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icted? Would you send abroad "the pestilence that Walke'th darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noon-day?" Would you permit the blood-thirsty pirate and the cruel slaveholder to live and prosper? Would you tor fare your infant child with excruciating pain? Would you deprive a beloved son of his reason, or reduce him to beg gary? Yet these things. do occur under the government of God; and if the affiictions of this life are not inconsistent with his benevolence, it is impossible to show, that those of a future state will be, even though they should continue through endless ages.

What will be the condition of human beings hereafter, he can tell us, who "brought life and immortality to light." It is not our province to decide, what measures the perfections of God require him to adopt. His ways are above our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Whatever he has been pleased to reveal, it becomes us, with a humble, teachable spirit, to receive.

5. If the sinner deserves endless punishment, this will be his portion. "Wo to the wicked! it shall go ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be given him," Isa. iii. 11. He shall receive the punishment which he deserves, and which God has threatened to inflict. "He shall have judg ment without mercy, who had showed no mercy," JAMES ii. 13. "If any man worship the beast and his image, the same shall drink the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation," REV. xiv. 9, 10. To have judgement without mercy, and drink of the wrath of God without mixture, plainly signify to be punished to the full extent of what justice demands, to suffer all that one deserves. When our Savior had concluded the parable of the servant, who owed his master 10,000 talents, he made (MARK Xviii. 35,) the following application : So likewise shall my heavenly father do also unto you, if ye, from your hearts, forgive not every one his brother their trespasses"-i. e. he shall treat you, as the king treated his wicked, cruel servant. How that was, he had just told them. "And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." Those persons, therefore, who do not possess a forgiving spirit, are to be punished for their sins, until they shall have suffered all which they deserve, and the claims of justice are fully satisfied. But that period will never arrive. When ages of suffering shall have passed away, a debt will still remain, which future ages of suffering will not be able to discharge.

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The argument is this. The sinner deserves endless punishment. The scriptures plainly testify that he will suffer, continuing impenitent until the close of life, all which he deserves. He will suffer, then, endless punishment. Not only

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is death his wages, but death is the end of the path, in which he is now travelling. "Oh, wicked man, thou shalt surely die." " As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death." As I live," saith the Lord, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way aud live. Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" Why this affecting expostulation, this earnest entreaty, if it were not a principle, as immovably fixed, as is the throne of the Eternal, that if the sinner turn not, he. must and will die? Die not merely the death of the bodythis he would not avoid by turning-from this repentance would not save him-but that second death beyond the grave, the ever-enduring death of the soul.

It is true, that Jesus Christ has died a "propitiation for our sins;" and the promise is sure, that the penitent shall be forgiven, the believer shall be saved. God hath told us, that he would have "all men come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved;" and all are most urgently invited to turn and live. But how shall he be redeemed from the curse of the law, who does not receive Christ, and secure, upon the terms proposed, forgiveness through his blood? What other name is given among men, whereby they may be saved? The blessings of salvation are not promised to all indiscrimi nately. How can they be saved from sin, who persist in the love and practice of sin? To the unbelieving and disobedient, Christ himself, is a "stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." Vengeance will come upon them for not obeying the Gospel. Simply to "neglect so great salvation" certain ruin.

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Let us all be persuaded to lay these things to heart. We all have been the abject slaves of sin; and if not made free by the regenerating Spirit, we are in bondage still. Bondage indeed it is. The way of transgressors is hard;" and it leads on to death. No one ever hardened himself against God and prospered. Against this glorious Being we have rebelled; by serving sin we have waged war with God. Persevering in this warfare, our recompense will be death: not the dissolution of the body, not the extinction of being, but that final separation from all that is holy and blessed; that hopeless abandonment to all that is evil and tormenting; that unutterable anguish of a mind in perpetual conflict with itself and with God, which constitute most truly the death of the soul; a death to be endured, not for a few years, not for a single century, not for thousands of ages, but for eternity. How long does a single night appear, which is spent in constant, excruciating pain. Minutes seem hours, and hours ages. Think of the situation of him who is languishing under an incurable disease, occasioned by his own folly, tortured with incessant agony, and hopeless of

relief. Behold him suffering, day after day, the tortures of an aching body and an upbraiding conscience. Hear him. cry out in the morning, would God it were evening; and in the evening, would God it were morning. When I lie down I say, when shall I rise and the night be gone; and I am full of tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day. The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit. The terrors of. God do set themselves in array against me." To spend one's life, 40 linger fifty, seventy, or eighty years in such misery, how insupportable the idea! What if life were lengthened to the age of the Antediluvians. How terrible to pass a thousand years in constant suffering, like that of the living body in the midst of burning flame! But what are a thousand years in comparison with eternity? Infinitely less than a drop in the ocean.

Needless alarm, causeless disquietude, I have no wish to produce. But I do beseech you to consider, what God has been pleased to reveal of the future and eternal condition of impenitent men. If you saw a fellow creature, carelessly slumbering on the brink of a precipice, would you not endeavor to save him? If your neighbor's house were on fire, and he were in imminent dange of being consumed, would you not sound the alarm? And shall not he, who beholds the sinner slumbering on the verge of perdition, warn him of his danger? Shall he be censured for preaching terror, and for attempting unduly to move the passions of his hearers, who tells them, in the language of inspiration, the end of these things is death, they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever?

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If, unpardoned sin will be punished with eternal death, it is the extreme of presumptuous folly to delay repentance. pleasures of sin are but for a season; the pains resulting from it will never cease. But they who believing in Christ take up their cross and follow him, though in this world they may have tribulation, will not be left comfortless, and in the world to come will inherit life everlasting.

Ye, who love not the Lord Jesus Christ, and are not careful to obey his commands, the day is at hand, when "the King will come in his glory, and will reward every man according to his works." Will it then give you pleasure, that you have spent the season of your probation in minding earthly things, and slighting the Friend who died to redeem you? At present you may believe, that your sins are few and of small magnitude; and that if you maintain a fair reputation among men, it is not indispensable, that you should walk humbly with God, set your affections on things above, and live the life of faith in a crucified risen Redeemer,

You hope that a liberal allowance will be made for human infirmity; and that the merit of your virtues will atone for your frailties and imperfections. But what saith the Scripture? "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."-" God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." The wages of sin, of all sin, of every sin, is death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The sins and deficiencies of the penitent and believing will indeed be forgiven; for "there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." But you are not Christ's. Not being renewed and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, you are none of his. You have not passed from death unto life. You are under the curse, as transgressors of the law, as rejecters of the Gospel; and whether you are more or less guilty, than some others, with whom you may compare yourselves, the wrath of God abideth on you, and for you is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

Do you refuse to take warning? Living as you now live, with the heart that you now have, will you still indulge the hope, that your end will be everlasting life? Take heed, that you proceed upon sure ground, that you build your hope upon a stable foundation; expose not your own souls to the peril of eternal death; for "what is man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?" Soon will your eternal doom be decided at that dreadful tribunal from which there is no appeal.

PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD.

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DELIVERED ON BOARD THE PACKET SHIP VICTORIA, CAPT. MORGAN, AT SEA, JULY, 1845.

BY REV. HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D.*

PASTOR OF THE North Church, hartford, ct.

GENESIS i. 10.-" And God called the dry land Earth: and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: And God saw that it was good.

Nor a few have wondered why God, in creating a world for the habitation of man, should have chosen to hide three-fourths of its surface under a waste of waters. Doubtless it had been as easy for him to have made it a good round ball of meadow and ploughland. The field where leviathan plays might as well have been given to the reaper: the fickle domain of waters might as well have been erected into a firm continent of land, and covered with flourishing and populous empires. Why, then, asks the inquisitive thought of man, why so great waste in the works of God? why has He ordained these great oceans, and set the habitable parts of the world thus islanded between them? why spread out these vast regions of waste, to suppress the fruitfulness and stint the populousness of his realm?

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That He has done it we know. We also know his opinion of arrangement-God saw that it was good. This should be enough to check all presumptuous judgments and over curious questions: God has done it, and in His view it is good.

Still, if our object be not to judge God, but to instruct ourselves, the whole field is open, and we may inquire at pleasure. And now that we are out upon this field of waters, cut off from the society of man, and from all the works of God, save the waters themselves, it cannot be inappropriate to inquire, What is the meaning ing of this Discourse, I venture to promise the reader no ordinary gratification and 'Having been requested, in the absence of the Author, to superintend the printdelight; and to express my admiration that a performance so full of thought, and life, and beauty, should have been thrown off, at the moment, on shipboard.

October 13th, 1845.
VOL. XIX.-NO. XIT.

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THO. H. SKINNER.

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