might urge, as its most tremendous completion, the state of those, who are now receiving the final wages of sin in that lake, which burns, and shall to all eternity burn, with inextinguishable flames. But I would rather wave the description, or rather an attempt to describe, what it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Let us throw a veil upon this awful scene, and pass to the consideration of one that is as bright and glorious, as the other is gloomy and terrible; which is, that “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We had occasion to observe, in the outset of this discourse, that the text places, in a contrasted view, some of the principal truths of revealed religion; that the one might serve as a foil to the other; and that the love of God to a sinful world might appear the more stupendous, by a consideration of the very abject condition to which sin reduced us, and from which no hand was able to extricate us, but that which made the world. In this contrasted scene, the things set in opposition to each other—are eternal life, and eternal death—the wages of sin, and the gift of God—the disobedience of Adam, and the righteousness of Christ—with all the calamities springing out of sin and death, and all the rich blessings flowing from that tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Sin is opposed to obedience; death, to life; the eternal duration of the one, to that of the other; the malignity of sin and the demerit of sinners, to the undeserved and gratuitous mercy of God, and the infinite merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, that our hearts may overflow with gratitude, when we reflect, that we have the bright side of our text to contemplate with rapture! when, had Jehovah entered into judgment with us, the sad subject of our meditations for ever might have been like the superscription on Ezekiel’s roll—mourning, lamentation, and woe. But now the voice of the Lord cheers the wilderness of our nature with that reviving word, “Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded.” Which, to a burdened sinner, is like clear sun-shining after rain, or the return of a serene and a bright morning after a dark tempestuous night; or like a pardon, unexpectedly brought, to a criminal under sentence of death. This we shall see in what follows.