LECTURE VII.

46 AND WHEN THEY HEARD IT, THEY SAID, GOD FORBID. AND HE BEHELD THEM, AND SAID, WHAT IS THIS THEN THAT IS WRITTEN ?"

LUKE XX. 16, 17.

WHEN the revelation of the states of men after death was confessedly imperfect, when it fell far short of its present distinctness, when invisible was written over the great exits from this passing life, when the impenetrable cloud gathered between the actual and the future existence,—there was much taught, and still not dubiously, that behind the mysterious confines, men were differently and respectively treated, according as they had acted here. Ever was the distinction marked and confessed between the excellent and the wicked of the earth. Ever was the assurance repeated that the Divine conduct towards them should strictly correspond. "The gates of the shadow of death," though not then thrown open as they are now, sent forth reflections and sounds to cheer the one and to appal the other. No doubt, wicked men wished that this dark curtain might be the limit of being. What they could not pierce they might deny to subsist,

Sheol and Hades might be on their jeering lips. The terms, denoting a deep obscurity, might bring relief to their fear. The unseen and the unknown might also be the unreal. But even these terms were not only negative. Variable and common might be their use, but they often spoke terror. Fearful images did they suggest. "A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall

burn unto the lowest hell." "Hell and destruction are before the Lord." "Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering." Could these expressions only intend the grave? Did they not intimate a region of punishment? When it is said of the evil-doers, that "in a moment they go down into Sheol," it is added, "their destruction cometh upon them," and that "God distributeth sorrows in his anger." "The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, and all the nations that forget God." This must be a sentence ulterior to the common sentence of mortality. The warning against vice cannot surely be only drawn from premature death, declaring with such solemn emphasis, that the licentious "die in youth and their life is among the unclean," that the "steps of the harlot take hold of hell," that "her house is the way to hell," that "the Rephaim, ghosts, are there," that "her guests are in the depths of hell." "The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath." This can scarcely mean his avoidance of what would tend to an earlier dissolution. "Thou didst abase thyself unto hell." The grave is not surely the gauge of this abjection.

Nor was

Job xxi. 13.

Hades," in the New Testament sense, ever an insignificant word, implying nothing but common death. "And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down unto hades." Now, was that city destroyed? its edifices prostrated to the level, and its foundations crumbled to the dust, of the grave? ? Or did any uncommon mortality seize upon its citizens? It still survives on the shores of the Galilean lake: "it remaineth unto this day." No depopulation is written against it. The trace of such infliction cannot be recalled or discerned. It was "in the day of judgement," that "the intolerableness" of the doom was to be felt. By what? The city then must fall with every other of the earth. Only can the doom light upon them who inhabited it, them who did not believe nor repent notwithstanding "the mighty works done in it." They were to be "brought down to" the place of retribution. The doom was at their death in the day of judgement it shall be confirmed and aggravated. "And in hades the rich man lift up his eyes, being in torments." He was buried. What torments were there in his grave? Then, whatever the place to which he was consigned, there is nothing in it alien to these torments, nor forbidding them: they found there a native scene.

But if we quit terms like these, and ponder the strong descriptions of future punishment found in the

"Vox Græca ȧons, cui respondet Hebræa is, et Latina inferorum, denotat illum locum communem, in quem recipiuntur omnes hominum vita functorum animæ. Nunquam vero significat aut sepulchrum aut cœlum."-Wetstein: Luke xvi. 23.

earlier testimonies of revelation, we shall confess that there can be no excuse for their disbelief and slight. "The eyes of the wicked shall fail, and they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost." "The wicked is reserved unto the day of destruction: they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath." "Terrors take hold of him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth; and as a storm hurleth him out of his place. For God shall cast upon him and not spare." "Because there is wrath beware, lest he take thee away with his stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee." "Evil shall slay the wicked." "The transgressors shall be destroyed for ever: the end of the wicked shall be cut off." "He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living and in his wrath." "In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same; but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out and drink them."

It is certain that man is not only susceptible of punishment, but that this susceptibility enters largely into his moral constitution. He can conceive its justice; he can entertain its fear; he can foreshadow its certainty. He is filled with its presentiments. Already he suffers it. The question is therefore past, whether he can or shall. Preparation is wrought in him for the consequences of sin. When God shooteth at him with his arrows, there is a nature for them to transfix. The subject and the infliction are fitted to each other.

No man could ever deny it. He cannot protect himself. His heart cannot endure, nor his hands be strong, in the days that the Lord shall deal with him. Reasoning from capacities, we may learn what man can enjoy and suffer: arguing from experience, we learn what he does: that temperament which points to rewards as easily adapts itself to punishments.

He

Nor is the argument feeble that man cannot, whatever be his wishes, and whatever be the obvious cause of those wishes, dissuade himself of retribution. attempts in vain. He cannot satisfy his reason that there is none, while it adduces its simplest dictates. He cannot abuse his conscience, while it urges its harrowing fears. He cannot put another construction upon the great system around him, and of which he forms so serious a part.

It now becomes us to state what we believe to be the doctrine of Scripture in respect to the duration of future punishment: a question before which all difficulties involved in its nature seem, comparatively, unimportant, and to almost disappear. Eternity is endlessness. When this is predicated of future punishment, it alleges that this punishment admits of no reversal; that it is lasting as the being of the immortal sufferer. But this is not any proper question of Christianity. Therefore the early apologists always throw back the charge upon its adversaries, who sought to confound the question with it. They remind the pagans of their own hell. They establish the fact of this hopeless retribution in far earlier convictions and greatly antecedent truths, which mythology could