These considerations concern us individually. The nation is but an aggregate of individuals; and what they are, it is. Hence it behoves us--1. _To strive after personal holiness._ This seems a very small remedy for national evils. But it is only by each man adopting it that the nation can be made religious. If each _drop_ in the ocean could eliminate the salt with which it is charged, the _ocean_ would become fresh. Besides, by our example we may stimulate others to personal reforms, and they again others. 2. _To entreat God to deal with us as a nation in the way of mercy, and not of judgment_ (Ps. ciii. 10). There is a mighty power in intercessory prayer. 3. _Diligently to promote all moral and social reforms._ We must labour as well as pray. A Christian man will assist in all political reforms, because it is the will of God that righteousness should prevail in all things. But much more interested will he be in all movements and institutions having for their end and the intellectual and moral advancement of the people: the school, the temperance society, better dwellings for the working classes, the diffusion of a pure literature, &c. 4. _To put forth constant efforts to bring and keep our fellow-countrymen under the influence of the Gospel._ Of all regenerative and conservative influences the Gospel is the most active and powerful. A nation composed entirely of genuine Christians would be at once the most happy, prosperous, and powerful the world has ever seen. The direct and short way to exalt Great Britain is to strive to lead all our countrymen to the knowledge and service of Christ. This is a work, not for ministers only, but for the whole Church. There would be more happy Christians if there were more working Christians. It is not the running brooks, but the standing pools, that become stagnant. SHAMELESS SINNERS. iii. 9. _They declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not._ Extremes are generally detestable: equatorial heat, arctic cold; the speaker whom we must strain to hear, the orator who roars, &c. So in morals: foolhardy rashness, cowardice; prodigality, penuriousness; hypocrites, and such shameless sinners as are spoken of here. Such persons are even more detestable than hypocrites; these at least pay this homage to virtue, that they array themselves in her outer garments. Desperate and vain is the endeavour to cloak iniquity, yet even this is better than the effrontery which leads some to flaunt it in open day. How surprising is such effrontery! When we consider what sin is--a thing horribly degrading to man as well as insufferably offensive to God--we should have expected beforehand that men would have been as anxious to hide their vices, as they are to conceal any loathsome disease with which they may be afflicted. But it is not so. There are tens of thousands of sinners as devoid of shame as were those who dwelt in Sodom; nay, they glory in their shame. Consider-- +I.+ THE CAUSES OF SHAMELESSNESS IN SIN.