true, and righteous, are thy judgments, O Lord God of Hosts." Crushed, but unhumbled, he was driven from the face of God an unrepenting criminal, and is now in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, hating God and hating holiness, and not more tormented by the actual pains he endures, than by the agony of selfish regret with which he realizes the happiness he has now for ever lost. But what is "the lake of fire?" What do these words mean? In order to answer this question safely, it will be necessary to view the phrase in connection with other passages of a similar kind. The following appear to embody the greater part of what is revealed with regard to the eternal state of the wicked. Take them in the order of Scripture. Matt. iii. 12. " He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Matt. xiii. 40. "As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that do offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Matt. xxv. 46. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." Mark ix. 44. "Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched." Jude vii. 13. Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever." Rev. xiv. 10, 11. "The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth 66 up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night." Now all these images of terror must have a meaning. They are not mere figures of speech. There must, too, have been an important end to be attained by their presentation. They harrow up our finest sensibilities; and he who planted those sensibilities in all their delicacy never wounds or violates them unnecessarily. It is not allowable for us to cast them aside under any pretext, that the contemplation of them is calculated to instil hard thoughts of God. God requires of us no such false solicitude about his character. The thought is presumption.-Are we tenderer than God? Are we more merciful than our Maker? Do we take complacency in our tenderness, our kindness of heart, our shrinking from another's sufferings? Who implanted those feelings? What is it that has given to them their exquisite sensibility? What, but that very Christian Revelation, of which eternal torments for the wicked is part and parcel. Why is it that we are not sacrificing our offspring to Moloch, or crushing our own bodies under the wheels of some English Juggernaut? You can find no other reason than this, because our rugged and cruel natures have in some measure yielded to the benevolent and loving influences of that very book which tells us of the lake of fire and brimstone. Away then with that false, bypocritical, and presumptuous delicacy, which would seek to hide what God has thought fit to reveal, and under pretext of solicitude for his honour, indirectly charge him with cruelty. These images of terror have a meaning, and an important end was without doubt to be attained by their presentation. What was that end? Why does God shock our feelings by such vivid pictures of a misery which would be otherwise inconceivable? Probably this-to hold up in the strongest light the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and its eternal opposition to his holy nature, to show us the awful character of eternal punishment, and by these strong representations of its unutterable misery to place before us, in connection with the death and mediatorial work of Christ, one of the most powerful motives which could possibly be brought to bear on that enlightened self-love, which unlike selfishness, operates, not for our aggrandisement but for self-preservation, and under the influence of which, in some degree at least, every man wishes to avoid the wrath which conscience tells him is to come. You must have noticed, that there is a strong indisposition in the minds of most persons to believe that there is such a place as hell. Thousands who profess to receive the Bible as a divine revelation are willing to persuade themselves that the frequent references which are made to everlasting woe, are, after all, only strong figures of speech, intended to deter men from the commission of gross crimes, and under the influence of vain speculations about things unrevealed, they soon come to disbelieve that which they wish to be untrue. To meet this infidelity of the heart, it has pleased divine wisdom so to vary these images, and to place them in such connection as to render it utterly impossible to deny the reality of the thing represented, without at the same time forfeiting all pretension to the character of a believer in the Bible. A dim but dreary outline of that gloomy abode is set before us, and chains, and darkness, and a lake of fire, and an undying worm powerfully shadow forth, the dismal woes, the gnawing agony of those who have God for their enemy. And then, as if to put at rest for ever all hope of change, we are told in the same sentence, and by the use of the very same word, what will be the duration both of the happiness of the righteous, and the misery of the wicked. shall go away into everlasting (avior) punishment, but the righteous into life eternal" (aiviov.) "These Without, therefore, passing the boundary of revelation, by attempting to define precisely the character of the sinner's eternal dwelling place, it is enough for us to know that it is a place of inconceivable wretchedness. "The breath of God-his angry breath, As residents in a sinful world, we know something about misery; but we know little indeed of it compared with what the lost spirits in hell know. Reader-You may have suffered acute pains of body or experienced much anguish of mind, and either are hard enough to bear. But remember, in hell, both these are united and endured in the highest degree. You may have heard of the torments inflicted upon martyrs or upon slaves. You may have read of racks, and whips, and flame, of flesh torn by burning pincers, or scorched by boiling lead. But these were short pangs. Our bodies are so mercifully constituted that they cannot sustain more than a limited portion of torment. The torn flesh will mortify, sensibility soon leaves it, and the sufferer dies. But in hell the powers of endurance are indefinitely increased, and no death relieves the hardened and blaspheming rebel. Here, under intense mental suffering, the mysterious chain which connects mind and matter, snaps, and he who a little while ago rolled in agony, now laughs in idiocy. But in hell the links are more firmly knit, and even the relief of madness is denied. But is it right, you ask, thus to force upon us thoughts from which we shrink? What end can be answered by such awful, such heart rending detail? Whether any end will be answered, God only knows; the end intended to be answered is important enough to justify God in making these painful declarations, and to justify man in bringing them prominently forward. This is the end. To awaken YOU, O unconverted sinner, to a sense of your real condition and imminent danger, that so you come not into this place of torment. To awaken You, O slumbering selfish believer, that you may arise from your guilty lethargy, and begin to stir yourself about the conversion of your unrenewed relatives, and friends, and neighbours, lest in that day their blood should be required at your hand. SINNER You have had a glimpse, (but a glimpse it is true, yet still a glimpse,) of the eternal dwelling place of all the unconverted. You have seen the pit on the brink of which you are trifling, and into which, if your feet turn not away, you will slide in due time. With all your might are you urging on your fatal way. I call upon you to stop. In the name of God, and with the mercies of Christ in my hand to offer, I implore you to return. " Why will ye die? What can it profit you, if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul.” Once more, before we part, I implore you to turn to Christ. He invites you. How can ye refuse? He intreats you. Can you yet deny? He stretches out his hand in token of reconciliation-and will you still disregard ? He waits to be gracious. How long is he to stand before you will bow? Soon will his feet turn another way. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." MY FELLOW BELIEVER-The life, the death, and the eternal dwelling place of an unconverted sinner have been set forth, chiefly for the benefit of those who are themselves in the like condition : but has the subject no bearing upon you? You have unconverted friends and neighbours, perhaps near relatives. Do you believe that they are travelling onward to a miserable eternity, and yet have you never tried to stop them in their way? Have you never taken them by the hand, and with the affectionate earnestness which a deep conviction of their danger alone can give? Have you never besought them to be reconciled to Jesus? Have you never prayed with them, as well as for them? Then where is your affection? Where your love to them? Where your likeness to the great apostle of the Gentiles, who could have wished himself accursed, so that his brethren according to the flesh might be saved? Where is your likeness to Christ? Where your zeal for his honour? Awake! awake! "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." "The judge standeth at the door." Beware lest your garments be stained with the blood of the unconverted. D. LETTERS OF FELIX NEFF, THE ALPINE PASTOR. munion with God, and as tending too much to a sort of spiritual dissipation, in which we are separated from God, even while we appear to serve him. He was sensible that activity, and zeal, and unwearied devotedness, are qualities excellent in themselves, and necessary to the faithful Christian; but he also felt, that the founding of schools, preaching to others, establishing missions, corresponding with half the world; in short, being, or appearing to be, important in the church of Christ, that these things do not make up the life of the soul; but on the contrary, often become, with a terrible facility, pernicious snares to him who is engaged in them. He felt that it is not the work of man which can sustain the trem. bling heart when it has to meet "the king of terrors;" that true peace is obtained only by a simple reliance on sovereign mercy, and that, on the bed of death, the most faithful Christian has no other To the Editors.-NOT doubting but that your readers have been deeply interested by the Memoir of Felix Neff, which appeared in your last number, and would be glad to know any further particulars respecting a man so eminently pious, and so singularly devoted and successful in the cause of Christ, I have sent you the following translations of two letters, written by him during his last illness, and addressed to all his brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus, of the churches in which he had ministered, and especially to his former catechumens. They were published at Geneva, not long after his death, by M. A. Bost, an excellent minister of Christ of that city, who attended his bed-side, and acted as his amanuensis in penning them. M. Bost has appended a short notice on the last moments of Neff, in which he speaks of the patience and unfeigned humility which this good man displayed in the midst of his acute sufferings, and of his well-ground of salvation but that grace grounded confidence and triumph which justifies the ungodly. in the Saviour. His experience in the prospect of death and eternity tended to confirm and strengthen what he had before taught and written, especially on the importance of real inward piety. Though Neff was far removed from ambition, and the desire of becoming great, and had laboured beyond measure in his vocation as a minister of Christ, he appears to have formed a very humbling view of his public ministry, and regarded that very activity which had led him to travail night and day for the good of others, as having proved too much a snare to his own soul, as an obstacle to his personal comN. S. No. 88. The following letters will, I am persuaded, be read with interest and profit. They were written in those circumstances in which the mind rejects with disgust everything but that which is real and satisfying. They were written in the light of the future world. They are full of simplicity, and breathe a spirit of exalted piety. They are valuable as a testimony to the truth and reality of religion, and come with additional weight and force from a man who had been so eminently useful and exemplary. I had many opportunities, last year, of witnessing the happy effects of his labours, and of hearing his name pronounced with filial Рр veneration by those to whom he had been instrumental in bringing to a knowledge of the truth. Three of these were young men studying for the ministry, and I was pleased to observe that the theses of two of them, which it is usual to publish, on obtaining the degree of Bachelor in Theology, were inscribed "A la Memoire benie de M. Neff." One of them is already labouring among those very mountains over which Neff had so often traversed, to carry the glad tidings of the Gospel; and may we not hope that the seed which he was the means of sowing shall bring forth yet more abundant fruit to the praise and glory of God? I am your's, very truly, J. W. H. P. LETTER I. Plombières, Oct. 6th, 1828. IN the state of complete isolation in which my long illness retains me, one portion of my time is employed in walks in Dauphiné. My spirit wanders, as in a dream, across the higher Alps and Triève; my heart accompanies it in these visits, and finds itself again, not without emotion, successively in all the places where it has experienced so many delicious sensations, especially where it has sighed for the conversion of poor sinners, and where it was surrounded with precious souls anxious for the word of salvation. I tread over again the vallies, the passes, all the little by-paths which I have so often traversed, alone, or with friends; I find myself again in the huts, in the stables, in the vineyards, particularly where I have conversed on the things of Heaven with those who are dear to me in Jesus Christ. I see them all separately, or assembled together; I hear them, and I speak to them. In these moments, I find myself quite naturally put again in possession of the sentiments which animated me heretofore; and, as formerly, I lift up my soul to the Father of every perfect gift, and I pray for his dear flock! I meet also in these recollections the image of those of my brethren who are no more, and I sigh; but presently I bless God for them, and I rejoice in seeing them in the fold, safely housed from every evil and every fall. Doubtless, I cannot thus recal these times and places, without finding afresh many humiliating recollections, very bumiliating, and without thinking, that if, at this time, I am, as it were, laid aside in the service of Christ, I have justly deserved it; but as these recollections are not the less salutary, I should do wrong to dispel them. That which casts the greatest gloom over this picture, is, alas! the number of those who have died in the desart, and who after having set out from Egypt, have returned thither in their heart, not having had the courage to go up to take possession of the good country! How often my memory meets, in running over your country, some of those poor souls, who have been struck by the preaching of the word, who have trembled at the foot of Sinai, who have cried out with anguish, "What shall I do to be saved?" who for a time renounced the world, endured its hatred, and partook of the afflictions of the people of God; and who then became tired of the way, who have feared no more the wrath to come, who have forgotten both the threatenings and the promises, and who have fallen asleep |