affairs-a light that sheds its pure and celestial tint over the whole of your path; and leaves not one little space in the field of humanity unirradiated by

its beams.

You have already heard me expatiate on the difficulty of ascertaining the real state and charac-ter of one's mind, by a direct examination of it; and if the immediate question were put to the inner man, whether he minded the things of the flesh or those of the Spirit, a clear answer might not so readily be obtained—and that, more especially, as they who are spiritual often feel on the one hand the instigations of the flesh; and they who are carnal have at times the visitation upon their heart, of a wish and an aspiration and an effort however ineffectual after a life of sacredness. It is well then, that this verse supplies us with a test for the resolving of this ambiguity. They who mind the things of the flesh, are they who walk after the flesh; and they who mind the things of the Spirit, are they who walk after the Spirit. With both classes, there may be the inward struggle of the opposite and conflicting elements-the one not being totally exempted from evil inclinations, and the other not being totally bereft of their longing after godliness. When we look only within, it may be hard to say from the fight that is going on, which of these two elements shall prevail. But this may be decisively gathered, if not from the battle itself, at least from the issue of the battle; or, in other words, from the way in which it terminates upon the conduct. The spiritual man is urged by the corrupt propensities of his nature-nevertheless he

follows not after them, and this from that preponderance of motive and of inward power on the side of what is good, which marks his mind to be set on the things of the Spirit. The carnal man is urged by the voice of conscience, and its remonstrances against all that is evil-nevertheless he obeys it not in deed, and this from that prevalency of force and of impulse on the side of what is corrupt, which marks his mind to be set on the things of the flesh. The working of the inner mechanism is not palpable. But the result of that working on the outward history is so; and thus from the stream do we learn the nature of the fountain, and by the test of man's fruits do we know them.

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LECTURE XLVIII.

ROMANS, viii, 6.

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

THE death which is here spoken of, is something more than the penal death that is inflicted on transgressors, in the way of retribution. It is not a future but a present death which is here spoken of; and arises from the obtuseness or the extinction of certain feelings and faculties in the soul, which, if awake to their corresponding objects, would uphold a life of thoughts and sensations and regards, altogether different from the actual life of unregenerated men. To the higher and spiritual life they are dead even now; and, to estimate the soreness of this deprivation, just figure an affectionate father to have a paralysis inflicted on all those domestic feelings, which bound him in love and endearment to the members of his own family. Then would you say of him, that he had become dead to the joys and the interests of home-that perhaps he was still alive to the gratifications of sense and of profligacy, but that what wont to constitute the main charm of his existence had now gone into annihilation-that to what at one time was the highest pleasurable feeling of his consciousness, he had become as torpid as if he had literally expired -and that thus he was labouring under all the calamity of a death, to that which occupies a high

place among the delights of the feeling and the friendly and the amiable. And it is in a sense analogous to this, that we are to understand the present death of all those who are carnally-minded -not a death to any of the impressions that are made upon their senses from without-not a death to the animal enjoyments of which men are capable-not even, it may be, a death to many of the nobler delights either of the heart or of the understanding—But a death to that which when really felt and enjoyed, is found to be the supreme felicity of man-a death to all that is spiritual-an utter extinction of those capacities by which we are fitted to prove those heavenly and seraphic extacies, that would liken us to angels-a hopeless apathy in all that regards our love to God, and to all that righteousness which bears upon it the impress of the upper sanctuary. It is our dormancy to these, which constitutes the death that is here spoken of; and in virtue of which man is bereft, if not of his being, at least of the great end of his being which is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.

And you may further see how it is that such a death is not merely a thing of negation, but a thing of positive wretchedness. For with the want of all that is sacred or spiritual about him, there is still a remainder of feeling, which makes him sensible of his want a general restlessness of the soul, on whose capacities there has been inflicted a sore mutilation; and from whose aspirings after undefinable good, the object is ever melting away into hopeless and inaccessible distance-a remorse and a terror about invisible things, which are ever and

anon breaking forth, even amid the busy appliance of this world's opiates, to stifle and overbear them. And there are other miseries, that are sure to spring up from those carnal sensibilities which have undergone no death-from the pride that is met with incessant rebuke and mortification, by the equal pride of our fellow-men-from the selfishness that comes into collision, with all the selfishness of the unregenerated society around it—from the moral agonies which essentially adhere to malice and hatred and revenge-from the shame that is annexed, even on earth, to the pursuits of licentiousness from the torture that lieth in its passions, and the gloomy desolation of heart which follows the indulgence of them-All these give to the sinner his foretaste of hell on this side of death; and, whether they be aggravated or not by the fire and the brimstone and the arbitrary inflictions that are conceived to be discharged upon him in the place of vengeance-still they are enough, when earth is swept away, with all its refuges of amusement and business and guilty dissipation, in which the mind can now be lulled into a forgetfulness of itself they are enough to entail upon the second and the eternal death, a burden of enormous and incalculable wretchedness-a curse so felt and so agonized under by the outcasts of condemnation, as to make the utterance of Cain their theme of wailing and of weeping through all eternity, even that their punishment is greater than they can bear.

From what we have said of the death of those who are carnally, you will be at no loss to under