past, and are but too apt to break out again, to cause relapses, to
torment the poor patient, perhaps to leave his character crippled and
disfigured all his life--certainly to require long and often severe
treatment by the heavenly physician, Christ, the purifier as well as the
redeemer of our sin-sick souls. Heavy, therefore, and bitter and
shameful is the burden which many a man has to bear after he has turned
from self to God, from sin to holiness. He is haunted, as it were, by
the ghosts of his old follies. He finds out the bitter truth of St
Paul's words, that there is another law in his body warring against the
law of his mind, of his conscience, and his reason; so that when he would
do good, evil is present with him. The good that he would do he does not
do; and the evil that he would not do he does. Till he cries with St
Paul, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?" and feels that none can deliver him, save Jesus Christ our
Lord.

Yes. But there is our comfort, there is our hope--Christ, the great
healer, the great physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us from the
remains of our old sins, the consequences of our own follies. Not,
indeed, at once, or by miracle; but by slow education in new and nobler
motives, in purer and more unselfish habits. And better for us, perhaps,
that He should not cure us at once, lest we should fancy that sin was a
light thing, which we could throw off whenever we chose; and not what it
is, an inward disease, corroding and corrupting, the wages whereof are
death. Therefore it is, that because Christ loves us He hates our sins,
and cannot abide or endure them, will punish them, and is merciful and
loving in punishing them, as long as a tincture or remnant of sin is left
in us.

Let us then, if our consciences condemn us of living evil lives, turn and
repent before it be too late; before our consciences are hardened; before
the purer and nobler feelings which we learnt at our mothers' knees are
stifled by the ways of the world; before we are hardened into bad habits,
and grown frivolous, sensual, selfish and worldly. Let us repent. Let
us put ourselves into the hands of Christ, the great physician, and ask
Him to heal our wounded souls, and purge our corrupted souls; and leave
to Him the choice of how He will do it. Let us be content to be punished
and chastised. If we deserve punishment, let us b