But amid this affluence of mercy, this plenitude of love, one of them continues indifferent, hardened, and without God. Every new appeal is resisted, and so thickens the incrustation which has gathered round the heart. All within is dead and cold. Religion brings no joy. It seems a system to fetter, and not to emancipate; and as that man cannot both sin and be a Christian, his heart continues shut against the influence which would separate him from his sins. The secret of all this is, that that heart is still the victim or the dupe of lies. There is no Christianity admitted into it. The truth of God is kept far away from the centre of man's being. Lest that truth should enter the heart, it is kept carefully guarded; it is crowded with worldly cares, or plunged into worldly follies, but left dreary and desolate as to all that is divine; the waters of Marah are never sweetened there; the soul is perishing with redemption in its offer; it is self-doomed to woe and to bitterness, while the Spirit of God through his Word is beckoning it to glory and to honour. The other of the two worshippers, however, has found out that "one thing is needful." He has listened to conscience. He has taken counsel with right reason. He has surrendered the heart to God, and that is the decisive moment when man's name is written in the book of life. It is then that the kingdom of God begins to be within us, then that we learn both how wayward is the heart, and how mighty is the grace of God to subdue it. Light now radiates where all was dark before; joy is now felt where all was cheerless; and the new-born sensation of spiritual freedom brings a presage of the glorious liberty of the children of God. CONTRASTS AND COLLISIONS. And what renders it more needful to urge on this ascendancy of truth in the heart is, the opposition which it is sure to encounter in the world. While we sail down the world's stream, we may glide pleasantly along, and need neither the canvass nor the oar; but the moment we attempt to stem it, the struggle and the conflict begin: we must either earnestly contend, or be carried down to ruin. What is it that produces thunder? It is the meeting of contraries, or fire and water. What is it that produces the earthquake? It is a similar cause--the meeting of contraries, or substances which cannot quietly co-exist. What is it that occasions war, and massacre, and devastation? It is still a similar cause. It is passion in collision with passion. It is the tyrant seeking to oppress the free. It is ambition grasping at more and more, and trampling upon all who oppose its pleasure--and the same law obtains in religion. Why are God's people often of all men the most miserable? Whence come persecutions? They come because holiness in the godly and sin in the world have come into collision. The will of God is opposing or protesting against the passions of men, and on that account there is war on the one hand, produced by inflamed passion on the other.