with God. From this it follows that "eternal life" being such a condition of mind, "eternal death" must be its direct opposite. Consequently the word "heaven" is not intended to denote a definite locality, but a state of mind in close communion with God, and hell one of alienation from him, of which the first constitutes the highest happiness of which a rational being is capable, and the latter its misery and ruin. But inasmuch as it is a great truth that God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live, it follows that all God's punishments are intended to be remedial. Consequently nothing can be worse for the sinner than that God should cease to punish him. On the other hand, God will continue to punish him as long as he continues to sin. As long, therefore, as God continues to punish, there is hope for the salvation of the sinner. Hence it follows that "eternal death," in its most awful aspect, is when God leaves the sinner unpunished in his sin; but what will be the ultimate fate of such the theory leaves in considerable obscurity.

The difficulties with which the theories which we have been considering are attended have been attempted to be concealed, by affirming that it is our duty to avoid passing an opinion on a subject so mysterious, and to leave it in the hands of God. But it is a subject which is far too personally interesting to each of us to be thus quietly passed over; and it is impossible to prevent thoughtful men, by a reason such as this, from giving their gravest consideration to a subject so profoundly interesting to us as individuals. Nor are these difficulties lessened by the consideration, which has been frequently urged, that there are various things respecting the divine government of the universe into which the finite intellect of man cannot penetrate, and respecting which, therefore, it is an inadequate judge. This is undoubtedly true, but it has nothing to do with the subject which

we are now considering; for the moral questions which are involved in these theories are the very things on which our enlightened conscience and moral sense are fully qualified to decide. Their first and primary dictate is, that might does not constitute right; and, after making due allowance for the relative positions of God and man, that what would be unholy in man cannot be holy in God. This being so, vain must be all attempts to hinder the human mind from sitting in judgment on the question, whether the results of these theories are in conformity with what reason and revelation affirm respecting the character of that God of whom the Christ of the Gospels is the image and likeness.

Before concluding this chapter, let us endeavour to realise in thought what the words "Everlasting damnation," according to the popular conception of it, really mean. It is almost universally understood to mean an existence without end, in a state of misery which will never cease.

Most of those who use these words fail to realise their awfulness. This our limited faculties, even when taxed to their utmost powers, are unable to do. I will, therefore, use an illustration which has been often used before, but which will help us to form an approximate conception of their awful meaning. Let us suppose this entire globe to be dissolved. into grains of sand as minute as those on the ocean shore, and that each of these represents a thousand years. Their exhaustion involves a period so immense that our feeble minds are utterly unable to grasp a duration so vast; but vast as it is, being finite, it must have a termination. Yet when these millions of millions of millions of ages have run out, the misery of those who perish everlastingly will, according to the popular theory, be no nearer a termination than when they first began. This will be equally true if we suppose the sun and the planets and the whole stellar universe which is visible to the best optical instruments, to be resolved into

similar grains of sand, and that each grain represents a thousand years. Still, when every grain has been exhausted, there will still remain an endless existence in never-ending misery beyond. Is not this an appalling thought, even if it is to be the fate of only a single individual? But when we consider the array of figures which would be required to represent the numbers of the human race who have existed in the pastaccording to the best computations more than twelve hundred millions exist in the present-and that those who, according to the above theories, will thus perish everlastingly will constitute an overwhelming majority of them, the thought is so awful that it may well set men thinking whether such theories can possibly be true. Yet such is the action which popular Christianity attributes to Him whom the Christian Scriptures affirm to be the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, and of whom Jesus Christ is the image and likeness.

That these theories are widespread as the genuine teachings of the Christian revelation, the following quotations prove beyond the power of contradiction. The first is from a sermon of one who is in the habit of addressing the largest congregation in London.

"Only conceive," says the preacher, "that poor wretch in the flames who is saying, O for one drop of water to cool my parched tongue! See how his tongue hangs from his blistering lips, how it excoriates and burns the lips of his mouth as it were a firebrand! Behold him crying for a drop of water! I will not picture the scene. Suffice it for me to close up by saying that the hell of hells will be to thee, poor sinner, the thought that it is to be to thee for ever. Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God, and on it shall be written, For ever. When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torments they shall say, For ever. When they howl, echo cries, For ever," &c.

The following is from a sermon of the same preacher of a much later date :

"We are sometimes accused, my brethren, of using language too harsh, too ghastly, too alarming, with respect to the world to come; but we will not soon change our note; for we solemnly believe that if we could speak thunderbolts, and in every look were a lightning flash; if our eyes dripped blood instead of tears, no tones, words, gestures, or similitudes of dread, could exaggerate the awful condition of a soul which has refused the Gospel and is delivered over to justice."

Our second quotation is from a tract written by a Roman Catholic priest, entitled "A Tract for Children and Young Persons. The Sight of Hell. Published by the permission. of his Superiors." We may therefore draw the conclusion that these Superiors, whoever they may be, hold some important position in this Church, and consider that its contents are suitable teaching for children and young people.

"See in the middle of that red-hot floor," says the author, "stands a girl who looks about sixteen years old; her feet are bare. Listen, she speaks. I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years. Look at my burnt and bleeding feet.. Let me go off this burning floor for one moment.' The fifth dungeon is a red-hot oven. The little child is in that redhot oven. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it burns and turns itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. God was very good to this little child. Very likely God saw that it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished more severely in hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the world in early childhood."

These quotations speak for themselves. The reader will scarcely be surprised to be informed that the tract from which

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the last passage is a quotation was very recently circulated among the frequenters of Mr. Bradlaugh's Hall of Science, as an example of what the largest section into which the Christian Church is divided affirms to be the teaching of Christianity respecting future retribution. After all, awful as are these citations, they are little more than the popular doctrines on this subject "writ large." I need hardly add, that it is impossible to put a greater stumbling-block in the way of unbelievers than such representations of Christian teaching.

But not only are the commonly accepted doctrines respecting retribution a stumbling-block to unbelievers, to doubters, and to the heathen, when they are told by the missionary that they are essential features of the Gospel of the God of mercy, grace, and love; but they are scarcely less so to a large and increasing body of intelligent Christian laymen, who are unable to believe that the Author of the Universe has created the human race with the clear foresight that the result of his creative work would be that an overwhelming majority of those who have lived during the past, and who are living in the present, after the few brief years of this present life, will enter on a life of misery which will present no hope of termination throughout the endless ages of the future. This they are unable to believe ; and when they are told that they must accept this doctrine as true, or in rejecting its truth they must reject Christianity along with it, they are far latter alternative than the former. intimated, do those who profess to act on them as though they were realities; for if they are true Mr. Spurgeon's description of their awful character is scarcely overdrawn; yet their belief in them is inert, and they for the most part refuse to contemplate the dread realities behind, or to warn those who are near and dear to

more likely to adopt the Nor, as I have already believe in these doctrines