calm, clear self-intelligence. Men do not know themselves. The Delphic
oracle was never less obeyed than now, in this vortex of mechanical arts
and luxury. For this reason, it is desirable that the religious teacher
dwell consecutively upon topics that are connected with that which is
_within_ man,--his settled motives of action, and all those spontaneous
on-goings of his soul of which he takes no notice, unless he is persuaded
or impelled to do so. Some of the old painters produced powerful effects
by one solitary color. The subject of moral evil contemplated in the
heart of the individual man,--not described to him from the outside, but
wrought out of his own being into incandescent letters, by the fierce
chemistry of anxious perhaps agonizing reflection,--sin, the one awful
fact in the history of man, if caused to pervade discourse will always
impart to it a hue which, though it be monochromatic, arrests and holds
the eye like the lurid color of an approaching storm-cloud.

With this statement respecting the aim and purport of these Sermons, and
deeply conscious of their imperfections, especially for spiritual
purposes, I send them out into the world, with the prayer that God the
Spirit will deign to employ them as the means of awakening some souls
from the lethargy of sin.

Union Theological Seminary,
New York, _February 17_, 1871.

* * * * *

CONTENTS.

I. THE FUTURE STATE A SELF-CONSCIOUS STATE