ity of sinful Adam, destitute of holy love
reverence and faith, lacking positive and perfect righteousness, should
be introduced into the seventh heavens, and there behold the infinite
Jehovah. Would he not feel, with a misery and a shame that could not be
expressed, that he was naked? that he was utterly unfit to appear in such
a Presence? No wonder that our first parents, after their apostasy, felt
that they were unclothed. They were indeed stripped of their character,
and had not a rag of righteousness to cover them. No wonder that they hid
themselves from the intolerable purity and brightness of the Most High.
Previously, they had felt no such emotion. They were "not ashamed," we
are told. And the reason lay in the fact that, before their apostasy,
they were precisely as they were made. They were endowed with the image
of God; and their original righteousness and perfect holiness qualified
them to stand before their Maker, and to hold blessed intercourse with
Him. But the instant they lost their created endowment of holiness, they
were conscious that they lacked that indispensable something wherewith to
appear before God.

And precisely so is it, with their posterity. Whatever a man's theory of
the future life may be, he must be insane, if he supposes that he is fit
to appear before God, and to enter the society of heaven, if destitute of
holiness, and wanting the Divine image. When the spirit of man returns to
God who gave it, it must return as good as it came from His hands, or it
will be banished from the Divine presence. Every human soul, when it goes
back to its Maker, must carry with it a righteousness, to say the very
least, equal to that in which it was originally created, or it will be
cast out as an unprofitable and wicked servant. _All_ the talents
entrusted must be returned; and returned with usury. A modern philosopher
and poet represents the suicide as justifying the taking of his own life,
upon the ground that he was not asked in the beginning, whether he wanted
life. He had no choice whether he would come into existence or not;
existence was forced upon him; and therefore he had a right to put an end
to it, if he so pleased. To this, the reply is made, that he ought to
return his powers and faculties to the Creator in as _good condition_ as
he received them; that he had no right to mutilate and spoil them by
abuse, and then fling the miserable relics of what was originally a noble
creation, in the fac