as we are sinners, and because we are sinners.  There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, only because the sinful creature will be compelled to look at himself; to know his sin in the same manner that it is known by the Infinite Intelligence.  And is there any injustice in this?  If a sinful being cannot bear the sight of himself, would you have the holy Deity step in between him and his sins, so that he should not see them, and so that he might be happy in them?  Away with such folly and such wickedness.  For it is the height of wickedness to desire that some method should be invented, and introduced into the universe of God, whereby the wages of sin shall be life and joy; whereby a sinner can look into his own wicked heart and be happy.

III.  A third characteristic of the knowledge which every man will possess in eternity will be a clear understanding of the nature and wants of the soul. Man has that in his constitution, which needs God, and which cannot be at rest except in God.  A state of sin is a state of alienation and separation from the Creator.  It is, consequently, in its intrinsic nature, a state of restlessness and dissatisfaction.  “There is no peace saith my God to the wicked; the wicked are like the troubled sea.”  In order to know this, it is only necessary to bring an apostate creature, like man, to a consciousness of the original requirements and necessities of his being.  But upon this subject, man while upon earth most certainly knows only “in part.”  Most men are wholly ignorant of the constitutional needs of a rational spirit, and are not aware that it is as impossible for the creature, when in eternity, to live happily out of God, as it is for the body to live at all in the element of fire.  Most men, while here upon earth, do not know upon this subject as they are known.  God knows that the whole created universe cannot satisfy the desires of an immortal being, but impenitent men do not know this fact with a clear perception, and they will not until they die and go into another world.

And the reason is this.  So long as the worldly natural man lives upon earth, he can find a sort of substitute for God.  He has a capacity for loving, and he satisfies it to a certain degree by loving himself; by loving fame, wealth, pleasure, or some form of creature-good.  He has a capacity for thinking, and he gratifies it in a certain manner by pondering the thoughts of other minds, or by original speculations of his own.  And so we might go through with the list of man’s capacities, and we should find, that he contrives, while here upon earth, to meet these appetences of his nature, after a sort, by the objects of time and sense, and to give his soul a species of satisfaction short of God, and away from God.  Fame, wealth, and pleasure; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; become a substitute for the Creator, in his search, for happiness.  As a consequence, the unregenerate man knows but “in