in this country perhaps always, they believe that they derive from him their existence, and, in a remote and subordinate sense, their enjoyments. As he made them, they believe that he is bound to provide for them, and that with no very sparing or illiberal hand. What he gives, they gather; and, during the period of enjoyment, think of him no more.

This spirit is expressed with the utmost precision and beauty in the address of the prodigal to his parent: "Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me:" not such a portion as the bounty of his father might induce him kindly to bestow; but that which fell to him in the course of things, to which he has a right; and which, therefore, he now claimed at his hands.

In exact accordance with the disposition here manifested, sinners feel no gratitude to God for the blessings which they receive; and never regard them as gifts of his bounty, but as enjoyments to which they have a claim, and on which, therefore, they riot without even an acknowledgment. That they deserve nothing at his hands, and that he still continues to give them innumerable blessings, are considerations which, although apparently fitted to overcome any obstinacy, and break down any self-dependence, awaken in them neither gratitude, nor humility, neither faith nor repentance.

The prodigal was impatient of living with his father. He loved, not his character, nor his mode of life,-the order of his house, nor the employments of his family. All these things were of such a nature as to counteract his ruling propensities, and violate his favourite views, wishes, and hopes. In the same manner the character and ways of God, as they are holy, pure, and perfect, are only painful to a sinful heart. Hence they reject both him and them, as much as possible, from their thoughts. The moral distance to which they remove from him, is exactly imaged by the prodigal's journey into a far country. They betake themselves to a world of sin and sinners,-a region where all the pursuits are opposed to God, and all the inhabitants are strangers, Here religion, God its object, and heaven its end, are disregarded and forgotten, and other objects of a nature wholly opposite, engross

the heart and the life. This region is not our Father's house. Heaven is the soul's home. Everywhere else it is a stranger, and finds no abiding place,—a wanderer, lost, bewildered, and forgotten.

II. Sinners waste their blessings, and reduce themselves to absolute want.

In the far country to which the prodigal took his journey, he wasted his substance with riotous living: in the Greek, living profligately, he entirely scattered his substance. To show his absolute poverty, Christ adds, " and when he had spent all." The portion distributed to him, was amply sufficient, had he exercised common prudence, to have carried him comfortably through life. But nothing will supply the demands of prodigality.

The blessings, communicated to sinners, were given for noble ends, and are means abundantly sufficient for their accomplishment. This is true of all their blessings, and peculiarly true of their powers of soul and body. With these it was intended that they should know, love, serve, and enjoy God; promote the well-being of their fellow-men; and secure to themselves comfort here, and immortal life hercafter. But to all these every sinner is steadily opposed, and vigorously hostile. His views, his wishes, his designs, terminate in himself, and, of course, are not only useless to every really valuable purpose, but directly frustrate the benevolent designs of God toward him. "Israel," says the prophet Hosea, with exact precision," is an empty vine. He bringeth forth fruit unto himself." Selfishness is abundantly fruitful, in its own view; and the soul is perpetually looking for the enjoyment which its produce is constantly expected to yield. But its fruits are those which are fabulously said to grow on the borders of the Red Sea, beautiful apples without, but within nothing but bitter ashes.

Riotous living, in the moral, as well as the natural sense, brings on absolute poverty. All the pursuits of avarice, ambition, and voluptuousness, are as injurious to the soul, as prodigality and luxury to the body; and leave it, in the end,

poor indeed. How little do the miserable wretches, who give up life, conscience, and hope, to these objects, think of the views which God forms of their conduct, or what will be its end.

III. Afflictions are very often the first means of bringing sinners to a sense of their condition.

"And, when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want." So long as there was food in the country, the prodigal felt, in some measure, safe. When the famine commenced, he began then to be destitute, and to feel that he was destitute: and this consciousness of suffering, derived from the famine spread around him, was the first rational apprehension which he entertained of himself or his condition, and the first step towards his relief.

The

Could sinners open their eyes, they would distinctively perceive, that this world is destitute of the good which they so ardently covet, and so eagerly pursue; that a famine absolutely prevails in it of such enjoyments as are necessary to sustain the soul. Nay, if they would open their ears, and believe what they hear, they would want no farther means of conviction. History is almost only a tale of sins and sorrows. stream of tears has flowed down from the apostacy to the present hour. Sighs have been breathed in every wind: and there is hardly a mountain, or a hill, which has not echoed to the groans of human anguish. “Were a man,” says Bishop Berkeley," to escape from this world, and to gain admission "into a world unpolluted with sin, he would probably return, "with much the same reluctance, as a prisoner, liberated from "his chains, would go back to a dungeon."

Insensible as sinners usually are to the whole import of these truths, and confidently as they expect to find, somewhere, the happiness for which their souls so ardently long, there are seasons at which many of them awake to their real condition. Some severe suffering may lay hold even on a hard heart, and force the mind to realize its condition. Before it said to itself, "I am rich, and increased in goods,

"and have need of nothing." Now it perceives that it is Rev 37 wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

IV. When sinners first acquire such a sense of their condition, they betake themselves to false measures for relief.

The prodigal, in his distress, went and joined himself to a citizen of that country. And he sent him into his fields to feed swine. This citizen himself lived in that land of famine; and therefore had, in all probability, little or nothing to give to the suffering wretch, had he been ever so well disposed. We know that he actually gave him nothing. At the same time he sent him into his fields to feed swine, an employment everywhere low and debasing; but in the eye of a Jew, such as those were to whom this parable was addressed, supremely debasing, and held in religious abhorrence. Nothing could less correspond with the real interest of this unhappy man. He needed food, clothes, comfort, encouragement, hope, better friends, and more desirable employments. Thus the measures to which he betook himself were all false, fruitless, and fitted to increase, not to lessen, both the calamities which he suffered, and the distresses which futurity presented to him in a long and dismal train.

He ought immediately to have returned to his Father's house. There, if anywhere, he might reasonably have expected to find friends. Parents love their children long after they have ceased either to be dutiful or hopeful. There, also, he had reason to believe, means might be found both of support and comfort. There, finally, his profligacy might have been terminated, and he, by the happy efficacy of repentance and reformation, have been restored to an approving conscience and a virtuous life.

When sinners begin to feel that they are alienated from God, and that God is alienated from them, their first efforts for their deliverance from this miserable situation are attempts to quiet their consciences, either by mixing with companions whose conversations and pursuits may enable them to forget their alarms, turn their eyes from their character, and follow

quietly their former courses, or to persuade themselves that the doctrines and denunciations of the Scriptures are to be understood with many qualifications and softenings, and that their case is therefore not so bad as they had been accustomed to suppose it. If neither of these schemes will succeed, they attempt to make their condition better by leaving off one sin, and performing one duty and another, particularly those which are of an external nature. In all this, there is not a single attempt to amend the heart, where the whole evil lies. In the first and second of these methods, their lives will become more, in the third commonly less, gross than before. But even in this case, there is no radical change for the better. If they attach themselves to such as they are, they will only conduct them to base employments, to greater guilt, and to more absolute degradation.

In the meantime, not a step is taken towards the sinner's home. The fewer sins he commits, the less he may suffer in the future world; still while he loves sin, he will steadily go onward towards perdition. All his efforts of this nature will therefore avail him nothing. His first duty is to repent of his sins, and turn to God. Every measure short of this is a false measure. His companions can never purify his mind from sin; and neither he nor they can save him from destruction.

V. This situation of a sinner is eminently unhappy.

The prodigal had spent his estate; was in a land of famine; had become a servant to a neighbouring citizen; was sent into his fields to feed swine; and was on the point of starving for want of food. So low was he reduced, that he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat. So low was he reduced, that, in the language of the original, he was earnestly desirous to feed with the swine upon the pods of leguminous plants, such as beans and peas, or the pods of the carob tree, which not a little resemble them. What must have been the situation of him, to whom these things were objects of earnest desire.

But this was not all. We are further informed that no