hearts, perhaps, that little suppose it, have been this day condemning themselves, when they heard that parable in church; they have quite agreed with David's thought, the man which hath done this thing shall surely die. But Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man. Oh what a mountain of false excuses, vain hopes, and self-deceiving recollections was cleared away by that one word! His sin fell upon his soul's eye in all its intolerable blackness; he cast himself down convinced and broken-hearted, without excusing or abating aught of his guilt, into the deepest humiliation and repentance. And David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And God saw that his heart was now right; and God said unto him by His prophet, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. Never yet was penitent rejected, who offered the same sacrifice which David did at that moment. That is, the sacrifice of God, even a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise. The fifty-first Psalm was written by the penitent king on this occasion, and we have need to study it very seriously, that we, too, may learn how to repent. You may not have committed any single sins so great as David now had, but can any of us say we have led a more holy life than his was in general? And then what a gift is that which God has given all of us in holy Baptism, the gift of His Spirit, to join us to His Son, which in David's time was not given: of course it makes our wilful sins far more inexcusable than even David's. Recollect, moreover, that all wilful sins are equally forbidden in the Book of God, and that all, even the best among us, hath some evil desires to which he is particularly subject, some sins which do most easily

beset him. What those sins are in each case, God and his own conscience know: but whatever they be, and in whatsoever degree they have prevailed, for them and in that degree repentance and conversion are daily to be practised. If any of you have not yet begun this necessary work, I will tell him when to begin and how. This very night, commune with your own self in your chamber, and be still. Ask yourself, 'What wilful sins have I committed to-day? and what duties have I wilfully left undone? Think of those sins, and of God's anger against them, till you be enabled by His grace to fall down before Him, and offer such a sacrifice as David did-a broken and contrite heart; a heart self-abased, self-renouncing, having no hope but in Christ, and stedfastly set to forsake all bad ways for the future. Stand in awe, and resolve to sin not; say with all your soul, as David did, I have sinned against the Lord: keep your vow of repentance as David did, and doubt not but God will do to you as He did to David. The Lord also will put away your sin, for His Son's sake He will put it away, and ye shall not die for

evermore.

Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God, our Father, our Saviour, our Comforter, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and Amen.

ever.

BURTHORPE,

July 21, 1816.

[Sixth Sunday after Trinity.]

SERMON IX.

[Through unfavourable seasons... the price of wheat rose, before the end of 1816, from 52 shillings to upwards of 100 shillings a quarter.-History of England, "Student's Hume," p. 704.]

PSALM cvii. 34.

: ma ‘ayi nyga ankeb ne vos

"A fruitful land maketh He barren, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein."

THE prophet Isaiah, in that glorious hymn which he puts into the mouth of the Church triumphant in the last days, mentioneth this among other wonders of the justice and mercy of Almighty God, which shall cause her to desire and wait for Him, and seek Him early with her spirit, that when His judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let not, then, the charitable man be offended, let it not dishearten him that trusteth in God, if I set before you to-day what your own experience will allow to be too true a picture of the sin and following misery of the land in which we live. Such contemplations are indeed humbling to the proud, and heart-breaking to the worldly mind, but by the people that do know their ceived as most undoubted instances of the severe and chastening kindness of their heavenly Father, as fresh pledges of His truth, and therefore of their final happiness. For if we saw God careless of accomplishing

God, they, are re

His threats upon the wicked, how could we depend upon His fulfilling His promises to the penitent?

Now, it is certain that no passages of Holy Scripture are more plain than those in which war, bloodshed, pestilence, and famine are threatened to guilty nations, and the contrary blessings assured to the righteous. If it be objected that these earthly goods and evils are the sanctions of a temporal not an eternal covenant, the fruits of Mount Sinai, not of Mount Sion, it must be allowed that the objection is good, so far as there was something peculiar in the state of the Jewish nation, inasmuch as they, having Jehovah for their King, and receiving continual messages from Him by His prophets, might ascertain more exactly in every case what it was that they had done amiss, and why the Lord was angry. Thus far, I say, the threatenings and promises of the holy prophets must be understood, in their strict and literal sense, of the Jews only; but if we have the same God as they had, the same Ruler of right and wrong; if we are beset with as strong passions within, as dangerous temptations without; surely it were most unsafe conduct in us, not much less than contempt of God's Word, to stop our ears against these warnings, as not given to us, or to doubt that the same punishments will still, generally speaking, follow the same sins. True it is, that the doctrines of the judgment to come, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, were but very darkly and imperfectly known to the Jews, and therefore it was God's will to make present rewards and punishments the consequence of good or evil conduct, more clearly and certainly in those days than they are now; but let it also be remembered, that nations, as such, will not last into another world,