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the possibility of existing somewhere, and in a manner unknown, will often deprive the mind of the dreary comfort of annihilation. This suspense of a thoughtful mind is also a severe punishment. Anxiety is among the most painful of our affections. But what uncertainty about temporal affairs, the final termination of which is always within the reach of our contemplation, can equal the doubts which have arisen concerning a future state? The whether, where, and how, assault the mind with a combined force. In many cases, a knowledge of the extent of an evil, though great in itself, affords some consolation. The fond mother who has ·lost her beloved child, is agonised by her ignorance, as much as by the loss. To know that the soul will be annihilated, might afford comfort to the Wicked and the Timid, but the possibility of existing in a state, destined for greater and more durable evils than the present, arms death with threefold horror.

From the above investigation of crimes committed,, and their contingent punishments, we may perceive three distinct characters. The crime may consist in a universal disobedience to the divine commands, which places the whole

human race in a state of condemnation :-It may consist in that irreclaimable profligacy of a nation or community of people, which will render their more immediate destruction equitable and necessary :-or in those vices and aberrations to which corrective punishments may be applicable and efficacious.

The sins committed by the whole human Race, commencing with our progenitors, and continued by ourselves, naturally deprive us of a native or filial right to existence. Life, to the most perfect of created Beings, is the free gift of the universal parent, and could, at any period, be recalled without injustice. But the Wisdom and Goodness which prompted to create Beings with such enlarged powers; the wisdom and goodness which render them capable of moral and intellectual enjoyments, to an unknown extent and immeasurable duration, will doubtless continue existence, when these grand objects can be ensured. The life, and the enjoyment of life, which are granted conditionally, are necessarily forfeited if the conditions be violated; and the offenders have no other resource than the uncovenanted mercy of God, in place of his covenanted beneficence. The renewal of the forfeited charter rests solely with himself; and it is for him to prescribe the terms, should com

passion triumph over the severity of justice. The law of death to the Disobedient being absolute, the offence being universal, the condemnation must be universal, and must per manently operate unless a most gracious repeal be announced.

The punishment of whole communities, on account of their profligacy, manifestly consists in the anticipation of that sentence which is passed upon all men. It is the sudden privation of life, and its various blessings, which might have been protracted to the space usually allotted to the human species; and this destruction presents an awful, but salutary, warning, to the surrounding nations.

Chastisement, and temporary calamities, have for their objects, the reformation of the sufferers, and admonition to surrounding spectators.

The reader will observe that our whole attention has been directed, in these enquiries, to the threatenings and punishments which were made known to the ancient world, before the advent of the Son of God. The Revelation of Christianity is a new Revelation, and upon very different principles. As it proposes higher rewards to the Righteous, thus it is armed

with more aweful threatenings against the Wicked. Our Saviour has asserted that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, notwithstanding their extreme wickedness, at the day of judgment, than for those who chuse darkness rather than light, now light is come into the world. St. Paul warns the Romans not to despise the riches of the divine goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, which ought to lead them to repentance: for "he will render to every man according to his deeds: unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile."

Notwithstanding Christianity is always represented as a dispensation of grace and mercy, there is not, in the Old Testament, a single expression equivalent to the dreadful sentence,

Depart ye wicked into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

The intimate connection between this representation of the punishment denounced in the Old Testament against disobedience, and the repeal of the sentence of condemnation, by the

authorised Son of God, is most conspicuous. In our chapter in this Disquisition, on the future Inheritance of Sons, the subject has in some degree been anticipated. We have thereshewn that the assurance of a Resurrection from the dead, was an essential characteristic in the gospel of Christ, and the introduction to eternal felicity. "Verily, verily, I say unto you," exclaims the messenger of the New Covenant, "he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from Death into Life." "The hour is come in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good into the resurrection of Life, and they that have done evil into the resurrection of condemnation. I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, shall he live," &c. &c.

These expressions, and innumerable others of a similar kind, which it would be superfluous to repeat, evince a perfect consonance of language under the dispensation of Grace, with the judgments denounced under a dispensation of Terror. This coincidence illuminates an essential doctrine respecting the salvation of mankind. By their union, we clearly comprehend what is to