baths or the glad retreats of the sea-side; add to thy expense; bring together large store of food; choose thee wines well refined; and when they ask thee, on whom bestowest thou this? say,—I have offended against God, I am in danger of perishing eternally, and therefore I am now distracted, and wasted, and agonized, if by any means I may reconcile God, whom, by my iniquities, I have offended."
But what one does mourn, is the loss of that inward sorrow, that overwhelming sense of God's displeasure, that fearfulness at having provoked His wrath, that reverent estimation of His great holiness, that participation of His utter hatred of sin, that loathing of self for having been so unlike to Christ, so alien from God; it is that knowledge of the reality and hatefulness of sin, and of self, as a deserter of God; that vivid perception of Heaven and hell, of the essential and eternal contrast between God and Satan, sin and holiness, and of the dreadful danger of having again fallen into the kingdom of darkness, after having been brought into that of light and of God's dear Son,—it is this that we have lost: it was this which expressed itself in what men would now call exaggerated actions, and which must appear exaggerated to us, who have so carnal and common-place a standard of a Christian's privileges, and a Christian's holiness. The absence of this feeling expresses itself in all our intercourse with the bad, our tolerance of evil, our apathy about remediable, and yet unremedied, depravity; our national unconcernedness about men's souls; our carelessness amid the spiritual starvation of hundreds of thousands of our own people. We are in a lethargy. Our very efforts to wake those who are deeper asleep, are numbed and powerless. Until we lay deeper the foundations of repentance, the very preaching of the Cross of Christ becomes but a means of carnal security.
It is indeed a hard and toilsome path which these Fathers point out, unsuited to our degraded notions of Christianity, as an easy religion, wherein sin and repentance are continually to alternate, pardon and Heaven are again and again offered to all who can but persuade themselves that they are sorry for their sins, or who, from circumstances, from time of life, or any other outward
