by vicious indulgence; we cannot at once restore health to the body enervated by dissipation-perhaps we can never do it perfectly,—but we can set about an honest purpose to repair the evil by a different course of life, as far as it may be possible. We cannot, indeed, recover the hours already wasted; but we may resolve that there shall be no more wasted, and we may be at such a time of life that the squandered part shall not materially affect our ultimate attainments and usefulness. We cannot recover our squandered property; but we can so regulate our lives that there shall be no more squandered, and so that we may acquire all that shall be necessary for our own wants and the wants of our families, and so as to furnish us the means of doing extensive good. We may have, indeed, injured our health; but the injury may not be irreparable, and we may resolve that the wrong done shall be carried no farther, and we may yet be enabled to pursue our task of life with restored and invigorated powers. If there is such a purpose at once to check and arrest the progress of the evil on ourselves, there is evidence of genuine repentance for the past; if there is not, sighs, and tears, and professions amount to nothing.

(3.) The evidence of repentance implied in our conduct invoves also such a course of life as shall repair, as far as possible, the injury done to others. There is much, indeed, here which cannot be repaired. You cannot recall from the grave the man who has been deprived of life; you cannot bring to the cheerful light of the living, the father and the mother whose hearts have been broken by your misconduct, and who have gone down with sorrow to the tomb; you cannot make the hair of a father that has been turned prematurely grey by your ingratitude and folly, black and glossy again; you cannot restore to innocence the deluded victim whom you have ruined by your seductive arts, your example, or your bad principles.

But you may, notwithstanding, do much to repair the evil which you have done to others. A wounded father's heart you may heal by a frank confession, and by a subsequent life of strict propriety and virtue. A wrong which you have done to another by dishonesty and fraud, you may in a great measure repair by confession, and by an honest restoration of all that you have taken from him by fraud. And though in many cases it may be beyond your power to undo the wrong that you have done to them, yet you may more than compensate for this to the world by the service which you may render to society. In a battle, you have at one moment proved yourself to be a coward, and the battle may be lost; but in a hundred subsequent engage

ments you may be faithful to your standard, carrying it into the very camp of the enemy. You may have made one infidel by your example or bad principles, and you can never save him now from the blighting influence of infidelity; but by a consistent and zealous Christian life you may save hundreds of others from becoming infidels. In the days of your sin and folly you may have led one ingenuous and noble youth to love the intoxicating glass, and no effort of yours can save him from a drunkard's grave; but by becoming now the warm and consistent friend of temperance, you may be the means of saving hundreds of such youths from such a grave; and so far as society is concerned, you may do an hundredfold to repair the wrong. Saul of Tarsus, when he was converted, could never recall to life the martyred Stephen; nor could he bring back to the earth those whom he had imprisoned, and against whom he gave his voice when they were put to death; but he could devote his great talents to the work of propagating the religion which he had persecuted, and save thousands and tens of thousands from a more dreadful death than that of the martyrs. He did it. He set about the great work of repairing the wrongs which he had done to the world as a persecutor; and the sincerity of his repentance was evinced not only by his expressions of deep humiliation and sorrow in view of the past-by his solemn declaration that he was the "least of all the apostles," and was not "fit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God," but by such a life of devotedness to a righteous cause as man never before led, and by a career pursued in repairing the wrong, which was felt to the ends of the earth, and which will continue to be felt to the end of time.

In this abandonment of an evil course; in this struggle against sin; in this solemn purpose to forsake that which has been seen to be wrong, and in this honest and persevering effort to repair the injuries which have been done by our past misconduct, is to be found the evidence of true repentance.

We may learn from our subject,

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(1.) That there is much false repentance in the world. There is much sorrow that expends itself in sighs and tears and temporary emotion, and that “ brings forth no fruit meet for repentance." There is much forsaking of sin for other reasons than because it is seen to be wrong. It is abandoned because it is unprofitable; or because it is unfashionable; or because it does not comport with good breeding and the maintenance of the character of a gentleman; or because the popular sentiment sets strongly against it; or because it is expensive, and cannot well be afforded; and not

because there is any deep sense of the evil. The evil is still loved, and you would be ready to practise it again if your own circumstances, or the views of the public, should be changed. So, many men break off from certain sins, not because they hate them, but because they are growing old, and can no longer enjoy them; many do it, not because their views are changed, but because they are laid on a bed of pain, and the hour of death draweth near. It becomes, therefore, obviously a very solemn duty for each one to examine his own heart, to ascertain why it is that he has forsaken the paths in which he once so cheerfully walked.

(2.) We may see the reason why a death-bed repentance is of so little value. Jeremy Taylor maintained that a death-bed repentance is impossible. There could not be, he said, evidence furnished that it is sincere and genuine. But, whatever may be true on that point, our subject teaches us that all the evidence furnished by a death-bed repentance is of very little value. A moment's reflection, it would seem, would satisfy any one of the truth of this remark. Let him think how many regrets are felt by those in health for their past conduct, which never amount to true penitence; how many expressions of sorrow are made, followed by no correspondent action; how many alarms are felt that produce no turning from sin; how many resolutions are formed only to be disregarded; and then let him reflect on the usual condition of the mind on a death-bed:-how incapable of calm reflection; how likely to act from the influence of mere alarm; how often it is wholly or partially delirious,—and he will see how little dependence is to be placed on expressions of penitence in such circumstances. Let him ask himself also how many in the sphere of his observation there have been, who on a sick bed have resolved to forsake their sins and to live to God, but who on their recovery have shown that their repentance was false and hollow, and he will learn what to think of that repentance when there has been no such recovery. It is a common thing for men when they are sick, and suppose that they are about to die, to become apparently penitent and religious;-not common for them when they recover to give evidence that the repentance was genuine. In a ministry now of nearly thirty years, I have had opportunity to see many sick and dying persons. In all that time I cannot now recall a solitary instance of one who became apparently penitent on a sick-bed, who furnished any evidence in his subsequent life that it was genuine. Now, if this be so in the usual cases of restoration to health, I would not say that it would absolutely prove that in

cases which terminated differently there was no evidence of true repentance; but who can help asking the question, What evidence would they have probably furnished, if they had been restored again to health?

(3.) Finally, the conclusion of the whole matter then is this:If we would have evidence of repentance that is worth anything— that will furnish consolation to our friends when we are gonethat will enable them to go and bend over our graves with the consolation derived from the belief that we are in heaven; if we would have them go and inscribe on the stone which marks the place where we sleep, in an intelligent manner, some simple and sweet passage of the word of God indicating their belief that we are happy, or have them plant there the flower which as it blooms from spring to spring shall be expressive of the hope that we shall be raised to life and glory, that evidence must be found in a life of piety so uniform as to show that we hate all the ways of sin. It must be founded on the workings of our minds in their best state, and in their maturest powers. And for myself, I desire to have, and to leave to my friends in that hour when, so far as this world is concerned, I shall give them the parting hand, a hope not derived from the workings of a mind broken and prostrate by age or disease, or from an expression of regret then wrung from my dying lips—but a hope derived from the best exercise of my intellect and my heart in my maturest days, employed with prayerful energy, and assisted by the grace of God, on the great subject of religion. No other subject so demands the exercise of those powers; nothing else would I desire to have placed on so firm a basis, and so far beyond the danger of deception, as my hope of immortality.

SERMON XXVI.

FAITH A CONDITION OF SALVATION.

MARK xvi. 16.—"He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved."

In illustrating this text, I propose to answer the question, why faith has been demanded as one of the conditions of salvation. The objections to giving such prominence to faith in a system of revealed religion, and to making the whole question of salvation turn on it, are objections more commonly felt than urged; but they are such that it will not do to pass them by as unworthy of notice. They are such as these:—that the rewards which God has to dispense to men are elsewhere bestowed, not according to their faith, but according to their character and conduct; that it would seem to be proper that the retributions of the future state should be according to what a man does, and not according to what he believes; that it is not probable that the retributions of eternity would be made to turn on any mere state of mind, and that if they did, there is no reason why the state of mind implied in faith should be selected in preference to any other; and that to make eternal life depend on the exercise of faith is, in fact, to propose a reward for credulity, and to justify the remark sneeringly made by the sceptic, that "our holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason.' Perhaps to these objections, some would be disposed to add another, that even the Scriptures themselves declare that when the rewards of eternity shall be apportioned on the final trial, the retribution will be according to the deeds done in the body," and that the grand question which will come up will be, not what a man has believed, but what he has done.

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These objections are worthy of particular consideration. propose, then, to ask your attention to the inquiry why faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has been made an indispensable condition of salvation. The inquiry will be exhausted if the following points can be made clear:-that it is proper that there should be some conditions of salvation; what would be the proper characteristics of such conditions; and whether these character. istics are found in the faith that is required in the gospel.

* Hume.