LECTURE V.

MATT. XXVIII. 46.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.

THAT punishment is reserved in another state of being, for guilt contracted in the present, an express revelation was hardly necessary to warn mankind. Had no scripture been promulgated;-had no inspired prophetic voice announced the woes, which await the offending and unrepentant soul;-remorse, the veiled prophet within, would have afforded at least some intimation, (indistinct indeed and imperfect, with respect to minuter details-yet as to the general fact,) sufficiently intelligible to convince, sufficiently dreadful to alarm. Reason, too, calmly speculating on the divine attributes,

and observing that transgression is, in the great majority of instances, permitted, without molestation, to retain the wages of disobedience,-and to revel in its forbidden pleasures ;-or, to speak more properly, observing that the stings of a disturbed conscience, which self-love knows too well how to blunt,-and whatever other minor distresses may here ensue, as the temporal consequences of guilt,—are for the most part, inadequate to that guilt as its punishments;-reason, I say, placing this view of life before its contemplation, could hardly fail to predict a future state of bodily or mental pain, wherein retributive justice would be more strictly executed.

Accordingly all people, of every age and clime,-who having declined from the patriarchal faith, have formed a religion by the light of nature for themselves, have assigned to guilt a place of sorrow beyond the grave;-and reinforcing the internal menaces of compunction, have taught the offender to tremble

under the apprehension of a heavier punishment, than it is in the power of man to inflict; or than can be inflicted within the compass of time. The scourge of furies, and the gnawing vulture; the thirsting lip, still tempted but never moistened, the labour ever fruitless, yet ever renewed; intense heat or perpetual winter; and various other descriptions of suffering, invented by different pagan nations, as their fears were severally moulded by their local situation, their manners, or their passions,-evince the punishment of wickedness in another world, to be one of those doctrines, of which God,-to point out their primary importance, and indisputable certainty, thought proper never to leave himself wholly without a witness.

While the voice of Revelation, whereever it has extended, has confirmed the bodings of conscious iniquity, and the inferences of cautious reasoning, it has supplied the defective intelligence of both, by unfolding much concerning the NA

TURE of the punishment, reserved for evil-doers.

To its information, expressed or implied, on this awful subject, I purpose at present to direct your views.--May the meditation, though for the moment displeasing and irksome, terminate in a joyous issue! May the Omnipotent realize, in the weak efforts of his minister, the result which an apostle anticipated from his own!-that knowing, and setting forth the terrors of the Lord,-I may persuade men, by timely repentance, to turn into the path of salvation.

11. Actual bodily suffering, then, seems unequivocally revealed, as one part of the sorrows to be sustained by the children of perdition. There are minds of sickly feeling, or of selfish presumption,-by which this is regarded as a hard saying : -minds which refine too far on the expressions of Scripture, and construe its plain statements into metaphorical allusions. As the souls of men, however, are to be rejoined to their bodies,-it