give a picture, full, and dark, and vivid, of the sufferings of the lost. Company which lightens suffering here, and sympathy which blunts its sting, are deprecated there, as aggravations of its woe and misery for ever. It is as if, addressing Abraham, he had said, "Save me from the presence of those I misled. Oh! let not their faces come before me in the abodes of the lost. There the victim will curse me as the destroyer. There the misled will heap. execrations upon me as the misleader. Spare me this additional flame, this new and yet more terrible torment. Let me suffer, if it be possible, alone." What if those terrible spirits who sprang up from the chaos of 1792 (though it is of no use to judge them, little as we can hope about them) are now in the regions of the lost! What a terrible thought to one, to know that his infidel Dictionary is poisoning the minds of the young men in London! to another, that his infidel essays are supplying reasons for extinguishing truth, and opiates for deadening conscience! What a terrible and agonizing recollection will crowd around, if not Paine, some one in his circumstances; if not Voltaire, some one in his guilt-when thousands and thousands concentrate, from the whole circumference of hell, their curses and maledictions upon those that misled them!

If a man should take care what he says, let him take care what he writes. If we cannot say, upon our deathbeds, that we have not spoken a word which we should wish to be hushed, let us at least be able to say that we have not written a line which we should wish to be extinguished. The litera scripta manet"-the written letter lasts. It is the press that makes a man have power after he is dead, and do damage to souls when he is drawn from the scenes and circumstances in which he lived.

I pass, however, to notice another circumstance. We see in this parable evidence that in the future state there is

mutual recognition. The rich man in misery recognised Lazarus in happiness; and there is here evidence by implication that the lost will recognise each other. Why should the five brethren, coming into hell, be a torment to the rich man, if he were not perfectly persuaded that he would recognise them there; if there were no recognition in the realms of the lost, he would not have deprecated their presence; the fact that he did so deprecate their presence, implies that he felt he should know them when they came there. May I not then argue, from the lesser to the greater, that if there be recognition in the realms of the lost, there shall be recognition in the realms of the saved? If the wicked meeting the wicked shall together add to their common agony, may we not presume that the blessed meeting with the blessed shall, together, add to their common joy; that instead, therefore, of sitting upon deserted thrones, or living in heaven in solitary chambers, unconscious who are around them, there is not a friend who shall not meet friend, nor a relative who shall not meet relative; and that if memory survives in the realms of the lost, and can go and take a retrospect of scenes that have passed away for ever, memory will survive in the realms of the blessed, and our retrospect of the toils we endured, of the pilgrimages we finished, of the sermons we heard, of the prayers we offered up, of all the way that the Lord has led us, will be no light portion of that joy which no longer enters into us, but into which, as into an ocean, we enter ourselves.

Let me suggest the possibility of another motive beyond all this, for the rich man's desire to send some one to warn his brethren, and I suspect it is the real secret of his proposal. Just as Adam blamed God for giving him the woman, and as the woman laid the blame on Adam for putting her in the way of the serpent, so the rich man here

is actuated less by sympathy with those that were perishing, or even deprecating their approach to himself, (though that must have been one element in the consideration,) than he was by the wish to convey to Abraham, and to Lazarus, the idea that he himself never had enjoyed a light that was adequate to lead him to happiness; that the Bible was not sufficient; that it was an imperfect book, a very dark and dull book; that there needed some extra light, some new communication; and that, therefore, if Abraham would do for his five brethren what he had never done for him-give them a better Bible, a better light, and a surer guide, they would escape that place of torment into which he had been plunged. There was, disguised under this sympathy with his brethren, a charge of injustice against God; the whole characteristic of the fallen man breaking out: "Anybody in heaven, or anybody on earth, is to blame for what I am; and the last person that is guilty is myself.”

But suppose you look at his proposition in its plain light; suppose the Bible is all that he imagined it to be; suppose the wish enters into our minds as a very natural one; and that we should desire a spirit to come from the realms of glory radiant with all its brightness, and reflecting all its beauty, or one from the realms of the lost, with all their terrors portrayed on every feature of his face too vividly to be mistaken, to inform us; suppose the one spirit or the other were to preach to us what the rich man wished his brethren might know and feel, "repentance unto life," would that be stronger evidence than we have? Would it contribute more powerfully to our repentance than the means we have? Would it be supererogatory, and of no use? or would it be the very thing we want to convince the unbeliever, and convert the world? I do believe that the practical value of such an apparition would

be nothing. You answer, "We are accustomed to the Bible; we hear reiterated the truths of Christianity day by day, and they have come to be commonplace; it is too true, the greatest blessings cease to be influential just by their commonness; but we think if the awful silence were to be broken; if some dread spirit from hell were to arise from the abode of torment; if he were to tell us that hell is a reality, that heaven is a reality, that God lives, that Christianity is true, that the Bible is true-it would more thoroughly convince and deeply affect us." I believe it would make a momentary impression, that it would make your hair stand on end for the time, but it would not make a sanctifying impression that would last for twenty days or weeks together; and for this very plain and obvious reason: the day you saw the spectre you would believe, you would be terrified and humbled; but after a few months you would say, "I wonder after all whether that spectre came from hell; who knows but that it may have been a trick played upon me? I wonder whether that spirit came from heaven; who knows but that it may have been some imposture, or a delusio visûs? My state of health may have been bad; I may have eaten this or drunk that, and the consequence was that some wild fantastic picture passed before me, and a disordered fancy created the spirit; it was not after all a commission from God to teach me these things." And what next? You would say, "How can I prove that it was not so? I shall consult a physician. (Of course he will say it was owing to a disordered stomach, which can very easily be put right.) I will consult the evidence, but I have none but my own recollection. I have no cold, standing, stereotyped evidence on which I can fall back, and prove that it was a fact, which I now presume and suppose to have been a fancy." The excitement, too, produced on the

night of its appearance, would soon be dissipated; other scenes, employments, and spectacles would soon occupy the mind; and I venture to say with certainty, from the experience of the past, from our common knowledge of our common nature, that the evidence of a connection between time and eternity by such an apparition would be the feeblest and most worthless that could be submitted. But you say, What better evidence have we in the Bible? We have evidence of the fact that the Saviour lived; the evidence of friends and foes that the Saviour died; evidence, on imperishable records, that the cross was raised, that the grave was opened, that the dead came forth, that miracles were performed, that mercies were bestowed, that apostles wrote, that evangelists taught, that Christianity commenced in Palestine, and will not close till the Millennium overflows and overspreads the earth! For your spectre you have only a recollection that would fade and become dimmer every day, till it perished for ever from the earth. For Christianity we have evidence, such as, if it were not a question of the heart, would soon decide the point. If a body of men could be impanelled in a jurybox, with no bad hearts, no passions, no prejudices, but only sober, cold, honest, logical intellect; and if the evidence by which Christianity is proved to be divine were brought before them, they would, without one dissentient voice, declare, "Christianity is true." It is our prejudices, our passions, our hatred of holiness, our love of sin, our desire to make money, our anxiety to become great― it is these, and a thousand counteracting elements, that dilute the evidence and destroy the impression which the truths of the gospel are fitted to produce.

Apart from my reasoning, the reply by Abraham is conclusive. He says, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." Let us see what is implied