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ginal righteousness, and how justly deserving of punishment! "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes "—that is, in deepest sorrow for the sins of my soul. Dust and ashes are proverbial terms for the expression of humility. "I am humbled, O Lord God, before thee: thou art righteous, I am wicked: there is no whole part in my body: I am disquieted within me: I roar for the very abhorrence of beholding myself in sin; O, grant me repentance that I may live." Come, brethren, I would that I were better able to let you see how you ought to look upon yourselves. How was Peter cast down when he saw the sinfulness of his own soul in denying his Master?-he went out and wept bitterly. How was Paul cast down when smitten with blindness by the light of conviction from on high he heard a voice saying unto him-" Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." Do not you kick any longer against God, but abhor yourselves and repent. Now, let us see the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice which is to purify our souls from sin. The Word of God-yes, that same Word which afterwards became Incarnate-spake comfort to the afflicted Job, accepted his prayers for his friends, and turned the captivity of the patriarch into freedom. Blessed be God for His mercies, that, when we feel the bite of the serpent sin, and are made to see the abhorrent souls which sin has made us become, we can look upon Jesus Christ even as the children of Israel did upon the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and, abhorring ourselves for our rebellion, behold the salvation of God. I want not to lift up souls with mad enthusiasm to kiss a crucifix in their dying hour, or

to have a picture of Christ's agony upon the cross before them what I want you to see with horror— aye, with just horror-is yourselves, that you may see the mercies of God in giving you a Saviour once and for ever sacrificed for you, and teach you to plead His mercies before your heavenly Father as your true and only efficacious Atonement. This, and this only, is the way to let your repentance be sincere. The heart untouched with the deep necessity for the atoning blood of Christ to be sprinkled upon it cannot, cannot, see with a just sense of its wickedness, its dangerous and abhorrent state, so as to say truly with Job-"I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." If it could, it would see, indeed, what the true love of God is. If, like Job, it could see how truly guilty it was, so as to require such a sacrifice, that nothing less than God Himself, being affixed in the person of His Son Jesus Christ to the cross, could atone for its guilt, and that there the debt was paid, the guilt washed away, the penalty, forfeit, redemption, satisfaction, all made to Jehovah for the dreadful sins of His abandoned creatures, oh, what a soul-searching spirit would be within you, and make you exclaim-" I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Oh, what amiable beings should we become, thus enlightened by the grace of God, to see what God Himself has done for us, and how impossible it is for us without His help to work out our salvation! It is impossible for a true Christian to hate anything but sin. But the true penitent abhors himself so completely that every approach of sin comes to him with a shudder: he never walks in self-righteousness: he puts on Christ: his word is, his speech is, spirit and life to him and he devours

it with all the hunger and thirst of one who, a long while parched with the weary toil and travel of the desert, comes to the fountain of life for refreshment. In the end of Job's trials, he was blessed with ten thousand mercies-men poured into his bosom the grateful offerings of their substance: for we read"Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before; and did eat bread with him in his house, and they bemoaned him and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also brought him a piece of money, and every one an earing of gold. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters; aud after this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons sons even four generations. So Job died old and full of days." Thus you have a visible proof, as it were, of the benefits of God's chastisements. See how they bring a man to abhor himself, and to repent in dust and ashes; and then how he is lifted up at the last and rewarded. Now, this is but a feeble representation of the joy in heaven in the presence of the angels of God over the truly penitent sinner. Beneath the Gospel dispensation we are promised far greater benefits than any we can conceive here to be spoken of; yet there is something so tangible in the representation here given of Job's returning prosperity, that we are apt to prefer the temporal blessings he had to those which are in prospect for us in a better world. Job certainly represented the

state of the poor in this world in his abject condition he represented in that day Him who was afterwards the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and His apostle James says-"Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord : that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord behold we count them happy which endure;" for there remaineth a rest into which those who enter can want no manner of thing that is good. "In my father's house are many mansions ;" and there "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." So that we are not to expect our reward in temporal but in eternal blessings. The angels of God wait to be our ministering spirits of joy, when the Holy Spirit has wrought His great work upon our hearts, and we shall have done all that is required of us-they that await around us to watch and see the work of the Holy Ghost in sanctifying and cleansing our souls from all wickedness for the time of their offering. "Be ye, therefore, patient; stablish your heart; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, and may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all—Amen.

Believe me, your affectionate friend,

THE COMFORTER.

W. E. PAINTER, 342, STRAND, LONDON, PRINTER.

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