Sermons to the Natural Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 389 pages of information about Sermons to the Natural Man.

Sermons to the Natural Man eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 389 pages of information about Sermons to the Natural Man.
part” respecting the primitive and constitutional necessities of his being.  He is feeding them with a false and unhealthy food, and in this way manages to stifle for a season their true and deep cravings.  But this cannot last forever.  When a man dies and goes into eternity, he takes nothing with him but his character and his moral affinities.  “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out.”  The original requirements and necessities of his soul are not destroyed by death, but the earthly objects by which he sought to meet them, and by which he did meet them after a sort, are totally destroyed.  He still has a capacity for loving; but in eternity where is the fame, the wealth, the pleasure upon which he has hitherto expended it?  He still has a capacity for thinking; but where are the farm, the merchandise, the libraries, the works of art, the human literatures, and the human philosophies, upon which he has heretofore employed it?  The instant you cut off a creature who seeks his good in the world, and not in God, from intercourse with the world, you cause him to know even as he is known respecting the true and proper portion of his soul.  Deprived of his accustomed and his false object of love and support, he immediately begins to reach out in all directions for something to love, something to think of, something to trust in, and finds nothing.  Like that insect in our gardens which spins a slender thread by which to guide itself in its meanderings, and which when the clew is cut thrusts out its head in every direction, but does not venture to advance, the human creature who has suddenly been cut off by death from his accustomed objects of support and pleasure stretches out in every direction for something to take their place.  And the misery of his case is, that when in his reachings out he sees God, or comes into contact with God, he starts back like the little insect when you present a coal of fire to it.  He needs as much as ever, to love some being or some thing.  But he has no heart to love God and there is no other being and no other thing in eternity to love.  He needs, as much as ever, to think of some object or some subject.  But to think of God is a distress to him; to reflect upon divine and holy things is weariness and woe.  He is a carnal, earthly-minded man, and therefore cannot find enjoyment in such meditations.  Before he can take relish in such objects and such thinking, he must be born again; he must become a new creature.  But there is no new-birth of the soul in eternity.  The disposition and character which a man takes along with him when he dies remains eternally unchanged.  The constitutional wants still continue.  The man must love, and must think.  But the only object in eternity upon which such capability can be expended is God; and the carnal mind, saith the Scripture, is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

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Sermons to the Natural Man from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.