Am I not right? Reflect, dear brethren, how many wrong things you do or desire, with little hesitation, with no compunction, with no fear of judgment! Reflect, too, how many good things you pass over or forego, or will take no trouble to attain, through want of consideration of the reward that belongs to them, and which therefore you are losing! How ready are you to taste each cup of pleasure, to be engrossed with the pursuits of this world, to withhold what you should part with, to do what is wrong, to omit what is enjoined, in forgetfulness of the fact that for all these things GOD will bring you unto judgment! How impatient, too, under trials, how slow in spiritual work, how little interested in the love and attainment of godliness; as though these things were all loss, and suffering, and uninviting toil; as though there were no recompense of reward! Yes, there is something in the best of us, and much in the most of us, of practical disregard of judgment. Of course we know (and are in a measure influenced by the knowledge) that by and by we shall stand before GOD, to be blessed or cursed—that it is necessary, therefore, to secure a good hope of acceptance, and to make our peace with GOD through JESUS CHRIST, and that this is to be done by keeping all the ordinances of religion, and obeying in spirit the whole moral code, and striving to love and serve the LORD now; or at least by repenting of all that is amiss, and praying earnestly for pardon and quickening of our faith, before we die. But still, it is not a _judgment_ that we contemplate—a real scrutiny of our life’s ways—an actual weighing of us in the heavenly balance, that we may be rewarded or punished for those ways, and accepted or rejected according to our actual state. We are wont to consider GOD as an arbitrary Being, not absolutely bound by any laws, or promises, or threats, but free to treat us as He will, and disposed, for CHRIST’S sake, to be favourable to us—if we ask Him—without any regard to what we have been doing, and what we actually are. I am not sure that you will admit this. But, brethren, to help you to do so, consider how general is a vague trust to CHRIST’S merits—and GOD’S goodness on account of those merits—to cover all excesses and defects of duty, to accept any kind of character, as though there were no rule of reward, and no necessary qualification for heaven! How rare is the conviction, that while CHRIST’S merits are indeed the only ground of our acceptance, and GOD’S mercy is exercised on account of those merits, yet the merits and the mercy are applied to us on condition that we do certain works, and attain to a certain character in the strength of the Holy Spirit given to incline and enable us; that we are to be rewarded or punished, accepted or rejected, strictly according to the terms of that condition, and that the inquiry into its observance, in the scrutiny of our past lives and of our present state, in the