investigation. Every utterance is reported for
review at judgment; every book is kept for that day. It is not the
method of the divine government to put down its enemies by mere
physical power, as if the question between God and man was indeed one
of strength and weakness, and not rather of right and wrong. The Lord
will indeed answer his enemies; but He will do so by the irresistible
power of truth, and the omnipotent force of righteousness. He will
crush and overwhelm them; but it will be in their own conscience, and
in their own estimation. He will expel them from whatever refuge of
lies they may vainly attempt to seek for shelter, and expose them to
the full blaze of _principle_, until their inmost souls echo the dread
sentence of "GUILTY," which must be pronounced upon them, while they
stand "speechless" amidst the assembled universe, and before the
omniscient and holy Judge of all the earth. "He is coming with ten
thousand of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to CONVINCE
all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they
have ungodly committed, and of all their HARD SPEECHES which ungodly
sinners have spoken against Him!"

Do we address one who is a professed unbeliever in the truth, or
rather, who "believes a lie,"--that there _is_ no Saviour? We ask such
a one to consider what the certain, or even _probable_ consequences
will be to him, if all we have said is nevertheless true? What if you
shall see Jesus Christ face to face, and have your whole outer and
inner history, as it _is known to God_, minutely revealed to your own
mind, and to the assembled jury of the universe? Will your thinking,
or saying, that the whole is a fiction, make it so? Will your scoff at
God's revelation of the future prevent the dead from rising, or the
Judge from appearing? Will a foolish jest, or a proud callousness, or
a subtle argument, or a brave indifference to what others fear, enable
you, on the resurrection morning, to shut your ears against the sound
of the last trump, or to disobey the summons of the Son of God to rise
from the tomb, and to appear before Him? And if no unbelief can change
the will of God, or make that false which He proclaims to be true, nor
alter His prescribed order in things to come, no more than it can do
His present order in the starry heavens,--what can you say to Jesus
Christ in your own defence? How can you, in consistency with His Word,
so justify your own opinions and c