This is the best solution I can give of the dark mysteries which surround our subject. I have no arithmetic by which I can reckon the duration of retribution. I have no philosophy which proves to me that sin is necessarily immortal. I would that the conviction of my mind were as strong as the desire of my heart that "Good shall fall At last, far off, at last to all, And every winter change to spring." So runs my dream." I wish it were more than a dream. I blame no man who tries to find in reason and in Scripture this Ultima Thule of the world's hope. If I cannot conclude with him that the consummation of Christ's work must be the final restoration of the entire race, it is not because I do not sympathize with him in his attempt to solve the dark problem of human sin and misery, but because my reason and my interpretation of the Scriptures prevent me from reaching this conclusion. I cannot be a Universalist because I do not believe in the power of Omnipotence to save a soul against its will, and because everything which I can see here in this world among men indicates that there is a point beyond which evil character becomes fixed and unchangeable. If, however, a man should tell me that in the far-off æons of eternity the vast asylum of the lost shall be depopulated because the madness of sin has spent itself and its victims have dropped away into that eternal unconsciousness which is "the blackness of darkness," and "the second death," I should be more willing to agree with him, for I am more and more convinced that the final end of sin is death, and that life and immortality are the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. My own struggle has been in reconciling the divine love with the fact of a future retribution. This done, I am willing to leave the times and seasons in God's hands. THE Is Punishment Everlasting? BY The Reverend JAMES DE NORMANDIE, D.D. HE view of the Christian church upon the subject of punishment is unmistakable. For many centuries it has been quite commonly held that, for the vast majority of souls, punishment was in a realm of fiery tortures, and it was everlasting. From the time of Origen, a few voices, here and there, have been lifted against this view; but they have been feeble and almost unheard amidst the loud and consenting testimony of the great body of believers. Those who are predestined unto life were chosen unto everlasting glory, and all others were bound over to the wrath of God, subject to death, " and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever." All through Christian literature one meets passages which show that, as if by common consent, this view was held withcut question. "How shall I admire," says Tertullian, "how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness, so many magistrates liquefying in fierier flames than they ever hurled against the Christians, so many philosophers blushing in redhot fires with their deluded pupils, so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings, so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish than ever before from applause!" A modern theologian says "Should the fire of eternal punishment cease, it would in a great measure obscure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed." Another writes, Another writes, "that the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted to them." The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions says. "To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of great exigency. Within the last thirty years a whole generation, of five hundred millions, have gone down to eternal death." Occasionally in some official way we find that this view is still emphasized. Canon Liddon of St. Paul's, the leading preacher and theologian of the English Church in the present generation, in a sermon of ordination, wherein he pleads with the candidates to declare the whole counsel of God, refers to a decision where it was ruled "that it is permissible in law for a clergyman to express a hope for the final restoration of the lost", and then adds: "The question is a question not of the inclinations of a sinful creature, but of the revealed will of a holy God. May we consistently with that will indulge that hope? Assuredly not." "For nothing is more certain than that by the terms of the Christian revelation any such hope is delusive and vain, since it is opposed to the awful truth that they who die out of favour with God and are lost are lost irrevocably, lost forever. If Holy Scripture is still to be our rule of faith, Scripture, I submit, is decisive. If endless punishment could be described in human words, no words could exhaust the description more absolutely than the recorded words of Christ. They admit of no limitation, they are patient of no toning down or softening away; in the page of the evangelist they live for all time before the eyes of men, in all their vivid, awful power. If Jesus Christ has taught us anything certain about the other world, we cannot doubt that the penal fire must last forever." Of course Canon Liddon ignores all the results of modern Biblical criticism, which probably he was unwilling or fearful to study, and takes his stand upon the old idea of the literal inspiration and infallibility of the scriptures; and for those who take this view there are many passages to substantiate it. Scripture", he says truly, "is no less explicit as to the endlessness of the woe of the lost soul than as to the endlessness of the scene or instrument of its punishment." We find the words "eternal", "everlasting ", and "forever and ever" associated with torment and destruction and |