certainty of the criminal's doom would not have been so
clearly and strongly expressed. That the king's eye instantly detects
the undecorated guest, although he is only one in a multitude, is the
most emphatic warning that could possibly be conveyed to the
unbelieving. None who live without Christ in the world shall be
permitted to glide into heaven with the crowd in the great day. The
constancy of nature is sometimes wielded as a weapon of assault against
revealed religion: it will one day strike a heavy blow on the other
side. When a mixture of wheat and chaff is thrown up in the wind, the
solid grains drop down on the spot, and the light chaff is driven away.
You never expect, in such a case, that to please some fancy of yours,
the solid grain will fly away on the wings of the blast, and the chaff
drop down at your feet. The constancy of nature prevents. Well; by a law
as constant and changeless--a law of the same God, reigning over the
world of spirit, "the wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the
righteous hath hope in his death" (Prov. xiv. 32).

He was speechless. The judgment will be so conducted that the condemned
will be compelled to own the justice of their sentence. Conscience,
brought again into contact with God, will be awakened and restored to
the exercise of its functions; like a mirror it will receive and repeat
the decree of the Judge. Persecutors were wont to gag their victims
while they burnt them; it was found necessary to put iron on the tongues
of the witnesses, to make them silent while they suffered. No such
clumsy device is needed in the assize which the righteous God will hold
upon the world. Conscience swelling within will stifle the complaint of
the guilty. The courage of the despiser will fail: the last poor comfort
of the blasphemer, to hurl against the judgment seat the last
despairing, defiant word, will be taken away. The history of the fact
written by divine prescience before the time, makes no mention of what
the condemned will say. The record simply runs, "These shall go away
into everlasting punishment."

"Outer darkness:" tell us in detail what the condition the outcast will
be, and what will be the constituents of their suffering? We cannot.
Rome has impiously traded upon this weakness of humanity. She has
parcelled out her purgatory, as we delineate this upper world on a map.
This is the machinery whereby she is enabled to traffic in the souls of
men. No; that condition