glory, and honor, and immortality. This is the career, then, we all may run. Leave, then, these meaner things. I must earnestly reprove your worldliness-your untiring, overweening care of your outward self-your pursuit of earthly riches and pleasures. Such objects all shrink into utter insignificance before these grand interests of the soul.

IV. A fourth fact, which gives interest and importance to our spiritual being, and should waken our care for its welfare, is its capacity for happiness.

We learn by our experience and by observation of others, that human happiness is dependent upon virtue. Animals without reason and conscience may have negative enjoyment without any moral character. But man, formed to discern between right and wrong, to approve virtue and condemn vice, and to feel himself accountable at the bar of his own judgment at the higher bar of God, cannot be happy without being good, and he cannot be good without being happy. Every person has learned by looking within upon himself, and observed in the case of others, that, though adverse and untoward events make deductions from our enjoyments, yet so far as there is integrity of principle, purity of intention, excellence of conduct, and consciousness that this is so, so far there is happiness always, sweet peace, a delicious enjoyment absorbing the soul, so that it feels the refreshing of the internal waters of life, of which if a man drink he shall never thirst again. The soul is full; for the time asks no better joys; overflows with bliss. Such seasons all good men know, when, their sins and imperfections out of view, they feel the consciousness of moral goodness, and there comes over the spirit the assurance that God looks upon them with approbation, and they approve and respect themselves.

Observation of others has often furnished us with similar examples. You have often seen happiness in circumstances so unpropitious as to leave you in no doubt that it must have been fed from an inward fountain of moral goodness, affording a consciousness of integrity. Have you never entered an abode of poverty and seclusion from the world, and marked the simple, calm pleasure, which was there, habitually there, though there was nothing in the outward world to afford it. It was good feeling toward God and man, and so far as opportunity and power was given, good doing. It was moral goodness, and the testimony of a good conscience.

Persons are often seen with afflictions beating terribly upon them, their property scattered, their friends dead, their expectations cut off, their earthly prospects perfectly dark-seen still calm and happy. They have the best of all their possessions still left to them, a treasure beyond the reach of vicissitude and trouble, I mean their virtue-a love of truth and righteousness is their own, which no power can take from them. This made Paul and Silas happy in their prison, John in his banishment, the Martyrs in their sufferings, Christians generally in their reverses and disappointments, and in their death. All the blessed anticipations of hope in the two worlds have their foundation in moral worth.

The whole current of Scripture corresponds with this representation. No one truth probably is so often in the Bible, as that the good are happy; that virtue and happiness are united under the Divine Govern

ment inseparably and forever. One object of the Scriptures throughout in recovering a fallen race to goodness, is to make them happy. Accordingly, this sentiment is reiterated in every form, unceasingly reiterated in the Scriptures that the good are happy. Great peace have all they that love thy law; shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace; in the greatest of all extremities he is happy. Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord, happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Happy is the man that feareth God alway. He that keepeth the law, happy is he. Blessed, happy is he, that doeth righteousness at all times. The Lord blesseth the habitation of the just. Blessed are the meek, said the Saviour, the merciful, the pure in heart, they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. The hope of the righteous shall be gladness. The fruit of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever. God giveth a man that is good in his sight, wisdom, and knowledge, and joy! The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. He shall enter into peace. Christ will say, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord. righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father!

The

Such every where is the representation of the Holy Scriptures. It is the universal and eternal law of the universe, that goodness shall be ever attended with happiness, as wickedness is with suffering. Neither can be separated. The whole spirit and conduct of the divine government depend on this union. Every thing is provided and arranged, both for time and eternity in reference to this fact. The divine purposes, the system of divine providence-all that has or will come to pass, all the law of God, all the promises of grace, the probation of time, the retribution of eternity, are dependent upon that great fact, that to be good is to be happy; to be wicked is to be miserable. It will never be otherwise unless God leaves his own universe, his government is extinguished, and his moral system rushes into confusion and universal ruin.

If thus the spiritual being within us possesses capacity for goodness, as has been represented, if it may run an immortal course, ever and endlessly opening and enriching itself with moral excellence; so may, so must it run a corresponding career of happiness. If the soul's virtue increases constantly and for ever, so must its fruit, true enjoyment. If the soul have no other qualities but goodness, so will it possess no other emotions but those of happiness. Is there no limit to the progress of its moral excellence, so is there no boundary to the happiness it will attain. Happiness, immeasurable, perfect, infinite, is laid out before the spirit; an entire eternity allotted to it to drink in constantly larger, richer, fuller measures. As its holiness, so its happiness, is progressive, measureless, illimitable, eternal. Gabriel, fast by the eternal throne, tell us, if thou hast no eye to penetrate the future, no heart to conceive and appreciate the blessedness of the long, eternal course yet before thee; tell, if thou canst, what thou hast been, delineate thy course of intelligence, purity, enjoyment. Let us know what is before us; we do follow thee; thy high, glorious course is ours also. We shall attain thy knowledge, we

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shall receive all thy virtue; we shall feel all the raptures of thy bliss. Wouldst thou be happier than the archangel? Thou mayest be; be good, and thou shalt be. As thou passest on age after age, thy desires shall spread themselves immeasurably forth, and they all shall be met and satisfied; thy heart shall expand so that worlds will be too small for it, and it shall be satisfied, and so shall thy eternity be filled.

Hast thou, Christian, ever known a favored, religious hour-an hour of Scripture reading, an hour of prayer, an hour of hope, inspiring hope; when heaven seemed near and open, and thou didst enter in, and, forgetful of all earthly evils, didst join with the just made perfect in acts of worship before the throne; and thou didst see the smile of Jehovah resting upon thy service, and feel the delicious peace and joy of a heart at rest upon the bosom of divine everlasting love, and committing thyself to God, didst breathe out thy whole spirit in the words of a saint of old, Whom have I in heaven but thee and thine? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee--such one day shall be every hour, only it shall be all reality, instead of being partly in anticipation; only it shall be completely filled with bliss; only every hour shall be happier than the last. And we are all susceptible of a character which will secure to us this full, perfect, ever increasing, immeasurable, eternal happiness.

V. Another fact adds greatly to the interest we should feel in this spirit within. It may be lost.

The prospective possessions and blessedness, provided for our spiritual being now referred to, are not assured to us. They are proffered, but we may never attain them. Your spirit, my friend, may never run this glorious high course; it may never swell and open with intelligence, and holiness, and enjoyment, rising constantly a brighter and more blissful spirit towards the eternal throne. All this may be lost, though pressed upon acceptance, and another career be run, immortal, but not virtuous, of increasing intelligence to some extent, but not of happiness. This spiritual being of ours may sink to perdition, instead of rising to heaven, according as we are religious or irreligious here on earth. If the soul be sent away to run its course thus with ever enlarging capacities for suffering, its doom will be terrible, infinitely dreadful.

Consider this doom, that our solicitude and sympathies and interests may be the more awakened in behalf of this spiritual immortal being within. What is the loss of the soul? This is a subject on which I have little to say. All language fails here. Imagination itself cowers and shrinks from such a theme, inconceivably momentous, dreadfully infinite. Inadequate, utter feebleness, as are all our thoughts and language on this subject of the loss of the soul, we are in danger of being left to learn what it is by sad and eternal experience. We must therefore consider a

few moments, and speak of it as well as we can. He that loses his soul, and thus goes down to spend his eternity in the great prison of the universe, loses all the pleasures of mind, all the pleasures, I mean, from the exercise and use of the intellectual faculties. The contemplation of truth, the employment and expansion of the understanding, constitute, no doubt, an important item of the happiness of the righteous in heaven.

The eye of religion directs itself to the great God, to a glory which

admits neither a superior nor an equal. The mind in heaven exercising itself upon those stupendous objects and events presented in the character and acts of Jehovah, will find some of its best enjoyments. But he that has lost his soul in this dark world below, will he find any delightful employment for his mental faculties ? He will carry with him all his intellectual powers. But will he find any elevating objects of thought, and hours of bright and cheerful contemplation? Will all that is past afford one pleasant remembrance; will there be a single object present in all the universe on which the mind can fix with comfort? will the whole future eternity present one? Every object of thought will be one of gloom and wretchedness; every action of the mind will plant an unavailing sorrow in the heart. Can you conceive of the wretchedness of that individual to whom every succeeding thought brings a pang of unavoidable sorrow. Such is the long, long eternity of him who loses his soul. What shall it profit!

He that loses his soul in the world of woe, loses all the pleasures derived from the exercise of kind and benevolent feelings. It is more blessed to give than receive. The fullest wish for the good of another being, makes the heart happier that cherishes it. In heaven the kindly affections which flow out upon every inhabitant of that world, and feed and strengthen themselves by communicating this to all within their reach, bring into the soul a calm and pure happiness passing all understanding. But in the world of lost souls, no charities are known. Will the miserable dwellers there stretch out a hand to relieve a fellow-being? There is not one capable of relief in all that world; and if there were, none need it more than himself. The lost, moreover, will have no disposition to relieve, or bless, or console. All the amiable feelings will have died; all the kind and social affections will have been extinguished; all the ties of brotherhood and friendship that bound him to any other creature that exists will have been severed. He stands alone, his soul, scathed and withered, hath nothing left but sins and woes. Who would possess such a soul? Who would become for eternity such a desolate, selfish, most wretched being?

He that loses his soul, loses all self-approbation and peace of conscience. Sweet consciousness of innocence! Self-approval, calm, soothing, peace of conscience! They that have this, experience in part the joys of heaven. The heart which is a stranger to it, never yet has learned what happiness is. Lost sinners have no peace of conscience, none of the sweet happiness of conscious innocence. But in place of it the heart is filled with bitter-most bitter, self-condemning, with the arrowy stings of deep remorse. How writhes the mind which remorse has seized; how throbs the heart with anguish most intense! It is the worm that never dies; the cold gnawing at the heart which never will cease; the fang piercing through the soul, making it quiver with torture, which will not be withdrawn for ever and ever. Who can endure it? Who can hear the ceaseless, eternal condemnation for his own wounded spirit: "Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not." Who can bear a guilty conscience for ever and ever, for ever and ever? Who will do it for the sake of a little earthly good?

To lose the soul, is to lose all purity, all moral worth. In that dark region, there is nothing amiable, nothing undefiled, nothing pure. Not

a heart in all that world that has a single attractive quality, a single feature of loveliness; not a being there possesses one trait of excellence or worth. Every character is that of unmingled wickedness; every heart is black. Pollution, guilt, sin unrestrained, spreads and reigns through all the caverns of perdition. He that loses his soul, leaves all that is lovely, and good, and valuable, and pure, and worthy, and excellent, in this universe, and becomes one entire mass of sin.

Can the soul, never, never, never, be redeemed from this destroyerno never! Who would become such a thing? Who would be such an unmingled corruption to all eternity? So does he become who is lost. "What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?"

I ought to add, he that loses his soul, loses all hope. Hope is one of the most cheerful guests of the human heart, the most constant and unfailing; it affords relief in pain, strength and courage in disaster; it is the sweetness of sorrow; it is the last friend that leaves us in the world. The world has its evils, its bitter disappointments, its calamities that are dark and fearful, its heavy afflictions that almost press the life from our hearts, and makes us faint and sink down into the grave. But in all these calamities and sufferings, hope, cheering hope, attends us, relieves our woes and keeps the heart from entire wretchedness. There never

But when

was a cloud so dark that hope would not send through it a cheering ray, the hour of greatest peril and deepest sorrowing and distress, has hope in it, and, of course, some mingled grains of comfort. On the death-bed, to the very last, hope sits by and lights up the eye, when in consequence of the disease and the coming on of death, nothing else can. a sinner enters his home of sin and misery, hope forsakes him; it is extinguished quite. Not its feeblest ray will cheer his heart again for ever and ever. Every expectation of any good, of one moment of happiness to all eternity has died within him. He is an object of black despair, of hopeless, utter, immeasurable, interminable misery.

"Burning continually, yet unconsumed,
Forever wasting, yet enduring still,

Dying perpetually, but never dead,

His are groans that never end, and sighs

That always sigh, and tears that ever weep!"

This is eternal death. This is the doom of him that loses his own soul !

Such is the doom to which this our spirit is exposed. This is the doom of which it is in the most imminent danger. This is the doom