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THE GLORY TO GOD FROM THE CONFESSION OF SIN.

REV. H. MELVILL, A.M.

ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH, BLOOMSBURY, JUNE 21, 1835.

"Give glory to the Lord your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness."-JEREMIAH, xiii. 16.

WE scarcely need observe, as the fact is too obvious to be easily overlooked, that the Infinite, glorious as he is in himself, can gather no accessions of glory from the contributions of his creatures. We are not at liberty to doubt, that whilst alone in the universe God was to the full as glorious as when he had surrounded himself with a multiform and dependent population. But the glory which is incapable of increase may be manifested in various degrees, and may be therefore spoken of as greater or less, in proportion as it is displayed and recognized. We are taught that the chief end of man is the glory of the Almighty: we do not suppose, as we have already intimated, that, either by creation or redemption, God can be made essentially more glorious; but only that creation or redemption are channels through which God exhibits his magnificent attributes; and thus shewing his glory may be spoken of as actually glorified.

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We wish, at the outset of our inquiry, to lay down this unquestionable truth, that the glory of the Creator must be strictly independent of the contributions of the creature; so that whatever the sense in which the creature glorifies the Creator, it is not that we would represent finite beings as either adding to, or abstracting from, what is in its own nature infinite and unchangeable. But the summons of our text is undoubtedly a summons to repentance. prophet having dwelt much on impending judgments, but still, as knowing those judgments might be averted, determines once more to try remonstrance and entreaty. The time fast approached when God, for their idolatry and profligacy, would give the Jews into the hands of the Chaldeans. The ungrateful and infidel nation flattered themselves, indeed, notwithstanding the ominous aspect of public affairs, that the city would maintain its ground against the enemy, that its footing would be secure, and that the cloud which overhung it would be quickly dispersed. Though almost at the base of the dark mountains, the captive Jews still thought they should walk the territory of independence and freedom: though the shadows of midnight were gathering fast around them, they expected the day-light would both continue and strengthen. Hence the prophet, well aware at once of their hope and its delusiveness,

• On behalf of the St. Ann's Society Schools.

exhorts them most pathetically to amendment of life, as the alone mode of removing the calamity, and beseeches them to give heed to what the Lord God had spoken, whilst there was yet a space between themselves and the dreary hills of calamity. It was not yet too late; their feet had not yet stumbled on the rough district of national disaster and trouble. Let them give glory to God, by confession of sin, by reformation of conduct, by a steady endeavour to yield obedience to the Lord; and the enemy should never prevail to their overthrow, and they should never be wanderers on the dark mountains, and the twilight in which they were already enveloped, should be that which waxes into day-break, and not that which wanes into midnight.

It thus appears evident, and upon this point we wish to fasten your attention, that the giving glory to God is used in our text as a synonymous expression with the repenting of sin, and with the reforming of life. We are persuaded you cannot examine with any carefulness the words of the passage, and fail to perceive that repentance is the duty which Jeremiah inculcates, and which if performed is to secure exemption from trouble near at hand. And when you have determined that the enjoined duty must be repentance, you are to observe it is defined as the giving glory to God: and thus connecting the duty with the definition, you reach the conclusion which we are anxious to examine, as affording a basis for that appeal which we have this day undertaken to make to your benevolence; namely, the conclusion, that thoroughly to repent is to give glory to God in the sense in which alone, as already declared, the Creator can be glorified by the creature.

In order, therefore, that we may compare the fair meaning of our text, and at the same time make way for a statement of the claims of that admirable institution of which I appear as the advocate, we will consider, in the first place, why to repent is to give glory to God; and examine, in the second place, the truths involved in the direction, that we give this glory to God "before our feet stumble upon the dark mountains."

Now, that repentance which is demanded of us in Scripture differs widely, as we may suppose you are aware, from the mere transient regret at having done wrong, and the passing resolve, made in our own strength, that we will abstain for the future from certain grosser and more flagrant misdoings. The repentance that conducts to salvation is nothing less than the thorough homage of the whole man, commencing with new views of the nature of sin, and its character as committed against a God of unbounded loving-kindness, and gradually overspreading the life and conversation, till all around may recognize that fresh creation which attests undeniably the divine interference. It would not be difficult to resolve this repentance into sundry constituent elements, and to shew under each that it yields glory to God. We must, however, content ourselves with taking two of the more prominent and broadly defined, and proving that so far they cause that in repenting man glorifies his Maker. We select the sense which a true penitent has of the evil of sin, and the confession, as well by action as by words, which that sense will dictate.

There is nothing which more strikingly distinguishes man in his natural state from man in his renewed state, than the difference in the estimates formed respectively of sin. The wonder of the natural man is, why sin should be

everlastingly punished; the wonder of the renewed man is, how a thing so heinous can ever find pardon. Unless the heart be in some degree the subject of those renovating operations, through which the Spirit of God restores the image which the first Adam lost, there is nothing which approaches to discernment of the infinite dishonour done by sin to the Almighty, and the consequent ruin which it deservedly fastens on man. We are quite sure that where there is freedom from actual infidelity—so that unconverted men assent to the fact, because matter of revelation, that the sin, even of a word or a thought, incurs eternal condemnation-there is the very strongest disposition to set down the fact as altogether unaccountable, and at least the secret, if not avowed inclination, to arraign the fairness of the dealing which apportions so heavy a doom to so light and transient an offence. There is no discovered proportion, but, on the contrary, a supposed vast disproportion, between the wrong done and the punishment awarded; so that where there is not the hardihood to avouch, there will be at least the passive entertainment of the sentiment, that God would be unrighteous in taking the vengeance that he determines.

But it is a widely different view which that man takes of sin within whose breast is excited the sorrow that worketh repentance. Almost the first truth that is apprehended by the mind when stirred by its native energy alone, is, that God would maintain the principles of the most rigid justice if he gave over body and soul everlastingly to torment. The gaze even of sin, yea of the very lightest and least heeded, striking as it were against every attribute of God, would convince us of this; and where can be the marvel, that in the rebound it should come down as vengeance which must sweep away the perpetrator? And if it be one of the earliest symptoms of genuine repentance, that there is entertained a sense of sin, as so dishonouring to God that it deserves unlimited punishment, there can be no difficulty in making good the identity between repentance and glorifying God. You must at once perceive, that to view sin in its true light, is to recognize the perfect justice of God in punishing, and his unbounded love in pardoning. Had there been no arrangement made on behalf of the fallen, so that the whole world were abandoned to the second and ever-during death, the thorough equity of the procedure would be felt and acknowledged by the man taught the evil nature of sin. But when informed that, as the result of the Mediator's interference, God can now be just and yet the justifier, his newlyacquired feelings as to what sin is and what sin deserves, will cause him to be overwhelmed with amazement and admiration. For, of course, in exact proportion that he observes and discerns the dishonour which sin does to God, will be his amazement that the sinner can be received back to favour. You have only, therefore, to contrast the different views which the obdurate man and the impenitent entertain of sin, as doing despite to the Almighty, and you cannot put from you the conclusion, that to summon men to repentance is to summon them to give glory to God. Let a man stand forth on the broad platform of creation, and take the survey of the evil introduced by human apostacy; let him examine, moreover, the disclosures which have been made to us of the future, the accounts furnished by inspired writers of allotments which must hereafter be entered upon; and we are

bound to say, that as the retinue of death and disaster wheel rapidly around, and he marks the mildew which is upon all the loveliness of earth, and observes how a worm gnaws at the root of whatever is fairest and most cherished, and then remembers, that if Scripture be true, a single act of disobedience, committed long ages back, entailed the blight and the misery, and fastened on human nature its heritage of woe-why we are bold to say of him, that hard thoughts of God will present themselves to his mind, and that at least he will leave it as an inexplicable problem, that in simply eating the forbidden fruit Adam should have thrown ruin among the unnumbered millions of his posterity. Thus God, so to speak, is dishonoured, an injurious suspicion being cast on the righteousness of his dealings with this our race.

And when from the present we advance to the future, and observe the alleged consequences of transgression extending themselves like lines of fire through all the spreadings of man's after existence, the stranger to repentance will be sensible of that recoil and jar of feeling which indicate the want of suspected equity in the procedure, or which at least marks a difficulty in reconciling this fearful abandonment of the creature with that yearning lovingkindness which we ought always to ascribe to the Creator; the presumed inconsistency between his actions and his attributes, being just the boldest accusation, which, whether openly or tacitly, can be advanced by the finite against the Infinite. If the sentiments excited in the unrenewed by the consequences, whether present or future, of sin, be dishonouring to God, it will necessarily follow that if just opposite sentiments be excited in the penitent man, they will give glory to God: and as assuredly as he has gazed on the results of disobedience, the man, stricken with a sense of the evil of sin, will give harbourage to feelings exactly the reverse of those cherished in the unconverted heart. He will not marvel that the might, and the beauty, and the happiness of human kind should have been dislocated and marred by Adam's transgression; for in that transgression he views the broken commandment and to speak of a trifling offence when the precept is divine, seems to him like speaking of a palpable impossibility; to insult, and yet the insult be other than heinous, being, as he imagines, to strike simultaneously against every point of the universe, and yet produce none but an inconsiderable result. He will see nothing at variance with the high attributes of God in the sentence of the hardened and impenitent, of the worm that never dieth; for he beholds in Deity a righteous Governor as well as a compassionate Father: therefore he feels that any doing away with the sternness of the retributive economy, would be shaking the pillars on which the throne of the Most High was fixed; or rather abstracting from the Most High himself those very characteristics which make him what he is the fountain of light and life and love to every district of the crowded immensity, the pattern and upholder of holiness in every department of the unlimited empire.

And thus his sentiments with regard to the consequences, whether present or future, of sin, are the exact opposites to those, which, entertained by the renewed man, are so clearly dishonouring to God. God appears righteous in taking vengeance: this is the discovery, the unhesitating conviction of the individual, in whose mind are the workings of genuine repentance. And if it be true, according to these shewings, that to summon a man to repent is to

exhort him to pass from the condition in which his notions of sin obscure all God's dealings, to one in which they illustrate those dealings-from the entertainment of the suspicion that the Creator may do wrong, to entertain the assurance that the Creator does right in exacting everlasting penalties; if this be true-and if further it be true, that he gives God glory who discovers and confesses him glorious in those very awardments which, to the mass of mankind, cause him to wear the aspect of a harsh, if not an unjust avenger; it is then clear to a demonstration, that repentance, as including a right sense of sin, must be identical with the glorifying God. And well, therefore, may the prophet, longing to bring a rebellious people to see and acknowledge the error of their ways, pour forth this as his exhortation-" Give glory to the Lord your God, before your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness."

But we have yet to speak of confession as well by action as by word, which the true penitent will make of his sin, and to show you that such confession gives glory to God. There is a remarkable instance in Holy Writ of this identity of the confession of sin, and the giving glory to God. You will remember that when the Israelites, under Joshua, had overthrown Jericho, Achan took of "the accursed thing," and the angef of the Lord was kindled against the congregation. The strictest commands had been given that the people should abstain from touching the spoil of the city, and the sternest threatenings uttered, that disobedience would bring a curse into the camp. Achan, however, tempted by the garments and the gold, obeyed not the injunction; and, accordingly, when Israel went next out to battle, they were smitten before the Canaanites. This led to inquiry, and the inquiry to detection. The Israelites were brought before the Lord, tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was taken; the tribe of Judah was brought family by family, then household by household, and then man by man; till at last the unerring finger of Omniscience pointed out Achan, the son of Zerah, as the troubler of Israel. The address of Joshua to the criminal, when thus singled from his fellows, is every way worthy our attention: "My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him." Making confession, you observe, is associated, or rather identified, with the giving God glory. When Achan owned that he had taken of the accursed thing, he publicly proclaimed that God had shown himself omniscient as having brought to light what no eye but his own had observed. The acknowledgement, moreover, was proof to the nation, that God had not smitten without cause, and that his threatenings always take effect; thus witnessing, so that the whole congregation would understand the testimony, to the justice, truth, and holiness of Jehovah. And if by making confession, and so declaring, that God had fastened on the criminal, Achan may be said to have set before his countrymen an exhibition of Deity, as the Omniscient one, and the just, and the mighty, and the faithful, why, it is easy to observe, that this guilty thing cowering under the weight of convicted inquiry, and shrinking from the reproaches of the nation whose victories his covetousness had arrested, was all the while instrumental to the magnifying God, and thus did what Joshua demanded-give God glory by acknowledging his wickedness.

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