verification of these most awful words,-of a type of all those by whom the first of heavenly privileges, that of baptismal grace, has been wantonly thrown away, a character like that of Esau should be selected by the Holy Spirit here. Not without reason is the ungodly member of Christ admonished, not by a case of most revolting wickedness, but by the case of one in whom some amiable qualities may be discerned; to whom his father, the good Isaac, would have fain given the blessing of Abraham; whose worst feelings do not by any means reach the most malignant or implacable character; who appears, in the last event recorded of him, to have been restrained, as well by a laudable recurrence of natural feeling, as by the overruling providence of the Most High, from doing or intending harm to his brother. Not without reason, I say, is a good-humoured, reckless hunter of the olden time made the beacon of the careless Christian. For there is no kind of character to which mankind at large are less disposed to attach deep moral guilt than to easy improvidence with respect to futurity they regard it in something of an amiable light, -as rather a man's misfortune than his fault. But whatever it may be in the blessed season of childhood, when the want of foresight is better supplied by that filial dependence and trust in parents, which we must all imitate towards our Father in heaven, certain it is, that in adult persons, who do think for themselves, and regard the various objects surrounding them, the disposition which throws off from itself all thought and care of

its highest relations, while lesser objects are merely regarded, evinces its true character of evil: it is the development of the same naughtiness of heart, which at an earlier stage shows itself in the slighter forms of disobedience and prevarication, or deceitful concealment of its ways from those to whom confiding love and reverence are due. Such, however, is the case with multitudes, whom mankind yet count amiable in their want of thought, long after that judgment is approved by God; the amiableness even in man's sight being of a nature to diminish continually. For nothing is worthy of love where self is predominant: the selfish will, whether intent on interest or pleasure, hardens the heart continually towards God and man; and the virtues of better human constitution fade and wither,they prove themselves unreal as well as transitory,when unsustained in that Eternal Love whence alone are the living springs of virtue and goodness. The generosity of Esau, the public spirit of Saul, turn alike to bitterness at last, when God, whom they first rejected, had rejected them, and abandoned them to the natural fruit of their own self-will. At the end, if not now, the equity of the divine judgment will be vindicated, even when our human sympathies least avail to discern it.

The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: its enjoyment and its more serious business are both transient and unsatisfying; and while sinful gratifications end in blackness and remorse, the purest pleasures that life affords abound in materials for sharper sorrow. Even these are unblest:

except as they may be made a part of that process by which the soul below is disciplined to a higher state; where all that is evil shall have been cleansed, and all that was here good refined to immortality,through Him who for this end was incarnate, and lived and died and rose again. All is unblest : except as conducting through Him to God-the God whom our sins provoke to anger, whom our waywardnesses grieve, from whom sensualities and undisciplined passions tend ever to alienate us. Well may we use the words of the most ancient psalmist, Moses the man of God: "Who regardeth the power of thy wrath? For even thereafter as a man feareth, so is thy displeasure. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." May we turn to account these days of preparation for the Eucharistic season of Easter, by penitent renunciation of all remembered sin: that grieving for it betimes and habitually, we raise not our cry of regret like Esau suddenly at the last,-loud and bitter and unavailing.

SERMON XXIV.

CHRISTIAN LIGHT TO THE PENITENT.

(Preached at St Mary's on the Third Sunday in Lent, Feb. 23, 1845.)

EPHESIANS V. 13, 14.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

THERE is no part of subjective religion on which the ancient Church laid greater stress than that of repentance: there is none on which our present popular teaching dwells so little. The fact is sufficiently striking to invite enquiry into its cause as matter of speculation; but far more so when surveyed, as everything in religion ought to be, practically. Is it then that we are more vigorously pursuing the apostolic precept to which I adverted last Sunday, not to lay over again the foundation of repentance from dead works, but, leaving this and the other principles of Christ's doctrine, to go on to perfection? Is it that with us the Christian regeneration is considered as so accomplishing its perfect work-"He that is born of God sinneth not" -that explicit repentance for sin after baptism is less called for than of old? And is it thus through the method indicated by the beloved disciple, i. e.

through the excision of that sin whose fruit and whose appropriate remedy lies in fear and godly sorrow, that we have reached in our own esteem that "perfect love which casteth out fear, because fear hath torment"?

No one, I apprehend, will venture to answer these enquiries affirmatively. Strangely as we are disposed to exalt our own spiritual eminence above every other age and people, our self-complacency has taken a quite different direction from that of denying the continuance of sin in the regenerate: it is not the Novatian vaunt of guiltless purity, but the Gnostic boast of superior knowledge of the Gospel, that is raised so loudly and often so fiercely among us. Far from such affirmations as have been supposed, nothing is more characteristic of our current theology as distinct from the old than this; the disposition to overlook or explain away the highest moral representations of the Christian state,―to view the distinctive blessing of the evangelical state as consisting not in the emancipation of the will from sin, but in conscious exemption from its consequences,-to consider our Lord's ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance, as in every sense a hypothetical unreality,— to refer the description in St Paul's seventh chapter to the Romans, not as his context requires, to the state of bare legal conviction, but to that regenerate condition to which it is most pointedly contrasted and opposed throughout,—and while all the privileges of judicial exemption are willingly enlarged on, and treated as if they alone were properly