as this, we say with confidence, that the awakening must proceed from some Being who is far more alive to the solemnity and significance of eternal duration than earthly man is.  Without impulses from on high, the sinner never rouses up to attend to the subject of religion.  He lives on indifferent to his religious interests, until God, who is more merciful to his deathless soul than he himself is, by His providence startles him, or by His Spirit in his conscience alarms him.  Never, until God interferes to disturb his dreams, and break up his slumber, does he profoundly and permanently feel that he was made for another world, and is fast going into it.  How often does God say to the careless man:  “Arise, O sleeper, and Christ shall give thee light;” and how often does he disregard the warning voice!  How often does God stimulate his conscience, and flare light into his mind; and how often does he stifle down these inward convictions, and suffer the light to shine in the darkness that comprehends it not!  These facts in the personal history of every sin-loving man show, that the human soul does not of its own isolated action wake up to the realities of eternity.  They also show that God is very merciful to the human soul, in positively and powerfully interfering for its welfare; but that man, in infinite folly and wickedness, loves the sleep, and inclines to remain in it.  The Holy Spirit strives, but the human spirit resists.

II.  In the second place, man needs the influences of the Holy Spirit that he may be convinced of sin.

Man universally is a sinner, and yet he needs in every single instance to be made aware of it.  “There is none good, no, not one;” and yet out of the millions of the race how very few feel this truth!  Not only does man sin, but he adds to his guilt by remaining ignorant of it.  The criminal in this instance also, as in our courts of law, feels and confesses his crime no faster than it is proved to him.  Through what blindness of mind, and hardness of heart, and insensibility of conscience, is the Holy Spirit obliged to force His way, before there is a sincere acknowledgment of sin before God!  The careful investigations, the persevering questionings and cross-questionings, by which, before a human tribunal, the wilful and unrepenting criminal is forced to see and acknowledge his wickedness, are but faint emblems of that thorough work that must be wrought by the Holy Ghost, before the human soul, at a higher tribunal, forsaking its refuges of lies, and desisting from its subterfuges and palliations, smites upon the breast, and cries, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” Think how much of our sin has occurred in total apathy, and indifference, and how unwilling we are to have any distinct consciousness upon this subject.  It is only now and then that we feel ourselves to be sinners; but it is by no means only now and then that we are sinners.  We sin habitually; we are conscious of sin rarely.  Our affections and inclinations and motives are evil, and only evil, continually; but our experimental knowledge that they are so comes not often into our mind, and what is worse stays not long, because we dislike it.