that the truth may come with power upon our souls!

There is nothing more wonderful in man than the moral faculty which we call conscience. By a wise arrangement of the Creator, men carry about in their bosoms a living register of their conduct, which they have only to consult with honesty and candour, to know their moral condition. Like the other faculties with which we are endowed, conscience may be injured and weakened. It may be so far impaired as to seem absolutely destroyed. But this is so only in extreme cases. the great mass of men, conscience always continues more or less in action, keeping an account of the moral progress. When conscience is speaking in our favour, it affords the greatest increase of happiness. But when it is exercising its office against us, when it is making the record of our sins, it is a cruel tormentor, lashing our souls with a sense of guilt and an expectation of judgment.

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Among the instruments of torture with which conscience afflicts the soul of the

sinner, is fear. Our first parents transgressed the command of their Creator, and then what follows? Let us hear the sacred historian." They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid." And this is the uniform process. Sin is immediately followed by fear, by the fear of detection, by the fear of exposure, by the fear of punishment. Under a sense of sin the bravest man becomes a coward.

Sin is followed by fear, especially by a fear of the Divine displeasure. This is a most important view of the subject, but it is not that first brought before us by the text. The sinner is there represented as a miserable being, entertaining a cowardly dread of his fellow-creatures. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." And it requires little observation, little ac

quaintance with mankind, to enable us to perceive the correctness of the picture.

It is a very remarkable testimony to the excellence of God's law, that mankind are pretty well agreed in putting a high value upon outward morality. Though the world at large, even in Christian countries, is not influenced by Christian views and feelings, though it has no taste for the higher and more refined beauties of holiness, there are certain great outlines that it never ceases to recognize, as being in fact so deeply traced in our nature, that the moral constitution must be actually destroyed before they can be totally obliterated. However corrupt may be the state of society, a certain tribute is paid to truth, and justice, and honesty. Even among the ancient heathens we find, from the testimony of the Apostle, that the things which were true, and honest, and pure, were regarded as lovely and of good report. And it certainly is not different now. trary, bad as the world is, the standard by which it judges of moral excellence is much higher. It knows much better what

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is wrong, and much more generally regards sin with disapprobation.

The world, then, discountenances certain flagrant sins, and fixes the brand of its displeasure upon those who are guilty of them. But actions are judged of, even among men, by a higher tribunal than the world

namely, by those who are themselves distinguished for their regularity or holiness. Men who are tempted to do what is wrong, are checked not merely by apprehension of what the world might think, but of what particular individuals might think. There is that in virtue which secures it respect even with the abandoned. And, besides, there are very few who are not from inferior motives desirous of maintaining the good opinion of those who would look with displeasure upon what is evil.

It is plain therefore why the sinner is, as he most undoubtedly is, in a state of fear. Sin is a thing of darkness. It shuns the light. And when a man has sinned, his chief care is, that his sin should not be known to others. His friends would think

worse of him, and therefore he would not have them know it. His enemies would have an advantage over him, or a matter of reproach against him, and therefore he would not have it come to their knowledge. It cannot be undone. That is not in the nature of things possible. It is to be concealed therefore. It must not be known beyond that privacy in which it was committed. And yet how is this possible? There is something wonderful in the frequency with which, in spite of every precaution, it becomes known. A bird of the air will publish it. It walks abroad without visible reason, when all the chances were against its being known. The sinner knows this, though he may not remember that it is written in the volume of inspiration, Thy sin shall find thee out. He feels an instinctive terror that it will be so ;-that some one will get to know it, who, he has peculiar reasons to wish, might remain in ignorance;—that it will some how or other come to tell against him. He sees how often this is the case, and he fears it may be the case with him.

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