Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

by Jonathan Edwards 1703 - 1758

THE MOST FAMOUS SERMON EVER PREACHED IN AMERICA

The place: Enfield, Connecticut.
The date: July 8, 1741.
The subject: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
The preacher: Jonathan Edwards.
The results: Phenomenal.

As Edwards preached (actually, he read the manuscript to the
congregation), strong men and women held onto the pews and
cried out for mercy, pleading with the preacher, "Is there no way
of escape?"

Hundreds were converted as they heard that sermon - a sub-
poena from the skies. About Jonathan Edwards. . .

Jonathan was only twelve when he attained
a working knowledge of Latin, Greek and
Hebrew. He graduated from Vale University
when he was seventeen. At nineteen he began
preaching and was ordained as a Congrega-
tional minister five years later.

He pastored at Northampton, Massachu-
setts, 1729-1750, then at Stockbridge, Massa-
chusetts, until 1757, followed by a brief few
weeks as president of Princeton Seminary where
he died March 22, 1758, as a result of a small-
pox vaccination, at age fifty-four.

Edwards profoundly influenced George
Whitefield, Thomas Chalmers, and David Brain-
erd. A notable philosopher and deep thinker,
Edwards ranks as one of the great preachers of
colonial America.

At any one moment, what is it that keeps
men from the snare of the Devil and an
eternity of torment in Hell?

On a warm summer's day in 1741,
Jonathan Edwards answered this question
with the most famous sermon ever preached
in America - a sermon that would shake
his congregation and become a powerful
impetus for revival in New England.

For nearly 250 years this powerful ser-
mon has touched hearts, changed lives,
and saved souls.

The power of this message continues to-
day, because men must still consider the
fate of sinners in the hands of an angry
God.

SWORD of the LORD PUBLISHERS
P.O. BOX 1099, MURFREESBORO TN 37133 USA


Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

"Their foot shall slide in due time." Deuteronomy 32:35

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment
out of Hell but the mere pleasure of God.

By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his
arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no man-
ner of difficulty any more than if nothing else but God's mere will
had, in the last degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in
the preservation of wicked men one moment.

The truth of this observation may appear by the following con-
siderations:

1. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into
Hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God
rises up. The strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any
deliver out of His hands.

He is not only able to cast wicked men into Hell, but He can
most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a
great deal of difficulty in subduing a rebel, who has found means
to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the number of
his followers. Not so with God. No fortress is any defense from
the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and a vast mul-
titude of God's enemies combine and associate themselves, they
are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff
before the whirlwind, or large quantities of dry stubble before
devouring flames.

We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawl-
ing on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender
thread that anything hangs by: thus easy is it for God when He
pleases, to cast His enemies down to Hell. What are we, that we
should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth
trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?

2. They deserve to be cast into Hell, so that divine justice
never stands in the way; it makes no objection against God's us-
ing His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the con-
trary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins.
Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of
Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" (Luke
13:7). The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished
over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary
mercy and God's mere will that holds it back.

3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to Hell.
They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the
sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of
righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind, is
gone out against them and stands against them so that they are
bound over already to Hell. "He that believeth not is
condemned already."  John 3:18

So every unconverted man properly belongs to Hell; that is his
place; from thence he is. John 8:23 - "Ye are from beneath"; and
thither he is bound; it is the place that justice and God's Word
and sentence of His unchangeable law assign to him.

4. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath
of God that is expressed in the torments of Hell; and the reason
why they do not go down to Hell at each moment is not because
God, in whose power they are, is not at present very angry with
them, as He is with many miserable creatures now tormented in
Hell, who there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yea,
God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now
on earth, yea doubtless with some who may read this book who,
it may be, are at ease, than He is with many of those who are now
in the flames of Hell.

So it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness and
does not resent it that He does not let loose His hand and cut
them off. God is not altogether such a one as themselves, though
they may imagine Him to be so. The wrath of God burns against
them; their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared; the
fire is made ready; the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them;
the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whetted
and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under
them.

5. The Devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as
his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to
him; he has their souls in his possession and under his dominion.
The Scripture represents them as his goals (Luke 11:21). The
devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand;
they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see
their prey and expect to have it, but are for the present kept
back. If God should withdraw His hand, by which they are
restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls.
The old serpent is gaping for them; Hell opens its mouth wide to
receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily
swallowed up and lost.

6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles
reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire
if it were not for God's restraints. There is laid in the very nature
of carnal men a foundation for the torments of Hell. There are
those corrupt principles in reigning power in them and in full
possession of them that are seeds of hell fire. The principles are
active and powerful, exceedingly violent in their nature; and if it
were not for the restraining hand of God upon them, they would
soon break out; they would flame out after the same manner as
the same corruption, the same enmity, does in the hearts of
damned souls, and would beget the same torments as they do in
them.

The souls of the wicked are in Scriptures compared to the
troubled sea (Isaiah 57:20). For the present, God restrains their
wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of
the troubled sea, saying, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no
further"; but if God should withdraw that restraining power, it
would soon carry all before it.

Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its
nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would
need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable.

The corruption of the heart of the man is immoderate and
boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like
fire pent up by the course of nature; and as the heart is now a
sink of sin, so, if sin were not restrained, it would immediately
turn the soul into a fiery oven, or furnace of fire and brimstone.

7. It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there
are no visible means of death at hand! It is no security to a
natural man that he is now in health and that he does not see
which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any
accident, and that there is no visible danger, in any respect, in
his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the
world, in all ages, shows this is no evidence that a man is not on
the very brink of eternity and that the next step will not be into
another world.

The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going
suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable.
Unconverted men walk over the pit of Hell on a rotten covering,
and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that
they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.
The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight
cannot discern them.

God has so many different, unsearchable ways of taking
wicked men out of the world and sending them to Hell that there
is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the ex-
pense of a miracle, or to go out of the ordinary course of His
providence to destroy any wicked man, at any moment. All the
means that there are of sinners going out of the world are so in
God's hands and so universally and absolutely subject to His
power and determination that it does not depend at all the less
on the mere will of God whether sinners shall at any moment go
to Hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned
in the case.

8. Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own
lives, or the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them a
moment. To this, divine providence and universal experience do
bear testimony.

There is this clear evidence that men's own wisdom is no
security to them from death; that, if it were otherwise, we should
see some difference between the wise and politic men of the
world and others, with regard to their liableness to early and un-
expected death; but how is it in fact? "How dieth the wise man?
as the fool" (Ecclesiastes 2:16).

9. All wicked men's pains and contrivances which they use to
escape Hell while they continue to reject Christ and so remain
wicked men, do not secure them from Hell one moment. Almost
every natural man who hears of Hell flatters himself that he shall
escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flat-
ters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or
what he intends to do; everyone lays out matters in his own
mind, how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he
contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail.
They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the
greater part of men who have died heretofore are gone to Hell;
but each one imagines that he forms plans to effect his escape
better than others have done. He does not intend to go to that
place of torment. He says within himself that he intends to take
effectual care and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.

But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves
in their own schemes and in confidence in their own strength and
wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The greater part of
those who heretofore have lived under the same means of grace,
and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to Hell; and it was not
because they were not as wise as those who are now alive; it was
9not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to
secure their own escape.

If we could come to speak with them and inquire of them, one
by one, whether they expected, when alive and when they used to
hear about Hell, ever to be subjects of that misery, we, doubtless,
should hear one and another reply, "No, I never intended to
come here: I had arranged matters otherwise in my mind. I
thought I should contrive well for myself. I thought my scheme
good. I intended to take effectual care. But it came upon me un-
expectedly; I did not look for it at that time and in that manner;
it came as a thief. Death outwitted me. God's wrath was too
quick for me. O my cursed foolishness! I was flattering and pleas-
ing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and
when I was saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction
came upon me."

10. God has laid Himself under no obligation, by any promise,
to keep any natural man out of Hell one moment. God certainly
has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance
or preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the
covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom
all the promises are yea and amen.

But surely they have no interest in the promises of the cove-
nant of grace who are not the children of the covenant, who do
not believe in any of the promises and have no interest in the
Mediator of the covenant.

So that, whatever some have imagined and pretended about
promises made to natural men's earnest seeking and knocking, it
is plain and manifest that whatever pains a natural man takes in
religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ,
God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment
from eternal destruction.

So that thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God
over the pit of Hell. They have deserved the fiery pit and are
already sentenced to it. God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is
as great towards them as those who are actually suffering the ex-
ecution of the fierceness of His wrath in Hell; and they have done
nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger; neither is
God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up for one
moment. The Devil is waiting for them; Hell is gaping for them;
the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold
on them and swallow them up. The fire pent up in their own
hearts is struggling to break out. They have no interest in any
Mediator. There are no means within reach that can be any
security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take
hold of. All that preserves them every moment is the mere ar-
bitrary will and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an in-
censed God.

APPLICATION

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening un-
converted persons to a conviction of their danger. This which you
have heard is the case of everyone out of Christ. That world of
misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under
you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath
of God; there is Hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have
nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of; there is
nothing between you and Hell but the air; only the power and
mere pleasure of God hold you up.

You are probably not sensible of this. You find you are kept
out of Hell, but do not see the hand of God in it. You look at other
things as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of
your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation.
But indeed these things are nothing. If God should withdraw His
hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling than the
thin air to hold up a person who is suspended in it.

Your wickedness makes you, as it were, heavy as lead, and to
rend downwards with great weight and pressure towards Hell;
and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and
swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf; and your
healthy constitution, your own care and prudence and best con-
trivance and all your righteousness would have no more influence
to uphold you and keep you out of Hell than a spider's web would
have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure
of God, the earth would not bear you one moment, for you are a
burden to it. The creation groans with you. The creature is made
subject to the bondage of your corruption not willingly. The sun
does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin
and Satan. The earth does not willingly yield her increase to
satisfy your lusts, nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to
be acted upon. The air does not willingly serve you for breath to
maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life
in the service of God's enemies.

God's creatures are good and were made for men to serve God
with; they do not willingly subserve any other purpose. They
groan when they are abused to purpose so directly contrary to
their nature and end. And the world would spew you out were it
not for the sovereign hand of Him who hath subjected it in hope.

There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging direct-
ly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and high with
thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, they
would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure
of God, for the present, stays His rough wind; otherwise it would
come with fury, and your destruction would come like a
whirlwind and would be like the chaff of the summer threshing-
floor.

The wrath of God is like great waters that are restrained for the
present; but they increase more and more, and rise higher and
higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the steam is
stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is
let loose.

It is true that judgment against your evil works has not been
executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been with-
held, but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing,
and you are every day treasuring up more wrath. The waters are
constantly rising and waxing more and more mighty; nothing but
the mere pleasure of God holds the waters back that are unwill-
ing to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should
only withdraw His hand from the floodgate, it would immediate-
ly fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God
would rush forth with inconceivable fury and come upon you
with omnipotent power. If your strength were ten thousand times
greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the
strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in Hell, it would be
nothing to withstand or endure it.

The bow of God's wrath is bent and the arrow made ready on
the string. Justice directs the bow to your heart, and strains at
the bow. Nothing but the mere pleasure of God - that of an angry
God - without any promise or obligation at all, keeps the arrow
one moment from being made drunk with your blood.

Thus all you who never passed under a great change of heart
by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you
who were never born again and made new creatures and raised
from being dead in sin, to a state of new and before altogether
unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.
However you may have reformed your life in many things - and
many have had religious affections - and may keep up a form of
religion in your families and closets and in the house of God, it is
nothing but His mere pleasure that keeps you from being this
moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.

However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you
hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those who are
gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it
was so with them. Destruction came suddenly upon most of
them, when they expected nothing of it and while they were say-
ing, "Peace and safety." Now they see that those things on which
they depended for peace and safety were nothing but thin air and
empty shadows.

The God who holds you over the pit of Hell much in the same
way as one holds a spider or some loathesome insect over the fire,
abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you
burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to
be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you
in His sight. You are ten thousand times more abominable in His
eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have
offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his
prince; yet, it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling
into the fire every moment.

It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell
the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this
world after you closed your eyes to sleep; there is no other reason
to be given why you have not dropped into Hell since you arose in
the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no
other reason to be given, while you have been reading this ad-
dress, but His mercy; yea, no other reason can be given why you
do not this very moment drop down into Hell.

O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great
furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of
wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath
is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of
the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the
flames of divine wrath flashing about it and ready every moment
to singe it and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any
Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to
keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that
you have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare
you one moment.

1. Consider here more particular whose wrath it is. It is the
wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man,
though it were of the most potent prince, it would be com-
paratively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much
dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs who have the posses-
sions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be dis-
posed of at their mere will.

Proverbs 20:2 - "The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion:
whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul." The
subject who very much enrages an arbitrary prince is liable to
suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or
human power can inflict.

But the greatest earthly potentates, in their greatest majesty
and strength and when clothed in their greatest terrors, are but
feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in comparison with the
great and almighty Creator and King of Heaven and earth. It is
but little that they can do, when most enraged and when they
have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth,
before God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing, and less than
nothing. Both their love and their hatred are to be despised. The
wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible than
theirs as his majesty is greater.

"And I say unto you my friends. Be not afraid of them that kill
the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will
forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath
killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear
him. Luke 12:4,5.

2. It is the fierceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. We
often read of the fury of God - as in Isaiah 59:18, "According to
their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries."
So Isaiah 66:15, "For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and
with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire." So also in many other places.

Thus we read of "the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God" (Revelation 19:15). The words are exceedingly
terrible. If it had only been said, "the wrath of God," the words
would have implied that which is unspeakably dreadful; but it is
said, "the fierceness and wrath of God" - the fury of God! the
fierceness of Jehovah! Oh how dreadful must that be! Who can
utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them?

But it is also "the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." As
though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty
power in what the fierceness of His wrath should inflict; as
thought Omnipotence should be, as it were, enraged and exerted,
as men are wont to exert their strength in the fierceness of their
wrath.

Oh, then, what will be the consequence? what will become of
the poor worm that shall suffer it? whose hands can be strong?
whose heart can endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, in-
conceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk who
shall be the subject of this!

Consider this, you that yet remain in an unregenerate state:
That God will execute the fierceness of His anger implies that He
will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the inef-
fable extremity of your case and sees your torment to be so vastly
disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is
crushed and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom, He
will have no compassion upon you. He will not forbear the execu-
tion of His wrath, or in the least lighten His hand. There shall be
no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay His rough
wind. He will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful
lest you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that
you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires. Nothing
shall be withheld, because it is so hard for you to bear.

"Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare,
neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a
loud voice, yet will I not hear them." Ezekiel 8:18.

Now, God stands ready to pity you. This is the day of mercy.
You may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy.
But when once the day of mercy is passed, your most lamentable
and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain. You will be wholly
lost and thrown away of God as to any regard to your welfare.
God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you
may be continued in being to no other end! For you will be a ves-
sel of wrath fitted to destruction, and there will be no other use of
this vessel, but only to be filled full of wrath.

God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to Him that it
is said He will only "laugh and mock."

"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out
my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my
counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your
calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear
cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a
whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then
shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me
early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge,
and did not choose the fear of the Lord: They would none of my
counsel; they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of
the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the
prosperity of fools shall destroy them." Proverbs 1:24,32.

How awful are those words of the great God:
"I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my
fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I
will stain all my raiment." Isaiah 63:3.

It is, perhaps, impossible to conceive of words that carry in
them greater manifestations of these three things - namely: con-
tempt, hatred and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God to
pity you. He will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case.
or showing you the least reward or favor, that instead of that. He
will only tread you under foot. And though He will know that you
cannot bear the weight of Omnipotence treading upon you, yet
He will not regard that; but He will crush you under His feet
without mercy. He will crush out your blood and make it fly, and
it shall be sprinkled on His garments so as to stain all His rai-
ment. He will not only hate you, but He will have you in the ut-
most contempt. No place shall be thought fit for you but under
His feet, to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict,
to the end that He might show what the wrath of Jehovah is. God
hath had it on His heart to show to angels and men, both how ex-
cellent His love is, and also how terrible His wrath is.

Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible
their wrath is by the extreme punishments they would execute
on those who provoked them. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and
haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show
his wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego;
and accordingly gave order that the burning, fiery furnace should
be heated seven times hotter than it was before. Doubtless, it
was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness that human art
could raise it.

But the great God is also willing to show His wrath and
magnify His awful majesty and mighty power in the extreme suf-
ferings of His enemies.

"What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his
power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction." Romans 9:22.

And seeing this is His design and what He has determined,
even to show how terrible the unmixed, unrestrained wrath, the
fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, He will do it to effect. There
will be something accomplished and brought to pass that will be
dreadful with a witness.

When the great and angry God hath risen up and executed His
awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually
suffering the infinite weight and power of His indignation, then
will God call upon the whole universe to behold the awful ma-
jesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it.

"And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut
up shall they be burned in the fire. Hear, ye that are afar off,
what I have done; and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might.
The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the
hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?
who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" Isaiah
33:12-14.

Thus it will be with you who are in an unconverted state, if you
continue in it. The infinite might and majesty and terribleness of
the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in the ineffable
strength of your torments. You shall be tormented in the
presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And
when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabi-
tants of Heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle,
that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty
is. And when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that
great power and majesty.

"And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to
another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to
worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth, and
look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against
me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be
quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."
Isaiah 66:23,24.

4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this
fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment, but you
must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this ex-
quisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a
long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow
up your thoughts and amaze your souls. You will absolutely
despair of ever having any deliverance and end, any mitigation,
any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out
long ages - millions of millions of ages - in wrestling and con-
flicting with this almighty, merciless vengeance. Then when you
have so done, when many ages have actually been spent by you
in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what re-
mains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite.

Oh, what can express what the state of a soul in such circum-
stances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very
feeble, faint representation of it. It is inexpressible and in-
conceivable, for, "Who knoweth the power of God's anger?"

How dreadful is the state of those who are daily and hourly in
danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dis-
mal case of every soul that has not been born again, however
moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be.

Oh, that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!
There is reason to fear that there are many who will read this
book, or who have heard the Gospel, who will actually be the
subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they
are, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at
ease and hear all these things without much disturbance and are
now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promis-
ing themselves that they shall escape.

If we knew that there was one person, and but one, of those
that we know, who was to be the subject of this misery, what an
awful thing would it be to think of! If we knew who it was, what
an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might every
Christian lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him!

But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember
these solemn reflections in Hell! And some may be in Hell in a
very short time - before this year is out. And it would be no
wonder if some readers who are now in health and quiet and
secure, may be there before tomorrow morning.

Those of you who finally continue in a natural condition who
may keep out of Hell longest, will be there in a little time! Your
damnation does not slumber; it will come swiftly and, in all
probability, very suddenly, upon many of you. You have reason
to wonder that you are not already in Hell. It is doubtless the
case of some whom you have seen and known, who never
deserved Hell more than you, and that heretofore appeared as
likely to have been now alive as you. Their case is past all hope.
They are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair. But here
you are in the land of the living, blessed with Bibles and sab-
baths and ministers, and have an opportunity to obtain salva-
tion. What would not those poor damned, hopeless souls give for
one day's opportunity such as you now enjoy?

And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day
wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open and
stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners, a day
wherein many are flocking to Him and pressing into the kingdom
of God. Many are daily coming from the east, west, north and
south. Many who were very lately in the same miserable condi-
tion that you are in are now in a happy state with their hearts
filled with love to Him who has loved them and washed them
from their sins in His own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the
glory of God.

How awful is it to be left behind at such a day to see so many
others feasting while you are pining and perishing! To see so
many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart while you have cause
to mourn for sorrow of heart and to howl for vexation of spirit!
How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your
souls as precious as the souls of those who are flocking from day
to day to Christ?

Are there not many who have lived long in the world, who are
not to this day born again, and so are aliens from the com-
monwealth of Israel, and have done nothing ever since they have
lived but treasure up wrath against the day of wrath? 0 sirs!
your case, in an especial manner, is extremely dangerous. Your
guilt and hardness of heart are extremely great. Do not you see
how generally persons of your years are passed over and left, in
the dispensations of God's mercy? You had need to consider
yourselves and wake thoroughly out of sleep: you cannot bear the
fierceness and wrath of the infinite God.

And you, young man and young woman, will you neglect this
precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of
your age are renouncing all youthful vanities and flocking to
Christ? You especially have now an opportunity; but if you
neglect it, it will soon be with you as it is with those persons who
spent all the precious days of youth in sin and are now come to
such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness.

And you children who are unconverted, do not you know that
you are going down to Hell to bear the dreadful wrath of that God
who is now angry with you every day and every night? Will you
be content to be the children of the Devil, when so many of the
children of the land are converted and are becoming the holy and
happy children of the King of kings?

And let every one who is yet out of Christ and hanging over the
pit of Hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged,
or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls
of God's Word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord,
a day of great mercy to some, will doubtless be a day of as
remarkable vengeance to others. Men's hearts harden, and their
guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect their
souls.

Never was there a period when so many means were employed
for the salvation of souls; and if you entirely neglect them, you
will eternally curse the day of your birth. Now, undoubtedly it is,
as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the axe is laid at the
root of the trees, and every tree which brings not forth good fruit
may be hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Therefore, let every one who is out of Christ now awake and
flee from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now
undoubtedly hanging over every unregenerate sinner. Let every
one flee out of Sodom: "Escape for your lives, look not behind
you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed."