Saviour the actual measure of the punishment we have deserved. The law instructs us in the holiness of God, but the Cross exhibits the most

awful display of it. The law discovers our malady and leaves us under the power of it; the grace of salvation searches the disease still more deeply, and then brings the cure.

Yes, it is the sight of Christ dying for sin which makes us, not only mourn, but BE IN BITTERNESS on account of it. This mingles gall. in every sinful pleasure; this saddens and confounds the guilty heart; this leads the penitent to abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes; this turns his inmost soul against all sin; this covers him with shame and confusion of face; this makes him feel that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God; this causes him to remember and be confounded and never open his mouth for shame, when God is pacified towards him for all the things which he has done. These holy compunctions of soul are indeed far less powerful in the first period of a Christian's repentance: but all true penitence has something of this character: and in a further stage of his progress, when the sinner has been for some time under the teaching of the Spirit of grace and supplications, has again and again meditated on the Cross, has fixed his heart with intense interest on the Saviour there, has seen the share he had in his sufferings, and yet the pardon and

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reconciliation which flow from them; it is then that he indeed mourns for him, and goes out, like Peter, and weeps bitterly.

Then is his sorrow like that of A PARENT FOR A CHILD, OR OF A NATION FOR A WISE AND

PIOUS PRINCE. Each of these images is striking. Who knows not the bitterness of a parent when his son, his only son, his first-born, has been suddenly snatched from his embrace? Who has not witnessed the anguish of the mother's heart, her disconsolate and penetrating grief which has refused to be comforted? Such was the grief of Jacob over the loss of Benjamin, and of David over the death of Absalom. What is there in all the compass of NATURAL sorrow more touching? And amidst public AFFLICTIONS, what can equal the general consternation, when a pious and wise prince has been carried off in the prime of youth by some unlooked-for and premature calamity? Yet is there no private or public affliction which can adequately represent the peculiar poignancy and bitterness of ingenuous repentance. The personal feelings mingle themselves with such as are social and national, when we contemplate the death of Christ. How can we endure ourselves, when we see what we have done to our Lord! Let faith place us near the Cross, and when we view our dying Redeemer, must we not feel our unworthiness and misery, in exposing a person so great, so holy,

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so divine, so gracious, to agony and death? Can we ever forgive ourselves? Can we ever feel an indignation too intense against our crimes? Can we ever feel a zeal too vehement, or a revenge too determined, against those iniquities which have pierced the Prince of life? Can we conceive too vivid an impression of the guilt of sin which made such a sacrifice neces? Can we be too much abased and confounded, when we consider our present ingratitude, coldness, and perverseness, after all the grace we have experienced? Can we be too indignant at ourselves for still harbouring and cherishing the traitors and enemies of Christ? Can we weep and lament too bitterly over those sins, or hate and detest them too deeply, which caused our Saviour to grieve, lament, and die?

And will not such a repentance COURT PRIVACY AND SOLITUDE? Yes, my brethren, if our sorrow can endure a witness, it is not profound enough. The presence even of the most beloved friend would be a painful interruption. We may sin in company, but we must repent alone. Peter denied his Lord with many around him, but he went out in order to weep bitterly. All deep emotions shun publicity. A man may act a part, and wish to be seen acting it; but when he repents, he goes into his closet, and when he has shut his door, he prays to his

Father in secret. The temper of the world is entirely opposed to that of spiritual mourning. The world calls for company and amusements : privacy suits the broken heart. There it can utter its sighs. There it can commune with its injured Lord. There it can learn its misery, its hope, its duty-The land shall mourn, every family apart, and their wives apart.

If these things then be so, if the Spirit of God is the author and source of true repentance, if a humble sight of the Cross is the chief means which he employs in producing it, and if the consequence of both is unaffected mourning for sin; then let me observe,

I. TO THE SINCERE CHRISTIAN,

That he may learn the IMPORTANT PLACE

WHICH TRUE PENITENCE OCCUPIES IN THE

CHRISTIAN LIFE. It is not a duty which concerns him merely in his first turning to God, but one which requires his utmost vigilance through every step of his progress to heaven. As long as he is a sinner, he must mourn for sin. As long as he must owe his salvation to that mysterious cross on which his iniquities have nailed the Prince of peace, so long must he look to it with ingenuous and poignant grief. As long as he is adding to his former transgressions, fresh sins of infirmity, fresh marks of ingratitude, fresh omissions of duty, he must

renew his mournful confessions. As long as he is deriving from the pierced' Saviour additional and increasing supplies of consolation, pardon, and strength, he must look to him. with deeper feelings of obligation and a more acute and penitential sorrow.

In this way will he further learn the coN

NEXION OF REPENTANCE WITH THE HOPES AND

PRIVILEGES OF THE GOSPEL. Repentance and grief for sin are perfectly consistent with a free remission, a gratuitous justification, and a simple and exclusive reliance on divine mercy. Nor are they less accordant with holy joy, peace, and triumph in the Saviour. In fact, they prepare for the one, they accompany and strengthen the other. Repentance, learnt at the cross of Christ, is that very lowly state of heart, which alone can welcome properly a free salvation; whilst every other disposition of mind will misunderstand, reject, or abuse it. Nor can any other grace prepare for solid and 'permanent joy in believing.

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Need I say, then, how strictly the EXERCISE
EVANGELICAL REPENTANCE IS CONNECTED

WITH

Α HOLY AND CIRCUMSPECT CONDUCT? What, when it teaches us that every sin pierces the Saviour? when it embitters evil in the very source and spring of it, and shows it surrounded with its most hideous consequences; when it creates and cherishes a new and holy temper of