excellence of thought and purpose, even in the bud. The companion of the hardened must, like them, "make his neck iron, and his brow brass," and his heart "like the nether millstone," or they will not tolerate his scruples, nor can he abide their daring,

3. Sear not conscience.

Let its dictates be unto you as the voice of . God. Let its warnings be unto you as his hand, holding you back from sin and death. Let its injunctions be as "the .cords of his love," drawing you to holiness and heaven. You may, by resistance, impair its force. You may cause its voice to be dumb forever. But remember, that when it ceaseth to speak, your heart will become as adamant.

Finally, Resist not convictions.

These are the beginnings of good. They are God's own strivings with you for your salvation. They cannot be neutral in their character and consequences. They either benefit or injure. They usually prove either "the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death." Improved and followed up, they will "renew a right spirit within you." "Resisted and repelled, they may return no more! and then, God's Spirit withdrawn, you perish!

Our LAST GENERAL ADMONITION IS THIS:

You must seek positive good.

It is idle to expect that it will come to you as by chance or by miracle--that you will find it as your feet carelessly wander in the

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"highway of life," or that " a sign from heaven" will aid you to its attainment. No, my reader, put yourself in the way of influence; go where moral good may reasonably be expected; listen to the faithful counsellings of private friendship, affection, and piety;, even from them there may come to you the " word in season," and that word in season, "behold how good it is!" The Scriptures, why should they be unto you as a sealed book and a dead letter?” Were they not "written for your learning also, that you, through patience and comfort, might have hope?" "Search them," then, and see if to you they testify not convincingly of God's blessed Son. See if to you they show no record of mercy, and no charter of salvation. And in the house of God, there seek the blessing of God, for there hath he promised his blessing, even life forevermore. There he is more especially present, and there does he manifest himself as he doth not unto the world. "Seek him" there," where he may be found; call upon him" there," where he is near."

We can conceive of impenitency settling and thickening over the soul of him who spurns the appointed means of melioration—who disdains to pray, to read, to hear, to "wait upon God," but never, never over him whose Bible is his text-book, whose mercy-seat his refuge, and whose feet make haste to the sanctuary of God. He cannot become worse; he must become better. His soul shall not be given

over to desolation. It shall rather be as a

watered garden. "God shall make it soft with the drop of rain, and bless the increase of it."

But what and if this preventive discipline which we have thus sketched be commended to you all too late? What and if the mischief be already done? the heart partially indurated, yea, made as an adamant stone? What then? Are you shut up in impenitency? Is your doom sealed forever? Nay, my readers, there is a remedy the Gospel is a remedial system; it was meant for the hard in heart; its Author came "to seek and to save even that which was morally lost"-" to call sinners, yea, even the chief of sinners, to repentance." Even for you there is hope, but hope only through effort. There is One who can break the stony heart, and "take it away and give you a heart of flesh." There is One who can raise the spiritually dead to life. Call upon Him with the importunity of prayer. Although seemingly unheard, yet pray again and again the more earnestly. Hope even against hope. In the very effort and act of prayer, your stony heart will become "broken and contrite;" and lo, for your encouragement it is written, "A broken and contrite heart, O God, wilt thou not despise."

CHAPTER IX.

CONCLUSION.

OUR intended survey of the heart in its state by nature is now completed. It might have been easily, perhaps profitably, extended. Other fields, not unworthy of observation, might have been examined; views might have been taken from other points, and the sketches here presented might have been more ample in outline and more perfect in filling up. Enough, however, it is trusted, has been presented, to give a faithful picture of its general condition. We have seen its surface blighted and withered by sin; neglected by its possessors; uncheered by the refreshing dews of grace. To none could the view be pleasing. We like not to look upon the traces of desolation and decay. The most stately ruins are ruins still; and the ideas awakened by their contemplation, although interesting, are still sad and painful. That they are not more so, in the case of the works of creation and the monuments of human art, must be ascribed to the fact that we are mere spectators; with an interest in them so remote as to be wholly unconnected with feeling, while even the sadness that steals upon us is almost lost in the sublimity and awe which

they inspire. But it is not so with the moral ruin caused by sin, consequent on the fall. This concerns us individually. It is the ruin, not only of our common, but of our personal nature. We are individually the sufferers. It is the heritage of our own heart that is laid waste. Hence the common reluctance to look upon our natural condition as it is. The natural man, shocked at the view, boldly denies its correctness; the spiritual man, aware of its fidelity, is ready to weep as he beholds it. Yet to all it may be useful. True philosophy teaches us to look upon things as they are, instead of fancying them what we desire them to be; to admit facts when their evidences are clear, how painful soever be the inferences; and to rise above that moral cowardice which is afraid to look an evil fairly in the face, or to measure it in its length and breadth. Had God provided, and could man employ, no remedy for moral evil, then "ignorance were bliss!" but as a remedy has been provided, and is commensurate with the requirement, the survey of fallen nature, nature in ruins, cannot lead us to despair, but will only point us to the Great Restorer. To the unrenewed, a just delineation of their state may, "through prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Christ," lead to a blessed and renovating change; while believers," renewed in the temper and spirit of their minds" by this retrospect of a state which once was theirs, may be excited to holy gratitude by the thought