But I again ask you—­Where, among us, are penitents of this description?  Now look around you.  I do not tell you to judge your brethren, but to examine what are the manners and morals of those who surround you.  Nor do I speak of those open and avowed sinners who have thrown off even the appearance of virtue.  I speak only of those who, like yourselves, live as most live, and whose actions present nothing to the public view particularly shameful or depraved.  They are sinners and they admit it:  you are not innocent, and you confess it.  Now are they penitent? or are you?  Age, vocation, more serious employments, may perhaps have checked the sallies of youth.  Even the bitterness which the Almighty has made attendant on our passions, the deceits, the treacheries of the world, an injured fortune, with ruined constitution, may have cooled the ardor, and confined the irregular desires of your hearts.  Crimes may have disgusted you even with sin itself—­for passions gradually extinguish themselves.  Time, and the natural inconstancy of the heart will bring these about; yet, nevertheless, tho detached from sin by incapability, you are no nearer your God.  According to the world you are become more prudent, more regular, to a greater extent what it calls men of probity, more exact in fulfilling your public or private duties.  But you are not penitent.  You have ceased your disorders but you have not expiated them.  You are not converted:  this great stroke, this grand operation on the heart, which regenerates man, has not yet been felt by you.  Nevertheless, this situation, so truly dangerous, does not alarm you.  Sins which have never been washed away by sincere repentance, and consequently never obliterated from the book of life, appear in your eyes as no longer existing; and you will tranquilly leave this world in a state of impenitence, so much the more dangerous as you will die without being sensible of your danger.

What I say here is not merely a rash expression, or an emotion of zeal; nothing is more real, or more exactly true:  it is the situation of almost all men, even the wisest and most esteemed of the world.  The morality of the younger stages of life is always lax, if not licentious.  Age, disgust, and establishment for life, fix the heart and withdraw it from debauchery:  but where are those who are converted?  Where are those who expiate their crimes by tears of sorrow and true repentance?  Where are those who, having begun as sinners, end as penitents?  Show me, in your manner of living, the smallest trace of penitence!  Are your graspings at wealth and power, your anxieties to attain the favor of the great—­and by these means an increase of employments and influence—­are these proofs of it?  Would you wish to reckon even your crimes as virtues?—­that the sufferings of your ambition, pride, and avarice, should discharge you from an obligation which they themselves have imposed?  You are penitent to the world, but are you so to Jesus Christ?  The infirmities with which