Nay more—­the religion which is only sunned into being by happiness, is a suspicious thing:  having been warmed by joy, it will become cold when joy is over; and then when these blessings are removed, we count ourselves hardly treated, as if we had been defrauded of a right; rebellious hard feelings come; then it is you see people become bitter, spiteful, discontented.  At every step in the solemn path of life, something must be mourned which will come back no more; the temper that was so smooth becomes rugged and uneven; the benevolence that expanded upon all, narrows into an ever dwindling selfishness—­we are alone; and then that death-like loneliness deepens as life goes on.  The course of man is downwards, and he moves with slow and ever more solitary steps, down to the dark silence—­the silence of the grave.  This is the death of heart; the sorrow of the world has worked death.

Again there is a sorrow of the world, when sin is grieved for in a worldly spirit.  There are two views of sin:  in one it is looked upon as wrong—­in the other, as producing loss—­loss for example, of character.  In such cases, if character could be preserved before the world, grief would not come; but the paroxysms of misery fall upon our proud spirit when our guilt is made public.  The most distinct instance we have of this is in the life of Saul.  In the midst of his apparent grief, the thing still uppermost was that he had forfeited his kingly character:  almost the only longing was, that Samuel should honour him before his people.  And hence it comes to pass, that often remorse and anguish only begin with exposure.  Suicide takes place, not when the act of wrong is done, but when the guilt is known, and hence too, many a one becomes hardened who would otherwise have remained tolerably happy; in consequence of which we blame the exposure, not the guilt; we say if it had hushed up, all would have been well; that the servant who robbed his master was ruined by taking away his character; and that if the sin had been passed over, repentance might have taken place, and he might have remained a respectable member of society.  Do not think so.  It is quite true that remorse was produced by exposure, and that the remorse was fatal; the sorrow which worked death arose from that exposure, and so far exposure may be called the cause:  had it never taken place, respectability, and comparative peace, might have continued; but outward respectability is not change of heart.

It is well known that the corpse has been preserved for centuries in the iceberg, or in antiseptic peat; and that when atmospheric air was introduced to the exposed surface it crumbled into dust.  Exposure worked dissolution, but it only manifested the death which was already there; so with sorrow, it is not the living heart which drops to pieces, or crumbles into dust, when it is revealed.  Exposure