ess pleasant, even while it
lasts, than such pleasures as are without such bitterness, viz. the
pleasures of religion. This, then, alas! is the state of multitudes;
not to be dead to sin and alive to God, but, while they are alive to
sin and the world, to have just so much sense of heaven, as not to be
able to enjoy either.

I say, when any one, man or woman, young or old, is conscious that he
or she is going wrong, whether in greater matter or less, whether in
not coming to church when there is no good excuse, neglecting private
prayer, living carelessly, or indulging in known sin,--this bad
conscience is from time to time a torment to such persons. For a
little while, perhaps, they do not feel it but then the pain comes on
again. It is a keen, harassing, disquieting, hateful pain, which
hinders sinners from being happy. They _may_ have pleasures, but they
cannot be _happy_. They know that God is angry with them; and they
know that, at some time or other, He will visit, He will judge, He will
punish. They try to get this out of their minds, but the arrow sticks
fast there; it keeps its hold. They try to laugh it off, or to be bold
and daring, or to be angry and violent. They are loud or unkind in
their answers to those, who remind them of it either in set words, or
by their example. But it keeps its hold. And so it is, that all men
who are not very abandoned, bad men as well as good, wish that they
were holy as God is holy, pure as Christ was pure, even though they do
not try to be, or pray to God to make them, holy and pure; not that
they _like_ religion, but that they know, they are convinced in their
reason, they feel sure, that religion alone is happiness.

Oh, what a dreadful state, to have our desires one way, and our
knowledge and conscience another; to have our life, our breath and
food, upon the earth, and our eyes upon Him who died once and now
liveth; to look upon Him who once was pierced, yet not to rise with Him
and live with Him; to feel that a holy life is our only happiness, yet
to have no heart to pursue it; to be certain that the wages of sin is
death, yet to practise sin; to confess that the Angels alone are
perfectly happy, for they do God's will perfectly, yet to prepare
ourselves for nothing else but the company of devils; to acknowledge
that Christ is our only hope, yet deliberately to let that hope go! O
miserable state! miserable they, if any there are who now hear me, who
are thus