(1.) From the fact _that all our future interests are dependent upon our present conduct_. God has endowed us with some degree of foresight, and has thus made us provident beings. We have a native tendency to take account of and forecast the future. By the aid of reason we can, in some measure, foresee the tendencies of our actions; we can lay our plans for the future, and anticipate events which are yet remote. We can also bring to our aid the lessons of experience, and from this also we can learn that our present action will have a powerful influence upon our future condition. We know that the circumstances which surround us to-day have been in a large degree created or moulded by ourselves, and that many of our misadventures and our miseries may be easily traced back to particular acts of imprudence and folly on our own part as the cause. So that there is no truth we more certainly know than this, that our future happiness of the next moment, and of every succeeding stage of our living, is dependent upon our present conduct. (2.) This is further evident from the fact _that the present scene is filled with moral tests and temptations_. There is in the present life an admixture of _good_ and _evil_. On the one hand there are numerous solicitations to evil; on the other there are motives and inducements to virtue, the plain intention of which is to prove us. In the words of Bishop Butler, "We have here free scope and opportunity for that good or evil conduct which God will reward or punish hereafter." This is necessary to moral government, because moral government can not exist without freedom of choice, and consequently the existence of those circumstances in which that freedom can be exercised. That we have freedom of choice we know; and our every-day experience of the temptations to wrong-doing, and of the difficulties in the way of a uniform adherence to virtue, teaches us that we are in a state of trial, where our principles are being continually put to the test. (3.) That our present life is a probation for a future life is evident from the fact _that in the present life punishment is deferred, consequences are delayed, to give play to the exercise of moral motives_.