ALL SPIRITUAL AND HEAVENLY JOYS ARE LOST. The favor and love of Almighty God, and all the joys of the light of his countenance, and the beaming eye of his tenderness which ever delight the souls of the blessed, the blissful sight of Christ, and the abode with him, who feeds his people, and leads them to the heavenly springs, and by the fountains of living waters, all, all is lost! "They shall be punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." The society of the glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the triumph of the noble army of martyrs, and the glory of the holy Church universal, are for ever lost! O unconverted sinners! before it be too late, think of that place where there shall be no light, no joy; think what it will be to see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the Prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out! O to be shut out of those joyful and happy regions, and shut up with the wicked for ever! "For without are dogs, and sorceres, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Here is of itself a hell. By their present miserable want of it, they know too late the value of the blessedness.

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All this loss, too, is ascribable to themselves; it is their own fault. They said unto God, depart from us, and what can the Almighty do for us?" and voluntarily chose that loss under which they smart. Suppose a man comes into the possession of a large estate, with a still richer reversion in reserve; suppose by prodigality and wastefulness, he squanders both away; and suppose, reduced to the lowest state of wretchedness and want, he beholds all the estate and reversion in possession of one whom he despised; surely he must painfully and remorsefully bewail his folly:—thus foolish is the unconverted sinner now; and thus will he bewail his loss of heaven, only with inconceivable aggravation of sorrow according to the unsearchable greatness of his loss.

Those who once said, as the Gadarenes did to Christ, "Depart from us:" will not again see the Saviour till they hear him say, "Depart from me," and all their loss is irreparable; to them "the midst of darkness is reserved for ever."

3. THE SUFFERING OF WOE.

This is expressed in the word "fire;" the most acute suffering we know upon earth being that occasioned by fire. The original expression is emphatically the fire, the everlasting fire: as if all VOL. II.-8

other fires were but figures compared with this last great fire of Divine wrath.

Do we conclude then, that there will be real and material fire? there may, or there may not be; we presume not to decide what may be the exact nature of that punishment, the sharpness of which this term represents, but those objections which are sometimes brought against material fire, are not really conclusive. If it be said, the rich man was in hell immediately on his death, and fire hurts not disembodied spirits, more is said than can be proved; fire only now hurts the mind, from the connection which God has established between the body and the soul; and it may please him to establish a constitution by which the disembodied spirit may also suffer there from fire. The body shall also be raised, and the body and soul of the wicked are to be alike the subjects of future torment.

It is perfectly clear, however, that it must denote exquisite suffering, even extremity of pain, and that the whole man will thus suffer. There is a "place" of torment for the body; Judas went "to his own place." There is a "state" of torment for the soul. And O how unutterable that torment, when, which ever way the soul look, there is nothing but tribulation and anguish! If it look back on the past, it sees time wasted away, opportunity for ever lost, enjoyment irrecoverably gone, folly irremediably and eternally ruinous. If it looks within and around, fiery flames, unmitigated pain, "the worm that never dies." If it looks to the future, O that fearful look, judgment to come, wrath to come, and that for ever.

The wicked fall into the hands of the living God, and He is said "to show his wrath, and to make his power known on the vessels fitted for destruction." O terrible words! Sinners, unconverted sinners, fear above all, fear to fall into the hands of the living God. Think of his power, it is almighty. Think of his wrath, it is infinite.

But there is one thing further, that should peculiarly alarm nominal Christians. There are degrees of punishment in hell, and there is special aggravation of suffering to the specially wicked; and those are accounted specially wicked who had Christian advantages and neglected them. Thus our Lord says, "That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes."

Thus Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum enjoyed the light of the Gospel, but disregarded it, and our Lord says, "It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment." O nominal Christians, flee, we beseech you, from the wrath to come. You will wish that you had been born a Hottentot or New Zealander, or any thing rather than to have had all the aggravated guilt of neglecting the full privileges of a Christian land.

IV. THE ACCURSED SOCIETY.

"It is prepared for the devil and his angels."

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Here is another tremendous part of the sinner's doom. It is "prepared." For six thousand years those fires have been preparing, and materials have been gathering together. God has had the disposal of every brand. How Isaiah says, xxx. 33, "Tophet is ordained of old, yca, for the King, (even the King of Kings,) 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."

And then what is the company-devils and evil spirits. Ah! to be associated with those cruel, malignant, and hateful beings, who first tempted, and then will laugh and mock us, taunt us, and torment us, is indeed woe. To be associated, for ever too, with liars and murderers, thieves, drunkards, and adulterers! Those who have forgotten God, may have been disgusted with gross sinners, and yet now to be for ever joined with the most vile and abandoned, and linked with them for ever in the one prison of hell, this is an aggravation of misery that no mind can adequately conceive. The wicked may be pleasant enough to the wicked in their mirth, but will they like each other as companions for ever in torment?

V. THE PERPETUAL PUNISHMENT.

The suffering is eternal and unreversible. This God does most plainly assert: he calls it in our text, "everlasting fire." It is also contrasted with the reward of the righteous. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous unto life eternal.

The strongest terms are repeatedly used on this point. It is said by our Lord, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, where the worm dieth not, and

the fire is not quenched," and this is in substance repeated again and again, so as to have in a few verses six solemn assertions of the eternal duration of the future punishment. So we find by Jude 7, The wicked shall suffer "the vengeance of eternal fire." In Revelation xiv. 10, 11, we read that he who receives the mark of the beast, shall "drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without measure into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever."

Thus God has expressly declared, that the punishment of the wicked shall be everlasting. How, then, is that punishment to be ended? By force? What! overpower Omnipotence? By fraud? What! outwit infinite wisdom? By exhaustion? Can any thing be annihilated? What! in contradiction to the Divine will!

But is it not unjust to visit upon a temporary sin an eternal woe? Ah! do you not even in this world, see men suffer lasting evils from a momentary sin. If it be necessary for God to threaten, it is right for God to execute, and the necessity of the threatening is proved; as even the tremendous penalty does not deter many from the sin, and though multitudes are warned, and escape the coming wrath, multitudes still go on in sin notwithstanding every threatening.

But it may relieve the Christian's doubts of the Divine veracity on this fearful subject, to remember that our obligations to God being infinite, life and death being placed before us, and the wicked voluntarily choosing death, justly merit the awful penalty. They remain impenitent in hell itself, they go on sinning there, and if they had lived here for ever, they would have gone on sinning for ever; God is clear when he judges, and even those who suffer will be constrained to justify him who condemns them to eternal woc.

In the vast extent of God's creation, when we look abroad on the starry firmament, and see worlds upon worlds, what if there be one region like a prison, where the Just Governor of the whole universe confines criminals, as a moral lesson to the universe, a guard against rebellion, and a preservative to obedience? Can you say that this may not be in infinite wisdom, equity, and love?

But, mainly and chiefly, hell is the mirror which displays the glories of his power, and truth, and justice, and holiness. "Hath

he said, and shall he not do it?" O risk not eternal ruin on the most improbable of all contingencies, the chance that God may lie and deceive, or rather on the utter impossibility that he should do so.

Do you say it is severe? Ah! remember the assertion flies back. Be not so severe to yourselves, as to rush upon it for vain pleasures; wrong not, destroy not, your own selves; you are forewarned, and yet you hasten to the ruin; it is distinctly laid before you, and yet you prefer it to self-denial, faith, hope, and love.

The voice of the whole sermon is, "Flee from the wrath to come." Linger not a moment on the plain. Escape, "escape for thy life," lest thou be consumed; escape to the only city of refuge, even Christ Jesus.

In applying this, I would add two or three plain directions. 1st. DREAD SIN AS THE WORST OF ALL EVILS. Losses of property are evils; poverty and contempt are evils; sicknesses in our persons or families are evils; national calamities are evils; wars and famines and pestilences are evils; but sin is the worst evil, for it is the cause of all others; bringing down upon the creature the displeasure and wrath of him from whose appointment all suffering originally comes, as well as all happiness, and, if having its full issue, landing the sinner in endless ruin. O sinner, stop in thy mad course: sin will be thy ruin here and forever, if persisted in. 2d. REPENT IN TIME. There is a way of escape; there is space afforded for a change of mind. "Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out," ere it be too late. You want a changed mind, consisting in a deep sorrow for sin, a hearty acknowledgment of it before God, a lively faith in his free pardon through the blood of Jesus, and then an amended life in righteousness and true holiness. You must be born again, and God has promised, if you will inquire of him, to give a new heart and a new spirit. O can you be content to receive all your good in this life, and to be miserable for ever; but "except you repent, you must perish." Turn you then to that Divine Saviour who gives repentance and remission of sins. Turn you, for why will you die? This leads me to

VALUE CHRIST JESUS SUPREMELY as the giver of all you need, the only refuge, the all-sufficient Saviour of the lost. Are you yet impenitent and unconverted? O value Christ, as able to give you repentance, and exalted for this very purpose. He came into