or future punishment of the wicked, may, as it generally is by Divines, be distin guished into two kinds, a punishment of loss, and a punishment of sense, both of which sinners must undergo. The one signifies their loss of happiness, and the other denotes some further positive punishment which God will inflict upon them.

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In the first place, Hell, or the final misery of the wicked, includes a separation from God, the loss of the divine favour, and such blessings connected with it as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, "neither have entered into the heart of "man" to conceive. When once the final sentence has been pronounced on wicked and ungodly men," these shall

go away" from the presence of God and Christ, from the company of the redeemed, and from all the unspeakable joys and glories of the heavenly world. And were this, my friends, the whole of their punishment, one would imagine that it alone would be sufficient; for it implies the total loss of all that is good and happy. The Holy Spirit of God,

which was wont to strive with them, will now utterly forsake them: he will never more suggest one good thought, nor excite so much as one faint desire after holiness in their minds. Their being banished, therefore, from heaven, the place where the honour of the Lord dwelleth, will complete the ruin of their depraved natures, and transform them in a manner into devils. Oh! What must it be to be debarred from heaven, to be banished from those bright realms of purity and love, from the society of the blessed, and from all share and fellowship in their joy and felicity, to lift up our eyes in the midst of torment,-to dart a look across the impassable gulph, and descry the regions of heavenly glory shining from afar,-to behold the once despised and humble saints, arrayed in white robes, tuning their golden harps, and singing immortal hallelujahs to God and the Lamb,-to see them so exalted and so happy in that blessed and glorious place, whence we are for ever excluded, to see them enjoying its unspeakable felicity, while we are from it

for ever cut off! How agonizing will be the sight! how dreadful the anguish of beholding it! Who can estimate the misery and horror of such a moment? "There shall be weeping and gnashing " of teeth," says our Saviour, "when ye "shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Ja“cob, and all the prophets in the king"dom of heaven, and you yourselves shut "out."

Moreover, how must it increase the anguish of the wicked in those dark and dreary abodes, to reflect "on the good "things they received in their lifetime," on the variety of blessings, temporal and spiritual, which they enjoyed on earth, that are now gone, and can never be recalled,―of the invitations to join the glorious company of the ransomed of the Lord, and to share in all their happiness and glory, which they so often on earth received, but despised,-of the gracious warnings with which they trifled,—and on the great salvation provided by God, but neglected by them; and that now they are denied even a drop of water to cool their burning tongues, and are doomed in the

infernal prison to associate with the devil and his angels, and with all the unholy and impure of every nation and kindred, people and tongue, to suffer everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power? How agonised must their minds be! how bitter their feelings! how painful their reflections!

Such, then, will be the punishment of loss; but there yet remains another species of suffering to be considered, viz. 2dly, that of sense, or the positive punishment which sinners must endure, and which God, in his just wrath, will inflict in a future world. The wicked shall not only "go away from the pre"sence of God, and from all the heavenly "society, but" they shall "go into ever"lasting punishment," which doubtless imports, that they shall be doomed to suffer some positive pain and torment.

Of these torments, it is true, the Bible gives no particular and exact description; nor is it probable, that at present we could conceive or comprehend them. Metaphors borrowed from the most painful

and dreadful things in nature are employed to express and represent them. They are shadowed forth under the ideas of the "wine of the wrath of God, pour"ed out without mixture into the cup of "his indignation ;"-" of torments in a "lake that burneth with fire and brim"stone, the smoke of which ascendeth 66 up for ever and ever;"-of a "gnawing "C worm," and " burning fire ;"-ideas, than which we can conceive none more awful, and which must strike terror into the inmost soul; for they imply at once the inward agonies of remorse and despair, and the outward agonies of pain and torture.

Who can tell the anguish that must seize a soul thoroughly awakened to a sense of sin, without the least, the most distant prospect of pardon and deliverance ;-a soul, which sees all its offences, with all their aggravations painted in the most lively colours, beholding at the same time the most awful displays of the Divine Majesty, power and purity ;—a soul deeply pierced with the arrows of the Almighty, alive to all the misery and horrors of its situation, charging itself as

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