2. But as awful as this solemnity is, one far more awful is at hand. For yet a little while, and _we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For as I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God._ And in that day, _every one of us shall give account of himself to God_. 3. Had all men a deep sense of this, how effectually would it secure the interests of society? For what more forcible motive can be conceived, to the practice of genuine morality? to a steddy pursuit of solid virtue? an uniform walking in justice, mercy, and truth? What could strengthen our hands in all that is good, and deter us from all evil, like a strong conviction of this, _the Judge standeth at the door_: and we are shortly to _stand before him_? 4. It may not therefore be improper, or unsuitable to the design of the present assembly, to consider, I. The chief circumstances which will precede our standing before the judgment seat of Christ. II. The judgment itself, and, III. A few of the circumstances which will follow it. I. Let us, in the first place, consider the chief circumstances which will precede our standing before the judgment seat of Christ. And 1st, _God will shew signs in the earth beneath_:[29] particularly he will _arise to shake terribly the earth. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage. There shall be earthquakes_[30] κατὰ τόπους not in divers only, but _in all places_: not in one only, or a few, but in every part of the habitable world: even _such as were not, since men were upon the earth, so mighty earthquakes and so great_. In one of these _every island shall flee away, and the mountains will not be found_.[31] Meantime all the waters of the terraqueous globe will feel the violence of those concussions: _the sea and waves roaring_,[32] with such an agitation as had never been known before, since the hour that _the fountains of the great deep were broken up_, to destroy the earth which then _stood out of the water and in the water_. The air will be all storm and tempest, full of dark _vapours and pillars of smoak_;[33] resounding with thunder from pole to pole, and torn with ten thousand lightnings. But the commotion will not stop in the region of the air: _the powers of heaven_ also _shall be shaken.[34] There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars_; those fixt, as well as those that move round them. _The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.[35] The stars shall withdraw their shining_,[36] yea and _fall from heaven_, being thrown out of their orbits. And then shall be heard the universal _shout_[37] from all the companies of heaven, followed by _the voice of the arch-angel_, proclaiming the approach of the Son of God and man, _and the trumpet of God_, sounding an alarm to _all that sleep in the dust of the earth_.