II. The divine power of sorrow.

1. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scripture, change of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart. This is the aim and meaning of all sorrow. The consequences of sin are meant to wean from sin. The penalty annexed to it is, in the first instance, corrective, not penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of this universe-the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts its hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson which it never will forget. Now, in the case of pain, this experience is seldom, if ever, in vain. There is little chance of a child forgetting that fire will burn, and that sharp steel will cut; but the moral lessons contained in the penalties annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly intended, though they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their application. The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries with them the sense of ill desert.

Sorrow, then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other words, when it works repentance. In the sorrow of the world, the obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if nothing cured it; heartache and trials come in vain; the history of life at last is what it was at first. The man is found erring where he erred before. The same course, begun with the certainty of the same desperate end which has taken place so often before.

They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind. Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains. The sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres of the past. Yet the present does

not become more wise. Not one resolution is made more firm, Grief is all. Whereas sorrow avails

nor one habit more holy. only when the past is converted into experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be forgotten.

2. Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.

The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals. Some men feel intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional, belonging to nervous temperament, rather than moral character. This is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a repentance "not repented of;" no transient, short-lived resolutions, but sustained resolve.

And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the repentance increases the grief diminishes. "I rejoice," says Paul, that "I made you sorry, though it were but for a time.” Grief for a time, repentance for ever. And few things more signally prove the wisdom of this Apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it did not urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging and examining it. So soon as grief had done its work, the Apostle was anxious to dry useless tears he even feared "lest haply such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow." "A true penitent," says Mr. Newman, "never forgives himself." O false estimate of the gospel of Christ, and of the heart of man! A proud remorse does not forgive itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner, realizing God's forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself. For what other purpose did St. Paul command the Church of Corinth to give ecclesiastical absolution, but in order to afford a symbol and assurance of the Divine pardon, in which the guilty man's grief should not be overwhelming, but that he should become reconciled to

himself. What is meant by the Publican's going down to his house justified, but that he felt at peace with himself and God?

3. It is sorrow with God-here called "godly sorrow;" in the margin, "sorrowing according to God."

God sees sin not in its consequences, but in itself; a thing infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. The grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept bitterly; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element of hope; and that sprang precisely from this-that he saw God in it all. Despair of self did not lead to despair of God.

This is the great, peculiar feature of this sorrow: God is there, accordingly self is less prominent. It is not a microscopic self-examination, nor a mourning in which self is ever uppermost my character gone; the greatness of my sin; the forfeiture of my salvation. The thought of God absorbs all that. I believe the feeling of true penitence would express itself in such words as these :-There is a righteousness, though I have not attained it. There is a purity, and a love, and a beauty, though my life exhibits little of it. In that I can rejoice. Of that I can feel the surpassing loveliness. doings? They are worthless, I cannot endure to think of them. I am not thinking of them. I have something else to think of. There, there; in that life I see it. And so the Christian—gazing not on what he is, but on what he desires to be-dares in penitence to say, That righteousness is mine: dares, even when the recollection of his sin is most vivid and most poignant, to say with Peter, thinking less of himself than of God, and sorrowing as it were with God-"Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee."

My

LECTURE LII.

2 CORINTHIANS, vii. 11-16.-Fanuary 30, 1853.

O-DAY we touch upon the last of those notices respecting

St. Paul's treatment of the incestuous Corinthian, which have so repeatedly interwoven themselves with the argument of the First and Second Epistles. The general subject has successively brought before us the nature of human punishment, as not being merely reformatory, nor exemplary, nor for safety's sake, but also as being declarative of the indignation of society, and, through society, of the indignation of God against sin. Again, it has taught us to consider excommunication and absolution, and what these ecclesiastical words express; and also to consider the power of binding and loosing lodged in Humanity --an actual and awful power, often used with fearful injustice and evil results: as when a person, cut off for ever from return, is driven to despair, "swallowed up with overmuch sorrow."

Now these are real powers, dispute as men may about the ecclesiastical meaning to be given to them. Every one daily, and often unconsciously, exercises them; and to do this rightly is no easy task for it is difficult to punish wisely, and it is equally difficult to forgive wisely. It is rare even that we rebuke in a true and prudent spirit. Hence the whole history of St. Paul's dealing with this offender is one of exceeding value, being so full of wisdom, firmness, justice, and exquisite tenderness. Most truly it is an inexhaustible subject! The portion of it which we shall consider to-day is the Christian manner of rebuke. We take two points :

I. The spirit of apostolical rebuke.

II. The apostolical doctrine of repentance.

I. The spirit of apostolical rebuke. It was marked by unflinching severity: "I do not repent; . . . for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing." St. Paul rejoiced, then, in the pain he had inflicted: his censure had not been weak: severely, truthfully he had rebuked. Let us inquire the reason of this joy. St. Paul rejoiced because the pain was transitory, while the good was permanent; because the sorrow was for a time, but the blessing for ever; because the suffering was in this world, but the salvation for eternity: for the sinner had been delivered to "Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." The criminal had undergone public shame and public humiliation; his had been private grief, and many searchings of heart: and all this had not only taught him a lesson which never could be forgotten, and strengthened him by terrible discipline against future weakness, but also had set up for the Corinthians a higher standard, and vindicated the purity of Christian life and the dignity of the Christian Church. This was the pain, and these were its results. Seeing these results, St. Paul steadily contemplated the necessary suffering.

Let us now infer from this a great truth—the misfortune of non-detection. They who have done wrong congratulate themselves upon not being found out. Boys sin by disobedience; men commit crimes against society, and their natural impulse is to hush all up, and if what they have done is undiscovered, to consider it a happy escape. Now the worst misfortune that can happen is to sin and to escape detection: shame and sorrow do God's work, as nothing else can do it.