1

liar with holy things, so aware of temptation, evil thoughts, unhallowed motions, dishonest casuistry, cheatings of conscience, evasions of light, deafness to warning, wilfulness, trifling with the preliminaries of temptation, and the like, have intenser spiritual evil than the ruder and broader disobedience of less practised and instructed minds. There is something very awful in the reiterated commission of any sin long known, professedly repented of, and habitually prayed against. If sin after baptism, or sin after repentance, be a provocation, what is sin against the light of many years and the realities of a mature probation? In such persons, year by year sin becomes more exceeding sinful; though their greater sins be forsaken, yet the less become more guilty; though they be less frequent, yet each one outweighs a multitude of sins done in the days of weakness and of twilight.

Still even for all these there is mercy. There is unspeakable consolation for them in the words, "not until seven times, but until seventy times seven;""if he trespass against thee seven times. in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." What else remains to us but this alone? and what does this teach us, but that no provocations, no reiteration of disobedience, how often soever committed, even between the sunrise and the sunset,

shall shut out the true penitent from pardon? This is the one and only condition: "if he turn to thee, saying, I repent." There is no limitation in the covenant of God, no tale of sins fixed by number, no measure of duration or of frequency registered in heaven. If only the sinner repentthis is the one and only necessary condition; the longsuffering and compassion of the Son of God are inexhaustible. If any sinner be lost, he will be lost through his own impenitence.

Let us, then, fear to lose time in turning to Him. Delay hardens men's hearts. "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and so ye perish from the right way, if His wrath be kindled, yea, but a little." Let us, when through our great frailty we sin against Him, go to Him straightway, and cast ourselves at His feet, and put our mouth in the dust; let us confess all we have done, with all its aggravations, leaving nothing for the accuser to add against us. Morning and night let us lay ourselves open before our forgiving and pitiful Lord. When we have fallen into any definite and particular sin, let us record on our knees before Him our solemn resolution to avoid, with all watchfulness, all the preambles and invitations by which we have been betrayed to it. Let us lay the rod upon ourselves, praying Him to spare us. Let us ask of

1 Ps. ii. 12.

Him not forgiveness alone, but bitterness and brokenness of heart, perpetual compunction, shame at our ingratitude, trembling and awe at our rashness in sinning against Him, the brightness of whose Presence would smite our whole being into dust and ashes. Blessed truth, that with Him is forgiveness seven times a day! for seven times a day do we commit greater sins than lost the paradise of God. "How, then, can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm ?"

Job xxv. 4-6.

SERMON XX.

THE GENTLENESS OF CHRIST.

ISAIAH xlii. 3.

A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench."

In this prophecy Isaiah foretells the gentleness of Christ. St. Matthew quotes it when he is recording the longsuffering of our Lord with the Pharisees. He had healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath day: the Pharisees lay in wait to entangle Him by questions; and when He had baffled them, they "went out, and held a council against Him, that they might destroy Him. But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew Himself from thence and great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all; and charged them that they should not make Him known." This He enjoined, it seems, lest the Pharisees should be goaded and provoked, by the unwelcome proofs of His divine power, into precipitate acts against

Him. For their sakes He would have concealed Himself; lest, by contending with Him, they should destroy themselves. His whole ministry was full of the like gentle and tender forbearance, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Behold My Servant, whom I have chosen; My Beloved, in whom My soul is well pleased: I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He shall shew judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets." His ministry was not a public disputation, with clamour and popular applause, with factions in the city, and a following of people. It was silent and penetrating," as the light that goeth forth;" spreading every where with resistless power, and yet from a source often withdrawn from sight. "A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench ;” which seems to say, so light and soft shall be His touch, that the reed which is nearly asunder shall not be broken down, and the flax which has only not left off to smoke shall not be put out. A most beautiful parable of tenderness, of which Moses, the meekest of men, was a type, when he said in the Spirit: "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the

1 Hosea vi. 5.

2 St. Matt. xii. 14-20.