FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. THE GOODNESS OF GOD A MOTIVE TO REPENTANCE. ROMANS II. 4. Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repent ance, LENT, my brethren, is the season for repentance, the special period of the year in which our Church seeks to awaken in us a deep sorrow for sin, and the need we have to break its yoke from off our necks. Ash Wednesday the first day of Lent, in a solemn but too much neglected service, sets before us our duty at this time, which is, that we should one and all, return to the Lord our God with all contrition and meekness of heart, bewailing and lamenting our sinful life, acknowledging and confessing our offences, and seeking to bring forth worthy fruits of repentance. I do not say that we should perform this duty at no other time. A Christian will feel that repentance is a work that must employ a great deal of his time, he will never think it safe to let many months, many weeks, go by with out remembering his ways; without sorrowing in secret for his sins; without steadfastly purposing to lead a new, and better life. Each time he comes to the Lord's table he will assuredly examine himself, whether he repents him truly of his sins. Nay, I might say more—at the close of each day of our life we shall if we are wise, make that same examination, we shall never lie down to sleep at night without an act of repentance towards God; we shall look back ere we take our rest, into what we have done, or left undone since the morning, we shall seek out our trespasses, and bring them with self-condemnation before our Maker, and plead to be forgiven for Jesus Christ's sake. I repeat the confessing and forsaking of sin, which is repentance, is not a thing to be done once for all, and then got rid of, but rather the life long business of creatures so weak and corrupt as we are, who many times a day in thought, word, and deed, offend against the laws, and go contrary to the will of Him Whom it is our duty, and Whom we have promised to obey. Still for this very reason, because we are weak; because we are inclined to evil, and disinclined to good; because we find it irksome to us, to be ever calling our sins to remembrance; because we shrink from the pain, and mortification of humbling ourselves before God, and so I fear for the most part omit the daily examination of our lives-for this very reason, the use of this season of Lent is so valuable. Now, whether we like it or not, we must in some way or other be confronted with our sins. The services of our Church-the collect which we repeat during the whole of the forty days, the often mention of repentance, of the wages of sin, of the great judgment in sermons, are as it were so many warnings to us, not to delay the work in our own souls, so many calls to us to repent, to lay the axe to the root of our besetting sins, to trifle no longer with the day of grace; not to despise the goodness, and patience, and long suffering of God when He calleth us mercifully to amendment. And this brings me back to my text-There we have the true and only safe ground on which to invite you to repent the goodness of God-His forbearance-His longsuffering-His inexhaustible kindness-It is this that leadeth thee to repentance. I think, my brethren, that if we could understand something of this-if we could bring home each to his own heart-how kind God is to ushow patient He is with us-how long He bears with our provocation-how rich He is in mercy and loving-kindness, we should-the hardest and most careless of usbe won to a better mind; we should be constrained as it were by a strong inward drawing of our heart, to come unto Him, who deals so lovingly with us, to leave off those evil habits by which He is injured, to cast away our ungodliness and to give up ourselves to His service, to be ordered and governed by His Holy Spirit seeking ever afterwards His glory, and serving Him daily in our vocation with thanksgiving. Would that I could help by any words of mine today, to bring about at least in some of you such a result! Would that any here present who in times past have been despisers of the riches of God's goodness, and forbearance, and long suffering, seeing their error might continue in it no longer, might now find in that goodness its true use, a leading to effectual repentance ! Now the goodness of God exhibits itself to us in many ways. It will suffice for our purpose to-day, to note two chief channels by which it ordinarily approaches us, First, in the way of chastisements,-Secondly, in the way of blessings. If we look back upon our lives, if we remember all the way that the Lord our God hath led us, we shall surely find marks not a few of both of these. And first, to speak of chastisements :-disappointment of cherished hopes-blighted ambition-a coming down in our degree in life, a falling off in popularity, ceasing to hear ourselves well spoken of by all men-sickness long continued unfitting us for active work, compelling us to religious thoughts-death entering our homes, the abstraction by that great spoiler of what we doated on, and resulting from that, the gathering in of our affections and setting them on things above-who of us has not in some of these ways been visited by God and called into nearer and closer communion with Him? Very grievous no doubt at the time are such visitations, but they carry in them a seed of after good; they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. Yes! God's goodness shines if we would but see it, in the darkest trouble of our life, and never more so, than in the way He visits us for sin. Here again, I appeal to your recollection-you remember brethren at some time in your life being overtaken in a fault; punished swiftly and sharply, for some, transgression of God's holy law; made to feel at the very entrance of the broad way, that after all, sin is not that pleasant thing, which the serpent's whisper would make you think it. Can you doubt whence that punishment came? Can you doubt the reason why He sent it? Was it not the chastening of the Lord— the correction of your heavenly Father-of a God that loveth you-Who watcheth over you-Who dealeth with you, not as with rebels, not as with enemies, but as with sons. For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? -- And if in chastisements God's goodness has been manifested, how much more has it appeared in the blessings wherewith He has blessed us-blessings of many kinds, and coming to us from many quarters-blessings on the work of our hands, on our basket, and on our store; blessings in our homes; blessings in the love of kindred; in the duty of children; blessings in recovery from sickness; blessings in escape from danger; blessings in our deliverance from temptation; blessings in the great helps to a godly and religious life by which He has surrounded us; blessings in our English birth and our English bringing np; blessings in the Sabbath, and all other means of grace, that we enjoy so freely in this favoured country; blessings in the possession of God's pure word; blessings in the long time-honoured establishment of His Church in the midst of us. These are but a specimen, a few out of the many marks of God's goodness towards us, which occur to my mind-you can each add, I am sure, many more to the list; you can add your own peculiar blessings, the |