While you are careless, heaven and earth are groaning over your guilt. "_Wonder, O ye heavens, and be in amazement_," says God by the prophet. "_My people have done two evils. They have left me, the fountain of living water, and have digged out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children and exalted them, but they have despised me. The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib, but Israel hath not known me, and my people hath not understood. Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a wicked seed, ungracious children: they have forsaken the Lord, they have blasphemed the Holy one of Israel, they have gone away backward_." [Footnote 18] [Footnote 18: Isai. i. 2, 3, 4.] But in the second place, mortal sin is the greatest of all evils as regards the sinner himself. Let us consider what are its effects. Ah, my brethren, some of these effects are obvious enough. We have not to go far to seek them. We know them ourselves. What is the cause of much of the sickness that affects our race? What but sin? What is it that has ruined so many reputations, that once were fair and unblemished? What is it that has destroyed the peace of so many families? It is sin. What is it that makes so many young persons prematurely old, which steals the bloom from the cheek and the lustre from the eye, and gladness from the heart, and strength from the voice, and elasticity from the gait? Ah! it is sin. Yes! the effects of sin are visible and obvious to all around us, and these external effects of sin are dreadful enough, but they are not so dreadful as the internal effects, on which I purpose particularly to dwell. Well, my brethren, I just said that the nature of a mortal sin is to turn away from God to the creature. {233} Now, its effect is to kill the soul. There is a twofold life of the soul. One is a natural life, and this it can never lose, not even in hell, since it can never cease to be; and the other is the life of grace. You know, my brethren, that in the heart of a good Christian there dwells a wonderful quality, the gift of the Holy Ghost, which we call grace. It is given first in baptism, and resides habitually in the soul unless it is lost by mortal sin. This it is which makes the soul acceptable to God, and capable of pleasing Him, and of meriting heaven. This grace was purchased for us by the blood of Jesus Christ, and is the most precious gift of God. It ennobles, beautifies, elevates, strengthens, and enlightens the soul in which it dwells: in a word, it is the life of the soul. This grace abides in the soul of every faithful Christian, the little child, the virtuous young man and young woman, the old man and the matron, the rich and the poor. Everyone who is in the state of friendship with God is possessed of this grace. He may be poor, sick, weak in body, disgusting as Lazarus was, but if he is the friend of God, his