shall on one and the same day be abolished utterly; that nevertheless the human race, even all in whose nostrils has ever been the breath of life, shall in bodily form survive that awful period; that new heavens and a new earth shall be created, not to be destroyed, but to endure for all eternity; these are truths which, one and all, baffle the researches and should humiliate the pride of human philosophy. But it is a yet greater wonder, (and an apparent evil too, more extensive and more desperate than any which philosophy can detect; and which in all our inquiries concerning the origin of evil should be carefully kept in sight,) that A FEW ONLY of mankind shall rejoice in the restitution of all things; A FEW ONLY shall receive the gift of life eternal; while the many, not being rescued by the Redeemer from their natural fate, shall go away into ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, and suffer a SECOND DEATH.

Many writers on the origin and sufferance of evil have laboured to prove that it has been permitted only for a time, for the sake of eventual good. But unless we are to term that eternal death of a sinner, which God willeth not, no evil, evil will never be abolished. If however future punishment be esteemed no evil, then it would be difficult to show that those present sufferings are evil, which are all of them consequences of sin,— which presently punish the wicked,-and work for the good of the righteous. We should become lost, in seeking, as we imagine, to vindicate Him whose thoughts and ways are not as ours, we

should in fact vindicate only our own inventions.

On this subject of future punishment, both as regards its duration, and the number of those to whom it will be awarded, God's revelation far surpasses our conjectures. For His dealings with man partake of His own infinity. No moral reasonings, no alarms of a guilty conscience, could enable a heart unvisited by the grace of God to draw so broad a line of distinction, to divide the human race into classes so unequal in amount, and whose destinies should differ infinitely. The actual extent of human depravity and guilt, and consequently the severity of punishment, would not have been known, but for revelation. That all had so far erred, and altogether become abominable, that a superhuman sacrifice was necessary to atone for their guilt, and a supernatural impulse upon their hearts to enable them to please God, are truths beyond reason, yet on which turns the whole history of man, both present and future: and by which alone can be explained the wide distinction which shall be made hereafter. With God there shall be no neutrality, for man no middle state, less blissful than heaven, more tolerable than hell; for none shall be accepted but through the Redeemer: for the rest remains only a "fearful looking for of judgement and fiery indignation."

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE FUTURE STATE OF PUNISHMENT.

LTHOUGH the Scriptures abound in allu

sions to the future punishment of the wicked, little or nothing is distinctly revealed concerning it. While the Christian is allured by a view of the splendours of the heavenly Jerusalem, the glories of the Divine throne, the delights of the Paradise of God; there is no opposed sketch of a City of Destruction, no locality for the mansions of the wicked, no defined image amidst the "blackness of darkness" which shall be their portion for ever. The very mode of their existence is as yet a mystery. Writers philosophical and pious, may teach us that all men are alike immortal; but the Bible declares that the fate of the majority,—the fate of all who are not rescued by Christ-is DEATH. The words life, eternal life, immortality, etc. are always applied to the condition of those, and those only, who at the Last Day shall enter into the joy of their Lord. And inasmuch as death signifies either the ceasing to be, or at least the ceasing to live, we should be led to conclude that sinners will either be punished with annihilation, or will exist in a state inconceivable to us, which is the direct opposite of life. It surely was with some good reason that the Holy Spirit has not permitted

his messengers to call this state "life;" but has invariably employed the opposite term; and it cannot be safe to overlook this distinction. It naturally tends, and has led, to extensive mischief. It caused even a Christian philosopher to say boastfully, "There is within us an immortal spirit:" whereas God alone hath immortality, and giveth it to whom He will. And how rashly he builds on this foundation of error! "Though the body, he says, moulders into dust, that spirit which was of purer origin returns to its purer source. What Lucretius says of it is true, in a sense far nobler than he intended:

Cedit item retro, de terrâ quod fuit ante

In terram; sed quod missum est ex ætheris oris,
Id rursus, cœli fulgentia templa receptant.

"What was from earth returns to earth; what was sent from heaven, is taken to heaven again.'

"Of purer origin?" Is such philosophy the handmaid of divine truth? Does not every Christian know that the soul of man is naturally corrupt and impure, and utterly unfit for communion with the Deity? The words of the poet are indeed true, but of the Christian only, in a sense far nobler than he intended. What was "from the earth and earthy," namely the whole of the "first man," the child of Adam, shall return to the earth out of which Adam was taken, and shall inherit corruption; what was sent from heaven, namely the whole nature of the regenerate and new man, quickened by the Spirit, the child of God, shall

be caught up from the earth, and shall inherit immortality. But Dr. Brown unhappily includes in his predicted immortality and return to heaven, all mankind alike; even those who shall never "see God," but shall be punished with " everlasting destruction from His presence."

This is the deplorable consequence of overlooking the Scriptural distinction: on the other hand, these contrasted terms life and death, while they forbid us to believe that the mode of existence of the righteous and the wicked will be the same, must not hastily be understood to imply that the latter shall altogether cease to be. In all ages and countries, it has been observed,

life," and the words answering to it in other languages, have always been applied, in ordinary discourse, to a wretched life, no less than to a happy one. "Life" therefore, in the received sense of the word, would apply equally to the condition of the blest and of the condemned, supposing these last to be destined to continue for ever in a state of misery. And yet to their condition the words "life" and "immortality" never are applied in Scripture. If therefore we suppose the hearers of Jesus and his apostles to have understood, as nearly as possible in the ordinary sense, the words employed, they must naturally have conceived them to mean (unless they were taught anything to the contrary), that the condemned were really and literally to be destroyed, and cease to exist, not that they were to exist for ever in a state of wretchedness. For they are