2. _A state of moral insensibility that abandoned the soul to the reckless commission of all kinds of sin._--"Who being past feeling have given themselves over . . . to work all uncleanness with greediness" (ver. 19). Sin is made difficult to the beginner. The barriers set up by a tender conscience, the warnings of nature, the teachings of providence, the light of revelation, the living examples of the good, have all to be broken down. Early transgressions are arrested by the remorse they occasion; but gradually the safeguards are neglected and despised, until the habit is acquired of sinning for the love of sin. A spirit of recklessness ensues, the reins are relaxed and then thrown upon the neck of the passions, and the soul is abandoned to the indulgence of all kinds of iniquity. "We are not worst at once. The course of evil Is of such slight source an infant's hand Might close its breach with clay; But let the stream get deeper, and we strive in vain To stem the headlong torrent." 3. _A state that rendered all mental activities worthless._--"Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind" (ver. 17). The art of right thinking was lost. For the man that will not think, think clearly and justly, the calamities and the raptures of life, the blessing and the curse, have no meaning. They evoke neither gratitude nor fear. The beauties of nature, as they sparkle in the stars, or shine in the flowers, or gleam in the coloured radiance of the firmament, are unheeded. The voice of God that speaks in the events of daily life has no lesson for him. The senses, which are intended as the avenues of light and teaching to the soul, are dulled by inaction, clogged by supine indifference, and polluted and damaged by inveterate sin. When the reason is poisoned at its source, all its deductions are aimless and worthless. +II. Effected by the personal knowledge of the truth in Christ.+--"But ye have not so learned Christ, . . . as the truth is in Jesus" (vers. 20, 21). The Gospel has introduced to the world the principles of a great moral change. It announces Christ as the light of the world--a light that shines through all the realms of human life. The diseased reason is restored to health, the intellectual faculties have now a theme worthy of their noblest exercise, and are made stronger and more reliable by being employed on such a theme, and the moral nature is lifted into a purer region of thought and experience. The world is to be transformed by the moral transformation of the individual, and that transformation is effected only by the truth and a personal faith in Christ.