will cut; but the moral lessons contained
in the penalties annexed to wrong-doing are just as truly intended,
though they are by no means so unerring in enforcing their
application. The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed
intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion
they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more
and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries
with them the sense of ill desert.

Sorrow then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other
words when it works repentance. In the sorrow of the world, the
obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if
nothing cured it: heartache and trials come in vain; the history of
life at last is what it was at first. The man is found erring where he
erred before. The same course, begun with the certainty of the same
desperate end which has taken place so often before.

They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind.
Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that
which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains. The
sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres
of the past. Yet the present does not become more wise. Not one
resolution is made more firm, nor one habit more holy. Grief is all.
Whereas sorrow avails _only_ when the past is converted into
experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be
forgotten.

2. Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a
more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.

The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals. Some men feel
intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional,
belonging to nervous temperament, rather than to moral character.
_This_ is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a
repentance "not repented of;" no transient, short-lived resolutions,
but sustained resolve.

And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the, repentance
increases the grief diminishes. "I rejoice," says Paul, that "I made
you sorry, though it were but for a time." Grief for a time,
repentance for ever. And few things more signally prove the wisdom of
this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the
Corinthian. He tried no artificial means of intensifying it--did not
urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor