ut, in what way can man be made to realize that there is an eternal
world, to which he is rapidly tending, and realities there, with which,
by the very constitution of his spirit, he is forever and indissolubly
connected either for bliss or woe? How shall thoughtless and earthly man,
as he treads these streets, and transacts all this business, and enjoys
life, be made to feel with misgiving, foreboding, and alarm, that there
is an eternity, and that he must soon enter it, as other men do, either
as a heaven or a hell for his soul? The answer to this question, so often
asked in sadness and sorrow by the preacher of the word, drives us back
to the throne of God and to a mightier agency than that of man.

For one thing is certain, that this apathy and deadness will never of
itself generate sensibility and life. Satan never casts out Satan. If
this slumberer be left to himself, he is lost. Should any man be given
over to the natural inclination of his heart, he would never be awakened.
Should his earthly mind receive no check, and his corrupt heart take its
own way, he would never realize that there is another world than this,
until he entered it. For, the worldly mind and the corrupt heart busy
themselves solely and happily with this existence. They find pleasure in
the things of this life, and therefore never look beyond them. Worldly
men do not interfere with their own present actual enjoyment. Who of this
class voluntarily makes himself unhappy, by thinking of subjects that are
gloomy to his mind? What man of the world starts up from his sweet sleep
and his pleasant dreams, and of his own accord looks the stern realities
of death and the judgment in the eye? No natural man begins to wound
himself, that he may be healed. No earthly man begins to slay himself,
that he may be made alive. Even when the natural heart is roused and
wakened by some foreign agency; some startling providence of God or some
Divine operation in the conscience, how soon, if left to its own motion
and tendency, does it relapse into its old slumber and sleep. The needle
has received a shock, but after a slight trembling and vibration it soon
settles again upon its axis, ever and steady to the north. It is plain,
that the sinner's worldly mind and apathetic nature will never conduct
him to a proper sense of Divine things.

The awakening, then, of the human soul, to an effectual apprehension of
eternal realities, must take its first issue from some othe