come. The present bait must be rejected; the present falsehood must be confessed and abjured; the present sin must be condemned and forsaken. The very promise which the Devil makes to us must be answered with the Get thee hence, Satan!

We may mark, however, a method by which evil may be assailed partially and superficially. It is that in which our repugnancies proceed from the lower impulses disconnected with the higher. If we reject gluttony and drunkenness, simply because they make us poor while we would be rich, or any sensual indulgence, because it darkens a reputation which we would make bright; if we put away the seeming of pride, because it makes us hateful, and we would be honored; if we decline ambitious ascents lest we should fall prematurely, while plotting all the while more effectual means of personal elevation; if, in a word, we check any particular current of selfishness, that the whole stream may become more full and sweeping; there is really no deep and vital process carried forward. The name may be changed, the evil remains.

I will go farther than this. The first movement in the true life is self-renunciation; a renunciation, unqualified, absolute, complete. Only when man loses himself, can he find himself. This may be, perhaps, the great idea from which mythologies have derived their sayings of a final absorption of created things in the uncreated. A man absorbed in the Supreme Essence, so soon as, with the awful fear of he knows not what, in the immense possibilities of the universe, he lets the whole pass by

leaving him desolate and alone, trusting only to the Unseen, finds himself no longer alone, no longer desolate. By losing even his life, he has found it. The demons are gone, and angels minister unto him. But there is one grand condition by which the blessing is guarded. The renunciation must be literally unqualified. If a person says within himself, "Now let me try some other way of happiness than has misled me hitherto. Now I will surrender these worldly pursuits, bringing me nothing but disappointment and anxiety, for those heavenly gifts which I believe will make me content and bring no care"; be sure he will be deceived. It is with him only a spiritual bargain. He sells off his present goods, to purchase a better stock; rather, he invests what he holds in something safer and yielding a larger income for the future. He may be satisfied to live somewhat poorly now, waiting for the Indian treasures and the luxurious paradise which a few days will bring him. Alas! his is an empty phantom, a bewildering shadow, a deathful delusion. What odds do time and place make in the great principles of the Divine Life? The selfishness, which asks for heaven, just as it grasps earth; which would find indulgence and grandeur and power after death, just as it seeks them before death; which is proud of spiritual attainments and turns them to means of aggrandizement, just as it is proud of any temporary thing and turns it to kindred use; is but the spirit of darkness transforming itself into angel of light, and seduces the wandering soul only the more

surely, because the evil is more concealed and the good more obtrusive. Not in dying for the sake of living, but in dying to the self wholly without thought of reward, comes the true life. Not in giving up earth for the sake of heaven, is heaven won, but in sacrificing the world without demand of compensation, comes the real heaven. Not in worshipping the self through God, but in worshipping him alone, the self removed, is peace found. Then, never else, the Devil leaveth us: behold, then, never else, angels come and minister unto us.

22*

SERMON XVIII.

REPENTANCE.

MATT. iv. 17.

JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH, AND TO SAY, REPENT.

I WOULD not treat the great subject of Repentance, more than any subject, dogmatically. It is a matter of immediate, practical, nay, vital concern. The word itself, as commonly used, all are aware, perhaps, does not go deeply enough into the heart of the matter: more strictly, it would be change of mind, supposing, with this internal transition, a correspondence in the external character, amendment or reformation. The extent of this change is in direct proportion to these two things, the sins, on the one side, of which the man or the society is guilty, and the law, on the other, which claims obedience. Hence, instead of being a work wrought at once and done up for ever, it is a process commensurate with the evils forsaken through the whole course of existence. Each age, however, as well as each man, may want some peculiar modification of the duty. Thus in the time when John and Jesus addressed the Jews, there was an almost universal state of mind to which it stood in antagonism. Proud of ancestral greatness, boasting of

Abraham as their father, of Moses as their leader and lawgiver; of the prophets who had illustrated their earlier history; recalling the grandeur of their monarchy when David reigned and Solomon eclipsed the glories of the East by his wealth and pomp; exulting in their Scriptures, filled with divine oracles, and in the absolute Being as their God; gathering often in Jerusalem at their festivals, and as in the temple, so likewise in the synagogues, renewing their allegiance to the ancient worship; they deemed theirs the nation chosen and loved of God; and in the complacency of a common worth each individual shared. True, they had dark remembrances, and a humiliating present. Their fathers had been captives in Babylon; when delivered, it was not by their own valor and prowess, but by foreign powers, nor had they ever regained a distinct national independence. And now, after various revolutions, they have become with other people of the East and of the West, vassals of the colossal empire, which from a single city on the banks of the Tiber has spread itself near the known bounds of the world. This very depression is, however, an excitement to their pride. The man or the community, calmly conscious of undisputed greatness, and dwelling in unquestioned freedom, may pass on without betraying to others or even perceiving any tumultuous workings of the selfish and ambitious spirit. Not so when the greatness is disputed, the freedom questioned or suppressed. Then comes a different order of feelings; what had been latent becomes open; what had been silent