they would lead from sin to sin and from crime to crime, their influence is controlled by counteracting causes. But in the future world the passions and desires of the sinner will start up into giant strength. All outward and inward restraints will be removed. The impenitent and obdurate sinner, who in the midst of light and knowledge, with vivid conceptions of his duty, has lived without God in the world; has violated the laws of both natural and revealed religion; outraged the best affections of his heart, and trampled upon the dearest interests of mankind; will there find that his passions and desires are his tormentors. There the wicked will find nothing to divert their attention, to raise their expectation, or to assist them for a moment in forgetting their misery. Every object of desire will now be taken away, while the desire will not only remain, but be increased in an inconceivable intensity. It seems to be the wise design of the great Rewarder, to punish his guilty creatures in the world to come with those very passions which they have in this life perverted to gratify a depraved heart. Hence the punishment of the wicked will be proportionate to the number and aggravation of their sins. The glutton and the drunkard will be forever tortured with inconceivable hunger and thirst. The spiritual sluggard will be incessantly goaded with prickling thorns and burning stings. The envious man will be overwhelmned with the pains of disappointed malignity! O how he will envy the saints in light! Their sweet songs—their golden harps-their robes of spotless purity-are all materials for the corrosion of his envy-for the gnawing of that worm which never dies. The man of pride will be filled with "shame and everlasting cortempt." The shame of being lost, how insupportable! Who can bear the slow finger of scorn as it points to the guilty outcasts from the divine favor? Where will the sinner hide from the shame of his nakedness? He gathers up perhaps his mantle of self-righteousness, and folds it around him, but alas, it is all filthiness and rags. He is ashamed to wear it. He is ashamed of the unholy influence which he has exerted-ashamed of his companions in guilt-ashamed to look up to that world of light and glory which he might have inherited-ashamed as he there beholds the saints in glory. And contempt coupled with shame. Oh! who can bear contempt? We shun it as an adder that biteth. But the portion of the wicked will be "shame and contempt." The covetous will be straitened with inexpressible want. The man of a jealous disposition will there find that this most cruel and unrelenting of all the passions will find full scope. All the fires of hell cannot burn it out. The floods of perdition cannot drown it. Those who loved cursing-cursing shall come upon them. As all restraints will be removed, the passions must rise to the highest pitch of fury; and as there will be nothing to divert them from one object to another, or give them that respite which sleep now affords, they must be sources of inconceivable misery. Nor is this all. Nothing inflames passion more than suffering. Men who at other times can preserve an equanimity of temper, often become impatient, discontented, and enraged when afflicted with pain and sickness, or harassed with losses and disappointments. How terrible then will the passions of the wicked be enraged by the sufferings of a future state, where no respite of pain, no consolation of sorrow, no hope in despair can be found; but where they must suffer the most extreme anguish forever and ever! O how will they curse themselves and rage against their former madness and fully, to think of the low delights and criminal pleasures of flesh for the sake of which they consented to part with their God and their reversion in the skies! How will they curse God, and look upward and blaspheme him because of their plagues! No doubt this principle of malignity which predominates in the hearts of the wicked, will be the source of the greater part of that misery they are doomed to suffer in the eternal world. We need represent to ourselves nothing more horrible in the place of punishment, than by supposing that the Almighty will leave the wicked to themselves to give full scope to their malevolent dispositions, and "to eat of the fruit of their own ways, and to be filled with their own devices.” The effects produced by the uncontrolled influence of pride, ambition, malignant passions, falsehood, deceit, envy, hatred, malice and revenge, which now exercise a sovereign sway over the hearts of the wicked, would be such as may be fitly represented by the emblems of the "worm that never dies, and the fire that is never quenched," and of their necessary concomitants, "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." Let us suppose many thousands of millions of such characters as Nero, Tiberius, Caligula, Antiochus, Epiphanes, Hamilcar, Asdrubal, Tamerlane, Mustapha, and Bonaparte associated together in a world where no pleasing objects meet the eye or cheer the heart; and let us suppose that the malignant passions which reigned in their minds during their mortal career, still continue to rage with uncontrolled and perpetual violence against all surrounding associates: in this case such a scene of misery would be produced as exceeds all power of thought. This is the society of hell; this is the essence of future misery. 2. The gnawing worm and unquenchable fire of which our Saviour speaks, includes the understanding of sinners. In this life their understanding is blinded and perverted in consequence of a depraved heart. But in the future state it will be cleared and enlarged. Then they will "see as they are seen, and know as they are known." No mental deception will then be permitted to be indulged. The veil will be torn from every eye, and all objects will appear in their true light. That film which now obscures the understanding of the wicked, and gives it the wonderful power of viewing good as evil and evil as good; and of so changing the appearance of objects as to bring itself to view the most atrocious crimes with ferocious delight and approbation, will then be removed. Every error of the mind which led them to entertain wrong views of the moral perfections of God, to reject the appointments of his wisdom, to despise his word and ordinances, to villify his people and to render that homage to the creature which was due alone to the Creator, will be refuted and cleared away from the understanding. O how will this augment the misery of the wicked, to know what a heaven of happiness they have lost, and what a hell of misery they have procured to themselves! As their understanding will be cleared and rectified, so its capacities will be enlarged, and this will of course increase their capacity for suffering. How dismal will it be to the poor outcasts from the divine favor, to know assuredly that they have lost their all; their eternal well being; and that they shall never be released from their torments. While they hear the weepings, and wailings, and gnashing of teeth in these regions of remorse, and view the "great gulf that is fixed," which must separate them forever from heaven and happiness, they will adopt the language of Satan in Milton's Paradise lost. "Me miserable! which way shall I fly Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."-(Book iv.) " 3. A deprivation of all future good will be another ingredient in the future cup of the wicked. This is the blackness and the darkness of perdition; and alas! who can bear it? It is so fearful, so intense, so gloomy, so ceaseless. It is the total eclipse which shuts out all light forever the deep dungeon which immures the soul in eternal midnight. Confined to one dreary corner of the universe-surrounded by the "mist of darkness," "the blackness of darkness"they will be cut off from all intercourse with the regions of moral perfection, and prevented from contemplating the sublime scenery of the Creator's empire. Oh! who can dwell forever shut out from light? How appalling that dark abyss, where there is no sun, no moon, no twinkling star, no coming morn-nothing but the dense smoke of the bottomless pit! Nothing can be more tormenting to minds endowed with capacious powers, than the thought of being forever deprived of the opportunity of exercising them on the glorious objects which they know to exist, but which they can never contemplate. And yet this is but a faint image of what the soul must endure forever. As the happiness of the righteous will consist in "seeing God as he is," so it will in all probability form one bitter ingredient in the future lot of the wicked, that they shall be deprived of the transporting view of the Creator's glory as displayed in the physical and moral economy of the universe. 4. The reflections of the sinner's own breast will in all probability form one constituent part of his misery in the future world. Even in this world his reflections are often painful. Though he may be surrounded by all those gaudy images and fascinating charms which make him an object of envy to the unthinking multitude, yet could you penetrate the secret recesses of his mind when he has retired from the world and communes with his own heart, you would discover a gnawing worm. Created and sustained by God, he is rationally convinced that he should have a supreme regard to the will and glory of his Creator and kind Benefactor. He reflects upon the many mercies that his heavenly Father has bestowed upon him, and of his unmindfulness of the claims of his Benefactor, and of the many crimes which he has been guilty of committing against him and his soul is filled with anguish. As a transgressor his way is hard. The recollection of the sins he has committed, the mercies he has abused, and the golden opportunities he has misimproved, often fill his mind with the most painful sensations. What then must be the reflections of the sinner when his eyes will be opened to all the enormity of his crimes! These must form a dreadful aggravation of his misery in the future state. Then he will not be a Nero, reflecting upon his crimes with the blunted feelings of a man who could cause hundreds of innocent beings to be covered with skins of wild beasts and torn in pieces by devouring dogs; or fastened to crosses and wrapt up in combustible garments and set on fire; and who could gaze upon the tragical scene with ferocious delight; but a Nero contemplating his wanton cruelty with the sensibility of a Howard, and the just estimation of moral worth of a St. Paul. They will then reflect that once they were within the reach of mercy, and had life and death set before them. They will reflect on the many gospel sermons they have heard, the many ordinances |