Ho. 45, 
 
 THE - 
 
 GREAT DAY OF WRATH AND OF GLORY. 
 
 BY REV, JOHN S. LONG 
 
 One night, many years ago, when locked in the em» 
 braces of slumber, I had a dream ; a dream that was most 
 fearful ; a dream that shook me like an ague, and thrilled 
 me with wonder, It seemed to me, that the citizens of 
 my native town were all assembled on some public oeea= 
 sion in the Academy* and on the Academy green- The 
 day Yforc on amid the iocreasing excitements of the festi- 
 val. Every one looked in the face of his neighbor. Knd 
 found {here nothing but gladness and security, I. my- 
 self, although but a boy, felt the" "strange, magnetic influ- 
 ence of the scene ; a scene that was created for older 
 heads and hearts than mine. It was now almost the hour 
 of twilight, when suddenly a cry, a shriek was heard.— 
 Every membsr of the crowded' audience within the •ho» e e 
 rushed to the doors, where such a sight presented ijbe'tf 
 as I shall not forget to my dying day. 
 
 The whole heavens, from one extremity to the other, 
 Were in a vivid blaze. F. : b y countenance was pallid, and 
 every eye turned npw%i. The exclamation went from 
 
lip to lip, " the judgement. " I stood and gazed upward 
 with the spectators. Great oceans of flame seemed spread 
 out above us, which opened occasionally to display greater 
 seas of fire far, far away in the distance. Then there 
 would come sullen mutterings of thunder. The earth 
 shook, the heavens shook, every thing shook. I watched 
 the furious element as never consuming it still reached 
 upward, higher, and higher still. Every cloud flamed, 
 and floated on. Every star blazed and sent its lurid radi- 
 ance to the scene. The vast dome of the universe was 
 wrapped in fire, and not a single atom of the physical cre- 
 ation above us seemed to have escaped. I felt cold, very 
 cold. My very heart seemed to have frozen with terror. 
 I looked upon the citizens around me. They were speech- 
 less. The great day of His wrath had come, and they 
 were not able to stand. Old, grey-headed men were 
 speechless ) young men and maidens were speechless ; 
 merchants, mechanics and husbandmen were speechless \ 
 lawyers, physicians and teachers were speechless. The 
 hour of doom had struck, and the people were not ready. 
 While these stupenduous events were transpiring around 
 and above me, a kind, of stupefaction seemed to have set- 
 tled upon my senses. Until at last being irresistably 
 drawn to look upward again, # a still grander scene opened 
 upon my view. From the very midst of the heavens a 
 great white throne descended. Upon it sat one like unto 
 the Son of God. His faee beamed with glory, and his head 
 was crowned with splendors. Nearer and nearer the 
 throne came, until at length it was arrested in the void 
 just above us. And now, strange to relate, a minister, at 
 that time stationed in the town, came to me,took me tenderly 
 by the hand, and, pointing to the great white throne, said. 
 "farewell, I must go." He left me, walked deliberately 
 to what seemed to me to be steps leading up to the throne, 
 entered calmly upon the awful ascent, and disappeared 
 
In the meantime the attention of all the spectators was 
 turned to another exciting act in the awful drama. While 
 the firmament was melting with fervent heat, and rapid- 
 shocks of thunder were making the earth to stagger un- 
 der us like a drunken man, I became conscious of the 
 presence of a new terror, and Was borne swiftly to the rear 
 of my position. When I reached that point, I was still 
 more fearfully impressed, if possible, than hitherto. Very 
 near me was a wide and deep pit, around which stood sev- 
 eral persons whose faces were perfectly familiar to me. 
 and they were engaged in seizing every one upon whom 
 they could lay their hands, and casting them into this pit. 
 They struggled to reach me. They had their emissaries 
 everywhere among the multitude. Some they seized 
 suddenly, and like a flash of lightning. Others they ap- 
 proached deliberately, and charmed them as the snake 
 fastens upon its victim. There was a start, a cry, a dash, 
 and the mouth of the pit closed over the convulsed suffer- 
 er. I needed no one to tell me that this pit was hell, and 
 these men devils. It was written in its jaws, upon their 
 faces, everywhere. At last I could bear the terrible pres- 
 sure of the excitement of this dream no longer, and awoke. 
 
 Reader, I have set down the principal facts of this dream 
 with the utmost accuracy, that I could command at this 
 distance of time. And I desire to make them the intro- 
 duction to some earnest suggestions on the Great Day of 
 G-od's Wrath and Q-lory. May the Spirit take these sug- 
 gestions, and apply them to your conscience very savingly . 
 
 And at the outset we inquire, will there be such a day. 
 Hear the reading of the Scriptures. "He hath appointed 
 a dav, in the which he will judge the world in righteous- 
 ness by that man whom he hath ordained." " It is ap- 
 pointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment/' 
 "For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of 
 Christ." " Rejoice, young man, in thy youth, and let 
 
thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk 
 in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes, 
 but know thou, that for all these things Grod will bring 
 thee into judgment." "But the day of the Lord will 
 come as a thief in the night \ in which the heavens shall 
 pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt 
 with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are 
 therein shall be burned up." " Therefore be ye also 
 ready : for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
 Man cometh." "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and 
 every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: 
 and ail kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." 
 £l When the Son of Man shall come in his Grlory, 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." 
 Can such words be mistaken. Are they not like the trees, 
 hills and rivers which a man looks at. Are they not like 
 the winds, voices and melodies which he hears. Are they 
 not like the pangs, pleasures and ecstacies which he feelsj 
 Yea, verily. -We had as well stand with our senses all in 
 free and vigorous exercise, and say that the material uni- 
 verse with its mountains, streams, harmonies, joys and 
 pains has vanished, as to fall upon our knees before Good's 
 living inspiration, and deny the verity of the great, "burn- 
 ing, transforming day of human accountability. Depend 
 upon it, it comes. 
 
 This day shall be marked -by judicial activity and firm- 
 ness. And what is most startling, Christ who is now the 
 mediator, shall then be the judge. Oh ! to think of the 
 slain Lamb, laying judgment to the line, and righteousness 
 to the plummet. To think of the pierced, rent and bleed- 
 ing Saviour, reigning like a king, and distributing justice 
 like an enthroned sovereign. And yet it shall be so. 
 From the agony and bloody sweat of the G-arden ; from the 
 thorny crown and mocking robe of the hall of judgment; 
 
from the gall and vinegar and intense anguish (Jtihe cross; 
 and from the solitude and silence and armed men of the 
 sepulchre, Jesus shall come up to regal dignity and judi- 
 cial greatness. " Before him shall be gathered all na- 
 tions/' Think of that. Nations that rose, flourished and 
 fell, before the walls of Babylon were built, or Greek and 
 Trojan arms struggled upon the plains of Troy; nations 
 that developed the resources of commerce, before the ships 
 of the Argonauts had sailed on their adventurous path ; 
 nations that were excellent in science and distinguished 
 in art, before Plato and Pythagoras learned the elements 
 of philosophy in the land of astrology and power ; and na- 
 tions that had accumulated a literature, and established 
 their universities and schools, long before the epics of 
 Homer were written, or the Sophists had gathered their pupils 
 in the shady groves of the Athenians. " And I saw the 
 dead, small and great, stand before God." Small politi- 
 cians, spending their lives in demagogueism and avarice, 
 shall stand before him. Small speculators, taking advan- 
 tage of the necessities of their fellow men, and draining 
 the very life blood from the veins of their country, shall 
 stand before him. Small grocers, seducing the hearts of 
 our unwary countrymen, and blasting the manhood of the 
 land with their distilled ruin, shall stand before him. And 
 small sinners, too little and mean to hate Christ openly 
 and oppose him boldly, shall stand before him. And the 
 great of the earth, they who have shone like suns, and 
 dazzled like meteors, shall see the face of the Judge. 
 Great statesmen, who have illustrated the genius of free 
 institutions, and contended for the rights of -free govern- 
 ment, shall stand in their places before the throne. Im- 
 mortal poets, radiant with inspiration and overflowing with 
 song, shall come to the feet of the Lamb. And gallant, 
 patriot soldiers, who went down beneath the red tide of 
 war, waving their swords and cheering their heroic men 
 
to the very last, shall stand in solemn array before the 
 Captain of our Salvation. It shall be a time of close scru 
 tiny. It shall be an occasion of unflinching administra- 
 tive firmness. It shall be a season, when consciences shall 
 arouse from slumber, and books shall be opened, and strong 
 men shall quake and toss like a line of battle ships in a 
 storm. 
 
 Moreover this Great Day shall be distinguished by a 
 swift and complete destruction, or rather renovation of the 
 physical universe. Mountains shall disappear as by the 
 touch of an enchanter's wand. Seas shall be dried up 
 as by a single breath of the wrath of God. Rivers 
 shall be bared to their lowest channels as by a single flash 
 of the judgment fires. Navies shall be swallowed up as 
 by the first gust of a universal storm. And then the tall 
 monuments of men, with the marks of genius upon their 
 foreheads, and the wrecks of generations at their feet, 
 shall pass away "like the baseless fabric of a ■ vision." 
 Mausolea, cenotaphs and tombs shall crumble. Splended 
 palatial edifices shall go to ashes in an instant. Rail-roads, 
 docks, canals and factories shall be blotted out. The tem- 
 ples of learning and the halls of education and refinement 
 shall be swept away. The great theatres of deliberative 
 and legislative power shall collapse as by the tread of an 
 earthquake. And then, the unexplored regions above us 
 shall be cut by the flaming chariot wheels of the divine 
 presence. Hear the word of the prophet. " And all the 
 host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be 
 rolled together as a scroll : and all their host shall fall 
 down, as the leaf falleth from the vine, and as a falling fig 
 from the fig tree. J ' The planets shall dash wildly from 
 their orbits. The moon shall be turned into blood. And 
 the stars shall be unsphered and rejected from giving 
 their light, as the New Jerusalem descends from God out 
 of -heaven. 
 
Now in all this scene of dissolution and of judgment, 
 there shall be the highest wisdom, and the most exact 
 impartiality. Human builders may construct their imper- 
 fect models. of mechanical ingenuity and art, and, in a 
 moment of reckless and unguarded temper, break them in 
 pieces. Human judges may be swayed by ambition or 
 the lust of gain, and visit injustice upon the subjects of 
 their official action. But not so with God. When he 
 touches the judgment torch to the magnificent, physical 
 framework which he has created, he does it deliberately, 
 wisely, and with a purpose. When he assembles his re- 
 sponsible creatures before "the great, white throne," his 
 administration isjust.and his decisions are spotless. Depend 
 upon it, there can be no question at this point. We had 
 better dispute the divine purity in reference to any other 
 matter, than this of the great renovation and final reck- 
 oning. Ail the rules of human responsibility, all the at- 
 tributes of the divine character, and all the developments 
 of individual existence, look to this absorbing time. God 
 is pledged to make himself no respecter of persons, as he 
 shall distribute his punishments and rewards. And hu- 
 man faith, for the security of its own hopes, is compelled 
 to anchor itself upon the divine pledges and guarantees. 
 
 But wherein shall the Wrath of God be most fearfully 
 made manifest. In his reprobation of sin. Sin is the great 
 enemy of his kingdom. It is contradictory to his charac- 
 ter. It flung his angels out of heaven. It corrupted the 
 hearts of his first earthly intelligences. It blasted the in- 
 nocence of the Garden. And from that time until now, 
 it has been busy with the hopes, joys and energies of 
 men. It has impoverished the spirituality of the church- 
 es. It has beggared the enjoyments of the saints. It 
 has subverted the triumphs of the cross, It has slain 
 the bodies of the martyrs. It has poured out the blood 
 
of missionaries and apostles. It has turned the rage of 
 earth and hell against the ^ates of God. It has mar- 
 shalled its legions to blot out the name of Christ. It 
 has desecrated altars, and destroyed sanctuaries. And it 
 has sent through the jaws of darkness an unceasing tide 
 of human souls, to desolate bereaved hearthstones with 
 sorrow, to fill the eye of the redeemed with pity, and to jar 
 the walls of perdition with wailings. And can God rise 
 up to the judgment of sin with a gentle countenance ? 
 Nay, verily. He shall come fbrth like a lion roaring for 
 his prey. He shall stand up like a man of war snatching- 
 hi s weapons for the hug of death. The very heat and 
 flame and thunder of a dissolving universe shalll be in- 
 significant as God launches his wrath against sin. The 
 rending Of the rocks, falling of the mountains, drying up 
 of the seas, and sweeping away of human pomp and pow- 
 er, will seem unimportant when compared with that great 
 exercise of divine strength and vengeance, which shall 
 shake this universal frame when God arises to the judg- 
 ment of iniquity. Then sin shall be seen in its true col- O 
 ors. No more shining as an angel of light. Its gaudy ^p , 
 trappings shall be torn off. Its silver slippers shall be 
 laid aside. It shall be seen as the blackest, vilest and 
 most venomous monster. Millions of witnesses shall tes- 
 tify to its terrible character. The very earth itself, as it 
 .rocks, blazes and disappears, shall utter its condemnation. 
 And God, through all the trackless regions of his might 
 and wrath, shall pour down his inexhaustible anger upon 
 it. 
 
 " Also, in the destruction of the finally impenitent, shall 
 the overwhelming terrors of the Almighty be displayed. 
 The sinner knows not what a reckless game he is playing. 
 He is trifling with the hand that shaped him from the 
 dust. He is procrastinating with the power that filled 
 
 op 
 
him witli a soul. He is trampling upon the love that- 
 ransomed him from chains. He is spurning at the blood 
 that kept him out of hell. And can he expect, under these 
 aggravated circumstances, to escape the torturing, con- 
 suming wrath of God. Nay, verilv. God shall lay his aveng- 
 ing fingers upon him with a thrill, that shall freeze his ex- 
 istence like a dead man. He shall destroy him because he 
 neglected the day of salvation; because he resisted the 
 influences of truth ; because he quenched the strivings of 
 the Spirit ; because he stopped his ears and turned his 
 back upon the heralds of the cross; because he rejected 
 the precious overtures of the Son of Man. The destruc- 
 tion of the body, it matters not how fearfully it may be 
 destroyed, will be as nothing compared with that destruc- 
 tion. The delicate limbs may be stretched upon an in- 
 quisitorial rack. The slender bones may be wedged and 
 pressed between the instruments of death ; and the sen- 
 sitive flesh may be scorched and consumed at the furious 
 burnings of the stake ; and yet all these physical suffer- 
 ings will be comparatively small when placed by the side 
 of the ruin of the soul. That destruction" shall consist in 
 the swallowing up of the immortal mind, with all its 
 wondrous faculties, soaring ambition, and unflagging ener- 
 gies, in eternal night. It shall consist in the snapping 
 asunder of all the cables of friendship and affection, which 
 moored us pleasantly, and securely in the enchanted har- 
 bors of this life. It shall consist in the stranding of our 
 hopes, plans and prospects in the midst of a wilder storm 
 than ever yet rent the sails of commerce, or buried the 
 lives and fortunes of merchant-princes under the sea. It 
 shall consist in an unending banishment from God, from 
 friends, from glory and from home ; for heaven is home. 
 And it shall consist in the subjection of both body and 
 spirit to the gnawings of a worm that never dies, and the 
 burnings of a flame that is not quenched. And is not 
 
10 
 
 this wrath — wratli intense, unmeasured, unspeakable? 
 0, who can take in the signification of eternity, when that 
 eternity is filled with blackness, and loaded down with 
 gloom for the condemned sinner's soul! What unknown 
 uavigator can fathom the wild waves of that burning 
 ocean, where not a single ray of mercy can ever shine up- 
 on the broken heart of the tossed and ruined mariner? 
 And yet this is the way in which God shall deal with the 
 proud, insolent and uncompromising reprobate. He shall 
 leave him not a foot of ground, upon which to base an 
 argument, petition or apology. He shall fling to him not 
 a single plank, upon which to buoy up his despairing spir- 
 it, while his fortunes are going down, and his pleasures 
 are beino- wrecked around him. But from first to last, he 
 shall make him the victim of his indignation and anger, 
 because he heard not Moses and the Prophets, and re- 
 fused all the intercessions of the Prince of Peace. 
 
 And then, the wrath of God shall be displayed in the 
 condemnation and punishment of the fallen angels. For 
 says the Apostle Jude, " The angels which kept not 
 their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath 
 reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the 
 judgment of the great day." Of course, we cannot tell 
 who these rebellious spirits were. Neither can we fix up- 
 on the sin which uncrowned, degraded and destroyed them. 
 But this one thing we do know, that they are reserved in 
 the blackness of their guilt for the day of wonders and for 
 the God of doom. what a time that will be. The very 
 devils must give up their cells, their burning fetters, and 
 come to judgment. The thrones, principalities and pow- 
 ers of darkness must pale and shiver before the face of the 
 Great Judge. The agents and emissaries of guilt, which have 
 "thronged the air, darkened heaven and ruled this lower 
 world," must be gathered by the judgment trump to the 
 flaming bar. And God, the great God, the unchangeable 
 
11 
 
 God, shall smite them like a withered pine, and consume 
 them like dry stubble. It will only increase the measure 
 of their bitterness and pain, that they were once citizens 
 of heaven, when " the morning stars sung together, and 
 all the sons of Grocl shouted for joy." The very fact that 
 they were once nearest perhaps to the eternal throne, that 
 their harps made the loudest and sweetest music, that their 
 wings impelled them on the swiftest and noblest errands, 
 and that their faces and crowns shone with the greatest 
 splendor, will only make them more shining marks for the 
 the shafts of the divine vengeance. Grod shall hold them 
 up to the scorn of the assembled universe. He shall pro- 
 claim, "these are the evil spirits which songht to dethrone 
 their king, which struggled to divide heaven, which cor- 
 rupted the innocence and withered the bright fields of 
 Paradise." And he shall give them over to the fury of 
 his thunders forevermore, without the possibility of a plea 
 of salvation. 
 
 But wherein shall the G-lory of the Q-reat Day be most 
 impressively revealed. Why most unquestionably in the 
 resurrection of the dead. Hundreds of generations, even 
 back to the first inhabitants of earth, shall burst the cap- 
 tivity of thegrave,and come forth. The caverns of the great 
 deep shall be opened, and the rushing tides shall roll their 
 dead to shore. The cemeteries of proud cities, filled with 
 sculptured marble, and adorned with the master pieces of 
 affluence and taste, shall echo to the tread of arisen mul- 
 titudes. The quiet graveyard of the secluded hamlet, 
 shall be vacated by its long forgotten sleepers. And even 
 the bridle-paths of the dim forest, and the silent groves of 
 trackless and untenanted wastes shall send forth their rep- 
 resentatives to the august revealings of G-od's great day. 
 ! what a scene of thrilling interest that will be I And 
 then,what is better than all else, the buried saints of Christ 
 shall rise in the likeness of their Lord. Their bones may 
 
12 
 
 be scattered at the grave's mouth. Their dust may have 
 been driven by the winds. Their names may have been 
 graven upon the sands. And yet, blessed be God, like the 
 slain in the valley of the Prophet, when the breath of the 
 Almighty comes upon them, bone shall come to bone, the 
 sinews and flesh shall be laid upon them, and the House 
 of Israel shall live. The poor missionary, who struggled 
 with the discouragements of his destiny, submitted to 
 hunger, heat and cold that he might carry the gospel to 
 the heathen, and at last went down unwept and unre- 
 membered in a foreign land, shall stand up - in the image 
 of his King. The faithful pastor, who spent himsef freely 
 for the religious culture of the people, and fell at his .post 
 in the midst of his activity and zeal, "shall come again 
 with rejoicing bringing his sheaves with him." The hum- 
 ble peasant, who pursued the quiet routine of charity and 
 faith, living upon the grace of the gospel and supported 
 by the comforts of the cross, shall leave the pine coffin of 
 his sepulchre with the rapture and the aspirations of 
 heaven in his soul. And the pious soldier, who was slar 
 in the conflict of battle, while the storm of death, was ragin 
 fearfully around him, and the blood of patriots and herot>. 
 was flowing like water, shall arise from his gory bed to 
 be clothed with the garments of immortality. Truly the 
 divine power and goodness shall be conspicuously dis- 
 played, in rending the bars of the tomb, and in dissolving 
 the empire of death from the bodies of the saints. 
 
 Also in the creation of new heavens and a new earth 
 shall the glory of God be most strikingly made manifest. 
 The old order of things shall be entirely changed. Phys- 
 ical laws shall be abolished. The succession of the sea- 
 sons shall be broken up. The watch-fires of the sky and 
 the beacon lights of centuries shall be extinguished. — 
 Material deformities and corruptions shall be purged 
 away. And in the place of all this, we shall have spirit- , 
 
13 
 
 ual, celestial and eternal habitations fitted for the occupan- 
 cy of God and of the angels. We shall walk upon streets 
 that shine with the lustre of gold. We shall gaze upon 
 mansions that have been wrought into the transparent 
 delicacy of crystal, and resound with the shoutings of the 
 redeemed. We shall stroll through immortal fields and 
 gardens, fragrant with flowers that are fadeless and musical 
 with songs that are unceasing. No more rugged rocks and 
 foaming torrents, to cast the shadow of danger and desola- 
 tion over the brightest landscapes. No more dreary lowlands 
 and miasmatic regions, to chill and wither the body with 
 disease and suffering. No more poisonous minerals and veg- 
 itables, to destroy the elasticity of health, and to cause life 
 itself to be a burden. But from gate to palace and from 
 plain to plain, it shall be one universal masterpiece of re- 
 finement and beauty, and the very morning stars them- 
 selves and the shouting sons of God shall exult in the 
 new creation. And as if to make this eternal residence 
 jjompletely enchanting, it shall be the dwelling-place of 
 t^ghteousness. Sin shall be excluded from it by immu- 
 ivaMe decrees. No foot-fall of iniquity shall ever be heard 
 in its radiant portals. No invasion of guilt shall ever blast 
 the beauty that blooms in its cloudless clime. But from 
 th centre of this grand, spiritual universe, out to its far- 
 thest boundaries of living trees and healing streams, it 
 shall be one unbroken reign of purity and truth. Every 
 shout of praise, every voice of song, every word of con- 
 gratulation, and every deed of love shall be full of the soul 
 of righteousness ; and not oae among all the ransomed of 
 the Lord but shall manifest and enjoy this state. 
 
 And farther still, the glory of the Great Day shall be 
 illustrated in the crowning of the saints with their final 
 and long looked for reward. " And these shall go away 
 into life eternal." Not the evanescant life of physical ex- 
 istence. Not the life that flows through the veins and 
 
THE DAY OPIWEATH. PL M. 
 
 1 The day of wrath, that dreadful day, 
 When heaven and earth shall pass away S 
 What power shall be the sinner's stay ? 
 •How shall he meet that dreadful day— 
 
 2 When, shriv'ling like a parched scroll, 
 The flamirg heavens together roll ; 
 And, louder yet, and yet more dread, 
 Swells the high trump that wakes the dead ? 
 
 3 on that day, that wrathful day, 
 
 When man to judgment wakes from clay 5r 
 Be thou, O Christ, the sinner's stay, 
 Though heaven and earth shall pass away