they will have to be endured. For aught we know, sin wilfully persisted in, i.e. evil become inherent and irremediable, which resists every means of cure consistent with the preservation of free agency in a moral being, may bring about the destruction of the sinner in the course of God's ordinary government of the moral and spiritual world, without the necessity of any special intervention on his part, just as disease brings about the destruction of the body under God's ordinary government of the natural world. I do not say that this will be so; but the idea is quite consistent with all we know of the mode of the Divine acting in both the moral and physical universe, in which, under His superintendence and energising providence, all things are made to work out His holy pleasure.

THE TEACHING OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES RESPECTING THE NATURE OF FUTURE RETRIBUTION.

HAVING considered the terminology of the New Testament in connection with future retribution, it is now necessary that I should consider its positive affirmations respecting its nature. I shall commence with the three first Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, because beyond all question these Gospels contain an account of our Lord's popular teaching, whereas the fourth Gospel is almost exclusively confined to reporting such of his discourses as were addressed either to his intimate followers or to learned Jews. To these I have added the Acts of the Apostles, because it is not only in reality a continuation of the third Gospel, but it contains an account of the popular teaching of the Apostles.

The teaching of the Gospels respecting retribution is uniformly associated with the great idea which interpenetrates them, viz. that of the kingdom of heaven. Although I have considered the position which this idea occupies in the Scriptures of the New Testament, its nature, and character, in another work, it will be necessary before entering on the immediate subject of this chapter to offer a few very brief observations on the important place which it occupies in the apostolic writings. If any of my readers should desire further information on this subject, I must refer them to the

"Revelation and Modern Theology Contrasted; or, the Simplicity of the Apostolic Gospel Demonstrated."

work in which I have considered it at length, and given proofs of the positions which I here lay down.

The reader cannot fail to observe that the idea of the kingdom of heaven, or what is synonymous with it, the kingdom of God, is one which underlies the entire Gospels. In St. Matthew's Gospel these words occur no less than forty-one times. Equally numerous are the occasions in which our Lord is described as performing actions which proved Him to be the Christ, i.e. the king of the kingdom of God; and in no inconsiderable portion of His teaching He assumes the character of its supreme legislator, and the evangelists not unfrequently describe His entire teaching as a proclamation "of the good news" of that kingdom. John the Baptist also commenced his ministry with the proclamation, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." So likewise did our Lord. St. Mark thus reports it: "Jesus came into Galilee preaching the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled (Tеnýрwται, i.e. filled up full), and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the gospel," i.e. in the good news. In like manner, when at a later period of His ministry He sent the twelve apostles and the seventy disciples out on their respective missions, He directed them to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven was at hand; and to enable them to give proof of the truth of their affirmation, He endowed them with the power of working miracles. The same course He pursued throughout His entire ministry, to its very close; for not only are His parables explanations of different aspects of the kingdom of God, and corrections of the popular misconceptions respecting it, but on His triumphal entry into Jerusalem He openly assumed the Messianic title, and allowed Himself to be proclaimed its king; and when the Jewish rulers, a few days afterwards, charged Him before Pilate with going about and saying that He was the Christ, a king, He affirmed that He was a king, but the king of a kingdom not of this world,

but of one which is spiritual and moral, i.e. of the kingdom of God.

The contents of the Gospels, then, may be briefly summed up as consisting of a proclamation of the speedy setting up of a kingdom called the Kingdom of God, a description of its nature, an annunciation of its principles and its laws and of the necessary qualifications for becoming its subjects, a delineation of the character of its king, and a proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as its king. Yet, strange to say, although this forms their subject-matter, and the subject-matter of the teaching of our Lord Himself, the idea of the kingdom of God scarcely finds any place in either systematic or popular theology, but in its place has been substituted a number of abstract dogmas as constituting the essence of Christianity. The point, however, to which it is necessary to draw special attention, in reference to the subject we are considering, is that our Lord's affirmations respecting future retribution are inseparably bound up with the idea of the kingdom of God, as it is explained and illustrated in His teaching.

Let it be observed also that the kingdom of God of the Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles, is the same institution as that which is designated the Church in this last book and in the Epistles. In the Gospels it receives the name of the Church twice only; in the Acts of the Apostles the words, the Church and the kingdom of God, are used in nearly equal proportions as designations of the same community; but in the Epistles, while the words "the kingdom of God" are far from wanting, the term Church greatly preponderates.

What, then, is meant by the kingdom of God, the idea of which is thus closely interwoven with the teaching of our Lord and his Apostles? I answer, that it is the designation of that society, the promise of the setting up of which occupies so conspicuous a place in the scriptures of the Old Testament, the advent of which was the subject of eager desire

both prior to and during our Lord's ministry; which was erected as a visible community on earth on the day of Pentecost, and which will continue to exist until every opposing power has been placed under the feet of the Son of God, after which, the purposes of its institution having been fully realised, the Son will resign the kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all.

While this is the general meaning of the kingdom of God in the apostolic writings, the reader ought carefully to observe that the sacred writers contemplate it under two aspects. First

The kingdom of God of the present dispensation, during the continuance of which the evil will be mingled with the good. This may be properly designated the period of its growth.

Secondly

That aspect of it which is referred to in various Scriptures when all evil shall be gathered out of it, the complete purposes of its institution realised, and during which all nations will become its subjects. It is to this last state of things that the various affirmations of the Christian Scriptures respecting retribution are directly applicable. The division of the kingdom of Christ into these two æons, or dispensations, is distinctly recognised in the following utterance of St. Paul :

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of the inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of the strength of his might, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit on his right hand in the heavenly places; far above all rule, and authority, and power,