what an enormous expense would be saved; as it would render governmental laws useless. But by reason of men's passions, and mistaken objects influencing them, our lives are exposed to be taken by our neighbors, our property pillaged, our hard earnings wrung by violence away, and our midnight slumbers interrupted by banditti, and, in short, all that is dear to us, to be taken from our enjoyment. "He, who loveth not his brother, is a murderer." Are not all men murderers? do they not sometimes experience the lack of brotherly love? This murderous passion is sin, it is opposed to the language of the heavenly man in the mind; but what are its consequences? Every one endeavors to supplant his brother; no one is safe, in his feelings, while he is in the hands of his brother. When this passion reigns, all the tender charities of humanity are suppressed; all the bowels of compassion are frozen; a deaf ear is turned to the cries and calls of the needy in distress; the poor are despised by the rich, the rich are envied by the poor; parents are dishonored by their children; children are abused, and provoked to anger by their parents. The vile affections of sin will burn to the destruction of the sweetest harmonies of nature; the whitest robes of innocence are stained with its indelible crimson; the soul is drowned in the black waters of iniquity, and the whole mind, with every faculty, is plunged into the hell of moral death.

Yet, listen to the worst of torments, in consequence of sin. "A wounded conscience, who can bear?" A fire that burns all the day long, a sword that continually pierceth the soul, a sting that cannot exhaust its poison, a fever that never turns till the patient dies. "A dart struck through his liver." What

ails the sinner? why his hand on his breast? There gnaws the worm that never dies, there burns the fire that is never quenched. A consciousness of guilt

destroys all the expected comforts and pleasures of sin. How strange it is, that after a thousand disappointments in succession, men are not discouraged. O sin! how you paint your face; how you flatter us, poor mortals, on to death; you never appear to the sinner in your true character; you make us fair promises, but you never fulfilled one; your tongue is smoother than oil, but the poison of asps is under your lips; you have impregnated all our passions with the venom of your poison; you have spread gloomy darkness over the whole region of the soul; you have endeavored, with your stupefactive poison, to blunt the sword in the hands of the cherubims, which, for your sake, keeps us from the tree of life.

A mistaken idea has been entertained of sin, even by professors. I have often heard sincere ministers preach, in their reproofs to their hearers. that it was the greatest folly in the world, for people to forego salvation, in a future state, for the comforts and pleasures of sin in this. Such exhortations really defeat their intentions. The wish of the honest preacher is, that the wicked should repent of their sins, and do better; but, at the same time, he indicates, that sin at present, is more productive of happiness than righteousness; but that the bad will come in another world that although doing well is a hard way, yet its advantages will be great, in another state.

Just as much as happifying than esteems it though

any person thinks sin to be more righteousness, he is sinful; his heart in some possible cases, for fear of the loss of salvation in the world to come, he may abstain from some out

ward enormities; yet, his heart is full of the desire of doing them. A thief passes a merchant's shop, wishes to steal some of his goods, but durst not, for fear of apprehension and punishment. Is this man less a thief at heart, for not actually taking the goods?

I have been told, by persons of high professions in christianity, that if they were certain of salvation in the world to come, they would commit every sin to which their unbridled passions might lead them; even from the lips of some who profess to preach the righteousness of Christ, have I heard such-like expressions! I do not mention these things to cast reflections on any person or denomination in the world; for I have a favorable hope, that there are some in all denominations, who are not so decieved; but I mention them in order to show how deceiving sin is, to the mind. It is as much the nature of sin to torment the mind, as it is the nature of fire to burn our flesh. Sin deprives us of every rational enjoyment so far as it captivates the mind; it was never able to furnish one drop of cordial for the soul; her tender mercies are cruelty, and her breasts of consolation are gall and wormwood. Sin is a false mirror, by which the sinner is deceived in every thing on which his mind contemplates. If he think of his Maker, who is his best friend, it strikes him with awe, fills his mind with fearful apprehensions, and he wishes there was no such being. If he think of any duty which he owes his Maker, he says in a moment, God is a hard master why should he require of me what is so contrary to my happiness? Religion is only calculated to make men miserable; righteousness blunts my passions, and deprives me of pleasures for which I long. But it represents stolen waters to be sweet, and bread eaten in se

cret to be pleasant. In a word, sin is of a tormentgiving nature to every faculty of the soul, and is the moral death of the mind.

Well, says the reader, can sin have all those evil effects, and not be infinite? Undoubtedly; as all those evil effects are experienced in this finite state. Thousands, who, I hope, are gone to greater degrees of rest than the most upright enjoy here, were once tormented with sin, were once under the dominion of the carnal mind. The effects of sin, as sin, are not endless, but limited to the state in which it is committed. This perhaps, will be contrary to the opinion of many who read this treatise, as they are wont to suppose, that there are three cardinal consequences produced by sin, viz. Death temporal, death spiritual, and death eternal. As to the first of these consequences, I say Men die natural deaths, because they are naturally mortal; but they are not mortal because of sin, for man was mortal before he sinned; if he were not, he never could have sinned. Our opponent will say, that the death of the body is the consequence of sin, when one man murders another; to which we reply, one man could not murder another, if men were not mortal. Sin cannot be said to be the cause of natural death, any more than of natural life. We will acknowledge that sin is often the means whereby natural life is ended, and our opposer must acknowledge, that it is often the means of persons being introduced into natural life. Perhaps an hundred are introduced into existence by illicit connexions, where one is taken out by malice prepense. But the meaning of the objector is. that man became mortal by sin; to which we reply, if immortality be corruptible by sin, the christian hope of immortality is a vain one. The death which Ad

am died, in consequence of sin, happened on the day of transgression, if we may believe the scripture account about it; but Adam did not die a natural death, on that day, nor for some hundreds of years afterwards.

The way in which many have tried to reconcile the scriptures with their traditions, in this matter, appears strange to us; they quote 2 Peter, iii. 8. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day with the Lord, is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; and as Adam died short of a thousand years, he died in the day of transgression. But, in order for the text to read to their meaning, it ought to read thus, "One day with the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day;" as they understand the text, the conjunction as has no possible meaning. In respect to spiritual death, we believe it was all that was meant by the word, "in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." But, if eternal death were also intended, there was no recovery for man. Why divines have carried this matter so erroneously beyond all scripture testimony, we cannot imagine. But, it is said, spiritual or moral death would be eternal, were it not for the dispensation of the gospel, by which death is swallowed up of life. So we might say of any thing else, even of a momentary nature; it would be eternal if it were never to end. The days of a man's life would be eternal, if they were never to end. The spring would be eternal, if it were not succeeded with the summer. A rose would be an eternal flower, if it never withered. And youth would be eternal, if it were not for old age and death. But what do all such arguments avail? The grand, sublime and glorious system of God, car