Balaam could say, "I have sinned;" and he could also say, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." While full of the knowledge of God's will, having the Spirit of God upon him, revealing to him things to come; he could nevertheless go from place to place, seeking for enchantments to enable him to do his own will, and thwart, if he could, what he knew to be the will of God. Can any one say that Balaam's condemnation is not just? What could be done with him? And yet he is exactly the parallel of every man's case who is cast away. The circumstances of no two of them may be alike externally, but the moral similitude is without a shadow of difference in any. In all their cases "the unclean spirit goeth out of the man, and walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished." (Luke xi. 24, 25.) Thus Satan is cast out of every man's mind by the word of God, and the man placed in the most favourable circumstances for making his choice; having done so, if it be a determination to obey or to disobey-and let every man remember he can choose either-he can do nothing without Christ; but he can will to do the will of God, or be unwilling when the alternative is presented to him. A man may be the most wicked that ever lived: in Christ God sees it not. He may be the most illiterate and void of sense: Christ is made of God wisdom to him. His habits may be most inveterately vicious, from a long practice of iniquity; but Christ is made of God sanctification to him. No man is placed beyond the reach of mercy, or the hope of salvation, but by his own deliberate and free choice. Whatever be his

state, he is so placed, that to be willing to do the will of God is a matter so easy, as to be no way meritorious; and to be unwilling is to pronounce with his own lips his eternal doom. There is no power in heaven or in earth to coerce or concuss him one way or other; and the appalling wickedness of an impenitent spirit is not the multitude nor aggravation of his innumerable transgressions; but it is his peremptory, and determined, and obstinate refusal, of his own accord, to accept of mercy, although pressed upon him by considerations the most potent, and persuasions the most melting and overpowering. They one and all make their own bed in hell, and while they may complain of their punishment as being more than they can bear, they never will ask or even wish for mercy; penitence they never will feel, for impenitence is their state, and the determined contempt of God's mercy their sin. "Then goeth the unclean spirit, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first." (Luke xi. 26.)

The future state of the impenitent is eternal and unchangeable; not because God has decreed it so, but because they have willed it to be so themselves. Place them in a state of probation as often as you will, the result would only be an aggravation of their guilt. Every thing that could be done for them has been done; theirs is the situation of criminals in prison justly for their offences, to whom the prison doors were opened wide, and left standing so; and upon whom every possible influence was brought to bear by all their friends; and to whom the Sovereign they had offended actually came Himself, taking them by the hand, using

the most earnest and affectionate entreaties to persuade them to leave their prison and be free, and, notwithstanding, they would not move, but added insult to their obstinacy, by telling Him that their hatred to Him. was the reason of their despising His mercy; and that if they thought they unitedly had sufficient power to overturn His throne and upset His authority, they would leave their prison gladly to accomplish that; but His gracious design they spurn, and will have none of it. Whatever else may be the component parts of their future state, that it is eternal, is, without controversy, true and certain. We have already seen that there are two extremes of truth in the description of their future state; one favouring the idea of utter annihilation, the other teaching that they never cease to exist. It is a marvellous display of the manifold wisdom of God, so to have overruled, as to make the popish corruption of the simple but significant ordinance of the Lord's supper, an exact figure of the future state of all who worship the beast. God has chosen their delusions; and the corner stone of Romish error, the doctrine of transubstantiation, monstrous and blasphemous though it be, is the true doctrine of God concerning the final state of the impenitent. The Lord's supper, as appointed by Christ, is a figure of the manner in which a believer is changed from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, until at length he puts off entirely his old man, and becomes a new creature in Christ. He is truly transubstantiated. Satan's falsehood, and his corruption of that simple rite, God has permitted, just to the extent of being a figure of the manner in which every impenitent man is changed from one degree of shame unto another, by resisting and striving against the Spirit of the

Lord, (significantly taught in the abolition of the use of the cup, as well as the absence of the formal breaking of the bread by each worshipper for himself,) until he fill up the measure of his iniquities, and be united to an harlot, one body of shame and everlasting contempt. He also is transubstantiated, and the ignoble change is his own choice. The explanation of the apparent inconsistency in the statements of Scripture is, that they are destroyed in their present injurious and obnoxious form; and that they are revived in another fitted to their eternal state. Their existence in this world has been serviceable, yea, most serviceable to God, in the accomplishment of His glorious purpose; they have been His hewers of wood and drawers of water. Imagining that they were actually successful in overturning His design, they have rather been the instruments through whose free but wicked agency it has been accomplished without fail in every part. God has been preparing for Himself a house. And "in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work." (2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.) There are four kinds of vessels:-The gold, the stars, which form the crown of the Redeemer's head: The silver, those who shine as the sun with which His body is clothed: The wood, they who shine as the moon upon which the feet of the body rests: The earth, the seed of the serpent; for dust shall be the serpent's meat. The state of the impenitent in the future world shall be a state of service to God and His church; for God does nothing in vain; and the gross

idea of a place of punishment without some beneficial result to the other parts of creation, is wholly incompatible with God's wisdom and benevolence. The spirit He inculcates upon all His people He exemplifies Himself; and while the obstinacy of wicked men precludes the shadow of a hope that they will ever either ask for or obtain mercy, the character of God forbids the opinion, that their state will not be as tolerable and as lenient as it is possible for Divine Wisdom to contrive to make it, having strict and unbending respect to His Holiness, His Justice, and His Truth. The wrath of God will be manifested against all unrighteousness, and the doom of wicked angels and men will be in comparison with the felicity of the redeemed, as truly awful, as the Scriptures figuratively represent it to be. But it will not be so bad and so wretched a state as they would make for themselves if left alone, and not transubstantiated. God will mete out strict justice; of that let no man entertain a doubt. According to his works, every transgressor shall be rewarded; but more suffering or misery than justice demands, shall not be inflicted: the measure of each sinner's cup will be the measure of his own choice. God will give him what he willed to have, but He will give him nothing more. Ham's conduct and curse are complete figures of the conduct and curse of impenitent men. In the proportion of mankind condemned it is an accurate figure. Ham was one of three sons of Noah, the progenitors of all who now dwell upon the earth, and he represents the third part of men, who were slain by the four angels, bound in the river Euphrates. "Noah was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren