Christ, when speaking of the final judgment, seldom omitted to insist and enlarge on its publicity. He thus reminds us, that the end for which there is any judgment at all is best secured by having it held in the presence of all worlds, that piety may be most honored, sin most abashed, and the government of God vindicated and glorified, on the largest possible scale. In a few descriptive words, he fills the horizon with intelligent beings of all orders and characters. It will not be the judgment of a single individual, nor of a nation, but of a whole world of intelligent and accountable beings. It will not be an assize for sins of recent commission merely; sins committed thousands of years before will be reproduced and examined, with all their circumstances of aggravation, as if they had been only just committed. What a profound impression will that produce of the holy character of God, and of the infinite enormity of sin! When his people are crowned, he would not have one of their enemies absent; and when the ungodly are doomed, he would not have one of the righteous absent: he would have them now to forestall that day-to feel, by anticipation, that they are speaking with the universe for their audience, and acting in the great theatre of the judg ment; and then, he would have them depart to their respective allotments, bearing away with them impressions of the hatefulness of sin, and the beauty of holiness, which shall remain uneffaced through all the scenes of eternity.

"The Son of man shall come in his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations." "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the

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Son." He hath "authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man; in his superadded humanity consists the very reason of his appointment. If the Judge is to be seen on that day with our bodily eyes, and if realities are to triumph on that day over appearances, substances over shadows, then is it fit that no illusion should sit on the throne, that He should occupy it who is, "without controversy, God manifest in the flesh." If it was right in God so to construct the plan of salvation that in all its workings it should be made to yield to believers, as it does, the largest possible measure of consolation and joy, then must it be right, also, that, in the person of their Judge, they should recognize their Redeemer. It will give an additional value to the crown of life, that it will be bestowed by the hand of Christ; that the very Being who died for them, who gave them the grace of repentance, and who awakened in them the hope of salvation, should come personally to realize their hopes, to collect them around him, to wipe away every tear, to receive the plaudits of the universe in their salvation; this will be the only ingredient their cup of bliss will require, and the last it can receive; having that, their joy will be full. And if it be right that his enemies should be vanquished, it seems fit that he should vanquish them; if it is proper that unbelievers should be condemned, there appears a peculiar propriety that, both for their greater conviction and his greater exaltation, the sentence of condemnation should be pronounced by him.

And O, what an enhancement of their doom will this single circumstance contain! If a person be con

scious that he is chargeable with ingratitude, and with ingratitude beyond forgiveness, he would rather confront his greatest foe than the person he has thus injured. Were any other being than Christ to ascend the throne of judgment, or were he any other than he is, the confusion of the impenitent sinner at appearing in his presence would be less intolerable. But when he shall draw near, and be compelled to look on that injured goodness, his confusion will be complete. When he shall behold him invested in the robe of humanity, that single sight will flash on him the recollection of all that Jesus did in that nature to redeem him: the incarnation, the bloody sweat, the cross, the pierced side all will rise to view, and penetrate him with an agonizing sense of his ingratitude and guilt. When he shall hear the voice of that injured Being, the voice which he had heard so often in the gospel, inviting, entreating, beseeching him in every tone of gracious solicitude, it will vibrate on his ear more dreadfully than the sound of the archangel's trump, which called him from the grave. When the impenitent are represented as calling on the mountains and rocks to fall on them, what is that which they seek to avoid? They ask to be hidden from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. The wrath of the Lamb! Had it been the fury of the lion; had it been the wrath of a being who had only created them, given them a law, and left them to obey it or perish, who had only been known to them as a being of rigorous and unbending justice, then, however conscious of guilt, they might have attempted to lift up their hardened front in his presence. But it is the wrath of

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the Lamb; of a Being who has always acted towards them with infinite tenderness and patience; who became the Lamb of God, the great sacrificial Victim, suffering and dying to take away their guilt. This is the circumstance which will render his wrath so unendurable that they will ask no higher favor than to be sheltered from the sight of his face, and would take the weight of the incumbent earth as a blessed exchange.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

REV. H. H. MILMAN.

EVEN thus amid thy pride and luxury,
O earth, shall that last coming burst on thee,
That secret coming of the Son of man,
When all the cherub-throning clouds shall shine,
Irradiate with his bright, advancing sign;

When that great Husbandman shall wave his fan, Sweeping like chaff thy wealth and pomp away; Still to the noontide of that nightless day

Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain. Along the busy mart and crowded street, The buyer and the seller still shall meet, And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain; Still to the pouring out the cup of woe, Till earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro, And mountains molten by his burning feet,

And heaven his presence own, all red with furnace

heat.

The hundred-gated cities then,

The towers and temples, named of men
Eternal, and the thrones of kings;

The gilded summer palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,
Where still the bird of pleasure sings;
Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go, gaze on fallen Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll;

'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurled; The skies are shrivelled like a burning scroll,

And one vast common doom insepulchres the world. O, who shall then survive,

O, who shall stand and live,

When all that hath been is no more;
When, for the round earth hung in air,
With all its constellations fair,

In the sky's azure canopy ;

When, for the breathing earth and sparkling sea,
Is but a fiery deluge without shore,
Heaven along the abyss profound and dark,
A fiery deluge, and without an ark?

Lord of all power, when thou art there alone
On thy eternal fiery-wheeled throne,
That, in its high meridian noon,

Needs not the perished sun nor moon;

When thou art there in thy presiding state, Wide-sceptred Monarch o'er the realm of doom, When from the sea depths, from earth's darkest

womb,

The dead of all the ages round thee wait;