most heart-rending description. From the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet, there is no soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores; their loins are filled with loathsomeness and disease, and their wounds are not bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Their morals are in perfect keeping with all the rest. They are all infidels, either professed or practical. Hence liars and slanderers, harlots and drunkards, are as the stars innumerable; and blasphemers and thieves, tyrants and assassins, abound through the length and breadth of the land. It may be said of their spiritual disposition that their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes; and their heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And as it is with one so it is with all. Without the grace of God, every nation is wicked; every country is depraved; every city is fallen; every town is polluted; every village is unholy; every hamlet is unrighteous; every family is ungodly; every individual is a sinner; and every imagination of the thoughts of every heart is only evil, and that continually. Sin has tainted every region on earth, and Satan hath enthralled every man. They are a people laden with iniquity, as it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth; there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Now from all this arises their imminent danger. They are exposed to the wrath of God, liable to be cut down every moment; likely to be taken away with a stroke, and then a great ransom cannot deliver them. They are on the verge of utter destruction; on the very brink of perdition, and there is but a step betwixt them and death. And as to their final doom, this is fixed for ever, except they repent. "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished;" "they shall be turned into hell with all the nations that forget God." "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment;" "where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched," and the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever. Is it any wonder that wise men in every age have desired a better country than this? abounding, as it does, with stinging adders, and biting serpents, and broods of vipers; and overrun, as it is, with snarling dogs, prowling wolves, and roaring lions. No wonder that such as have hastened their escape, are unmindful of returning to the country from whence they came out, though they might have had opportunity to do so. What, indeed, is there to return to, but the habitation of dragons, the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean bird, and one vast menagerie of every poisonous reptile and every ravenous beast? There is nothing that is worth even looking back for, except to witness your departure from Sodom, and your escape from Gomorrah, ye unconverted husbands or wives, or parents or children, that were left behind. Lest ye suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, make haste, delay not to come out of Egypt, and turn your back of Babylon, infested, as it is, with hoards of human sav▾ ages, dens of thieves and gangs of murderers, and doomed, as it is, to perdition; we exhort you to come out of it, lest ye partake of its plagues. Having furnished this brief description of the kingdom of darkness, and of the ruler of the spiritual wickedness of this world, together with an account of its degraded and ungodly population, our subsequent remarks on the present world must be understood in a more literal and general sense. Observe we:— 4. Its frequent and strange illusions. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."-Eccles. i. 2. There is a vanity and emptiness in sublunary things which most men experience, but which only few are able to describe. We do not refer now to the deceptions which are practised upon them by others, but to the strange illusions which they practise upon themselves. How much of their happiness is derived from reflections on the past, or drawn from anticipations of the future, and how little satisfaction they feel in their present possessions. They either have been happy, or else are about to be blessed; but at present it is not quite so well with them. They are either telling of good days gone by, or singing of "good times coming," but, in some way or other, they fail to be happy just now. There is much that is true in what the celebrated poet has said on this subject "Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Rests and expatiates in a life to come." The fact is, men undervalue their present privileges, overrate their future prospects, and retain but partial recollections of their past experience. Let us try to illustrate this very strange position. Look at that schoolboy, blessed as he is with every comfort, favoured with every privilege, and free from every care, he has no idea that this is the time for him to be happy. He is looking forward to the time when he shall be a man, and ride his own horse, drive his own carriage, and manage his own business, as the period of complete felicity. He is deceived with the gaudy show and brilliant outside appearances, of men immersed in the business of life. He has no idea that manhood has its difficulties, and business its anxieties and embarrassments; that emolument has its miseries, and power its responsibilities. Well, let us see him again at the end of some twenty years, when he may be said to be in the full possession of the objects that he dreamed of in childhood, and sighed for in youth. Now he rides his own horse; there he goes driving his own chariot; here he is, over head and ears in the business of maturer life; but, strange to tell, he now adverts to the days of his juvenile joy, when he sat at his father's table, ran in his father's garden, and pursued his innocent sports in his father's field, as the happiest days of his life. It often happens that men sing the most feelingly of home, sweet home, when they are at a distance from it; they love it most when called to leave it, and seldom learn its worth until they feel its loss. This also is vanity. While we are grateful for the past, and sanguine with hope for the future, let us learn, by turning away from the vain illusions of time and by securing the blessed realities of eternity, to be happy to-day-contented now. How many and painful are the disappointments of men in the present life. Let us consider (1.) Its perishing hopes. "My strength and my hope is perished."-Lamen. iii. 18. It cannot be denied that whatever may be the object of man's pursuit in the present world, he is frequently the subject of bitter disappointment. How often his wisest schemes are completely frustrated; how frequently his most strenuous efforts fail to secure the object of his ardent wishes. Where is the man who has not realized this in his own experience? Infancy, youth, mature life, and old age; every stage and every station in social and active life, supplies abundant evidence to prove the fact, that they are only mortals in miniature: men only a few moments in this vain world, who are strangers to bright hopes blasted, and who are not familiar with the grievous experience which arises from sanguine expectations completely cut off. It frequently happens that the object of man's most intense desire, mocks all his efforts to secure it; ignus-fatuus like, it dazzles only to deceive him; it allures him only to elude his grasp; and having drawn him into danger and involved him in difficulty, then it vanishes from his vision and leaves him in distress. One reason that may be assigned for the disappointments of human life is this: men grasp at shadows; they pursue phantoms; and, if they sow the wind, what marvel is it that they reap the whirlwind? "For that which a man soweth, the same shall he also reap." "It is not for man to be seeking his bliss, Or building his hopes in a region like this; Let him seek for a city which hands have not piled, |