the soul, and it were to be buried up in the dark house of
the grave. Even the boldest of us is disturbed at the thought of bodily
death, and we are always startled when the summons suddenly comes: "Set
thy house in order, for thou must die."

Again, the spirit of man fears that "fearful something after death," that
eternal judgment which must be passed upon all. We tremble at the
prospect of giving an account of our own actions. We are afraid to reap
the harvest, the seed of which we have sown with our own hands. The
thought of going to a just judgment, and of receiving from the Judge of
all the earth, who cannot possibly do injustice to any of His creatures,
only that which is our desert, shocks us to the centre of our being! Man
universally is afraid to be judged with a righteous judgment! Man
universally is terrified by the equitable bar of God!

Again, the apostate spirit of man has an awful dread of eternity. Though
this invisible realm is the proper home of the human soul, and it was
made to dwell there forever, after the threescore and ten years of its
residence in the body are over, yet it shrinks back from an entrance into
this untried world, and clings with the desperate force of a drowning man
to this "bank and shoal of time." There are moments in the life of a
guilty man when the very idea of eternal existence exerts a preternatural
power, and fills him with a dread that paralyzes him. Never is the human
being stirred to so great depths, and roused to such intensity of action,
as when it feels what the Scripture calls "the power of an _endless_
life." All men are urged by some ruling passion which is strong. The love
of wealth, or of pleasure, or of fame, drives the mind onward with great
force, and excites it to mighty exertions to compass its end. But never
is a man pervaded by such an irresistible and overwhelming influence as
that which descends upon him in some season of religious gloom,--some
hour of sickness, or danger, or death,--when the great eternity, with
all its awful realities, and all its unknown terror, opens upon his
quailing gaze. There are times in man's life, when he is the subject of
movements within that impel him to deeds that seem almost superhuman; but
that internal ferment and convulsion which is produced when all eternity
pours itself through his being turns his soul up from the centre. Man
will labor convulsively, night and day, for money; he will dry up the
bloom and freshness