Deacon Mutans.-If allowed to respond, I will briefly state that Dr. Doubty and his friends are desirous of taking some part in the discussion if it be compatible with their standing in the community.

Bishop Omicron.-The question propounded cannot be answered, because the church has not expressed its views of the conduct of Dr. Doubty and his friends. But as to his liberty to take part in this meeting, having cut himself off by asking a letter, and in such a way as to injure the feelings and to insult the dignity of the congregation, I know not with what consistency he can ask for such a liberty on the present occasion.

Evangelist Zenas-With your leave, brother Omicron, I ask for information whether a person, until he is separated from a church, or constitutionally withdraws from it, has not the rights of every other member? and if so, has not brother Doubty a right to participate in the discussion ? I speak, sir, at his suggestion; and as he claims not only a right in common with other members, but also a right of property in this house, being one of its most liberal contributors, I hope his right to speak will be recognized, and full liberty granted him to take part in this discussion.

Biblicus. I fear, brother Omicron, these matters will consume much of the evening; and as, in my opinion, they are at least irrelevant to the subject before us I hope they will not be discussed.

Evangelist Zenas.-Allow me, brother Omicron, to insist upon your opinion in this case. It is important that it be decided; for if not we shall be deprived of much of our strength in the present discussion. We should regard the inhibition of any of our brethren from this floor as antirepublican and partial in its bearing, however intended. I hope then, sir, it will be decided by a clear exposition of the views of the church.

Bishop Omicron.—It is with reluctance I again advert to this unpleasant case; and nothing but the fear that the evening will be improperly spent could induce me to give at this moment, and without a full discussion of the whole subject, an opinion on the affair as it now presents itself to our view. First, then, a member of a church, until convicted of some crime and excommunicated, or until he constitutionally withdraws, with consent of the community, from it, has all the rights of a member. But if by any impropriety he sins against that community, and wounds either the cause itself, or any of its friends in particular, he may be called to order, and inhibited until satisfaction be given. And this is the case before us. Brother Doubty has sinned against the Lord and this church, in my esteem, and in that of other elders of this community, in the scenes and events of the last evening, and cannot now be heard until he first make a confession of the said errors, and presents an acceptable apology, and then withdraws his request for a letter of recommendation.

But he pleads property in this house. He has not, then, given any thing to the Lord. If so, Why retain it ? But be it so : he has on that account no more privilege in Christ's church than any other member. Do men buy votes, and places, and spiritual authority, and Christian rights, because of a contribution to build a meeting house! Talk then no more of Romanists buying heaven with money. The

sin of Simon Magus, it seems, is not yet wholly repudiated. Should A give a thousand dollars, and B but one, to build a house for the Lord; A has not a thousand shares in that house for B's one. In all spiritual rights and Christian immunities they are equal. A has not a thousand times more stock in church privileges or in heavenly grace than B, if their liberality be equal. I did not imagine that we had any Protestants who claimed spiritual licences upon golden arguments. But the pecuniary part of the argument is more ungrateful to my ears than the political part of it. Brother Zenas, as a politician, may plead republicanisin in the State; but political republicanism is none of the gifts bestowed by the Messiah upon evangelists, pastors, teachers, or hearers. There is no political republicanism in heaven, in Christ's church, nor in any Christian family. The state is, indeed, a republic; that is, it is public property, public rights, immunities, and privileges. Christ, too, is a public property, or common Saviour, and he makes his blessings all public. His is a common salvation. But our virtues are more than republican virtues; and, therefore, we expect much more courtesy, subordination, and equality too, in the proper sense of these words, than in any political association. Hence no one well read in sacred learning will speak of any transaction in Christ's church as "antirepublican." I cannot, then, recognize the plea of republicanism any more than the plea of property, in conducting the affairs of Christ's church. It would be full as eloquent, as apposite, and as evangelical for an Englishman to say, in London, that such a way of proceeding is antiprelatic, or antimonarchical, as for an American to say it is antirepublican. We repudiate such language as we do Popery itself. If, then, those who disturbed the meeting last Wednesday night have no apology to offer, they have cut themselves off from any participation in the exercises of this evening.

[No response being offered by Dr. Doubty, Biblicus arose]. Biblicus. Brother Omicron, I cordially acquiesce in the decision you have pronounced; and with your leave, sir, I shall at once offer another argument after a brief enumeration of those offered. Bishop Omicron.-Proceed, brother Biblicus.

Biblicus.-We argue :

1st. From the dying commendation of his spirit to the Lord on the part of the protomartyr Stephen :-" Lord Jesus receive my spirit."

2nd. From the dying commendation of his spirit to the Lord on the part of the suffering Messiah:-" Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit."

Both of these had given up their bodies to martyrdom and the dust, but their spirits were given to God.

3rd. From the promise made to the dying thief by the author of our faith:-"To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

4th. From Paul's being unable to know whether his spirit was "in the body or out of the body," as expressed in these words :- I knew a man in Christ some fourteen years ago, caught away to Paradise; whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell-God knoweth.” If souls cannot live out of bodies, and if men both bodied and dis

embodied cannot be in Paradise, Paul could not, by any possibility, have spoken thus.

5th. From the fact that in Scripture bodies only are the tenants of the tomb, and bodies only are represented as coming out of the tomb. "Many bodies of the saints arose, went into Jerusalem, and appeared unto many." Matt. xxvii. 52.

6th. From the language employed on the reanimation of the son of the widow of Sarepta:-" The soul of the child came into him again."

7th. From the names given to the body by the Apostles Peter and Paul. They both called the body a tabernacle; they both regarded the soul as dwelling in a house, a temple, or a tabernacle. Hence the soul is a guest or a ghost. Thus said Peter:-I must soon lay aside or put off this tabernacle. There was some person that put off this tabernacle. This is corrobated by Solomon, who said, "The body returns to the dust, and the spirit to God who gave it."

8th. From demons, evil spirits, and the whole doctrine of familiar spirits, and necromancy-their possessions and dispossessions—it is shown at great length that the spirits of wicked men perish not in their bodies; and that spirits are so diverse from bodies as to go into them, and come out from them, &c. &c. No materialist or destructionist can in any plausible way whatever dispose of this argument. They can only say that demons, and familiar spirits, and all spirits are phantoms. They are phantoms, however, the belief of which has always been as universal as any sentiment, or view, or tradition ever expressed in language.

9th. From the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This comparison, founded upon facts, as all the Lord's parables are, clearly indicates that while the body is in the grave the spirit is in conscious existence, susceptible of pleasure or pain. It was before the resurrection, and while the rich man's brother was still living, that Abraham told the rich man that while Lazarus was comforted he was tormented.

10th. From the developments on opening the fifth apocalyptic seal. John "saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain on account of the Word of God and the testimony which they held ;" and they cried with great earnestness, soliciting information on the subject of the continuance of God's forbearance to punish them who had shed the blood of saints and martyrs. Now had there been no separate state, no souls distinct and separate from their bodies, how could such a case have been introduced as representing God's schemes of providence towards the living and the dead?

To these ten arguments discussed during the last evening, we shall proceed to introduce and develop a few others. And first we shall state an argument deduced from the words of the Messiah, addressed to Martha and reported by John, chap. xi., 66 Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die." Martha's faith only went so far as to repudiate a pre-millennial resurrection of the saints. She, simple woman, only believed that her good brother Lazarus should "at the resurrection rise on the LAST DAY," not a thousand years before the last day; for she was not yet technically a pre-millennial adventist;

but this point of never dying had not yet become familiar. Still, she believed it when the Lord said it.

11th. My eleventh argument then, is, that if he that believes in Christ shall never die, and as Christians actually die so far as their bodies are contemplated, their souls must certainly survive their bodies, else the Lord has deceived us.

I hold this to be as evident as any proposition can be—an argument, I humbly think, irrefragable. It bears equally against soulsleeping as against soul-dying. For if death is compared to a sleep, as some contend, in all respects, then the sleep of death, or unconscious existence after death, is wholly repudiated in the words "he shall never die;" that is, he shall never pass into a state of unconscious existence.

Zenas. With your leave, brother Omicron, I will say a few words. As I have been made to waver in my educational belief touching the future state of the wicked and also concerning the state of conscious existence between death and the resurrection, since I have heard some of the Adventists deliver themselves on the subject of destruction— "EVERLASTING DESTRUCTION," I am anxious to hear what can be said on the other side; and, therefore, wonder not if I should occasionally offer an objection or two, drawn from their reasonings and quotations. This eleventh argument seems to be a host itself; provided it cannot be shown to be an hyperbole. May it not only mean, that while wicked souls die, good souls shall only sleep from death to the resurrection.

Deacon Mutans.-That resembles the saying of an evangelist in Kentucky, who said he would be glad not only to free his mind and the world of the hyperbole of everlasting life in misery, but the whole universe; but on being asked what "everlasting punishment" meant, said, he could not tell, unless everlasting destruction and everlasting punishment meant everlasting nonentity. And, continued he, what a beautiful and sublime idea-an universe without a hell, a groan, or an evil spirit!

Biblicus. And why not add, without a Satan? But if Satan and his angels can consistently be annihilated, would it not have been better to have annihilated them before the world began, than to annihilate them after the work of seducing the human family shall have been consummated in the eternal destruction of untold millions!

Deacon Mutans.-But some of the speculators of the Universalism genus, make Satan a metaphor, hell an hyperbole, and everlasting destruction a literal annihilation; and so they metamorphose the literal into the figurative, and the figurative into the literal.

Biblicus. From all such unlearned and unthinking speculators let us turn away to the Bible and its common sense interpretations. Our Saviour has solemnly said that a true believer shall never die. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were true believers, and have been dead some three thousand five hundred years, and all believers have died, so far as all other animals have died. If, then, their souls survive not their bodies, and are not now living somewhere, then our Saviour's words are false. From which conclusion there is no escape open to any materialist, to any one that denies a separate state in

which spirits live after their animal existence is defunct. Here, then, I shall institute a twelfth argument which greatly corroborates the eleventh, and will open a new field of thought.

12th. My twelfth argument shall be deduced from an argument offered to the Sadducees by the Messiah in person, as reported by Luke, in the words following, to wit:-" Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. There was therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection whose wife of them is she, for seven had her to wife? And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead but of the living; for all live unto him.” Luke xx. To understand this most important passage, we must quote another from Luke's Acts of the Apostles, chap. xxiii. 6-8, "But when Paul perceived that the one part of them were Sadducees, and the other part Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both." "The Pharisees acknowledge BOTH"-two tenets, not one. Angels and spirits are the one tenet-the resurrection of the body, the other. The Sadducees deny spirits and a future state; consequently, the resurrection of the body. The non-resurrection of the body was, therefore, a mere consequence of their doctrine. Now the Messiah always aims a blow at the root, the tap-root of the system of error. He proves that spirits are; that the spirits of the dead ARe. The Sadducees say they are NOT. Jesus affirms not that they were, but that they ARE. Abraham is dead, and Isaac is dead, and Jacob is dead, said the Sadducees, wholly dead: "spirits are not, bodies only are; and as their bodies once were, but are not, the resurrection is absurd." But Jesus affirmed that they are; and his proof is, that God is the God of Abraham-of some existing person-not the God of what was; but the God of what is. Therefore, as he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob now livealways live. For adds he, "All live to God.”—“ If dead to us, they are alive to him." "But their bodies are yet in Palestine; their sepulchres are yet with us. For David nor Abraham is not yet