and again more easily, and may feel more and more in the place of it the pleasure of pleasing Christ. Whatever is done in Lent becomes indeed a superstition and an injury to us if it does not help us and set us forward on our way to God, and so continue to benefit us when Lent is over. Then and then only is self-denial of value, when it has taught us to know and to love the higher pleasure of pleasing God: he who has in any degree learnt this cannot surely wish to unlearn it again, to lose the little which he may have gained, and when Lent is ended, to hasten to return to the condition in which he was before it began. February 21, 1841. SERMON IV. CHRISTIAN REPENTANCE. ST. MATTHEW, xxvi. 34. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. THESE words were spoken by our Lord to Peter soon after the last supper; soon after the time when our Lord had said to Peter with the rest of the disciples, except Judas, that they were all clean. They were all clean then, yet He foresaw that in that very night one of them, and that one inferior to none of the rest in love to his Master, should deny Him. One of His disciples should deny Him, and yet that disciple was one whom He had pronounced to be clean; another of His disciples would betray Him, but of him He said, that it had been better for that man if he had never been born. every day Even so it is still there are some of his disciples who deny Him; there are some, it is to be feared, who betray Him. Nor should we think that to deny Him can never be a sin equal, or almost equal, to that of betraying Him, for He himself has told us, that whoso shall deny Him before men, him will He also deny before His angels in heaven. Yet still the case of Peter shows that there is a denial of Him which may be forgiven, although there is also a denial of Him which will not. There is a denial of Him which may be forgiven, if we turn to Him, as Peter did, in sincere and hearty repentance. Peter went out and wept bitterly. But the denial of Him, which seems to us a little thing, and to require no earnest repentance, is, indeed, not far from being a betrayal of Him. What is now the difference between the two sins of which we have been speaking, between the sin of Peter and the sin of Judas? Let us see what was the difference of their general lives. We know that Peter loved our Lord sincerely, and that he followed Him with a real desire to do His will. When Christ saw many of His disciples leaving Him, He said unto the twelve, "Will ye also go away?" And then Simon Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life:" whereas what we know of Judas, even before his great sin, is unfavourHe complained of the waste of the oint able. ment when Mary poured it on our Lord's head, and said that it ought to have been given to the poor; and yet St. John says that he said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag and bare what was put therein. It is of importance to observe this, because, in fact, our particular sins take their colour from the general character of our lives. What we call a sin of infirmity, a sudden yielding to some very strong temptation, can hardly be said to exist in a man whose life is generally careless or sinful. We mean by a sin of infirmity, a sin by which the weakness of our nature is overcome against our general will, and in spite of our general carefulness; and we suppose that the temptation must have been very great, and have borne very hardly upon the real weakness of our nature, because the man's general care had strengthened his nature against common temptations, and what many would say that they could not do, he had showed, through God's grace, that he could do. But he who takes no heed at any time to strengthen his nature has no right to plead its weakness; he who is the slave of all common temptations has no right to say that this one temptation overcame him, because of its exceeding greatness. And therefore, had Judas done the very same thing which Peter did, and nothing more, yet the act in him would have been very different. It would } have been less a sin of infirmity and much more wilful, because he had taken no pains to gain any spiritual strength, and therefore his weakness was not so much that of nature but of choice; it was a weakness which he had deliberately allowed to continue, and the consequences of which therefore were no longer his misfortune, but his fault. Yet the acts of Peter and of Judas were in themselves also different. The act of Peter was done without premeditation. Assuredly, had he felt himself in any danger of denying his Lord, he would have gone away to his own home, rather than have sought admission into the palace of the high priest. He probably felt still as he had felt when he said to Jesus, "I will lay down my life for thy sake." Sad indeed it is to see that, when the actual trial came, his purpose, or rather his impulse, was changed in an instant: he sought to shelter himself amidst the crowd of safe spectators; his answer was at once, "I know not the man of whom ye speak." Still he probably would not have believed a very few moments before, that he could by possibility have given such an answer. But Judas's sin was deliberate; it had been resolved upon, not some minutes only before it was committed, but some hours, and even some days. He had gone to sleep and risen in the morning more than once, with the evil purpose in his heart; he had seen Christ, had heard |