is sincere. There are those who have attempted to correct their lives in secret; and, in their closet, to live to God alone, while in public they were contented to wear the livery of the world; to converse with the same persons, and in the same manner, as before their conversion to holiness; and to shrink from the suspicion of being, in truth, more godly than they were formerly. Those, who have tried this experiment, will have found, I am well convinced, that this half repentance was no more than enough to make this world joyless, without giving them the hopes of a better in its room; that religion concealed, like the stolen fox of the Spartan, would gnaw its way through to light, to the destruction of its wretched possessor; that motives unconfessed would lead them into continual inconsistency and apparent weakness; and that, like David, "while they held their peace, their bones consumed away by their secret complaining." If, however, we really and sincerely reckon in our daily prayers, — by name and separately, every transgression of which we have been guilty, since our last confession to God,- it will be a task of such agony, that we shall be very unwilling to persist in adding to the number of those sores the cure of which is so painful: and an outward amendment, as well as an inward contrition, will be an almost unavoidable consequence of acknowledging our sins to the Most High.

And this repentance and amendment, we should be careful not to forget, both as it is the third great lesson which may be learned from the 32nd Psalm; and as it is the natural end, to which confession of our sins should lead; and without which the most humble confession can be no more than an offence to our Maker. To own our transgressions, without a sincere purpose of amendment, is little else, however qualified by hypocritical grief, than a sturdy defiance of God's wrath. It is to say, in effect, "We know, O Lord, our behaviour is offensive "to Thee: but bear it, as Thou mayest; we will "not and cannot alter it.

We know we are

rebels we like to

"be. We know that our feet are treading the "road to Hell; but we will not turn back, "however mercifully Thou mayest call us." And therefore we cannot wonder that the Almighty, even in the act of pronouncing David's pardon, accompanies His mercy with a caution against a future relapse into brutish carelessness; and that he requires, as the only convincing proof of the sincerity of his confession, that he should be like "the horse and the mule" no longer.

The duties, then, of God's servants, as expressed in the present Psalm, will resolve themselves into these three, humility, confession, conversion. The first, we learn from that

natural weakness, which, far from meriting reward, can only escape the severest punishment by having its sins put away by God: the second, by the example of David, who thus, in the extremity of his distress, obtained peace and hope and pardon: the third, by the merciful warning of God Himself, that His forgiveness is only extended to those who by improvement of the grace vouchsafed to them, proceed thenceforward in the paths of holiness.

One truth, however, yet remains unexpressed in this beautiful poema truth it is indeed, which was to the prophet himself in repentance imperfectly known, and was manifested afar off through the veil of mystery and sacrifice. We know what David only desired to behold more thoroughly that our sins are blotted out, and our confession received, and our repentance inspired, and forwarded; and everlastingly rewarded, hereafter, -through His merits and sacrifice and grace alone, Who for our sake assumed the flesh of sinful man, and the seed and lineage of David; - who, in His own body bore those sins which must else have sunk us in perdition; whose sufferings conciliated for us that mercy which had else been closed against mankind; - and whose Holy Ghost both teaches us our duty, and enables our weakness to fulfil the task, which would be without such aid impossible!

SERMON IV.

CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

Acts, ix. 5.

And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

THE Conversion of St. Paul has been regarded by many wise and learned men as one of the strongest proofs which the Christian religion can offer of its proceeding from the Almighty. No stronger proof of the kind, indeed, can possibly be required by man, since the testimony which He thenceforth gave of the change that had taken place within himself, and the circumstances which had produced it, was the testimony of one who, not only, had no interest in telling a lie in favour of the Christian religion, but had every possible worldly interest to lead him the contrary way. It was the testimony of one who, from his situation in life, and from his former education, was unlikely to fall into any mistake in favour of Christianity and it was a testimony which related to facts on which no man could possibly be mistaken.

There have been few men, if any, since the world began, certainly no man whose birth was so humble, and his nation so obscure, of whose preaching, life and general history we have so many and so satisfactory accounts as we have of St. Paul. We have a journal of some of the most interesting years of his life, written by one of his disciples. We have his own letters to the different communities who acknowledged his spiritual authority; letters filled with allusions to his own history, to his private circumstances, and to his daily habits; we have, lastly, passages concerning him in the writings of the Jews and Jewish Christians, from which we may fairly expect to learn something of his character and situation, and to form a judgement as to the degree of credit which may be given to the miraculous part of his story, that part, I mean, which rests on his own authority and that of St. Luke, and which relates to the call from Heaven, which, according to their account, determined him to embrace Christianity.

Now all these accounts are, in essential points, agreeable to each other. St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, informs us that Saul, or Paul, before his conversion, was a young man of fierce and fiery zeal, who consented to the death of Stephen, the first martyr of Christ; that he had, afterwards, proceeded to use a considerable degree of authority and influence, of which he