ACCEPTABLY

APPROACHED BY US

ONLY IN THE CHARACTER OF SINNERS.

Many professed Christians speak of worshipping their Creator in the same sort of spirit as that in which Adam may be supposed to have worshipped him before the Fall: forgetting apparently that great gulf which sin has opened between us and our Maker; forgetting that we have lost our similitude to the divine image, that our nature is corrupt and defiled, and that we can no longer come before God with filial confidence and assurance, except we be reconciled to him through faith in his dear Son; and that even then we must draw near to him, as far as we ourselves are concerned, with shame and confusion of face: Consider how the saints of old are recorded to have approached the Lord. Look at the instance presented to you in the text.* "Job was a perfect, and an upright man, one that feared

*Job i. 8.

God, and eschewed evil;" but Job was self-righteous, and the Lord permitted Satan to afflict him with unprecedented trials, in order to humble him and convince him of sin. Long did he maintain his integrity, and justify himself; but in the chapter preceding our text, God revealed himself to him in all his power, justice, and holiness, and the result was the lowly and penitent confession, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

And no sooner was this penitent spirit discovered by Job, than all his afflictions were removed, and* "the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning."

When Abraham, who attained to the peculiar honour of being called the friend of God, was interceding for the cities of the plain, with what language did he

*Job xlii. 12.

address his Maker? Prostrate on the ground, he exclaimed, *" Behold now I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes!"

Hear how Moses, who was with God himself the mount for the space of

upon

forty days and forty nights, and saw the unveiled glories of the Lord, hear how he speaks the language of penitence, and classes himself with God's rebellious people Israel: +

"And Moses made haste, and bowed his head towards the earth, and worshipped: and he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us, and pardon our iniquity and our sin!"

See the Royal Psalmist, the "man after God's own heart," overwhelmed with penitential sorrow! Under the conviction of a particular crime he traces all sin back to its true source. knowledge my transgressions, and my

"I ac

* Genesis xviii. 23-33. + Exod. xxxiv. 8, 9.

sin is ever before me." "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And again: "Lord pardon my iniquity, for it is great."

Contemplate that wonderful scene recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, where the glory of the Lord was manifested to the prophet as filling the temple; what were the feelings of the holy man at the sight? "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." Thus the prophet Daniel, when he set his face to seek the Lord by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes, poured out his lowly confession.* "We have sinned, we have rebelled, we have done wickedly. O Lord! righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face! O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive!"

Daniel ix. 3-23.

It would indeed be an endless task to bring forward the numerous passages of scripture in which even the most exalted saints confess their guilt and sinfulness in the sight of God; but if we add, to those already quoted, the statement of St. Paul, that he esteemed himself" the chief of sinners," proud indeed must we be if we refuse to humble ourselves as these eminent persons did, confessing, in the language of the prophet Isaiah, (lxiv. 6,) "that we are all as an unclean thing, and that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

It would be easy to multiply passages from the doctrinal parts of scripture, illustrative of the important truth in question: that man is separated from God by sin, and must approach him only as worthy of eternal wrath. The wise man teaches us, that "there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not." St. Paul, in the three first chapters of his epistle to the Romans, argues most fully that the whole