passage, condemn the wicked to the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels ? "*

* The fact recorded of the supposed demoniacs, demonstrates also that they were not merely madmen. The insane either reason rightly on wrong grounds, or wrongly on right grounds, or blend the wrong and right together But these demoniacs reasoned rightly on right grounds. They uttered propositions undeniably true. They excelled, in the accuracy of their knowledge, the disciples of Christ himself; at least we never hear that either of these had applied to our Lord the epithet of The Holy One of God. They were alike consistent with their knowledge and their language. Their bodies were agitated and convulsed. The powers of their mind were controlled in such a manner that their actions were unreasonable; yet they addressed our Lord in a consistent and rational, though in an appalling and mysterious manner. Our Lord answered them, not by appealing to the individuals whose actions had been so irrational, but to something which he requires and commands to leave them; that is, to evil spirits, whose mode of continuing evil, in this instance, had been so fearfully displayed. These spirits answer him by evincing an intimate knowledge both of his person and character, which was hidden from the wise and prudent of the nation. The spirits that have apostatised are destined to future misery - - their judge was before them. "Ah! what hast thou to do with us, in our present condition," they exclaim, art thou come to torment us before the time ?" And they entreat him not to command them to leave this earth, and to go to the invisible world. The demons believed and trembled. -Townsend's New Testament arranged, vol.i. p. 159,

"I can only say," replied Mr. Trueman, "that I consider these expressions metaphorical, and your sense of them altogether mistaken; for my part I cannot deduce from the Scriptures sufficient to believe Jesus to have been any other than a great prophet; and Satan any other than an ideal being, and the fire prepared for him, any other than a strong figurative expression, for, perhaps, a great but limited punishment. But, to proceed in the regular detail of our principles —"

"Stop, Mr. Trueman; you speak of punishment hereafter, even though it may be great, as being limited; am I to understand that it is the opinion of your sect, that the torments denounced against wilful and impenitent sinners in Scripture, are not perpetual and endless ?"

If a

"Surely," he replied, "they are not. frail mortal being has sinned, is it either just or reasonable that an immortal and endless punishment should be the penalty?"

"With respect to the ways of God and his dealings with the children. of men," I replied, "I should doubt whether it can be right to set our feelings and our reasoning against what he in his wisdom has declared. The mercy and

justice of created beings, though of the same kind, is not, in degree, the standard of the mercy and justice of God. Christ has said

the hour is coming, in which all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.' And, with still more explicitness, when speaking of the wicked These,' said he, shall go into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.' And, in correspondence with these, St. John, speaking of the doom of the wicked, and of the deceiver of mankind, describes them as tormented day and night for ever and ever,' while of the blessed, he says, they shall reign for ever and ever?

"Yes, Sir; but the terms, eternal and everlasting, do not invariably signify more than an endurance of pain for many ages."

“This is true in some instances, but the texts which I have quoted refer to an indefinite time; if not, our hopes of lasting happiness are, indeed, vain; for the same epithet being varied in the original, both to the reward and punishment, if it does not convey the threat of everlasting punishment to hardened sinners, it conveys not the

promise of life eternal to the righteous.* Reason cannot prove the eternity of punishment to be inconsistent with the plan of God's moral government, and this is a subject on which reason must be dumb, because revelation is explicit. But though we believe this, we need not on this account to despair; for though these declarations do not restrain God from doing what he pleases, yet they cut off from the sinner all reasonable hopes of relaxation or mitigation of them. It is the wicked, and the wicked only that have ground

* In every page of Holy Writ are these terrors displayed, in expressions studiously adapted to lay hold of the imagination of mankind, and awaken the most thoughtless to such an habitual sense of danger, as might be sufficient to overcome the most powerful allurements of vice. "The wicked are to go into outer darkness. There is to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. They are to depart into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. There they shall drink of the wrath of God, poured out without mixture, into the cup of his indignation." Whatever there may be of figure in some of these expressions, as much as this they clearly import: that the future state of the wicked will be a state of exquisite torment, both of body and mind- of torments, not only intense in degree, but incapable of intermission, ease, or end,-a condition of unmixed and perfect evil, not less deprived of future hope than of present enjoyment.—Bishop Horsley's Sermon on "The coming of the Son of Man." See Tillotson's Sermon on "The Eternity of Hell Torments."

for fear, for they are to go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." *

"Whence, Sir, do you derive this notion?" asked Mr. Trueman, hastily interrupting me; "not from the Scriptures. Christ died not to appease divine wrath, nor for any sacrifice of atonement, nor for any other unscriptural, irrational, and derogatory purpose †, but merely as a martyr to the truth, and as a necessary step towards proving to mankind the certainty of a resurrection."

"If you say that the only purposes of the death and sufferings of Christ were, that he might attest the truth of his doctrines and mission, and that he might afford stronger proofs of the resurrection; they were only such as any

* "It seems most agreeable to our conceptions of justice, and is consonant enough to the language of Scripture, to suppose, that there are prepared for us rewards and punishments, of all possible degrees, from the most exalted happiness, down to extreme misery; so that our labour is never in vain;' whatever advancement we make in virtue, we procure a proportionable accession of future happiness; as, on the other hand, every accumulation of vice is treasuring up so much wrath against the day of wrath." -Paley, Moral Phil. ch. vii.

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