souls that image of God in which man was originally created; he will introduce you to the divine favour; and will at length bestow upon you a paradise which knows no forfeiture, an uprightness which cannot be lost, a crown of glory that fadeth not away.

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SERMON IV.

THE NATURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE

ᎻᎬᎪᎡᎢ .

JEREMIAH xvii. 9.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

IN no instance, perhaps, are the opinions of the world in general in more direct opposition to the plain declarations of the Holy Scriptures, than in the estimate which is commonly formed of the moral qualities of the heart. The excellence of those qualities is almost universally insisted on. The goodness of their hearts is a point which will not be given up even by those, whose lives are disgraced by the most palpable transgressions; and who, if they could but be persuaded to exercise the smallest degree of impartiality in the judgment which they form respecting their own character, could not but be

sensible that the undeniable wickedness of their lives, excessive and notorious as it may have been, has yet by no means kept pace with the evil within them. While, however, the very worst will thus dwell on the commendable qualities of their hearts, he who knows what is in man, has given us in the text a very different account of the hearts of all as they are by nature, not excepting those who are looked upon as the very best.

The words before us, indeed, immediately refer to the hearts of the Jews in the days of Jeremiah, and describe the source of those sins which were about to bring down on that obdurate people the predicted vengeance of Heaven. Still the terms themselves are general and unlimited; and the proposition which they contain is an universal truth; the hearts of all men being made of the same materials, and the differences which are discernible between them arising not from nature, but altogether from other causes; from the external restraints of God's providence, or the internal operations of his grace. There is not an individual among us; there is not an individual on the whole face of the earth; of whose heart, in its natural state, we may not safely declare, that it "is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

This humiliating, but most important and instructive description will lead us to consider the heart,

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I. AS DECEITFUL: It is deceitful above all things:"

II. AS WICKED: It is "desperately wicked :" and,

III. AS INSCRUTABLE: "who can know it?"

I. The unparalleled deceitfulness of the heart might be made to appear from a great variety of considerations. I shall confine myself to two only, and drop merely a hint or two in reference to each of them.

It will appear, if we advert to,

1. The false views which it leads men very generally to adopt respecting the safety of their state.

It leads some persons to conclude that they are in a safe state, merely because they are free from the commission of gross sins, and not inattentive to the performance of many moral and social duties: closing their eyes against the plain declarations of the word of God, that "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified," (Rom. iii. 20,) and that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved," but "the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth." (Acts iv. 10, 12.)

If, in addition to the external decorum just mentioned, and which, as far as it goes, is certainly both commendable and necessary, there be found also a merely formal attention to some religious duties: then, in too many cases, the deceitful heart prompts the idea, that there can be no doubt of the safety of the person in question; nay, that assurance is thus rendered doubly sure: the deluded religionist, not in the slightest degree bearing in mind the awakening truth, that a merely formal attendance on ordinances even of God's own appointment, a drawing near him with the mouth, and honouring him with the lips, while the heart is removed far from him, is no other than a solemn mockery of the Most High, and a provocation of his righteous indignation. (Isa. xxix. 13.)

The deceitful heart of others will lead them to rest satisfied with a general reliance on the mercy of God; a reliance this, which may be found even in those whose lives are stained with the grossest immoralities. Putting quite out of the question the holiness and justice of God; utterly disregarding, too, his plain declaration that "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God," (Ps. ix. 17,) they conclude that he is far too merciful to cast any one individual of these nations there; and con