their ancient disputations. The infant and the aged, the oppressor and the oppressed, the slave and his lord, the rich and the poor, form one promiscuous crowd. In that prodigious assembly, you and I, my brethren, must join: for "every eye shall see him." Willing or unwilling, prepared or not prepared, we must each stand before that bar, we must each appear before that Judge. For the day is come-the day of vengeance and of recompense, the day of terrors and of triumphs-the day which is to manifest the character and determine the everlasting destiny of every child of Adam, from the beginning to the end of time.

Vain judgments of the earth! how then shall you be confounded! How little then shall we estimate the pride of birth, the splendour of rank, and the blaze of reputation, when we shall see amid that crowd of guilty, the sovereign confounded with the subject, the great with the meanest of the people, the learned indiscriminately blended with the ignorant, and those gods of war, those heroes of antiquity, who have filled the universe with their names, at the side of the husbandman and the labourer!

Thou alone, O my God, hast glory, honour, and immortality; and all the titles of vanity being destroyed and annihilated with the world which had invented them, virtue alone shall survive the universal carnage, and every one shall appear before thee, accompanied solely by his works!

"And the books were opened." The book of Providence; the book of redemption; the book of conscience.

The dispensations of Providence are exceedingly mysterious. The judgments of God in the present world are often a great deep. All things seem to happen alike to all. "There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked." Nay, it sometimes fares

worse, in outward appearance at least, "with him that sacrificeth, than with him that sacrificeth not." Treason and villanies are often crowned with success; triumphs and victories attend the ensigns of the usurper and the tyrant, wherever they go: whilst persecuted virtue is left to toil against the stream, and to descend at last to an obscure sepulchre, without any other obsequies than the tears and groans of a ruined family. But the book is now opened; the great drama of providence is now winded up; the grand plot is unravelled; and it now appears that all the ways of God are equal. Oppressed innocence now meets with a protector; injured virtue now receives a just compensation; vice, appalled, hides its diminished head; and guilt no longer eludes the stroke of justice. Another order of things is established. "Behold!" says God, "I create all things new." "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." The proud shall be humbled, while they who humble themselves shall be exalted. Lazarus shall be comforted, whilst his rich, unfeeling brother shall want a drop of water, to cool his parched tongue. "Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty! just and true are thy ways, O King of saints!"

"And the books were opened." The book of redemption. Our knowledge of the economy of grace is in this life extremely limited. How, indeed, should it be otherwise? How should our finite capacities ever presume to fathom that ocean of love and wisdom which at once formed and executed the plan of human redemption? "Who by searching can find out God? who can find out the Almighty to perfection?" But in that day all our faculties shall be expanded; these intervening clouds shall be dispersed; we shall no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face. Every difficulty will vanish; every seeming contradic

tion be reconciled; and every thing mysterious will be explained. On the one hand it will be seen, and seen clearly, that "salvation is of the Lord," that he is "the author and finisher of our faith," that it is he who "worketh in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure: " and on the other it will be equally apparent, that the ungodly are left without excuse; that if any are lost, if any are shut out of heaven, if any are banished from "the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power," they have only themselves to blame; that it was their own wilful perseverance in sin which occasioned their ruin; that, like Israel, they have destroyed themselves; that they are the authors, the sole authors, of their own damnation.

"And the books were opened." The book of conscience. Yes, my brethren, the sinner will be condemned at the tribunal of his own conscience, before he arrives at the bar of his Judge. That friendly

monitor, whose voice he had so long disregarded, whose upbraidings he had so often slighted, and whom he had always treated as an unwelcome visitor, will at length speak out and witness against him.

Sermons on important Subjects.

HEAVEN.

THE high superiority of this happy and glorious world is strongly marked in the Scriptures, whence alone we derive any knowledge of it, by that peculiar epithet, "the heaven of heavens." As "the God of gods" is distinguished by this phrase above all other gods; so the heaven of heavens is, in a manner, indefinitely similar, intentionally exhibited as wholly superior to all other heavens.

In the same Scriptures we are taught, that this glo

rious world is the house of God, or the peculiar and favourite place of his residence; the place where those manifestations of himself are seen, which he is pleased to make, as the most special displays of his presence and character. Present in all other places, he is peculiarly present here.

It is also, as we are farther informed by the same Scriptures, the throne of God, the seat of universal and endless dominion; where the divine authority is peculiarly exercised and made known, and the splendour of the divine government exhibited with singular effulgence and glory.

It is the residence of his most favoured creatures; of the saints, who are redeemed by the blood of his Son; and of the angels, who, innumerable in multitude, "stand round about his throne."

It is the ever lasting seat of consummate holiness, or virtue; where that divine principle shines without alloy, flourishes in immortal youth, and reigns and triumphs with eternal glory.

It is the place in which are seen all the finishings of divine workmanship; and in which the beauty and greatness of the Infinite Mind, and the endless diversities of Omniscient skill, appear in all their most exquisite forms, and in the last degrees of refinement and perfection.

It is the centre of all divine communications; the city in which all the paths of providence terminate; the ocean, from which all the streams of infinite wisdom and goodness proceed, and into which they return, to flow again and for ever.

It is the theatre in which an eternal providence of progressive knowledge, power, and love, rendered daily more and more beautiful and amiable, wonderful, and majestic, is begun, and carried on through ages, which will never approach towards an end.

It is the place where all the works of God are studied and understood, through an eternal progress of knowledge; where all the diversities of virtuous intelligence, all the forms and hues of moral beauty, brighten in an unceasing gradation; and where gratitude, love, enjoyment, and praise resound day and night, in a more and more perfect harmony throughout the immense of duration.

Dwight.

"A CROWN of glory that fadeth not away."

Let us take a few transient views, as it were by parts, of the several jewels that compose this crown, and we shall find, at every time, new wonders.

And what a grandeur of expression and climax, is here in this small collection of syllables used in describing it!—it is set out in general, by this single, little, but how copious word?

"A crown." Ordinary common sentiment takes in much from that bare form of speech, and supplies a redundancy of meaning. A crown is an expression of strongest energy, and suggests a thousand ideas of magnificence and pleasure. It is the topmost pinnacle of human hope, and hardiest ambition. See how the Scripture condescends to treat us by speaking in sounds of familiar, and readiest conception.-It carries in it the notions of dignity and super-eminency, of amplitude and fulness. The heavenly beatitude shall encircle, decorate and take in the whole compounded essence, body and soul; every constituent part and faculty. It also conveys to our thought the ideas of influence and authority, and the capacity for unbounded delights, which shall then be profusely dispensed at God's right hand. This is the rewarda crown. But this is not all: for the gradation enlarges, heightens, every step we advance; it is, above all this,