But, in what way can man be made to realize that there is an eternal world, to which he is rapidly tending, and realities there, with which, by the very constitution of his spirit, he is forever and indissolubly connected either for bliss or woe?  How shall thoughtless and earthly man, as he treads these streets, and transacts all this business, and enjoys life, be made to feel with misgiving, foreboding, and alarm, that there is an eternity, and that he must soon enter it, as other men do, either as a heaven or a hell for his soul?  The answer to this question, so often asked in sadness and sorrow by the preacher of the word, drives us back to the throne of God and to a mightier agency than that of man.

For one thing is certain, that this apathy and deadness will never of itself generate sensibility and life.  Satan never casts out Satan.  If this slumberer be left to himself, he is lost.  Should any man be given over to the natural inclination of his heart, he would never be awakened.  Should his earthly mind receive no check, and his corrupt heart take its own way, he would never realize that there is another world than this, until he entered it.  For, the worldly mind and the corrupt heart busy themselves solely and happily with this existence.  They find pleasure in the things of this life, and therefore never look beyond them.  Worldly men do not interfere with their own present actual enjoyment.  Who of this class voluntarily makes himself unhappy, by thinking of subjects that are gloomy to his mind?  What man of the world starts up from his sweet sleep and his pleasant dreams, and of his own accord looks the stern realities of death and the judgment in the eye?  No natural man begins to wound himself, that he may be healed.  No earthly man begins to slay himself, that he may be made alive.  Even when the natural heart is roused and wakened by some foreign agency; some startling providence of God or some Divine operation in the conscience, how soon, if left to its own motion and tendency, does it relapse into its old slumber and sleep.  The needle has received a shock, but after a slight trembling and vibration it soon settles again upon its axis, ever and steady to the north.  It is plain, that the sinner’s worldly mind and apathetic nature will never conduct him to a proper sense of Divine things.

The awakening, then, of the human soul, to an effectual apprehension of eternal realities, must take its first issue from some other Being than the drowzy and slumbering creature himself.  We are not speaking of a few serious thoughts that now and then fleet across the human mind, like meteors at midnight, and are seen no more.  We are speaking of that permanent, that everlasting dawning of eternity, with its terrors and its splendors, upon the human soul, which allows it no more repose, until it is prepared for eternity upon good grounds and foundations; and with reference to such a profound consciousness of the future state