being an "enemy to God;" a "child of wrath,” because of disobedience; in being a subject of the "kingdom of darkness;" in being "condemned already;" in being "dead in trespasses and sins ;" in being "without God in the world ?" Yet all this is true of you, if you are not saved. No one has ever revealed the anger of God against sin as Jesus the Saviour has done.

In spite of this you do not, it may be, see or feel anything in your present state or condition to alarm you. So have I known men obtain rest from pain a few hours before they died; ceasing to suffer, while death was seizing their vitals and turning them into the corruption of the grave. Thus the sinner often experiences most ease, when he is nearest eternal death. But I have also known-and I daresay so have you-men brought to a sense of their danger, from seeing the concern of others about them. Have you never seen a man become for the first time alarmed about himself, when he saw the faithful physician look anxious, and heard him no longer express good hope of recovery, and saw his family gaze upon him with tearful eyes, or heard their low sobs, which could not be restrained? From these outward signs,

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he became convinced that something dangerous had befallen him. And thus, too, might the most indifferent sinner be made to conjecture at least that some sore and terrible malady had seized his soul. If he was not in danger of some great, though to him unseen destruction, because of the existence of a great, though by him unfelt moral disease—why do the great and good angels rejoice when he escapes it; and, how is it that God himself commands, warns, beseeches him to fly from it? And why that sore agony in Gethsemane, that awful scene on Calvary? The danger of the sinner can only be measured by what God has done to deliver him from it. And if there is not inconceivably great danger, because great evil, then the inconceivably great things which God has done to save us must have been unnecessary. It is thus that you may be made to know your danger, when you are too blind to know the true nature of the malady which occasions it. When you look within, you may be disposed to cry "peace and safety;" but when you look without, you cannot choose but see that an inevitable destruction awaits the impenitent.

Or it may be that not denying the dangerous

consequences of this malady of sin--you imagine perhaps that you can escape from them without Christ. But God says, that "there is no other name given whereby we can be saved, but the name of Christ.” If you refuse to avail yourselves of this Divine method of being healed and adopt methods which appear to you (in your blind and sinful ignorance) better and wiser, you are but acting like Naaman the Syrian, who refused to dip in Jordan at the command of the Prophet, and who like a fool "went away in a rage," saying, "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them and be clean ?" But remember the advice given to this proud and ignorant leper by his servant: "If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean ?" He had the sense to do so, and what was the result? "Then went he down,

and dipped seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean!" Go thou and do likewise. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,

"by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost."

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And all this, it may be, you intend doing-but you see no immediate necessity for applying to the Physician. No immediate necessity! Is it not certain that you are every moment getting worse, and that you never can get better until you go to Christ? Is it not certain that, if left to yourselves, the condition which you so much love to-day, you will love much more to-morrow? you be holy, and enjoy peace, and love Christ, and obey God, too soon? And if you determine to keep that sin one week-one hour-what if God should permit you to have your own way for ever, so that it will for ever possess you? "To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts ;" but if you will not hear his voice "to-day," what if to-morrow the righteous sentence shall be passed" They hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof; therefore shall they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices"?

But are those the true reasons, after all, which

keep most men from seeking the balm that is in Gilead, and the Physician who is there; or are they not rather the mere excuses of one who perhaps desires to get rid of the evil consequences of sin, but not of sin itself? It is not unlikely that I truly interpret your feeling, and read aright the wishes of your heart, when I say, that you have no objections to be saved from all the pain and trouble which attend your malady, and from all the fears of coming agony, if you are only permitted to keep the malady itself; or to be cured, provided only the Physician will cure you in your own way;-or to be saved from the curse of sin when you die, if you are only allowed to keep "the pleasures of sin" as long as you live. And, accordingly, the language of your heart may be like this, "My disease, I fear, is dangerous; I am afraid of it. I am willing to be healed, but let the cure put me to no trouble, no pain, no self-denial of any kind. Let it be done, in spite of me, by an act of omnipotent power. Save this body from being cast into hell; but do not cut off this hand, or pluck out this eye to save it. Bring me into the way that leads to glory; but not by a gate so strait, or a road so steep and narrow. Deliver me from