but a continued punishment of the continued, ever-aggravated guilt in the eternal state; the allegation is of no avail in vindication of the doctrine; because the first consignment to the dreadful state necessita'es a continuance of the criminality; the doctrine teaching that it is of the essence, and is an awful aggravation, of the original consignment, that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged for ever. The doom to sin as well as to suffer, and according to the argune, to sin in order to suffer, is inflicted as the punishment of the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually, therefore, the eternal paniskraert is the punishment of the sins of time.

Under the light (or the darkness) of this doctrine, how inconceivably mysterious and awful is the aspect of the whole economy of this human world! The immensely greater number of the race hitherto, through all ages and regions, passing a short life under no illuminating, transforming influence of their Creator; ninety-nine in a hundred of them perhaps having never even received any authenticated message from heaven; passing off the world in a state unfit for a spiritual, heavenly, and happy kingdom elsewhere; and all destined to everlasting misery. The thoughtful spirit has a question silently suggested to it of far more emphatic import than that of him who exclaimed, "Hast thou made all men in vain ?"

Even the dispensation of redemption by the Mediator, the only light that shines through this dark economy,-how profoundly mysterious in its slow progress, as yet, in its uncorrupted purity, and saving efficacy. What proportion of the earth's inhabitants are, at this hour, the subjects of its vital agency? It was not the divine volition that the success should be greater,—that a greater number should be saved by it,—or most certainly, most necessarily, its efficacy would have been greater. But in thus withholding from so large a proportion of mankind even the knowledge, and from so vast a majority in the nominally Christian nations the divine application, indispensable to the efficacy of the Christian dispensation, could it be that the divine purpose was to consign so many of his creatures, existing under such fearful circumstances, to the doom of eternal misery? Does the belief consist with any conception we can form of infinite goodness combined with infinite power?

But, after all this, we have to meet the grave question, What say the Scriptures? There is a force in their expressions at which we well may tremble. On no allowable interpretation do they signify less than a very protracted duration and formidable severity. But I hope it is not presumptuous to take advantage of the fact, that the terms everlasting, eternal, for ever, original or translated, are often employed in the Bible, as well as other writings, under great and various limitations of import; and are thus withdrawn from the predicament of necessarily and absolutely meaning a strictly endless duration. The limitation is often, indeed, plainly marked by the nature of the subject. In other instances the words are used with a figurative indefiniteness, which leaves the

limitation to be made by some general rule of reason and proportion. They are designed to magnify, to aggravate, rather than to define. My resource in the present case, then, is simply this—that since the terms do not necessarily and absolutely signify an interminable duration,—and since there is in the present instance to be pleaded, for admitting a limited interpretation, a reason in the moral estimate of things, of stupendous, of infinite urgency, involving our conceptions of the divine goodness and equity, and leaving those conceptions overwhelmed in darkness and horror if it be rejected, I therefore conclude that a limited interpretation is authorized. Perhaps there is some pertinence in a suggestion which I recollect to have seen in some old and nearly unknown book in favor of universal restitution;-that the great difference of degrees of future punishment, so plainly stated in Scripture, affords an argument against its perpetuity; since, if the demerit be infinite, there can be no place for a scale of degrees, apportioning a minor infliction to some offenders;every one should be punished up to the utmost that his nature can sustain; and the same reason of equity there may be for a limited measure, there may consistently be for a limited duration. The assignment of an unlimited duration would seem an abandonment of the principle of the discriminating rule observed in the adjustment of degrees.

If it be asked, how could the doctrine have been more plainly and positively asserted than it is in the Scripture language? In answer, I ask, how do we construct our words and sentences to express it in an absolute manner, so as to leave no possibility of understanding the language in a different, equivocal, or questionable sense? And may we not think that if so transcendently dreadful a doctrine had been meant to be stamped as in burning characters on our faith, there would have been such forms of proposition, of circumlocution if necessary, as would have rendered all doubt or question a mere palpable absurdity ?

Some intelligent and devout inquirers, unable to admit the terrific doctrine, and yet pressed by the strength of the scripture language, have had recourse to a literal interpretation of the threatened destruction, the eternal death, as signifying annihilation of existence, after a more or less protracted penal infliction. Even this would be a prodigious relief: but it is an admission that the terms in question do mean something final, in an absolute sense. I have not directed much thought to this point; the grand object of interest being a negation of the perpetuity of misery. 1 have not been anxious for any satisfaction beyond that; though certainly one would wish to indulge the hope, founded on the divine attribute of infinite benevolence, that there will be a period somewhere in the endless futurity, when all God's sinning creatures will be restored by him to rectitude and happiness.

It often surprises me that the fearful doctrine sits, if I may so express it, so easy on the minds of the religious and benevolent believers of it. Surrounded immediately by the multitudes of fellow-mortals, and looking abroad on the present, and back on the past state of the race, and regard

ing them, as to the immense majority, as subjects of so direful destination, how can they have any calm enjoyment of life, how can they be cordially cheerful, how can they escape the incessant haunting of dismal ideas, darkening the economy in which their lot is cast? I remember suggesting to one of them such an image as this:-suppose the case that so many of the great surrounding population as he could not, even in a judgment of charity, believe to be Christians, that is, to be in a safe state for hereafter,-suppose the case to be that he knew so many were all doomed to suffer, by penal infliction, a death by torture, in the most protracted agony, with what feelings would he look on the populous city, the swarming country, or even a crowded, mixed congregation? But what an infinitesimal trifle that would be in comparison with what he does believe in looking on these multitudes. How, then, can they bear the sight of the living world around them?

As to religious teachers; if the tremendous doctrine be true, surely it ought to be almost continually proclaimed as with the blast of a trumpet, inculcated and reiterated, with ardent passion, in every possible form of terrible illustration; no remission of the alarm to thoughtless spirits. What! believe them in such unconceivably dreadful peril, and not multiply and aggravate the terrors to frighten them out of their stupor; deploring still, that all the horrifying representations in the power of thought and language to make, are immeasurably below the real urgency of the subject; and almost wishing that some appalling phenomenon of sight or sound might break in to make the impression that no words can make. If we saw a fellow-mortal stepping heedlessly or daringly on the utmost verge of some dreadful precipice or gulf, a humane spectator would raise and continue a shout, a scream, to prevent him. How then can it comport with the duty of preachers to satisfy themselves with brief, ocasional references to this awful topic, when the most prolonged thurring alarm is but as the note of an infant, a bird, or an insect, in propcion to the horrible urgency of the case?

There has been, in some quarters, what appears to me a miserably fallacious way of talking, which affects to dissuade from dwelling on such terrifying representations. They have said, These terrors tend only to harden the mind; approach the thoughtless beings rather, and almost exclusively, with the milder suasives, the gentle language of love. I cannot, of course, mean to say, that this also is not to be one of the expedients and of frequent application. But I do say, that to make this the main resource is not in consistency with the spirit of the bible, in which the larger proportion of what is said of sinners and addressed to them, is plainly in a tone of menace and alarm. Strange if it had been otherwise, when a righteous Governor was speaking to a depraved, rebellious race. Also it is matter of fact and experience, that it is very far oftener by impressions on fear that men are actually awakened to flee from the wrath to come. Let any one recall what he has known of such awakenings. Dr. Watts, all mild and amiable as he was, and de

lighted to dwell on the congenial topics, says deliberately, that of all the persons to whom his ministry had been efficacious, only one had received the first effectual impressions from the gentle and attractive aspects of religion; all the rest from the awful and alarming ones-the appeals to fear. And this is all but universally the manner of the divine process of conversion.

A number (not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of ministers within my acquaintance, several now dead, have been disbelievers of the doctrine in question; at the same time not feeling themselves imperatively called upon to make a public disavowal; content with employing in their ministrations strong general terms in denouncing the doom of impenitent sinners. For one thing, a consideration of the unreasonable imputations and unmeasured suspicions apt to be cast on any publicly declared partial defection from rigid orthodoxy, has made them think they should better consult their usefulness by not giving a prominence to this dissentient point; while yet they make no concealment of it in private communications, and in answer to serious inquiries. When, besides, they have considered how strangely defective and feeble is the efficacy, to alarm and deter careless, irreligious minds, of the terrible doctrine itself notionally admitted by them, they have thought themselves the less required to propound one that so greatly qualifies the blackness of the prospect. They could not be unaware of the grievous truth of what is so strongly insisted on as an argument by the defenders of the tenet,--that thoughtless and wicked men would be sure to seize on the mitigated doctrine to encourage themselves in their impenitence. But this is only the same perverse and fatal use that they make of the doctrine of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. If they will so abuse the truth we cannot help it.—But methinks even this fact tells against the doctrine in question. If the very nature of man, as created, every individual, by the sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder, that there is no possibility of conversion and salvation except in the instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main proportion of the race thus morally impotent (that is, really and absolutely impotent) will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence? But this I have said before. With all good wishes for the success of your studies and ministrations, I am, dear sir, yours truly,

J. F.

CCXXV I. TO THE REV. ROBERT AINSLIE.

[On Socialist publications.]

Stapleton, September 16, 1839

DEAR SIR,-I am truly obliged for the packet from you, forwarded to me by Mr. Wills; though I confess that no envelope, of paper or any other

substance, ever brought me anything so repulsively nauseous-a perfect moral assafœtida.

As to the object for which it is sent to me ;* I did endeavor to make my answer unequivocal when you favored me with a short visit here. To answer a polite and estimable man, intent purely on a benevolent purpose, with the blunt, curt, impatient, "No, I will not,"--" say no more,” is very ungracious to the feeling of both parties. I had to plead off in such shifts of language as intended this meaning, without rudely saying it.

A man necessarily best knows what his situation is, and what are his aptitudes and abilities (rather I should say, in this case, inabilities) for any given task.

66

For one thing, as to time. Your letter says a few days." Now I have the mortification to confess to you, that to compose a short essay on the subject named would take me months, literally and certainly months, and not the lowest, or nearly the lowest, number in this plural term. With a mind of slower operation than any I ever knew that could operate at all, and with eyes that painfully recoil from much reading, and a memory that hardly retains anything that I do read, I should have (for the purpose of making a tract of say twenty pages) to go about reading, comparing, selecting, digesting, and trying to condense-with such an amount of still unsatisfactory labor as no one can imagine for There would be no idle pride or vanity of doing the thing well; but without such a hard and slow labor I should have no feeling that it was done well. And for the labor of composition I have, and I may say always have had, a very great repugnance-often an extreme and almost invincible repugnance: whether this be a fault, I know not; but it is an obstacle, and in part a disability.

me.

As another thing—for any small matter that I may think I can perform in the writing way, I am at present under a positive obligation, to which I am so ill responding that I am mortified and ashamed.

It strikes me that it must be a great advantage for addressing the classes in question, on any of the proposed topics, that the writer should be one of those who have the opportunity of a direct or very near acquaintance with the parties to be dealt with, in order to be aware of the particular ways in which their minds are perverted, of their sort of notions, feelings and talk, the tempers they manifest, the modes of evasion, the signs they give of sincerity (in the coarse sense of the word) or of insincerity. The general argument may thus have many special adaptations, according to characters and circumstances. It is obvious that this can be much better done by an observant person who is in the close neighborhood of the parties, so as to have something approaching to an immediate knowledge of their current sayings and doings-as Mr. Giles

* Mr. Foster had been requested to write a tract on "The Existence of God," for the London City Mission.