with abolishing degrees of guilt and punishment. What would he say if its advocates retorted that there cannot possibly be degrees of punishment at all, or else God would certainly have revealed what degree of punishment each sinner was actually to receive? Surely, to borrow his own language, this is something very like the awful presumption' of 'setting up to be the judge of God,' of 'dictating to Him,' of 'arrogating to themselves the right of being wiser than God,' and, in short, indicates a fearful frame of mind.'

If we are right in our belief, that everlasting destruction is a clearly revealed truth, all objections grounded on the supposed 'danger' of promulgating it, and on the probability of its being misunderstood or abused, simply fall to the ground. A faithful ambassador will not shun to declare all the counsel of God,' so far as it has been made known to him. Whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, whether his message prove a savour of life or a savour of death, he is bound to speak what he believes, knowing, that whatever the results, he must, so far as he is a true witness, be a sweet savour of Christ.' But in this case I am quite unable to feel that any special exercise of such faith is required. I see so clearly the disastrous effects of the popular doctrine and feel so strongly how incom

parably more effective a weapon for arresting the attention of the careless is God's truth than man's attempt to improve upon it, that no risk of weak believers being disturbed, or of the truth being misunderstood and turned into licentiousness, seems too great to incur for the sake of helping to disseminate that truth.* What doctrine has not been misunderstood and abused? Are the doctrines of justification by faith, and of election, always rightly understood by those who hear them? Does the offer of free and full forgiveness for the vilest sinner always produce its proper effect upon the minds of those who theoretically believe in it? Does it not most certainly soothe multitudes into a fatal slumber? Yet who proposes to suppress it, or to promulgate it only in books for the learned? Who doubts that it is to be proclaimed aloud to the men that sit on the wall? Did not our Lord tell His apostles that what He spoke to them in the ear they were to proclaim upon the housetops? And was not one of those sayings Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in

* Mr. Grant appeals to converted persons, and asks whether it was not the conviction that punishments hereafter will be of endless duration that filled your souls with fear and trembling, and constrained you to cry out mentally, if not with an audible voice, "What must I do to be saved?" Does he really suppose that any such conviction was present to the mind of the Philippian jailor, when he asked that question?

hell? Are we to be told that this truth, of all others, is only to be confided to the initiated, or suggested in learned language for the consideration of scholars? Are we to be told, in the teeth of Christ's own words, that if it is proclaimed upon the housetops, it will cause men not to fear Him'?—that the love of life, long ago attributed to man, and talked so much about in every age, is all a delusion?-that destruction has no terrors for him, and that non-existence is the very thing he covets? What could have driven sensible men into anything so preposterous, but the unnatural state of mind engendered by the fiction of eternal torture? Destruction a 'boon'! Yes, in comparison with eternal torture. But that is comparing it with what has no existence. The alternative, the only alternative, is an endless life of perfect happiness. And what must be the horror of awaking to the consciousness that this magnificent inheritance is hopelessly lost!

There is a special reason, however, why this truth should be spoken directly to the people, rather than submitted to the consideration of them that sit in Moses' seat; namely, that in no other way will it ever reach them at all. The strength of the opposition lies in the teachers and their more devoted adherents. If this gigantic error is ever to be overturned, it will be by a

masses.

popular movement amongst the religious portion of the They will not be deterred by the fear of man, or by the fetters of tradition, from looking the question full in the face. And when they have once got a little help to set them on the right track, and prevent them being led astray by misunderstanding one or two familiar expressions, they will only wonder, as several pious and intelligent persons told me they did on hearing the following sermons, how anyone with the Bible in his hands could ever have believed that the wicked were to live for ever.

As to the deterrent effect of the common opinion upon the irreligious masses, in restraining them from open wickedness, I believe it is hardly appreciable. Whenever any fear of the future arises in their minds, it is a vague indefinite apprehension of something very terrible, which, however, can always be escaped by repenting, even at the last moment. Who can imagine that it would make the smallest practical difference to them, whether they understood the general belief of religious people to be, that the lost will live for ever in misery, or be destroyed body and soul in hell;—that they will be able to endure the wrath of God to all eternity, or be crushed to death by it? At all events, things could not be much worse than they are; and

if we might be in any degree guided by experience, the disastrous failure of the common doctrine would make us only too ready to try anything else that could pretend to the slightest warrant from Holy Scripture.

But after all, the Gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation; and it is, quite unconsciously in most cases, a defective faith in its power that makes timid Christians so alarmed at the rapidly-spreading disbelief in endless suffering. Of the many astounding things which this controversy has elicited, none can exceed the statement of an excellent Evangelical clergyman, that the hand which takes away the doctrine of eternal punishment, takes the meaning, the object, the force, the life out of the entire Gospel scheme.' So that for the words, God so loved the world,' &c., to have any meaning or force, it is necessary that we should understand 'perish' to mean live for ever in misery,' and 'everlasting life' to mean 'everlasting happiness.' To say that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation from everlasting destruction unto glory and honour and immortality; that it offers to guilty, perishing sinners, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; that, when received, it gives them eternal life, makes them partakers of the