they " dwell with everlasting burnings?" Who can conceive the anguish with which they will " weep and wail and gnash their teeth?" View, on the contrary, the godly healed of every malady, grown to the full measure of the stature of Christ, and enjoying continually the meridian glories of the Sun of Righteousness. Who can conceive the happiness of such a state? But though " we know not yet what we shall be," so far as respects the degrees of our happiness or misery, we know that the distance between the righteous and the wicked will be immeasurably great. Would to God that, in the contemplation of it, we might all fear the Lord, and walk in his fear to the latest period of our lives !]
Mai. iv. 5, 6. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord : and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
THE advent of our blessed Lord has been foretold from the beginning of the world. No sooner had man in Paradise fallen, than God promised him a Saviour in that seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent's heada. From that time has it been predicted with increasing clearness by many succes- sive prophets, that so he might be easily and clearly discovered at the period of his arrival. At last, the Prophet Malachi foretold the very person who, as his harbinger, should precede him, and point him out to the people.
The day of his arrival is here, as well as in the Prophet Joel, called, u the great and terrible day of the Lord." But St. Luke, quoting the Prophet Joel, calls it "the great and illustrious day of the LordV And it was, indeed, both illustrious and " dreadful :" for then did God himself become incarnate, for the salvation of all who would believe in him ; but then also were inflicted, on those who rejected him, such judgments as were altogether unprecedented in the
a Gen. iii. 15.
"D Compare Joel ii. 31. and the text, with Acts ii. 20. ETrKpapfj.