If the thought of death, and another state of being after it, comes across them at all, it is not with a change so radical as that of being born again, that they ever connect the idea of preparation. They have some vague conception of its being quite enough that they acquit themselves in some decent and tolerable way of their relative obligations; and that upon the strength of some such social and domestic moralities as are often realized by him in whose heart the love of God has never entered, they will be transplanted in safety from this world, where God is the Being with whom it may almost be said that they have had nothing to do, to that world where God is the Being with whom they will have mainly and immediately to do throughout all eternity. They admit all that is said of the utter vanity of time, when taken up with as a resting place. But they resist every application made upon the heart of man, with the view of so shifting its tendencies that it shall not henceforth find in the interests of time, all its rest and all its refreshment. They in fact regard such an attempt as an enterprise that is altogether aerial, and with a tone of secular wisdom caught from the familiarities of every-day experience, do they see a visionary character in all that is said of setting our affections on the things that are above, and of walking by faith, and of keeping our hearts in such a love of God as shall shut out from them the love of the world, and of having no confidence in the flesh, and of so renouncing earthly things as to have our conversation in heaven.