according to your high calling of God in Christ Jesus. But if you live a life of constant rebellion against its holy laws, and abandon yourselves to the dominion of your baneful lusts; be assured that though you have now the privilege of ranking externally or nominally with the children of the kingdom, a day of trial is fast approaching, when you will be weighed in the balance of a divine judgment, and on being found wanting, will be cast out, into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Outer darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, occurs in two other places, in Matthew xxii. 13, and xxv. 30; in the former place the man who without a wedding garment at the marriage, and in the latter, the unprofitable servant, were cast into outer darkness, where should be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Outer darkness, according to the natural sense, seems to apply to the contrast at marriages in the east which were celebrated at midnight. Within the place of celebration, all was splendidly illuminated, while without all is darkness, and with respect to any one rejected from a participation of the splendour, it must, on his being cast into it, appear extreme, and partake to the sense of the superlative degree.

Those who have acted the hypocrite, in matters of religion, especially the religion of the divine Word, and have used its truths for purposes of selfish ambition or worldly aggrandisement, stifle in themselves more fully the admonitions of a true conscience, and in proportion plunge themselves into greater enormities and wickedness, which is, and ever will be, accompanied with a corresponding opposition to, and denial of the truth. The Lord is the sun of heaven, and of the universal spiritual world, and the light which proceeds from him is the divine truth, which really and truly shines as a light to the eyes of angels and spirits, and presents to them all the spiritual objects which they are enabled to see. He, indeed, is the true light, enlightening every one; but it is luminous or otherwise, according to the state of the eye which beholds it, and the eyes of spirits may be conceived of as the direct organ of the understanding; nay more, the understanding thus organised for the purpose of outward vision in that world.

Every mind, therefore, which becomes non-receptive of truth by an evil life, when it attains its final state in the spiritual world, exists in a spiritual body exactly corresponding to its predominant qualities, by which circumstance the eyes of spirits can only see in a light corresponding with their understandings, from which, if truth be excluded, especially by the falses of

evil, they are unable to see in the true light of heaven, and appear to those who do see in its light, as if they were cast out into dense darkness. It is on this account that hell, from hich the divine truth is rejected, is called the kingdom of darkness, and its inhabitants are called the powers of darkness. Their state is truly a state of darkness, in the sense in which we have described it! for that mind must be dark indeed which has rejected the divine truth, and especially when it has so rejected it as to have used it for base purposes as long as the power to use it so was granted. The false opinion of it, and its importance, which those must entertain of it who so treat it, must, in the very nature of things, be of the most malignant character, and spring from a heart reckless of all evil. A false of this character is therefore to be estimated as the false of evil, or the false generated by evil. The children of the kingdom therefore, who convert the things of the church, in the means of gratifying a most selfish ambition, as did the Jews when they applied to themselves personally, independent of their real characters, the divine truths and promises which applied to them only representatively, are such as are cast into outer or extreme darkness, corresponding to the extreme exclusion of the divine truth into which they have suffered their cupidities to hurry them. The man who intruded himself to the marriage without a wedding garment, and the unprofitable servant, in the passages before referred to, were evidently the hypocrites of the Lord's church, of whose final state this outer darkness is predicated.

"There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Every deviation from divine order, must, in the very nature of things, be attended with suffering, and the intensity of sufferings must increase with the extent of the deviation from order. We find this to be true of universal nature, as well as of man, as a rational being. It is true, insensitive beings cannot truly or sensitively suffer; but in the ideas of those who are able to look upon them as rational beings, and, as means of their sustenance and pleasure; in proportion as they are effected by their deterioration, they may be said to suffer. Both the punishments awarded to evil as well as the happiness by which the good are rewarded, are direct or indirect consequences of each. In goodness there is treasured up every possible felicity, and in evil every possible suffering a rational creature can endure. God does not properly punish any of his creatures. His will is their constant happiness, for which he has made the utmost provision, even in their susceptibility of suffering. Their fine organization, in which they have the capacity of enjoy

ment, while preserved in health and order, suffers, in proportion as derangement and disorder are introduced. The Lord has placed man in a state of freedom, and thereby has put into his power the means of his own happiness or misery, and watches over him with all his conscience, and guards him by all his omnipotence against the operation of any force, that would deprive him of such freedom. Whatever man, therefore, permanently suffers in it is by his own act and deed. How ardently should he seek the true knowledge of both good and evil, that he may choose the former, and shun the latter. Against himself his wilful ignorance becomes, in the utmost degree, criminal, though he cannot be criminal against himself, without, at the same time, living in rebellion against God, and in deeds of mischief to his fellow-beings.

In some instances miseries appear more horrible to the beholder, than to the persons enduring them. Cases of insanity are peculiarly of this character. The unhappy sufferer appears in almost all cases unconscious of his miserable condition, and his situation only affects with horror those in a state of sanity. In hell all are in a state of insanity, with respect to heaven and the sources of real enjoyments, and by those who behold them, enjoying the opposite state; they are looked upon as being in a miserable condition, though, like the insane in this life, they are not conscious of the extent of their misery, and much less that it is the effect of their wilful opposition to God and his divine laws of order. The right understanding of the terms of Scripture, in which the enjoyments of the good, and the miseries of the wicked, are expressed, will lead us to see, in most instances, the specific goods and evils, which cause the one and the other. Weeping denotes lamentation by the good, when good and truth perish from the church (Jer. xxxi. 15, 16, 17; Matt. ii. 18); but it denotes the anguish of the wicked, from their own lusts and falses, and hence denotes such lusts and falses as cause the weeping.

The wicked weep when their lusts cannot be gratified; those in particular, who have profaned holy things, and have thereby gained importance, respect, and, perhaps, ascendancy over many who have been truly principled in them, will never cease to cherish the unhallowed feeling, though they must, when finally cast out into outer darkness, be necessarily deprived of the power, longer to deceive by the profession of truth. Such have little power of deception, and of rule by deception, except in the last times of the church, when falses of doctrine prevail, by the perversions of the Word. They, in consequence, being destitute of any interior

principle of religion, become dexterous falsifiers of truth, especially the truths of the literal sense of the Holy Word; hence gnashing of teeth is peculiarly predicated of their state of suffering; because teeth denote, in a good sense, truths, in the sensual degree, or of an ultimate order, and the gnashing of teeth denotes their collision, by falses of doctrine.

Let us, then, be careful to understand what things may be lawfully, and for ever enjoyed, and fix our hearts so stedfastly upon them, as that no opposition will be able to prevail against them. We shall necessarily enter into states of trial and temptation, as to the genuineness of our charity and faith, because they can never become the ultimate principles of life, till the natural mind undergoes such a degree of purification, that the affection of goodness and truth may be safely implanted in it. Our evils cannot be cast out, till we know them to be, and to inhere in us; and we cannot experimentally know this, till the Lord permits the evil spirits to excite them within us, which it is their delight to do. But he does not permit this, till he has furnished us with the means of successful combat and victory. Let us, then, never fear to persevere in the ways of true religion, as we are sure to reap if we faint not; and the joys of eternal life will be so pure, so elevated, so sweet, so full of mutual love and friendship among the good, that we shall for ever appear to be only entering into life, the delightful present being for ever so exquisite, as to keep in the shade both the past and future. May we all prepare to be so fully, so delightfully, and for ever occupied, in the Lord's heavenly kingdom. Amen.

SERMON XLIII.

CHRISTIAN CONFIDENCE IN THE DIVINE LOVE AND TRUTH.

BY THE REV. J. W. BARNES, BATH.

Psalm li. 10.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

BELOVED friends. There was a time, namely, at the commencement of the Lord's church on this earth, when the hearts and the understandings of men, were the images and the likenesses of Jehovah God; when the soul of man was well compared to the fruitful field, to a land flowing with milk and with honey; when without spot or blemish, the flock of the Word made flesh, basked in the sunshine of heavenly glory, and sported in innocency and true joy. Truly was this period, this first and blessed state of man, called the golden age, in that it was the holiest ever known, for the minds of those who lived at that period, like that precious metal, were incapable of taint, and proof against corrosion; because in direct communication with the fountain and source of life and light itself. Though on earth as to their natural bodies, these people were in heaven as to their spirits, and being thus constituted, as desiring to walk in the order of the Lord, they lived a life of peace, and in a sweet sleep they passed almost unconsciously from earth to heaven above. But when man began to decline from this holy confidence in the Lord, and failed to rely on his goodness, on his wisdom, and on his power: then it was that the image and likeness of the Deity began to be effaced in his soul, which, in successive generations, from a pure and delightful Paradise, became a wilderness and a desert, naked, barren, and unfruitful. Faith and love, in succeeding ages, existed but in name, for the love of the Lord in man, gave place to lust or concupisence, and truth-pure and unadulterated truth, was supplanted by falsehood, and thus the bodies and the souls of men became defiled, and as, the Scriptures affirm, "a cage of unclean things." The passage before us, taken from the Psalms of David, has a two-fold relation; firstly, to the Lord himself; and, secondly, to the