sunset, some of the people sit on mats spread on the ground, and others stand about, lights and shadows flitting curiously over them from a lamp screened by an upright mat from the evening wind.

A famous beater of bushes was the Rev. Ralph Stott. He would go into a village, and get into conversation with some one on the way. Another would join them, and another; and as the company increased he would gradually raise his voice till he found himself preaching the gospel to a large congregation. When he excited angry opposition, as, of course, he did sometimes, he had his own way of meeting it. In a Batticaloe village, when a furious native came up with the thick hard stalk of a cocoa-frond in his hand, and threatened to stop his eloquence, he disarmed him by kneeling down then and there among the people, and praying aloud for his assailant's salvation. He was distinguished for his practice, strange in the East, of visiting from door to door. If a heathen repelled him from his compound he would fall upon his knees, clasp his hands, close his eyes, and with unaffected simplicity, in the hearing of all around, pray for the man and his family. There was considerable iconoclasm in Batticaloe in Mr. Stott's days. Several converts gave up their idols, and the sheds that had accommodated them, to destruction. When he first lifted the axe, the people looked on with a degree of awe, thinking it possible for the gods to take care of themselves. He was more successful than a workman who tried to cut down a demonhaunted tree at Cattavelly in the north, and was hurled to the ground by the resisting spirit, that is to say, fell from the ladder. Mr. Stott's operations brought no disaster to himself or his agents. In 1844, he broke thirteen stone pilleyars, and pulled down five thatched tabernacles in which they had been kept for worship. The huts were most of them too small for Christian uses; but I remember giving tickets to a Methodist class in one of them, which its owner had presented to the mission, in a place called Carovapancany.

The total number in Ceylon, for all the Protestant missions, were very recently 38 English ministers, 92 native pastors, 591 lay agents, 4,800 church members, and 19,000 regular hearers. About one-third of the baptisms last year were of adult persons, and there were many inquirers in catechumen classes. The first Hindoo ordained in the Church of England, the Rev. Christian David, was a Ceylonese. The Methodists

alone have now 12 native ministers among the Tamils of the island, and 34 among the Singhalese, not counting catechists and others. And the success of the Rev. John Kilner, and his able lieutenant the Rev. Edmund Rigg, in organizing these young churches and teaching them self-support, is a matter of surprise and joy.

Attempts were made, under the patronage and with the aid of the Government agent at Batticaloe, to arrest the decay of the Bintenne Veddahs; but these unhappily proved unsuc; cessful. Some of these wild men were supplied with agricultural implements, and induced to settle in a new village; but the native placed over them degenerated into an unfaithfulness that sent them back to their forest haunts and ways. Both agent and missionary were a little too hasty in baptizing a number of the more hopeful of them. One may frankly confess the mistake. These wild hunters were placed in a row, and christened one after another; but the foolish practice of giving new and European names was followed, and at the close of the ceremony it was discovered that no one among them remembered what he was called. It was then sagely determined to give each person his own name, plainly written, that there might be no mistake. The pieces of paper were afterwards handed with solemn concern by their respective owners, none of whom could read, to the wise head-man, to be taken care of; and he mixed them all together, making it impossible for any one in the settlement to recover the knowledge of who was who.

Whilst rejoicing in the triumphs of earnest faith and labour, I must confess that it has been a great pain to me that the Burgher population have not had the respect from the missionaries which they deserved. We began our work in their sanctuaries, and found among them exemplary Christians, like Mrs. Schrader, who translated many hymns into Ceylon-Portuguese, and was a faithful helper and ornament to the church which she joined. If the most had been made of the honest descendants of the Dutch, they would have proved an admirable middle class, speaking the proper languages of the country more fluently than stiffmouthed foreigners, and exerting themselves usefully in educational and evangelistic service. Nevertheless, since this century began, Ceylon has been the field of a brave service, a service which has in a few years overcome the habits of centuries, and is changing this kingdom of idols into a kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

Εν

VERY preacher of any experience knows the advantage, specially when preaching to a congregation to which he is a stranger, of having a text which is a suggestive or (what some people call) a striking one. It will commonly fix the attention of the congregation to at least the first sentences of the sermon which follows. It need not be an eccentric or extraordinary text: such will rather repel intelligent hearers; and such are generally prefixed to discourses whose text is the only remarkable thing about them. And every preacher knows too the damping of anything like interested attention which follows the announcement of what may be called the regulation text, which commonly precedes that kind of sermon which might be preached over every Sunday without any one recognising it ;-the kind of sermon which reaches nobody, which gives no offence, which does no harm, and which most assuredly does no good.

Now I know quite well that my text at this time is not the sort of text which many people hear read out with much anticipation of interest. I am well aware that in these days there is in many congregations a distaste for theological terms, such as Repentance, as Faith, as Justification and Sanctification; and a shrinking from the discussion of theological doctrines, as something unreal, and uninteresting, and (in any case) as something that you are quite tired of being preached to about. So when I say that my subject is Repentance, I know that I am placed at some disadvantage. I hope to get over that I trust that God's grace may make each soul here present to feel that a more real and practical thing cannot be. And there is something besides. It is common to speak of Repentance as a humiliating thing, a sore thing, a thing our passing through which will always be looked back upon with something like shame, and a sense of personal degradation. An eminent Roman Catholic writer, the late Cardinal Wiseman, says that Repentance is "the one door of the sheep, the one entrance to the Church of Christ, narrow and low perhaps, and causing flesh and blood to stoop as it passes it." But then Cardinal Wiseman was speaking of Repentance, not as Christ preached it, but as the Roman Church has made it; with the

Yet,

debasing Confession in the ear of man of what ought only to be known between the soul and God; with the irrational and unChristian Satisfaction by one's own doing or suffering; which lose the simplicity of New Testament Repentance in the Sacramental Penance of the unreformed Church. apart from this, apart from all factitious addition of disagreeables, there remains as a fact in human nature, that it goes against the grain with man to frankly say he has done wrong: not wrong vaguely and generally, but wrong in this or that. I have known many people who would tell any number of the most apparent lies, rather than frankly admit that they had done wrong. Their rule plainly was, Never admit that. And so the excuse was always ready, though it could mislead nobody. To people of more principle, and more sense, the candid confession of having behaved foolishly or wickedly remains a sad and humbling necessity, too. And so it is, that we have all been told a great deal about the Duty of Repentance, and the Necessity of Repentance, and about how Gospel Repentance goes against the proud heart of the Flesh, and how God's purpose is that we all be brought down into the very dust of humiliation before He will let us get off the painful consequences or even escape the enslaving power of our sins. There is confusion, too, in many minds as to what Repentance actually is. Forgetting the manly and downright and common-sense account of it given in the Shorter Catechism, there are those who would make it a matter of the nervous system,-who would carry the penitent into the realm of hysteria,and associate Repentance unto Life essentially with unmanly tears which are merely manifestation of exceptive physical temperament, and with extravagant self-abasement which I do not believe that God can be pleased to see in any immortal creature of His hand. I have known men call themselves, in their confessions of sin, what they would have been very angry had any other person called them. Hence a general impression of unreality and so it comes that as to forgive as a Christian sometimes means not to forgive at all; in like manner to say in a prayer that one is sinful,—to call one's self sinful in a theological sense,-often

implies no real and deep sense that one has done grievously wrong. Now this is bad. There is no great harm in telling a man that you are his obedient servant without meaning much but never go and tell God that you are a miserable sinner unless you mean what you say. It cannot please God that any man should call himself worse than he feels himself to be. Nor does inordinate selfdebasement go to make New-Testament Repentance; any more than exceptional emotion, which it is not in some natures to yield. I desire to preach to you of the Privilege of Repentance. I desire to speak of it, not as a painful and humbling necessity, but as a great and blessed privilege. I wish I may be helped to show you that we can never thank God enough that we are allowed to repent. For, indeed, Repentance, rightly understood, is as grand a gift as Christ ever won for us.

We might well take for granted that our Saviour would not have preached oftentimes on Repentance, and indeed have made that the characteristic staple of His preaching when He began His ministry, had not the subject been one of vital moment. And it is plain, too, that the subject is of just as much concern now as ever. You remember, likewise, that on this matter the Saviour's Fore-runner S. John the Baptist had uttered the self-same words: the same counsel, or command (if you will), Repent: the same reason why, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. To repent is the thing to be done: the thing everybody needs to do. Now there are two different words used in the New Testament, both of which are translated into the English word Repentance: one of them conveys specially the notion of being sorry for having done wrong; the other conveys specially the notion of changing one's mind as to things,-seeing things in a different light, and then shaping one's conduct accordingly,-trying to mend one's life. It is this second word which Christ used: which you can see is the fuller and larger word, including substantially the meaning of the first word too: taking in the being sorry for the wrong-doing and ashamed of it, coming to right views, beginning afresh and trying to do better. This is Gospel Repentance in which, as the Catechism has it, "a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience." It is not difficult to understand: it is indeed very

plain: it does not seem as if Christ thought it needful to give much explanation of what He meant to the plain folk He preached to. A very little child, who has done something wrong, is able thoroughly to grasp the idea of what is meant by repenting of it. And so with older folk. You see that wrongdoing (or call it sin) is very bad, which you had thought not so bad: you see it leads to infinite trouble and shame, when you had thought you would get pleasure out of it and escape the trouble: you are sorry for it, you are ashamed of it, you feel degraded by it: you turn over a new leaf, and begin again afresh, upon a clean page. By God's mercy you will cease to do evil and learn to do well: you will sever the connection with the miserable past: you will start anew, get into the right way and stick to it. That is Repentance: that is what Christ bade us all do and He added for encouragement, that a new and milder dispensation was here: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." The religion Christ taught was the first which offered forgiveness without suffering, on the part of the penitent, or inflicted by the penitent. False faiths had told of expiatory penances: starve yourself, torture yourself, deny every desire of your nature, measure a thousand miles by lengths of your body, find out by trial how miserable a poor wretch may be, and then you will be forgiven: God will never be hard on a tortured creature that has been so awfully hard upon himself. And how natural the fancy, though so wrong! And in the dawning light of the Jewish law, if the sinner himself was not required to suffer, then some helpless thing must that had never sinned: the harmless lamb, the innocent dove, must die: "without shedding of blood there was no remission:" the eternal truth of the inevitable link between sin and suffering must be held forth before all. Nor ought we to forget that when the better "kingdom of heaven" did come at last, that fundamental truth was still recognised and affirmed in the suffering and death of our Blessed Redeemer, upon whose head, as the one self-sufficing sacrifice of all sacrifices that ever were offered, were made to meet the iniquities of us all. But now, when we would repent, when we would find pardon, though we ever plead that Great Sacrifice, there is no suffering needed any more. All the suffering was borne, long ago, and once for all, that brought our salvation. And now "if we confess our sins,"-that is all,-" if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to

forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." No wonder that it was said, as strongest encouragement to repent, that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" For the coming of that kingdom has made repentance efficacious, and made it simple, as it never was before.

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Now here is the sum of Christ's preaching. The command, the exhortation, let us call it, is to Repent. That preaching starts from a fact: the fact that there is something wrong: the fact, ordinary preachers would say, that men are sinners. And this is fact, not doctrine: or if you will call it doctrine, it is fact stated dogmatically. For it is fact, that there is something wrong; wrong in our lives, wrong in our natures. Our natures are all twisted, and amiss: wherever the wrench came from that left us so. If we be not the chief of fools we all know that. Look back on your life and oh the follies, the failures, the dark transgressions! The remembrance bows you down. Now Repentance is just the right and healthy feeling of the awakened soul that sees its own sin. Once a man is made to see he is a sinner, see he has done wrong times beyond counting, then if his mind be in any way healthy and true, the state of feeling which arises in it is what we call Repentance. And it includes all that has been said. Sorrow and shame for having done wrong: an earnest wish to get out of wrong and to be right: turning with true purpose and intention into the right way, and holding on in that.

My friends, if this be truth, and it is truth, is it not strange that repentance should be so commonly thought a painful duty? It is a grand and inexpressible privilege. There is nothing degrading in it; the degradation is all in the state it takes us out of. It is degrading to stay in sin, not to get out of it. And there is no humiliation, beyond the fact that it is a humble thing to be a human being, in confessing that we have been wrong. It is too common for that. It is just the condition of being a human being. We take that for granted. "To go wrong is human;" everybody everywhere has always known that. And that Christ's Gospel invites us to repentance just means that man is not tied to go on in his wrong and misery. It means that he has not got into that miserable lane in which there is no turning. It means that, save in our despairing imaginations, there is no such thing on God's earth. You are not such a fool as to fancy you never go wrong? Well, repentance is getting right. What an unspeakable and blessed relief to one who

feels he has made a mess of his life if you get him to take in that it may all be mended yet! Then that was exactly what our blessed Saviour said-said to every mortal-when he preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Many a poor soul, bogged, shamed, crushed, broken-hearted, has cried in agony, "Oh, if I could only get beginning again!" Well, says Christ, begin again! There is nothing to hinder you. Sad as is the past, it may all, so far as concerns the worst about it, be as if it had never been. God never ties any mortal to sin who honestly longs to be delivered from it. "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow: though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool."

I do not say that the truest and heartiest repentance will avail to deliver a human being from all the painful consequences of transgression. It can never be in this world that the grievous sinner should be as though he had not sinned. The future punishment of sin, and the present power of it, from these things the penitent is delivered through God's mercy in Christ, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit; but the needful course of things here often denies the wrongdoer the mercy here which all of us pray he may receive from God. The temporal consequences of sin and folly, lesser and greater sin and folly, cannot, in the nature of things, be quite taken away here, though true penitence will show the way to bear them better. It is an unhappy thing about this life, and it often seems a very hard thing, that human beings, when very young and inexperienced, can spoil it all. this not merely by some grievous wrongdoing, whose stain can never be effaced in this world, but by lack of judgment, of tact, of energy, of decision, when the whole thing was misfortune and not fault. A man takes the wrong turning at some critical time, and never gets over it. A man makes a wrong choice of a profession, and all his life feels himself misplaced, and does his work ill, does it heartlessly and inefficiently, and taking no pleasure in it, perhaps downrightly hating it, while there is some other vocation in which he would have been in his right place, and useful-perhaps eminently useful, and happy in feeling himself so. I have known very middling preachers who were first-rate lawyers spoiled. But it was too late. It could not be helped. And there are other choices which have blighted the whole life

And