limits eternally the divine Omnipotence; for the omnipotence of God is in carrying out his will to have all men saved by becoming holy. Unless God's laws are obeyed, God is not obeyed; and he is not sovereign if not obeyed. Hell is a condition of things hostile to God's will: it is a permanent and successful rebellion of a part of the universe. It is no answer to say, that it is shut up, and restrained, and made to suffer; for it is not conquered. God has conquered sin only when he has reduced it to obedience. Hell is no more subject to God than the Confederate States, during the rebellion, were subject to the United States government. They were shut up by a blockade; they were restrained by great armies and navies; they were made to suffer; but they were not reduced to submission and obedience.

Nor is it any answer to say, that the existence of sin and suffering hereafter no more limits God's omnipotence than their existence here and now limits his omnipotence. For the question is of ETERNAL suffering. Temporal suffering hereafter, we grant, is no objection to the divine Omnipotence. Limited and finite evil, in this world or the other, is no philosophical difficulty; and for this reason that finite evil, when compared with infinite good, becomes logically and mathematically no evil. The finite disappears in relation to the infinite. All the sufferings and sins of earth, through all ages, are strictly nothing when viewed in the light of the eternal joy and holiness which are to result from them. This is a postulate of pure reason. Make evil finite, and good infinite, make evil temporal, and good eternal, — and evil ceases to be anything. But make evil eternal, as is done by this doctrine, and then we have Manicheism dualism on the throne of the universe.

an infinite

§ 5. Everlasting Punishment contradicts the Fatherly Love of God.-This doctrine is a relapse on Paganism, and derived from it. It has nothing to do with Christianity, except to corrupt it. No man was ever made better by believing

it: multitudes have been made worse. It attributes to our heavenly Father conduct that, if done by the worst of men, would add a shade of increased wickedness to their character. It assumes that God has made intelligent creatures with the intention of tormenting some of them forever. It assumes that those who are thus created, exposed to this awful risk, are to be thus tormented, unless they happen to pass through what is called an Orthodox conversion in this short earthly life. God keeps them alive forever in order to torture them forever.

The barbarity of this opinion exceeds all power of language to express. We are accustomed to mourn over the anguish and misery that are in this world. The problem of earthly evil has been a burden and anxiety to good men in all times, a great question for thinkers in all ages. The only satisfactory solution is, that it is temporary and educational; that it is to pass away, and, in passing, to create a higher joy and goodness than could otherwise have come. But the doctrine of everlasting punishment not only annuls this explanation, and makes it impossible to explain earthly evil, but adds to it a tenfold greater mystery. The fatherly character of God disappears in Pagan darkness, in view of this horrid doctrine; for the everlasting suffering of one human being contains in itself more evil than the accumulated sufferings of all mankind from the creation of the world to the end of it. Add together all the sicknesses, bereavements, disappointments, of all mankind; all the wars, famines, pestilences, that have tormented humanity; add to these all the mental and moral pangs produced by selfishness and sin in all ages, and all that are to be to the end of time, and these all combined are logically and mathematically nothing, compared with the sufferings of one human being destined to be everlastingly punished. For all temporal sufferings added together are finite; but this is infinite.

Now, the being who could inflict such torture as this is

not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There may be some deity of cruelty, some incarnation of wrath and despotism, in the Hindoo Pantheon, capable of such terrific wickedness. It is no answer to say that God inflicts suffering now in this world, and therefore he may inflict everlasting suffering in the other; for these are all finite; that is infinite. Finite suffering may result in greater good, may be an education to good; but everlasting suffering cannot. The finite and infinite cannot be compared together. There is no analogy between them.

The God of the New Testament is our Father. If he inflicts suffering, it is for our good; "not for his pleasure, but for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness." All earthly suffering finds this solution, and accords with the fatherly character of God in this point of view. Much, no doubt, cannot be now fully understood. We do not see how it tends to good; but all suffering that ends MAY end in good. Suffering that does not end CANNOT end in good.

If human beings are everlastingly punished, it must either be that they go on sinning forever, and cannot repent, lose all power of repentance, and so cease to be moral agents, or else that they retain the power of repenting, and therefore may repent. In the first case, God continues to punish forever those who have ceased to sin, because their freedom and moral power have ceased; or else he punishes forever those who have repented, and so ceased sinning. In either case, God must punish everlastingly those who have ceased to be sinners; which is incredible.

If God is a Father, he is at least as good as the best earthly father. Now, what father or mother would ever consent to place a child in a situation where there was even a chance of its running such an awful risk? God has created us with these liabilities to sin; he has (according to Orthodoxy) chosen and determined that we shall be born wholly prone to evil, and sure to fall into eternal and unending ruin, unless

he saves us by a special act of grace. "What man among you, being a father," would do so? Custom dulls our sense to these horrors. Let us therefore imagine a case far less terrible. Suppose that a number of parents should establish a school, to which to send their children. Suppose they should arrange a code of laws for the school of such a stringent character that all the children are sure to break it. Under the school are vaults containing instruments of torture. For each offence against the laws of the school (offences which the children cannot fail to commit) they are to be punished by imprisonment for life in these cells, with daily torture, from racks, thumb-screws, and the like. A few of them are to be selected from the rest, not for any merit of their own, but by an arbitrary decree of the parents, and are to be rewarded (not for their superior good conduct, but according to the caprice of the parents) with every luxury and privilege. Among these privileges is included that of taking a daily walk through the cells, and witnessing the horrible sufferings of their brothers and companions, and hearing their shrieks of anguish, and praising the JUSTICE of their parents in thus punishing some and rewarding the rest.

But this, you may say, is not a parallel case. No, we grant it is not, for what are these torments to that of a neverending futurity? They are all as nothing. Therefore every such comparison must utterly fail of doing justice to the diabolic cruelty ascribed to the Almighty by this Orthodox doctrine.

"But what right," says the Orthodox defender of this doctrine, "have we to reason in this way concerning the divine proceedings, by the analogy of earthly parents? What right have we to compare God's doings with those of a human father?" No right, perhaps, as philosophers; but as Christians we have not only the right to do it, but it is our duty to do so. Jesus has himself taught us to use this analogy, in order to acquire confidence in God's ways, and to assure

ourselves that God cannot fail of acting as we should expect a good and wise earthly parent to act. "What man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?" (Matt. 7:9-11.) Jesus authorizes and commands us to reason from the parental nature in man to that in God. Instead of simply assuring us of it, on the ground of his own authority to teach us; instead of saying, "Believe this, because I say it," he says, "Believe it, because it accords with your own convictions and with human nature."

§ 6. Attempts to modify and soften the Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment. — The reasons for the late efforts to support this terrific doctrine are probably to be found in a widespread and increasing disbelief concerning it, pervading the churches nominally Orthodox. This has come from the growing intelligence and progressive movements of thought in the Christian Church. The evidences of this belief are numerous and increasing. Those who reject the Orthodox view are a numerous body, but divided into several parties. There are the old-fashioned Universalists, a valiant race,men of war from their youth, who, under the lead of such men as Hosea Ballou and Thomas Whittemore, have spent their lives in fighting the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Very naturally, perhaps, they went to the opposite extreme of opinion, and denied all future suffering. But this view has, we think, ceased to be the prevailing one among the Universalists. The doctrine of ultimate restoration has very generally taken its place. This doctrine also prevails widely in other denominations; not only among the liberal bodies, like the Unitarians, but also among Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. It has widely spread, as is well known, in Germany. It was held by Schleiermacher,