On the 25th, Jolin narrated to his visitor the whole history of his melancholy life; his difficulties and discomforts, arising, not so much from others, as from his own sinful, wilful heart. Like many other young persons, he had chosen the way of dissipation and folly, instead of that which many circumstances had led him to think was a happier and a safer course. It is indeed true, that his parents were not in a state to check him in his proceedings; but he seems to have had at many intervals those convictions of conscience which were sufficient to have guarded him from the transgressions into which he fell, and even to have guided him to seek the paths of religion. His wretched education, however, came in aid of his natural self-will, and soon confirmed him in those vices which led to his ruin. His state had been, as he himself described it, at times truly miserable; but drinking had quickly expelled every conviction of his own guilt, and he soon returned again to his mad career. He observed to Mr. Durell, that since 1823, he had not seen one happy week.—There are two things to observe on these transient convictions of guilt in a state of unconversion. Until the Spirit of God has enlightened the heart, sin does not by any means, in all cases, appear as it had appeared to Jolin, and as it invariably does to the renewed heart, a grievous burden. The life of many wretched sinners is one unbroken course of self-satisfaction. They are described in the seventy-third Psalm, as often passing from their cradles to their graves without a feeling of sorrow, or an apprehension of death. The Bible, however, teaches, that such a state of unmixed prosperity is the most dangerous in which a man can be placed; that the sinner, when thus left alone of God, is lifted to that very slippery pinnacle from which he will fall to his eternal ruin. Ministers cannot, therefore, press upon their ungodly hearers the universal conviction of the misery attending upon sin as an evidence of their unconverted state, because sin does not in this life uniformly bring along with it any such conviction. Their state of self-complacency is, indeed, a state which comes as short of the real spiritual happiness of the true Christian, as darkness does of light; but it often affords a false peace, which perhaps does not leave the sinner till his punishment begins, and the door of hope is shut against him for ever. Another observation arising from Jolin’s feeling of wretchedness in his former state, is, that the pain sometimes connected either with the practice of sin, or a view of its consequences, will not, unassisted by the Spirit of God, produce the real repentance which the Gospel requires. It is true, the compunctions of conscience, like the afflictions of life, are means often used to prepare the sinner for the doctrines of the Gospel. Yet, in how many cases do we find men wounded, but not contrite; stunned, but not really affected by the deepest distresses of life.