for. He cannot admire the power, and wisdom, and righteousness, and love, which are so finely blended in the work of redemption, unless his consciousness of human wretchedness convince him of its adaptations. He cannot approve of expiation at all, whether made by the sinner himself, or by his accepted Substitute, unless his views of the nature of sin, as committed against a God of eternal righteousness, shall convince him it was indispensable. Much less can he appreciate the stupendous fact, that sin was expiated by God, in our nature, without seeing his own case to be so awfully desperate, that no less a sacrifice was equal to his rescue. Still all this is necessary in order to conversion; for it belongs to the very essence of the Christian remedy: and to believe in Christ for salvation, is just to know that fact, viewing it precisely as it is. But these views of sin are just the beginnings of a genuine self-knowledge-the first openings of the mind on the sad realities of its moral condition. We call them the convictions which precede or accompany a turning to God, and so they are; for they are as really necessary to that important change, as the pain of a frost-bitten hand or foot to the recovery of vital circulation. But their very name, convictions, is expository of the point; for it tells us most explicitly that they consist in saddening sights, and painful feelings, of which the man himself-nay, the very conscience of the man-is peculiarly the theatre.

Thus we say, that self-knowledge is indispensable to a genuine conversion from sin to godliness. There are many mysteries about a man which invite,

and may receive, a portion of his regard, but the grand and dreadful mystery which claims his primary and paramount attention, as a prisoner of hope addressed by the gospel, is the mystery of iniquity in his heart. He must see sin as it exists within him, and, irrespective of its outbreakings, to be a deadly moral calamity, disturbing the harmony of his moral constitution; perverting the obvious dictates of nature, and working its way, by certain advances, to the settled predominance of misery unmingled. From his own experience of its evil nature, he must be brought to abhor it in all its forms, whether milder or more virulent, as the one thing in the moral universe, which effectually poisons the human soul; as so directly opposed to the great Supreme, in his very being and administration, that he cannot forgive it, and ought not to do so, without a perfect satisfaction for the offence it has given, and security against its recurrence; and as so ineffably deep in its demerit, that no satisfaction could ever have been found, had not the Son of God, in our nature, "who knew no sin, been made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Such are the views of sin in their substance, although not in all their latitude of import, which must be realized within a man, in order to bring him to the point of conversion; for to turn from sin is to escape for his life: but so firm is its hold of the human heart, and so bewitching the love of its gratifications, that he never can be brought to forsake it, till he see it as his mortal foe, exhausting his comforts, and filling up his cup of misery, by its own intrinsic contrariety to the very being of the God that made

him. We know that isolated self-inquiry will never furnish him with such convictions. In order to arrive at them, he must look out of himself, and form his estimate of moral evil, as it stands displayed in the word of God; but the end for which God has given this display, and the grand reason for studying it which any individual should propose to himself, is just to supply him with correct information about the nature and tendency of moral evil, as it exists and operates in his own heart. In this view of the Bible, it is Heaven's appointed instrument, for curing the sinner of his self-ignorance, and setting before him an adequate view, not simply of sin in general, but of his own specific moral condition, as it is estimated by the God that made him: and it is only when he is led to make this use of the Bible; to carry home its information to his own particular case; to survey himself in the light of its stern disclosures; to turn away, in short, from that which is outward and general, and give himself to that which is inward and special, that he is brought to feel those moral alarms which are the first symptoms of a return to God.

This is the kind of self-knowledge which is indispensable to radical reformation; and it is the want of this knowledge, or ignorance of self, at this very point, which causes so many to come short of true and saving conversion. There are some who plead the very greatness of God, or the absolute independence of his being, as a protection to them in their trespasses, arguing as if it were beneath him, as the Governor of a universe, to take any serious interest in the actions of a creature so insignificant

as the wayward child of Adam: and there are others, who seem to judge of their God very much as they judge of their king; thinking it quite enough to conform in externals to the letter of his law, and denying his right to be offended, so long as his authority is thus far respected. These persons cannot be converted, not however because they are sinners, for it is sin which makes a man a subject for conversion, but because, while conversion is effected by the exercise of moral intelligence, and moral feeling, they are so ignorant of themselves, that they cannot appreciate the character of God, and know not what is meant by being a sinner, on the one hand, or a saint on the other; and therefore, are shut out by the grossness of their moral stupidity, from using any of the means which God has graciously ordained, for removing men from the one state of being, and placing them in the other. They may know these means a Christian education may have fixed them in their memories-but they cannot make the appointed use of them, because they believe them to be nearly superfluous. But the worst of it is, that, while the one of the classes referred to, suppose themselves sheltered in their own insignificance, by ejecting God from the government of his creatures, the other are not only retained in their sins, but fortified in them, by overlooking his eternal Godhead. They admit the necessity of a conversion, at least in the case of the openly immoral, but they measure it exactly by their views of sin, confining it entirely to the outward conduct; and when such a conversion as they approve, has

been accomplished on themselves or others, they hold the point as finally settled, and consider the doctrine of a sinner's repentance as no longer suitable for them. Their ignorance of themselves, as the subjects of sin, involves a corresponding error about the nature of conversion; and this error, perverting their judgment, and quieting every alarm, deludes them with the shadow, instead of the substance, and trains them to live in practical Atheism.

II. Self-knowledge is indispensable to that progressive renovation of nature, which follows a genuine conversion to godliness. Conversion produces a radical change in the moral condition of the sinner's mind, but it does not free him all at once from the practical influence of sin; and, after he has attained it, a process of sanctification is still necessary to fit him for the enjoyments of the heavenly state-for heaven is the scene of perfected happiness; but there can be no perfect happiness, except where holiness is previously made perfect, any more than perfect health, when disease is still disturbing the functions of bodily life. But let it ever be kept in mind, that, although this process of sanctification, as well as conversion itself, be entirely the work of God's free grace, in respect of all efficient agency, it is not, by any means, a work in which the man himself is altogether passive. Its very nature is an interdict on every such opinion. It consists, not in the implanting of any new principles, but in clearing, and settling, and nursing to maturity, the principles of grace which were previously planted; in progressively eradicating the principles of evil; in destroying old habits, and forming new ones; in efforts