l threatenings of Heaven,
whence the fearful language of Bible warning is derived. They attest its
truth, and illustrate its import.

The favorite theory of the unbeliever is the uniformity of nature.
"Where," says he, "is the promise of Christ's coming to judgment; for
since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were since
the beginning of the world?" But the telescope dispels the illusion,
exhibits the course of nature as a succession of catastrophes, displays
the conflagration of other worlds, and the extinction of their suns,
before our eyes, and asks, _Why should our sun differ from other suns?_
It is not the preacher, but the philosopher, who has turned prophet,
when--looking back on the period when the Siberian elephant and
rhinoceros were frozen amid their native jungle, and icebergs visited
the plains of India--he proclaims, "_The womb that bore the past
contains the future._"

The threatenings of God's Word are invested with a mantle of terrible
literality by the facts we have been contemplating. Raised at the day of
resurrection, in these bodies, and with these senses, and this
capability of rejoicing in the light, and shuddering and pining amid
outward gloom, physical darkness will be the terrible prison of those
who chose darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. The
Father of Lights shall withdraw his blessed influences from the hearts,
the dwellings, the eyes, of those who say to him, "Depart from us, for
we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." The sun shall cease to vivify
God's corn, and wine, and oil, which ungodly men consume upon their
lusts. The moon shall cease to shine upon the robber's toil, and the
stars to illumine the adulterer's path. The light of heaven shall cease
to gild the field of carnage, where men perform the work of hell. In the
very midst of your worldliness and business, unbeliever, when you are in
all the engrossment of buying and selling, and planting and building,
and marrying and giving in marriage, without warning or expectation,
"the sun shall go down at noon, and the stars shall be darkened in the
clear day." As in the warning and example given to the enemies of the
Lord in Egypt, thick darkness, that may be felt, shall wind its
inevitable chains around you, preventing your escape from the judgment
of the great day, and giving you a fearful foretaste of that "blackness
of darkness for ever" of which you are now forewarned in the Word of
Tr