to the judgment! The great mass of Christians are neither saintly, nor deliberately sinful and in that mass how much insensibility, how much false confidence, how much self-deceit! "Ephraim hath grey hairs upon him, and he knoweth it not." "Wo to them that are at ease in Zion." "Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after." Some men go down unawakened to the grave, and "their bones are full of the sin of their youth, which shall lie down with them in the dust.'

What sign, then, have we to shew that our sins are not following close upon us until now?

There are only two conditions on which we can be set free from this fearful pursuit of sin.

Either that we have never fallen from our filial obedience, since God, in holy baptism, made us to be His children; or that having fallen, we have, by a conscious and sincere repentance, arisen and cast ourselves at the foot of the Cross. Who is there that will say, that since baptism he has not fallen? If there be any, blessed and holy are they-sons of the first resurrection, on them the second death hath no power, neither, if they persevere, ever shall have.

But where are they? Then, if we cannot bear this witness, can we say that we have, by a de

1 Hosea vii. 9.

2 Amos vi. 1.

3 Job xx. 11.

liberate course of self-examination and confession, entered upon a life of repentance?

It was in mercy, for the sake of those who after baptism fell into deadly sin, that our Lord Jesus Christ left in His Church the power of absolution.

1. The first great end of this power was, openly to restore to peace both with God and the Church, those who had fallen from the peace openly and publicly given to them in their regeneration. And this the Church of England every year declares in the Commination service. Nor do we declare it only, but openly testify our desire that it may, the health of souls, be restored.

for

This power of spiritual discipline entrusted to the Church by our Lord Jesus Christ, is inalienable. However bound down by worldly bonds, and entangled by the course of our secular state, so as to be for a time suspended from activity, there must ever exist an imperishable power of judging and chastening sinners now in this life, that their souls

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may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." It is indeed much to be desired that this godly discipline of repentance were restored. Thousands who, in days of ruder but more living faith, would have been chastened into penitents, now hide the corruptions which fester inwardly, and die in their sins. It is the flock that perishes when the shepherd's

staff is broken.

In this luxurious and unchastened

land, it is to be feared that multitudes "lie in the hell like sheep," and "death gnaweth upon them," for lack of the loving severity and the stern tenderness of discipline.

2. But though the first end of this power of absolution be the public reconciliation of penitents, yet there is another equally important, equally, nay even, if possible, more blessed, and full of Divine compassion upon fallen Christians; and that is the private absolution to which the Church, in the name of Christ, invites all who cannot quiet their own conscience before God. The unbelief and impenitence of the world may suspend outward discipline, but the inward consolations of repenting Christians are beyond its reach. It cannot thrust itself between penitent souls and the pastor who bears the heavenly keys.

In days when there was more power in faith, more fire in love, more abasement in repentance, many of us who pass to and fro unchastened would have earnestly prayed to receive the yoke of a salutary penance. How do you know but that your sins may be following you now? Many are hemmed in by them, and know it not. them, and they are not aware. though slow, are sure of foot. sured yourselves that the sins

Guilt hangs upon

Forgotten sins, How have you asof childhood, and

youth, or of your more self-possessed and daring manhood, are put away? They do not trouble you. But security is no sign of safety. Your conscience is not burdened. But that does not shew that they are taken away. Forgotten sins cannot burden us. Sins dimly seen in the twilight of a dull heart give little trouble. Insensibility is proof against disquiet unconsciousness leaves no room for compunction. To be free from alarm is no sign of true repentance. There must be surer signs than these. It may be you will desire upon a deathbed, or in the foresight of death approaching, something more than your own self-absolution, to assure you that there is no train of sins still following you to judgment. Are you so sure that you can make no mistake in this? And what if you be mistaken ? What if, at your passing hour, you wake up under the flood of eternal light, and see yourself all soiled and spotted with forgotten unrepented sins? can make this mistake but once and what a doom hangs upon that once! O better ten thousandfold is all humiliation, all bitterness, all shame, a whole life of penance, a whole age of sorrow in this present time, than to run into so much as a shadow of peril, lest death should first reveal to us this one eternal mistake. How far wiser in their generation are the children of this world! Who dresses his own wounds, or plays the physician to his own

We

fevered pulses? Who is his own pleader in a charge of life or death? Who counsels himself even in the vilest matters? And yet for the healing of the soul and for the judgment after death, we are all supremely skilled. Alas for us! If a mistake can be our ruin, here is one upon the threshold ; a mistake fraught with eternal perils; the forerunner, it may be, of that mistake which is everlasting. It is in pity and tenderness to our infirmities of ignorance and fear, that our Lord Jesus Christ has committed to His pastors the keys of His heavenly kingdom. He has, by the Spirit, given His pastors' to the Church, that they may be the guides of sinners, and safeguards against self-deceit. It is a benign and loving appointment of the Good Shepherd: for after He has marked us for His own, we may still perish by our own self-guidance. Happy are they who from early childhood have been under a pastor's care; who have been thereby restrained from the blind and deadly wanderings of sin. What makes men so unwilling to accuse themselves before God, in the hearing of His servants, but that long years of self-guidance, or rather of self-deceit, have heaped up a multitude of sins before which their hearts die away for fear and shame? The longer they keep silence, the harder it will be to speak at 1 Ephes. iv. 11.