creation, true to its original design, will render service to its Lord in conspiring to facilitate the ends of justice. And so essential to those ends will be the presence of every human being, that if you alone were absent, the solemn proceedings would wait, the judgment would stop for your

appearance.

But impartiality requires not only that every individual should be present; it also demands that cognizance be taken of every act. Let a single deed, let a single thought, the most inconsequent and unproductive that ever passed through the mind, be omitted; and if that thought possessed a moral quality, the universe would be justified in protesting against the omission. But nothing shall be overlooked, nothing made light of; the slightest voluntary exercise of the soul, the very dust of the balances shall be taken into the account. The two mites, the cup of cold water, the prison visit, the pious wish, on the one hand; the omitted kindness, the idle word, the unchaste look, the thought of evil, the deed of darkness, on the other; shall all be brought into the open court. It is in the moral world as it is in the natural, where every substance weighs something though we speak of imponderable bodies, yet nature knows nothing of positive levity. And were we possessed of the necessary scales, the exquisite instrument, we should find that the same holds true in the moral world. Nothing is insignificant on which sin has breathed the breath of hell; every thing is important on which holiness has impressed itself in the faintest characters. And, accordingly, there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.' However unimportant now in the estimation of man, yet, when placed in the light of the divine countenance, like the atom in the sun's rays, it shall be found deserving attention; and as the minutest molecule of matter contains all the primordial

elements of a world, so the least action of the mind shall be found to include in it the essential elements of heaven, or of hell.

And in order to make good its character for righteousness, it must also be a judgment of proportion and comparison; in which the guilt of each is ascertained according to all its peculiar modifications. In the courts of human judicature, one law, and one measure of punishment, is often applied to a multitude of offences varying in their shades of guilt. But, in that day, a law will be found for every different sin; and a measure of punishment accurately adjusted to every measure of guilt. It will be more tolerable for some than it will be for others. He who knew his Lord's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes; and he who knew not, and yet committed things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. The number of talents which each had received, will determine the returns which each should have made. It will not be a question merely of guilt or innocence, but a question of how guilty. The sinner will not merely be convicted of impenitence, but of all the aggravations of his impenitence. He will find himself brought into comparison with those, who, though their religious advantages were less than his, succeeded in laying hold on eternal life. He will find himself confronted by the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Tyre and Sidon, and Ninevah; the whole heathen world shall rise up in judgment to condemn him. They who have been punished will demand-they who would have been punished, had they misused their means and mercies as he has done, will demand-the universe will demand, on every principle of impartiality and justice, that the impenitent hearer of the gospel shall not escape, that judgment go forth against him, that he be punished according to the enormity of his guilt.

Were any allowed to absent themselves from that tribunal, the hearers of the gospel certainly would not; they form the most important class who will be there arraigned. Could any class of sins be passed by, impenitence under the gospel could not; it takes rank with the highest order of guilt; it will throw every other description of sin into the shade. Were a day of judgment appointed for no other class, the hearers of the gospel are a class so important, that the judgment would be set, and the books be opened, if only for them. They occupy no middle ground. They are either the subjects of faith and repentance, and as such entitled, through grace, to the highest glories of the heavenly state; or else they are the guiltiest, the most inexcusable of their race, and as such deserving the extremest woe. We are to suppose that the most ordinary proceedings of that day will be invested with a more awful solemnity than the universe ever before beheld: but when the impenitent hearer of the gospel shall be arraigned, that solemnity shall deepen, if possible, a thousand-fold; while the crimson aggravations of his guilt shall be laid open, the attention of the congregated world shall become more breathless and intense; and when his doom shall be pronounced, the voice of the righteous Judge shall take if possible a deeper tone, and speak with a more awful emphasis, as he utters the sentence, Depart from me; I never knew you.'

And to render the rectitude of the judgment perfect, the whole must be conducted according to the known laws of the divine government. In other words, the laws to which man is now required to conform, are the identical rules to which his conduct will then be brought. Were another standard to be then set up, a new law introduced, man might justly object to its irrelevance, put in a plea of ignorance, and protest against its application. But the rule of

judgment will be two-fold: the law of eternal morality to which our nature was originally adapted, and in obedience to which we should have found perfection; and the law of grace brought in to suit our lapsed condition, and in compliance with which we may obtain salvation. These, as they are the only rules known to us now, will be the only laws adduced then; the consequence of which will be, that our works, our present conformity or non-conformity with these known principles will constitute the great subject of inquest. By thy words shalt thou be justified,' said Christ, 'and by thy words shalt thou be condemned.' While he declares that the formula of the final sentence shall run thus, ' Inasmuch as ye did it; and inasmuch as ye did it not.'

In his hands, these laws will become of universal application. He will make it apparent that our conduct has never stopped with ourselves; that it has never stopped at human laws, but has been all related to his divine laws; that every thing we have done, has obeyed a law, or violated a law divinely enacted; and either written on our hearts, or published in his word. And not only will these laws, in his hands, receive universal application as to persons, but also as to the character of each individual; taking cognizance of all its thoughts and rudiments. If we had eyes adapted to the sight, we should see, on looking into the smallest seed, the future flower, or shrub, or tree, enclosed in it. He will look into our feelings and motives as into seeds; by those embryoes of action he will infallibly determine what we are, and will show what we should have been had there been scope and stage for their developement and maturity. His law has a magnifying power; and when he shall apply it in that day to human character, the faintest and minutest parts of that character will show a definite outline, and a determinate quality.

And how easy will it be for him to give the law this magnifying power; or, rather, to show that it has always possessed it. How often did he do this in the days of his flesh, for the Old Testament code. By a single sentence; a passing remark: he sometimes laid open the spiritual interior of a precept; and showed that in the morality of the ancient book there lay, as in its germ, the whole legislation of his new economy. The last day will be the triumph of law: by a single touch the scales shall fall from our eyes; and what now seems low in the standard of holiness shall be seen towering away to an infinite height, and what now seems contracted shall be seen taking an immeasurable compass. God himself will be seen paying reverence to the law; and man shall feel himself pervaded and encompassed by it. Nothing shall seem to exist but character and law: man, denuded of all but character, shall find nothing left him but his virtue or his vice; and the law, in the person of the Judge, applying itself to that character, and making its estimate. The reign of appearances and professions will then be over, and works alone will be in request. Now men act as though the law called only for words, professions, semblances of right; but then it will be heard calling imperatively for works, character, works: and men will find that they have nothing else left them to produce.

5. The necessary result of bringing the human character to this test will be, the division of the whole family of man into two clases-the good, and the bad. 'When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall He sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.' Now, men