advanced within the very precincts of hell. Yes, the hell of debt, of disease, of ignominy, or of remorse, may gather its shadows around the steps of the transgressor even on earth; and yet these,-if holy scripture be unerring, and sure experience be propheticthese are but the beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed may be done, alas! in a moment, in one fatal moment; but conscience never dies; memory never sleeps guilt never can become innocence; and remorse can never, never whisper peace. Pardon may come from heaven; but self-forgiveness, when will it come?

Beware then, thou who art tempted to evil-and every being before me is tempted to evil; beware what thou layest up for the future; beware what thou layest up in the archives of eternity. Thou who wouldst wrong thy neighbour, beware! lest the thought of that injured man, wounded and suffering from thine injury, be a pang which long years may not deprive of its bitterness. Thou who wouldst break into the house of innocence and rifle it of its treasure, beware! lest, when many years have passed over thee, the moan of its distress may not have died away from thine ear. Thou who wouldst build the desolate throne of ambition in thy heart, beware what thou art doing with all thy devices, and circumventings, and selfish schemings! lest desolation and loneliness be on thy path as it stretches into the long futurity. Thou, in fine, who art living a negligent and irreligious life, beware! beware how thou livest; for bound up with that life is the immutable principle of an endless.retribution; bound up with that life are elements of God's creating, which shall never spend their force; which shall be unfolding and unfolding with the ages of eternity. Beware! I say once more, and be not de

ceived. Be not deceived; God is not mocked; God who has formed thy nature thus to answer to the future, is not mocked; his law can never be abrogated; his justice can never be eluded; beware, then, be forewarned; since, for ever, and for ever will it be true, that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap!

V.

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION

BE NOT DECEIVED; GOD IS NOT MOCKED: FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.-Galatians vi. 7.

THE views which are usually presented of a future retribution, are characterized, as I have observed in my last discourse, rather by strength than by strictness of representation. The great evil attending the common statements of this doctrine, I shall now venture to say, is not, that they are too alarming. Men are not enough alarmed at the dangers of a sinful course. No men are; no men, though they sit under the most terrifying dispensation of preaching that ever was devised. But the evil is, that alarm is addressed too much to the imagination, and too little to the reason and conscience. Neither Whitfield, nor Baxter, nor Edwards, though the horror produced by his celebrated sermon (C on the justice of God in the damnation of sinners," is a matter of tradition in New England, to this very day yet no one of them ever preached too much terror, though they may have preached it too exclusively; but the evil was that they preached terror, I repeat, too much to the imagination, and too little to the reason and conscience. Of mere fright, there may be too much; but of real, rational fear, there never can be too much. Sin, vice, a corrupt mind, a guilty life, and the woes naturally flowing from these, never can be too much dreaded. It is one thing, for

the preacher to deal in mathematical calculations of infinite suffering, to dwell upon the eternity of helltorments, to speak of literal fires, and of burning in them for ever; and with these representations, it is easy to scare the imagination, to awaken horror, and a horror so great as to be at war with the clear, calm and faithful discriminations of conscience. With such means, it is easy to produce a great excitement in the mind. But he who should, or who could, unveil the realities of a strict and spiritual retribution, show what every sinner loses, show what every sinner must suffer, in and through the very character he forms, show, too, how bitterly every good man must sorrow for every sin, here or hereafter, show, in fine, what sin is, and for ever must be to an immortal nature, would make an impression more deep, and sober, and effectual.

It is not my purpose at present to attempt any detail of this nature, though I shall be governed by the observations I have made, in the views which I am to present, and for which I venture to ask a rational, and calm, and most serious consideration.

The future is to answer for the present. This is the great law of retribution. And so obviously necessary and just is it; so evidently does our character create our welfare or wo; so certainly must it give us pain or pleasure, as long as it goes with us, whether in this world or another world, that it seems less requisite to support the doctrine by argument, than to save it from evasions.

There are such evasions. No theology has yet come up to the strictness of this law. It is still more true, that no practice has yet come up to it. There are theoretical evasions; and I think they are to be found in the views which are often presented, of conversion and repentance, and of God's mercy and the

actual scenes of retribution; but there is one practical evasion, one into which the whole world has fallen, and so dangerous, so momentous in its danger, that it may well deserve, for one season of meditation, I believe, to engross our entire and undivided attention.

This grand evasion, this great and fatal mistake, may be stated in general terms to be, the substitution of something as a preparation for future happiness, in place of devoting the whole life to it; or to a course which is fitted to procure it. This evasion takes the particular form perhaps, of an expectation that some sudden and extraordinary experience may, at a future time, accomplish what is necessary to prepare the mind for happiness and heaven; or that certain circumstances, such as sickness and affliction, may, at some subsequent period of life, force the growth of that, which is not cultivated now, and may thus remedy the fearful and fatal neglect; or it is an expectationand this is the most prevalent form of the error,-that old age or death, when it comes, will have power to penetrate the heart with emotion, and subdue it to repentance, and prepare it for heaven. The subject, yet, it must be feared to be the victim, of this stupendous error, is convinced that in order to be happy eventually, he must become pure; there is no principle of indulgence, there is no gospel of mercy, that can absolve him from that necessity; he must become pure; he must be pious; his nature must be exalted and refined. It is his nature, his mind, that is to be happy; and he is convinced by experience, that his mind must be cultivated, purified, prepared, for that end. But he is not doing this work to-day, nor does he expect to do it tomorrow; he is not doing it this month, nor does he expect to do it next month; he is not doing it this year, nor does he in particular expect to do it next