A similar process conducts the nominal disciple of revelation to a denial of its grand peculiarities. Sin, especially when it does not operate in flagrant lusts, is not felt to be a grievous and deadly evil; and an atoning sacrifice, a divine Saviour, the regenerating work, and eternal punishment are denied.

But the form of judicial hardness which is most prevalent within the sanctuary, and against which I wish most particularly to guard you, is that which may be denominated the unbelief or insensibility of orthodoxy. Its subjects are persons who are not ignorant of the doctrines we preach, nor disposed to deny them. They bear, on the contrary, a clear perception of the evangelical, and exercise a zealous partizanship on its behalf. They are not unfrequently clear-sighted to discern the bearings of doctrine, and cannot endure the least departure from its Shibboleth. They confess, moreover, the importance of a personal interest in salvation; and the necessity of repentance, of faith, and of spirituality. And to all this they add the acknowledgment, that they themselves have not hitherto obtained such an interest in the blessings of the gospel, nor experienced the influence of it in renewing their hearts. Yet they come and go apparently satisfied and at ease, whilst living without God in the world, and aware, as they hesitate not to profess, that they have not at present any legitimate hope for eternity.

Is not this a case of amazing stupidity?—of blindness, of deafness, of insensibility unparalleled? It is as if the dead should come forth from their graves, and clothe themselves anew in the habiliments of this world, and with eyes unclosed, and ears unstopped, should sit in this place, beholding and listening, yet uniting, with the recovery of sensation, a soulless insensibility to the purport of all which they should see and hear. Thus do the attendants on our ministry too often sit and hear us. We hold up the mirror, and exhibit the deformity of depraved nature: they acknowledge the resemblance; yet seeing, they perceive not, for it raises no blush, it excites no anxiety. We point to the unquenchable fire, and the undying worm: they see both, and they acknowledge themselves to be on the dizzy verge of the roaring pit; yet their countenances are unmoved and their hearts unappalled-or if a momentary shudder thrill through their system, neither do they look upward and cry, "Lord, save, or we perish," nor do they address to us the inquiry, "What must we do to be saved?" We speak of Christ, of his sufferings, of his love, of his salvation; they admire our orthodoxy, and respond to us that there is no other way of salvation; yet they seek not salvation for themselves in this way; they are unaffected by the Saviour's love; they desire him not when they see him. Whether

we roll in their ears the anathema, they tremble not,—or sound the sweet notes of jubilee, they melt not. They applaud our reasonings, they approve of our fidelity, and sometimes they have even tears to answer our pathetic appeals; but we are "to them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear our words, but they do them not."

Let me reason with you as to this hardness. You are ready to excuse yourselves: you say, "It is our misfortune, it is our destiny, it is inevitable; it is in vain to struggle against it." But your own consciences tell you, that you are inexcusable; and that so far from wishing to struggle against this state of mind, you cherish it. Think of the perversity of such a state. You have an understanding to appreciate evidence, and discover truth. You have a nature to take alarm where danger presents itself; where kindness is displayed, you have a nature to be moved by it. It is to divine things alone that you are insensible; and that perverse insensibility is inexcusable; it is a perversity which you cannot excuse even to your own minds. The mind is itself preoccupied. The world has an absorbing place in your affections: you have no heart for religion; and you set about its services as a formality, as a speculation, as a mere exercise of intellect. Your insensibility is wilful. You divert attention from your own state of guilt and danger: you feel that it would not be pleasant to be aroused to anxiety, and to the shame and grief of repentance; you feel that you could not like to be the spiritual and devout Christian; you feel that religion, spiritual religion, would be incompatible with those habits and affections which you now cherish with complacency: you feel that your hardness is voluntary. Is not this a state of infatuation? To trifle with eternal love and eternal wrath, to trifle with your own soul, to trifle with your own well-being through all the immortality of your being!-to know that you are in danger of hell, and yet to use your ingenuity in preserving your mind from alarm, and to put from you the overtures of mercy as inducements that might subdue and attract you from the way of danger, this is unparalleled infatuation! Is there not much also of obstinate malignity in this state of mind? There are times when wish that all the doctrines of revelation could be disproved, and that the volume of revelation itself had never been imparted to man. Still more habitually do you wish that othodoxy of creed did not demand accompanying spirituality. You are ready to say, "We shall never be religious; we could not bear the restraints; we could not bear the yoke; above all, we could not bear the spirituality of religion."

you

"Go," it is said to the prophet, "make this people's heart gross,

lest they should be converted, and I should heal them." My hearers, acknowledge to yourselves that you are reluctant to be converted; that you are even afraid of being converted; that you guard against being converted; that you shrink from the idea of being converted. You are not without your impressions and your anxieties; but you are unwilling that these should ever become so deep and influential, as to issue in a change of nature and of habit. You cannot endure the thought of exposing yourselves to the derision which such a change would bring. You cannot give up the world, as you would be bound to do, were such a change to ensue. Above all, you feel that devotion, that the company of God's people, aye, that heaven itself, would be irksome.

Having thus set before you the character of such as are subjects of judicial hardness, I shall occupy your attention with much more brevity on the remaining heads of discourse. I remark,

II. That the text exhibits the RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION involved in the case of JUDICIAL HARDNESS.

This will appear, when you observe how mercy, slighted by unbelief, becomes the means of developing depravity. Had no prophet arisen in Judah, we might have mourned the seduction of the idolatrous tribes, rather than have denounced their criminality. When judgment at length descended upon them, no plea was left them, for ample warning had been given, and had tended but to demonstrate their perversity. "Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling-place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy," 2 Chron. xxxvi. 14-16. When Jesus himself was upon earth, the unbelief of the Jews demonstrated the hardness of their hearts, and became an aggravation of guilt. Thus he speaks: "If I had not come, and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father," John xv. 22-24. When apostles conveyed the gospel to their countrymen, and they rejected the message, those heralds of mercy shook off the very dust of their feet as a witness against them; and this was their Master's sentence

respecting the city that rejected their message, "I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city," Luke x. 12. In every age the faithful ministers of Christ have to say, "We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: to the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life," 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16. Thus does mercy itself become the occasion of demonstrating depravity. It is not, however, the cause of that aggravated depravity, although it becomes the means of developing it. A child rebels; every act of kindness is used for his recovery, but his rebellion is aggravated. Is the aggravated rebellion chargeable upon the kindness shewn him? No; that kindness but demonstrates the depth of evil in his heart. "For judgment," said the Saviour, "I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind." Their blindness was not, however, the effect of the light; the light was but the occasion of demonstrating it. It is thus that Jesus himself expounds his own words: "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth," John ix. 39, 41. The case is as clear as it is melancholy: slighted mercy shews how far the hardened unbeliever is gone from God, and becomes, in righteous retribution, "a savour of death unto death."

When mercy has thus been slighted and insulted, it may probably be withdrawn. "The kingdom of God" may "be taken away" from a people bringing not forth "the fruits thereof." In the course of events, the hardened hearer may be removed beyond the sound of the gospel; and he that trifled with impression, may be debarred of the means of impression. God may say to his minister, "I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover: for they are a rebellious house," Ezek. iii. 26.

But the more ordinary course of divine retribution, is to leave the hardened heart to its own hardness. Hence, as the hardening of our nature is the consequence of divine withdrawment, God is himself said to harden the heart; but it is, you perceive, a simple abandonment. And, O my hearers, God has but to abandon us to ourselves, and then the most fearful and the most hateful characteristics will be developed. It was a final threatening when God said of the antediluvians, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man," Gen. vi. 3. We are solemnly warned not to "quench the Spirit," 1 Thess. v. 19. We are told of some that have "done despite unto the Spirit of grace," Heb. x. 29. We gather that he is ever busy operating on the human mind, and that his total

withdrawment is the sure precursor of ruin.

The soul from which God has withdrawn is "nigh unto cursing." It is like the barren soil on which no rain descends, ever becoming more sterile. It is like the body from which life has passed, every day yielding more and more to corruption. When impression becomes less and less powerful; when terror no longer shakes the soul, and mercy no longer melts it; when conscience slumbers under guilt and under sermons,-when weeks and months pass away without anxiety for the soul; then, may it be apprehended, is the heart beginning to yield to judicial hardness.

Under such

This state of abandonment is the prelude of wrath. a state, the soul is becoming daily more meet for wrath. It is, in itself, the most fearful token of wrath ever to be experienced in this world. A famine of bread, a deprivation of the vital air, the fatuity of the idiot, the aberration of the maniac are not so fearful, so desperate. It is death, death to the soul, the abandonment of the soul to spiritual death, the commencement, there is too much reason to fear, of death eternal, even in this world.

But the doom is not yet sealed. We have another aspect under which to view the text.

III. The text constitutes an ALARM calculated to AWAKEN FROM

THE SLUMBERS OF JUDICIAL HARDNESS.

The whole dispensation of divine government towards us, is a dispensation of mercy. Even the severest denunciations of wrath are uttered in merciful warning; and the flames of the pit are made a beacon to arrest our attention and awaken our alarms. When the prophet was sent with his sad message to the people of Israel, it was that he might arouse them from their stupor by exhibiting its influence. After Jesus had wept over Jerusalem as lost, when sending forth his disciples on their errand of mercy, he charged them to begin at Jerusalem. Luke xix. 41, 42; xxiv. 47. When the apostle Paul gave the most fearful description of the hardness and abandonment of the Jews, he explained, that he made these statements, "If by any means he might provoke to emulation them which were his flesh, and might save some of them," Rom. xi. 14. And in the case of our text, why, after having reasoned from morning till evening, did the apostle call back the unbelieving Jews to say this one word, if it were not with the hope that the faithful warning he gave them of their desperate condition, might haply be the means of awakening some of them? With similar aims, I would adopt the language of the text, and would make it an alarm to the most insensible of this assembly.

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