ven God's law, can make men righteous in heart,
unless the Spirit has taught men's hearts to acquiesce in the law. It
can only force out into rebellion the sin that is in them.

It is so, brethren, with a nation's law. The voice of the nation must
go along with it. It must be the expression of their own feeling, and
then they will have it obeyed. But if it is only the law of a
government, a law which is against the whole spirit of the people,
there is first the murmur of a nation's disapprobation, and then there
is transgression, and then, if the law be vindicated with a high hand,
the next step is the bursting that law asunder in national revolution.
And so it is with God's law. It will never control a man long who does
not from his heart love it. First comes a sensation of restraint, and
then comes a murmuring of the heart; and last, there comes the rising
of passion in its giant might, made desperate by restraint. That is
the law giving strength to sin.

And therefore brethren, if all we know of God be this, that He has
made laws, and that it is terrible to break them; if all our idea of
religion be this, that it is a thing of commands and hindrances--Thou
shalt, and thou shalt not; we are under the law, and there is no help
for it. We _must_ shrink from the encounter with death.

We pass to our second subject--Faith conquering in death.

And, before we enter upon this topic, there are two general remarks
that we have to make. The first is, The elevating power of faith.
There is nothing in all this world that ever led man on to real
victory but faith. Faith is that looking forward to a future with
something like certainty, that raises man above the narrow feelings of
the present. Even in this life he is a greater man, a man of more
elevated character, who is steadily pursuing a plan that requires some
years to accomplish, than he who is living by the day. Look forward
but ten years, and plan for it, live for it; there is something of
manhood, something of courage required to conquer the thousand things
that stand in your way. And therefore it is, that faith, and nothing
but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character
which we get from looking steadily and for ever forward, till eternity
becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last
struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all,
but only as something that stan