power towards the church and the material of which our present dwelling-place is made. The Hebrew youths could be preserved unharmed amidst a seven-fold heated furnace, and while the cloud which led Israel through the sea, was a darkness and a terror unto the Egyptians, its beaming brilliancy gave a cheering and a protecting light unto the chosen seed. We know from philosophical experiment, that were one of the two gases which compose the atmospheric air, withdrawn, universal combustion might, at the will of the Creator, instantly take place in the other. Without, however, prying too curiously into the secrecy of God's operations in the world of nature, it is sufficient for our faith to be assured of Divine and merciful protection in that day. Still the promise reads, Nothing shall by any means harm you; Luke x. 19; and when the streaming splendours of Jehovah's holiness meet our upward flight into the regions of air, we will think of the blood which dropped in lone Gethsemane, and be comforted. If material fire should enter at all into the process of the judgment of the great day, it will simply purify, and not destroy the earth. Restitution, and not annihilation, is the burden of the harp of prophecy, and therefore do we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein righteousness and peace, in the place of sin and strife, shall dwell. Acts iii. 24.

2nd. The pains of hell also, are usually represented in Scripture under the denomination of fire. For example, God says unto Moses, A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell. Deut. xxxii. 22. Isaiah asks, in most emphatic terms, Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Ch. xxxii. 14.

And the rich man is represented by our Lord, as tormented in a flame. Is this fire real, that is, literal? We answer, first; the term Schoel in Hebrew, translated Hades in Greek, and rendered Hell in our own vernacular tongue, is not the word generally used to signify the place or the mode of punishment: its usual meaning is the state invisible, whether good or bad; but generally signifying the former, and answering to the term Paradise, whither the Lord departed, and whither also he took the penitent thief on the day of the crucifixion. His body was interred in Joseph's sepulchre : his spirit departed into hades, or into the Father's gracious care and keeping. (A descent of Jesus into the actual hell, therefore, as held by Papists, becomes a mere invented figment, to favour the absurd idea of the fabulous fires of purgatory.-But to resume our exposition.) The Hebrew term usually significant of the place of torment, is Gehenna; and this again is stated to be derived from the valley of Hinnom, or valley of Gehenna, where, on the north of Jerusalem, it is believed a perpetual fire was kept to consume the refuse of the city. Isaiah, speaking of Sennacherib's defeat and the slaughter of his numerous army, says: Tophet is ordained of old: yea, for the king it is prepared: he hath made it deep and large. The pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it. Ch. xxx. 33. Jeremiah also says, temples to Moloch were built in the valley of Hinnom in Tophet, to burn their children there by fire unto their idol-god. Ch. vii. 31. To drown the cries of the poor innocents, large drums or musical instruments were beaten : hence the place became, the valley of Tophet, or a drum, with allusion to its rites of torture and of death. Thus the eternal torments of the wicked

The

are mentioned by the sacred writers in expressions borrowed from visible things and actual occurrences. Isa. lxvi. 24, with Mark ix. 44. Nothing could more aptly or impressively describe them than fire acting with unyielding intensity upon sensibilities so exquisitely tender as those of the human subject. Departure from the presence of the Lord, the Source and Centre of all joy and of all blessedness, must surely be punishment sufficient for reasonable and immortal creatures. Spirit of the Lord withdrawn, and no more sacrifice for sin remaining, unavailing regret, anguish inexpressible, all the horror of hopeless, endless, remediless despair, must become the bitter portion of a ruined soul—the misery without the drum to drown or to obliterate its cries for ever. We tremble while we speak, and would urge you by the terrors of the Lord, where mercies hitherto may have failed to soften, that you would instantly betake you to the throne of love, and ask in the name of Jesus there for the converting and the renewing grace of your forgotten God. The Gehenna of the lost will be-truth believed too late.

3rd, and finally. The afflictions of the righteous in this present state are often compared to fire. As when the suffering Patriarch declares, When I am tried, I shall come forth as gold, Job xxiii. 10: trial in the providence of God, serving, as the enveloping fire of a crucible, to purify the gracious character from all admixture of evil. Think it not strange, says St. Peter, concerning the fiery trial that is to try you. 1 Epis. iv. 12. Should the fire of martyrdom be enkindled for your body, it will only serve you as another chariot to bear your spirit home to an approving and a loving God. Communications of support and of comfort from above,

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can sustain us under the heaviest trials of our mortal state, and change the complainings of pain into songs of praise. Many sorrows-and sorrows unmixed with the alleviations of gospel-peace-shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Ps. xxxii. 10. The salvation of the right

their strength in time of

eous is of the Lord: he is trouble. Ps. xxxvii. 39. He that is our God, is the God of salvation: and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. Ps. lxviii. 20. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth us: thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever: forsake not the work of thine own hands. Ps. cxxxviii. 8. With this sweet persuasion in your minds, nothing in life or death, in things present or to come, need greatly to move you. All things are working in both the will and providence of the Lord for good. Your sure defence is the munition of rocks; a tri-une God. Isa. xxxiii. 16. Your Redeemer holds the key of hades by right of personal conquest over it. Rev. i. 18. He will admit you there, or bring you thence, as it pleases him: He loves you too well to forget you, even for a passing moment, and when he has meetened and prepared you for the honour, he will take you to sit with him in the throne of his glory. Rev. iii. 21. Can he do more, or you want more, than

this?

Gracious Saviour, moved by love,

Thou the lofty heavens didst bow,

Thou didst leave thy throne above,

With lost man to dwell below;

Here among us thou wilt be,
We'll rejoice alone in thee,

Here thy name we will record,
O Immanuel, our Lord.

DISCOURSE XV.

THE HIDDEN MANNA.

REVELATION ii. 17.

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden

manna.

To every unprejudiced and candid reader of the sacred volume, it must be manifest that one Master-mind has influenced and indited the whole of its contents. It would be morally impossible that with characters and dispositions so diverse, aims and purposes so varied, times and places so distant, there could have been any collusion between the inspired writers of the Bible, to produce a system of religious truth at once so complicate, and yet so harmonious in its details, so varying in its announcements, and at the same time, so agreeing in its principles and facts. Here, surely, the finger of God is discernible; and next to an experimental certainty of its inspiration, this agreement of all Scripture with itself, affords the most conclusive and irrefragable proof, that the Bible really is what it purports to be, a revelation from the world invisible, the communi

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