Again, the apostate spirit of man has an awful dread of eternity.  Though this invisible realm is the proper home of the human soul, and it was made to dwell there forever, after the threescore and ten years of its residence in the body are over, yet it shrinks back from an entrance into this untried world, and clings with the desperate force of a drowning man to this “bank and shoal of time.”  There are moments in the life of a guilty man when the very idea of eternal existence exerts a preternatural power, and fills him with a dread that paralyzes him.  Never is the human being stirred to so great depths, and roused to such intensity of action, as when it feels what the Scripture calls “the power of an endless life.”  All men are urged by some ruling passion which is strong.  The love of wealth, or of pleasure, or of fame, drives the mind onward with great force, and excites it to mighty exertions to compass its end.  But never is a man pervaded by such an irresistible and overwhelming influence as that which descends upon him in some season of religious gloom,—­some hour of sickness, or danger, or death,—­when the great eternity, with all its awful realities, and all its unknown terror, opens upon his quailing gaze.  There are times in man’s life, when he is the subject of movements within that impel him to deeds that seem almost superhuman; but that internal ferment and convulsion which is produced when all eternity pours itself through his being turns his soul up from the centre.  Man will labor convulsively, night and day, for money; he will dry up the bloom and freshness of health, for earthly power and fame; he will actually wear his body out for sensual pleasure.  But what is the intensity and paroxysm of this activity of mind and body, if compared with those inward struggles and throes when the overtaken and startled sinner sees the eternal world looming into view, and with strong crying and tears prays for only a little respite, and only a little preparation!  “Millions for an inch of time,”—­said the dying English Queen.  “O Eternity!  Eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity,”—­says the man in the iron cage of Despair.  This finite world has indeed great power to stir man, but the other world has an infinitely greater power.  The clouds which float in the lower regions of the sky, and the winds that sweep them along, produce great ruin and destruction upon the earth, but it is only when the “windows of heaven are opened” that “the fountains of the great deep are broken up,” and “all in whose nostrils is the breath of life die,” and “every living substance is destroyed which is upon the face of the ground.”  When fear arises in the soul of man, in view of an eternal existence for which he is utterly unprepared, it is overwhelming.  It partakes of the immensity of eternity, and holds the man with an omnipotent grasp.