hearers may not only recall to their recollection their sins and iniquities, but may, also, recall them with tears of penitential sorrow; that, penetrated with heartfelt contrition, they may betake themselves to God their Father, humbly imploring him to pluck from the soul the poisoned stings of sin.
The zeal of the pastor should not, however, content itself with sketching the turpitude of sin; it should also depict the unworthiness and baseness of man, who, rottenness and corruption that he is, dares to outrage the majesty of God, which no created intelligence can comprehend, and his transcendant dignity, which no created tongue can describe. This picture of the baseness of man borrows a deeper shade from the consideration, that God has created us; that he has redeemed us; and that his goodness has heaped upon us countless blessings, the value of which is not to be appreciated. And why thus grossly outrage God? That, estranged from our Father, the supreme good, and lured by the base rewards of sin, we may devote ourselves to the devil, to become his wretched slaves. Language is inadequate to describe the cruel tyranny which he exercises over those, who, having shaken off the sweet yoke of Christ, and having broken the bond of love which binds the soul to God our Father, have gone over to their relentless enemy, the devil. Therefore, is he called in Scripture, " The prince and ruler of this world," [1] " the prince of darkness," [2] " and king over all the children of pride;" [3] and to those who are thus the victims of his tyranny, apply with great truth these words of Isaias: " O Lord our God, other lords besides thee have had dominion over us." [4]
Are we so insensible as to be unmoved by the base violation of the sacred covenant which bound us to God? If so, let our insensibility yield, at least, to the calamities and miseries into which sin plunges its votaries. It violates the sanctity of the soul, which is wedded to Jesus Christ; it profanes the temple of the living God; and it thus involves the sinner in the awful denunciation conveyed by the Apostle in these words: " If any violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy." [5] Innumerable are the evils of which sin is the poisoned source; their magnitude is thus expressed by David: " There is no health in my flesh, because of thy wrath; there is no peace for my bones, because of my sins." [6] He marks the virulence of the disease, by declaring that it left no part of his frame uninfected; the poison of sin entered even into his very bones; in other words, it infected his understanding, and his will, the two great faculties of the soul. Describing this wide-spreading and destructive contagion, the sacred Scriptures designate sinners by " the lame," " the deaf," " the dumb," " the paralyzed."
But, besides the anguish which he felt on account of the wickedness of his sins, David was afflicted yet more by the
