You have therefore no ground to palliate or deny the guilt of your own sinful acts, as you will not be permitted to lay their guilt upon any other being but yourselves. Though your sinful actions result from inherent depravity, over which you have no control, yet you are under no irresistible impulse to sin. You are free agents, as you have ability to follow your inclinations. And you are not less obliged to love and serve God with all your heart, than was Adam in paradise. Now, if you continue in sin, you must reap the consequences. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." There is no alternative.

This declaration contains an important truth, which is not limited to any age or nation. It is a declaration of universal concern; to the EXPLANATION and PROOF of which, your serious attention is now requested. What I propose is,

I. TO EXPLAIN IN A BRIEF MANNER THE PRINCIPAL TERMS CONTAINED IN THE PASSAGE BEFORE US; and

II. TO ESTABLISH THE TRUTH WHICH THEY EXHIBIT, VIZ. ENDLESS PUNISHMENT; FROM FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS WHICH, INDEPENDENT OF DIRECT scripture TESTIMONY, APPEAR TO MY OWN MIND CONCLUSIVE PROOFS THAT THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED IN A FUTURE STATE, WILL BE ENDLESS.

By the soul, as a general and comprehensive term, is meant the spiritual, rational, and immortal part of man; which is the origin of our thoughts, and desires, and reasoning; which distinguishes us from the brute creation, and which has some resemblance to its Dívine Author. This must be spiritual, because it thinks; and it must be immortal, because it is spiritual.

By sin, which the soul commits, the violation of the divine law is intended; for "sin is the transgression of the law."-(1 John iii. 4.) The death, to which the soul, guilty of the transgression of the divine law, is exposed, is such a death as the soul can die. It is not annihilation, or ceasing to exist; but it is losing all hope, all restraint, and sinking into everlasting horror and wretchedness. The soul, being immortal, is capable of experiencing this death, and according to the testimony of the Bible, it must thus die if the sin

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ner persist in the ways of transgression. When the sinner experiences this death, he ceases to be a prisoner of hope, and plunges into a state of endless despair and wretchedness. This is the secand death. God stating to Adam what would be the inevitable consequence of transgression, said, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,”—(Gen. ii. 17.)—or, dying thou shalt die. The import of this first threatening to man is, "In the day that thou sinnest, thou shalt experience, death spiritual, by the guilt and power of sin, death temporal, which shall then begin in thee by decays, infirmities, dangers, and other harbingers of death, and death eternal, which shall immediately succeed the other." This was particularly addressed to Adam, but through him, as a federal head, to all his posterity. Accordingly, we find the divine declaration afterwards, "The soul (meaning any person) that sinneth, it shall die." In the epistle to the Romans, it is said that "The wages of sin is death.” (Rom. vi. 23.) Death, as here used, denotes the awful punishment of sin, in the everlasting banishment of the sinner from the presence and favor of God. This is as justly due to the sinner, as the food and pay which generals give to their soldiers for their services. The wages which sin gives to its slaves, is eternal death. That this is the idea intended to be conveyed in this passage, is evident from the latter part of the verse. "But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." eternal life, and must be the opposite, or it would not be a contrast. The phrase "eternal life," is opposed to death, and proves incontestibly, that that means eternal death. The one is as long as the other. As there is no doubt about the duration of life, so there can be none about the duration of death.

Here death is contrasted with

In this sense the term death, as contained in our text, is to be understood. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." It shall be forever excluded from the happiness of heaven, and sink to endless misery. Having thus explained the principal terms contained in the text, I proceed,

II. TO ESTABLISH THE TRUTH WHICH THEY EXHIBIT, VIZ., ENDLESS PUNISHMENT; FROM FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS WHICH, INDEPENDENT OF DIRECT SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY, APPEAR TO MY OWN MIND, CONCLU SIVE PROOFS THAT THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED, IN A FUTURE STATE, WILL BE ENDLESS.

1. The first argument in support of this proposition, will be drason from the CONSTITUTION and FITNESS OF THINGS.

No creature which God has made, can be happy, unless the objects of its pursuit, and the sources from whence it seeks for happiness, are suited to the capacities of its nature.

The various kinds of the brute creation, while unmolested, and sufficiently provided for, lie down or range abroad, and attain the summit of that enjoyment of which their nature is capable. But they are uneasy when out of their place, though in a situation that pleases other creatures.

Man is possessed, in common with the brute, of an animal nature. This is satisfied only in those objects of pursuit from whence arises a gratification that is suited to his animal desires.

Man is possessed also of an intellectual nature, which is gratified according to his peculiar turn of mind, in the various pursuits of life adapted to its capacities, from the occupations of the man of business, up to the deeper studies of the philosopher. But these objects pursued to the greatest extent, and with complete success, can only impart that enjoyment which his intellectual nature is capable of receiving. Something more is yet necessary to render him perfectly happy; for he possesses a constitution of mind still higher than mere animal or intellectual being.

He is a moral accountable creature; possessing a capacity of knowing, loving, serving, and enjoying God as the Source of all excellence. And such is the constitution of his moral nature, that he cannot be happy without the proper exercise of this capacity, any more than any other creature can be supported and rendered comfortable out of its element. Hence it is that man is not happy in his unregenerate and sinful state. His moral nature meets with nothing, amid all the variety of objects which fill his eye, engross

his affections, and occupy his time, that is capable of affording the enjoyment which this nature in its proper exercise is fitted to receive, and which it is necessary that it should receive in order to real happiness. Does man feel perfectly happy, while conscious that he is made for another world, he lives only for this? What though he toil from morning to night with incessant care to lay up a few fleeting treasures! What though he pants for fame, and obtains the elevation of office! What though he indulges in sensual gratifications, and in vanity, ambition and pride! What though he amuses himself with pictures of fancy, with fantastic exhibitions, and with theatrical scenes, and vain shows! What though he explore the fields of literature and science, but does not aspire after moral excellence, nor devote his active powers to the glory of his Creator and the good of his fellow men! Does he find any thing like substantial bliss in all the objects of his pursuit? An aching void within, with a voice that cannot be silenced, demands something more to satisfy the boundless desires and fill the capacities of the immortal mind,

By the fall, man's moral nature has become awfully depraved. Its energies are not directed towards his Creator, as the source of all true happiness; for "God is not in all his thoughts." The objects of pursuit and the sources of enjoyment suited to his moral nature, are by him disregarded. He labors solely for the meat that perishes, and rejects that which endures unto everlasting life. He hoards the trifles of time, and squanders, or with dire infatuation, rejects the treasures of eternity. Who is there that naturally engages in the spiritual worship and service of God, and finds them a delight? Are not these things the weariness and aversion of natural men? Whoever carefully watch the prevailing disposition of their hearts, while they seriously contemplate the moral perfections of God, his laws, threatnings and judgments, and their own past and present sins, will find a "witness in themselves" to the truth of revelation, that "the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Hence, "except a man be born again," he cannot take any pleasure in God,

nor can God take any pleasure in him. He cannot be subject to the law of God, nor regard his service as a privilege, honor and happiness. He is a rebel against the divine government, a nuisance in the universe of God, incapable of those sublime and rapturous emotions which swell the bosoms of celestial intelligence, and altogether unqualified for mingling in their society. Such an individual must be miserable. Change of place will produce no change of nature, no reformation of the heart and life. Death is but a separation of the soul from the body. Hence every mind will carry into the eternal world just that impress which it has at the moment of death. We have no warrant to believe that he who dies impenitent, a blasphemer, a murderer, a hater of God, will have a different disposition implanted in him after death. His disembodied spirit will enter upon its future and everlasting state of being, with the same dispositions and desires that it had in this life. Were it admitted to heaven, it could not relish the company, the work, the worship and the joy of that world. It would have no meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. Its re-union with the body at its resurrection will only serve to increase those desires, and per petuate that disposition. It will effect no moral change. For as no description is given in the Bible respecting the change of the bodies of the wicked, when raised, as there is respecting the bodies of the righteous, we infer that no change will pass upon them by which they will be improved. In the re-union of a depraved soul, with a body whose members will serve only as the instruments of sin and of suffering, it will follow of course, that misery must be the unavoidable consequence. And this misery must be eternal; for such a soul being left to itself will recede farther and farther from God, and will go into an eternal separation from his likeness and favor.

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From the constitution and fitness of things then it is evident, that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. For such is the nature of God, of holiness, of happiness, and such is the state of the natural heart, that man cannot be either holy or happy, but must eternally depart from God unless his nature is changed by the power of divine