g-house, where the most cunning
wins most of his neighbour's money; and now according to their faith it
was to them. They had forgotten God and spiritual things, and now they
were hid from their eyes. And these travellers found them sitting,
playing antics, quarrelling for the fruits of the field--mere
beasts--reaping as they had sown, and filled full with the fruit of their
own devices.

Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor
wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from above--a dim
feeling that they had been something better and nobler once--a faint
recollection of heavenly things which they once knew when they were
little children--a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin, into which
their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily sweeping them
down;--and then they tried to think and could not--and tried to remember
and could not--and so they sat there every Sabbath day, cowering with
fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered that they once had souls!

My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these poor
dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God's image except
their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and the pleasures of
this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to have quite
hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath days when they come
to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all vacant, stupid, their
hearts far away, or with a sort of passing uneasiness and dim feeling
that all is not right--_try to think and cannot_--_try to pray and
cannot_--and, like those dwellers by the Dead Sea, once a week on Sabbath
day half remember that they once had souls?

So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he seemeth to have. So true it is, that the wages of sin is death;
death to the soul even in this life. So true it is that why men do not
believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word. So true it is,
that only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god-
like words. So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the
whirlwind, and that he who _will_ not hear Christ's words, shall soon not
be _able_ to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master,
must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages,
spiritual death. From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed
Saviour, in