consciousness of having provoked the wrath of God. The wicked are at war with God, whom their crimes so grievously offend. " Wrath and indignation," says the Apostle, " tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil." [1] The sinful act, it is true, is transient, but the guilt of sin remains; and that guilt the wrath of God pursues as the shadow follows the body. Pierced by these stings of the divine wrath, David was excited to sue for the pardon of his sins; and that the faithful, imitating the royal penitent, may learn to grieve, that is, to become truly contrite, and to cherish the hope of pardon, the pastor will place before their eyes and press upon their attention, the example of his penitential sorrow, and the lessons of instruction which it conveys. [2]
The importance of such instruction in teaching us to grieve for our sins, God himself declares by the mouth of his prophet: exhorting Israel to repentance, he admonishes her to awake to a sense of the evils which flow from sin: " Know thou, and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee, to have left the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not with thee, saith the Lord the God of Hosts." [3] They who are strangers to these sentiments, who know not these feelings of heartfelt sorrow, are said by the Prophets Isaias, Ezekiel, and Zachary, to have " hard hearts," [4] "stony hearts," [5] " hearts of adamant;" [6] like stone they are insensible to all feeling of sorrow, and devoid of every principle of life, that is, of the salutary consciousness of their own infatuation and abandonment.
But lest, terrified by the enormity of his crimes, the sinner despair of obtaining pardon, the pastor will animate him to hope by the following considerations; he will remind him that Christ our Lord gave power to his Church to remit sins, as is declared in one of the articles of the Creed; and that this petition makes known to us the extent of the divine goodness and bounty towards us, for if God were not disposed to pardon the penitent sinner, he would not have commanded him to ask for pardon: " Forgive us our debts." We should, therefore, be firmly convinced, that commanding us, as he does, to solicit, he will, also, extend to us his paternal compassion; the petition fully implies that God is so disposed towards us, that he is willing to pardon the truly penitent. True, he is that God against whom we sin by disobedience; the designs of whose wisdom we frustrate, as far as depends on us; whom we offend, whom we outrage in word and deed; but he is, also, a most beneficent Father, who has it in his power to pardon all our transgressions; and who not only declares his willingness to exercise this power, but also urges us to sue to him for pardon, and teaches us how to ask it. It cannot, therefore, be matter of doubt that, with his gracious assistance, we have it in our power to conciliate the divine favour. This attestation of the willing-
