gined picture of Belial be realized! That the wicked Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey Of racking whirlwinds; or for ever sunk We think it pitiful that a brief, transient space of time, like life, should decide and determine these terrible conclusions of eternity. We could wish a taste of it, and then a chance of escaping from it. And, oh! it would please us well, could we indulge the fond hope of seeing all yet recovered and restored to happy seats: Hell cheated, the devil himself converted, and the universal world bound in chains of love and blessedness. It feeleth more than terrible to think of wretches swimming and sweltering for ever in the deep abyss, preyed upon by outward mischiefs and distracted by inward griefs, tortured, tormented, maddened for evermore. There is something in this quietus of torment, in this ocean of sorrow and suffering, which shocks the faculties of reason and distresses the powers of belief. But away with such thoughts. They are tormented, as wicked men are at present tormented, with certain aggravation of their case, brought on chiefly by the separation of the righteous. The same elements which work their wofulness here, work their wofulness there, but with more success, from not being withstood inwardly by the better law of the mind, now for ever silent; outwardly by the active agents of goodness, now for ever translated from the sphere. Now, as we think not of blaming God for the misery and wretchedness in which the savage tribes exist in the Indian seas, nor for the degradations under which the Hindoos have groaned for rolling ages, but attribute it to the active agency of the evil parts of nature; and the passive suppression of the good parts of nature; and least of all do the degraded people themselves think of blaming him; no more do I think that they in heaven will blame, or they in hell blaspheme the sufferings that are endured. They will go on actively occupied with their fell pursuits; they will sweat on in their foul debaucheries, and wallow in their sinks of wickedness, and they may have a glory in it. I say not but the people may make them merry with their ignominious case, and constitute honourable offices of crime, and institute royal rewards of wickedness; and, by their ambitions, heat the natural furnace of hell seven times hotter than God did make it. And while they hasten their red revelry, and gallop through the whole circuit of crime, and drink the bitterness of every passion-I see not but the people may think it glorious, and conceive that all are paltry to them, and that they are the great and mighty ones of creation. For what verily is all this self-adulation and dreaming of vanity, but another torturing demon, which exalts itself over the glorious parts of human nature, and turns them into degradation, extracting even from good qualities the most sorrowful sensations. Had Satan not been vain-glorious, he might still have stood; his vainglory brought him to hell, and of hell was the most stinging torment, as our Poet hath well pourtrayed in the several speeches which he hath put into his mouth. So that I think we very much take the thing for granted, when we fancy the wicked creatures pinched and scorched alive by active ministers of God. Their torture is the absence of the ministry of God. God comes not to their quarters, and therefore their quarters are so hot; for, where God is, there is peace and love,-and where he is not, there is confusion and every evil work. Alas! there comes no warning prophet nor ministering priest; no reformer, nor Saviour, to their world. It floats far remote from the habitations of holiness, and no emanations of the divine Spirit shall visit it any more. They range the wastes and wildernesses of sin, and build the fabrics of iniquity, and work the works of darkness, and travel in the ways of cruelty and wickedness. The murderous devil is their master, his emanations inspire them, his powers of darkness rule them. They aye toil like Vulcan and his slaves, manufacturing thunderbolts for this their cruel Jove, to overwhelm themselves withal; and, as Etna, the fabled residence of these workers in fire, conceives in her bowels that flame and smoke which she afterwards vomits to scorch the vegetation up which else would beautify her woody and verdant sides-so these wretched men will aye conceive within their soul malicious, fiendish imaginations and purposes, which being brought forth will destroy all the good which else might flourish in their clime. Who knows but there may be evidences, even there, of a good God,-incitements to meditation upon all the better alternatives of being,-which, by reason of abounding wickedness, are frustrated, and the people tantalized with the sight and thought of good, which their own crazed and disjointed frames did aye hinder them from realizing. When I see the wretchedness created within the breast of man by the simple excess or overstrained action of any power, however good; how benevolence being in excess will drive man into Quixotic madness, and make him a world's sport; how malice will drive him into misanthropic madness, and much learning will make him mad; how sensibility will make him a melancholic, helpless creature; and disappointed love make him wander under the pale moon, till he catches her lunatic influences; how the amor sceleratus habendi,' or hell-fire greed,' (if I may be permitted a Scottish version) will waste a man like a shadow, and eat the flesh off his bones though he have a royal dowry in his coffer.-Oh! when I think how near every man verges upon the confines of madness and misery, and how the least shift in the fabric of our minds |