nf oBQHnnr mo 8188 HMfflfflmffl^ iftKHlffl fiulin! iHHuitmllttHtsn lfiHRf£«o&l tflralttinmUfPflHfui lltUHW lltllnillWfliil^Tllml HkimiB?fflAiffl8Bf Uitlt huHHhhhiV InmiYluUtili l&nHti nHnnUUw ISnmiHmSinH IhBbh 989 ass HBIHra Hnmil m m ■1HH111H ^nsiHiii m Hii Mm ■n la«iiutraoiK3ilinaw Itlinlum ■ ■ BSBim Mufflffi Ifflwuu 3fHXiwUt8iiftjlItiift^^ ++ Y '^> 00 v ^V A^ -A K A V A $V ' f - ■p \ v -^r %$ , \> ^ * V- ,^ V "qo^ ^ ^r ■ 7 oo^ V. 'V .«V x 0c i. ** '*p <^\ A <^ THE Ifimm rf tjie SJorllt fa C«: AND THE CHURCH'S STEWARDSHIP, AS INVESTED WITH THEM. GEORGE bTcHEEVER, D.D. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 2 85 BROADWAY. 1853. r Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Library of Congress WASHINGTON STEREOTYPED BT THOMAS B. SMITH, 216 William St., N. Y. PRINTED BY JOHN A. GRAY, 97 Cliff Street. \ • * 4 "'-• I PREFACE. The present work has its origin in a course of lectures on that mighty phrase adopted as its title, in the solemn passage of God's word in Hebrews, 6 : 4, 5, 6 — and have tasted the good Word of God, and the Powers of the World to come. It is, in fact, a practical survey of what is termed in some quarters the Eschatology of the Scrip- tures ; the realities which according to Divine Revelation we are to meet "beyond the grave. We are wholly depen- dent on Divine Revelation for the least knowledge of them ; and yet that Revelation has so long rendered them familiar, that they seem possessions of our intuitive expe- rience, or gifts of our Natural Theology. Thousands walk beneath their light without thinking of them, and act by their light, without any acknowledgment of the source from whence it flows, as men walk beneath the stars with- out lifting up their faces to the heavens, and pursue their IV PREFACE. avocations by the conclusions of astronomy, without any study of the heavenly bodies. To know Divine Truth, the object of the soul's pursuit and affections must be the Divine Author of it. This is distinctly declared in that striking passage in Ho sea, " Then shall we know, — if we follow on to know the Lord." Correspondent with this is that grand passage in the thirty-sixth Psalm, " With thee is the fountain of life ; in thy light shall we see light." And correspondent with both these passages, and illustrative of them, is the great declaration of Christ, " He that followeth me, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." All true, all living knowledge, derives its life, its power from this personal, experimental, heart-knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. In proportion as communion with God increases, so will increase the knowledge of his Word ; while without that communion, though the world were filled with Lexicons, Grammars, and learned expository helps of every kind, and philosophical and theological speculations ever so acute and erudite, the Word would remain a sealed Book, a dead letter. The Word is writ- ten for believing hearts as in sympathetic ink ; communion with, God by the Spirit is that hidden sympathetic fire that makes the letter burn, and reveals its meaning. Therefore, according to Cowper's sweet picture, PREFACE. V Yon cottager that weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store, shall have, by the humble prayerful study of God's Word by the Spirit, a knowledge of heights and depths in the Divine intelligence, that the most learned minds have never reached, and cannot appreciate. " I thank thee O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid those things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." The truths of the Divine Word are like the revelations of the starry heavens in coming to us, and in their more and more perfect gradual discovery By the construction, in later years, of telescopic instruments with vastly-in- creased skill and power, many a spot of cloudy indefinite light in the heavens, once thought to be an incomplete nebulous mass in process of development, has been re- solved into clusters of bright shining worlds, clear and unmistakable. So do the truths of Grod, when rightly ex- amined, break upon the soul. The nebula of the Divine Word, or what were once thought to be such, shall con- tinually be resolved into perfect and clear-shining stars. But the depths ! Infinite on infinite, beyond the possible reach of our vision, regions of truth roll off, filled as with suns and stars, region upon region, deep beyond deep, VI PEEFACE. riches unfathomable of boundless wisdom and love, that as yet no man hath seen, nor forever, perhaps, can any created understanding fully comprehend ! And let us remember that for our knowledge of the Word, in the nearness and the life thereof, we are depen- dent more upon the Spirit of God, than on any external advantages ; dependent entirely, indeed, upon the Spirit of God. Without that, the veil is on the heart, whatever be the external facilities of knowledge ; but when it shall turn to the Lord, that veil shall be taken away. We are said to be, known to be, nearer to the sun in Winter than in Summer. But the increased swiftness of the earth's motion in its orbit, together with the inclination of the axis in the same, prevents the increase of heat, that otherwise would be inevitable. The surface of the earth on this account is so much less time exposed to the sun's rays, and so obliquely that the heat is diminished by the nearness. Just so, the World may be nearer to God in position, by providential advantages, opportunities, and in speculative divine knowledge nearer, and yet, farther from God's love, less affected by his mercy, less warmed and quickened by his light. So it may be with an individual heart. One man may really be farther from God in posi-_ tion than another, and yet have a Summer season in his soul, while the other, though nearer in point of every ad- PEEFACE. Vli vantage and opportunity, may remain in the dead of Winter. The climate of the soul does not depend so much upon the nearness and abundance of the rays, if it is flying swiftly through them, and obliquely turned from them, but upon the steadiness and constancy with which they are re- ceived by a heart turned directly towards them. Looking steadily to Christ is the condition of light and life. Look- ing steadily to Christ, and thus only, can we see and know the Powers of the World to Come. CONTENTS. PAGE God — The Reality — The Idea 11 The Denial of God 2*7 The Search after God 40 Eternity 53 Probation 66 Once to Die ......... 80 The Judgment • 92 Affirmations of Conscience in reference to the Judgment 1 08 Disclosures of the Judgment 116 The Person of the Judge, and the Evidence . . 184 The Things written in the Books 149 The Resurrection of the Flesh 163 Awakening in God's Likeness 174 The Resurrection of Damnation . . t . . 183 The Work of the Angel Reapers 195 The Power of an Endless Life 201 Many Mansions 221 The Building of God, for God 233 The Family in Heaven 244 The Power of an Endless Death .... 25? X CONTENTS. PAGE Continued Wickedness, an Endless Death . . . 271 Dead and Lost . 283 The Argument of Ruin from Salvation . . . 295 The Argument of Ruin, from the joy of Heaven . 308 Character and Consequences 323 Forewarned, Forearmed , ... 336 The Ultimate Warning , .... 349 The Church's Stewardship 365 POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME, GOD. THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. The Powers of the world to come ! These words constitute a phrase, which, wherever it might have been met with, though in the pages of Plato or of Cicero, would have powerfully arrested the atten- tion of a thoughtful mind. And the more such a mind should dwell upon them, the more would they grow upon the soul, and rouse the imagination. Sometimes they seem presenting themselves as a wild rising bank of cloud in the midnight horizon, behind which and out of which the Northern lights are sending up a strange and flickering brightness, and through which the stars seem to struggle as on the verge of chaos. The sense of sin in ourselves, and the combination of certainty and uncertainty, definiteness and indefiniteness, clearness and mys- tery, locality and infinitude, in what is before us, adds immeasurably to the grandeur and gloom of the sway of the future. The conviction, universal and unescapable, that the guiltiness of our own char- 12 GOD. acter and conduct exposes us to whatever elements of terror and of retribution there may lie embosomed and awaiting us in that undisclosed world, invests even the most indistinct revelation of it with an overpowering solemnity and majesty. What, then, are the powers of the world to come ? What precise forms of revelation, of thought, of conception, answer to the term ? Some things Na- ture herself teaches us, though we do not see what we might see, nor so far, nor so clearly, as we ought. We are as children in a dark room, waiting for the curtain to be lifted before some grand transparency or solemn show. It is dark here, because we have made it so by our sins ; most men make this vesti- bule of their eternal being a dungeon ; having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts. So they know not what is before them ; whether, when the curtain rises, they shall behold a world of blessedness and glory, or of terror and despair; whether the scenes that meet the amazed gaze shall be scenes welcoming the soul with songs to joy eternal, or overwhelming it with weepings and wail- ings, and the gnashing of teeth ; whether the holy light and the ravishing forms and employments of a celestial world are to surround them, or the dread- ful realities of the blackness of darkness forever. Even the quickened vision of faith sees as through a glass darkly, and to those who have the very witness of the Spirit within them that they are the sons of God, it doth not now appear what they THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 13 shall be ; only they know that when He who is their life shall appear, they shall appear with Him and like Him in glory. If, now, any one of the realities in that eternal spiritual state to which we are advancing, were sud- denly struck forth into visibility and brought home upon the soul, it would be experienced as a Power, in comparison with which, nothing else could gain the least attention or influence. There are princi- palities and powers in heavenly places, and the smallest appreciation of their glory, the slightest vision of the array of such creatures on their thrones of light, would be a disclosure and an ex- perience before which all earthly glories and dis- tinctions would vanish as insignificant and worth- less. If they were seen and known ; but they are not ; they may be imagined, but such things as these do not constitute men's native forms and furniture of thought — neither are they so revealed as to brood upon the soul and hold it captive. They are not m the dynamics , but the circumstances of an eternal state. Neither is it of the creature that men think, when they think of the world to come ; neither is it of thrones, dominions, princedoms, or tracts of space inhabited by worlds ; but they think of God. The thought that broods upon the mind, more or less distinctly, in every conception of the world to come, is that of meeting Grod. That is the conviction, the sense, the feeling, — lam to meet God; and that meet- ing is the decision of an eternal destiny. Every- thing marches towards that, everything is drawn 14 GOD. in and absorbed as a bare attendant upon that ; and therefore we are forced, first of all, to individualize and define this phrase, the powers of the world to come, as including whatever manifestations of the Deity we have reason to believe or to know must then be encountered, and the various overwhelming dis- closures of God's attributes that shall open on the soul. The world to come presents itself to the mind as the more immediate dwelling-place of God, where He is to be seen, in a sense, in which He cannot be seen in this world. He fills, indeed, immensity with His presence ; He is here as well as there, in Divine power and glory, but in essence invisible. So that here, if men choose, they may forget God ; may live, according to the indictment against them in the Scriptures, without God in the world ; may keep the soul as empty, dark, and desolate of God, as the supposed vacuity and malignity of Atheism. But not so in the eternal world, where every eye shall see Him, every intelligent creature know His ex- istence by feeling it, and find the nature of His at- tributes by experience as well as observation of their power. There shall be neither darkness, nor igno- rance, nor insensibility. Even the blackness of darkness forever, will be no veil to hide the soul from the scrutiny and the sense of the all-seeing eye of an infinitely holy God. There is a foreboding of all this, even in the pres- ent world. Men expect to meet God. Even the Atheist, struggling against the belief, cannot over- master and annihilate the fear of meeting God ; THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 15 cannot so abnegate the conditions of his being as not to tremble, lest what he denies may prove to.be a reality ; cannot pluck from his soul the twining roots of the primary law of its intelligence acknowl- edging a Creator. All men expect to meet God. Before all men the future world rises, as the province or scene of an introduction to the more immediate, inevitable, irresistible sight, sense, and knowledge of God. Now in this world, even in the idea of God as a belief, or as a constitutional intuition and knowledge, which is the ground of such belief, there resides something of that power which fills the eternal world by the presence and manifestations of the per- sonal reality. Over this fallen world the idea of God reigns, perverted indeed, in many cases, and deformed with monstrous superstitions and horrid miscreations of ignorance, depravity and fear, ac- cording to the process described in Romans, i. 21- 25, but still a presence and a power, greater than all other powers ; and both in heathendom and Chris- tendom, it is the idea that leads on and governs all progress, all responsibility, all moral life. It is the idea that quickens and enlightens the conscience ; and just in proportion as it is brought near, and the soul is made acquainted and familiar with it, it rouses the whole being. Nothing is so overwhelm- ing to the sinful soul as a sense of God's presence ; nothing is so abasing and annihilating to it as a clear sight and sense of God. The bare hieroglyphics of His power and glory in the creation are overwhelm- ing, just in proportion as through them the soul 16 GOD. dimly sees Him, and becomes penetrated with some faint conception of the inaccessible light, majesty, and infinitude of His attributes. All things that speak of God, and bring Him near, are full of power and glory. But the manner in which this idea affects the soul here in this world is infinitely different, according to the character which the soul wears in the sight of God as holy or unholy, and the relation in which it stands to Him as forgiven and at peace, or at enmity against Him. The idea of God attracts and pene- trates a holy soul, and absorbs it more and more, till every other thought is lost in God : being the power, by eminence, of the world to come, so likewise here in this world it draws and holds the soul accordingly. As a flame darts upward, so the soul of the creature, restored to its right tendency, with its sensibility purified from sin, soars upward towards God, pants to view His glorious face, longs to behold Him and to know Him. " I beseech thee," cried Moses unto God, "show me thy glory." The great prophet had been forty days and forty nights in God's more immediate presence, and he began to have but one feeling, one desire — the longing desire to see and know more of God. The nearer he came to God, the swifter was the course of his soul, and the more burning its ardor towards Him. All thoughts and things for Moses began to be absorbed in the one thought of seeing God. He could, like Peter after him, have pitched his tent forever there, and forgotten all earthly beings and objects, all creation, all the universe in- THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 17 deed, in gazing upon God. Thus it is, and ever must be, that the idea of God, just in proportion as it opens on the soul, absorbs the whole being, en- trances all the faculties, and fills and satisfies the holy mind and heart with bliss ineffable, incon- ceivable. And thus are the desires of holy souls described in God's own word, as drawn out after Him, and only after Him, everything else passing into forgetfulness and nothingness in the compar- ison: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon the earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever!" And again : "As the hart panteth after the water- brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God ! My soul thirsteth for God ; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." These are expressions of holy and absorbing emotion in the vision of God begun on earth, in the heart that is drawing near to Him, and finds and feels the all-absorbing nature of His glory. God is the soul's all-sufficient good — God is the soul's entrancing happiness. Nothing is needed to make a holy soul perfectly, infinitely happy, but just for God to exist, and continue to disclose His glory, and permit that soul to gaze upon His attributes. And so the great fact of regeneration, and of translation from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear son, is just the shining of God into the heart, to give the light of the knowl- edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Nothing of evil or temptation can stand 18 GOD. against that ; all things of glory and of good are comprehended in that. And infinitely favored and happy are they to whom God thns nn veils his glory, they whom God chooses and brings near to himself, revealing his Son in them, and himself in his Son, and answering for them the prayer of Christ on earth ; a prayer explained only by this truth ; that God is essential to the soul, and that all bliss consists in the knowledge of God, and the sight of his glory. " This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Glorify thou me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me, where I am, that they may behold my glory." It is the behold- ing of this Divine glory - that constitutes the very bliss of heaven. The Holy City has no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the central supreme feature of the blessedness and glory of his servants is, that they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads. And thus it is that the very idea of God, whose existence is the happiness of heaven, whose glory is the light of heaven, draws all holy intelligences throughout the universe, absorbs and governs all minds, and is a Power in the world of faith, as a Power in the world of reality. But this same idea of God ; so full of glory and blessedness to all holy beings, and attractive with an all-absorbing irresistible power of gravitation, THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 19 is the subject of infinite terror and aversion to every unholy soul. That which constitutes the law and power of beatific attraction to the good, is the an- tagonistic principle and law of abhorrence and re- pulsion to the evil. The very essence of repug- nancy being bound up in it towards all wickedness, and in all wickedness towards it, it is the transcend- ing terror among the powers of the world to come, producing an intractable, spontaneous aversion in the sinful soul, or rather rousing up its native, in- dwelling, inevitable hatred into activity. The sinful soul experiences in itself an elastic coil of reper- cussion against God, and springs back with a force intuitive and unconquerable, from the presentation of the true idea of God. The intensity of dread is concentrated in the thought of meeting a holy God in judgment, nay, of meeting him at all. The thought of God, brought home, distresses the soul, even now ; it is a gloomy, dreadful thought ; for in a sinful mind there lies beneath it, there advances along with it, the irresistible conviction of justice, holiness, power, arrayed against the soul, na}^, infi- nite goodness, infinite love, compelled by sin to play the part of a devouring fire. God's intellectual attributes may be endured, may be admired, may be rev renced afar off, even by a sinful being ; but it is impossible that his moral attributes, when their operation in regard to sin is clearly seen and known, should be regarded by the wicked with any other emotions than those of hostility and dread. And God's infinite holiness, which constitutes the eternal glory and loveliness of his character, in the sight of 20 GOD. all good beings, is the very attribute against which the guilty soul feels itself arrayed, and that against itself, is entire and eternal opposition. And so in the whole array of the powers of the world to come, there is the same difference to a holy and unholy soul. All the passages of Scripture, through which the light is poured down the most directly and intensely, are touchstones of the opposites of character. Take that grand and glorious passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the .New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.'' It will be admitted that this is a glorious and radiant passage, like the flinging wide of one of the gates of Heaven, where you may stand and look in, seeing and hearing celestial sights and employ ments. But with what eyes, and with what heart, do you read and behold these records ? Is there a counterpart of these heavenly images in your own soul, by the Divine Spirit drawing you towards them ? Is that the blessed power which they have over you ? Are they distinct and animating, or in- distinct, unattractive, and by reason of the central presence, the idea of God the Judge of all, is there present likewise, with all this climacterical array of beatific scenes and persons, an element of gloom THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 21 andrepellency? Gloom and repellency I Is it pos- sible to connect such impressions with the idea of God, the very centre and source of all the bright- ness, loveliness, and bliss of heaven ? Alas ! have we not seen that except there be an entire change from sin to holiness in the human heart, God, a holy God and a just God, is the transcending terror among all the powers of the world to come ? Take, then, the experience of two different men with this passage, the believer and the unbeliever, the man of God and the man of the world, the Christian and the unconverted. Take John Bunyan, and put him with David Hume, or Francis Spira, or any hardened, heedless, but dying and awakened sinner, and bring this heavenly transparency before them ; turn upon them the same shafts of celestial radiance. What is Heaven to the one is Hell to the other, the character and vision of the inward indi- vidual soul being the determining rule. The powers of the world to come are there, all thronging in that wondrous figured gateway ; but in one case it is the powers of a celestial world, in the other of a world of woe ; in the one case it is the power of Paradise, in the other of Hell. In the one case it is all that is dearest to a renewed soul, all that a holy being loves, brought near to the heart yearning after God, Christ, holiness and heaven ; in the other it is con- viction of guilt, and a fearful looking for of judg- ment and of wrath eternal. We see, then, that the loss and ruin of the sinner are an inevitable necessity in the nature of things, and not in any way a mere determination of the arbitrary 22 GOD. will, but an evil which, in spite of that will, the sinner brings down on himself, by a necessity growing out of what God and holiness are, and what the sin and sinner are. Here, then, is a great touchstone of nature and of character. This first, dominant, supreme power among the powers of the world to come, the idea of G-od now, and the presence of God hereafter, is the preeminent and decisive test for the discovery of the habitual disposition and appropriate retributions of the soul. " I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give to every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." For all this, it only needs the application of the attributes of a holy "God. True it is, that God's own will goes with His attri- butes, and cannot but be, not only in harmony, but in hearty and infinite cooperation with them all. God could neither be perfect nor happy were it otherwise. But really and truly, to decide the fate of every probationer for eternity, every moral agent in the universe, it only needs that each should be made acquainted with God's attributes, and that those attributes should just play according to their nature. No other judgment, decision or sentence would be necessary. If the very inhabitants of the world of woe loved God, if the crowd of the lost angels delighted in Him, and in the operation and glory of His attributes, they would be happy in Him, even in their world of woe. But there could be no such thing as a world of woe, if there were no such thing as hatred of God and rebellion against Him. When the will is submissive to His, that change THE EEALITY. — THE IDEA. 23 alone is enough to change hell into heaven. When the will is opposed to His, that alone would be enough to change heaven into hell. And, therefore, this elective affinity will have its full sweep in eternity, and the elements and inhab- itants of antagonistic characters and worlds will draw off by themselves, in infinite purity and sepa- ration from one another, pure unmingled holiness, and pure unmingled sin ; pure and supreme love to God, absorbing all the being and entrancing it in God's own blessedness, or pure and supreme hatred against God, equally entire and predominant, and whirling the lost soul into the depths of an irremedi- able, unfathomable ruin. It is, therefore, plain, that for the decision of the question, to what world the soul belongs, there would nothing else be needed in the trial of all creatures, but just to stand at the gates of heaven, and see, in the turning of God's character, God's attributes, upon each soul, as it comes up into that light, what colour of answering character the soul itself assumes. If it shine with the reflection of God's holiness, if it be in sweet and blissful sympathy with that, then will it spring towards God, as flame darts upward through the firmament, to rest in his likeness and blessedness forever. If it be the darkening of sinful character that is made manifest in God's light, then will that soul draw back, and pass, silently if possible, but in gloomy abhorrence and despair, into that world of darkness, where the rule of the feeling of the inhabitants in regard to God is just this, — Farthest from Thee is best! 24 GOD. So then we see clearly that it is not God's will, but the sinner's, that makes hell what it is. And that- world of darkness and of sin must necessarily be, in all its characteristics, the very extreme opposite of the heavenly world. This, where God is the glory, and the Lamb the light thereof, a world of light; that, of the blackness of darkness forever ; — this, a world of holiness, that, of sin and wickedness; — this, a world of love, that, of hatred ; — this, of serenity and peace, that, of rage, confusion, terror, remorse and despair. All things, indeed, according as God himself is the happiness or terror of the soul, will put on the same aspect, will wear the same character. " Whoso is wise, and he shall understand these things ? prudent, and he shall know them ? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein." The same attributes, the same ways, the same principles, will be happi ness and glory to the righteous, terror and misery to the wicked. It cannot be otherwise. It would be so now, in present, instant demonstration, were it not for Christ's death. That suspends the rule, keeps in abeyance the very nature of things, and so surrounds even the soul of the sinner with an atmosphere of long-suffering and forbearance in the offer of mercy, that God is not yet felt as a consuming fire, even by the wicked ; and therefore, on account of God's mercy, still waiting to be gracious for Christ's sake, men may for the present hate and disobey God, and yet not find, not in this world, from the laws of God, such a retaliation of their THE REALITY. — THE IDEA. 25 guilt and defiance of the Creator, such an avenge- ment of their contempt towards Him, as would make any world in God's universe a world of retribution But by-and-bye, God will let things go. He will cast oft' the muzzle by which the forces of a just retribution have been restrained, to see whether the sinner would in the interval flee to Christ for mercy, and he will let those forces have their own just way; he will let the fire of sin, which the sinner would not have Him quench in this world, take its own course, and burn on unto perdition. Away, then, with all complaints against the tre- mendous truth of an everlasting retribution, accord- ing to character, and complain of God, if you com- plain of Him at all, because He does, in such amazing mercy, for so long a time, restrain His own attributes, and the natural and just operation of things; a restraint which makes this world such a paradox to the universe, and calls forth sometimes, even out of the anguish of His own people, tortured into tem- porary doubt and darkness, such strains as in the 73d Psalm ; and from scoffers, walking after their own lusts, such sarcasms of infidelity and contempt as those recorded by Peter, saying, Where is the vaunted promise of the coming of your Lord to judgment ? O perishing and delaying men ! O presuming and abusive trespassers on God's mercy ! remember ye that the Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long suffering to us- ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Eemember 26 GOD. what God hath distinctly declared, that it is a righteous thing with Him to recompense tribulation to the wicked, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe. And remember yet once more that you have your own choice of the attributes of God, which of them you will experience ; and that if you draw down His justice, instead of receiving His mercy and love in Christ Jesus, you do it against His warning, against His will, against His incessant importunity and efforts. He must be forever the same righteous God, but He would infinitely rather you would experience His righteousness in heaven, and rejoice in it, than draw down His justice in hell, and suffer under it. But as to Himself, He cannot change — He cannot abdicate His attributes ; and if you do not change, if you do not flee to Jesus from the wrath to come, to be in Him made partaker of God's own holiness, then that wrath abideth on you forever. %\t initial 0f Qlofr- But, notwithstanding all this, " The fool hath said (wishing, but not believing) in his heart, There is no God." He hath said it in his heart ; but no man's reason ever said it, or could say it. There is no one word in our language capable of translating this Hebrew word, fool. The moral meaning is deeper than the intellectual ; and how intense it is, may be gathered from the consideration, that the grander a man becomes in intellect and acquire- ments, and the more he has of the respect, honor, and even admiration of mankind, the more truly does this word describe his character, if the fool's heart depicted in the tenth and fourteenth Psalms be his. Those portions of Grod's word contain a description of the practical atheists ; and there are no other atheists in the world, nor ever will be, but practical, although they sometimes endeavor to hide the inveterate and radical vileness of the thing beneath a veil of subtle philosophic speculation. The spring and reality of the evil is always in the heart. The fool hath said it, and none but a fool would say it, though some have said it who have thought them- selves, and have been thought by others, among the wisest of mankind. 28 THE DENIAL OF GOD. Three very striking paragraphs, descriptive of this atheistical juggling, by which the mind is subdued and blinded in the toils of a sinful heart, are pre- sented in the tenth Psalm. First. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God : God is not in all his thoughts, or in all his thoughts there is no God. Consequently, he hath said in his heart, I shall never be moved, never in adversity. Second. He hath said in his heart, If there be a God, yet not a God caring for our affairs. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten ; He hideth his face ; he will never see it. Insensibility to God's attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and pres- ent just providence, and thence a denial of the same. Third. Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God ? He hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it. Insensibility to God's retributive providence, and a denial of the same ; and thence a denial of the truth of a future judgment ; and thence a contempt of all human restraints and penalties, if by any act of power or lying they may be evaded. The whole of this Psalm is, in fact, an argument that not mere atheism, but a disbelief in future punishment, would break up all the foundations of social morality, and set men in a wild and savage freedom of " cursing and deceit and fraud." Take away the idea of a God, whose providence is personal, superintending and retributive, and you leave nothing for restraint but a present low expediency — nothing but self- interest in the present life, which, if there were no God, would be impossible to be demonstrated as on THE DENIAL OF GOD. 29 the side of virtue ; for without a God, and his eternal holiness and justice, self-interest would as often lie in vice as virtue, and oftener in all forms of sustained and popular depravity. The most aspiring form of attempted intellectual atheism is Pantheism, which is but a sublimated materialism, maintaining that all the shapes of ani- mated nature, and man himself among them, are but organic harps diversely framed, that tremble into thought as the one intellectual breeze sweeps over them, constituting the soul of each and the God of all. All things are parts of God, and all being is to be absorbed in Him. The two things, no God and all God, might seem to be the extreme opposites and antagonisms of one another, but the truth of the existence and attributes of God is equally dis- tant from both. The atheism and the Pantheism lead to the same fool's paradise ; for as to religion, it is all one, as Howe, in his Living Temple, long ago demonstrated, whether we make nothing to be God, or everything ; whether we allow of no God to worship, or leave none to worship Him. And although the attempt may be made by Pantheistic abstractions of philosophy, and delusions of poetry to cheat the world with names and with a show of piety, the system of Pantheism has been proved as directly levelled against all religion as the most avowed atheism. Indeed, inasmuch as atheism is more openly blasphemous, it is less reputable, and therefore less dangerous ; while Pantheism, being too subtle and refined for a vulgar religion, and capa- ble of assuming an appearance of most devout rev- 30 THE DENIAL OF GOD. erence and transcendental sentimentalism, may be really alluring, under an intellectual and poetic garb. It wears sometimes an aspect of mystic piety and wrapt devotion. It is a mist-piety, shrouding you with a kind of wet that penetrates to the very bones, if long enough continued, while a strong, drenching rain of open undisguised atheism, would have done its work only on the skin and clothes, and left a possibility of drying in the next sunshine. But this subtle system displays the semblance of absorption in God, self-renunciation, self-annihila- tion, union with the Infinite, and other things hav- ing some appearance of the self-denial and self-cru- cifixion for Christ, commanded in the Scriptures. But it is entirely inconsistent with a personal dis- cipline of the soul under Divine grace. To lay one's being at the foot of the cross, to mortify and subject the self-will to God in Christ, is widely dif- ferent from the vague, mystical absorption of the soul in a universal influence of nature. It is very quieting to the conscience, a charming anodyne for all fears of a future retribution, to believe in a vast system of necessity in which all things are parts of God, so that wicked souls themselves are but ac- complishing a mission from Him, and will in the end return into Himself, as waves of His own being. Even this the fool hath said in his heart, nor indeed is there any form of madness and absurdity to which men have not resorted, in the vain endeavor to throw off a conviction of personal responsibility to a personal God of holiness and justice ; a God who hates sin, and will bring men into judgment accord- THE DENIAL OF GOD. 31 ing to their character and doings, for every secret thing, good or evil. But all this is the delusion or the speculations of a few. The great mass of mankind will ever go on believing in God speculatively, but wholly regard- less of the relation of their own moral being to His attributes, and insensible as to their personal re- sponsibility to God. Without Christ, without pray- er, without hope, without God ; — these are the ne- gatives that describe the existence of most men, the habit of heart and life with ordinary sinners. A sinful man — the subject of all these negatives, may yet be, as regards society, a very moral man, so called, so considered. He may be a very moral man towards men, and a very immoral man towards God ; in friendship with his fellow-men, but at en- mity against God. He may be so insesible in re- gard to God, and voluntarily and habitually so igno- rant of God's claims upon him, that he shall never have the state of his heart towards God come into notice ; so that the accusation against him of being an enemy to God shall be as unmeaning, or seem as incredible, as an indictment of personal enmity to- wards the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid. And yet, in all the breathings and outgoings of his being, he is opposing and violating the law of God, and the less he thinks of it, the more thorough- ly and habitually is such opposition becoming the law of his nature. There is no care for God in his existence ; into none of his plans does the consider- ation of God enter. Over none of his affections does the affectionate regard of God shed its hallow- 32 THE DENIAL OF GOD. ing heavenly radiance. In no province of his mo- tives is the will of God supreme or even consulted. None of his desires are towards God ; none of his meditations, if he ever meditates, dwell upon God's attributes, and not only is God never in his thoughts, but even the idea of God is never pre- sented, or if it comes, it rises as an unwelcome in- truder ; it comes only to be expelled by the cares, the business, and the pleasures of life ; an expulsion in many cases so absolute and successful, that the distinct impression of the Deity, or even of any one of His attributes, has no more entered the soul, or been admitted, there, than the wind that breathes over the senses enters the brain, or draws a picture on the visual organs. The heart, mind, soul, whole being, have gone on for years in all their processes, with no more impressions from the nature or the providence of God to bring him definitely to the con- sciousness, than if the existence of God were a fable. When we consider what a being God is, and that we are His intelligent creatures, the success and power of this insensibility in excluding God, seem astounding and incredible. For one would think that we ourselves and every other created thing in the universe would be perpetually bringing to the mind irresistible notices of God, that we never could, by any possibility, get rid of Him, that no art of blindness in the memory would enable us to forget Him, nor any veil of insensibility to exclude Him. And yet there are those who, dependent from mo- ment to moment on the omnipresent God, have lived all their lifetime, up to the present hour, in THE DENIAL OF GOD. 33 such utter alienation from Hiin, that, from day to day, and from week to week, as it passed by, it may have been said at each successive interval, God is not in all their thoughts. And if one should ask you how this has been brought about, how it could have been accomplished, how such a power of ex- pulsion in regard to the Deity could have existed in you, as might look to a being who knew nothing about sin like a stupendous miracle, what answer could be made that would explain the mystery? How has it been possible for you, the creature of God's power, so fearfully and wonderfully made by His wisdom, surrounded by His agency, pressed by the manifestations of His being, dependent every in- stant on His bounty ; how has it been possible for you, addressed by God's word, the subject of God's warn ings, invited and entreated by His own dear Sol, breathing every breath you draw by God's permis- sion ; how has it been possible for you to evade the idea of God, and to keep His existence and attributes from your positive notice ? By what process have you contrived to keep God out of your soul, and while surrounded and upheld by Him, to live without God in the world ? What frightful power is it that you possess, what spell of destruction and darkness, what diabolical energy, that you could walk all this while in God's opened hand of mercy, and yet not see God's eye upon you, not feel His all-seeing scru- tiny, not admit God to your consciousness, not have God in all your thoughts ? Who has helped you to remain ignorant of your omnipresent Maker? What league are you in with the spirits of darkness, 2* 84 THE DENIAL OF GOD. that you can shield your soul from the sense of His holiness and glory ? Or who gave you this cloud of spiritual death, this garment of perdition, woven, one would think, in the deepest darkness of the bottomless pit, that you can so wrap it round your soul, that the all-pervading God himself ceases to be the object of your attention? Who helped you to get rid of God ? Who tempted you to cast off the fear of God ? Who supplied you with expe- dients, whereby you might forget God, and what could induce you to shut the eye of your own soul upon God, and plunge so deep and mad into the death of trespasses and sins ? What amazement is is this in reference to God's attributes, that this body, the shell of the soul, can keep them off, as a casement of iron might keep off the flames of a con- flagration ! And what amazement in reference to your own indifference, that this infatuation, which must be voluntary, can be yours, and yet that such amazing guilt as it involves should make no im- pression on your sensibility, no alarm in your con- science. Yes ! it is an alliance with the powers of dark- ness, it is the mysterious permitted and tremen- dous agency of evil spirits, by which, in conjunc- tion with your own will, this anomaly of guilt is preserved in the universe. There is no conceal- ment of this fact in God's word, but a most explicit announcement of it, that in thus remaining insensi- ble to God and his glory, and to your own interest in the propitiatory death of his Son, you are under the admitted power of Satan, you are in covenant THE DENIAL OF GOD. 35 with him, among the ranks of the lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of those who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine within them. But while by this mysterious agency, in conjunc- tion with your own will, this involution of dark- ness can be going on here, can be maintained now in this world, it is impossible in the world of spirits; and we have reason to believe that the devils, who cannot thus remain blind and insensi- ble, envy the condition of souls that for a season can. The time of this possibility is rapidly passing, and you are passing from a world of faith into a world of light and experience. According to the relation in which you stand to God's attributes now, will be the operation of those attributes upon you, when you come to see and feel them. One reason why it is permitted to be possible to live in such a world as this without seeing God, is that there might be the possibility of a discipline of faith, by which we might become like God. The proof and manifestation of God " could not be intellectually more evident, without becoming morally less effect- ive; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the life of faith, to the cold mechanism of a worth- less, because compulsory assent." God will have no believers on compulsion ; he will leave men to their own choice ; and the choice, if that of unbe- lief and insensibility, is that of the heart. Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is 36 THE DENIAL OF GOD. in them because of the blindness of their heart. But the time of this ignorance is passing, and though the enmity of the heart will remain, the blindness will be gone forever, when the veiled frame of a fleshly organization and a material world shall have dropped asunder. And what then will be the effect of a meeting of the soul with God ? "When face to face we shall behold him, when character shall be developed in the blaze of character ; when the attributes of the creature shall appear in manifest conflict with the attributes of the Creator, when the moral aspect of the creature's sin shall be revealed in the lightning flame of the Creator's holiness, the hideousness of guilt in contrast with the glory of the righteousness of God and angels, will there then any longer be the anomaly of an atheistic insensibility to God, the infernal miracle of a soul indifferent to his existence and attributes ? Every eye shall see him, and then, as the process here has been that of insensibility and the heedless accumulation of guilt, the process there will be that of the soul becoming all eye, all sense, all vivid sensibility to God, a quickened fiery conscience in regard to sin, a sense at once of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, of the glory of heaven and the terror of hell, of the brightness of light and the blackness of darkness ; a sight and sense of all things as they are, and not as when the delusions of the carnal mind concealed and belied them, not as when the dust and ashes of a sensual existence were laid upon them. Is there any guilty soul that can endure the terrors of that THE DENIAL OF GOD. 3? clay ? Is there any soul that can pass from an in- sensibility in this world, maintained amidst such radiant light from the works and the revealed word of God, without change, into God's presence, with- out the certainty, from the very nature of things, of misery there ? For without holiness no man shall see Grod, no guilty creature could endure the sight, for our God is a consuming fire. If now, these paragraphs are speaking to a sin- gle soul that has hitherto lived without God and without hope in the world, let the question be asked, have you made any preparation to meet God in that condition ? Are you ready to stand in his presence ? Perhaps these questions may fall upon the sense of some, in regard to whom this very in- sensibility to God is a source and subject of aston- ishment, fear, and almost indignation to themselves and to others. There are those who are ready to say, that I might see God ! that he would come out of his place of invisibility, and compel my in- sensible spirit to feel him, to behold his holiness and glory, and my own guilt ! that this solid world that closes me around, and hides everything but material existence from my view, might as it were open, and disclose the splendor of Jehovah in such overpowering light that I might never for- get the vision ! that this curtain of creation, in- stead of separating between me and God, might light up indeed as a bright transparency revealing his presence in power and glory, and compelling me to fall prostrate and adore ! that I might see him as Job saw him, and be compelled to cry out, "I have 38 THE DENIAL OF GOD. heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dnst and ashes!" And if this wish be sincere, then there is nothing which you would not be willing to do, to gain that purity and contrition of heart, through which alone, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can behold God in peace. Sometimes the first beginning of life in the soul towards God may be the commenc- ing sense of this very insensibility, and the convic- tion of it as in itself a mighty sin, but a mightier proof and consequence of that death in trespasses and sins in which the soul has remained wholly at ease and quiet, not having God in all its thoughts. And if out of this insensibility there is an outcry after God and an effort to return to him and to find him, God will bless it. Yet there may be a great struggle and conflict. For it is a great mistake to suppose that this insensibility will be always rem®v- ed the moment the soul enters on the process of re- turn to God. In the nature of things it cannot be expected that the soul at one bound will recover from the effect of the habits of a life of sin. If a devotee of Hindostan, after holding his arm motion- less in an upright position for years, finds that it has grown there unalterably, is it a strange result from the process with his physical nature ? Can he expect by an act of volition to recover the use of that limb? Must it not be by a long and very gradual process, by multitudes of volitions and of efforts, each making the muscles yield perhaps a very little, and all necessary in constant repetition ? THE DENIAL OP GOD. 39 Analogous to this may be the case of religious in- sensibility, although God himself is the Healer, and the heart, when changed by grace, is, as to princi- ple, wholly changed, and radically. Still, put the case in regard to your own dispositions and prac- tices, long inured and inveterate, and it stands thus : You have, by long habit, disregarded God ; your business, studies, amusements, pleasures, farms and merchandise, have absorbed you. Is the insensi- bility of death a strange consequence of this suffo- cation of spiritual life ? And can you think to re- cover from that insensibility, except by voluntary, patient, persevering efforts? You will say, it is im- possible ! And yet, in another view, and the right view, it is not impossible, for it is of grace. And so we show you a better way, or rather the way to enter on such efforts and maintain them, with an ab- solute certainty of success. You are to come to Christ. Your insensibility can be moved in no other way. And besides this, besides His being the only Physician that knows your case and can heal your soul, it is only in Christ that you can see and know God. In Christ, those divine attributes, by themselves destructive of the sinful soul, and of con- suming, fiery light and power, shall, with regenera- ting grace, subdue the soul, and renew it in their own nature, preparing it for God's holiness, by mak- ing it partaker of the same. CI}* $nxt§ aft-er <&»&♦ Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! The anxious heart of humanity speaks out in this sen- tence. Amidst all our darkness and insensibility as a fallen race, there is still a constitutional attrac- tion in our being towards God, as well as a consti- tutional necessity of finding Him. Our grand attribute of intelligence and immortality is just this capacity of knowing God, and this necessity of loving Him. Our reason is a gift divine, because it enables us to see God, because the idea of God is one of its intuitions, and the heart is under a law of the reason to love God. It is only in loving Him that we can find Him and know him. "Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love." He that loveth not, enoweth not. Let us set up that pillar of the beginning of all science, for if it be true in regard to God, it is true also in regard to all God's works. And a being constituted with the capacity of knowing God, could never be satisfied with any thing less than God. An imperious necessity of knowing and of loving is here. The THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 41 whole circle of knowledge and of thought in the universe might be exhausted, and it would leave the soul empty and restless without God. There might come a time when, to be shut up to the whole universe without God, would be as tedious to an immortal soul, as it would now to a man with the comprehensive intellectual power of Newton, to be restricted all his lifetime to the study of the primer of his childhood. There might come a time when the universe itself would be a prison without God, and the condemnation of existence in it a burden of wearisomeness and sameness, intolerable. For the more the mind grasps, the less it can be satisfied without God ; the more the soul knows, the stronger are the constitutional and eternal necessities of its being to know God; the vaster the reach of its travel in the created demonstrations of God, which are the consequences of God's existence, the more pressing and irresistible become the cravings of its immortal nature for the sight of God. For, wherever you go, whatsoever you do, whatsoever you know, rest is never in all creation, but in God ; happiness is never in created things, but in God; and the universe would be but as a wheel revolving with you transfixed upon it, and maddened by its rev- olutions, if you know not God. Everywhere, from the depths of immortality, the unsatisfied, rest- less yearning rises after God. The sound of the ocean of our being, as it breaks upon the shores of eternity, is the boom and roar of a desolate tem- pestuous sea, if it knows not God. The depths of an infinite despair, to a being endued with intell*- 42 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. gence and immortality, are in the condition of not rinding, seeing, knowing God. Ever, at the end of all knowledge, rises the ques- tion where is God, and the necessity of knowing Him. The more you see and know of the laws and glories of creation, the more heavily this ques- tion and necessity press upon the mind. It is the final end of all thought to think upon God ; it is the ultimate object of all steps, enquiries, researches, to find God. And the more you grasp of this material universe, in your studies, your investiga- tions, your comprehension, without God, you are but led to an open door, through which you pass into the blackness of darkness forever, if you have not found God. A created being might take the universe orb by orb, might travel from star to star, from sun to sun, from system to system, but nothing could give him rest; and everywhere, after all things were comprehended that God has made, there would only arise, with a more overwhelming pressure, the question, Where is God ? The nearer you seem to get to Him, as you pass from world to world, through the trains of material glory in His infinite temple, through the folds of the veil of created systems round about Him, the stronger becomes the attraction that presses you to him, the swifter this power of gravitation, as capacity ex- pands, and worlds are unfolded, and yet, if you see Him not, whither are you hurrying, and what can be the rest of your soul? You might meet, amidst the range of worlds, trains of angels and archangels, beings more glorious in themselves than THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 43 all worlds ; but the greater their magnificence and grandeur, the less the possibility of resting or re- maining among them, and the greater the pressure of the question, Where is He who made them ? The more you could, by any possibility, behold and know of all things but God, the more you could find out of being and of matter, in the roll of ages, if ages were allotted for the experiment, before finding God, the more universal, absorbing, irre- sistible and uncontrollable, would be the necessity that carries you towards God, the necessity of seeing and of knowing Him. Amidst all these unbounded and innumerable forms and glories of being and of matter, orbs of splendor, fires of intelligence and light, but one feeling would at length absorb the soul, but one necessity would weigh upon it, the craving and necessity of knowing God. The more infinite the variety of those glories, and the more unbounded their expanse, the greater the pressure upon an immortal being, towards Him who made them all. Where, where is God ? And what in God's universe can the soul rest upon without God? Such is what may be called the constitutional necessity of finding and of knowing God. But now there is, in addition, a still more pressing and inexorable moral necessity, a necessity of finding in Him a friend, the strength of our heart, and our portion forever. There is the absolute certainty of meeting God ; but how do we know what will be the effect of that meeting ? Eather, how can we hope, if we do not know Him now by loving Him, 44 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. if we do not know Him as His dear children, how can we hope that the meeting of our souls with Him can be an event of joy ? May it not prove, must it not prove, the most dreadful event of all our exist- ence, and deplorably decisive for eternity ? What if, amidst all these demonstrations of God, all these manifestations of His power and glory, all these avenues of worlds leading onward to the introduction, with all this constitutional necessity of knowing God, and this absolute impossibility of rest apart from Him ; what if the soul, the veil being lifted, and God's attributes seen, finds in Him an enemy ! What if the state of mind and heart that has prevented God from being seen in, through, and by His works everywhere, is a state of such opposition to His holiness, His sovereign will, that when He comes to be seen and known as He is, when the veil of the universe is withdrawn, and the soul is in His immediate presence, it shall be found that He is a consuming fire ! What will be the state of a mind that has groped through this present world of light in regard to God without finding God ? What will be the condition of our men of assumed science and intelligence, who have read nature backwards, and the more they have seen and known of God's works, the less they have seen of Him who made them ? What will he, who is now estranged from God, experience, when the attributes which he now denies, or hates, blaze upon him, no longer through the vista of a telescope of worlds, where he at present conceives himself to be at one end, and God infinitely distant at the other ; THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. 45 but in a revelation that brings him face to face with Jehovah, creation all behind, and none but God before him and around him ? What will become of him, a sinful creature, in the presence of a God of infinite holiness, gone, against all warning, into that presence, in the midst of sin ? We do suppose that the revelation of God once made, the sight of God once seen, will command all notice, absorb all thought, leave no possibility for any created thing any longer to interpose before the soul, to gain from it a moment's attention, in dis- tracting it from God. If the Divine attributes are the object of the soul's affectionate and confiding love, they will absorb the soul in an ecstasy of being, in adoration and praise, to us inconceivable. But if the habits and affections of the soul be opposed to the Divine attributes, then the nearer it is brought to the contemplation and sense of them, the more intolerable the condition of that soul must be. For even in this world, the thought of God to such a soul is full of terror. A sinful being can never endure the attributes of God. And yet, those attributes once revealed, nothing in the universe will be able to distract even a sinful soul from the contemplation of them ; nothing will be worthy of notice in comparison with them ; and indeed, both with holy and sinful beings in the spiritual world, it must be the case that nothing will, by itself, any longer confine the notice of the mind, but every- thing will be seen as the Divine attributes play upon it, and are illustrated in it. It is God, who will be all in all to the righteous soul, and God who will be 46 THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. all in all to the wicked soul. Now, God's works may be seen, and not himself ; God's works may be examined with scientific pride and pretension, and yet the Anthor of them never be noticed ; nay, His presence, His agency, if not His being, may be denied. Men may analyze the light of the sun, and boast themselves in the power of rational research and discovery, and yet never behold the light of the Sun of Kighteousness. Men may examine the organization of plants and animals, and the structure of a world, and receive the worship of their fellow- men for their acuteness and sagacity, and yet, amidst all this, neither see, nor know, nor acknowledge their Creator, but live and die Atheists, in a world sustained by God's presence and filled with God's light. But there, God himself will be seen. The veil that hides Him will be taken away ; or rather, the soul being carried behind the veil, God and His attributes will fill the vision. Creatures will no more speculate about His agency, but feel it ; and according as they themselves are consentaneous with it, prefigured for it, in harmony with it, or opposed to it, unfitted for it, and habituated against it, it will be the source of unmingled happiness or misery. According as they are the friends or the enemies of God, God will be to them either a foun- tain of love and blessedness, or a consuming fire, either the light of life, or a light revealing sin and darkness. There must come a time, when we shall meet God face to face, and that will be the revela- tion and the knowledge of our destiny ; that will THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 47 be the experience of heaven or hell. The light of these senses shall no longer hide from us the light of God ; the occupations of a world shall no longer distract onr absorbed sight and being from Him. Oh, then, what shall we do to find Him ? What shall we do to meet Him, not as strangers and ene- mies, but children and friends ? And how shall we be prepared to find in Him, when we see Him behind the veil, when sense and shadows drop away from around us, and leave us in uncreated light before the splendors of His infinite holiness, to find in Him, not the terror of our souls in His avenging justice, but a reconciled friend and Father — a for- giving, loving, and beloved God ? Oh the greatness, the majesty, the glory and the gloom of this mighty problem! How can men be so heedless of the meeting of their souls with God ! How can immortal beings be so thoughtless of the question, What shall I be to God, and what will God be to me, when I meet Him, when I see Him, when I stand in the blaze of His attributes, in the light of His counte- nance — when that light, angry or glorious, destruc- tive or life-giving, according to what I am, falls upon me ? What shall I find myself to all eternity, when character is all revealed and fixed forever — when holiness discloses sin — when delusions and distrac- tions are withdrawn — when mine inmost soul, and heart and being, penetrated with God's light, reveal their every process, habit, thought, feeling, sealed, by a contrast or similarity with God, for mine eternal destiny ? Surely this is the one absorbing question of our 48 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. "being — What shall we do to find God ? or, to change the question in a manner expressive of the fear, What shall we do to find in ourselves such a like- ness to God, such a participation in His holiness, that we may be prepared for that meeting with Him, so soon to take place, when this fleshly tabernacle drops from around us? " Blessed are the pure in heart," says our Lord Jesus Christ, " for they shall see God." " But, oh!" the sinner answers, "my heart is all impure, and I dare not, cannot meet Him;" and so, from the depths of the condemned soul, in the anguish of a troubled conscience, the question resounds, Where shall I gain that purity ? for my heart is all defiled with sin. Clouds and darkness are round about me, and in my sins I cannot see God. If I look to God through aught that I am in myself, I see him only as the righteous and revenging God of that holy law which I have violated. If I see His glorious attributes, it is but to see and feel their tremendous condemnation of my guilt. If God looks upon me, if He reveals Himself unto me, in my sin, my corruption, my ruin, I am undone ; for one t glance of His countenance, one ray of His in- finite holiness, discloses my darkness, mine impurity of heart, my possession of all the qualities that must banish me from His holy presence, and shut me up in hell. If God stand before me, and I see Him, I must cry out with Peter, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord !" Till I am changed, I can- not see God ; and who and what shall change me ? Till I am purified, I cannot see God, for my heart is full of sin. I cannot, dare not see Him; for the THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 49 very thought of His intolerable holiness, when He comes near to my soul, is more than I can bear; and my will is strong against Him, and my soul is dark to every attribute but that of His condemning and avenging righteousness. And yet I must see God. I am directed to His presence ; I am hasten- ing to His judgment-bar ; His mandate is upon me ; His indictment is against me ; His writ is after me. I must meet the King of terrors ; and after that, I must meet God. Oh, where shall I find Him ? What shall I do to find Him ? And where is that purity of heart, without which no man shall see God? Who has it? With whom is the fountain of it? Where shall I find it ? Oh Son of God most merciful, who didst speak those gracious words, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," have mercy upon me, for I am a miserable sinner! Oh Lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon me ! Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Oh thou compassionate and forbearing Lord God, whom I would fain see, but cannot, have mercy upon me ! Oh divine Ee- deemer, who didst bear our sins, have mercy upon me ! I look to Thee — I throw myself on Thee. To whom shall I go but unto Thee, who only hast the words of life eternal ? Yes, O yes, to Thee, Lamb of God ! It is to Jesus Christ, and to Him alone, that this sense of guilt, this fear of meeting God, this conviction of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment to come, this sense of evil in the soul, and this outcry of the 3 50 THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. conscience after purity of heart, points the sinner, yea presses him, burdened, anguished, dying, to the cross of Christ. The first step to the character and blessing of the pure in heart is to see our own im- purity ; and when we see that, and feel it — when our conscience accuses us to God — when we feel that as we are, we cannot meet God, cannot endure His presence, cannot see Him and live, then, as we look about in anguish for deliverance, for some power to help, to heal, and save us, all the voices of revelation point us to Christ — to that very Being who declares to us, that the pure in heart are blessed, because they shall see God ; for He it is, and He alone, that can give us that purity — that can, by the power of His own blood, wash away our sinful stains — that can, by the grace of His spirit, subdue and soften our hearts in contrition, in repentance, in faith, and prepare us to see God. He it is, who has been exalted as a Prince and a Saviour, to give re- pentance and the remission of sins ; He it is, who can take away the hardness of our hearts, our insen- sibility, our indifference, our love of sinning, our pride, our self-will ; He it is, who can make us meek and lowly in heart, can lead us to the mercy-seat, can teach us to plead His name and merits with the Father. "Will we come to Him for this blessedness ? Will we believe in His power and love ? Will we make our appeal for His mercy ? Ah ! perhaps we need to have God in some way come near to us in wrath, before we can be made to feel how near and how infinitely precious Christ is in His redeeming love, and God in Christ ! It is THE SEARCH AFTER GOD. 51 the sight of God that possibly we need now, in con- trast with our guilt, in order that we may see and feel the greatness of that guilt. It is the light of the Divine Holiness that we need, to reveal the darkness and sinfulness of our own hearts, and the everlasting ruin that awaits us, if, with such hearts unchanged, we go into eternity. Oh that careless souls might see God in His holiness now, and feel Him in some- thing of the terror of His wrath and justice, in order that they might be roused up from their insensibility, and driven from their indifference, and compelled by the anguish of a wounded conscience to cry out for the Divine mercy. Then might they arrive at that purity of heart without which no man shall see God — then might they be prepared by the Eedeemer for their introduction to God in the eternal world. Would to God that the corruptions of this sinful and rebellious heart might be unveiled before the sinner, that he might be taken down into the depths of them, and made to see how he is filled with them — how they expose him to the wrath of God — how they prepare him, if he enters the eternal world with such a heart unchanged, to feel the attributes of God as a consuming fire. "Would to God that the hell of the sinner's own passions might beforehand be let loose upon him, that, by the experience of the con- flict, the strife, the war, in deep conviction now, he might be terrified from himself to Christ, might be driven to the Saviour for refuge. For, indeed, anything is better than the insensi- bility of this death of trespasses and sins. Better that men feel the burning fire of God now, in a world 52 THE SEAECH AFTER GOD. of probation, than feel it forever in the world of wo ; — better that men see and feel the enmity of their hearts against God, and bear the stings of an angry conscience now, and hear the accusation against them in God's word as His enemies, than go on in stupid indifference, in the dream that they are His friends, only to hear His voice in an eternal judg- ment, "Depart from me; I never knew you I" — better that men learn their own character in season, while God gives them the opportunity of becoming new creatures in Christ Jesus, than to hear it first announced, and have it first admitted and under- stood, in the thunder of that dreadful sentence, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels I" (EUntitjK Next after tlie Idea of Grod, comes tliat of Eter- nity. The Reality is one of the Powers of the world to come. It may be said, perhaps, that Eter- nity itself is the world to come, but it is more proper to say that the world to come is in Eternity, while this world, and we upon it, are in Time ; and the passage from Time to Eternity is by us conceived as something more than a mere going from one world into another world. Eternity ! Eternity ! We have indeed the Idea here ; we meet the Power there ! The moment a soul emerges from Time, we think of it as passing from a point into an infinitude ; we think of a boundlessness of which it must be con- scious, an everlastingness of duration, which it knows now only in Idea, but must know then, not in imagination merely, but in self-consciousness, as a Power. The change from Time into Eternity is a change in the whole position and relations of our being, all that is partial being left behind, and a to- tal assumed or entered on, within us and around us. Here we know in part, but there shall we know as we are known ; here we see in part, but there we shall see as we are seen. The language which Paul 54 ETERNITY. uses in regard to eternal blessedness, will be here reversed in regard to the condition of eternal mis- ery. In either case, the entrance on Eternity will be the experience of Eternity, a knowledge of Eter- nity, absolute, and not in expectation merely; the experience of an Eternal Now which, nevertheless will not prevent the forecasting of a still greater experience either of glory on the one hand, or of terror on the other. Our whole being is so consti- tuted as to be perpetually now forecasting that fix- edness of doom, that reality of Eternity ; constitu- tionally we are expecting it ; we are anticipating it, whether preparing and planning for it, or not. It is the great cloud before us, into which we know we are to enter ; it is the great thought brooding over us, as the firmament overhangs our bodies, and we work beneath it without looking up, without think- ing of it. Nevertheless, immortality in ourselves, and Eternity to be experienced by us, at the great goal of our being, when we come to the end of the present (which is but the beginning of the endless), constitute the overruling consciousness of the soul. Whether a man be wicked or good, careless or anx- ious, this element of his nature he can neither deny nor abdicate. He may live as a sea-monster, down in the depths of a moral medium as thick as the ocean, but yet this all-surrounding air of his accountability and immortality is above him, with its universal pressure. The change from Time into Eternity will be the fulfilment of all this mighty anticipation of our mental and moral constitution. Then, Time shall be no longer ; for in this view, it ETERNITY. 56 Is a thing only for beings on probation, and when that ends, Time ends, and Eternity begins. Time is the clock that strikes the hours of our probation- ary trial, and every moment is precious ; but when that is passed through, we must have a clock that strikes Eternity or none at all; and doubtless, when that is passed through, our very consciousness will strike Eternity, as now it strikes Time. Time is nothing there, since there is no more anything depending upon it, nor any use for it, but Eternity is all in all, according as God is all in all. What is Time, to one who has entered on Eternity, whose state is fixed for Eternity? A fixedness, which makes such a change, as to leave no longer any room for either fear or hope, the eternal goal of each of these passions being reached, and an unchang- able experience begun, which is indeed to be pro- gressive in degree, but absolute in quality, forever. Our motion on our axis may be what we please, but our orbit is in Eternity, and once launched upon it, we can do nothing but pursue it, wherever it may sweep us. Here, we have something to look for- ward to, of a nature that we never have experi- enced, but there, all is decided. Here we seem to hold our choices in our own power, as long as Time lasts; but there we lay aside our very free agency for a supreme eternal good, or a supreme eternal evil, that can never more be changed, nor our choice altered, whatever it may be. Over neither the evil nor the good shall we be any longer master, but it will be master over us, forever and ever. This mighty responsibility of an eternal destiny 56 ETEKNITY. is on us all — a destiny soon to be known and sealed unchangeable, in heaven or bell. One would think this amazing truth would be supremely impressive, once announced, even if it were only probable ; but being certain, we should think the pressure would be felt, as of a great mountain, upon men's hearts and consciences. How can it be otherwise ? Never- theless, how little emotion — how mighty an insensi- bility ! And though the Judge standeth at the door, yet, because judgment against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Absorbed in the trifles of time, men give themselves no leisure to look beyond the present moment, and accustom themselves to anxieties only about the present life. The power of habit in this consequent insensibility is tremendous, and most disastrously successful. The merest, maddest vanities and dreams of time shall thus outweigh the interests of eternity. The miserable pursuits of the present moment are held so close to the eye of the soul, and its affections are so fixed upon them, that nothing else can be seen or thought of. We may hold a shilling before the eye so near, that it shall shut out heaven from the vision ; we may, with a mote between the glasses of the telescope, cover the orb of day. So men shut out the things of God, Christ, eternity, heaven, hell, wholly from their view, even by the barest con- sideration what they shall eat, drink, and with what their bodies shall be clothed ; and so the god of this world, even by things of this world, blinds the minds of those who believe not, keeping off the ETERNITY. 57 thoughts of eternity, and absorbing the heart with other things, instead of the interests of an immortal soul. This power of the world to come, in such a case, is veiled, is hidden ; it is as if it did not exist, or only as an unmeaning abstraction. But yet it does exist ; and whenever and in whatever way the idea of eternity gets hold upon the soul, and gains the mastery there, it turns out every other idea ; it shows its power by its despotism ; it blasts the fairest visionary castles of the mind ; it turns the pleasures of the world into ashes. And God can, any time, bring this idea sweeping on the soul, like an army with banners. "We have heard of such things — heard of men seized, as by an invisible power, at the sight and hearing of the ticking of a clock in a crowded court- room, and carried forth into the open world, and pursued through all the lanes of life and din of business, unable to escape, till pressed to God's foot- stool in secret, and compelled to pour out, as a dying sinner, the prayer for God's salvation, wrung from the soul by the pressure of sin and the thoughts of eternity, and the question, In what world shall I dwell, when this world passes away, and I pass from it forever ? You have heard of the flood-gates of such thought, thrown open by the bare utterance of that one word, eternity, and, as if the fountains of the great deep were broken up, a cataract and storm of angry, gloomy, prophetic wailing and despair rushing through the soul. Under such a sense of guilt and eternity, no man can bear up ; but if re- tribution unchangeable have not already commenced, 58 ETERNITY. or a judicial desolation and petrifaction of the soul, must cry out, God save me ! I am a lost creature ! God have mercy upon me, a sinner ! Lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon me ! Now, as it is in the power of the Spirit of God at any time to bring in this idea of eternity upon the soul with an exceeding and eternal weight, whether of glory or of gloom, we need not wonder at the instances on record of persons awakened by the mere hearing of the word eternity, or merely seeing it printed on a page. I think it is Hannah More, to whom we owe the authentic account of a lady of social distinction and gaiety in England, who re- turned one night from a party or a ball of great splendor, and found her maid waiting for her, em- ployed in reading a religious book. As she glanced at it, she exclaimed, " How can you contrive to amuse yourself with poring over the pages of such a melancholy work!" But her own eye had been an unsuspected inlet to the mind for one of the powers of the world to come, that it might enter, sweeping with all its solemn train the visions of her worldli- ness quite away. She retired to rest, but lay tossing in anxious thought, and when her maid the next day inquired the cause of her pale and gloomy mood and appearance, she confessed that it was wholly that one word Eternity, beheld in the pages of that book, which had startled a world of convictions, anxieties, fears, remorse, forebodings, that at length completely overwhelmed her, and no peace could be found till it was gained in Christ Jesus, till in ETEENITY. 59 Him she had gained that preparation for eternity, of which the word had roused her to feel her need as an immortal being. And at any time that one word eternity may be the power of the Holy Spirit in the soul, to break up the fountains of the great deep of thought in regard to our everlasting respon- sibility and destiny. And truly, a right impressi®n of eternity is suffi- cient to make everything here, everything transi- tory, however splendid, however coveted, seem insig- nificant and worthless. A constant impression of eternity would make a man superior to all life's changes, shows, temptations and delusions. It has much the same effect with that of severe and over- whelming affliction, though in a different way ; for whereas overwhelming sorrow may bury a man as in a sepulchre, making him dead to the world, because he cannot enjoy anything, — the deep and vast impression of eternity raises him quite above it, to a place of serene and commanding observation, where he sees its vanity and madness. " I greatly deceive myself," said the great Edmund Burke, when prostrated by tie death of a son, as an oak by a hurricane, "T greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season of life I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world." But the deep sense of eternity will make a man feel that all the riches and honors of the material universe are are not worth a peck of refuse wheat, even with the greatest zest and spirit for their enjoyment, except the soul is prepared to meet God, prepared for its abode in eternity. A strong 60 ETEKNITY. sense of eternity, in its power of reducing the bubbles and shows of this world to their intrinsic vanity, and paralysing its grasp upon ns, is like the near approach of death, and for the same reason. Indeed, death itself borrows nearly all its power over ns from eternity, all its power to move ns. The brutes have no fear of death, because they have no life after death, nor the possibility of conceiving of it. In like manner, the mighty idea of probation borrows all its solemnity from the idea of eternity. We are on trial in this world, not for any limited duration of destiny in the next, but for an existence that shall never end, an existence determined by causes which here in this world we set in operation, and habits which here in this world we form or begin. Everything bears upon eternity, and takes its dignity and importance thence, nor can we live, in whatever way, without riving for eternity. All moral influences and causes run into eternity, and in human action and thought they are so innumerable and incalculable, that tho whole of what is sown here not only determines the whole of what is reaped there, but it may take immeasurable* ages to develop particular fruits from particular seeds here deposited. In that respect the mind of man may be like the universe of God, in which there are worlds whose light may have been travelling towards us ever since the dawn of the creation, and never yet have reached us. But it must come, it never can perish ; it may be millions and millions of years upon its way, but still it wings its wondrous flight, and will ETEKNITY. 61 produce, somewhere, if there remain an eye to meet it, the image of its object. So it is with men's actions, characters, lives. As the planets are coming up in space, so may things transacted here come up in their reality, in their power, in their knowledge, millions of ages in the bosom of eternity. And therefore the idea and reality of time, which as to its moral character is very much the same with the idea of probation, borrows, in like manner, all its solemnity from the reality of eternity, the reality of an endless existence, the character of which time determines ; determines it indeed, not by itself, but by our use of it. What we make of time, time makes of our eternity. Time is the weaver of the garment of our existence there, and unrolls in an everlasting web, whatever elements of character, whatever threads of action, we put into his loom, we fasten to his shuttle, here. Time is the season of sowing, eternity of reaping, and the rule is, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. This being the case, as time governs eternity, eter- nity gives to every moment of time an infinite pre- ciousness and solemnity. To-day has all the import- ance of eternity attached to it, concentrated upon it. Oh Eternity, Eternity ! By what way can careless men be waked, be roused, to a sense of eternity ? How shall that idea be stirred within them ? The moment its power is felt, how do all the vastest interests of time dwindle and fade into insignifi- cance! What are the proudest reputations, what the highest degrees of honor, what the most suc- cessful gains of ambition, or of boundless wealth, 62 ETERNITY. or of personal gratification, whether sensual or intellectual ? Extended to the largest measures of time, what are they, when the end comes, and eter- nity is before the soul ? Oh for a permanent im- pression of Eternity ! Oh to have the mind and heart kept under that mighty guardianship, beneath the full weight and pressure of that power of the world to come ! How shall this be accomplished ? It cannot be done without prayer. It cannot be done without coming to Christ. It cannot be done without a living faith in him, as the way, the truth, the life. Apart from him, all truth is frozen, deso- late, ineffectual. The idea of eternity must be inspired with the life of love, or it has no power as an abstraction. It mav waken the soul, but Christ only can make it a permanent element of living, loving duty. But earnest prayer, by a soul coming to Christ, can do everything. In prayer, eternity is brought near, is realized. In prayer the soul is baptized by the Holy Spirit with power, and is transported from time into eter- nity, from shadows to realities, from dreams to the energies of life. When the soul wrestles in prayer, God causes the powers of the world to come to wrestle with the soul, and they enter into it and possess it mightily. The very insensibility of the soul is a thing which must be brought to God in prayer, and men must groan and agonize before Grod to have it taken away, and it will be conquered. It cannot be done without God's word ; but prayer causes the word of God to live within the soul, to burn in it as a fire, and to carry it away as on the ETERNITY. 63 wings of a whirlwind. Habitual intimacy with God's word draws all the realities of the eternal world around the soul, and touches its forms of intermin- able and dreadful glory into life and power within it : — the clouds of heaven, the great white throne, the thronging angels, the books of judgment, the lake of fire, the holy city, the jasper walls, the golden streets, the crystal river ; principalities and powers of thought endowed as regal fixtures, as burning mountains in a vast horizon, as an atmos- phere or firmament brilliant with sparkling stars. When the soul is much conversant with the word of God in prayer, then the Spirit of God brings out its infinite treasures, kindles its fires, lights up its propositions, till they shine as suns, and carries the soul down into the abyss, or up into the third heaven, till all the powers of the world to come pass into a foretasted experience. For the Divine Spirit acts by the word, and reveals it within the soul as an irresistible agency, so that it is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Then there are other forms of truth which the same Divine Spirit makes efficacious, if a man will wait upon them. Let a man, for example, take Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, or Doddridge's Eise and Progress, with John Foster's Essay pre- fixed, and set himself to its prayerful perusal, and it will be strange indeed if the Powers of the World to come do not reveal themselves, and take hold upon his inmost being. Then, too, let a man watch the providences of God. Oftentimes they are greatly effectual in unsealing the prisons of the soul, and 64 ETERNITY. calling dead entombed convictions into life, and re- moving the grave-clothes of custom, insensibility, unbelief, that swathe divine truth itself from the sight and feeling of the conscience. It is astonish- ing to see how suddenly a whole embattled squad- ron of thought and argument, that had been dead and buried out of sight beneath the insensibility and blindness of the heart, shall be roused into action. A patriarchal preacher in the northern part of our country, after a vain attempt to convince a couple of deniers of the truth of an eternal retribution, passed away in almost hopeless sorrow. But the word only waited the providence which was ready to give it pungency and power. One of those men, not long after, was cutting down a tree in the forest, and when it fell, and lay motionless where it fell, the text in God's word, As the tree falleth, so it Ueth, came to the mind of the wood-cutter with a force that carried away all his unbelief, let in the flood of the Divine Argument upon the soul, and brought him at length, in humble repentance and faith, at the feet of the Eedeemer. Sometimes God's "Word, Providence and Grace are thus united in so remark- able a manner, in subduing the heart of the sinner, that every step in the process can be distinctly traced, nor is there anything more interesting and instructive than the record of such cases. But let us remember that no impression of eter- nal things can be lasting, unless it brings the soul to Christ, unless, coming to Him, we secure His presence, power, life and guidance. There are no means of grace, however promising in their ETERNITY. 65 first efficacy, but will become lifeless, will wear out, and leave the soul more insensible than ever, unless it truly comes to Christ. All the awakening books and providences in the world will fail to reach its state, will fail at length to move it, unless it obeys their voice, and does that for which they are grant- ed, for which all the interpositions of Grod are thrown in, unless it is brought to Christ, unless it gives up all to Christ. Urff&atifltt* We have seen that from the Idea of Eternity that of Probation derives all its infinite solemnity. A trial for Eternity ! "What a weight of importance, immeasurable, indescribable, in that phrase ! Yet, Probation is not so much the trial of character, as it is of the truths of God's word upon character. Character is already a setttled thing ; the problem presented in a world of probation respects the possi- bility of change for the world to come. For this purpose, through interposition of the Son of God, keeping in abeyance the operation of retributive justice, the powers of the world to come are re- vealed as truths and ideas, and are not known as yet experimentally as powers. For in order that a knowledge of the powers of the world to come may prove effectual in producing a preparation for that world, our state in this must be an arrangement by which experience is deferred, while information, in- struction, warning and persuasion are employed upon us. Such is God's arrangement for us by the power of the Cross ; God's goodness vouchsafes to us in that cross, a wondrous demonstration previous to our experience. PEOBATION. 67 The great difference between this world and that which is to come, or the thing which necessarily makes the two worlds so different, is that this is a world of preparation for that. But in order that it may be such, we must be forewarned here of what we are to meet there ; we must know here in idea, what we are to meet there in reality. When we meet the powers of the world to come, our manner of meeting them, and the character in which we meet them, will determine our destiny. "We cannot change that destiny, after so meeting them. We may wish, too late, that we could. We may have disbelieved in those powers here, or taken up wrong ideas in regard to them, and we may find that on being translated among them, they destroy us; a thing which perhaps the Apostle himself refers to in the expression, if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked ; but it will then be too late to make another choice, or to undertake to meet them in a different manner. We must prepare for such a meeting now. This is God's very argument; be- cause I will do thus and thus unto thee, therefore prepare to meet thy Grod, O Israel ! Now, as Grod's attributes are veiled, even when revealed, and some of them veiled, even in order that they may be revealed, we must, of necessity, exercise faith in regard to them. If we will not believe, and act accordingly, they will destroy us. There are some of them, which to know in this world any other way than in idea, would be our perdition. If a man will not believe this, and will not prepare to meet Grod, he must take the conse- 68 PKOBATION. quences. If you should travel to the brink of a volcano with a man who had never seen volcanic fire, nor known anything about it, and if he should not believe you on jour telling him that it would burn like any other fire, but should throw himself into it, he would be destroyed instantly. Now, in regard to sin, and the unbelieving unrepenting sin- ner, we are distinctly told that our God is a con- suming fire. If a man will not believe that, but marches on as he is, to meet God in his sinfulness, then the fire of God's holiness and justice must con- sume him. In this world, God's justice is an attribute quite hidden from us by His mercy ; we know His mercy in reality, know it in ten thousand ways ; but we know His justice only in His word. His long-suffering we experience ; His justice we do not experience ; and therefore He seems to be slack concerning His promise, just because we are permitted to experience His long suffering, in the hope that we may be induced to escape the infliction of His justice before the time comes, when the blow can no longer be suspended. It is the wonder of the universe that it can be suspended at all ; for God's justice is just as dear to Him as His love ; indeed, it is but part of His love — an essential element of love. There could be no such thing as love without justice, and no such thing as justice without love. But as ours is a world in rebellion against God, it would be unjust in Him not to execute His justice, unless there were some plain reason for such forbearance ; for He has given a demonstration of His justice in all that He has PROBATION. 69 done upon the angels that kept not their first estate ; and what justification can there be why the same measure of justice should not be meted out to us as to them ? Do not the same compulsions of justice and reasons of state call for our punishment as theirs ? What is the reason for this apparent capri- ciousness ? How can God be just, and not punish sin now, if He could not be just, and not punish sin then? Just this, and this only, is the reason — because of the interposition of His beloved Son, who did interpose, not for .the fallen angels, but for lost man. Now, to secure the benefits of this interposition, our world must be the scene of a second probation. It was at first a world of probation for the good, to see if they would sustain their trial, and persevere in holiness against temptation to sin. That experi- ment failed, and now, and ever since, our world is a world of probation, to see if the wicked will become good — to see if they will accept God's offered mercy in Christ. And to this end, as a matter of necessity, the penalty of God's law is warded off, is kept at a distance, in abeyance ; the avenging fires of justice are kept down ; the mouth of the bottomless pit is covered; the energies of retributive justice are muzzled ; God's hand is twisted in the mane of the lion, and his bridle and bit are in the jaws of Levia- than. And thus the world stands, 'twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires, which yet do not burn upon us, because a form like unto the Son of God is seen walking with us. He, by the power of His cross, His sufferings, His death, keeps off these 70 PROBATION. flames ; He stands beneath this firmament, and holds it closed, that else would spout cataracts of fire upon us ; He gathers the thunderbolts of Divine justice into His own bosom, yea, His own soul, (for Thou, oh God, didst make His soul an offering for sin) ; and so, as to us, they fall harmless, while the long- suffering of God, thus enabled righteously to wait upon us, spares us, and works with us, to bring us to repentance. He holds back these impending mountains of retribution that quake over us on every side, and the arrows of those angry eyes of Nemesis that glare upon us, and would blast us, and the fierce flames that would consume us in eternal despair ; and, instead of letting them execute their mission of justice, He turns them into mercy. He makes the very law that destroys us our school- master, to bring us to Christ ; He sheathes the light- ning, and lets it play for our warning merely. "We hear the roar of the thunder ; but it is God's voice, calling us to repentance, and to a quick, sure flight from the wrath to come. We see the angry eyes ; but there is a mournful tenderness in the light they shoot upon us. God's lightnings and judgments flash and play across this world, just enough to waken the conscience, and convince the soul of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come, but not enough to blast with angry fire unto perdition irre- mediable. God makes this a disciplinary world ; He is enabled to do it, because Christ has died; — a disciplinary world in so wondrous a degree, that He will make men's very sins to chastise them, and save them from perpetuity in sin. God afflicts, overturns, PEOBATION. 71 disappoints, casts down, uses all the whips and thorns in the storehouse of His providence, for the discip- line of a probationary state. Sometimes He shuts up a sinful mind in such terror and anguish, that it seems as if the world of God's inflicted justice could have no greater horrors, but in the addition of despair ; and jet He does all this that the soul may be taught wisdom — may be brought to a timely re- pentance — may be kept back from madly pressing on to the experience of eternal justice, in the endurance of the penalty of God's violated law. Often, indeed, God's representations and provi- dences alike fail; and sometimes both men and n ^ons come so near to these walls of restraint, with such n^yage madness of sin, as almost to break through J^em, even in this world — break through into hell violently out of a world of probation. This was the case with Sodom and Gomorrah ; this is the case sometimes with individuals, who, instead of walking humbly, or enuring God's restraint, dash themselves, as it were, with headlong sins, against the thick bosses of Jehovah's Wckler, and impale themselves upon the flaming spikes of justice. You may often see men thus grasping God's sword by the blade, and indefatigably gathering the lightning- rods of retribution into their own hearts ; you may see men rushing into the mouths of lions, that other- wise would merely have roared afar off against them, for their warning and repentance. But in general the scene runs on, as a scene of wondrous forbear- ance on the part of God, perfectly unaccountable, whether to good men or angels, except on the 72 PROBATION. ground of the interposition of a dying Christ, that He is with us ; that this is His world, where He suf- fered for us, loved us, died that we might live, and lives Himself now to save us by His life, as He hath reconciled us to God by His death. He hath recon- ciled God also to the possibility of enduring, with much long-suffering, a freedom for his enemies from retribution, even in sin, if haply they may, by Christ's dying love, be subdued to the power of mercy, and come to repentance. He has made it consistent with God's universal justice and love to let there be, in the sight of the whole universe, such a spectacle of apparently successful rebellion; o^ creatures in rebellion, and yet not punished?' 0I> miserable, vile worms in this external l'opnet, wriggling themselves in contempt ar>^ sneers at God's very forbearance, and crying out to one another and to God's prophets &■ scorn, Where is the promise of His coming. 9 T>o not the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree T Who is the Lord, that we should regard Him ? There is no God who will ever trouble Himself to regard us. These things, says Jehovah, hast thou done, and I kept silence. Tnou thoughtest that I was alto- gether such an one as thyself. And the quiet of Jehovah, or rather of Jehovah's thunderbolts, in such a world as this, is indeed wonderful. But far- ther even than this, God's restraining hand not only grasps the reins, to hold back the fiery coursers of his own justice, but is laid also on the very pas- sions of his rebellious creatures, which otherwise would create a hell even this side the judgment. PKOBATTON. 73 God is here, in Christ Jesus, waiting to be gracious, and therefore he not only confines, keeps down, and keeps back, these fires and quaking crags of an eternal retribution, waiting to be just, but these in- ward fires of depravity also, in sinful souls, that otherwise would burst forth, defying all restraint, the fountains of a great deep of internal all-de- vouring passion broken up, and rolling in fiery bil- lows. God keeps off this catastrophe, that other- wise would be the very realization of hell before- hand. He reins up even the very nature of things, and the necessity of moral causes, thereby for a sea- son almost falsifying what he himself hath taught us, and what we know is true, namely, that wicked- ness in its very self, and. by an immutable necessity, burnetii as the very fire. He checks all this, and allows not these native energies to put forth half their strength, but arches over men's own tempes- tuous sea of wickedness in the very heart thereof, and makes a channel as it were, in which there is air to breathe and a space to move, and a practicable way laid down, on which they may pass from sin to holiness. By the very nature of this vast proba- tionary discipline, by mutual checkings and re- straints in this vale of a selfish humanity, which otherwise would be nothing better than a broad valley of the shadow of death, he makes possible a transit into life. Yea, even by setting passion as sentinel over passion, and making men's own sins grim watch-wolves against one another, he keeps them in comparative quiet. The pressure of men's own selfishness compels them to restraint, and self- 74 PKOBATION. denial. The wind sometimes sweeps over the ocean in such a broad condensed typhoon, sweeps down upon it with such exceeding weight of fury, that the waves which otherwise would rise as mountains, are pressed down as with a colossal flat-iron, are concentrated in upon themselves, and cannot even break in angry foam, because of the immense pres- sure. And so it is with men's passions under the discipline of God in this world of restraint and pro- bation. It is not because the Lord is slack concern- ing his promise, as some men count slackness, but because he is long-suffering to us- ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And now just consider for a moment the astound- ing effect, which through the incredible deceitful- ness and desperate wickedness of men's hearts, this very forbearance of God in so many cases produces. Instead of escaping with all haste to the mountain refuge of salvation, while God's angels, under the commission of the Crucified, stand behind sinful men, warding off a tempest of fire worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah, they turn this interval of peace, and hope, and proffered mercy, into an inter- val of delusion and indulgence in their sins, and not yet seeing and feeling the fire, will not believe it. And because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. And there they are, on the way between Sodom and Zoar, sporting themselves with their own deceivings. Because the crags of fire are kept from falling, and the firma- PEOBATION. 75 ment over us does not tremble in flakes and cinders, God's guilty creatures here mock at the promise of his coming, and turn the very possibility of re- pentance, which, at the expense of Christ's suffer- ings and death, he has provided, into a most diabol- ical distorted argument to make men believe that he will never execute his justice. Was the like ever heard or known, even in hell itself? Nay, for there, not the ideas, but powees of the world to come th'ey grapple with, and the devils themselves believe and tremble. They cannot doubt or deny God's faithfulness. But on earth the delusion and denial run yet further, and inasmuch as by this probationary dis- cipline men's own sins are kept down from raging, and they have leisure and peace to be amused and gratified, and God himself indulges them with his goodness, on very purpose to persuade them to re- pentance, they cajole themselves into the persuasion that they are very amiable creatures, and that sin is a very venial thing, and that God will surely par- don them even without repentance. Because they are occupied and mollified with earthly enjoyments, and seek and find honor one of another, and the passions of their souls, not thwarted and disap- pointed at every step, do not break out into open, angry malignity against God, they distort this quiet also, this apparent absence of a furious hostility, into an argument against their own depravity, and a persuasion that they do not need such a mighty change as the gospel proclaims necessary for them, and a delusive hope, nay, a lying assurance, that 76 PEOBATION. they are nothing, and have done nothing, so vile, as to expose them to God's wrath, which therefore they need not be afraid of. Thus they turn God's very cup of mercy into poison for their own souls. His costly, precious medicine of salvation, and the gentleness, compassion and forbearing patience, whereby he renders it possible for them to be healed, they use as an anodyne in their sins. Truly, what a climax of iniquity is this ! If there be judg- ment for nothing else, surely such wickedness as this demands it. From such a view of the nature of our probation, we learn something of the strength of the argument within and without, that demonstrates eternal mis- ery to those who die in their sins. To die in one's sins is just to begin to live in them in all the terror of the second death. If here on earth men would not part with them under a system by which the Eternal "World itself could be brought into this world, to bear upon men's consciences, without con- suming their souls, what will they do in that world where all things will be left to work out their own nature and power to the utmost. Here, it is re- traint ; there, it will be perfect freedom. Habits con- cealed and partially confined here will break out there into an uncounteracted despotism. All evil passions will have perfect sway. We see, therefore, the necessity of the change from sin to holiness in this world, and clearly, in this world, or never. Here only, the nature of sin can be known, with a purpose and possibility of acting on that knowledge, where Christ Jesus himself PROBATION. 77 keeps it from devouring us, that we may, Tinder ex- perience and discovery of our disease, come to Him to be healed. We must have conviction of sin, with faith in the consequences of sin, in a world where, as yet, those consequences are kept off. We must believe in the consequences, and be prepared against them, before they come. It will be too late afterwards. And as to the examination of the argu- ment from the nature of sin, and the investigation of the state of our own hearts, if we do not examine these things now, it will be too late to do so when we experience them, when all that was restrained is let loose upon us. For this examination, we must have a laboratory in which we can breathe. We could not analyze gunpowder in a room where the air was flame. We could not try the properties of arsenic if we were compelled to breathe the fumes of it. Here is Christ's open laboratory, both for ex- periment and change. Here is the place of the Divine Mercy. Here is the theatre of the sufferings and the death of Christ, here the trial of the virtue of His blood. Here, and here only, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus can set us free from the law of sin and of death. Here is the scene and season of the application of all the influences of a Saviour's Cross, and all the motives of the gospel, all the hopes of heaven, and all the terrors of hell, all the powers of the world to come, and all the amazing experience of the goodness of God. When this scene is closed, when the shop is shut up, there can be no more such chemical experiments and changes. Now, the goodness of Cod leadeth thee to 78 PEOBATION. repentance, but when all these influences cease, when all these merciful agencies are withdrawn, and God lets things go into operation according to their essence, then there will arise another demon- stration, essential to the glory of God, and the good of the universe, the demonstration of God's justice. Then they who mocked at His warnings, and de- spised His long-suffering here, cannot do otherwise than experience His justice there. Surely He will laugh at their calamity, He will mock when their fear cometh. We learn, too, from such a survey, what is the nature of the experiment we must make in regard to salvation, and how to make it, and to whom we must come, that in us the purposes of God's long- suffering may be accomplished. There is no being but Christ Jesus, from whom, for us, there is any hope. This world is Christ's world, given Him by the Father, that He should give eternal life to as many as will come to Him, as many as will believe in Him. He is our peace, our hope, our refuge ; He and He only, neither is there salvation in any other. "We owe all possibility of our salvation to Christ, and it is both for His sake, and by Him, that this great and wondrous system of Divine forbear- ance and offered mercy to the chief of sinners is kept up, with all the wondrous remedial agencies of providence and grace applied. Our building is in flames, and it is just falling upon us ; but Christ Jesus stands beneath the burning rafters and holds them ; stands beneath the great arch of the gateway, and bears up the pillars, and cries to all to escape PKOBATION. 79 for their lives from the burning ruins, while he holds the door of escape open. Nay, He is Himself the door, and all that come to God by Him shall find mercy. But they must come in entire earnestness, and seek with the whole heart. "No lukewarm seeker," said John Eandolph, of Eoanoke, " ever became a real Christian ; for, from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suf- fereth violence, and the violent take it by force ; a text, which I read five hundred times before I had the slightest conception of its true application." wtt to §it. It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment. How impressive, how solemn, even to sadness, is this little word once. Sometimes it is the most solemn word in our language. In many of its connections, a world of meaning, yea, an eter- nity of thought and feeling, is thrown upon it. It stands in such a connection, and bears such a boundless weight, in that exceeding solemn passage from the lips of our blessed Lord, When once the Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door. That once determines the eternity of mil- lions. It is appointed unto men once to die. There are a great many things that we can do only once. There are opportunities that we can enjoy only once. There are forms of trial that we can pass through only once. There are precious peculiarities of blessing that can light upon us only once. If in such cases the object fails, if their design is lost, if the one opportunity is wasted, it can never be re- covered. There is probably one decisive trial in every man's life, one point where all the currents of his probation pass into their eternal course. "When ONCE TO DIE. 81 it comes to that, then everything is suspended on this once. A man may have many sicknesses, many warnings of death, but he can die only once, and when that time comes, not all the urgencies of the universe can put it by. On this word once hangs all the solemnity of every important crisis of our life ; for the moment you say twice, the solemnity and responsibility are not indeed divided, but carried forward from the first to the second, and then it becomes again once, and every- thing of importance is thrown finally and forever upon that once. It is only when the last opportunity has come, that men really feel the power of this solemnity, the weight of this responsibility. Given : a hundred days more of life : how many of them will the man of prayerless, irreligious habits be likely still to spend without God and without hope in the world, without any preparation for death and the judgment? Or, given: a hundred days more, not all certain, but within which some day will be the man's last day — that is, he may not live out even the hundred, but certainly, some day within that number, he will die, — how long, in that case, would he be likely to go on without repentance ? "We say, without hesitation, that ordinarily, a man whose habit of procrastination has gone with him, or has carried him through many years unaffected by the consideration of death and the judgment, unmoved by what he owes to himself as an immortal being, and to God his Creator and Judge, will not likely be much moved by the announcement, that he has only a hundred days remaining, and possibly not 3* 82 ONCE TO DIE. even a hundred. There is scarcely a doubt that, for the present, he would pursue the same course as heretofore. As he drew near towards the close of the allotted period, he might begin to be anxious ; but, even in the very last day but one, he would be very likely to say, There is one more opportunity, one more day remaining : I can close up all to-mor- row, and make my peace with God Or, it may be that, under the influence of long habits of insensi- bility, united with a gloomy sense of the impossi- bility or hopelessness of change, he might say, It is too late ; I must take my chance, come what may. In either case, not till the very last day would he f ally realize the greatness and solemnity of the crisis. Something like this course of combined insensibility, anxiety and procrastination, does really take place in almost every case of fatal sickness ; and, doubtless under the dread power of the soul's great adversary, a sullen despair often enters and takes possession before there is reason for it, and the victim of sin is struck down by those words, too late, before it really is too late. It is only when the last opportunity has really come that men begin to feel the power of that one word, once, and the solemnity of such a crisis. Only once more ! When it comes to that, the solemnity deepens indeed. The last performance of any duty, any action, any detail in the routine of life, to which we have been long accustomed, even though it be trivial, possesses something of this solemnity. Even to a prisoner confined for years, and now at length to be liberated, the last time that he should walk his ONCE TO DIE. 83 cell would have something of this solemnity ; and the last remnant of any very precious thing is solemn indeed. Your last sight of the sun, or the moon, or the stars, or the ocean, if you knew it was the last, would partake of deep solemnity. The exile's last look at his home, his native land ; the last look of the mourner at the face of the dead ; the last farewell word or kiss of the dying, — what unutterable solemnity may be concentrated in such occasions! Paul's last interview with the dear church at Ephesus, when they fell on Paul's neck, and wept sore, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more ; it was just that that made the interview so solemn — the sight of the face of that beloved apostle for the last time. One may remem- ber an account of a bank note found in the pocket of a despairing, wretched young man, who had destroyed himself, on which was written something like this : My last bill ; the last remnant of a fortune miserably squandered, and I lost ! Or we may re- member an account of a man in a great emergency, when life for himself and some others depended on the instant successful kindling of a fire, finding that there was but just one match left, their last possi- bility. What a concentration of interest and solem- nity on that sole possibility ! But time, — when it comes to that — one more day ■ — -your last day — your last remnant of a thing so in- finitely precious as that! Oh, who shall convey any adequate sense of the solemnity of the last draft of time upon eternity ! What if that draft were an 84 ONCE TO DIE. unavailing effort of terror and despair, and on the back of it were written those tremendous words, Too late! How inexpressibly mournful is the lamentation, The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved ! How heart-breaking the wail, even of the weeping Saviour, over that beautiful and beloved city, once the Zion of the Holy One of Israel, and indulged with so many warnings, so many waitings, so much mercy, so much patience, so much long-suffering and forbear- ance, so many seasons of such gracious and gentle visitation, so many and such precious opportunities, precious and available, even to the last, and the last infinitely the most precious of them all ! "Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace ! But now they are hid from thine eyes. How often would I have gathered thy children, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." In this there is a most impressive and admonitory appeal to every individual soul. For such is the dread experience of multitudes of men, trifling with Time, and permitting all precious opportunities, one after another, to pass unregarded, unimproved, till the last comes, and all are hidden forever ! Hidden forever as mercies, but only to reappear in another guise ; hidden from sight and from all possibility of recovery, now, but only to come up in the judg- ment. And with what tremendous power of retri- bution will such despised occasions of Christ's mer- ciful visitation come armed there ! Not more terri- ONCE TO DIE. 85 • ble the gory apparition of murdered John the Baptist to the startled soul of Herod, than the avenging horror with which such murdered mercies will pass before the conscience of the careless sin- ner. Of all transactions in that Coming Day, per- haps none will occasion a more intense bitterness of remorse, and unavailing regret, or an angrier, keener anguish of despair, than the review of slight- ed, wasted opportunities of eternal mercy. Indeed, we take it to be this that is especially re- ferred to in that incomparably solemn passage of God's word, " Because I have called, and ye refused ; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regard- ed ; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh : when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me ; for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would none of my counsel, they de- spised all my reproofs, therefore shall they eat of the fruits of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them." In this profoundly-instructive and warning pas- sage, it is the turning away, the mere turning away of the soul, from invitations, admonitions, opportu- nities of salvation, that shall accomplish the destruc- 86 ONCE TO DIE. tion, otherwise not accomplished, and shall be the very heart and seal of desolation to the lost soul, otherwise saved. Every gracious opportunity is God's merciful call, every day of time, and of light from the cross, is a new emphatic gesture of God's outstretched hand ; and when all these oft-repeated and compassionate efforts of Divine love disregard- ed come up for review, with the cost at which every one of them was exercised, and the manner in which they were all treated, then will the sight and sense of these things alone, were there nothing else of judgment, be a calamity like a whirlwind, taking away the soul. But how can men persist in such madness ? What indescribable folly, what desperate fool hardi- ness, so to deal with time, in reference to eternity ! What madness to defer, we will not say to a con- venient season, but, as generally happens in such a case, to the last season, the soul's efforts for eternity ! Think of the madness of throwing all your fortunes, like an insane dicer, on the last throw. If you were merely at a distance from home, and it were ne- cessary for you to return by a set day, you would feel it important for you to take an early train, and not throw the whole possibility of a seasonable re- turn upon the last train. And so with regard to any and every very important interest. Now the whole amazing weight of all these con- siderations comes down upon this one word once, in reference to death and the judgment that 's to follow. This very word, in the great and solemn text in Hebrews, is chosen, and the whole thought ONCE TO DIE. 87 is arranged, with all this solemnity that we have described, and more than all that we can conceive, investing it. It is appointed unto men once to die, and only once, and then they are forced across the tremendous verge, for eternity. You cannot die, and make the experiment of what is to come after death, and then, if you do not like it, return to have one chance over again, or to make a new choice in your mode of life, and your manner of entering the eternal world. You cannot die but once, and that once settles your life or death for eternity. It is the last-train. And yet, from the neglect of all men to prepare for death, an unknowing beholder would say, There must be other trains ; this cannot be the final passage. For how can men busy themselves with the trifles of time, in such amazing unconcern as to the great object and end of time, — Eternity! Is there anything that can give any adequate idea of such madness ? Let us suppose that Sodom and Gomorrah had been cities in the sea, like Venice, and that the only mode of access and de- parture had been by a steam-vessel, and that the last evening before the destruction of those cities, it had been distinctly made known that a steamer would leave for the opposite coast precisely at the hour of nine, the only steamer, and the last voyage ever to be made, the last opportunity of escape from the impending ruin. It has been distinctly an- nounced that on the instant departure of that steamer, the storm of fire and brimstone would burst over the whole city in avenging flames, and there are some professed believers in that overhanging 88 ONCE TO DIE. perdition, who have resolved to set sail in that very steamer. But instead of being on the pier at the appointed hour, watching and praying, they were waiting to pack up their jewels, or to enjoy one more social festival, one more masquerading ball in Sodom's theatre, one more ballet dance in Gomor- rah's scenic opera, or to finish one more speculation in their city lots, in case the ground itself might not be swallowed up, and they could return and build again upon their property. Yet, after all this, they hurried in their carriage to the pier, but only to arrive there just as the steamer had cast off her moorings, and was darting on her way. They had but half believed that she would go ; but now they see her for the last time, and it is too late. They had not half believed that the storm of fire would come ; but now the pitchy lurid cloud of fire and smoke has rolled over the whole city, and the roar- ing of the thunder is so near, incessant and terrible, that their souls are paralyzed with despair, and the flakes of fire are already dropping upon them, and there is no escape. It is manifestly too late ; con- viction has come too late ; decision too late ; there is no remedy. But would the terror of such despair be any ade- quate measure of the calamity upon the soul of being too late for an eternal salvation ? Alas ! nothing can measure that. And yet, the madness of such infatuation in Sodom, such procrastination in Gomorrah, would be some faint image of the folly of a soul, dancing on in sin, and dreaming on from speculation to speculation, always counting upon ONCE TO DIE. 89 time, and neglecting, till too late, all preparation for death and Eternity. It is possible to be prepared ; to be prepared to-day, in case you should be called to-morrow. Yea, by going to Christ to-day, it is possible to be so prepared, that if to-night thy soul should be required of thee, to-night thou shouldst be with Jesus in Paradise. What infinite madness therefore to delay ! If you could not he prepared till some future period, then were there some excuse for some little procrastination ; but where grace is at your disposal now, if you will accept of it, what madness to neglect it ! If you were sure of another opportunity, you cannot be sure that then it will be available. The other day, just as a railroad train had started, a man was seen at the top of his speed to overtake the cars, and he barely succeeded in lay- ing hold of the handle to throw himself upon the steps, when his foot missed, and he was thrown by the very violence of his motion under the wheels of the cars, and died instantly. He was too late, and the very effort to recover his last and lost op- portunity, destroyed him. Again, the other day, just as a steamer was start- ing from the ferry, a man was seen to rush in reck- less haste to the edge of the floating pier, and thence with all the impetus of his motion, leaped for the deck of the steamer, but even while he was leaping, the distance had enlarged, and he sunk beneath the boiling billows. He was too late ; and the very recklessness of despair hurried him to his ruin. So it is with multitudes who have put off a passage in 90 ONCE TO DIE. the Ark of Salvation to the last opportunity, and the last is too late. Not long since in England, a grave, respectable man, perhaps sixty years of age, stood by the cars just as they were starting, undecided whether to go or not. There were friends within the carriage, urging him to step on board, but he kept saying, "No, not this time," and yet kept hold upon the very handle of the door, half inclined to go, and balancing between going and staying, when the motion of the cars threw him from his balance, and before they could be stopped, he was crushed to death between the cars and the platform. He was undecided up to the last moment, till it was too late, and his very indecision was the cause of his destruction. So it is in multitudes of cases, with those who mean to go, but are never quite ready, not just now, not just this opportunity, till already it is the last opportunity, and the unhappy victim of indecision and procrastination knows it not. With great power of solemnity the once employed in scripture, on the subject of death and the judg- ment, teaches us the hazard of the habit of delay. It is the habit that all men have formed, who have not fled to Jesus Christ from the storm of fire that is coming. Every day it grows stronger and stronger. Every day there is greater power of self- delusion, persuading you that to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant, while every day there is greater certainty that to-morrow will not be as this day, and greater probability that to- morrow may be the day when you shall meet the ONCE TO DIE. 91 decisive once of the text, that is to settle your whole eternal destiny. Are you prepared to die ? If not, every hour of your life is madness, and every action of your life is a new mortgage of Satan upon you. Are you prepared to die ? Thus only are you the master of your own life, but otherwise, it is com- pletely in the power of Satan, and may remain so to the last moment. Are you thinking to be pre- pared? Ten thousand thousand have been think- ing in the same way, and while thinking, have died. Are you yet undecided? Then you are leaving death itself to decide the matter for you, and if death decides for you, he decides against you. Then, too, every time you think of being prepared, of coming to Christ, and do not come, you deliber- ately decide against Mm. It is not merely saying, by and by, but positively declaring, not now. Af- ter every such negative, your likelihood of dying unprepared is greatly increased. Your habit of de- ciding wrong is strengthened, your habit of inde- cision as to the right is strengthened also. The case is mightily against you, if you do not break from this habit, this very day. If you leave the decision to sickness to startle and impel you, the probability is, nay, the almost certainty, that you leave it to death. Take your health, and not your sickness, take your hour of life, and not of death, for going to Christ. Take to-day, for that is the direction of the Holy Ghost, and only when you obey God to the letter are you sure of salvation. €|* fttfrputtt. The doctrine of a day of judgment, and the de- tails respecting it, are matters of pure revelation. Our natural theology, through the human conscience, and by the convictions of mankind, in view of the inequalities and imperfections of the present state as the system of a moral Governor, does indeed demon- strate a future reckoning and righting of all things in regard to the righteous and the wicked — demon- strates a future state of retribution. But of a day of judgment, and of the appointments and arrange- ments of Grod in regard to it, there is nothing taught outside the Book of Eevelation. All pretended new revelations in regard to these things, so far as there is any truth in them, are but fire stolen from God's word, and palmed upon the world as new, original discoveries ; and this is a species of plagiarism of which none but a being who could say, Evil, be thou my good! would dare be at the foundation. Accordingly, it is found to be a characteristic of all such pretended discoveries, that they diminish the sanctions of God's word. Their object is, not to give us higher truth, but to narrow, degrade and falsify, or neutralize the truth already in our keep- THE JUDGMENT. 93 ing. Whatever they teach is lower than that which is already taught, and diminishes its sanctions. If there were many such progressive revelations, all positive truth would at length be annihilated. There are two passages in regard to all such pretended revelators, that stand as fiery cherubim, with drawn swords, at the gates of the sacred word, before which one would think the most daring soul would tremble. "There be some," says Paul, "that would trouble you, perverting the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be accursed." The other passage is that at the close of John's Revelation: "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this pro- phecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life." The revelations which God has given to us in regard to the day of judgment for mankind, are remarkably connected with information concerning two other grand subjects — namely, the judgment of the fallen angels, and the change or destruction of the material universe. The passages that teach these things are sublime and explicit ; they are like sudden bursts of thunder from heaven ; and being uttered, there they are left, and not a word is added ; — an example of solemn silence, full of awe. " If God spared not the angels that sinned," says Peter, "but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judg 94 THE JUDGMENT. ment, the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment, to be punished." " The angels which kept not their first estate," says Jude, " but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in ever- lasting chains, under darkness, to the judgment of the great day." " Of old," says David, in the 102d Psalm, " hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment. As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end." Now, in reference to those who denied or disbelieved such a coming change in the material universe, in connection with a general last judgment, Peter says that they are wilfully ignorant ; that the same heavens and earth which by the word of God were created, are by the same word kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men. ISTow, these things are such accompaniments or forerunners of the judgment, that of their infinite awfulness and sublimity we can have no possible adequate conception. By these heavens the psalmist meant all that the eye could reach, all that the human mind could know, of the expanse of rolling worlds. All this universe is to be burned up. " Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath," exclaims Isaiah, in reference to this de- struction. Go forth of a starry evening, gaze upon THE JUDGMENT. 95 the countless glittering orbs above, beneath, around your own small globe, and think of Jehovah as folding them all up together like a worn-out gar- ment, and whelming them in a universal sheet of fire ! It is a great triumph of faith to bring these things as realities within the scope, not only of our conception, but confident belief. The sacred writers seem to have had no more doubt upon these subjects than they had in regard to the simplest practical truths of the gospel ; indeed, they appeal to these tremendous revelations for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, just as they do to the plainest disclosures of man's responsibility. We can go no farther than the sacred writers ; but as far as they go, we are bound reverentially and solemnly to follow. On one of the most memorable and explicitly recorded occasions of Paul's preaching (that is, before Felix), it is said that he reasoned of righteous- ness, temperance, and judgment to come. The main body of his discourse seems to be here described ; and it is added, after mention of the judgment to come, that at that point in the sermon, Felix trembled. This was indeed one of those terrors of the Lord, with which the preachers of the gospel were in- structed by the Holy Spirit to knock at the door of men's hearts. " For we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." This re- corded sermon of Paul, or the brief note which we have of it, is a single illustration of the impressive style in which he and his fellow ministers of Christ 96 THE JUDGMENT. labored for the awakening and salvation of an im- mortal soul. It had been given to Paul, according to tlie Eedeemer's promise, to know both what and how he ought to speak ; and under the guidance of that Divine inspiration, every thought and sen- tence of his discourse was conducted. He was to preach concerning the faith in Christ ; and, first of all, in the chariot of the terrors of the Lord, he drove directly at the conscience of Felix. No other mode of dealing would have been suitable for such an audience, even if it had not been Paul's habit, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, thus to make the law a schoolmaster, to bring the soul to Christ. But Felix was a very bad man, and if fragrance and flowers would not win even a common sinner, or bring him to his senses, much more would it have been lost upon this Komano- Jewish Judge. He was a villain in state-robes and ermines ; and yet, the word of Grod, under Paul's management, did get hold upon him, and we doubt not, mainly by that power of the judgment to come. With what maj- esty and glory would Paul have demonstrated the claims of the Divine Law, and the nature of that holiness, without which no man shall see God. With what pungency to a guilty conscience would he have portrayed the self-denial and habitual purity of heart and life required by the Supreme Jehovah ! But if he had stopped there, probably the iron would not have entered into Felix's soul, although Felix knew in his inmost heart that he was himself a person of a manner of life right contrary to all that Paul had been insisting on. Yet men can very THE JUDGMENT. 97 quietly listen to essays on the nature and the obli- gations of virtue and holiness, and the baseness of vice, and say amen to the whole of such a preach- ment, if you stop short of retribution and the ven- geance of eternal fire. The beauty of holiness and the ugliness of sin even the most sinful men admit. But Paul did not stop there, but drove on with his burning eloquence, and carried Felix pale and trembling into the eternal world, beneath the terrors of the Lord God of an eternal judgment. He rea- soned not only of righteousness and temperance, but of the judgment to come, where every trans- gression of God's holy law, should meet a just rec- ompense of reward. That tremendous judgment to come ! It is the first and only note we have, in the divine record, of any of Paul's sermons on that sub- ject. What would not the whole intellectual and Christian world give to have heard that sermon. Yet we can tell, pretty nearly, from Paul's own com- positions, in what style of argument and imagery he would have thundered with God's artillery upon the conscience. We need only to connect a few sen- tences from his own Epistles to show what must have been the tenor of his appeal on this solemn subject. " For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. And we are sure, Oh Felix, that the judg- ment of God is according to truth against those who commit such things. And thinkest thou this, Oh man, who judgest them that do such things, and doest the same, that thou shall escape the judgment of God ? or despisest thou the riches of his goodness 5 98 THE JUDGMENT. and forbearance, and long suffering ; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repent- ance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judg- ment of God. For he will render to every man ac- cording to his deeds ; to those who by patient con- tinuance in well doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life ; but to those that obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, in- dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil. For is God un- righteous that taketh vengeance ? God forbid ! For then how shall God judge the world? Yea, and he will judge it with the righteous judgment of God, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, tak- ing vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to that devouring judgment." But all this reasoning of righteousness, temper- ance and judgment to come, was only preparatory, on Paul's part, at the door of Felix's conscience, for the introduction of the claims of the Saviour and the cross. He did not indeed begin with the cross, but grappled the law first upon the conscience of his hearer, preparatory to bringing the man to Christ Jesus. He seems to have thought that it would be but a waste of words to tell a heedless THE JUDGMENT. 99 hardened hypocrite like the corrupt judge before him, of the character and claims of a Eedeemer, un- less he could convince the man of his own sin, and then he intended to have displayed the whole scheme and glory of the gospel, and the mercy of the Lord Jesus to the chief of sinners. And he would doubtless have gone on preaching Christ to Felix, had not Felix's impatience and procrastina- tion stopped him. When Felix began to tremble, the man certainly was not far from the kingdom of heaven. If he had cried out, Oh man of God, what shall I do to be saved, or if in silent anguish of soul at the view of his unveiled guilt and condemnation before Glod's law, he had humbly waited to hear of a crucified and forgiving Saviour, then might the result have been the triumphant conversion of the Jewish Judge, and his translation into the kingdom of heaven. But at the very first pangs of convic- tion, he broke up the whole audience ; he would stay to hear no longer, but concealing his sense of guilt and his terrors of conscience, he cried out, go thy way for this time ; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee. It was not so much procrastination, for it is doubtful if he had the least ^design of recurring again to the subject ; but it was the sense of guilt, and the terror of conscience, under 'u Q is sudden and unexpected revelation of the judgment which he could not and would not en- dure. It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the • judgment ; and that judgment was a power of the -v/orld to come, appalling and intol- erable to the guilty . sou ^- 100 THE JUDGMENT. It always is. Next to the reality of eternity, rises that form of truth and justice on the soul, which stands in the gate of eternity — that reckoning with God — that discovery, decision, and judgment of character for an eternal destiny — that day of doom — that last decisive day! Once death; and after that, the judgment ! Death is a power of this world ; eternity and judgment are powers of the world to come. The idea of that day of doom receives its grandeur and its horror from the stupendous reality of that eternity to which it is the introduction ; and the idea of eternity itself, on the other hand, owes its solemnity and power over the conscience to the certainty of judgment, and an endless destiny in heaven or hell. Considering the interminable array of all that has passed in the guilty experience and history of the whole human race ; that it is all to be recovered, in all its personal relations, and to sweep again before the mind, beneath God's eye, in that day of doom ; and considering the certainty and in- finitude of what is to follow, the idea of judgment, next after that of God and eternity, is the mightiest, the most comprehensive, the most solemn and weighty, of all human ideas. All other conceptions of the mind are transitory and insignificant in the comparison. It is a power of the world to come which, when it once takes hold upon th;e sinful mind, fills it with an overmastering terror, that nothing but the hope of Christ's mer C y can allay. Under the conviction and dread of \ts nearness, the souls of men have often been stirre,"^ in great masses, with agitation, horror and d\ S may. Sometimes, THE JUDGMENT. 101 whole cities Lave poured forth their inhabitants weeping, wailing, fainting, dying, at the very thought that the day of judgment was nigh ; sometimes, an earthquake, or the sun's eclipse, or any great portent of dissolving nature, such as we might suppose will usher in that day, has thrown a whole community into such prevailing and despotic fear, that all busi- ness has been suspended, all thoughts of earth and energies of mind have been paralysed, and men have stood shivering and pale in expectation. There have been seasons when men have anticipated daily the thunder of the trumpet that shall wake the dead. These mighty agitations show that this power of the world to come, this idea of the day of judgment, is as a ground- wave in men's convictions, and, when moved by the wind from eternity, sweeps everything before it. It is because we are a guilty race, and have a guilty, accusing conscience, and a sense of responsibility to God, and a foreboding of Divine justice ; it is because that day of judgment is be- lieved and known to be the day of doom, eternal, unalterable, according to the declaration of God, that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether good or bad. Even where the light of Divine reve- lation has not reached, there has been this brooding sense of the judgment to come — sometimes more definite, sometimes less so, but always active and powerful, according to the activity of men's con- sciences. Yet men keep it at bay, as they do the devouring fire of conscience itself, which they ward 102 THE JUDGMENT. off by an insensibility, sustained by their all-engross- ing devotion to the things seen and temporal. The things unseen and eternal are thus hidden, and kept out of view ; so that it is -wonderful to see how near men dwell upon the verge of them, and yet how distant they live from them — how far off they hold them — how dim and faint their thought and vision of them. And for this very neglect and strangeness, so much the more overwhelming is the terror with which these realities take hold upon the soul, when they suddenly advance upon it, and stand forth to the quickened imagination as just bursting on the world. The actual belief of the judgment, in its nearness, is a thing against which the soul cannot stand. It drops everything else, as a man engaged in a midnight robbery drops his spoil and flies, when the officers of justice break upon him. Confronted with the terrors of the Lord, it cannot endure them. If this day of doom were announced throughout the crowded city, as to break upon the world to- morrow, or next week, and men really believed it, who can describe the mighty change that would be effected ; the dropping of men's schemes of business and pleasure ; the relinquishment of their unrighteous and ill-gotten gains ; the abandonment of commerce ; the solemnity and loneliness of 'change ; the aston- ishment, anxiety and terror, that would sway the streets ; how men's hearts would fail them, and all faces would gather blackness, and many would go insane, and many would die, from the mere excess of sudden fright and conviction ! Yet now they are wholly at ease and quiet ; they dream on in their THE JUDGMENT. 103 fancied security, dancing on the verge of doom, and this power of the world to come has as yet no grasp upon them. When Felix trembles, the god of this world is at hand to shield him from the truth ; he betakes himself to his merchandise, or rushes into the next night's ball, or draws around him the scenic shows of an opera, or busies himself deeper than ever in his successful worldly speculations. For thus, and with a mighty despotism of worldliness, the things seen and temporal intercept before the vision of the eternal. The fires are burning there, waiting there, the revelations and the fires of judg- ment ; and the midnight horizon of the soul some- times glows ruddy and wild with their light ; and the brooding, dreaming, restless, anxious thoughts reflect it, just as the low clouds gleam through the darkness in the fire of a distant conflagration. But still, because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Now in perfect correspondence with these mys- terious depths of man's nature, in which God seems to have set, as in the bottom fountain of a well, the deep reflection of some of heaven's profoundest truths, and from which we sometimes hear rolling up, as from subterranean gongs, the vast reverbera- tion of voices from the powers of the world to come ; in perfect correspondence with these buried, muttered thunderings of conscience, God has con- centrated, in the terms of His own revelation of this day of doom, some of the most solemn and mighti- est images of grandeur and glory. In correspond- 104 THE JUDGMENT. ence with the regency, the kingly power in the soul, of this terrible consciousness of accountability to God, and of an advancing day of reckoning and retribution, God has invested its announcement with a dread array of images, of tempestuous magnifi- cence and sublimity. It reminds us of many pas- sages in Habbakuk and the Prophets, and the Psalms : Clouds and darkness, trembling and burn- ing mountains, the cleaving cataract-sound of many waters, the channels of the great deep upturned, lightnings and thunderings, hail-stones and coals of fire I Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals were under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly ; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. The wreathing smoke, the bickering flames, the arrowy darting fires, the bowing heavens, the pavilion of dark waters, the blast of the breath of his nostrils, the elements themselves on fire, and melting with fervent heat, the heavens dissolved, and worlds fleeing with a great noise from the face of God ; these are some of the draperies let fall be- fore the breaking of that Day. " I beheld in the night visions till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool : his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him ; the judgment was set, and the books were opened." " I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, THE JUDGMENT. 105 small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man, according to their works." "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to con- vince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly com- mitted, and of all their hard speeches, which ungod- ly sinners have spoken against him." "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him, and- all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." But of all the solemn references to that great Day, and descriptions of it, the one by our Blessed Lord, in the 25th chapter of Matthew, with its grave and awful minuteness and yet vastness of detail, is the most overwhelming. " When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations ; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shep- herd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, in- herit the kingdom prepared for you from the foun- dation of the world. Then shall he say also unto 106 THE JUDGMENT. them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." And these things are near us, pressing, crowding upon us. Only death keeps them off ; once death, then the judgment. How strange it is that we can, with so little effort, put these realities so far from us, that in effect, if there were an Eternity between them and us, we could hardly be less excited by them ! The things present and temporal are set by us as a screen before the things unseen and eternal. Oh that God would mercifully, by his grace, break up this blinding habit, remove our insensibility, and inspire within us that daily and perpetual faith, which shall be in us " the victory that overcometh the world !" In the admirable writings of Jane Taylor there is a poem entitled, " The World in the Heart." It is a beautiful and searching chapter in the christian conflict, and in some of its lines the nearness of the things eternal is presented with a solemn and start- ling impressiveness ; and the sense of that nearness is truly described as an experience, of which the most careless minds are not always destitute, though alas, in most cases, it is transitory and ineffectual, the soul being careful and troubled about many other things. The world in the heart is a dread- fully successful barricade against the powers of the world to come. And yet, amid the hurry, toil, and strife, The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life, — THE JUDGMENT. 107 The soul — perhaps in silence of the night — Has flashes, transient intervals of light ; When things to come, without a shade of doubt, In terrible reality stand out. Those lucid moments suddenly present A glance of truth, as though the heavens were rent ; And through that chasm of pure celestial light The future breaks upon the startled sight. Life's vain pursuits, and Time's advancing pace, Appear, with death-bed clearness, face to face, And Immortality's expanse sublime, In just proportion to the speck of Time ; "While Death, uprising from the silent shades, Shows his dark outline ere the vision fades. In strong relief against the blazing sky Appears the shadow, as it passes by ; And though o'erwhelming to the dazzled brain, Those are the moments when the mind is sane. For then, a hope of Heaven, — the Saviour's cross, Seem what they are, and all things else but loss. Oh, to be ready ! ready for that day ! Would we not give earth's fairest toys away ? Alas ! how soon its interests cloud the view, Rush in, and plunge us in the world anew ! ^ffirmattmts of Cmtsdetta in nkxmt There is a sense of the future judgment in the heart. Every sinful being is conscious of it. There is no sin ever committed, but it carries with it a monition, a prediction, — I shall meet that sin again. The mind travels forward, with the speed of thought, to the time when all things shall pass in review. The consideration of that review may not always be distinct in the consciousness ; nay, there may be, there almost always is, a shrinking back from the idea of the future judgment, an attempt to avoid its acknowledgment. Men avoid looking in the face the thought which nevertheless springs up in the soul, For all these things God will bring thee into judgment. If this declaration of God's word, echoed as it is in the depths of men's being, were listened to seriously, it would prevent a great many sins. A man is engaged in some sinful indulgence, pursuing some unholy train of thought, prosecuting some wrong enterprise, committing some unlawful action, perhaps simply making some malicious or ill-natured remarks. Meantime there is a murmur, sometimes distinct, sometimes indistinct, going on AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 109 in his conscience. If now he would stop and listen, and while he listens, think what conscience is speak- ing and meaning, it would often arrest the evil ; if he would say, when conscience murmurs, Speak louder ! What were you saying ? There is often this threatful muttering in a man's being, this sup- pressed rebellion of his moral sense, when he does not notice it, or rather, he is so accustomed to dis- regard it, to give it, as we say, the " go by," that he lets it sound on, and it makes no abiding impression. Just so, externally, persons become accustomed to the noise of a factory, though the whirring of the machinerv, when it is heard for the first time, is quite stunning. So persons on the sea-shore be- come accustomed to the roar of ocean, and it ceases to excite notice, whilst persons from the inland are filled by it with the most sublime impressions. But we easily become more accustomed and in- sensible to the motions of our inward being, than our external senses do to external sounds. Amidst sin, or sinful indulgence, we do not like to listen to the voice of conscience, and would rather she would speak in indistinct murmurings, than in clear tones. But if men would attend to what is going on within them, a' great deal of sin and misery might often be saved. It requires a great deal of hardihood and obduracy to look conscience distinctly in the face, and with her eye, like that of Grod, upon you, pro- ceed to the very sin against which she warns you. Let a man's attention in such a case be wholly given to his conscience, and it will stay his sin. But the attention in such a case is so occupied with the sin, 110 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE that the face of conscience is hidden, and the voice of conscience, though it sounds on, is like a whisper in the presence of a cataract. But when the noise of passion has subsided, then the sound of con- science for a season is awfully clear; when the crime is committed, the soul is at leisure to attend to itself; then at once it hears the judgment now past, and remembers the warning before given. Now if men would beforehand attend to con- science as they do afterwards, it would make a great difference in their conduct. If every man, in pur- suing a course which he doubts or suspects is wrong, if every man, in entering into temptation, would let conscience speak out, would attend to her uneasy moanings, and would say, What is it? Speak, for I will listen ; then, that indistinct feeling of condemnation, indistinct in the presence of pas- sion, but awfully distinct in the remembrance, would become clear, loud, alarming. The indis- tinct idea of sin, of God, and of the judgment, would become as if an angel had stood in your way, and had said, This is wrong, God sees you, for this there will be judgment. The voice of conscience always speaks with refer- ence to the judgment. The voice of conscience is not merely condemnatory, but prophetic. It is not merely by the present sense of sin that conscience acts so powerfully, but by the sense of a coming condemnation. Conscience is a prophetic miniature of the judgment, in that inward court which she holds in the soul. God will bring thee into judg- ment, God will bring thee into judgment ; this is IN REFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. Ill what she is evermore repeating; this constitutes her sanction, the foundation of her power. This is the essence of all those forebodings, those gloomy presentiments, that sometimes fill the souls of wicked men, and which they vainly strive to dissipate. There is sometimes a state in the sinner's soul like that chill rawness in the atmosphere, which pre- cedes a wintry storm ; there is a gloomy shivering, when there are, as yet, no clouds ; the guilty mind may hear the distant moaning of the storm, when as yet it has not darkened the horizon. It is a striking expression in the scriptures in regard to the wicked, that a dreadful sound is in their ears. It is there, whether they attend to it or not, just as the roar of ocean is still there, though men living by the sea-side cease to notice it. "Wicked men so accustom themselves to live upon the borders of the ocean of eternity, and to dance and trifle on its shores, listening only to the music of their own sins, that the sounds that come across it are scarcely ever attended to. And yet, there it is before them, the ocean of eternity, and a sense of it is always brooding over the mind, and there is sometimes a consciousness of it. Sometimes the sense of it is like a night-mare upon the soul, for which men know not how to account. Sometimes their indistinct sense of what is buried in the future pursues them into the midst of their busiest occupa- tions, their most absorbing pleasures, and the worm of conscience is gnawing away in secret, when there is the consuming care of gain, or the flush of wine, or the excitement of the dance upon the coun- 112 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE tenance. Many men have these seasons, who never tell of them ; hear this dreadful sonnd, who never mention it to others. I doubt not that sometimes professed infidels have written their works beneath this brooding sense of indistinct avenging evil in Eternity. There was something in the very bosoms of Hume and Voltaire, that was always giving the lie to their own pages. Sometimes, when such men come near to death, the cloud is all lifted, a lurid light strikes through it, the inward eye sees far out over the ocean of eternity, the inward ear is rendered keenly and painfully sensitive to the tempest sounds that come booming and wailing across it. Sometimes even great and hardened sinners enter into the shades of avenging retribution before they die. We have seen a man of great powers of mind, great exper- ience in guilty pleasure, great contempt for religion, great wit and richness of intellect in conversation, beneath a gloom so deep under the hand of disease, that we could scarcely doubt that the images of the despised future were busy with him ; the spirits with which his evil life had peopled the eternal world were beginning to return upon him, to peer in through the darkness of his infidelity, to show their dreadful faces, and to wake up the snakes in his own heart, coiled in his conscience. We shall never forget the expression of that man's countenance, as we once saw him gazing into the pale face of a dead man, a former companion of his pleasures, carried beneath the window in a coffin. How often, when we little think it, are the wicked IN REFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. 113 like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt ! A very graphic writer describes an interview with an imprisoned murderer, who, at the close of the conversation, "folded his arms, leaned back against the wall, and appeared to sink gradually into one of his reveries. I looked him in the face, and spoke to him, but he did not seem either to hear or see me. His mind was perhaps wandering in that dreadful valley of the shadow of death, into which the children of earth, while living, occasion- ally find their way; that dreadful region where there is no water, where hope dwelleth not, where nothing lives but the undying worm. This valley is the fac-simile of hell, and he who has entered it, has experienced here on earth, for a time, what the spirits of the condemned are doomed to suffer through ages without end." It is a fearful thing to see a man passing through that valley, beset by the fiends in it, his sins having found him out and fastened upon him. But if it is dreadful to see another in it, how much more dreadful to experience it ! And yet, perhaps insen- sibility is worse. It has sometimes been witnessed. A notice of the death of Hume, by a thoughtful and masterly observer sets the fearfulness of such insen- sibility in great solemnity before us. " We behold him," says John Foster, " appointed soon to appear before that Judge, to whom he had never alluded but with malice or contempt; yet preserving to appearance an entire self-complacency, idly jesting about his approaching dissolution, and mingling 114 AFFIRMATIONS OF CONSCIENCE with the insane sport his references to the fall of superstition, a term of which the meaning is hardly ever dubious, when expressed by such men. We behold him at last carried off, and we seem to hear, the following moment, from the darkness in which he vanishes, the shriek of surprise and terror, and the overpowering accents of the messenger of vengeance. On the whole globe there probably was not acting, at the time, so mournful a tragedy, as that of which the friends of Hume were the spectators, without being aware that it was any tragedy at all." How dreadful to face death with conscience for an enemy ! In such a position, how powerfully does conscience act with reference to the judgment ! What instruction may be gathered from the keen desire of restitution for fraud and injustice, some- times evinced on a dying bed, and often also in a season of health, beneath powerful conviction of sin ! It seems as if the soul could not die beneath a sense of injustice to others, unconfessed and unatoned for. The soul often seeks atonement in restitution. But who shall make restitution to God for a life of in- justice, ingratitude, injury towards him? And if fraud and wrong towards a fellow-creature can so afflict and torture the soul, when it comes to be remembered and felt even in this world, what will be the misery produced by a sight and sense of sin in eternity as committed against God? The doctrine of the atonement once revealed, it does not seem possible that any man who believes in a future judgment, and has ever looked into his IN KEFERENCE TO THE JUDGMENT. 115 own heart, can have the hardihood to reject so divine a truth. Accordingly we find that with its denial, men have coupled the disbelief of the judgment, and the denial of a future endless retribution. Perhaps we ought to say, the attempt at such disbe- lief, for every man's own moral constitution makes him a believer, however unwilling. And when a man looks over his own life, and into his own heart, and begins to realise in some measure the nature of that revelation, which is to take place in eternity, What can he do ? There is no reparation that he can make, no restitution that he can offer to Grod. But with infinite power of consolation to a wounded conscience the divine reality of the atonement rises on the soul. Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world ! Lsr one of the sea-side sermons by our blessed Lord, beneath the unclouded sky and sweet, open air of Judea, He told the people (and the Omniscience of God, the meanwhile, seemed brooding upon them, in the all-surrounding transparency of cloudless light) that "there was nothing hid that should not be manifested, neither anything kept secret, but that it should come abroad." Two propositions are contained in this disclosure. The first is, that there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested; the second, that the purpose for which anything, for a time, is kept secret — the reason why such temporary secresy is permitted, is, that it shall come abroad. We could not have known either of these propositions, had not He who knoweth all things revealed them to us. They embrace a great universe of truth ; the nature of our probation and accountability ; the certainty of a future judg- ment ; the justification of God's present government, under which so many crimes seem to go concealed and unpunished ; and the fact, that these things are permitted now, only to be revealed and set right hereafter. Had not God taught us this truth, and DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 117 made us thus to look into futurity, we should have supposed that many things might forever remain unknown, except to the beings who transacted them ; or, at any rate, that thoughts, purposes and feelings, inscrutable by mortal sight, might remain eternally hidden from mortal knowledge. But God tells us that there is nothing hid which shall not be mani- fested ; and this proposition extends to the thoughts and intents of the heart, and leaves nothing, either of event or motive, out of its circle. All things shall be manifested, shall be made manifest, shall come abroad, shall be introduced to others' knowledge. All things are known to God, and cannot be other- wise ; but they shall also be made known to others. There is no place of concealment, and no such thing as concealment, in the universe. In the first place, there is a sense in which there is nothing, even in the counsels and works of God, which shall not be manifested by Him, for His glory. All things were planned and made for the display of His perfections ; and even as it pleases, and when it pleases, the great and glorious Sovereign of the universe, the veil shall be taken from them, and they shall be known. The strength and acuteness of reason in God's intelligent creatures shall be em- ployed in searching out His works and ways forever ; a blessed employment, which, by reason of the in- finitude and incomprehensibility of God's perfections, must be eternal. And God will forever make such manifestations of Himself to all holy beings as will forever increase their glory and blessedness. But, in the second place, and in a more absolute, 118 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. unlimited sense, there is nothing out of God, nothing in His creatures, now hidden, which shall not be manifested; there is nothing in the counsels and works of man, nothing thought, nothing spoken, nothing acted, in secresy, in darkness, which shall not be made known. No length of time, nor depth of loneliness, is any security of concealment. No oblivion can cover a single transaction, either inward or external ; no interval of forgetfulness can banish one circumstance, or dim or wear away one past reality, or diminish its brightness. And thoughts are realities more eternal than things. Thoughts lead to things, give birth to them, and dwell forever with them ; and neither thought nor thing can be anni- hilated, or its trace perish. Ages on ages might roll on, and no remembrance occur, no association bring it up, no indication take place, by which the exist- ence of such a fact might be dreamed or suspected ; but having once been, it is eternal ; and when it is renewea in the mind, the present and the past con- sciousness shall be brought together, and made as distinctly and clearly one, as if no interval of time had elapsed. It shall be as if a vacuum between two objects were removed — as if two leaves of a book, that had been torn asunder, and removed to distant and different quarters of the globe, had been brought together, there being no interruption of the sense by that removal. There is no more separation of the mind's identity and consciousness from any thought or event in its past existence, whatever in- terval of time may have elapsed, or different expe- rience ensued, though it were whole ages, than there DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 119 would be between the sense of these words, on the bottom of a page in John's gospel, " The hour is coming, in the which all;" and those words that begin the next page, " That are in the graves shall hear His voice" — than there would be between these two pro- positions, if you were to tear these words asunder, and carry the last without the first into Asia Minor. Whenever these words are brought again together, the whole sense again is as perfect as if they never were separated ; and so it is with the mind's identity and consciousness. The past can no more be separated from the pre- sent, than the present from the future. A thing may for the present be forgotten, but it cannot be lost, being an eternal possession of the mind, a tran- saction of its stewardship, for which account must be given. It may be buried in utter forgetfulness, nearly the whole span of a man's life ; but the smallest, most trivial association may reproduce it. Sometimes the mind suddenly and unaccountably goes back and lives over again in perfect freshness a scene of its past being, not remembered for years. A mote in. the sunbeam, an odor wafted on the wind, a tone in the voice, a strain of music, a fall- ing leaf, the shape of a cloud, the title of a book, the glance of an eye, the song of a bird, a color in the sky, may bring it all up at once, without an effort of the will, or a thought that seemed leading to it. There may have been that in the scene, which the soul would fervently wish could be an- nihilated; there may have been that, which is of such a nature, that the soul itself would rather now 120 DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. be itself annihilated, than dwell with the remem- brance of it. But involuntarily, unsought for, in spite of will, wishes, fears, up it comes. A man can trace no magic circle for his being, within which the past shall not intrude ; within which he can stand in safety, and stretch his wand of power, and say to the pale ghosts of his sins flocking towards him from the darkness, Keep off! They will not mind him, and sometimes they seem to come crowd- ing and shoaling towards him all at once, struggling for the mastery. He can separate himself from no past frame or experience, habit or action, thought or result, of his being. Neither the evil nor the good can be forgotten. In this sense also the words of Ecclesiastes are true, The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be ; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. More than three thousand years ago a handful of grain was deposited in an Egyptian tomb. More than three thousand years passed away, and the buried grain was discovered. It had all the ger- minating properties of life hidden within it, and when, after this long interval, it was planted in a garden in London, it sprang up, and produced its appropriate harvest. So it is with buried, hidden, forgotten thoughts and things. They never die, never can die. They may be entombed with the dead, but they never lose their vitality. They may pass out of the consciousness, and be forgotten ; but they are to be sown again, and to bring forth their fruit for weal or woe, in the mind, in eternity. This is the security, from the nature of the human DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 121 mind, fearfully and wonderfully made, for the ful- filment of this assurance, that there is nothing con- cealed which shall not be manifested. A man's being is a chain of experiences coiled up, and coil- ing on, every link indissolubly connected with the preceding, so that it cannot, in any part, be severed, and so that, if you have one link in hand, you are sure of all. And a man's own self is to go back step by step and uncoil this chain, and examine every link of it, and hold it up to the light, and it is to be seen how it was forged, from what furnace in the mind, by what process of the will, with what moral and mortal tempering and hardening. But there is a higher security of manifestation than this, and that is, the purpose and word of the living God. Neither was anything kept secret, but that it should come abroad. It is kept secret, only in order to come abroad. Nothing would be kept secret, suffered to be hidden, were not that (rod's de- sign. There is this inscription on every hidden thing, To be manifested. Therefore it is safe, it can- not be lost. The very fact that it is hidden makes it sure to come abroad. There is a particular in- surance from God upon it, that makes it more safe from forgetfulness and loss, than if it had been trans- acted in open day, and were among the known things of a past eternity. There is a superior cer- tainty, over the chaos of things that have been known, connected with those that are unknown, of being brought out into the light ; for that is the particular design with which God put them by, as it were, and suffered them to pass into oblivion. 6 122 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. Whatever remains concealed, God's purpose is con- nected with, such concealment, and that is as if every such concealed thing or thought were labelled, and written in a book, catalogued, numbered, with place, time, circumstance, to be brought up at the great appointed day. There is such a book; the fires of the last day cannot consume the record. " For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." And now as to the purpose of God in permitting such secresy for a season, some things are plain. Many things are kept secret, in order that they may be completed, the purpose of the agent fully re- vealed, and so far as God permits it, accomplished. If there were not this possibility of present secresy, men could hardly be said to be free agents. Doubt- less, then, it is partly for the development of char- acter, that God permits evil to be concealed, and the wicked to go unpunished. A man who will sin, though he knows the eye of God is on him, merely because his fellow-beings do not see him, is essen- tially wicked. A man who will sin against his own conscience and knowledge of truth and righteous- ness, though neither God nor man should see him, or because he alone sees himself, is essentially wicked. A man who would refrain from sin, be- cause men see him, while he would not, if God only saw him, is essentially wicked. God will let men therefore for the present, play the hypocrite ; he will let men's inward wickedness develop itself, while they say, no eye seeth me. He will try what DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. 123 men are. He will see what a man is, alone ; lie will let hirn think he is alone ; he will let him for- get God, and act out his evil nature, that the uni- verse also may see what he is, alone. So things are kept secret, in order to be revealed. A daguerreo- type is formed, and can only be formed, in the dark- ness ; that is, the plate must be shut from the sur- rounding light, and receive only the light transmit- ted from the person to be taken, in order that when it is produced, it may bear, without blur or dimness, the lineaments of the face it has reflected. If the light were let in upon it, the process would be stopped ; there would be no picture. So it is in some respects with men's characters in their de- velopment. Secresy is often essential to the commission of crime, and essential to the production of evidence in regard to men's character. How many a villainy would have been stopped, how many a sin crushed in the bud, how many a fraud or murder arrested, if there had been a single eye known to be in the room, on the face, on the hand, on the paper. If the first concoction of evil plans were seen in their commencement, in their originating steps, there are comparatively few that would be finished. Some persons indeed, in great power and boldness, sweep on in their career of evil, regardless with what transparency the world may see their motives. But in general men cannot accomplish their schemes of selfishness, without concealment. And in this world many a crime goes unpunished for want of evidence. There will be evidence enough in the 124 DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. eternal world. Every murderer, who thinks he has removed every witness of his crime, has only sent the witnesses out of this world into the next, out of the porch or ante-room into the judgment hall itself. He has only sent forward the evidence, by which he is to be tried. Every man who has secretly injured or defrauded another, has had the fraud or the in- jury inscribed and catalogued for eternity. Every man who has neglected prayer, neglected the word of God, neglected his own soul, has had the neglect, every instance of it, not only written down in the book of his own conscience and memory, but checked as it were, in the record of things to be manifested in eternity. Every man, every day, is filling up his character. God keeps a book of char- acter. Every thought, every act, goes into it; every attitude of the moral being. The book is filled up, in order that its great leaves may be un- folded and read for the knowledge of the universe ; that all may see what man is, what God is ; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world plead guilty before God ; that man may be seen in the greatness, wilfulness, and inexcusableness of his depravity, God in the holiness and justice of his punishment. The more secrecy, hypocrisy, and successful wickeness there is here, the more clearly will the justice of the condemnation of the wicked appear hereafter. It may be that secresy in sin is often permitted in mercy. God does not keep secret His own expostu- lating and restraining words and influences; He sends them abroad, pours them upon sinful minds DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 125 and consciences, hedges up the path of the sinner with them, to turn him from destruction to repent- ance. But he often permits men's sins to remain secret, so that they may come to a hearty repentance before God, and not be shut out from society, or from paths of usefulness, by the wide-spread knowl- edge of guilt. God conceals every man's heart from every man ; for the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, so that none but God can know it. Hence the apostle says, Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment, and some they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand, and they that are otherwise cannot be hid. Some sins are so plain, so glaring, that they carry the thoughts at once to the bar of God, and spectators are led irresistibly to speak of the fearful account that must be ren- dered ; and such sins are as swift reporting messen- gers sent onward to the judgment. Other sins are not fully completed, till after the author of them has gone to his grave; the results of them are not developed, the purposes of them not accomplished ; but as fast as they are, so fast the witnesses of them travel on after the author, to overtake him in the eternal world. The witnesses against some men, we have reason to believe, will thus be crowding into the eternal world to the end of time, the indictment against them not being filled up till the last result of their iniquity is developed. A man, for example, who writes an immoral, but immortal book, may be tracked into eternity by a procession of lost souls 126 DISCLOSUEES OF THE JUDGMENT. from every generation, every one of them to be a witness against him at the judgment, to show to him and to the universe the immeasurable dreadful- fulness of his iniquity. A man whose teachings or whose influence remain behind him for evil, does in a solemn sense remain sinning in this world, long after his soul has gone forward into the land of spirits. And it must be an awful reception which such a man gives to the witnesses of his guilt, as they come into his company, covered with the mantle of his sins, filled with the element of perdi- tion ministered by his soul to theirs. It may have been the dread of that, that made the rich man in his torments beseech father Abraham to send Laz- arus to testify unto his five brethren, lest they also should come into that place^of torment. But the good works of good men are as immortal as the bad works of evil men. They, too, are swift messengers, but bright celestial ones, before the throne of God in judgment. They, too, come troop- ing into the eternal world as witnesses, long after the authors of them have entered on their reward. And who can tell the blessedness of such men as Baxter, Bunyan, Doddridge, Flavel and others, when they see, generation after generation, the results and marks of their own earthly labors, in souls that follow after them to glory. No good that they have done can ever be hid. Not a cup of cold water given to a disciple, nor a widow's mite put into Christ's treasury, nor a penitent tear, nor a fervent, faithful prayer, nor any thought or deed of self- denying love, but is recorded in the book of life, DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. 127 and sends on its witness for the great day. " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord ! Yea saith Spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." The pursuit of this subject teaches us most im- pressively what a solemn world we live in. We seem to walk by ourselves, we are often alone with ourselves, and there is no window in our bosoms, through which men can look into the recesses of our hearts and see what is going on there. But there is no such thing as absolute concealment. Our deeds are all done, our characters all formed, in open light. There is no such thing as darkness. What appears darkness to us is light to God, and every thought and every thing, every feeling, every action, is thrown from us into the light. How solemn, how beautiful, are the declarations in the scriptures : " Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. For the darkness hideth not from thee, but the light shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him, saith the Lord ? There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. Mine eyes are upon all their ways, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes." And if it is hid now, for a season, from the uni- verse, it is only because it shall be revealed when God pleases. So with every thing, whether good or evil, the one just as indestructible, indelible, uncon- 128 DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. cealable as the other. If we ever think or act in the darkness, it is for the light. As rockets are shot into the sky, to explode and blaze there, so our thoughts, words, deeds, shoot into the eternal world, to have their development there, but not like the transitoriness of a meteor in the evening sky. The good thoughts, the good deeds, the good words of good men will shine in the firmament of their own consciousness and remembrance, and in the light of a Saviour's love, forever. The evil thoughts, evil deeds, evil words of the wicked will be as baleful, everlasting fires, darting from every quarter their corrosive influence. So the good man shall be satisfied from himself, and the wicked shall be filled with his own mischief. In the light of eternity, under the disclosures there, every being need only be left to the unrestrained development of the character with which he went out of this world into that, and this would be enough to constitute everlasting happiness or misery. The seeds are sown, the elements established in this world. Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. "Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him. And here let the solemnity of these principles be noted, as to our sins of omission, and let any man, the most careless, the most hardened, ask himself if he is prepared to meet the revelation of them. Our negative life, or what we call such, is as determined in its moral character as our most positive ; and in the light of that great declaration of God, To him DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 129 that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin, our negative life may sometimes be the guiltiest of all our existence. When the universal stewardship is reckoned, for which God is to hold every man to his account, it is not perhaps the ques- tion, What have you done with your talents, your wealth, your opportunities? that will prove the severest trial to the soul, but, What have you neg- lected to do, failed to do, refused to do, or left un- done, that you had the time and occasion given you to accomplish ? It is this last question that in most cases will work the greatest revelation of guiltiness, and the greatest remorse and woe. Alas ! too often it is the emptiest hours, the most unmarked, that most upbraid us. Where are the many days, almost a blank in our existence, that might have been filled, or marked at least, with memories of prayer, with thoughts of God, and as- pirations deep and earnest after heaven, with efforts to do good, however baffled, and voices of suppli- cating sorrow, even amidst defeat? Alas! they have gone sinfully vacant to the judgment, even as the case from which the jewel has been stolen is reserved to prove the theft. Of many of our days, we can tender to God, as of a wasted talent, only the folded napkin. Each day is as a vase, a precious crystal vase, bestowed of God to be filled with grace from His own fountain, with living water from His own throne, with some precious treasures of words and deeds of love, and sweet op- portunities, not utterly neglected but usefully em- ployed. Each day should bring something to God, 130 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. the precious vase, with, some little offering, though it were but a cup of cold water, or a publican's prayer. God gives it whole ; but every day, in the careless, prayerless, godless man's life, returns it empty, broken. But for every empty and every wasted day, thou must give account to Him. We are taught the prayer of the psalmist, that God would make us sensible of our hidden sins; but from ourselves a great many things are concealed, not by the darkness, but the glare of light. A great master of thought and style in our English tongue once likened the realities of our moral being not re- vealed as yet, to the stars, invisible by day, but which are only waiting for the obscuring daylight to be withdrawn. He employed that phrase in reference to the repressed and hidden thoughts, memories, and possessions of the mind, brought suddenly into view in an hour of darkness and of judgment, like the dying moments of a drowning man. Then, all the past of life rises from its obscurity into clear and awful light. Now, the distractions, the gaieties, the business and brightness, of our daily worldly exist- ence, hide us from ourselves, and make most men more ignorant of their very selves, their own real character in the sight of God, than they are of the most abstruse of the sciences. In such ignorance there may be a sullen peace at present, there may be calmness and stupidity of conscience, but only while this ignorance lasts. But when the distracting and obscuring shows of this world die from the vision ; when the light from things seen and tem- poral, that now veils and obscures the unseen DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 131 and eternal, shall be drawn away, then will all that we are not, in comparison with God's standard of all that we onght to be, and all that we are; in compari- son with God's standard of all that we ought not to be, become insufferably clear. How dreadful must be that inevitable revelation of sin in all the life, and of guilt within the soul, to the man of gaiety and pleasure, who never in this world would admit the indictment of God's word against him ; to the fools that danced through life, making a mock at sin ; and to all those who never here, amidst their round of amusement and pursuit, would look either at God's word or their own hearts long enough to see and feel their real character in God's sight ! And who, when that revelation takes place, can meet God without a Saviour? What, even now, can the dying sinner do, when it pleases God to draw aside the obscuring veil, to set his sins in array before him, and to give him some insight into the deep and dread reality of the character he has formed, while living without God and without prayer in the world ? He can do nothing but despair, were it not that, just at this place and condition of utter guilt and irremediable ruin, Christ Jesus interposes. And here, to the Cross of Christ, this subject brings us all ; for, apart from Him, what can we do, when God makes us known to ourselves, as He himself knows us ? He has set our iniquities before Him, our secret sins in the light of His countenance ; and what refuge can there be, when they are so set before us, so illustrated by the holy eye of God, if Jesus Christ have been rejected by us? It is the partial 132 DISCLOSUKES OF THE JUDGMENT. illustration that God now gives, and the partial con- viction of sin which follows, in minds not utterly hardened, th,at reveals, and was intended to reveal, both the solemnity and terror of the judgment, and the necessity of the cross. And while this power of the world to come shows the need of just such a Saviour, and just such a salvation from sin, as are brought to us in the gospel, it also shows the blessedness even of the most painful conviction of guilt, and the merciful and compas- sionate intent of God in producing such conviction. Truly, the greater the severity of God, the greater is His goodness. How frivolous, how unreflecting, how perfectly groundless and inconsistent, is the objection brought by some men against the system of the gospel, that it is a harsh and gloomy system ! To be sure, it is gloomy to determined sinners, to impenitent men, who wish to sin on, undisturbed by conscience and the fear of coming wrath ; and if it were not gloomy to such, it could not be from God, and never a single dying sinner could be saved. But it is gloomy to such, just to drive such to the cross, just to bring them to the Saviour ; and then and there it is all brightness, and a brightness the greater and more glorious for the gloom. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we per- suade men. "We persuade them from the sin to the Saviour, from the law to the gospel, from the gloom to glory, from conviction to pardon, from death to life. Let the conviction of sin come, and let it press our guilty burdened souls in anguish to our Saviour, for that is our only hope. Let no man shrink back DISCLOSURES OF THE JUDGMENT. 133 from the revelation of his sins now ; now while par- don may be found, it is mercy unspeakable to have your sins set in array before you, to have some leaves in the Book of Judgment illuminated for you beforehand. Draw not away your vision ; let the soul, though affrighted, gaze ; it may do you good, it may save you. Draw not away your shrinking heart from the sword of the spirit, from the hand and probe of the merciful heavenly physician, search- ing and revealing your guilt. Yea rather pray God so to manifest your sins now, beforehand, and to make you so painfully and despairingly sensible of the guilt and the burden of them, that you shall be compelled to cry out, Lord save me, I perish ! God be merciful to me a sinner ! Cftf f matt of % f i%e, attfr % "When our blessed Lord stood upon the earth as the Saviour and the light of the world, He said, " If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not ; for I come not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him ; the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." There is in this passage a striking testimony as to the independence, self-evidence, and self-existence of the Word of God. It is not man that can judge the word, but the word itself is the judge of man, and the judge more particularly for the sin of unbe- lief in rejecting the Saviour. Not to receive Christ's words is to reject both him and them; and Christ's words are God's words, both in the Old Testament and the New, as is plain, not only from the oneness of Christ with God as God, but from direct palpable passages, such as that in 1st Peter, i. 10, 11, where the old prophets are represented as searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified before- THE PEKSOISr OF THE JUDGE. 135 hand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Now Christ, in the character of the faithful Witness of God, declares that at present if any man hear his words andbelieveth not, he judges him not. Nothing else will be needed, even at the last day, for his judgment and condemnation, but just to hear the word which he has rejected. And so nothing else will be needed for the condemnation of those who have resisted the light, but just to see the light. This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. When men neglect God's word and reject it, they are neglecting and rejecting that, which not only carries its own irresistible Divine evidence in itself, irresistible to a good and humble heart, but they are also investing it, in that very rejecting, with the ermine of their Judge ; they are arming it as the instrument and power of their condemnation. The fact that its evidence is in itself and irresistible, takes away all excuse for not attending to it, such as the criminal might plead if there were a long array of external evidence, which he must consult and decide upon before coming to the word. And considering the nature of the light, its neglect as well as its rejection condemns him ; its neglect is its rejection. How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ? This heedlessness as to God's voice is both conse- quence and proof of depravity. But in this passage the word judge must not be taken as meaning the person, or supplying the place 136 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE, of the person, who shall sit in judgment at the last day. It is rather to be taken as intimating the nature and strength of the evidence, which will judge and condemn. Thus we say, if a man is brought in before an earthly tribunal accused of murder, and in the course of the investigation a let- ter addressed to him from a distant party is found in the Post Office demanding money as payment for concealing that very murder, we say of such a letter that it judges the man at once, it condemns him ; or if a man steals his neighbor's goods, and yet denies that he knew they were his neighbor's, and a writing is produced in court found in the possession of the man, showing beyond all possibility of doubt that he knew whose the goods were, and had the inten- tion to steal them, we say of such a writing that it judges and condemns him. In this sense it is, that the woed is said to judge and condemn the sinner. Let us enquire, more directly, first, as to the judge in person in the last day ; second as to the accuser ; third as to the evidence against the criminal at the bar. A man advancing to trial for some great crime, of which he is accused, will be anxious to know who is to be the judge, the day when his particular case comes to be tried. Perhaps among the judges on that circuit there is one, with whom the prisoner has in past time held transactions that go far to establish, if known, the proof of his guilt. Per- haps this judge holds a claim against him, which he has resisted and denied, and in addition to that, may have foreseen the very crime for which the man is AND THE EVIDENCE. 137 to be tried, and may have forewarned him against the temptation and the danger. If this be the case, then, the moment that judge's name is named to the prisoner, his soul will sink within him ; he will say to himself, Then it is all over with me, for he knows my guilt, and must condemn me. "Whoever might be the jury, the prisoner would come to trial before such a judge with the hopelessness of de- spair. The very name of the judge destroys all possibility of deliverance. Considering the upright- ness of his character, the evidence that will come before him, and the amount of his own knowledge, there is no hope. Now, how stands the case with guilty man, ar- raigned for his sin against Grod, in the judgment at the last day ? Has he no anxiety, advancing swiftly to trial, and perfectly conscious of his guilt? Is there any question as to the person of his judge? If that person were a being who had but one unsat- isfied claim against him, and that claim iniquitously denied and resisted, or who had been cognizant of but one of the transgressions for which he is arraigned before God, having met him in time past, and forewarned him against it, and forbidden him the course which was leading to it, even then he would despair of acquittal, he must be perfectly sure of condemnation. But if the judge be a person knowing not one merely, but all his crimes, if he have had an eye, the eye of Omniscience, upon all his steps through life, if he have seen his iniquities in their very first thought in his soul, their earliest indeterminate and shadowy but not resisted begin- 138 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE, ning, if lie have known the growth of them from motive into act, and from act into habit, and all the while against all light, check, and warning ; what then ? And if he be a person not merely knowing all these things, and irradiating them with light, as the sun irradiates and marks the leaves it shines upon, but also, the very Being against whom all these things have been committed ; if he be the Law-giver, upon whose authority the criminal in the reckless violation of his laws, every step of his way through life has dared to trample ; if he be also the kind and gracious expostulator, admon- isher and prophet, who has met him every step of his ways, as a friend, to bid him beware ; and not only so, if he be also, in mysterious love, one who, to make an escape for him from the perdition of his ways possible, has died for him, and yet whose death he has despised as foolishness, or denied as an unreal, unmeaning parable ; if he be the Being, to whom he owes his existence, protection, support, and every blessing; if, in fine, he be the God, Creator, Pre- server, Eedeemer of the sinner, and if all these attributes, claims, authorities, and retributive de- mands and necessities, meet in the person of his Judge ; can human language state strong enough the certainty, or depict the terribleness of the pros- pect before him ? Under such a prospect, with such a cloud of ven- geance lowering, has he any being with whom he can entrust his case, any lawyer in the chancery of Heaven, any Advocate with the Father, who dare or will undertake the hopeless cause, or plead a suit AKD THE EVIDENCE. 139 for the criminal at God's bar ? Is there any created being who can do it, man or angel ? If there were, is there any creature who dare or will do it ; any creature in heaven or on earth, who would have the heart, the disposition, even if it were permissible under God's government, to stand up in behalf of a criminal, whose guilt is not only undoubted, un- questionable, and to the bottom known, but has not one redeeming quality, and is attended with every possible exasperation under heaven? If there be none among good beings in all God's universe who can, or whose unmingled purity and goodness and delight in God's justice and holiness would let them, even if they could, stand up to plead for the exemption of such unmingled guilt from deserved punishment, is there one among evil beings, one of the demons below, under whose guidance the crim- inal at the bar has rushed on to such excesses and uninterrupted continuance of sin, who would speak for him ? Alas ! they will stand, if opportunity be given, as his fierce, malignant accusers. The tempter is the enemy and accuser of mankind. There is no lawyer either in heaven, earth or hell, who can or will undertake his cause. He must stand alone. His guilt isolates him, as to his per- sonal accountability, conflict, and desert and en- durance of the penalty, from all the universe, while it connects him as to its aggravation, its conse- quence, and its evidence, with all the universe. It isolates him as to friends, it gives him over to enemies. There was an Advocate, a friend, a Eedeemer, to 140 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE, whom the criminal might have committed his cause, no matter for its utter blackness and desperateness, whatever may have been the depth, enormousness or malignancy of his guilt. There was an Advocate appointed of God for this very purpose, and with a title which no other being in the universe dare take, the Friend of Sinners ; a title and an office without parallel under God's government ; a Being appoint- ed by the injured law-giver himself, as a Counsellor of Mercy, to save the guilty from deserved punish- ment. His name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- sellor. But this wonderful Being, this Advocate with God, must be applied to by the sinner himself, and in this world ; and if such application be re- fused, or neglected, then the case goes forward on its own merits, to the judgment, and there the crim- inal stands alone, surrounded by the evidences of his guilt, but isolated in it from the whole universe of God, with none to befriend or deliver him. The judgment being set, the witnesses summoned, the assizes opened, he has had his choice, his voluntary disposition of all things, and there can be no change ; and the very fact of no Advocate appear- ing in his behalf, were there no other positive evi- dence against him except the accusation, would be sufficient for his condemnation. He must stand alone, with innumerable participators in his guilt, indeed, and accessories to it, and accusers of it, but not one defender; alone, without an advocate, in utter despair. Alone, cut off from God, over- whelmed with the conviction of sin, and unable to open his lips except to cry out guilty before God ! AND THE EVIDENCE. 141 And the Judge in this ease ! Who is he ? How shall we describe his appearance, his attributes ? We have supposed a case, and it is the reality ; but we can take the description only from God's word. "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; and He that sat upon him was called Faith- ful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a name of fire, and on His head were many crowns ; and He had a name written that no man knew but Himself. And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood ; and His name is called the Word of God. And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, and He treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords." Can we recognize the Person of this description ? Have we ever seen or imagined this King of wrath and glory, or has He ever been revealed to us in any other character ? Have we seen Him, have we fled to Him, as our Advocate and Intercessor with the Father, our Kedeemer and not our Judge alone? " Behold He cometh in the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him ; and then shall all the kindreds of the earth wail be- cause of Him." Look back once more to the most sublime of all the visions of the Prophets, whose subject is the judgment of the last day, and compare the burning imagery of the Old Testament with the answering flames of the New. "I beheld till the flames were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did 142 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool ; His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him : thmisand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him : the judgment was set, and the books were opened." " When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. And He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats ; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on His left. And He shall say to them upon His right hand, Come, ye blessed, but to them upon His left hand, Depart, ye cursed. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Thus far God himself has guided and rendered both possible and lawful the excursions of the human imagination in regard to the Judge at the last day, and the unparalleled scenes of the judgment. Farther no eye can pierce, no mind can follow, till that day when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not Grod, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Till then, He stands in the midst of the seven golden candle- sticks, for the redemption of mankind. But even in that position of forgiving mercy, how august, how glorious, and to be feared with holy fear by those who love Him. " His head and His hairs white like AND THE EVIDENCE. 143 wool, as white as snow, and His eyes as a flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and His countenance as the sun shining on His strength, and His voice as the sound of many waters." From the Judge we turn, under the guidance of Grod's word, in the midst of this awful and glorious scene, to the accuser. This is none other than the Divine Law itself, in all its majesty. It has a two- fold office of indictment and conviction ; that of the guilt of man for breaking the great moral law of God revealed on Sinai, and that of his guilt in the rejection of Christ and His words in the gospel. "Do not think," said Christ to the Jews who did not believe on Him, " that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me." Even so the law, in its original charge against us, and conviction, and penalty of death upon us, is our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ. But if it fail of that — if we reject Christ, whether trusting in the law that we have broken, and in a miserable, patched-up morality of pretended obedience to it, or, in utter insensibility and heedlessness both of the law and the gospel, disregarding Christ, and so rejecting Him, — then the law also accuses the soul in regard fco such rejection. Grod's law, both in the Old and New Testament, one and the same, the law of pre- cepts and the law of love, makes the accusation. It comes down upon the soul ; and by it is the knowl edge of sin, and every mouth is stopped, and all the 144 THE PEESON OF THE JUDGE, world becomes guilty before God. And the greater the knowledge of sin by the glory and clear-shining holiness of the law, the greater the guilt of the soul, and the showing of that guilt, in the rejection of the Saviour. If it were iniquity to break God's law, what incomparably greater guilt, when the law itself pointed to a Saviour provided of God for redemption from the guilt and the consequences of such viola- tion ! — what incomparably greater guilt to set at nought that salvation, to trample on the claims of the Divine Eedeemer as well as the Divine Law — nay, as God's word sets the guilt of such rejection forth, to trample under foot the Son of God ! If they who despised Moses' law died without mercy, nnder two or three witnesses, of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and done despite unto the Spirit of grace ? And this is the guilt of every rejection of Christ Jesus, under whatever circumstances. Call it what you please, disguise or mask or flatter it as you will, it comes to this ; it is the climax of human guilt ; it is the last, preponderating, overwhelming act and proof of man's depravity against the love, as well as the majesty and holiness of God. And now, do we want confirmation of all this ? Is proof needed at the judgment ? The criminal himself is stricken with despair, guilty before God. The law only need appear against him, and it con- demns and silences him. Its bare accusation is awful, irresistible proof; he is struck down by it. AND THE EVIDENCE. 145 But is there a manifestation needed, a judge and a judgment of his guilt, in the very showing of the law under which and against which he acted, such as will fill all minds with a conviction as deep and abiding as eternity, as outshining and glorious as the holiness of God ? We suppose there is ; we suppose, indeed, that this is one great object of a day of judg- ment, to vindicate, in the sight of all the universe, the ways of Grod to man. We suppose that its pro- cesses will be conducted with reference to this very purpose. Accordingly, the original evidence shall be called up. Against what has the criminal sinned ? What was the light that shone upon him ? What the manifestation of the Divine glory that stood in his way ? And as to the last completion and seal of his iniquity, its highest possible development in this world, and its seal of unchangeableness and per- petuity in the eternal world, in the rejection of the only and infinitely merciful remedy offered from heaven, what is the demonstration of that? "He that rejecteth me," says Christ, " and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him. The WOED that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." Let, then, the universe hear that. Let its glory be seen by bright intelligences. Let Him speak again, who spake as never man spake. Let the beauty and the power of his teachings, and the loveliness and compassion of his example, and the tenderness of his invitations and promises, be spread before the universe of souls. Let him be heard saying, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 7 146 THE PEKSON OF THE JUDGE, I will give you rest." Let the law appear in the glory of its transcript of God's holiness and good- ness, and the gospel in its thrilling manifestation of the wonders of God's forgiving love. Then shall it be seen that against all that light, love, and mercy, against all that tide of tenderness and expostulation, and the current of providence and grace, the sinful man pursued his way down to ruin. It shall be seen that though the blood of the Lamb of God stood before him, he trampled over it ; that though the merciful and gentle Spirit of God warned him, and strove with him, he heeded it not ; that when the sword of the Spirit was flashing the terrors of God's law upon his soul, it was of no avail, nor of any avail all his experience of the goodness of God's leading him to repentance. It shall be seen to be his' condemnation, that light came into the world, and into his soul, but that he loved darkness. It shall be seen that by that light the things into which the angels in heaven desire to look, and by the won- derful glory of which they are ravished, were shown to him, but he cared not for them. That though the attributes of God in the cross of Christ were demonstrated to him, as intense, eternal, and unal- terable against sin, he cared not for that ; that though the transcendent spectacle of a dying Saviour, the incarnate Son of God, lifted up for him, was shown him, he cared not for that ; that when a thousand times it was shown him that on his acceptance of this Eedeemer hung his last and only hope of for- giving mercy from his God, and that his contempt and rejection of this divine effort would seal him up AND THE EVIDENCE. 147 to inevitable and eternal guilt and misery, still he received Him not. All these warnings, restrainings, converting in- fluences, were in the word, and all this demonstra- tion of guilt arises out of it ; the conviction of in- gratitude, of selfishness, of unbelief, of ambition, of the pride of evil, and the fear of man, and the shame and disregard of good men and of God, and the treasuring up of wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of God's righteous judgments. And it will be found that in the midst of all his darkness the Word of God followed him ; that in misery it got hold upon him ; that in the visions of the night it terrified him ; that in a thousand forms it was laid before him ; that good men and good books, and the prayers of saints, and the providence of God, brought it home to him ; that it lodged in his con- science, and was an element there, of which he en- deavored in vain to rid himself, but never could exclude it from his being ; that it was ever pressing him to God, while he himself was pressing farther from Him ; that it set him on fire round about but he knew it not ; that it drew him to the light, but he would not follow. The demonstration of his guilt from the word of God will be as clear as God's own holiness, and as definite as the actions of his life. Oh guilty, dying sinner ! Thou must have an Ad- vocate with God, or thou art lost forever ! What canst thou do, in the day when He shall reckon with thee ? Thou art advancing to thy trial ; hast thou retained thy counsel ? There is one appointed Ad- vocate, whom thou mayest have without retaining 148 THE PERSON OF THE JUDGE. fee, and mayest put thy whole cause securely in His hands, and He (Oh wondrous mystery of grace!) will justify thee ! yea, justify thee before God, thou guilty, dying sinner ! Wilt thou trust thyself with Him ? Wilt thou tell Him all the secrets of thine heart ? Wilt thou let Him intercede for thee ? Friend of sinners ! Wonderful, Counsellor, Ad- vocate, both of the government and the criminal ! Yea, appointed of God to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and the remission of sins ! Oh that every heart would hide in Him, would trust Him, would love Him, would receive His glad sal- vation ! Cfie things ^tritten m \\z %nh> In tlie last revealed exposition of the judgment we see the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books are opened, " And another book was opened which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." It may be that this is not figurative language. It is commonly so regarded, at least that part of it which speaks of books. But we know nothing which should prevent us from interpreting even that with a degree of literal simplicity. Not that any man would dream of there being books at the judg- ment made out of perishable matter, and bound with parchment, any more than a sane mind would expect to find palaces or streets of solid gold in the New Jerusalem. But there may be a literal record, in form and space, of the life of every creature, answering to our idea of the reality of a book, which shall truly be opened at the judgment, and be there used in determining the eternal sentence of every individual. It may be said that the Divine Omniscience is of itself such a book ; but in the passages which speak 150 THE THINGS WEITTEN IN THE BOOKS. of this matter, there is manifestly a special record by that Omniscience referred to, which special record is to be opened in form. And who can tell but that every attitude of his moral being, every movement of his heart, his will, his affections, as well as every word of his lips, and every action of his life, goes down, by some mysterious arrangement, sponta- neously into such a record ? There may be a series of moral and spiritual daguerreotypes thus perpet- ually drawn from every intelligent creature, by as fixed a spiritual necessity as the physical arrange- ment by which the sun inevitably draws the picture of the face upon the plate prepared for it. And as that picture is drawn without any disguise or mis- take, exactly as the face is, in whatever position it happens to be, or with whatever expression it hap- pens to wear, so with the series of pictures or repro- ductions of our moral selves, our elements of char- acter, our habits of action, our attitudes of thought, feeling, expression, which go into God's book for the judgment, out of which, when it is filled up, can be read at a glance the whole character and destiny of the individual. Let us, then, look for a moment, first at the contents of this book of God as a book of character; also at the certainty with which, supposing it were opened beforehand, even in this world, the end could be predicted from its tenor ; and again at the only cause or agency by which its condemning tenor can be changed into mercy. Our life, then, under the operation of the Divine Omniscience, becomes a solemn book, on the leaves of which are written, THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 151 though invisibly to mortals, the processes of our real existence, the goings on of our inward, hidden being, the movements of real, undissembled, abso- lute character and motive. Our appearance in the eyes of men, our actions with the world, our life which the world notices, occupies but little of the writing in this book. By far the greater part is taken up with the processes of a life which men do not and cannot see, which God only sees fully and clearly, and of which we ourselves seldom read more than one page at a time. For though no part of the writing in this book goes into it without our consciousness, yet the moment it is there, the mo- ment it is recorded as a development that has actually taken place in and of our nature, we forget it, and pass on to the next. Every fact, every development in it is indestructible, is eternal. Every event, every thought, every feeling of our existence, every passion, every wish, every impulse, is a part of our- selves, a part of our character, a part of our ac- tual life, a part of the evidence by which we are to be judged, a part of the realities with which the book is filled, for us or against us. A thought once conceived, a feeling once indulged or experienced, a word once spoken, a movement or event once acted, goes down into the record, cannot be with- drawn from it, cannot be obliterated ; may now be invisible, but it is perpetual, is laid up for the judg- ment, It may be invisible now to every eye but God's, and yet it is visible now, whenever our own consciousness, the notice from ourselves, which was present when it was acted, when it first went into 152 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. being, is again fixed upon it. And that may be at an j time, and in a manner the most unexpected. The consciousness is sometimes carried back to a single word or feeling in the pages of this book even after the lapse of years, and there it pauses, bringing out the letters as in fire, reading them as clearly as if the hand had this moment traced them, and remembering the very atmosphere of character connected with them. Every letter in this book is preserved, every letter is important. The minutest processes of thought, the evanescent shades of feeling, the succession of uttered words, that seem almost as swift, as idle, as without law, and as countless, as the trembling and whispering of the leaves, when the wind breathes over a vast forest, must all be put down, all go to make up the whole meaning, all are parts of that mysterious, sacred, immutable, awful, eternal reality, called character. I write immutable, because, when the book is filled, there shall be no change forever. The very last entry or record made in it in this world may change the whole for eternity ; may pos- sibly, by the grace of Christ, do this, as in the case even of the thief upon the cross, when that last de- velopment, the last dying breath of the wind of life over the forest, — Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom, — changed the character of the whole book of the existence of that immortal being for the judgment. But when the last stir, the last whisper, upon the leaves has passed, the book is finished, and character is immutable, eter- nal. And ordinarily, nay, almost always, the last entry made in the book, the last recorded syllable. THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 153 is just as was the preceding, just follows in the train of habit and of life written down in all the previous pages. And again, because immutable, I have written aw- ful. Yes ! the reality of character, fixed for eternal duration, is a most solemn and awful contemplation. There is no idea in the whole compass of our conceptions more solemn than that of character. What you are now, what you have been thus far through life, in all likelihood you will be through eternity. We say in all likelihood, because, if you are now an unconverted soul, then, judgiug from all human experience, and from your own habitual neglect thus far, of the opportunities of change, the probability is that you will not change before you die. And what you are when you die, you will be, not in all likelihood, but in all certainty, through eternity. There is, therefore, nothing more solemn than the contemplation of character, nothing more intensely interesting than to watch its development. We have said that every letter in the book is pre- served. There may be actions, there may be words, there may be thoughts and feelings, so seemingly idle, so shadowy, so evanescent as the summer light- ning, in a man's existence, as by themselves to seem of no importance; but they all go to spell some words, and the words go to make up sentences, and the sentences complete the book, and make up the final sentence at the judgment. There may be in- terjections and glancings and points of thought and language, almost as meaningless and characterless by themselves, as the fount of type distributed in 154 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. the printer's cases ; but when they come to be set up together, and copied in the book, even a comma gives meaning. And therefore it is said by our blessed Lord that for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment. Letters form syllables, syllables form words, and words are connected by points so mi- nute, that a hundred of them together might not form a single syllable ; but their position fills them with meaning. It is not their greatness in them- selves, but the place in which you see them in the book, that gives them interest, makes them of con- sequence. And so it is with the almost invisible, imperceptible tenor of men's words and fancies, the current of men's unmarked, unnoticed life. Even a comma gives meaning, and a word that seems idle now, may be found, when you read the impression it makes in its own place, set in connection, to be very far from idle, nay, to have some deep and solemn meaning, or to throw an important light upon some other train of meaning. Sometimes things that seem as evanescent as the flashes of heat lightning in a summer's night, reveal a whole horizon of character in an instant ; just as in a sin- gle flash from amidst the darkness you may see re- vealed, with almost the distinctness of day, trees, buildings, mountains, and the whole line where earth separates from heaven. The materials of character lie in our being and habits, distributed apparently without law or order, as a superficial observer might suppose, just as the type in a printing office seems scattered without THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 155 meaning. But there is a law of character, a law of development, by which they are set up ; the evolu- tions of our being put them daily, hourly into shape, into publication, and then comes their record in the Book ; then they are indestructible, eternal, and full of meaning. That record is as clear and correct as the eye of Omniscience. No mistake is ever possible. The sun does not strike upon the plate of a daguerreotype a reflection of the image set against it with half the unerring precision, with which our thoughts, words, feelings, our whole ele- ments of being, character themselves, register them • selves, engrave themselves, in that Book for eterflity. The clear white paper does not receive the impress- ion from the type forced upon it, with half the exactness or power, with which the Book of charac- ter receives and preserves, in unmistakable, indelible identity, the whole image, or reproduction, of the minutest processes of our being. No syllable nor idle word can be lost. But even if it could, even if there were not this infinite, and to a wicked mind, intolerable exactitude of a repro- duction ; even if there were no greater accuracy than that with which the human mind can turn off its own creations, calculations and processes of thought, and numberings of event, by mere material machinery, with the perishable visible qualities of ink and type ; even then there could be no material mistake. Though a word be lost, and even whole sentences, you may almost invariably determine their purport unerringly by the context. Even manuscripts almost illegible, may be clearly de- 156 THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. cyphered by the skill of man, and lost inscriptions may be restored, in a manner that leaves no doubt whatever in any mind in regard to their meaning. And so in the context of a man's life, when it has flowed on for a few pages, yon could not only guess, but might read unerringly the meaning not only of words, but even of sentences here and there lost or illegible. And if God should open to you the Book of Judgment, that invisible record of which we have been speaking, and make its pages visible to you only for a little distance; if he should show you what is already written down in the record of any man's life up to the present moment, you could pre- dict yourself, with unerring certainty, from that part alone, what the tenor of the next page will be, except for only one cause, one possible change that may be effected. One cause put out of view, you could tell as unerringly that the next page of ex- istence will be of the same moral tenor as the past, as if you stood in futurity on the eternal side of the page, and read it as already past. One cause only excepted, and there runs through the record of a man's existence an inalienable despotism and identi- ty of impression and law of character from begin- ning to end, from time into eternity. It is the law of sin and of death in our corrupt nature, which you are as sure will come out and be reproduced in every successive page of existence, and rule the whole, except for one cause, as you are that you have already seen its development in any one page or sentence. The beginning is declarative of the THE THINGS WEITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 157 way, and the way of every man is declarative of the end of that man. You may not only predict with dread certainty that the next page of life turned over, and noted down, will be the same with all the past, but you can predict and read the end, as certainly as if you stood at the end ; as certainly as if God placed you by the dying sinner's bed, with your ear so close to his departing spirit, that not even a breath of impulse or feeling in his soul could stir unknown. Except for one cause you know that the soul of the man whose life, as it is written for the judgment, God has opened before you thus far, showing you that it has run on hitherto without God, without prayer, without an element of life indicated in it, will enter on the eternal world and pass to the eter- nal judgment, and be engulphed in the eternal destiny, just as hopeless and prayerless and lifeless as it has lived, with just the same elements of character and none different, with just the same ceaseless and determined absence and rejection of all the life of heaven, and just the same adherence and immutable despotism of the death of sin. And now, what is this one cause ? What is that solitary interposition, the possibility of which throws a bare single uncertainty into a calculation otherwise unerring, a prediction otherwise as sure as if the Eternal himself had uttered it ? What is that prin- ciple, or mighty agent, that can or may possibly interfere, and change the tenor of that book of character and judgment, which you have thus far read with the most perfect conviction that this man's 158 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. life is flowing on to inevitable perdition ? Perhaps there may have been not even an indication of any such agency, not a solitary trace of the effort or operation or existence of any such principle, in all the almost countless variety of impulses, thoughts, feelings, plans, desires, expectations, efforts, attain- ments, disappointments, developments of character, which you have been perusing. Perhaps, amidst all that variety of selfish, sinful development, and all the succession of events and changes, and trials of God's providence upon the soul, there may have been one unvaried continuity of hardness of heart, and insensibility and carelessness of mind, in regard to all considerations drawn from the eternal world ; an abandonment and destitution of all feeling, all alarm, all anxiety on the only subject on which the soul of man ought to be anxious, while on every other subject it is full of interest. And if so ; if this insensibility has become the habit of the soul, of which you are reading the development thus far, to judge of its character and end for the future ; and if you can trace no presence or effect of a higher power, life and effort, than that of the law of sin and of death in this fast ripening nature, then you have double reason to conclude that there never will be a change, but that this nature will go on developing as before, and is only fulfilling and ripening for end- less ruin. But it is scarcely possible to find such a case ; it is scarcely possible but that there must be, in some part of the record of this individual life, this develop- ment of character, and of influences for its formation, THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 159 some trace of the presence of that agency, some proof of the working of that principle, which alone is to change, if it ever be changed, the tenor of this record for the judgment. And indeed, if yon look carefully, you will see in ten thousand instances in the chain of events, circumstances, providences, causes, trials and blessings, prosperous and adverse discipline traced through the book, the undoubted presence and effort of a heavenly agency, the indi- cations of a cause working to turn the current of the man's being, if possible, towards heaven. You will find seasons of warning, of visitation, of solemnity — you will find the record of innumerable interpositions, both of Providence and grace — you will find the history of seasons, in which seed was sown that had almost taken root and sprung up in the man's character, to bear fruit to life everlasting. You will find, above all, the solemn record of the man's Sabbaths of mercy, and of the course of his feelings and experiences beneath them, and of the manner in which he turned aside from them un- changed, and withdrew his soul away from their merciful influences ; and as you see how, year after year, he came up to them, passed through them all, and entered again into the world a prayerless, un- changed man, you will feel with a deeper and deeper solemnity that the man's prospect of ever being changed is smaller and smaller, and the certainty of his going on to the end of his career as he has thus far pursued it, greater and greater. You begin to see that that agency which alone could defeat the certainty of your prediction as to the end of that 160 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. man, has manifestly been at work already, and been successfully resisted. You will perhaps meet with the record even of precious revivals of religion, set down in the book of this man's character for the judg- ment, and all the experiences of his soul in the midst of them — experiences of God's warning and gracious providences, and offers of the most inestimable kind. And if you meet with one such season, where the converting influences of God's Spirit have been descending on the souls of others around this man, but have had no effect upon him, leaving him, to say the least, just as hardened and careless as before, you will think that the possibility of an interposition now in his case, to change the whole tenor of his character, and make a new record for the judgment, even the record of faith in Christ, of a holy sorrow for sin, of heartfelt repentance, of forgiveness and eternal life, is indeed faint. You will feel that the way of this man is declarative of the end of this man ; and that, in all probability, the next page of the journal for eternity which you have been perus- ing will be of the same hopeless tenor as the last ; and that just thus the record will go on, till the last day of life, with its mercies, is wasted, and the last leaf of character filled up, unchanged, for the eternal world. But it is time to change the argument from sup- position to reality, and to turn the glass through which we have been gazing at the book of another's destiny in upon ourselves. May there not possibly be readers of these very pages, whose individual consciousness recognizes and claims the portrait as THE THINGS WKITTEN IN THE BOOKS. 161 their own ? Are there not those, whose consciences say distinctly and undeniably, Thou art the man, and this is the prediction of thy destiny. If you have not yourself fled to the Eedeemer of your soul to have your name entered as a penitent in his book of Life, whose character have you been reading thus far in God's book of Judgment ? Is it not your own, in forgetfulness of God, in procrastination, in neglect of your eternal interests, in resistance against the Holy Ghost, in the waste of innumerable oppor- tunities, in presumptuous sins against the Divine mercy, in hardness, insensibility and unbelief? And what now is the prediction of your own des- tiny, and what think you in your own case of the principle that the character and way of a man is declarative of the end of that man ? Is it not as certain as that the sun shines, that you will continue, unless you cry out for God's mercy, unless you seek the arresting and renewing power of God's grace, that you will continue just in this dreadful neglect of all opportunities of grace, till the book of your character is filled up entirely for the judgment, till the last moment of your life comes, without one element which is not an element against you, with- out one, which is not an element of sin and death ? Oh then, if you entertain the least thought of salva- tion, have mercy on your own soul ! Let it not pass on any longer in life beneath such a prophesy of death, beneath such a tremendous weight of evi- dence for your destruction. Rest not, till you get some element besides your sin and condemnation in the book of Judgment. If there be not the element 162 THE THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOKS. of love to Christ, of faith, in Christ, of reliance on Christ, of sorrow for sin, if there be not the element of repentance and prayer, there is nothing there, which is not utter desperation, which will not banish yon forever from heaven, which will not whelm yon in inevitable ruin. JSTow, in more than a dream, as you look over your past life, God opens to you the book of Judg- ment ; but thus far, if you have not repented of your sins, it is for you the book of guilt and ruin, the book of exclusion from Heaven, and the title- deed of your soul to the world of woe ! But praised be God, it is not yet filled up, there are pages in it yet unwritten. What shall be the tenor of the next page, even if one day's leaf still remains for your will, your character, to turn over? To think of its being at your own disposal, to fill up, as you will, for Eternity ! If now you will but write Christ's name there, and write your own name beneath it, though yours is the name of a poor, guilty, lost sinner, a worthless name, yet if you put it there as your own humble believing signature, God will put it with Christ's own name in his book of Life. And then the whole nature of this book of Judgment shall be changed for you from a book of only sin and misery to a book of grace and glory ! Let it be written on this page in your history, that there was weeping and prayer on earth, and joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth ! €fj£ %tmxtdim d X\t f rat In tlie affirmation of things revealed to faith, and received on the ground solely of the word of God, the sacred writers always assume them as absolute knowledge. There is no shadow of doubt admitted or intimated. So with the disclosure of the resur- rection of the just. The link by which the argu- ment of Divine truth is fastened to its practical con- clusion of duty is just this — -forasmuch as ye know. The encouragement, the animation, the impulse to duty, is not hope merely, but knowledge. The apostle speaks, at the close of the great resurrection- chapter, given to him for the church, in a firm, un- hesitating manner, as of a thing demonstrated, and not to be questioned. Then, again, the point or period where this assur- ance of reward for all the labor of the righteous in Christ Jesus has its termination, its fulfillment, is to be considered ; the vista, through which the mind of the writer runs on to far distant ages, stopping nowhere short of the final coming of the Lord in glory and for judgment. Ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. But it was not from any present victory or success, not from anything in the 164 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. saints' then present experience, or even earnest, of the inheritance of glory ; for they were then passing through great trial, and were regarded as the off- scouring of creation ; and it was not by any appeal to sight, or proof from sense, that the conclusion was established, but wholly by faith, founded on God's word, God's promises, through the cross, death, and resurrection of the Saviour, bringing future eternal glories near, as known, undoubted realities. Because Christ has died and risen again. This is the whole and sole foundation laid by the apostle ; and this stupendous fact once admitted, that He, who was in the beginning with God, and who was God, and who is God over all blessed for- ever, became man, God manifest in the flesh, suffer- ing, dying, rising, we KNOW that the purposes of God in this amazing transaction cannot fail. What- ever object God had in view in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Lord of life and glory, must be accomplished. There is no more possibility of a failure, than there is that Jehovah should abdi- cate the throne of the universe. The blindest faith may find light here, and the deepest despondency may be encouraged here, in this one fact, undiscover- able, unimaginable, but by Divine revelation, that Christ, the incarnate Son of God, has died. It is the central fact of all our knowing ; it is as a sun shot into the chaos of human speculation, and a radiance spreads from it through infinitude, and a power is in it vivifying all knowledge. The dis- covery of the law of gravitation was not so simplify- ing and explanatory in the theory of the physical THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 165 universe, as the knowledge of the death of Christ, by Divine revelation, in the moral universe. If we believe this fact as God has revealed it, then we know that all God's promises, made with respect to this fact, and on the ground of it, are sure ; they are all yea and amen in Christ Jesus. They all hang and hinge upon this fact, cluster and revolve around it, and derive their life and activity from it. What- ever else might fail, nothing that is attached to the cross of Christ can fail. Now, as to the nature of the resurrection, as a demonstration grounded on this transaction, we may find it briefly summed up in a passage in the Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians : " For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." This constitutes the whole argument in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthi- ans, the dying and rising again of Jesus. By Him is the resurrection of the dead. For this purpose He both died and rose again, that believers in Him, having died to sin and risen in holiness, might rise also from the dead unto life everlasting. The resur- rection of the dead is to be the great revelation of the Divine glory ; it will be the scene in which all the processes of grace and of God's providential wisdom, that have been drawing on silently and in concealment, will come to their most glorious out- breaking development before the whole universe. Till that day everything lies hidden, or in germs, or like the processes of a living vegetation under ground. Before that day, the very providences of 166 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. God are as seed sown, and preparing, out of sight, to rise into light and glory. There can be no concep- tion, beforehand, of the greatness of that glory. If a man that had never seen in its blossoming perfection that plant that blooms but once in a hundred years, were to look upon the rough stem, or uncouth leaves of the tree, could he form the least conception of the consummate loveliness of the flower, when it shall appear, the exquisite beauty and grace to be developed ? If any man had lived all his days in a twilight prison, or subterranean cave, and had never beheld the sunrise, could he have the least imagination of the glory of that scene ? But far less can it come within the scope of a human intellect to behold in the seed-corn of God's opera- tions the infinite glory of the future, or to conceive the nature of that scene, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all who believe. The resurrection itself is a transaction of inconceivable, incomprehensible power and glory. The time when it takes place is the time of the ' Redeemer's second coming.* Hence " the coming of the Lord," and "the appearing of the Lord," being connected, in the minds of the disciples, with such glorious expectations, came to be the signal phrases, by which they described the consummation of all things in God's scheme of redemption. When the Saviour cometh in the clouds of heaven, and all the holy angels with Him, he cometh to raise the dead, and to judge all nations. When Paul says that those also who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him, THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 167 he means that the dead in Christ shall be raised, and carried into heaven to be forever with the Lord. In nearly all his epistles he presents the same great fact, as the great ground of encouragement and joy, and sometimes in a logical strain not unlike the one in the great resurrection chapter to the Corinthians. This also is in fact the grand heart of that triumph- ant chapter, the eighth of the epistle to the Eomans. If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. And the triumph- ant strain in the second epistle to the Corinthians has the same key-note, the same theme, the same conclusion. " We, having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken, we also believe, and therefore speak ; knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not, knowing that our light affliction worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and that when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." To the same purport is the great passage in the epistle to the Philippians. " For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile 168 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto bis glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself." These different passages are like the ground waves in a vast deep sea, or like the tidal movement of the whole body of waters under a heavenly orb. The tide of emotion, in faith, hope, joy, love, rolls up in one and the same mighty argument, addressed to differ- ent minds, at different times, yet always for the whole church of Christ, and with the same conclusion. In the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corin- thians the argument is drawn out into greater detail than anywhere else, not only as to the raising of the dead, but as to the kind of body with which the dead are to be invested. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power ; it is sown a material body, it is raised a spiritual body. Its model is the Lord from heaven ; for as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly ; and as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. For this corruptible must put on incor- ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incor- ruption, and this mortal shall have put on immor- tality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory ! O Death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory ! Now we are to remark that all this is not the mere resurrection, but the resurrection into the THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 169 image and likeness of Jesus Christ. The two things are widely different, although the one is not to be conceived apart from the other, and both are merged in one and the same mighty event of Christ's coming. The bare raising of the dead is not the thing which is so much insisted on in the New Testament, as perhaps the mightiest to us conceiva- ble exercise of God's power ; but the raising of the dead in the glo^ of Christ Jesus ; that is, the righteous dead, those who sleep in Jesus, to the possession, in body as well as spirit, of a sonship of God that shall make them joint heirs with Christ, to be glorified together with Him. The earnest ex- pectation of the creature waiteth for that manifesta- tion of the Son of God. And we ourselves also, says the Apostle, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. It is not the resurrection of our body, but the redemption, which certainly includes the great reality and consummation of glory in the possessed and perpetual likeness of Christ. All before that is but the earnest of an inheritance until the redemp- tion of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory. The bare raising of the dead is not a thing so difficult or impossible to conceive, nor does it seem to us the most amazing exercise of Divine power conceivable ; but the investment of our im- mortal being, and change of our mortal, with this spiritual and glorified body like unto Christ's is re- ferred to as an exercise of Divine power, so entirely beyond the possibility of conception by the human 8 170 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. mind natively, that the Apostle praj^s for an inspira- tion, baptism and illumination from above, " that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and do- minion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come ; and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." Now, sitting down before this last passage, if we endeavor to analyze the elements, and sound its depths of meaning, we speedily find that there are involved in it ideas and processes not only sweeping the whole universe of God, but rising to the ineffa- ble and incommunicable perfections of Jehovah, in that light inaccessible and full of glory, to which no creature can approach nor hath seen, nor can see. And yet this infinite glory of God in Christ Jesus, and this exercise of infinite Divine power in His resurrection and ascension at the right hand of the Father, is presented as the type by which, and ac- cording to which, to measure the glory of the re- demption of our body. We must consider, there- fore, that there is here a transference from the grave of mortal flesh to the throne of eternity, a transfer- ence of a human being, not indeed ever at any mo- THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 171 merit separate from the Divine, but the transference still of the Man Christ Jesus, raised from the dead, past all orders of intelligences, angels, archangels, principalities, powers, thrones, dominions, almost infinite on infinite, past them all, to the very throne of God, for it is the throne of God and of the Lamb, to which He is exalted ; the transference, or trans- figuration and transference, of a body that lay in the tomb, quickened, glorified, beyond, far beyond, all forms of glory and of power, and all possible con- ception of such forms, that had ever been created, up to a glory and a lordship, such as the Eternal "Word had with the Father before the world was. Considering this, we perceive the need of a baptism of the soul by the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, before we can begin to un- derstand the greatness of such a transaction. And considering this, we begin to comprehend how un- searchable, how incomprehensible is the exercise and manifestation of the same Divine power in us, according to the working of that mighty power in the resurrection and enthroning of Christ with the majesty of Supreme Deity, the same Divine power in us, according to that pattern; even the investi- ture of all the redeemed in Christ, with the same likeness and life out of the embrace of death, en- throned in glory everlasting ! If now we wish for a still more direct confirma- tion of this theory, a more explicit proof of this be- ing the definite sense to be put upon this passage, we have but to turn to that wondrous promise in the third chapter of the Eevelation of John, where our 172 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. Saviour says, To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also over- came, and am set down with my Father in His throne. What is here meant no man can tell this side the grave, any more than John could tell what the being a joint heir with Christ meant, when he said, It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. But that is meant, whatever it be, which the Apostle prays, in such strong and fervent language for grace to understand, that which is shadowed forth in the description of the mighty power of God, when Christ Jesus himself was raised from the dead, and seated on the throne of eternity. His prayer is, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the greatness of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ, when he raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand, in the heavenly places. The illumination, divine, supernatural, by the Holy Spirit, is here prayed for, that we may know some- thing of this glory here and now, even in this mor- tal state, that it may not be to us as a succession of unknown hieroglyphics, but revealed to our hearts at least, by the Spirit ; but to know it absolutely and THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST. 173 perfectly here, is impossible, and therefore there is here just such a hyperbole of thought, logic, ex- pression, as in that other wondrous prayer, that we might comprehend with all saints what is the length and depth and breadth and height, and know the love of Christ, which passeih knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of Grod. In either case, in both cases, it passes knowledge indeed ; and what defi- nitely is meant, we cannot know, till we ourselves, and Christ in us, and we in Christ, are revealed in eternity. A meaning in any sense answering to those amazing words of God and promises of Christ, a meaning in any sense corresponding to that astonishing declaration, that Christ Jesus, who is now seated on the throne of the universe, will give to the overcoming believer to sit down with Him on His throne, as He is seated with the Father on His throne, must surpass the possibility of our present faculties and state to know, and must shadow forth a glory utterly beyond our conception. And we are reminded by such expressions of the declaration of the inspired Apostle concerning even himself and his fellow Christians, that now we know only in part, and that here we see only as through a glass darkly. It is not dimly that we see, but in fact, in comparison with that which is to be seen, in com- parison with the excess of glory and of light soon to be revealed, we see darkly ! What then will it be, when we know even as we are known ! ^toak-eniitjj in (M'a ITilunm In the fifteenth verse of the seventeenth Psalm, David exclaims, "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. I will behold thy face in right- eousness." In the 15th verse of the 49 th Psalm David says, speaking of the universal death of mankind, " But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for he shall receive me" This is precisely similar to the language of the 73d Psalm, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.' Before this recep- tion into glory there comes the sleep of death. The repose of the grave is before the resurrection, and the resurrection is not from death merely, but from the grave. Death, and the lying down in the grave, are as a sleep, from which the resurrection is an awakening. This was Job's and David's con- ception of it; this was Paul's exhibition of it. Paul loved to present death as a quiet, peaceful slumber in the Lord. "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, them also which sleep in AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 175 Jesus will Cod bring with him. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall alsoquicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you." They that sleep in Jesus are to be raised by virtue of his resurrection, as they have been forgiven and justified by virtue of his death, and sanctified by the grace of his spirit. Christ is risen from the dead, and be- come the first fruits of them that slept. He is the first born from the dead, the beginning ; that in all things he might have the preeminence ; Christ the first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming. All will not sleep, nor be raised. There will be those living in the body, when Christ cometh to judgment, who will not go down to the grave. There will be a world of people, as living, as active, perhaps as careless, as the world at this day, when the peal of the last trumpet breaks upon the uni- verse. There will be believers, perhaps a multi- tude, who shall never see death. But all will be changed ; and what the resurrection is to those who sleep in the grave, the change will be to those who are living when the graves are opened. But the dead in Christ, they that sleep in Jesus, will be raised first of all, in an incorruptible, glorious, celes- tial body, and then all living believers will be changed into the same body, so that the effect will be the same with them, as the awakening from the sleep of the grave with those who slumber there. This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. Whatever be the process going on, while the sleep of death con- tinues, it is a sleep in Jesus, from which the awak- 176 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. erring will be the positive entrance of the soul into everlasting life, in an immortal, incorruptible, spirit- ual, glorified body. Now, the glory of that awakening passes all con- ception, this side the grave. It is clear that it is of the nature of an awakening ; that is the word best fitted for it. There must be something like a dream, a sleep : the language of inspiration clearly intimates as much. There are no processes of nature that meet the case, except by faint analogy, such as the grain of wheat falling into the ground, and dying, and then awakening into the light of day, and the green, fresh life of sunny nature; or such as the chrysalis, the grub, the worm, awakening from darkness and deformity, from a confinement to earth, into illimitable freedom, in exquisite beauty of form and color, on bright, glittering wings, in the pure liquid air. But these wondrous transformations and resurrections are of things material and corruptible, with all their loveliness, and can by no means shadow forth the yet incomprehensible glory of a change from the material to the spiritual, from the corrupti- ble to the incorruptible, from the sleep of the grave to the glories of eternity. Whatever be the nature of that sleep, whatever the state of the soul while the body is in the grave, the awakening from it will be a surprise of infinite and overwhelming glory. The grand surpassing thought in it is that of the likeness of God ; and who can arrive in this world at any adequate conception of that glory? For a sinful creature to find itself suddenly and entirely perfect in God's likeness, would itself be a surprise and a AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 177 blissfalness overwhelming, even here. For a creature to lie down in death, in this body of sin, with all the consciousness of sinfulness, which accompanies most vividly the most holy in this world ; for a sinful creature thus to lie down in the cradle of the dj^ing body, rocked there to sleep, as by the Saviour's love, and then, out of that sleep, to awake in God's perfect likeness! All the images and analogies that we could summon to our aid would fail to convey any appropriate imagination or description of it. If a man were translated from the deepest dungeons into the light of noon, that would be nothing — if a man were snatched from the central deserts of Arabia, and transported into the fresh, cool verdure of gar- dens like the Paradise of Eden, that would be nothing — if, out of the dark, unfathomed caves of ocean, a prisoner should rise to the bright air of day, and the open life of creation, that would be nothing. For, oh! there is nothing to compare with the change from the sinfulness of a fallen race into the holiness of God — from the gloom and corruption of a body of sin and death, into the spirituality, the light, the glory, the dazzling radiance, the infinite purity, of the glorified body of the incarnate Son of God ! Take Job, as a child of God, and suppose him dying, amidst his extreme affliction and suffering. Take David, with all his attainments, in advanced old age. Think of his decrepid frame, stiffening and helpless, health and warmth deserting it, with his mind perhaps verging towards second childhood ; and can any imagination conceive the change from such bondage, imprisonment and weakness, into the 8* 178 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. perfect likeness of God? Take Lazarus, full of sores — take Latimer, burning at the stake — take Baxter or Flavel — and look at the form and state of their mortality, and see if you can command any imagination of the overwhelming surprise of glory comprehended, of necessity, in a translation and transfiguration into God's own likeness. We may take the experience of the dying Payson, one of the nearest approximations of heaven to earth, and of earth to heaven, ever known; but even there, great as was the tide of ineffable happiness God was pouring through his soul, yet there is nothing that can convey to us an adequate image of the astonish- ment of wonder and of rapture with which such a being must find himself awakened, in immortal life, in God's own perfect likeness. The consideration of this subject brings together and illustrates a great number of passages both in the Old and New Testament, but especially in Paul's epistles, all shedding a grand and glorious light on one another. Of this nature is that expression of Paul in the epistle to the Philippians, That I may "know him, and the power of his resurrection, in con- nection with that great prayer for illumination, by the spirit, in the epistle to the Ephesians, on which we have already dwelt. These passages are illus- trated with great glory, when we bring David's wonderful expres'sions in the 16th and 17th psalms in connection with them, showing the dependence of the church in body and soul upon, and its con- nection with Christ's resurrection. The power of his resurrection is not only that power by which he AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 179 ■ himself was raised, but that efficacy of his resurrec- tion, by which (as he is the head, and believers are his body) the body, and every member of it, will experience the same glorious resurrection with the head. For our conversation, says Paul in another passage to Philippians, is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the work- ing whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. And again, he is the Saviour of the body, and we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. With this stands connected that expression, Christ in you the hope of glory, and also, in the same first chapter of Colossians, the mention of Christ's death and resurrection, accord- ing to the pleasure of the Father, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him, in the body of his flesh through death, to present the saints, holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, without fault before the throne of God in his likeness. Also here are illustrated those passages in the eighth chapter of Eomans, in connection with the 5th chapter of the 2d Corinthians, and the 4th and 5th of the 1st Thessalonians with the first chapter of the second epistle to the same ; all, parts of one and the same magnificent and mighty anthem, looking for, hastening unto, and yearning after the coming of the day of Christ, and the glory to be revealed when he shall come to be admired in his saints, to shine out in them, and they in him, according to 180 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. that expression, " When he, who is our life shall ap- pear, then shall je also appear with him in glory." Then shall be that manifestation of the sons of God, for which the earnest expectation of the crea- ture waiteth, and that redemption of the body, for which the soul, even in the enjoyment of the first- fruits of the spirit, yearneth and groaneth. And here are illustrated all those fervent and almost im- patient desires after Christ's appearing, expressed so frequently in the New Testament, and which be- came so habitual and peculiar a characteristic of the saints, that they were described as those who long for his appearing. For then only would they ap- pear with him in glory, then only be delivered from this body of sin and death, and through their trans- formation into the likeness of Christ's glorified body, obtain a full introduction in that body of light, into the knowledge and enjoyment of all the glories of the celestial world. And hence, too, the anathemas pronounced against those pernicious infidels, who denied that Christ had come in the flesh, as well as those who denied his resurrection. And hence the frequent repetition by our blessed Lord, in his ser- mon on this subject in the sixth of John, of that cheering passage of promise to the believer, And I will, raise him up at the last day; a thing impos- sible except by the coming, dying, rising, and su- preme glorification and enthronement of Christ in his mediatorial kingdom. We have cause to believe that one of the reasons inducing the assumption by our blessed Lord of a human body for accomplishing the work of redemp- AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. 181 tion was the utter impossibility, except by such in- carnation, and our transfiguration into, and possess- ion of, its image and glory, in a body like Christ's, that we could ever see God. For he dwelleth in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see ; and this impossibility of seeing God in that in- accessible light, of beholding God's face in right- eousness, and of awakening in his likeness, could be taken away only by God in Christ becoming man, God manifest in the flesh, assuming a mortal body, which itself, by the power of the divinity in Christ's own death and resurrection, should be changed, glorified, and formed a type, according to which, and according to that alone, and by transfiguration like it, it would be possible to be admitted amidst the glories of heaven, with the possibility of com- muning with .them and understanding them. Our utter incapacity now to form any definite concep- tions of the glories of the heavenly world may be the want of that very medium, through which alone the heavenly world can be definitely seen and con- versed with, that body which is the image and like- ness of Christ's body. When clothed upon with that house which is from heaven, then the soul will see and understand, and then it will be satisfied. It will be as familiar with the scenes of heaven as the angels are, and those scenes will be as familiar and as suited to the souls of the redeemed in Christ's image in their glorified spiritual body, as to the souls of angels. But it may be absolutely impossible, without that spiritual organization, to come into 182 AWAKENING IN GOD'S LIKENESS. such communion with, the spiritual world, as that after which David was longing, that to which all the redeemed are advancing, that which all the angels, and the spirits of the just made perfect, for- ever enjoy. €fj£ ^mxxtttm of $amtrattmu The Sabbath of this announcement was one of tbe most marked in tbe ministry of our Saviour. It was that in wbicb, after a great and merciful mir- acle of healing, he justified to the Jews his own working on the Sabbath day by the example of God himself, the Creator and providential governor of the universe. And when the Jews interpreted that as making himself equal with God, our blessed Lord, instead of disavowing any intention of claim- ing such equality, went on to declare and explain it still more distinctly. He revealed to the Jews the great fact that all works whatsoever which the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son likewise, and that even as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. Moreover he told them that all judgment was committed to the Son, in order that all should honor the Son as they honor the Father. He told them that the hour was coming, and even then was, when the dead in tres- passes and sins should hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard should live. For that, as the Father had life in himself, so had he given to 184 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. the Son to have life in himself, and authority to ex- ecute judgment also, because he was not only the Son of God but the Son of man. He told them that they need not marvel at that announcement, for the hour was coming in which all that were in the graves should hear his voice, and should come forth ; they that have done good unto the resurrec- tion of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. A series of disclosures was here made to the people, in regard to the char- acter and glory of Christ, of amazing magnitude and importance, but with the plainest simplicity and distinctness. Announcement followed announce- ment, with the grandeur of great thunder-bursts of truth from heaven, yet in serene calmness and majesty, and with a plainness that could neither be questioned nor misunderstood. It was God mani- fest in the flesh, revealing himself in that form, as possessing divine authority and attributes, the Author of life, the Eedeemer and Judge of man, the Arbiter of all the destinies and results both of the resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation. This was a wondrous sermon. Its texts are of an unfathomable meaning in vastness and glory. It was like taking up great mountains and throwing them into the sea. And indeed, with what an almost confounding weight must these disclosures of the two Kesurrections have fallen upon the minds of our Lord's hearers! We can almost hear the fire-side report made by one of them as he went home to tell to his family what the great Prophet had been saying to the people. "He spake as THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 185 never man spake. He told us that all things for time, death, and eternity, were committed into his hands, and that he, just as God the Father, had the power of life, death, and the judgment. He told us of the resurrection. He said that he himself was the Lord of it, and could raise the dead, and quicken whom he would. He told us of the resur- rection of life, and how every one who would be- lieve in Grod through his word should have ever- lasting life, and should pass from death unto life, and never more see condemnation. But 0, he told us more than that ; he told us of the resurrection of damnation ; and when he told of that, it was with tones of such tenderness and sorrow, yet solemnity and awe, it was with such profound and overwhelm ing conviction accompanying the manner and the words in our souls, it fell from his lips upon us, not idly nor speculatively, as the Pharisees talk, but with such exceeding and eternal weight of truth and earnestness, that indeed it seemed as if the judg ment had come, and Gehenna's gates stood open be fore us, and we were entering in. Yes, he told us of the resurrection of damnation ; and I, who nevei before trembled at what our prophets have spoken, nor at what John spake of the fire unquenchable, when he warned us to flee from the wrath, felt this in mine inmost soul. The resurrection of damna- tion ! The resurrection of damnation ! The words still ring in mine ears. Oh what shall we do to escape the resurrection of damnation?" Yes, even so, without all question : such was the preaching of Christ. The most burning revelations 186 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. of hell and of heaven came from His words ; and such, we doubt not, was the effect again and again produced upon the souls of His hearers. And here, again, we observe the reverberation of the tones and expressions of the Spirit of God from the Old Testament into the New, and from the New into the Old. Our blessed Lord was preaching simply what had been taught from the beginning of the revelation of God; and here, on this occasion, He had been referring to what was plainly set down in the Book of the Prophet Daniel. And when He said that all judgment was committed into His hands, because He was the Son of man, He referred to the descrip- tion of the dominion of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, seen in the night visions of Daniel. And when He spoke of the resurrection of life, and the resurrection of damnation, what was it but a Divine illumination and paraphrase of the great resurrection-text in Daniel, that they who sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake, some to ever- lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con- tempt ; when they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever ? In truth, the Old Testament declarations on this and other subjects were as the frame and canvas of a vast transparency prepared and sketched of God ; while Christ and His Spirit and teachings in the New Testament are as the light from heaven, lighting all within, illuminating all the figures, and shining forth through them to all the world with such power and plainness, that he who runs may read. THE KESUBRECTION OF DAMNATION. 187 Christ it was, and His Spirit indeed, that spake through all the prophets ; but when Christ came on earth as the Word made flesh, then the Divine pre- dictions in Daniel and all others became incarnate in Him, and the truth was seen and felt, no more in the difficulty or dimness of prophetic hieroglyphics, but living, moving, acting. The words that Christ uttered came as tongues of flame from the eternal world, touching men's souls as with fire; and all His revelations concerning the future retribution for the wicked assumed an awful distinctness, whether investing selected persons standing for classes of men, as Lazarus and Dives, and couched beneath the coloring and imagery of heaven and hell, per- sonifying realities, or pealed forth in decisive lan- guage, as sharp and startling as the Archangel's trumpet, These shall go away into everlasting pun- ishment ; but the righteous, into life eternal ! Now, this powerful form of contrast adopted in the last sentence is familiar both in the Old and New Testament, but far more direct and startling in the New. Whatever of glory and blessedness there is known to be in the resurrection of life, we may and must, with certainty, conclude right the opposite in the resurrection of damnation. Experience, in both cases, deserts us, and we are thrown upon God's word. But there is a kind of predictive and corro- borative experience, which we possess in each case, through the Spirit of God, and the revelation in our own consciousness, which is exceedingly powerful. The Spirit of God producing, in souls submissive and believing, a hungering and thirsting after righte- 188 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. ousness in God's likeness, shows, beforehand, some- thing of the glory to be revealed, in the event of an awaking in that likeness. The happiness arising, even in this world, even out of these desires after God, is sometimes so great, that it is like an experi- ence of heaven — like being filled with all the fulness of God. And jnst so the Spirit of God, and men's own convictions, together with their dread and fore- boding of punishment, produce in the conscience of the wicked a sense of guilt, and a terror of coming wrath, which is sometimes insupportable ; a sight of their own defilement and depravity, in the likeness of Satan, and in contrast with the character of a holy God, which produces some experimental de- monstration of the terror of an awakening in the image of fiends. To a mind that has any proper appreciation of the difference between holiness and sin, any true knowledge of the character of God, any sense of God's holiness, any true conviction of guilt, and sense of the evil of sin, there could be nothing more terrible than the contemplation of such an awaken- ing, nothing so dreadful as the prospect or the fear of it in one's own case. There could be no descrip- tion of the world of woe more terrific than this, that it is a world of unmingled and eternal depravity. And this is the least we can possibly make out of it, namely, that that depravity of our nature, which is here restricted, negatived, and neutralized, even with the worst, and made oftentimes to assume many insinuating, amiable and pleasing forms, will there be perfectly developed, without any restric- THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 189 tion, any neutralization, any disguise. This is the world of seeds, of causes, and of tendencies ; that is the world of harvests, of results, and of perfected and eternal consequences. There will be no mix- ture of causes or of character there, but perfect, defecated wickedness, purified from all mixture of good, and. incurably, immutably, everlastingly evil. There will be nothing but the scum and dross of creation. It is rising to the surface here, and in pro- cess of development and of separation from the precious metal. It is mingled and separating now because the very system under which we live through the interposition of Christ, is that of proba tion and grace, for such development and separation that character may be. perfectly tried and known that all who wish to become good, may, and that the righteous may be perfectly purified. But there the scum and dross will be gathered and flung away by itself, according to that significant declaration of the Psalmist, Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross. Many shall be purified and made white, and tried ; but the wicked shall still do wickedly, and all forms of evil character will go on to fill up their measures of iniquity, and there must be an eternal separation, without any more combi- nation. It must be so, for the defence of God's own character, for the sake of His righteousness and justice, and for the purity of heaven itself. Other- wise there would lie against God's government there, and against the possibility of unmingled blessedness there, the same objections that are brought here ; according to that very striking pas- 190 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. sage in Jeremiah, where the prophet, describing the uselessness and misery of a state of society where justice is not executed, but the evil are permitted to mingle successfully with the good, corrupting and corrupted, observes that a the bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire, and the founder melteth in vain, because the wicked are not plucked away." But there will be nothing of this at the resurrec- tion, but each world and system, of the righteous and the wicked, will be alone in its perfection. There will be no such thing there as a growth of character which is half tares and half grain, but all will be either tares or grain solely. The tares will be gathered into bundles to burn them, and the grain into God's barn. Here, a man going into the field, can hardly tell, sometimes, what is wheat and what are tares, and sometimes even the same ear will seem one side grain and the other tares ; but it cannot be so at the end of all things, when character will be developed and discerned in infinite perfec- tion. The angels shall come forth, and shall sepa- rate the evil from the good. The opposite and conflicting elements of character and of being will draw off to opposite extremes, opposite worlds, and there will be nothing but eternal and unchangeable fixtures of holiness and blessedness or of sin and misery. Now, just as, if Christ be in you, though the body must die because of sin, yet the spirit is life because of righteousness, and He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 191 His Spirit that dwelleth in you ; just so, if Christ be not in you, then, as the body must die because of sin, so body and soul must remain in sin, for there is no spirit of life to raise the body in Christ ; but you are under the law of sin and of death, and yours is the carnal mind which is enmity against God, and the spirit in you is death because of wickedness. And as it is the work of the spirit of life to make a spiritual body, so it is the work of the spirit of death to make a corrupted and corruptible body. He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting ; but he that soweth to the flesh shall o± the flesh reap corruption. And as the body of the resurrection of life is a glorified body suited to the character of the holy soul, and growing out of it, in the likeness of Christ, by the Spirit of Christ, so the body of the resurrection of damnation will be equally suited to the character of the sinful soul, growing out of that, by the spirit of death and of evil, a deformed and tormented body in the likeness of fiends. So that, although the awakening to shame and everlasting contempt spoken of beforehand in Daniel, seems a faint and mild form of the predic- tion of retribution, as compared with the figures and realities used by our Saviour, yet, interpreted by those, as it must be, and illuminated by the glare of that fiery corruption reaped from sow- ing to the flesh, it conveys a most terrific and tremendous meaning. What but a shame and ever- lasting contempt by us inconceivable can await the soul of the wicked, awakening in a body as de- formed as the soul ; in a body of infernal spirituality, 192 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. which, with, the same translucent power of a celestial body, will convey, and answer to, without any con- cealment or imperfection, the whole corruption of the soul, its real, undisguised, unmingled character of perfect evil. For such it must be, to answer to that declaration of Christ, Depart ye cursed. For nothing, in which any mixture of good remained, could have such a curse from God ; and anything bearing such a curse must be a terror and contempt to itself as well as a terror and contempt to the universe. And it is quite as impossible to conceive the overwhelming horror of surprise, in which a wicked soul will rise in such accursed deformity of utter wickedness in the resur- rection of damnation, as it it impossible to conceive the overwhelming surprise of glory and blessedness, in which the holy soul will rise in God's perfect likeness. Take the case of the rich man given by our blessed Lord, as we have already taken the case of Lazarus amidst his sores, his sufferings, his wretchedness, on earth, with the dogs for his com- panions, to show how impossible it is for us to con- ceive the overwhelming surprise of blessedness and glory to him, when he found himself conveyed by angels, in God's own likeness, into the bliss of heaven ; take the case of the rich man amidst his sumptuous living, his costly and splendid array, his crowd of waiting servants and of friends, all ministering to his pleasures, all praising his virtues, all treating him with marked and uninterrupted respect ; and who can conceive the overwhelming surprise of horror with which he awoke on d ying, and in hell lifted THE RESURRECTION OP DAMNATION. 193 up his eyes being in torments ? Who can conceive the awfulness of the man's terror and despair, in finding out his own character ! No wonder that our Lord has said there shall be weeping and gnash- ing of teeth. And let it be remembered that it is our blessed Lord himself who has said all these things. And though the carping unbeliever sometimes endeavors to countenance his attacks upon Cod's word by shooting his envenomed arrows at what he calls the hard and cruel things of the Old Testament, yet let it be remembered that for every threatening of evil to the wicked there, you will find incom- parably greater terribleness and distinctness of retri- bution shrouded in the words of our Eedeemer. Nay, not shrouded, but the shroud taken off, the covering in the Old Testament removed, and every- thing in the preaching of Christ made as if we stood ourselves on the burning verges of heaven and hell, and beheld, with our own eyes, their realities. For truth itself was incarnated in Christ, and as he was the Word made flesh, so the reports from heaven and hell in the Old Testament, coming through his lips, seem living and moving as incarnate forms among us. Poor rich man ! destined to such an awakening ! could not some one, armed with the truth of heaven, have gone in at some of his grand feasts, and told him what was before him ? Could not some earnest friend have said to him, Dear sir, you are close upon your mortal sickness, and you are not prepared for death, and when you die, from all this luxury you 9 194 THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. will wake up in unmingled wickedness, contempt and misery ! But if there had been such a faithful messenger, one among a thousand, what would have been his reception ? Have you no more manners, the rich man would have answered, than to bring your untimely croakings here in the midst of my company and pleasures? Away with your libels upon God and human nature, as if God were not a God who loves to see his creatures enjoying them- selves ! As if man were a being of so much wick- edness as to be destined to the state which you call hell! Aye, but there stands Christ's own word, In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. Poor rich man! had he no friends, nor warning messengers to entreat and save him. Oh yes ! he had many ! He had Moses and the Prophets. He had David describing to him his own state and danger. He had Daniel telling him of the resurrec- tion of the wicked. He had God's word, God's providences, God's mercies, seeking to bring him to repentance ; but all in vain. Now, for what purpose are these disclosures? Have I any pleasure at all in the death of him that dieth ? saith the Lord ; and was it any pleasure to our Blessed Redeemer, to unveil the secrets of the world of woe ? Is it not all in mercy, all in love, that he puts for us, in such vivid light, the resurrection of life on one side, and the resurrection of damnation on the other, and bids us choose ? In the miglity transactions of the judgment, how solemn and awful is the instrumentality of the angels of God ! The Son of man shall send forth his angels. They are the angels of Christ ; and as to their number, it seems to be intimated that all heaven, all the holy beings in God's universe, will be his ministers in the transactions of that day. The Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him. The Lord Jesus shall be re- vealed from Heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was, in the antediluvian world, a prediction of the scene, and a foreshowing of the Lord's coming. For Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are un- godly of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." And at a later period, as an advancing step in this revelation, we have the sublime delineation in 196 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. Daniel. " I beheld till the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool ; His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him ; thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him ; the judgment was set, and the books were opened. "What multitudes on multitudes, countless, incon- ceivable, are here •represented! Each as a flaming fire, each as the lightning, in power, swiftness, and glory ! Who can conceive the unimaginable gran- deur, the awful splendor of that day ! All that ever went before, of God's judgments, were but faint symbols of this. God's coming on Sinai was terrible in grandeur, yea, of intolerable sublimity and glory; yet it was little compared with this. All the efforts of the human mind fail before the inconceivable magnitude and majesty of this final reality, this last whirlwind blaze, this ministration of flaming intelligences amidst material burnings, this manifestation and execution of the Divine attri- butes in the unrestricted fulness of their hitherto veiled and restrained glory, this final development of judgment and of retribution by the agency of all the brightest and mightiest holy beings in the uni- verse of God ! There have been dreams of these things ; men have been visited in the night visions with appalling bursts of the light, the glory, and the terror of this last day, so that they have awaked in anguish uncontrollable ; and some in words and images of fire have told the scenery through which THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 197 their dreams have carried them ; but no possible imagery can adequately realize this last transaction to the mind. The angels of God, as presented in the parable of the tares, are the reapers of the final har- vest. They are commissioned by the Son of man to gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. They are thus to sever the wicked from among the just. They are to gather first the tares in bundles, preparatory to what follows. They are to make this great and final separation of the evil from the good, before they are cast into that world, in which the foun- tains of the great deep of retribution will be broken up upon them. They are supposed to know, in- stantly and unerringly, the objects of their search. There can be not a moment's doubt or hesitation. The tares and the wheat will both be disclosed in perfection. A good angel on this commission will have no more difficulty in knowing, as quick as thought, an evil being from this world, than he would have in discovering an angel of darkness from the bottomless pit. As in the resurrection, the awakening of the wicked will be to shame and everlasting contempt, in the character and likeness of unalloyed evil, while the good will shine out as the stars of the firmament in brightness, so in the change that will take place with all the living at the last day, all the growing tares then above ground will put off, with their mortal covering, all character but evil, and will develop all of evil that before was concealed. So that the passage of the light- 198 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. ning cannot be more swift, than the knowledge where the lightning should strike ; and the angels that are to gather the tares into bundles, will have no more difficulty or uncertainty as to the indica- tions of their work, in gathering out of Christ's kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity, than those who are to gather the bright shining golden sheaves of wheat, to transport them into God's garner. What a harvest-home will that be, what a procession of glory, what songs of re- joicing, what melodies of heavenly blessedness, when the reaper's work is done, and the companies of white-winged seraphs convey their glorious sheaves, their gathered multitudes of the redeemed, into the presence of God and the Lamb ! And on the other hand, what a harvest-home of misery, what a procession of terror, amidst weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, with the majesty and overwhelming glory of Halleluia anthems to the divine justice vindicated, when the reaper's work is done upon the tares, and the bundles of evil are carried to their own place ! And here we find, very clearly revealed, the principle of association, according to which the reaper's work is to be accomplished, when they bind the tares in bundles to be burned. The law of socialism, which men talk about so carelessly, may be, when fully realized and carried out, an infinitely terrible thing. These bundles of the tares mean, in all probability, that in the day of judgment and of retribution like will be gathered to like, forms of evil with kindred forms, peculiar refinements and THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 199 hideousness of evil character with, similar hideous- ness. This probability becomes quite a revealed certainty when we compare the note of the bundles in the parable of the tares with the category given by John in the 21st chapter of the Eevelation, where he says that the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the second death ; and also with the various notices, throughout the Scriptures, of the variety of degrees in which punishment is to be meted out of justice, and assumed by the sinner, ac- cording to the forms and degrees of his light and wickedness. And this makes a terrible demonstra- tion of the nature of hell, considered as formed out of the combustion of the elements of sinful charac- ter, out of the necessary play and growth of princi- ples of evil, out of the combination, concentration, and perfect development of specific forms of sin. For if we will but apply this supposition even to our own world, we may see, by what it would be here, something of the tremendous reality of evil which it must be hereafter. Suppose that in this world men of similar evil dispositions and crimes were assorted and bound together, and left to the full development of those evil habits and tendencies. Suppose that all the murderers were gathered into one set, one community, and all the revengeful, cruel and passionate into another, and all the liars into another, and all the fraudful and dishonest into another, and all the proud, haughty, scornful and 200 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. ambitious into another, and all unbelievers and cor- rupters of the truth into another, and all adulterers and sensualists into another, and all drunkards and intemperate into another, and all the profane swearers and blasphemers into another, and were thus left to themselves, and to the unrestrained growth and conflict of their respective depraved tendencies, chosen sins, vile, vicious habits, and abandoned, profligate practices. How unimaginably and intolerably dreadful and hateful would society become, even here upon earth ! It is not so now, simply and solely because of God's restraining mercy in the arrangements of His providence and grace. He so governs the world, restraining its superfluity of wrath, that one passion in society modifies and confines another, even by the very selfishness of men. And it is just because every part of society is made up of all varieties of depravi- ty, that depravity does not, in any one direction, go so far as to make our earth an absolute hell before- hand. But suppose all restraint withdrawn, and the associative principle in evil left to work itself completely out, in its fullest perfection and power, and then consequences would ensue, which might almost make the mind insane, even to follow them in imagination. It was something like this idea that the poet Dante pursued with such terrific minuteness and horror of detail, in his tremendous delineation of the compartments of a moral and material hell. And the inscription, which that mighty poet has read, as traced in lurid fire over hell's portals, THE WOEK OF THE ANGEL EEAPERS. 201 shows a theology deeper, truer, more scriptural, in his mind, and in the minds of multitudes for whom he wrote, in the middle ages, than that of multitudes of sickly sentimentalists since the Reformation. The theology of David and Paul, the one by emi- nence the inspired poet, and the other the inspired logician, of true Christianity, and thatof Dante and of Jonathan Edwards, the theological poet of the mid- dle ages in Italy, and the theological logician of the modern world in New England, meet and coincide in that description. The united attributes of Divine Justice, Divine Power, and Divine Love, are recog- nized in the eternal punishment of all the incorrigi- bly wicked. " Through me you pass into the city of woe : Through me you pass into eternal pain : Through me among the people lost forever, Justice the founder of my fabric moved ; To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval Love. Before me, things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here 1" And indeed all hope they must abandon, whose character of evil brings them into such a world. There the tares will grow on, everlastingly, forever burning, yet forever unconsumed. For wickedness burneth as the fire, and there is no stay to the on- ward progress of character, in a world of results and consequences. "What it could have been, if it would have changed, what it might have been, had there been the disposition, the repenting will, under a 202 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. system infinitely favorable for a return to holiness, has been offered, but not accepted ; what it is, and must be forever, is all that remains. There can be nothing else. God gave the opportunity of what man might be, and the trial of what he would do, un- der the offer, nay, the urgency of pardon, regenera- tion, and eternal life through Christ ; and now there only remains what man must be, and what God must do, man having passed, as a guilty being, through such an ordeal of the divine mercy, un- changed. And here we perceive that the object of the reapers work, the end of the commission to the angels, in binding the bundles of the tares, in sever- ing the wicked from among the just, in gathering out of God's kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity, is just this, to burn them. 11 Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is what God will do with the wicked. As to what, according to our ideas, he might do, ought to do, must do, we may reason, imagine, surmise, wonder ; but as to all positive declaration of what he certainly will do, we are shut up, absolutely, to God's word. As to the inevitable consequences of sin, we not only may, but must, reason, and with the utmost certainty, out of God's word, as well as in it, knowing in ourselves THE WOEK OF THE ANGEL EEAPEKS. 203 that the wages of sin is death, and having also the light of God's judgments to guide us. But as to God's direct agency, as to his own execution of the penalty of his law, we must go solemnly, submissive- ly, tremblingly, to God's word. And here we are before it. And from the book of Genesis to that of Eevelations we find this fur- nace of fire ; find the wicked, according to that ex- pression in Jude, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. The last great prophet of the Old Testament closes his revelation with the announcement of this fire. " For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble ; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." And the first great prophet of the New Testament opens his announcement of the gospel with the same fire. "Every tree, which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down, and cast into the fire. He will gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." And this same line and demonstration of fire is continued in our blessed Lord's discourses and parables with unparalleled vividness and power ; so that sometimes, as in Mark, the sermon is one tissue of flame, and he repeats the warning of fire no less than seven different times, in as many verses, mentioning three times the fire of hell, and five times repeating the assurance that it never shall be quenched. And once he carries us into the eternal world, and sets us down in hell, with the rich man tormented in its flames, and tells 204 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL KEAPEKS. us of the great immutable, impassable gulf between that and heaven. And in his very last sermon upon earth he leaves the wicked burning in that fire. His last words before the crucifixion, to a world of reckless sinners, open wide the doors both of heaven and of hell, and set before us the equally immutable awards of either. " These shall go away into everlast- ing punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Now, this is God's arrangement, God's work ; this is what God will do with the tares, with the wicked ; and the result in their case can be nothing but weep- ing and gnashing of teeth; the consciousness of guilt, the sufferance of deserved punishment, and the remorse of conscience, as the worm that never dieth, in the darkness of eternal despair. And with all this there will be the clearest sight and the deep- est conviction of God's perfect righteousness and justice ; nay more, of God's infinite love ; a love abused, wasted, rejected on the part of the careless, obstinate soul, when God at the expense of the death of his son was interposing to save it from de- struction, and it would not be saved ; and a love now at length exercised for the guardianship of the universe, in eternal punishment demanded, made necessary, and absolutely drawn down upon the sinner by himself, in opposition to all God's efforts to the contrary. The ordeal of Divine mercy through which the sinner thus forces his way to ruin, was a trial and a conflict on the part of God for man's life, man's sal- vation ; it was a struggle on the part of man for his own perdition. Every way was tried, is tried, to THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. 205 induce men to flee from the wrath to come ; but, in multitudes of cases, in vain. " How often would I have gathered your children, but ye would not !" In following out even the brief and simple course of this parable, into what an array of the Divine power, wisdom, and love for man's salvation, has the argu- ment led us ! What openings have we seen, through which heaven's light radiates on the earth as in a flood of demonstrations of Divine truth, in language not of words only, but of the mighty realities of the cross, and of Grod manifest in the flesh, and of the dying anguish of a Divine Sufferer, dying for man's sins; dying to demonstrate Grod's justice, that it might be possible, through such demonstration of it, for believing man to escape the realization and the sufferance of it; dying, in the exercise of God's compassion, that the guilty and the lost might live ; and dying to show that if they do not live, if they will not live, through the merits of that death, they must die forever ; dying to show at once the infinite depths of human guilt and ruin, and the infinite depths of Divine holiness and love ; dying to demon- strate the meaning and eternity of both worlds, hell and heaven 1 What openings of blazing light upon human character have we seen, our character, rendering its depravity and ruin, unless changed here, unmistak- able, inveterate, irremediable ! What movements of Divine providence have we seen, awakening, pur- suing, enlightening, teaching ; causing, as it were, the very fire from the eternal burnings to fly in men's faces, and to light upon their souls ! What is there 206 THE WORK OF THE ANGEL REAPERS. indeed, careless, sinful, dying men ! that God could do to awaken you, that He is not doing, has not done ? You have been both entreated and alarmed, discip- lined with trials and blessings, experiences of con- viction, and promises of pardon ; you have been pleased and disappointed, treated with indulgence and tenderness, and again brought into calamity; but in the day of your adversity, God has to com- plain of you, that you turn not to the hand of him that smiteth you ; and in the day of your prosperity, your heart remains unchanged, hardened, and secure in sin. What now remains, after all this trial of the Divine mercy and love unavailing, but wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of God's righteous judgment? What can be done? If mercy has been tried in vain, justice must follow. Under the Cross of Christ, God gives to sinful men the choice of just what attributes they will please to have dis- played in themselves. He lets them experience all that they choose to experience of the Divine char- acter, the Divine perfections. But in their guilt per- sisted in, all that they can experience, finally and eternally, is the Divine righteousness and justice ; and therefore God points us to the Saviour, and Christ himself pleads with us, beseeches us, by His dying love and agony, that we would be reconciled to God ! It is a magnificent conception which is conveyed in this language, yet rarely do men pause and pon- der before it. The Power of an Endless Life ! Life worthy to be called life ; life holy, beatific, glorious, divine ; life, participant of God's own holi- ness and blessedness ; life, in comparison with which all that we have known of existence in this world is but as a sleep and a forgetting, or as a dismal dream, or as a terrible reality, the death of trespasses and sins. The power of such a life ! endless, unchange- able, save only from accumulating glory ; perpetual in its energy and freshness, with the boundlessness and security of infinitude before it, forever and ever ! It is this glory which is held out for our attain- ment. We, who are here in death, even the death of trespasses and sins, are invited to such a life. We know not, as yet, either death or life, absolute- ly, nor the power of either as eternal, but only in the embryo, or by an effort of imagination, in idea and not in reality. Soon we shall know, forever ; shall know by experience what life is and what death is ; what life is by possession of it, and what death is, by redemption from it ; or what death is, 208 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. by entering upon it, and what life is by the eternal loss of it. It is to secure for us the redemption from such death, and the glory of such a life, that Christ came. He would not have come, had not both these inevitable consequences been eternal. He was made, not after the law of a carnal or tempo- rary commandment, or necessity, or arrangement, but after the power of an endless life. He came as a Saviour, and came such a Saviour, with just that endless life in view, and just that salvation from an endless death ; and he would not have come, other- wise. He was made, was constituted, not for any temporary purpose, plan, or ordinance, but in ac- cordance with the necessity of an eternal salvation, an eternal life, for its accomplishment, after its power. Had it been a finite glory to be gained, or a finite misery avoided, a limited life on the one side, or a limited death on the other, a transitory heaven and a transitory hell, then a transitory High Priest and a finite Saviour might have answered. There had been no need for the Divine Word to be made flesh, nor any sufferance of such a sacrifice. But the penalties and powers concerned, the life and death, the guilt and the redemption, being boundless as eternity, and the government to be honored and sustained, the government of God, a Saviour must come in the glory and majesty of in- finitude, possessing and answering to, the power of an endless life. Such we take to be the argument in this grand and glorious passage, in Hebrews 7: 16. The THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 209 power of an endless life, and the might of a redemp- tion into it, by the quickening and resurrection of the soul from the death of trespasses and sins, re- quired and demanded such a Saviour, and for God's glory, justified such a sacrifice. A Saviour must be had, the benefit and power of whose atoning inter- position would extend through eternity, would se- cure the universe through eternity from the incur- sions and the malignity of sin, would destroy him that had the power of death, would take away all guilt forever from the soul, and would confirm all redeemed and believing creatures in holiness and happiness, in God's love and under God's law, for- ever. Let us then look at some of the things in- cluded under this vast and mighty expression, The Power of an Endless Life. And first, it is a perfect life. They who enter upon it are without fault before the throne of God. There is no sin, no defilement, no imperfection, no spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing, nor remnant, nor result, nor fear, of evil. There is not only no imperfection, but on the contrary, a purity and per- fection so infinite, that it is just a participation of God's own holiness, a transformation and transfisr- uration into the righteousness of the Lord of life and glory. The glory and the bliss of such perfect, absolute, unspotted holiness, are beyond the possi- bility of our conception in this mortal state ; and therefore the inspired Apostle himself is compelled to say that it doth not yet appear what we shall be, only this we know, that we shall be like Christ. And this perfection in his likeness will be of body 210 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. as well as spirit, because lie will change even our vile body, that it may be fashioned according to his glorious body ; and the very example of his own resurrection is the pattern of God's mighty power towards those who believe, according to the work- ing of that amazing power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places. This is Christ's own glory, Christ's own life, and we are complete in him, possessing and reflecting his glory. We cannot, in our mortal state, have any adequate idea of the infinite glory and blissfulness even of a perfect freedom from sin ; but as to the positive glory of appearing in Christ's likeness, neither the heart nor imagination of man ever yet began the most distant conception of it, except as God deigns an otherwise incommunicable revela- tion, by his spirit. In Christ the perfection of Saints is an infinite perfection, and in him they enter on the power of an endless life in perfect one- ness in spirit and in work with the infinitely glo- rious Jehovah, even as the Son of God, in his spirit and work, was one with the Father. In the second place, it is a social life, in which all the communicative and companionable tendencies of our nature and powers of our being, will be exer- cised in an enjoyment ten thousand fold intensified by being reflected from, and shared with, the beatific experience of others. It is remarkable, as an indication of the glory of the social life of heaven, and the activity and blissfulness of mutual thought and affection interchanged and ardent there, THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 211 that this same epistle to the Hebrews introduces us to the innumerable company of angels, and the general assembly and church of the first born whose names are written in heaven, and to the spirits of the just made perfect. We are come to such vast and glorious assemblages, as to scenes and objects transporting, even to be only looked at and ad- mired, but how much more enrapturing to go in and out among them, holding communion with them. The very sight of others in glory will be infinite joy, a study of salvation, a rapture of delight. There will be so much to admire and love in every creature, every creature will be so full of glory, so ravishing a reflection of the glory of the Saviour, that eternity might be occupied in silently gazing, and adoring ; and even so the Lord Jesus at his coming with His saints will be admired in all who believe. But there will be infinite sociableness in heaven ; that life will be the perfection of a social life, as truly as it will be a life filled with all the fulness of God. There will be the good and the glorious of all ages and all worlds to love and to rejoice with. There will be communion among angels and saints, sweeter than the conversation on the way to Em- maus, more frank and loving than ever could have been imagined, in ten thousand infinite directions and disclosures of mutual history and character, in the suggestion, investigation, and comparison of thought, amidst the providence, works, attributes and revelations of the infinite God. And indeed the power of an endless life would find full employment in the universe of God alone, and saints will find a 212 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. boundless study of the Divine glory in angels, principalities and powers, even as to principalities and powers shall be revealed in the church the manifold wisdom of God. There will be mutual study, there will be social study, there will be nothing solitary in heaven, nothing exclusive or concealed, nor any need of guardian forms of courte- sies, nor any distant or reserved civilities, nor any jealousy of honors claimed or due, nor any sense either of superiority or inferiority, all pride and envy being forever debarred from the possibility of entrance or existence there. Divine love is the at- mosphere of heaven ; they dwell in love, they dwell in God, for God is love, and in sweet forgetfulness of self, the happiness of others is as dear and de- lightful to each as their own. But in the third place, it is a life of blissful activity. There will be employment enough in heaven, and they need no rest, day nor night, nor ever experience any exhaustion of their energies. All is harmonious activity, nothing conflicting, en- tangled, opposing, or out of joint. All the powers of the being are in concert, inspired with one mind and one spirit in the service and the praise of God. Every intellectual capacity will be carried to the highest possible exercise, in studying the divine at- tributes, and accomplishing the Divine will. The individual will, being in every respect one with God's, and the whole soul filled with His love, the activity of heaven in doing His will must be sponta- neous and infinitely delightful, perpetual and un- changeable. And in whatever universe of God, or THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 213 part of His universe, an intelligent being might be employed, there is everywhere a sense of God, a perception of His presence, such as in our mortal body we cannot have, but with which and in which there is, to the soul that loves God, the fulness of heaven's blessedness. God's will is the happiness of such a soul, and activity in doing it would be the irrepressible expression of such happiness. Would that it were so on earth ; our meat and drink to do the will of our Father in heaven ! In the fourth place, it is a progressive life. And here it is that this phrase, the power of an endless life, •comes into more immediate and definite exposition, at least the significance of it is more palpable. An endless life ! the power of an endless life ! The very idea of it is triumphant. The idea of the life of an antediluvian, a life of only a thousand years, is grand and imposing. Only a thousand years! What might not be accomplished in such a tract of time on earth, with energies unfettered and untired, a heart filled with God's love, and all the powers of the whole being employed «,nd absorbed with inex- haustible spontaneous delight and zeal in His service ! What progression, what acceleration would there be, and what accumulation of impulse and power from generation to generation! But a thousand years are as one day in the conception and incomputable arithmetic of an endless life. Our plans on earth are contracted, fragmentary, broken, and incomplete ; but in the security and infinitude of an endless life there may be plans, even by finite minds, encom- passing ages and worlds. And there will be nothing 214 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. to prevent the execution of them, no fear of inter- ruption by death, no doubt or indecision of mind, no inward conflict nor external foes, no enfeebling of the energies by sickness or unwillingness, nor distracting of them by temptation, nor crippling of them by want of means, nor any dividing of them, as in this world, between present and future, temporal and eternal, earthly and divine. There will be an infinitude of wealth in God's bounty to draw from, for all things are yours, children of this glorious adoption in Christ ! whether things present or things to come ; and ye are heirs of Grod, and joint heirs with Christ, and he that overcometh shall inherit all things. All fountains of strength and grace shall be yours to draw from, and with angelic skill and wisdom all needed resources will be com- bined, and with intuitive swiftness the best means will be seen and adopted. The understanding will be divinely illuminated, the mental vision seeing no more as through a glass darkly, but face to face, and the memory no longer treacherous and feeble, but capacious and retentive* beyond all bounds. All past acquisitions will be secured, and nothing lost or wasted. There will be no haste, nor anxiety, but a divine and holy leisure and serenity of mind, even in the swiftest, grandest onward excitement and progress. It is only in the power and triumph of an endless life, that any creature from this restless world ever can be at leisure. But there you have eternity at your disposal, and all your plans, glo- rious and unembarrassed, may move on forever and ever ! It is the power of an endless life. THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 215 There will be progression in holiness. There can indeed be no addition made to the righteousness of Christ, and that is what the believer is clothed with from the outset, and that is what every redeemed soul will reflect in glory everlasting. But as star differeth from star in glory, so in the reflection of that glory, which will be brighter and brighter the more the soul studies and knows of God and his holiness. The glory, the brightness, the worth of that holiness will continually be increasing in the creature, because it is infinite in the Creator, and the soul will forever be coming into nearer and nearer resemblance to God in Christ. There will be progression in the power of holy habit. Think of the glory and the power of such habit in the soul, when ages on ages have made the life of love a nature so irrevocable, that by the very principles of an immortal constitution there shall be no more possibility of change, than in the nature of the Son of God ! How glorious is this certainty ! This is one element in the power of an endless life. It shall be a power of life that all the opposing powers in the universe might be let loose upon with safety ; might war against it, and should not over- come, might labor with whatever native or permit- ted intensity and energy could be brought into the conflict, and yet should not start one impulse in the soul, or one thought or motive from its foundation in holiness, and its con firmed immutable fastening to the throne and being of God, and its direction in his love and glory ! This is that great meaning, beginning in this life, and running on through 216 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. eternity, of that triumphant close of the eighth of Komans, revealing the immutability of that holy love, which nothing can overcome or weaken. "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor princi- palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other crea- ture, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." There will also be progression in knowledge, there will be boundless room for this, throughout eternity, and in this particular, easier than in any other, the overwhelming weight of meaning in the text may be approximated, and the power of an endless life imagined. There is always an infinitude still before the mind, as fresh, as inexhausted, and as inexhaustible, as if just now you were stepping on the verge of it, just now in the first moment of your acquaintance with it. The incomprehensible infinitude of God is before you, and what you do know, though it may, after the lapse of countless ages, seem as an absolute infinitude already con- quered, is yet as nothing in comparison with what you do not know. Oh the incomprehensibility, and the eternity, and the infinitude of God ! Who by searching can find out God, who can find out the Almighty unto perfection? Yea, unsearch- able are his judgments, and his ways past finding out ; so that the whole capacity of the soul will be filled, both as to intelligence and happiness, and will be employed to the uttermost, forever and » THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 217 ever, and yet no possible approximation be made to a limit, in the knowledge of God, in the study of his works and ways, in his kingdoms of creation, grace, and glory. All that is comprehended in the threefold division in that great promise of Christ in the Apocalypse, shall be given, as an infinite posses- sion for the wanderings, and acquisitions, and visions of the soul. " Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out. And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name." " Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, God, besides thee, what He hath pre- pared for him that waiteth for Him." And even the revelation by the Spirit is more the implantation or excitement in the soul of a longing, panting desire after God and his glory, than any actual sight or knowledge. We want the fire of inspiration, the winged fiery chariot of in- spiration, to go careering on this vast immensity, this illimitable, unimaginable, incommunicable do- minion of the divine attributes ; and if we could give the widest scope and license to the grandest imagination ever created, as to the possibilities of glory to be encountered, we should fall infinitely below them. In the matter of merely material worlds, the career of journeying and investigation from one to another, the contemplation and the noting down, from universe to universe, of marvels, 10 218 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. which it might take a thousand thousand ages of the swiftest possible motion to reach, and a thou- sand more to master and comprehend, present a sphere of mental activity and acquisition, boundless and eternal. What heart can conceive, what mind can measure, even in imagination, the infinitude of the riches of creative wisdom and love ! But when you add to that the riches of God's grace, and su- peradd to that the riches of his glory, the kingdoms of creation, redemption and reward, piled one above another, in every direction an absolutely incompre- hensible infinitude, you are confounded by the very attempt, and can only humbly cry out with the en- raptured and yet baffled apostle, Oh the depths ! the infinite depths ! infinite on infinite ! And in view of such glimpses of God's glory, the heart that has been taught by His Spirit, the heart that has begun to know, in feeling and experience, the power of His love, is ready to exclaim, My God ! it is enough ! Thou art my all in all. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside Thee. Oh ! if I may but be made to know God, if I may but be taught to love Him, I want nothing else. My happiness is secure in Him. The power of an endless life is power to me, because it will let me study and love God to all eternity. The power of an endless life is glory to me, because it absorbs me in the glory of God, unfathomable, unsearchable, inconceivable, adorable, eternal. This is life eternal, this is the power of an endless life, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 219 And thus, again, that life is eternally progressive in enjoyment, in delight, in happiness inconceivable, unutterable. Forever increasing with the increase of the knowledge of God in Christ, ages on ages shall witness an undiminished freshness and novelty in the glory still to be revealed, a capacity of bliss forever enlarging, and a reality of bliss forever accumulating. The bliss arising from the knowledge and the love of God not only never can have any limit, but, in the nature of things, must be positively and infinitely progressive. "What raptures are pro- duced, even now, even in this world, even in the midst of suffering and torture, by the manifestation of God to the soul ! Take the case of such a man as the dying Payson, and see him racked with pain, yet swimming in a sea of glory ; almost torn asunder with the spasms of bodily anguish, yet, in his inward spirit, visited not only of angels, but of God ; almost entranced in the light and glory of God in Christ Jesus, and, under the communications of God to the soul, rilled with serene, ineffable, ecstatic rapture and delight ! Take the case of Dr. Scott, whose experi- ence of dying was in these words: " This is heaven begun. I have done with darkness forever, forever. Satan is vanquished. Nothing now remains but salvation, with eternal glory — eternal glory." This is of God — the presence, the power, the glory. It is a power and a mystery of bliss beyond the reach of mortal natural philosophy. Let reason, and na- turalism, and rationalism, do the utmost with their forces — let them call in all the powers of science, art, nature, imagination, and they can produce no- 220 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. tiling like this, nothing of this; neither can they account for this. It is God's own mystery, God's own glory, God's own gift, God's sole almighty power. Here are glimpses of what God can do, what the manifestations of God to the soul can do, even this side the grave, in a world of guilt and suffering. Who, then, can reach to any adequate conception of what God may do, what He has pro- mised He will do, in a world where He himself dwelleth, in light inaccessible and full of glory? Who shall set any limits to the happiness of the soul in Him, in a world triumphant over all evil, where there is no more sin, doubt, darkness, unbe- lief, pain or suffering, but pure, clear, celestial, radiant light, within and without, — the region of the Paradise of God to dwell in, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, filling the soul and expanding it, as the air lifts up these heav- ens ? the power of an endless life I the power of an endless life ! in the manifestation and dis- covery of God to the soul ! CH aug pattstflits* In His last loving address to the dear disciples, so sad, yet so consoling, our blessed Lord said, " In my Father's House are many mansions: if not, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also." My Father's House ! How sweet a designation of locality as well as personal affection ! My Father's House ! And is not this vast universe the House of my Father, and where He is, there the very homestead of heaven, no matter where, if He be there ? Oh yes ! But that is not the thought that Jesus here suggests or intimates, nor that the form of truth that here He teaches to the faith of His disciples, for their joy and consolation. There is delightful deflniteness here. It is not the dim in- comprehensible universality of Omnipresence mere- ly, but a place for our abode, as determinate as place is for us now, and with as intimate a home relation, as the dearest fireside on this earth can have, nay incomparably more intimate and personal and definitely local, in our Father's House in heaven. 222 MANY MANSIONS. It is that building of God, that house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, to which the thoughts are here carried. We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have that building of God ; and this text of Paul in Corinthians may well be taken as a kind of paraphrase or guide to this, in John, for the inter- pretation of the expression, In my Father's House are many mansions. Thus, then, let us examine some of the glorious characteristics of that heavenly building, which is there our home. In the first place, it is a building of God. God made it, with neither creature, nor created agency, intervening. It is God's own, immediate work. It is His work, as a different kind of work, and in a very different sense, from anything material. It is a building not merely of God, but as the expression may allow, a building proceeding forth from God, rather as an effluence from His own essence, than an ordinary exercise or result of creative power. It is said that God is light, also that God dwelleth in light, also that we ourselves, as the children of God, dwell in God ; we are also called children of light. Now, if we knew the immateriality of light, we might find in that something more than a mere type of our Father's House in heaven. This building of God may be as different from all material construc- tions or creations, of which we have either knowl- edge or conception, as the light itself is different from the forms of material substance, which we see around us. For, in the second place, it is a house not made MANY MANSIONS. 228 with hands, not capable of being so made. It is not constructed piece by piece, as all buildings here in this world are, but is one and indivisible, as if an orb in the heavens were constructed of one perfect diamond. Moreover, it is possessed and inspired with the attributes of a spiritual glory, so that we could get no more idea of it, nor of any likelihood of it, from anything of material growth or construc- tion, than we could get an idea of the nature or ap- pearance of this all-surrounding crystal atmosphere of heaven, from considering the doors of our houses, or the iron hinges on which they swing. All possible forms of architecture here are made with hands. The temple of Grod, built by Solomon, was so prepared, that there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building ; yet was it all built with hands, and its glory was to pass away and be forgotten for- ever. "We can build out of Grod's material creation, structures of great beauty and grandeur ; and we can imitate the very forms of nature, almost at our pleasure, using the materials placed of Grod at our disposal. Almost anything and everything in this lovely breathing world, the hand of man can imi- tate, with exquisite naturalness and skill ; trees, plants, roses, feathers, flowers, birds ; all the crea- tions that the sun evolves or shines upon. The first Crystal Palace was a house made with hands. But its very idea sprung from the effort of a garden- er to construct a large and peculiarly shaped glass covering for a strange, costly and wondrously beautiful lily from a foreign land. So with material 224 MANY MANSIONS. substances, the architect wants but the idea, and the skill even of human hands can produce structures of vast magnificence and splendor. But life and light cannot be handled, cannot be put together, cannot be imitated, nor anything like them be made with hands, nor any approximation to them, nor any symbol, or forth-shadowing resemblance of a spiritual habitation. So this building of God, not made with hands, is thus presented as inconceivably superior in essence and in glory to anything sug- gested by our mortal frame, or the frame of this material universe. It is also, in the third place, an eternal building. In this respect, again, it is different from anything in this world, anything in the visible universe. Everything that these eyes behold is transitory ; not one thing that we are acquainted with is permanent. These spheres and orbs of glory, constructed with such infinite skill and grandeur, connected and revolving, and each in its own bosom creatively germinating, by laws of such infinite complication and harmony, by principles of such Divine wisdom and benevolence, are yet to be laid aside. This earth and these heavens are to be rolled together as a scroll, though so Divinely glorious ; these elements shall melt with fervent heat, and all nature be dis- solved in the chaos of a final conflagration. " Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou endurest. As a vesture shaft Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed ; but Thou art the same, from everlasting to everlasting !" And MANY MANSIONS. 225 so is this building of God, not made with hands, immutable, imperishable, like His own eternity, the same forever and ever, indestructible, everlasting. But, in the fourth place, it is eternal in the heav- ens. It is where God resides, in light inaccessible and full of glory; it is where God manifests the brightness of His attributes, in a display peculiar and endearing, intimate and local. My Father's house signified, even to the Saviour, a divine, be- loved and heavenly abode, from which, for a season, He had departed, had laid aside His glory, had left His robes of Deity, as it were, lying there, thrown off upon the throne of God, till He should return to be reinvested with them, after having accomplished, by His sufferings and death, in human form, that infinite redemption which for guilty, dying sinners He had undertaken. My Father's house signified, even to Him, His home in the heavens. Did He not say so on earth? "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world. Again I leave the world, and go to the Father." And again : " Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father ; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." # It is peculiarly the dwelling-place of God. That city of which we read in the Eevelation of John — that holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, and called the tabernacle of God with men, having the glory of God, presents the most distinct and definite image under which it has pleased the Divine Spirit to shadow forth the place 10* 226 MANY MANSIONS. and nature of our house which is from heaven, my Father's house, in which are many mansions. The throne of God and of the Lamb is there ; and His servants see His face, with His name in their foreheads. There is no temple there, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. There is no need of the sun, nor of the moon there, for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And whereas, it is said of those who are before the throne of God in such glory, that they see His face, and then it is added, that His name is in their foreheads, this is to signify the completion of all those predictions and processes of grace unto glory, begun on earth and fulfilled in heaven ; begun in beholding, by faith, as in a glass, even in this earthly tabernacle, the glory of the Lord, and being changed into the same image from glory to glory ; begun here on earth, by having the life hid with Christ in God, to come forth there in heaven in the life revealed, seen and known, with Christ in God forever, according to the promise, " When He who is your life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory ;" begun by the burial and hiding of the life with Him and in Him here, and completed by and because of the sight of His face there, according to the promise and assur- ance, " "We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Hini as He is." The sight of Him as He is, in His Father's house in glory, will complete the fulness of perfection and of glory in His dear disciples, as they are in Him, in their many mansions in that house, in His eternal MANY MANSIONS. 227 likeness. The sight of His face, without veil, with- out cloud, in the eternal glory, will bring out the fulness of His name in their foreheads — that is, in their whole conspicuous body, form, spirit and nature, — His whole name, the glory of His Divine attri- butes, His whole image, a perfect reflection of His holiness in their holiness in Christ, eternal in the heavens ; the glory of (rod, and the glory of Jesus, and the glory of the city, all possessed and reflected in that name, in their foreheads, and flashing forth, when they see His face, even as the glory of the noonday sun would be flashed forth from a spotless mirror, with insufferable brightness, the moment you should turn the mirror to the sun. For the Lord of glory and of life hath said of him that over- cometh, and is to see God, " I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, and my new name" ; and when they see His face, then will the whole eternal glory of that name shine forth in their whole being. They may be under a cloud now, as a pure and spotless mirror might be rolled up and covered round and hidden in a veil of dark cloth, so that even beneath the sun, you could not see that it is a mirror, could not see the sun in it ; but the instant you unroll the cloth, take away the veil, and hold it up to the sun, then it is so flashing and glorious, that you cannot look at it. Just so, when these wrappings of cloth, these folds of earth, that veil the dwelling of the soul in this earthly tabernacle, are drawn away ; when this tent is taken down, and the believing soul, without fault, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, is 228 MANY MANSIONS. before the throne of God, and sees Jesus as He is, then will the soul itself be seen shining forth in Jesus' likeness, glorious in His glory. But now, in the fifth place, there are many man- sions. There is room for all, and all who are there belong there, and the house belongs to them, for they are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. As being the sons of God, the dwellers in those man- sions have received the building as their inheritance in Christ. For them he has fitted it up, and placed it at their disposal. " I go to prepare a place for you." They have their mansions in fee simple. They are no more tenants, but heirs, joint heirs with Christ, who, as a Son, with them as sons, abideth in the House forever. There is no incumbrance on the property, and never can be. There is no mortgage on our Father's house in Heaven, whatever there may sometimes be, even on his own house on earth, which there never should be. There is no debt upon it, nor ever was, nor ever can be ; for the debts of the children in it, to whom it is freely given of God, were all paid by their suffering, dying Kedeemer, and to them it is given, free, full, the title in Christ unquestioned, unincumbered, per- petual. So ought the house of God on earth to be in this respect some faint type of the freedom and glory of that house in Heaven. It ought to belong to God, and to be held by man simply in trust for him. And indeed, since he hath provided for us a habitation so glorious, his own free gift, with a per- petual title of heirship to it in Christ Jesus, it is but little that we can do for him, if, out of our abun- MANY MANSIONS. 229 dance which he hath given us by the way, we put his house on earth into his hands unincumbered, for the glory of his kingdom, that it may be said in Zion, of this and that man, when he writeth up the people, These were born there. Oh truly we ought not to be willing to have God's house on earth in debt, where we are training for that house in glory, which he hath already put out of debt at our disposal. Now, once more in our consideration of the build- ing of God, if there are many mansions in our Fa- ther's house, and divinely glorious, there are to be glorious inhabitants also (as indeed we have already anticipated), and a great multitude of them, whom no man can number. " Ye are come," says Paul, " to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first born, which are written in heaven, and to the spirits of the just made perfect." There will be the good and the blessed, from all ages and nations, the crowned and the glorified, all, whose robes have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. There will be Paul and Peter and John, and all the be- loved apostles and disciples, who walked with Christ on earth, and shared his personal sufferings. And there will be all those whom they were instru- mental in bringing to glory. There will be the Ephesian, Philippian, Corinthian and Athenian con- verts. Joseph of Arimathea, and Mcodemus, and Dionysius the Areopagite, and Lydia the seller of purple, and Barnabas and Timotheus and Apollos, and multitudes of others from the Apostolic age, 230 MANY MANSIONS. will be there together. There will be Phillip, and his interesting convert the Ethiopian, seen last on earth sitting together in the chariot, reading of their Saviour's sufferings, now beheld in heaven, gazing together on their Saviour's infinite glory. There will be Enoch and Abel, and Adam and Noah, and hosts of shining witnesses of oldest time. There will be Moses and Elias as on the Mount of Trans- figuration. There will be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, with David and Job, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and all the Prophets, and all who with them or through them died in faith, having embraced the promises. There will be the family of Bethany, and those dear ones who followed Christ with their hearts, and ministered to him of their substance. There will be that saint who washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head ; and she too, who broke for him her box of Alabaster, and stood behind him weeping ; and those who followed him to the cross, and watched him at the sepulchre. There, too, will be that poor widow whom Jesus beheld as she stole trembling to Grod's treasury, and threw in all the living that she had. Oh what a study of character will be there, and what a comparison of infinite re- ward of glory 'with little but precious sacrifices and services on earth ! There will be the earliest noble army of confessors and martyrs. There will be the great companies of witnesses slain in the many per- secutions of the saints. There will be the glorified forms of those Christian heroes, whose bones lie bleaching in the mountain snows, and those whose MANY MANSIONS. 231 life wore out in dungeons, or who by racking tor- iures rode to heaven in fire. "What a congregation of the good from every clime, and every nation ! "What spirits of the just made perfect, in assembled hosts, of men whose memory is sweet on earth, and around any one of whom, if seen again on earth in person, men would crowd in homage and admira- tion ! Think of meeting them together ! Think of being made worthy to meet them ! Think of the only condition on which we can meet them, by a participation in the life and likeness of one common Saviour. Dear friend, have you begun your acquaintance with Him ? Is the power of his grace already ex- perienced within you, and is your life so hid with Christ in Grod, that you can feel that he has gone to prepare a mansion for you, and that when he ap- pears again, you also shall appear with him in glory? Happy indeed are you, if by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, setting you free from the law of sin and of death, this is your assurance. And ought not the possession of this assurance to be your con- stant aim and labor ? Ask yourself daily, into what house you are going when you die. Do not imitate the fool, who spent his probation in pulling down his barns and building greater, but never in all his life made the least preparation for the dwelling of his soul in glory. Alas, there are many who take far greater care for a house for their carriages and horses, than they do for their own immortal spirits. Do not imitate the wretched being, who from his palaces, and magnificent furniture, and grand cloth- 232 MANY MANSIONS. ing and living, went into a house of flames. Oh see to it that you have this building of God. Give all diligence to make your title sure, your calling and election. And another thing is evident, if you possess that building in the skies, your affections will be fixed there, you will sometimes long to go there, more earnestly than ever the owner of a lovely paradise in the country longs to escape from the city to the sweet open fields, when Spring and Summer are spreading glory and life over all nature. And again, if you possess it, you ought to know that you possess it, and to act accordingly, and never be much troubled by anything that befalls the walls of this earthly tenement, or you in it. You ought con- stantly to remember that this must be taken down, before you can be admitted to that ; but though the taking down of this be painful, the being clothed upon with that — the hope and assurance of it — should make you resigned and happy, and your only anxiety should be, to be prepared. CJre imlMug d <&&, fur (§ah In that passage in the second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, to which we have already referred, as a fit commentary on the preceding passage in John, concerning our Father's house, and its many mansions, Paul says we KNOW that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The language of this expression of Christian con- fidence is peculiar in respect both to the intensity of the confidence, as an absolute knowledge, and the time of the possession described, as the present time. We know that we have. Here is the intimation of a present experience as the ground of a future cer- tainty. The experience in a Christian soul arises from what, under the grace of God, that soul has been and is now doing, the life, hid with Christ in God, which it has been and is living, the character it has assumed and is building up. If there be this well-grounded assurance of this glorious house, it is because, as the apostle continues in his argument, he that hath wrought us for this self same thing is God, who hath also given unto us the Earnest of his 234 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. Spirit. And the proof that he hath so wrought us, is to be found in the fact of our working in that same direction, by that same Spirit. Let every man take heed how he buildeth. Every man is building is now building for eternity. The manner in which he is building now, shows what will be the nature of his habitation in eternity. The building into which he is to remove so shortly, is preparing in this world. In many cases it is already decided ; it is always so, if a man be truly a child of God ; for when a sinner comes to the Saviour, and begins building for eternity, God is building with him and for him. " Know ye not that ye are the temple of the living God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- eth in you ? He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity ; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a con- trite and humble spirit. He that keepeth His com- mandments dwelleth in Him. And hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and that He abideth in us by His Spirit that He hath given us." This, then, is the rule under which we are all ad- vancing to meet God in eternity. By the manner of our passing through this world, we determine the manner of our residence in the next. It is just simply a question of character. They who work with God, and build their house as the Spirit of God directs, working out their own salvation by Him working in them both to will and to do, shall dwell with God forever. But if otherwise, if the master workman is Death, by sin, and Satan, every man's THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 235 Work shall be made manifest, for the day shall de- clare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. It all proceeds just according to the rule that what- soever a man soweth that shall he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap cor- ruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. "We see, then, if a man has so much to do in this world with the building of that house, if according as he builds here, such and so the building will be there, what madness it is to neglect this house, to make no provision in regard to it, or to be employed in constructing it out of materials that will not stand the fire. It must be of such materials that God can dwell in it, that we and God can dwell together in it. If God cannot dwell in it, then it can be no dwelling of happiness to us. For it is written that our God is a consuming fire. And when we bring such a text as that, alongside with that other from the Epistle to the Corinthians, that the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is, it seems that we have a new light as to the kind of fire that is to try the building. Suppose it to be simply the fire of God's holiness, the fire of the presence- of God. Can we stand that, if our building is made of such materials as cannot endure that light ? It is said of all the wicked, that wickedness is in their dwellings ; and it is also said, Thou art not a God that hast pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee. But it is also said of all the good, The up- right shall dwell in God's presence, and God hath 236 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. said, I will dwell in them, and will be with them. The very essence of heaven, and the peculiarity of the building there, and the blissful certainty and im- mutable necessity of glory for the righteous there, is this, that they dwell in the very presence of God. But he himself is like the refiner's fire, arid in the last revelation he will come in flaming fire, and the very work of the Holy Spirit in preparing submis- sive and believing souls for his presence and glory, is said to be that of the Holy Ghost and of fire ; and therefore rolls forth the woe of the prophets against the men who build by iniquity, and in the very same breath we are called to mark that it is of the Lord of Hosts that such persons shall labor in the very fire. But who among us shall dwell with devouring fire, and who can lie down in ever- lasting burnings ? Now, a man may choose what materials he pleases ; he may build for himself just what character he pleases ; but let him remember that he is putting up a building, which is to meet God's inspection, and not only so, but if he has the least idea of eternal blessedness, it must be a building in which God can dwell. Let us then suppose that a man having the com- mand of all the elements, and of all the resources of science for their combination, and of all the agencies and materials for the construction of a splendid residence, should undertake to build a house out of a preparation of crystalized and solid- ified gunpowder, or whatever ingredients of mingled sulphurous, bituminous, fiery and explosive power, THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 237 might be concentrated and hardened into beams, pillars, walls, roofs and rafters. He might also have his house furnished with wrought crystal furni- ture of the same material ; brimstone couches, and chairs carved of solid nitre, and stuffed and cush- ioned with gun-cotton. The house is to be lighted with gas, and he has all the fixtures prepared accord- ingly, and gas-pipes of transparent asphaltum run- ning through every apartment. It is a wondrous house indeed ; the dreams of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments never imagined such a building ; a splendid house, a most original and costly house ; and if things were well adapted, if the nature of the materials would permit, it might be a most com- fortable, useful, and lasting house. But there is one thing the builder has forgotten, or by a strange hallucination has overlooked, in thus consulting his own will, and building his house according to the freaks of his fancy ; and that is, the inflammable nature of its materials, and the certainty that that which is necessary to light it, will also inevitably consume it ; that which is requisite for the possi- bility of residing in it, will shroud it, from the foun- dation to the top-stone, in a sheet of fire. The instant the gas is lighted, or the fire kindled, the whole building is a flash of living inextinguishable flame. Now, this is but a faint emblem of a man who builds up his character in this world without God, out of materials that are instinct with sin, and sealed with God's displeasure. His character thus wrought out, solidified, established here, is to be his possess- 238 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. ion and abode for eternity. Its materials are all chosen, not according to the reason of things, or the will of the great God of Eternity, but according to the freaks of his own fancy, the rule of his own appetites and passions, the indulgence of his own present pleasure. All the fixtures even for lighting up this abode, and making it comfortable, are according to the same law of present self-indulgence, wrought out of the same sinful ingredients; and the very atmosphere of the dwelling is of the same elemental stuff. Now, the house of a man's char- acter, even thus constituted, may be all very grand, costly, luxurious, splendid in appearance, and may abide quiet for the present ; but what will become of it the moment the fire tries it, the moment a flame is kindled in it, the moment that light, by which it must be lighted in eternity, if ever lighted at all, is let into it and upon it ? What will become of it, when the light of God's holiness enters into it, flashes through it? Why, indeed, we have the answer to this question in the declaration of scrip- ture, that to the wicked and the unbelieving, our God is a consuming fire. Such the Divine attri- butes must be, in the eternal woild, to a man whose character is builded out of such materials, without Christ, without God, without prayer, without holi- ness, without hope. For we know that we are designed to be, every one of us, according to God's rule, a dwelling place for God, a living temple, of which God shall be the happy life and soul. And the building built up in God and with God and for God here, and so formed THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOE GOD. 239 that God can inhabit it forever, will be blessed in eternity, an immortal temple, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And nnless so formed that God can enter it, can dwell in it, can be glorified by it, then the moment God touches it, the moment the light of God's holiness blazes upon it, surrounds it, flashes within, it will be all a flame of fire unquenchable. All the fixtures running to and fro in such a character are of inflammable materials, that will kindle with the fires of hell ; all the furni- ture of such a character has only the seal of the self-willed maker, and of God's wrath. And the character thus formed in sin is of such a nature, that that very light which is necessary in order to light up and render happy any created soul, will inevita- bly consume it, the moment it meets it. That flame of purity and love, which alone can form the possi- bility of any man's blessed residence in the eternal world, will set the whole residence on fire, a lurid and conflicting fire, a retributive and self-avenging fire, forever burning, yet forever unconsumed, in the very materials out of which the soul's dwelling, nay, the soul's adopted nature, was constructed. See, then, what you are doing, O man of sin ! You wish to be saved, you wish to be received into heaven when you die. You wish by no means to be lost, you are not willing to contemplate that as your destiny, or to believe it possible. You wish that your existence in the eternal world may be a blessed and blissful existence, that for you there may be a mansion of eternal rest, that your name may be found in God's book of life, and that yours for- 2-10 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. ever may be a place in the city of the righteous. Consider, then, what this wish really signifies. It means that you may be permitted to dwell with God, and that God would deign to dwell with you forever and ever. It means that you desire to have God's own abode within you, and to enter into an eternal and intimate communion with God, so that you shall be as cognizant and conscious of God's presence and inspection, as God is cognizant of your existence. It means that you desire a state of being, where every thought, wish, impulse and emo- tion shall be as clear to the eye of Jehovah, and you yourself conscious of it, as this material world and you yourself in it, or the men that walk upon it, or the trees and flowers that adorn it, are to your own eye. It means that you desire to meet God, and to have the blaze of all His attributes upon you and within you ; that you desire to be forever fixed, where you can never for an instant escape the notice of His all- seeing eye, where your inmost being will be turned to Him as to the sun, where not a thought can arise, not a feeling be ex- perienced, not a wish formed, not an impulse cherished, but it will confront the instant blaze of the Divine holiness ; and where, consequently, un- less you are one with God, your being will flash forth in hostility, just as the house of nitre, or of solidified oxygen, or alcohol, would kindle at the touch of fire. Just consider, then, O creature of such tremen- dous responsibilities, if you be a stranger to grace, what it is that you are doing, while you are living THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 241 in your sins, that is, while you are living in neglect of Christ Jesus, and of prayer, and without God in the world. For, to be without God is to be alienat- ed from Him, it is to be without holiness, it is to be passing on towards Him, in the habitual formation of a character that cannot bear His sight, a character in hostility against Him. What are you doing to prepare your own heart, your own mind, your own consciousness, your thoughts and your affections, for the habitual presence of Grod ? What are you doing to make your own being, with its spiritual furni- ture and habits, a temple for His indwelling, holi- ness and love ? What are you doing in preparation for that meeting of your soul with Grod, to which, on the supposition of the least hope of a happy existence in the future world, you are advancing ? What in preparation for that most intimate commu- nion with God, and closeness of His inspection, which your very wish to be happy in the future world implies? What have you done already, supposing you should now die, just as you are, what have you accomplished in preparation for God's taking up His glorious and blissful abode with you ? Alas, is there any joy within your heart at the thoughts of such a meeting, or do your thoughts draw back in terror as the reality draws near ? Un- less you are changed indeed, and possess a new spiritual character, unless you are submissive to God, and a partaker of His holiness, could God abide with you? Is there any such possibility? Can there be for you, in any such blissful sense, a build- ing of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in 11 242 THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. the heavens? Would not the meeting of every prayerless being, every unregenerate heart, every sin-defiled soul with God, be just that of antagonist forces, incompatible, not to be united; that of infinite righteousness and utter sinfulness, infinite justice and uncancelled guilt, that of the Divine sovereignty and the sinful soul's habitual and su- preme selfishness, that of the will of the creature and the Creator in uttermost eternal conflict ? It is one of the mightiest, most overwhelming truths of our existence, that we are all advancing into the immediate presence of God, all coming where we shall see him face to face, where the nature and operation of his attributes will be clearer to the soul, and more sensibly experienced, than the objects and qualities of the material world to the bodily senses. The meeting must take place. It is the great event to which we are all hastening. It is the event which is to determine our eternal destiny, according to the character with which we meet God. And one would think the sense of this truth, the remembrance of it, and a watchfulness accordingly, would never be out of our minds, but would inspire us with a spirit of incessant prayer. One would think that the knowledge of a meeting, so rapidly near, with Infinite Holiness, would arm us with such an energetic and instinctive terror and abhorrence of all sin, that we should recoil from the least approach of it, and start as from the upreared head of an adder in the way. One would think that the very breath of ceaseless prayer in our hearts, and the thought and the yearning co-present THE BUILDING OF GOD, FOR GOD. 243 with all other thoughts, would be, Oh Grod ! cleanse me from my sins, and make me like to thee ! Oh Thou, whom I must shortly meet, and whose very love, if I be not a partaker of it, will burn me, like thine own holiness, as a consuming fire, take pos- session of me now for thyself, baptize me now with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Let the refining flame of thy love kindle within me, and never go out, but burn on, till every sinful thing shall be consumed, and every native faculty transfigured, and every impulse of will, feeling, and emotion baptized in that regenerating flame ! And how can such a prayer be answered, and to whom, if it be sincere, will it certainly bring the yearning heart and soul, that the whole being may be thus gloriously and forever transfigured, regen- erated, and delivered from all sin ? Oh ! to Jesus, to the Son of God, our Saviour, to the great Physi- cian of the soul ! Behold the Lamb of Grod, who taketh away the sin of the world ! There is the Being, to whom love will bring you, there is the Being, who will answer your love, and will fulfil, as he must have inspired, all blissful and heavenly desires within you. "Jesus answered and said, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him." " Lord, to whom shall we go, but unto thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life !" €\}t Jfamilg in fUaiuiu That is a wonderfully glorious passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, which reads thus ; " Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." The glory of the whole context is infi- nite, and this is but a sort of parenthesis before the prayer. But the full comprehensiveness and gran- deur of this parenthesis, can be known only in the Eedeemer's second coming, and final everlasting reign. As all beings were created by him and for him, so angels and archangels, principalities and powers of heavenly height and glory, as well as the redeemed from our fallen world, are named in him and for him, for he is before all things, and by him all things consist. We have had occasion to refer to the manner in which Gk>d makes heaven our home; gives us a home locality there ; throws around the idea of place there the same sweet associations that cluster in the heart and delight the imagination at the word home, here. But we are carried still farther. There is also the word family in heaven ; indeed, the only time in which this word is spoken in the New Tes- tament is here, in this mention of the whole family in THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 245 heaven. There is a family circle there ; there are family ties and associations dearer than all ties on earth ; and if we should descend from the vast and mighty sweep of this whole phrase, " the whole family in heaven and on earth," which takes in all the redeemed out of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and tribe, from the beginning to the end of time, and stop at the literality of the first clause ; if we should cut out those striking words, the whole family in heaven, from their connection, and inter- pret them of one household, applying there in heaven something like the very thought and feeling of a loving family on earth, with its particular and strong affections, in which a stranger intermeddleth not, we should not perhaps be far out of the way. Nor can there be anything more delightful than the thought of a whole family in heaven. No doubt, there will be many such — many whole households, transplanted entire, not one left out or missing, from earth into the kingdom of heaven. There will be whole fami- lies gathered there, through the blessed instrumen- tality of one faithful and beloved member of the household, first brought to Jesus. There will be children gathered by the piety of parents, and parents gathered by the piety of children ; brothers drawn to Christ by sisters, and sisters drawn by brothers ; and whole families saved by the faith and prayers of one. One of the two that heard John speak, and fol- lowed Jesus, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first findeth his. own brother, Simon, and he brought him to Jesus. That is one example given 246 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. us in God's own record of the manner in which He maketh up His jewels ; how the endearments and affections of onr family ties and duties sometimes lead on those of grace; the earthly affection brings the heavenly to bear upon the soul. And can there be the least doubt that in heaven itself, the tie on earth so strong between Andrew and Simon, and made the means of the salvation of the one, through the instrumentality of the other, and thus exalted and glorified, even here, will be recognized, will make the family there, in some sense, a family still ? "Why, we may learn something on this subject, even from the lost in the world of woe, as presented by our Saviour. We find the elder brother in the gulf of flame, trembling at the thought of meeting the family circle there ; five brethren, whom he expected to meet, and to meet as brought thither partly by his own example, and in such a manner that the family on earth would be known as a family in hell. That direction, also, of the Lord of the harvest, to gather the tares in bundles, and bind them for the burning, has a marked meaning here ; for the prin- ciple of association and participation in sinful exam- ple, instrumentality and character, such as marks and attends an evil family all through life, will be one of the principles of association and relationship in an endless retribution. And the same principle of association in heavenly and holy relationship, character, example and influence, marking the fami- lies of redeemed on earth, will hold them peculiarly known and near in heaven. There will be trains of blissful causes, sacred instrumentalities, set at work THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 247 in family circles here, the results of which will be seen, marked, traced, admired there, holding the same circle nearer and nearer through eternity, nearer and dearer in Christ, and in one another, in and through Him.. But if the whole family in heaven and earth is recognized, there are also the more particular repre- sentations, and representatives of the family there. There are children in heaven. There are babes in heaven, and there must be an infant's heavenly dis- cipline there. Of such, said our blessed Lord, is the kingdom of Heaven ; and we may suppose that he had in view not merely the childlike temper and disposition of a new-born soul in his kingdom here, but the fact that the kingdom of the redeemed there is made up, in so great a degree, of little children. I shall go to him, but he will not return to me, ex- claimed David, speaking of his own babe, that God had taken, and speaking of the child as at rest with God, in the presence of God in heaven. Thither the affections of David travelled ; there his hopes were placed ; there was his eternal dwelling-place and home. When he himself should depart from this world, he expected to be with God in glory. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ; he could speak that promise of himself, as well as a prediction of the Messiah's resurrection. By the Earnest of the Spirit he was confident, for God had wrought him for the self-same thing, and he had the witness of the Spirit within him that he was a child of God. " The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and my cup. Thou wilt show me the path of life : in 248 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. thy presence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satis- fied, when I awake, with thy likeness." But his child had gone thither, to God, before him. If there is anything clear in David's confi- dence, it is this, that his child was in heaven, and there in heaven he expected to meet him. I shall go to him. I shall rejoin him in God's good time, when it pleases God to take me also to my heavenly home. And the confidence has a personal and not merely a local direction. I shall go to him, not merely to the place where he is, but to him. It was in the heart of David to recognize his child again in glory ; and the confidence does not seem to be set down as a mere imagination, springing out of a present fondness, or a mere desire that it might be so ; but out of the darkness of his present sorrow it was the breaking forth of a great truth. It was an inspira- tion flashing from earth to heaven. As a sheet of lightning in the blackness of a midnight storm re- veals instantly and vividly the whole horizon, so this confident declaration of David lights up the whole landscape, not only of heavenly realities, but of the Jewish belief in regard to them ; not only throws a stream of sudden radiance into the revealed spiritual world, but shows the contemplation of a future existence habitual to the Hebrew mind, and that, too, on occasion of the death of an infant. There was no surprise in David's servants, as though he had announced to them a new and most surprising, most overwhelming doctrine, such as it THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 249 must have been if it had been new; but David enunciated it, and they received it, with the utmost calmness of a customary conviction, as a fixture of their own belief and instruction, to which they were to resort for consolation and submission under such a bereavement. Here, again, we have the scepticism and blindness of those who would dephlogisticate out of the word of God, in the Old Testament especi- ally its living breath and flame of thought and knowl- edge in regard to a future world of rewards and punishments, put to shame and scorn. And out of the mouth of a babe, speaking as it were from the eternal world, God perfects truth and praise. Here we have a great prophet of God, speaking to the people over the grave of his own child, concerning a truth which they had all been taught from God's Word, as well as declaring out of his own impulse of Divine inspiration, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me ! Now, as to the recognition in the heavenly world, it is to be marked that David himself did not die, did not depart to his heavenly home, to rejoin what- ever loved ones of his family circle might be gath- ered there, till near twenty years after this beloved child had gone from its cradle to Abraham's bosom, to the companionship and glory of the celestial world. Twenty years the child would have been in heaven with Moses and Elias in glory, a lamb in the fold of Christ there, before his earthly parent would again see him ; and could he be expected to know, in the bright form of a seraph, educated for twenty years in the presence and likeness of Jesus, his own 11* 250 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. departed babe? "Why not, as well as Elijah, when translated to heaven, could be expected to know Moses, who had been dwelling in heaven five hun- dred years before Elijah went thither? There would be no more of mystery in the one recognition than in the other, but an equal delight and glory. That a Christian parent should recognize a child, passed into the skies, and educated there, is no more mysterious than that Moses and Elijah should recog- nize each other, or rather know each other, though they never met on earth, but only in heaven. But whether that come to the mind as a mystery or not, there is something unspeakably delightful in following a little child, in imagination, into the heavenly world, and dwelling on the blissfulness and glory of its development there. There must be a nursery, an infant school in heaven, a peculiar training of these buds and blossoms of immortal being, which for all heaven may be a scene of greater rapture and delight, than perhaps any other of the infinite wonders of redemption, even in the heavenly world. What a sight must it be, that of the spirit of a babe, an infant, a prattling child, growing up in heaven, opening, developing, in the image of Jesus, perhaps beneath the guardianship and teaching of other angels — an employment how ecstatic, how divine ! For aught we know, there may be a form of glory, or degrees and qualities of glory, resulting from such a development in heaven, transcending all other manifestations of the manifold wisdom of God through the church to all ages. And as we THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 251 have reason to believe that so vast a preponderating multitude of those transmitted from our world to heaven die in infancy and childhood, so the greater part of heaven is filled with just such scenes, and heaven might be conceived as one vast ecstatic holy school of youthful happy spirits. What curious, wondrous, blissful forms of the wisdom and love of the Creator, combined with the perfection of the work of our Divine Redeemer, may be seen in the evolution of the infant immortal spirit from the very bud of being, — who shall tell ! Who has not felt, at times, an earnest desire to look into the invisible workings of an infant's mind, to see the dawnings of thought, reason, self-consciousness, to know the motions of this wondrous opening and dreaming soul, even as we know our own ! Oh certainly, to see the growth of a mind in heaven, to watch its developings in Christ, above the brightness of the firmament, must be a process of glory so exquisite, that nothing which we now see in the grandeur and beauty of all this material universe can bear any proportion to its loveliness. But we pass from the family to the name. Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth are named. It is Christ the Saviour. Not a creature of the redeemed of all our race, infant or aged, but bears his name. All are there through the virtue of his blood, and through that alone, without which no more the babe than the child a hundred years old, or the chief of sinners, could ever enter heaven. The whole family, young and old, are named of Christ, washed in his blood, clothed in his right- 252 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. eousness, and in him, and him alone, without fault before the throne of God. This is the certainty, and the only certainty, alike of the babe's salvation, and that of the matured, believing child of God. It is that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world, and that his blood cleanseth from all sin. It is that the child as well as the sinner a hundred years old, needs a Saviour, and that Jesus died for children. All that are in heaven bear his name, and only thus can any be in heaven. It is as difficult for God to save a child as a grown person, equally a wondrous work of his Divine redemption ; but it is also equally easy ; for Christ has died, and it is not on account of any im- agined or possible innocence or merit, that any human being, infant or aged, is ever saved, but only on account of the merit and the death of Christ. So the whole family in heaven and earth are named of him, though we have reason to believe the greater proportion by far of the members of the family at any one time, and at all times, passing from earth to heaven, are infant members. Their first lisp of language is his name, and the first exercise of belief into which their minds open, is faith in his blood, and the first and simplest feeling and emotions in which their hearts beat, intelligent and self-conscious, are of gratitude and love to him. And the first song in which their joy finds utterance must be the anthem, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain; and their infant melodies may be the sweetest of all heaven's melody, and the grandest part in those celestial services, that which they bear in the halle- THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 253 luialis of redemption. Perhaps, indeed, it is this very thing, of which the Psalmist caught a view by inspiration, when he exclaimed, " Lord ! thou hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ! " No literal interpretation can be given to that passage in any other way. But if you translate it of the infant singers in heaven, it is a very natural window opened into the glories of the celestial world. The assurance that little children, through the blood of Jesus Christ, are taken to heaven, should greatly mitigate the grief of parents and friends, when Grod takes them away. They cannot help sorrowing, for ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and mourned the death of Abel, the loss of children has been and must be regarded as one of the severest of earthly trials ; but they must not sorrow as those who have no hope. The sting of death is taken away, and the imagination and heart can follow the little one into a world of glory, where there are no conceptions of beauty and blessedness, in which they may not properly array it. All that ever they could depict to themselves, or by the Earnest of the Spirit ever foretasted, or could desire to experience, of holiness, radiance and happiness in the heavenly world, they may feel sure is outdone, is overpassed, by the infant cherubs that have gone before them. If the fancy in vain strives to paint the glories that surround the believer, when on rising from the river of death, the visions and realities of the celestial world burst upon the soul, still more impossible is it to conceive the 254 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. beauty and happiness of a babe in heaven. What a privilege it is for parents whom God has bereaved, to feel that they have children there! What a privilege to have consecrated them to God, to have prayed over them, to have led them to the Saviour, to have offered them to God in baptism, to have claimed His promise for them, to have given them to Jesus as the members of His family, the lambs of His fold ! And now, if God has taken them, from how many thousand evils, snares, temptations, dangers, sins, have they been snatched ! Neither pain, nor sickness, nor sorrow shall they ever know more. And what education could the most careful parents ever have given them, compared with that angelic and ecstatic discipline in which they are nur- tured there in the perfect likeness and beholding of the Kedeemer; or what care could the most anxious parents ever have bestowed upon them, compared with the care of that Saviour who has taken them to His bosom ; or what fortune could the most indulgent parents ever have provided for them, though all the riches of the universe had been placed at their disposal, compared with tha,t inherit- ance of which they are with Christ the heirs, those glorious mansions they inhabit, that blessed society where they rest ? And we may add, what happi- ness could they ever have conferred upon the most delighted parents here, compared with that they are conferring in heaven upon myriads, who perhaps gather from the remotest dominions of the King of saints, to gaze upon their glory, and to admire with THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. 255 new love and gratitude, and new ecstasy of enjoy- ment and surprise, the glory of the Saviour revealed so ravishingly in them. If there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, oh what joy likewise over every babe received to glory! But again, and more solemnly still, the consider- ation of this theme ought to make us think of the sacredness, preciousness and glory of the work of training up a little child for Christ and His King- dom. How blessed the thought of a whole family in heaven ! How precious, how delightful, the mutual communion, example, instrumentality, effort, faith, prayer, by which one after another, coming into the Christian life here, enter on the life of glory there, till all are gathered at length, a dear unbrokerj family before's Grod's throne ! How in- finitely important the work of faith, love, instruc- tion and prayer, to be applied continually by parents upon the susceptible hearts and ductile minds of their little ones, that from the earliest period, the image and superscription of Jesus may be impressed and growing daily! "We know not how rapidly they may be passing from the time, when, if they were suddenly taken, we might feel the assurance that Jesus has taken them to Himself in glory, to the period of conscious unbelief and voluntary neglect and rejection of Jesus from the heart. What fervent effort ought to be used, what earnest prayer, what affectionate persuasive instruc- tion, that they may not enter upon that period, or if entered on it, that they may turn from it, and 256 THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN. hasten to the Saviour, in faith, penitence and love, the youthful happy subjects of His sanctifying grace ! Both the uncertainty of life, and the certainty that if habits of youthful piety are not commenced, the habits of procrastination and of sin are greatly and constantly strengthening, and the prospect becom- ing less and less favorable of a conversion to God, ought to impel every Christian parent to an earnest heartfelt, never-ceasing diligence, in pleading and applying the instructions and promises of the gracious Saviour, and the affectionate persuasive power of a heavenly example. The power of an endless death ! Amazing and infinitely dreadful expression ! Yet thus hath eternal life its infinite and opposite extreme ; and little in- deed could we know of either but by the disclosures of Divine Eevelation. Accordingly, in one of the grandest chapters in the book of Job, we have the following sublime and impressive interrogation from the Almighty: "Have the gates of death been opened unto thee ? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?" And what mortal can answer it ? "Who hath ever gone down to those portals, or been admitted within the secrets of that prison house, and returned? What living man knows anything about death, even the death of the body, save as he sees some of the phases of departing life ; but when it is gone, knows not which way it tied, nor how, nor whither ? And as to the changing substance that remains, the mould, the worm, the putrefaction, the corruption of the grave, all that is no more a process of death, than the disintegration of a granite mountain by the rain, the light, the air, frost, fire and sunbeams. And what- ever thou hast seen or known of disease or pain, 258 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. dark- walking pestilence or noon- wasting destruction, fretting leprosies, plagues, lazar-houses, consump- tions, fevers, poisons, wounds, or the bloodiest mur- derous carnage of war, if tliou art yet alive, thou knowest nothing of death. So far from having entered the gates of death, thou hast not seen even the doors of its shadow. The doors of the shadow of death ! Kightly considered, there is surely something exceedingly ter- rific and awful in this expression. Where are those doors? And if we were admitted within them, what is there there sending such shadow here ? All that we see and know is but the shadow ; and if such be the shadow, what must be the reality ! and where is it? Sometimes Grod has caught us up as in a vision ; once He stood upon the world, and bade us look down into the gulf, opening it before us ; and always He makes us know that the substance, which sends, from the doors of the unseen, such a shadow, englooming the world, is infinite depths beyond the confines of time, filling eternity. And death here, Shadow or Skeleton, is the King of Terrors, because we know him not till we get beyond, within those unseen portals, whence this vast, wide, creeping, desolating shadow issues and enshrouds us. Death! Its shadow covers the world, darkens it, and fills all hearts with gloomy fears and fore- bodings. All their lifetime, through fear of death, men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is here, but its substance and its power are the power of an endless life, life in death, and death in life, conflict- ing forever. The reality of death is in eternity. THE POWER OF AN" ENDLESS DEATH. 259 And that death is called in scripture the second death. This is that, of which the first death is but the shadow. This is the last, and, in some respects, the most terrible designation of it in God's word — ■ the second death. There is nothing after that, but that holds on, perpetual, eternal. And it is under this designation that we must examine it. It is appointed unto men once to die ; but that death is scarcely worthy of the name of death. The death that comes after the judgment — the death of the soul' — the death of sin, and of retribution for sin — the death eternal — that is death indeed, that is the second death. Salvation from that is indeed salva- tion. Anything less than that would be but the purchase of a lease, that would of itself inevitably run out. Eedemption from the second death was a work worthy the interposition and atoning sacrifice of the Son of God ; but nothing less than eternity made it so. Nothing less than the power of an endless life, on one hand, and the power of an end- less death, on the other, demanded, for a High Priest and Saviour, the Almighty, the Word that was with God, and was God. Under this view, let us examine it. We have to set out with the great fact of scripture and of our own experience, that death is death in sin, and that only. Dead in sin, dead in trespasses and sins, and such like expressions, are some of the forms convey- ing the description, or announcing the reality, of this state. The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is 1jfre law, — expressions which carry us at once beyond the grave, not referring merely, or by 260 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. any means mainly, to that shadow of death under which this body passes to the tomb, but to the reality and power of death in eternity ; and that reality and power is sin. The first thing, then, to be noted of the substance of death, under the power of an end- less life, is, that it is perfection in sin. It is not until this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal, immortality — not till after the passing of the shadow of death, and the raising of the body from its dominion into the glori- fied body — that, in eternal life, the saying is brought to pass that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death ! where is thy sting ? Gone for- ever, because sin is gone. And, therefore, in the last description of the blessed in Christ, the all-em* bracing proposition is, that there shall be no more death. Over such the second death hath no power ; for there is no sin, but an eternal victory over it, eternal, absolute, perfect holiness ; in the imparted and participated nature of the Eedeemer. And on the other hand, it is not till the absolute, unmingled mastery of sin beyond the grave, not till the destruction of both soul and body in hell, that life is swallowed up of death, and death is seen and known, as sin is seen and known, by and in eterni- ty. In this view there is a tremendous emphasis in the declaration that sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. When sin is finished, the whole being is alive with it, in a living, positive, active death, perfect, unmingled, unalleviated. There is no good left. It is absolute evil, unbalanced, unmodified, unmitigated. Perfection in sin is the negation of THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 261 all good, and the active despotism of all evil. Neither of these can be without the other. John says, even in this world, He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death. He knoweth nothing of life, nothing of God, nothing of heaven. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. In the absence of all good, all evil reigns. Even now, the carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. But enmity against God is the parent of all other enmity. Our blessed Lord said, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin ; and again, by the Apostle John, Whosoever commit- teth sin is of the devil. And again, our blessed Lord, Ye are of your father the devil, a murderer from the beginning ; and by the Apostle John, He that hateth his brother is a murderer. Now here is the dominant spirit of heaven, and the dominant spirit of hell, love on the one side, and hate on the other, and each in infinite perfection. To be ruled by the spirit of hate is to be by nature the children of wrath and children of the devil. When that nature is given over to itself, then there can be nothing but despair, no more possibility of good, no motive for good, no desire towards it, no possibility of ever communicating aught but evil. And as the happiness of heaven consists in the knowledge of good, so the misery of hell consists in the knowledge of evil. In both directions the measure is infinite. Approximation towards God, in His knowledge, likeness and love, is the rule in heaven, distance from Him, and enmity against Him, 262 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. is the rule in hell. And there is no half-way, but a perfection in both extremes. This is the nature of things in a world where all tendencies, both good and evil, will be left to a perfect development. The points of starting are separate and absolute, and the directions opposite, and so the course in either case runs on, according to the judgment pronounced in the shutting up of God's own word, He that is un- just, let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still. This then brings us to a second manifest point in the power of an endless death, that it is progression in sin. As it is the power of an endless life, that it is progression in holiness, in the knowledge and likeness of God, and consequently in happiness in- conceivable, immeasurable, so it is the power of an endless death, that it is a living death, and a progressive death, in the increase of wickedness, the knowledge and experience of evil, and con- sequently the endurance of misery. Here we are on simple and plain ground. Character is progress- ive, unalterably so, even in this world, in one direction or the other. And here, also, character would be exclusively bad or good, and sin with the sinful would go to an instant entireness and suprem- acy, if it were not for the interposition of a Saviour, which has made this world a world of restraint and grace. Even under all opposing, preventing and reclaiming influences, evil character, if not changed by grace, exasperates and grows, even to the end. THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 263 Character accumulates and shoots onward. There is nothing that gathers such strength, and at length ac- quires it even from opposition. This is the power of habit. The progression of the mind in evil is tre- mendous, and wickedness burneth as a fire. There comes a time, even this side the grave, when the power of habit is absolutely irresistible, and passion is like a forest conflagration. Yet here there is vast and constant restraint. What then will it be, when all restraint is taken away, and what when ages on ages shall have passed, and all the while the habit growing, and the evil nature becoming more and more permanent and predominant. Then will pas- sion be seen in its omnipotence, and the will in its immortality and inflexibility as the slave of the passion, yet one with it, as the regent of a hurricane, bound to it, and madly driving through eternity. Progression in sin is as inevitable as progression in holiness. In the third place, there will be communion in sin ; a community, and yet anarchy, a fellowship, and yet repulsion, nearness, and yet malignity. Heaven is a social state, a state of perfect love; hell is an unsocial state, and yet a community ; but of perfect wrath and hatred. The conception is fearful beyond expression, of a world of intelligent beings, demoniac in nature and by habit, abhorred of one another, repulsive and repelled, and yet, by very wicked- ness and hate compelled into proximity, suspicious, angry, raging, tormenting and tormented, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. Fearful as the conception is, it may be in a great 264 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. degree realized, even in this world ; and in fact the last expressions used, are just merely descriptions by the Apostle of a state of society on earth, of which he and his friends had formed a part. It was a state of society little better than that of Sodom and Gomorrah, the state of all bad passions dominant, with little restraint save that of fear, hatred and revenge. The description of such a state on earth is to be found in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans ; a description of human beings, filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without under- standing, covenant-breakers, without natural affec- tion, implacable, unmerciful; who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that do them. What have we in this account, when all restraint is removed, but the very elements of hell in de- praved human nature ? And we have only to carry forward the evil which we see here, to a progressive social perfection there, a perfect unrestrained devel- opment ; we need only take what we are by nature, in our depravity, and let it run on at natural com- pound interest, and no hell of revelation could dis- close more dreadful realities. We only need to take a wicked community, and endow that community with the power of endless life and progression in wickedness, that is, with the power of endless death* THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 265 The good are all drawn off to a better world. There is left only in the seething mixture the dross of the universe. It is one of the descriptions of Grod's justice and goodness in the word of God, 'Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross. It is the scum and corruption of this universe that will form the social state of hell. The universe is to be purified, and its dregs, its impurities, as dross, when the scurf rises to the surface from the crucible, shall be thrown away, shall be gathered into one place. The wicked shall be driven away in his wickedness, and the strongest spirits in this seething mass of demoniacs will still be uppermost, and there will be plans of evil carried careering over ages, ambition towering upon ambition, empires and shoals of evil natures driven on over the depths of hell, and chasing one another like waves as wide as the ocean. Eaging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, clouds without water, carried about of winds ; trees whose fruit withereth, with- out fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots ; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever ! Such are some of the express- ions in scripture descriptive of the character of those who shall compose this fraternity of perfect, pro- gressive sin, and absolute despair. Separated from the good they must be, and gathered into one place they must be, by the very necessity of G-od's good- ness and love as the guardian of his universe, no more to permit the combination of evil with the good, nor the spread of temptation, nor the power of bad example. How terrific is the thought of 12 266 THE POWEB OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. such a community! How fearful the imagination, how dire the prospect, for an immortal intelligent nature, of spending eternity in such companionship ! Yet such are the very terms of judgment announced by our blessed Lord beforehand, " Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." What remorse, recrimination, angry despair, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, must constitute the materials of social intercourse there, we can more easily in silence contemplate and shud- der at, than openly express. In the solemn providence of God, in the deep valley of Hinnom, outside the city of Jerusalem, there was of old a place of infinite abomination, where the carcasses of animals, and the dead bodies of malefactors, were thrown together, and an inces- sant smouldering fire was kept up to consume them. It became an emblem of the place and state of ever- lasting torment of the wicked. The glorious pre- dictions of Isaiah close with it : " They shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." That outcast and detested place, that vale of death and putrefaction, where carcasses were festering with fire and worm together, day and night unquenchable, the energies of corruption always going on, and the elements of consumption always administered, that dreadful place God chose, to be some emblem, and indeed a most lively and terrible emblem, of the everlasting corruption and conflagration of the soul THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 267 in sin, in the world of retribution and despair, where their worm dieth not, and the tire is not quenched. And may not these two agencies have been chosen on purpose to signify, the first the nature of sin as a corruption and undying worm in the conscience and the soul ; and the second, the external kindled fire, to signify the retributive and guardian justice of Grod, a fire which He will never quench, which never indeed can be quenched, being as eternal as his own goodness. Not once, nor twice, but manjr times, and sometimes with vast and mighty array of circumstantial imagery, our blessed Lord took up the same emblems, and wrought them, with solemn, awful, deliberate intensity of truth, into his appeals to the soul against sin and temptation. "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than hav- ing two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." This then brings us to the last point, as to the power of an endless death, its absolute endlessness. It is eternity in sin. It is that, or it is nothing. It is that, or the shadow of death has no substance. It is 268 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. that, or the system of redemption is a mockery, and the Bible the falsest, most deceitful book in the world. The wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eter- nal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. The death is the opposite of life, and wages are paid to a living in- telligence. Forever, and forever, and forever ! The death itself of Christ for us, demonstrates the endless- ness of death without him, the eternal ruin of the soul, had he not died, and the everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, of those who obey not the gospel. And we are thus taught, with an exceeding and eternal weight of solemnity, the dreadful meaning of that declaration of our blessed Lord, "If ye be- lieve not in me, ye shall die in your sins." To die in your sins is to be buried to all eternity in them, beneath the experience and power of an endless death. But as there is no possibility of redemption from them but in Christ, no possibility of having them removed but by his Spirit, who but must feel the infinite importance of an immediate application for his mercy ? There is no time to lose. The law of sin and of death in our depraved natures is every day growing stronger, while we stay away from Christ. It can never be overcome but by him ; it will soon become the power of an endless death, if we do not go to him. It can be broken now, but only in him, only by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, working in our souls. If it be not broken now, it cannot forever. If you die in your sins, under this law of sin and of death, there will be no more change, but from wickedness to wickedness. THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. 269 How should there be? Are there any conceiv- able motives that could be tried in that world, that have not been tried in this, nnder a far more hope- ful state ? There can be no new atonement, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but if there could be, it would be only a new world of proba- tion, and the law of sin and of death there, would act with still greater certainty and power than here, keeping the soul from Christ. But the neglect and contempt of Christ in this world is the very thing that shuts the soul out of heaven in that. On the supposition of the possibility of a change there, it must be by the power of motives, as here ; but no motive can be imagined, none can possibly exist, of greater power than that derived from the knowledge of an endless hell on the one hand, and heaven on the other, and from the knowledge of the way of salvation. But these motives have already been presented, and failed, in a world of probation and restraint, where guilt and habit were neither so great nor powerful ; and how should they ever be effect- ive, in a world of unmitigated rebellion and de- pravity. There must be again in such a world the an- nouncement of hope, and the moment there is hope, then again there is all the balance of disposition and indisposition, willingness and unwillingness, as in this world. And the discovery of there being still hope in that world, after all revelations to the contrary in this, would cut off all possibility of be- lief in eternal misery at all, so that the only motive that could have the least power against the habit 270 THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS DEATH. and the love of sin would in reality be destroyed, and all possibility of change would be destroyed with it. All appeals would cease to be of any avail, and onward the soul of the sinner would be carried in the career of increasing and perpetual evil. But the whole question is set at rest by Grod's word. There is no room for any speculation on the subject. The wicked are driven away in their wick- edness, they die in their sins ; and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the right- eous into life eternal. If we notice the broaching of any other speculation, it is only to show, by the place where it lands us, that a sinful character itself, unchanged, constitutes and creates an essential and inevitable hell, even were there no other retribution than the last law announced in God's word, " He that is filthy let him be filthy still." And in the nature of things, the guilt, the power, the horror of such a hell must go on increasing. There could be no end. "We revert, then, to the necessity of an immediate application by faith, in prayer, in repentance, to the Lord Jesus. "We see clearly what, in our sins, we are coming to. Yet in point of fact we are not so much coming to the promised wrath, as carrying its elements in our souls, to their place of full develop- ment, to be there lighted, to be there set on fire, and left to burn on uninterrupted. What, in such a case, shall be done ? Who, that stays away from Christ, that defers for one single hour the outcry of the soul to him for mercy, is not guilty of a madness that cannot be described ? Cmtthmtfr Wtitktimm, mx