66

member of every family on earth, would greatly increase the general happiness; and this, I suppose, is as reasonable as the assumption before us, but would not men be ready to ask for proof? But Dr. Strong very coolly tells that they are under no obligations to show the manner in which eternal misery will promote the greatest good." Certainly not; nor am I under any obligations to believe that it is possible.

SEC. 10. Endless Punishment is just and proper, according to the analogies of both natural and civil laws.

This argument of analogy is often insisted upon, in order to render the doctrine of endless punishment less improbable and obnoxious to reason. "In the sickly debauchee, never regaining perfect health," says Bp. Delancey, "and in the victim of the scaffold or the block, never restored to life, may be seen the natural indications of the perpetuity of punishment, of a worm that never dies, of a fire that is unquenched." Dr. Cheever also, in his defence of capital punishment, does not hesitate to acknowledge the analogy which he supposes to exist between the endless torments of hell, and capital punishments here in this world; and he seems to fear that the abolition of the latter will only prove a precursor of the rejection of the former. But let us examine these analogies.

We have two before us; one drawn from the

action of natural, and the other from that of civil laws, both of which are untenable. There is, in the first place, obviously no analogy between capital and endless punishments. When a man is executed, he is, so far as human government possesses the power, utterly annihilated. With the death stroke the victim of civil law passes forever beyond its reach. True, he is "never restored to life again;" nor is he subject to another pain, another fear. Capital punishment is to civil governments what total annihilation would be to the divine; but there is no analogy between instantaneous death without torture, and endless life in torment! The former may, in some cases, perhaps be a blessing; the latter must always be an unmitigated curse.

The analogy drawn from the action of natural laws is quite as groundless. The sickly debauchee may "never regain perfect health;' but he will either regain enough of health to make life a blessing, or friendly death will soon close at once his existence and his sufferings. God has in infinite goodness so ordered, that human sufferings can never be protracted beyond certain limits. When you can point me to the individual, whose life has been preserved for long, tedious years, along whose pathway no sunlight has failen, no goodness been manifested; but who has been preserved in being only to suffer; then, and not before, will you have presented a case ex

hibiting a faint, infinitismal analogy to the miseries and horrors of endless punishment.

But says Dr. Burthogge, "If mortal men kill the body temporally in their anger, it is like the immortal God to darnn the soul eternally in his." The two actions would probably spring from the same angry and revengeful feelings; and if it is like the immortal God to damn the soul eternally in his anger, it must also be very like God in men to torture and kill one another. The Inquisition was, on this view of the case, a very godly and reverend institution, and many of those who have been the worst of men, have proved themselves the greatest imitators of God that ever lived!

The fact is, the doctrine of endless punishment, if true, stands unsupported by a single analogy in the whole universe. Neither the dealings of God, nor the governments of men, imperfect and erring as they are, furnish a single analogy for it that has any weight or deserves a moment's consideration.

SEC. 11. Sinners will have contracted such a bias to sin that they will never cease, but continue to sin forever; hence they may be justly punished without end. This is the famous argument of Leibnitz against the Demonstration of Soner. "Although we concede, therefore," says he, "that no sin is of itself infinite, yet it may be said that the sins of the damned are infinite in number, since they will persevere in sinning through all eternity. Where

fore if their sins are eternal, it is just that their punishments should be so likewise." This has become rather the fashionable hypothesis. "God may justly punish sin," says Dr. Dwight, "as long as it exists, and it may exist forever. He who sins through this life, may evidently sin through another such period; and another; and another; and another without end." Dr. Beecher says, "We are not punished forever for the sins of this short life. This is a mistake. Man is a free agent, and free agency exteuds through eternity. . . If sin exists it must be punished while it exists, and if it exists forever, the punishment must be endless." The Am. Tract Society adopts the same hypothesis.

...

I need not remark that this involves a total departure from the old hypothesis of infinite sin. Those who adopt it recognize moral freedom as an indestructible element of human nature, and therefore believe that it must exist in the future

state as well as in the present. But here again the very premise which needs to be proved is assumed. If men sin forever they must be punished forever. Very true, I reply. Now prove that men will sin forever, and I renounce Universalism at once. But how is this to be done? Either man is a free agent in the future world or he is not. If he is not a free agent, on what principle is he to be punished? If he is, who can say that he will never reform? Dr. Beecher tells us that

"the doctrine of the Bible is, if ye do not repent ye shall all likewise perish; if ye do not repent in this life, ye never shall repent"! agency extends through eternity,"

But if "free why may not

a sinner repent beyond this life? Does not such freedom imply the power of repentance and ref ormation? If it does not then it means nothing. Dr. Dwight lays it down as a fact that "the Scriptures teach us that sinners who die impenitent, will not cease to sin through eternity," and to prove so important a position, he introduces two passages of Scripture, Rev. xxii. 15, and Eccles. ix. 10, to which the reader may refer. enough to say that neither of them has any reference to the subject, and I am only surprised that Dr. Dwight should ever have used them for such a purpose. So far are the Scriptures from favoring this notion that they stand decidedly opposed to it, and teach plainly that Christ must reign till he has subdued all hearts to himself.

It is

But if it were conceded that men would sin forever, do not the advocates of this hypothesis perceive that they deprive themselves of every proof-text of endless punishment in the Bible? If those passages which are used to support this ter rible doctrine are legitimately employed, they prove that endless punishment is to be inflicted for the sins of this life, not those of the next; for deeds done in the body, not those to be done in the spiritual state. They say nothing of damning