however, as a universal Father, who created to bless, and who will in the fulness of time accomplish his good pleasure in the everlasting felicity of his moral creation; and men shake their heads, and tell you that this is "too good to be true." Prove from the volumes of Nature and Revelation that God "is good unto all and that his tender mercies are over all his works," and that he "sent his Son to be the Savior of the world," and they think you a fond deceiver, or call you an emissary of Satan!

The time was, Mr. Remington, when persecution and blood. shed, and all the horrors of the stake and the Inquisition, were thought consistent with humanity, and with the religion of him who died for his enemies and persecutors. The time was when the hanging of witches was believed to be a good and pious work. The time was, too, when a faith in election and reprobation was essential to orthodoxy, and when infant damnation was preached as a godly and edifying doctrine. We now look back on those times with wonder, and deem it strange that man could be so ignorant or so infatuated. But the time has not yet come, though it is rapidly approaching, when the doctrine of endless misery, which is now so generally believed and so highly esteemed, and thought so very essential to the christian faith and christian character, shall have taken its place among the abominations of by-gone days, and christians will wonder at its former prevalence as we do now at the horrors of the dark ages! As ever yours,

THOMAS J. SAWYER.

LETTER XVII.

Dear Sir-I now pass to the consideration of your third lecture, in which you contrast "the gift of God which is eternal life, with the wages of sin which is death."

After alluding to the horrible miseries which await the sinner in a future state, and which you have so abundantly proved in your preceding lectures, you are pleased to say-" But fearful and dreadful as will be the condition of all such as die in their sins, yet there is no necessity for a soul's perishing, for God has made an ample provision for our salvation." You then add divers scraps of poetry, setting forth in glowing colors the goodness and love of God, and the anxiety he feels for the happiness of the human race.

This is certainly very well, but you must allow me to doubt whether it is any thing better than mere declamation, and employed most incongruously with the whole tenor and spirit of your system. With all your free agency, you have no be lief in man's ability to turn himself, and, unaided by revelation and the accompanying spirit of God, to work out his own salvation. Now you cannot be ignorant that four thousand years of idolatry and darkness passed away before the true light shined upon the world; and that during this period almost countless millions of human beings lived and died, not only destitute of "the means of grace," but even of the knowledge of the only living and true God. Since the christian era, in like manner, the number of those who have had the offers of the gospel have constituted but a very small portion of the world, and even now only about one fourth part of the inhabitants of the earth know any thing of christianity and the way of salvation. All the rest, with the whole race who lived before Christ, one little people alone excepted, must necessarily go down to hell! According to this, your theory, perhaps one in a thousand of those who have already lived, may be

saved, and not more than one in five hundred has even had the slightest opportunity

"To 'scape from hell and fly to heaven."

And yet the pastor of the Willet street church tells us with all becoming gravity, that “there is no necessity for a soul's perishing!"—that "we need not die. The water of life is abun

dant.

'Its streams the whole creation reach,
So plenteous is the store!'"'

Astonishing, indeed, is such language in the lips of one who knows, or who ought to know, that it contains scarcely a semblance of truth. What is it but something worse than folly, to assert that God is not willing that any should perish, while at the same time it is acknowledged that Jesus Christ is the only name under heaven given among men whereby a soul can be saved, and yet that millions of millions have died in their sins without ever hearing or having the possibility of hearing that name?

In this lecture you institute three inquiries: "1. What are we to understand by eternal life? 2. By what proof do we know that it is the gift of God? 3. We shall inquire unto whom it is given." Eternal life you define to be "the consummation of all the benefits derived from the life, death, resurrection and intercessions of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is directly the opposite of the penalty of the divine law." You add, "the antithesis which the Scriptures exhibit between the penalty of the law, and this great and glorious gift of God through Jesus Christ, is perfect and will hold good throughout. The penalty of the law is death-the gift of God is life." That is, "death" is in all respects equal to "eternal life ;" and as a consequence, man merits by the least sin he can commit, a punishment that is throughout the perfect opposite of "the great and glorious gift of God through Jesus Christ!" Or to make the conclusion still more obvious, man is able to do himself as much evil in one instant, as Almighty God can confer good upon him throughout eternity!! This is the doctrine of the orthodox world, and the necessary inference from its interpretation of that much abused text of Scripture, Rom,

vi. 23. The absurdity of such a consequence is too obvious, one would think, to avoid being seen, but it is also too important for the support of that amiable dogma, endless misery, to be rejected. It matters little in what light it is viewed; for it either brings the Omnipotent down to the level of man, or else it exalts man to a kind of equality with God. It represents man to be as capable of doing an endless and infinite evil, as God himself is of doing an endless and infinite good. I regard this as not merely absurd, but as blasphemous. It is an insult alike to reason, and every sentiment of purity and reverence. It is contempt thrown upon the word of God and the character of its Author. When will the christian world have ceased to indulge in these wretched puerilities, and be willing to interpret the word of divine truth in a manner worthy of itself?

In the passage of Scripture under consideration, there is, as I observed in my sermon upon it, three pairs of antithetical terms: 1. Wages is contrasted with gift. 2. Sin, personified, is contrasted with God. 3. Death is contrasted with eternal life. Now every one knows that because wages is contrasted with gift, it is by no means necessary to suppose that the gift is just equal in all respects and only equal to the wages. So sin is contrasted with God, but he would deserve a home in the mad house who should thence argue that sin, considered as a personal being, is altogether equal to the Almighty. The truth is, these antithetical terms are properly used by the apostle; they are not merely elegant, but give great force to the expression; the contrast, however, does not consist in the perfect equality of the objects contrasted, but in the opposition or dissimilarity of their nature.

But, as if the apostle anticipated the abuses that would be heaped upon his language, and was anxious to provide against them, he himself introduced the word eternal in connexion with life, to show that, while in its nature it was the opposite of death, it indefinitely, perhaps I should say infinitely surpassed it in point of duration.

If the doctrine of eternal death which you so ardently advacate, is true, is it not a matter of wonder that not one of the

inspired writers ever once mentioned it? Of eternal life the New Testament writers spoke familiarly and constantly. They contrasted it in many instances with death, but never with eternal death. I ask you, I ask any believer in endless misery, to account for this fact. Were the apostles so familiar with the modern doctrine of antithesis, and with the interpretations it receives, as to think it unnecessary to express themselves fully on this point, and thus left it to the ingenuity of their readers to form as best they could their faith in endless torments? Or were they so parsimonious of words that they could never afford to write eternal in connexion with death? Some explanation of this remarkable fact should be furnished, that we may know how to account for its existence. If the inspired writers believed in eternal death, why have they not mentioned it? If they did not, what is your authority for believing it?

You are good enough to furnish us with six or seven instances of antithesis for the purpose of showing its nature, and also aiding you in explaining the passage we have now been considering. I shall not stop to examine them or to follow you in your winding way over and about them, because with all your exposition they add nothing to Rom vi. 23. Indeed, this is by far the most favorable passage in the Bible for proving the doctrine of eternal death. And if you cannot find and establish that doctrine here, it is in vain for you to appeal to other texts.

Still I cannot but smile at your array of antithetical passages of Scripture introduced to sustain your favorite doctrine. I am unable, however, with my best efforts to see how you extract endless misery from this proverb-"The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death;" or how you make it out from Matt. vii. 13, 14, where "destruction" is contrasted with "life." True, you very kindly aid our Savior by changing "life" into "life eternal," and of course construe "destruction" to mean nothing more nor less than "eternal death, 'soul and body in hell."" With such talents for interpreting Scripture, you can hardly fail of succeeding in any undertaking. He who can