new heart; which, instead of being a nest of vipers, a cage of unclear birds, is become a temple of the Holy Spirit, filled with divine inspira tions and acceptable devotions! Can we wonder that such a change should deeply affect the highest order of finite minds, and cause the angels of God to exclaim with rapture, This, our brother, was dead and is alive; he was lost, and is found? If all are unrighteous,—if all are by nature dead in sin and condemnation,-if there is no escape without repentance, then repentance must be of all things the most essential to a sinner: and such it is expressly declared by Him who said, Except ye repent, ye shall all perish!

But why, you ask, is the joy greater for the repentance of one sinner than for the perseverance of ninety-nine saints? The ninety-nine righteous persons only stand where they stood before; they only go on in the same path of life in which they had long walked; the only change they can experience is an accretion, an augmentation of the principles and blessings in which they were already confirmed; there is no abrupt and surprising revolution, no essential change: but the first conversion of a sinner to God is an event never to be forgotten; it is an era in eternity, it is registered in heaven!

4. The fourth and last point of inquiry is, the reason why Christ places the scene of this joy in heaven. The repentance of a sinner is a subject of joy on earth; of joy to the faithful minister who has been perhaps the honoured instrument of producing the change: as the apostle Paul, addressing the converts of his ministry, says, "What is our joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye in the presence of the Lord?" O as the beloved disciple says, "I have no greater joy than to see my children walk in the truth." There is joy in the Christian church on every accession of new converts: these, if genuine, constitute the true adornment of every Christian society; in these its real prosperity consists; and melancholy is the state of that church, however externally prosperous, which does not value and desire the increase of its sincere penitents far above every other sign of its prosperity! But when it is said that there is joy in heaven over every repenting sinner, the assertion is to be understood in a meaning far more just and adequate. Repentance is there weighed in other scales than here. Angels view the change that is effected in a sinner's position before God, by repentance, from higher ground,-in all its aspects and dimensions, in all its bearings and consequences. They appreciate the greatness of that happiness which their fallen brethren have lost for ever, which they themselves enjoy, and which is now in reserve for the converted sinner. They taste the joy which is set before him; they dwell in the glory which is become the object of his desires; they know that whatever may be his present sufferings, they are light and merely for a moment,-they will ere long be exchanged for unspeakable pleasures, he will have all his tears wiped away by God himself! Angels penetrate far deeper than it is in the power of the most exalted saints on earth to penetrate; the heights and depths, the lengths and breadths of that eternity which is the seal and crown of the felicity promised to every real penitent, which stamps it an eterna.

felicity, even eternal life, the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. They have long been engaged in contemplating the beauty of that holiness which dwells in God as its original; they have long enjoyed him as their portion, as their all; they have been exploring the true fountain of happiness through a long succession of ages, and they find it still as fresh and inexhaustible as ever; they have iong basked in the beatific splendours of uncreated light! They comprehend the mysterious and undefinable value of the soul; its intense susceptibilities as a rational, moral, accountable substance, incapable alike of extinction and unconsciousness through infinite duration: these things are clear to their view; but they are obscure and tonfused to us, who are of yesterday, and know nothing,-to us, who are crushed before the moth.

5. In the last place, let me attempt a brief improvement of the subject which has now been presented. And, first, we may hence perceive the very great dignity and importance which attaches to the Christian ministry. This is, beyond all doubt, the highest, the inost sublime and sacred employment in which the sons of men can be engaged. Its greatness, however, arises not from any circunstances of a secular kind, not from any worldly splendour, but from its purely spiritual character, from its immediate bearing on human salvation. That salvation, in all its parts, is entirely the work and gift of God; but in this, as in his other works, he employs created instruments; and the chief instruments by whose medium salvation is communicated, by whose operation the great change of repentance and conversion is effected, are the ministers of the gospel. The object they habitually have in view, as preachers of the Word, is to persuade men to lay down the arms of their unnatural and guilty rebellion, and enter into the covenant of a merciful God: they stand as the commissioned ambassadors of Christ: their ministry is expressly a ministry of repentance and reconciliation through the blood of the cross; and it is powerful, in every instance, either as a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. It is an awful reflection, that if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; that we are called a sweet savour of Christ unto God, in them that are saved and in them that perish! It may well make us ready to sink under the weight of our responsibility, while we exclaim with the apostle, Who is sufficient for these things? Oh, how anxious should this reflection make us, to whom this ministry is committed, that the blood of immortal souls may not be charged against us; since the word we deliver cannot return void to Him that sent it, but must accomplish, in every case, its destined purpose; issuing either in the accumulation of guilt, or the increase of grace, to every one who hears it! And repentance, let it be remembered, necessary as it is to salvation, is taught alone by the gospel; it is only to be learned in the school of Christ. Philosophy knew nothing of repentance towards God, any more than of faith in Jesus Christ: it 'excited no salutary alarm in the conscience; it opened no view of the terrors of a righteous God. It is the gospel that has first done this; it has awakened a fear which becomes its own cure, and has first

The gospel

taught the sinner to cry out, What shall I do to be saved? has withdrawn the dark vail of nature's ignorance which hid God from our view, at the same time that it has brought life and immortality to light in Jesus Christ! If it fail to lead you to repentance, it fails of every thing for which it was designed; when He who had the keys of death and hell in his hand could employ no stronger motive to repentance than that which he employs in assuring us, If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall DIE IN YOUR SINS !-Ye shall DIE IN YOUR SINS! But Jesus Christ, my brethren, came expressly to save you from this dreadful destiny; he came down from heaven to give life unto the world; to quicken those that were dead in trespasses and sins; and He is now exalted as a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance as well as remission of sins; a repentance unto life, never to be repented of! There is enough here, surely, to awaken both your fear and your gratitude; to excite both a sense of the value of your soul, and a sense of the love of your Saviour. And these are motives peculiar to the gospel: to these motives it owes all its triumphs over the hearts of men: it is the gospel of your salvation; and well might it be ushered into the world by angelic beings with that annunciation, Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth! Goodwill towards men!

(2.) In the second and last place, it is not necessary to produce motives to repentance from the Scriptures; the text alone is sufficient to show its importance: the simple fact recorded in the text is itself equivalent to a host of arguments-the fact that the only, or at least the chief, event on earth which excites joy in heaven, in the mind of God and of the holy angels, is-the repentance of a sinner! The barrier that separates eternity from time is impassable; the world beyond the grave is enveloped in utter obscurity. Had not revelation broken the silence of nature, never should we have known that a single event which takes place in the present scene is noticed in heaven but now we are informed that there are occurrences on earth which excite deep attention and emotion in that higher world: and what are these? We are assured by the text that it is not the advancement of knowledge and civilization, not the splendours of art, nor the extension of empires and commerce, that attract the regard of those celestial intelligences; they are interested by objects of a very different description; they rejoice over one sinner that repenteth! The repentance of one solitary sinner, his conversion from the error of his way, has greater charms in the view of angels than even the spectacle of their own happy society, or that of all those saints on earth who persevere in pursuing the way to life eternal. And if the mere contemplation of this change is so sweet to angels in heaven, oh, how sweet must the experience itself be to the penitent!-for he it is who tastes that the Lord is gracious,-who tastes the unspeakable comfort that arises from the pardon of his sins and peace with God; he it is who goes on from strength to strength, from smaller to larger discoveries of the blessings that are in God and his Christ; he it is that comes to God, comes to Jesus the mediator, and to the blood of sprink

ling; to the general assembly and church of the first-born; to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to an innumerable company of angels. Hence none ever experienced this change indeed who did not consider it far above every other event of his life: he may have experienced many other changes, and some of a very pleasing kind; he may have passed from a state of poverty and hardship to a situation of affluence and every earthly comfort; or he may have been raised up from a bed of pain and sickness to the enjoyment of ease and health but if he is a true Christian, if he has ever been a true penitent, his conversion is an event that can never lose its importance in his regard; the season of his first repentance is an era in the records of his memory; it must always appear as a brilliant spot in his retrospect; it hallows the place and the hour that witnessed it; it lays him under a deeper, a more sacred obligation to the minister or the friend that was the honoured instrument of producing it, than he can entertain towards any inferior benefactor. And well it may; for it is a change of which the happy consequences shall endure for ever: all other benefits are temporal and transient; this alone is eternal: its value will be just as great when thousands of ages shall have passed away as it was at the first moment. Do you suppose those penitents who occasioned this joy in heaven at the first preaching of the gospel have found any abatement in their happiness by the lapse of eighteen centuries? No, my brethren! that happiness is just as fresh as on the day when they first entered into the joy of their Lord. The experience of eternity has rather increased than diminished its value. It is repentance that changes the whole aspect of things, whether present or future. The conviction that we have repented, that we have experienced that real, vital conversion which places us in a state of friendship with the Author of our being, this conviction lightens all afflictions, brightens every prospect, gives peace in the hour of death, and, at the last day,-amid the wreck of elements, amid the dissolution of the material heavens and earth, the spark of celestial immortality that was first kindled in repentance will emerge from the darkness of the sepulchre, and shine for ever in the new heavens and the new earth. wherein dwelleth righteousness! Ah, my brethren! the time is coming and may be very near, when you will have nothing left to do but to lay down your head on your death-bed pillow; and then, it is probable if not before, yet then you will begin to feel the force of what has now been suggested on the subject of repentance. In that hour, the least apprehension that you are a real penitent,-the faintest hope that you have laid hold on Christ with a true heart,-will give you far more satisfaction than any event that ever occurred to your attention. Oh, then, let none dismiss this subject with indifference: let none have listened to this discourse without being prevailed upon to retire this evening, and in the stillness of his chamber, and the solitude of his soul, to pour forth a fervent, importunate prayer, that he may be numbered among those penitent sinners who here occasion joy in heaven, and who will hereafter obtain eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

XVIII.

NATURE AND DANGER OF EVIL COMMUNICATIONS

I COR. XV. 33.-Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners." [PREACHED AT CAMBRIDGE, IN AUGUST, 1826.]

THIS passage is taken from a heathen poet, Menander, and shows that Paul was not unacquainted with the literature of the pagan world. By this he was peculiarly fitted for some parts of his work, being destined to bear the name of Christ before princes, magistrates, and philosophers, especially in the Roman and Grecian parts of the earth. The maxim accords with universal experience, and was worthy, therefore, of being adopted as a portion of those records of eternal truth which are to be the guide of mankind in all succeeding ages.

The connexion is not that in which we should have expected such a maxim to be inserted, it is in the midst of a very affecting and .nstructive view of the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting; but the occasion of it was this: the Corinthians had received, from the intrusion of false teachers, principles which militated against that great doctrine. They had been taught to explain it away, and tc resolve it merely into a moral process which takes place in the present world; interpreting what is said of the resurrection of the dead in a mystical and figurative manner. The apostle insinuates, that it was by a mixture of the corrupt communications of these men with the Christian church, and the intimate contact into which they had permitted themselves to come with them, that they had been led off from the fundamental doctrine of the gospel, and rejected a primary part of the apostolic testimony. "For, if there be no resurrection of the dead, then," as he observed, "is Christ not risen, and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain; ye are yet in your sins."t

We see, that, notwithstanding the apostle had planted pure Christianity among the Corinthians, and had confirmed it by the most extraordinary miracles and supernatural operations; yet, such was the contagion of evil example and corrupt communication, that the members of the Corinthian church, in a very short time, departed from the fundamental articles of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ; and hence we may learn the importance, nay, the necessity, of being on our guard in this respect, and of avoiding such confidence in ourselves as might induce us to neglect the caution here so forcibly expressed. "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."

Among the first things accomplished by our blessed Lord after his

*This sermon has been prepared by collating and blending the notes of the Hon. Mr. Baron Gurney with those of Joshua Wilson, Esq.

†1 Cor. xv. 13, 14, 17.