to be filled with sentiments of admiration, and oftentimes, with an enthusiastic glow of soul.  We see this in the impression which the character of Christ universally makes.  There are multitudes of men, to whom that wonderful sinless life shines aloft like a star.  But they do not imitate it.  They admire it, but they do not love it.[3] The spiritual purity and perfection of the Son of God rays out a beauty which really attracts their cultivated minds, and their refined taste; but when He says to them:  “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart; take up thy cross daily and follow me;” they turn away sorrowful, like the rich young man in the Gospel,—­sorrowful, because their sentiments like his are elevated, and they have a certain awe of eternal things, and know that religion is the highest concern; and sorrowful, because their hearts and wills are still earthly, there is no divine love in their souls, self is still their centre, and the self-renunciation that is required of them is repulsive.  Religion is submission,—­absolute submission to God,—­and no amount of mere admiration of religion can be a substitute for it.

As a thoughtful observer looks abroad over society, he sees a very interesting class who are not far from the kingdom of God; who, nevertheless, are not within that kingdom, and who, therefore, if they remain where they are, are as certainly lost as if they were at an infinite distance from the kingdom.  The homely proverb applies to them:  “A miss is as good as a mile.”  They are those who suppose that elevated moral sentiments, an aesthetic pleasure in noble acts or noble truths, a glow and enthusiasm of the soul at the sight or the recital of examples of Christian virtue and Christian grace, a disgust at the gross and repulsive forms and aspects of sin,—­that such merely intellectual and aesthetic experiences as these are piety itself.  All these may be in the soul, without any godly sorrow over sin, any cordial trust in Christ’s blood, any self-abasement before God, any daily conflict with indwelling corruption, any daily cross-bearing and toil for Christ’s dear sake.  These latter, constitute the essence of the Christian experience, and without them that whole range of elevated sentiments and amiable qualities, to which we have alluded, only ministers to the condemnation instead of the salvation of the soul.  For, the question of the text comes home with solemn force, to all such persons.  “Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking of the law, dishonorest thou God?” If the beauty of virtue, and the grandeur of truth, and the sublimity of invisible things, have been able to make such an impression upon your intellects, and your tastes,—­upon that part of your constitution which is fixed and stationary, which responds organically to such objects, and which is not the seat of moral character,—­then why is there not a corresponding influence and impression made by them upon your heart?  If you can admire