IV. They have a peculiar love for Christ shall he go without any mark of honor, their Lord; such a love, brethren, as passes which she can pay him? No. Like the understanding of a cold-hearted world; Mary of Bethany, she takes a box of the a love that angels, in the very presence of most precious ointment which the country their Lord, cannot feel. afforded, and hastened with it to her Lord. When by his side, she pours the ointment on the feet which the haughty Pharisee had dishonored, and then she "wipes them with the hairs of her head." She deems no sacrifice too great, so that it honors Christ; no service mean, that he will accept. Joyfully would she have forsaken all the world for him, and followed him as his servant all the days of her life. Nay, who can look at this woman, and not see, at a glance, that she would have rejoiced to shed her heart's blood for that Nazarene?

lower. Do you really love Christ more than you love any earthly friend, more than you love any earthly sin? Do you love him, because you have received from his hands a pardon bestowed by his mercy, and bought with his blood? Do you seek his favor and presence more than you seek money, or pleasure, or any thing which the world can give? Is your remembrance of sin such as would make it as easy for you to cease to breathe, as to cease from prayer for forgiveness? Do you so mourn over it, as to feel it to be your chief sor row? and are you so humbled under a sense of it, as to account it your chief, your only shame ?

Some of us then may discover here why | as tender, and warm, and active, and selfwe are so ungodly and comfortless-we denying, and blessed? She had been a are never on our knees at a footstool of great sinner; and all her feelings and acmercy. Others may see why their graces tions were in some degree proportioned to are so languid and their hopes so low- the greatness of her sin. We will come they are seldom pleading the blood of Christ for forgiveness. When once they have caught a faint view of pardon, many appear to act as though they needed pardon no more. They no longer seek it. They imagine that in the new title of children of God, they have lost the character of sinners. This notion has been the bane of thousands. It has first puffed up and then ruined many a soul. It has clouded the views, and marred the comforts, and hindered the progress of many more. Renounce it, brethren. However sanctified and however blessed, you must enter heaven at last as sinners. O be content, while on earth, to stand before God as sinners. Is the hardness of your hearts a grief to you? Is their pride a burden? Is their want of love a sorrow and a shame ? Do your souls ache for an assurance of pardon? O then seek this assurance, seek peace, seek love, seek a broken and contrite spirit, in this one prayer, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"

We learn also here how to judge of the state of our own souls.

Twice does our Lord call this woman forgiven. Not satisfied with telling Simon that her guilt was cancelled, he says to her, unasked, "Thy sins are forgiven." And when does he say this? While she is standing behind him weeping; while she is washing his feet with her tears, and wiping them with the hairs of her head. We need not then go up to the skies to see whether our iniquities are blotted out from the records of heaven; nor must we trust to convictions, or impressions, or feelings. We must look into our hearts; we must examine our dispositions and lives; we must endeavor to discover in ourselves the marks which distinguish all the pardoned of God.

Are these marks visible on you? Have you beheld in the character of this silent penitent, any resemblance to your own? We will not say, do you seek Christ so earnestly as she sought him? is your remembrance of sin as lively as hers; your sorrow as humbling and softening; your love

Trust not to any one of these things. They were all in this woman. Not a jus tified sinner has ever trodden the earth, in whom, in a greater or less degree, they have not all been found. If they are not in you; if your eye, which can weep under worldly sorrows, is dry as a desert over spiritual evils, and your heart hard as a rock at the mention of spiritual mercies, be assured that the forgiveness you hope in is not that which this woman received, nor that which Christ bestows. It is a forged pardon. It comes from the father of lies. And what will it profit you? No more than an acquittal written with his own hand would profit a criminal who has been tried and condemned. It will answer no other purpose than to deceive, to harden, and destroy you.

Think of your situation, brethren. You are unpardoned sinners in a dying world on the verge of a wretched, endless hell. "The Judge is at the door." The minis ters of vengeance are at hand. A few hours only are left you for escape. Ole them not run to waste. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adver sary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily, I say uns thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing."

SERMON XV.

THE AFFLICTED DAVID A PARDONED

SINNER.

2 SAMUEL xii. 13.

us: our once peaceful assurance of his pardoning mercy gives way, and is succeeded by perplexity and doubt.

But where all this time are the declarations of our Bible gone? We have only to bring our afflictions to the standard of

Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put that holy book, and their character is in a

away thy sin.

THE closing years of the life of David are deeply but most painfully interesting. His dreadful crimes, and the miseries which followed them, are such as we can never forget, and yet never think of without a shudder. But there is some light amidst all this darkness. We learn from the text the readiness of Jehovah to blot out the most heinous offences; and who can look on the contrition of this pardoned sinner, without instruction and pleasure? Some of us may derive consolation even from his sufferings. They show us that many things which we are prone to regard as the sure marks of an unpardoned condition, are yet sometimes found in the redeemed soul; are, in fact, no proofs or indications whatever of a condemned state. To this single point then let us confine our attention; and may the Holy Spirit bless our consideration of it to the comfort of every sorrowful heart!

moment changed. The Holy Spirit foresaw all our apprehensions, as well as our sufferings; and this is his language to us under them; "Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children; My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth; and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "But not as we are scourged," you answer. Then turn again to that faithful word of testimony. Read in it the history of the church which was bought with blood. Is it not a record of afflictions, such as you never witnessed? And whose afflictions, whose trials, were all these? They were the portion of men, "of whom the world was not worthy;" of men who, while on earth, were the most beloved of God, and who in heaven are nearest to his throne.

When your troubles, brethren, are more bitter than those of David, more numerous I. Heavy afflictions are no signs of an than Paul's, and more hard to be borne unpardoned condition. If they were, who than the desolate Job's, then regard them was ever more lost than David? "The as witnesses against you. Till then, look Lord hath put away thy sin," said the on them rather as manifestations of kindprophet to him; but from that hour judg-ness. They will not prove you forgiven, ments followed him to the grave. You but they will prove that you are not aban remember the history of his woes. They doned. They are no more the marks of were such as make a father's ear tingle as condemnation, than the pruning knife is a he hears of them. They almost broke that oor monarch's heart. But in the lowest depths to which he sunk, the words of Nathan concerning him were as true, as hough he had been happy on his throne. The iniquities of David were forgiven.

sign that the tree must fall. Does the refiner often heat his furnace for the metal which he knows to be worthless? Do you watch over and correct year after year a stranger's child?

II. To all this perhaps you have an There are times when we find it hard to answer ready. "We know," you say, elieve this truth. A light and short afflic-" that if we are Christ's, afflictions are a on seldom much depresses us, for we can part of our inheritance. They alone could asily reconcile it with a Father's faithful-never excite one fear in our souls. This ess; but when blow succeeds to blow, is the cause of our misgivings we have when our troubles are peculiar, and long no consolations under them. All without ontinued, and harrowing, our hearts begin us is trouble, and all within us is darkness. o fail us. We think that a gracious God ever can love the creatures whom he so everely wounds. We could not so afflict ur children; we are ready to conclude, herefore, that were we the children of a eavenly Father, he would not so afflict

Were we among the pardoned, would it, could it be thus ?" Turn again to the experience of David. It tells us, as plainly as the most comfortless affliction can tell us, that a want of spiritual consolation under calamities is no evidence of an unpardoned state,

III. A want of consolation then is no proof of a condemned state: neither, thirdly is a troubled conscience.

It is true that the Lord Jesus Christ has | cing cry that ever came from human lips, taught his people to expect special consola- came from the holiest; "My God, my tions in special sufferings. It is true also, God, why hast thou forsaken me?" that their most afflicted hours have sometimes been their happiest. But is it not as true that they have often walked in darkness and had no light? Their feelings under afflictions have been as various as their afflictions themselves. What different feelings, for instance, have they manifested at the death of children! "Blessed be the name of the Lord," was the exclamation of Job, when the tidings were brought to him of the loss of all his off spring. "Aaron held his peace," when his two sons were consumed. The end of Hophni and Phineas could not move old Eli. It was not till he heard that the ark of God was taken, that he fell from his seat. But turn to David. His infant sickens and dies. This was his first affliction after his fall. A ray of comfort seems to have cheered him under it. But where was David's spiritual joy, when he "tare his garments" at the news of Amnon's death, and "lay on the earth," and "wept very sore?" Did his consolations abound, when his chamber rang with the sounds, "O my son Absalom! my son, my son, Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son !"

"We read in our Bibles," say some "that they who are justified by faith, have peace with God. We are told also, tha they have peace within; that the blood which cleanses, quiets them. Christ him self promises them rest; we see that som of them enjoy it. There was a time whe we ourselves were easy; but now a pris oner on the rack might almost pity us Sins committed months and years ago, sin which we thought blotted out of God's re membrance and our own forever, are now as fresh in our memory as though they wer not an hour old. They follow us whereve we go. We cannot forget them. They ale a terror to us by night, and a burde by day. We could be content to be com fortless; we could welcome the sharpes tribulations; but this wounded spirit, th evil conscience, who can bear? It is the scourge of an angry God; it is a mark o his wrath." No, brethren; an accusin conscience is a mark of nothing but this that you are sinners, and that sin is a mor evil and bitter thing than you once though it. It cannot of itself prove you forgive for the guilty in hell are "tormented i this flame." Much less can it prove yo condemned. Thousands have groaned un der it, who are now peaceful in heaven and thousands more, who will soon be i heaven, it often lays on the ground in an guish.

Your sense of guilt may be exceedingl painful; and so was David's. The agonie of his soul pass all description. Word fail him, as he attempts to express them In the thirty-eighth psalm, he compare his recollections of sin to arrows dartia into his flesh, to a wasting disease, to rans ling wounds, to broken and aching bone

And think of the psalms which are every sabbath on our lips. Most of these are the compositions of this pardoned sinner. Is it possible for words to express more unmixed, comfortless misery, than that which gives vent to its wretchedness there? "I am troubled," he says; "I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long." "I am weary with my groanings: all the night make ĺ my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears." "How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" And hear the piteous complaints of the disconsolate Heman. "My soul," he says, "is full of trouble." "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps." The sufferings of your spirit may b "Lord, why castest thou off my soul? frequent. His were constant. "Thin Why hidest thou thy face from me?" Job arrows,' ," he says, "stick fast in me. too bewails departed comforts, and Jere-"There is no soundness in my flesh, becaus miah groans in unbroken darkness. And of thine anger; neither is there any rest shall we forget the exceeding great sorrow my bones, because of my sins." of his soul, who "knew no sin, neither was sorrow is continually before me." found in his mouth?" The spotless "But David," you answer, was sur Jesus himself, in the hour of his deepest ported. He had strength to bear his misery misery, was comfortless. The most pier-Ours is sometimes overwhelming, intole

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It may be that eyen yet the cause of your disquietude has not been touched. It is not trouble, it is not darkness, it is not past guilt, that makes you deem yourselves accursed; it is present sin. You have great temptations from without, and strong corruptions within. Satan harasses you. Your wearied soul is a scene of perpetual conflict. You tell us that sin, when remitted, is not thus powerful; that where Christ is a Saviour, he is a Sanctifier also. You infer therefore that you have no interest in his salvation.

able." Was David's light? Did he think | justice, the fearfulness of his wrath. By his anguish easy to be borne ? "Thy the one, he exalts himself; by the other, he hand," he cries, " presseth me sore. abases and empties us. He pardons our "Mine iniquities are gone over my head; sins, that we may be saved from them; he as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for suffers us to taste their wormwood and their me." "I am feeble and sore broken. I gall, that we may value salvation. He have roared by reason of the disquietness takes us to heaven, that we may magnify of my heart." his grace; he shows us the bitterness of sin "But my sins," you reply again, "are in our way to it, that we may not enter so abominable, so loathsome; the remem-heaven with a cold heart and a silent tongue; brance of them fills me with self-abhor- that when we are there, we may praise the rence; it covers me with unutterable Lamb that was slain, with a love propor. shame." Turn once again to this troubled tioned to the greatness of the evil from king. "My wounds stink and are corrupt, which he has delivered us, and with a ferbecause of my foolishness." "My loins are vor suited to the weight of the curse which filled with a loathsome disease." Hear too he has borne. what the astonished Ezra says. "O my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God." And hear the upright Job. "I abhor myself.” And pass from the prophets of old to the holy men who wrote our Prayer Book. Did they deem convictions of sin tokens of condemnation? Why then have they labored so much to keep these convictions alive? Why have they taught us to call ourselves no fewer than six times every sabbath, "miserable offenders, miserable sinners?" And what is the language which they put into our lips at the table of the Lord? With the emblems of his blessed body and blood before us-the body which, they tell us, was given, and the blood which, they say, was shed for us they call us not at once to a song of exultation or praise. They bid us bewail our manifold sins; they bid us say of them what you, and such as you, are the only persons who can say without a mockery of heaven, "The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable." And what perhaps is the feeling of some envied neighbor who is kneeling by your side, or of the minister whose voice is uttering this confession in your ears? He is wishing for a more heartfelt sense of its meaning: he is praying for a greater measure of the compunction it describes.

O happy are you, if your only cause of fear is a troubled spirit! Wherever God bestows a pardon, he always first bestows this; and even when his pardon has been welcomed to the heart, sooner or later he generally bestows this gift again. And it is not a useless gift. Pardon teaches us the extent of Jehovah's mercy; this painful sense of guilt shows us the awfulness of his

IV. We will go then a step further, and say, without fear of misleading you, that a painful sense of inward corruptions is not inconsistent with pardoning mercy.

But let us be cautious here. If there is any one lust which, day after day, and year after year, leads you captive; any one ungodly practice, in which you habitually indulge; if the sin which is your fear, is at the same time your delight, ever committed with greediness, though sometimes repented of with anguish; let an angel from heaven declare you to be pardoned, we will appeal to the written testimony of God, and say that the truth is not in him; that you have no more reason to regard yourself forgiven, than a dying man has to think himself in health. But if sin is opposed, as well as felt; if its strivings within you lead to prayer instead of iniqui ty; if, through the Spirit, the base passions of your nature are habitually overcome; if sin is your grief and abhorrence, as well as terror; then, brethren, we are as sure as the Bible can make us, that the warfare in your soul, though painful, and tumultuous, and unceasing, is no mark of the displeasure of Heaven; is as plain a token as God