Beginning life anew, a vain wish.

really think you wish to repent, but I think you deceive yourself. What you wish for, is some of the results which you suppose would follow from repentance. This is what the desires of your mind rest upon; but repentance itself looks disagreeable and repulsive, and as you cannot gain those results in any other way, you are troubled and distressed."

Alonzo saw at once by a glance within, that this was true. He longed for peace of mind, relief from the reproaches of conscience,―the reputation and the standing of a Christian here, and assurance of safety and happiness hereafter; but he perceived that he did not long for penitence itself. It was a disagreeable means of obtaining a desirable end. He was silent for a few moments, and then he said, with a sigh,

'Oh, how I wish I could begin life anew. I would live in a very different manner from what I have done.”

"That remark shows how little you know, after all, of your own character, and of the way of salvation. It is not by purifying ourselves, and thus making ourselves fit for heaven, -or by any such ideas as should suggest the plan of beginning life anew. If you should begin, you would undoubtedly be again as you have been."

Alonzo saw that this was true. He was ashamed that he had expressed such a wish, and at length asked, in a sorrowful desponding tone, whether his pastor could say nothing to aid or guide him.

"I do not know that I can," was the reply. "The difficulty is not the want of knowledge of duty, but the want of a heart to do it. If you had the right desires, your difficulties would all be over in a moment, but as you have not, I cannot impart them. Since you are thus bent on sin,

God alone can change you.

"I will ask you, however, one question. Do you clearly understand what this verse means, For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish

Self righteousness.

Repairing an old house.

their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.'"

"No sir, I have never thought of it particularly."

"You feel in some degree the hopelessness of your condition, if God should leave you to yourself. - You have been neglecting your highest duty all your days, and in your efforts to seek religion, you have been endeavoring to set yourself right, with an idea of thus recommending yourself to God's favor. You have been discouraged and disheartened by this hopeless labor, for the farther you proceed in your efforts to repair your character, the more deep and extended do you find the proofs of its inherent corruption and depravity.

"You are like the man attempting to repair a house gone thoroughly to decay," continued the pastor, and as he said these words, he took down from a little set of shelves behind him, a small volume, from which he read the following passage.

"The sinner going about to establish a righteousness of his own, is like a man endeavoring to repair his house, which had thoroughly gone to decay When he begins, there is a tolerably fair exterior. It appears as if a few nails to tighten what is loose,-a little new flooring,-and here and there a fresh sill, will render all snug again; and that by means of these, together with paint and paper and white-wash, to give the proper superficial decoration, all will be well, or at least, that his building will be as good as his neighbor's. When he begins, however, he finds that there is a little more to be done than he had expected. The first board that he removes in order to replace it by a better, reveals one in a worse condition behind it. He drives a nail to tighten a clapboard, and it slumps into de-. cayed wood behind, taking no hold; he takes away more, by little and little, hoping at every removal, to come to the

The parallel case.

The true way of salvation.

end of what is unsound; but he finds that the more he does, the more disheartened and discouraged he feels, for his progress in learning the extent of the decay, keeps far in advance of his progress in repairing it, until at last, he finds to his consternation, that every beam is gone,—every rafter worm-eaten and decayed, the posts pulverized by the dry rot, and the foundations cracked and tottering. There is no point to start from, in making his repairs, no foundation to build upon. The restoration of the edifice to strength and beauty, can never be accomplished, and if it could, the expense would far exceed his pecuniary power. His building only looks the worse for his having broken its superficial continuity. He has but revealed the corruption which he never can remove or repair.'

"Now does not this correspond with your efforts and disappointments during the last few months?"

"And your case is hopeless if God leaves you to yourself. You cannot be saved. It is not that you cannot come and be the child of God if you wish to, but you cannot come, because you do not wish to.

"Now this being your condition, you need a Savior. There is one for you. If you wish, you can come and unite yourself with him. If you do, through his sufferings and death you may be freely forgiven. The responsibility, the liability, so to speak, for the past will be cut off. The Savior assumes all that burden and you may go free. By coming and giving yourself up wholly to him, you bring your past life as it were to a close, and begin a new spiritual life, which comes from union with him. The burden of past guilt is like a heavy chain, which you have been dragging along, until it is too heavy to be borne any longer. Union with Christ sunders it at a blow, and you go forward free and happy, forgiven for all the past, and for the future enjoying a new spiritual life, which you will draw

Alonzo renewed.

His walk home.

New desires.

from him. In a word, you abandon your own character, with the feelings with which a man would abandon a wreck, and take refuge with Jesus Christ who will receive you, and procure for you forgiveness for the past, and strength for the future, by means of his own righteousness and sufferings."

Alonzo had heard the way of salvation by Christ explained a thousand times before, but it always seemed a mysticism to him, as it always does to those who have never seen their sins and felt the utter hopelessness of their moral condition. As long as man is deceived about his true character, he needs no Savior. But when he detects

and his deep seated

himself, when his eyes are opened, corruptions are exposed,-when he feels the chains of sin holding him with a relentless gripe in hopeless bondage,then he finds that utter self-abandonment and flying for refuge to union with a Savior crucified for his sins making thus as it were, common cause with a divine Redeemer whose past sufferings may be of avail to ransom him, and who will supply new spiritual life to guide him in future, he finds this prospect opens to him a refuge just such as he needs.

As Alonzo walked home from this interview, his heart dwelt with delight on the love of Christ to men, in thus making arrangements for taking lost sinners into such an union with him. His heart was full. There was no struggling to feel this love and gratitude. It was the warm, spontaneous movement of his soul, which no struggling could have suppressed. He longed for an occasion to do something to evince his gratitude. It was evening, and he looked forward with delight to the opportunity of calling together his family to establish family prayers. He almost wished that the exercise was twice as embarrassing as it was, for it seemed to him that an opportunity to suffer some real pain or sacrifice, in the cause of his Savior, would be a high enjoyment to him, as a gratification of the new feelings of love which burned within him.

The great change.

Created anew.

Address to the reader.

As he walked along, his heart clung, as it were, to the Savior, with a feeling of quiet happiness. In former days, he thought he loved him, deceived, as we have already shown,-now he knew he loved him. He saw "God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," and the Savior whom he there saw was all in all.

When he opened his bible, old familiar passages, which had always seemed to him mystical and unintelligible, shone with new meaning

"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God by our Lord Jesus Christ." 'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,—but the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Alonzo made greater efforts to do his duty after this, than he did before, but it was for a different object and in a different way. Then, he was trying to establish his own righteousness, so as to fit himself for heaven. He abandoned this altogether now, having hope only in Christ,undeserved mercy in Christ. He however made great efforts to grow in grace and do good to others,—but it was now simply because he loved to do it. Then he made these efforts as an unpleasant but a supposed necessary means to a desired end. Now he hoped to secure that end in another way, and he made these efforts, because they were delightful on their own account. He was, in fact, a new creature; a NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST JESUS;" changed not by his vain efforts to establish his own righteousness, but by the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit, altering fundamentally the desires and affections of his inmost soul.

Reader!-in going forward through this volume, which will explain to you the way to do good, if your aim is secretly or openly to fit yourself, by your good deeds, for the