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advancement of his glory, and the present and eternal welfare of those who are its subjects. Blessed are they who thus mourn, for they shall be comforted. But let us specify particulars, that we may understand the nature of this sorrow aright. In the first place, blessed are they who thus mourn for themselves. We have no opinion of that man's religion which has to do with every one but himself; who laments over everybody's failings but his own; who can discover the beam which is in his neighbour's eye, but cannot perceive the mote which is in his own eye. True it is, that the real Christian must sigh and cry over national sins; the abominations that are done in the land. When he beholds transgressors, in whatever walk or state of society he discovers them, he must be grieved. But no sorrow for the sins of others can be after a godly sort, unless we have first been sorry for our own sins. Here the sorrow of the mourner must begin, whose mourning is entitled to the blessing spoken of in the text. There must be a mourning for sin; original and contracted sin; personal and national sin. There must be the mourning of genuine repentance; a true contrition; the anguish of the broken and contrite heart. O how deep, how agonizing must it be, when the sorrow of the parent, bereaved of his first-born, his only child, is presented as an illustration of it! "They shall behold Him whom they have pierced, and mourn, and shall be in bitterness as one is in bitterness for his first-born, and mourn for him as one that mourneth for his only child." The true penitent, in the day when he is first convinced of sin, and perceives its malignant nature, its dreadful aggravation in the sight of the divine love, in the sight of divine purity and justice, feels as though there were no other in the universe, save himself, unfallen; he feels as though the sins of all other men were nothing and vanity, compared with his sin; the load of his guilt presses upon him as a burden too heavy to be borne; he acknowledges himself to be the chief of sinners; and in the anguish of his spirit thus calls upon God: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." From various sources the sorrow of the true penitent springs; and from various considerations his grief on account of sin is deepened and augmented. He sees sin in its native odiousness; as the abominable thing which the soul of God hates. He sees sin as the cause of all the degradation, and suffering, and agony, and death, which the Redeemer condescended to endure. He sees sin as that which, if it be not removed in its presence, in its pollution, will for ever separate him from God, and shut him up at length in hell. O what an odious, loathsome, detestable thing is sin now; the sin in which he was once delighting; the sin which he once rolled as a sweet morsel beneath his tongue! His besetting sin-that which was dear to him as his right eye, or his right hand-he cuts it off, and casts it from him; while with a broken heart he exclaims, loathing himself, bemoaning his sad condition-" I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou Eternal? Behold I am vile; I loathe myself, and repent in dust and ashes. God be merciful to me a sinner."

But let it not be imagined, that this mourning for sin is confined to the period of the sinner's first conviction, and that the joy of pardon is succeeded by no future sorrow. No, he can never cease to mourn, even to the end of life, for the remembrance of the time past. He can never cease to weep when he is made to possess, even in mature age, the sins of his youth; when he thinks upon those days of rebellion, of folly, and of crime. While there is, throughout the whole

of his mortal pilgrimage, remains of sin in the breast of the holiest and most devoted man, with which he must still engage, and maintain a perpetual struggle -over this he must continually mourn. Take the change in the case of Peter, in the case of Paul, as an example and illustration of this. O what unhallowed passions, O how many omissions; what idle words, what vain thoughts, what innumerable cases of positive and obvious sin in the heart and in the life, in the daily intercourse and conduct, of the most devoted of mankind! What a law in the members, continually warring against the law of the mind; and often bringing a Christian to loathe himself on account of them, bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. It is for this that he struggles, and agonizes, and pants for deliverance, and cries, “O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Then what cause has he to mourn over his unfaithfulness, his inconstancy, his sluggishness to all that is good, his reluctance oft-times to believe! His backwardness to speak for God; his attachment to the creature; his want of spirituality; the cleaving of his spirit to the dust-these are the sources of sorrow ever appointed to the man of God. And often they render the record of his experience, like the roll of the prophet, which was written within and without, with weeping, and lamentation, and woe. But blessed are they who mourn thus, and whose sorrow has such a source; "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

In the second place, blessed are they who mourn for their Christian brethren. They who mourn with the sorrow and sympathy of brotherly affection and Christian love. "A new commandment," says Christ, "I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, so do ye also love one another." And this is one of the most obvious expressions of that love, in the exercise of this sympathy, the sympathy which this love will ever maintain—to bear one another's burdens, and thus to fulfil this law of Christ. Blessed are they, then, that mourn with their sorrowing brethren, that are afflicted in their afflictions, and weep with them that weep; and whose religion, pure and undefiled before God, is this to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. But not only are the afflictions of the brethren a source of sorrow to the Christian, but he mourns over their sins, their follies, their failings, their falls. To see a fair profession blasted by some unhappy indiscretion; to see a character, hitherto unsullied, tarnished by some vile sin; to see the cause he is so anxious to promote injured and retarded, by one who ought to have been its most efficient advocate; to see the Redeemer crucified in the very house of his friend; to see him crucified afresh by his own disciples, and held up to the scorn of an infidel and blaspheming world: O, who that loves the Saviour but must mourn for this? Blessed are they who thus mourn, for they shall be comforted.

In the third place, blessed are they who mourn for the Church; who lament over the desolations of the Church; of the diminution of her numbers; the desertion of her temples; the neglect of her ordinances; the decline of her graces; the death of her ministers; the attacks of her enemies; the contentions of her members; the treachery of her professed and seeming friends. All these are sources of sorrow to the Christian: in all these things he must take a deep and painful interest. As he never ceases to pray for the peace of Jerusalem,

and only desires the prosperity of such as love her, so he must ever mourn when she is torn by inward contentions, and is impaired and injured in her strength, or tarnished in her glory, or impeded in her triumphs, though it be but a moment, by the attacks of her foes. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning: if I remember not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

Still further, blessed are they that mourn for the world. Deeply must the eye of the godly man affect his heart, when he looks abroad and sees the universal prevalence of impiety, irreligion, and crime; the neglect and contempt of God among all ranks and classes of society; the vice and iniquity that abound in the streets of our crowded cities-the great marts of merchandizeand that fills the land in the length and breadth of it, from the palace to the cottage. What ignorance; what recklessness; what impiety; what cursing and swearing; what sabbath-breaking; what acts of injustice; what deeds of enormity; what guilt! O how hideous, how disgusting, how revolting the scene! His spirit is stirred within him with grief as he beholds populous and mighty regions of this fair world wholly given to idolatry. With the Psalmist, as he beholds these things, " rivers of water run down his eyes, because men keep not the law of God." He exclaims with the prophet, "O that mine head were waters, and mine eyes fountains of tears, that I might weep day and night for the sins of the daughter of my people;" for the infatuated multitudes of a Christian land, who are perishing in their sins, and pressing, with a madness that might make angels weep, down the broad road that leadeth to destruction. We might proceed much further in illustrating the various sources of godly sorrow; of that mourning which the Christian must ever feel, and with which the blessing of the text is inseparably attached. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

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But, in the second place, wHAT IS THE BLESSEDNESS OF THAT FORT WHICH THE REDEEMER HERE ASSURES US IS ATTACHED TO THIS MOURNING?

In the first place, we assert it is present and positive. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." They have the assurance of the pardon of sin. 66 Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned." It is to such that Jehovah speaks when he says, “Behold I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions." The sacrifices of God, what are they? The riches and costly things, the purchase of this world's silver and gold? No. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Despise it! No; for though he is "the high and the holy One that inhabiteth eternity," yet will he dwell in such a heart; that is the residence of his Spirit.

"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Herein is the consolation of the saints: they shall be comforted; for their's are the consolations of the Gospel, in all their richness, in all their variety, in all their adaptation, in all their intimacy, in all their exceeding great and precious promises; they are all yea and amen in Christ Jesus, to the glory of God. The dispensation of the Gospel and the ministry of mercy are especially to them. "The Spirit

of the Lord God is upon me," said the Redeemer when he opened his commission and commenced his ministry, "because he hath appointed me to preach glad tidings unto the meek, to bind up the broken heart,"-to strengthen thy bruised reed, to fan thy smoking flax, and to confirm and establish thee, trembling Christian; to bind up thy broken heart, and pour into it the balm of gladness and joy. "He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn:" the day of vengeance is not for them; but the comfort, the consolation, the soothing and sustaining influence of the ministry of reconciliation and peace. They are blessed; for in their sorrow they deeply resemble Christ, and the saints, and the holy and the excellent of all ages of the world, and all dispensations of the Church. What was Jesus? A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. What are these afflictions, these sorrows, these tears? Are you not, brethren, accomplishing thus the same afflictions which were accomplished in your brethren, who in successive generations have gone before you? Like you, it was through much tribulation they entered the kingdom; they knew what sadness and what sorrows meant: their tears were put into the Almighty's bottle. But now they "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb;" "they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne leads them, and God himself has wiped away all tears from their eyes." Be ye followers of them, then, who through faith and patience thus inherit the promises.

And then, they who thus mourn are blessed; for there is a salutary influence in sanctified affliction. Their sorrow is blessed, because it has an immediate tendency to promote their highest interest and their truest welfare. It softens the heart, and subdues its obduracy; it elevates the soul; it detaches the man from the creature, from sublunary sources and scenes of consolation and joy, and turns him to the only unfailing source. It endears to him the throne of the heavenly grace, and gives him an experience of the sustaining power of the everlasting arm; so that he feels in his own blessed experience the rich enjoyment, that God is a satisfying portion to them that trust in him, and that there is no want to them that look to him for succour. He that goeth forth weeping thus, bears precious seed; and seed that cannot be lost; and seed that must be productive, and yield an ample harvest: "He that goeth forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Though sorrow may endure for a night," and, like the Psalmist, through the darkness of the night he may "wet his couch with his tears;" but "joy will come in the morning," from the lifting up the light of his heavenly Father's countenance, to chase away his gloom.

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Thus we have observed that there is present and positive blessings connected with this mourning. But, secondly, there are comparative and contrasted blessings connected with this sorrow. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." You observe, in the first place, that the situation of such is less dangerous than that of others. Who is it that stands in slippery places? Not the mourner who feels the burden of guilt, and laments his worthlessness; who is conscious of his weakness, and is looking to the throne of God for pardon,

for succour, and salvation. Who is it that stands in slippery places? The man whose path is bright, and strewed with flowers; who is rolling in affluence, has all that his heart can wish, and says to his gold, "Thou art my God." The man who is in the midst of scenes of mirth and gaiety, and who is saying, Rejoice O young man in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and sight of thine eyes”that is the man that stands in slippery places. But he that is humble and lowly in penitential sorrow and godly grief, he is secure; the everlasting arms are around him; he is, as it were, in the hollow of the Almighty's hand, safe as the apple of his eye.

And then, still further, the state of such as mourn after this godly sort, is less equivocal than that of others. When men go on in a course of uninterrupted prosperity and joy, when they are strangers to sorrow and grief, when all is as their heart could wish, there is reason to apprehend that all is not right as it regards their state before God: for it is written, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Now if we endure chastening, then the Lord dealeth with us as his children: "What son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?" "If we be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers," our experience does not correspond with the people of God: we have reason to apprehend then, that all is not right, as it regards us, before him for if we be without chastisement, "then are we bastards and not sons." And their situation is less critical and dangerous, as their state is less equivocal and doubtful. Sanctified affliction is a sure and certain evidence of our adoption, that we are children. When the Father corrects his children, and sends his chastisements, he sanctifies the discipline.

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Then, in the third place, this blessedness is peculiar to themselves. are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." There are future consolations in store, of which the present is but the foretaste. For they that mourn thus, shall finally enjoy the blessing of the renewed and sanctified nature, when having laid aside the garments of mortality, they shall enter into the kingdom prepared for them from before the foundation of the world, and shall be satisfied, waking up in his likeness. They shall be comforted with the fulness of the eternal fruition of the blessed, when the triumph of the Church and the glory of all things shall be complete: when He whom they love shall appear, they shall be like him, for they shall see him as he is. O let us seek, then, this godly sorrow let us pronounce those that mourn blessed, whose sorrow springs from such a source, and is sanctified by such an efficacious influence. Amen.

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