FORGIVE?HESS OF SIN. what ends and purposes ? that he may purify and sanc- tify them, make them holy, and dedicate them to God ; furnish them with graces and gifts, interest them in pri- vileges, guide, direct, comfort them, and seal them unto the day of redemption. Now this Spirit is grieved by sin, Ephes. 4: 30; and his dwelling-place defiled there- by. 1 Cor. 6 : 19, and 3 : 17. Thoughts of this greatly sharpen the spiritual sense of sin in a recovering soul. He considers what light, what love, what joy, what con- solation, what privileges he has been made partaker of; what warnings to keep him from sinhe has received from the Spirit; and says within himself, " What have I done I whom have I grieved l whom have I provoked I what if the Lord should now, for my folly and ingratitude, ut- terly take his Holy Spirit from me ? what if I should have so grieved him that he will dwell in me no more, delight in me no more I What dismal darkness, yea, what utter ruin should I be left unto ! And what shame and confusion of face belong to me for my wretched ingratitude towards him !" This is the first thing that appears in the returning soul: a sincere sense of sin wrought in it by the Holy Ghost. And this a soul in the depths described must come to, if ever it expects deliverance. Let not such persons expect to have a renewed sense of mercy with- out a revived sense of sin. II. Hence proceeds an ingenuous, free, gracious ac- knowledgment of sin. lien may have a sense of sin, and yet.suffer it to lie burning as a fire shut up in their bones, to their continual disquietude, without coming to a free, soul -opening acknowledgment. Yea, confession may be made in general, with the mention of that very sin in which the soul is most entangled, and yet the soul come short of a due performance of this duty. Consider how the case stood with David: " When I kept
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