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HEAVEN AND HELL

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"NOT one of the long train of diseases and calamities, introduced into the world by sin, can find an entrance into heaven. The glorious body of the saints will not be subject to sickness, or weakness, or weariness, or decay. inhabitant shall not say, I am sick;' it shall bear the bloom of an immortal youth; and when myriads of ages, beyond the power of angelic calculation, shall have passed away, it shall be strong and vigorous as ever. The trembling limb, the shattered frame, the quivering lip, the emaciated countenance, the wasted form, the furrowed cheek, the hoary head, the deep-sunk eye, and the faltering voice; the throbbing heart and the aching head; the rheum and paralysis, and palsy, and fever, and all the fell diseases that prey upon the vitals, and strike this clay tenement with a sudden blow that shakes it to its foundation, or that bring it down to the dust of death by a slow and almost imperceptible decay; all those maladies, that fill our families with gloom, our streets with mourners, and all our places of sepulture with the ashes of our friends, will be banished from that new heaven and new earth which the redeemed are destined to inhabit. There every eye sparkles with delight, every countenance beams with the smile of complacency, every tongue drops manna, every pulse beats high with immortality, and every frame is built to sustain, without weariness, an eternal weight of glory. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and the day of their mourning shall be ended.' There shall be no bitter regrets, no sad recollections, 'no anxious desires, no harassing fears; for theirs is an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.' Theirs is a sun that never sets; a river of pleasure that ever flows; an ocean of felicity that cannot be exhausted; a day without night; a spring without winter-pure, spiritual, unmingled, never-ending felicity! Every thing in their blest inheritance affords them satisfaction, so that they have not a wish ungratified."

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"Who shall say that God is unjust in punishing the sinner, so long as he remains a sinner? If his rebellion endure for ever, it is but right that his punishment endure as long. And what evidence have we, that the rebellion of the finally impenitent will not endure for ever? What Scripture do you bring to prove that it will not? In what portion of Holy Writ are we told of the repentance of the lost in hell, and their ultimate return to God? Here, then, for a moment pause; fill your imagination with ages, and myriads of ages, till they equal in number the atoms that compose the universe; and even this mighty calculation, could you make it, would not measure the duration of the torments of the damned. Oh! eternity, eternity! 'tis an awful word, even amid the advantages and opportunities afforded us in time; but no knell that ever struck to the heart of a criminal, on the morning of his execution, was half so dreadful as that word must be to him, the duration of whose misery it too well expresses. The hireling watches with joy the lengthening of the shadow, and retires to lose the toils of the day in the bosom of his family and the slumbers of the night;

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but, in this abode of torment, there is no cessation-not a moment's ease. They are tormented day and night.' Even death itself comes not to their relief; yet it is eternal death they suffer; they are dying, yet can never die! They seek for it as for hid treasure; but the monster whom they shunned on earth shuns them in hell, and, like a phantom, ever eludes their grasp. Even annihilation, from which the mind shrinks back with horror now, would be a welcome guest; but it must not be: this last boon that despair solicits is denied. No! they must not be annihilated: they cannot die: they shall live for everfor ever-in torment, compared with which our most excruciating pain were ease, and the most terrible mortal calamity a trifling accident. No ray of hope is ever cast upon the blackness of their despair: no dawn of joy shall ever break upon their night of horror. The distracted eye wanders over a vast abyss of torment, and finds not a single resting place! Who,' as he surveys the dismal prospect, the unhappy wretch exclaims, Who shall dwell with the devouring fire, who shall dwell with everlasting burning? But such is his doom, and he must endure it.'

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"Ah! if, at some distant period, however remote-if, after ages, beyond the power of human calculation, had passed away, the unhappy man might secure his release from the prison-house of hell, hope would not utterly desert him: by her enchanting visions she might render his captivity tolerable; for an eternity of ease and joy would still stretch its immeasurable realms beyond the long period of his suffering. But what must his condition be-of what alleviation does his misery admit—who, after these periods have elapsed, will have to pass through them all again, in the same torments; and so on, period after period, age after age, to all eternity! O! dreadful accumulation of ideas! every bitter reflection, every excruciating pang, every feeling of remorse, every emotion of shame-all the pinings of envy, all the burnings of rage, all the sinkings of despair-bitter accusations and cutting insults, unwelcome associates and horrid society of hell-all, all eternal!—all this, frightful and appalling as it is, for ever!

"Christian! think of this-and learn to regard your trials as light afflictions which are but for a moment.' Sinner! think of this-and cease to esteem sin a trifle, and rebellion against God a little thing, or the reception or rejection of the Saviour, a matter of inconsiderable moment. Heaven and hell are suspended on it-the scene of glory or the place of torment—a happy or a miserable eternity-' He that believeth shall be saved-he that believeth not, shall be damned-Choose."-DR. RAFFLES.

THE DUTY OF HOLDING FAST THE TRUTH.

REV. T. J. JUDKIN, A. M.

SOMERS' CHAPEL, SOMERS' TOWN, DECEMBER 22, 1833.

'Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent." Revelations, iii. 3.

Ir is a truth, my Christian friends, of the most solemn importance, that just in proportion to my faithfulness in declaring to you the whole counsel of God, your accountability increases for the use you make of my labours. Perhaps in the great day of the coming judgment no witness shall appear against a careless and a negligent people so fearfully powerful as their spiritual teacher. It may be that he shall then be called upon again to repeat those truths and expostulations which he so often uttered to no purpose, and which, as they stood charged with comfort and joy in believing, will become so many sentences of condemnation and of ruin. To every sincere pastor of the visible church, who watches with an anxious and with an affectionate spirit over the little flock confided to his care, there cannot be a character under which he would choose the less to appear than this: and yet, from the evidence of the eye and the ear, respecting the many around him, it amounts to a moral certainty, that he shall so appear to testify against some whom it was the great burden of his hands and of his heart to recover unto God, and to build up in the truth of Christ. Amongst his other discouragements, this consideration must needs oft-times inflict a pang, that is not the less acute because it is not seen by mortal eye, but only by the kind Father who seeth in secret, and to whom the minister bears the spiritual condition of his people, so far as he knows it, making mention of it with tears and with prayers. I would trust, my Christian friends, that there are none here that shall give occasion to these painful forebodings. I would trust that there are none here who would not spare me the sorrow, as well as themselves the awful consequences, of my thus becoming their accuser at the bar of retribution; but rather, through their belief and through their practice, I would feel strong in the consciousness, that with the same congregation on earth, over whom I am minister, I shall worship as the glorified spirits of a brighter world; to dwell together with them, (in Saint John's words,) as a family in heaven.

"Remember therefore how thou hast received, and hold fast, and repent." Upon these words I would remark briefly, that it is the duty of Christians to meditate upon and to recall what they hear; that they are commanded to hold fast what they have received; and that, lastly, they are exhorted to repentance. In the first place, I say, that I have to record a great and general neglect of the duty enjoined I apprehend, that many come to church with even devotional and properly affected minds, so far as the solemnities of the time and the place are concerned; that they hear with attention and with respect, even as persons "desiring the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby; but who make no after effort to retain what they have heard: like a man beholding his natural face for a moment in a glass, and then straightway going away and

VOL. I.

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forgetting what manner of person he was. Such leave this place with their memories unstored, and the mere act of coming to church stands in their life like a parenthesis in a sentence, having no visible connexion with what has gone before or with what follows. And so it consists with such nabits, that, soon as the service is over, the transition should be in no manner violezi from the church to the world, from the temple of God to the temple of Mammon; and so it consists well with such hats, that the most trifling and the most idle of subjects should rapidly, and in a moment, succeed the deep and the weighty matters involved in their spiritual interests. It is not only that the openly wicked should, upon their chance attendance at the house of God, wish and resolve to get rid of what they have heard, to stifle in the very birth every recollection that might become their disturber and troubler-to strangle (shall I say?) this serpent in its birth. But I am remarking on the conduct of those who profess themselves wise, and who thus become fools-of men wellaffected generally to the interests of religion, but who take no pains to rivet and to fix on their memories the things which they have received; who close the doors of their attention with the doors of the church, to be opened only with them on the following sabbath.

Now when I last met you, as a minister amongst his people, it was my object to deliver to you some of those solemn truths which vitally connect with your present your everlasting peace. Allow me to try the question, (for I would bring no unfounded charge against you, I would willingly think well of you,) allow me, I say, to try the question; put the matter to your own souls. How often have you recalled and meditated upon those solemn things which I delivered to you? It is in vain for you to expect any substantial good to follow from what you hear, unless, like Mary, you keep these things, and ponder over them in your hearts just as vain as the expectation of a sick man, who should hear with attention the physician's advice, but neglect to take the medicine which the physician prescribes; or just as foolish as the conduct of that prisoner, who, having liberty presented to him at the open door, shrinks back again to his chains, to the hugging of his chains, because his way home lies over a steep and a rugged mountain, and he cannot gather heart enough, and resolution enough, to exert his strength in ascending that black mountain.

After adverting generally to this fact, and leaving its natural inference to your own thoughts, praying that you may judge yourselves, that you be not judged of the Lord-I will now call your attention to the duty of holding fast what you have received. I will answer these several questions: What you are called upon to hold fast: how you are to hold fast the things you hear: and why you are to hold fast that which is delivered unto you.

You are, my dear hearers, exhorted to hold fast the truths of the gospel; to lay to heart those precepts, and commands, and promises, which the great God hath condescended to utter on your account. You are required to receive the moral and religious discoveries of the New and of the Old Testament, after the pirit in which they were conceived and delivered. You are to trifle with none; you are not to decry the less in compliment to the greater. All that teach the moralities of the head and of the heart are to be remembered with the deeper mysteries of godliness, as issuing from the spirit of Him who was the truth, who was the light, who was the life of the world. You must consider the law of Moses as equally searching, and equally binding in its greater obligations as the sublime doctrines of the gospel. It is your nappy privilege to hold fast the truth as it is in Jesus, as it is revealed by Him who spake as never man spake.

The great doctrines of the fall of man, of the alienation of the heart from God, of its evil and depraved principles, and of the recovery and restoration of our degraded nature through the precious blood of Christ's atonement; of the necessity of a holy life, as an illustration of a holier faith; of justification by faith, and of sanctification by the Holy Spirit; of your adoption as sons by the grace of God; and of the perseverance of all saints; these things I apprchend comprehend the greater doctrines which it is your duty as Christians to hold fast. Now I come to the question, HOW YOU ARE TO HOLD THESE THINGS FAST. First. With the assent of your judgment, holding fast that which is good, not suffering the sophistries and false arguments of others to blind and to confound you. In St. Peter's words, "Seeing ye know these things, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness:" or in St. John's words, "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." Secondly. With the consent of the heart; the word being grafted in your heart. We should ever hold fast that which we love; even as the sinner cleaves to the error of his ways, and the heart of the righteous is bound up, as it were, with the things of God. It were like doing unholy violence to a righteous man's nature, to a man who is led and sanctified by the Spirit-it were like doing an unholy violence to that man's nature, to endeavour to detach his exercises and desires from heaven: his affections so wind and so intertwist themselves with the doctrines of the gospel, and with the tree of life itself, that they must live and flourish, or fall together.

Thirdly. We are to hold fast with faith. Not a mere historical faith; not a mere speculative faith; but a faith apprehending the greatness of the Son of God in the glory of his spiritual offices, thus conferring a greatness on the doctrines which the Son of God delivered; by faith holding fast the words of eternal life. Fourthly. There should be a holding fast in our lives and conversations ; walking no more after the fashion of a vain world; but walking in the light and in the truth of Jesus, “holding faith with a pure conscience."

Fifthly. With distrust and meekness; with fear when our personal efforts are depended upon; but with resolution and uncompromising boldness, none making us afraid, when we place a simple reliance upon the might of the great God, who giveth us the victory, even by his Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sixthly. We should hold fast with prayer and perseverance. With prayer that the divine assistance may be bestowed in the time of our greatest need. "Hold up my goings in thy paths," said David, "that my footsteps slip not." With perseverance, knowing that he who hath begun a good work in us is able to perform it until the great day of the Lord Jesus.

I will now answer the third question, WHY YOU ARE TO HOLD FAST THAT

WHICH IS DELIVERED UNTO YOU.

Because of its excellency; the incomparable value of divine truth. It is more precious than gold, it is more to be desired than fine gold. Natural men have called truth the daughter of time; divines say, that truth is the daughter of God. Truth reflects the divine image; truth attempers the glories of the great God, and exhibits his perfections.

Again, because of the violence and the wrong which were otherwise offered to God. Truth is essentially his; it is the source of his nature; and the people that renounce it, "change their glory for that which does not profit."

Again, because of its blessed tendency; for, by making us holier, even in this life, that which we hear makes us happier. We are doing criminal

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