SERMON I.

REPENTANCE.

2 CORINTHIANS vii. 10.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, not to be repented of; but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

IMPRESSED, as every Christian must be, with the deep import and power of repentance, towards any sure and certain hope of final salvation, I shall not unfitly occupy your time by the endeavour to mark the distinction so strikingly laid down in the text, that godly sorrow worketh salvation,-the sorrow of the world worketh death. This is the more needful, for although the consequences to which those two dispositions of the heart lead are far asunder, since by the one the soul is saved, by the other lost, yet are they by no means unlikely in their early workings to be mistaken, and the counterfeit to pass for the pure gold :-but "the Lord

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putteth away the wicked like dross, and will refine them even as silver is refined.'

By adducing, then, such spiritual relations as illustrate and explain the nature of sincere repentance, and detect the semblance of it, we shall be the better prepared to learn its efficacy, and enforce its needfulness.

We find the workings of godly sorrow, and the sorrow of the world, strongly delineated and exemplified in the characters of two of our Saviour's disciples. I bring, therefore, to your consideration Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot. That St. Peter was warmly attached to his Lord, his intentions upright, and his professions sincere, we cannot doubt; still there was a forwardness, a fierce heat of temper and a self-confidence, in him, which, while they rendered him sanguine, and personally daring, laid him open to rash and hurried actions. Frequently does it happen that he who would have stood high for personal courage, fails greatly when the nobler attribute of moral courage is suddenly called into requirement. Thus, we find, when his Lord was betrayed and arrested, that Simon Peter was the first to stand forth for his defence and his rescue, for he drew his sword and smote the servant of the High Priest;" and yet, when a

mere girl taxed him, saying, "thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee," he wanted the energy of mind to own his Lord and openly avow himself his disciple. He denied him, again and again, and again, I know not what thou sayest, I know him not-and he denied him with an oath,—I know not the man. But ere he left the porch of the High Priest's dwelling, where his Lord was arraigned, "his Lord turned and looked upon him, and he remembered the word of the Lord, how that he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice; and he went out and wept bitterly." Notwithstanding, he had vowed, "though all should be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended;" that though he should die with him, yet would he not deny him—yet deny him he did. What a lasting lesson this gives to man-it tells him "who thinketh he standeth to take heed lest he fall;" it tells him not to place his trust in any aid of man, but to look up to a higher and holier power when his trial cometh. It asks this question', one which every man must answer for himself; from what you know of yourself, of your own heart, your own strength, and

1 Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection."

you, is

from what history, and your own personal experience, have bid you to conclude of mankind generally, dare you trust to your own unaided conscience? When the "bosom sin" burns in the heart, when the sin that most easily besets before you,-dare you, then, trust in the strength of your own self-denial? When the tempter sifts you as the disciple, by means of that sin to which you are, by constitution, liable, or which confirmed habit has made to appear to your corrupted thoughts as no sin; think you that you will of yourself say, get thee behind me Satan? If so well, it is your own risk, we judge not; before him whom man cannot mock, you stand or fall. God grant that when, though not in word, but in act, we practically deny our Lord -if ours be that disciple's sin, ours too be that disciple's sorrow. In that sin there was neither forethought nor deliberation; it was neither planned before, nor lingered in after; and if its guilt were deep, deep also was the repentance. It arose not from the heart but from circumstances, and that this godly sorrow worked repentance in Simon Peter as sincere as it was early, his whole subsequent life gave proof and token.

Far different was that of Judas Iscariot. There

was a calculating depravity about his whole character, which, of itself, indicated that repentance in him could never spring from love, nor faith, nor feeling, but, alone, from motives of interest, or fears for the future. A few incidents of his life will, I think, sufficiently attest this conclusion. When Mary poured the costly ointment on the head of Jesus and anointed his feet, and the house was filled with the odour, then murmured Iscariot-" Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor? this he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag, and bare what was put therein," and his covetous spirit could not endure that such a valuable booty should escape his hands, and that he should lose so good an opportunity of peculation. Thus with a lie in his mouth he sought to cloke his own thievery by the mock pretence of assumed charity, a feeling he knew not, and for the poor for whom he cared not. And in reference to his betraying his Master, he was not tempted by others or solicited by those who sought his Master's life; but it was the birth of his own bad heart, the brooding of his own treacherous thoughts. We read that one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto