parents remained in paradise, ere they began to dress the garden they would have worshipped God; and when they desired to give a richer zest to the sweets of Eden, would it not have been a delight to them to have heard the voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day? But fallen man acknowledges not the Lord; he desires him not, either in his house of business or of pleasure he has turned his back upon the Tree of Life.

It is, then, the being turned from this state which is conversion; the turning round, and looking unto Jesus; the turning of the whole man. As it regards the thoughts or the mind being possessed with this principle :- Here am I, who, as one of the posterity of fallen Adam, am in these circumstances: I enter into the world with a heart, to say no worse of it, naturally averse to God; taking no delight in him; nor looking to him as my portion and my joy. Since I have been in this world, I have times without number transgressed the commands of God, and have brought myself under that awful sentence, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." There is nothing I can do by which I can escape this sentence: like every other law, it follows me wherever I go, and demands that the sentence be executed. But God, in his rich grace and mercy, has provided his Son as a

Saviour: he has shed his blood to procure my pardon; he has fulfilled the law to cover me with his righteousness; he has risen from the grave to disarm the power of death; he has ascended to heaven to receive gifts for the rebellious; and he now lives, ever ready to communicate to me out of his fulness every needful grace. To this Saviour I must turn-or, rather, I must be turned: that God who breathed natural life into my nostrils, must breathe spiritual life into my soul, that in the power of this life I may turn to the Lord. I must give up all those vain hopes which I had in the general mercy of God, in the amiableness of my disposition, in the partial merit of my own performances; and I must now come to my Saviour.'

This, my friends, is the conversion of the mind; or the thoughts turning to the Lordturning, either from deism, or from self-righteousness, or from mere nominal Christianity, or from actual ungodliness and sin, to Christ the Saviour.

This is accompanied with a conversion of the desires, or the turn of the affections: for, my friends, it is not enough to have the mind convinced the thoughts are only like the outward court; it is the heart which is the sanctuary. "Give me thy heart," is the call that God makes.

In conversion, therefore, the desires turn; there is a wish to come to the Saviour, beautifully illustrated in that character who "smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner." He desired forgiveness. Religion was not with him a speculative notion; it was a reality. In whatever current his inclinations had before run, his whole soul was now bent upon reconciliation with God and acceptance with him, through the atoning sacrifice then burning on the altar, and typifying the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

But conversion extends yet further; it shews itself in action: and there, I might say, is the principal difference between regeneration and conversion. Regeneration is the act of God in renewing the soul by the operation of the Holy Ghost; conversion is the act of the sinner, consequent upon, and through the influence of, regeneration. Conversion, therefore, shews itself by various acts; such as, coming out from former vain and slothful and ungodly habits; by acts of faith in Christ, or casting the soul upon him as all its hope and all its salvation; by acts of prayer, in the silence of the night or in the retirement of the closet, calling upon God for pardon through the blood of Christ; by acts of obedience, or carrying out into all the relative duties

of life, and in all the opportunities which the providence of God affords, his holy commandment of love to God and love to one another.

This is conversion; there is nothing fantastic or visionary in it. It is the soul, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, turning round from the errors, mistakes, false notions, and ungodly courses of a world lying in wickedness, to that blessed Saviour whom God has provided for us. The more you consider it in this light, the more you will be convinced of its necessity. It requires no argument to prove its reasonableness; it is a self-evident truth. Only behold the maxims of the world, the practice of the world, yea, the religion of the world; and then behold the Lord Jesus as God's free gift to man, to raise him to astate of endless joy and immortality, and you will feel the force of our Saviour's declaration, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven:" for as we could not suppose that one going to the north would meet the beams of the sun shining from the south; neither can we suppose that one living in the course of the world should in that track meet with the blessings which are treasured up in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I should now proceed, secondly, to attempt

to resolve the doubts that some have, whether they are thus converted, by stating the marks of conversion; but as this would occupy you too long, I defer it to another occasion. I would only, in the mean time, press upon you the importance of this subject; and can I use a more striking expression than that of my text on the last Sabbath? "Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins *." Here you see it is implied that the unconverted die in their sins, and that these all remain exposed to the eye of the coming Judge. What the misery of this death is, we need not go far to understand; the Gospel of the day† places it before us in most striking colours; and with this remarkable feature, that in the history of the person who is described as lifting up his eyes torment there is nothing that we should call open vice, nothing that offends morality; but he had the essential character of an unconverted man,living without God in the world: "Clothed in fine linen, and faring sumptuously," but regardless of the day of his visitation; not turning to

* James v. 20.

in

+ First Sunday after Trinity: the narrative of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Luke xvi. 19.