turn-they will struggle, and draw back, as if you were rushing into flames, or upon the point of a sword. They will cling fast to sin and the world, and will not let go their hold. They are disaffected to strict holiness, and all you can do cannot bring them in love with it. They are hard as the nether mill-stone, and no human means can break them. In short, you will be sensible that you are so far gone with the disease of sin, so indis posed, weakened, and corrupted, that nothing but the power of divine grace can recover you, and inspire you with spiritual life and vigour. Therefore you will lie moaning and groaning be fore the Lord, waiting for his assistance, as helpless creatures, in the greatest danger, and unable to deliver yourselves. Then you will understand the meaning of that inspired prayer, Turn thou me, and I shall be turned*-Draw me, and I will run after thee." Then you will be convinced, by experience, of the truth of that declaration you had before heard from the mouth of Christ, and perhaps laboured to explain away: "No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me, draw him."‡ Oh! when shall we see the vanity and self-confidence of sin ners mortified? When shall we see them deeply sensible of their weakness and helplessness? It may seem strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that they will never strive in earnest till they are sensible that all their strivings are not sufficient, but that God must perform the work in them, It is the high idea they have of their own power that keeps them easy and careless. When they see that it is God alone who must work in them both to will and to do, then, and not till then, they will earnestly cry to him for his assistance, and use all means to obtain it. It is not the awakened sinner, that feels himself weak and helpless, that lives in the careless neglect of the means of grace. No it is the proud, presumptuous sinner, that thinks he can do great things in religion when he sets about it. It is indeed a strange sight to see those that complain they can do nothing without Christ, la bouring hard; and those that boast they can do great things, standing idle to see those that renounce all dependence upon their good works, abounding in good works; and those that expect to be saved by their good works, living in the neglect of good works, and doing the works of the devil! This, I say, is a strange sight but so it generally is found to be, in fact, in the John vi. 44. world. And the reasons of it are, that they who feel their own weakness will earnestly seek for help from God; and God will help those that are sensible they need it. Whereas, others are not earnestly seeking that grace, the want of which they do not feel; and God lets them alone, to try what the vain fools can do ; and will not throw away his assistance upon those who do not want nor ask it. But, Fifthly, If ever you return to the Lord, you will be made deeply sensible that Christ is the only way of access to God, You will be sensible, that it is only for his sake that you can expect acceptance with God; and that all your transactions with Heaven must be carried on through him, as mediator. If ever you return, you will come in, as obnoxious criminals, upon the footing of grace, and not of merit; and you will see that it is only through Christ that grace can be communicated to you. You will renounce all your own righteousness. You will lie at mercy, and own that you deserve hell as justly as ever a malefactor deserved the gallows. Some of you, perhaps, will say, 'I will never believe this concerning myself I will never believe that I am such a guilty, obnoxious criminal!' But pray do not be too positive do not say you never will believe it; for you may believe it yet. Yes, you certainly will believe it, if ever you be converted and saved; and I hope God has not given you up. If ever you return to the Lord, you will come in as a poor, brokenhearted, penitent rebel; and unless you come in upon this footing, you have nothing to do with Jesus, nor he with you for he came to save sinners, and to heal the sick: And till you feel yourselves such, you will never comply with the gospel, which is a method of salvation through a mediator. Oh! that many sinners among us might thus be mortified, humbled, and brought down to the foot of their injured Sovereign, this day! Oh! that they may be made sensible that they lie at mercy, and that they have not the least possible ground of hope, but only through the righteousness of Christ! But, Sixthly, If ever you are turned to God, you will experience a great change in your temper and conduct. Your hearts and lives will take a new bias-your thoughts and affections will be directed towards God and holiness-your hearts will be turned to the holy law of God, like wax to the seal, and receive the stamp of his image. They will then aspire towards heaven-thither they will tend, as naturally as a stone gravitates to the earth. You will contract an evangelical turn; that is, you will delight and acquiesce in the method of salvation revealed in the gospel. Jesus will be infinitely dear to you; and you will rejoice and glory in him, and put no confidence in the flesh. You will be turned to the ordinances of the gospel, and delight to converse with God in them. In short, your whole soul will receive a heavenly disposition--a new divine bent, or bias, towards God and divine things. Your thoughts will run in a new channel-your will and affections will fix upon new objects, and you will become new creatures-old things will pass away, and all things will become new.* You will become fit for heaven, by having heavenly dispositions wrought in you; and thence you may infer you shall be admitted there. Believe me, sirs, when you are turned to God, religion will not be such a dull, insipid thing to you, as it now is. The gospel will not be such an idle story; nor the law of God such a leaden rule, that you may bend it as you please, to your own obliquities. Heaven and hell will not be such dreams and trifles ; but you will be habitually affected with these things, as the most important realities, and your hearts will be deeply impressed with their influence. As you will be turned to God and holiness, so you will be turned from sin and all its pleasures. Yes, brethren, that pride, hypocrisy, sensuality, worldly-mindedness, and all the various forms of sin which you now indulge, will become forever hateful to you -you will abhor them, resist them, make war against them, and never allow them a peaceable harbour in your hearts more. You will see their intrinsic vileness and baseness, and their contrariety to the holy nature of God; and on this account you will hate them and fly from them, as well as because they may bring ruin upon yourselves. Oh! how will it then break your hearts to think that ever you should have lived as you now do! How bitter will your present pleasures and pursuits then be to you; and how will you bless God, that he opened your eyes and gave your minds a new turn, before it was too late! Farther when your minds thus receive a new and heavenly turn, your practices will be turned too. The practice follows the inward principle of action; and when this is set right, that will be agreeable to it. Conversion, sirs, would be an effectual restraint from those vices which you now practise, and an effectual constraint to those duties you now omit. It would cure you of your * 2 Cor. v. 17. swearing, drunkenness, defrauding, contentions, and quarrelings, and other vices; and it would bring you to pray, to hear, to meditate, to communicate at the Lord's table, and to endeavour to perform every duty you owe to God; and it would bring you to observe the laws of justice and charity, and all the duties you owe to man and pray observe, that these things always go together. Conversion will teach you not only to pray, and perform the other duties of religion; but it will make you just, charitable, meek, compassionate, and conscientious in all the duties of morality. It will make you better members of society, better neighbours, better masters, better servants, better parents, better children; in short, better in every relation. Never pretend you are converted, unless it have this effect upon you-without this, all your religion is not worth a straw. From hence you may see what a blessed thing it would be, even for this world, if we should all turn to the Lord. Then, what happy families should we have! What a happy neighbourhood what a happy congregation-what a happy country! Then every man would fill up his place, and make conscience of the duties of his relation; and then Heaven would smile, and rain down blessings upon so dutiful a people. Seventhly: If ever you are turned to the Lord, your minds will habitually retain that turn. I mean, your religion will not be a transient fit; a fleeting evanid thing: but it will be permanent and persevering. You will never more relapse into your former voluntary slavery to sin-never more indulge from day to day your old disaffection to God, and your habitual allowed indisposition to the exercises of religion. Then, farewell forever to the smooth, enchanting paths of sin; and welcome forever to the ways of holiness. From the happy moment of your return to God, to the end of your days, it will be habitually the great concern of your life to make progress in religion, and live to God; to carry on a war against all sin and temptation, and root out every evil principle from your souls. I do not mean, that you will be perfectly free from all sin, or that you will never relapse into some degree of lukewarmness, and indisposition of spirit towards God. But I mean, you never will be entirely and allthrough what you once were, in your unconverted state; you never will relapse into that indulged and wilful love of sin and the world-that-prevailing indifferency or disaffection towards God and his service, and that stupid, habitual carelessness about eternal things, which now has the dominion over you. No, nev er more will you be able to offend your God and neglect your Saviour and your souls, as you now do-never more will you be able to rest secure and thoughtless, while your eternal state is awfully uncertain, and your hearts are out of temper for devotion. The bent of your minds towards God may be weakened; but you can never lose it entirely. Your aversion to sin may be lessened; but you will never give up yourselves to the love and practice of it. Something within will make you perpetually uneasy while your graces are languishing and sin gathering strength. There is a secret bias up. on your souls, that inclines them heavenward; even while they are carried downward to the earth, by the remaining tendencies of your innate corruption. The seed of God which remaineth in you, will never suffer you to sin as you now do. Your new nature will be searching after God by a kind of spiritual instinct, like a child for the breast, and you can never more peaceably take the world in his stead. This, I hope, sundry of you know by experience. Since the moment of your conversion, though you have had many sad relapses and backslidings, yet you can never heartily return to sin again; and all the world cannot make you let go your hold of God. You tend towards him with a propension which, though it be weak, yet neither earth nor hell, neither sin within, nor temptations without, can entirely overcome. : And hence such of you who once fancied you were converted, but are now habitually careless, earthly-minded, and lukewarm towards God-hence, you may see, you never did, in reality, turn to him. No it was all a dream; for if you had once been turned to him with all your hearts, you would never again have turned entirely from him. Your conversion would have had some lasting good effects upon you; and, having once turned to God, you would never again have bid him farewell, and forsaken him entirely. Such, therefore, should still rank themselves among the unconverted. And now, my dear hearers, I have endeavoured, with the utmost plainness, to describe to you that turning to God which should be the result of your afflictions as well as of the means of grace, and which you must experience before you can enter into the kingdom of heaven. I have had something more important at heart than to embellish my style, and set myself off as a fine |