He speaks of them as "having their consciences seared with a hot iron." If we endeavour to trace this process of mental induration, by observing closely how sinners generally deal with conscience, we shall, perhaps, ascertain, that they are, for the most part, in the first instance angry at its remonstrances. Being resolved, at all events, on the enjoyment of their pleasures, or the accomplishment of their ambitious or avaricious designs, yet not being able to refuse all deference to the voice which speaks within, a war ensues between inclination and the sense of duty. This internal conflict rouses their angry feelings, and though they choose rather to resist and violate conscience than to put the rein upon selfishness and passion; yet are they not able to purchase peace on terms so easy as they had expected. They are troubled with repeated remonstrances and with consequent misgivings which they are impatient to bear. The remembrance of past instructions—of a father's advice and a mother's prayers and tears,―rushes unbidden on their minds, and compels them to pause before they venture on the contemplated crime; but these thoughts are indignantly spurned, the determination to proceed receives only a momentary check from these moral restraints of the judgment; the temper is ruffled and irritated, and the desire is scarcely dissembled, that the inward monitor would be less trouble

1 1 Tim. iv. 2.

some with her expostulations, intreaties, and accusations.

This vehement conflict, however, among the mental powers, does not often long continue. The sinner finds a painful deduction from his pleasures, in the feelings of remorse which conscience intermingles with them. His cup of joy is dashed with these drops of bitterness, and he would desire -at almost any cost-to purchase respite from the inward struggle. Hence he frames apologies for his favourite sins, he calls them by gentle names, he endeavours to invest them with the garb of some virtue which they most nearly resemble, he pleads for them with all the strenuousness of an interested advocate; he tries by degrees to bring conscience round to the side of inclination; and in order to accomplish this purpose, instead of directly opposing its authority, he rather attempts to reduce its standard, to compromise its claims, to compound by certain sacrifices for certain other indulgences, and to win it over, by frivolous arguments and considerations,such as would have no weight with any but himself, and none with him in any other case than his own-to give a verdict in his favour. When things have proceeded, for some time, in this manner, the voice of reproof is heard more faintly, and at wider intervals, and at length dies away like the last echo among the mountains. Conscience has been tampered with and corrupted, till it can scarcely be aroused from its slumber by

any enormities, and can scarcely be compelled to pronounce judgment on on the most atrocious misconduct.

Thus St. Paul, speaking of persons who had "given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness," describes them as "being past feeling,"1 destitute of moral sensibility, having all the finer feelings of conscience destroyed. They were no longer to be moved by any moral considerations whatever. Neither truth, nor justice, nor kindness could sway their deliberations, or decide their conduct. They had no longer the fear of God before their eyes; they were alike indifferent to the desire of mercy, and the dread of judgment. Their heart was "fully set in them to work wickedness." Such was the state of Cain, when having imbrued his hands in his brother's blood, he could coldly and disdainfully meet the heart-searching question of God himself, by asking, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Even the solemn voice of heaven failed to impress his seared conscience! Such too was the state of Ahab, who "sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord;" and who thought to parry and to neutralize all the accusations of the prophet Elijah, by boldly commencing the attack, and saying, "Art thou he that troubleth Israel? "2 But it is impossible to adduce any example, which so perfectly illustrates all that

1 Ephes. iv. 19.

2 1 Kings xviii. 17.

a seared con

can enter into our conception of “ science," as that of the traitor Judas, who with an unprecedented consistency in crime, never seemed, by any act of his life, except the last,-which was itself an act of unpardonable iniquity,-to betray the least symptom of conscientious feeling. Thus the only proof he ever gave, so far as we know, that he possessed, in common with the rest of his species, the faculty of moral judgment, was a proof that he had abused this inestimable gift, to his own irremediable ruin. He appears to have uniformly resisted every inward remonstrance, to have checked every sentiment of justice or benevolence, to have abused every mercy and every privilege with which he had been favoured, and to have listened to the words of him who " spake as never man spake," not only without profit, but with continually increasing guilt, till conscience, "seared with a hot iron," was ready to acquiesce in the most heinous crimes which Satan could suggest, or man could perpetrate.

How solemnly instructive are such examples! They are beacons on the rock to warn us of the danger of shipwreck. They teach us to what lengths the mind of man can go in evil, when conscience is "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." He who is reduced to such a condition of moral slavery, becomes deaf to the sound of truth, blind to the beauty of holiness and the deformity of sin, unmindful of future consequences, desperate in wickedness, his feet are swift to do evil, and his

hands to shed blood, destruction and misery are in his ways, and the path of peace he knows not. Instruction is all lost upon him; the precepts of God's word are slighted, its reproofs repelled with anger, its threatenings braved or ridiculed, its most affectionate entreaties and invitations contemptuusly spurned, its promises of mercy through Christ set at nought; the revelation of a future state with its rewards and punishments, treated as a fable; the divine authority of the whole Scripture questioned; the ministers of God denounced as madmen or impostors; the ordinances of religion scoffed at as the mere instruments of priestcraft or of policy; the doctrine of divine providence, and even of the divine existence, if not denied, yet coldly acknowledged; so that if he does not say, "There is no God," yet he dares to say, "Tush, God will not see, neither will the God of Jacob regard it." Beneath the chastisements of the Almighty, he is neither softened nor humbled, but chafed and irritated. He may be crushed to the earth by divine judgments, yet retain to the last the impenitence of an obdurate heart, the insensibility of a "seared conscience."

But in what does this insensibility consist? In the loss of all susceptibility to good impressions, in the absence of all that tenderness of moral feeling, which is quick to discern the difference between good and evil, not in the actual removal or suspension of sensibility to suffering. On this point great misapprehensions prevail. What is