SERMON CCCLXXXVII.

BY REV. JOHN RICHARDS,

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

THE BLESSED CONSEQUENCE OF REPENTANCE.

"Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."-Acts

iii. 19.

PETER and John healed a lame man in the temple. The man had expected no such thing. All he did or felt was to look at them steadfastly, and hope that in the depth of their compassion, they might give him a single silver piece to help him in his poverty. What was his astonishment, when Peter said, "No money !—but such as I have give I unto thee." "IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, RISE UP AND WALK." What,was his astonishment, not merely to hear the words, but to feel strength rushing to his ancle bones, and himself obeying the instinct of his animal nature, with the delightful consciousness that he was a whole man!

Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, "Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the wilderness waters shall break out and streams in the desert."

This lame man leaped for joy and praised God. "And all the people saw him walking and praising God: And they knew that it was he. which sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple. And as they ran together, all, and gazed with stupid astonishment, looking no further than the naked fact, without seeking for a cause out of Peter and John,-Peter, reproving them, said, Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though we had done this thing? God has done it,-glorifying his Son Jesus, and it is in His name, through faith in His name, that has made this man whole,-yea, the faith which is by HIM hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all;-yea, the faith which is by HIM, whom ye delivered up, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you: and ye killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead. Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."

Peter thus came boldly up to the multitude of the Jews, in the most public place in Jerusalem, at the hour of largest concourse—the hour

of prayer-it being the ninth hour, that is, three o'clock in the afternoon. And he charges them with the highest crimes men could commit. "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just-ye killed the Prince of Life,-your garments are red with the crime of murder,-and murder of no ordinary sort, but the most aggravated.". Yet it is probable that not one of this multitude was directly instrumental in the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ. The meaning simply is, Ye assented in your hearts to what your Rulers did,-ye rejected Christ from the throne of your hearts, and ye rejoiced when the cruel indignity and scorn were put upon the Prince of Life, by nailing him to the cross. It was upon this charge, which they attempted neither to palliate nor deny, that Peter grounded his exhortation, "Repent and be converted, that your may be blotted out."

sins

My hearers, to this text thus introduced, I call your attention more particularly to its latter part," that your sins may be blotted out :"the blessed consequence of repentance-the blotting out of sin.

Now, that sins are to be blotted out in any case, implies that somewhere they are written down.

I. Where, then, are they written down? Be this our FIRST inquiry. They are written in God's book. But does God keep a book, and write down in it daily transactions-sins-offences against his law and government? Yes, God keeps a book; and writes down all that you do that is wrong, and all that you feel in the secret recesses of the soul. There are two passages in the Bible of fearful interest on this subject. The candid reader of the Bible cannot read them, if his eyes are but a little opened, without a current of awe, not to say horror, rushing back from his veins to his heart. The first is the 139th Psalm.

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me: even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

The second passage is in Revelations, xx. 12.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

1. The first of these passages asserts the capacity of God to take cognizance of human action, through its entire range; from the outward act to the inmost feeling. And the second asserts the fact that all are noticed and written down ;-that they are made the basis of the judgment God will hold, and the sentence he will pronounce at

last.

And he

2. Again, your sins are written down on the conscience and the memory; that is, on your own soul. It may be that only the last lines of the long roll are legible to you; but God can at any moment develope that roll, so that from its one end to its other, you shall see it all; so that in an instant you shall read both its details and its sum. can hold it open, and hold it up, to the mind's eye, so that it shall never, never pass away. My hearer, how long could you bear to look at each and all of your sins with the conviction that you were not able to turn off the view for a moment, though panting ever so hard for the privilege?

3. Again, your sins will be written down in the sight of all men. The day of judgment will be a day of exhibition,-of declaration,—of public showing of all human deeds, unto all interested in God's government. If the principles of his government, and if his character compel him to punish, then it behooves him to let all intelligences understand the grounds of that punishment. This enters into our very idea of a moral government,-a government based on justice and intelligence. Therefore, will God cause the long roll of every sinner's sins to be wide unfurled and fixed immovably to the broad firmament, so that it shall be known and read of all men: so that if peradventure any bold blasphemer shall rise and say, " Why is this man adjudged to such a doom?" God shall say to the multitudinous assembly, "Read it there :"-so that the convicted sinner shall himself say, " Amen-read it there!".

And so also will that long roll of crime be transferred to the walls of the dreary prison of God's enemies; so that if the wretched outcast should desire oblivion of his crimes, there stands the authenticated catalogue dread duplicate of his own soul. And should he desire that his associates in suffering and guilt might forget, there stands the evidence of his guilt. Like a hated spectre it follows him, it haunts him, it is the all-present and everlasting accusation of himself and vindicator of God.

Men's sins then are written down; in God's book-in the conscience. They will be written down in the sight of all men; and in the ultimate prison of the unpardoned, incorrigible sinner. They will be as it were nailed up on his prison walls; so that all within those walls shall know why he himself is there.

And now, would it not be a blessed thing for the sinner, at the judgment day, to have his sins blotted out? Look then,

II. At this consequence of repentance. Peter says, "Repent, that your sins may be blotted out. What then is it for sin to be blotted out? We have inquired what it is for sin to be written down,—what is it for sin to be blotted out?

1. First, it is to have our sins removed from God's view. It is as if the whole record of sinful acts and sinful feelings were struck out at one dash. Not that God will indeed forget them; but he will act as if he had never known them. "And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.' "As far as the east is removed from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy towards them that fear him." And as David prayed in the fifty-first Psalm,-" Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities," so God does. And when God thus blots out the iniquities of those who repent, he writes their names in another book-even the Lamb's Book of Life. “And another book was opened which was the book of life."

2. It is to have our sins blotted from the book of conscience. Not indeed that they will be so annihilated as that there shall be no memory of them; but blotted out in the sense that they will no longer give pain by the remembrance. They will no longer remain there as accusers, tormentors, terrifiers. They will no longer exist as pledges, signals, earnests of alienation from God and of a certain fearful lookingfor of judgment. They will no longer be there like the mark on the forehead of Cain. In every such respect they are gone-gone-gone, sunk in the ocean wave, never to appear again. The conscience is at peace-tranquillized-perfected-as if there had never been any long catalogue of sins recorded upon it. Still there is such remembrance as preserves unimpaired the foundation of gratitude. It will dictate the song of redeeming love,-" Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen."

Once more; it is to have sins removed from the view and memory of all beholders. And this will come to pass from the altered character of the forgiven. Once, they were wicked, the enemies of God, clothed in all the moral deformity of sin, with marks on their foreheads like Cain's, with the record and catalogue of their sins nailed up on the heavens before them wherever they went. But now, their characters are changed, their robes are changed, they are white, their hands are washed; there is nothing about them to proclaim before them as they go, their former horrible character and deserts. But the character they possess through grace, will arrest the attention, and hold it, and absorb the contemplation of all who look upon them. And although God, from his infinite and unchangeable attributes, can never be ignorant; and although the indelible impressions on their own memory of what they once were, remain, so as to give ever more new relish and pathos and power to the song "Worthy is the Lamb;" still, their new characters, and the perfect conviction of the glorious blending of God's justice and mercy in their salvation, will take the place of all other thoughts in the minds of beholders.

Their sins are blotted out. Over the book, the blood of Christ has flowed-a mighty stream-and obliterated every mark. The glowing

fire of God's love has purified their souls, so that their excellences solely appear, not their previous deformities. Their enmity is taken away, and a reciprocity of love fills their souls, onward, for ever more.

And now, my hearers, in respect to this subject, where are we? Let us bring the subject directly home; let each one wrap himself in it; let each hold his mind to it, as a matter of personal, not of foreign concernment. Consider then,

1. In the first place, how great a matter this is,-to have sin blotted out. You think "it a great matter, when you hear that such and such an one of your acquaintance has come into possession, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a great estate; if another, contrary to all probability, has been elected to an honorable and highly lucrative office; if any young lady of worth, but in obscurity and destitution, is suddenly married into an elevated and honorable, and wealthy and happy connexion. You think it a great matter, when you hear or read of remarkable changes in the political world. And you would think it a great matter if you should go out this evening, and discover that Sirius, the most brilliant star in the heavens, no longer occupied its accustomed place, but was gone, vanished, annihilated.

But suppose, my hearers, that before the morrow's sun, it should be known here as a certain truth, and in heaven, too, that nine young immortals, now before me, who came to me on Monday evening last, with the inquiry," What shall I do to be saved?" had had their sins blotted out from God's book-from the burning record of a troubled conscience, and that that record should never be nailed up in the dread prison of despair,-nor ever remembered in heaven, except as an occasion of one more pealing anthem of praise, "Unto him who loved us and washed us in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and his Father." This would be a matter of importance. This would transcend in importance the estate, the office, the marriage, the star.

Revert then to yourselves. To every sinner in this assembly, whether young, middle-aged, or old,-to every sinner, who, in the retirement of the closet, is compelled to say unto himself," Soul, thou art in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity," and to heaven, "God be merciful to me, a sinner :"-to every such one, I say, bearing the commission of the skies, that God, even thy God-the father, even thy father, stands ready to do this great thing for you:--To say to the recording angel, "Stay! reverse thy pen-draw it backward over all the space of months and years-of ten, twenty, forty, seventy years, even a whole life-To say to some other ministering spirit," Fly quickly down to Earth, and pour upon that troubled conscience the blood of Christ:"To another, "Take the key that would open the eternal prison for that soul, and hurl it beyond creation's bounds,"-to say to him, "Welcome,

* Young ladies, members of a school, whom the writer hopes and believes to have been truly converted.