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has conquered sin, only when he has reduced it to obediHell is no more subject to God than the Confederate States are subject to the United-States Government. They are shut up by a blockade; they are restrained by great armies and navies; they are made to suffer but they are not reduced to submission and obedience.

Nor is it any answer to say, that the existence of sin and suffering hereafter no more limits God's omnipotence than its existence here and now limits his omnipotence. For the question is of ETERNAL suffering. Temporal suffering, hereafter, we grant, is no objection to the Divine Omnipotence. Limited and finite evil, in this world or the other, is no philosophical difficulty; and for this reason,that finite evil, when compared with infinite good, becomes logically and mathematically no evil. The finite disappears in relation to the infinite. All the sufferings and sins of earth, through all ages, are strictly nothing when viewed in the light of the eternal joy and holiness which is to result from them. This is a postulate of pure reason. Make evil finite, and good infinite; make evil temporal, and good eternal, and evil ceases to be any thing. But make evil eternal, as is done by this doctrine, and then we have Manicheism an infinite dualism on the throne of

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But what, then, is the vital truth in the doctrine of eternal punishment? Christ says, "These shall go away into eternal punishment." What is this "eternal punishment"? It is commonly supposed to mean the same thing as punishment which shall never end, or punishment continued through all time. But this is to misunderstand both the philosophical and scriptural meaning of the word "eternal." Eternal punishments are the opposite of temporal punishments: they have nothing to do with time at all; they are punishments outside of time. To attempt to

realize eternity by adding up any number of myriads of years of time, is necessarily a failure; for time and eternity are different things. You might as well attempt to produce thought or love by adding up millions of miles of distance, as, by adding up millions of years of time, to get any idea of eternity. Eternal life, in the language of Scripture, has nothing to do with the future or the past. It is a present life in the soul, awakened within by the knowledge of God and Christ. "This Is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Eternal life and eternal death both come from the knowledge of God and of Christ. To one, it is a savor of life; to another, of death. Eternal punishment and eternal life are the punishments and the rewards of eternity, as distinguished from those of time, and having their root in the knowledge of God which comes through Christ. Eternal life and eternal punishment both commence here, from the judgments which take place now: but the last judgment, or the judgment of the last day, is that which will take place hereafter, when the soul shall have a full knowledge of itself and of God; see its whole life as it really is; have all self-deceptions taken away, all disguises removed, and know itself as it is known. God's love, when revealed, attracts and repels. Like all real force, it is a polar force. The one pole is its attractive power over those who are in a truth-loving state: the other pole is its repelling power to those who are in a truth-hating state. Love attracts the truthful, and repels the wilful. Eternal punishment, then, is the repugnance to God of the soul which is inwardly selfish in its will, loving itself more than truth and right. It is the sense of indignation and wrath, alienation and poverty, which rests on it while in this condition. It is the outer darkness; it is the far country; it is the famine, which comes as a holy and blessed evil, sent to save, by

bringing to repentance, the prodigal child, who has not yet 66 come to himself."

From this knowledge of God and of itself, therefore, from this judgment of the last day, will flow eternal life to the one class, and eternal punishment or suffering to the other. Those who have been conscientious and generous; who have endeavored faithfully to live for truth and right; who have made sacrifices, and not boasted of them; who have clothed the naked and fed the hungry, making the world better and happier by their presence, will hear the Saviour say, "Come, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and ye gave me meat." Perhaps they had never even heard the name of Christ; perhaps they were the Buddhists of Burmah, of whom Mr. Malcom speaks, who brought food to him, though a stranger to them. "I was scarcely seated," says he, "when a woman brought a nice mat for me to lie on; another, cool water; and a man went and picked me a halfdozen fine oranges. None sought or expected the least reward, but disappeared, and left me to my repose." Or perhaps they will be the poor black women in Africa, who took such kind care of Mungo Park, singing, "Let us pity the white man he has no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind him corn." The reward of their fidelity will be the gift of a greater power of goodness, coming from a knowledge of God and Christ. They were helping Christ, though they did not know him. when saw we thee an hungered?" These Gentiles, who are without the law, who do the things contained in the law, will come to know God and Christ, and receive a spiritual life, life flowing from that knowledge. On the other hand, those who have not endeavored to do what they knew to be right will receive from the same knowledge of

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God and Christ a spiritual or eternal punishment. Perhaps they have received some of it already in this world; but a deeper knowledge of the truth will bring a keener self-reproach. The worm that never dies is this gnawing tooth of conscience. The fire which is not quenched is the heart still selfish, turned to evil, joined with a conscience which sees the good. For man, as long as he is man, cannot get away from himself. He may sophisticate himself with falsehoods; put his conscience to sleep, and imagine that he has escaped all the penalties of evil: but he cannot escape from himself. The longer and deeper the sleep of conscience, the more terrible its final awakening.

Eternal punishment, therefore, is the punishment which comes to man from his spiritual nature; from that side of man which connects him with eternity, in contradistinction from temporal punishment, which is that which comes from his temporal nature and the temporal world. Through the body, he receives temporal pleasure or pain from the world of time and space: through the spirit, he receives spiritual joy or sorrow from the world of eternity and infinity.

Thus intimately are judgment and retribution connected. There is nothing arbitrary about rewards or punishments. They follow naturally and necessarily from the revelation of divine and eternal truth. Sooner or later, the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, make themselves seen and known. The distinctions between right and wrong are eternal.

The idea of duration is not connected with eternal punishment or eternal life; for the idea of duration belongs to time, and not to eternity. Human law sentences men, for crime, to be punished by imprisonment for six months, three years, ten years, or for life; but, in God's world, there is not, and cannot be, any relation between a man's

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guilt and the precise time he is to suffer. He must suffer while he is guilty, be the time longer or shorter. When he ceases to be guilty, he must cease to suffer. He therefore fixes the duration of his suffering himself: that makes no part of the divine sentence. If he judges himself unworthy of eternal life during five, ten, one hundred, or ten thousand million years, that is for himself to say. God will never save him against his will; and God can wait. The sphere of time belongs to man's freedom; that of eternity, to the freedom of God.

And this reconciles the philosophic difficulty. Man, being free, can postpone his submission and obedience indefinitely; but, being finite, cannot postpone it infinitely. At any point of time, he may still resolve to resist the influx of eternal life, and continue in the sphere of death: but eternity surrounds time, and infolds it; and, in eternity, God's purposes will be realized, and every knee bow, of things in heaven and in earth, and under the earth. Universal harmony must prevail at last.

It is not our object to state, to criticise, or to defend Universalism. We therefore go into no argument on this side. We deal with Orthodoxy, and deny that eternal life or death means never-ending. It means vastly more. It has a vastly deeper and higher meaning. Well may we believe, that the true doctrine, when generally received, will add immensely to the power of the gospel in converting and saving souls.

But what is the vital truth in the doctrine of a future judgment? and how is Christ the Judge? A deaf and dumb child, being asked this question, replied, "Judgment is to see ourselves as we are, and to see God as he is." This is the essential thing in judgment; and in this sense Christ is declared" to be the Judge of the quick and the dead;" that is, he judges us in this world, and will judge.

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