NEMO. The proper reply to your observations is, "What saith the Scripture?" We have admitted that creatureship involves mystery and perplexity. If our Saviour has committed Himself to the doctrine of the eternity of evil, we may be spared mental distress and indignant declamation. In this liberalizing age the representations of God's character are mostly on the side of compassion, and tenderness, and mercy; but is there but is there not another side, even power, justice, holiness, rectitude? There is law as well as love in the Gospel. God is our Judge, as well as Creator. It is often said, this doctrine is of human invention, but as far as we can understand words in their honest acceptation, we must claim for it the proclamation and enforcement of God's revealed truth. Your way of stating the case is one that is popular I know, and since it appears agreeable to human reason, is assumed assumed to be true. But is the creature more pure and benevolent than his Creator? In many quarters man's idea of a conquest over evil is accepted as nobler and more. beneficent than the Divine plan. I would regard with the greatest respect the sentiments and pleadings of those who sigh for light and relief on the oppressive difficulties of this solemn verity, for I can truly say I never think or speak of it without trembling; but man must not put himself in the place of his Maker, nor his reason above Revelation. The schemes which have been propounded to get rid of the eternity of evil are built on assumptions. The plainest language of Scripture is tortured to support a theory, and for one I have found no kind of relief in human hypothesis and indignant assertions. In creation and providence we find exhibitions which do not appear to harmonize with infinite wisdom and goodness. In ordinary life we occasionally notice that God permits misery to follow from the faults of men in what may seem

a disproportionate degree. It is not possible however to argue from our own limited conceptions of what the justice or goodness of God can require in His universal administration. How cautiously ought we to speak of that desert or retribution which ought to be measured out to transgression and disobedience against an infinite Lawgiver. The ends and uses of eternal punishment may be, for anything know to the contrary, of the highest conceivable importance in the moral universe. From plain statements in God's word, it is more than a conjecture to affirm that such is the case.

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Remember here, that God's goodness and justice are not defeated, if their authority be maintained. The infinite dignity and illimitable grace of the Gospel are not frustrated, if its asseverations and sanctions are enforced. When disobeyed and rejected, Christianity possesses the alternative of self-vindication. "The wrath of man shall praise Him, and the remainder of that wrath He shall restrain." There is no defeat in this. If the gospel had salvation of all men, irrespective of means and conditions, conditions, then the ruin of any would have been a failure. Only this would have been "another gospel," not "our Gospel." The Christian scheme is a reign, as well as a redemption, and in its movements of grace among men, while unto some "the savour of life unto life," may be unto others the "savour of death unto death." And from the classical allusion of this passage, you know what a meaning must be attached to these words. The notion of a universal restoration, the dream that every prodigal convinced at last, in "the furnace of future probation" of his folly, will return to the bosom of his Father; such teaching is directly at variance with Scripture that admonishes us that when all enemies are put under Christ's feet, it is only preparatory to their dismissal to a direful

conscious and changeless state of existence. I need not refer you to the virgins, shut out from the marriage; to the man destitute of the wedding garment, banished into outer darkness; to servants who knew their Lord's will, and prepared not themselves, having assigned to them a portion with the lost. How this definite teaching is sustained by such declarations as this, "He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life, and he that believeth believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." You say the wrath of God only abides on him on earth, and yet this unbeliever while on earth is in great prosperity, and apparently great enjoyment. "wrath" must be more than punishment in this mortal life, and is the antithesis of everlasting life. You further say, the wrath of God will not abide on him for ever, since he will be since he will be annihilated, or eventually restored; to such a statement I must

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still reply, this cannot be proved from "the true sayings of God." The Bible is absolutely silent on the existence of any ulterior restorative Gospel benefits in the world beyond the grave, and is as silent on the notion of cessation of being.

ALIQUIS. "The wish that no life may fail beyond the grave," comes, as the poet has told us, from what we have that is likest God within the soul, and presumably is an instinct or desire not likely to be disappointed. On your representations, we are not that I can see, Christians who believe in perfect good, but rather manichæans who believe in two rulers who divide the universe between them, in which the evil ruler is barely kept down by the power of the good ruler. "Where is the attraction and inspiration of such a melancholy faith? What comfort is it to me if I am saved, while one half of the world is lost? What blessedness can I have in heaven, if my brethren are in hell? It is no

heaven to me; I have no union of spirit with its God; I feel as the old warrior felt when he came. to baptism; "Where are my ancestors?" "In hell

for ever," said the priest. "Then I prefer to join them." His answer has been recorded as an impiety, but for all that, most men have sympathized with it, and felt as I feel, that the Spirit of Christ was more in that man than in the priest who stood beside him."

NEMO. I recognize there an extract from a sermon which I was sorry to read, as having been preached by an ordained minister of the Protestant church in this country. The sentiment or doctrine of such teaching is human enough, intensely human, and very acceptable to human nature, however destitute of good in its action on that nature. In such preaching the sharper and sterner features of the Gospel are not only evaded, but contradicted; the discrimination of different classes of character-oh! how contrary to the teaching of the New Testament-avoided, and self-flattering notions substituted for "the truth as it is in Jesus." We have settled the underlying and all-important admission of the Divine Inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. Assuming this, then, our appeal must be to them, and not to mere human sentiment and imagination. The most like God in the human soul, will be that which is most in accordance with God's Word. This Word must be our standard as to what is most like God, and whatever thought or judgment in the human soul contravenes its statements, is not at all like God.

Of course the priest here referred to may never have existed, or may be offensively represented; if the statement however be true, he was a priest on whom Christianity directly frowns; and as for the old warrior, the best we can say of him perhaps is, if he ever uttered such words, he had been miserably taught. The other portion of the extract

of the sermon may be designated, a mere caracature of the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Christ. He is not the wisest and purest of our race who parades his feelings, and dogmatizes his own speculations. It is a greater thing to walk the sea of mysteries, than to sink aspersing the Christian system, and be wrecked with doubts. Since Peter was bidden by Christ to come out of the ship and tread the waves, he was safe enough, and his obedience made him great; but when he began to disbelieve and theorize he sank. In God's Word we are bidden to abide by mysteries. Who can account for the origin and malignity of sin? Who can understand the exceeding turpitude of that evil to expiate which God spared not His own Son? The permission of moral evil distresses the most masculine minds, quite as much as this affecting mystery of its everlasting punishment. There is that overwhelming fact of the Incarnation, and that of the Resurrection. of the body, and that of the Divine Atonement. How immeasurably these truths surpass the compass of the human understanding. On these high matters how wise it is to trust to Revelation, rather than to man's reason and theories. Do not dash yourself against the rock of mysteries. Do not abandon yourself to indifference and scepticism as if life had no help, and the human intellect no relief. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all they that do His

commandments."

Allow me to to read you an extract from Archer Butler's sermon on "The Daily Self-denial of Christ;' a sermon as you may know of special excellence. "The ultimate facts of the Bible and of the reason, for the Bible is but the perfection of reason, the existence in God's universe of good and evil, with happiness and misery as belonging respectively to each. Under these all grasping titles we may

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