ture, when the time has come for her to pronounce her final doom on the glutton, the drunkard, the debauchee, hold her hand, or hearken to entreaty? Alas, no! she shows herself as inexorable as the darkest dogma of the Calvinist.

How, then, shall this strange mixture of good and evil, this seemingly capricious juncture of mercy and wrath, be explained? The only solution I know is the one which Scripture proposes. It is this: That had man's doom been immediate and absolute, like that of the fallen angels, then the world, which is his home, would have been unvisited by one ray of mercy or light. But because the seed of the woman was appointed to bruise the serpent's head; because God would first offer man atonement, through the death of His own Son, before He shuts him up in death, therefore it is that He has made us for the time "prisoners of hope," and adorned our prison with all these alleviations in order that they might allure us to the footstool of gospel-mercy. "Account that the long-suffering of our God is salvation."-2 Peter iii: 15. "The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance."-Rom. ii: 4. "He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."—Acts xiv: 17. Thus every terrestrial blessing, from the daily food which refreshes the hunger of an hour up to the children which fill your homes with love, is a voice to remind you of that amazing sacrifice of infinite love to which God was moved by His infallible knowledge of the depth of your everlasting doom, and to woo you to flee to this city of refuge before it is too late. This is God's explanation of His earthly dispensation of good and evil to man. Does it furnish any solace to that man who is resolved to slight the only atonement? Surely there could be no mistake so tragical and so perverse as that which wrests this ministry of mercy into an argument for contumacy. Here is a state prisoner, accused, tried, condemi ed, locked up, awaiting his condign punishment. But because the king and the king's son have so thorough an apprehension of the horror of that fate which justice. will inflict, therefore they cast about for some way of escape, whereby "righteousness and peace may kiss each other." It is found at length in this amazing plan: that the king's son shall drink the cup of death in his stead. So, to prepare the way for the message of this ransom, the gloom of the condemned cell is lighted with the sun; the fetters of the doomed man are relaxed; he is fed with dainties from the king's own table; and the cheering voices of hope penetrate his despair, inviting him to reconciliation through the son. But now the perverse wretch begins to abuse the very overtures of mercy, to argue that his sentence was not just, and the king knew it and never dared to execute it; that all this doom and threat.

ened destruction had been only an unsavory jest. To that man "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation." His unbelief, by a dreadful alchemy, converts every fleeting blessing into an abiding curse, and stores it in the treasury of wrath against the day of wrath.

There is no safe footing here, then, for a doubt whether "we must surely die" if out of Christ. The Bible explanation of the mercies sinners experience is too consistent; to the gospeldespiser too terribly consistent and reasonable. And in the light of that explanation every earthly mercy has a voice which, even in its sweetest accents, implies that there is a hell as it cries, "Turn ye to the stronghold, prisoners of hope."

IV. But some, driven from God's providence, resort to His character for arguments to sustain the doubt as to His purpose to punish forever. They ask whether the justice, wisdom and goodness of God will not forbid His forever destroying a being whom He has Himself formed for happiness. Men ask, for instance, How can it be just in God to punish a puny creature eternally for a sin committed in this short life? They claim it as almost a self-evident truth that temporal punishment is sufficient for temporal sin. Now, I might dwell upon several thoughts which have presented themselves to my mind neutralizing the probability of this position. I was reminded, for instance, that neither the course of nature nor human law measures its penalties by the length of time consumed in the transgression. But sometimes the recklessness of a moment incurs a result, from the laws of nature, which fixes calamity and pain on the whole future life; and a murder, which it required a few moments to perpetrate, is justly punished with an everlasting banishment from this life and all its benefits. One cannot but think, again, how the estimate of his sins may be affected by the infinite glory and majesty of the Being at whom they are aimed. If the youth who strikes his own parent, for instance, is justly held far more guilty than the common brawler, how high may not the aggravations of our guilt against the Universal Father rise? But our very sinfulness and unbelief unfit us to weigh this element of our case fairly. We cannot rise to the impartial estimation of God's exalted rights and honor; we are too selfish and blind. Look, then, at another thought. None but atheists are so insolent as to deny that temporal sins deserve temporal punishment. Suppose, now. that you should continue sinners after death, while paying off the score of your earthly transgressions? Why not? Yes; why not? Because you will then be suffering punishment? We do not see that God's chastisements of you in this world have had any tendency as yet to make you any better: why should you count on them to make you better there? Or be

cause your habits and evil principles will then be so confirmed by a life of sin? Which is easier to bend, a twig, or a tree? Or because the company of hell will be so edifying or improving to your heart? Hardly! Take, then, one sober, honest look at yourself, and answer me, what is the likelihood that you, who are an obstinate sinner now, will not be a sinner then? You, whose resolutions of repentance have hitherto been so absolutely worthless; you who cannot be in the least restrained from your sins by the near prospect of a retribution so heavy that you are now murmuring at its weight? But should the prediction of Scripture prove true, that he who is unjust now will be unjust still, and he who is filthy now will be filthy still; and should you be heaping up a second mountain of transgressions while you are paying your debt for the first, when will you ever finish? There is the question which ruins. all your hope. Be God's justice what it may, obviously no reasonable being, who has once resolved to curb rebellion by penalty, can consistently stop punishing until the criminal stops rebelling. To do so before would be impotent child'splay. But after you have on this earth rejected Christ, who is to help you to cease rebelling? Who is to intercede for you with the avenging Judge to hold His hand? I see not where your hope is to hang.

"But God is supremely wise and kind!" How do you know He is? From the Bible? The same Bible that tells me, "God is love," tells me that He "turns the wicked into hell, with all the nations that forget God."-Ps. ix: 17. Which side of this statement must we take? And if we reject either, then the Bible ceases to be of authority with you for both: it no longer authorizes us to say God is love. Or will you turn from it to God's works, and plead that "the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord"?—Ps. xxxiii : 5. When we look there, we "behold both the goodness and severity of God"-Rom. xi: 22; death set over against life; calamity against blessings; war against peace; sickness and pain against health; "distress of nations and perplexity" against perplexity. And when you bid me infer that God's wisdom and goodness forbid His destroying forever even a guilty creature, whom He Himself formed for immortal happiness, then I know that we have both gone far beyond our depth. Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is higher than heaven; what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell; what canst thou know? Look around; and so far as your earthly wisdom can read His dispensations, do you not see Him daily permitting the most ardent aspirations of your fellows to end in vanity, despair and death? Do you not see Him permitting millions of young infants, in whom He had implanted the seeds of reason, and love, and happiness, and beneficent action, die like the bud

ding flower that drops from the tree with its undeveloped germ to rot on the ground? How is that? Do we not see Him rain on the salt, barren ocean and the unpeopled deserts, while the vales on which the children of men hope for their daily bread, and whose clods they have watered with their sweat, shrivel for drought? How many men, judging by earthly reason, have ever been content to die as satisfied with the results of their life? The one thing, the only thing that is certain to us all is, that we must die; and so far as earthly wisdom can see, "How dieth the wise man? Even as the fool dieth!" Thus, when I see this awful God stamp "vanity and vexation of spirit" on all the hopes of man, I cannot undertake to decide what awful severities on the guilty He may not purpose to execute in another world. He has worlds under His government. His purposes span eternity. "Clouds and darkness are round about Him; but justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne."-Ps. xcvii: 2. Feeble man, we are out of our depth! There is here no standing ground for any hope. Let us then go back, and hear what message the Lord Himself hath been pleased to send us out of His Word. And when we look there, the most striking fact is, that the clearest, the most dreadful declarations of the eternity of the unbeliever's ruin are those uttered by Jesus. Men sometimes babble of a difference, even a contrast, between the theology of Paul and of his Master. They talk of Paul as the austere logician, excogitating a rigid system of dogmas; they prefer, they say, to turn to the teachings of the "meek and lowly Jesus," whose theology is that of love. Well, one thing do we know: never was there love like unto His love! It surpassed the love of woman. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." He laid down His for enemies! No man can see one trait of cruelty in this Jesus; for His life was a ministration of kindness, not to the deserving, but to the "publican and sinner." Never did the cry of human woe strike His ear in vain; never did human anguish appeal in vain to His soul while on earth. And He knew, also, the real facts; for He came from the world of spirits and thither He went back. How comes it, then, that this meek and loving Jesus uttered His warnings against hell, in words sevenfold more frequent and solemn than the "austere" Paul? Is this also done in love? Yes; the beauty of His beneficent life and death permits us to think nothing else. If, then, it is the tenderest heart in the universe which comes out to us most fearfully, "Beware of the pit!" what shall we think? Is it because He who knows best, and loves us best, is most fully informed of its inevitable certainty and its intolerable pains? Hear this Divine Pity, then-Mark ix: 43, 44; Matt. xviii: 34 xiii:41, 42, xxv: 30-46; Luke xvi: 23-26; Rev. vi: 16, 17.

What, then, is the part of reason for you? As I said at the outset, I have no dogma to advance. I have no interest in arguing that there is an everlasting hell for impenitent sinners. If any man can prove that there certainly is none, by any evidence honorable for God and safe for man, sure I am that no man's soul will be more rejoiced than my sinful heart. I have but one parting word to utter, and that is so plainly just that it needs no argument. It will be well for you to look thoroughly into this doubt before you trust yourself to it. Your eternity is at stake! And if, after your faithful, honest and exhaustive examination, you are constrained to feel that there is a possibility that Jesus may be right and Satan wrong on this point, it will be best for you to come with me to the safe side, and hide under the sacrifice of Christ.