hortations to watchfulness and growth. Yet even now, our addresses to these unhappy persons would, I doubt not, be more affectionate, more solemn, and more effective, because more true, if we spoke to them as they are, erring, or, it may be, even deserting Christians, but still with Christ's mark upon them, still as sheep of His fold, not now for the first time to enter in, or to "come to Christ," but to return,—with much sorrow, labour, trouble, and distress of mind,—but still to return to Him into Whose fold they had been brought, Whose sheep they are—to return to Him the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls; to return to Him, before Whom they must come, as their Judge. And if they should most lamentably refuse our warning, still our own increased earnestness in warning them of the difficulty of the way which they have now to tread, may, by God's grace, deter others, and show them the fearfulness as well as the shame of "returning," after they have been washed, "to their wallowing in the mire."
But, as before said, the effect of our preaching, as it does not depend upon ourselves, so neither may it be our test of its soundness; and that, simply, because we can at the best know but a very small portion of its real effects or defects. Our concern is, whether it be according to God's word. And it behoves us much to ascertain, by patient, teachable study of that word with prayer, whether it be right to make the way of repentance so easy to those who, after Baptism, have turned away from God; whether we have any right at once to appropriate to them the gracious words with which our Saviour invited those who had never known Him, and so had never forsaken Him, and with which, through His Church, He still invites His true disciples to the participation of His own most blessed Body and Blood—"Come unto Me, ye that labour and are heavy-laden;" whether, having no fresh "Baptism for the remission of sins" to offer, no means of "renewing them to repentance," we have any right to apply to them the words which the Apostles used in inviting men for the first time into the ark of Christ; whether we are not thereby making broad the narrow way of life, and preaching "Peace, Peace," where, in
