❝ deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." It is as certain now as it was in the days of Jesus that "out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." And, therefore, the assertions of Scripture touching our depravity are made generally of man as man, and expressed in a universal form. "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh.”* "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."+ "There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.”‡ "What is man, that he should be clean, and he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous ?"§- "Who can say I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin ?" ||

And as the natural condition is thus similar in all men, so equally must be the necessities which result from such a condition, the sum of which necessities is, Deliverance from a state of sinfulness, with all its workings and concomitants, into a state of Holiness; which Deliverance, therefore, is the grand benefit announced by Revelation, provided for in Christ, and placed within the reach of all to whom the glad tidings of Christianity are proclaimed. The Remedy is commensurate with the disease.

* John iii. 6. + Romans iii. 23.

Eccl. vii. 20.

§ Job xv. 14. || Prov. xx. 9.

But if the Disease be universal, and equally so the Remedy, then certainly the mode of operation of that Remedy must, in all essential points, be similar; the method, (or path of transit,) of the Deliverance from a state of sinfulness into a state of Holiness, must be but one and the same for all. The course of Christian experience, however marked by different accidental circumstances in different individuals, and however varying in intensity or in rapidity, according to their temperament, or opportunities-must exhibit certain general features common to each particular case. And hence it is that St. Paul lays down the principal steps of this transition in consecutive order, when he tells the Romans, "Whom God did predestinate them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified;" and that Christian churches and divines have always noted them with more or less distinctness in their Confessions, and their Theological Systems; the fullest as well as the most exquisite example of which is afforded us incidentally in the Seventeenth Article of the Church of England, where she declares that they who be endued with the benefit of God's predestination, "be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they

be justified freely: they be made Sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity."

If then, we simply cast our eyes on some of the broader facts of the unrenewed soul, and consider what is the transformation which the mere existence of those facts supposes necessary in order to the realizing of that sense of God as our Father which constitutes, as we have before seen, the Essence of Christian Piety, we shall perceive, I think, that the developement of the Spiritual Life, wherever it has been awakened, must manifest itself in something like the following progression of Experience.

First. All men are by nature indifferent to God. They do not willingly think of Him, do not desire the knowledge of his ways; are fully occupied with the cares, the business, and the pleasures of their earthly nature, and thus live practically" without God in the world." The first step, therefore, which they need towards Piety is to have their attention awakened; their minds roused from the torpor of indifference to spiritual things; and the thought of God, and of their relation to Him, and of all the solemn consequences of that relation, made alive within

them. And this the Scriptures denominate their Calling, their waking out of sleep- their rising from the dead.

Secondly.-Men are ignorant of God. They know Him not; they understand him not; and even when an interest in the thought of Him has been awakened, that thought is vague, imperfect, feeble. It is for the most part an "unknown God," whom they are "feeling after if haply they may find him, though he is not far from every one of them." Here then, they need farther to have their understanding opened to his character, his will, his demands upon their conscience, his doings in their behalf, his invitations and directions to them. And this is called in Scripture their Illumination Christ giving to them light-their being taught of God in the Gospel of his Son.

Thirdly. The hearts of men are averse to God. The thought of Him is not welcome-it is irksome -they would rather do without it. And this not only on account of its strangeness as contrasted with the nature of their earthly imaginations and pursuits, the Spiritual not assorting well with the Sensual; and not only on account of its dimness, its being so unfamiliar and perplexing,—as no man likes the contemplation of Ideas whose obscurity upbraids his ignorance; but, still more, because of its contrariety; because of the natural opposition

that exists between Sinfulness and Holiness, the resistance of the evil nature to the demands of goodness, and the consequent dislike which rises against Him who is the Ideal of that Holiness and the Author and Enforcer of those demands; and whose very purity the more it is perceived and understood, becomes the more reproachful to us, --our image darkening by the contrast, as the image of the Holy One emerges into greater brightness. We need, therefore, the removal, or at least, the repression, of this sense of contrariety; we need the softening of this opposing will; the winning over of this Cain-like sullenness; the casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and the bringing every thought into subjection to the obedience of Christ; so that the alien may be naturalized, the rebel be transformed into a loyal subject, the heart made friends with God, and ready to obey his will. And this the Scriptures call Repentance, or a change of mind towards God; Conversion, or the turning back to God; Regeneration, or the awakening of a will in harmony with God's will;-a new creation ;—the renewing of the Spirit of the mind.

Fourthly.-Where there is indifference, and ignorance, and aversion, there also is Dread of God. A sense of contrariety brings with it a sense of guilt.