II. Take up a lamentation over them —
Our blessed Lord ** wept over Jerusalem," which he saw devoted to destruction. And shall not " mine eyes be a fountain of tears, to run down day and night'" for so many of you as, I have reason to fear, are perishing in your sins ? Alas ! respecting multi- tudes, I must say,
1 . How awful are their delusions !
[All of these persons promise themselves impunity. One is too high to be called to account ; another too low to attract the attention of the Deity. One is so immersed in business, that he may be well excused ; and another too intelligent to be deceived : and all have an idea that God is too good and too merciful to proceed against them. But there is for every one of us a future state of retribution, when every one " shall receive at the hands of God according to what he has done in the body, whether it be good or evil." If it were not so, we might adopt at once the Epicurean maxim, " Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we die." But " we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," and receive at his hands our doom in happiness or misery, to all eternity. Our foohsh excuses will then avail us nothing. Our duty was plain ; namely, to seek^r*^ the kingdom of God and his righteous- ness :" but we chose to prefer other things before it, and to seek it last : we must therefore for ever lose the blessedness we would not seek, and endure for ever the misery which we would not deprecate. And, if men will not believe this now, they will surely be convinced at the very moment of their departure hence. Then " they will know whose word shall stand, whether God's or theirs"." And then,]
2. How bitter will be their reflections —
[Let us suppose a man " lifting up his eyes in the tor- ments of hell," and looking back to the means of grace which he once enjoyed, and the offers of mercy that were made him in the Saviour's name : how bitterly will he bewail his folly ! how will he wish that he had been born a heathen, or an idiot ; or rather, " that he had never been born at all !" We are told how such persons will be occupied in " weeping, and wailing, and gnashing their teeth," with impotent rage against their God. And what will they then think of the gratifica- tions for which they sacrificed all the felicity of heaven, and incurred all the miseries of hell ? How will they stand amazed at their folly and their madness ! and what language will they
t Jer. ix. 1. " Jer. xliv. 28.