SERMON I. 2 COR. vi. 1. "We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." THIS passage of Holy Scripture, with which the Church meets us on the first Sunday in Lent, contains an earnest charge to all those who, of God's grace, have been made partakers of the heavenly calling, not to use carelessly their high privilege, or content themselves with rendering a slight and common measure of obedience. Bringing before them the cost and hazard at which the Gospel had been preached amongst them, it urges them, on their part, to use its discipline aright, by "perfecting holiness in the fear of God." It reminds us, in a word, of the absolute necessity laid on us of employing earnestly the means of grace now afforded us for resisting present temptation; and not excusing lightly any sin, whilst we build rashly on the chance of future amend ment. There was, no doubt, an especial fitness in the address of such a charge to the Church of the redeemed at Corinth; lest, in that learned and luxurious city, the Gospel of Christ should be received as some new form of speculative philosophy; or lest its gracious promises should be made the fatal excuse of a loose and sensual life. And no less appropriate is the caution to our peculiar character in this favoured place. To those who, in their signal opportunities for a religious life, have here "received" in large measure "the grace of God," it had need to be a matter of anxious watchfulness, that they "receive" it "not in vain :" lest, hedged in by the necessary proprieties of a religious life, and shining in the lustre of hereditary piety, they forget that they are hereby called to higher measures of personal holiness, and so perchance, instead, sink down contentedly into a speculative orthodoxy of faith, and a self-indulgent decency of living. Still more needful is it to those for whom now first the stricter bonds of early discipline have been relaxed, and to whose unascertained character there seems to be allowed a license of action which will be withheld in after-life. They are on every side invited to partake freely of present pleasures; while they are flattered with the promised opportunity of a future repentance. They deem it natural, that the thoughtlessness, or even the vice of youth, should be succeeded by a more becoming maturity; and their general acquaintance with the Gospel of salvation still further suggests to them an undefined hope of pardon and of grace. You, therefore, above all, must we "beseech, as workers together with Him, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain;" that you lose not your present opportunities of good, and inflict upon your souls abiding injury. And when the cunning tempter takes up the whisper of evil desire, and bids you "Rejoice, O young man, in the days of thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes," we must remind you, though it seem a stern message, that "for all these things God will bring you into judgment:" that, by the very constitution of our nature, these things have an enduring effect upon us; that they do not pass away, and leave the character what it was before; but that they stamp upon it the abiding features of guilt and shame. This is a point which deserves our closest attention. Sin appears to us in the separation of successive temptations, as a number of unconnected actions, which may at any moment be checked or interrupted: but the truth is, that every sin has certain inward consequences; that, not only our acceptance with a holy God, but our own moral constitution, is altered, by the commission of every act of iniquity; and that even if the sinner could at once be forgiven by God, by an act of sovereign and partial favour, still he would not be in the same condition that he was before; because there would remain in his very nature the accursed conse quences of past pollution. This is what shall now be put before you in detail; in the earnest hope, that when the offered cup of the sorceress sparkles before your eyes, you may turn away with loathing from the draught whose enchantments must work upon you so foul a transformation. A very few words will suffice to establish this first point-that the commission of sin has naturally a debasing effect upon the moral constitution; not even when passed away leaving the soul in its former condition, but, by the very necessity of the case, degrading and corrupting it. The slightest observation of ourselves or others must at once shew us that one sin paves the way for another; and that, not only by growing into a habit, and so providing for its own recurrence, but also by leading to the commission of other acts of iniquity. We see daily, that one sin prepares the soul which harbours it for the admission of evils different from itself in kind, and which have no other connexion with it than that they are of the same sinful na |