onging to the nature of matter, to which these
qualities naturally adhere.

But to dilate no farther on a topic which, however it may excite the
ridicule of the inconsiderate, will suggest matter of furious
apprehension to all who form their opinions on the authority of the word
of God: thus brought as we are into captivity, and exposed to danger;
depraved and weakened within, and tempted from without, it might well
fill our hearts with anxiety to reflect, "that the day will come," when
"the Heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall
melt with fervent heat;" "when the dead, small and great, shall stand
before the tribunal of God;" and we shall have to give account of all
things done in the body. We are naturally prompted to turn over the page
of revelation with solicitude, in order to discover the qualities and
character of our Judge, and the probable principles of his
determination; but this only serves to turn painful apprehension into
fixed and certain terror.--First of the qualities of our Judge. As all
nature bears witness to his irresistible power, so we read in Scripture
that nothing can escape his observation, or elude his discovery; not our
actions only, but our most secret cogitations are open to his view. "He
is about our path and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways[9]."
"The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations
of the thoughts[10]."--"And he will bring to light the hidden things of
darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart."

Now, hear his description and character and the rule of his award: "The
Lord our God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God."--"He is of purer
eyes than to behold iniquity."--"The soul that sinneth, it shall
die."--"The wages of sin is death." These positive declarations are
enforced by the accounts which, for our warning, we read in sacred
history, of the terrible vengeance of the Almighty: His punishment "the
angels who kept not their first estate, and whom he hath reserved in
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day:"
The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; the sentence issued against the
idolatrous nations of Canaan, and of which the execution was assigned to
the Israelites, by the express command of God, at their own peril in
case of disobedience: The ruin of Babylon, and of Tyre, and of Nineveh,
and of Jerusalem, prophetically denounced as the punishment of their
crimes, and taking pla