wickedness will succeed in the end as well? Who cares for God, when in despite of God we shall win our own again. What may be in the womb of eternity, I know not. Whether there may be a visit paid to hell's habitations by another mighty to save' I know not. Whether there may be some other dispensations of mercy to the abject creatures when this dispensation is fulfilled, another trial of the forlorn creatures, and another levy of righteous men carried after probation and sanctification to heaven, and so, dispensation after dispensation, the numbers of the damned thinned and thinned until at length they shall be all recovered these things there is not one shadow of revelation to induce the hope of, and therefore I declare it to be the most daring invasion upon the prerogative of God, the most monstrous abuse of his gracious revelation, and the most dangerous unloosing of its power over men, to set forth as certain, as probable, or even as possible, such doctrines as are wont to be set forth amongst us.

It seems a cruel-hearted thing thus to argue against an opinion which hath in it such a show of tender mercy, and consign to eternal abodes of darkness and dismay the souls and bodies of my fellow men; but I am convinced that it is the greatest mercy upon the whole thus to state the plain unvarnished truth. For such are the pleasures of sin for a season, that while we can look hell in the face we will continue to follow after them, and so defeat all the good ends of present enjoyment and future blessedness which God aimeth by revelation to bring about. Now, this opinion doth just make hell such a thing as human nature can tolerate, and so panders to every evil tendency of our nature which this awful issue was intended to refrain. A vague indefinitude settles down upon the mind, little better than positive disbelief. It is content to run the risk, not perceiving its magnitude; it exaggerates the mercy of God in the proportion of its own need of mercy; it seems to do him the more honour the more it magnifies this lovely attribute; it shudders at every one as a monster who can imagine God to be of a sterner, firmer mood; and by dwelling upon this topic constantly, sin drops its heinousness, the law loses its strength, the future is disburdened of its fear, and life goes on just the same as if God had overlaid it with no rule, and required of us no account. The whole constitution is defeated, and all the ends of divine government are made null and void. Now what good, what beauty, what mercy is there, in thus defeating all God's intentions for the re

novation of mankind, and bringing us back into the same pass from which he hath sent his Son to recover us.

I allow that if God had actually consigned some portion of men to these awful abodes, brought them into being, bred them up in wicked training, that he might ship them off like Africans to work his pleasure in the infernal pit, I should have stood amazed and horror-struck no less than they, and cried, Let such a tenet be hunted from the face of the earth, back again into the detestable brain which bred it. But, seeing all men intreated to shun this direful abyss, and Jesus sent from heaven to redeem all from its curse, and open up, to all, the gate which leadeth unto honour and life, I marvel greatly how any man can be so thoughtless as to defeat the progrees of this salvation by undervaluing the misery from which it is to save us. It is to unpeople heaven and to people hell, to forge such notions. For it musters the resolutions of men to meet the issue. Whereas, Christ would utterly defeat that resolution, would make nature shrink with horror from the foul and fearful catastrophe, that she may turn round as in desperation and call on God for mercy. I declare it is to blunt conscience, and make the shafts of conviction harmless, and leave men at will to reject the Gospel. Nay, truly, the avenue of sin must be shut by the horrid shapes of fear and shrieks of horror which are heard onward, a little onward, from the place we now occupy. But if instead we heard the voice of hope and expectation, the bold purpose of endurance, and the cheerful call to a little patience, when all should be well; if we saw them mounting to heaven on joyful wing from the surface of the sulphurous lake, an active intercourse passing across the gulf; then what were it but a bold adventure like that which voyagers make to inhospitable climes, a threading of diffi cult sounds and dangerous straits, for the glory which awaits us when our labour is complete-an adventure which it were accounted poverty of character to fear, resolution to undertake, and heroism to have braved. These speculators, I say, know not that human nature which they study to please. They please it at the expense of all that is great and noble. They make hell tolerable at the expense of making heaven indifferent. And by consequence, none of the powers of heaven come down to possess the soul. There is no regeneration of the inner man, or recovery of the divine image. The world continues in its pitiful plight, for want of heaven-born characters to do deeds which breathe of hea

ven.

If we can make the ends of God's amplified mercy

and our own diminished character to meet, we are content. As the one decreases, imagination extends the other. And so we pass into dwarfishness in respect of good, and into enormity in respect of evil.

But as I said, it is heaven the Saviour preaches, not hell. Hell is not the alternative to be chosen, and therefore it is made horrible beyond all choice. Hell is the fire from which the divine mercy would pluck us. And it is conceived in every odious and shocking guise, to horrify human feelings as much as material fire and sulphureous smoke and darkness horrify the real sense of man. It is described so as to make the mind suffer from the thought, as much as the body suffers from the most horrid torments. But why? because it is the truth, and that we might know the truth, and take hold of the hand that is stretched out to save us. If ever hell were described in Scripture, as oft it is in an enthusiast's sermon, out of a fell delight in cleaving the general ear with horrid speech; if ever it was made like a torturing tool in the hands of angry priests, to torture the souls of those whose party or faction they hate, then let it be condemned and heard of no more; but if with sympathy and pity it be spoken as the sad decree gone forth against sin, and if forthwith, when it hath taken hold of the soul, recovery and restoration be preached, and a way to avoid its terrors and surmount its fears, and ascend to the bosom of God; then, I say, let it be discoursed of while there is one single creature upon earth who dotes and dreams upon its confines without any fear of its smothering and consuming effects upon the happiness and well-being of his soul.

An innocent child not many weeks old will in its ignorance grasp the flame of a taper in its tender hand, and bring excruciating agony upon its little frame. But by that experiment it is taught the power of fire, and saved from rushing into the midst of the flames, and losing its precious life. Such little children we are. So accustomed to sin, sorrow hath become so indigenous to our nature, we are as it were so annealed to suffering; or rather this state is so dubious between good and ill, mercy and justice mingling so confusedly, pleasure and pain so wildly, God is so longsuffering, and the Gospel so gracious, that we cannot fancy a place whence mercy is clean gone for ever; we cannot fancy pure unadulterated evil, pure unmitigated sorrow, absent hope, absent consolation, absolute misery and flat despair. We are to the future world of woe what new born children are to the present world of existence, totally unacquainted

with its objects and with the strange feelings which these objects will excite. What could God do, but give us a foretaste, so far as language of the earth can dress out, and so far as conception can taste, the savour of bad things to come. This smaller experiment he makes upon us like the smaller experiment which the child makes with the flame of the taper, in order to save us from the more fatal consequence which shall come, when we plunge soul and body, and are ́ bathed through every pore with the overwhelming sensations of its agony.

And is God to be blamed for being so copious of his revelations to men, the more to excite them on every side to a glorious ascension up on high? Say, that he had kept this side of the picture under the vail, set forth heaven but avoided all mention of hell-then he would have deprived his dispensation of half its power; it would have continued to have a purchase upon our hopes, but it would have lost all purchase upon our fears. Now it is the opinion of the best philosophers, that the activity of man is more prompted by the sense of present inconvenience and the fear of portending evils, than by the taste of present pleasures and the sense of future advantage. And not only would you have lost all power over this side of man, but you would have lost half the meaning and purpose of the dispensation. What means this law, if the disobedience of it draws on no consequences? What difference between those who keep it and those who keep it not? for there is none revealed. What means this dispensation of the wrath of God against his inoffensive Son? Why thus restrain our natural inclinations? Why vex us with constant calls to repentance? What better of this ascetic life. Why not live as we list? Who could have answered these questions, if it had not been revealed that these rebellious courses led down into the second death, which is aye endured but never ended! This revelation of hell is therefore the 'vantage ground on which the genius of the Gospel stands, and from which she points aloft to heaven.

Therefore it is not true to Scripture, it is baneful to human improvement in the long run, it is not manly withal, thus to shrink from knowing the worst; and it is very wicked to make the worst palatable. Let it stand as the Scripture hath stated it, I ask no more, but be not ye poisoned by a philosophy, falsely so called. Palliate not the worst, but avoid it, I pray you; flee from it; take to righteousness, and aim at heaven. This is your resource; and when this

resource is closed against you, then is your season to complain. But at present, when all paradise unfolds its bosom to embrace us within its happy bowers, for us to be debating whether hell is tolerable, and whether we had not better run our chance awhile in its sulphurous pit, doth indicate a downward bent of nature not to be endured, much less pandered to. If any man, though hell endured but a lifetime, were in a mood to take his cast therein, rather than at once enter into the company of God and the unfallen, he is a grovelling, lustful creature, whom heaven would not be polluted with for an instant.

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