OF JUDGMENT TO COME.

PART VIII.

THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE CONDEMNATION AND WRATH TO COME.

FROM these awful scenes which we have been faintly sketching out, for in their fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow it is not given to man either to know or to describe them, we return to visible things; and, planting ourselves upon the populous earth, we could wish to lift up a voice like the last trumpet in the ears of men: How are you to escape this condemnation and wrath to come? But, alas! there is no voice like the last trumpet, to reach the ear of perishing men; and unless the Lord hasten to pour his Spirit upon all flesh, the abject people will die ignorant of salvation, and for ever perish from the way of everlasting peace. Do Thou, who gavest thy Son for sinful men, now quicken my thoughts, that they may come forth full of divine life, to plant their likeness in every bosom to which these pages may come! This, truly, is my prayer. But were my God pleased to grant me this, how little doth it avail among the myriads in this world!-among the myriads in this empire-among the myriads even in this city, who are perishing under the

mortal disease of sinfulness, that hath spread into the heart of every cottage, and is fast hauling its unvisited and unpitied inmates to habitations of misery. There is an establishment of physicians to make known the remedy unto the people, and there are houses open where the remedy is made known. But, alas! the people know not of the soul-consuming malady, and having none to tell them, they come not to be cured; while in their darkness Satan revelleth, wasting them with lust, pride and quarrel. The miserable people have no chance of being delivered, unless the Lord will awaken his congregation, and send them forth on errands of salvation. Oh, for the spirit of a Paul, to lead the congregation forth upon this errantry of good! Oh, for the spirit of a Loyola, to bind them in a harmony of exertion; Oh, for the spirit of a Luther, to make them fearless of infringing established things-that a reformation might come about, which would not need to be reformed! But, I think Religion hath learned to make men tame and cowardly, whom antiently she made undaunted. The men of God hardly speak above their breath, who were wont to ring doom and woe into every impeding minister of evil. They creep about under the colossal limbs of power, and cry mercy instead of denouncing vengeance. It is an age in which the antient spirit is well nigh extinct; but it will revive again in this land, which hath been famous for the junction of manhood with religion; when to the piety and the humility of the church, will

be added her antient fearlessness and heroism and activity. And the offence of the offending will be feared no longer; Christian spirit will resume its boldness, Christian sight its watchfulness; every priest will be a watchman in Zion, and every Christian a soldier around its walls.

It dispirits me while I undertake to write, to think how much better these subjects have been written before, and how darkness triumphs over all the light which hath been scattered abroad. No sooner doth a book with any nerve appear, which might make invasion upon Satan's reign, than he covers it with the disparagement of some hated name, calling it enthusiastical, gloomy, or ascetic, and so keeps it from coming into those places where the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, have their strongest holds. Or he raiseth up some strong-minded, light-witted scoffer, to argue or laugh it down, whereof he hath establishments-scholars, wits, and critics--who hate the very visage of a genuine disciple of Christ, and are aye ready to asperse any book which is marked with the sign of the Cross, and send it into the arcana of oblivion. And, oh! the natural man loveth any thing better than to hear of his new birth and regeneration, and will take up with a pleasant song or idle tale sooner than he will with the institutes of his own salvation. And, alas! there are multitudes who cannot read what is written, and come not to hear what may be spoken; so that it dispirits me while I write, to think of the difficulties

which stand before my way, and how abler men have endeavoured in vain to beat these difficulties down.

But while the Press is free (which may it for ever remain!) it will send forth its host of intellectual messengers, as evening sendeth forth her constellations to rule over the darkness of the night. And as astrology believeth of the stars which come forth at even-tide, these messengers of intellectual light do, without a fable, shed various influence over the lives and fortunes of man-some, like the martial planet, stirring him to strife; some melting him to tender love, some rousing him to gay and jovial moods, and some foredooming him to the saturnine fates of melancholy and misfortune. Likewise, as in the starry firmament there is but one blessed light which hath in it any steady guidance to the lost wanderer or the sea-faring voyager, so amongst those various lights in the firmament of mind, there is but the solitary light of religion which hath in it any consolation or direction to guide the soul of man as it fareth through the perilous gulf of death onward to eternity. Therefore from the Press there should at all times issue forth, amidst its teeming company, some forms of religious truth, to guide the course of those who are ever influenced by its novelties. On which account, though we should say nothing that has not been better said before, we will, out of regard to the constant appetite of the age for novelty, and out of pure love to the good old cause, set forth our opinion.

I fancy, that if the Spirit of God were to choose out twelve men from the house of God, with whom to finish the great work of converting men, especially the men of this country, and for that purpose were, as on a second Pentecost, to bestow upon them special gifts, the gift of writing powerfully would be a chief one. For the press hath come to master the pulpit in its power; and to be able to write powerful books, seems to me a greater accomplishment of a soldier of Christ, than to be able to preach powerful discourses. The one is a dart, which, though well-directed, may fly wide of the mark, and having once spent its strength is useless for ever;-the other is the antient catapulta, which will discharge you a thousand darts at once in a thousand different directions; and it hath an apparatus for making more darts, so that it can continue to discharge them for ever. To use this most powerful of intellectual and moral instruments in the service of Christ is a noble ambition, which should possess the soul of every Christian. He doth in a manner multiply his soul thereby, and give to his ideal thoughts a habitation and a name; his ethereal spirit he doth in a way condense and present for the use of others, as they do the invisible steam of liquors; he doth rectify it, he doth make of it an aquavitæ, an elixir of life, to the refreshing and saving of many souls. Therefore I do not hesitate to confess, that in this essay in the cause of Christ upon the field of religious literature, I feel like the knight that breaks his first lance in the cause of