8. Finally, let me remind you to consider how you are affected to the present world. If you could only be exempt from its afflictions, would you wish it to be your lasting home? If If you could surround yourself with all its advantages and enjoyments, would you be content to dwell in it for ever? Yet you know that it is a place of separation and exile from the Divine Majesty ;-that it is a scene of darkness; in comparison with heaven, very faintly illuminated with the beams of his distant glory ;that its inhabitant is constrained to say, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but mine eye hath not yet seen thee;" while heaven is the proper dwelling-place of God and his people! Could you then consent to remain here always, without ever seeing as you are seen,-seeing light in his light, without ever beholding his glory; without ever drinking at the fountain, and basking in that presence which is fulness of joy, and life for evermore! always to remain immersed in the shadows of time -entombed in its corruptible possessions!-never to ascend up on high to God and Christ and the glories of the eternal world! If such is the state of your spirit, you want the essential principle of a christian,-you want the love of God. The genuine christian, the lover of God, is certain to feel himself a "stranger on the earth." No splendour, no emolument of this world,-not all the fascinations of sensual pleasure, can detain his heart below the skies, or keep him from sympathizing with the sentiment of the Psalmist: "As for me I shall behold thy face in righteousness; and when I

awake in thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." I do not ask whether you have, at present, "a desire to depart:" perhaps you may not be as yet sufficiently prepared and established to entertain so exalted a desire; but still, if you have received a new heart, you will deprecate nothing so much as having your portion in this life,—as having your eternal abode on earth. It is the character of faith to dwell much in eternity: the apostle says, in the name of all real believers, "We look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal."

II. And now, my brethren, supposing the preceding remarks to have produced in any of you the conviction that you have not the love of God in you, permit me very briefly to point out the proper improvement of such a conviction.

1. First, it should be accompanied with deep humiliation. If you laboured under the privation of some bodily organ, requisite to the discharge of an animal function, you would feel it as in some degree a humiliating circumstance; but what would be any defect of this kind, however serious, in comparison with that great want under which you labour-the want of piety, the calamity of a soul estranged from the love of God! What are all other subjects of humiliation, compared with this-a moral fall, a spiritual death in sin: and this, unless it be removed, the sure precursor of the second death-eternal ruin! "This is a lamentation indeed, and it shall be for a lamentation."

Suppose the children of a family, reared and provided for by the most affectionate of parents, to rise up in rebellion against their father, and cast off all the feelings of filial tenderness and respect; would any qualities those children might possess, any appearances of virtue they might exhibit in other respects, compensate for such an unnatural, such an awful deformity of character? Transfer this representation to your conduct in relation to God: "If I," says he, "am a father, where is my fear? if I am a master, where is my honour?" Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me: the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."

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2. And let your humiliation be accompanied with concern and alarm. To be alienated from the Great Origin of being; to be severed, or to sever yourself, from the essential Author and element of all felicity, must be a calamity which none can understand, an infinite woe which none can measure or conceive! If the stream is cut off from the fountain, it soon ceases to flow, and its waters are dissipated in the air: and if the soul is cut off from God, it dies! Its vital contact with God,—its spiritual union with the Father of Spirits through the blessed Mediator, is the only life and beauty of the immortal soul. All, without this, are dead"dead in trespasses and sins!" A living death— a state of restless wanderings, and unsatisfied desires! What a condition theirs! And, oh! what

a prospect for such, when they look beyond this world! Who will give them a welcome when they enter an eternal state? What reception will they meet with, and where? What consolation amidst their loss and their sufferings, but that of the fellow-sufferers plunged in the same abyss of ruin? Impenitent sinners are allied to evil spirits; they have an affinity with the kingdom of darkness; and, when they die, they are emphatically said to "go to THEIR OWN place!"

3. This is an awful state for any to be in at present; but, blessed be God, it is not yet a hopeless situation. Let no person say, "I find by what I have heard, that I do not love God, and, therefore, I can entertain no hope." There is a way of return and recovery open to all. Jesus Christ, my dear brethren, proclaims to you all, "I am the way. No man can come to the Father but by me:"-but every one that will may come by this new and living way; and, if you lose life eternal, you lose it because, according to his words just before the text,-because "you will not come to Christ that you may have life." If you feel the misery, deformity, and danger of your state, then listen to his invitation, and embrace his promise. See the whole weight of your guilt transferred to his cross! See how God can be at once the just and the justifier! Take of the blood of sprinkling, and be at peace! His blood cleanseth from all sin : He will send that Spirit into your heart, which will manifest him to you; and where that Spirit is, there is liberty and holy love. He is the mystical

ladder, let down from heaven to earth, on which angels are continually ascending and descending, in token of an alliance established between God and man. United by faith to Jesus Christ, you shall become a habitation of God through the Spirit: the Father will make you a partaker of his love, the Son of his grace, angels of their friendship; and you shall be preserved, and progressively sanctified; until, by the last change, all remains of the grand epidemic source of evils shall be for ever removed from your soul; and the love of God shall constitute your eternal felicity.

XVII.

THE JOY OF ANGELS OVER A REPENTING

SINNER.*

[PREACHED AT BROADMEAD, BRISTOL, SUNDAY EVENING, AUGUST, 22, 1824.]

LUKE XV. 7.—I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance.

THE ministry of our Lord was exercised, and his success obtained, principally among the lower classes of mankind. We read that, in opposition to the supercilious contempt of the Pharisees and rulers, "the common people heard him gladly;" the ancient prediction being thus verified, that,

* Printed from the notes of the Rev. Thomas Grinfield.