"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."-Matt. 25: 46. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment."Epistle to the Hebrews. "Who could guess that the mind has so many doors leading directly into hell?"-A woman to Dr. Worcester. "A spark of the eternal God: And to what end? How yield I back The trust for high uses given? Heaven's light hath but revealed a track -Lowell. 'We are going to be through this life before very long. The longest life is short when it is over; any time is short when it is done. The gates will swing to behind some of us soon, but behind all of us before long. And then the important thing will be not what men thought of us, but what He thought of us, and whether we were built into His Kingdom. And if, at the end of it all, we emerge from life's work and discipline crowned souls, at home anywhere in God's universe, life will be a success."-Among last public utterances of Dr. Bowne. "This body is my house-it is not I; Triumphant in this faith I live, and die." -Written by him a week before Frederick Lawrence Knowles was taken ill with his last fatal illness. V IS THERE A HEAVEN AND HELL? If so, SOME declare that "heaven is a dream." do not wake me from my dream. Some affirm that "hell is a myth." Ceasing to believe in a thing, however, does not abolish it. Some assert that "there is a heaven, but no hell." But the proofs for one are about as strong as for the other. The wish may be father to the thought. Some say "there is a hell, but no heaven.” But that is because they are in hell now, perhaps, in the bitterness of sin and pessimism, and have lost the glorious prospect of paradise. Let us consider what is the truth in this matter, for our object is first to discover the truth, let it lead us where it will, whether to reject outgrown conceptions or to champion new, and having found it, to put it into concrete life and conduct. There are undoubtedly heavens and hells on earth. Wherever holiness, love, and obedience to divine law reigns, there is heaven. Wherever disobedience and hatred rule they beget wretchedness, remorse and retribution, which is hell. Salvation nowadays means deliverance from sin, present sin, let the future be what it may, not from some future hell, sealed by a paid-up insurance policy on some future heaven. "Christ is not a celestial fire-escape," He is the Savior from sin. Is there a future heaven and hell? Logically we should have first to demonstrate to faith that there is a life beyond the grave; that death does not end all. We pass that now, however, and for the time being assume immortality as the hope and faith of all. Some students in Germany we met not only disbelieved in any future life, but even doubted the existence of God and the soul. Death was pushing off into black nothingness. Identity, self-consciousness, mortal life, thinking, and feeling were swallowed up in the illimitable void. Souls are cast by the grim enemy of mankind to the rubbish heap. Some few men have been known in America to have declared that death was the end of everything for every man. Such views, however, certainly never have and never will win the assent of the vast majority of men, certainly not the Christian. Revelation promises it, reason infers it, science finds no fault with it, as John Fiske showed. The argument for immortality is approved by the Scriptures, reinforced by evidences of analogy of the unity of consciousness, by instinctive faith, by an ethical view of the divine dealings with men, by the promises of God. Christ came to bring life and immortality to light. Materialistic notions both of heaven and hell are fast being abrogated by thoughtful men. God's opulence will doubtless provide a heaven that will surprise our best conceptions and surpass our holiest dreams. There will be surprises when the soul enters the home of the blessed. Those who thought the most about it will probably have to reprint many of those fanciful pictures of that fair world which their human imagination had painted in materialistic colors. Certainly the fiery hell of our forefathers has been abolished forever. Neither the theologian nor the man on the street believes in the existence of such a place as their crude imagination depicted. Yet doubtless there are unrevised creeds which still declare that the punishment of sin shall be the "most grievous torments in soul and body without intermission in hell-fire forever." Jonathan Edwards taught that hell is like a red-hot oven in which the wicked are to be eternally burned for the glory of God, and he preached it with such awful power that men |