means so unerring in enforcing their application.  The fever in the veins and the headache which succeed intoxication, are meant to warn against excess.  On the first occasion they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries with them the sense of ill desert.

Sorrow then, has done its work when it deters from evil; in other words when it works repentance.  In the sorrow of the world, the obliquity of the heart towards evil is not cured; it seems as if nothing cured it:  heartache and trials come in vain; the history of life at last is what it was at first.  The man is found erring where he erred before.  The same course, begun with the certainty of the same desperate end which has taken place so often before.

They have reaped the whirlwind, but they will again sow the wind.  Hence I believe, that life-giving sorrow is less remorse for that which is irreparable, than anxiety to save that which remains.  The sorrow that ends in death hangs in funeral weeds over the sepulchres of the past.  Yet the present does not become more wise.  Not one resolution is made more firm, nor one habit more holy.  Grief is all.  Whereas sorrow avails only when the past is converted into experience, and from failure lessons are learned which never are to be forgotten.

 2.  Permanence of alteration; for after all, a steady reformation is a
 more decisive test of the value of mourning than depth of grief.

The susceptibility of emotion varies with individuals.  Some men feel intensely, others suffer less keenly; but this is constitutional, belonging to nervous temperament, rather than to moral character. This is the characteristic of the divine sorrow, that it is a repentance “not repented of;” no transient, short-lived resolutions, but sustained resolve.

And the beautiful law is, that in proportion as the, repentance increases the grief diminishes.  “I rejoice,” says Paul, that “I made you sorry, though it were but for a time.”  Grief for a time, repentance for ever.  And few things more signally prove the wisdom of this apostle than his way of dealing with this grief of the Corinthian.  He tried no artificial means of intensifying it—­did not urge the duty of dwelling upon it, magnifying it, nor even of gauging and examining it.  So soon as grief had done its work, the apostle was anxious to dry useless tears—­he even feared lest haply such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.  “A true penitent,” says Mr. Newman, “never forgives himself.”  O false estimate of the gospel of Christ, and of the heart of man!  A proud remorse does not forgive itself the forfeiture of its own dignity; but it is the very beauty of the penitence which is according to God, that at last the sinner, realizing God’s forgiveness, does learn to forgive himself.  For what other purpose did St. Paul command the Church