The Lectures of Dr. Chalmers on the book of Romans is a work of no ordinary merit. The following from his lecture on chap. 8: 7, on the carnal mind, contains a lesson worthy of careful consideration:— "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8: 7. It was a contradiction in terms, to say otherwise of the carnal mind than that it was enmity against God—for how, if all its preferences be toward the creature, can it be otherwise affected toward that Creator, who looks with a jealous eye on all such preference, and fastens upon it the guilt of idolatry—how, if its regards are wholly directed to sense and time, can it be otherwise than in a state of disregard to Him who is a spirit and invisible? If the law of God be a law of supreme love toward himself, how is it possible for that mind to be in subjection to such a law, whose affections are wholly set on the things and the interests of a passing world? It not only is not subject to this law, but it cannot be so—else it were no longer carnal. It would instantly be stripped of this epithet, and become a different thing from what it was before, did it undergo a transference in its likings from the things that are made to Him who is the maker of them all. It has the certainty in it of an identical proposition, when it is said of the carnal mind that it neither is nor can be subject to God's law. Ere it become subject, it must resign its present nature and be carnal no longer. The epithet then will not apply to it; and though a mind before carnal should now have gathered upon it the character of Heaven, and become a devoted and willing and most affectionate subject under the government of God—still it holds true of the carnal mind that it is not so subject, neither indeed can be. But it is not only logically true that the carnal mind cannot be subject to God's law—the same thing is also true physically and experimentally. There is no power in the mind by which it can change itself. It has a natural sovereignty, we admit, which extends a certain way over the doings of the outer man; but it has no such sovereignty over the desires of the inner man. It can, for example, constrain the man in whom it resides to eat a sour apple rather than a sweet. But it cannot constrain him to like a sour apple rather than a sweet. There are many things which it finds to be practicable, which it does not find to be palatable; and it has just as little power over the taste and affections of the mind toward God, as it has over the bodily organ of taste, or the law of its various relishes for the various food which is offered to it. There are a thousand religious-looking things which can be done; but without such a renewal of the spirit as the spirit itself cannot achieve, these things cannot be delighted in, cannot be rejoiced in. But if not rejoiced in, they really are not religious, however religious they may look. And this is the great moral helplessness under which we labor. We can compel our feet to the house of God, but we cannot compel our feelings to a sacred pleasure in its exercises. We can take a voluntary part in the music of its psalms, but we cannot force into our hearts the melody of praise. We can bid our hands away from depredation and violence, but we cannot bid away the appetite of covetousness from our bosoms. We can refrain ourselves from the infliction of all outward hurt upon our neighbor; but tell me if we can so muster and so dispose of our affections at the word of command as that we shall love him as we do ourselves. And, ascending from the second commandment to the first great commandment of the law, we can, it may be thought, keep the Sabbaths of the Lord and acquit ourselves of many of the drudgeries of a carnal obedience—while, instead of loving him with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, there exists against him an antipathy, which we can no more extirpate than we can cause a sycamine tree to be plucked up by the roots at the utterance of a voice—so that, in reference to the law which claims a supremacy over the heart, and taketh cognizance of all its affections, we are not and we cannot be subject to it. And here I am sensible that, when I charge you with a positive enmity against God—when I say that he is not merely the object of indifference, but of hatred—when I affirm of the human heart, not merely a light and heedless unconcern about him, but also the virulency of a strong hostile affection against him—I might not, in all this assertion, obtain the exact or the willing respondency of your own consciences. You may be ready to answer that really we are not at all aware of anything half so foul or so enormous at work in our bosoms as any ill-will towards God. We may be abundantly regardless of him and of his laws; but we feel nothing that approaches to a resentful emotion excited within us by his name. We may not think of him often; and perhaps are very well satisfied to do without him, if he would but let us alone. But, examine ourselves as we may, we can detect no affirmative malignity in our affections towards him; and for once we have lighted upon a case where the dogmata of a stern theology are really not at one with the decisions of our own intimate and personal experience. Now on this we have to observe that the greatest enemy whom you have in the world will excite no malevolent feelings in your heart, so long as you do not think of him. All the time that he is absent from your remembrance, he has no more power to stir up the painful and the bitter feeling of hostility within you than if he were blotted out from the map of existence. And so let it not be wondered at that you should not be ruffled out of your complacency by the thought of God, when, in fact, for days or hours together, the thought is utterly away from you—that no acrimony about him should ever disturb you, during the whole of that period, when at play or pleasing yourselves with his gifts, the giver is wholly unminded—that, instead of carrying the tone or the aspect of an enraged adversary toward God or any one else, you should simply appear in the light of an easy, comfortable, good-humored man, while, busied with the enjoyments of life, you have no room in your regards for him who gave the life, and scattered these enjoyments over it. When one is in a deep and dreamless slumber, his very resentments are hushed, along with all his other sensibilities, into oblivion; and though in the latent dormitory within, there should lie a fell and unextinguishable hatred against the deadliest of his foes, yet even the presence of that foe would awaken no asperity; and while under the immediate eye of him who with implacable revenge could call forth to the field of mutual extermination, might he lie in all the meekness of infancy. And so of you who are not awake unto God—who are sunk in dullest apathy about him and all his concerns—who, profoundly asleep and forgetful, are really no judges of the recoil that would come upon your spirits, did he but stand before you in all his characters of uncompromising truth, and the inflexible justice, and sacred jealousy, and awful unapproachable holiness. By the thought of this being you are not disturbed, because, steeped in the lethargy of nature, it is a thought that does not come with a realizing touch upon your perceptions. You may even hear his name, and this may stir up some vague conception of an unseen spirit; and you still have no feeling of that enmity which our text has charged upon you. But the conception of whom or of what we would ask? Is it of the true God in his true attributes—or a being of your own imagination? Is it of that God who is a spirit and claims of you those spiritual services which are due unto the character that belongs to him? Is it of him, the very view and aspect of whom would mar all your earthly gratifications, or put them utterly to flight, because of his paramount demand for the affections and pursuits of godliness? Oh how little do we know of ourselves, or of the mysteries of our inner man, which may lie hid and dormant for years—till some untried circumstances shall form the occasion that proves us, and reveals to us all which is in our hearts. And thus the manifestation to our understandings of God, not as we fancy him to be, but of God as he actually is, would call forth of its hiding-place the unappeasable enmity of nature against him; and would make it plain to the conscience of the carnal man, how little sufferance he hath for the God that would bereave him of his present affections, and implant others in their room. The disrelish would be just as strong as are the disrelish and opposition between the life of sense and the life of faith. Did God reveal himself now to the unconverted sinner, he would strike the same arrow into his heart that will be felt by the condemned sinner, who eyes on the day of reckoning the sacredness and the majesty of that being whom he has offended. You have heard him by the hearing of the ear, and yet remain unconvinced of nature's enmity. Could you say with Job that now mine eye seeth, then would you see cause with him, wherefore you should abhor yourself, and repent in dust and in ashes.