the most ungrateful of his creatures; that for the sins of the world, yea, for our sins, He hath not spared to deliver his own Son; when we behold that blessed Son, Himself a portion of His substance, His Word, and the brightness of His glory, brought down by his love for man, from that dazzling height to the form of a mortal, and to the shame of a malefactor, our ransom then from his Father's justice, and now at his Father's right hand, our advocate and mediator; when, lastly, we behold the Spirit of God, peculiarly called the Spirit of grace, and love, and comfort, pervading all space, and shedding His influence through all creation; when we acknowledge that the mercy of God has been so richly displayed in all his dealings with all his works; it is impossible, I conceive, for even the most undone sinner to despair entirely, or to repress a hope, that from the Infinite of Love some rays, however faint, may fall upon his darkness. Nor, in thus hoping, would even such a sinner err. The very hope itself, if he had power to entertain it, as it could only proceed from grace, would be a proof that he was not quite abandoned. His love for God thus revived would be, in truth, nothing else than the faint reflections of that love which God bore for him; and whose light, though our sins, like clouds, have long intercepted it, need only shine on the soul to bring forth fruits of holiness.

And this may show the unreasonableness of their conduct, who, in the beginning of sickness, and when the warnings of death are more distant and uncertain, drive away all serious thoughts from the soul, through a fear of injuring the body, and are afraid of meditating on even the possibility of soon standing before God, lest such a meditation should hasten the event to which it calls their attention. Even if this were necessarily the case, the risk is so far less in dying soon, than in dying unprepared, that the former danger should be cheerfully encountered, rather than incur the possibility of the latter. Yet, in truth, the cases of sickness are very few, in which, at the beginning of a disorder, religious considerations, such as I have now instanced, can do our bodily health any harm. On the contrary, that awe and tranquillity of soul, which are induced by them, may, in many cases, be of real advantage; while it is, at all events, better to perform these most necessary duties in the beginning of a disorder, than to defer them to a time when our state is visibly perilous; and when the urgent necessity of such thoughts, and the little time which we have for them, may well be expected to press too strongly on the nerves, and to lessen by that pressure our natural chances of recovery. But to return from this digression.

When our minds are thus sobered, and in some measure composed, by a due consideration of our

total dependence on God, - of His almighty power, and of His infinite mercy,—it must be next, and it will be very naturally our care, to consider what means are yet within our reach to interest that power and mercy in our favour; how, even in the storms of this life, we may cling to the rock of our safety, and, in the valley of the shadow of death, be comforted and supported by the staff of our Heavenly Shepherd. And this may best be accomplished by repentance; to which an examination of our past lives is, in the first place, absolutely necessary. In our conduct of this inquiry, it is well, however, to attend to the following cautions.

First, it is highly probable, nay it is almost certain under such circumstances, that the review of our past behaviour will be, even to the best of us, extremely painful and humiliating, as well as alarming; and we shall be tempted to escape from the bitter recollection of our sins, by turning to those actions of our lives which wear a better appearance; and by attempting to strike such a balance between our evil and our good deeds, as may enable us to look forwards with less terror to the account which we have soon to render. But this must be at all events avoided. The very attempt to do so, the attempt to reason with our Judge, and to prepare beforehand the plea which we shall offer to him, will, of itself,

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extremely agitate the soul and the bodily frame, and render both the one and the other less fit for death, and less likely to escape death. And, above all, the attempt to plead our own good deeds in extenuation of our sins, must be extremely offensive to God, who has repeatedly refused in Scripture to admit any human merit, or any other call on his favour than our utter misery, and the merits and mediation of our Saviour. By flinging ourselves entirely on His mercy, we shall place our confidence where it will not be thrown away: we shall escape much present misery, and the alarm to which any reliance on our own efforts will expose us; and we shall escape that indignation which the Lord of life and death must feel against an insolvent debtor who should presume to reckon up his little services, and to bring forward his pitiful efforts as claims against Him to whom his all was due. And on this account I would advise the sick man to abstain entirely from all thought or recollection of what he may suppose the praiseworthy parts of his character. It can do him no good to recollect them; since God knows them already, and needs not to be put in mind. And

it

may, nay must do him harm; inasmuch as it will take off his attention from a work for which his time is but too short, and will lead him, perhaps, to seek for comfort in things which cannot

profit, instead of in that boundless mercy of God through his Son, in whose name alone there is salvation.

2dly. While the sick penitent thus abstains from all mention or notice of his own virtues, he will do well not to be too particular, or dwell too long in his recapitulation of such of his sins as are gone by and not to be remedied. For these regret, however natural, is useless, and, beyond a certain degree, injurious. A deep sense of his own unworthiness and sinfulness; a thorough conviction that he has no hope but in God's free mercy, this is necessary; and for this a very general recollection of our lives will be sufficient. But to indulge in the horrid details of an ill-spent life; to paint, in exaggerated colours, the circumstances of each transgression is not only a loss of time, and distressing ourselves in vain, but it is a very frequent snare of our enemy to plunge us into utter desperation and abandonment of ourselves, and of all those means of escape and salvation which the merciful grace of the Holy Ghost may, even yet, extend to us. Nor is this the worst. It is not impossible that, with such recollections, a guilty pleasure may revive in our soul; that our fancy may return, with more regret than horror, to the scenes of our former enjoyment; and that, while we suppose ourselves to be mourning for