have brought us: troubles, I say, from the Lord come upon us; we are as persons taken, bound, carried away captives: we are at last convinced that the world cannot help us, and we cannot help ourselves. Then, as I said, the Evil One will beset you, if he can, with the temptation to despair: but do not you listen to him: think of Manasseh, the wicked, idolatrous, murderous Manasseh, in his fetters in the Babylonish prison, and see how he employs himself. The good seed, which no doubt his father Hezekiah had sown, now begins to shoot out, having been stifled for so many years, since he was twelve years old, by his sins. Manasseh is come to himself; he thinks, like the young man in our Saviour's parable, "were I but in my Father's house, I should have bread enough and to spare: but now I perish with hunger." He listens not to the devil, tempting him to despond, as unhappy Judas listened: but being in affliction, he beseeches the Lord his God, and humbles himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prays unto Him: prays heartily, prays so, that God is intreated of him, and hears his supplication, and brings him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom: so that he is settled in heart to believe that the Lord, He alone is God, and the idols after which he had gone are nothing in the world. This is the repentance and conversion of king Manasseh: and, blessed be God, like unto it has been the repentance and conversion of thousands, who in our Christian times, alas! have abused greater privileges to worse sin. Like to it, by His grace, may our repentance and conversion be, in whatever respect and degree we have gone after the world and the flesh. Only let us not trifle

with God.

He who warned and afflicted Manasseh, is even now warning us: let us not wait till He afflicts us; till age, or sickness, or poverty, or trouble take away our taste for our sins; let us not stay till we are taken among the thorns, and in prison at Babylon, but let us put away our idols, break off our bad ways, at once. It was well that Manasseh repented in Babylon; but have you any doubt that, if you could ask him, he would say he could wish to have repented long before? But even his repentance, late as it was, was not too late to bring forth fruit. "When he was come back to Jerusalem, he took away the strange gods and the idols out of the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city: and he repaired the altar of the Lord and sacrificed thereon peace-offerings and thank-offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel." That is, having truly repented, he did all he could to undo his former sins. He did not only humble himself for them, but worked against them with all his might: and laboured to reform the people whom he had before corrupted. Christian penitents, learn we of Manasseh, that ours must be a watchful and active repentance. We must not give way to any kind of sloth. We must not sit at home merely regretting the past, but we must go out and fight the battles of the Lord, as He shall call and enable us. Little enough, alas! can we do, to repair the sad effects, secret or open, of our past sins. Manasseh's penitence, earnest as it was, could not undo the results of his transgression. The people whom he had so

much helped to corrupt, continued corrupt when he was changed. The sentence which God had passed on Judah and Jerusalem for the sins into which Manasseh had led them, continued in force even after Manasseh's repentance. This is a sad and fearful thought. The penitent, when he has done his best, will find that he can but very imperfectly cure the mischief he has occasioned. often, much of it will abide for ever. Consider it well; and while you thank God that in one sense true contrition can never come too late, be sure that every moment of delay must be paid for one day, with loss and bitter regret.

Too

SERMON XXVIII.

THE REPENTANCE OF NINEVEH.

JONAH iii. 2.

"God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that He had said He would do unto them, and He did it not."

OUR Lord God is exceedingly merciful in forgiving all sin. We saw it last Friday in the case of the wicked king Manasseh: whose true confession was, "I have sinned more in number than the sands of the sea, and I am not worthy to look up and behold the height of Heaven;" and yet he was forgiven, when in his captivity he turned to his God in earnest; and so will even the worst sinners among Christians be forgiven, if they turn in good time and lay hold of the Cross, with a repentance which sincerely tries and longs to be in some measure proportionate to the sin. The Prodigal child may have wandered into a very far country, he may have wasted all his substance over and over with riotous living, he may have been fain to fill his belly with the husks, to give himself up to the basest and most swinish pleasures; and yet, if he not only wish to arise, but really do arise and go to his Father, not minding the pain, the

shame, the self-denial, the perplexity; doubt not but his Father, Who watches him a great way off, Who indeed is, all the while, with him in secret, putting the penitent thoughts into his heart, He will before very long come out, and fall on the mourning sinner's neck and kiss him, and will admit him, as he shall be found worthy, to all the graces and comforts of his home.

so.

God is very merciful, and will forgive all sorts and all measures of sin: but then the sinner must really and practically repent, must repent in deed, not in word and imagination only. All, even the very worst who have not quite lost all sense of the difference between right and wrong, must at times wish to repent, wish that they had the heart to do It may for the time be a very earnest wish: it may move the heart, and draw tears from the eyes. But if that be all, it is not repentance; it is but a wish to repent. Then it is repentance indeed, when in addition to these inward feelings it begins to make a difference in their conduct: when being still within reach of temptation, they refrain from the sin which had before been too mighty for them: when they do what in them lies to keep themselves out of temptation, or strengthen themselves against it; and also when, in humble sense of past sin, they vex and punish themselves for having been guilty of it: judging themselves, as S. Paul says, and as the Church recommends in the Communion Service, that they may not be judged of the Lord. I will try to make my meaning plainer. It will many times happen, that by the time a person begins truly to repent of his sins for God's sake, the very tempta