+I. Our state by nature.+--The distance from God here spoken of is not a local distance, neither is it that which separates us from Him as an infinite Being. 1. It is legal. Banished by a righteous sentence and by a sense of guilt and unworthiness. 2. It is moral. Estrangement. Absence of sympathy. Want of harmony. 3. In both these respects it is ever-widening. 4. It is miserable and dangerous. +II. Our state by grace.+--1. The legal barriers are removed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross. 2. The moral alienation is removed by the blood of Christ as applied to the believer by the Holy Spirit. 3. The nearness to God thus effected is a valuable privilege. It includes reconciliation, friendship, communion. Sinner, apply now to be made nigh. Believer, remember thy obligations.--_G. Brooks._ Vers. 14, 15. _Death a Peacemaker._--The struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America closed for ever at the funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion surrendered twenty years before; but the solemn and memorable pageant at the tomb of the great Union soldier, where the leading generals of the living Union and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder and mingled their tears in a common grief--this historical event marked the absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America. Ver. 16. _The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the Human Heart against God._--1. The goodness of God destroys the enmity of the human mind. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. There is not one of you skilled in the management of human nature who does not perceive that, though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution--of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest--this is not the way of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonises with their every performance, and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight in God and the love they bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a particular way; and no such way is to be found but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the