that after the offender has suffered all he deserves to suffer, that he deserves a little more; so that God may have the honor ot granting him a pardon.

Suppose our governor should call one of the penitentiary convicts before him, at the conclusion of the culprit's term of imprisonment, and very gravely grant him a pardon for his past offence. Would he not make himself ridiculous in the eyes of every one, and entitle himself to the sarcastic thanks of the culprit, for exercising his gratuitous benefaction toward him when he did not stand in need of it?

Universalians may take the other horn of the dilemma, if they please, and say that sinners do not suffer in this life all they deserve to suffer; therefore God pardons them when they

die. Well if they do not suffer all they deserve to suffer inthis life, they surely deserve to suffer in the next, or they would not stand in need of pardon. O, but say the univer salians they do not deserve to suffer forever. Well if they do not, then, like the culprit in the penitentiary, if they stay out their time they may get out of hell without being indebted to divine mercy.

Thus you see the doctrine of divine mercy, as well as Christ's atonement, is swept away at a stroke; for if man was not subjected to endless sin and misery, sin and misery would of themselves come to an end. Were the duration of sin and misery limited to any definite period, that period however remote, would at length roll round, when sin and misery would come to an end, without the interposition of either God's mercy or Christ's atonement.

You see thus that universalism, by denying that man was subjected to endless misery, holds that if sinners will only brace up their nerves, so as to bear up under a few twinges of conscience, which according to Job, as well as universal experience, can, without much inconvenience to the sinner, admit of fiddling, dancing, drinking, swearing, gambling(stop, I was just going to write something not proper to be seen in print) and yet get to heaven, without being indebted to divine mercy.

Among the inconsistencies of universalists, they sometimes admit that those who believe, repent, and reform, are interested in Christ's atonement in this life; but they have no pretension that those who live and die wicked derive any benefit from it, either in this world or the world to come. They know that the scripture is plain, He that believes shall be saved and he that believes not shall be condemned; Mark, xvi, 16, and having adopted the sentiment that all the gospel promises and threatenings refer to this life, they cannot claim the benefits of the atonement for those who remain impenitent until death; and yet they say Christ is the saviour of all men good and bad.

The further we go into the subject the more we are astonished to think, that men with keen, discriminating minds, and with the bible in their hands, should ever have adopted the universalian scheme. They argue that endless punishment never can be proved to be consistent with infinite goodness. Answer, punishment, it is true, is inconsistent with goodness either in time or eternity, only as the choice of a less evil, to prevent a greater.

Universalians themselves admit that punishment is perfectly consistent with divine goodness in time. What makes it consistent in time and inconsistent in eternity? Will God change for the better in eternity? Or will it not be because there will be no need for punishment in eternity? Let universalians only prove that there will be no necessity for it in eternity and we will give up the point at once and contend no longer about it.

To illustrate this subject a little further we will suppose a kind father has two sons: one is a remarkably obedient and good child; the other as remarkable for disobedience and worthlessness. Every evening this kind father calls his two sons before him and rewards the one and punishes the other, in exact accordance with the merit and demerit of their conduct through the day. Now, what is the cause of this difference of treatment towards the boys? Will it be contended that the father loves one better than the other? Universalians will

not say so. Well, may we be permitted to inquire upon what principle the father punishes one and rewards the other. We will unhesitatingly avow that goodness is the leading motive in both cases. The father has the happiness of both children in view, both in rewarding and punishing. He rewards the good boy, not only because his good conduct deserves a reward, but that he may be encouraged in well doing; and in respect to his disobedient brother that it might serve as an incentive to the prodigal to return to duty.

Again, punishment is inflicted on the disobedient brother, not merely because he deserves it, but mainly, that it may be a means first of securing his obedient brother against the immediate effects of his evil conduct: secondly, to guard him against the contagion of bad example: for should the father let the disobedient boy continue in his evil course with impunity, the obedient son might be tempted to believe that there was nothing very bad in disobedience, since his father took no notice of it: thirdly, this good father has the reformation of his offending child in view. Now we see no inconsistency so far between the goodness of this kind father and the punishment of his refractory son. We see the relation now existing between these parties, punishment is now right. How long may that relation continue before punishment will become wrong? It never can become wrong so long as those parties sustain the same relation to each other. To evade the force of this conclusion universalians resort to this subterfuge; they say, as God possesses unlimited power and infinite goodness: He is bound to put a stop to the ravages of sin, or he is not a good Being. Answer, if infinite Goodness was not bound to prevent sin and misery from entering into the creation, He can never become bound to put a stop to it. If ever there was a period, in boundless duration, when the Almighty was or could be bound to exercise unlimited power, to put a stop to man's sinning, it was when man committed the first sin. If he was not bound then to do it, he could never become bound afterwards, for God never changes.

The idea that God's goodness binds him to do any thing that he cannot withhold without an impeachment of his character, is to say that there is no goodness in the matter: that God delights in exercising goodness is abundantly evident from the rich displays of it that are exhibited in creation; but were he bound to bestow the multiplied instances of his bounty that his creatures enjoy, it would argue some inherent right in the creature to demand these favors at his hand. This would argue that God could not withhold these favors without being dishonest.

Did our first parents, when they transgressed and involved themselves and posterity in sin and misery, lay the Almighty under an obligation of justice to send Jesus Christ to save the world? If they did then the Almighty could not withhold him without being unjust. If this was the case, there was no goodness in the matter, and we are under no obligation to thank him for the gift of his Son. But how God could have been under an obligation by the sin of our first parents, both to punish and save, is a problem which I purpose leaving to others to decide.

If then God was laid under no other obligation to send Jesus Christ, to save a lost world, than that of voluntary kindness, he could have withheld this inestimable gift, without injustice done to a single soul of Adam's fallen family. Now, had the Almighty withheld the gift of his Son I would ask, how long would Adam and his lost race have remained involved in sin and misery?

I should like to hear a universalían undertake to disprove the conclusions growing out of the above reasoning, by demolishing the premises upon which these conclusions rest.

So intent are universalians upon demolishing the doctrine of endless misery, that they assert in the Evangelical Magazine, as their belief, that had infinite wisdom foreseen such an end as the eternal misery of one object of his creation, almighty power would have been interposed to prevent the event, or infinite love and unbounded goodness would have staid the creative hand. Answer, it is a contradiction to suppose that

infinite wisdom could foresee an event, and then almighty power be interposed to prevent the contingencies upon which the accomplishment of that event was suspended.

But, again, did not the Almighty foresee that Adam's race would subject themselves to the penalty of endless misery? He certainly did, for his goodness made an effort to save one and all of Adam's fallen family. Christ came to seek and save that which was lost. That loss was an eternal loss or it was not. If it was, he stood in need of a saviour to save him from it; if it was not eternal, time itself would restore the loss.

Universalians seem to suppose that our views depreciate the value of Christ's mission to our world, because we are not willing to admit that the whole world shall be saved, whether they comply or not with the terms of that mission. It remains to be tested by what follows whether their scheme or ours puts the lowest value on this mission.

Universalians say, that man, by sinning, only came to a loss for the space of threescore and ten years, or, at most, for the common lifetime of the human race; for all his losses by sin have to be endured in this life.

Well, then, if man only subjected himself to threescore and ten years of misery, and that misery of so trifling a character as to admit of all the merriment and foolery that abounds in our world, who, with any brains, could ever have dreamed of the Almighty putting his wisdom and goodness into requisition to form a plan that had nothing more in view than to save man from the miseries of this life-miseries that nine tenths of the wicked would rather endure to eternity than go to heaven, any way you could fix it.

This pitiful scheme looks like raising a tempest to drown a fly; but the worst is yet behind; for, after all, if the universalian scheme be true, a large number of the human family are neither saved from sin nor misery, by Jesus Christ, but atone for their own sins by their own sufferings.