be everlasting, eternal, &c. I produced these passages in my lecture, not for the purpose of proving endless punishment, (though I take them in the endless sense,) but to show what the Universalists have always contended for, that the words everlasting, eternal, &c., mean an "age," or ages of ages." I apply these words as the Scriptures do, to express the duration of punishments under the Divine law, and to show the conclusiveness of the argument: I apply them to the case of deliberate suicide. What does my opponent do here? Why, first, he goes to work to show, what my argument does not require, viz., that these words do not mean endless punishment, and he occupies between four and five squares of a column to make this out. In the next place he states the case of an insane person, who, "by despair and excessive sorrow is driven to the dreadful alternative of taking his own life," to show that he receives his whole punishment in this world. In the third place he tells us that, "In cases of suicide, the sin is in the intention to do the deed, the execution of it may be the punishment." And here his argument closes. Now I desire to ask my opponents a few questions for information. And, first, where, in what books, in what language, and in what nation, they learned that the sin of suicide is wholly "in the intention to do the deed," that is, that there is no sin in the act of taking one's own life, but that the act is the "punishment" of the in

tention?* And secondly, I would ask whether they are quite certain that the act of taking life is the "punishment of the intention" in a case of suicide, when they say it “may be the punishment ;" and where, and what the punishment shall be, if it should not happen to be, as they say it may be? And, thirdly, I would ask, for it appears to have escaped their thoughts entirely, whether the time occupied in "executing" the "intention," when one shoots himself through the head or the heart, is the whole time expressed by the words, for ever, everlasting, eternal, fc. Is not this one of the finest defences of Universalism ever set up by two learned men!

As my opponent has several times asserted his ability to make it appear that the words everlasting, eternal, fc., do not mean endless duration, I may be thought wanting in attention to this subject if I pass it over in silence; and yet I can make but a few brief remarks upon it in this place. I take these words in

* As my opponent has given us the novel and very queer sentiment that "the sin," in a case of suicide, "is in the intention to do the deed," and that the "act of taking life is the punishment of that sin ;" and as in his defence he quoted Matt. v, 28, "Whosoever looketh on a woman," &c., in proof of that sentiment'; he is desired, as there has been no small inquiry on that head since. the evening of his defence, to inform the public whether the same distinction between the "intention" and the "act" is to be made in a case of adultery, as in suicide; and if not he would do well to be very particular in as. signing his reasons for confining it to the lattor

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the endless sense, for the following reasons among others :

Because this is the true sense of the Greek word aion, from which they are derived. All able critics, ancient and modern, give the word this meaning according to its etymology, ai, always, and on, existing, always existing; and thus the idea conveyed by it is endless existence. The same is to be observed of its derivatives. The word aionios is applied to God, Theos aionios, "the everlasting God." And this word Dr. Chauncey tells us. "is applied to the future state of the righteous more than forty times in the New Testament." In all these places he admits that it means endless duration, Universalist as he was. Why then should these words be taken in a different sense when applied to the punishment of the wicked?

In this application of these words we are sustained by an unerring rule of revelation,"The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal," 2 Cor. iv, 18. Here the word "eternal" must have the endless sense, as it stands opposed to the word "temporal." And then the things which are not seen, the things of the invisible, spiritual world, as God, angels, saints, and sinners when they enter that world, with the happiness of the one class, and the misery of the other, must be endless, because "the things which are not seen are eternal."

And here let me add the testimony of Dr.

Huntingdon; of which I might say as David did of the sword of Goliath, "There is none like it ;" for he was not only a man of learning, but a Universalist, and wrote his book entitled "Calvinism Improved," to prove that doctrine. His words are, 66 Does the Bible plainly say that sinners shall be damned to interminable punishment? It certainly does ; as plainly as language can express, or any man, or even God himself can speak. It is quite strange to me that some who believe that all mankind shall in the end be saved, will trifle as they do with a few words, and most of all with the original word, and its derivatives, translated, for ever," &c. We never denied that these words are sometimes applied by way of accommodation, to temporal things; but to us, as well as to Dr. H., it appears "trifling," when men have nothing to urge against the proper application of these words to the future state but their accommodated application to the things of this world.

I quoted Jude, verse 7, in my lecture, and offered four reasons to show that the phrase, "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," in relation to Sodom and Gomorrah, &c., should be taken as implying that they are still suffering The reply touches only one of these reasons, but accuses me of misquoting a passage in one of St. Peter's epistles which I do not quote at all; and then to show that the phrase, "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," is limited to this world, tells us "the

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fire which St. Jude speaks of he supposes to be the fire by which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, called eternal, aionios, on account of the great length of time it lasted;" and to support his supposition, gives another supposition mentioned by "Whitby," that "this fire lasted from Abraham's time to the beginning of the second century,” a period of about two thousand years. This was a long time for a literal fire to last; and really I" pose" there is no more foundation for this report than there is for that of the "apples of Sodom," or the pillar of salt," into which Lot's wife was changed, as still remaining, but which noboby can find: but there is another report as credible as that mentioned by Whitby, viz., that the land where those cities stood was sunk, and that the Dead Sea occupies the same spot. And I should think, after all the assurance manifested by my opponents, it would not be a little mortifying to be obliged to resort to supposition and such legendary tales to support the doctrine of universal salvation.

My opponent's remarks, if such they may be called, upon the passages which speak of the unbeliever dying in his sins and the hypocrite's hope being cut off, having little in them beside words, and nothing like argument, I pass over; but I stop a moment to notice those on the texts produced to show that the "end" of the impenitent "is destruction," that they "bring upon themselves swift destruc