said, it is clear that the necessity of this kind of conversion or repentance arises out of the disobedience of the regenerate, and from the falls of those that sin grievously after baptism. That which is put forward as the perfection of the saints is the recovery of fallen Christians. And the reason why this theory maintains itself so strongly and is so popular is, because it is the interest of the majority to hold it. The great multitude of Christians are in that state. "Many are called, and few are chosen." All are regenerate, but saints are few. The multitude are at best to be numbered among penitents; and their own case fixes their theology, and sets bounds to their belief. What is true of themselves, they think is true of all, and true alone; partly, I say, from being bribed, as it were, to hold a theory that will make the best of their own case; and partly because the very nature of their case must make them unconscious of the realities which others know who have never fallen as they have. Besides, the tokens and evidences of repentance are just those that are most perceptible to the world. They appeal to the ear and to the eye, and force themselves upon the notice of men. The zeal, fervour, activity, which converted or converting men exhibit are so nearly akin to the same qualities in the mind and character of worldly people, that they are more

easily understood and appreciated. The character of true saintliness, as it is most remote from the world, and even opposed to it, is least understood and valued by the world. It is either simply not perceived to exist, or it is thought eccentric, weak, and unprofitable. This will explain why the popular religion will always incline to exalt repentance to the position of the leading idea and design of the gospel. But when we pass from the judgment of sight to the discernment of faith, we shall see that it is but remedial and secondary; that it is a painful and laborious undoing of the tangled and stubborn perversity of the disobedient will; that it is, as it was called of old, a kind of regeneration, implying thereby the freeness of God's mercy, the greatness of the necessity, the dangerous state of the lapsed Christian, the depth of the injury done to the spiritual nature; so that it can be likened only to the original state of sin and death, and healed by a work second only in greatness to the original operation of preventing grace upon the soul. All this shews us that the repentance of baptized men is as the difficult and precarious recovery of those who, after the partial cure of a death-sickness, fall into relapse. The powers of nature are wasted, the virtues of medicine baffled, and the disease grows doubly strong. A sad exchange for those who once walked in white

raiment, and were numbered among the children of God.

3. Lastly, we see in what it is that they who have been kept and sanctified from their regeneration exceed the blessedness of penitents. They have never fallen away from their first estate. The grace of their election, though it has been resisted and grieved, has never been baffled and reduced to inaction. Not to have fallen into the pollution of the world, the flesh, and the devil, how high a grace! How unspeakably great is the loving-kindness of Him who has thus kept them! From what has the grace of regeneration protected them;from what dangerous familiarity with evil-from what excitements of the carnal mind-from what defilement of the imagination—from what obliquity of the will—from what unfeelingness of heart! To be free from all this, how blessed! To be ignorant of that which must be unlearnt with pain and sorrow by all who will enter God's kingdom! From what hours of bitter remorse-from what years of toil, weakness, and infirmity, are they preserved! And what a delusion is it to believe that the visible fervour and zeal of penitents is evidence of a higher state of grace! What can their zeal or fervour do in comparison with the unconscious strength and stedfast principle of those that have ever walked with God? It is not, indeed, to be denied that we

do sometimes see in " righteous persons who need no repentance" a torpor and sluggishness of spirit ; but still oftener the world so judges of them because it cannot read the tokens of their state aright. The depth and inward force of true holiness are beyond the world's ken; the calm and unmoved collectedness with which they set themselves to the greatest tasks, worldly eyes cannot discern from torpor and tameness. Why should they exhibit the noise and excitement of effort, whose very nature is moulded into unconscious obedience? They do great things in silence; and the world thinks that because they say little, they do nothing. The haste and exertion which penitents must needs use to make up their lost time and ground, has in them long since passed into the stedfast and quiet consistency of a mature piety. Why should they "strive or cry?" Why should their voice be heard in the streets, whose life has been sheltered under the shadow of the Most High, and nurtured into the peace and strength of habitual faith? There is in the deep, burning zeal of a saintly mind an intensity which the excitement of converts can never approach. Even in those peculiar graces which are thought to be the all-but exclusive property of penitents, the fervour, self-chastisement, resolution, entire devotion of their whole being to God, what is there to compare with the glowing charity, the

vivid compunction, the perfect mortification, and absolute self-oblation of those that are early sanctified? Great and blessed as are the graces and acts of penitents, they are but approximations to the sanctity which they might themselves have attained, had they preserved their baptismal life from soils and lapses. The very visibleness and loudness, I may say, of their religion betrays difficulty and effort. The movements of nature are easy and spontaneous, and though done without reflection, are more truly the acts of the whole being than those things which we do by rule, and thought, and with conscious preparation. In the one case it has become our own, in the other it is a borrowed nature. This is the ripe fruit of holy childhood; and to this every one that is born again may, in his measure, attain. The holiness of children is the very type of saintliness; and the most perfect conversion is but a hard and distant return to the holiness of a child. Let us, then, lay to heart the great gift which has been bestowed upon us. Our baptism was a change greater than any which can come on the sons of Adam, except death and the resurrection. Let us humble ourselves with plaints which cannot be uttered, for the sins, by deed and thought, which in childhood, boyhood, and youth, we have committed against the grace of our regeneration. And though perhaps it may be now too late