express mind and understanding by figures or colors, and, therefore, they are forced to fly to that in which the soul inhabits, and from thence they attribute the seat of wisdom and reason to God, having nothing better to represent him by. And by that means, joining power and art together, they endeavor, by something which may be seen and painted, to represent that which is invisible and inexpressible. But, it may be said, we had better then have no image or representation of him at all. No, says he; for mankind doth not love to worship God at a distance, but to come near and feel him, and with assurance to sacrifice to him and crown him. Like children newly weaned from their parents, who put out their hands toward them in their dreams, as if they were still present, so do men, out of the sense of God's goodness and their relation to him, love to have him represented as present with them, and so to converse with him. Hence have come all the representations of God among the barbarous nations, in mountains, and trees, and stones.*

As to the views with which modern idolaters of intelligence perform their acts of worship in the presence of inanimate images, a few citations will prove instructive. Erskine says:

The learned Brahmins adore one God, without form or quality, eternal, unchangeable, and occupying all space; but they carefully confine these doctrines to their own schools as dangerous; and teach in public a religion in which, in supposed compliance with the infirmities and passions of human nature, the deity is brought more to a level with our prejudices and wants. The incomprehensible attributes ascribed to him are invested with sensible and even human forms. The mind, lost in meditation, and fatigued in the pursuit of something which, being divested of all sensible qualities, suffers the thoughts to wander without finding a resting-place, is happy, they tell us, to have an object on which human feelings and human senses may again find repose. To give a metaphysical Deity to ignorant and sensual men, absorbed in the cares of supporting animal existence, and entangled in the impediments of matter, would be to condemn them. to atheism. Such is the mode in which the Brahmins excuse the gross idolatry of their religion.t

*Stillingfleet, answer to a book entitled "Catholics no Idolaters," page 414. Similarly, Jamblichus thought the statues of the gods endued with power derived from the divine presence, as many Platonists and Neoplatonists, down to modern times, have conceived the heavenly bodies to be animated by the pres ence of divinities dwelling in them.

William Erskine, "Bombay Transactions," i, 199. Compare Colebrooke, "Asiatic Researches," viii, 279, 396, and quotations in Bohlen, "Das alte Indien," i, 153; Max Müller, "Chips from a German Workshop," i, 27-39, etc., and "History of Sanskrit Literature; " Lassen, "Indische Alterthumskunde;" J. Muir, "Sanskrit Texts;" W. W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal," 116.

From M. Bernier we learn that when at the University of Benares he reproached one of the learned men with idolatry, and asked an explanation. His respondent said:

"We have, indeed, in our temples many different statues, etc. . . . But we do not believe these statues to be Brahma, etc., themselves, but only their images and representations, and we only give them that honor on account of the beings they represent. They are in our temples, because it is necessary, in order to pray well, to have something before our eyes that may fix the mind. And when we pray, it is not the statue we pray to, but he that is represented by it."*

Of similar purport we find the testimony of another modern Hindu, "a gentleman of high caste," protesting concerning the idols employed in his worship. Babu Amrita Lal Roy, speaking of the Hindu family worship, says:

Many families, longing for some visible object to represent the Deity, bring from the river-side a small black stone and lay it on the sacred stool. The weight of this stone expresses to them strength and solidity. It helps them to think of the substantial force and power of the Infinite. This may stand for what among the white races is known as an Indian idol. Every Hindu knows that the various images we use to represent the supernatural are not God, but each thing represents some quality of the Supreme Being. Christians think with reverence of their Bible, though they know it is made of paper which was rags. Just so a Hindu treats with reverence one of his idols. He knows it is clay, or stone, or wood, and no more God than paper rags; but, like the Bible, his piece of clay or stone helps him to think of God. t

Heathenism, indeed, has sometimes forgotten that these ancillaries to devotion are but symbols. The poor Hottentot may venerate his fetich with the most devout belief that the Supreme Spirit, whose presence he feels, is embodied in the worthless stick before which he trembles. The ignorant Buddhist may bow in the presence of his idol as unmindful as the Jew before his shekinah that metal and wood have no power to control human destiny. So the ignorant Greek, undoubtedly, sometimes fell before the image of Athene with devotion as unreserved as that experienced by the ignorant papist in kneeling before the image of Mary.

The views here set forth enable us to contemplate in the proper light the constantly manifested tendency of certain

* Bernier, "Memoires," tome iii, 171.

"Dio Lewis's Monthly," 1883.

schools of Protestantism to hold on to the symbolism of abandoned papacy, or even to revert into the mother Church. Visible forms and imposing ceremonies invented or adapted from paganism, as aids to devotion, when European civilization was in its infancy, are still as agreeable and as necessary as ever to minds in an infantile or sensualistic stage of culture, or in which the religious sentiments bear a large ratio to the intellectual powers. These terms are not employed in a reproachful sense. Viewing human condition as it is, it may be the part of wisdom to condescend to capacities impervious to abstractions, and keep alive the sense of immanent divinity and inexorable duty by an impressive amount of pomp and sensible symbolism. In the lowest stratum of popular politics the same principle is strikingly exemplified, especially in America. An eloquent or argumentative presentation of political doctrine may convince a hundred; but a political log-cabin or a rustic railsplitter in a procession will settle the convictions of a thousand.

All these symbols and acts prompted by the religious nature of man are worthy of our profound respect and most philosophic study. Undoubtedly, when properly analyzed and interpreted, they will be found witnesses of the universality of a profound spiritual monotheism ingrained in the constitution of the human soul, and will teach us charity and justice in contemplating the contrast between our own religion and that of the less fortunate representatives of our species. They will show us, at least, that anthropomorphism is a necessary element in every human system, not less in religion than in government, philosophy, and science; and that it is no reproach to the religion of a people to discover it anthropomorphic unless there can be shown a degree of anthropomorphism which is incongruous with the intellectual grade and cultus of the people.

Every degree of anthropomorphism is a falling short of adequate and worthy apprehension of divine relations. It is, therefore, determined by limitations of intelligence. These may be either constitutional and irremediable, or cultural and remediable. If the former, we must be content with a religion permanently adjusted to the limitations. If the latter, we may address ourselves to the culture of the intelligence and the enlargement of its comprehension of the natural world. The processes of religious education must not, then, be, under all

circumstances, the same. We must condescend to the intelligence of the child and the childlike intelligence of the savage. The mind of the child will expand with age and education, that of the savage, in spite of a low receptivity for culture, will remain permanently childish, and any religious doctrine suited to his condition must be permanently anthropomorphic. On the contrary, the intelligent heathen and the uneducated member of Christianized society lack culture. In the effort to impart improved religious conceptions the intellect requires expansion and furniture. The heathen Hindu or Chinaman is not to be approached in the same way as the degraded Dyak or the Kroo.

If, then, the adequacy of our conception of divine things is conditioned by cultural as well as constitutional intelligence, we see how intimately connected are education and an exalted type of religion, and how inseparable are ignorance and superstition, bigotry, idolatries, fetichism, and other forms of anthropomorphism, and how deeply interested are the higher interests of religion in the progress of ideas which furnish and enlarge the intelligence.

ART. III. THE FINAL OUTCOME OF SIN.

THE Gospel is the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. In it God reveals his method of saving men; and there is no other method of which we know any thing whereby they can be saved. What, then, is to become of those who obey not the Gospel?

This awful question cannot be settled by reason alone, for we have not sufficient data on which to base conclusions; neither can it be decided by experience, for as yet the rewards and punishments of the future are but truths in man's intellect, not facts in his history. Still less can we decide it by our instincts or desires. We are not at liberty to reject a truth because we do not like it. All we know, or can know, in this life, about this doctrine, must come from revelation; for only one who has been behind the veil, and knows the end from the beginning, can speak with authority. If, then, we would avoid

mistakes which all eternity cannot rectify, we must listen reverently to what God the Lord hath spoken.

Within the past few years the doctrine of future—especially eternal-punishment has been widely discussed. A good deal of vehement rhetoric has been expended in denouncing the doctrine as derogatory to the Divine character, thus presenting the awful spectacle of sinful, short-sighted men sitting in judgment on their Maker, and presuming to settle what is and what is not becoming in the administra tion of his government. So, in former times, men vehemently denied that the earth revolved around the sun; but in spite of all their clamor the earth still swept onward in its orbit and so, regardless of men's reckless denunciations, God's mighty truths will march onward to the accomplishment of his vast designs.

It is worthy of note that those who denounce the doctrine of eternal punishment fight very shy of Scripture. But what else could be expected, since the texts which, to say the least, seem to teach the doctrine are so numerous and plain that it is very difficult to make them mean any thing else; while the few that are pressed into service to buttress up the notions of "annihilation" or "restoration," give an uncertain testimony, and afford only a feeble support. And yet, in all fairness, it must be admitted that the objections of the more thoughtful opponents of this solemn truth do not lie so much against the doctrine as taught in the Scriptures as against that monstrous perversion of it which at one period was almost universally ac cepted throughout Christendom.

In the present paper we limit the discussion to the case of those who have heard the Gospel; with the heathen we have, at present, nothing to do. Our inquiry respects only what is the final outlook for those who, from the sound of a preached Gospel, and the presence of a crucified Christ, go unsaved to death and the judgment.

There are certain truths in reference to which it may be assumed that all believers in revelation hold common ground. All believe in divine government and law; in the probationary character of man's present state; in a final judgment, when the good shall be rewarded and the wicked shall be punished. But just here, in regard to the nature and duration of the