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ing spot or wrinkle or any such thing, | and know that you have a heart of but that it should be holy and without stone, and that you need to have a blemish."

Behold then from Almighty God I proclaim this promise unto you, "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, however great, and from all your idols, however they may have provoked the Lord to jealousy, will I cleanse you." Will you not lift up your hearts to God and say, “O my God, let this be verified in me this night?" Will you hear such a promise made from Almighty God, and not endeavour to lay hold of it, and not endeavour to obtain an interest in it? I charge you all-do not hear man now-hear Almighty God-it is the word not of man but of God himself. I beg of God to apply it with power to our souls, that you may be the happy persons in whom this promise may be fulfilled this very night.

Next, he will send you the Holy Spirit to renew your hearts. Is there one here who has not a heart of stone? You can weep and mourn on account of temporal affliction; but on account of the state of your souls before God, and your sins, do you find it an easy thing to go and weep at the throne of grace? Do you find that if you set apart a day for penitence, you have not a hard heart, a heart of stone? Take your very prayers that you offered this morning, and tell me whether you have not a heart of stone? You know, perhaps, more or less what a broken heart is as it respects temporal sorrow; but do you know what it is to have a broken and contrite heart on account of sin? I say, if you will but look back and see how little you have ever wept for sin-how little you have ever resembled him who smote upon his breast and cried for mercy-how little you have ever blushed and been confounded before God on account of your iniquities and abominations, you will see

heart of flesh given to you, a heart of flesh tender, contrite, and abased before God in dust and ashes. Now then I say again, God promises this, that his Holy Spirit shall be poured out upon you to give it. And mark, does he promise to the Jews that they shall come to him with weeping and with supplications, that they shall mourn and be in bitterness as one that mourneth for his first born? Does he promise to them that they shall remember their evil ways and their doings that were not good, and be ashamed at the view of their iniquities and abominations? I say, does he promise this to them, and will he not fulfil it to us? He will fulfil it—he will take away the heart of stone! and I trust there are many here who can bear testimony, and set to their seal that God is true in relation to the manner, in which he will give us a heart of flesh.

My brethren, I declare unto you from the Lord, that if you only look unto him "Old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new." I tell you that your understandings shall be enlightened-your rebellious will shall be subdued-your unhallowed affections shall be sanctified. I tell you that all, not only your views of religion, but the very inmost desires of your heart, shall be changed. Yes, your hopes and fears, your joys and sorrows shall henceforth arise from heavenly views. And as to earthly things, they shall, in comparison, lose their power over you. In a word, the Lord Jesus Christ will renew you after the divine image in righteousness and true holiness; and "He will be to you a God, and you shall be his people." O, what a blessed change is here! Is there one of you that does not desire to experience it? Do look up to God. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart

out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh." O lift up your hearts to God, and say, "Lord be it unto me according to thy will.”

Further, he will give you the Holy Spirit to sanctify and help you. What you have hitherto heard has been described figuratively, "cleansing with water," " taking away a heart of stone;" but here every thing is spoken plainly and simply, in the plainest language, that God will give his Spirit unto you, and cause you "To walk in his statutes and keep his judgments." Now God has promised that he will write his law upon your hearts -that he will put it in your inward parts-that he will renew you in your inward man—and that you shall have such a constraining influence on your souls, as shall overcome all your natural reluctance, and which shall bring you truly to the foot of the cross.

Now, methinks some one will say how can this be-"I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and keep my judgements?" And how will the Spirit of God operate in this way upon you? You ask a question which no man living can answer: but yet I will give you something, by way of analogy, that may give you a tolerable conception of it. The new creation I apprehend very much resembles the old creation. When God formed the universe he gave to the heavenly bodies an impulse; but the sun being in the centre of these bodies (I speak only of our own sphere) by its attractive influence draws every one of those bodies towards it, and by the union of those two powers, I mean centrifugal and centripetal, by the union of those two powers, they are kept in their respective orbits and continually reflect the glory of the sun that shines upon them. Now what is the new creation? In our regeneration God gives a new impulse to the soul. There is the Sun of Righteousness in

the centre, whose attractive influence we feel, and thus we are all of us kept in our respective orbits, performing every one of us our destined course, and reflecting every one the light of our glorious luminary to the praise and glory of our God. Now that is my view of the influence of the Holy Spirit on the soul, and I will show you, as far as I am able to show you, how it is that the Spirit of God works upon the soul, by giving it a divine impulse, by causing that attractive power to operate, and thus keeping us in our destined orbits, and making us to reflect the light of God's glory in the whole of our life and conversation.

But now how come we to know any thing of the heavenly bodies? By the courses which they perform. We say God has done this, not chance. How do we know respecting the Christian in his course? Is he walking as a natural man? Not at all, I say there is a greater hand than man's used. A new direction is given to the man altogether, and he is kept shining in the path which God has assigned him; seeing that, I am constrained to say with the Apostle, "Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit." Now, then, this is promised to you. The Holy Spirit, I say again, is promised to you at this time for this blessed end, to cleanse you from your guilt, to renew your hearts, and to sanctify your minds; and now shall I not hope that some at least will be crying to God?

But mark, here is something of great importance. I will read the text in a way that you have not yet seen it. "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out o1

your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." Not one condition here-nothing like it. All that God requires is, I will be enquired of to do these things-that you shall go to him and pray to him, but there is no condition whatever. It is all I WILL-I WILL-I WILL. Is there any one of you who has a reluctant heart when God says I will lead you into all these benefits? Will you be saying no, I do not desire them, I would rather be without them? Methinks I heard one there, and another there, saying to every one of these words, "I will, I will, O my God, I answer amen, amen, amen, let it be unto me even as thou wilt." Dear brethren, is not this reasonable? Will you provoke Almighty God to say in the last day as our blessed Saviour said unto the Jews, "How often would I have gathered you together eyen as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not." Dear brethren, dear brethren, let it not be so this evening, but let every heart respond to what I have said and cry unto God, amen, amen.

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Now in order to improve this subject, there are two things that I would urge. I would say, first of all, lay hold of these promises yourselves, and then I would say endeavour to promote the acceptance of them among the Jews.

I say first of all, lay hold of these promises yourselves. My dear brethren, do I stand up here in order to preach for the Jews? I preach for yourselves. I must give an account to God, and you must give an account to God of what you hear to-night. My first object is the salvation of your souls, and I would rather have one soul

brought to God, than all the wealth that all of you possess. That is my first object; and let it be yours, my dear brethren. For consider, if you do not experience this change—if you are not cleansed from your guilt-if you are not cleansed from your idols, is it possible that you should be happy in another world? Do you think you can enjoy heaven if you go there with a heart of stone, instead of a heart of flesh? Do you think you can ever be happy if you do not have these great and precious promises? I must charge every one of you in the name of the Great High God that in the day of judgment you shall surely hear again respecting what you are hearing now, and you shall give an account of it to God. Dear brethren, do not let me use such language as that I am speaking on these great and precious promises. I would invite you and entreat you with floods of tears, that you open your hearts now to receive your God and all his gracious communications. Do, dear brethren, lift up your hearts to God; for the voice of man is nothing, it is only as it is accompanied by the Spirit of God, that it can do the least good whatever; lift up your heart to God, "O my God, let this word be quick and powerful-let it be sharper than a two edged sword-let it search my heart-let it work all the good pleasure of thy goodness there;" and, dear brethren, we shall experience what, perhaps, we never experienced before, the mighty workings of God's power, such as raised Christ himself from the dead. This I say is my first argument. I would not for the world come to preach about the conversion of others without seeking first of all the conversion and salvation of your souls; and I cannot but hope that before you go to bed this night, you will think again of these words, "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all

your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you," and so on, I will, I will, I will. I cannot but hope that many of you this night shall say, O, my God, I have never yet said, Amen with sincerity of heart to these great and precious promises, but now I say, Amen, Amen, Amen-and I will add, Amen too.

Now then let me endeavour to promote the reception of these promises among the Jews. I must say it is a shame and a scandal to the Christian world that they have thought so little of the Jews; that although God has spoken in such terms as these, they have never thought or wished that they may receive these things. On the contrary, when a Society arose for the purpose of endeavouring to call the attention of the Jews to their own writings, nothing but contempt was poured upon them; and even at this day how many Christians are there who slight it altogether; and even those who retain it are cold and lukewarm in it. But what is the reason of this? Christians are ready to say this is God's work and we cannot interfere in it, and we cannot do it. do not call you to interfere about their restoration to their own land, you may leave that to God,—but what I want is, the conversion of their souls, and in that you are to interfere. What did the Apostles do? They were Jews, and we were what they called Gentile dogs; and yet we have held the poor

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Jews with all our additional light in the very same kind of contempt, that they held the Gentiles. But how did the Apostles act? Did they say, we have nothing to do with these poor wretched Gentiles! On the contrary, they dedicated themselves, their lives and all, to the salvation of the Gentile world. "Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice," says the Apostle, “and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all." Now then I say, we ought in like manner to pity the Jews. We should seek their welfare and not sit down in despair. The Apostles of themselves could not convert more than we could convert the Jews. They used the means and God gave the blessing; let us use the means and God will give us the blessing too. If we do but pray for them in secret, if we do but read the Scriptures more particularly, seeing what God says respecting them, how his whole heart and soul are not upon them, I speak quite advisedly, I will turn to the passage in Jeremiah for fear I should speak too strongly. "I will cleanse them from all their iniquity whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me. And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth which shall hear of all the good that I do unto them."

(To be continued)

London: Published for the Proprietors, by T. GRIFFITHS, Wellington Street, Strand;

and Sold by all Booksellers in Town and Country.

Printed by Lowndes and White, Crane Court, Fleet Street.

THE PREACHER.

SERMON BY THE REV. C. SIMEON.
SERMON BY THE REV. R. ROBINSON.
SERMON BY THE REV. E. GREY, D.D.
SERMON BY THE REV. C. BRADLEY,

No. 31.]

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1830.

(The Rev. C. Simeon's Sermon concluded.)

There God declares his own honour and happiness to depend upon them, and shall we be indifferent? O, brethren, humble yourselves before God for having taken so little interest in it; and read the Scriptures, and when you read them, particularly the prophecies, read them in a simple way, and see what God speaks on this subject. In another passage he says, "And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good: but I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly, with my whole heart and with my whole soul." Shall God Almighty speak such words as these, and engage with his whole heart and his whole soul in this great work, and we be indifferent?

My dear brethren, we are ready in order to account for this our own indifference to say this is to no purpose. No purpose! why you had in the metropolis of late twelve Jews baptized, and since that time seven more. Who can tell if Christians do but rise to their duty, who can tell what a blessing God may pour out upon them! And I do call upon you (if I speak the truth of God I must say it) I call upon

VOL. II.

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you beyond any other people in Britain. What has God Almighty done for you? What has God Almighty been doing for you? What evidence have you of the benefit arising from the exertions of ministers for promoting the welfare of the soul, and the welfare of mankind? I feel it indelicate to touch upon it. There is no people upon the face of the earth that can judge better than you of the benefit of a soul impressed with a duty to God, and exerting itself for the salvation of man. There is no people more capable of entering into a calculation on it better than you are. Shall I leave the matter with you I say? No; I leave the matter with God, and I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may come upon you, and that every day, and every week, you may have richer evidence of the blessing of the Gospel, sweeter experience of it in your own souls, and a greater sense of its power to cleanse from sin, to transform the heart, to sanctify the life, and to bring you into communion with God, so "that you may be his people, and he your God." Dear brethren, I shall add no more, if you do but receive that good which God Almighty has sent to you, I have no doubt you will interest yourselves in sending to the Jews that which God has prepared for them,

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