to offer Absolution and Communion.

We if we

choose may look another way. We may listen to other voices, rather than the voice of our Saviour. But it will be at our souls' peril.

Lent, as well as other Church seasons, is an accepted time, a time of salvation, to all of us alike if we will so take it; and there are besides to each one of us, our Lord's private and personal warnings. Did you never hear some word of Holy Scripture, some sentence in a sermon, or saying out of a good book, which seemed at the moment to suit yourself so exactly, to come so straight home to you, that you could hardly help believing the speaker or writer was thinking of you? Now whether he was so thinking or not, God Almighty, God your Saviour, you may be quite sure, was thinking of you. The word came from Him: it was He who put the thought in your mind. And the time when the thought came, you may also be quite sure was an accepted time; a favourable time for you to draw near to Him. If you refused to do so, you have cast away such a time. Take care how you do so again: the next trial may be the last. Now, this moment, resolve that by God's grace you will act upon that warning whatever it was. heart to Him in silent prayer, that He would touch you again, and that the next time He touches you, it may not pass away as in a dream. Watch religiously for the next chance of doing good or of overcoming temptation, which He may put in your way. When it comes, make much of it. Consider that it is the very time that God has prepared for you: that it will soon be over like

Lift up your

former times; and who can say whether it or any thing like it will ever return? Who can say how deeply, how grievously God Almighty may be offended, if you let it pass, taking no account, making no endeavour to improve it?

Let no man say in his heart, these times of the Lord are for grievous sinners, I am no murderer or adulterer or thief, why need I be so careful to turn every thing into a warning? How do such thoughts agree with the love of God? If you love Him in earnest you will be on the watch for whatever may help you to love and serve Him better. Some sins to be sure you have; in some duties to be sure you are imperfect; whatever that sin or neglect be, to go on with it after special warning must needs make it very serious. If you use yourself to make light of warnings, for ought you know you may be at this moment living in some deadly sin; what if you should die before you have truly repented of it? what if you should be struck down suddenly, and depart into the next world without any time to recollect it and mourn for it, much less to repent and make amends? What if God, justly displeased at your making so light of His former visitations, should visit you the next time as He did Dathan and Abiram, allowing you no time at all to repent in ? What if you should lose your senses ? or be so full of pain of body, or anguish and perplexity of mind as to be unable to think and turn to God? Surely no one of us can say that he is in no danger of any of these things? None of us can say that it would be any thing so very surprising, any thing so very much out of the ordinary way, for himself to die

suddenly, or to lose his senses, or to be incapable of a regular confession. Now, now is the time, now is the moment for one and all of us to prevent the evil day, amending our lives, and watching our hearts in earnest, before the power of doing so is taken away.

Think in earnest my brethren of the Day of Judgement. Do you suppose that in that hour any one of us will repent himself as though he had not made the most of life, having turned to God sooner or more heartily than he need? My brethren we all know better than that, we all know that the most a man can do will seem to him nothing in that hour. At least let us lose no more than we can help of the short time that yet remains. Let not this Lent be added to our list of neglected warnings. It is here now it will very soon be gone: God grant the memory of it may be a joy to us all for ever!

SERMON VII.

CONFESSION.

I.

1 S. JOHN i. 8.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

ONCE more the time of Lent is come; in one year more the Holy Church has cried aloud in our ears and spared not. She has lifted up her voice like a trumpet, declaring as you heard last Wednesday, the sentences of God's wrath against impenitent sinners, who are such, how accursed they are in this world, and what their end must be in the next, if they do not betake themselves in time to their only Saviour. All this has sounded in our ears, every one of us, for indeed we are all concerned in it: it is a serious time for us all. Not for a few notorious sinners only, such as are called reprobates, and pointed at in all the neighbourhood; not for such only is this time of Lent appointed, but for all and every one of us. For Lent is a time of penitence, and all have need of penitence, or as the Commination Service calls it, of Penance. Look at a little child of a day old, even that has need of penance, i. e. of God's corrective discipline. For it is a sinner in the sight of God, and subject

to His wrath, having in it, that seed and spark of original sin, which has been born with each one of us, ever since the fall of Adam. And we may well believe that in some mysterious way the pains, and especially the death of little children may serve as a penitential medecine to heal the sore and foulness of that birth sin, which though it be forgiven as to its eternal mischief, continues within them, even after they are baptized. But this is one of God's secrets. With regard to elder persons it is quite certain, that "if they say they have no sin they deceive themselves," were it only in respect of the sin which they inherit from Adam. We ought to think of that original mischief more, and more gravely than we too commonly do. For only consider what your feelings would be, if you were made aware that you carried about with you the seeds of some dangerous and tormenting disease, which would soon become incurable if you were careless about it. Would it not make you very watchful, very much on your guard not to do anything that would strengthen the complaint, or bring on an attack of it? Would it not come into your mind along with your morning and evening prayers, and help you to feel how feeble and powerless you are, so long as you are left to yourself: how entirely in the hands of your Lord for life or death? Well now, such as would be your feelings concerning your body if you knew you were subject to a bad and dangerous sickness, such ought to be your feelings concerning your soul, which you know for certain to be infected with the most miserable fatal pestilence of sin. We ought never to forget it, we ought never to go on for a moment