approach of it will be, to the lost, a deepening gloom, its arrival the
settling down of interminable night. Instead of entering into their
bodies with transport, as the righteous do, they will each be like a
prisoner removed from one jail to another with new bars and bolts. If
it be not unreasonable to suppose that the appearance of the body will
conform to the character, and if the bodies of Isaiah, and Paul, and
John must be seraphic, to correspond with their experience and
attainments, what must the bodies of the wicked be! They will have spent
centuries in sinning, and suffering, debased in every part, the image of
God supplanted by the image of him whose service they preferred to that
of a holy God and Saviour. What a moment will that be, when the sinner's
grave is opened by the last trumpet, and a hideous form rises to receive
a frantic spirit! "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers
are the angels." "As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in
the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall
send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all
things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into
a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "And
many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." There
will be separations at the graves of those who lay side by side in
death; many a tomb will yield up subjects both for heaven and for hell;
the differences in character, between the regenerate and unregenerate,
will there be made conspicuous in the correspondence of the risen body
to the soul, according as the soul shall have arrived at the grave from
a state of joy or of woe. Arrests will be made, there will be forcible
detentions, overpowering strength, disregard of entreaties, remorseless
rendings asunder of families, unclasping of embraces, and an
indiscriminate mixture of all classes among the wicked, indicated by the
command, "Bind ye the tares together, in bundles, to be burned." Nor
will this be worse for holy angels to witness, than it was to see those
sinners turn their backs on the Lord's supper, year after year. They
could treat their Saviour's dying agonies, and his blood, with perfect
neglect and contempt, through their love of the world and sin; now they
eat the fruit of their own way, and are filled with their own devices.