A HOMILY

ON

How to Escape Hell.

"How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?"-Matt. xxiii. 33.

HE voice of OLD TIME, that in one of Sir Walter Scott's pensive moods rang through his great nature, sends its stirring echoes through my poor soul, as I remember, that I am now commencing the NINTH VOLUME of my "Homilistic" labors; and that too, just as one year, voluminous with the biographies of millions, retires to that God of ages who is the Righteous Arbiter of our destiny, and another appears charged with the missions and mysteries of eternity:

"Before thy breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away;
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay :
Redeem thine hours-thy space is brief,
While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,

And measureless thy joy or grief,

When time and thou shalt part for ever."

What subject more suited to the solemnity of the hour could I select, than that which will enable us to indicate the method of reaching a happy eternity, and which is suggested by the startling appeal of Christ to the sinners of His age "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?"

?

The word "hell" a translation of the Greek word, Gehenna; a term used to designate the valley of Hinnom.

Vol. IX.

A