ENDLESS PUNISHMENT TOO TER

RIBLE FOR BELIEF.

In protesting against the monstrous idea of Endless Punishment, we are not compelled to magnify a number of small things, and thus seem to build up an argument. There are many reasons, each of which is sufficient to settle the question. When once the moral nature is aroused to attempt to grasp the horrid idea of an endless continuity of vengeful acts, by which man is to be punished of God, and his immortality to be made but pain and agony, every utterance of that nature is an unanswerable argument against the truth of the terrible thought. The commonest moral sense is outraged. All ideas of justice are violated, and it is impossible for a moment to entertain the thought alongside of the truth, "God is love." Suppose the world ignorant of the Christian revelation, and when the late discoveries on the site of ancient Nineveh were made, a scroll unharmed by the waste of time, was found; suppose that scroll unrolled, and through the interpretations of science should be read the two ideas, "God is love," "Endless

Punishment is the doom of those who die in sin." Would not our common nature rebel against the unity of these ideas? We can conceive of love punishing, but there is no soul that can conceive of love punishing endlessly; that idea annihilates the conception of love being present in the ever-continuing evil. And those who are the most consistent in advocating endless evil, do not claim that love has anything to do with this matter; they say, "God is never weary in punishing." "If the wrath of man is as the roaring of a lion, what must be the wrath of Almighty God!" "Your body (i. e. in the resurrection), shall be as fully possessed of God's burning vengeance, as the sparkling iron with fire, when heated in the hottest furnace." And that the absolute unendingness of the punishment may be certain in our thoughts, we are told, that "wrath is terrible, but REVENGE is implacable." This "revenge will be the delight of the Almighty," "God will stand over thee with the rod in his hand and lay it on."

Now, who would not protest against this Idea of un tterable

Horror from one single motive,-a disgust at seeing the worst passions of the worst human being made infinite in God! This doctrine does. euthrone a Being of Infinite Cruelty as the Sovereign of the universe. The language in which the Idea used t be conveyed, is the justest--the most appropriate the most vivid. When men revolt at the proper clothing of their thought, the story is told of what they really feel. If the idea of endless torture is true, then the old fashioned terms in which it was set forth, are as truly appropriate to it as our Saviour's comparison of the sepulchres full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness, was a proper embodiment of the state of the inward being of those he addressed.

But why do people now shrink from the most appropriate language of their great idea? Because they do not want to see the thought it makes known-it is too much like making the "evangelical" Satan visible. They shrink from the spirit that moulded the language. And here is the greatest obstacle in the way of the advance of truth: People will not labor to make real what they profess to believe, that which is deemed by them to be the very essence of all godliness, and which can no more be given up, as they think, without destroying the holiness of the church, than the body can survive the departure of the spirit. It would seem that an idea deemed so important would demand the greatest efforts at elaboration. It would seem as though the man who could make it most real-most vivid, would, of all men, be deemed the friend of the church, and his words-his pictures, be reproduced in every pulpit.

But no! The church shrinks from realizing the idea to which it gives such tremendous importance. It never concentrates the mind to at

tempt to grasp the thought in all its manifold horror-its terrible signifi cance its unspeakable vindictiveness-its hideous revengefulness. Those who attempt it go mad; cr, like Saurin, immediately think of those who have gone mad, by a farther effort than they themselves have made. Reason is not an Atlas strong enough to bear up such a world of horror, when once placed on the power of thought as a burden. staggers-crouches-falls,-and were it not for the element of hope and trust mingled in our being, never wholly made inactive, it would be crushed to nothingness.

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Now, this is a moral argument that the idea is not true; and we can but say, that the ease with which the profession of belief in the monstrous doctrine sits on the professor, is evidence that it is taken rather on trust, than from any clear conception of what it is, and why it is received. John Foster, in speaking of those who profess, and doubtless honestly profess to receive this doctrine, says: "I repeat, I am, without pretending to any extraordinary depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they contrive to do with their sensibility, and in what manner they maintain a firm assurance of the Divine goodness and justice. Yet I see numbers of these good men preserving, apparently without great effort, a tone of equanimity, sometimes excited to hilarity, while every where closely surrounded by creatures whom, as not being subjects of Divine grace, they deliberately regard as the destined victims of eternal fire."

It was this that first woke Channing to consider the claims of the theology of his time, as told us in his "Memoir," and in a note to his eloquent sermon at Newport, R. I., he speaks of the famous Dr. Hopkins, and his facetiousness, and says:

"This facetiousness may seem to some who are unacquainted with the world, not consistent with the severity of his theology; but nothing is more common than this apparent self-contradiction. The ministers, who deal most in terrors, who preach doctrines which ought to make their flesh creep, and to turn their eyes into fountains of tears, are not generally distinguished by their spare forms or haggard countenances. They take the world as easily as people of a milder creed; and this does not show that they want sincerity or benevolence. It only shows how superficially men may believe in doctrines, which yet they shudder to relinquish. It shows how little the import of language which is thundered from the lips, is comprehended and felt. I should not set down as hard-hearted, a man whose appetite should be improved by preaching a sermon full of images and threatenings of a bottomless hell.'" Channing adds, "that the best meals are sometimes made after such effusions."

Sometimes we say, we thank God that these professed believers do not make real to themselves their professed belief; but such thanks are not always reasonable. We ought to pray that they may attempt to grasp the idea they deem so important; for never till they see it never till they weigh it never till they hold it before them, will it be to them what it should be. But they have not the power to apprehend it fully. It is a monster of imagination that was conjured up to alarm and terrify; and if those go mad who see the faintest outline of its image, what would be the fate of those who should be able to do more! We wish it might come at least with as much power as the vision of Eliphaz, when in the thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,

fear came upon him, making not merely his nerves, but his very bones to shake, as a spirit passed before him, and the hair of his flesh stood up. It stood still, but he could not discern the form thereof. But he saw enough to strike horror into the centre of his being. There was an image before his eyes; there was silence; and he heard a voice. And what did the Phantom Preacher utter? He uttered what the church needs to hear now; and I wish it might be waked in this night of indifference, to the real horror of what is professed to be believed; and though I would not ask that the full terribleness of their creed be represented, for it cannot be, yet I would have an image stand before their eyes,-an image in some little degree approaching the thought, --an infinitesimal of the fulness of the professed idea, for that would be enough to make their bones shake and the hair of their flesh to stand up. But what did the Phantom Preacher declare in the awful stillness of that terrible night to Eliphaz? "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" THAT is the question they need to ponder. It presses home the thought, what are our ideas of justice? What is it to be just?

This throws us upon our moral nature and call us to exercise its attributes. The church denies us this privilege. It forbids us to question the truth of the common doctrine of endless evil, and says we are preSumptuous and profane in attempting to judge what is right in God. Why does the church make itself guilty by advocating that it is right in God to punish endlessly?

Why not erect our altars "To the Unknown God?" Why not do so, and when we are told, "Ye worship ye know not what," answer, in all sincerity, "Very true; we do not presume to judge what is right in God.

We worship the UNKNOWN." But this were to violate nature and common sense. And that same exercise of mind which keeps from Atheism," which gives us a God to love and adore, which leads us through History to gratitude for his Providence, and which enables us to accept his Revelation and acknowledge the Authority and Redeeming Mediatorship of Jesus the Christ, is the exercise by which we presume to question the consistency of the idea of "endless punishment" with "God is love."

We are told to remember our finite capacities; we do so, and reject the idea of endless punishment as disproportionate to a race with finite capacities. We are told not to be wise above measure; and we heed it, being equally careful not to be wise below the measure of common intelligence. We are told to yield our questions, with the assurance that God will make the matter all plain hereafter; but we answer, we shall be finite there as here, and if here it is presumptuous and profane to judge these matters by reason of our finite capacities, it will be there. But as the last resort, we are assured that the redeemed will have their social sympathies so far annihilated as may be necessary to prevent the mystery of a redeeming God being an endless punisher of some of their friends, from disturbing them; yet to this we have an answer, that it is not pretended that this is any where predicted, and were it to take place, God would thus destroy one of the most beautiful elements of Our spiritual nature; and what becomes of the great argument that endless punishment is necessary as an ample? The social susceptibilities gone, pity gone, with that loss must go all capacity to be influenced by the torment of the world of misery.

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What mean all these attempts at

explaining away difficulties, if the questions of the soul respecting the justice of the result which suggests the difficulties, are presumptuous and profane? Why indulge the profaneness of the mind by trying to meet its reasonings? The answer is plain. The church knows that the moral nature of the inquirer is roused to the most important of all subjects next to the immortality of man, and something must be done to quiet thought. It dares not rest the argument with the assertion, "you are presumptuous and profane." profane." It

knows the best and humblest minds have been disturbed with these difficulties, difficulties which they have carried to their altar of private prayer, where they have groaned in utter prostration of spirit over the awful mystery, Is the spirit of God brooding over the creation or development of an absolutely endless evil? Professor Stuart says,-"If there are any whose breasts are strangers to such difficulties as these, they are to be congratulated on having made attainments almost beyond the reach of humanity in the present world; or else to be pitied for ignorance, or the want of a sympathy which seems to be among the first elements of our social nature. With the great mass of thinking Christians, I am sure such thoughts as these must, unhappily for them, be acquaintances too familiar. That they agitate our

breasts AS STORMS DO THE MIGHTY DEEP, will be testified by every man of a tender heart, and who has a deep concern in the present and future well being of those whom he loves."

That is what we want,- we want the thought of endless evil to agitate the breast as storms do the mighty deep. We want the power of the terrible idea to stir the very depths of the moral and social nature.