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HOW
THE
SPIRIT
CONVINCES
OF
SIN.
597
" because
thou
has sold
thyself
to word
wickedness be-
fore the
Lord,
therefore
will
I.
brim
evil
upon thee
:
"'
thus the soul
to sin,
when
convince
by
the Spirit,
'"
T'
"
have
found
thee,
Q, my
enemy,
becaùse
thou
Bast been
"
the
lurking
evil in
my soul,
and
the occasion
of the
" contention
between.
G
od and
me,
and
I will
thrust thee
"
out."
The
soul does
not
till then
coudenìn itself
as
it
ought before
God.
So
Ephraim,
when
God
corrected
him,
discovered
his
guilt,
(Jeremiah
xxxi.
IS.). Here'
was
chastisement,
but
that
would
not
do
of
itself,
there-
fore
there
was
need
of
God's Spirit
to
turn the heart and
to rnake
him
repent of
his sin.
When
he
was
instructed, he
"
mourned,
and
smote upon
his
thigh," and humbled
himself before
God. Has God
discovered
sin
to
our
souls
under
any sorrows and rebukes of
his
providence?
Let
us
humble ourselves before
God
and
be
ashamed to
think
there should
be
any thing
in
our
bosoms
that
God
hates,
and
for which he
contendswith
us.
When the Spirit
of
God discovers
sin
it makes the soul
wait
at
the
foot of God
for pardon, for
peace, and
for'
deliverance.
The
soul
that
is
not
humble
under
the
hand
of
God
has
just
ground
to
fear
that
he has
not
yet
discovered the
reason
why
God's hand
is
lifted ùp
against
him.
If.God
strikes
us by his
providence,
we
are
stub
=.
born
creatures
in ourselves and ready, like the church
of
old,
"
to go on
frowardly
in
the
way
of our
own
heart
:"
this
is
the tendency
of
nature
;
but
when
God
by his
Spirit, lays sin in all its
dreadful colours
open to
our
view,
he shews how much
evil
there
is in
sin,
and
we
see
what wretched worthless worms
we
are
;
then
we
cannot
help throwing ourselves
clown
at
the foot
of
God,
and abasing ourselves
in
the
dust
before
him.
Look
back
upon what
you have felt
under
such
providences,
when
God
has frowned
upon
you
by
sickness,
and laid
you
under
a
load
of
trouble, and at
the
sanie time con-
vinced you
of
the
sin
that
occasioned
it.
Have you not
been
ready
to sink
into nothing,
and
wonder
that God
should have
so
much compassion
as to
correct
you
for'
sin
?
Then
you
waited at
the foot
of
the mercy
-seat
for
comfort,
and
every word
of
hope, every
whisper
of
the
Spirit
you have
attended
to.
how
sweet has
it bead
to you,
if
hope
has been
set
before you
!
You have
thought it worth
while to wait Iona upon
God
for
a
word
q