a heart in all that world that has a single attractive quality, a single feature of loveliness; not a being there possesses one trait of excellence or worth. Every character is that of unmingled wickedness; every heart is black. Pollution, guilt, sin unrestrained, spreads and reigns through all the caverns of perdition. He that loses his soul, leaves all that is lovely, and good, and valuable, and pure, and worthy, and excellent, in this universe, and becomes one entire mass of sin.

Can the soul, never, never, never, be redeemed from this destroyerno never! Who would become such a thing? Who would be such an unmingled corruption to all eternity? So does he become who is lost. "What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?"

I ought to add, he that loses his soul, loses all hope. Hope is one of the most cheerful guests of the human heart, the most constant and unfailing; it affords relief in pain, strength and courage in disaster; it is the sweetness of sorrow; it is the last friend that leaves us in the world. The world has its evils, its bitter disappointments, its calamities that are dark and fearful, its heavy afflictions that almost press the life from our hearts, and makes us faint and sink down into the grave. But in all these calamities and sufferings, hope, cheering hope, attends us, relieves our woes and keeps the heart from entire wretchedness. There never was a cloud so dark that hope would not send through it a cheering ray, the hour of greatest peril and deepest sorrowing and distress, has hope in it, and, of course, some mingled grains of comfort. On the death-bed, to the very last, hope sits by and lights up the eye, when in consequence of the disease and the coming on of death, nothing else can. But when a sinner enters his home of sin and misery, hope forsakes him; it is extinguished quite. Not its feeblest ray will cheer his heart again for ever and ever. Every expectation of any good, of one moment of happiness to all eternity has died within him. He is an object of black despair, of hopeless, utter, immeasurable, interminable misery.

'Burning continually, yet unconsumed,

Forever wasting, yet enduring still,

Dying perpetually, but never dead,

His are groans that never end, and sighs

That always sigh, and tears that ever weep!"

This is eternal death. This is the doom of him that loses his own soul !

Such is the doom to which this our spirit is exposed. This is the doom of which it is in the most imminent danger. This is the doom

which vast multitudes receive. Here are we, then, all between the great inheritance of saints, and the dreadful doom of lost souls. What vast interests are connected with what we are, with what we do!' No finite mind can measure or comprehend the good or ill which lie in the bosom of our futurity.

And will any individual in his right mind, instead of the eternal, progressive course of knowledge, of purity, of happiness, take the descending path to perfect ruin, to infinite suffering? Have I any hearer who will himself sow seeds which are to bring forth the grapes of Sodom, who will kindle the fires in his own soul which shall no more be quenched; who will cherish the worm that shall never die? Have I a hearer who will do this instead of making his heart the seat of pure affections which will befit the kingdom of heaven; instead of making the same heart the abode of eternally augmenting joy and peace?

Act not, let me persuade you, against every remonstrance of conscience and every dictate of reason, and every chapter of the Bible, and every lesson of Divine Providence; act not against every consideration which should influence a rational being. Abandon such folly. Renounce such heaven provoking sin. I do call on you to flee from the wrath to come. Come that wrath most surely will. There is a world of woe, awful and eternal. Soon you will have no other home. Heaven, blessed heaven! Heaven of knowledge, heaven of holiness, of happiness! perfect, glorious, eternal heaven! Must these sinners never enter within thy gates; never know thy seraphic joys, never mingle with thy holy people, never love nor praise thy God, the light of thee, the glory of thee, the glory of the whole universe? Cease, ye hasty travellers to the eternal world, oh cease this fond pursuit of earthly good, and lay hold on eternal life. "What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Hazard not so vast an interest by deferring to a time which, because future, may never come. Settle the great infinite concern while you can, while it is called to-day. "Do it now," says reason, says conscience. "Do it now," saith the Bible-heaven and hell respond, "Do it now!"

SERMON DCXXXIX.

BY REV. CHARLES WHITE, D.D.,

PRESIDENT OF WABASH COLLEGE.

OUR RELATION TO THE JUDGMENT.

"For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ."-Roм. xiv. 10.

THE knowledge of a future existence, which men have obtained without the Scriptures, has been vague, doubtful, and indistinct. Mostly conjectures and waking dreams. The Bible makes us familiar with the future world, makes known and describes with much particularity its events, its objects, the various condition of intelligent beings there. We think and speak of the things which are to be in the next world, after death, as certainties, as realities clearly known and seen, much as we do of what is yet future of this life. Being deeply interested personally in what is to occur in the eternal world, it is of great consequence and great favor to us that its affairs and objects are so fully and intelligibly opened to us. (Matt. xxv.) There is no event of eternity of which the Scriptures give us information more eventful and important than that referred to in the text, the final general judgment.

Some have inquired, "What can be the need or the object of a judg ment, since men go to their award immediately on leaving the world?" Doubtless the object is to justify the ways of God to man, to angels, to the universe. To do this by making a visible exhibition of divine retributive justice, by a public actual award to mankind, according to the deeds done here in the body. Men do not receive wholly according to their deserts in the present world. But God is just. We are made by God to revere only a Being of strict, unbending justice. Towards no other can we have the feelings which ought to be entertained towards a Supreme Divinity. Now if vice be not fully punished in this world, and if virtue be not fully rewarded, it seems certain that a just God will appoint a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. It seems proper and suitable that it should be done in the presence of the world. The righteous will see an illustration, at the judgment, of God's holiness which they had never seen, and be led to admiration and adoration higher, almost infinitely, than they have ever rendered to him. And sinners will doubtless feel the justice of their condemnation, as they had never felt it. Sinners even will then exclaim, "Just and equal, oh God, are all thy ways!" A judgment earlier than the end of the world could not have all the facts developed by which to show the justice of the final decisions. The results of men's doings, good or bad, reach on augmenting through all generations. When the gathering influence issuing from each man's life, has all been collected into one mighty accumulation, then the judgment will open.

Let us now inquire what is our own relation to the great day of account.

What are the conditions and circumstances in which we shall appear before the Supreme Judge of quick and dead.

I. We shall on that day assume in all respects, the condition in which we shall remain-remain for ever.

Then all that pertains to our being is settled, fixed, definitely, finally. Previously changes had attended us always; we never in all repects were just what we had been before, we were incessantly changing form, place, circumstances. The body itself had been undergoing a concealed change as to its matter and substance, and a visible one in its growth through infancy, childhood, to full vigor; and then in its progress to decay, and death, and dissolution. The soul had been subject to mutations no less visible and striking. Its desires, purposes, passions, pleasures, griefs, had been undergoing large unceasing changes. Uncertainty, too, had been the condition of our being, we were habitually in suspense respecting the future, never knowing what would be even on the morrow. So doubtful were all things which were yet to come, that anticipation, conjecture, apprehension, were prevailing states of the soul. Both vicissitude and uncertainty, being the prominent conditions of our life, were subjects of more remark and moralizing than all others united. It was on every

tongue, that nothing was lasting or permanent with us, nothing certain; that there was no rest, that life was like a tale that is told; not a record, remark, or inscription upon marble, a constant succession of new words, new incidents, so that we never knew what was yet to come.

ever.

At the day of judgment, all this is reversed entirely. Then all change with us and all uncertainty cease; there is no more even the shadow of turning in any respect. What we are on that day, we are for ever and Before were preparations, now effects; before antecedents, now results. The body undergoes a great change at the resurrection, is made spiritual, incorruptible, immortal, susceptible of pleasure or pain beyond what it had been inconceivably. But this is its last change. The body stands up before God just as it will be to all eternity. The soul, too, in this refitted lodgement, possesses the appetites and designs, the whole moral aspect and condition precisely, which it will retain unaltered. This is the grand final crisis in its moral concerns, in its immortality. It is to be moulded and formed no more. All that can affect us at all, is past; we are fixed. We have had various allotments, now the allotment is one and eternal. If outward circumstances were to change, we should not. But outward things will not change. We and our circumstances, all are settled as the pillars of heaven.

There is no place for anticipation, all is present; nor for apprehension, all that will be is. There is no more hope, no more fear, all is existent reality, stern, uniform, unchanging, unchangeable. Succession of time. is no more. Henceforth all is one steady, unalterable, eternal, now !! Oh, if such is the crisis in my being and my condition at the judgment of the great day if there I am to be fixed unchangeably and eternally, both in soul and body; if as I am then, so I am to be for ever; what shall I be then? What character shall I present to take the unchanging, unchangeable stamp of eternity? How solicitous should we be, if for this life our condition were to be all fixed on a certain day of it. If with our

advantages and disadvantages on that certain day; if with the same heart, honor, wealth, happiness, home, friends, society, we should ever after unalterably remain. How careful to place ourselves in the best possible position! What character, impenitent one, will you form and wear to appear in at the judgment, never to be changed through all the interminable ages which follow? At any hour you may drop into eternity, with your present heart, never, never to be improved. Then are you lost irrevocably. Escape, cast off these garments of sin, and put on the garments of light.

II. We shall appear at the judgment with our character only.

In this world men appear with so much that is extraneous to what is really themselves, with so much that is mere outside show, with so many appurtenances, that we seldom see simple men, real human character, uncolored, uncovered, just as it is. It seems to be the very general desire of men, not to be, but to appear to be; to be accredited for something whether possessed or not. I suppose it may with truth be said that one half of the labors and endeavors of this life are to make these appearances; when this is not the aim or the effort, it may still be true that the real character may be covered over and concealed by wealth and titles and honors, and great pretensions. Perhaps I am making a representation which may seem rather too strong. But to a great extent certainly human life is a factitious scene, a great deal is mere profession, gay decoration, superficial show.

At

We are all dazzled and caught with appearances; we all think too little, and care too little, for substance, for interior solid excellence. the judgment we shall appear stripped of all disguises and all extraneous adornings-mere human beings, simple men, nothing more; unvarnished, unconcealed men. An existing soul with its renewed body; existence and attributes of existence-being and its character-this will be all. Every thing else will be left behind us. Authors will be there without their renown; poets and philosophers will stand in the same indiscriminate mass with those their cotemporaries, too ignorant to know that they lived. The orator will hat rere without the charms of his eloquence, without the thrilled and he hauding assembly, all simple men, with their character. The king wil im there without his crown or sceptre; the slave without his chains. arts the men of place and power and pride, without their honors, without their titles, without their worldly elevation. The conqueror will be there without the splendor of his achievements, or the fame of his military prowess. Alexander, Napoleon, Wellington, will stand there by the side of the humblest menial; men no more; men all undistinguished except in the moral qualities of the soul. The young absorbed with tempting pleasures, they that had rolled in wealth, and erected splendid dwellings, shone in equipage, and fared sumptuously every day, will be there with nothing of all they appeared with here, poor as the neglected being that slept upon straw and begged from door to door-mere men, with nothing but their character. How ignorant, how empty, how little is left, when the temporary and the external is gone! when all is gone except vanity, pride, folly, and sin. Ah, how poor will multitudes appear with only their character!