SOLITARY REFLECTION; OR, THE SINNER DIRECTED TO LOOK INTO HIMSELF FOR CONVICTION.

SERMON XI.

[Delivered on a Lord's-Day Evening, in a Country Village.]

PSALM iv. 4.

Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

You are assembled together, my dear hearers, that you may learn something concerning your everlasting welfare. I am glad to meet you; and shall be happy to communicate any thing that I understand on this important subject. I pray God to bless it for your good! You have heard many sermons preached, and yet perhaps, have been but little profited; and you may hear many more to as little purpose. Religion consists not merely in hearing sermons; nor in going away, and talking how you like or dislike the preacher. Religion is not found among noise and clamour and dispute. It does not consist in either applauding or censuring men. If ever you hear to any purpose, it will make you forget the preacher, and think only of yourselves. You will be like a smitten deer, which, unable to keep pace with the herd, retires to the thicket, and bleeds alone. This is the effect that I long to

see produced in you. It is for the purpose of impressing this upon your minds that I have read the above passage, and wish to discourse to you upon it. In doing this, all I shall attempt will be to explain and enforce the admonition. Let us attempt.

and as these

I. TO EXPLAIN THE MEANING OF IT. The persons admonished in this psalm were men who set themselves against David, and persecuted him without a cause accusing him, perhaps to king Saul: and what greatly aggravates their guilt, they are said to have turned his glory into shame; that is, they reproached him on account of his religion, which was his highest honour. There are such scoffers in the world now wicked men opposed David, so they oppose our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David according to the flesh. And by how much Christ is superior to David, by so much greater is the wickedness of those who mock at his gospel and people, than the other. They were, many of them, men of property; their corn and their wine, it seems increased; and it is likely that some of them were people in high life, who had access even to the king. But all this would not screen them from the displeaure of God, Even kings and judges themselves must submit to the Son, or perish from the way. And, if riches will not profit in the day of wrath, neither will poverty. It is true, the scriptures wear a favourable aspect towards the poor. Jesus preached the gospel to them; and God is often represented as threatening and punishing those that oppress them; but, if a man be wicked as well as poor, (as it is well known great numbers are,) his poverty will excite no pity; he must bear his iniquity.

Presumptuous and thoughtless sinners are admonished to stand in awe, and sin not, to commune with their own hearts upon their bed, and be still. Bold as any of you may be in sin, there is one above you, who will call you to an account: pause, therefore, and think what you are about. To commune with our hearts, means much the same as to ponder the matter over with ourselves. It is said of the adulteress, that lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. She leads on her thoughtless admirers from one degree of sin to another, in quick succession; just as a person who should wish to lose you

in a wood, and there murder you, would lead you on, under some fair pretence, from path to path, through one winding direction af ter another, never suffering you to stand still and pause, lest you should turn back and effect your escape. Thus it is with sinners: they are hurried on, by delusion, from sin to sin, from company to company, and from one course of evil to another, while the enemy of their souls is doing every thing in his power to secure his dominion over them.

That which the adulteress most dreaded, was thought, close and serious thought: and this it is which the enemy of your souls most dreads. It is by pondering the path of life, if at all, that you must escape the snare. If sinners are saved, it is from their sins. Their souls must be converted to the love of Christ; and the ordinary way that God takes to convert them is, by convincing them of sin, which is never effected but by their being brought to close and serious thought. It was by thinking of his ways, that David turned his feet to God's testimonies.

The place and time particularly recommended for this exercise is, upon your bed, at night. If there be any time more favourable to reflection than others, it must be that in which you are free from all intruding company, and interruptions from without. Then when you have retired from the world, and the world from you; when the hurry of business is withdrawn; when the tumult of the soul subsides, and is succeeded by a solemn stillness; when the darkness which surrounds you prevents the interference of sensible objects, and invites the mental eye to look inward; then commune with your own heart; take a reckoning with your soul; inquire what course you are in, and whither it will lead you!

It might be well to examine the actions of your life: but as the heart is the spring-head of action, the state of your heart must be the chief object of your inquiry. As to actions, they are neither good nor evil, but as they are the expressions of the heart. Were you to kill a fellow creature, you know there would be no evil in it provided it was by mere accident, and not from any malicious design, criminal passion, or careless neglect and if you did ever so much good to your neighbour, yet if it were by accident and not from design there would be no goodness in it. It is the

disposition of our hearts that denominates our character in the sight of God. In all your communings, therefore, commune with your hearts.

Perhaps you will say, I find great difficulty in collecting my thoughts, and fixing them upon those things which are of the greatest importance: when I would think, I scarcely know what to think about.' Well; give me leave, then, to suggest a few plain questions, which I would earnestly recommend you to put home to your own soul.

First. Does my heart choose and follow after those things which my conscience tells me are right? I can assure you, many do not. Their consciences tell them, that they ought to fear God, to keep holy the Sabbath-day, to read and hear the word of God, and to perform various other duties; but their hearts are at variance with all these things. Their consciences tell them, that they ought not to swear, lie, steal, get intoxicated, cheat their creditors, and ruin their families; but their hearts, nevertheless, are set upon these, and many other such wicked courses; and they will pursue them, at all events. Is this the case with any of you? It is a miserable life, to have the heart and conscience at variance. You are sensible it is so; and, therefore, if any of you are of this description, you labour, I dare say, to lull conscience asleep, that you may enjoy the desires of your heart, without interruption from its remonstrances. But this is a desperate way of going on. Conscience will not always sleep; and when it does awake, which perhaps may be upon a death-bed, its voice will be more terrible than thunder, and its accusations more painful than the sting of a scorpion. Did you never see a wicked man upon a dying bed? Perhaps not possibly you cannot bear such sights, and therefore shun them. There are persons, however, who have; and, witnessing his agony, have longed to alleviate it. The guilt, the fear, and the horror, which have appeared in his eyes; the bitter regret that has preyed upon his dying heart; and the forebodings of everlasting misery that seemed to have seized his soul, have wrung their hearts with anguish but all they could do was to drop an unavailing tear. Given up to the hardness of his heart, even the doctrine of salvation by the blood of the Lamb has had no effect.

upon him, and he has died in all the misery of despair. O that this may not be your end! Yet, if such be your life, and you persist in it, there is no reason to expect but that it will.

But it is possible that you may not sustain this character. Your heart and conscience may not be at such variance as to give you any considerable pain. If so, let me recommend a second question: Is my conscience instructed and formed by the word of God? Though you may be certain that you are in a wrong course if you live in the violation of conscience, yet you cannot always conclude that you are in a right one when you do not violate it, because conscience itself may err. Saul was conscientious in persecuting the followers of Christ; yet he was one of the chief of sinners for so doing. You may ask, 'What can a man do, but follow that which he thinks to be right?' True; but it becomes him to compare his thoughts with the word of God: for we are easily persuaded to think favourably of that conduct which suits our inclinations; and, where this is the case, the error of the conscience, instead of excusing the evil conduct, becomes itself an evil.

The consciences of many people tell them, that, if they take care of their families, pay every man his due, and attend public worship once or twice a week, this is all that can reasonably be expected at their hands. And I have heard this Scripture passage brought in proof of it, What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? But, (to say nothing of the love of mercy towards our fellow-creatures,) to walk humbly with God is a very different thing from the above exercises.

A man's conscience may be easy, and he may persuade himself that he is in the way to life, while, in fact, be is as far from it as the old Pharisees, against whom the heaviest woes of damnation were denounced. The case of such people seems to be worse, on some accounts, than the openly profane: these, acting in opposition to their own consciences, as well as to God, a faithful warning sometimes takes hold of their fears; but those, deluded by vain hope, consider all such warnings as inapplicable to them. Both are steering the same course; but the one is impeded by wind and tide, while the other is aided by the current of a perverted VOL. VII.

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