with being carnal and sold under sin, with doing that which is unallowable and undesirable and evil and hateful-with omitting to do what is good, and being without the skill and the power to perform it-with being utterly destitute of any good thing-with keeping up its execrated residence, even in the bosom of the Christian who loathed it; and, ever present there, warring against the suggestions of a better principle; and bent on taking captive the whole man to the law of that sin which was in his members-So as that the flesh was wholly enlisted on the side of this hateful service; and such a conflict upheld among the belligerent powers and principles that were in a believer's frame, as burdened him with a sense of wretchedness, and made him cry out for deliverance therefrom.

Take this along with you, and you will be able to appreciate what the confessions are that Paul makes of his own sinfulness. He first mourns over the guilt of his omissions, what I would that I do not'-"how to perform that which is good I find not"-" the good that I would I do not." Ere you estimate the flagrancy of his omissions, think of this, that they consist in having fallen short of his desires-not that his work fell short of that of other men, but that it fell greatly short of his own willingness-not that he neglected any one duty which could obtain for him credit in society, but that he failed in bringing his graces and his exercises up to the balance of the sanctu

ary. That he should in any one instance through the day, have lost the frame of his affectionate dependence towards God, or have let a sense of his obligations to Christ depart from his mind, or have slackened his diligence in the way of labouring for the souls of his fellow-creatures, or have cooled in his charity towards those who were around him, or have failed in any acts and expressions of courteousness-these were enough most tenderly to affect such a heart of moral tenderness as he had, and to prompt every confession and every utterance of shame or humiliation or remorse that is here recorded. What some might mistake as the evidence of a spiritual decline on the part of the apostle, was in fact the evidence of his growth. It is the effusion of a more quick and cultured sensibility than fell to the lot of ordinary men ; and like the mortification of him, who, because the most consummate of all artists, is therefore the most feelingly alive to every deformity and every deviation. The inference were altogether erroneous, that because Paul went beyond other men in his confessions, he therefore went beyond them in his crimes. The point in which he went beyond them was, not in crime, but in conscience; and the conclusion is-not that he who uttered these things was a reprobate, against whom the world could allege some monstrous or unnatural defect from any of the social or relative proprie. ties of life—but that, on the other hand, he was a busy and earnest and progressive disciple of the

Lord Jesus, urged on by a sense of his distance from the perfection that lay before him, and charging his own heart with a wide and woful defect from the sanctities that it felt to be due to his God.

And the same holds true in regard to his confessions of positive sinfulness. 'What I hate that

I do.' "I do that which I would not." "The evil which I would not that I do"-Not that any doings of his were such as would be hateful to him of an ordinary conscience, not that the world could detect in them a flaw of odiousness. It was at the tribunal of his own conscience, that they were deemed to be reprehensible. It was in the eye of one now enlightened in the law of God and made alive to it, that the sins of his own heart bore upon them an aspect of such exceeding sinfulness. It was because of that quicker sensibility that he now had, as he moved forward in his spiritual education, that he now felt more of tenderness and alarm, about the secret workings of pride and selfishness and anger and carnality in his inner man; and such an effusion as that before us, which has been so strangely ascribed to a personified outcast from all grace and from all godliness, is one that only could have proceeded from the mouth of an experienced Christian, and is the best evidence of his progress. No unchristianised man could have felt that delight in God's law, and that love for its precepts, and that active zeal on the side of obedience, which are all profest in the soliloquy that

is now under consideration; and they would insure, as they do with every Christian, a real and habitual progress in the virtues and accomplishments of the new creature. But just in proportion as the desire after spiritual excellence is nourished into greater force and intensity in the one department of his now complex nature-so must be the detestation that is felt for every degree or remainder of evil, that exists in the other department of it. And not till the union of the two is terminated by death -not till that tabernacle is broken up, which festers throughout with the moral virus, that entered at the sin of our first parent, and was transmitted to all his posterity-not till these bodies have mouldered in the grave, and are raised anew in incorruption and in honour-not till then shall the desire and the doing, the principle and the performance be fully adequate the one unto the other; and then, emancipated from the drag and the oppression that here encumber us, we shall be translated into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

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LECTURE XLIII.

ROMANS, vii, 16, 17.

*If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."

Ir might save a world of illustration in the business of interpreting this passage, were we sure of addressing ourselves to the experience of all our hearers. But we fear of some of you, that you have no internal conflict in the work of your sanctification at all—that you are under the dominion of but one ruler, even of self, that ever lends a willing ear, and yields a ready obedience to its own humours and appetites and interests; and that, living just as you list, you feel no struggle between your principles and your propensities-even because you live without God in the world. And furthermore we fear of others of you, that you have taken up your rest among the forms of an external religion, or among the terms of an inert orthodoxy, which play around the ear, without having reached a practical impulse to the heart; and which lead you to solace yourselves with the privileges of an imaginary belief, instead of landing you in the prosecution of a real and ever-doing businesswhich is to cleanse yourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and to perfect your