of circumstances shall engulf his soul, and his name, in the depths of infamy.

All this operates with tremendous power in religion. There is no man on earth who more dreads an ingenuous avowal of guilt; who is more reluctant to admit the full charge of God against himself, than the immoral, or the moral man. To admit that he is guilty and lost; that all God has said of the worst of men, and nothing worse could be said, is true of him; to admit that his heart has been proud, selfish, ungrateful, unsubdued; that he has violated all laws; despised all "entreaties;" held in contempt prophets, martyrs, and the Son of God; and that the eternal home of the drunkard, the adulterer, and the pirate whom he would not admit into his presence, would be the abode fit for him :-all this is too humbling, and before a man will come to this, he will flee to every hiding-place of guilt; adopt any system of religion, however absurd; or associate with any society, however much he may despise it. Hence one class of men pray us to prophecy to them smooth things. Another become angry at faithful dealing. Another run away from the sanctuary, and seek smoother preachers. Another devote the Sabbath to gain, or study, or reading novels, or newspapers, or books that lie along the borders of religion, that they may not wholly fall out with their consciences for violating the Sabbath. Another seek refuge in a form of godliness; and another in those places where the Saviour is denied, and they are told there is no danger that "these shall go away into everlasting punishment."

Yet in a return to God, it is indispensable that there should be a full and frank confession of guilt. The very idea of repentance involves it, and the man must be the herald of his own guilt, as far as the knowledge of his penitence may go. It must be made in the face of companions who will regard him as weak and superstitious; before even parents who may

despise religion and its God; in view of elevated and refined society amid which the penitent has moved; before associates, partners in crime or amusement; in the face of thoughtless and deriding men; and before the wide world. Nay, more, it must be made before the universe, with a willingness that every created intelligence may mark the flowing tear of shame and grief; every eye witness the heavings of the guilty bosom; and every ear hear the sigh of the soul contrite for sin. God himself, the great Being who surveys all hearts, and against whom the soul has long sinned, is also to witness the subdued and humble tread of the haughty man, as with bending head and a face bathed with tears, and with faltering steps, he approaches the throne of grace, confessing that God is right, and he is wrong, even when he has no assurance yet of his favour, or that he may not frown him into hell.

Now it is clear that against this avowal of guilt, there will stand opposed all the hatefulness of shame; all the pride of rank and wealth; all the influence of miserable self-valuation ; all the flattery of friends and of men's own hearts; all the pride of station and office; all the incense offered to splendid talents and attainments; all the aspirings of ambition; and all the allurements of pleasure. Where is the man that would not rather climb the steeps of praise with incense burning around him, and the multitude rendering homage at his feet, than be found pleading for mercy with bitter tears, or weeping in the prayer-meeting, or in his office, or countingroom? Where is the man that would not rather recline on his bed of down, and seek enjoyment in his splendid abode, than weep with Jesus Christ in the garden or on the mountains? Where is the daughter of gayety that would not rather seek for pleasure in the theatre, or be the admiration of the splendid circle, than like Mary bathe the feet of Jesus with tears?

3. A third obstacle to conviction of sin, is the influence

of false philosophy and unscriptural opinions. These I shall just enumerate. 1. The ancient Pharisee had his system of self-righteousness reduced to statute, and intrenched with subtle arguments, to oppose the claims of God. The modern man of self-righteousness has a system just like his, and one equally insurmountable by human means. 2. The apostles found the world organized into sects, and names of philosophy all standing in array against the command to repent. The Stoic held that all things were ordered by the Fates over which he had no control; and, of course, he had no consciousness of crime. The Epicureans held that pleasure is the summum bonum, and the common interpretation was, that all pleasure was to be enjoyed, and, of course, he felt no guilt for sensuality and gross indulgence. The gods of the Greeks were represented to be as bad as any man could wish to be; and as the standards of morals among all men will be formed from the character of the gods, they felt no obligation to repent until they reached a point which they were sure not to reach-a descent to the same level of depravity as their gods. Thus Augustine says that "the Gentile gods are most unclean spirits, desiring under the shapes of some earthly creatures, to be accounted gods, and, in their proud impurity, taking pleasure in those obscenities, as in divine honours. Hence arose

those routs of gods, and others of other nations as well as those we are now in hand with, the senate of selected gods— selected not for virtue, but for villany."* The same thing is to be encountered in all pagan lands; and hence one of the peculiar difficulties of the missionary is to make the heathen feel their guilt. 3. The same thing is true of the false systems of civilized lands. Systems of morals are so framed as to evade the conviction of guilt. This is eminently true of most of the forms of infidelity. An absolute and decided

City of God. Book vii. chap. 33,

fatalism has found its way commonly into the scheme of the Deist. If he has admitted the existence of guilt at all, it has been only of those enormous crimes which a proper regard to the opinions of men would not allow him to deny. The tendency of the scheme has been to obliterate the memory of crime, and to leave men to the indulgence of all mad and ferocious passions. Hence France, under the reign of this terrible system, was drenched in blood, and men were taught to feel that carnage and lust were not offensive in the eyes of heaven. Hence Hobbes held that all property should be common, and that a man had a right to it wherever he could find it-the same doctrine that we have had among us; and hence Hume left it as his recorded opinion, that adultery should be practiced if men would obtain the chief benefit of life, and that suicide is lawful. With such views of laws and morals, repentance was out of the question. When a man by his very system was allowed the indulgence of every passion, for what was he to be grieved at the close of life? 4. Men often adopt systems of physical philosophy whose tendency is to destroy all sense of obligation to repentance. One man believes the soul to be material, and, of course, that he is under no obligation to seek any moral change. Another supposes disease of the mind to be like that of the body; a misfortune indeed, but not truly criminal. A man of science will often run his views of materialism through the subjects of morals. Thought is but some motion in the brain or nervous system. Passion, or emotion, is but a movement of animal spirits. Reason, fancy, conscience, are but some comformations of matter, and in these certainly no man is bound to make a change. Another holds that depravity is the very nature of man. That he is born with it as an original propensity of the same kind as that of the tiger or adder. He holds that no human power can reach that;—that it must be counteracted by the infusion of some principle equally independent of the will, of a contrary

tendency; and that all his efforts would be like attempting to aid the Almighty in propelling the planets. With such views we call on him in vain to exercise repentance towards God. 5. A fifth perversion respects the doctrine of ability. The man avers that he cannot repent, and while this stands in the way, there is an end of the matter. It would be in vain to call on a man to remove a mountain, or to raise the dead. We might as well proceed to the tombs, and summon their lifeless tenants to come forth. And especially is this true when the plea of inability is one which the man has not made up for himself, but has learned from others in places of spiritual power, and can defend by the endless dogmas of the church, and find in the almost infinite tomes of theology. No man would dare to invent such a plea for himself; nor could he keep himself long in countenance with such a pretence, if he were left alone. It is so obviously a reflection on the goodness and justice of God; such a manifest violation of all his own views of right, and of all the dictates of his own conscience; so plainly in the face of the Bible, that a man would be compelled to forsake it if he had not the countenance of some of the better class of Christians. I verily believe, indeed, that Satan never furnished to sinners a more obvious, useful, and unanswerable defence of impenitence, than has thus been furnished by the ministry of the gospel. Tell a man that he cannot repent, or love God, or obey him, and your work will be done. The effect of one such dogma will go through life; will shed a baleful influence on large regions of Christian truth; and, like the tree of Upas, or the Siroc of the desert, will shed a desolation all around the moral feelings of a man in regard to his duties towards God. 6. Men pervert the doctrine of election and decrees, and either with mistaken views of the doctrine, or by design, bar up all access to their souls against truth adapted to produce the conviction of guilt.

4. A fourth reason why men do not feel their guilt, is