in darkness, how can other phraseology applied to future punishment be explained? A world lighted up by everlasting flames cannot be a place of darkness. It is thus that we infer that descriptions of heaven are figurative. In one place God is represented as dwelling in light unapproachable and full of glory, and in another as making darkness his pavilion. These accounts are in the letter contradictory, but in their real import harmonious. They mean only that He cannot be seen and fully comprehended. Thus the various and apparently irreconcilable accounts which we have of hell, appear perfectly correct. They are only intended to teach that the place is extremely miserable and appalling. III. Although a literal account of the nature of future punishment is not given, we partly know in what it consists from the properties of the human mind. 1. Lost men will be harassed with discontent. The love of happiness is inseparable from their nature. While beholding the blessedness of heaven and feeling a total deprivation of the means of enjoyment, they will be tormented with ungratified desire. Dissatisfac tion with existing circumstances and fruitless wishes for a change which they cannot enjoy, will keep them in perpetual irritation. There can be nothing tranquil and serene where there is nothing to allay vexation, and where every thing to excite it abounds. To be where all bad principles, where all unholy feelings burn and rage without restraint, where they are all inflamed by a sense of want, and of ignominy, and by a view of the blessedness of heaven, in which spirits originally of a nature like its own are exulting in perfect holiness, will deprive the soul of tranquillity and contentment, and call every angry passion into exercise. Envy, hatred and revenge, which were once in their infancy and only excited at intervals, will gather strength from free indulgence, and exasperation from the poverty and despair of its circumstances. Its desires can never be satisfied, its malice never accomplished, its revenge never satiated. Such turbulence and dissatisfaction, the reality of which is fairly inferred from the nature of the mind, will undoubtedly contribute to the miseries of lost men. 2. Recollection will awaken the anguish of unmingled self-reproach, of the most bitter regret and of biting remorse. The wretched soul will remember its abused sabbaths, its stifled convictions, its broken vows, its vicious practices, its half formed resolutions of amendment, its neglected bible and slighted opportunities, with shame and dismay. Every moment, which recalls such acts of folly and guilt, will be replete with anguish. Then light will fall on each step of probationary existence. Sins before unsuspected or forgotten, will flash on the mind. The justice of God will be relieved from suspicion. The soul will not doubt that mortal life was short, its joys mean and its concerns trifling, in comparison with the interests of an endless existence. It will stand in amazement at the folly which for the honor, ease and pleasures of earth provoked the wrath of God and forfeited heaven. It will not recall one event or act of life on which to reflect with satisfaction. The past will only flash on the mind to keep open an eternal wound. Endeavor to picture in imagination a being cut off from friendship, from peace and pleasant occupation and confined in dismal abodes, with no employment but meditation on past existence, and that existence replete with events, at the remem brance of which he is overwhelmed with shame, remorse and anguish. Imagine yourself in his stead, a lonely, blasted, and haggard outcast, unpitied and unprotected, with no subject of reflection but the crimes and follies which have thus reduced you! What could create more exquisite suffering than the recollection of those deeds of madness which drew you from probationary ground into utter ruin? How painful to retrace the steps by which you approached the gulf of despair! how painful to remember duties unperformed, opportunities unregarded, proffered pardon often despised and salutary fears always quelled! 3. Despair of a better state will deprive the sufferings of hell of mitigation, and form one of its most appalling circumstances. To feel that their condition is unalterable, their portion unalienable, that the night of darkness on which they entered at death has no morning, that the fire into which they are banished is unquenchable, that the worms which prey on their spirits never die, is the dreadful doom of lost men. Could ages bring them relief, though wrapt in mantles of woe and lying on beds of sorrow, they might wait patiently. But no such expectation sustains them in the midst of their miseries. They are no longer deceived by error, no longer consoled by hope. They are persuaded of the awful truth;-as the tree falls, so it lies. It is impossible for us to realize this state of mind. To be involved in wretchedness which we know will never cease, to see the frown of God, to look back and forward without fixing on one object to relieve, and in full expectancy of worse evils, is hell. In this life we know nothing of it. Here in the saddest conjunctures, when every friend forsakes us and every prospect lowers, we look to all changing time, and hope for succor. But in hell the storm never clears away, the sunshine of prosperity never opens upon the soul, the expectation of a brighter day is over. It is not wonderful that in this state of feeling, the agitated and despairing spirit should ex-. claim ; "Which way shall I fly? Infinite wrath and infinite despair! Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." The evil that it now experiences it could ་ |