eternity have the judgment of the lower court set aside, all the costs
remitted, and we may be victorious defendants forever.

My object in this sermon is to show that common sense, as well as my
text, declares that such an expectation is chimerical. You say that
the impenitent man, having got into the next world and seeing the
disaster, will, as a result of that disaster, turn, the pain the cause
of his reformation. But you can find ten thousand instances in this
world of men who have done wrong and distress overtook them suddenly.
Did the distress heal them? No; they went right on.

That man was flung of dissipations. "You must stop drinking," said
the doctor, "and quit the fast life you are leading, or it will
destroy you.". The patient suffers paroxysm after paroxysm; but, under
skillful medical treatment, he begins to sit up, begins to walk about
the room, begins to go to business. And, lo! he goes back to the same
grog-shops for his morning dram, and his even dram, and the drams
between. Flat down again! Same doctor. Same physical anguish. Same
medical warning.

Now, the illness is more protracted; the liver is more stubborn, the
stomach more irritable, and the digestive organs are more rebellious.
But after awhile he is out again, goes back to the same dram-shops,
and goes the same round of sacrilege against his physical health.

He sees that his downward course is ruining his household, that his
life is a perpetual perjury against his marriage vow, that that
broken-hearted woman is so unlike the roseate young wife that he
married, that her old schoolmates do not recognize her; that his sons
are to be taunted for a life-time by the father's drunkenness, that