God on wicked men is dreadful beyond all that we can conceive. ..... We have rather reason to suppose that after we have said our utmost, and thought our utmost, all that we have said or thought is but a faint shadow of the reality."

says,

What effect these torments are to have on the inhabitants of heaven is somewhat disputed. The Rev. Tryon Edwards, in a sermon which appeared in the National Preacher in 1838, "O! it is enough to make angels weep to think of all the disappointed hopes, and the blighted feelings, and ruined prospects, and the perverted intellect, and the broken hearts of hell! To see the eye that might have sparkled with celestial brightness, gleaming forever with hopeless desperation; to hear the tongue that might have hymned the sweet anthems of the redeemed, breaking the silence of perdition only with weeping and wailing; to behold the intellect, the heart, the soul, the entire being that might have adorned the heaven of heavens, cast down to the blackness of darkness, the companion of devils and lost spirits-yes it is enough to make angels weep-enough, I had almost said, to wake compassion in the heart of the vilest outcast of perdition!" But the venerable Dr. Edwards takes a very different view of the case. "The sight of hell torments," says he, "will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. It will not only make them more sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace of God, in

their happiness; but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it will make them more sensible of their own happiness; it will give them a more lively relish of it; it will make them prize it more. When they see others, who were of the same nature, and born under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery and they so distinguished, O, it will make them sensible how happy they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all cases, greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure."

I hope this will suffice on this head of Hell's Horrors. That it could be made more horrible than here described is very probable, but I shall not trouble myself for other authorities, and much less shall I attempt to add any thing of my own. And in closing this chapter I think I may, without offence, express my earnest wish that all good orthodox believers in endless hell torments will read it with care, and profit by the brief exposition I have given of that important doctrine. And if they believe there is such a place and such pun. ishments, they will certainly feel themselves under obligations to me for bringing together into so small a compass such a variety of descriptions, descriptions gathered from so many authors, and duly set in order and faithfully transcribed. Orthodox ministers will here find what is most essential for sound and powerful sermons, and the young, if they will but possess themselves of this

chapter, may with little expense or labor vie with the oldest and most eloquent in descriptions of hell, and its varied torments and horrors. It now only remains for me to speak of the numbers, who, it is believed, will be finally consigned to this "world of wo."

CHAPTER III.

OF THE NUMBER OF THE DAMNED.

On this important subject there has been, and probably still is, much diversity of opinion. In quite recent times some of our orthodox divines have shown a great solicitude to reduce the number of the finally damned to the lowest point possible. Indeed there have been pretty clear intimations from.certain quarters that they were strongly opposed to damning any considerable portion of the human race, and thought the damation of a few necessary only as a kind of example. There are many honest christians of the present age, I believe, who would be very well satisfied if all were to be saved, except perhaps Judas Iscariot and a few other eminent sinners. They value the principle which embraces endless punishment beyond measure, but are not anxious to see it widely put in practice. Hence for years past there has been with many a growing desire to lessen

more

the number of the damned, and thus, as than suspect, to do something toward justifying the moral government of the Almighty, and saving orthodoxy from the attacks of Universalists which are becoming more and more annoying, and from which, on its old grounds, it is less and less easily defended.

To Dr. Lyman Beecher belongs the honor, I believe, of leading off on this new tack. As early as 1827 or '28, he said, "It seems to be the ima gination of some that the kingdom of darkness will be as populous as the kingdom of light, and that happiness and misery of equal dimensions will expand, side by side, to all eternity. But blessed be God, it is mere imagination; totally unsupported by reason or revelation. Who ever heard of a prison that occupied one half the territories of a kingdom, or who can believe that the universe, which was called into being, and is upheld and governed, to express the goodness of God, will contain as much misery as happiness? How could the government of God be celebrated with such raptures in heaven,if it filled with dismay and ruin half the universe? How vast soever, therefore, the kingdom of darkness may be in itself considered, it is certainly nothing but the prison of the universe, and small compared with the realms of light and glory. The world of misery shrinks into a point, and the wailings of the damned die away and are lost in the song of praise."

Prof. Stuart followed the example so nobly set by Dr. Beecher. On certain suppositions concerning the designations of time in the prophecies which he indulged, he thinks that "the triumphs of redeeming love will bring home to glory such multitudes of our ruined race, that the number who may finally perish will scarcely be thought of in comparison with the countless myriads of those who will come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads." Dr. Joel Parker, late President of the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, follows in the same strain. "We know not," says he, "the comparative magnitude of the prison of hell. It may bear a proportion to all the moral intelligences of Jehovah's empire, not unlike a country jail to the inhabitants of the world at the present time." On this hypothesis Dr. Parker seems to think that we may justify the character and gov. ernment of God. Dr. Albert Barnes adopts a similar mode of expression. He says, "Taking the race as a whole, there is no reason to think that the number of those who should be lost, compared with the immense multitudes that shall be saved by the work of Christ will be more than the prisoners in a community now, compared with the number of peaceful and virtuous citizens." Other divines of the present day speak in much the same manner. One told his audience that "the Devil would not at the conclusion of the