In conclusion, do you, my bearers, constantly live in view of your present and final destination? Have you reflected that to secure your well-being here and hereafter, you must conform to the will of the Creator, as made known, not only through the higher tendencies of your nature, but by his revealed word? Have you further considered, that the destinies of your being include a wider range than the brief history of the present world? Stretching away into infinity, far beyond our limited conceptions, they settle amid scenes of retribution, unalterable and enduring as the nature of the soul, and corresponding to its moral character. To fail in securing the end of your being, does not imply merely the loss of a blessing, the deprivation of a forfeited good, but positive infliction, the incurring absolute, infinite evil. Man's destination is that of a moral and accountable being, looking forward to a day of reckoning, and beyond it, to the final and everlasting issues of the judgment. If you meet and discharge your responsibilities, fulfilling the obligations of the gospel, by repentance and faith, and a life of holiness, your present being, fallen and degraded as it is, compassed about by manifold infirmities and sorrows, shall issue in a glorious state of perfection and bliss, such as in this world eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived. But, if you fail, there then awaits you beyond the grave, instead of a blessed immortality, "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, which shall come on every soul of man that doeth evil."

SERMON IV.

Death-the Wages of Sin.

BY REV. DAVIS W. CLARK, A. M.,

OF THE NEW-YORK CONFERENCE.

"The wages of sin is death."-Rom. vi, 23.

SIN has been defined "a voluntary transgression of the divine law;" or, in other words, "the voluntary departure of a moral agent from a known rule of rectitude or duty cribed by God." And this answers to the pertinent

and pointed definition of the evangelist John: "Sin is the transgression of the law." The law consists in requirements and prohibitions, founded upon the inalienable prerogatives of the divine character, and growing out of the immutable rights secured to the Almighty from the rela tions he sustains to us, as our Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor. His will, then, is the sufficient cause of the existence of these requirements and prohibitions; and the proclamation of that law by the divine authority was sufficient to render it binding, in all its parts, upon all his creatures. Hence a neglect of its requirements is no less sin than a transgression of its prohibitions. And though there may be kinds of sin, as well as degrees in sinning, the neglect of the known requirements of the gospel exhibits no less " a want of conformity to the divine will," than does the most gross and daring disregard of its prohibitions.

In the text not only sin, or want of conformity to the will of God, is spoken of; but also the wages of sin-as though man was hired to commit sin, and received pay for its commission. By wages, in the common acceptation of that term, we mean that which is given or received in return for services rendered; and frequently, the term, as in the present instance, is made to express the fruits or results of any specific course of conduct. Thus the apostle inquires, "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?" and immediately replies, "The end of those things is death." Man is here represented as yielding his services and receiving his pay-yielding his services to sin, and receiving death as the fruit of his toil; or yielding them unto God, and having his fruit unto holiness, and his end everlasting life. "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"

But a more comprehensive view of the whole nature and tendency of sin, than that which the inspired penman has here given, can hardly be conceived of: "The wages of sin is death." Mournfully solemn truth! Earth and hell are full of its memorials; and all time, and all eternity, shall reveal more and more of its fearful import. Yes, the wages of sin is death!" and wherever its contaminations

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have reached, it has exerted the same baneful and deadly influence. Its character and nature have ever remained the same, bearing on its very front the fearful and alarming marks of the divine displeasure. And the destructive tendency of moral corruption is as strongly characterized, and as clearly evinced, among men, and in the present age of the world, as when it robbed rebelling angels of their high estate, or man of his primeval glory.

It is necessary, however, that we guard our inquiry; and limit it to such bounds, that the subject may not degenerate into mere impracticable speculation. We inquire, then, not why such consequences have been attached to sin; but our simple object is to show what its consequences really and truly are. Touching upon the reasons why God has thus instituted his system of moral government, we offer no hypothesis, no explanatory supposition. We deal only with the facts in the case; we enforce only the truth, that "the wages of sin is death.”

In attempting this, we shall contemplate it in its threefold aspect, as being the cause of temporal, spiritual, and eternal death.

I. We remark, then, in the first place, that sin is the cause of temporal death.

Temporal death, in its original and natural signification, implies the loss of life; or the separation of the soul from the body, and the consequent decay and dissolution of our physical nature. Physiologists have defined it to be "the irrecoverable cessation of all the functions which belong to a living animal." It may apply also to the destruction, or loss, of whatever is connected with, or essential to, the existence of that nature.

1. It is impossible to define what would have been the temporal condition of man, had he never sinned. It is supposed by some that he would have enjoyed the privilege of continued existence and happiness on earth. The tree of life, to which he would have had access, was at pledge of permanent being and happiness, and also ns of securing them. The fruit of this tree would, tedly, have healed or averted every evil to which nysical nature might have been subject; and prelife through the longest periods of duration, had not

our iniquities barred us from its approach, and girt it around with sleepless "cherubim and a flaming sword," as an eternal guard "to keep the way of the tree of life."

Or again, there is nothing inconsistent in the supposition, that man might have enjoyed a long life here; and after a long series of years, when the faculties of his body and mind had acquired earthly maturity-by an easy transition-he might have been transferred to a holier clime, to pass through higher scenes of bliss, in his endless progression to infinite perfection and happiness. How easy might have been the change! how glorious the transition! What unspeakable felicities would have enraptured the soul, as every successive change brought it into nearer progression to the infinite, exhaustless Fountain of goodness and love! But, when just created, when just planted in the garden, with the broad seal of immortality upon his brow, and with the clearest indications of his Creator's goodness around him; it was then that rebellion dire

"Brought death into the world, and all our wo."

It was then that the glories of Eden faded from his vision, and a dark cloud of wo and death passed over all his prospects: for "as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

2. This existence was not only designed to be dependent, but also probationary; for no one can doubt but that man was designed, ultimately, to fill a still more exalted sphere in the scale of being, and that a brighter glory would have been revealed in his existence, had he not fallen.

Perhaps our race were designed to fill up the vacancy in the host of heaven, which had been occasioned by that disastrous rebellion that had peopled hell with angels. Can we wonder, then, that a being, a race, designed to fill up so glorious a place in the scale of existence, should first have their faith and obedience tried and tested in a probationary state? Can we wonder that such a being should be first placed in a condition in which his character should be subjected to a full and perfect ordeal?

But a probation implies a law; inasmuch as there can be no trial, no probation, without a system of discipline

eating of the forbidden fruit, and the suffering of the penalty of death, sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect, the one naturally and necessarily growing out of the other. A man, forewarned, partakes of arsenic; then he suffers death as the consequence of his stupid inattention to the warning, or the obstinacy of his unbelief. So our first parents, by one simple act of disobedience, threw off the restraining influence of the divine command, forfeited the favor of God, and brought upon themselves affliction, misery, and death. They willfully forfeited their innocence, and incurred guilt; they yielded themselves to the indulgence of their appetites contrary to their knowledge and conviction of duty; they permitted themselves to be led away by the influence and force of temptation to violate the law of God; they suffered inclination to subdue the dictates of conscience, and the natural consequence of all this was misery and death. This was not a fortuitous or peculiar result. The consequences of sinful indulgence have been the same in all ages of the world, and of eternity. It dethroned angels of light ere ever the world was; and, since man has fallen, it has been ever working the same results among a sinning race. Not so obvious, indeed, among those already tainted and polluted, for their brightness is already half obscured; but tending, with unerring certainty, to the same final result.

Let us not, however, be understood as palliating the actual guilt and enormity of the primeval transgression. From the intimate and glorious connections that, up to the period of their apostasy, had existed between our first parents and their Creator; from the distinct and awful manner in which God, with his own lips, had warned them of their danger and of the consequences of disobedience; from the clear light which their own unclouded minds reflected upon every truth and every duty; from the inconceivably beautiful images of purity and goodness with which the primeval earth was decked; and from the awful consequences that should inhere to an unborn and unnumbered posterity, the crime of our first parents assumes enormity and a magnitude, to which earth, with all its ated and increasing wickedness, has not since been find a parallel. I know there are crimes that seem a stamp of deeper malignity and heaven-daring,—