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saved."

"Look unto me, and be ye Though your sins be as scarlet, they "shall be white as snow;" "tho' they be "red as crimson, they shall be as wool." Then will you be encouraged to lift up your head, and to cast an eye of faith and of hope to Jesus; and you will behold in him every qualification that a perishing sinner, humbled and broken under a sense of guilt, can require in a Saviour. Though the spark of spiritual life in you be extremely faint, though hope and despair, like the quiverings of an expiring flame, alternately take possession of your mind; yet you will behold in Jesus a gentle and a compassionate Saviour, who will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. You are not only covered, but oppressed. with guilt; but in Christ you will see him who bare your sins in his body on the tree, You have no merits, no righteousness of your own, to plead with God; but you will behold Him who fulfilled the law in your stead, and by whose obedience many are made righteous. You are poor in spirit; you are conscious that you are weak, dependent creatures; that you have no claim even to the most or

dinary blessings of life; but in Christ you see the heir of all things, out of whose fulness you may hope to receive, and grace for grace. Thus, my friends, you must look to Jesus with an eye of faith, convinced of your lost condition; that Jesus alone can save you, and that he can save to the uttermost all that come to God through him; and when you have thus beheld in Jesus every thing that could be desired of a Saviour,-when you see that he is the very person whom your condition requires, then will you fly, with eagerness, to the hope set before you,then will you exclaim, with the Apostle Thomas," My Lord and my God!"This leads me to shew, in the

Second place, That we must look to Christ with eager desire of relief.

The Lord Jesus is styled "the desire "of all nations." He is just what a guilty, condemned, perishing world required. And when God, by his prophets, gave men some faint hopes of such a Saviour, with what eagerness did they look forward to that happy period! Abraham longed earnestly to see the

day of Christ, and "he saw it afar off " and was glad." "I know," saith Job, "that my Redeemer liveth, and that he "will stand at the latter day on the "earth.” “I will lift up my eyes," saith the Psalmist," to the hills, from whence "cometh my help." Thus did the men of old look forward with eager desire to the coming of the promised Messiah. But we, my brethren, have seen his day. To us he has been more clearly and fully exhibited. Can we then pretend to believe in Jesus, and yet behold him with indifference? Will the man who is on the point of sinking in the waves, behold with indifference the boat that comes to his relief? Will the criminal who has been sentenced to death, and who trembles at the approach of the destined fatal hour, look with indifference to the Prince from whom he expects a pardon? These, Christians, are faint, but they are apt comparisons; they shew the absurdity of pretending to believe in Jesus, and yet not looking to him with the strongest emotions of desire and hope. Only conceive the situation of man by nature: Convicted of transgressing the divine

law, sentenced to the most dreadful punishment, already feeling the alarming prelude of the wrath of God, and looking forward to the gulph of misery, which death discloses; he is approaching it with rapid steps: the moment of his dissolution is uncertain; he trembles on the brink of eternal ruin, every instant ready to sink into endless torment: Conceive such a situation; conceive a man whose eyes are opened to behold all its horrors, trembling, aghast, casting around a look of distraction and despair. Suppose, at such a moment, he hears these delightful words, "Look unto me, and be ye saved," what will be his emotions? Will they not be those of the most importunate desire and eagerness to obtain the help,—the relief of which he stands in need? Will he not, with Peter, when ready to sink in the waves, reply," Help, Lord, or I perish ?" How would he then labour to lay hold on Jesus Christ, to reach the Rock of Ages, and secure himself from danger! Then will he be often on his knees before a throne of grace, and a new spirit will be infused into his prayers. Then, with the importunate widow, will he pray with

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out ceasing, till his request be granted. Then will his heart accompany his addresses to heaven, and enforce the petition with groanings that cannot be uttered. Such, my Christian brethren, will be the feelings of the awakened sinner; such the look of eagerness which he will direct to Jesus. Nor does this eagerness abate; on the contrary, it increases with his growth in grace. does not, however, proceed altogether from the same principle. It is less prompted by fear, and more and more by love. After he has once tasted that the Lord is gracious, then indeed his soul is inflamed with desire; then, like the Apostle," he counts all things loss, "that he may win Christ, and be found "in him." Though he is already in Christ with respect to faith, he is still out of him with respect to complete conformity." He has not yet appre"hended that for which he is also ap"prehended of Christ Jesus.' Fixing, therefore, his look on the Saviour, he is continually "leaving the things that are "behind, and reaching forth to those "that are before," while he " presses

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