his head like the pure wool. His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued, and came forth from before him: thou sands thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him." Dan. vii. 9, 10. Perhaps our Lord may exhibit himself to the whole world upon this most grand occasion, in the same glorious form in which he was seen by his favorite John, “clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle: his head and his hairs white like wool, as white as snow; his eyes as a flame of fire: his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace: his voice as the sound of many waters, and his countenance as the sun shining in his strength." Rev. i. 13, &c. Another image of inimitable majesty and terror the same writer gives us, when he says, "I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them." Astonishing! what an image is this! the stable earth and heaven cannot bear the majesty and terror of his look: they fly away affrighted, and seek a place to hide themselves, but no place is found to shelter them; every region through the immensity of space lies open before him. Rev. xx. 11. This is the Judge before whom we must stand; and this is the manner of his appearance. But is this the babe of Bethlehem that lay and wept in the manger? Is this the supposed son of the carpenter, the despised Galilean? Is this the man of sorrows? Is this he that This is the picture drawn by the pencil of inspiration. We may now contemplate the imagery of a fine human pen. -From his great abode Full on a whirlwind rides the dreadful God: The tempest's rattling winds, the fiery car, The flaming Cherubim, attend his flight, And heaven's foundations groan beneath the weight. The Day of Judgment, a Poem, a little varied. was arrested, was condemned, was buffeted, was spit upon, was crowned with thorns, was executed as a slave and a criminal, upon the cross? Yes, it is he; the very same Jesus of Nazareth. But O how changed! how deservedly exalted! Let heaven and earth congratulate his advancement. Now let his enemies appear and show their usual contempt and malignity. Now, Pilate, condemn the King of the Jews as an usurper. Now, ye Jews, raise the clamor, crucify him, crucify him. "Now bow the knee in scorn, present the reed; Now tell the scourg'd Impostor he must bleed."-YOUNG. Now, ye Deists and Infidels, dispute his divinity and the truth of his religion if you can. Now, ye hypocritical Christians, try to impose upon him with your idle pretences. Now despise his grace, laugh at his threatenings, and make light of his displeasure if you are able. Ah! now their courage fails, and terror surrounds them like armed men. Now " they hide themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains; and say to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;" for the Lamb that once bled as a sacrifice for sin now appears in all the terrors of a lion; and "the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. vi. 15. O! could they hide themselves in the bottom of the ocean, or in some rock that bears the weight of the mountains, how happy would they think themselves. But, alas! "Seas cast the monsters forth to meet their doom, And rocks but prison up for wrath to come."-YOUNG. While the Judge is descending, the parties to be judged will be summoned to appear. But where are they? They are all asleep in their dusty beds, except the then generation. And how shall they be roused from their long sleep of thousands of years? "Why the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." 1 Thess. iv. 16. The trumpet shall sound, and they that are then alive shall not pass into eternity through the beaten road of death, but at the last trumpet they shall be changed, changed into immortals, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. Now all the millions of mankind, of whatever country and nation, whether they expect this tremendous day or not, all feel a shock through their whole frames, while they are instantaneously metamorphosed in every limb, and the pulse of immortality begins to beat strong in every part. Now also the slumberers under ground begin to stir, to rouse and spring to life. Now see graves opening, tombs bursting, charnel-houses rattling, the earth heaving, and all alive, while these subterranean armies are bursting their way through. See clouds of human dust and broken bones darkening the air, and flying from country to country over intervening continents and oceans to meet their kindred fragments, and repair the shattered frame with pieces collected from a thousand different quarters, whither they were blown away by winds, or washed by waters. See what mil lions start up in company in the spots where Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome, and London once stood! Whole armies spring to life in fields where they once lost their lives in battle, aud were left unburied; in fields which fattened with their blood, produced a thousand harvests, and now produce a crop of men. See a succession of thousands of years rising in crowds from grave-yards round the places where they once attended, in order to prepare for this decisive day. Nay, graves yawn, and swarms burst into life under palaces and buildings of pride and pleasure, in fields and forests, in thousands of places where graves were never suspected. How are the living surprised to find men starting into life under their feet, or just beside them; some beginning to stir, and heave the ground; others half-risen, and others quite disengaged from the incumbrance of earth, and standing upright before them! What vast multitudes that had slept in a watery grave, now emerge from rivers, and seas, and oceans, and throw them into a tumult! Now appear to the view of all the world the Goliahs, the Anakims, and the other giants of ancient times; and now the millions of infants, those little particles of life, start up at once, perhaps in full maturity, or perhaps in the lowest class of mankind, dwarfs of immortality. The dead, small and great, will arise to stand before God; and the sea shall give up the dead which were in it. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Now the many that sleep in the dust shall awake and come forth; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Dan. xii. 2. Now the hour is come when all that are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation. John v. 28. Though after our skin worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh shall we see God, whom we shall see for ourselves; and these eyes shall behold him, and not another. Job. xix. 26, 27. Then this corruptible [body] shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. 1 Cor. xv. 23. As the characters, and consequently the doom of mankind will be very different, so we may reasonably suppose they will rise in very different forms of glory or dishonor, of beauty or deformity. Their bodies indeed will all be improved to the highest degree, and all made vigorous, capacious, and immortal. But here lies the difference: the bodies of the righteous will be strengthened to bear an exceeding great and eternal weight of glory, but those of the wicked will be strengthened to sustain a heavier load of misery; their strength will be but mere strength to suffer a horrid capacity of greater pain. The immortality of the righteous will be the duration of their happiness, but that of the wicked of their misery; their immortality, the highest privilege of their nature, will be their heaviest curse: and they would willingly exchange their duration with an insect of a day, or a fading flower. The bodies of the righteous will "shine as the sun, and as the stars in the firmament for ever and ever;" but those of the wicked will be grim and shocking, and ugly, and hateful as hell. The bodies of the righteous will be fit mansions for their heavenly spirits to inhabit, and every feature will speak the delightful passions that agreeably work within; but the wicked will be but spirits of hell clothed in the material bodies; and malice, rage, despair, and all the infernal passions, will lower in their countenances, and cast a dis mal gloom around them! O! they will then be nothing else but shapes of deformity and terror! they will look like the natives of hell, and spread horror around them with every look.* With what reluctance may we suppose will the souls of the wicked enter again into a state of union with these shocking forms, that will be everlasting engines of torture to them, as they once were instruments of sin! But O! with what joy will the souls of the righteous return to their old habitations, in which they once served their God with honest, though feeble endeavors, now so gloriously repaired and improved! How will they congra tulate the resurrection of their old companions from their long sleep in death, now made fit to share with them in the sublime employments and fruitions of heaven! Every organ will be an instrument of service and an inlet of pleasure, and the soul shall no longer be encumbered but assisted by this union to the body. O what surprising creatures can Omnipotence raise from the dust! To what a high degree of beauty can the Almighty refine the offspring of the earth! and into what miracles of glory and blessedness can he form them!† Now the Judge is come, the judgment-seat is erected, the dead are raised. And what follows? Why the universal convention of all the sons of men before the judg ment-seat. The place of judgment will probably be the extensive region of the air, the most capacious for the reception of such a multitude; for St. Paul tells us, the saints shall be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." 1 Thess. iv. 17. And that the air will be the place of judicature, perhaps, may be intimated when our Lord is represented as coming in the clouds, and sitting upon a cloudy throne. These expressions How weak, how pale, how haggard, how obscene, Each gesture mourns, each look is black with care; Mark, on the right, how amiable a grace! |