rld, you cause him to know even as he
is known respecting the true and proper portion of his soul. Deprived of
his accustomed and his false object of love and support, he immediately
begins to reach out in all directions for something to love, something to
think of, something to trust in, and finds nothing. Like that insect in
our gardens which spins a slender thread by which to guide itself in its
meanderings, and which when the clew is cut thrusts out its head in every
direction, but does not venture to advance, the human creature who has
suddenly been cut off by death from his accustomed objects of support and
pleasure stretches out in every direction for something to take their
place. And the misery of his case is, that when in his reachings out he
sees God, or comes into contact with God, he starts back like the little
insect when you present a coal of fire to it. He needs as much as ever,
to love some being or some thing. But he has no heart to love God and
there is no other being and no other thing in eternity to love. He needs,
as much as ever, to think of some object or some subject. But to think of
God is a distress to him; to reflect upon divine and holy things is
weariness and woe. He is a carnal, earthly-minded man, and therefore
cannot find enjoyment in such meditations. Before he can take relish in
such objects and such thinking, he must be born again; he must become a
new creature. But there is no new-birth of the soul in eternity. The
disposition and character which a man takes along with him when he dies
remains eternally unchanged. The constitutional wants still continue. The
man must love, and must think. But the only object in eternity upon which
such capability can be expended is God; and the carnal mind, saith the
Scripture, is _enmity_ against God, and is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be.

Now, whatever may be the course of a man in this life; whether he becomes
aware of these created imperatives, and constitutional necessities of his
immortal spirit or not; whether he hears its reproaches and rebukes
because he is feeding them with the husks of earth, instead of the bread
of heaven, or not; it is certain that in the eternal world they will be
continually awake and perpetually heard. For that spiritual world will be
fitted up for nothing but a rational spirit. There will be nothing
material, nothing like earth, in its arrangements. Flesh and blood cannot
inherit either the king