der, rapine, murder and assassination, would be the common occurrences of every day and every hour. The seller would uniformly endeavour to cheat the buyer, and the buyer would endeavour by every kind of fraud, or open force, to deprive the seller of the value of his commodities. Poison would be sold for medicine, and deleterious mixtures and poisonous drugs would be mixed up with the common articles of food, that the venders might enjoy the diabolical pleasure of hearing of the pains, the agonies, and the dying groans of the victims of their villany. The debauchee would triumph in the number of victims he had rendered wretched and forlorn by his wiles and depraved passions; the strong would oppress the weak, and rejoice in depriving them of every comfort, and the powerful would exult in trampling under their feet the persons and the property of the poor, and in beholding the extent of the miseries they had created.

In the common intercourse of life, every one would be maltreated, insulted and reproached, as he walked along the street; the lip would be shot out with a diabolical grin at every passenger, which would be returned with the frown and the scowl of a demon. Every passenger that met another on the high-way would be encountered with blows, execrations and reproaches; and he who met his neighbour unawares in the recesses of a forest, would receive a dagger in his breast before he was aware of his danger. Words would be exchanged between man and man that would cut each other's hearts "like the piercings of a sword," and horrible contentions, accompanied with rage and fury, and wounds and bruises, would be presented to the view in every city, and village, and rural scene. When one had finished a house to shelter him from the storm, a number of desperadoes, in horrid combination, would overturn the mansion, and crush him among the ruins. When one had planted vines and fruit trees, others would seize the opportunity when they were beginning to bud and blossom, to tear them up by the roots; persons who sowed the seed in spring could have no confidence that they would ever reap the fruits in autumn; and no one could have the least security, that the wealth and property he possessed to-day would be his toNo one could feel secure for a single hour,

morrow.

that his life was not in danger from the sword of the murderer or the assassin; every man would live in continual fear and alarm; no pleasing prospects, nor hopes of future enjoyment would ever calm the tumultuous passions, or cheer the distracted mind; all confidence between man and man would be completely destroyed; falsehood in every shape would walk triumphant; the mind would be. distracted amidst its ignorance of the scenes and events that were happening around it; for no intelligence could be believed, and no one could certainly know the reality of any object or event, unless he beheld it with his own eyes. Schools, seminaries of learning, universities and academies, would have no existence, and no one could gain an acquaintance with any principle, or fact in the universe around him, except in so far as he had made the investigation by means of his own senses and powers. Tormented by tumultuous passions raging within, in continual alarm from desperadoes, plunderers and assassins raging around, looking back on the past with horrible recollections, and contemplating the future with terror and dismay, the mind would feel itself fixed in a scene of misery and wretchedness, which no words could describe, nor pencil delineate.

If we could suppose a number of such beings leagued together for the purpose of carrying the schemes of malevolence more completely into effect, one of their employments would be to set fire to houses and villages, in order that they might enjoy the infernal pleasure of seeing their fellow-creatures deprived of every shelter, and of beholding men, women and children, roasting in the flames. Another employment would be to poison the springs of water, that they might behold one after another, from the sucking child to the hoary head, seized with excruciating pains, and sinking into the agonies of death. Another gratification of malevolence would be to dam up the rivers in their rapid course, that they might overflow the circumjacent plains, in order that they might feast their eyes on the scenes of devastation and ruin that would thus be created, and on the terror and destruction of the wretched inhabitants. The conflagration of a city, with all its accompaniments, the crash of falling houses, and of palaces tumbling into ruin; the terror and confusion

of its inhabitants, the wailings of women and children, and the groans of the burning victims, would be a feast to the eyes, and music to the ears of such malignant beings, as they once were to Nero, when, from the top of a high tower, he beheld Rome wrapt in the flames which he himself had kindled, and sung on his lyre the destruction of Troy. Even in the midst of the ocean, such revolting scenes would be frequently realized. When two ships descried each other, a diabolical onset would ensue. To set on flames the respective vessels, to sink them in the deep, or to cause them to burst with a horrid explosion, would be the object of both the crews; that they might feast their malevolence on the spectacle of wounds and carnage, of drowning wretches covered with blood and scars, fighting with the billows, and scrambling for safety among the shattered fragments of the wreck.

Were it possible that discoveries in art and science could be made by intelligences actuated by such malignant passions, they would all be applied to subserve the purposes of malevolence. The force of gun-powder would be employed to blow ships and houses to atoms, to shake populous cities to their foundations, and to create among their inhabitants universal horror and alarm; the force of steam would be employed in producing destructive explosions, and in propelling the instruments of death and devastation among a surrounding populace. Air balloons would be employed for enabling them to carry their malignant schemes in relation to distant tribes, more speedily into effect, for hurling down upon towns and villages, stones, and bullets, and darts, and for enabling them to escape in safety, when they had finished the work of destruction. The discovery of the nature of lightning, and its identity to the electrical fluid, instead of being applied for the protection of persons and of buildings from the stroke of that terrific meteor, would be destined to the purpose of devastation and destruction. The electricity of the atmosphere, and the lightnings from the clouds would be conducted and directed so as to set on fire stacks of corn, to shatter lofty buildings, and lay groups of men and cattle prostrate with the dust. Every mechanical power, and all the combinations of physical forces which art can produce, would be applied to the 'framing of en

gines for torture, devastation, and massacre; and on the front of every new invention, would be displayed, as if engraved in legible characters, TERROR, MISERY, AND

DESTRUCTION.

Could we suppose for a moment such beings occasionally combining together, on a large scale, for the purpose of more extensively glutting their malevolence, their conduct towards each other as nations, and the contests in which they would be engaged in this capacity, would be tremendous and horrible beyond the power of description. Every malevolent affection would be brought into action; every infernal passion would be raised to its highest pitch of fury; every one, stimulated by his associates, would breathe nothing but revenge, execrations, slaughter, and utter extermination against opposing armies; every engine of human destruction which ingenuity could invent, would be brought into the scene of action; the yell of demons would accompany the fierce and sanguinary onset; and a scene of horror would ensue beyond the power of imagination to conceive-which would not terminate, till the one class of combatants had exterminated the other-till they had trampled down and destroyed the fruits of their ground, and turned their land into a wilderness-till they had burned their villages to ashes, and tumbled their cities into a heap of ruins-till they had drenched their fields with blood, and strewed them with skulls and limbs, and the mangled carcasses of thousands and ten thousands of men, women, and children, thrown together in horrible confusion. But it is needless to dwell on such scenes; since the history of all nations-since even the history of modern Europe presents us with spectacles of horror, scarcely inferior to those I have now described, and with moral agents who bear too striking a resemblance to those whose actions are completely subversive of the second commandment of the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Such, then, would be some of the dreadful effects which would flow from a subversion of the second principle of the moral law, if we could suppose that organical intelligences not endowed with immortal bodies, could exist for any length of time amidst such scenes of depravity and wretchedness. But it is more than probable, that such

a state of society could not long subsist in such a world as we now inhabit, and among rational beings whose corporeal organization is constructed after the model of the human frame. The whole mass of society in every land would soon be transformed into one boundless scene of anarchy and confusion; every one would flee from his neighbour as from an infernal fiend; a war of universal extermination would commence; nothing would be beheld over all the regions of the globe but spectacles of rapine, devastation, and destruction; and nothing would be heard among all the eight hundred millions of its inhabitants but the voice of execration, and the yells of lamentation, and mourning, and wo-till at length every beauty which now adorns the face of nature would be effaced, every fertile field transformed into a desert, every human habitation overturned, and every inhabitant of the earth sunk into oblivion. This is one of the most terrible representations we can form of the horrors of the future state of punishment, where malevolent passions rage without control; and the considerations now stated, demonstrate, that the man who is actuated by a principle of hostility towards his neighbour, is training and preparing himself for becoming an inhabitant of that miserable and dreary region, "where the worm dieth not, and the fire" of malevolence and revenge "is never quenched." We are thus instructed, that if there be a future state at all, it must, from the very nature and constitution of things, be a state of misery and horror to every man whose mind is under the unrestrained dominion of depraved affections and malignant passions; so that there is no possibility, in such a case,

*

* Whether such scenes as some of those now described may be realized in the future state of punishment, or whether the principles of the moral law will be entirely subverted among the miserable beings who are subjected to that punishment, it becomes not us positively to determine. But we can scarcely conceive a more horrible idea than that of intelligent beings acting uniformly from principles of pure malevolence, and, at the same time, endowed with immortal bodies, capable of sensa tions similar to those we now feel. In this case, every accumulated wound received from malignant associates, would be an additional source of pain and misery, which would continually increase without any prospect of relief from the stroke of death,