everlasting punishment, is it nothing to you to dishonour God and grieve the Spirit? And know you not, that though your iniquity should be pardoned, yet still it will be punished with stripes and the rod, and be followed by anguish of soul? David was forgiven; yet the sword never departed from his house in consequence of his transgression, and years of bitterness and distress were the fruit of his crimes: to his dying day the retrospection of these crimes planted daggers in his heart. Even though you were sure, which you are not, of repentance, yet accumulate not for yourself these miseries.

In reviewing this history, we are naturally led to ask, Why did Providence permit this shameful fall in David? or, to extend the question, Why does God allow sin to remain, and sometimes to break out forcibly in his regenerate children? This question cannot easily be answered. It is not for want of power to prevent it; for he could perfectly sanctify them. It is not for want of hatred to their sin; it appears as odious, more odious in them than in others. It is not for want of love to them; he regards them as his friends and his children. Why then does he not render them immaculately holy? The following are, perhaps, some of the reasons of this dispensation. These do not at all justify the offender, though they vindicate the providence of God, and show its omnipotence in educing good from evil itself.

1. By them, the grace of God, in justification, is illustriously, and will be eternally magnified. It is rich and infinite mercy for God to forgive our sins before conversion. It is rich and infinite mercy to pardon and love, notwithstanding the remains of indwelling corruption. Every believer with the

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tle Paul, when contemplating the "body of death" that he bears about with him, finds a new sweetness in the grace of the gospel, and thanks God with greater rapture for Jesus Christ. But when, after greater falls, the voice of pardon is heard, the heart swells with adoring wonder of the grace communicated to so base, so unworthy a rebel. Can the hallelujahs of a seraph vie with the flaming love of a Peter, when he recalls the tender look of Jesus, which recalled him to his duty, and assured him of forgiveness? How tuneless is the harp of Gabriel, compared with that of David, when, recalling his fall and his forgiveness, he celebrates the grace of the Most Merciful, and the merits of Immanuel!

2. They are thus taught the depth of that iniquity which is in them, and rendered humble and dependent. Never did David so pathetically and emphatically bewail the corruption of human nature, as in his penitential psalms; never with such ardour did he make mercy his only plea; never did he more fully acknowledge and feel, that unless God upheld him by his free Spirit, he must fall. Peter, before his denial, was confident of his own strength, and exalted himself above his brethren; but afterwards his carnal confidence in himself and his own strength were destroyed for ever; and he perpetually exhorts believers to watchfulness, to holy fear, and dependence.

3. Thus they are taught to value more dearly the advocacy and intercession of the Lord Jesus. Having thus painfully felt their weakness; knowing that they could not be sustained a moment without Him who "prayeth for them that their faith fail not;" with what gratitude do they look up to an interceding Redeemer! with what tears of thankfulness do

they read such declarations as that of John: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous!"

4. The remembrance of the anguish of soul which they endured before God restored unto them the joy of his salvation; the recollection of " the wormwood and the gall," inspire them with additional fear of sin, and make them more studious to mortify it. They tremble at the disease they have already felt, and walk in holy fear. David, crushed by the recollection of the sin which had defiled him, opposes all iniquity, and looks to the very root of sin, and hates it in its source.

5. They are thus, by the wonderful providence of God, fitted for service. "When thou art converted," says Christ to Peter, after predicting his fall, "strengthen thy brethren." By the bitter experience of the power of sin, they can admonish others against it. It is Peter who particularly warns those to whom he writes, not to "deny the Lord that bought them." By the sweet experience of pardoning mercy, they are fitted to direct the trembling, distressed, wounded soul to the fountain of grace. Because they have found the mercy of God to themselves, they will put on the spirit of meekness and compassion to others; they feel the force of that exhortation of the apostle, "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye that are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted." Ah! think you that David, after this lamentable proof of his own weakness, ever displayed the temper of an elder brother to any poor penitent prodigal?

6. The sins of believers make them long for heaven. They are made ready to drop this body of

flesh, if with it they may drop the body of sin and death. 66 They groan, being burdened," and sigh for that land of perfect holiness, where they shall no longer offend their God. They cry with David, while crushed with the sense of indwelling sin, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." (Ps. lv. 6.)

Such, my brethren, are some of the benefits which God, in his wonderful and adorable providence, educes even from sin, the worst of evils, an evil greater than hell. Such were probably some of the reasons why he permitted the fall of David and of others. Do not here misunderstand me. I repeat it; these good effects produced by God do not, in the smallest degree, justify the transgressor, or diminish the blackness of his guilt. Is there a person present who is resolved to indulge in sin, because God can over-rule it for good? Let him listen to the apostle Paul, and tremble: "We be slanderously reported, and some affirm that we say, Let us do evil that good may come : whose damnation is just."

The conscience of David, after the commission of crime, remained for a long time stupified and insensible: but he was at last recovered by the mercy of God, and returned to his former zeal, though he had not his former comforts.

The Lord sent to him a prophet to reprove, to convict, and instruct him. This prophet was Nathan, who is known to us only by his connexion with David. God often employed him to manifest the divine will to this prince, to whom it may be said he was a tutelary angel. He consoled David in his afflictions and persecutions by Saul, by the prediction of the prosperity that should follow them; he humbled him in his prosperity, by the denunciation of the misery

that awaited him; he roused him from his spiritual lethargy, by the exhibition of the greatness of his crime; he declared the remission of his sins to him when penitent; he defended him in his old age against the faction of Adonijah and his followers; he put the crown upon the head of his successor; and, after his death, wrote his history, a work which has not reached us, unless, as is probable, it is incorporated in the book of Kings. Such was the man selected by God to make David feel the enormity of his guilt, and to denounce the punishment with which it would be followed.

Nathan performed this office with all the respect due to his king, and at the same time with all the firmness becoming a messenger from that God, of whom this king was both the creature and the subject. Under a feigned character, he, in a beautiful apologue, represented to David the baseness of his conduct, and made him his own judge. Perceiving not the design of the parable, the wrath of David was excited against the supposed transgressor; and ordered, that not only, according to the law, the criminal should restore fourfold, but that also, from the circumstances which aggravated his guilt, he should die. Thus odious does vice appear, when we coolly view it in the conduct of another; but, deluded by self-love, we form a thousand excuses for ourselves, for those same crimes which we execrate in our neighbour.

Nathan immediately raised the veil which concealed from David his guilt; declared that he had pronounced sentence upon himself; and, with a holy majesty and solemnity cried to him, "Thou art the man!" A light from heaven instantly darted into the soul of the royal culprit. With anguish and horror,