crite, too. What would all the world think of you, if they knew as much against you as I do? What would the world think of you, if they saw into that dirty heart of yours?' For we can answer him-'Whatever the world would think, I know what God Himself thinks: He thinks of me as of a son who, after wasting his substance, and feeding on husks with the swine, has come home to his Father's house, and cried, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; and I know that that same good Heavenly Father, instead of shaming me, reproaching me, shutting His doors against me, has seen me afar off, and taken me home again without one harsh word, and called to all the angels in heaven, saying, 'It is meet that we rejoice and be glad, for this My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.' And while Almighty God, who made heaven and earth, is saying that of me, it matters little what the lying Devil may say.'

Only, only, if you be wandering from your Father's house, come home; if you be wrong, entreat to be made right. If you are in your Father's house, stay there; if you are right, pray and struggle to keep right; if the old account is blotted out, then, for your soul's sake, run up no fresh account to stand against you after all in the day of judg

U

ment; if you have the hope in you of not coming to shame, you must purify yourselves, even as God is pure; if you believe really with your heart, you must believe unto righteousness; that is, you must trust God to make you righteous and good: there is no use trusting Him to make you anything else, for He will make you nothing else; being good Himself, He will only make you good: but as for trusting in Him to leave you bad, to leave you quiet in your sins, and then to save you after all, that is trusting that God will do a most unjust, and what is more, a most cruel thing to you; that is, trusting God to do the Devil's work; that is, a blasphemous false trust, which will be utterly confounded in the day of judgment, and will cover you with double shame. The whole question for each of us is, Do we believe unto righteousness? Is righteousness what we want? Is to be made good men what we want? If not, no confessing with the mouth will be unto salvation, for how can a man be saved in his sins? If an animal is diseased, can it be saved from dying without curing the disease? If a tree be decayed, can it be saved from dying, without curing the decay? If a man be bad and sinful, can he be saved from eternal death without curing his badness and sinfulness? How can a man be saved from his sins but by becoming sinless? as well ask, Can a man be saved from his sins without

being saved from his sins? But if you wish really to be saved from your sins, and taken out of them, and cured of them, that you may be made good men, righteous men, useful men, just men, loving men, Godlike men;—then trust in God for that, and you will find that your trust will be unto righteousness, for you will become righteous men ; and confess God with your mouth for that, saying, 'I believe in God my Father; I believe in Jesus Christ His Son, who died, and rose, and ascended on high for me; I believe in God's Holy Spirit, which is with me, to make me right,' and your confession will be unto salvation, for you will be saved from your sins.

Always say to yourself this one thing, 'Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in God's goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good, more than I do myself,' and you will find that because you have confessed, in that best and most honest of ways, that God is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you: and that because you have really trusted in Him, you shall never come, either in this world, or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself.

SERMON XIX.

FORGIVENESS.

PSALM li. 16, 17.

'Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: Thou delightest not in burnt offering.

'The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.'

You

all heard just now the story of Nathan

and David, and you must have all felt how beautiful, and noble, and just it was; how it declares that there is but one everlasting God's law of justice, which is above all men, even the greatest; and that what is right for the poor man is right for the King upon his throne, for God is no respecter of persons.

And you must have admired, too, the frankness, and fullness, and humbleness of David's repentance, and liked and loved the man still, in spite of his sins, as much almost as you did when you heard of him as a shepherd boy slaying the giant, or a wanderer and an outlaw among the hills and forests of Judæa.

But did it now seem strange to you that David's repentance, which was so complete when it did come, should have come no sooner? Did he need Nathan to tell him that he had done wrong? He had seduced another man's wife, and that man one of his most faithful servants, one of the most brave and loyal generals of his army; and then, over and above his adultery, he had plotted the man's death, and had had him killed and put out of the way in as base, and ungrateful, and treacherous a fashion as I ever heard of. His whole conduct in the matter had been simply villanous. There is no word too bad for it. And do you fancy that he had to wait the greater part of a year before the thought came into his head that that was not the fashion in which a man ought to behave, much more a king?-that God's blessing was not on such doings as those?-and after all not find out for himself that he was wrong, but have to be told of it by Nathan?

Surely, if he had any common sense, any feeling of right and wrong left in him, he must have known that he had done a bad thing; and his guilty conscience must have tormented him many a time and oft during those months, long before Nathan came to him. Now, that he had the feeling of right and wrong left in him, we cannot doubt; for when Nathan told him the parable of