tISC.:Uhl THE NATURE of THE PUNISHMENTS IN HELL: 579 shall not find us, fdr it is bred and lives within. There is no couch there to lull the conscience into soft repose, and to permit the sufferer to forget his agonies. Ancient crimes shall rise up and stand for ever before the eyes of the sinner in all their glaring forms, and all their heinous aggravating circumstances : These will sit heavy upon the spirit with teazing and eternal vexation. O dreadful state of an immortal creature, which must for ever be its own tormentor, and shall know no relief through all the ages of its immortality ! Think of this bitter anguish of soul, O sinner, to guard thee from sin in an hour ofstrong temptation. II. Another springof this torment will be the " over- whelming sense of an angry God, and utter despair ofhis love which is lost for ever." It was the thought of the ;displeasure of God, which pierced the soul of David with such acute pain, when he remembered his sins; Ps. li, 3, 4. " My sin is ever before me : Against thee, against thee only have I sinned, and I have done this evil . in thy sight :" And again he pleads with God ; Ps. vi. 1. " O Lord, chasten me not in thy anger, nor vex nie in thy sore displeasure." He could face a host of armed men without fear, but he could not face an angry God, whose loving kindness is life, and the loss ofwhose love is worse than death. Ps. lxxvii. 3. " I remembered God, said he, and was troubled, that is, lest be should be fa- vourable no more, and shut up his tender mercies in ever- lasting anger." This was the terror of that good man, under a deep sense of his crimes, and of God hiding his face from him, and this even while he was in the land of the living, and was not cast out beyond all hope. But when the grave shuts its mouth on the sinner, and he is thrust out into utter darkness, where the light of God's countenance never shines, nor will shine, how unsup- portable must such anguish be ? Here in this life perhaps a profane wretch has imagined he could live well enough without God in the world, and was content to have no- thing to do with him in a way ofworship or dependence here : He determined with himself, that the less he could think of God the better, and so forgot his Maker clays without number : But in those regions of hell, whither the sinner shall be driven, he can never forget an angry God, nor fly out of the reach of his terrors.
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