rivers of water, bearing fruit abundantly; that He will deliver you out of the hand of your enemies, that you may serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life; that He will never leave you nor forsake you; but be the strength of your heart and your portion for ever.

We ask, again, why do you not fulfil God's requirements and enjoy God's promises? Why, in short, are you not holy, useful, and happy? You need not search far for an answer; it is simply this: Your faith is weak and imperfect.

We do not mean, Christian friends, to insinuate that you are destitute of saving faith. On the contrary, we are willing to believe that you trust in Christ alone for mercy; and through him have a precious, although faint, hope that your sins are forgiven, and that your souls will be saved. But here you stop. You exercise faith in the promises of God as far as regards forgiveness of sin and deliverance from hell; but not on those promises which have reference to deliverance from the power of sin, victory over Satan and the world, and subduing the corruptions of your own evil nature; nor to those on which God engages to give you wisdom, grace, and courage for usefulness; to bless your labours; to remove your fear, and cause your peace to flow as a river, and your joy to be full. Hence, your life is one of inconsistency. You are not truly happy; you are of little use in the church; Satan obtains frequent advantages over you; the world steals your heart from Christ, yon imbibe its spirit, live under its influence, conform to its habits, and prove a stumblingblock in the way of inquirers, and too often give occasion to the enemies of the Cross to blaspheme.

We are earnestly desirous, brethren, of seeing you freed from this dishonourable and slavish state; of beholding you press onward with cheerful alacrity, in the full enjoyment of the glorious liberty of children of God. Then, BELIEVE in the great and precious promises God has given to you (wherefore shouldst thou doubt?); expect their fulfilment, and according to your faith will it be unto you.

For example. You are conscious of your own proneness to depart from God. This is known to Him who pitieth you as a father does his child. In the New Covenant he has made provision for this tendency of your depraved nature. He has said (Jer. xxxii. 40), “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." On what condition does the fulfilment of this promise depend? Simply on your faith. Go, then, to Him, in the name of Christ, and ask its fulfilment; seek, and you shall find the promised blessing. God will put his fear into your heart; not the fear of the trembling slave, but the fear of the loving child; which will make you willing rather to die, than to forsake your heavenly Father.

In like manner, in reference to the world and the devil, your past experience causes you to tremble, lest they should overcome you. Search out the promises of God, you will find them clear and strong: "Whosoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John v. 4, 5). "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" (Rom. xvi. 20). "Resist the devil, and he will flee

from you" (James iv. 7). Believe them, look up to God for their fulfilment. He will strengthen you with all might by his Spirit in the inner man, that you may be able to stand in the evil day; yea, he will bring you off more than conquerors, through Him that loved you. Be strong in faith; and, by overcoming the enemies of your soul, you will give glory to God.

Being bought with a price, you surely would not live to yourselves, but in His service who redeemed you with His own blood; but your selfish sloth is stronger than your feelings of disinterested benevolence. To arouse yourself from this useless, wretched state, exercise faith in the declarations of God, as regards the present state and future prospects of the multitudes of unconverted men around you. Contemplate them as immortal beings-justly exposed to His wrath for their sins-in danger every moment of perishing-follow them, in imagination, to their dying bed; to the entrance of the spirits into eternity; to their appearing, with you, at the judgment-seat; and ask yourself, How shall I then wish to meet these, my fellow-men, to be hailed as the instrument of leading them to Jesus; or to hear their cry: "You cared not for our souls"? Surely, compassion for them will awaken you from your guilty apathy, while the love of Him, who, though He was rich, for your sake became poor: who, to rescue you, pleased not Himself, but submitted to humiliation, and sorrow, and death, will constrain you by every means in your power, to seek their salvation. In reply to this, you say, you have not qualifications for usefulness. In this you deceive yourselves; remember that God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you may abound in every good work. He has said, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it shall be given him." Take God at his word. Go to him, ask wisdom, not for any selfish end, but to use it to the glory of His name, and He will give unto you the wisdom to win souls.

Perhaps some may say, "We do labour to do good; we are engaged sabbath after sabbath in teaching the young; we visit the sick and the poor; we make known the gospel in various ways, but without success. We pray, too, for Divine guidance, and for the blessing of the Most High to rest on our feeble efforts, but our prayers do not appear to be answered; we seem to labour in vain, and to spend our strength for nought." To such we would say, Do not despair: the shower may yet come, and the seed you have buried in the ground spring up; then, "be not weary in well-doing; in due season you will reap if you faint not." Still, is it not possible that you have not, as yet, been successful, because of the weakness of your faith? Now, take God's promise, "My word shall not return to me void," coupled with the declaration, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live;" and go to Him, believing that He means just what he says, and plead His oath and promise, with special reference to the individuals whose conversion you are aiming at, and be assured that your prayer will be heard; for it will be presented by the Great Intercessor; and, for his sake, your prayer of faith will be answered and your work of faith rewarded.

You are anxious, we trust, to be sanctified wholly; conformed to the Divine Image; made meet for the inheritance of the saints in

light. If not, no wonder that you are troubled with doubts and fears. Your fears can only be dispelled by your own spirit bearing a jointtestimony with the Spirit of God that you have been born again-that you are the children of God; your doubts can only be removed by your having sympathy with, and, in some degree, preparedness for, the enjoyments of heaven. But if you do really "hunger and thirst after righteousness;" if you are reaching forth unto those things which are yet before "pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;" then, brethren, go to the Throne of Grace; ask of your Father in heaven to fill you with righteousness, to "sanctify you wholly, and to preserve your whole spirit, soul, and body blameless, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it" (1 Thess. v. 23-26). Ask of Him to give you His Holy Spirit; but ask in faith, nothing doubting, for He has promised to grant your request (Luke xi. 13). The Spirit will then take up his abode within you; will consecrate your body a living temple to your God; will transform you into God's image, from one degree of glory to another; you will then have the witness in yourself that you have passed from death to life; you will realise the privilege of being a citizen of heaven; you will be at all times willing, yea, if it be God's pleasure to remove you, rather desirous of departing, that you may be with Christ; or, if He has work for you to do here, sympathising with Him in His hatred of sin and His compassion for perishing sinners, you will endeavour "to save them with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh;" you will lead the anxious and inquiring to that Saviour who is so precious to your own soul; you will strengthen your brethren in Christ, admonishing and comforting them. It is true, you will not be freed from temptations and troubles, but you will be enabled to overcome, by the exercise of faith in the Captain of your salvation, who will bring you off more than conquerors; your trials will endear Christ more and more to you, and bind you to Him in closer affection; you will be enabled to rejoice in tribulations, and all your affliction, though, for the time, it may be heavy and wearisome to bear, will work out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while you look not at things seen and temporal, but, by the eye of faith, at those which are unseen and eternal.

Then, beloved brethen, have faith-faith in the love of God, as exhibited to you in the gift of his Son to be your Redeemer and your Intercessor-faith in the promises of God to give you the Spirit to guide, and comfort, and sanctify you to be the witness of your adoption, the pledge of your future bliss. Then will you be holy, useful, and happy; and by your Christian life you will "give glory to God;" yea, by your death you will glorify Him, for you will triumph over the last enemy; and when an entrance is ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of your God and Saviour, you will then "give glory" to Him who gave you that faith by which you were enabled to subdue your enemies, to obtain promises-even great and precious promises of blessings, beyond what eye had seen, or ear had heard, or the heart imagined-but which had been purchased by the blood of Christ, and laid up in store by God for you and all who love Him.

and me,"

Then let us, beloved brethren, "be strong in faith," that "I may be comforted together with you, by the mutual faith both of you and that by our faith we may "give glory to God."

J. C.

ON THE PERPETUITY OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT.*

Ir may be presumed, that most of our readers are, by this time, acquainted with the general purport of the publication now before us, that Mr. Dobney's "argument" is an attempted disproof of the perpetuity of future punishment. The present edition differs chiefly from the former in being an expansion from simple "Notes of Lectures," to the fulness of a regular treatise. Not more than sixty pages, we are informed in the Preface, of the former edition are retained. As a matter of taste, we could have wished that the author, in preparing this edition, had lost sight of the Lectures altogether, and commenced the composition quite anew. Some literary blemishes which still adhere to it, such as a too frequent recurrence of paraphrase, and an undue exuberance of ornament in the style, and which owe their probable origin to the anticipation of an oral delivery, would thus have been avoided. We shall have partial occasion, perhaps, to illustrate what we intend by the above strictures as we proceed.

A more favourable specimen, in some respects, than the present, of a controversial work, has seldom fallen into our hands. With scarcely an exception, the spirit discovered by the author throughout is highly commendable-modest, serious, conciliatory. The greater credit is due to him on this latter head, as he appears to have received provocations from some of his critics which would certainly have ruffled the temper of an ordinary theologian. Mr. Dobney seems to know the odium theologicum only by name. Apparently bent, like the ancient artist, on profiting by appropriate hints from any quarter, he has resolutely resisted all temptation to personality in his argument; no passions of the advocate accordingly are found in the advocacy; no traces of the sensitiveness and soreness which a respondent too often betrays.

We honour Mr. Dobney for this self-mastery; and must add, that, intellectually considered, the warmest abettors of his opinions have no reason to be ashamed of their champion.

"Si Pergama dextrâ

Defendi possint, etiam hac defensa fuissent."

A combination of mental qualities better adapted to popular impression is not often met with. Acuteness to seize objections, skill in exhibiting them; an eye alike for the philosophical view of the subject, and the poetical in an argument; a competent conversancy with both

* ON THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. An Argument, in Two Parts. By H. H. DоBNEY. pp. v., 278. Second Edition. Ward and Co., London.

logical and rhetorical proprieties; a decent richness of illustration and imagery; our only regret is, that such talents should not have been enlisted in a better cause.

In one particular, the theory espoused by Mr. Dobney appears to differ from that of other recent writers on the same subject. While rejecting with them the eternity of future punishment, he yet holds it to have a duration of indefinite extent :

"How fearfully protracted this dying out of existence may be, who can tell?— If the soul quit its clay tenement so lingeringly as it often does in the present state, the yielding of itself to death may be in something of the proportion of its superiority to the body,"-p. 213, 214.

And again, p. 257:

"It is quite conceivable that the length of time which shall elapse ere the wicked utterly cease to be, and the degree of suffering by which their final dissolution shall be preceded and accompanied, may be exactly proportioned to their various deserts."

As a possible term of such duration, he elsewhere names a thousand years. In thus modifying the annihilation scheme, we are much inclined to suspect, that he will be found to have cut away his principal ground from under him. "How can death," he inquires, p. 120, contending for the literal interpretation of the Scripture terms on the subject, "mean life, endless life?" Now, if a thousand years of continuous torment are not inconsistent with the literal significance of the terms "death" and "destruction," why should ten thousand; if not ten thousand, why a million; if not a million, why any number? In punishment, Mr. Dobney intimates, p. 251, "the definite will prevail [i. e. as to the influence exercised] over the indefinite;" but what can there be less definite than his own hypothesis? The utter and awkward vagueness of it is such as to recall to mind the objection so pungently made to the ancient Stoical theory:

"Stoici autem usuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus; diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper negant."-Tuscul. Disput. I., 31.

Such

We feel the less disposed, however, to dwell on this part of the subject, as Mr. Dobney does not pretend to support his peculiar view by Scripture evidence, and half confesses himself (p. 265) to have adopted it in deference to the exigencies of his theory. Notwithstanding the adoption, he does not scruple to use ordinarily the language of the annihilationists, and, perhaps, would say, that he has thrown out the other idea rather as a probable conjecture than as a settled point of his belief. We could wish, that, on so serious a subject, he had been less at liberty to indulge in the conjectural. terms as "perhaps," "if not," and the like, we would have wholly tabooed from discussions like the present, except on confessedly minor points. Mr. Dobney, we are sure, will not wish his chief vocation to be to unsettle and disturb, or be satisfied that the popular religious mind, set free from its former moorings, should float loosely down the current of opinion, without compass or rudder. In Chapter I., p. 7, he pleads, indeed, for the privilege of a suspension of judgment. To a private inquirer, such privilege may be readily conceded; scarcely, to a voluntary public guide. A theological reformer should, we