The original relation between man’s nature and the moral law was precisely like that between material nature and the material laws.  There has been no apostasy in the system of matter, and all things remain there as they were in the beginning of creation.  The law of gravitation, this very instant, rules as peacefully and supremely in every atom of matter, as it did on the morning of creation.  Should material nature be “delivered” from the law of gravitation, chaos would come again.  No portion of this fair and beautiful natural world needs to become “dead” to the laws of nature.  Such phraseology as this is inapplicable to the relation that exists between the world of matter, and the system of material laws, because, in this material sphere, there has been no revolution, no rebellion, no great catastrophe analogous to the fall of Adam.  The law here was ordained to life, and the ordinance still stands.  And it shall stand until, by the will of the Creator, these elements shall melt with fervent heat, and these heavens shall pass away with a great noise; until a new system of nature, and a new legislation for it, are introduced.

But the case is different with man.  He is not standing where he was, when created.  He is out of his original relations to the law and government of God, and therefore that which was ordained to him for life, he now finds to be unto death.  The food which in its own nature is suited to minister to the health and strength of the well man, becomes poison and death itself to the sick man.

With this brief notice of the fact, that the law of God was ordained to life, and that therefore this disparaging phraseology of St. Paul does not refer to the intrinsic nature of law, which he expressly informs us “is holy just and good,” nor to the original relation which man sustained to it before he became a sinner, let us now proceed to consider some particulars in which the commandment is found to be unto death, to every sinful man.

The law of God shows itself in the human soul, in the form of a sense of duty.  Every man, as he walks these streets, and engages in the business or pleasures of life, hears occasionally the words:  “Thou shalt; them shalt not.”  Every man, as he passes along in this earthly pilgrimage, finds himself saying to himself:  “I ought, I ought not.”  This is the voice of law sounding in the conscience; and every man may know, whenever he hears these words, that he is listening to the same authority that cut the ten commandments into the stones of Sinai, and sounded that awful trumpet, and will one day come in power and great glory to judge the quick and dead.  Law, we say, expresses itself for man, while here upon earth, through the sense of duty.  “A sense of duty pursues us ever,” said Webster, in that impressive allusion to the workings of conscience, in the trial of the Salem murderers.  This is the accusing and condemning sensation, in and by which the written statute of God becomes