soon all this may happen to you; we only know that to all of us "the time is short,' "the Lord is at hand;" our flesh is not as brass; we shall soon be dying; our graves will soon be opened, our coffins soon made ready, and we shall go from the light of the world, from the sun and the cheerful day, from our friends, our kindred, our gains, our pleasures. Then, then your sins, unless they have been repented of, will break out into a devouring flame; then your soul will find the torment which your present way of life is preparing. Once more then, by the mercies of Jesus Christ, by the long-suffering of God, I beseech you to turn and repent; repent in this accepted time; repent before the day of grace has gone; repent while God calls you to repentance; cast yourself on God's mercy; plead for pardon in your Saviour's Name; bow yourself to the dust before the most pure God, whom in time past you have grieved and angered, whom you have despised and disobeyed, but who even yet opens wide the arms of His mercy that He may receive you back and embrace you, and not drive you out of His presence as a reprobate and a cast-away. O my friend, repent, repent!

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

COMFORT TO THE PENITENT.

ARE you out of heart about your salvation? Do your sins sit so heavily upon your soul that you are almost without hope? Does your conscience bring strong accusations against you, so as almost to crush you and beat you down to the earth? Do you seem to yourself to have sinned too long or too deeply to be forgiven?

It is indeed a fearful thing when we wake up and hear all our sins crying out against us, when we see all our transgressions witnessing against us, when we recollect all our wasted opportunities and our wasted warnings, our contempt of God, our crucifyings of Christ, our reckless and guilty ways, our bold and frequent violations of Christ's will, our stubborn perseverance in iniquity, our long indulgence of many hurtful lusts and passions, our forgetfulness of our heavenly Father's love, and of our Redeemer's sufferings, and of the many pleadings of God the Holy Ghost who has oftentimes

sought to hold us back from sin, who has often, with "a still small voice," urged us to return to the Bishop and Shepherd of our souls. It is an awful thing to wake up and see how vile we are, how polluted, how far from God, how sunk in sin, how stained, how spotted with the world, especially when with all this strong overwhelming consciousness of our sinfulness in God's sight, we have also strange, awful thoughts of death, of judgment to come, of Christ's second coming in glory, of hell, of God's vengeance on sinners at the last day. All these thoughts are very terrible, very overwhelming. We seem quite stricken down; the fear of death comes upon us; we dare not look up; all is darkness and blackness around us; self-accused, self-condemned, we lose all heart; we sit, as it were, on the ground and weep; we doubt whether we can be saved; we are well nigh inclined to think we are past hope, and that God must have numbered us amongst the reprobates.

Now if you are thus smitten, my friend, with this deep sense of your sins, and are in this great bitterness of soul, if you are ready almost to despair, let me come to you in Christ's Name and speak to you the words of God; and in Christ's Name, that most blessed Name, whereby

alone we can be saved, I charge you not to give yourself over to despair. I tell you that there is hope; the hope may be faint; it may be slight; it may be very small; but still, I say, there is some hope; the darkness of utter condemnation has not settled on you; imprisoned though you may be, and fast bound in sin, you are among “the prisoners of hope;" for the final wrath of God, the vengeance of the last day, has not fallen on you. There may be but a little streak of hope in the sky, or perhaps the darkness may not be the midnight darkness, but rather that dusky twilight as when Mary went to the sepulchre, but still, even this is some change for the better; there is some token for good, even if while it is still dark, the darkness is not so thick.

For I would ask you this, How is it that you have come to feel the burden of your sins? How is it that you begin now to feel that you have sinned, that you are in a perilous case, that you have been a false son to your heavenly Father, a false soldier to the Captain of your salvation, a false disciple of your most loving Lord? There was a time when you sinned without feeling it, when your conscience did not prick or sting; you went on day after day, week after week, without any fear for your soul, without any dread of the

judgment to come, without any thought or care what you were about. How, I ask, has this change come over you? How is it that you have been awakened as from a sleep and now see your danger? Surely, my friend, the voice of divine love, the voice of the Spirit of God, has sounded in your ears, has startled you from your sleep. It must be God who has opened your eyes, who has shewn you your wounds and sores, who has given you these fears of death, who has roused you from that dead and torpid state, who has quickened you, who has made you feel yourself a rebellious child, a wanderer from the fold, a backslider, a worthless, fruitless branch, deserving to be cut off.

Though even now you may have much cause for fear, yet you were in a far more fearful state when your sins did not oppress or torture you, when you did not know your guilt; you have now some ground for hope. You can, at least, say that you are beginning to see yourself in the true light, however defiled and deformed your own soul may appear to be. For this beginning of self-knowledge, of consciousness of sin, you may fall down on your knees and bless God; you may bless Him that He has given you this sight of yourself, fearful as it is, while you are