because his own experience was not deeper, they rose, or were suffered to rise, into occasions of mischief and difficulty. Had the powerful spring-tide of piety as well as mind overflowed his being, there would have been no breakers in the sea. Had Foster's mind been lifted, for example, to a post of observation like that of Edwards, when he wrote the history of Human Redemption, what a very different view he would have taken of the economy of human existence with its lurid shades. He has such a post now, we doubt not, amidst the "sanctities of heaven."

The truth of Eternal Retribution is a citadel defended by many batteries. So fast as to the vision of an enemy one seems to be demolished, another rises. In the Scriptures, in human reason, from analogy, from the nature of things, from the character of God, from the character of man, the evidence is solemn and overwhelming. You may play your game of escape, if the laws of evidence be disregarded, but with one who holds you to logical conclusions, in every possible move you are check-mated. You cannot put the various doctrines of the Bible in any relative array but they lead to this; you cannot exclude this from any possible combination. And any one of the elements of the Scriptural problem given, may lead you through the whole circle of Truth. Given, the Atonement; to find the character of man, and its relation to the element of retribution;-that would do it. Or, given, the character of man and the character of God; to find the element of retribution; that would do it. Or, given, the necessity of Divine Grace to fit the soul for heaven, the atonement being the sole condition of that grace; to find the element of retribution; that would do it. Or, given, the existence and agency of fallen spirits; to find man's retribution; that would do it. Or, given, the bare offer of eternal life; that would do it. Or, given, the benevolence of God, the axiom of the universe, GOD IS LOVE; that would do it. For all retribution is invested with the atmosphere of Love, and had not God been Love, he might have let the guilty go unpunished. But Justice only does the work of Love, and Love works by Justice for the purity and blessedness of the universe. Where there is sin, Love without wrath, without retribution, would only be connivance with iniquity. There is no such thing as Love without Justice, or Justice without Penalty, or Penalty without execution, or execution with end, so long as there is sin.

Even in our natural theology, sin being given, pain is absolutely necessary, in order to prove the benevolence of God. So that the problem and the answer might be stated thus: Given, the fact of sin, how will you demonstrate that God is a good being? Answer: Only by proving that God punishes sin. In this view, the actual degree of misery with which earth is filled, so far from being a difficulty in God's government, goes to establish it as God's. Å malevolent being would have let men sin, without making them

miserable; therefore, God could not be proved benevolent, unless, in a world of sin, there were the ingredient of misery.

But the arrangement in this world is imperfect, even to a pagan mind, and leaves the system open to doubt as to God's justice, because sin is so often without punishment, and the wicked escape. But if they escape here only to meet a perfect retribution hereafter, the doubt is removed. Here, then, in this world, we see only the seeds, the roots, the imperfect development of a system, which has its perfection in the eternal world. Such is the inevitable argument from our natural theology. A mind like Bishop Butler's, not withheld, as Foster's was, by permitted doubts as to the Divine goodness, from pressing the argument to its logical conclusion, finds in the eternal world the completion of the system, which is but begun in this. Then there comes in revelation, to bring the prophecy of our natural theology to an absolute certainty, detailing beforehand the perfect provisions of the Divine government, and showing that the partial flashes of justice in this world are but the restraint of the Divine indignation, under a system of mercy through the death of the Son of God; so that while there are intimations enough of retributive justice to warn men of what is to come, if they do not avail themselves of that mercy; there is restraint enough of retributive justice to constitute a perfect probation, and leave unembarrassed the entire free-agency of There is retribution enough to show that God can and will punish sin; retribution so little, as to show that what he does not do here, he will do hereafter.

man.

In such a system, the very provisions of mercy are manifestly an overwhelming proof that there can be mercy in no other way. The provisions of mercy, if rejected, return into sanctions of the law, and are the greatest assurances of an endless retribution. Just thus is the argument conducted in the Scriptures. And it must be a most singular perversity of mind, that, accepting humbly of those provisions for itself, as the only possible way of salvation, at the same time condemns the goodness of God in not saving without those provisions, the persons who reject them. It is turning the whole foundations of argument upside down, and putting things in the very reverse order from that which they occupy in the Scriptures. It is this reverse order which Mr. Foster takes. Given, Justification by Faith alone; to save that part of the world which continues rebellious, without faith. Or, in other words, given, the Atonement for Believers; to save unbelievers in spite of it.

There is no shadow of such a problem presented for solution in the Word of God. The question is not even mooted of the possibility of such salvation. If there be any form of question about it, it is presented in such a shape, as to constitute a new and more impregnable variety in the argument of retribution; not, how can

they be saved? but, how can they escape, who neglect so great salvation? Given, by God's mercy, the Atonement; what MUST become of those who reject it? That is the solemn path, into which our inquisitive thoughts are turned in the Scriptures.

There is a marked contradiction between Mr. Foster's line of reasoning on this subject, and his practical solemnity and power in the enforcement of repentance. Take, for example, those admirable letters written to assist a soul on the verge of the Eternal world in its preparation for the change from this world to that. He never glances at a possibility of there being safety in the Eternal world, without a previous reliance upon Christ in this. His whole argument, in all the solemnity which Foster, of all men, possessed a surpassing ability to throw around it, so that it seems as a dark cloud coming to brood over the spirit with mutterings of thunder, is constructed here and elsewhere on the impossibility of blessedness in heaven without regeneration by Divine grace; the impossibility of that grace, except on a personal application to, and reliance upon, the Divine Mediator; the impossibility of guilt being taken away but by relying wholly on the Saviour of the world; the impossibility of pardon, without seeking pardon through his blood. To all this he adds the inveteracy and profoundness of human depravity, the utterly perverted state of every heart. "It is here," says he, speaking to a dear and most amiable young friend, "that we need pardoning mercy to remove the guilt, and the operations of the Divine Spirit to transform our nature and reverse its tendencies. It is thus alone that we can be made fit for the community and felicity of heaven." And to all this he is wont to add the emphatic pressure of the danger of delay, lest the opportunity be passed by, and the immortal spirit be "driven away in its wickedness," unprepared to meet its Judge.

What is there behind all this? What does it indicate? A deep, unfathomable conviction of the danger of eternal retribution, a conviction which sinks Foster's sentences into the conscience as with the pen of a diamond; a conviction which goes beforehand with the reader, and prepares the mind to receive the impression from Foster's solemnity of appeal, stamped as with the weight of a mountain. The conviction in Foster's mind was indeed habitually wrestling with doubt; but whenever he addressed himself to the work of warning an immortal being, the instinctive energy of the conviction, quickened by anxiety for another, seemed to thrust the doubt down, and the tide of solemn thought pressed unimpeded onward. Such declarations of Foster's belief as this, that it is only by the Scriptural view of the Mediator that "all our guilt can be removed from the soul, and dissevered from its destiny in the life to come," indicate a reef of thought on this subject, over which the anxieties of his mind were thundering incessantly. The student in theology, or young minister to whom he addressed a letter

so palpably inconsistent with the practical tenor of his writings, might have answered him with the question, What mean the breakers on that reef? What is that destiny in the life to come, from which guilt cannot be dissevered?

And he may be answered now, in Foster's own language, taken from his earlier work on the Importance of Religion, with a positive answer in the shape of a returning question: "The question comes to you, whether you can deliberately judge it better to carry forward a corrupt nature, uncorrected, untransformed, unreclaimed to God, into the future state, WHere it must be MISERABLE, than to undergo whatever severity is indispensable in the process of true religion, which would prepare you for a happy eternity. Reflect that you are every day practically answering the question. Can it be that you are answering it in the affirmative? Do I really see before me the rational being who in effect avows:-I cannot, will not, submit to such a discipline, though in refusing it and resisting it, I renounce an infinite and eternal good, and consign myself to PERDITION?"

He may be answered with another sentence, taken from the same powerful work of Mr. Foster, and applied by Foster himself, as the final answer to those who question the truth of that "appalling estimate of future ruin," presented by the evangelical religious doctrine an answer which the writer himself would have done well to put up in characters of fire over his own entrance to the consideration of the subject:-"We have only to reply, that, as he has not yet seen the world of retribution, HE IS TO TAKE HIS ESTIMATE OF ITS AWARDS FROM THE DECLARATION OF HIM, WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE, AND THAT IT IS AT HIS PERIL HE ASSUMES TO ENTERTAIN ANY OTHER.

Here we rest. This single sentence contains a wisdom that quite sets aside Mr. Foster's whole letter on the subject of Divine Penalty. God only knows the retributions of eternity, and it is at our peril that we assume to entertain any other estimate of them, than that which his words distinctly reveal.

We cannot better close our notices of this subject, and of these intensely interesting volumes, than by quoting two of the remarks in Mr. Foster's Journal, numbered 321 and 323.

"We are, as to the grand system and series of God's government, like a man who, confined in a dark room, should observe through a chink in the wall, some large animal pacing by;-he sees but an extremely small strip of the animal at once as it passes by, and is utterly unable to form an idea of the size, proportions, or shape of it."

"How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations, which conscience is solemnly preaching to the heart. If they are neglected, the difficulty and indisposition are increasing every month. The mind is receding, degree after degree, from the warm and hopeful zone, till at last it will enter the arctic circle, and become fixed in relentless and eternal ice."

Out of the first three hundred articles in this Journal, prepared with great care by Mr. Foster's own hand, only twenty-eight have been published; of the others, likewise, many are omitted. We cannot conceive the reason for this procedure. It would seem pro

per to have published the whole of the Journal; it will be strange indeed, if it be not demanded by the earnest desire to know all that can be known of the mental and spiritual processes of so remarkable a mind. Appended to these volumes are some deeply interesting notices of Mr. Foster, as a preacher and companion, by John Sheppard, author of Thoughts on Devotion, and other productions.

We have spoken of that delightful trait in Mr. Foster's noble nature, his childlike ingenuousness. There was in him a striking combination of simplicity of purpose, independence, originality, and fearlessness of human opinion. Now if he had possessed, along with these qualities, a greater degree of wisdom in practical judgment, we believe we should have seen in the memorials of his biography more of positive faith, and less of the workings of anxious disquieting, and sometimes agonizing doubt. There are seasons of doubt and darkness in Christian experience, which man should keep from man, and carry only to God. He should keep them, not because he fears the tribunal of human opinion, but fears to add what may be the wrongfulness of his own state of mind to the sum of error and unbelief in the world. He should cease from man, and wait patiently upon God for light, because he loves his fellow beings, and is unwilling by his own uncertainties, which may spring from he knows not how many evil influences, to run the hazard of balancing their uncertainty on the wrong side. It is no part of a childlike ingenuousness to give utterance always to whatever may perplex the soul in its conflicts with the powers of darkness.

The admirable constitution of the mind of Robert Hall in reference to this subject has been developed by Mr. Foster himself in his own original and forcible style. In that part of his remarks on Mr. Hall's character as a preacher, he has alluded to the peculiar tendency in some minds to brood over the shaded frontier of awful darkness on the borders of our field of knowledge. "There are certain mysterious phenomena," says he, "in the moral economy of our world, which compel, and will not release, the attention of a thoughtful mind, especially if of a gloomy constitutional tendency. Wherever it turns, it still encounters their portentous aspect; often feels arrested and fixed by them as under some potent spell; making an effort, still renewed, and still unavailing, to escape from the appalling presence of the vision." Mr. Foster is here evidently disclosing something of the habit of his own experience. He was longing to have the oppression upon his mind alleviated; and he thought that the strenuous deliberate ex