Mark here the end of man, in Florio see ON MAN. Whitsuntide! alas! cried Trim, (extending his right arm, and falling instantly into the same attitude in which he read the sermon) what is Whitsuntide Jonathan (for that was the coachman's name) or Shrovetide, or any tide or time past to this? Are we not here now continued the corporal (striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and stability) and are we not (dropping his hat upon the ground) gone in a moment! STERNE. MEDITATIONS AMONG THE TOMBS. The wicked seem to be here, like malefactors, in a deep and strong dungeon, reserved against the day of trial. Their departure was without peace. Clouds of horror sat louring upon their closing eye-lids, most sadly foreboding the blackness of darkness for ever. When the last sickness seized their frame, and the inevitable change advanced; when they saw the fatal arrow fitting to the strings, saw the deadly archer aiming at their heart, and felt the envenomed shaft fastened in their vitals-what fearfulness came upon them! What horrible dread overwhelmed them! How did they stand shuddering and aghast upon the tremendous precipice! excessively afraid to plunge into the abyss of eter nity, yet utterly unable to maintain their standing on the verge of life. O! what pale reviews, what startling prospects conspire to augment their sorrows! They look backward, and behold! a most melancholy scene! sins unrepented of; mercy slighted; and the day of grace ending! They look forward, and nothing presents itself but the righteous Judge, the dreadful tribunal, and a most solemn reckoning. They roll around their affrighted eyes on attending friends. If accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their anguish to consider this farther aggravation of their guilt, that they have not sinned alone, but drawn others into the snare. If religious acquaintance, it strikes a fresh gash into their hearts, to think of never seeing them any more, but only at an unapproachable distance, separated by the unpassable gulf. HERVEY. THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Behold! the books are opened; the secrets of all hearts are disclosed; the hidden things of darkness are brought to light. How empty, how ineffectual now, are all those refined artifices, with which hypocrites imposed upon their fellow creatures, and presented a character in the sight of men! The jealous God, who has been about their path, and about their bed, and spied out all their ways, set before them the things that they have done. They cannot answer him one in a thousand, nor stand in the awful judgment. The heavens reveal their iniD 3 quities, and the earth rises up against them. They are speechless with guilt, and stigmatized with infamy before all the armies of the sky, and all the nations of the redeemed. What a favour would they esteem it, to hide their ashamed heads in the bottom of the ocean, or even to be buried beneath the ruins of the tottering world! If the contempt poured upon them be thus insupportable, how will their hearts endure when the sword of infinite indignation is unsheathed, and fiercely waved about their defenceless heads, or pointed directly at their naked breasts? How must the wretches scream with wild amazement, and rend the very heaveus with their cries, when the right-aiming thunderbolts go abroad!-go abroad with a dreadful commission to drive them from the kingdoms of glory, and plunge them, not into the sorrows of a moment, or the tortures of an hour, but into all the restless agonies of unquenchable fire and everlasting despair. Misery of miseries! too shocking for reflection to dwell upon. But if so dismal to foresee, and that at a distance, together with some comfortable expectation of escaping it, O! how bitter, how inconceivably bitter, to bear without any intermission, through hopeless and eternal ages. Who has any bowels of pity? Who has any sentiments of compassion? Who has any tender concern for his fellow creatures? Who?then let him shew it, by warning every man, and beseeching every man, to seek the Lord while he may be found, to throw down the arms of rebellion before the act of indemnity expires, submissively to adore the Lamb, while he holds out the golden sceptre. Here, let us act the friendly part to mankind; here, let the whole force of our benevolence exert itself, in exhorting relations, acquaintance, neighbours, whomsoever we may probably influence, to take the wings of faith unfeigned, of repentance undelayed, and flee away from this wrath to come. HERVEY. MATTHEW VI. v. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, "Think not, when all your scanty stores afford, Say, does not life its nourishment exceed? Yet your kind heav'nly Father bends his eye They neither toil nor spin, but careless grow; Yet see how warm they blush! how bright they glow; What regal vestments can with them compare! THOMPSON. Explain the Figures contained in the following Extracts; and in what manner they are to be Read. What nervous arms he boasts! how firm his tread, His limbs how turn'd! how broad his shoulders spread! By age unbroke!-but all-consuming care Destroys, perhaps, the strength that time would spare; Dire is the ocean, dread in all its forms! Man must decay, when man contends with storms! Thus toil'd the chiefs, in different parts engaged, Rapt through the ranks he thunders o'er the plain; Now here, now there, he darts from place to place, Pours on the rear, or lightens in their face. |