The text declares that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. This we includes all who are now within the sound of my voice, and not only us, but all who live upon the face of the earth; and the Archangel’s trump will wake the pale nations of the dead, and summon them to judgment. The dark domain of hell will be vacated, and the angels that kept not their first estate, and are now reserved in chains of darkness, will appear in the presence of the Judge. Heaven’s holy inhabitants will be present. Thus heaven, earth, and hell, will be represented in that august assemblage. The scene will bear some resemblance to that which takes place in our earthly courts. The Lord Jesus Christ will be the Judge, and the angels and saints will be the jurors, who will consent to and approve of the acts of the Judge. The angels will be the officers who will summon, from the prison-house of hell, the devils, to the trial, and also those wicked men who will call upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon them, and hide them from the face of the Lamb. Nor, as is so often the case with earthly officers, will any be able to elude the vigilance of these. They will be clothed with ample power to compel the attendance of all; none will escape. We must all appear before the judgment-seat. As in earthly courts, law is the basis of judgment, so we shall be judged according to law in that day. The heathen will be judged by the law of nature—the law written in their hearts, and on their consciences. The light of nature teaches the being, wisdom, power, and goodness of God. For a violation of this law, they will be beaten with few stripes. The Jews will be judged by both the law of nature, which they have, in common with the heathen and the Mosaic law. But we who live in the nineteenth century, in the full blaze of gospel light, will be judged not only by the light of nature and the Mosaic law, which we possess in common with the heathen and the Jew, but also by the glorious gospel of the Son of God, which brought life and immortality to light; and if condemned, how fearful our doom, who are so highly favoured! In earthly courts, we are judged for our overt acts alone; but in the court of heaven, the commandment is exceeding broad; it reaches every thought. Our words, too, are taken into account. We must give an account for every idle word. By our words, we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned. Our thoughts, our words, our deeds, will all be taken into account.
As in our courts there are witnesses, so also there will be at the bar of God. Our pious relatives and friends will bear this testimony, that they have prayed with us and for us; that they had a deep concern for our souls, and that we who are found on the left hand of the Judge, refused all their counsel, and despised their admonitions. Ministers of the gospel will testify that they came as ambassadors from the King of kings, and beseeching you, in Christ’s stead, to be reconciled to God, pointing to the coming wrath, and warning you from that wrath to flee; and yet their labour of love ye despised, and scorned the message from on high. The Bible will be a witness against you. Its teachings are able to make wise unto salvation. It is the chart which is given to guide us through this wilderness-world, to fairer worlds on high. It tells of the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. It is truth without any mixture of error, and yet you have despised this necessary revelation, and chosen to perish, with the Word of Life open before you. God, the Father, will be a swift witness against you. In the greatness of his love for you, in the counsels of eternity, he devised the plan of salvation, and sent his only begotten Son to suffer and die, that you might live, and yet you have despised that love, and rejected that Saviour. God, the Son, will bear this testimony, that he came from the shining abodes of glory, where seraphim and cherubim fell prostrate at his feet, in humble adoration, and emptying himself of his glory, bore all the ills of life—the persecutions of wicked men, and the accursed death of the cross, that salvation might be yours, and yet ye refused it, and trod the blood of the Son of God under foot, and put him to an open shame. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the adorable Trinity, will bear witness that he often knocked at the door of your hearts for admittance; that he wooed you to embrace his love, offering to abide with you for ever, and yet you rejected the offer, and did despite to the Spirit of grace, till, in sorrow, he took his everlasting flight.
The devil is now going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and sometimes transforming himself into an angel of light. He is tempting you to sin, by presenting before your minds the superior charms of the riches and pleasures of earth, to things that are unseen and eternal. He has no power to compel you to sin. His evil suggestions are whispered in your oft too willing ears, and then it remains with you to accept or reject. He has no power of compulsion. Your sin must be an act of your own will, or it is not sin. When you consent to the wiles of this arch enemy, and sin against God, remember that with eager desire and base ingratitude he will fiercely accuse in the great day of God Almighty, and urge these very sins of his suggestion as a reason why he should have you to torment you for ever in the bottomless pit.
That internal monitor, that light which enlightens every man that cometh into the world—the moral sense, or conscience—will be a swift witness against you. By it you have been enlightened and warned; and in the case of many who have denied a future state of punishment, the goadings of remorse have convinced them that there is a hell, the kindlings of whose fires they have felt in their own bosoms. Conscience will compel you to confess that your doom is just, though for ever debarred from the joys and happiness of heaven. O! my fellow-prisoners and travellers to the bar of God, listen to her warning voice to-day, before it be too late, and you are compelled mournfully to exclaim, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!” The conscience of the sinner will be compelled to admit the truth of the testimony. In earthly courts, oftentimes witnesses are suborned, and their testimony false. Not so at the grand assize. Not a scrap of false testimony will be admitted. The evidence will be in truth, and the judgment in righteousness.
After all these scenes have occurred, the Judge will render a verdict, and pronounce the sentence, which will be irreversible and eternal. With regard to the righteous, though they have been guilty of many sins, both of omission and commission, and have no merits of their own to plead, and consider themselves justly obnoxious to eternal banishment, their Advocate, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom, while in the flesh, they exercised a true and living faith, will now present them, clad in the white robes of his perfect righteousness, faultless before his Father, and they will now hear the welcome plaudit, “Come ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” But those on the left hand, who all their life rejected the mercy offered—the great salvation proffered without money and without price—will now hear the dread sentence, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!”
O my dear, impenitent fellow-prisoners! how can ye take up your abode, your eternal abode, in everlasting burnings? How can ye dwell with devouring fire? How can ye endure everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power, shut up for ever in the fearful pit out of which there is no egress except for the vision of the damned, and the smoke of its torment? Be wise to-day, ’tis madness to defer. Procrastination is the thief of time. Delay is fraught with awful danger. Trust not in promises of future amendment. The way to hell is paved with good resolutions, which are never kept. The future convenient season never arrives. Like Felix, we may tremble when the minister reasons of a judgment to come; and like Agrippa, we may be almost persuaded to be a Christian, and yet come short of the glory of God through procrastination. Procrastination has populated hell. All the doomed and damned from Christian lands are victims of this pernicious and destructive wile of the devil. It is foolish to procrastinate. Though the Bible teems with rich and glorious promises of a hundred-fold blessings in this life, and eternal glory in the world to come, to those who break off their sins by righteousness, and their transgressions by turning unto the Lord, yet all these promises are limited to the present tense. There is not a single blessing promised the future penitent. He procrastinates at the risk of losing all. Behold, now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation. To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.” “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” “And the Spirit and the Bride say, come; let him that heareth say, come; and let him that is athirst come: and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. There is no warrant for deferring till to-morrow the momentous and eternal interests of the immortal soul. The shortness and uncertainty of life furnish a strong reason why we should not procrastinate. In the Bible, life is compared to everything that is swift, transient, and fleeting in its nature. It is compared to the swoop of the eagle hasting to the prey; to the swift post, to the bubble on the river. Life is compared in its duration to a year, a day, and to nothing, yea, less than nothing, and vanity. All these comparisons indicate that it is very brief and evanescent. We have no lease of life; we hold it by a very slight tenure; and this is especially true of us in our present condition. Confined in prison, some of us led to death every day without a moment’s warning, every evening I address some who, before the next evening, are in eternity. Myself in chains, my life declared forfeited, ought we not all to be deeply impressed with the necessity of immediate preparation to meet our God? I feel that I am preaching as a dying man to dying men, and I beseech you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved. Trust in him for salvation, for he is faithful who has promised. God has never said to any, seek ye my face in vain. By the love and mercy of God, by the terrors of the judgment, by the sympathy and compassion of Jesus, I entreat you, my fellow-prisoners, to seek an interest, a present interest, in the great salvation!
I close for the present. We shall never all engage in divine service together again on earth. We separate—some to go to a distant prison, and some to death. May God grant that when we are done with earthly scenes, we may all meet in the realms of bliss, where there is in God’s presence fulness of joy, and at his right hand pleasures for evermore! And may the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, rest and abide with us, and all the Israel of God, now, henceforth, and for ever, Amen!
The following hymn was then sung:
In the sun, and moon, and stars,
Signs and wonders there shall be;
Earth shall quake with inward wars,
Nations with perplexity.
Soon shall ocean’s hoary deep,
Tossed with stronger tempests, rise;
Wilder storms the mountains sweep,
Louder thunders rock the skies.
Dread alarms shall shake the proud,
Pale amazement, restless fear;
And, amid the thunder-cloud,
Shall the Judge of men appear.
But though from his awful face,
Heaven shall fade, and earth shall fly,
Fear not ye, his chosen race,
Your redemption draweth nigh.