In reference to our present subject, the observation carries with it much weight. For what, I may ask, is religion but a great counteracting power, designed by its author to diminish the attraction which sensible and present objects have upon our thoughts, desires, and affections, by presenting in their stead others which, though invisible, yet infinitely outweigh in importance any thing which can engage our attention here. Every feeling of our nature tells us that we are not made for this world only; that we have nothing here which we can properly call our own; that earth, with all its sensible attractions and realities, is not the proper good of man, that which can become identified with our immortal nature, and continue an integral part of ourselves for ever. Yet do the mind and the affections cling to it with all the pertinacity of nature, powerfully aided by habit, association, and interest; by a strange contrariety, we are too apt to think that there is nothing real but what we see before us, nothing which deserves our endeavours to attain but what we can immediately grasp and appropriate.

What consideration, therefore, possesses in itself, if duly attended to, so much power to deaden, to counteract, to weaken these mighty prepossessions of our nature, whereby we become

so early and so devotedly attached to a world of sense, as that greatest of all events, "the day of the Lord?" a thought, which by presenting to our minds the consequences of our actions here, in this state of trial and moral probation, may make the future so predominate over the present, as that all our actions shall be directed and have a reference to that event. It is only by displaying that day which "shall come as a thief in the night," that the thoughtless can be awakened, the worldling in any tolerable manner be roused from his fatal abstraction. It is only by representing a world in flames, the elements melting, the earth and the things of the earth departing as a scroll, and leaving a state of pristine and awful vacuity, that heedless man is stunned into reflection, and induced to relinquish his grasp on these perishable things. It is only by creating an opposite, and a preponderating interest, by representing to his imagination that "new heavens and that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," that a desire can be produced in him to become fit for so entire a change, by having his heart and affections at length permanently fixed on things above. And it is well for us, the creatures of sense, the dupes of the present moment, curious but incredulous of the future, that there is a motive, that

there is a divine power residing in the word of truth which, by the grace of God, is capable of detaching us from the present scene.

It is well for us that fear will sometimes do what hope will not; that the terrors of the Lord will influence some minds which his mercies fail to affect. Were it not for this, many would be to the last as indifferent to the next world, as we commonly are to a foreign country, whose existence we are taught from habit to believe, but which we never design to visit. They would leave it to a few sanguine and hardy adventurers to go up and possess it. Since, however, it is not in our own choice to remain here, or to embark on the ocean of eternity; but we must sooner or later push off and set sail, leaving all we hold dear in this place of our nativity: since moreover either shipwreck and loss of all we possess await us, or a gain infinitely transcending in worth any thing we have left here: and finally, and chief of all, since this loss and this gain are placed in our own power, and made to depend upon our own choice, and our own actions-then the doctrine of a future judgment must be allowed to form a motive sufficient to work upon every unprejudiced mind: a motive for which we cannot be too thankful.

We see indeed the truth of this doctrine at

least practically disputed every day. I fear we so dispute it ourselves. For which of us lives, thinks, speaks, acts, as if he expected the day of the Lord as a thief in the night? It is our lives and actions which dispute it; not our reason and cooler reflection. It is only such "scoffers of the last days," as the Apostle sets us on our guard against, who affect speculatively and as a matter of reason and religion, to deny the doctrine. It is only because they walk after their own lusts. But "Scripture is still a trumpet to their fears."

"What none can prove a forgery may

be true;

"What none but bad men wish exploded, must." Or supposing that they could successfully impugn the truth of Scripture, there are other testimonies to a future state, which though of secondary importance, carry with them a force not to be resisted. If the sceptic will not hear the voice of revelation, he cannot be blind to the evidence of his senses. Does not all nature

co-operate with Scripture in proclaiming that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust? The grain of wheat that he treads under his foot, the changes which the insect fluttering out his short day of enjoyment undergoes, the successive alterations sustained by his own curious frame, are all visible refutations of

the scoffings of the libertine and sensualist. He must therefore stop or change the course of nature, and annihilate his own body, before he can destroy even the natural arguments for a resurrection; he must do away with all our notions of justice and retribution, and shut his eyes to the present scene as a state of moral probation, in which vice too often successfully triumphs over oppressed virtue and suffering innocence; he must, by the aid of a power never yet possessed by mortal man, silence the voice of conscience, (and with it get rid of the existence of a righteous governor of the world altogether) stop the ordinary movements of his own mind, the course of his thoughts, the ceaseless train of his ideas, his involuntary reasonings concerning "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," before he can dispose of the moral proofs of this doctrine.

Still the question returns upon us, and returns with encreasing force from the preceding arguments taken from nature, reason, and scripture, How happens it that the doctrine has so slight a hold; an influence (with a view to practical purposes) almost next to nothing upon the mind of man? Where is the person who, with an ancient father of the Church, fancies that he always perceives the words Come to judg