against God of ten millions of years were punished with permanent misery as a penalty?-Yet there is no essential difference." If again it be said, "Mercy may be infinite; but justice must be limited in its punishments;-God may confer undeserved blessings of infinite amount and extent, but not undeserved punishments;" it may be asked--" Where then will you place your limit? If the sufferings of sinners were an expiation for their sins, there might be a limit:* but Christ is the only expiation, and he has been rejected and trampled on. "Thou shalt by no means come out, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." And thou canst not redeem thy soul with itself; thou, a sinner, canst not "make thine own soul an offering for thy sin."

Let us now turn to the book of Revelations, and consider God, as He is there represented, in the character of an Avenger of Sin. "The devil that deceived them, (i. e. the nations of the world, after the expiration of the thousand years), was cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet were before; and THEY SHALL

BE TORMENTED DAY AND NIGHT FOR EVER AND

EVER." Here the word is the same, it may be

* Thus the Romanists, who believe in expiatory sufferings for certain offences, place a limit to the pains of Purgatory.

+ Supply "were before" rather than "are" as in our version. Βασανισθήσονται, (they shall be tormented), ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αιώνων.

observed, in the original as where it is written, "his lord was wrath, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to him."

The same also as when the devils, struck with terror, said to Jesus, " Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?"

The fate then of the Arch-enemy of God ans. man will plainly be everlasting pain. Will ours be the same? The passage does not indeed actually involve man; but it nevertheless deprives him of one resting place; it proves that to inflict everlasting pain, as the punishment of sin, is not inconsistent with the attributes of God. And all sinners will be cast, along with Satan, into "the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." But by this passage, it must be admitted, man's condemnation is not sealed. For Death and Hades, we read, shall be cast into the same burning lake: whereby it seems plainly to be meant, that an utter end shall be made of them. The great enemy Death shall be no more; the gates of Hades shall come down, and the Power of Destruction be destroyed. What then will be the fate of the condemned? Will they be destroyed, with Hades and Death, or tormented, with Satan and his angels? Let us consult the prophecies again. "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man." And this man, we know, shall be tormented day and night, along with Satan, for ever and ever. Again, let us hear our Lord

saying "Depart, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared (not for Hades, but) for the devil and his angels."

Further; wherefore should we believe that they who are of their father the devil, who serve him, and do his works, will receive a different kind of wages from their master? That his punishments will be endless, theirs only for a time? If Satan is to suffer eternal pains, why not man? The transgressions of both were but for a time. Satan's rebellion has been permitted to continue for untold thousands of years, man's but for threescore and ten; but there is no essential difference here. We have some reason to believe, since it is said that Satan "abode not in the truth," that he was originally, like man, created upright; and this would bring nearer the resemblance between them; but whether originally pure or not, his existence had a beginning, he has transgressed only for a time. Had he his will, he would transgress and rebel to all eternity; and who will say that the children of the Wicked One, if they had their will, would not follow his example? Where then is the injustice of their being punished for all eternity, according to their intentions: punished for the rebellion in which they would persist for ever, did not the Almighty Avenger arrest their course, afford them time no longer, but finishing on the Day decreed, the mystery of his toleration of sin, at length take unto Himself His great power and reign. But whether we can comprehend, or not, the justice of God's future

dealings with wicked men, no sinner can show cause why the like judgement as shall befall Satan should not be executed upon himself. In declaring that Satan shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever, the Almighty God has revealed to us that such punishment is wise and just; and who is he that shall reply against God, if they who do the works of Satan participate in Satan's reward?* What if they who fall into the hands of the living God should be as the bush in which He revealed Himself to Moses, the bush which burned with fire, and yet was not consumed?

That this fearful punishment, whatever its nature, awaits the larger portion of mankind, (since of those who are called, few are chosen, and we dare not believe that of those not called, a larger proportion can be saved,) this awful truth must surely place in doubt the soundness of those arguments by which moralists usually seek to prove the natural immortality of man. All human excellence, if merely of the earth, shall perish with the earth. Though it enable man to measure the sun, and trace the winds, and subdue all elements and all animals to his will, it gives him no power to lay hold on eternal life. Moral reasonings lead us to hope that good will be produced

may

*If the imagery of the parable of Dives and Lazarus be, as has been argued above, in part that of the Day of Judgement, we may venture, without treating the parable as a revelation, to gather from it thus much,-That the sufferings of the wicked are torments of indefinite duration.

out of the evil: but the revelation which more than confirms this hope as respects some men, yet declares that the fate of the rest is not immortality, but everlasting death.

Here we may leave this subject. We know not what that state will be, which is punishment but not life; but the Christian is rather concerned with the state of immortality; and should aspire to be governed by his hopes of heaven, and that perfect love which banisheth all fear.

CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW HEAVENS AND EARTH.

IN theological compositions, as well as in ordi

nary discourse, the kingdom which the heirs. of salvation shall enter at the Last Day, to dwell and reign therein through all eternity, is said to be "in heaven;" which is commonly understood to signify some place above this earth, and the peculiar abode of the Most High. Scripture appears to confirm this notion. For Christians are taught to pray to their father who is in heaven, and to believe that after death they shall be with him and our Lord speaks of his coming down from heaven, and "ascending up where he was before," and "going to the Father." And St. Paul informs us that after the resurrection of