ence to the condition of that person's mind when he may remain most unwilling to return, he may reject all the offers of pardon, he may continue in his ungrateful enmity against the offended party, and yet this would not in the smallest degree alter the fact of the offended party having proclaimed forgiveness, free, full forgiveness, having been most willing that the other should return and receive his bleesing.

3rd. In the exercise of pardon, it may be all on one side in this way, or it may embrace both sides. The party offending may accept that pardon, he may return, may be admitted into his household, may have continual relation with him, may be again and again doing something that ought to give him offence; may have need to come and ask him for that forgivenesss, and may receive it as often as he asks, and the comforting assurance of the love, and the kindness and goodness of the party who ought to be offended, would be the best attraction to his coming back again to ask his forgiveness for the multitude of little acts that would need it, of which he might be inadvertently or wilfully guilty.

4th. Now in the enjoyment of that pardon, a man who had been dismissed from another's house, or another's service, and was re-admitted into the family, or into the service could have no doubt of his general pardon, although dwelling in the house there might be need of his every hour coming and asking some forgiveness for similar offences or similar failures in that household. Here therefore we have a picture presented to us of the nature of divine and human pardon, the nature of forgiveness in general: and from this let us turn to consider,

II. The pardon which belongs to the Kingdom of Heaven.

probationary pardon, there is that of God so exercised as to be consistent with the moral condition of man. God looked at the whole world and gave his Son to die for that world, upon this condition, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That which is true of the world, is more especially true of the church; for Christ gave himself for the church, "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing." But there is another condition of human pardon, and a real, full pardon, pardon not only in the forgiving disposition of the mind of one party, but in the confidence that that party can place in the other. God enters into a covenant of pardoning love with his own people, with those who lay hold upon his promises in Christ, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before them. With these he enters into a pardoning covenant, not probationary, but real, full, and final. Just as we may forgive some one on probation, because we do not confide in that person's future consistency in his feelings towards us; or we may forgive a person, assured that that person will never again offend towards us. In the one case there would not be the confidential admission into redemption; in the other case it would be as if it had never been: we should feel that that person would never again change. So does God deal with his own people. Where he renews the heart in love, where he purifies the soul by the Spirits power, and where he brings their persons with acceptance of the covenant into that state of faith which enters within the veil, there is full, final pardon, of which the spirit of God says "their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." But we have to consider this

in connexion with that pardon which occupied us so much last Sunday, but as this probationary pardon which God exercises in the church of which Christ himself more especially and permanently says here, "so likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother." If there be therefore in the mind of God a forgiving disposition towards the world, we have

2nd. To consider the declaration of that mind on the part of God. He declares it in his mercy to the whole world, the bounties of God could not come from an unforgiving disposition. The goodness of God, the forbearance and long-suffering of God, could not come from an unforgiving state of mind in God towards man. And to this natural declaration of a pardoning state of mind does the Apostle frequently refer; as you will find in the 14th chap. of the Acts of the Apostles, and the 17th verse, Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." Surely that state of mind that opens the hand of bounty to give food, and opens the heart of kindness to give gladness, is not an unforgiving state of mind. Here is therefore what I may call the natural declaration of God's pardoning mind towards the whole world. So in the 17th chap. of the same book of Acts, in the 26th to the 28th verses, we find the Apostle again addressing idolatrous heathens, and saying, "He hath made of one

blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if happy they might feel after ihm and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

for in him we live, and move, and have our being." Here therefore we have not only God giving us food and gladness, but God in us, that we may feel after him and find him; and that not merely in the converted man, or in the baptized or circumcised man, but in the heathen. Amongst all men, that we may feel after him and find him, for in him we live and move, and have our being. Comparing thus the grace of God's moral dealing as we have it in the Book of Jonah, in the 7th chap. and the 8th to the 10th verses, we find that the heathen king of Nineveh trusted in the goodness and mercy of God, and he says there, Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God, ye let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands who can tell of God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not, and God saw their works, that they turned away from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not." If there be in the natural works of God then the manifestation of his pardoning mercies, of his goodness and kindness towards the whole world, we have it more especially in the institution and constitution of the Christian (Church. Here is a great institution so constituted as to admit within it all men without exception, without serutiny, the evil and the good, the child and the aged. The message that is sent into the world is to go into the high ways and hedges, and invite all without exception to come in, and that message of Christ, as we have it in the 24th chap. of St. Luke's Gospel, and the 47th verse, is a message of God's pardon to the whole world,