Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON II. FORGIVENESS A PRESENT MERCY. Isaiah Xliv. 22. " I Have Blotted Out, As A Thick Cloud, Thy TransGressions, And, As A Cloud, Thy Sins: Return Unto Me; For I Have Redeemed Thee." No subject can be of greater importance to the babe in Christ, the young man in Christ, the father in Christ, than that which these words illustrate, " I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins ;" more especially when viewed in the remarkable connexion in which they stand to those that follow them, " return unto me; for I have redeemed thee." May God grant, that our consideration ofthem be not without a blessing upon any soul by whom they are this day heard ! We shall first consider the beautiful propriety of the Prophet's simile, " I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins." The comparison is remarkable, but peculiarly just. Our sins may well be likened unto clouds, as to their number. Who can count the clouds which chase each other across the winter sky ? And has not one of the holiest men who ever lived, left upon record the humiliating confession, that his sins were not less numerous? " They are more in number, than the hairs of my head."' Then as to their nature : are not the clouds all exhalations from the land and sea, the earthly portion of the universe; and are not our sins, in like manner, the produce of our corrupt and earthly nature ; do they not all ascend out of the soil of the natural heart, in 1 Psalm xl. 15. which every transgression and every sin has its foul and polluted origin? Then, again, as to their effects : do not the clouds hang between us and the sun, and shut out from us the clear and cheering light, and the bright blue sky ; and when they greatly thicken, do they not a...