selves incapable of doing without, drag on the miserable wrecks of a reputation, either blasted or too slightly repaired, and wherever they show themselves, arouse the remembrance or the suspicion of their crimes!

Such had been the affliction and disgrace, with which the passions and debaucheries of this sinner were followed; but her penitence restores to her more honour and more glory than had been taken from her by the infamy of her crimes. This sinner, so despised in the world, whose name was never mentioned without a blush, is praised for the very things which even the world considers as most honourable, viz. kindness of heart, generosity of sentiments, and the fidelity of an holy love; this sinner, with whom no comparison durst ever be made, and whose scandal was without example in the city, is exalted above the Pharisee; the truth and sincerity of her faith, of her compunction, and of her love, merit at once the preference over a superficial and pharasaical virtue: Lastly, This sinner, whose name was concealed, as if unworthy of being pronounced, and whose only appellation is that of her crimes; is become the glory of Jesus Christ, the praise of grace, and an honour to the gospel. O matchless power of virtue!

Yes, my brethren, virtue renders us a spectacle, worthy of God, of angels, and of men: it rebuilds a fallen reputation; it renews our claim, even here below, to rights and honours which we had forfeited; it washes out stains, which the malignity of men would wish to be immortal: it reunites us to the servants of Jesus Christ, and to the society of the just, of whose intercourse we were formerly unworthy: it calls forth in us a thousand laudable qualities, which the vortex of the passions had almost for ever ingulphed and finally, it attracts more

glory to us, than our past manners had attached shame and contempt. While Jonah is rebellious to the will of God, he is the curse of Heaven and of the earth; even idolaters are under the necessity of separating him from their society, and of casting him out, as a child of infamy and malediction; and the belly of a monster is the only asylum in which he can conceal his reproach and shame. But, touched with contrition, scarcely hath he implored the eternal mercies of the God of his fathers, when he becomes the admiration of the proud Ninevah; the nobles and the people unite to render him honours till then unheard of; and the prince himself, full of respect for his virtue, descends from the throne, and covers himself with sackcloth and ashes, in obedience to the man of God. Those passions which the world praises and inspires, had drawn upon us the contempt even of the world; virtue, which the world censures and combats, attracts to us, however unwillingly on its part, its veneration and homage..

What, my dear hearer, prevents you then from terminating your shame, and your inquietudes, with your crimes? Is it the reparations of penitence which alarm you? But the longer you delay, the more they multiply; the more debts are contracted, the more you increase the necessity of new rigours to your weakness. Ah! If the necessary amends discourage you at present, what shall it one day be, when your crimes, having multiplied to infinity, scarcely any punishment whatever shall be capable of expiating them? They shall then plunge you into despair; and you will adopt the miserable choice of casting off every yoke, and of no longer reckoning upon your salvation; you will make for yourself new maxims, and modes of reasoning, in order to tranquilize

your mind in freethinking; you will consider as needless, a penitence which will then appear to you impossible. When the embarrassments of the conscience come to a certain point, we feel a kind of gloomy satisfaction in persuading ourselves, that no resource is left; we quiet ourselves with regard to the foundations of truths, when we see ourselves so far removed from what they prescribe; we fly to unbelief for a remedy, from the moment that we believe it is no longer to be found in faith; and from the moment that the chaos becomes inexplicable to us, we have soon settled it in our minds, that all is uncertain. And, besides, what should there be so melancholy and so rigorous in acts of atonement, whose only merit ought to spring from love?

Alas! unbelieving soul! You dread being unable to support the holy sadness of penitence; yet you have hitherto been able to bear up against the internal horrors of guilt: virtue in your eyes seems wearisome beyond suffering; yet have you long dragged on under the stings of an ulcerated conscience, which no joy could enliven. Ah! Since you have hitherto been able to bear up against all the inward anguish, the feelings of bitterness and disgust, and the gloomy agitations of iniquity, no longer dread those of virtue: in the pains and sufferings inseparable from guilt, you have undergone trials far beyond what may be attached to virtue; and doubly so, because grace softens, and renders even pleasant, the sufferings of piety, while the only sweetener of guilt is the bitterness of guilt itself.

My God! Is it possible, that, for so many years past, I have had strength to wander in such arduous and dreary ways, under the tyranny of the world and of the passions; and that I should be unable to live with Thee,

under all the tenderness of thy regards, under the wing of thy compassion, and under the protection of thy arm! Art thou then so cruel a master? The world which knows thee not, believes that thou renderest miserable those who serve thee: but we O Lord, know that Thou art the gentlest and best of masters, the tenderest of fathers, the most faithful of friends, the most munificent of benefactors; and that, by a thousand inward consolations with which Thou indulgest thy servants here below, Thou givest a foretaste of that eternal felicity which Thou hast prepared for them hereafter.

SERMON XVI.

THE WORD OF GOD.

MATTHEW iv. 4.

It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

NOTHING can give a better idea of the power and sublimity of the word of the gospel, than the images employed by Jesus Christ to foretell its effects. At one time it is a sacred sword, which is to divide father from child, husband from wife, brother from sister, and man from himself; to bend all minds under the yoke of faith, to subjugate the Cesars, to triumph over sages and the learned, and to exalt the standard of the cross upon the wrecks of idols and of empires; and through this we are shown its might, which the whole world hath been unable to resist.

At one time it is a divine fire, spread in an instant throughout the earth, which dissolves mountains, depopVol. I.

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