Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrightous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him. — Isaiah 55:7

THIS is the great chapter of gospel invitation. How free! How full! How plain and pressing are the calls to receive grace!

• Gospel provisions are presented freely (verses 1 and 2).


• A Savior is provided and proclaimed (verses 3 and 4).


• Saved nations are absolutely promised to him (verse 5).


• Men are encouraged to seek and find the Lord (verse 6).

But the call to conversion follows close after, and is intended to be the necessary inference from all that preceded it. Men must return to God: his very mercy makes it imperative.

1. The nature of God. How can a holy God wink at sin, and pardon sinners who continue in their wickedness?

2. The nature of the gospel. It is not a proclamation of tolerance for sin, but of deliverance from it. It contains no single promise of forgiveness to the man who goes on in his iniquity.

3. The facts of the past. No instance has occurred of pardon given to a man while obstinately persisting in his evil way. Conversion always goes with salvation.

4. The needs of society. It would be unsafe to the common-weal of the universe to show mercy to the incorrigible offender. Sin must be punished, or else virtue will perish.

5. The well-being of the sinner himself requires that he should quit his sin, or feel its penalty. To be favored with a sense of divine pardon, while obstinately abiding in sin, would confirm the man in sin; and sin itself is a worse evil than its penalty.

7. The design of our Lord Jesus would be overborne, for he comes to save from sin.

8. The character of heaven requires that a sinner's nature be renewed, and his life purged, ere he can enter the holy place where God, and holy an§els, and perfect saints abide.

• His natural way; that into which he runs when left to himself.


• His habitual way; to which he is accustomed.


• His beloved way; wherein his pleasures lie.


• The general way; the broad road in which the many run.

• Own that it is wrong;


• Profess to be sorry for following it;


• Resolve to leave it, and end in resolve; or,


• Move more cautiously in it.

• About God, his law, his gospel, his people.


• About sin, punishment, Christ, self, etc.

• To find pleasure in evil;


• To indulge in conceit and self-sufficiency; or,


• To harbor wrong thoughts of God.

• To continue in sin, to delay repentance, to be a free thinker, to be his own master, to defy God, etc. Such thoughts are to be forsaken; he must flee from them.

It bids him cease from pride, neglect, opposition, distrust, disobedence, and all other forms of alienation from the Lord. He must turn and return; wandering no further, but coming home.

Oh, that the sinner would consider the need of a total change of thought within, and way without! It must be thorough and radical or it will be useless.

May this hour see the turning-point in your life's course! God saith, "Let him return." What doth hinder you?

William Burns was preaching one evening, in the open-air, to a vast multitude. He had just finished, when a man came timidly up to him, and said,"O Sir! will you come and see my dying wife?" Burns consented; but the man immediately said,"Oh! I am afraid when you know where she is you won't come.""I will go wherever she is," he replied. The man then tremblingly told him that he was the keeper of the lowest public-house in one of the most wretched districts of the town. "It does not matter," said the missionary, "come away." As they went, the man, looking up in the face of God's servant, said earnestly, "O Sir! I am going to give it up at the term." Burns replied, "There are no terms, with God." However much the poor trembling publican tried to get Burns to converse with him about the state of his soul, and the way of salvation, he was unable to draw another word from him than these: "There are no terms with God." The shop was at last reached. They passed through it in order to reach the chamber of death. After a little conversation with the dying woman, the servant of the Lord engaged in prayer, and while he was praying the publican left the room, and soon a loud noise was heard, something like a rapid succession of determined knocks with a great hammer. Was this not a most unseemly noise to make on such a solemn occasion as this? Is the man mad? No. When Burns reached the street, he beheld the wreck of the publican's sign-board strewn in splinters upon the pavement. The business was given up for good and all. The man had in earnest turned his back on his low public house, and returned to the Lord, who had mercy upon him, and unto our God, who abundantly pardoned all his sins. Nothing transpired in his after life to discredit the reality of his conversion. — William Brown, in "The Joyful Sound"