1. We of this generation, a miscellaneous multitude of old and young, good and evil, move about at liberty in the wide expanse of life, as fishes move about in the deep broad sea; but certain mysterious, invisible lines, have been let down into the water, and are silently, slowly creeping near, and winding round us. The net at first has a vast compass: a fish within its circle has as much room as it needs, and cares not for distant danger. Even when the cords begin to come near, he moves out of their way, and for his own comfort embraces warmly the opinion that these cords do not constitute a net. They are some loose things,--certain species of sea-weed, such as he has often seen before. He has gone round them or through them often and easily: he will do so again. But these approach persistently, and still from the same side: they lie between him and the open sea: to avoid them he must move in-shore. Getting now a nearer view, he descries some new features of the danger. These lines are crossed and knitted in a manner all unlike the sea-weed threads that streamed so long and straight and loose in the tide-way. A secret foreboding of some unknown doom arises: the alarmed captive, having now no further room to retire, darts wildly sea-ward, and is caught in the inevitable meshes of the encircling net. After a moment of violent but feeble struggle, he is laid still and dumb on the shore. It is a picture touchingly, terribly exact of our own state. The net has been spread around us: the sharp knitted lines gradually approach and touch us. Shrinking from the clammy contact as we would from living snakes, we retire before them, and still find room. But the lines appear again, always on the same side. Our space grows narrower as we recede, from year to year, from week to week, from day to day, until at length we graze the ground and strike upon the eternal world. That net cannot be removed or evaded; but it may be changed, so that you would not fear its approach. When we become new creatures in Christ, death approaching us becomes a new creature too, as the image in a mirror changes with the object that stands before it. This dreaded net becomes like a warm, soft, encircling arm, pressing a frightened infant closer to a mother's breast. 2. Good and bad alike are drawn in company toward the shore, but the good and bad are separated when they reach it.