to comment or dilate. The images under which it is described, the Almighty seated in judgment on his throne, the recording and the accusing angel, the books in which our works are entered and our doom enrolled, are rather intended to impress us with an awful sense of the event, than to impart an idea of its nature. Of the judicial procedure by which sentence will be pronounced upon the just and unjust, it is vain, if not irreverent, to indulge in conjectures. An ancient writer, who is distinguished for his attachment to allegorical senses, supposes, that the judge and the accuser will be the conscience of the guilty.464 When the terrific majesty of the Son of God is made apparent to the world, as the lightning shines from one end ' of heaven to the other; 465 the wicked and the infidel will be reduced to a just sense of their guilt and of his divinity; and execution follow upon the transgressor, without the formalities of a trial, or the denunciation of a sentence.

With respect to the final destiny of the earth, its future dissolution by fire is as plainly foretold, as its former destruction by water is narrated, in Scripture. Of the writers who have treated of the subject of the Millennium, two have devised theories, in which they have undertaken to account for its origin and destruction, on physical prin

464 Orig. Com. in Matt. tom. xvii. § 35. 465 Matt. xxiv. 26. 466 2 Pet. iii. 7. 10. conf. supr. p. 127. n. 300.

But

ciples. The first, who may be considered the founder of the geological school, supposes that three causes will contribute to the catastrophe, in which it is doomed to perish. 467 A central fire, which he supposes to exist within the bowels of the earth, will be the great magazine from whence the flame is to issue, by which it will be laid waste; the scorching heat of the sun, by rendering it combustible, having prepared it for the devouring element. The upper regions will be thus rarified, and rendered highly electric, for the operation of the meteoric fires, which he supposes will contribute their force to kindle it into a flame. to the physical agency by which it is thus conceived the frame of this earth will be dissolved, a writer of the same school supposes it necessary, that another natural cause should be added.468 He considers it most consonant to the declarations of scripture and the operations of nature, that the consuming fire, by which it will perish, should be aided, if not communicated by a comet. As the deluge was caused by the descent of one of these bodies to the sun, the conflagration will be effected by the ascent of one, impregnated with the igneous matter, from the centre of the.system.

These rude and complicated theories have been formed with a view to dispose of the immense body

467 Burnet Theory, B. III. ch. vii.

468 Whiston New Theory, B. IV. ch. v.

t

of water, which covers and pervades the earth; the existence of which is conceived by these authors to oppose insuperable obstacles to its destruction by a conflagration. The discoveries of modern chemists have, however, tended to prove, that water itself may be employed in such a mode of destruction. As it is formed by the combination of oxygen with hydrogen; it unites in its composition an inflammable gas with the greatest supporter of combustion. It is thus constituted by its nature, to become a principle of the destruction, which is effected by fire. Even from the same element, volcanic eruptions and meteoric fires are supposed to proceed; which furnish the ancient theorists with the magazines from whence they suppose the frame of the globe will be set on flame. Volcanic eruptions are conceived, by the ablest of modern chemists,469 to originate from metals, existing in the earth in a pure state, and inaccessible to air and oxygen, but which, on coming in contact with water, are directly ignited. Meteors are equally supposed to be small planetary bodies, which revolve in different systems, until coming within the attraction of our earth, they directly inflame, on entering into its atmosphere. By the same celebrated chemist, they are supposed to consist originally of the pure metals of silex and magnesia, united with iron and nickel; the former 469 Sir H. Davy.

of which, when brought in contact with the oxygen of our atmosphere, directly take fire. While, by the simple process of decomposition and combination, such effects may be produced; we need not have recourse to the higher operations of creation and annihilation, in order to prove the physical possibility of a general conflagration. Since by a slight modification of the contrary elements, which are thus wonderfully poised, the equilibrium of nature might be destroyed; and that combustion produced, from which the destruction of the earth must inevitably follow. And rare as are the confirmations which revelation derives from science; it furnishes evidence not only of the disruption of one planet by some immense internal force, but of the extinction of an entire system, in the destruction of the sun, which was the centre of its light and motion. From the nature of the orbits of the asteroids, which modern observation has discovered in our system, it is collected, that they are fragments of a great planet, which was shattered by some internal force, and the parts projected from the point where their orbits are found to have a common intersection. And from the suddenly encreased splendor and final disappearance of one of the fixed stars, of which the observers at the beginning of the seventeenth century have given an account, astronomers have been led to conclude, that the systems, of which those bodies are supposed to form the suns D d

are not merely subject to decay, but to absolute extinction.

Without having recourse to the supposition that the great abyss may explode, or the shell of the earth be broken up, by the shock of a comet; without supposing the operation of meteoric or subterranean fires, and that the craters of innumerable volcanos voiding forth molten torrents, will cover the face of nature with a sea of liquid fire; we may conceive the possibility, that, by the decomposition of the ocean, the surface of the globe may be overwhelmed with a fiery deluge. In the earth, reduced to this state of liquid fire, we most easily distinguish the burning lake;' in which we are assured, that all besides those on whom the second death hath no power,' will perish everlastingly.470

Of the mansions intended for the blessed we have been vouchsafed more particular information. In the New Jerusalem, the descent of which from heaven is described by the Evangelist, a place of rest is provided for the righteous. To this para

471

disaical abode, there is the plainest allusion in 'the Epistle to the Hebrews,' in which it is described as the place of rest, into which the spirits

' of just men made perfect' are received.

470 Rev. xx. 14, 15. 472 Heb. xii. 22, 23.

471 Rev. xxi. 2. 10.

Gal. iv. 26.

The