the rebellion and corruption of the human heart, has converted the law of God into an exacting task-master and an avenging magistrate.  For the law says to every man what St. Paul says of the magistrate:  “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.  Wilt thou, then, not be afraid of the power?  Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.  For he is the minister of God to thee for good:  but if thou do that which is evil, be afraid.”  If man were only conformed to the law; if the inclination of his heart were only in harmony with his sense of duty; the ten commandments would not be accompanied with any thunders or lightnings, and the discharge of duty would be as easy, spontaneous, and as much without effort, as the practice of sin now is.

Thus have we considered two particulars in which the Divine law, originally intended to render man happy, and intrinsically adapted to do so, now renders him miserable.  The commandment which was ordained to life, he now finds to be unto death, because it places him under a continual restraint, and drives him to a perpetual effort.  These two particulars, we need not say, are not all the modes in which sin has converted the moral law from a joy to a sorrow.  We have not discussed the great subject of guilt and penalty.  This violated law charges home the past disobedience and threatens an everlasting damnation, and thus fills the sinful soul with fears and forebodings.  In this way, also, the law becomes a terrible organ and instrument of misery, and is found to be unto death.  But the limits of this discourse compel us to stop the discussion here, and to deduce some practical lessons which are suggested by it.

1.  In the first place, we are taught by the subject, as thus considered, that the mere sense of duty is not Christianity.  If this is all that a man is possessed of, he is not prepared for the day of judgment, and the future life.  For the sense of duty, alone and by itself, causes misery in a soul that has not performed its duty.  The law worketh wrath, in a creature who has not obeyed the law.  The man that doeth these things shall indeed live by them; but he who has not done them must die by them.

There have been, and still are, great mistakes made at this point.  Men have supposed that an active conscience, and a lofty susceptibility towards right and wrong, will fit them to appear before God, and have, therefore, rejected Christ the Propitiation.  They have substituted ethics for the gospel; natural religion for revealed.  “I know,” says Immanuel Kant, “of but two beautiful things; the starry heavens above my head, and the sense of duty within my heart."[3] But, is the sense of duty beautiful to apostate man? to a being who is not conformed to it?  Does the holy law of God overarch him like the firmament, “tinged with a blue of heavenly dye, and starred with sparkling gold?” Nay, nay.  If there be any beauty in the condemning law of God, for man the transgressor, it is the beauty of the lightnings.  There is a splendor in them, but there is a terror also.  Not until He who is the end of the law for righteousness has clothed me with His panoply, and shielded me from their glittering shafts in the clefts of the Rock, do I dare to look at them, as they leap from crag to crag, and shine from the east even unto the west.