in one breath, and sin in another? that will acknowledge the remembrance of error to be grievous, and immediately proceed to create a fresh injury to his soul, and one more painful?

By thus carefully tracing the course of error through the successive stages of life, we shall know our besetting sins, and be more on our guard against each. What has been perceived assaulting us most frequently in childhood and youth, in secret or in company, in thought, or word, or deed, will now, if not watched, remain the besetting sin of the soul. The trifling child is found to be an unsettled man. Hastiness in youth becomes violence in age. Deceit rises into confirmed duplicity. Irreverence, not unfrequently, freezes into scepticism or indifference. The vain boy is the self-sufficient man. And the indelicate mind is owned by the profligate and the sensualist.

Such are the marks of sin; such are the sins, by which, youth, under various

circumstances, are led astray; and such the bitter, but salutary, remembrance of sin, which we ought to cherish, when sufficiently advanced in the journey of life, as you now are, to look back on the scenes of youth. Be stedfast, all of us, in this resolution, of humbling ourselves for youthful offences. God abhors sin practised in every stage of life. Christ, the only begotten, has died, a "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world." How great, therefore, must it be before him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity! The Holy Spirit has been neglected. If this were not so, the cure of sin would have been begun earlier. "Wilt thou have him," as saith Job, "to write bitter things against thee, and make thee possess the iniquities of thy youth'?" Or wilt thou humble thyself before him? Wilt thou force him to make the sins of

Job xiii. 26.

thy youth, the smart of thine age? Wilt thou refuse to try thyself and abase thyself; and thus force him to bring thee to thyself, by visitations of chastening wrath? Wilt thou urge thy heavenly Father, against his gracious will, to correct thee in anger, because thou wilt not discipline thine own heart in penitence and faith? Yet, even in thy humiliation, be careful of pride. Think not, that there is any merit in these labours of self-recollection, such as may exalt thee above others, and entitle thee to claim a share in Christ's merits. We may indeed become so pleased with our humility, as to turn it into pride.

The same mercy, which at first brought thee into "a state of salvation," would now lead thee to lay hold on the benefits thereof. Let me beseech you to depend humbly, but firmly, on heavenly grace, for strengthening your faith in Christ; enlarging your hopes of acceptance, and perfecting the work begun, by him, in your

heart. Be it our daily prayer that the Comforter may so "turn us, that we may be turned;" that we may be ashamed; may be instructed, and may repent: that so, in the words of Jeremiah, we may not bear the reproach of our youth ';" but that Christ may bear it away, in our behalf: and that, looking to Him, we may be saved from the curse, from the dominion, from the defilement, and from the everlasting punishment of sin.

1 Jer. xxxi. 19.

42

LECTURE III.

ACTS xvi. 1, 2, 3.

66 THEN CAME HE TO DERBE AND LYSTRA

AND, beHOLD, A CERTAIN DISCIPLE WAS THERE, NAMED TIMOTHEUS, THE SON OF A CERTAIN WOMAN, WHICH WAS A JEWESS, AND BELIEVED; BUT HIS FATHER WAS A GREEK WHICH WAS WELL REPORTED OF BY THE BRETHREN AT LYSTRA AND ICONIUM. HIM WOULD PAUL HAVE TO GO FORTH WITH HIM; AND TOOK AND CIRCUMCISED HIM BECAUSE OF THE JEWS WHICH WERE IN THOSE QUARTERS FOR THEY KNEW ALL THAT HIS FATHER WAS A GREEK.

In my two former discourses, it has been my endeavour, to make the mind search. into itself; to awaken the conscience to the consideration of sin committed in youth; to recall the scenes of childhood, and home, and school; and to represent the dangers which beset the young man, in the next stage of life. My earnest desire