The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Such is the language of faith, under both the Old and New Covenant: but the people of God, under the former dispensation, did not understand the reason of that merciful compassion, which led the high and the holy One to regard a humble and penitent heart as his chosen temple, and his choicest sacrifice. We possess additional motives to humility, and fresh materials of joy, in the knowledge, that God so loves and condescends to the contrite ones, because for them his beloved Son first determined upon, and afterwards accomplished, the sacrifice of himself upon the cross. If self-abasement, and self-renunciation, and self-condemnation were required in an Israelite, as a necessary preparation for the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit, they must be at least equally necessary to Christians, who understand more clearly the nature and extent of sin, and the moving cause of God's condescension and mercy.

Without the certain promises of Revelation, we can have no assurance of finding favour with God. If there be a supreme ruler of the world, he must be holy and just. The justice of God is concerned in avenging his holiness, and in

punishing every offence against it: this is a truth, which conscience persists in repeating, by whatever sophistry a corrupt reason may disguise or conceal it. That we are not perfectly righteous, that we offend against the light of nature, as well as the declared will of God, no man will be found to deny. The consequence is too plain to be eluded; we must perish in our iniquities. Yet God is merciful as well as just: but how to reconcile the exercise of his mercy with the claims of his justice, we cannot tell. We know that we are transgressors, and deserve his wrath; but how to escape it? Of that we can have, by nature, but a vague, and trembling, and unsatisfactory hope.

In this perplexity, the natural man inquires, with the anxiety of one who feels that he is accountable, and knows that he is a defaulter, what are the methods and the means of conciliating the favour of God, and of obtaining those consolatory assurances, which the spirit of a man longeth and thirsteth after, and which the Spirit of God can alone supply. The Spirit of God alone can answer the inquiry; I dwell with the contrite and humble. Humility, then, is the indispensable preliminary to a spiritual communion with God. If there be no genuine

humility, no real contrition, no prostration of the heart, God will not dwell with it; and if God be not with us by his Spirit, we can have no fellowship with his Son; no taste of reconciliation; no revival of hope; no restoration of comfort; but must remain like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt; as proud and rebellious, as impure and as unquiet. It concerns us very nearly, therefore, to inquire into the nature of this humility and contrition, which are thus made the prerequisites of religious comfort and confidence.

2

The foundation of them, and therefore of the whole religious character, is, a sense of sin. By a sense of sin, I mean, not merely an apprehension of the offensive nature of sin in general, but a conviction of our own sinfulness in particular. No person, who has even a vague and imperfect notion of the relation in which he stands to God, can be ignorant of the odiousness of sin. Every page of the volume of revelation declares it to be highly displeasing to God; the concurrent testimony of the wise and good, in all ages of the world, pronounces it to be odious to the better part of mankind; experience teaches him that it is injurious, if not utterly ruinous to

2 Isaiah lvii. 20.

himself. Of all this he may be thoroughly persuaded; and he may further believe, on the evidence of God's Word, that sin disqualifies a man for admission into that kingdom, into which there shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth. But all this reaches no further than to a speculative sense of sin. It is the personal application of these truths, by each individual, to his own particular case, the realizing of them in his own feelings and convictions, which constitutes a practical and soul humbling sense of sin; such a sense as our Saviour supposes to be effectually perceived by the true penitent; Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden. Whatever notion we may entertain of the effects of sin upon our spiritual relation to God, we shall not feel its oppressiveness, till we have experienced its weight upon our own souls. The word contrition means a bruising and breaking; and although a general persuasion of the mischief and evil of sin may affect the heart with tender feelings, and lead the way to holy wishes; it can never be contrite, bruised and broken, except by an overpowering sense of its own sinfulness. The Jews, who listened to the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost, were doubtless

3 Rev. xxi. 27.

not ignorant of the dangerous nature of sin: they could not be ignorant of that which was interwoven in the whole texture of their Scriptures: but it was not till the powerful and searching eloquence of the Apostle had convicted their consciences of sin in their own persons, that they were pricked in their hearts, and exclaimed, with all the earnestness of a genuine contrition, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

Indeed, it too often requires almost the eloquence and authority of an Apostle, to lead men to this conviction. It is a conviction, to which the pride and the passions of human nature set themselves in vehement opposition; and which is contradicted by the language and the habits of the world, and that conventional measure of goodness which the children of this world have adopted, as the rule of their conduct and their judgments. It is here that our chief difficulty lies, as preachers of the Gospel; in bringing our hearers to a sense of sin; of the nature of sin in general; and of their own in particular. Until we succeed in laying this foundation, we shall labour in vain to raise the superstructure of Christian faith and practice.

It is in vain that we talk to our hearers of

4 Acts ii. 37.