William Wilberforce, testifies as to his natural moral state in this language: "Often, while in the full enjoyment of all that this world could bestow, my conscience told me that in the true sense of the word I was not a Christian. I laughed, I sang, I was apparently gay and happy; but the thought would steal across me, What madness is all this?-to continue easy in a state in which a sudden call out of this world would consign me to everlasting misery, and that when eternal happiness was within my grasp." At length such thoughts as these completely occupied his mind, and he began to pray earnestly. He spoke often of his "deep guilt and black ingratitude." "It was not so much," he said, "the fear of punishment by which I was affected, as a sense of my great sinfulness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of my God and Saviour; and such was the effect which this thought produced, that for months I was in a state of the deepest depression from strong convictions of my guilt." When his troubled conscience at length found peace, it was through faith in Christ as his Saviour. Rev. George Whitefield, whose fame as an evangelist will never die, gives the following confession respecting his life prior to his conversion: "It would be endless to recount the sins and offences of my younger days. They are more in number than the hairs of my head. My heart would fail me at the remembrance of them, were I not assured that my Redeemer liveth to make intercession for me. However the young man in the gospel might boast that he had kept the commandments from his youth up,' with shame and confusion of face I confess that I have broken them all from my youth." Such is the view of his own previous moral condition when a man is enlightened by the Spirit of God. James Hervey made a similar acknowledgment after he had discovered the extent of the requirements of the law of God, and the all-sufficiency of the atonement of Jesus Christ. His own words are, "The two great commandments, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,' and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' made the first awakening impression on my heart. Amazing! thought I: are these commands of God as obligatory as the prohibition of adultery or the observation of the Sabbath? Then has my whole life been a continued act of disobe

dience; not a day nor an hour in which I have performed my duty. This conviction struck me as the handwriting upon the wall struck the presumptuous monarch. It pursued me as Paul pursued the Christians, not only to my own house, but to distant cities, nor ever gave up the great controversy till, under the influence of the Spirit, it brought me, weary and heavy laden, to Jesus Christ."

Rev. Thomas Adam, of England, whose humility and devoutness the world has acknowledged, from his own experience uttered some thoughts of special value in this connection. Here are a few, chosen from an entire volume of his sayings:

"If man is a sinner, why does he not believe it? And if he is not, why does he confess it? What a strange jumble of blindness and hypocrisy. We confess what we do not believe, and yet really are what we confess.

"Whoever thinks he can acquit himself to God, has wrong notions of God, himself, of duty, of sin. Either he considers God only under the single idea of mercy, or he knows nothing of his own great corruption, or contracts duty into a narrow compass, or fixes the guilt of sin at a low rate.

"The sour fruit that Adam ate will be ever and anon rising upon our stomachs, even in our best estate.

"It is the devil's master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. Never a day passes, but Satan offers his service.

“Human nature is like a bad clock. It may go right now and then, or be made to strike the hour, but its inward frame is to go wrong.

"Wretched mankind! in your natural state you can be happy only in opposition to the will of God.

"Sinning is so much a nature, and so closely wrought into the constitution of man, that I can scarcely form a conception of existence without it.

"Sin keeps no Sabbaths.

Sin is the only thing which God hates, and almost the only thing that man loves.

"Where have I not sinned? The reason is evident, I carry myself about with me..

"I see the devil's hook, and yet keep nibbling at his bait.

"One sin, fully known, and pressing home upon the conscience in all its guilt and malignity, leads to the discovery of more, for there is a fatal connection.

"Parting with sin is harder than parting with my friend. My friend was bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; sin is in the bone and in the flesh, and twisted about every fibre of my heart.

"We have commonly one master-sin, and are so blinded by it, as not to see others as great, and perhaps more dangerous, because they are hidden.

"My sins brought Christ to me, and me to Christ.

"I see in other sinners what I am; in Jesus what I should be." We are well aware that moralists reject such radical confessions of guilt and sin. They do not look at life from the same standpoint that Whitefield, Hervey and Thomas Adam did. They pride themselves in the deportment which men see-in being and doing "about right." Some of them are even willing to challenge criticism of their outward conduct. They forget that man only looketh upon external things, that God judgeth the heart. A wrong-doer at heart, whose circumstances have prevented the actual commission of crime is as guilty in the eyes of the infinite Judge as is the convicted criminal in the eyes of men. Guilt lies in the secret desire and intent, not simply in the open act. follows, therefore, that a man's life may be nearly right, and his heart all wrong.

It

Further, it is not for men to choose what portions of the moral law they will keep, and what they will break. Nor will it answer to conclude that because eleven commandments are observed, and only the twelfth broken, that the offence is small, and life in the main correct. St. John says: "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. Small as the point of offence may appear to the offender, by it the royal law, which is a unit, is broken, and no point of that law acquits him. Moral perfection consists, not in the aggregate of righteous acts, but in that pure spirit of love and self-devotement to God, which regulates the whole life even to the minutest detail of word or deed.

The illuminating influences of the divine Spirit alone reveal the

heart's actual depravity and make clear its secret sins. In the light of spiritual truth shining into the soul moral obliquity and pollution are discovered, just as in a sunbeam darting across a room the before unperceived particles of dust and impurity are seen floating. Should any upright man after reading this statement be still puzzled to account for such evils in the natural heart as have here been testified to, let him try upon himself the following experiment : "Let him carefully attend to what passes in his own mind, and commit to paper his thoughts, wishes, and emotions, his impulses and imaginations under the different circumstances that may befall him during the space of a week; then let him read over what he has written, and if he has executed his task with honesty and fidelity, he will start at his own deformity, and be unable to endure the sight of it." Nevertheless, he will not have discovered in himself what he would, if not experimenting at all, but rather, convicted of sin by the Holy Ghost, humbly measuring himself by the Gospel standard.

"God's holy law transgressed,

Speaks nothing but despair;

Convinced of sin, with guilt oppressed,

We find no comfort there."

It is a burden, a plague,

a

Sin is the world's monster curse. defilement, a disease. It is the cause of all disappointment and grief and wretchedness and sorrow and suffering and death. It is the sting of death, and sinning adds venom to that sting. Sin is the mildew of human life, blasting and withering mortal hopes. It is the millstone around humanity's neck, dragging down to hell. It is "the hoary sexton that digs man a grave; the foul, painted temptress that steals his virtue; the cunning sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul. It is the metamorphosis, more hideous than Ovid ever fancied, that changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters, and fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocents." Ignorance, poverty, friendlessness, are trifling evils as compared with sin. The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain because of sin. God's smiling face is hidden from the gaze of an apostate race by this

lowering cloud of guilt. He has worked patiently and long among men to “overcome, to root out, to put an end to sin. Men maintain the existence and dominion of iniquity by refusing to listen to God, by turning their backs on him, by contending against him, by rejecting his Saviour and resisting his spirit, by the greatest folly man can be guilty of-despising God's word. God has revealed his will, with its instructions, commands, warnings, pleadings, invitations and promises to turn men from sin and win them to righteousness. The Lord Jesus came into the world to make his soul a sacrifice for sin, to bear the stripes due disobedient man, to save his people from their sins. He ministers to those who trust in him that he may sanctify and cleanse them, and at last present them before God without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blame. The Holy Spirit is sent to convince men of sin, to enlighten, renew and sanctify them. The voice from heaven to earth declares, 'Except ye be born again, be born of water and the Spirit, be born from above, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." It is man's duty and privilege to be cleansed from sin, and to be delivered from its power. Sin has no dominion over those whose hearts God has sanctified, for they are not under the law but under grace. They are lifted out of the pit of their former sensuality. They flee temptations and banish evil thoughts. Their intellectual faculties are engaged with higher themes than those which engross the sinner. Their affections are placed on things above, and all their aspirations and desires are unto God and the things of God. The ungodly are not so.

THE REALITY OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

Of the reality of our existence we are all truly conscious. We live and move and have our being, and there is no denying it.

Nor is the animal life the highest form of existence of which we are conscious. The fact that man thinks is as clear to the thinker as the fact that he eats. Yet thinking is an intellectual process, belonging to the higher nature, while eating is a mere animal function.

So, the dictates of conscience, the apprehension of right and