SERMON II.

REPENTANCE.

MATT. iii. 2.

Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

In every dispensation of religion, under which it has pleased God to place mankind, he has always treated them agreeably to their nature, that is, as beings who are capable of free thought, and free action; and however liberally he has at any time supplied them with moral benefits and advantages, he has still left something for man to do to qualify himself for the reception and enjoyment of those blessings. Thus it has happened in regard to that subject, so unspeakably interesting to all the sons of men,—the means of recovering the favour of God after it has been justly forfeited by sin; the Deity has uniformly shown himself, towards his offending, guilty creatures, as longsuffering and

of great kindness,—as willing to receive once more into the arms of his mercy those whom their transgressions had alienated from Him, but on the condition that they themselves are earnestly desirous of such a reconciliation, and that they feel and act in a manner correspondent and proper to their situation. Repentance therefore is inculcated, both under the Law and the Gospel, as the means, though not the ground, on which sinners must approach to God, to obtain the pardon of their past offences.

The duty of repentance therefore being so extensive and important, it will be well worth while to examine it more attentively; especially as in some of its parts it seems to be not unfrequently misunderstood. At present therefore, we shall endeavour both to explain the thing itself, and, in the course of that explanation, to notice some of the practical errors which have been occasionally grafted upon it.

The word repentance, as it occurs in Scripture, is generally used in a good sense, and this is the only one of its significations with which we are now concerned. Even however when it is used in a favourable way by the sacred writers, it does not always mean precisely one and the same thing; it is sometimes applied more comprehensively, and sometimes more strictly, according to the subject to which it refers; but in all cases it conveys the

idea of a change of inclination, disposition, and conduct, produced by consciousness and conviction of personal sin: and in this general sense we now use the term.

First, then, the object on which repentance is to be exercised is sin-sin, which the person repenting is conscious and convinced he has committed: only to form a proper conception of the extent of sin, we must carefully remember that it includes unholy thoughts and dispositions, as well as external acts of wickedness. This account of the matter will, we doubt not, be allowed to be conformable to the representations of Scripture; and, if so, we may derive from it some conclusions worthy of remark.

For, first, sin, which the penitent is conscious of having committed, being the only legitimate and proper object of repentance, a person cannot be called upon, on Scriptural grounds, to endeavour to repent of original sin. We say to endeavour to repent, because as to actual repentance in this case, it is not only unnecessary but impossible; for repentance being only applicable to calamities or disadvantages, which the penitent himself might have prevented, and arising from the concern he experiences that he has not prevented them, is here altogether irrelevant. A man who feels within him, as we all must feel if we carefully examine our own hearts, the workings of a spirit of evil, inclining

him to gratify the desires of sense at the expense of all remote considerations whatever,-may be sorry for the inconveniences of his situation, and the dangers to which they expose him, just as a man, who from the hour of his birth has been defective in some of the organs of sense, may regret his helplessness in active life, and incapacity for enjoyments, which he knows that others partake of; but the idea of repentance, in its proper acceptation, can be no more applied to the feelings of the man, produced by reflection on his natural condition, in the former case than in the latter. All this may appear sufficiently obvious, and yet it is no uncommon thing to meet with such accounts of original sin as seem to imply that it is a duty to repent of it. Now only imagine a person, in whom this conviction has been wrought, and you can hardly conceive an object more truly pitiable he believes his duty tells him one thing, and he is sure his reason tells him another ;— he labours to stamp an impression upon his conscience, at which it instinctively recoils, and which it never will or can receive; and his fruitless toil must either end in the conviction that the precepts of the Gospel are irreconcileable with reason, or in the production of some vague, and mixed, and mysterious feelings, which have neither foundation, nor motive, nor end.

In the next place, as sin is the object on which

repentance is to be employed, and must be employed, before we can obtain forgiveness, it will follow that repentance must be necessary as long as we continue to sin although it be only occasionally and by surprise. Now this will be the case as long as we live, for the apostle has told us that, even in the regenerate,-the flesh still lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot always do the things that we would'. Consequently, in compliance with the requisitions of the Gospel, repentance must be not so much an act as a habit-a distinction the more necessary to be insisted upon in these times, because some modern representations of the doctrine of conversion would appear to supersede any farther necessity for repentance in the spiritual life of one who had ever experienced conversion. the descriptions, given by certain religionists of the present day, of that total transformation, which they contend must take place in the heart of every man without distinction, we hear much of that repentance which attends this primary change, but very little of any repentance that is ever required afterwards. Perhaps the origin of this omission may be found in a partial consideration of Scripture, in which we undoubtedly observe a much more frequent mention of repentance, as accompanying conversion, than as subsequent to it.

1 Gal. v. 17.

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