confiders them all as in the order of providence; nor even on his paffions, because the charity which is within him is their rule and measure. The juft man alone, then, enjoys a perfect liberty: fuperior to the world, to himself, to all creatures, to all events, he begins, even in this life, to reign with Jefus Chrift; all is below him, while he is himself inferior to God alone.

But the finner, who feems to live without either rule or reftraint, is, however, a vile flave; he is dependant on all, on his body, on his propenfities, on his caprices, on his paffions, on his fortune, on his masters, on his friends, on his enemies, on his rivals, on all furrounding creatures; fo many gods to which love or fear fubject him; so many idols which multiply his flavery, while he thinks himself more free by cafting off that obedience which he owes to God alone; he multiplies his masters, by refusing submisfion to him alone who renders free those who serve him, and who gives to his fervants dominion over the world and over every thing which the world contains.

You often complain, my dear hearer, of the hardships of virtue; you dread a Christian life, as a life of fubjecttion and forrow; but what, in it, could you find fo gloomy as you experience in debauchery? Ah! If you durft complain of the bitterness and of the tyranny of the paffions; if you durft confefs the troubles, the difgufts, the frenzies, the anxieties of your foul; if you were candid on the gloomy tranfactions of your heart, there is no lot but what would appear preferable to your own; but you difguise the inquietudes of guilt which you feel; and you exaggerate the hardships of virtue which you have never known. But, in order to hold out to you an affifting hand, let us continue the hiftory of our gofpel, and let us fee, in the refurrection

refurrection of Lazarus, what are the means offered to you, by the goodness of God, of quitting fo deplorable a fituation.

REFLECTION II. The power of God, fays the apostle, is lefs confpicuous in the converfion of finners than in raifing up the dead; and the fame fupernatural power which wrought upon Jefus Chrift to deliver him from the tomb, ought to operate upon the foul long dead in fin, in order to recal it to the life of grace. I find there only this difference, that the almighty voice of God meets no resistance from the body which he revives and recalls to life; on the contrary, the foul, dead and corrupted, as I may say, through the long duration of guilt; feems to retain a remainder of ftrength and motion only to oppofe that powerful voice which is heard even in the abyfs in which it is plunged, and which refounds for the purpose of restoring it to light and life, Nevertheless, however difficult may be the converfion of a foul of this description, and however rare such examples may be, the fpirit of God, in order to teach us never to despair of divine mercy when we fincerely wifh to quit the ways of iniquity, points out to us at prefent, in the refurrection of Lazarus, the means of accomplishing it.

The firft is, confidence in Jefus Chrift: Lord, fays Mary the fifter of Lazarus, if thou hadft been here my brother had not died; but I know that, even now, whatsoever thou wilt afk of God, God wilt give it thee. I am the refurrection and the life, faid Jefus unto her; believeft thou this? Yes, Lord, faid fhe, I believe that thou art the Chrift the Son of God, which fhould come into the world. It is through this that the miracle of raifing up Lazarus begins,

viz.

viz. the perfect confidence that Jefus Chrift is able to deliver him from death and corruption.

For, my brethren, the delufion continually employed by the demon, in order to render our defires of converfion unavailing, and to counteract their progrefs, is that of defpondency and mistrust; he warmly retraces to our imagination the horrors of an entire life of guilt: he says to us, in fecret, that which the fifters of Lazarus fay to Jefus Chrift, though in a different sense; that we ought, at a much earlier period, to have checked our career; that it is now impoffible, when fo far advanced, to return; that the time for attempting a change is now paft; and that the virulency and age of our wounds no longer admit a resource. Upon this they abandon themselves to languor and indolence; and, after having incenfed the righteousness of God through our debaucheries, we infult his mercy through

the excefs of our mistrust.

I confefs that a foul, long dead in fin, muft fuffer much in returning to God; that it is difficult, after fo many years of diffipation, to form to one's felf a new heart and new inclinations; and that it is even fit, that the obstacles, the fufferings, and the difficulties which always attend the converfion of fouls of that defcription, fhould make great finners feel how dreadful it is to have been almost a whole life-time removed from God.

But I fay that, from the moment a truly contrite foul wishes to return to him, his wounds however virulent or old, ought no longer to alarm his confidence: I say that his wretchedness ought to increase his compunction but not his despondency: I say that the first step of his penitence

ought

ought to be that of adoring Jefus Christ as the refurrection and the life; a fecret confidence that our wants are always less than his mercies; a firm perfuafion that the blood of Jefus Chrift is more powerful in washing out our stains than our corruption can be in contracting them: I say that the fewer resources of strength a criminal foul may find in himself, the more ought he to expect from him who taketh delight in rearing up the work of grace upon the nothingness of nature; and that the more he is inwardly opposed to grace, the more does he, in one fenfe, become an object worthy of divine power and mercy, for God wifheth that all good shall evidently appear as coming from above, and that man fhall attribute nothing to himself.

And in effect, my dear hearer, whatever may the horror of your past crimes be, the Lord will not long refufe you grace, from the moment that he hath inspired you with the defire and the refolution of afking it. It is written in Judges, that the father of Sampson, terrified by the apparition of the angel of the Lord, who, after announcing to him the birth of a fon, commanded him to offer up a facrifice, and then, like a devouring fire, consumed the victim and the pile, and vanished from his fight; that, terrified, I fay, at that spectacle, he was convinced that both himself and his wife were to be ftruck with death because they had feen the Lord. But his wife, holy and enlightended, condemned his mistrust. If the Lord, faid fhe to him, wifhed to destroy us, he would not have made fire from heaven to descend on our facrifice: he would not have accepted it from our hands; he would not have discovered to us his fecrets and his wonders, and what we had hitherto been ignorant of.

And

And behold what I now answer to you. You believe your death and your deftruction to be inevitable; the ftate of your confcience difcourages you; in vain do sparks of grace and of light fall upon your heart; in vain do they touch you, folicit you, and almoft gain the point of confuming the facrifice of your paffions; you persuade yourself that you are loft beyond refource. But, if the Lord wifhed to abandon and to deftroy you, he would not make fire from heaven to defcend upon your heart; he would not light up within you holy defires and fentiments of penitence: if he wished to let you die in the blindness of your paffions, he would not manifeft to you the truths of falvation; he would not open your eyes on thofe miferies to come, which you prepare for yourself. Befides, how do you know if Jefus Chrift has not permitted your falling into fuch a deplorable ftate for the purpose of making a prodigy of your converfion an incitement to the converfion of your bre thren? How do you know if his mercy has not rendered your paffions fo notorious, in order that thousands of finners, witneffes of your errors, defpair not of conversion, and be inflamed at the fight of your penitence? How do you know if your crimes, and even your scandals, have not entered into the defigns of God's goodness with regard to your brethren; and if your fituation, which feems hopeless like that of Lazarus, is not rather an occasion of manifefling God's glory than a prefage of death to you?

When grace recalls a common finner, the fruit of his converfion is limited to himfelf; but, when it fingles out a grand finner, a Lazarus, long dead and corrupted; ah! the defigns of its mercy are then much more extensive : in one change it prepares a thousand to come: it raises up a thoufand chofen out of one: and the crimes of a finner

become