We need not again reply--/It is holiness/. It is purity like the purity of God. It is perfection like his perfection. Sin at the first marred the moral beauty, and put all that is morally offensive in its stead. But a new creation takes place. The original loveliness begins to be restored. The beauties of holiness decorate the soul, and with the restoration of holiness the restoration of happiness begins. Give the unholy soul the wealth for which millions pant; give it an empire like that of our sovereign, on which the sun never sets. Let all that can gladden and regale be poured into the cup of an ungodly man. The mere fact that he is unholy, would leave him deformed and unseemly; his soul would be wretched, craving, aching still.--A nobleman of ancient name and brilliant powers once ranked among the most conspicuous of all who dwelt in our land. He was admired by millions, and, for a time, was "followed, flattered, sought, and sued," wherever he appeared. But he was slightly deformed in a limb; and when his eye fell on the deformity, even from the heights of his fame, he was chafed and chagrined: it was more than a counterbalance to all the incense which was offered to his powers. Now, that nobleman was as signal for his ungodliness as he was for his powers. THE JOY OF HOLINESS. But, on the other hand, place a holy soul in a dungeon. Let the new, the holy nature which the Spirit of God imparts, be imparted to such a man. With that in his soul, let the persecutor wreathe his chains around him; let him "five times receive forty stripes save one;" let all men forsake him and flee;--still, by the grace of God, that soul would be made more like the Holy One by the very sorrows which it encountered and the tears which it shed: and it is thus that godliness becomes the ornament of life. As the rainbow would never be seen were it not for the clouds and the rain, the beauties of holiness would never shine so brightly were it not for the trials which the Spirit of God employs to promote them. But /when/ he employs them, the soul of man is changed into the image of the Redeemer, from glory to glory. Though covered by sin with wounds and bruises and noisome sores, it is created anew, after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness. The altogether lovely One becomes the model of that soul; and ornament after ornament is bestowed--such adornings as the eye of God can complacently regard, for they are the work of his own Spirit: they indicate the restoration of his handiwork, from the state of ruin into which it had lapsed, to the state of beauty in which it appeared when it sprang into being at his word.