The Soliloquy.

Wandering thoughts.

Reveries.

mood, and sits down again in his armed chair before the fire, where a train of thought something like the following passes in his mind. I insert it, not for its dignity, or its good taste, but because it is true to human nature.

THE THOUGHTFUL SINNER'S SOLILOQUY.

Oh, I do wish I was a Christian. I must attend to the subject. I am now twenty-five, and half mankind do not live to be fifty, so that probably I am more than half through life. I should like to know exactly what my chance of life is. They say the insurance companies can tell exactly;-wonder how they calculate.—

"But I wish I was a Christian. I do not know how to repent. I will confess all my sins now, and try to feel penitence for them. I will begin back in infancy. That lie I told to my father about the book. Charles Williams sat on the same seat with me then.- Wonder where he is now."

Here he gets into a reverie, about home and scenes of childhood; presently he rises up and sighs, and begins to walk back and forth across the floor.

"Oh dear, how hard it is to confine my thoughts. Strange; going to judgment,- all my sins recorded,coming up against me, and I have no heart to repent of them. Can see them, but can't feel.- Mr. W's sermon was not very clear. I do not understand how the judgment will be arranged. Take a great deal of time.— Bible says Christ will judge the world.

"But I must become a Christian.-And yet if I should, I must make a profession of religion.- Very public.— What would they all say?

Here he stops to look out of the window, and seems lost, for a few moments, in vacancy.

"Wonder who is sick in that house;- bright light. How should I feel if I was taken sick to-night, and knew I was going to die?— The time will come.

The confession.

The cold, formal prayer.

-I disobeyed my

"But my sins.-Let me see; father and mother a great many times; I used to take their things without leave, too.-Stealing, that?- no,not stealing, exactly. Why not? Let me see.”

He speculates a few minutes on this question of casuistry, and then sighs deeply as he finds his thoughts wandering again, and makes another desperate effort to bring them back.

"Oh! how I wish I could really feel my sins. I will pray to God to forgive them, and then go to bed; I will sit down in my armed chair and pray.

-I am a

"Oh God, look down in mercy, and forgive all my sins. I confess I have been a great sinner- -I have,great sinner,-I,- —(musing)—I—that's a beautiful blue flame; -some chemical substance in the coals,azure- -(musing)- O my God, forgive me, and enable me to repent of all my sins;-beautiful;- what a singular thing flame is,—distinct shape, but no substance.

"O! how my thoughts will wander. I wish I could confine them. What shall I do? I will go to bed; and pray there; posture is of no consequence."

He lies down and begins again to call for forgiveness, but very soon loses himself in a dreamy reverie, which terminates in a few moments, in sleep.

As I have been writing the above, I have been on the point, again and again, of drawing my pen over the whole, as a wrong species of composition to introduce into such a work as this. But it tells the truth. Many of my readers will see their own faces reflected in it; for as in water, face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. And it shows the real difficulty in the way of salvation,- a heart cold, insensible and callous; unbelief almost entirely darkening the soul, and pride destroying the cffect of the little light which gains admission.

Effect of sickness and suffering.

The sick man.

A visit.

is, so far as

Every thing

The difficulty seems hopeless, too: that human means will go towards removing it. fails. In the hands of the Spirit of God, as we shall hereafter show, every thing does indeed, at times, succeed; but in its ordinary operation, every means and every influence which can be brought to bear upon the human heart, fails of awakening it. You cannot possibly have a stronger case to present to men, than the claims of God's law, and you cannot have a case in which argument, and eloquence, and instruction, and persuasion, if left to themselves, will be more utterly useless and vain. It is a common opinion among men, who are aware that all this is true in regard to their own hearts, that the coldness and insensibility which they feel, will be dispelled by some future providence of God. They think that affliction will soften them, or sickness break the tics of earth, or approaching death arouse them to vigorous effort to flee from the wrath to come. But alas, there is little hope here. Affliction does good to the friends of God, but it imbitters and hardens his enemies. Sickness stupifies, and pain distracts; and approaching death, though it may alarm and terrify the soul which is unprepared for it, seldom melts the heart to penitence and love. I will describe a case,— it is a specimen of examples so numerous, that every village and neighborhood in our land might appropriate it, and every clergyman who reads it, might almost think I took it from his own journal.

A few years since, when spending a sabbath in a beautiful country town, I was sent for to visit a sick man who was apparently drawing near the grave. I was told, as I walked with the neighbor who came for me, towards the house of the patient, that he was in a melancholy state of mind.

a firm believer and supHe

"He has been," said he, porter of the truths of religion, for many years,

Conversation by the way.

The unfeeling heart.

Consumption.

has been very much interested in maintaining religious worship, and all benevolent institutions; he has loved. the sabbath school, and given his family every religious privilege. But he says he has never really given his heart to God. He has been devoted to the world, and even now, he says, it will not relinquish its hold."

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Do you think," said I, "that he must die?' "Yes," replied he, "he must die, and he is fully aware of it. He says that he can see his guilt and danger, but that his hard heart will not feel."

This is the exact remark which is made in thousands and thousands of similar cases, and in almost precisely the same language. The eyes are opened, but the heart remains unchanged.

We at length approached the house. It was in the midst of a delightful village, and in one of those calm, still, summer afternoons, when all nature seems to speak from every tree, and leaf, and flower, of the goodness of God; and to breathe the spirit of repose and peace. I wondered that a man could lie on his bed, with windows all around him opening upon such a scene as this, and yet not feel.

As I entered the sick room, the pale and emaciated patient turned towards me an anxious and agitated look, which showed too plainly what was passing within. It was a case of consumption. His sickness had been long and lingering, as if by the gradual manner in which he had been drawn away from life, God had been endeavoring to test by experiment, the power of approaching death to draw the heart towards him. His strength was now almost gone, and he lay gasping for the breath which his wasted lungs could not receive. His eye moved with a quick and anxious glance around the room, saying, by its expression of bright intelligence, that the mind retained undiminished power.

I tried to bring to his case, those truths which I thought

Hopeless condition.

Character of the Deity.

calculated to influence him, and lead him to the Savior; but he knew all that I could tell him, and I learned from his replies, given in panting whispers, that religious truth had been trying its whole strength upon him all his life, and that in presenting it to him again now, I was only attempting once more, an experiment, which had been repeated in vain, almost every day, for forty years. I saw the utter hopelessness of effort, and stood by his bed-side in silent despair. He died that night.

My reader, if your heart is cold and hard towards God, abandon all hope that the alarm and anxiety of a death-bed will change it. Seek moral renewal and forgiveness now.

CHAPTER V.

PUNISHMENT.

OR THE CONSEQUENCES OF IIUMAN GUILT.

"He will miserably destroy those wicked men."

THERE are perhaps one thousand millions of men upon the earth at this time, of which probably nine hundred and ninety-nine millions entertain the feelings towards God which are described in the last chapter, and act accordingly. The question at once arises, what will God do with them.

The reader will perhaps recollect, that in the first chapter of this work, when considering the character of the Deity, we found that one of its most prominent traits, is determined decision in the execution of law. This is a trait which shows itself as conspicuously in all nature around us, as it does in the declarations of the Bible;