sumptuous fare, from his excessive physical enjoyment, to everlasting
perdition.

II. In the second place, the worldly man _derives more enjoyment from
sin, and suffers less from it_, in this life, than does the child of God.
The really renewed man cannot _enjoy_ sin. It is true that he does sin,
owing to the strength of old habits, and the remainders of his
corruption. But he does not really delight in it; and he says with St.
Paul: "What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." His sin
is a sorrow, a constant sorrow, to him. He feels its pressure and burden
all his days, and cries: "O wretched man, who shall deliver me from the
body of this death." If he falls into it, he cannot live in it; as a man
may fall into water, but it is not his natural element.

Again, the good man not only takes no real delight in sin, but his
reflections after transgression are very painful. He has a tender
conscience. His senses have been trained and disciplined to discern good
and evil. Hence, the sins that are committed by a child of God are
mourned over with a very deep sorrow. The longer he lives, the more
odious does sin become to him, and the more keen and bitter is his
lamentation over it. Now this, in itself, is an "evil thing." Man was not
made for sorrow, and sorrow is not his natural condition. This wearisome
struggle with indwelling corruption, these reproaches of an impartial
conscience, this sense of imperfection and of constant failure in the
service of God,--all this renders the believer's life on earth a season
of trial, and tribulation. The thought of its lasting forever would be
painful to him; and if he should be told that it is the will of God, that
he should continue to be vexed and foiled through all eternity, with the
motions of sin in his members, and that his love and obedience would
forever be imperfect, though he would be thankful that even this was
granted him, and that he was not utterly cast off, yet he would wear a
shaded brow, at the prospect of an imperfect, though a sincere and a
struggling eternity.

But the ungodly are not so. The worldly man loves sin; loves pleasure;
loves self. And the love is so strong, and accompanied with so much
enjoyment and zest, that it is _lust_, and is so denominated in the
Bible. And if you would only defend him from the wrath of God; if you
would warrant him immunity in doing as he likes; if you could shelter him
as in an inaccessible castle from the retrib