discharge a duty, without discovering that you were averse to it, and that you must gather up your energies for the work, as the leaper strains upon the tendon of Achilles to make the mortal leap.  And if you had not become weary, and given over the effort; if you had entered upon that sad but salutary passage in the religious experience which is delineated in the seventh chapter of Romans; if you had continued to struggle and strive to do your duty, until you grew faint and weak, and powerless, and cried out for a higher and mightier power to succor you; you would have known, as you do not yet, what a deadly opposition there is between the carnal mind and the law of God, and what a spasmodic effort it costs an unrenewed man even to attempt to discharge the innumerable obligations that rest upon him.  Mankind would know more of this species of toil and labor, and of the cleaving curse involved in it, if they were under the same physical necessity in regard to it, that they lie under in respect to manual labor.  A man must dig up the thorns and thistles, he must earn his bread in the sweat of his face, or he must die.  Physical wants, hunger and thirst, set men to work physically, and keep them at it; and thus they well understand what it is to have a weary body, aching muscles, and a tired physical nature.  But they are not under the same species of necessity, in respect to the wants and the work of the soul.  A man may neglect these, and yet live a long and luxurious life upon the earth.  He is not driven by the very force of circumstances, to labor with his heart and will, as he is to labor with his hands.  And hence he knows little or nothing of a weary and heavy-laden soul; nothing of an aching heart and a tired will.  He well knows how much strain and effort it costs to cut down forests, open roads, and reduce the wilderness to a fertile field; but he does not know how much toil and effort are involved, in the attempt to convert the human soul into the garden of the Lord.

Now in this demand for a perpetual effort which is made upon the natural man, by the sense of duty, we see that the law which was ordained to life is found to be unto death.  The commandment, instead of being a pleasant friend and companion to the human soul, as it was in the beginning, has become a strict rigorous task-master.  It lays out an uncongenial work for sinful man to do, and threatens him with punishment and woe if he does not do it.  And yet the law is not a tyrant.  It is holy, just, and good.  This work which it lays out is righteous work, and ought to be done.  The wicked disinclination and aversion of the sinner have compelled the law to assume this unwelcome and threatening attitude.  That which is good was not made death to man by God’s agency, and by a Divine arrangement, but by man’s transgression.[2] Sin produces this misery in the human soul, through an instrument that is innocent, and in its own nature benevolent and kind.  Apostasy,