Or take the case of another character, the man who has spent his life in neglect of God. In the day of health he has been occupied with the world’s interests, and been enabled to stave off the great question of his soul’s salvation. But now the great enemy is upon him, the day of account is near, and the Judge must be met in judgment. Under such circumstances, a man will give anything for time. If possible, time here; but if that is impossible, time hereafter: at all events, time. He will do anything to stave off the great decision,—he will grasp anything that postpones the necessity of preparation. From this mind arises the hope amongst all classes, of doing something for the dead. I was once charged myself with carelessness as to men’s salvation, because a certain dead body was not carried into the church at burial. “If,” said the woman, “you really believed that you saved souls by carrying the bodies into church, you would have taken him in as well as others.” Now the system of Popery has grown out of this anxious fear. It has met the fears of dying men, by giving a system to their ill-founded hopes. It has given the man who knows he is unprepared to die a resting-point beyond the grave. It has shifted the work of preparation to a world unseen and unknown, and so hushed the voice of conscience by assuring it that there still remains the hope of expiation for its sin. Purgatory, therefore, is the last stay for an unsatisfied heart. It gives the hope of pardon after death, and serves as a sedative for death-bed fears. Thus, then, we have traced some few particulars of the Romish system to their hidden sources in the human heart, and have observed some of the many perversions and modifications which it has provided for the sinner, to assist him in the pursuit of peace. “Oh, how unlike the complex works of man, Heaven’s easy, artless, unencumbered plan! No meretricious graces to beguile, No clustering ornaments to clog the pile, From ostentation, as from weakness, free, It stands like the cerulean arch we see, Majestic in its own simplicity. Inscribed above the portal, from afar Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening words, ‘BELIEVE AND LIVE!’” Here, therefore, we may safely leave our argument; and we would make, in conclusion, one or two very simple practical remarks.