for the purpose of evading the natural meaning of his language we put on it a most strained interpretation-that such an opportunity has been afforded to a portion of the human race, viz. to the disobedient antediluvians who perished in the flood, and that Jesus Christ proclaimed to them "good tidings" between His death and resurrection; and also that, although the Apostle mentions the antediluvians alone, the inference is irresistible that men who have lived and died under equally unfavourable conditions will be similarly favoured. But while St. Peter is the only writer in the New Testament who makes an express affirmation on this subject, I have further shown that the same inference follows as a necessary consequence from the character of God as it is revealed in the person, work, and teaching of Jesus Christ, and that the appeal of those who have lived and died under the unfavourable conditions referred to in former chapters cannot but come up with acceptance before Him by whom God will judge the world in righteousness, who is as merciful as He is just, and who came to give His life for the life of the world.

XII. To the same conclusion those considerations point on which the theory of universalism is based, and also those numerous passages of Scripture which I have adduced in the last chapter which affirm the all-embracing efficacy of Christ's redeeming work, and the ultimate and final triumph of good over evil through Him. Is it possible, I ask, to read these and believe that the final result of redemption will be the salvation of only a small portion of the human race, and the consigning of multitudes, so numerous as to transcend our powers of definite conception, either to an existence in misery which will never end, or to ultimate annihilation? So strong are these declarations that, as I have observed, if they stood unqualified by other declarations of our Lord and His Apostles, which in their natural meaning affirm the destruction of the finally

impenitent, they would go far, very far, to suggest, if they would not absolutely prove, that the result of Christ's redeeming work will be the ultimate recovery of every evil being to holiness and to God. But, as it is an unquestionable fact that the overwhelming majority of mankind have both lived and died in a condition either of positive unholiness or in one of very imperfect holiness, it follows, unless these Scriptures make unmeaning affirmations, and unless the Divine attributes of justice, holiness, mercy, and love differ widely from our human conceptions of these qualities, that a state of things must await man beyond the grave in which those whose probation here has been passed under unfavourable conditions will enter on one hereafter where the conditions will be favourable; in which those who have had no opportunity afforded them of embracing the gospel here will have one afforded them of doing so in the unseen world; in which those who die in a condition in which all good in them is not utterly extinct may be capable of recovery to holiness; and in which those who die imperfect in holiness may have the opportunity afforded them of growing "to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Such are our general conclusions.

It will doubtless be urged as a fatal objection to the chief positions maintained in this work that the doctrine of the everlasting damnation of the wicked-i.e. their endless existence in never-ending torment-has received so wide an acceptance in the Christian Church as to render it one of its catholic doctrines, and that this acceptance has been so wide and general as fully to realise the maxim, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus;" that is to say, what all Christians have always everywhere believed must constitute an essential truth of Christianity, and consequently the truth of this doctrine is so placed beyond dispute as to render all further inquiry into it useless.

To this I answer, that this much-vaunted rule for determining what constitutes an essential Christian truth is little better than a pyramid erected on its apex. It may be theoretically correct to say that what all men always everywhere have believed must be true, or that what all Christians always everywhere have believed to constitute an essential truth of Christianity must be one of its essential truths. Whether this be so or not, it will be unnecessary to discuss here; for the moment we attempt to give this rule a practical application it vanishes into thin air as a test of truth, for the very simple reason that we have no possible means of ascertaining either what all men or what all Christians have always everywhere believed. If, on the other hand, we interpret the rule in question into meaning only what the majority have believed, it requires no proof that such beliefs are very uncertain tests of truth. If, however, it be alleged that all that the maxim means is, that whatever doctrine has been accepted by what is designated the Catholic Church must constitute so essential a truth of Christianity as to render superfluous all further investigation into its claims to be accepted as such, we then become involved in the following very difficult questions, viz. what constitutes universal acceptance by the Catholic Church? through what medium is its voice heard? and how is this universal acceptance to be proved during the long ages of the past? So complicated is the mass of matter which must be carefully investigated before it is possible to arrive at anything approaching to certainty on such subjects, that it will be long, indeed, before we can determine what are and what are not essential truths of Christianity, if this is the only mode by which the validity of such truths must be determined. Any further discussion of this question, however, is superfluous; for whether such rules are valid or invalid for the purposes for which they have been

put forward, it is a matter of absolute certainty that in all ages of the Christian Church, as far as our historical evidence extends, there have been eminent theologians who have been unable to accept as a Christian verity the commonly accepted doctrine known by the name of eternal damnation. This being so, the affirmation that it is a doctrine which has been accepted always everywhere by the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ is untrue, and therefore the theory which has been erected on the assumption of its truth is invalid.

But the extensive acceptance of a particular position by the Church, as true, is very far from constituting any adequate reason for believing that it must be so. As I have above remarked, the evidence is wholly wanting that any except those very simple truths on which Christianity is based, and the denial of the truth of which would completely nullify it, have received the universal assent of the entire Christian Church. On the contrary, there are several positions which, as far as our evidence goes, have made a very near approach to receiving such assent at different periods of the Church's history, which are now recognised as untrue. Of these a few instances will suffice. Once it was an all but universal belief, if not an actually universal one, that the sun moved round the earth, and that to affirm the motion of the latter was a most flagrant denial of the truth of Scripture; and when those appeared who openly controverted the truth of this belief, the position taken by them was pronounced a heresy. So it was with the belief that there are antipodes. Up to our own day, the belief that the world was created in six natural days had a far stronger claim to be a catholic belief than an overwhelming majority of the dogmas in behalf of which such a claim has been asserted; and the idea that animal and vegetable life had existed on the globe for hundreds of thousands of years, would have been pronounced one of the most dangerous of heresies. It would be easy to enumerate many

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other positions which have received an equally wide acceptance, and which modern investigations have shown to be utterly untrue. But to come to dogmas which are more avowedly Christian. It is impossible to read the New Testament, and attach to language its natural meaning, without arriving at the conclusion that the belief that the personal coming of Christ was then actually imminent, or at any rate an event not very remote, was an all but, if not an actually, universal belief of the apostolic Church; yet time has proved that that belief was founded on a mistake. to mention others, two beliefs may establish a far stronger claim to universality than that which affirms that the ultimate fate of those who die in an unholy state will be a neverending existence in never-ending torment. I allude to the widespread belief, in the early Church, which was accepted as true by a majority of its most eminent doctors and teachers, that the atonement was a sacrifice offered to the devil; and to the still more widespread and fatal belief, which has been sanctioned by the highest authorities of the Church and State during not less than fourteen hundred years, that persecution is a lawful instrument to employ in the defence of Christianity, the suppression of so-called heresy, and in the propagation of the faith. With these instances before us, it is absurd to invoke the wide acceptance of this doctrine as a bar to our summoning it to answer for its truth at the tribunal of reason and revelation.

I will conclude with a citation from the work of one, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the Churches, as to the possibility of the discovery of truths hitherto overlooked in the records of revelation and the mode in which such investigations must be conducted to render them fruitful of results :

"And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before