this world; adding,
in this connection, briefly: "But do not understand me as in any degree
waiving the strictness of judgment to which every soul will have to
submit. It will not be limited by his acts, but go down to his ends of
life--to his motives and his quality--and the sentence will really be a
judgment upon what he _is_, not upon what he has _done_; although,
taking the barest literal sense, only actions are regarded."

In opening and illustrating his text, he said, farther: "As the word of
God, according to its own declarations, is spirit and life--treats, in
fact, by virtue of divine and Scriptural origin, of divine and
spiritual things, must we not go beneath the merely obvious and natural
meaning, if we would get to its true significance? Is there not a
hunger of the soul as well as of the body? May we not be spiritually
athirst, and strangers?--naked, sick, and in prison? This being so, can
we confidently look for the invitation, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father,
if our regard for the neighbor have not reached beyond his bodily life?
If we have never considered his spiritual wants and sufferings, and
ministered thereto according to our ability? Just in the degree that
the soul is more precious than the body, is the degree of our
responsibility under this more interior signification of Scripture. The
mere natural acts of feeding the hungry and giving water to the
thirsty, of visiting the sick, and those who lie in prison, of clothing
the naked and entertaining strangers, will not save us in our last day,
if we have neglected the higher duties involved in the divine
admonition. Nor will even the supply of spiritual nourishment to hungry
and thirsty souls be accounted to us for righteousness. We must find a
higher meaning still in the text. Are we not, each one of us, starving
for heavenly food?--spiritually exhausted with thirst?--naked, sick, in
prison? Are we eating, daily, of the bread of life?--drinking at the
wells of God's truth?--putting on the garments of
righteousness?--finding balm for our sick souls in Gilead?--breaking
the bonds of evil?--turning from strange lands, and coming back to our
father's house. If not, I warn you, men and brethren, that you are not
in the right way;--that, taking the significance of God's word, which
is truth itself, there is no reasonable ground of hope for your
salvation."

It was not with Mr. Braxton as with his friend. He could not let
considerations like these enter