The subject is forbidding to a gay world; but not therefore to be neglected. The first Christians looked forward to the last day with hope and transport, as to a glorious jubilee. Times are changed; still we should not divest ourselves of discretion and reason. Wise men foresee and prepare for evils, which are unavoidable, or only probable. They bring home to their minds the sufferings of their fellow creatures, and build hospitals. The conflagration of a city is a dreadful event; yet the citizens, instead of pushing the danger from their thoughts, form themselves into societies, and furnish themselves with engines to extinguish the flames. Though the expectation of death be terrible, men sometimes write their own wills, appoint their successors, direct where their bodies shall be buried, or build their own tombs.

A familiar contemplation of the great day may be equally wise, and a preparation for it more useful, than any of those deeds of wisdom and discretion.

The general expectation of such a day by all ages and nations, is evidence of its reality. A day of judgment is an article of almost every creed in the world. In this all parties of Christians unite. In this Pagans, and Jews agree. This doctrine is taught, not only in the churches of Jesus Christ, but in the mosques of Mahomet, and in the temples of the heathen gods. The Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the Druids of Europe, taught the doctrine of a future judgment. The colleges of Egypt and Chaldea gave their testimony to support the solemn fact. In all the pomp of song, the bards of other times described the terrours of Minos, and the other judges of

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the invisible world. Though tradition and allegory had obscured its splendours, the beams of truth burst the mantling clouds of errour and displayed the day of judgment as a tremendous scene.

What has commanded so general assent has high claim to our belief.

The frequent judgments, which overwhelm the wicked in this life, are presumptive arguments in favour of a general judgment. The miseries of Cain, of Achan, and Judas, were the day of judgment in miniature. Belshazzar and Voltaire, Herod and Robespierre, dying in torment, were witnesses of a judgment to come. If God thus visibly punish some sinners, it is highly probable that he will judge all sinners. But all are not judged in this life. These strongly argue for a day of general retribution.

Listen to that designing wretch, in the guise of friendship, prating of fidelity, of honour and truth, yet secretly practising every species of enmity against his greatest benefactor.

See yonder plausible hypocrite; a splendid Bible graces his parlour; he pleads for the clergy and the Sabbath, for public worship, and the Christian religion. He would be thought as temperate as Daniel, as pure as Joseph, as penitent as David, and as orthodox as Paul. He gains his point; his good name is as precious ointment: yet in his heart he despises the Christian religion; he detests the gospel ministry; and among his companions he ridicules the church, and scoffs at the doctrines of the cross. Is there not a day of judgment?

God judges some persons in this world to teach mankind that he will by no means clear the guilty. He suffers many others to pass with impunity, to prove that the great day of his wrath is coming. The present punishment of sinners, and their prosperity, both prove the same truth-the judgment of God.

With this day of trial, Scripture connects the universal conflagration. Do any circumstances render such a catastrophe probable?

The materials, in part, are already visibly prepared for a general conflagration. Numerous facts now show how possible and probable is such an event. Vast magazines of coal, in different countries, are found, buried in the bowels of the earth. Hills and plains in our own country conceal their immense stores of fuel, which may aid the fires of the great day. Miry grounds, in large portions of the globe, abound with a combustible substance, which being once kindled, the world will burn as an oven. The adamantine rocks are stored with latent sparks; may not these consume the dry land? Marshes and ponds often emit a fiery vapour; water absorbs an inflammable air; is capable of combustion, and may enrage the burning of the last day.

So visible were the means or so authentic the tradition of the event, that the ancient heathen believed in a general conflagration. Pliny the elder, supposed there was such a tendency in nature to this crisis, that he wondered it had not taken place. The Stoic philosophers, who had much important truth in their system; the Platonists, distinguished for the sublimity

of their philosophy; the Epicureans and Pythagoreans,
all expected a general conflagration. They probably
learned the doctrine from the Chaldeans; the Chal-
deans received it from the Jews. Ancient heathen
oracles, and poets, and historians, warn the world of
the same terrible event; as the Sybils, Sophocles,
Hystaspes, and Lucan; Strabo, Plutarch and others.
Seneca says,
"The stars shall run upon each other,
and every thing being on flame, that which now
shines regularly, shall then burn in one fire." Lucan
says,

"So when this frame of nature is dissolved,
And the last hours in future times approach,
All to its ancient chaos shall return.

The stars shall fall; the moon attack the sun,
Driving her chariot through the burning sky."

The Sybils declared,—

"For certainly the day will come, will come
When the bright sky shall from his treasure send
A liquid fire, whose all-devouring flames,
By laws unbounded, shall destroy the earth.

All shall vanish; the waters of the deep shall turn
To smoke; the earth shall cease to nourish trees;
The air shall burn."

Ovid says "It was by fate decreed, that sea, and earth, and heaven should burn, and this vast frame of nature fail."

The brahmins of Siam and the savages of the Canary islands, expected the world would be destroyed by fire. This is one of the most ancient traditions. The Jewish historian relates that Adam foretold that the world should be destroyed by fire. The philosophers of Greece, expected the final dissolution of the

world by fire. "The world," say they, "is to be destroyed by a general conflagration."

Though the operations of nature in the centre of the earth must be very much more unknown to the inhabitants of the surface; yet circumstances render it probable, that matter is not cold and inactive in the fathomless abyss of the world. Earthquakes and volcanoes, vaguely reveal the secrets of the earth. "The enormous mass, which constitutes the mountains of Arabia," says a late voyager,* "rests upon no solid basis. An internal conflagration hath formed immense caverns under their foundations, which, passing under the Red Sea, communicate with Africa. Hence Maha and Zeila, two towns on the opposite shores of the Red Sea, feel the shock of an earthquake precisely at the same moment; which proves that they stand on one of those volcanic caverns, which passes under the bed of the sea." The island of Sicily is mostly covered with the eruptions of Etna. This mountain, one hundred eighty three miles in circuit, and more than two in height, is supposed by philosophers to have vomited forth more than twenty times its own magnitude. The amazing furnace there burning below may be forty miles in depth, and nearly two hundred in circumference. An English philosopher,† in his account of Vesuvius, says "There is every reason to believe with Seneca, that the seat of the fire, which causes the eruptions of volcanoes, lies deep in the bowels of the earth." The blazing hills are scattered among the

*Grandpre.

+ Sir W. Hamilton.