in controversy. word of proof, as if it were a self-evident proposition, and that in two different parts of his book, that if God inflicts any limited amount of suffering upon the condemned, before destroying them, it must be done ' gratuitously,' without any moral necessity, because He ' is a vindictive Being,'' actuated by a spirit of revenge,' and 'luxuriating in the frightful misery of millions of those whom He called into existence, without its being necessary that He should do so, whereas '—pray let the reader observe the quietness of the assumption—' the doctrine of eternal punishment is based on the belief that nothing less will satisfy the demand of Divine justice.' I thought it was supposed to be based upon two or three texts of Scripture. The doctrine of limited suffering is certainly based upon some hundreds. And those positive declarations of God's Word establish the 'belief,' which, from the moral nature that God has given us, we might even of ourselves judge to be right,'* that some penal suffering, how much or how little we cannot tell, is necessary to satisfy the de

He deliberately asserts, without a

* Even Mr. Grant says: 'Let me now very briefly invite attention to what Reason says on the subject.' But when we invite attention to it, even though we feel a thorough persuasion that it speaks the same language as Inspiration,' we are stigmatised as 'Rationalists,' and are sharply, rebuked for setting up our own judgment against the Word of God.

mands of Divine justice,' but that endless suffering would violently outrage that justice. The worst part of the matter is, that Mr. Grant puts this gratuitous' aspect of the case as if it were part of our doctrine. No one would gather a hint from his remarks that we could possibly believe in any necessity for limited suffering. As I have said, in dealing with Mr. Minton's arguments in his newly-published work, there is something so utterly unlike the character of God, and so awfully dishonouring to Him, in the belief that He will gratuitously subject His creatures,' &c. What is this but to represent it as my belief,' in defence of which I have adduced arguments,' that God will ' gratuitously' inflict punishment upon His creatures? The writer in the Bible Treasury adopts the same subterfuge. 'Pure vengeance for a lengthened period on what is to perish is gratuitous misery.' Then what must the vengeance' be that is inflicted for an endless period on what is never to perish!

So also Mr. Waller, Tutor of St. John's Hall, Highbury, thus represents my argument:

'It is inconceivable that a God of love should keep any of His creatures in everlasting tortures, though they may still be of service in His dominion, as I shall presently show. But it is quite conceivable that for no

purpose whatever (!) except mere vengeance and retribution, a God of love should keep some of His creatures in prolonged torment, simply to annihilate them when it is over. What should we think of a law which, having condemned a criminal to death, sentenced him to be first imprisoned and tortured to his utmost powers of endurance, as long as he could possibly be kept alive? Is this more merciful or more just than the doctrine which Mr. Minton condemns? To my mind it is most monstrous. It is like the old barbarous laws of disembowelling, burning alive, boiling, crucifying, impaling, starving, pressing to death those sentenced to die. The ultimate annihilation makes the previous torture hard indeed to justify!'

Most certainly, as compared with his own view, that the tortures will be continued for ever, and death never be allowed to release the sufferer from them, even the above monstrous caricature of the doctrine of Scripture would be tender mercy itself.

Strangest of all, even Mr. Garbett has endorsed this palpable fallacy.

"We most fully agree in the view so vividly expressed by Mr. Grant in his book, that this belief appears to the mind most horrible, and incalculably to exceed in horror the ordinary orthodox doctrine. For, in this

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case, God must be supposed to keep the wicked alive in order that He may torment them, lingering over the process of dissolution as if to crowd into it as much agony as possible; whereas, in the orthodox view the eternity of existence is but a part of that mystery of being with which God endowed His creatures at the beginning, and the endless suffering but a perversion of that lofty capacity of nature which was formed to be a vehicle of everlasting joy, and which human sin alone has changed into a vehicle of everlasting suffering.'

*

Surely God can withdraw any nature with which He has endowed' any of 'His creatures at the beginning.' Every creature is dependent upon God for existence from one moment to another. 'In Him we live, and

* This is certainly not the view that was taken of ' endless suffering' by that profound and learned divine, Jonathan Edwards, if we may judge from the following passage in his writings, which describes something very much beyond a perversion' of man's lofty capacity of nature'::

'The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire-a vast ocean of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves or billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall for ever be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, and their vitals shall for ever be full of a glowing, melting fire, enough to melt the very rocks and elements. Also they shall be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments-not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, nor for two ages, nor for a thousand ages, nor for ten thousand of millions of ages, one after another, but for ever and ever, without any end at all, and never, never be delivered!'

move, and have our being.' Therefore, when a moral creature like man has turned his lofty capacity of nature' into a curse, God may either deprive him of life altogether, or leave him to endure the consequences of his own sin. In the latter case, it is to all intents and purposes keeping him alive.' No creature can live an instant longer than God chooses. "The mystery of his being' may affect the mode in which Divine is exerted for its sustenance; but, pracpower tically, an Archangel is kept alive by God as much as an insect.* It is, therefore, a purely gratuitous, groundless assumption, to say that it may be necessary to keep fallen creatures alive for ever under punishment, but that it cannot be necessary to keep them alive under it for a time. The argument that no limited

* Since writing the above, I have met with the same argument in the Rainbow, March 1869:

'To our aspirations for eternity, Scripture answers by the promise of eternal life through Christ Jesus; but there it stops. An essential immortality of the soul it denies as explicitly as it denies it to the body. To one Being only-to God-does it allow to have 'Life in Himself:' of one Being only-God-does it allow immortality, i.e. the absolute incapacity of death (å¤avaoía), to be an attribute (John v. 26; 1 Tim. vi. 16). And here, as in everything else, Scripture is the book of the highest reason. That which has had a beginning may have an end. That on which God has bestowed life He may and can inflict death upon. The highest intelligences, as much as the lowest, must depend on Him for the continuance of their life. Let Him withdraw His sustaining power, and the mighty archangel becomes a thing of naught as completely as the insect which dances in the sunbeams for an hour and then passes away for ever.'