Such thoughts will cross our minds.  They have crossed the minds of all mankind since the first man’s conscience awoke, and he discovered that he was not a brute animal, by finding in himself that awful thought, which no brute animal can have—­’I have done wrong.’  And therefore the consciences of men will cry for pardon, just in proportion as they are worthy of the name of men, and not merely a superior sort of animals; and therefore just in proportion as our souls are alive in us, alive with the feeling of duty, of justice, of purity, of love, of a just and orderly God above—­just in that proportion shall we be tormented by the difference between what we are, and what we ought to be; and the sense of sin, and the longing for pardon, will be more keen in us; and we shall have no rest till the sins are got rid of, and the pardon sure.  That is the price we pay for having immortal souls.  It is a heavy price truly:  but it is well worth the paying, if it be only paid aright.  If that tormenting feeling of being continually wrong in this life, ends by making us continually right for ever in the world to come; if Christ be formed in us at last; if out of our sinful and mortal manhood a sinless and immortal manhood is born;—­then shall we, like the mother over her new-born babe, forget our anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

But, again, besides pardon, we want peace.  Who does not know that state of mind in which, perhaps, without any great reason in reality, one has no peace?  When everything seems to go wrong with a man.  When he suspects everybody to be against him.  When little troubles, which he could bear easily enough at other times, seem quite intolerable to him.  When he is troubled with vain regrets about the past—­’Ah, if I had done this and that!’ and vain fears for the future, conjuring up in his mind all sorts of bad luck which may, but most probably never will, happen; and yet from off which he cannot turn his mind.  Who does not know this frame of mind?

True, a great deal of this may depend on ill-health; and will pass away as the man’s bodily condition gets better.  We know, in the same way, that the strange anxiety which comes over us in sleepless nights, comes from bodily causes.  That is merely because, the circulation of our blood being quickened, our brain becomes more active; and because we are lying alone in the silent darkness, with nothing to listen to or look at, we cannot turn our attention away from the thoughts which get possession of us and torment us.  That is only bodily; and yet it may be very useful to our souls.  As we lie awake, our own past lives, our own past mistakes and sins, and God’s past blessings and mercies, too, may rise up before us with clearness, and teach us more than a hundred sermons; and we may find, with David, that our reins chasten us in the night-season.  ’When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; when my heart is vexed, I will complain.  Thou