The Crisis. The sore temptation and the struggle.

Results depending.

and pleasant to write to his parents. He used to have a letter, well filled, always ready for any private opportunity which accident might furnish; but now, he writes seldom, though he apologizes very freely for his seeming neglect, and expects every week to have more time. At last, some Saturday afternoon, the proposal comes up among his companions, to go off on the morrow on a party of pleasure. It is not made directly to him, but it is in his hearing, and he knows that he is included in the plan, and must decide in favor or against it. A party of pleasure, of innocent recreation, they call it. He knows it is a party of dissipation and vice,— and formed too for that sacred day, which God commands him to keep holy. He says nothing, and from his silent and almost indifferent look, while they loudly and eagerly discuss the plan, you would suppose that he was an unconcerned spectator. But no; look at him more attentively. Is not his cheek a little pale? Is there not a slight quiver upon his lip? And a slight tremor in his limbs, as he leans upon a chair, as if his strength failed him a little? These external indications are very slight, but they are the indications of a sinking of the spirit within, as he feels that the moral forces are taking sides, and marshalling themselves in array for the struggle which must come on. Conscience does not speak;

but he knows, he feels, how she will speak, before this question is decided. Inclinations, which are beginning to grow powerful by indulgence, do not yet draw, but he knows how they will draw; and the blood falls back upon his heart, and strength fails from his limbs, as he foresees the contest. It seems as if the combatants were drawing up their forces in gloomy silence, waiting, by common consent, till the time shall arrive, and the signal be given, for their deadly struggle.

The armistice continues, with slight interruptions, until he leaves his companions, and having closed the busi

Consequences of a defeat.

Probation.

Nature of it.

ness of the day, walks towards his home. But there are within him the elements of war, and as soon as he retires to his solitary room, and the stimulus and excitement of external objects are removed, the contest is begun. I need not describe it; I can have no reader who does not understand the bitterness of the struggle which ensues, when duty, and conscience, and the command of God, endeavor to maintain their stand against the onset of sore temptation. Human beings have occasion to know what this is, full well.

Besides, it is not to the circumstances of the contest in such a case, that I wish to turn the attention of the reader, but to this fact: that very probably, on the event of this single struggle, the whole character and happiness of the young man, for life, depend. He may not see it so at the time, but it is so. If duty gains the victory here, her next conquest will be achieved more easily. There is a double advantage gained, for the strength of moral principle is increased, and the pressure of subsequent attacks is diminished. The opposing forces which such a young man must encounter, in taking the right stand, are far more powerful than those which tend to drive him from it, when once it is taken. On the other hand, if he yields here, he yields probably for ever. Conscience stands rebuked and silenced; guilty passions become tumultuous for future gratification; impure and unholy thoughts pollute his mind; and though remorse may, probably, for a long time to come, at intervals more and more distant, and in tones more and more faint, utter reproaches and warnings, he will, in all probability, go rapidly down the broad road of vice and sin. All this is not fancy, but fact. It is the sober history of hundreds of young men, who go down every year to ruin, in precisely this way. They have their time of trial; the time when they are put to the test; a crisis, which, in many, many cases, is over in a few hours, but whose awful

Sin perpetuates itself. Its worst effects.

Wandering from God.

consequences extend through a life of misery, and are not stopped, even by the grave.

Perhaps it may be supposed, that all the miseries of a life of vice, ought not to be charged upon the hour when the first step was taken, but should be considered as the consequences of the repeated acts of transgression which the individual goes on to commit. We have no objection to this at all, but it does not relieve the hour of the first transgression from any portion of its responsibility; for this very disposition to go on in sin, is the direct result of the first transgression; and it is the very worst. result of it. If the first sin left the heart in a right state, the conscience tender, and guilty passions subdued; and if nothing was to follow from it but simple suffering, even if it were suffering for years, it would be comparatively nothing. The greatest, the most terrible of all the evils which result from the first indulgence of sin, is that it leads almost inevitably, to a second and a third. The tyrant takes advantage of his momentary power, to rivet his fetters, and to secure his victim in hopeless slavery. So that if a young man spends one night in sin, the great evil is not, that he must suffer the next day, but that he will go on sinning the next day. He brings heart, and conscience, and ungodly passions into such a relative condition, that he will go on. There is not half as much to stop him, as there was to prevent his setting out, so that the first transgression has for its consequences, not only its own peculiar miseries, but all the succeeding steps in the declivity of sin, together with the attendant suffering, which, to the end of time, follow in their train.

All this is true, though not universally, in respect to he vices and crimes of human life. I say not universally, for the wanderer does, sometimes, of his own accord, stop and return. But it is true universally, and without exception, of the broad way of sin against God, from which the wanderer, if he once enters it, will never,

Can the sinner return?

Will the sinner return?

of his own accord, turn back. Take the first step here, and all is lost. The inclination to return never comes. The whole Bible teaches us, that sin once admitted, whether it be by a spotless spirit before the throne of God, or by a tender infant here, establishes its fixed and perpetual reign. Cannot the sinner return? the reader perhaps may ask. Cannot the fallen spirit or sinning man, give up his warfare and come back to God? Cannot Dives, who neglected and disobeyed God when on earth, seek his forgiveness and his favor now? We have nothing to do with these questions; the inquiry for us to make is, not whether they can, but whether they will return. The Bible tells us they will not; but with mankind around us, and our own hearts open to our view, we scarcely need its testimony. Sin once admitted, the soul is ruined. It lies dead in trespasses and sins; going farther and farther away from God, and sinking continually in guilt and misery. It may indeed, while in this state, be clothed in the appearances of external virtue, but it will still remain, hopelessly estranged from God, so deeply corrupted, and so wholly lost, that it can be restored to purity and holiness again, only by being created anew. Sin thus does more than entail misery, -it perpetuates itself. The worst of all its consequences, is, its own inevitable and eternal continuance.

The question is very often asked, whether the punishment of sin in another world, will be suffering directly inflicted, or only the evils which naturally and inevitably flow from sin. The distinction between these two species of retribution is very clear in respect to human punishments, but it is lost at once, in a great measure, when we come to the government of God. It is impos. sible to draw the line between them, because whatever consequences follow, they are so uniformly, and indissolubly connected with sin, that they form a part of its

God often employs suffering.

Arrangements for it in the hunan frame.

nature. In fact, it is not enough to say that sin brings suffering, it is suffering. Misery is, as it were, an essential property of it; but whether rendered so by the decision of Jehovah, or by an original and absolute necessity in the very nature of things, it is perhaps impossible for human powers to determine. One thing is certain, however, that Jehovah, does not shrink from the direct employment of suffering, whenever it is necessary to accomplish his purposes. It is an unpopular subject, and one which, probably, a vast majority of readers would prefer to have passed by; but no one can form any correct idea of his Maker's character, or know at all, what he is to expect at his hands, without being fully aware of it.

Take, for instance, the human frame. It is made for health and happiness, and when we look upon a countenance blooming with beauty, and observe its expression of quiet enjoyment, we feel that the being who formed it, is a God of love. But we must not forget, that within that very blooming cheek, there is contrived an apparatus capable of producing something very different from enjoyment. A fibrous net-work spreads over it, coming out in one trunk from the brain, extending everywhere its slender ramifications, and sending a little thread to every point upon the surface. What is this mechanism for? Its uses are many; but among its other properties, there is in it a slumbering power, which may indeed never be called into action, but which always exists, and is always ready, whenever God shall call it forth, to be the instrument of irremediable and unutterable suffering. We admit that in almost every case, it remains harmless, and inoperative; still it is there, always there, and always ready; and it is called into action whenever God thinks best. And it is not merely in the cheek, but throughout overy part of the frame that the apparatus of suffering