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“For my iniquities are gone over my head: as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.”
Psalm 38:4.
I HAVE a special purpose before me this evening. I shall endeavor to describe the state of the sinner’s heart when it
has been awakened, when conscience is set at work, when sin and the judgment of God upon it occupy the mind’s attention—
that period which John Bunyan describes in his, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” as being spent between the City of Destruction
and the Wicket Gate—that state of mind in which a man is found when he flees from his former sin and desires to
escape from the wrath to come, but has not yet found out the way of salvation so as to realize his own pardon and forgiveness
through the great Atonement made upon the Cross.
In fulfilling this intention, I propose, first, to speak of the terrors which frequently accompany conviction of sin. Secondly,
to describe the cases of some who, while really convicted of sin, are, nevertheless, strangers to those terrors. And
then to address a few words of advice both to those who are sorely broken by cruel fears and those, on the other hand,
who are more gently brought to Christ.