Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward; that is, by a general law of nature. Hence we find it in want and abundance, in toil and indolence, in indulgence and restraint, in infancy, in manhood, and in age. It waits on every pleasure, and every path, and every pursuit—it dwells within. We can no more escape it than we can fly existence. Take a few illustrations. A young man resolves to be eminent. Entering the academy, he finds many difficulties in algebra, and becoming discouraged he gives it up; but has he liberated himself? No, he has plunged from great to greater difficulties. How can he unlock the vaults of mathematics without algebra, their only key? Does he abandon mathematics, another difficulty seizes him. How can he become educated without a knowledge of the exact sciences? Does he relinquish his aim at scholarship? How then, can he carry out his resolution to become eminent? Will he rescind his resolution? Then challenge him to tame the restless passions by which it was prompted. Like the fabled ships of the ancients, “_Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim_”—he who endeavors to avoid Charybdis is drawn into the jaws of Scylla. How many, because of difficulties in their pursuits, become idlers? But who on earth has more trouble than the idler? A man becomes religious, and enters the path of life; but he soon finds that the world opposes, that his passions demur, that his secular plans come in conflict with his religious efforts, that an invisible adversary stands in the path to contend every inch of ground with him. He retreats. But now his difficulties are ten thousand fold greater. He finds that an unseen footstep treads upon his wandering heels, that an All-seeing eye surveys his inmost soul, that an invisible hand writes his guilt in characters indelible on all the objects around him. He must encounter the stings of conscience, the upbraidings of reason, the admonitions of the altar, the prayers of Zion, the cross of his dying Christ, the intercession of his risen Jesus, the moving, mellowing, subduing influences of the divine Spirit, the ten thousand warnings of a merciful Providence, the unnumbered monitions of living, decaying, dying, reviving nature, the very sympathies of heaven, yea, even the moving entreaties of her compassionate king. The apostate deliberately contends with conscience, reason, Providence, truth, Zion, men, angels, God; and in addition to all these the enemies he had before, and without a single auxiliary in earth, hell, or heaven! Verily, he has gained. 2. Difficulties invigorate the soul. I do not mean the difficulties of indolence and disobedience, these are withering curses, but the difficulties of industry, of obedience.