Which way, then, shall this aged sinner turn his eyes?  Every scene, every place, every month and day of his life, which he can call to remembrance, reminds him of some sin.  Shall he look to some of his more reputable actions?  Alas, even when his conduct has been most creditable, his motives have been unchristian and impure.  “True, I have had some character,” he now says to himself, “but I have had no title to it.  Men have not known me; or if a few have known me, and yet praised me, they have praised me because they have wanted to carry some point of their own by pleasing me:  nay, my companions have even praised me for what was evil, for the same people seem now, methinks, to blame me in proportion as they discern any thing in me that is good.”  Thus the recollection of the applauses he used to receive from these wicked men is one aggravation of his pain.

But shall he look to his more innocent and early years?  Alas, the review of his infancy only serves to remind him how naturally and how soon he went astray; how soon “he forsook the guide of his youth, and forgot the covenant of his God.”  Thus, if he looks backward, all is misery, and horror, and despair.  Shall he then look forward and comfort himself by thinking how effectually he will repair all the evil he has done?  But how shall he now repair it?  Of those whom he has corrupted many are dead, and of the survivors very few can now be found.  Go, then, and bring these few back to God.  Alas, one will mock, another will dissemble, a third will despise.  Go, try to reclaim even the children of thine own loins, who are all trained through thy means in an evil course.  Nay, even these also will scoff at thy rebuke, and say, “Our old father is grown troublesome and peevish through age; he is turned religious only because he has just done with this life, and has one foot in the grave.”

What then, I say, can this aged sinner do to remedy the evils he has caused?  He can only abhor himself for what is past, and repent sincerely of all that he has done.  See him then at length abhorring himself, and “repenting in dust and ashes.”  See him retiring to his chamber, and, for the first time, communing seriously with his own heart.  See him reviewing the whole of his past life, from the first dawn of reason to the present hour, endeavoring to survey with exactness his thoughts, words, and actions, and all his most secret practices, intentions, and inclinations.  See him meditating also on his numberless omissions, taking the law of God for his rule, and beginning now, for the first time, to discover what manner of person he has been.  How does he stand amazed at his own former stupidity and blindness and hardness of heart, and how astonished also at the patience of God, which has so long borne with him.