place of torment- -a dungeon from which there can be no escape until the uttermost farthing has been paid? I ask you, my hearers, to consider well, what elements of misery are mixed up in the sinner's character, and you can then say whether such terrible imagery will not be even more than realized? The sinner carries the materials of his own punishment within him. God need only give him over to his wickedness and he will find that though his future dwelling place be paved with gold or arched with sapphire, it is but a magnificent hell. Let him but admit that his character will be immortal and immutable, and we care not what may be his theory about a future state. Let him but admit that his passions and habits, and principles are to go with him-that he is to be as covetous, and proud, and cruel in the world to come, where no opportunities for gratification will be afforded him, as here, where even when indulged to their full extent they fail to satisfy, and we say he is sure of an awful harvest, wherever he carries the seeds of ruin with him. The very nature of his constitution will ensure for him an amount of misery of which it is impossible to conceive. And if these elements of woe are to increase-if these cravings are to become more violent -these passions rage more fiercely, then will there never be a time when the lost spirit cannot say with truth, "And in the lowest deep, A lower deep still threatening To which the hell I suffer, "A man may sustain the spirit of his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear?" Even in this life, where rewards and punishments are so imperfectly administered, the vicious and profligate man must make a vigorous effort to prevent himself from being miserable. The task is often so great, that he prefers to die like Judas, rather than be disquieted by the stings of passion and lashed by the upbraidings of remorse. But let him lose this clayey tenement, and yet retain his spirit; be under bondage to the same vile habits, and be maddened by the same strong cravings; let him have the same memory of the past, the same accusing thoughts, the same dread fears, and if he does not drink the wine cup of God's wrath, he has at least one of his own, as deadly and as bitter. It was a custom among the Egyptians, we are told, on some of their occasions of festivity, to have the embalmed body of a departed spirit brought out and exhibited before them-probably to induce a remembrance of years gone by; perhaps to show how they would be in a similar situation. In the world to which the sinner is going, there will be a constant return of these terrific monitors of the past. The ghostly form of mis-spent years and slighted opportunities of good, will come, stealing up every avenue of the mind, and send their poisonous influence through every fibre of the heart.Ah! there is an awful significancy in those words: "They would none of my counsels, they despised all my reproof; therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices. mere 2. In conclusion, permit me to add, that this subject will enable you to form a correct and rational idea of true religion. What God requires of us, is something more than a transient impulse for good; an earnest prayer in the time of need, or a few tears upon the bed of death. Possibly you may be saved, like the penitent thief, in the very last moments of your life. The grace of God is competent to any work, and we dare not affix to its blessed operations a precise and definite limit. But all analogy favors the idea, that if you would be saved, you must, by the aid of the Spirit, build up for yourselves a holy character, and work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Religion is a habit of mind-a growth of the soul-a permanent principle; and a preparation for a future world is a work that demands a lifetime. You are in various ways tempted to defer attending to your spiritual interests. The hope of some more convenient season allures you to delay. But you must begin early and toil hard, if you would realize what true religion is designed to effect; if you would have your characters transformed and fitted for eternity. We must distrust to a great degree, the piety that commences in old age or on the sick bed. We want the whole life given to the work, to be assured that it is genuine. We would have you strive as vigorously, as if it depended entirely upon your own exertions whether or not you were to reach the final dwelling of the saints. But do not suppose, because we thus speak, that we undervalue in the least, the blessed work accomplished by the Saviour. So far from this, we affirm that the only way in which your present characters can be radically changed, is through the subduing grace and effectual mercy of Christ Jesus; that all your hope of being turned from sin to God, and that all your strength to persevere in forming for yourselves a character that God will love, must be derived from him. The seeds of faith must be implanted and strengthened from above. But yet your faith must be conjoined with works, and your religion must be the obedience of your life to truth, to duty, and to God. "The tenet of justification by faith," I quote the words of the lamented Chalmers, "is at antipodes with the idea of our virtue here being the adequate price, but not with the idea of its being the indispensable preparation for our eternity hereafter. Under the economy of grace heaven is conceived essentially to lie in character-to be in fact but the full-grown development of our present charity, our present piety, our present holiness. There is nothing surely in the doctrine and philosophy of habit, counter to that system, which represents it as the great business of those who have received the promises of the gospel, to perfect their holiness; which tells us, that what a man soweth that shall he also reap; which speaks on the one hand of the path of the just, as if his rudimental virtue here were to his perfected virtue hereafter, what the dawn of morn is to the shining of the meridian day; and which speaks on the other hand of the -wicked being filled with the fruit of their own ways; which in a word represents the kingdom of heaven as begun on earth, and at last closes its description of the relation between time and eternity with these impressive words- He that is unjust let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy let him be filthy still; he that is righteous let him be righteous still; and he that is holy let him be holy still.'" DEATH NO TERROR. The believer in Christ should banish all solicitude about the event of death to himself or to others who depart in the faith. Christ assumed our nature, "took part of flesh and blood, that through death"-first endured in his own person and then vanquished by his resurrection-" he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The Christian has no occasion to be in bondage to the fear of death; indeed by such a bondage he dishonors the power and the grace of Christ, and puts discredit upon his finished work. It is sometimes the case that even where the intellect, the heart, and the will are all properly disciplined for the advent of death, there is a nervous apprehension of the mere physical process that renders the thought of death unwelcome. And indeed there must be something repugnant to the sensibilities of our nature in the thought of dissolution, whenever the mind dwells upon this apart from its relations to a higher existence. The demolition of a house in which we have lived from infancy, and every stone and beam and arch and angle of which has some association of childhood and of home, awakens feelings of sadness, though the building is old and crazy, and not longer fit to be occupied. But the mind should not live thus in the past, and hug the old stones, and timbers, and nails, as if these were home or had in themselves any life and virtue; it should look forward to the house that is to succeed the time-worn tenement, should study its plan, arrangement, and effect, and transmute the memories of the old into the hopes of the new. It is thus by a beautiful analogy that Chrysostom discourses of the believer's change at death. "When a man is about to rebuild an old and tottering house, he first sends out its occupants, then tears it down, and builds anew a more splendid one. This occasions no grief to the occupants, but rather joy. For they do not think of the demolition which they see, but of the house which is to come, though not yet seen. When God is about to do similar work, he destroys our body and removes the soul that was dwelling in it, as from some house that he may build it anew and more splendidly and again bring the soul with greater glory into it. Let us not, therefore, regard the tearing down, but the splendor which is to succeed." Thus in a higher strain does the Apostle speak of this blessed exchange: "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The Christian should familiarize his mind. with the thought of dying as one familiarizes himself with the thought of exchanging an old and decayed though still serviceable house or garment, for one new, bright, glorious-of better material, yes, of an imperishable fabric. It is idle to conceal from oneself the fact of his own mortality and of his exceeding frailty. And it is unwise and unnecessary to allow in the mind a secret dread of death. That event should be familiar to the Christian, not as a process of physical decay, but as a process of mysterious and sudden but of certain and glorious transition from the seen to the unseen, from the mortal to the immortal. "The Christian, when he leaves the body, is at once with the Lord Jesus. He rushes, as it were, instinctively, to his presence, and casts himself at his feet. He has no other home than where the Saviour is; he thinks of no future joy or glory but that which is to be enjoyed with him. Why then should we fear death? Lay out of view, as we may, the momentary pang, the chillness and the darkness of the grave, and think of that which will be the moment after death-the view of the Redeemer, the sight of the splendors of the heavenly world, the angels, the spirits of the just made perfect, the river of the paradise of God, and the harps of praise, and what has the Christiau to fear in the prospect of dying?" "And not only so, but we also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." ROM. V. 11. THERE is a remarkable peculiarity in Paul's disposition. To him is entrusted the charge of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles; but he is not the stern religionist, the fierce sectary we might have been led to suppose from the relations which he had previously sustained to Judaism. He is the decided, yet liberal-the devoted, yet amiable Christian. Thwarted in his movements, yet he is not despondent. Exposed to persecution, yet he is not embittered in his feelings. Doomed to suffer, he does not complain. Threatened with bonds and imprisonments, neither the prospective loss of liberty nor of life can shake his firmness or repress his spiritual joys. He ever rejoices in the hope of the glory of God; and not only so, but joy and triumph pervade the very heart of his trials. Yes, brethren, if you would witness an embodied illustration of the blessed power of our holy religion, look into that gloomy dungeon. See there a man who might have been honored by his nation, had he not become a Christian; who might have enjoyed domestic comforts, lettered ease and distinction, an unmolested course, a peaceful old age, had he not |