eternity. They will utterly despair of one moment's respite from pain, or the least mitigation. All happiness will have flown forever. If a single day of comfort could come after ten thousand ages of misery, they would have something to look forward to; but now they have nothing but the blackness of darkness forever, growing still darker as the ages of eternity revolve. They are utterly undone, and their constant cry will be, O that I had never been born! O that I could sink into nothing and be no more!

An unspeakable aggravation of their misery will be their guilt and shame. When their eyes are opened to see the eternal love against which they have always been in arms,—the infinite majesty which they have insulted and defied, the dying compassion which they have trodden under foot,and that immeasurable good which they have sought to destroy, they will be crushed under guilt and shame beyond the reach of thought. Remorse will be the never dying worm that will gnaw their vitals. As dreadful as eternal damnation is, and as selfish and proud as they will still remain, they will feel that they deserve it all. With all the haughtiness of their pride raging without restraint, to be held up to public scorn, so polluted, so degraded, so accursed, will fill them with agonies of shame not to be described. The contempt with which they will be regarded by their former acquaintance,—their former dependants, their former admirers,-the infamy of your state prisons is glory to this.

The passions of the damned will be left unbridled.

Their selfishness and pride, their malice and envy, will rage without restraint. A tempest of passion will tear and rend them with the fury of whirlwinds. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.— They will gnash upon God, they will gnash upon his saints, they will gnash upon their tormentThose who have known the agony which only one of these passions can effect, may judge of the torment produced by them all when every restraint is taken away.

ors.

But that which will blast and wither all their powers is the wrath of an infinite God,-a God from whose hands none can deliver them. In this life the anger of God is less regarded than the displeasure of men: but in that day they would rather have all creation incensed against them than God alone. When they awake and find him their enemy whose being and power are above created thought; when they fall into his hands and are lashed and broken by almighty strength; how will they stand appalled and overwhelmed. The cloud that darkens the earth and breaks in jarring thunders on the affrightened town; the earthquake that with tremendous roar suddenly bursts upon the astonished city; these awaken terrors not to be described: but neither the thunder that jars the world, nor the earthquake that heaves the agitated ground, nor the shriek of sinking thousands, can raise such terrors as the wrath of an incensed God. When the damned, overwhelmed with guilt, shall behold God their enemy, -their infinite enemy, their eternal enemy,-an enemy from whom none can deliver them,-and

shall see all the energies of his justice engaged to crush them as a worm beneath a falling rock,-the terror that will appal them, but language fails; I leave imagination to supply the rest.

Need I advert to any bodily pains to render their sufferings complete? But God has said that they shall be cast into a lake of fire. He has said it often, and has never unsaid it. He has never hinted that the representation is figurative; and I know of no consideration drawn from Scripture or reason, against the literal construction of these numerous texts. If you say, it is too dreadful to be believed, I answer; if it is not fire it must be something as bad, or the Scriptures have practised a great deception upon us. And if it is something as bad, why may it not as well be literal fire as anything else? Besides, if there is any place where figures are not employed, it is on the judgment seat, in the act of passing a judicial sentence. This is certainly the case in human affairs. But he who is to be the Judge has told us exactly what the sentence will be: "Then shall he say-unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." And is this judicial language from the judgment seat nothing but poetry?

To complete the misery it will be eternal. On earth few cases are so bad as not to admit of the hope of amelioration. The deepest wretchedness looks forward, with some expectation, to those numerous casualties which, hid in the womb of future years, may tinge with a brighter hue the sable web VOL. II.

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of life. But there no chance remains for hope to All is blank despair: all is eternal misery. Could they escape after they had suffered as many millions of ages as there are stars in heaven, added to all the sands of the sea, and all the spires upon the mountains, and all the leaves in the forest, the sunken eye of hell could be illumined with hope. But FOREVER,-that one word withers all their expectations and rivets them to infinite despair. And if their misery is eternally to increase, so that what they now endure is nothing to what they expect, then it is infinite despair multiplied into infinite despair.

I would drop down among that despairing company a thousand ages hence, and ask them, What now think you of the Bible? of sabbaths? of opportunities for prayer? of the day of probation you enjoyed in yonder world? What now think you of your former folly in putting off religion and neglecting your souls? I should be answered by one loud and universal groan. But blessed be God, I am speaking to a different assembly,—to an assembly of living men, in a world of hope. But am I not speaking to some who will be in those circumstances at last? God knows. I fear there are some such in this house. How many of you have lived twenty, thirty, forty years without religion, and still are sunk in stupidity! In this state of stupidity the greater part of those who have passed the middle of life, in all probability will die. They will go on making a thousand excuses and hoping for future conversion, until they open their eyes in torment.

Thus men have done in all past ages; thus they are likely still to do. And why should this congregation be exempt? I will not conceal my anxiety. My soul is distressed with the apprehension that I shall another day see some of my hearers crying to rocks and mountains to cover them, and cursing the day that they ever heard a Gospel sermon. All the entreaties of God and man cannot bring them to pray in their families, nor even in their closets. All the blaze of light around them cannot stop them from making excuses and casting the blame of their impenitence upon God. We may weep over them till our hearts break, and yet they will not have an anxious thought about their well being in all future ages; and yet many of them have already passed the period of probable conversion. If they fully believed that the grave would terminate their existence, I should not wonder. But perhaps they all believe that they shall live as long as the throne of God endures. With such a creed,-to be anxious to provide for old age, and take no thought for all the years between seventy and a thousand,-between a thousand and an epoch which numbers cannot reach,-this is madness,-this is folly that wants a name.

My dearly beloved hearers, practise no longer upon yourselves the cruelty of tigers. Have some compassion on those souls for which a Saviour died. Have mercy on yourselves: have mercy on me. O for mercy, mercy, mercy! I cry to you as a dying man for relief. If you will not hear these supplications, perhaps you in your turn may stand and

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