tion that he is bidding it adieu; his paradise is retiring behind him, and what but a dreary immeasurable desert is before him? This will blast the fair scene while he surveys it, however rich its hues and the sunshine that gilds it!

On the contrary, and by the same rule, this fair display of the Creator's works and resources will be gratifying, the most and the latest, to the soul animated with the love of God, and the confidence of soon entering on a nobler scene. "Let me," he may say, "look once more at what my Divine Father has diffused even hither as a faint intimation of what he has somewhere else. I am pleased with this as a distant outskirt, as it were, of the paradise toward which I am going." Though we are not informed of the exact manner of a happy existence in another state, assuredly, there will be an ample and eternal exercise of the faculties on the wondrous works of the Almighty, and therefore a mode of perception adapted to apprehend their beauty, harmony, and magnificence. It is not for us to conjecture whether good spirits corporeally detached from this world, are therefore withdrawn from all such relation to it, or knowledge of it, as would admit of their retaining still some perception of the material beauty and sublimity displayed upon it by the Creator. But it may well be presumed that in one region or other of his dominions, the intellectual being will be empowered with a faculty to perceive every order of phenomena in which his glory is manifested. If we think of an angel traversing this earth, though he has not our mode of apprehending this fair vision of spring, it were absurd to suppose that therefore all this material grace and splendour is to him obliterated, blank, and indifferent. We shall not then believe that any change which shall elevate the human spirit, will by that very fact, destroy, as to its perception, admiration, and enjoyment, any of the characters on the works of God.

We hastily close the contemplation by observing, what an immensity of attainable interest and delight, of one class only (besides the sublimer,) there is, that may be lost, —and all is lost, if the soul be lost!

May 27, 1822.

LECTURE XI.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

GENESIS XViii., xix.

"And the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre : and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day," &c.

WE just now read the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, containing the narrative of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and other cities of the vale of Siddim.

At our last meeting of this kind we made some reflections on the beauty spread over the earth, especially in the season of spring. And, as one of those reflections, it was very obvious to note the sad contrast between the beauty of nature, and the moral quality mingled through the scene. There is no need of ancient and foreign illustrations; but a very striking one is that Vale of Siddim. Lot had beheld it "as the garden of the Lord" (Gen. xiii. 10), and was so captivated, that he chose it for his sojourn, even with the certainty that "his righteous soul" must be "vexed.”

Think of a region blooming and smiling in all the riches of nature;-on every hand something to raise the contemplative thought to the glorious Creator;-something, it might be supposed, to refine and harmonize the sentiments; -and a copious fertility of supply, to make every tract speak the bounty of Providence.

But amidst all this, what was MAN? A hideous assemblage of beings, "sensual-devilish,"-such as might almost be conceived to have been thrown up from the infernal realms, to go down again in an earthquake and

tempest of fire! The wickedness was so aggravated and extreme, that the region itself was doomed to perish with the inhabitants. As if divine justice could not permit to remain under the face of heaven, the very ground which had been polluted by such a race! Beautiful scenery remained, spread over the world; but one portion was sunk and vanished for ever. The natural beauty, and the human wickedness were both struck out of the world at one tremendous blow. At that one spot it is far toward four thousand years since nature bloomed and man sinned,-for

the last time!

So terrible a judgment and warning, however, has not revented sin from infecting ever since the fair field of nature; and it is this which spoils the beauty of the scene. This thing that spoils it so, is incomparably stronger and more intense in its quality of deformity, than the other is in its quality of beauty. That there is a luxuriant verdure,that there are flowers-rich fields-fruitful trees-pleasing sounds, and tastes, and odours-streams-soft galespicturesque landscapes-what is all this as set against the other fact, that there are-in almost infinite mass, and number, and variety-bad dispositions and passions-bad principles-wicked thoughts-vile language-impieties and crimes of all possible kinds? We are not forgetting that there are also better things than these in the moral world; but of these there is enough to form an overwhelming contrast to all that which could make the world look " as the garden of the Lord." So that on the supposition (if we might be allowed such an idea) that all the sin could become a visible thing, a thing palpable to the senses, in forms and characteristics duly representing its odious and dreadful quality, it would blast and overpower in our view all the beauty of nature.

It may be that the "angels of the Lord" so much spoken

of in this early part of the Bible, and throughout it-may have such a power and mode of apprehension, as to behold sin in as palpable a manifestation, here on earth, as the face and forms of the material world itself; except perhaps sin as latent within the soul. But they would hardly need the exquisite intuition, and the capacity of angelic faculty, to apprehend the character of a scene like that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Wicked as all the nations of those lands were the people of this one tract appear to have surpassed the rest in atrocity. "The Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grievous." The insults to Heaven had, as it were, come up with a strength, and loudness, and outrage, greater than from other parts of the earth. It was time for the righteous Governor to manifest himself.

And as the first circumstance, three persons came as on a friendly visit to Abraham. Both at this point of the relation, and afterwards, it is impossible not to be struck with the calmness and quietness of the proceeding. There were no terrible portents-no magnificent phenomena—no thundering menaces-nor formidable preparations-nor effulgence of Divine Majesty. The patriarch's hospitality was accepted. The first thing unusual was a matter of complacent interest,-a renewed assurance of posterity to Abraham. But to think what this friendly converse was the introduction to!

It was not for heavenly beings to stay long in direct intercourse with mortals. And besides, there was something else to be done! "The men rose up from thence and looked toward Sodom" (Gen. xviii. 16), that is, set out that way, Abraham accompanying them some way from his house. By this time it was signified to him, that there was an awful and immediate design against those cities; and this led to that memorable intercessory conversation in