Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/12

 Hell bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, And storms sulphureous; her voracious jaws Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey. At midnight (when mankind is wrapt in peace, And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams,) To give more dread to man's most dreadful hour, At midnight, 'tis presum'd this pomp will burst From tenfold darkness; sudden as the spark From smitten steel; from nitrous grain, the blaze, Man, starting from his couch, shall sleep no more! The day is broke, which never more shall close; Above, around, beneath, amazement all! Terror and glory, join'd in their extremes: Our GOD in grandeur, and our world on fire! All nature struggling in the pangs of death!"

I am not disposed to intimate that such imaginative and poetical descriptions of the judgment day have been entirely useless. They consist in substituting the changes of the external and natural world for those of the internal and spiritual, and for many persons such apparent truths are undoubtedly of great use in keeping alive in their minds an impression of a future state of moral retribution, which impression might otherwise perish entirely.

But there is a class of minds to whom it seems just and reasonable to believe, that the last judgment will take place in accordance with the laws of our spiritual nature, and will leave the laws and operations of the natural world undisturbed; on minds of this class, the old and popular views of the judgment day have ceased to exert the least influence. They seem to them more like the creations of the imagination, or the visions of poetry, than like the stern and sober realities of our spiritual destiny. Such descriptions might serve to delight the fancy, were it not that the solemnity and importance of the subject renders it peculiarly unfit to be used for such a purpose. The conviction is every where becoming deeper and stronger, that the natural