Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from above--a dim feeling that they had been something better and nobler once--a faint recollection of heavenly things which they once knew when they were little children--a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin, into which their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily sweeping them down;--and then they tried to think and could not--and tried to remember and could not--and so they sat there every Sabbath day, cowering with fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered that they once had souls! My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these poor dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God's image except their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and the pleasures of this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to have quite hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath days when they come to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all vacant, stupid, their hearts far away, or with a sort of passing uneasiness and dim feeling that all is not right--_try to think and cannot_--_try to pray and cannot_--and, like those dwellers by the Dead Sea, once a week on Sabbath day half remember that they once had souls? So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have. So true it is, that the wages of sin is death; death to the soul even in this life. So true it is that why men do not believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word. So true it is, that only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god- like words. So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the whirlwind, and that he who _will_ not hear Christ's words, shall soon not be _able_ to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master, must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages, spiritual death. From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed Saviour, in His infinite mercy, deliver us. IV. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TREE OF LIFE; OR, THE FALL.