forget, but by that pride which had magnified them, and had rendered me so feeling to them. And seeing thou hast promised to forgive us our trespasses whenever we shall have forgiven the trespasses of our brethren, fulfil, O Lord, thy promises. It is in this hope that I presume to reckon upon thine eternal mercies.
SERMON XV.
THE WOMAN WHO WAS A SINNER.
" And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment." — Luke vii. 37, 38.
From such abundant tears, so sincere a confusion, and a proceeding so humiliating and uncommon, it may easily be comprehended how great must once have been the influence of the passions over the heart of this sinner, and what grace now operateth within her. Palestine had long beheld her as the shame and the reproach of the city; the Pharisee's household views her to-day as the glory of grace and a model of patience. What a change, and what a spectacle!
This soul, fettered, but a moment ago, with the most shameful and the most indissoluble chains, finds nothing now capable of stopping her; and, without hesitation, she flies to seek, at the feet of Jesus Christ, her salvation and deliverance: this soul, hitherto plunged in the senses, and living totally, for voluptuousness, in a moment sacrifices their liveliest charms and their dearest ties: this soul, lastly, impatient till then of every yoke, and whose heart had never acknowledged other rule than the caprice of its inclinations, commences her penitence by the most humiliating proceedings and the most melancholy subjections. How admirable, O my God, are the works of thy grace! and how near to its cure is the most hopeless wretchedness, when once it becomes the object of thine infinite mercies! And how rapid and shortened are the ways by which thou conductest thy chosen.
But whence comes it, my brethren, that such grand examples make so trifling an impression upon us? From two prejudices, apparently the most opposite to each other, yet nevertheless, which proceed from the same principle, and lead to the same error.
The first is, that we figure to ourselves that conversion of the heart required by God as merely a cessation of guilt, the abstaining from certain excessive irregularities, which even decency itself holds out as improper. And as we are at last brought to that, either by age, new situations, or even our own inclinations, which time alone has changed, we never think of going farther; we believe that all is completed, and we listen to the history of the most
