2. But if it be true that the happiness of those who love God is promoted by the change effected at death, how obvious is it that a contrary effect must be produced on a mind of an opposite religious character.

It can require but a moment's reflection to perceive that he who is merely destitute of love to God could not be happy on leaving this world. Were we to overlook the native enmity of the heart to God; were it possible that a rational spirit could be neutral in his feelings towards the Most High, but destitute of love; even in that case, it is too obvious to be misunderstood, that when the spirit shall "return to God who gave it," it must be for ever void of bliss. I appeal to the reason of every unrenewed man; to you who are conscious of this want of love to God; who find no interest in religious worship, in prayer and praise, or in silent meditation on the character and goodness of your heavenly Father; whose souls are never dissolved in view of the Divine mercies; who have no peace in believing, nor fellowship of the Spirit;-I appeal to yourselves, what would be necessary to make your eternity happy? Think over in what your chief enjoyment now consists. If it be not in the service of God, is it in any thing you can carry with you into eternity? Remember, you enter that state a spirit. While the spirit shall return to God who gave it, the body shall return to the dust whence it was taken. If you do not love God, what do you love that will be associated with the spirit, the naked spirit,-that will soothe it, or employ its powers, or warm into life and bliss its affections? Think of your present interest in your estates, your farms, your shops, and your merchandize; it may be in your ships and your money, the provident "insurance of the one, and the cautious "securities" in bonds and mortgages which underlie the other. You know that those sources of happiness will be cut off at death. What the moth and the rust do not corrupt, the final flames will consume. But if they were perpetuated and could accompany you into eternity, they would avail you nothing. You return to God a spirit, and will have no occasion for such ministers of good.

Consider, again, how far your regard for personal appearance occupies your thoughts, and makes your existence one of interest. But you know the spirit is to be separated from the body. That shall return to the dust. Reflect, also, upon the happiness now derived from your domestic relations. To say nothing of the moral character of those relations, of the ennobling enjoyment which may be innocently derived when God is honored, yet there will be no families in eternity. That is an institution adapted to our present condition, having material bodies and temporal wants. How far heaven may be sweetened or the world of woe embittered by the recollection of associations formed on earth, I cannot say; doubtless much. But we are not to have families in eternity. We are to be as the angels of God.

Think, then, I beseech you, when all these earthly sources of pleasure shall be closed; when you can no longer be happy in the acquisition of property, in the support and mutual affection of your friends, or in devotion to your persons; when the pleasures of appetite and taste are no longer to be realized, what remains? You open your eyes upward, and there is poured upon you the full blaze of the Divine glory. You cast your eager glance around on either side, and God is there, for he is every where. He fills all in all. And by his thus presenting himself to you, he says virtually, and so you understand him to say: Be ye happy in me! But to the beauties of his character, to the attractions of his perfections, the soul is dead. There is nothing in him that you should desire him. Can you be happy? Will not the soul be empty? Would not the abodes even of the righteous be to you as cheerless as the solitude of the prisoner's cell? Say, friend, conscious as you are of being in your unrenewed state destitute of love to God, could you be happy in eternity if you could hold only a neutral relation to him? You can be happy now, because there are objects around you which you do love. You are happy in created objects. But can you think of any thing in eternity that will supply their place, if you cannot enjoy God, and such of his creatures as are in the image of God? Does the Bible speak of any thing? Does reason suggest any? Come, let us reason together. Settle this question now, I beseech you,-whether you can be happy in eternity with your present feelings unless you can carry with you what you know to be impossible? On this ground, then, alone, you cannot but perceive the necessity of a new heart and a new spirit.

But this is but a partial view of the subject. It is more serious than this. It is not sufficient to say that the sinner will find nothing in eternity to interest him; and hence the mind will be left vacant, a mere blank. This is of too negative a character. Every thing about man as an active being, who has a soul bound to its Creator by relations of inconceivable solemnity, is positive, actual. The feelings must be elicited. Man will love or hate. Men often have feelings here which are drowned amid the confusion of this life, so that even the enemies of God are not conscious of any such state of heart. But the moment the spirit shall return to God, or, in other words, the moment it shall enter on an existence where it cannot exclude the consciousness that it is surrounded by God, that every act and thought and affection has direct and inevitable reference to him; then will be developed what had before been unobserved, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God."

The more fully to illustrate this truth, let us direct our attention to two particular relations which we hold to this Omnipresent Spirit; and which in eternity will be more appreciated than they now are.

There will be a lively and abiding feeling of dependence on God. In this life we often trust to our own strength, or recognize in the laws of nature certain means of support and protection, so that we may, and many do, live much of the time without any suitable feeling of dependence on the Almighty. To have this feeling of dependence every instant, to have it, too, very vivid, as we must have when the spirit shall return to God, will be a great change. Let such, therefore, as are sensible of their unreconciliation to God, consider how it will affect their happiness. You are to have a lively apprehension of an entire dependence, at every moment, for ever, on one whom you do not love; yea, more, with whose moral attributes you have no fellowship; to whom and to whose moral government you feel a fixed and inherent opposition; and who, you are sensible at this very moment of your dependence on Him, is treating you as a rebel against his government and as a dispiser of his mercy. Could you, friend, be happy in a state of dependence on a fellow-being, between whom and yourself there exist such feelings of estrangement? Fancy yourself the dependent inmate of one towards whom you have feelings of uncontrollable aversion, and who, you know, has feelings of just resentment at the wrongs you have committed against him and his household; conceive yourself, for the limited space of fifty or even twenty years, sheltered and clothed by him, sitting daily at his table, under the silent rebuke of his eye, in every glance of which you cannot but read his just estimate of your baseness and guilt. Could you endure this? Would not darkness and oblivion be a boon? Would you not prefer death? But your relation to God, in the world of spirits, must be inconceivably more intimate. Wherever you move, every act, and every exercise of each faculty will only remind you of Him who keeps you in being. You will feel your very existence to be drawn out every moment from Him in whom is life, but to whom you are unreconciled. Can you be happy?

Besides this feeling of dependence, we shall also have an acute sense in eternity of the claims of the Divine law upon us as we do not in this life. God says, Be ye holy, for I am holy. We now know this to be his requirement, but we do not appreciate it; and we do not feel the force of the law resting on the conscience. The chief reason is, we have not an abiding sense of God's presence, accompanied with a clear view of his perfections. In eternity, the apprehension of the claims of the law of God will be precisely those of our perception of his existence and attributes, since his law is a transcript of his moral character. Here we can sin; and because God keeps silence, we feel no restraint upon us. There is little or no compunction of conscience; so indistinct often is the impression on the mind that there is a God, at least that he is a holy God. But it will not be so in eternity, Every thought and volition will be seen to have in it

moral character; and the mind will instinctively refer its actions to the moral standard. If what we have said before be in substance true, the perfections of Jehovah will so blaze out upon the intelligent powers of the soul, that not to make this comparison will be impossible. Were a voice from heaven repeating, in the solemn accents of Divinity, the commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, it would not in all probability produce an impression so deep or so vivid as will be experienced in eternity by the secret living consciousness of the soul that "the law is spiritual." Could you be happy on earth with this claim, thus forcibly addressed to you? Is not the quiet of conscience now experienced, much of it at least, the result of forgetfulness-because you do not consider? Have you never experienced any uneasiness as you have felt this requirement urged upon you? Have you not felt it to be a demand which you had no heart to answer? Though sensible that it is right that you should be required to love God, and to love him supremely; still, have you never been sensible at the same time that it was painful to acknowledge the claim ? Has it not been the conviction of the understanding and conscience triumphing for the moment over a reluctant heart? But can you enter eternity, where this claim will never be forgotten, nor its justice doubted, but from the living remembrance of which and the acknowledged justice of it the heart revolts ? Where you shall feel the claim of God upon your affections, and yet not an emotion of love be awakened, but the opposite? It shall only call into livelier action the secret hostility of the heart to such a being as God is, and to such a government as his. Can you, can any person, endure an endless existence like this? Are you aware that such must be your condition, if you die unreconciled to God? To say nothing of that punishment which God may inflict on you directly as the desert of your sins-or of the remorse which you must inevitably experience at the recollection of past offences, as it shall be suggested to the conscience of the different periods onwards in eternity: Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime wast guilty of this or that transgression, didst omit this or the other duty, or didst, on occasions which can never be forgotten, treat lightly the Divine mercies-to say nothing of your now, by a life of impiety, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath; can you as you are, unreconciled to God, venture into his holy presence? You are now conscious of shrinking even from the remote intercourse which the worship of him on earth requires; can you endure to be for ever with him?

Under these views death is a solemn event. It fixes character. He that is holy will be holy still. He that is unholy will be unholy still. He that is holy will love God, for he is holy. And the more intimate the intercourse, the more fully will this affection be developed. The more God is seen and known,

and his goodness enjoyed, the deeper will be the well of love opened in the soul. And this will constitute an essential part of the Christian's heaven. But let it never be forgotten, that opposite emotions must be excited in the mind of one who does not love God. If the heart be alienated from him, the more God is known, the stronger will this alienation become. This must lay the foundation of the sinner's future suffering, and constitute no unimportant part of it. It is impossible, where a spirit of blasphemy has not already taken possession of the heart, properly to estimate such a condition.

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The inference that, to be happy in the presence of God, the heart must be changed, is so obvious, that furthur confirmation is unnecessary. How important that a fountain of holy love be opened in the soul before death; as that fixes character. After death comes the judgment. As the tree falls, so it lies. Ye must be born again. Nothing will avail but a new creature." And all this must be experienced before death. And as death is often sudden and unexpected, why delay? why not seek a new heart now? why not this instant offer the prayer, "create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me ?"

O inquiring friend, what rich grace is seen in the way of life? You perceive your need of an essential change in your feelings towards God. You are doubtless convinced that nothing can effect this but the energy of the Divine Spirit, renewing and sanctifying the heart. But do you duly consider that God cannot, consistently with his character and the justice of his government, enter, by his Holy Spirit, your estranged and defiled heart, except through the mediation of Jesus Christ? If we who were enemies are reconciled to God, it is by the death of his Son. Not only, therefore, ought we to lift up adoring hearts to our heavenly Father for his unspeakable gift, but to seek in prayer and by faith in Christ the aid of the Spirit. This is the richest fruit of his death. You can hardly be so ignorant of the nature of sin as to view yourself entitled to this spiritual aid. You are more liable to deem your wretched condition a plea,-a reason for its bestowment. It was the reason why the Son of God died. But had our peril and wretchedness been a ground for sending the Spirit, the sacrifice of God's onlybegotton Son would have been spared. Sensible therefore alike of your guilt and your helplessness, come as near to God as you now can by faith-come by the new and living way, which is ever open-come by the blood of Christ. Be assured of his willingness to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him. But be also assured that he will grant this mercy only for Christ's sake. Then with his redeemed ones you shall in this life joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement; and when your spirits shall return to God, living in the likeness of God, your joy shall be full.