clashing against His will; they are beset round about, but they are not dwelt in by His holy presence; the gulf between them and heaven is ever widening day by day they are ever departing from God, and ever sinking downward to the abyss; and the shadow of the outer darkness already gathers upon their inmost soul. Now this, in truth and soberness, is the work which rests not, day or night, in the moral being of mankind. Heaven and hell are but the ultimate points of the diverging lines on which all are ever moving. The steady and changeless rise and fall of the everlasting lights is not more unerring. It is a moral movement, measured upon the boundaries of life and death; a change of nature, which, in the moral world, is a change of position and of standing before God,-it brings us nearer or casts us farther from Him.

3. And this leads us to one more thought: I mean, that such as we become in this life by the moral change wrought in our immortal nature, such we shall be for ever. Our eternal state will be no more than the carrying out of what we are now. After this life is over, there will be no new change-no new beginning-no passing the eternal gulf between good and evil. He that is unjust shall be unjust still; he that is filthy shall be ļ filthy still; he that is righteous shall be righteous

still; and he that is holy shall be holy still. The two diverging lines shall then be at an impassable distance, and they that move upon them, it may be, shall move onward still, into a brighter glory, or a darker gloom-to a closer ministry, or a further banishment from God. For, in very truth, heaven and hell are not more abodes than characters. Abodes they are, where shall be gathered all men and angels, according as the award shall be; but that which makes the bliss or misery of each is not less the habit which has here been wrought into the moral being, and there is made absolute for good or evil. In this life the holiest will and the most saintly spirit is clogged and checked by the swerving and burden of the flesh. All men fall short of their high purposes; the best of men bear but little fruit; it ripens slowly and uncertainly, and often soon decays: but the will which has here struggled to perfect itself after the example of our Redeemer, shall there be perfected by His mighty working. He shall fulfil the work. They that have yearned to be holy shall be holy without blemish; they that have wept for their feeble services shall there excel in strength-what they would fain have been, they shall be. Their determination of will, and deliberate choice, and faithful toiling, shall fix the character of their

eternal lot. What through their weakness they could not here attain, He, of His gracious power, shall make them to be for ever.

And so, likewise, of evil men. The warning, and striving, and restraining of the Holy Ghost shall then be over; and all that in this life kept back the full outbreak of a sinful will shall be taken off. The whole power of evil, which lurks pent up in the hearts of the wicked, shall burst forth into a flame. The very air they breathe must kindle it. It may be they shall wonder at themselves, at the mystery of iniquity which has lain harboured in them. Their conditions in life so far repressed and masked them from themselves, that they did not fully know what they truly were just as we often see men, by some outward change, put forth new and incredible powers of evil, which, before they were tried, no man could believe them to possess ; and as we all know how the example of others, their influence, their presence, the glance of their eye, and a thousand other outward checks,-will sustain in us a better habit, which, when they are removed, is altogether lost, and our true self rises to the surface, and overspreads the whole character, and puts out its full ungovernable strength. Such, beyond doubt, shall be the state of those whose will has here conflicted with the will of God.

There all check, all mitigation, all repression, shall be gone; and such as they would be now, if they dared, they shall be then for ever.

And if these things be so, with how much awe and fear have we need to deal with ourselves!

First of all, we must needs learn to keep a keen watch over our hearts. Every change that passes upon us has an eternal consequence; there is something ever flowing from it into eternity. We are never at rest: our moral life is like a running stream; its very condition is change. And these changes creep on us by such an insensible approach, that we hardly perceive them till they have established themselves. They are like the growth of our stature, or the change of our features,-most perceptible in the whole after-effect, but beyond the subtlest observation to detect in the manner and the moment of their mutations. So, too, our moral dispositions grow upon us. We know them by retrospect. They took their first spring from some unperceived or forgotten incident, winding themselves into our inmost being, and drawing it to their own shape. To pass by the grosser forms of sin, I would take, for example, a secret dislike of religion, which often comes from a soft, self-pleasing temper; or pride, springing from the accidents of life; or supercilious contempt of the Church's warnings, arising from a confidence in our own

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judgment and opinion. These, being free from all grossness, and therefore compatible with all that the world exacts of a man, wind themselves imperceptibly around many who are otherwise blameless and upright. But, though free from all grossness, they are faults capable of great intensity. They stifle the very life of faith, wear out all reverence, excite a most restless and obstinate dislike of holiness, and turn the whole man aside from God with a most perfect estrangement of heart. They are sins more deadly for the very reason that they are spiritual. They dwell in that depth of our being which is most akin to the immortality of fallen angels.

Watch, then, over the changes and inclinations of your will; for every one bears upon eternity. Every energy lays in another touch upon your deepening character; every moment fixes its colours with a greater stedfastness. Remember that you are immortal; realise your own immortality. Remember it all day long, in all places live as men whose every act is ineffaceably recorded, whose every change may be retained for ever.

And, again; we have need not only to watch, but to keep up a strong habit of self-control. How it is that every act we do leaves upon us its impression, we know not; but the scars and the seams of our bodily frame warn us of the havoc sin