and sat down with the Redeemer on his throne of glory? Have they taken their place where nothing can enter that defileth, or worketh abomination, or loveth or maketh a lie? Have they arrived where sin and pain are unknown; where human labors, and human cares, and human infirmities, can find no admittance; where human relations have no place; where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God? Have their corruptible bodies put on incorruption, and their mortal put on immortality? Do they believe themselves to have become spirits of just men made perfect; shining as stars, and as the brightness of the firmament? Certainly, they will not pretend all this. Doubtless, they hope for a better, a holier and happier heaven than they now enjoy.

What, then, is their condition? If neither in heaven nor hell, where are they? Are they settled in neither, and do they spend their time in quick transitions from one to the other, being in heaven when they do right, and in hell when they do wrong? Do they

leap, many times in a day, across that "great gulf," which divides the blessedness of the righteous from the tormenting flame? No. Heaven is a state of permanent blessedness, from which those who have once entered, shall go no more out. And the smoke of the torment of those in hell ascendeth up for ever and ever; which means, according to the very lowest interpretation, that the visible indications of their torment are uninterrupted.

No. It cannot be, that men have adopted this doctrine considerately, and with a full understanding of its import. Their own consciousness proves it false. They know they are not in such a hell as the Bible describes. They know they never have been in it. They know their neighbors are not in it. They know, if they will stop and think soberly, that the men whom they see alive on earth, enjoying pleasure mingled with their pain, and sustained by hope, are not in the hell of which the Bible speaks. If, then, we believe the Bible, we must believe that there is such a

hell as the Bible describes, somewhere beyond this world.

And if not in this world, where and when will hell be found? Doubtless, when those that have done evil shall hear the voice of Christ, and shall come forth from their graves to the resurrection of damnation; when those who have never shown themselves the friends of Christ, shall be sentenced to depart, accursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, and shall go away into everlasting punishment; when those that obey not the gospel, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.

Dream not then, that the penalty of sin is only what you find it to be from day to day. Think not that you can persevere in sin so cheaply. Indulge not the tempting hope, that after the body is dead, no more pain can be inflicted upon you; but "fear Him, who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear Him."

CHAPTER V.

FINAL RETRIBUTION.

We have already seen, that God hath appointed a day, in which Christ will come again from heaven, the bodies of men will be raised, and men will be judged according to the deeds done in the body; when some will be approved and admitted to heaven, and others condemned and sentenced to the punishment of everlasting fire. Most who believe these truths, believe also that the judgment of that day will be final; that the sentence then pronounced, will fix each individual unchangeably in a state of happiness or misery.

And it is natural that it should be so. All the circumstances of that transaction look like the grand closing up of the affairs of the hu

man race.

The Lord Jesus Christ, accompanied with all his holy angels, descends from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; they that are in the graves, hear his voice and come forth; the dead are raised incorruptible, and the living are changed; all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and every one gives an account of himself to God; the Judge separates the righteous from the wicked, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; the righteous are called to inherit the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world, and they enter into eternal life; the wicked are sentenced to depart accursed into everlasting fire, and they go away into everlasting punishment; the heavens pass away, the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth, and the works that are therein, are burned up. Who can believe that this settlement of the affairs of the world is not final? Every thing is attended to. All the individuals of the human race, small and great, are brought to their account. Every work of