DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISH

MENT.

We once beard a father say, runing his fingers the while among the golden curls of his child's hair, "If I were in heaven, and saw my little daughter in hell, should not I be rushing down there after her? There spoke the voice of human nature, and that love cannot be turned to hatred in heaven, but must grow purer and intenser there. The doctrine which makes the saints pleased with contemplating the woes of the damned, and even draw much of their happiness from the contrast, is the deification of the absolute selfishness of a demon. Human nature even when left to its uncultured instincts, is bound to far other and nobler things. Radbod, one of the old Scandinavian kings, after long resistance, finally consented to be baptised. After he had put one foot in the water, he asked the priest if he should meet his forefathers in heaven. Learning that they, being unbaptised pagans, were victims of endless misery, he drew his foot back and refused the rite, choosing to be with his brave ancestors in hell, rather thantobe in heaven with the Christian priests. And speaking from the stand-point of the highest refinement of feeling and virture, who, that has a heart in his bosom, would not say, "Heaven can be no heaven to me, if I am to look down on the quenchless agonies of all I have loved here!" Is it not strictly true that

"The thought that even one should have endless woe,

Would cast a shadow on the throne of God,

And darken heaven?"

If a monarch, possessing unlimited power over all the earth, bad condemned one man to be stretched on rack and to be freshly plied with incessant tortures for a period of fifty years, and if everybody on earth coul

hear his terrible shrieks by day and night, though they were all themselves, with this sole exception, blessed with perfect happiness, would not the whole human race, from Spitzbergen to Japan, from Rio Janeiro to Liberia, rise in a body and go to implore the king's clemency for the solitary vic

tim? So if hell had but one tenant doomed to eternal anguish, a petition reaching from reaching from Sirius to Alcyone, signed by the universe of moral beings, borne by a convoy of angels representing every star in space, would be laid and unrolled at the foot of God's throne, and he would read thereon this prayer: "FORGIVE HIM

AND RELEASE HIM, WE BESEECH THEE, O GOD." And can it be that every soul in the universe is better than the Maker and Father of the universe?

The popular doctrine of eternal torment threatening all our race, is refuted likewise by the impossibility of any general observance of the obligations morally and logically consequent from it. In the first place, as the world is constituted, and as life goes on, the great majority of men are upon the whole happy, evidently were meant to be happy. But every believer of the doctrine in debate is bound to be unutterably wretched. If he has any gleam of generous sentiment, any touch of philanthropy in his bosom, if he is not a frozen petrifaction of selfishness or an incarnate devil, how can he look on his family, friends, neighbors, fellowcitizens, fellow-beings, in the light of his faith seeing them quivering over the dizzy verge of a blind probation, and momentarily dropping into the lake of fire and brimstone that burns forever, how can he do this without being ceaselessly stung with exquisite wretchedness, and crushed with overwhelming horror? To be otherwise would not be human.

For a man who approvingly be

lieves that hell is right under our meadows, streets, and homes, and that nine-tenths of the dead are in it, and the nine-tenths of the still living soon will be, for such a man to be happy and jocose, is as horrible as it would be for a man, occupying the second story of a house, to light it up brilliantly with gas, and make merry with his friends, eating tit-bits, sipping wine, and tripping it on the light fantastic toe to the strains of gay music, while directly under him, men, women, and children including his own parents and his own children, were stretched on racks, torn with pincers, lacerated with surgical instruments, cauterised, and lashed with whips of fire, their half-suppressed shrieks and groans audibly rising through the floor!

Secondly, if the doctrine be true, then all unneccessary worldly enterprises, labors, and studies should at once cease. One moment on earth, and then, according as we spend that moment, an eternity in heaven or in hell; in heaven, if we succeed in placating God by a sound belief and ritual properties; in hell if we are led astray by philosophy, fature, and the attractions of life! On these suppositions what time have we for anything but reciting our creed, meditating on the atonement, and seeking to secure an interest for ourselves with God by flouting at reason, praying in church, and groaning," Lord, Lord, have mercy on us miserable sinners?" -What folly, what mockery, to be searching into the motion of the stars; and the occult forces of matter, and the other beautiful mysteries of science! There will be no astronomy in bell, save the vain speculations as to the distance between the nadir of the damned and the zenith of the saved; no chemistry in hell, save the experiments of infinite wrath in distilling new torture poisons in the

tion."

What have men who are in imminent peril, who are in truth almost infallibly sure of being eternally damned the next instant, what have they to do with science, literature, art, social ambition, or commerce? Away with them all; lures of the devil to snare souls as they are!-The world reflecting from every corner the lurid glare of hell, who can do anything but pray? "Who could spare any attention for the vicissitudes of cotton and the price of shares, for the merits of the last opera, and the bets upon the election, if the actors of these things were really swinging in his eye over such a verge as he affects to see?"

Thirdly, those who believe the popular theology on this subject are bound to live in cheap huts on bread and water, that they may devote to the sending of missionaries among the heathen every piece of money they get beyond the bare neccessities of life. If our neighbor were perishing of hunger at our door, it would be our duty to share with him even to the last crust we had. How much more, then, seeing millions of our poor helpless brethren sinking ignorantly into the eternal fires of hell, are we bound to spare no possible effort until the conditions of salvation are brought within the reach of every one!

How a man who thinks the heathen are thus sinking to hell by wholesale, through ignorance of the Gospel, can live in a costly house, crowded with

luxuries and splendors, spending every week more money on his miserable body than he gives in his whole life to save the priceless souls for which he says Christ died, is a problem admitting two solutions. Either his professed faith is an unreality to him, or else he is as selfish as a demon and as hard-hearted as a nether millstone. If he really believed the doctrine, and had a human heart, he must feel it to be his duty to deny himself every indulgence, and give his whole fortune and earnings to the missionary fund. And when he has given all else, he ought to give himself and go to pagan lands, proclaiming the means of grace until his last breath. If he does not that, he is inexcusable.

Should he attempt to clear himself of this obligation, by adopting the theory of predestination, which asserts that all men are unconditionally elected from eternity, some to heaven, others to hell, so that no effort can change their fate, then logical consistency reduces him to an alternative more intolerable in the eyes of conscience and common sense than

the other was. For by this theory the gates of freedom and duty are hoisted, and the dark flood of antinomian consequences rushes in. All things are fated. Let man yield to every impulse and wish. The result is fixed. We have nothing to do. Good or evil, virtue or crime, alter nothing.

He

Fourthly, if the common doctrine of eternal damnation be true, then surely no more children should be brought into the world: it is a duty to let the race die out and cease. that begets a child, forcing him to run the fearful risk of human existence, with every probability of being doomed to hell at the close of earth, commits a crime, before whose endless consequences of horror and guilt

of fifty thousand deliberate murders would be as nothing. For be it remembered, an eternity in hell is an infinite evil, and therefore the crime of thrusting such a fate on a singlechild, with the unasked gift of being, is a crime admitting of no just com parison. Rather than populate an everlasting hell with human vipers and worms, a hell whose fires, all alive with ghastly shapes of iniquity and wriggling anguish, shall swell

with a vast accession of fresh recruits from every generation, rather than this, let the sacred lights on the marriage altar go out, and utterly perish, all happy villages be overthrown, thrown, all regal cities crumble down, and this world roll among the silent stars henceforth a globe of blasted deserts and rank wilderness, resonant only with the moaning shrieks of the wind, and the thunder's crash.

Fifthly, there is one more conclusion of mortal duty deducible from the theory of infinite torment. It is. this: God ought not to have permitted Adam to have any children. Let us not seem persumptuous and irreverent in speaking thus. We are merely reasoning on the popular theory of the theologians, not on any supposition of our own or any truth; and by showing the absurdity and blasphemy of the moral consequences and duties flowing from that theory, the absurdity, blasphemy, and incredibility of the theory itself appear. We are not responsible for the irreverence, but they are responsible for it who charge God with the iniquity that we repel from His name. the sin of Adam must entail total depravity and an infinite penalty of suffering on all his prosterity, who were then certainly innocent because not in existence, then we ask, why did not God cause the race to stop with Adam, and so save all the needless

If

and cruel woe that would otherwise surely be visited on the lengthening line of generation? Or, go further back, why did he not, foreseeing Adam's sin, refrain from creating even him? There was no neccessity laid on God of creating Adam. No evil would have been done by omitting to create him. An infinite evil, multiplied by the total number of the lost, was done by creating him. Why then was he not left in peaceful nonentity? On the Augustinian theory there is no way of escaping this awful dilemma. Who can answer the question which rises to heaven from the abyss of the damned—

"Father of mercies! Why from silent earth

Didst thou awake and curse me into birth?
Push into being a reverse of thee,
And animate a clod with misery?"
-The Christian Life.

THE POWER OF JESUS' NAME.

Some years since a gentleman connected with a scientific exploring party, operating among the Rocky Mountains, got separated from his associates, and at the close of day found himself lost in the darkness, whithout means of shelter from the furious storm which had been gathering for several hours, and burst in full force shortly after nightfall.

The position was one of extreme peril, being apparently many miles from human habitation, and beset by dangers common to such localities at any time, but now greatly intensified by absolute darkness, and warring elements, whose battle, when occurring among lofty elevations, progresses with unique and awful gran deur. On the night in question the air was filled with mingled rain and ice, whirling along before a mighty tempest, while the black shadows gave away every few minutes before flashes of vivid lightning,

instantly succeeded by thunder peals, beneath which the mountain's massive fabric trembled and vibrated, as though its very foundations were giving away.

Our explorer at length found partial shelter under a cluster of dwarf pines. And while trying to make the best of this situation, during a lull of the storm, his ear detected something which seemed like a hu man voice. Listening with eager interest until the elements once more grew quiet, the sound again attracted his attention, and this time all doubt vanished. Some one was surely in the glen just below, and also in a very pleasant mood, for loud and distinctÎy, in a rich, baritone voice, rang forth that immortal hymn:

"All hail the power of Jesus' name,
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem,
And crown him Lord of all."

At first the gentleman almost believed the melody of supernatural origin, the circumstances under which it was heard serving to invest the singing with amazing beauty, seemingly beyond the scope of the human production. And as its glorious refrain vibrated through the wild precincts, each rock and crag with sweet echos repeated the harmony again again, until, at its close, from far up the mountain-side came back faintly, but still clearly enunciated, "Lord of all!" Then, for the first time, one who had listened unmoved to impassioned sermons, and studied God's Word without the slighlest responsive feeling, began to realize the name of Jesus is power indeed, and was constrained to exclaim, "Why should I not crown him Lord of all?"

As the storm abated our scientist took the music for a guide, and soon discovered the cabin of a miner, who had found the yellow metal in the sands of a little stream; and all by