SERMON IV.

ROMANS II. 16.

IN THE DAY WHEN GOD SHALL JUDGE THE SECRETS OF MEN BY JESUS CHRIST, ACCORDING TO MY GOSPEL.

OUR remarks, this afternoon, will relate to the great importance of the doctrine, which we considered this morning, of a future judgment, especially when it is viewed as a revelation of the secrets of all hearts.

When we reflect on the insufficiency of human laws, the vast sum of evil against which human legislation cannot provide, and the vast amount of good for which this world and its laws neither offer nor procure a recompense, we feel the importance of this doctrine of a judgment to come. When we are impatient at the long resounding groans of a land in bondage, and the inquiry is awakened, whether there is not "verily a reward for the righteous," let us consider that these are visible and public evils; but let us ask also, What shall be the retribution for all that hypocrisy which has enjoyed the favor of the world? What shall be the fate of those who have escaped the detection of all but their own consciences? Shall there be no account taken of those sinful inclinations which have never ripened into acts; of those wicked intentions which death or accident has frustrated; no retribution for ingratitude, treachery, and many other offences, of which neither the tribunal

of public opinion nor of public law is empowered to take cognizance?

Let us remember, also, that the laws of society are full of threats and penalties, but barren of rewards. They repress only the greatest crimes, and have no recompense for the greatest virtues. The world offers little encouragement for secret and unpretending goodness. Will there not, then, be a day of judgment, when it shall not be forgotten, who have secretly cast their mite, even all their living, into the treasury of human virtue and happiness?

The doctrine of a God, from whom nothing is hidden, and whose future judgment no creature can escape, is the very keystone of all the religions in the world. Take it away, and society becomes a desolate mass of ruins. While, then, we feel the value of this doctrine, as Christians and believers in God, what shall we think of those men, who, because they will not listen to the declarations of the Son of God, are yet willing, not only to despoil the believer of his hope, but see, without alarm, the foundations of human virtue broken up, and all the fidelity of promises, the force of oaths, and every hold which truth and virtue give us upon one another, left to the protection of an undefined and variable sense of honor, which is, to say the most, as perishable as the creatures whom it governs.

Thus much we have thought proper to repeat of the truth and importance of this doctrine, not because your faith in it is weak, but to prepare you for the consideration of that circumstance mentioned in the text, that God will, in that day, judge the secrets of men. Leave out but this single fact, that the secrets of all hearts shall then be revealed for the purpose of an equitable decision, and we leave out the most interesting and solemn of the circumstances which attend the scene of judgment.

What a day will that be which shall uncover the vast repository of human secrets! which shall lay bare the concealed crimes, the forgotten follies, and the unacknowledged motives of all the thoughtless actors in this busy world; the hidden purposes, wishes, fears, sorrows, and miseries of every creature that has ever been endowed with thought; the unregarded virtues, the ill-requited goodness, the undervalued worth of the children of heaven; in one word, which shall expose all that man has loved, all that he has dreaded, desired, or intended! The thought is too great for us to feel its force, and we must attend to it in parts, that, by enumerating, we may strengthen, rather than weaken, the force of the persuasion.

In that day shall God expose to view the many deliberate acts of hypocrisy, which have defied all human scrutiny. Then it will be seen what trusts were broken, what perjuries committed, and what equivocations were contrived by the deceitful dealer, to amass and keep his ill-gotten wealth; for his wealth will then no longer purchase him concealment and security. Then will the testimony of those, who have been taken off by secret violence, rise, in one dreadful reclamation, before the tribunal of eternal justice, and the groans of the injured and forgotten overwhelm the triumphant oppressor. Then will those dazzling and awe-commanding crimes, which have deluded the whole world, be laid bare to the indignation of the meanest sufferer from the oppression of the usurper. Then will many an object of mistaken admiration be exposed; the formal saint who believed nothing; the smiling calumniator who meant nothing; the unprofitable man who did nothing but purchase, by his professions, a temporary estimation. Then will the false witness and the corrupt judge, the incendiary

and the hidden criminal, whether small or great, stand revealed in the light of His countenance, whose "eyes are as a flame of fire," and whose understanding is infinite.

In that day will be disclosed the motives of those actions which have either received the applause of mankind, or been the subject of doubtful or timid condemnation. We shall see at what the patriot aspired, when he pushed himself into the notice of his countrymen; what the orator meant, when he poured out his honied words; and the preacher, when he awakened the hopes or fears of his auditory. Then the public declarations of those, who directed the affairs of the times in which they lived, and changed the fortunes of a nation, will be compared with their purposes and wishes, and the history of the world be read, not in the page of the eloquent historian, but in the records of eternal truth.

Then shall be known, also, wherefore the believer in Christianity has been ashamed to profess it, and how far the multitude of professors have acted up to their profession. Then it shall be discovered, how much of all the vast contributions of charity in the Christian world has been given "not grudgingly and of necessity," and how much, of all that has been bestowed on the relief of human misery, was truly given to relieve it.

In that day shall men be made known to themselves. To every individual his own character will be revealed which had been so often and so strangely misapprehended by himself. These discoveries, indeed, will be enough to cover the best of men with temporary confusion; for, when we come to understand the strange mixture of the motives which have governed us, the confusion of better and meaner principles, of zeal with passion, of humility with disappoint

ed ambition, good conscience with spiritual pride, charity with the desire of estimation, love of truth with love of paradox, integrity with obstinacy, honor with base fear, correct sentiment with pride of opinion, love of peace with indolence and cowardice, and vanity, that most delusive of our motives, with all the rest, the best man will be astonished, and the worst be terrified, at the labyrinths of his own character.

But there is yet another and a deeper abyss of secrets to be broken up, and that is, of the before unknown and unacknowledged miseries of human kind. What a sound of groans issues at this opening of the depths of human sorrows! how many voices, hardly ever heard before, now utter their piercing cries before the assembled universe! Now shall be seen how much more impartial has been that moral retribution here on earth than we had ever imagined, and how unfounded have been our accusations of Providence for the apparent inequalities of its distribution. For then will be revealed the secret worm which has been gnawing, for years, in many a proud heart; and the unacknowledged fears which have pursued the wicked; and the dismay, which, in the hour of danger and of death, has overwhelmed many a secret sinner, will now betray itself to the observer.

Then will be revealed the many vexations which men have made for themselves by their evil and dissocial humors; the secret stings of impotent resentment, the long concealed gnawings of envy, the mortifications of vanity, and the wastings of discontent; the distressing doubts of many a profound philosopher and boasting freethinker, and the secret mournings of many an awakened conscience. Then will be shown the long roll of domestic vexations,