e of the Creator. In answer to the suicide's
proposition to give back his spirit to God who gave it, the poet
represents God as saying to him:

"Is't returned as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear?
Think first what you are! Call to mind what you were!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die,--if die you dare!"[4]

Yes, this is true and solemn reasoning. You and I, and every man, must by
some method, or other, go back to God as good as we came forth from Him.
We must regain our original righteousness; we must be reinstated in our
primal relation to God, and our created condition; or there is nothing in
store for us, but the blackness of darkness. We certainly cannot stand in
the judgment clothed with original sin, instead of original
righteousness; full of carnal and selfish affections, instead of pure and
heavenly affections. This great lack, this great vacuum, in our
character, must by some method be filled up with solid, and everlasting
excellencies, or the same finger that wrote, in letters of fire, upon the
wall of the Babylonian monarch, the awful legend: "Thou art weighed in
the balance, and art found wanting," will write it in letters of fire
upon our own rational spirit.

There is but one method, by which man's original righteousness and
innocency can be regained; and this method you well know. The blood of
Jesus Christ sprinkled by the Holy Ghost, upon your guilty conscience,
reinstates you in innocency. When that is applied, there is no more guilt
upon you, than there was upon Adam the instant he came from the creative
hand. "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." Who
is he that condemneth, when it is Christ that died, and God that
justifies? And when the same Holy Spirit enters your soul with renewing
power, and carries forward His work of sanctification to its final
completion, your original righteousness returns again, and you are again
clothed in that spotless robe with which your nature was invested, on
that sixth day of creation, when the Lord God said, "Let us make man in
our image, and after our likeness." Ponder these truths, and what is yet
more imperative, _act_ upon them. Remember that you must, by some method,
become a perfect creature, in order to become a blessed creature in
heaven. Without holiness you cannot see the Lo