to make a more painful impression than the treason of his base disciple. His mind possessed with these objects, when the scene of the general judgment comes in view-the traitor standing in his sight - his crime foreseen -the sordid motives of it understood, the forethought of the fallen apostle's punishment could not but present itself; and this drew from our divine instructor that alarming menace, which must have struck a chill of horror to the heart of every one that heard it, and the more because the particular application of it was not at the time understood. This was the effect intended: our Lord meant to impress his audience with a just and affecting sense of the magnitude of those evils-the sharpness of those pains, which none but the ungodly shall ever feel, and from which none of the ungodly ever shall escape.

Nor in this passage only, but in every page of holy writ, are these terrors displayed, in expressions studiously adapted to lay hold of the imagination of mankind, and awaken the most thoughtless to such an habitual sense of danger as might be

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sufficient to overcome the most powerful allurements of vice. "The wicked are to go into outer darkness. There is to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. They are to depart into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. There they shall drink of the wrath of God, poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation." Whatever there may be of figure in some of these expressions, as much as this they certainly import, that the future state of the wicked will be a state of exquisite torment both of body and mind, of torments, not only intense in degree, but incapable of intermission, cure, or end, a condition of unmixed and perfect evil, not less deprived of future hope than of present enjoyment.

It is amazing that a danger so strongly set forth should be disregarded; and this is the more amazing, when we take a view of the particular casts and complexions of character among which this disregard is chiefly found. They may be reduced to three different classes, according to the

three different passions by which they are severally overcome, ambition, avarice, and sensuality. Personal consequence is the object of the first class, wealth of the second, pleasure of the third. Personal consequence is not to be acquired but by great undertakings, bold in the first conception, difficult in execution, extensive in consequence. Such undertakings demand great abilities. Accordingly, we commonly find in the ambitious man a superiority of parts, in some measure proportioned to the magnitude of his designs: it is his particular talent to weigh distant consequences, to provide against them, and to turn every thing, by a deep policy and forecast, to his own advantage. It might be expected, that this sagacity of understanding would restrain him from the desperate folly of sacrificing an unfading crown for that glory that must shortly pass away. Again, your avaricious money-getting man is generally a character of wonderful discretion. It might be expected that he would be exact to count his gains, and would be the last to barter possessions which he might hold for ever, for a wealth

that shall be taken from him, and shall not profit him in the day of wrath. Then, for those servants of sin the effeminate sons of sensual pleasure, these are a feeble timid race. It might be expected that these, of all men, would want firmness to brave the danger. Yet so it is, the ambitious pursues a conduct which must end in shame; the miser, to be rich now, makes himself poor for ever; and the tender delicate voluptuary shrinks not at the thought of endless burnings!

These things could not be, but for one of these two reasons, either that there is some lurking incredulity in men, an evil heart of unbelief, that admits not the gospel doctrine of punishment in its full extent; or that their imaginations set the danger at a prodigious distance.

The Scriptures are not more explicit in the threatenings of wrath upon the impenitent than in general assertions of God's forbearance and mercy. These assertions are confirmed by the voice of Nature, which loudly proclaims the goodness as

well as the power of the universal Lord. Man is frail and imperfect in his original constitution. This, too, is the doctrine of the Scriptures; and every man's experience unhappily confirms it. Human life, by the appointment of Providence, is short: "He hath made our days as it were a span long." "Is it, then, to be supposed, that this good, this merciful, this longsuffering God, should doom his frail imperfect creature man to endless punishment, for the follies- call them, if you please, the crimes, of a short life? Is He injured by our crimes, that he should seek this vast revenge? or does his nature delight in groans and lamentations? It cannot be supposed. What revelation declares of the future condition of the wicked is prophecy; and prophecy, we know, deals in poetical and exaggerated expressions." Such, perhaps, is the language which the sinner holds within himself, when he is warned of the wrath to come; and such language he is taught to hold, in the writings and the sermons of our modern sectaries. He is taught, that the punishment threatened is far more heavy than