SERMON XVII.

ON THE DELAY OF CONVERSION.

JOHN i. 23.

I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.

Ir is in order that he may enter into our hearts that Jesus Christ announces, by John the Baptist, that we have the way to make straight for him, by removing all those obstacles, which, like a wall of separation, rise up between his mercy and our wretchedness. Now, these obstacles are the crimes with which we so often stain ourselves, which always subsist, because it would be necessary to expiate them by penitence, and we expiate them not: these obstacles are the passions by which our heart foolishly allows itself to be carried away, which are always living, because, in order to destroy, it would be necessary to conquer them, and we never conquer them: these obstacles are the temptations by which our innocence is so often led astray, and VOL. II.

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which still continue fatal to our resolutions, because, in place of yielding to that inward inclination which leads us towards them, it would be necessary to shun them; and we shun them not: in a word, the true and only manner of making straight the way of our hearts for Jesus Christ, is that of changing our mode of life, and of being sincerely converted.

But, though the business of our conversion be the most important with which we can be entrusted here below, seeing that through it alone we can draw Jesus Christ into our hearts; though it be the only one truly interesting to us, since on it depends our eternal happiness; yet, O deplorable blindness! it is never considered by us as a matter either of urgency or of importance; it is continually put off to some other time, as if times and seasons were at our disposal. What wait you, Christians, my brethren? Jesus Christ ceaseth not to forewarn you, by his ministers, of the evils which threaten your impenitence, and the delay of your conversion; he hath long announced to you, through our mouth, that, unless you repent, you most assuredly shall perish.

Nor is he satisfied with publicly warning you through the voice of his ministers: he speaks to you in the bottom of your heart, and continually whispers to you, Is it not time now to withdraw yourself from that guilt in which, for so many years, you have been plunged, and from which scarcely any thing but a miracle can now extricate you? Is it not time to restore peace to your heart, to banish from it that chaos of passions which has occasioned all the misfortunes of your life; to prepare for yourself at least some few happy and tranquil

days, and, after having lived so long for a world which hath always left you unsatisfied and uneasy, at last to live for a God who alone can give peace and tranquillity to your heart? Will you not at last bestow a thought upon your eternal interests, and, after a life wholly frivolous, return to the true one; and, in serving God, adopt the only wise plan which man can pursue upon the earth? Are you not weary with struggling against those remorses which tear you, that sadness of guilt which weighs you down, that sense of the insufficiency of the world which every where pursues you? And do you not wish to finish at last your misfortunes and your disquietudes, by finishing your crimes?

What shall we reply to that inward voice which hath so long spoken in the bottom of our hearts? What pretexts shall we oppose? 1st, That we are not, as yet, furnished by God with the succours necessary to enable us to quit the unhappy state in which we live. 2dly, That we are at present too much engaged by the passions to think of a new life. That is to say, that we form two pretexts for delaying our conversion; the first drawn from the part of God, the second from within ourselves. The first which justifies us, by accusing God of being deficient towards us; the second which comforts us, by alleging to ourselves our inability of, as yet, returning to him. Thus we delay our conversion, under the belief that grace is wanting, and that, as yet, God desireth us not; we delay our conversion, because we flatter ourselves that some future day we shall be less attached to the world and to the passions, and more in a situation to begin a Christian and an

orderly life: Two pretexts which are continually in the mouth of sinners, and which I now propose to combat.

PART I. It is not in these times alone that men have dared to throw upon the Deity the blame of their transgressions, and have tried to render his wisdom and his goodness responsible for their iniquitous weakness. It may be said that this blindness entered with sin into the world; the first man sought not elsewhere an excuse for his guilt; and, far from appeasing the Lord whom he had so lately disobeyed, by an humble confession of his wretchedness, he accused him of having been himself the cause of his disobedience, in associating him with woman.

And such, my brethren, is the illusion of almost all souls living in guilt, and who delay to a future day that conversion required of them by God. They are continually repeating that conversion does not depend upon us; that it is the Lord who must change their heart, and bestow upon them that faith and grace which they, as yet, have not. Thus they are not satisfied with provoking his anger, by delaying their conversion; they even insult him, by laying upon him the blame of their obstinacy, and of the delay of their penitence. Let us now overthrow the error and impiety of this disposition; and, in order to render the criminal more inexcusable in his impenitence, let us deprive him at least of this pretext.

You tell us then, 1st, that if you had faith, and were thoroughly convinced of the truth of religion, you would be converted; but that faith is a gift of God

which you expect from him alone, and that as soon as he shall have given it to you, you will easily and heartily begin to adopt your resolution. Your first pretext then is, the want of faith, and that God alone can give it.

But I ought first to ask you, How have you then lost that faith so precious? You have received it in your baptism; a Christian education hath cherished it in your heart; it had grown up with you; it was an inestimable talent which the Lord had entrusted to you in selecting you from so many infidel nations, and in marking you, from the moment you quitted your mother's womb, with the seal of salvation. What have you then done with the gift of God? Who hath effaced from your forehead that sign of eternal election? Is it not the corruption of the passions, and that blindness which has been their just punishment? Did you suspect the faith of your fathers before you became dissolute and abandoned? Is it not yourself who have extinguished in the dirt that celestial torch, which the church, in regenerating you, had placed in your hand, to enlighten your way through the obscurities and the dangers of this life? Why, then, accuse God of that waste which you have made of his favours? To him belongs the right of reclaiming his own gift; to him it belongs to make you accountable for the talent which he had entrusted to your care; to say to you: "Wick"ed and ungrateful servant, what had I done for 66 others, that I had not done for thee? I had embel"lished thy soul with the gift of faith, and with the "mark of my children: thou hast cast that precious "jewel before unclean animals; thou hast extinguish