the universalist. If universalism be the grand remedy for the errors and miseries of mankind, the benevolence of God must have inclined him to make it known in every past age, and over the whole earth. If God be omnipotent, he is able to execute his desires-then he must have made all men, in all ages, universalists. The recent origin of universalism, by this sort of argument, disproves either the benevolence or the power of the Almighty.

2. But universalism conflicts still more decidedly with the benevolence of God. It strips his character of all clemency. Clemency consists in the remission of deserved punishment. It is no clemency to remit punishment that is unmerited; this is mere justice. Now, what deserved penalty is remitted by the Almighty, according to universalism?*

Is it future and endless punishment? This the system denies to have been our desert. This penalty, we are told, is unrighteously severe, and cannot constitute the penalty of the divine law. It cannot be contended then that it is clemency to save us from a doom which we have never deserved, and to which we have never been exposed.

We are not to be told here, that Christ died to save sinners. Christ did not die to save men from undeserved perdition. The atonement must not be brought in thus as a mere makeweight in the system of the universalist. If it were unrighteous severity in God to threaten eternal ruin as the penalty of the law, it were no mercy to provide an atonement by which. to save us from such ruin. This were cruel mockery, not divine compassion. The Son of God would not trifle with men by claiming the merit of surprising clemency, when to have failed to save us would have proved the sheerest injustice. How then is the clemency of God displayed? From what does divine mercy save men?

Universalists are shocked at the doctrine of future punishment. They labor hard to explain away those passages of Scripture which announce a future judgment and the final condemnation of sinners. They assert that no punishment is to be feared after death. They admit with us that God has expressed for our race the most adorable compassion. They, as well as ourselves, believe the frequent and strong professions of clemency which the Lord has recorded in the sacred volume. We can unite in extolling the mercy of God. They will exclaim with us, in the liveliest admiration " God is love."

When we admire the clemency of Heaven, we mean that clemency which saves us from the woes of hell. We adore the grace that can rescue lost sinners from a perdition which they deserve. We can exclaim with rapture, "thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." We can look upward, with observing angels, to the stupendous height, and downward to the unsearchable depths of that love which ransomed guilty men from the woes of an eternal imprisonment. We behold here, as we imagine, a topic that ought to call forth the grateful raptures of every heart.

According to the system of universalism, however, our raptures are wholly unnecessary. As there is no endless perdition, there can be no future salvation. Suppose it were possible to prove that we have not been ransomed from eternal ruin. We cannot blot from the Scriptures the glowing records of divine. goodness. The universalist cannot deny while he receives the Bible, that we are said to be under the highest obligations to the Son of God, that the clemency of heaven is said to have made unparalleled exertions to save our race-that God claims from us the most rapturous gratitude for the actual exercise of surprising

mercy.

Where is this clemency seen? From what does the Son of God save men?

It must be only from evils in this world, if we credit the assertions of the universalist. From what earthly evils does the Son of God save men?

Let it be recollected that it is a doctrine of universalism, that men suffer in this world according to their deserts, and thus endure the penalty of the law. It is not from punishment on earth then that we are saved by divine mercy. Punishment we are said to suffer literally and fully. Universalism makes God as unrelenting as the severest task-master. According to this system, he inflicts without mitigation and without mercy the entire penalty of transgression. He is held up to our view as an almighty Shylock, who stands over the sinner with unyielding sternness, unwilling to abate in the slightest degree the demands of justice. We know that universalism professes to regard Christ as a Saviour, but, at the same time, with glaring contradiction, it avows that we are punished as much as we deserve in this life. Here then is no room for the services of a Saviour. We cannot be punished by justice and saved by mercy at the same time. The convict, who serves out his time of

confinement in the cell of a prison, obtains his discharge as an act of justice, not of mercy. To offer him pardon, after he has suffered the full penalty, is to insult and wrong him.

The mercy of God saves us from no punishment in this world, according to universalism. From what then does it save us?

When the force of this representation is felt, the reply usually is, that we are saved from sin.

There is an important sense in which Christ saves his forgiven people from the power of sin. But this is not what the universalist means, when he says that we are saved from sin. If the phrase "to save us from sin" mean any thing, according to his system, it must mean to save us in such a sense from the power of sin, that we do not become sinners. In this sense Christ does not save us from sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. All sin, and all suffer more or less the consequences of sinning. From what then does the Redeemer save us? We are not saved from future punishment, or from punishment in this life, or from our sins. We are saved from nothing. Does the alleged clemency of God then expend its vast energies in doing nothing? Does prophecy, from the beginning of time, pour its multiplying and brightening rays upon a stupendous effort of divine mercy that is to prove at last nothing but a splendid bubble? Does the projected scheme of man's redemption kindle the piety and animate the lyres of ancient prophets? Does it awaken thrilling interest among the heavenly hosts? Does the Son of God, at length, descend to an expecting world? Is the tragedy of redemption brought to its mournful close? Is it pronounced that the vast and eventful work is finished? Does the scene excite the most intense interest among angelic spirits? Does the triumphant Redeemer ascend again to heaven to receive afresh the praises of the universe-and is this all for nothing? Are the reiterated promises and the glowing appeals of the New Testament grounded upon nothing? Is the extolled clemency of heaven nothing but an empty name? It is, if universalism be

true.

It is justice, not goodness, to enforce rigorously the demands of law. According to the tenets of universalism, there is no remission of sin, no expiatory atonement, no grace, no clemency. If men obey, they are rewarded as an act of justice; if they sin, they expiate their own guilt by enduring the full amount of

punishment. And yet this system claims the merit of showing forth to a surpassing extent, the glory of divine benevolence!

The favorite appeals of the friends of this system might be retorted upon themselves in greater number. We have restricted ourselves to but three points, the justice, the competency, and the benevolence of God. The length of the article. admonishes us to bring these remarks to a close. We shall conclude with expressing the hope that the continued existence and spread of universalism will attract more than they have yet done the attention of the friends of truth, and elicit from them such countervailing exertions as will save our flocks through the divine blessing, from the encroachments of this moral gangrene.

ARTICLE V.

MISSIONARY SCHOOLS.

By Rev. Rufus Anderson, D. D., one of the Secretaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Boston.

It is thought by some, that modern missionaries among the heathen give too much attention to schools, and that they do this at the expense of time which ought to be devoted to the preaching of the gospel. There may have been something to justify this opinion in a few of the missions, especially in their earlier stages. In general, however, the impression is probably a mistaken one; at least in respect to the missions with which I am acquainted. The misapprehension may be owing to two causes. First, in the annual reports of missionary societies, the statistics of education are usually given more in detail and with greater precision and prominence, than those of preaching -a result not easily avoided. Secondly, the precise object of education, as a part of the system of modern missionary operations, appears not to have been generally understood hitherto by the community. Perhaps I ought to add, that its proper object has not always been well understood by the directors of missions. What this object is, will be explained in the sequel. The proportionate attention given by missionaries to schools, is by no means as great as many seem to suppose. Those who attended the last annual meeting of the American Board of

Commissioners for Foreign Missions, will remember the result of inquiries on this subject there proposed to the Rev. William Richards, of the Sandwich Islands mission. It appeared that not only was the average attendance of natives on preaching, at the fifteen stations of that mission, greater than it is in any one considerable district of our own country, but that the missionaries preached oftener than is here customary among the settled pastors. And in general, the missionaries of that board among the heathen will bear comparison, in respect to the frequency of their preaching, with their more zealous brethren in the pastoral office at home. And the same is no doubt true of the missionaries of other societies.

Still it is admitted, that schools constitute a prominent part of the system of modern missions, and that there is no evidence of their having formed any part of the missions prosecuted by the apostles. The inquiry therefore is very natural and proper. Why this departure from apostolical usage? To this inquiry the present article is designed to furnish a reply.

Our first object will be to ascertain the extent of territory embraced by the apostolical missions.

The inspired history gives no information that the apostles and their companions extended their personal labors beyond the Roman empire. Fabricius has collected from the New Testament the names of all the places there mentioned, at which they planted churches, some forty or fifty in number; and also the names of the different countries which they are said to have visited. These countries were Judea, Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Illyricum, Greece, Italy, and the islands of Cyprus and Crete, with several others of less note. Mesopotamia should probably be added, on the strength of 1 Pet. 5:13. All the principal districts or provinces of Asia Minor are named in the Acts of the Apostles. The parts of Arabia in which Paul spent several years, are supposed to have been adjacent to Damascus, and within the modern Syria; and there is no evidence in Scripture that this apostle actually made his contemplated journey into Spain. The whole territory, therefore, traversed by the apostolical missionaries, so far as the Scriptures inform us, was within the Roman empire, and formed but a part of it; and, so far as territory is concerned, but little more than

* Fabricii Lux Evan. exoriens, etc. p. 83.