under a greater obligation, to love and honour a being more lovely and excellent, than one less lovely and excellent. It follows, then, that if a being be infinitely lovely and excellent; (and God is that Being,) we are under an infinite obligation to love and honour him: And if our guilt increases with our obligation, then when we fail to love and honour Him, we contract infinite guilt; we subject ourselves to incalculable punishment.

But it may be said, does not this reasoning lead to an absurd conclusion? Does it not confound all our notions of guilt by making all sins equal, the least as well as the greatest; because all are committed against an infinite God?

I answer, that we do maintain that all sins, from the obligation of the sinner to obedience; necessarily subject him to infinite or incalculable punishment. However formidable the difficulties which meet us here, we cannot but admit this, for the reasoning is direct and conclusive. But when we affirm that all sins subject to infinite or incalculable punishment, we mean

that the punishment is infinite or incalculable only in one respect-in respect of continuance. Though the same in this one respect-its continuance,-future punishment will and must vary in another,—its degrees of intenseness. Its duration, in every case, may be the same, while its severity may be very different.-Every sin, and especially every habit of sin, to say the least of it, produces eternally injurious consequences. The sinner is eternally retarded in the path of improvement and happiness; or in other words, every sin he commits, makes his condition eternally worse than it would, otherwise, have been.-Hence appears, plainly, the infinite evil of every sin, and the absurdity and impertinence of the objections that have been often so triumphantly made to the possibility of the infinite duration of its direful effects.-Though, in one view, every sin is an infinite evil, yet it does not follow, that the evil, in every case, and in all respects, is precisely the same.-We see then, that the above reasoning, by no means confounds our notions of guilt, by making all sins, the least as well as the greatest, issue, as the objection supposes, in exactly the same penal consequences.

Again, shall it be said, that if from God's being infinitely great and excellent, our sins, therefore, have infinite guilt, then it will follow, that our obedience, for the same reason, ought to have infinite value?

I answer; the very reverse seems to be true, for though our guilt increases with our obligations, the value of our obedience diminishes, in the same proportion. This will appear evident, by adducing a plain,' familiar example.-I am more bound to be just, and pay my lawful debts, than to be charitable and relieve my necessitous neighbours. Yet in the former case, my conduct is less valuable than in the latter.-How? Merely from my being under a much greater obligation to be just, than to be generous. -If then, the merit of our obedience, instead of increasing, decreases, in proportion to the greatness of our obligations, it follows, that the merit of our obedience to God, to whom our obligations are infinite, must be infinitely little ;-that is, we can have no merit at all. But if we dare to withhold this obedience, our guilt, like our obligation, is infinite, it passes all bounds; we justly expose ourselves to that misery

which is said to be prepared for the devil and his angels. It is impossible, fully to conceive what it is to sin against God, to set up our own wills against His, to violate the order of the world, to transgress the law of the universe." Shall I not visit for "these things? saith the Lord.-And who "knoweth the power of his anger?—Ac"cording to his fear, so is his wrath *."

The vast demerit of sin appears also from the humiliation and sufferings appointed, and submitted to, in order to atone for it. -So obnoxious was sin to God, that when it entered into the world, it was necessary, either that the sinner should perish, or that the Son of God himself, should become our ransom. Accordingly, in the fulness of time, astonishing to be told! he was made" manifest in the flesh;" and became a man of sorrows and acquainted "with grief." To finish the work of our salvation, "he was oppressed and he was "afflicted," and died, at last, an accursed death. If we would see, then, the evil of sin, let us consult his tragic history; be

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* Jeremiah v. 9. Psalms xc. 2.

hold him in the garden, and on the cross; behold him pouring out his precious blood, and drinking the cup of unutterable woe.— Ah! how destructive that, from which no created arm could save: which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could expiate! -From this tremendous effect of sin, we may judge of the nature of sin itself.

But to be duly impressed with the demerit of sin, consider not only Him against whom it is committed; and the humiliation and sufferings appointed, and submitted to, in order to atone for it; consider, also, the dreadful consequences which still result from it.-Sin is the frightful source

of

every evil which embitters our lot. It, at first, expelled man from paradise, and made him subject to all those unnumbered troubles, to which he is now, as naturally born," as the sparks fly upward." It is this which mingles with our sweetest comforts, fear and disappointment, and vexation of spirit. It is this which racks the body with pain, and the soul with remorse; which produces all the evils of envy, and hatred, and strife, and violence; which embroils, society, kindles the flames of war, and unsheathes the sword of persecution,

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