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BY

"_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_~~~1880.
FUEE Lrsro--Free PAGE.
1

SEORETARY.

---

"The Wagesof Sin is Death; but the gift of God is Eternal Life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

No. 1. Vol. IV.


TABLE OF CONTEN'l'S.

OCTOBER,

CONFERENCE NUMBER, PRICE TWOPENCE.

copies posted to Young Men's Christian Associations Rooms, on receipt of address with signature if the postage is in excess of the British of Inland

and to Free Reading Secretary or Librarian;

Report of the Liverpool Conference Sermon in Pembroke Chapel General Goodwyn's Address Man and Immortality Man, the Image of God in general .. of Conditional Immortality Justify the Ways .. and to the World Our Position with regard to other Christians, Do the Teachings Traditional Everlasting .. .. and Vain Deceit

o
7 10

charge, such excess must accompany the order. ADVllRTISING CHARGES-Four lines and under additional insertions line 3d. Displayed-ls.6d. per inch, charged as five. Two per (30 words) Is. single column. Each Six

Christians Despoiled through Philosophy

14 14
17

RATES OF SUBSCUIPTION-One copy Is. 6d. per annum, post free. copies 2s. 6d. copy. Member's Associate's Four copies, upwards, post free at Is. per annum 5s. per annum, two copies sent. 2s. 6d. do. one do.

of God to Men? " Theology: Punishment Tested by its Results and Found Wanting not Everlasting Pain

Subscription do.

Hi ~l 24 27 27

The Second Advent of Christ, a Personal Appearing, connected with the First Resurrection The President's Responsibility Resurrection: Address .. The Rewards in the Kingdom .. measured by Privilege Scripturally Considered ..

CONFERENCE

REPORT.
Hotel.

28
30

THE Conference was opened in the large hall of the Washington Lime Street, Liverpool, on Tuesday for Prayer and Testimony, enhead. exercise, Hammond, after which afternoon,

Sept. 7th, by a Meeting

which was led by Mr. Thomas Vasey, of Birkhour was spent in the former and Mr. R. J. of the work in some experiences

A very profitable and helpful of Lo~'i:)I'f, ,:;poke to personal

NOTICES

TO

CORRESPONDENTS, to the Secretary, CYRUSE. of all classes of works If

Mr. T. J. Hitchcock, of Glasgow,

-'

ALL COMMUNICATIONS should be addressed BROOKS, (Temporary Address-Cheltenham.) THE ASSOCIATION undertakes touching the Life and Advent. the publication

Glasgow and Tor,~uay. light concerning intensely the interestillk

The former related life, by reading experience

how he had been led into teaching and discnssion.

The Rainbow, and related

of open-air

The latter spoke cif a month's holiday recently spent at Torquay, where, Do not roil, but fold it. in connection with some Methodist friends lately led into the life, he had held a month's services, with some pleasure to himself, and-it was

IN BENDINGCOPY,write on one side only. declined, send stamps for return.

THE BIBLE
hoped-some the opposition gain to the truth. he had met with. Much amusement was created touching Especially concerning one opponent

STANDARD.
A Public Meeting was held in the evening, presided over by the Rev. Henry Constable, M.A., when addresses van Someren, Thomas Vasey, of Birkenhead. were delivered by Major G. J. of India, and Messrs. T. J. Hitchcock, of Glasgow, and About 350 were present. The

who wanted to settle the truth or falsity of the doctrine by a public vote, the majority to carry it! And another, who claimed the challenge of a hundred pounds for a text proving the natural immortality of the soul, by quoting" The spirit shall return to God who gave it," and Matt. x. 28. also spoke of the improving prospects Mr. H. B. Murray, of Cheltenham, .of the testimony friends of the truth there.

On Thursday afternoon, another Public Meeting was held for the reading of Papers, under the presidency of the Treasurer, Mr. R. J. Hammond. following were the readers-Rev. Brittain, F.S.A., of Birmingham, The attendance was very fair. After Tea, the Question Meeting was resumed under the oversight of General Goodwyn, opened maintained said in the was resided it the topic discussed being "The Spirit of Mr . if, to the Man-is it a Personality?" Quite 50 persons the discussion the Acts, untrue? Affirmative. "Devout He were present. Mr. Vasey men carried maintained that asked Stephen if G. P. Mackay, of Lincoln, Mr. Henry and General H. Goodwyn, of Reading .

in that town, and of the new chapel opened by the He was followed by Mr. Wildman, of Liver-

pool, who instanced the spiritual condition of that city, as showing the need of more Scriptural and winning religious teachings than the dogma .of natural immortality In the evening, and its necssary hell. Chapel (Baptist), As, however, the congregation entered, each a protest against the use Notmost excellent their Christian

a Service was held at Pembroke

R. J. Hammond who when his followed, it was burial,"

in the Negative.

Mr. Maude,

kindly lent by the Deacons.

person was served with a handbill containing withstanding this bit of bad taste-to The organist

of the edifice for such a purpose, signed by three of the Trustees. say the least-a service followed. announced and choir manifested

personality not buried. spirit-said dust,

in the spirit, it was

not true, and Step hen was that there could

Mr. Wildman-replying

to the statement

feeling by attending and leading the service of song. Leask , D.D., Vice. President. rich throb of spiritual life. At a later stage of the Conference,

Capt. J. E. Dutton

be no resurrection

unless the personality were preserved by the departed promise. He, who at first created from the therefrom. Messrs. J. E.

the hymns, and the Sermon was delivered by the Rev. W. There was an excellent congregation, and the following resolution and published in was the

they could trust Him, who had promised to raise them from to restand

the dead, to fulfil that

could cause His sleepers

Dutton, T. J. Hitchcock, and C. E. Brooks followed in the same strain, pointing out also Christ's. statement personality of the human " in the heart of the earth." neither concerning Himself, that He-the spend three days and nights Christ-would

.adopted, signed

by several of the members,

Liverpool Daily Post :"Washin.gton Hotel, Liverpool, 9th Sep., 1880. TO THE DEACONS F PEMBROKE O CHAPEL. " Dear Bl'ethren,- We, the undersigned, as representative members of the Conditional Immortality Association, desire to tender to you, the deacons of Pembroke Chapel, our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for your generous Christian conduct in granting the above Chapel for the use of the Association for service and sermon on Tuesday last. We rejoice in this example of catholicity upon your part, which has placed an edifice rich in honourable associations at the disposal of a society embracing all sections of the Christian Church, whilst acknowledged by none. "We pray for you and the Church you so worthily adorn all needed blessing, and the 'well done' of that Master, Himself so eminent an .example of catholicity. " We deeply regret that you should have been exposed to any pain through this generous action, and can but think that time and reflection will induce a more generous view." On Wednesday afternoon, 'about 200 present. a Public Meeting was held at the Hotel,

And how strictly this was in keeping with Mr. R.

the sixteenth Psalm, " Thou wilt not leave My soul in the grave (sheol), wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." meaning of the original Killip asked the grammatical words, whether

they conveyed the idea of personality? Henry Constable, that entity was implied; that personality

Replies were given by Rev. by Major G. J. van Someren, The rapid flight of time

conld not be found therein.

caused the unwelcome close of a lively and profitable discussion, which was materially helped by the Chairman and Treasurer. The closing Public Meeting was held in the evening, and, in point of numbers, was the best of the series, near 500 persons Henry J. Ward, Esq., President D.D., of the Association, and Addresses were given by the following-Capt. the Rev. W. Leask, Cheltenham. of London; being present. took the chair. of

J. E. Dutton, of Liverpool; Mr. H. B. Murray,

Owing to the lateness of the hour, the Secretary abstained Meetings of the Conference, the attractions suburbs, proved too strong for

Gen. H. Goodwyn presided, and Papers were read by

from his intended address. As regards the Business some of the members. important of the city, its 'noble river, and beautiful business transacted. met at noon on Tuesday, President September 7th, of the (as also at each following several new morning, there were from reading digest that and was

Mr. M. W. Strang, of Glasgow, the Rev. H. Constable, M.A., of London, and Mr. R. J. Hammond, of London. After Tea, a Question Meeting was held, presided over by Mr. R. J. Hammond. The topic introduced was" Adam and Immortality." A free discussion followed, sustained was immortality by-Rev. H. Constable (Adam's state and thus living for Immortality a in resurrection-as

Several meetings were, however, held, and much

The General Committee under the chairmanship meeting).

nisi, it might be and was forfeited by sin); C. E. Brooks to latter-day translation.

(Adam mortal, but capable of receiving immortality, -ever, by a change equivalent gift which cannot be revoked. Christ); -postponed untested); Same in believer-at

A Digest of Business was prepared, containing

and valuable recommendatious. The Annual Meeting of Members was held on Wednesday September Members visit. 8th. of the After singing and prayer, the President Conference to .Liverpool, stating testimony, that welcomed the

Gen. Goodwyn (an enquiry as to the nature of the human spirit to following evening); immortality Capt. J. E. Dutton a St. Helen's resident (Man was not being given to any creature and fr"om H. B. Murray. (the pfirpoee of the Tree would not all closed a most in which the could ever cease.

created purely mortal,

already signs of good, for the local Referring of surmounted, confirmation proceeded Only three by diligence minutes with. had withdrawn. subscription It and

resulting

(asked meaning . !tnt. nature of life); he

to past difficulties, he said carefulness. of previous

they had After the

been happily

was followed by a question from a stranger, Rev. H. Constable replied. of Life in Paradise,
SI

Capt. H. J. Ward

Conference,

the

viz: to impart be dependent?); somewhat

an endless life{; Mr. Maud (would Capt. Ballantine discussion,

Who only hath immortality" though

ever cease to be exclusive? discursive

MEMBERSHIP: The Secretary reported a net increase of 73 members was resolved that Life Members should be received on payment of a single subscription of Five Pounds. That the annual of Members should be raised to 5s.; and

.creature-immortality interesting, Chairman

took an active part, by asking if jmrnortality

THE BIBLE
that Associates subscription FINANCE: should be received in future, for which the annual Also to a

STANDARD.
regards expenses, Association the 'I'ravelling Expenses of Executive and General but that

3
Comthe A

was fixed at 2s. 6d., such to have no voting power. The Treasurer of reported the year's working.

mittees, it was resolved-That fund provide

members thereof otherwise sleeping

pay their own travelling arranged, when needed.

issue a card to Members and Associates in place of a simple receipt form. Leaving balance in his hands PUBLISHING: 'I'racts, 84,000 Parable," by C. F. Impertinent leaflets Two" 3 19s. On-d. The amount of Bible monthly of income being

except where previously

accommodation,

most cordial vote of thanks was passed guests; and to the local Secretary,

to the local Committee, the Conference

and to

nearly double that of the previous year. 22,000 copies circulated Present Standard, showing a Of sold. falling off from previous year. The issues consisted a reprint "Bible of "What Truths that total 1,650 copies.

the friends who had so generously received

Members as.

Mr. W. H. Miller to whose energetic services of by evening Septem--

efforts so much of the success and comfort of the Conference was due. The Local Committee them, were asked to arrange for the continued and Liverpool. for a series Hall the Rev. 'I'hos, Vasey, in Birkenhead to take the Washington the ordinary services, after It was decided of Sunday

have been printed, of which near 40,000 had been is Truth?" "Man: Few Believe," "Man by H. B. M. from the Rainbow. by same.

"A Modern "An 15,000

his Origin and Nature," by J. J. Hobbs. a reprint.

services of the Churches.

Major G. J. Van

Question,"

in Death,"

Someren and Capt. J. E. Dutton conducted the fi;st on Sunday, ber 12th, which was attended by about 250 persons. CYRUS E. BROOKS, Cheltenham, Secretary, September

have been presented Rainbow Tracts" Each

to the Society by Mr. Overton, of London, and Advent Hymns ". as follows:Rev. W. the Rev. H. Secretary, Mr. of four works have been purchased. re-elected, Heading; London. Liverpool. H. Goodwyn, Vice-Presidents,

and a collection of "Life

are in the press. OFFICERS: President, Leask, present. assistance. Constable, D.D., Henry

'I'he stereo-plates J. Ward, Esq.,

17th, 1880.

officer was unanimously General

London;

THE DIVINE
OPENING SERMON

TEST

OF DOCTRINE.
CONFERENCE,

lVI. A., was elected, but Treasurer,

decided not to accept office for the

Mr. Robert J. Hammond, Mr. William

AT LIVERPOOL

Cyrus E. Brooks, whose salary was increased, with an allowance for office Auditor, Mortimer, Lincoln. Assistant the

By

REV.

W.

LEASK,

D.D.
gospel of the blessed,

Auditor, Mr. J. W. Davis, London. MISCELLANEOUS: Owing to the heavy claims Editor (Dr. IV. Leask) the official organ; be Editor. services. literature. Dr. Leask pressed it was therefore agents made upon him, to be relieved of the labour of preparing decided that the Secretary should also thanked for his kind and valued THERE is a remarkable English and gradation in these shortly. glorious words, as they stand in the the original, excepting. blessed God,-the The series of steps is this gospel of the blessed God. I am greatly have been appointed for the sale of Collections version, which fairly enough devout attention represents :-God,-the "Sound doctrine, according God."-l Tint. i. 10, 11. to the glorious

was warmly

Three additional

Lectures have been delivered at Skipton, Bacup, and Lincoln, and at Torquay, by Mr. R. J. Hammond. Congregational Church, London; Glasgow Meeting.

in one point which will be noticed it commands of the gospel blessed God-the

by Mr. '1'. Vasey; Missions :-Maberly Church, Lincoln;

on behalf of the Society have been made by the following Churches and Mint Lane Baptist It was decided that Skip ton Mission;

Take this line of study, and if it does not convince us that all "sound doctrine" mistaken. must harmonise Undoubtedly of sound with the revelation that he makes Let it contains, this is the apostle's idea. doubt doctrine. Whatever we may

Churches or Missions making an Annual Collection in aid of the Society, should appear as Affiliated Societies in the Annual Report, and that their time and place of meeting should be given. liberty to appoint one representative Annual Meeting Committee. The adjourned ber 9th. Executive Lincoln; Also that such should be at each, on on the General Septemmember was held

make of it, it is beyond speaks the test

the gospel of which he'

us first examine the teaching,.

and secondly the practice it suggests. 1. '['HE TEACHING. 1. " God." to the human life All that mind, is grand, The being imposing, by it. Without that wonderful, Without and good, is. a living God, Creator, suggested by this word. subordinate of God is at once incomprehensible an Almighty

Thursday,

Committee to consist of the Officers, and Messrs. W. H. Brittain, Birmingham; G. Aldridge, Bradford; Glasgow. and to its place centre, H. Matthews, 'I'orquay ; M. W. Strang, in some populous

F. Davies, Liverpool; W. Bausor, The transact

and demanded The difficulties

were impossible. are great;

above to meet once quarterly,

creation could not be. . of the Self-Existent account self-existent splendour; cause,

meet us in trying to think phenomena, Theism without a a

the business of the Society between Such Executive to be a moveable

the sittings of the Annual one, as regards testimony on behalf of in whom the New

but those that meet us when we try to greater. is belief in

Conference. truth.

for the universe, with its marvellous are immensely' be true.

of meeting, and at its sessions Also that the Executive

to bear public

appoint a body of Trustees, Brown,

sublime Mystery concealed Irom human but it must all reason, all logic, and must be false. reason. "I'he Scriptures

gaze amidst

its own ineffable

property of the Association shall be vested. CORRESPONDING EMBERS: Rev. G. A. M Zealand; Lieut.-Col. E. Armstrong, India; pool and New York; the Representatives same. That

Atheism

is the negation of all order,

Auckland,

The belief in God is the highest works, ways, and.

Capt. J. E. Dutton, LiverCommittee, with the for

The belief that there is no God is mental insanity. refer to God, or speak of His character, attributes so constantly, of Him. that they are actually

Major G. J. Van Someren, India. of the Executive of Affiliated Societies, and to meet annually,

GENERALCOMMITTEE: '1'0 consist day previous to the Annual Conference, testimony. MISCELLANEOUS: Resolved that dition of Membership-That" is to be obtained only by union

will, purposes, emphatically

a revelation

This is their' avowed object, and it prophets, the Bible really but uttered knows God. truth He is of His

to prepare digest of business for

is so completely realisedby and apostles, that that our Lord


U&'bJ

the words of inspired historians, who knows

following such session there shall be a Public Meeting

the man

And this is especially true in relation the following be required as a conLife" (in the sense of Immortality) Decided As

to the living Word, the Logos, so a profound seen the Father."


11

no figure or metaphor,

Eternal

when He said, " He that hath seen Me, hath glory, so that we have in Christ personality, but an embodiment not only

with the Lord Jesus Christ."

the express image of the invisible God, the bright out-streaming of the divine character.

that the Annual Meeting should be held on the day following the session of the General Committee, and to be followed by a Public Meeting

living proof of the divine If therefore.

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
Now, is it sound doctrine" to say that this blessed Being who speaks the lips of His adorof the damned to an end

we wish to know the feelings snd disposition of God in relation to us, we have simply to study Christ, satistactory of Christ strikingly and the result will be delightfully ; we shall be constrained towards us. to love the Father and the Son; said about God, too, are reat such as

to us thus in the Scripture of truth, and through

able Son, will take delight in the groans and shrieks to their cursed existence? I write with such blasphemy; brethren, 3. "The I am ashamed to stain

for there is no difficulty at all in ascertaining the feelings and disposition Some of the things impressive, bright flashes from the fount of inspiration which we are unable' to fathom;

all eternity, and will not be moved to the small pity of putting

the paper on which

hut it is in the world and the Church, and,

vealing a depth of meaning all." stain; Love, yearning

if we value the sacred name' we bear, we will not rest until it gospel of the blessed God." Nothing could be more natural something like a correct view of so overflows with bears is He would tell us about

these, " God is love," and" God is light, and in Him is no darkness propriate means for that end;

is driven from both as a lying imposture. or more likely, once we have obtained the divine character, than Himself.

to secure the welfare of others, and devising apand Light, moral purity without possible that never does injustice,

wisdom that never errs, righteousness

the conviction that

and a character of such infinite excellence that it will bear the scrutiny of eternal ages, and shine with growing lustre as those ages roll on. Now any doctrine that discredits, or opposes these representations God by inspired lived centuries, doctrines. earth, cannot be sound." and had I care not now what it is. the suffrage of illustrious of men, and by the daily life of Christ when He was on It may have but if of sound names;

This He has done, and the information

kindness and love toward us that the name it appropriately good news or gospel. happiness. of His will."

In this message from the blessed God we have good pleasure The nature Men

the revelation or unfolding of the plan by which He seeks to secure our This plan is all His own, the result of "the It must be true. Those who have grasped it most fully are the most deeply precludes the possibility of fable or falsehood. conceptions,

it cannot; bear the test, it has no place. in the catalogue

convinced of its wisdom, grace, and love. of'the document 'aud


80

It is heresy, and no part of the faith, and must not disturb

the calmness of our confidence, and the glow of our adoration, when we think of Him whom the Saviour has made known. 2. The blessed God." Blessed or happy in Himself, so called-that This is a statement He is the ever has of enormous eternal source of all the happiness-properly been or ever will be in the universe. breadth;

could not have invented" a thing so marvellous in all its arrangements, entirely above the range of human that constitution must whilst at the same time it is so tenderly human human Whether we view it as illustrating to its name gospel,-" every fibre and nerve of the visible to its Author.

have been distinctly

Divine beneficence, or revealing man's

for with all the sin and the sorrow that of the blessed God.

have been in the It is not difficult to The happy


I

necessities by showing the perfect remedy for them, it is equally entitled the gospel of the blessed God." to the ways of God, but we can that the gospel These corresAn analytical view of this gospel would of course be interesting devout men who find pleasure in tracing only glance at it here.
I

world, there have also been joy, peace, love, blessedness, that could only have their spring in the heart understand this. We have analogy in our own experience.

man cannot keep it all to Himself. His presence is sunshine. a sympathetic man must benefactor's give.

He wishes to share it with others. The benevolent of this to the


I

Nevertheless

I may remark

His very smile gladdens some weary one as help it. It is the very nature adding

embraces two great subjects, a Church and a Kingdom. pond to its priestly and regal designs, respectively.

cordial finding its way to the heart. He cannot feeling, and it grows by exercise,

Under its priestly

aspect divine grace forms a church, an elect assembly of redeemed men, baptised into Christ by the Holy Spirit, and so made one with Him who is at once the Head and the Life.
!

divinely implanted

happiness,

according to the great saying of Christ, It is Whereas, upon the other hand, of "happiness." The word not the meaning

These, mortals by nature in common of their union with Christ

more blessed to give than to receive." the selfish man knows miser means miserable.

with all other creatures, will, as the result be incorruptible, and consequently immortal

their life, be raised or changed at His coming into His likeness, and so in their Lord, His life being communicated to them constantly, as the divine source of their immorin the Evangelists; was neces-

Rivers of gladness, joyous feelings, deep consolation, fellowship with the Father and the Son, songs of adoring praise, are not strange in the world; chief Benefactor, the supreme Philanthropist, it impossible that He can keep His happiness things and they all come from the heart of the blessed God, the whose very nature renders to Himself. He had to
I

tality, as light flows from the sun, or a river from its spring. The regal aspect of the gospel is very prominent and the reason is obvious. brought The gospel of the Kingdom"

sarily the subject which the King of the Jews and His missionaries before the Jewish people who were eagerly on the outlook for promised Messiah. Blinded by saw no royal the appearance among them of their

share it with others, and to share it with the unworthy gave Him double pleasure, as the fact of their unworthiness magnifies the fulness of His grace. part of the argument, life do not prevent proves their urgent need and Nor must we forget to note, in this The blessed God None but the

prejudice and jealousy, the priestly guides of the nation beauty of gorgeous apparel in the surpassing of course rejected;

the wonderful fact that the trials and sorrows of Him, our griefs shall minister to our songs.

moral beauty of the lowly decrees which would

the experience of solid happiness.

Nazarene, and so in rejecting Him the kingdom of tbe Son of David was and instead of those imperial have been issued from the hill of Sion for the government of the world,

has so arranged that, if we will but trust to our gladness, and our sighs give pathos fying for an everlasting

happy God could have thought of overcoming evil with good, and sanctiweight of glory to the pilgrim the afflictions and of the invisible God, speak: I will I will send you a Comforter in me ye might have my joy might rod now come I to and these things you that sorrows of his pilgrimage. Here again let Christ, the representative Let not your heart be troubled .. come to you .. peace .. Peace I leave with you .. I will not .leave you orphans; "The Bible! Most wondrous Book! Bright Candle of the Lord I Star of Eternity I the only star By which the barque of man could navigate The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss Securely." Pollock. Whence but from heaven could men unskill'd in artsIn several ages born-in several partsWeave such agreeing truths? 01' how, or why Shouldall conspire to cheat us with a lie? Unasked their pains-ungrateful their adviceStarving their gain, and martyrdom their price." Dryden.

. . These things have I spoken unto you that These things have I spoken unto remain in you, and tl;lat your joy might be full .. Thee,"-addressing selves." I speak in the world, that

the Father who bad sent Him-"

they might have My joy fulfilled in them-

THE BIBLE
bad the King been accepted, we have only a series of remarkable parables. The Kingdom is in parable or mystery until return He will. will yet be a Kingdom of God upon earth more splendid in arrangement, the return of the King, for and there the more extensive in territory, His royal rights have not been surrendered, and more beneficent

STANDARD.
pressions that sadden or soothe, that terrify or delight,-are

5
physical He it was

organs of such exquisitely skilful contrivance, and so perfectly adapted to secure the end in view, that I call them thoughts of God. that planted the ear and formed the eye, and in doing so He had in view another great thought, namely, to bring His mind into contact with the mind of His creature, man. structure of Scripture. The variety of forms He has been pleased as you. are all to adopt in pursuit of this object is not the least noteworthy fact in the I need not select illustrations, familiar with the fact that the Book contains the pathetic, the tender, but I do not know of If this is an to prove

in result, than

most ardent Jewish patriot ever dreamt of when exulting over the pictures of Messiah's reign in the pages of his national seers. Now the message from God which tells of sinners saved by grace, and of mortals made partakers of God, and assured of the Divine nature in union with the Son life in Him because He, after putting which gives sceptre of the state, the of eternal

the awful, the sublime, the grand, the beautiful; than these, "The

away sin, rose from the dead and lives for ever, is worthy of the name, gospel "; and in the other great division of this message us an outline of all nations blessed uuder But the gloomy and the terrible the righteous an

any combination of words that the eye can gaze upon with more delight glorious gospel of the blessed God." accurate description of the revelation God has given to men, in and by His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, it needs no laboured argument that moral and mental wealth of which it is impossible conception, for this is a thing ence. I may tell a man that understand God,-which, he cannot revelation. Now the designation which these words apply to the record which God has given of His Son, is in the highest library. degree sublime. the entire Each member text is a divine The words are in Christ of tes "the of the text is a volume of divine theology; But there is a fact to be noticed clearer and therefore to everyone the eternal those who will not receive it, deprive themselves of an amount of they can have any to be understood only by personal experithere is a holy luxury in thinking with religion,-but

Anointed of Jehovah, it is equally true that it is indeed good news. about intermediate purgatory, the gigantic superstructure mediation of departed of priestcraft and superstition,

saints, mariolatry,

the immaculate

conception,

the infallibility of the Pope, and collateral proclaims a gratuitous salvation, through

dogmas which it chafes one's the finished work of the

intelligence even to name, can never be reconciled with a gospel which Saviour, and promises a divine kingdom under the whole heaven." The simple truth scriptural Protestants notion is, the world would never have been plagued with and abominations of papalism but for the unfolly of and of human immortality. The impudent the priestly tyranny " spiritualism"

of course, is the best definition of personal

me so long as he rejects the gospel as a divine

would be unknown

but for the same delusion;

here, which will give us a

who perpetuate the delusion are unwittingly To call ourselves Protestants

the advocates of is one thing; to

still higher idea of its meaning,

the very foundation

of the ecclesiastical apostacy from which their name

true as they stand in our version, for the gospel of immortality who receives Him-and "Light" and "Love;" " redemption "-is glorious as an emanation of the mind but the original-to be rendered

says that they are free.

that is precisely the meaning evangelion

bring all our beliefs to the divine test of doctrine is another. It is remarkable how all departures from the pure gospel tend to the extension that" of creeds and multiplication of ceremonies. Every new "article of faith," imposed by ecclesiastical authority, the faith once for all delivered buttress to the saints" obscurity, and the freshly-erected of traditional is a fresh evidence is receding into and afraid that Whilst,

and heart of

doxes tou makariou. theou-must

into our language,

gospel of the glory of the blessed God," thus transferring from the message to Him from Whom the message came. latter, to God Himself from Whom these rays issue.

the radiance Of course the

is a sign that the guardians

ray partakes of the central light, but here our thoughts are called to the And our reasoning any of the divine to the must be faulty and feeble if we do not reach the conclusion that theological doctrine that casts a shade upon the brightness test. glory, must be open to suspicion, and should at once be brought is to see that the honour of his Father is safe. and traditional opinions perish.

theology are convinced of its weakness,

some day soon it will fall to the ground and arise no more. upon the other hand, if we go back to the teaching On a small piece of parchment specimen and illustration: stand:

of our Lord and His them in a few Here is a

apostles, what sublime simplicity we find I The articles of faith are few. a scribe could reproduce them without I declare minutes, and memory could retain an effort.

My deepest convictions tell me that the first duty of the Christian This must be maintained

"Brethren,

unto you the gospel what I

iutact, spotless, glorious, though theological systems should be discredited, That the words under notice teach that the di vine nature, sets it before the world But this is far the gospel message illustrates

which I preached unto you, which also ye have received and wherein ye by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
Oul'

For I delivered

as good, pure, beneficent, and as intended to attract men, that they may get the blessing of which the message speaks. is obvious. from being all. To justify the ways of God to men has been the self-imposed task of many writers, for there is an intuitive the very heart of all things. mistakes, partiality, mistake! perception that this is positively errs, is liable to If HE does wrong,

unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that a kind of reading of It is enough for our He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." A student of the history of doctrine goes through which tbe Church has little conception, To describe it in a few sentences is impossible. present purpose to say that as the generations and the demands on popular faith consequently the days of Christ's personal ministry of "the the writings of Moses and the prophets, brings us such an abundance and the outside world none. pass the dogmas grow. become stronger. As in theology

injustice, where are we?

At sea without chart, sun,

star, or compass I The hope of the universe is gone, and creation is a But though many of the well-meant e.fforts to justify the way fact that certain lines of of God have been failures, from the vitiating no authority. governmental

With tbe swelling of priestly ambition the things to be believed increase, Rabbinical glosses had obscured and doctrines of

conduct were assumed to be part of His ways, for which His Word gives Of course, if you assume a thing to be part of God's scheme, which is really no part of it, but essentially blast of relief and joy. The

so now traditional

commandments

men," that it requires both earnest determination accept only" the doctrine of Christ." 4. "The glorious gospel of the blessed The eye that sees, and the ear that

and moral courage to Language, as the thing.

opposed to it, the effort to justify Him cannot satisfy the earnest mind. But our text comes- with its trumpet same evangel that brings us life and immortality glory of the blessed God. vindication of His government is the gospel of the

God."

written or spoken symbol of invisible thought,

is a wonderful

It will issue in a complete and triumphant during the long continued conflict of the

hears,-conveying

to the mind im-

THE BIBLE
forces of good and evil. the suddenness in the universe; creation The day is coming-it may be far off yet in the day is

STANDARD.
himself was on his way to Macedonia that he might urge some not to be teachers of other doctrines, or strange the gospel of the blessed God. things, which have no place in the Word," he writes with I charge thee be all "Preach

~============================~=============================
unborn centuries, it may be just at hand and about to flash upon us with of a great surprise, but remote or at haud-the coming when there will be neither sigh, nor sorrow, nor sin, nor death when the old years of a troubled race and a groaning shall be among the fading memories of an age gone by; when of

emphatic earnestness, as he foresaw the great apostaey :-" the dead at His appearing instant endure long suffering and doctrine. sound doctrine; and His kingdom;

before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and preach the Word; exhort with in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, own lusts

the mystery of God will be finished, and the riddles, and enigmas, and parables of time will be solved and explained to the entire satisfaction the severe discipline through intended heaven; the keenest intellects of the perfect day; when it will be understood that which the sons of God had to pass was shall shine forth in to fit them for their respective positions in the royal family of and when the glory of God in Christ the joy of all intelligences, the Sheeinah but of the

For the time will come when they will not shall they heap to But watch thou in make full

but after their

themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall Le turned unto fables. all things, endure proof of thy ministry. afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,

unsulJied splendour,

For I am now ready to be offered, and the time I have fought a good fight, I have finished henceforth there is laid up for me a judge, shall give also that love

universe, and the crown and glorious purpose of creation and redemption, This is an outline of the teaching of our text; as all divine doctrine is suggestive of Christian obedience, let us look,-

of my departure is at hand. crown of righteousness, me at that day:

my course, I have kept the faith:

which the Lord, the righteous

n.
1.

At the PRACTICE REQUIRES. IT Patriotism. We get this from the introduction: "Pau:!, an of God our Saviour and

ana not to me only, but unto all them

His appearing." Now, brethren we have assembled in this great maritime city, famous for its enterprise, its merchant completely in the shade; less scorn-" What princes, and its marvellous commercial navy, which throws that of ancient Tyre, great as it was in many waters, and we must be ready to answer the question and some in thoughtIf, conscious of individual which thousands will ask, some in real earnestness, do these men mean?"

apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope; faith: Lord.

unto Timothy, my own son in the when I went into no other so do.

grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, thou mightest neither give heed to fables and charge some that they teach

Macedonia, that doctrine, minister

endless genealogies, which

questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: and of faith unfeigned:

weakness, we have associated for the very purpose of gaining strength by union for a great enterprise which, we think, comprises piety, patriot. ism, and philanthropy, countrymen. let us answer the very natural question of our We can do it, and nothing will give us greater pleasure We do not mean to found a new sect, or but we do mean, the Lordfrom a and the

Now the end of the commandment a good conscience,

is charity out of a pure heart, and of from which some having desiring to be teachers of knowing and

swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; the law; understanding But we know that and disobedient,

neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. man, but for the lawless sinners, for unholy

than the knowledge that inquiry is awakened and an answer required on the meaning of our association. to seek proselytes to any already in existence; press, to deliver theology from a terrible dark cloud, preachers of the Word character of God from a foul libel. our text book and authority

the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; for the ungodly of mthers and for

this, that the law is not made for a righteous profane, for murderers kind, for men-stealers,

helping us, to put forth our utmost exertions, by the living voice and the burden, the churches a grievous fetter, from

and murderers of mothers, for man-

slayers, for whoremongers,

for those that defile themselves with manaccording to the glorious

for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any

This is is our high and holy aim; our goal, the restoration of and our great reward the by the

other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

is the Bible;

gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust." Thus it is obvious that the many forms of vice and crime which injure a nation, necessary, and for the punishment are totally opposed and repression of which law is The It morality. to the principles of the gospel.

apostolic doctrine concerning God and man; certainty that countless multitudes enemy of God and men. thing in anticipation

in all lands will rejoice that the light

of revelation is no longer obscured by a dismal dogma invented of that day when"

As honest witnesses we would fain do somethe earth shall he full of the a clay

message of life which comes from God contains the purest is the nursery of the highest and noblest virtues. gospel do not trangress they set an example to their fellow subjects be a tower of moral strength to the nation. moulded upon the divine proclamation patriots. civil law; they give magistrates Christians

Men who practise the no trouble, and whose conduct is the best

know ledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea;" which will surely come;
SPOl~EN

for "the

glory of the Lord shall be revealed, ron THE


~IOUT1'!

the copying of which would

and all flesh shall see it together;

OF 'I'HE LORD HATH

rr."

of grace are therefore

They are salt to prevent corruption,

and light to banish darkthe divine will the more

ness; and the more clearly they understand

helpful they will be to the best interests of their native land, even with. out allying themselves with noisy politicians or fighting the battles of party. The world does not know it yet, but the Christian that faith is the most blessed visitant ever touched its shores, and has done it an

SUMMARY OP ADDRESS THE LIVERPOOL By General


As an old soldier of Jesns

FROM THE CHAIR CONFERENCE, H. GOODWYN.

AT

incalculable amount of good of which it has no conception, and for which of course it exhibits no gratitude. Divine Giver. We have thus been entrusted with a divine gift for the good of others which we must use in reliance on the And as it is clear that the power will- be in proportion to philosophy or the baseless traditions of a the purity, we must see to it that our religious principles are not crippled or neutralised by heathen cruel theology. 2. Philanth7oPY. the love of God.

Christ Ire was privileged in that Meeting in of traditional and maliguiug orthodoxy. They the character of by the

making an attack upon the strongholds were accused of denying the atonement, God. He denied this,

They had come there with two most solemnly Those two doctrines were-first life as an inheritance, of all, that but that he

important doctrines, which this Association had been constrained Spirit of Christ to make, man was not possessed of eternal

Our love to men should lead us to tell them of

received it by faith in Jesus Scriptures that announced

Christ.

There was but one record in the

Paul besought Timothy to remain at Ephesus when he

this truth, and all records in the Scriptures

THE BIBLE
must, and dill harmonise with that which the Apostle "This," "This John had

STANDARD.
It is admitted, then, that

7
the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ was corruptions of the Greek and

declared

in the fifth chapter

of his first

epistle.

he says,

alluding tu the central point of the whole doctrine, and there is none other, that life is in His Son." Jesus Christ, universe; the

is the record,

buried out of sight under the accumulated

God hath given to us eternal life, and that sovereign and judge of the

The second doctrine was associated with it-that

Roman Churches. Have our Protestant Reformations succeeded in restoring it to the light of day, and to its proper place in the minds of professing Christians? We doubt it much. is our deliberate conviction that error, of the all the abominations While thankful for what has been achieved, and rejoicing in the degree of liberty to which we have attained,-it much remains which Papal to do. serves as a foundation We believe, indeed, tbat one gross parent for nearly

Son of God, was both

and that in order to maintain His claim and to exercise those years. In concluding bis remarks, the

functions He would appear a second time, previous to and during a period of personal reign of a thousand gallant speaker reminded that Whatley,-viz., his audience of the words of Archbisbop the objections before by searched

"tbe right way of reviewing objections against any

teaching, requires still to be banished, with all its progeny, from where it holds a place of almost equal honor

system of opinion

is not to begin by considering

the creeds of Protestantism,

you are acquainted with the evidence in favour of it," and judging that rule, he asked-Had for and weigbed? that evidence yet been conscientiously e (Hear, hear.)

as the accredited basis of all true religion. This error is the belief in the IMUORTALITYF THE SOUL,and the O inalienable destiny of every man to live for ever in some condition or other. This doctrine we who occupy this platform solemnly declare to be no against whose have sworn to

CHRISTIANS

DESPOILED THROUGH AND VAIN DECEIT.


Conference,

PHILOSOPHY

part of the doctrine of Christ, but ou the contrary to be opposed thereto, and to be derived directly from that very" philosophy" encroachments St. Paul raised a voice of warning. that owiug to the allegiance which professing Christians We further maintain

Paper read at Liverpool

By M. VV.STRANG.
the work of planting the

this usurping theory, they have been despoiled and robbed of a great part THE apostles of the Lord had barely finished truth throughout of warning to the youthful churches of their precious inheritance many and pernicious errors. The proofs of this grave indictment a brief paper such as this. cannot be adequately presented at length in They may be found in those of Truth, and brought under the yoke of the world, when they were constrained to lift up a voice to be

to beware of the leaven of false "There were

teaching which was already abroad in their midst, and was destined work sad havoc with the simplicity and purity of the faith. false prophets amoug the people," says Peter, "even false teachers among you ... aud many shall follow their as there shall

treatises upon the question which have grown so numerous of late years. Some portion will also be presented in the other papers and addresses to It will be admitted, however immortality of the soul' philosophy, its introduction
I

pernicious

follow in the course of this Conference. can claim no higher authority than human

ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of." No department of the truth would escape the corrupting touch of this false leaven. They would" even deny the Lord that bought them"; while "the promise of His coming" devised fable." was already at work,-the would become to them as " a cunninglyteaching which to Not to be sound the

that il, as we have asserted, this idea of the"

into the Christian system of doctrine could not fail to have some such baneful effect as we have sketched. Let us then see what Church History has because, although troubles to say about the contact of I say, Greek, philo"The Greeks," apostolic doctrine with the systems of Greek philosophy. sophy" in Paul's letter points distinctly to this quarter. he says, " seek after wisdom (sophia)." tending schools of thought. I might quote from the writings of scholars now present, rather call in as a witness one who cannot our favour,-one of the soul,-I who seems to have himself refer to the learned be suspected historian, but I shall of any bias in Dr. Mosheim, His of Their eminent profession lovers of wisdom, or philosophers,

John also warns against the antichristian Guostic "deceivers,"

who, while professing

be Christian disciples, denied" decline. With what

Jesus Christ coming in the flesh." does Paul does he beseech in his exhortation Timothy

arose from other sources, the term"

less earnestly, and even more frequently, solemn fervour " urgent in season, and out of season" " for the time will come," says he," doctrine; to themselves teachers; truth, and shall and they

predict the same sad and teaching;

men were by

divided into various con-

when they will not endure tUI'n away their

but, having itching ears, after their own lusts they shall heap shall ears from turti aside unto fables!" With what sad surprise does to "another gospel" than does he seek says

believed in the immortality

he find the Galatian disciples that which he had preached. whom"

already turned

Church

With what tender solicitude bodily." deceit,

merely premising that his testimony is borne out by that of others. to the disastrous Christ. iuroads of worldly philosophy into the doctrine

that the Colossians should be instructed

only in the knowledge of Him in "Beware," after

History of the Church during the first few centuries is full of references But so far as the Greek philosophy is concerned, of the second century, Dr. Mosheim the corrupting says :-" To-

dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead through philosophy and vain

he, " lest any man spoil you [i.e. despoil you, make a spoil of you, carry you captive] the tradition of men, after the l'ltdiments of the world, and not after Christ." The frequent and solemn warnings and predictions, but a sample, terrible as they were in their descriptions the corruption of which these are of the extent of accurate.

influence seems to have come almost entirely from one School, viz. that of PLATO. Writing wards the close of this century, a new sect. of philosophers sudden, spread with amazing rapidity throughout detrimental to the cause of Christiamits], Its votaries to no particular sages, arose of a

the greatest part of the gave the They was to

which would ensue from the germs of error already planted with Church History suffices to justify their of our modern Protestantism

Roman Empire, swallowed up almost all the other sects, and was extremelu Alexandria in Egypt ... sect, yet they preferred birth to this new philosophy. because, " though attached sublime Plato to all opinions concerning embraced other chose to be called Platonics,'" of the most of his

by the enemy of Truth, were proved ere long to be diviuely The slenderest acquaintance terms, The very basis and vindication

consists in an acknowledgment of the fact that for centuries,whichhavecome to be known as the Dark Ages, under the professee1 name of Christianity, the civilized world was held in the galling bondage of error, superstition, and cruelty, while" refuge from bitter the meek and modest Truth" persecution "in was forced to seek a nooks obscure, far from the ways of

and approved

the Deity, the universe, and the human soul." This new species of Platonism Christians

were known also as Eclectics.

by such of the Alexandrian

as were desirous

retain, with the profession of the Gospel, the title, dignity, and habit of philosophers. It is also said to have had the particular approbation of

men."

8
Athenagoras, Christians Panteanus, Clemens the Alexandrian,

THE BIBLE
and all those who, in

STANDARD.
would be by the soul's escaping for ever from the trammels "The of the

this century, were charged with the care of the public school which the had at Alexandria. . . . The Christian Eclectics had this also Plato to the other philoin common with the others, that they preferred

material frame in which it had been for a while imprisoned. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, came proclaiming: Man and come forth," citated, demnation word-neither no conntenance

The Lord hour is com-

ing in which all that are in the graves shall heal' the voice of the Son of and that of those who should be thus bodily resusto life everlasting, but others to conHe uttered not a the immortality of the soul; He gave some should be appointed did His apostles-of to human pride;

sophers, and looked upon his opinions concerning God, the human soul, and things invisible, as conformable to the spirit and genius of the Christian doctrine." It is important to observe how distinctly cerning the human soul was thus Epicurean, Academic, Aristotelian, adopted cording to Dr. Mosheim, all the other doubted the immortality of the soul. the Platonic by Christian doctrine teachers. conAc-

and a second and in-eversible destruction.

but He came with a message of mercy life whose fountain

schools of Greek philosophyflatly denied or openly and And it was in this "The The followers of Socrates teaching.

from the God of heaven to sinners who were in danger of utterly perishing, and offered them freely a share in the everlasting was in the Son of God. What possible communion could there be between two such opposing doctrines? None. And hence, no sooner was the Platonic theory received into the Church of Christ, than a struggle began between them for the mastery. And in that struggle the natural pride of sinful men was all on the side of Plato, and against the" Cross. One natural humbling" doctrine of the . fruit of Plato's doctrine appeared at once in the rise,
III

Stoic-either

Plato alone made it the basis of their time incorporated with Christianity. venerable not of long duration; "Many examples,"

second century, then, that this dogma as taught by Plato was for the first And with the natural result. simplicity of the Christian system," says Dr. Mosheim, " was its beauty was gradually effaced by the laborious science." which the historian, "might be alleged,

efforts of human learning, and the dark subtilties of imaginary continues verify the observations we have now been making; desirous of a striking one, he has only which began to be taught in this centuTY, concerning

the 2nd century, of the Christian

Mystics, who" were ordered," says our

and, if the reader is the state of the soul record of rhe and protests of to "the in with

to take a view of the doctrines

historian, " to extenuate by hunger, thirst, and other mortifications, the sluggish body, which confines the activity and restrains' the libelty of the immortal spirit ; that thus, in this life, they might and ascend, after death, enjoy communion active and ttnwith the Supreme encumbered, Being,

after the dissolution of the body." Time would fail me to quote at length the instructive decline which rapidly followed. the cause of philosophy the better class of influence and authority the purer lessons;" Christian triumphed over the objections

to the universal Parent, to live in His presence for ever." became dimmed out and displaced, the great and the way was paved for its by Tyndall, with the Papist after the And this

Suffice it to say that in the third century advocates-thanks principally

Thus the hope of the resurrection being reduced to secondary importance, ntter denial. Protestant Reformer and Martyr,

It was long ago pointed

of Origen, who, having

been early instructed

in his controversy

the new kind of Platonism

already mentioned, blended it unhappily tenets of a celestial

More, that to send the souls of believers to bliss immediately and the resurrection, which were the true Scriptural hope.

and more sublime

doctrine, and recomhis public vain fictions,

event called death, was to make void and useless the coming of Christ argument has never to this day been answered. Without wishing to charge upon Protestants yet it is right to enquire holds in popular faith. at large complicity in the now "the vagaries of extreme men, such as the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg, what place the doctrine of Resurrection It is notorious that among in France, Switzerland, and Germany, the Protestant and it is even

mended it in the warmest manner to the youth who attended and that, as early as the fourth century, "those to the Platonic philosophy which an attachment

and to popular opinions

had engaged the greatest part of the Christian doctors to adopt before the time of Constantine, were now confirmed, enlarged, and embellished, in various ways," leading to prayers to dead saints, worship of relics, and many other Popish dogmas and practices. Protestants may, with some truth, claim to have escaped the particular in the Eastern and Church. philosophy But have they shaken in regard to the more forms of evil just referred to, which are still rampant Western divisions of the Continental themselves free from this heathen essential doctrine of immortality It was surely a cunning gether. Christian teachers to believe that coincident.

churches of the Continent, resurrection of the dead" considered a debatable

is boldly and widely denied,

question

whether our Lord actually rose from the was merely what they are pleased to

dead, or whether His resurrection

itself? Plato and Christ could be served toand that of Christ were they both taught The chief remaining

call" a moral fact." And in our own couutry within recent years the same pernicious error has heen propagated by theologians holding high rank, and important position as educators of youth. Let us look into this matter a few moments. a future and immortal life upon the fact that and creeds of Protestantism. were not secure enough physical theories about indestructible the Panl based the hope of Christ had risen from the Not so the theologies from metaand tacking the on

device of the enemy of Truth to induce the of Plato

In one point the doctrine

On the same point they both differed from the bulk of the That point was this-that life. as we have already they"

dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.

Gecian and Roman world, schools of philosophers,

As if they feared this divine foundation dignity of human nature,

men to look forward to a future and immortal while as for the mass of mankind, no better witness) confesses that doctrine," apprehending rather

to build upon, they start rather

said, had no such faith;

Plato himself (than whom we can have would not readily assent to his that it goes forth and is on the very day in which the man (Pluedo, 39, 40, men a hope death was seemed and

quality of the nobler part of man-merely matters ~ore curious than

thereto a doctrine of the resurrection relegate to an appendix of the strangest things upon" the rudiments

of the body, as authors are wont to essential, or which Surely this is one men on whom has that those who have a

that"

dies, the soul is destroyed and extinguished; 58, 68.)

cannot conveniently come into the body of their work. done under the, sun,-that of the world" for a guide; shined a full revelation of the path

dissipated, like a breath or a smoke, and ceases_to be."

of life, should prefer to fall back

But while both Plato and the Christ held out to despairing their respective teachings on the subject. only apparent,-that so was transition," that immortality Plato taught that

of immortality, there was scarcely one feature further in common between there really was for man no death, "what was inherent

living Prince of Life in whom to trust should seek their solace rather in those unsatisfying pleas with which the dying Socrates, who knew no better, sought to comfort himself and those about him. "Is Christ the abler teacher, or the Schools? If Christ=-then why resort at ev'ry turn

in the deathless

indivisible soul or thinking part, and that the manner of its enjoyment

THE BIBLE
To Athens, or to Rome, for wisdom short Of man's occasions, when in Him reside Grace, knowledge, comfort, an un fathomed store?" A year or two ago, I saw in an evangelical magazine, a frank confession that in making the way of salvation of religion were" apt to forget tion hope." usurped Why, its place. how is this clear to the sick and dying, teachers before the eyes the resurrecBecause a false hope has to set Jesus forgetting forgetting to set brightly possible?

STANDARD.
Dr. Mosheim mentions Christian allegory" teachers of the

9
as one of the early effects of the adoption by Alexandrian Platonism, that "a torrent of which nothing themselves could withstand. to the study of

came in upon the Church, soon abandoned great man,

" The doctors,"

he says, " who had applied

letters and philosophy, speculative Platonic that tribe. This

the frequented paths, and struck enchanted by the charms of the

out into the devious wilds of fancy. . . . Origen was at the head of this philosophy, and set it up as the test of all religion, and imagined were to be found extent in that Iavorite by it." nature and to be determined

Can we conceive the Lord

before the eyes in such a case His great promise that He would raise the believer up at the last day? who protested rise not; Christian who, in instructing Can we conceive Paul the Thessalonians it-Paul, if the dead that all his devotion advantaged him nothing,

the reasons

of each doctrine their

philosophy, Again :-"

Having entertained to defend

a notion that it was extremely difficult, if contained in the sacred writings

as to the hopes of the

not impossible, literally,

everything

n death, passed by unnoticed the Grecian guess at immortality, of the dead and change of the living when the Lord this Scriptural completed one from its place. its dethronement.

from the cavils of heretics and infidels, so long as they were explained according to the real import of the terms, he had recourse to and maintained that the Holy that the in the same allegorical manner the fecundity of a lively imagination, Scriptures were to be interpreted Platonists

said not a word about a spirit-world for the departed, but pointed forward to the resurrection Himself should descend from heaven? A false hope, we say, has ousted The creeds and theologies did half convey the actual popular the mischief, but the hymns, which

explained the history of the gods."

It must not be forgotten

that Origen was not the first in the field, although he carried in a new direction, and to a fresh extreme, principles which were already for some time in vogue. Hooker Thus, by "this licentious came and deluding art," as the judicious calls it, Christians to be in effect robbed of the very claim to have escaped the evil are of very little (Stromata, use to those Book 10.) Is

hope, have

Hence we find our friends singing as if they had just quitted the bedside of Socrates, this "jargon of the schools":-

" It is not death to bear The wrench that sets us free From dungeon chain, to breathe the air Of boundless liberty. " It is not death to fling Aside this sinful dust, And rise on strong exulting wing To live among the just." Truth is here, but not such as was intended certainly just." cannot Or again:" Welcome sweet hour of full discharge (I) That sets our longing souls at large, Unbinds our chain, breaks up our cell, And gives us with our God to dwell." Or this, which was sung at the funeral of one of our best Scotch be death, whatever or can profit anyone. to
LIVE

Scriptures.

Do our Protestant "The

friends Scriptures

effects of this process? Origen's motto was: who understand that a doctrine day that application It them

Let facts decide. as they are written." to Protestantism? Canon "the letter "'~pon

unknown

Was it not just the other warned us, with an utter miswhile another to rest of Scripture, (Principal killeth;" the letter

a learned and eloquent of Paul's words, that

eminent theologian, north of the Tweed, told us that our attempt our belief in conditional argues a misunderstanding Tulloch, in The Contemporary immortality of Review, among the the idea of Revelation!" April, 1878_) of the arguments

it is, to "rise

And are these not a fair sample

which are brought

against us in this controversy? It is no use to call attention to the general teaching of Scripture on the question. Our opponents are proof against any" array of texts," and ready to shelter themselves from the whole phalanx of Scripture terms, behind the so-called spiritual interpretation. immortal What though spirit? the What Bible though never once addresses possessing sinners as beings, or utters as requiring What though a whisper of man's an undying

Biblical scholars, the late Dr. Eadie:" Hark, a voice! it cries from heaven, Happy in the Lord who die. All their toils and conflicts o'er, Lo I they dwell with Christ above. Now they see Him face to face, Him Who saved them by His grace, 'Tis enough-enough for ever! 'Tis His people's bright uward. They are blest indeed, wbo never Shall be absent from the Lord; Oh, that we may die (!) like those Wbo in Jesus then repose!" Wbat need to multiply thousands, these necessary? from instances? Are there not sown broadcast by hymns such as unof the led is openly are rank set aside as a thing against the Prince

or indestructible liable to death, tion of death? they" more;" immortality,"

it speaks rather

of the soul as

. . .

to be redeemed

from the grave, and from

first to last addresses sinners as those shall abide for ever," shall" while it threatens

who have come under condemnalife," shall" put on

it offers, to those who will accept it, that have everlasting

shall become like the holy angels, who" cannot die any those who reject this offer with being con-

sumed, being destroyed soul and body, coming to nought, and perishing in everlasting destruction? These, and many similar and harmonious forms of Scripture teaching are, by those who have set to their seal that and that man agree does not require to be Plato is true, made to bend to the dogma that sinners are all as deathless as the angels or as God Himself, indebted finds that to the Incarnate destroued. But neither does their witness sinners another, Son of God for the bestowal of immortality. with itself, for while one division to be preserved for ever in are destined

for the use of young and old in our land, Such sentiments treason

in which the resurrection the keys of death that

Life, who holds forehead

and the grave. is His, and plant

They would snatch it, where?-on vain deceit"

hopeless misery;

following the lead of Origen, teaches that for and the blessed!

His brow the diadem of Death, that

a sinner to "perish"

is to be saved from his sins and find a dwelling-

last of enemies, to save us from whom Christ couplet testify:!"

place among the ransomed Thus Bend And, First

both died and rose again I Oh, what impiety has this" pious men to utter, let Dr. Young's daring

" Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; T4e King of 'I'errors is the Prince of Peace

men go wrong, with most ingenious skill, the straight rule to their own crooked will ; with a clear and shining lamp supplied, put it out, then take it for a guide."

10

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
may be safely based the grand conclusion that hetween man and Immortality there is a connection of a very close and real kind. As to the other ordinary arguments possessed of very little force indeed! last century-was ever produced! for human Butler-Bishop reasoners immortality of Durham that they are in the has

And thus, by this philosophy and vain deceit, the noblest promises and most solemn warnings of the Word of God are reduced of enigmas, hyperboles, or equivocations! Oh, what despite has been done to the doctrine of Christ by this false teaching. preacher If, on the one hand, the follower of Origen has robbed the of the Gospel of the salutary terror of the Lord, or has setting up in His but Governor, to a series

one of the profoundest

England

To him we owe one of the ablest defences of revealed And yet if you take up his Analogy Of a Future Life," you will not see a that of

deprived the Universe of a perfect moral stead a weak embodiment of sentimental does not execute-what sin and pain, a doctrine the Christian of that" so monstrous

religion that has ever appeared! and carefully read his chapter" single argument

benevolence that threatens and incredible that

shall we say of the contrary doctrine of endless even its It robs it casts from it openly?

advanced by him in favour of man's immortality

might not be advauced with just the same force for the immortality the brute creation ! Among the ancients again there was no greater intellect Immortality that Plato's profess to take him as a great authority. fundamental principle is altogether

pledged supporters in our day are afraid to preach righteous Father" a foul slur upon the holy name of God, putting before even the vindictive gods of heathendom. Christianity Him

whom Christ revealed;

than Plato's! If they only

to an open shame

Though he was a heathen, yet our Christian advocates for man's natural honestly considered for a single moment, they would see and acknowledge subversive of their of the theory! Why did Plato believe and maintain that lies before us? in the etemity the immortality

It has alienated

some of the best intellects of mankind, filling some with a

fierce hate, and others with mute despair, and has given, oh, how much occasion for the enemy to blaspheme all that is called religion! One further point, and we are done. personal return The great promise of our Lord's and to the earth to give reward unto His servants,

human soul f01' the etemity strongly the existence changes well-known," F. 31. "that and transmigrations

Because he held just as of the past! "It is very

of the human soul through an infinite variety of in his "Intellectual in that System," B. 1. C. L these two things neither," that he

estahlish the Kingdom of God upon the earth, which cheered the apostles and early Christians,-this, that torrent Nor has our Protestantism coming"! too, has been engulpl::ed and borne away in let loose upon the Church. What a variety of recovered from the loss. of allegory which philosophy

says Cudworth, according together

to the sense of philosophers,

were always included

one opinion of the soul's immorheld the the

fanciful fulfilments are we not still asked to accept of " the promise of His But not one of them could for a moment stand were the true restored,-least of all that worst one of them all, the return of his Lord. For who lies in the return of and fashion by ConDeprived due doctrine of immortality that

tality, namely its pre-existence soul's future permanency existence; soul was generated, he corrupted." also have supposed immortality,

as well as its post-existence!

adds, " was there any of the ancients, before Christianity, they clearly perceiving that

after death, who did not likewise assert its preif it were once granted that it might also would so often Plato,

which makes the death of the saint

has learned that his only hope of immortality

it could never be proved but that that it would come to an end.

the Saviour from heaven to change his body of humiliation it like unto His own glorious body-could destruction of Jerusalem,

Had Plato supposed it to have had a beginning-he

ever be satisfied with the

with the endowment of Ohristianity

appealed to as an authority

by the modern asserters of the soul's natural His view is in

stantine, with the mystical rhapsodies of Swedenborg, or any other stone that may be offered him as a substitute for the Bread of Life? of this, the poles tar of the Church's destiny, she is adrift without sands of the perilous latter days. We plead therefore with our beloved friends to help us to remove this fundamental error that, like a mist engendered in some unwholesome swamp, has succeeded in" darkening the whole firmament of Truth." Restore the true doctrine of immortality, and you have the most potent weapon ever forged for the defeat of that Rationalism and its twin Agnosticism, which are eating the vitals out of our modern Christianity, and every department of the doctrine of redemption through the slain and risen Son of God will share in the enlightening and gladdening effects of the liberation from the chains of centuries. Be assured it is the Lord's work this. " For every plant," said He, " which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall he rooted up." Rooted up this error shall be, whether we choose to share in the honourable work or not. With the river of life flowing freely at our feet, let us no longer betake ourselves to the stagnant pools of human tradition and philosophy. But if we are disposed to turn lightly away from this inquiry, let us beware lest that condemnation be passed on us which was of old uttered against a people highly privileged: "My people have committed two evils-they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn them out cisterns-broken cisterns that can hold no water."

would only have smiled at their ignorance.

reality opposed to, and subversive of theirs I But still we freely confess that man's general conception of the grand idea of Immortality-the in it-however earnest hope for it on the part of some-the judgment,-are to us natural faith feeble-on the part of a few, for reasons which did not ground for

guide, and is in danger of making shipwreck among the rocks and quick-

satisfy even their own partial

the belief that for man there is such a thing as Immortality! Look for example at such a man as Socrates, Philosopher so repulsive thing that mind. in the 5th century before Christ! to the eye, had come-he he profoundly the great Athenian was one without ennobling was a Here

any divine revelation to enlighten him, and yet within that frame of his, knew not whence-the idea of Immortality! It was more than a mere abstract idea :-it longed for :-in

support of which he sought the existence of dialogue which the poison

out every reason that could suggest itself to his most acute and subtle For my part I am of the assured opinion that record of that wouderful such a man as Socrates-the was consuming his life-the is a proof on which I rely-in

took place between him and his friends when in the prisou

longings of that noble soul for an existence which I delight-that between man and which the foundation From the un-

in which he should know what here he was only faintly guessing afterImmortality there is a link of a very strong kind indeed! Such is often done in the case before us!

MAN

AND

IMMORTALITY. By REV. H.
CONSTABLE,

Paper read at Eicerpool Conference.


AMONG what are called the natural there are two-and real force. . Longing -lInd only two-which race!

M.A.

But we must not hastily build up a structure will not bear. tality-from

arguments for a future life for man appear to me to be possessed of any of the idea in one On the truth The second is, the Hope and the

doubted fact of man's general conception of the grand idea of immorthe fact that some have hoped for it, and a few sincerely course I am speaking of heathen, not of Christian times these premises men of name and mental power, followed crowds, have rushed into the astounding immortalman! conclnsion that that there will be an eternal life of The great French COI!believed in it-of and lands-from by unthinking

The first of these is the general conception

shape or other by the human for immortality

on the part of some minds among men. object-I

sound general principle that to every idea there is a corresponding to every desire there is a corresponding

all men are inalienably

bave no doubt

some kind or other for ever"! individual

THE BIBLE
troversalist and Preacher of the 17th century-Bishop "Wish almost it-or seems Bossuet-has wish it notof St. from You are borrowed

STANDARD.
that" Our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished to light through the Gospel." that death, and brought (2 Tim, i. 10.)

11
life

thus expressed it in one of his sermons: eternity is assured Paul's, Bossuet-repeats already"-he not-immortal foundation you beyond a doubt"! language that Dr. Liddon-in

and immortality sequence! brought

The great preacher Sermons-"

Let us mark the force of this. It intimates before the general

It is a passage of the greatest conwas not first by the "appearance" The subject of the

the subj ect of immortality notice of mankind

the idea in one of his University says, addressing beings."

every member' of his congregation,you will it or

among men and the teaching it is now brought

of Jesus Christ, but that, before noticed, light.

"You are already, whether you think it or not,-whether

into a clear and distinct

(Sermons, University of Oxford, 3"d Ed. 128.)

Gospel was one on which man had been speculating, reasoning, guessing, sometimes perhaps aright, more frequently wrong, but his mind was in a maze from which the Gospel of the Lord of Life was to clear it up, tell him how far he had been right, where he had gone into error, give him clear, definite, satisfactory information where hitherto only dim of shadowy figures were passing along through the murky atmophere

Too much, we say, even to names as great or greater than these! The cannot bear so much as this! You plead for a universal immortality because some men in heathen times and lands have hoped
for it! that But have all hoped for it? Have we not all heard of Buddhism, in its followers the disciples of Eastern faith which out-numbers

Christ and Mohammed? Have we not read that one of its four sublime truths is that it teaches the way to Nirvana? Nirvana is the repose of Annihilation! the millions Annihilation is the goal which Buddhism holds out to of India, of China, and Japan, as that which is most to be If then Immortality may be argued from human from human aversion :-or if

the night, how far real, how far only the creation of fancy, could not be known until the clear light of day shone upon the scene. Apostle of Christ in his Epistle various opinions them Gospel light. And in this light we.may see Immortality Thus viewed we can lookupon this inalienable any terror! in its connection with man! delight. We can see with which part, it-we and need it with unmingled of human schools of thought that The great to Timothy collects into one view the he may shed upon

hoped for by man.

hopes, may not its opposite be argued from the faint hesitating may be inferred,-is The truth is that

faith of a few, man's survival in another state

no force to be given to the fact that such faith has man's relation to this grandest of all subjects-

attribute of Deity bestowed upon His creature without and imagination, and fear on man's

been derided by the vast majority of men as a foolish myth? while it may establish some connection between him and Immortalitypoints at the same time yet more distinctly to the want of some higher authority than our hopes, or wishes, our fears, our faith, or our incredulity, to tell us what the connection is ! For, there are several t1ileories imaginable, besides that one which some would force upon us-that all men are immortal!
i->

Stripped of all those adventitous circumstances

craft, and ingenuity, never shrink

diabolical subtlety upon the part of Satan, had associated from any aspect in which it is represented

to us in the

Gospel of Christ I It cannot on the one side paralyse us with terror or goad us into maduess.c--while on the other it fills us with delight. On every side it is fair, awl beautiful, and lovely, and worthy a God of love! We have been hitherto refiecting upon man's aspect towards tality apart from the revelation vVe have seen that it was various, manifold. how the revelation ImmorI of the Old and the New Testament We have now to consider to and

Might not this wondrous conception of a divine life that would stretch out into eternity be the conception of something which man had lost be a lingering memory of the past :-be only an echo returning our ears the sound of a voice which had itself for ever ceased to be? Or, might it not be the rising up of a thought for some, but not for all-which It is quite evident that might lead us, as probably-we the longers life for it, might gain, while others would not? these, and various would say far modifications of these, would the be the issue to which man's feelings towards immortality more probably-than which might be realized for it, the shapers of their backto

of the Bible on this subject corresponds

answers what we have called, and what in the main no doubt is, man's natural aspect towards it. The idea of Immortality, thought -have idea? It is found among all nations. taken in its idea. its account of man as we know from the history of religious idea, a universal one. All have thought over some future life; And how does Scripture in for this universal among men, is, as nearly as any other Whence is this?

take in this aspect, and account

stereotyped maxim-"

all men are immortal." in the absence of revelation! His mind

So, this was man's position

By telling us in its opening pages that tality! primal our first parents, " in that condition day thou shalt

man was made for immorsurely die." Here was the else. image, he was

was in a perfect chaos on what was to him the most important subject that could engage it. One school of philosophy faintly believed in mau's immortality! Another scornfully or not! rejected it ! A third accepted it for it was all men's of the subject or any some, and denied it for others! heritage, be it desirable man's heritage! The few thought

"In the day thou eatest of the tree of knowledge," God said to of man, liable to death if he sinned, immortal

As he came forth from his Maker's hands, in his Maker's immeasurably higher into existence before him. subject to death-i.e.,

The multitude denied that it was any a more important

than those other living creatures which had come Holy in his nature, loving and worshipping the first circumstances of his being not And If he had not sinned the dark shadow conception of the idea of a that once was possession :-compre-

A state of bewildering confusion was the state Were all men immortal,

human mind on what was to each individual than whether there was a God or not! of them? Was this immortality, be hoped for by all who should obtain

God, a ruler, he was also under immortal.

partially or universally true, a thing to it, or by some only, while for with an intensity importance, of dread If ever

of death would never have hovered over and descended upon him. thus the Bible accounts for man's universal future life. his :-the It is the lingering tradition memory of the condition

otbers, few or many, it was to be dreaded

that it would be madness to look fully and fairly in the face. there was a question which for its incalculable

handed down of an alienated

its profound

hended by a mind which, made originally for immortality, can, even where this has been lost, embrace and take it within the compass of its thought. There universal is another conception aspect of man towards immortality beside his of the idea. But here his aspect towards it is is that some of the race have power of their mind for that which

mystery, its hopeless diffculty of natural solution, called for and wanted a revelation from the great Father of lights, this question of Immortality was such. The knot was one which only God could unloose. accordingly which Revelati,pn has taken up. and more clearly before us in the New. It The the Old Testament! It is, as might well be supposed, when he says, This is the question runs throughout Apostle Paul

no longer univenal :-it all have conceived!

is pmtial-it

hoped and longed with the utmost

brought more prominently presents

it in one of his noblest utterances

We turn back in thought for an example to one of the most renowned

12
cities of the ancient beautiful of Greece! world, fair Athens

THE BIBLE
by the sea, rising in all her page in the life of

STANDARD.
thrown down :-when -should nations. burning (Luke God's ancient people-the day of their doom come capture and the historian

proportions of an unequalled

architecture

nnder the blue skies

fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all xxi. 6-24.) had The time for Jerusalem's almost of its temple come when the Jewish

We turn back to what is perhaps the darkest

history of Athens, to a scene in the life of a man which in some respects bears the closest resemblance is in his prison-house! judges! has The executioner drank to the last hours of the Redeemer's He has been condemed bottom! any that I know of in the history of man outside of the Bible. Socrates He

Josephus brings Titus before us, encouraging his soldiers to the assault of the lofty tower of Antonia guarded by the fierce zealots who had so long defended their sacred city and temple from the Roman legions! of the soldier. Immortality Success was doubtful! It was one of those critical periods which test to its utmost the physical courage Death stared them in the face! his men? By the hope of he says, action, by the dread of annhiAnd how does the noble leader encourage as the reward of courageous lation as the coward's doom 1 "What

to die by unjust

has given him his cup of deadly poison!

it calmly to the

He has felt its fatal influence

stealing up from the extremities by have witnessed the gradual

to the heart 1 His sad friends standing dimming of the eye, the gradual wasting and A few

of the frame on which, spite of the want of all physical" beauty proportion, they have never looked but with love and veneration! those who had seen Socrates die, and asks-" that great man spoke before he died :-and Willingly why? I can hear." Because he hoped, Yes, his departure fondly, earnestly

man of virtue is there,"

" who does not know that those souls which are severed from the fleshly bodies by the sword are received by the ether, that purest of elements, and joined to that company which are placed among the stars while upon those souls which wear away in and with their distempered bodies, comes subterranean night to disolve them to nothing, and deep (Josephus, J.W. vi. 1. 5.) forgetfulness receives them, taking away along with their life and person the very outline of their memory." All these whom I have spoken of, and they were not alone in their day and generation, were men of a noble purpose! They had some great object in mind which was worthy of man, and in following it out they felt the dignity, the preciousness, worthless hateful possession! the value of life! With They did so whether in their they failed or whether they succeeded! Life had not become to them a the idea of Immortality

days afterwards we are told, one who had not been present meets one of What were the words which how did he depart from life? was a willing one! hoped, and believed And in

because he hoped, for Immortality. himself-the another unjust

He was Ieaving=-he

had persuaded Let us take for

judge for the just-a without

world where wrong prevailed, law. and yet longing

for one where equity was the universal and perpetual example of man a revelation Immortality!

We turn to Daniel's fourth kingdom, and its great capital, Rome 1 It was the period when that mighty state was, through the terrible throes of civil war, changing from the Republic of the Consuls to the Empire of the Csesars. The very names of the men who figured then, and which come When we repeat the names of Crassus and Csesar, and Pompey, and Marc to us vividly even now after so long a lapse of time, bring with them the memory of the deadly struggle. and Sylla and Cataline, of Brutus fear and apprehension world, stands

minds, however derived, they saw this as their possible heritage in the future, and went forth with enthusiastic the hereafter when they thought to exercise hindrance Here they every faculty were to their free exercise 1 breathing an attenuated atmosphere, struggling hope into that unlimited age of it would be was no let and no how grand, how delightful

of being where there

Anthony, and Octavius Augustus, we call to mind times which brought to the boldest minds. It was then that Cicero, the foremost orator of the of Rome, before its But these of deep in his one of the greatest of writers, and perhaps forth to our view.

against constant and often increasing difficulties, battling for causes which the world would not sanction, seeking truth when, as it might seem to And so when be about to reveal itself to their gaze, the dark cloud would settle down upon it, and all but hide it completely from their view! But not so of their hope in the hereafter! were to be unlike. "Heaven," "The or the" call Evil where they hoped Elysian What to be, whether or the" life came to its close here they often felt that they had failed! There the circumstances thing we place they called that There was to be none of that mysterious Fields,"

In the Forum

senators and its people, he had pleaded in the most solemn causes that can effect the temporal interests of individuals or of states! were not the greatest fondest causes for which he pleaded! when disappointment sorrow came to him :-times earthly hopes :-and - mind to a question Times met him

then he turned with all the ardour of his fade into insigall that he Tuscalan Questions"

before which all earthly questions

abode of the Gods," or wherein to arguments were

nificance, and gave the world in his" the Immortality -he relied! them,

Islands of the West," and they were to have Eternity if some, or most of their

could bring together in favour of that view to which he earnestly clung, of man in a future happy life! None knew better than he the weakness of many of the arguments on which, for want of better, "I have read I read vanishes

pursue and to enjoy! mind as Socrates

weak, if none of them were absolutely conclusive? could gravely present Immortality

What if even such a of death, the

as a reason for our belief in with its shrillness in the vigour

It is a sad confession which he makes when he refers to the I know not how-while of souls, all my assent evidence, possession

the fabled song of the swan at the approach

writings of Plato, his great predecessor in this subject! and very often," he tells us :-" them I assent to them :-when away." Life!

melody of whose note then contrasting

of its life, arose, the greatest of heathen philosophers would fain persuade us, from its delight, that it was about to take its departure to God whose servant Epicurus Socrates? 1 it had been in life 1 iPhozdo
S.

I have laid down his book, and reflect in hope against of an eternal

my own mind upon the Immortality

35.)

What

if the logic of arguments It only

And yet he would believe with little

and Lucretius

could brush aside the reasons of Plato and of the strongest superstructure?

hope, so earnestly did he long for the grand

What if we, now calmly examining foundations of their mighty

of some of the greatest minds of antiquity on this subject, may smile at the insufficient like Socrates, nor an orator
01'

Let us now turn to another of the great minds of ancient heathendom Titus was not a philosopher Cicero. pleader

like

shows the real grandeur And has Immortality, revelation? Immortality

of their

minds in fixing their hopes upon an to light by the Gospel and satisfying of Jesus one 1 The

Trained to arms from early youth he was engaged in the cease-

idea for which even they felt that they could give no sufficient proof. as brought Christ, no reply to this, the noblest aspect of the human mind without a Yes, it has, and a most plain they longed for, and hoped for, and struggled for, is there The second chapter of Romans and the

less wars of the Roman Empire, in our remote Britain, among the fierce tribes of Germany, among the fanatical zealots of Galileo and Judea! It is among these latter that he is especially brought before our notice, for he was the man appointed by the providence of God to bring upon Jerusalem the woes predicted by Christ, when there should not be left temple which should not be one stone upon another of Jerusalem's

placed upon its sure and immovable basis, the promise of the Eternal God in and through His Son,

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
instant they are of their duration, it may be said of their whole frame,

13
that

7th verse, is the reply of the great Apostle of the Gentiles to the aspirations of the heroic patient continuance immortality, said: raise mind after a future endless life; "to them who by and honour, and of Christ, in well doing seek for glory,

God will render eternal life."

And the utterances

the death destroyer,

the life giver, are frequent

and are full, as when He which seeth and I will says Dr. life:

, Trembling alive all o'er And smart and agonise at every pore.' " (Printed Extracts, xi. 18.) 'I'here are some advocates of eternal misery who turn from such pictures in terror, and suppose the suffering of the lost to be of a mental rather "Gather all which malicious, than of a physica l kind! in your mind "-he is most loathsome, What do they gain by this? says-" most They only draw another picture just as terrible. Here is Dr. Pusey's description :an assembly of all those men and gather most in mind by any revolting, the treacherous, for a single rage, ever with hate j from

This is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone on Him may have everlasting last day." (John vi. 40.) "where him up at the "Where,"

the Son, and believeth

Perowne, in his work upon our great subject: the ambrosia merely beyond thoughts, grave? of Immortality? How shall desire, nor tremblingly this life?

shall man find sure of, not a life anticipate,

he be quite death

women, from whom your memory most sbrinks j .... coarse, brutal, invective, fiendish

expect, nor doubtfully

How shall he be sure that

has no power to knowing himself

cruelty, un softened spite, frenzied and through

destroy him, but that he, the same person, the same in his memory, in his in his affections, in his will, shall continue, his own individual by two facts: life of Christ Christianity and answers by the to be himself, and perpetuating of Christ: next, existence beyond the to us." on which whom supreme all only the in

remains of human

feeling, such as thou couldst not endure through and through

hour j conceive the fierce fiery eyes of hate, fixed on thee, lopking sleepless in their horrible thee, never to be turned sight of hate.

first, by the Resurrection communicated Immortality that hailed after others, with it with not

gaze j felt, if not seen j never turning from, except to quail under and concentrated hating

the like piercing hate, as everyone, expression on all in itself 1870.

(" Immortality," J. J. S. Peroume, p. 96.) But there is another aspect of man towards a we few words would the must be said. among But there We men, and have have call heroes being. have aimed been

Hear those yells of blasphemy that hate unceasingly,

they echo along the lurid vaults of hell j everyone and venting around, Duration, mental of malignity j conceive all this, multiplied, everlasting misery." (Beecher's 159.) Sermons intensified, on Future

seen

some,

with every inconceivable of hate were

reflected

delight ardour heathen

idea of Immortality,

on every side j . . . . a deathlessness dic., 5 Ed. suffering

of their

Punishment, physical

lands but in Christian

lands and times,

who have viewed it

Between Wesley's

and Pusey's

very differently indeed.

The abusers of life, the men who have found in towards Immor-

there does not seem much difference of pain. must give rise, to every variety of

it no worthy aim or end, to whom existence has become worthless, a gift which they would refuse or despise, how do they stand tality? They view the idea of it with aversion, it, they plead for destruction They reason against or fear, or hatred! as a boon, since with of misery. mental

Descriptions

such as these, whatever difference there may be between

them, have given rise, as they needs

conflicting thought upon the mind of those who consider them. They are seized upon by the unbeliever, in order to hold up the God of whom the Scriptures speak, as a God of cruelty and injustice! Stuart against Christianity Here are the is good words of the late John implanted in his mind Mill, whose whole mind, there everlasting

them the eternity of existence is equivalent

to the perpetuation

Such a man was Lord Byron I In the abuse of the wonderful powers which God had given him, in the unrestrained To him life had become a thing of abhorrence or heard, or saw, only weariness sprung! possible to fly from himself, from that

pursuit of pleasure,

reason to suppose, was poisoned

by the supposition misery was the he says, . create

he had in the very opening of his life dried up the springs of happiness. I From all that he met, His ardent desire was if which tormented eternal of

from infancy, that " The recognition

doctrine of Christ and the New Testament: in his Essays on Religion, worship countless generations might outrages common in a Being who could make

"The recognition," and who could

of the object of the highest

demon-thought

a hell,

him j and when he stood by the strong flowing river and looked down into its sweet waters, his wish was that forgetfulness Jesus," to him. again (Byron, Childe was David so intense Such a man some years ago. Father, Strauss, they could be Lethe, the author Harold, c. 1., s. lxxxiv., c. 3., s. 1. of the "Life throughout Christendom

of human beings with the certain foreknowledge that Is there any moral enormity which of such a Deity. and humanity of Any other of the involved in the God, sinks (114.) rejection of into by imitation ordinary

He was creating them for this fate. not be justified to the most Christian

justice

which excited

an interest

conception

of the character

He had deeply studied the life of one who indeed knew in doing all for the glory of His as a thing to be rejected. criticism In he concludes thus, " the idea of a has to oppose, p. 143.) Human Destiny,"

insignificance orthodox

beside this dreadful idealization takes occasion punishment future to

of wickedness." justify the

the true nobility of life as consisting and yet he speaks of Immortality Doctrine of Faith," his last work, the"

If one class of mind view of Christianity, restoration.

from what is falsely called the by its terriffic aspect to

another class of mind is compelled When we say that

future world is the last enemy which speculative and, if possible, to overcome." calls unbelievers,-and grave and terrible the mind Supposed popular (Hudson,"

rush into the opposite opinion, and to advocate the theory of a universal in the earlier centuries of Christianity of the Eastern Church, headed by the more than one-half of the Fathers say that in more modern (IIudson's H. Destiny,

Now, I need not say that it is in connection with those whom Scripture even the heathen world called wicked men,-that doubts, and objections, and horror, are roused up in with the doctrine of man's immortality! the has raised in utter What Wesley to be immortal the mind Eternal like the righteous, sinks as John

learned Origen, were forced into this most dangerous opinion j when we times such men as Beugel, and Neander, and and Jukes, have embraced it unreservedly insinuating out his Tholuck, and Thos. Erskine,

in connection

in general estimation teaching of the Christian vision Eternal


01'

38, 101,122) j when we see Tennyson

Church for long centuries absolutely misery!

it in his poetry, and Birks propounding

an idea never heard of before, to stretching may see another proof of the misery. nor infidels, who hold in hat of the the It is thus ornaments

up a dread prostration. matters the other. Methodism describes it,

before which agonies!

get rid of the awful idea of endless misery, and Farrar hands towards it as nearly as he dare j-we fearful influence of the doctrine of everlasting the view of eternal Scripture, yet start the late William Church of Ireland misery because they

Eternal evil!

it whether Here :-"

the pain of the lost be physical

mental, as Dr. Pusey supposes. is the description There is no business

The one is as terrible as scene Every

And do not others, who are neither universalists

of hell as given by the founder of there, but one uninterrupted They have no interval

conceive it to be taught

back from it in terror and alarm? one of the brightest

of sorrow, to which they must of inattention

be all attention.

Archer Butler,

or stupidity j they are all eye, all ear, all sense.

in our day, and who hims/(lf held and advocated

14
view, was yet compelled to speak of it :-"

THE
Were it possible"-

BIBLE
he saysabout it blanched that we

STANDARD.
Note 1.-AIl " 2.-AlI 3.-All 4.-AlI things created (en) in Him. things created (dia) by means of Him. things created (eis) unto Him or for Him. things subsist, consist, or are held together in or by Him. we must see that God became visible in the of creation, to the object and subject of of Holy a the key the Anthr6pomorphism

" to conceive the horrors of such a doom as this, all reasoning thought. The beholder of it' would come forth with intellect It is of God's mercy"-he adds-"

were at an end; it would scorch and wither all the powers of human and idealess from a sight too horrible for any whose faculties are not on the scale of eternity itself. can believe what Series.; Thank God, the Scriptural teaching on the nature of man and his and removes every objecafter God and His revealed message For those who future destiny meets every aspect of humanity, tion which mis-conception raises against to us, contained in Holy Scripture. adequately to conceive were death." (8e1"1n0118,2nd

Even if we do not see in this Scripture the eternal generation or Sonship of the theologians, angelic worship, Scripture. and Word,' John i. I, the Archetype

2. In Governmental

position.

Man was made to have dominion, of human nature, accounts

fact which touches a main-spring

for many ages

FOl' man's natural aspirations

events in earth's history, and gives a leverage to Satan's temptations, being a craving desire of man's constitution that are coming on," the deprivation eternal punishment of the lost. The speculations multiply of Malthus which is to be satiated in the" of which is a great part of the

immortality, it provides an eternal life worthy of them. will seek that life, it holds out the assurance find it.

that they shall certainly

While for those who are unfit for it, who will not take the

trouble to seek for it, whose continued existence would and could be only an existence of misery and evil, it holds out the sad yet just and even merciful view of their blotting out from God's book of life. accomplished Christ holds out to our view: "The world passeth And thus is the glorious prospect which the beloved disciple of Jesus away and the lust

Man was to have dominion over all the earth, to subdue it and to fill it. and the Honourable The millions Member for Northof acres of Central ampton are opposed to the will of our God, which is, "Be fruitful and and replenish the earth." Africa, a land of rivers and fountains of water, flowing with milk and honey, are awaiting the occupation of the white-faced image of God. 3. In capacity for communion with God. craves to be loved, hence the creation. God is love, and therefore Love must be freely reciprocated

thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." (1 John ii.17.)

..
MAN, THE IMAGE
Conference.

OF

GOD.
HAMMOND.

to be of any real value, hence the free agency of man and His liability to fall. When the dread shadow and nightmare of eternal evil and torment these things "The can be delightfully conas in Prov. viii. 22-32: Lord possessed me in the I was set up from everWhen there were no abounding is chased away by Immanuel, templated,

Paper at the Liverpool

By Mr. R. J.

THE wonder and charm of this portion of Holy Scripture, consist in the unfolding creation, incarnation, without reservation. The iuspired commentaries plain. on this Psalm, of the divine purpose concerning

Psalm viii, man, the

beginning of His way, before His works of old. depths, I was brought with water. brought forth:

image of God, from its original conception in Jehovah's mind, through death, and resurrection, to its complete establishment in the coming age when man will be nex~ to God, absolutely and in the New Testament, Adam, redeeming,

lasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. Before the mountains

forth ; when there were no fountains

were settled, before the hills was I When He prepared the

While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, when He set a compass upon the face of the when He strengthened when He appointed always before the When He gave to the sea His decree, that Then I was by Him, as one brought up with delight, rejoicing Him; for and my delights were with

nor the highest part of the dust of the world. heavens, I was there: depth:

make this abundantly

Heb. ii. 5 -10, shows the cause of Adam


10 shows the all things puts on the top Eph. i. 20, shows

or man, taken up by Jesus the second and last claiming, and finally possessing all things, -verse to be the all things of Colossians i.

When He established the clouds above:

the Iountains of the deep: foundations of the earth: Him:

1 Cor. xv. 24-28,

the waters should not pass His commandment: and I was daily His

stone, and shows man to be indeed God's image, placing him next to God, with all things, death inclusive, under his feet. that this is all done representatively, Lord of the new creation. Gen. i. 26-27: after our likeness: all the earth, and So Elohim "And Elohim said, Let us make man in our image, over thing the that cattle, creepeth and over on the of God and let them have dominion over the fish of the over every creeping as the Head of the Church and the

Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; the sons of men. Now therefore blessed are they that keep my ways." vast geologic ages delighting

hearken unto me, 0 ye children:

Here we see Jehovah through the

in His plan, even His ultimate purpose of

sea, and over the fowl of the air, and earth.

Heading up all things in Christ, (Eplt. i. 20,) when His eternal delights shall be with the sons of men.

created man in His image,

in the image

created He him; We understand

male and female created He them." by this Scripture that man is the image of God. A reference to Gen. ix. 6, and to the image of God even after the the murder or cursing of our fellow is Anthropos, the one who

OUR POSITION wrra REGARD TO OTHER CHRISTIANS, AND TO THE WORLD IN GENERAL.
An Address given at the Lioerpool
VAN

1. In the form of his body. fall, for it is upon this ground that creatures is prohibited,

James iii. 9, shows that man retains

Conference,

By Major G. J.

SOMEREN.

Man generically

IT is no light thing to stand before a gathering such as this, and to speak on the great and high matters which will be brought who will take an active part in this Conference. forward by those Oar earnest desire and

throws up the eye, the one who ever keeps tl.e upright position, never lost by man and never gained by the brute. Col. i. 15-17, gives us the source and origin of this image into which [the Son of His love] is the For by Him or powers: angels and men have been mouldad : "Who

prayer is that God may, by His Spirit, lead us to just and holy conclusions to the glory of His holy name. I am here, to-night, to speak on the including in or all those of the position that we hold, first, with regard to other Christians, matters of faith; and, second, with regard to the world,

image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature: and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, All things were created by Him, and for Him: things, and by Him all things consist."

were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible And He is before all

that term all who bow to the Bible as the only and final authority in who practically or theoretically Bible as the Word of God. deny the truth and authority

THE
Our position able to accept, immortality; I would thus as taught torment, define. First, with regard

BIBLE

STANDARD.
part of him only. used, "man's Scripture Listen

15
soul?" It is not in Scripture. ye from man of." and Far less does is in his God

to Christians, natural

Whence then is derived the expression so commonly worth and grandeur. whose breath Are we told that omniscient?

While agreeing with them

in much, we differ from them in not being in the Bible, the doctrine of man's

immortal

speak of man as a being of intrinsic

and the resulting dogmas, on the one hand, that the wages and on the other hand, that suffering, after

to what it says, "Cease

of sin is unending

nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted not then say that man is omnipotent

death, whether for a longer or a shorter period, purges a man of his sin, and so admits all that were ever born of woman into God's kingdom of life and light and glory. a way of attaining whosoever believeth "With regard followers us anything We believe that man was born mortal, but that is opened to him if he will obey God, "that life." all not perish, but have eternal Theists, and all the immortality

made man in His image, and therefore man is immortal? not more divine than immortality." immortality, for we read that

We ask, why attributes "God only hath

If to avoid that very manifest on our outward form?

difficulty we are told that Is it not corruption rather

and believe on His Son Jesus Christ, "who died and rose again," in Him should to the world, we maintain, all Deists,

irnage means only the outward so clearly imprinted that that

similitude, then we ask, Is immortality that reign in every feature? those life) .

on the one hand, against

sits on every line, decay and death by patient continuance

of Plato, against

so-called On there

Again, the Word tells us that eternal life is the reward given "to mortality" (or incorruption-a necessary condition and natural of lasting

apostles of sweetness and light, that neither nature nor science can teach to warrant a belief in the natural against immortality materialist, of man. that the other hand, we maintain the mere

in well-doing seek for glory, honour, imto himself, the generation does that No I

.Does any Christian

claim to have, inherent

is a future life and a resurrection, flowing only from God in Christ. It is thus abundantly

and that the source of both is divine,

glory or the honour here spoken of, or to have it by natural from his earthly father? mortality? mean that immortality we combat Again, if God tells us to seek for immortality, we have it as an essential is the gift of God. the lie that Satan started when he suggested portion

If not, how can he claim to thus have imof ourselves?

clear that we differ greatly, in these points, from Why do we thus differ? except when figures Recognizing, as are

a majority of our fellow-men. primary and proper sense,

an elementary rule, that Bible words and phrases must be taken in their and metaphors manifestly intended, we declare that a careful and unprejudiced in the matter. study of

We take Bible words in their primary and proper sense, and, so doing, to our first parents that they would" not surely die." We cannot that They believed him, disobeyed

God's word has left us no option

If you judge our con-

clusions to be wrong, believe us when we say that they have been reached after much prayerful and patient search, and that we are ready to follow them out to the end. Therefore it is a small thing truth. is on our side. to us that on these few in number, points we stand apart, that as yet we are comparatively or that many decry us,-for

God, sinned, and sin brought forth its inevitable and bitter fruit-death. believe that when God told His, dust-made creature, Adam, of disobedience would be death, that meant that still live on for ever, but in unceasing misery. We dare the punishment

Adam should

It is necessary that I should indicate some of the points on which we differ, and I will now proceed' to do so, and also adduce some of the grounds on which our position demand has many hours. been present that is based. To unfold that the in them ages; all would it could We all fully admit the idea of immortality promise
01'

not alter God's word" death," and say that the wages of sin is unending torment, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." God hath made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. of our peace. soul unto death." fellow Christians, sins and mine? If, then, "death" do you believe that God forbid! On Him was laid the chastisement "He poured out His for your means" unending life in t01~nent," All God's billows went over Him.

to the mind of man from the earliest the woman's seed should inherent

Jesus is now in torment

not have been otherwise when we consider fallen parents, But the question is, Is immortality if not, how is it to be gained? that the Bible assumes the natural

made to our to man; and

No, the miracle of love was completed, Thus, only, were you and I crucified

bruise the serpent's head. natural I have been told The fact to us fact, does

and carried out to the bitter end. all the debt.

with Him on the cross, and Jesus, made the cnrse for you and me, paid Can we endorse the suggestion, that because the sacrifice so holy, the God of justice accepted a portion in lieu due to sin? Such a suggestion dishonours God, It is a mere after-thought error of man's natural was so stupendous, and minimises immortality.

Let Scripture reply. immortality

of man, and therefore

does not anywhere actually sbate it as a fact. that man has sinned and is subject all,-but a "Thus not assert it? the Eternity, No, it mentions the Immortality, the holiness do we find that the Bible, assuming saith the Lord" on our side.

Can this be so? that as a patent

of the full punishment of theology, introduced

to death, is openly manifest

the value of the atonement. It cannot be found in Scripture. to be reached?

to prop up the cardinal

it again and again, so that we may have Does the Bible merely assume does it assume the the Wisdom, the Power, the Love of God? of the Lord Jesus? and so pass on to deduc-

How then is immortality private interpretation.

Let us again go to the Word, to our own The

and beware how we handle it craftily, or render it according

does it assume tions

Let God be true and every man a Iiar."

necessity of some Way of Life for dying man? from these assumed assume that premises.

words of our Lord are, "Ye must be born [or rather, begotten] again." 'l'hen that shows that there is a life in which, by nature, we have neither part nor lot; it must be conferred on us by free grace, and "that in His Son." mediator We lay helpless, all of us condemned was found, a sacrifice was appointed. life is to death, but a

No, it states these facts over and doctrine of the natural im-

over again, so that we may not be left to our own inductive wisdom only. Shall we then mortality vVe refuse friends. this crucial of man is so self-evident its results to take this on trust We want a "'I'hus that it need not be specifically stated are to man so stupendous, the Lord" for it. so awful? from our, it may be, keener-sighted We find that Surely that silence, (not earthly). It the

This was Jesus, the to

in the Bible, though

Holy One of God, Who went down into

death, was heard in that He from the dead."

feared, was raised again by the might,Y power of God, and "declared be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection Justice having been satisfied, the Eternal power, ant! "brought sheep."

saith

nowhere does Scripture speak of man as immortal. if it stood alone, would be significant. tells us that creature), of grass." God made man of dust, It tells us plainly that man "is of the earth, earthy" breathed breath of life, and man became a living creature" It tells us that" Mark I all this is spoken of the entire

Father put forth His sovereign the Prince and Author of

But what does the Word say? into his nostrils

again Irom the dead that great Shepherd of the

'rhus our Lord Jesus Christ became"

life," for, "as the living Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself, and the Son quickeneth whom He will." . He shall see of the travail of His soul, and' be satisfied," up many sons unto glory. by raising This view brings out the doctrine of th\l

(not an immortal man, not of some

man is as grass, and his glory as the flower

16
Atonement, which cannot be seen in all its grandeur than this. sins, but He has also given us life,-life lives, we shall live also." fulness of the Atonement, stupendous immortality, of salvation. I shall not stop to meet the objection too much of life alone. results

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
you accept that or not? Psalm xxi, 4., "He Let us take the Bible definition of life. "Every word of God is pure." Read iYhen

in any other light "because He

Not only has our Lord, by His atoning work, borne all our eternal,-for Indeed, speaking for myself, I never knew the till I saw it in this light. To take a lower are life and God's way

asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even

length of days for ever and ever."

that word tells me that "the wicked shall not live out half his days," I know it to be true, though I see him flourishing rich and increasing in riches. might have been his. Such must ever be the result of sin unatoned for, for sin is the most For " we look for a new When our and equity disintegrating agent in the universe. It is thus the sting of death and here to a fat old age, If he rejects God's way of life, he shall

view of it dissipates its power, and shakes, to the very foundations, the of that mighty work. Those results glory and honour, to all who will accept

surely die,' and go down to everlasting destruction, forfeiting the life that

that we are carnal, and make

To such cavilling I will only reply that the life

gives it all its powers. Lord shall have returned

But not for ever.

of the justified, sauctified, risen and glorified saint embraces something more than mere existing, but he must first be made alive to enjoy the fruits of that life, and those things that love Him." "that God hath laid up for them great point in our significance erred, And this leads up to another

heaven and a new earth wherein reigned, when those thousand

dwelleth righteousness."

and taken unto Himself His kingdom and years of peace and judgment

shall have run their glorious course, Satan shall be loo sed from the pit in which he was bound during the millennium, craft to lead men against Jehovah. Jerusalem and will again use his But it shall be the last exercise of Then Satan, the fallen the charge of this

position, i.e., a fuller perception of the beauty and startling of the doctrine of the resurrection. error of Hymenams saying that some." and Philetus, "who, concerning

Let us beware of falling into the the faith,

his baleful power, for when the armies are gathered together against fire from God shall destroy them, Archangel, to whom in his better days was entrusted and night shall last till the age of ages. the Great White Throne,

the resurrection is past already, and overthrew the faith of The apostle "if there is no resurrection, the words just quoted show, Christ mnst necessarily have The

That error is still to be found in the Churches.

Paul, speaking on the subject, says that then is Christ not risen." evidently believed death that remained to mean, though

earth, shall be cast into the lake of fire, there to be tormented while day Then follows the setting up of "the dead, small and Before that tribunal

I will not here dwell on what the apostle

if there had been no resurrection,

great," all the impenitent ones who, since our race was placed on earth, have died in their sins, and all the righteous who had been born and had fallen asleep during the millennium, the things written in the books. hour will have arrived, shall stand to be judged out of will be passed, the dread Sentence

dead, as the resnlt of the sin laid upon Him. the Lord Jesus,-His birth, His childhood, His life in

I pass on to show that without resurrection there is no life for us. facts concerning

Nazareth, those concerning His ministry, His death, burial, and resurrection, are, and can be as clearly proved as any other well-known fact in the history of the world. The apostle Paul, who was a young man when our Lord died, appeals. after his conversion, to the fact of the resurrection being known to some Most of 500 men, who had seen the Lord alive aIter His rising again.

Before the assembled hosts of angels, princithis great and closing scene of Then deceived and "This is the

palities and powers; before myriads of risen and glorified ones, who had their joyful part in the first resurrection, time shall unroll its dread and awful splendours.

deceiver, the Devil and all those whom he led to death, and with them death and hades shall have their lot in the lake of fire. second death," Unquenehable, and all in it shall be as chaff burnt up, as "ashes though they had not been." that fire shall burn till its work is done, upon the earth," as many mansions Sin gone, there shall be no more death in

those 500 men were alive at the time Paul made that public appeal. The reason why the Jews could not bear to hear Paul, and the other apostles, speak of the resurrection be a of the Lord was that they knew it to condemned them. So Christ is unto a lively hope; " at the to wit, the fact, and that fact in itself

that new world of light and life and glory; the Father's city of light, and the great sabbath

risen, and we who believe in Him are "begotten resurrection redemption corruption, immortality triumph morn.

shall be filled for ever; the saved nations shall walk in the light of that day having dawned, the Almighty blessed the will have ended all His work which he had made, and "God work which God created and made." I have now indicated the main points on which we differ and given the grounds by which we justify our belief. shall not enter on that work. will follow me. I now desire with the greatest deference to the wider experience of my fellows in this Association, and with much humility, to offer some remarks on the methods we should adopt to spread the light given us, and the manner in which we should deal with those who differ from us. are all good things. leaders. All these, thank God, we have. Conferences, meetings, committees, tracts, magazines, and special addresses But individual efforts by the rank and file must not be lessened because we have good One and all must work. Then too we must remember that all We desire As good things must be done in charity with all men, or else we shall give good reason for doubting whether we are doing the Lord's work. not victory for our glory
01'

" our life is hid with Christ in God," and shall be manifested For that we wait, "for the adoption," It is then that Is this of the body.

corruption shall put on inand death shall be to incorruption man? Is that and song of

seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He rested from all His

that mortality shall put on immortality, resurrection the inherent right of the natural

swallowed up in victory.,

Much remains untouched, but I

to burst from the lips of those

who, according

to popular

It will be more ably done by those who

theology are, and must be, as incorruptible of God, though they are to spend unending fire. Listen to the word again, inherit

and immortal as the saints lives in torment, in misery, deny God's word can corruption only by

in cursing, in sin, or as some say in remorse.i--such and blood cannot

"Now, this I say, brethren, that flesh

the kingdom of God, neither is changed

inherit incorruption,"

The risen and glorified believer then inherits the to incorruption, Whence through obedience then does the for to exist I

kingdom of God, his corruption unto death, and bestowed

virtue of that life which the Lord Jesus Christ gained on His followers. be incorruptible?

sinner, who has not been begotten again, inherit incorruption, for ever, be it in woe, he must cannot I confess. But I do know that the Scripture

Can you tell me?

tells me, on the that, Do

to prove our brethren

wrong.

contrary, that the sinner shall be burnt up like chaff in the unquenehable fire, " that the wicked shall be as though they had not been;" sinner shall be " cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." after hearing his final doom pronounced at the Great White Throne, the

soldiers of Jesus Christ we must endure hardness, but our feet must be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. weight, even, to the burden of a brother Let us add no featherto perhaps already pressed down.

Above all let no schism, no rending of Christ's body, no attempt

TIlE
form ourselves into a sect or denomination us not imitate nor resent that obtain among us. in

BIBLE STANDARD.
Others Let with Some were but baits of the Evil One. old yet ever new. But the Lord has shown us that Conference.

17
they

have driven us forth from among them, told untruths wrong doing then

regarding us. dealing

are His, and we want all to come and see them in their glorious beauty' This is our third The Lord has blessed that lies on of 1880,' and take us greatly, and while we acknowledge the deep responsibility each one of us, let us thank courage." "Praise ye the Lord," again, again, The Spirit strikes the chord, And faith takes up the happy strain, We praise, we praise, the Lord." God this September

others. We shall meet all kinds of Christians who differ from us. are perfectly apathetic important. They are determined

with regard to the things that we know to be so to leave them untouched, or else seem They are subjects for prayer that for them.

to be incapable of caring Let there be light.'

the Spirit may move upon the face of the deep, and that God may say, Others again denounce that both us and our belief strongly, at the same time boasting dangerous and devil-born doctrines. they will not look into such to the truth. great grace to

But noisy as such are and trying to the smell, obstruc-

to our sense of fairness, they are not really dangerous They are like the smoke in a skirmish, unpleasant tive to the view, but harmless and fleeting. It requires

DO THE TALITY

TEACHINGS OF CONDITIONAL IMMORJUSTIFY THE WAYS OF GOD TO MEN?


Address given at the Liverpool Conference.

deal with such in love, great wisdom to know when to, and when not to, answer a fool according to his folly. their business and to get brethren expelled Then there are those who make it the evil," who had brothers. Let trials from early to scent out what they call heresy and "judge from fellowship with others,

By T. J.

HITCHCOCK.

THE subject which I am called upon to speak of is considerably altered in my estimation from that appointment, which I agreed to accept at the time of the when I wrote to the Secretary about it so much so, that

hitherto received them on the broad ground of being Christian field for the exercise of love and patience. work patience, and eventuate selves, and they will be won. education, (the greatest therein, obstacle reading the Word, unconsciously, become more rooted Calm argument thereto. opponents. not consent secrethearts in love towards Are they trials?

Such men are generally filled with spiritual pride: they afford us a grand those who oppose them-

after he had sent it down, I said, I really did not know it again, it had so changed its form. However, he wrote back again to say it was too with its form, and I late to alter it now, and he hoped that I would just do the best I could with it, but not to allow myself to be hampered stand here to-night determined not to be hampered, but to take my own independen t course. The subject, then, Immortality as stated here, is," The Teachings of Conditional the Ways justify of God to Men." I put it in the Teachings That, form, and I say, "Do as Justifying

There are those who, either to find not truth

as we have found ourselves), or from but their own views but blind These are honest

in error. and prayer

are the means to draw them. Others in their

Others again, know our position

clearly and cannot gainsay it, but will

Such only trouble themselves.

another form, in the interrogatory of Conditional Immortality

believe us to be right, but fear of loss of friends, of influence,

the Ways of God to Men?"


.:;

or fear, it may be, of loss of employment or business, turn them aside. To such we say, 'as a man thinketh in his heart so he is.' His friends see more than he thinks, and his influence, whatever it may be, is already vitiated, for' a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.' Let such come out bravely and they will find' grace to help in time of need.' With regard to the world, though still doing all in love and meekness, our methods must vary. be cast down. preaching Brethren! right way. ashamed. There are many who believe in an immortality All their vain imaginations Not by entering must into and future of their own imagining. discussions on their When dealing power of God. with

then, I wish to be understood, as the form of the subject this evening. In the first place, dear friends, the question arises Teachings of Conditional Immortality?" What are the It is not for you or I to say to have a good foundaIf you will kindly

whether they justify the ways of God before men or not, unless we know what they are. own Word-with I like, then, always in starting That foundation tion to rest upon. I will now read to you from God's

regard to the justice of God's ways.

turn to Deut. xxxii. 1 to 4, " Give ear, 0 ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, 0 earth, the words of My mouth." coming now, surely there is something that coming from the Most High God. by the prophet Isaiah ear, 0 earth
j "

How is this to be accomplished.

Surely there is something such an intimation as

empty dreams and on the nature those who deny

of man, but by

behind

the Cross of Christ, Christ crucified is the powel of God. God or devil, angel or spirit; to all such preach the Cross of Christ, Christ crucified, the Try nothing else. It is God's way and so is the only foolishness of preaching." It To do so properly we must be workmen who need not be Our version speaks of "the the foolishness of the thing preached." The Cross it must He may be

It is like the testimony given "Hear, 0 heavens, and give are called upon to is it the "Great-

in his first chapter,

but in that case what they are called upon to listen to is In that case the heavens

the very reverse of this. against Him.

hear that God had nourished and brought up children who had rebelled But here in this case how different I What are called to listen to in this chapter? 4th verse-" unto our God." heaven and the earth ness, yes, greatness work is perfect:

should be rendered"

of Christ is foolishness to the natural

man, but he who teaches

He is the Rock, His a God of truth and

be taught of God, if he is his preaching will not be foolish. life" but he must still preach Christ crucified. At all times we should remember faiths, but to sow the seed. evening, hold not thy hand." the increase." "In

for all His ways are judgment:

to some "a savour of death unto death, to others a savour of life unto that we are not called to pull down the morning sow thy seed, in the a sower went forth to sow." The God gives the corn when He has this room I see cause for under the rubbish of

without iniquity, just and right is He." all his dealings" are in judgment," iniquity, [ust. and l'ight is He." Circumstances this character if there is an individual beiore,-" words of My mouth;" " just and right is He." do with the matter to another

It does not matter whether it a "God of truth ana without

refers to man in his nature, in his character, or in his destiny, all his ways

"Behold,

cannot alter this glorious statement. Hear, this is 0 heavens, what God

0, dear friends,

seed is the Word of God." "Paul may plant, Apollos water, but God giveth Read the 65th Psalm. must sow it. Ten years ago or so how many of us spoke with prepared for it-we us to rejoice heartily. centuries.

here to-night who has never understood God in and give ear, 0 earth, the declares of Himself, that Much every way.

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, when I look around

You may now say to me, But what has this to Immortality?

of Conditional

bated breath of the jewels we had found hidden

But before I proceed to speak upon that point I will call your attention passage in Deut. xvi. 19, just to show you what is meant

Some told us they were but painted glass, others that they

18
more emphatically passages Himself? still, where God is instructing His servant

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
clear statement of our Maker,-if this be His own testimony, who shall

His servant as to how of these two

he should act, and the question arising from the connection is, Does God request

dare to stand up and deny what He has said ? else, but the man himself.

Man, not some separate

to do what He does not thou

thing connected with a man, not a house, not a tabernacle, or anything Man was made of the dust of the ground, That point settled in our minds, all the position. Well, what is the next? the breath of life. When and he was a man. God declares him to be a man before ever the breath was breathed into his nostrils. rest falls into its own natural with him?

Does God expect His servants to be what He is not Himself? Thou shalt not wrest judgment; That neither take a gift, for a gift doth blind the which is we were God with

Now what is it we read here ?-" shalt not respect persons,

eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. altoqether just shalt thou follow." Here is the command reading;

God had made this man of the dust of the ground, what does He do He breathed into his notrils Theology that this if such is here is the desire of that as His representative and Tradition tell us that God put into him an immortal soul; Well now, dear friends, portions

of the great God, whose character

here is the testimony,

regard to one who is to stand his fellow-men.

in dealing with

breath of life was the immortal soul. really the case, of course other that.

" That which is altogether just shalt thou follow." It comes from the teachon the Mount, taken out of this of God. No,

of Scripture will agree with is, literally, Man It he became? what happened? became? soul. what

Time runs away very fast, or I would like another quotation or two upon this point, but one more I must make. ing of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, children of God. passage-it children can build. structure." There in the Sermon

God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life-which that word "became "-who

the breath of lives, the breath of all life,-and became-mark The shell, according to tradition; received one- that is what tradition pulpits-that teaches:

where He calls upon His disciples to do these things, that ye may be the is a wrong idea sometimes we become the is that of God. by doing children

the house, according to tradition. Not that says,-that

is the mun, according to God, who became a living man received a living soul; God breathed but that

is the talk in all our is not what God Man became a living soul.

friends, it is the Lord Jesus Christ's desire that we may appear to be the I think now I have laid the foundation upon which I "It that would not stand the superThere are two tboughts Do the Teachings of ConThe first to us the r" itself, suggests Our Chairman of this evening, in speaking to-day, said:

you must alter God's Word to make it speak so. into his nostrils that God"

by virtue of the breath

would not do to lay down a foundation

Dr. Kitto gives us this translation,

blew into his nostrils the Now, does the Scriptnre I shall just ye from man, "Cease

If you get a good broad foundation, then you may build at

wind of life, and man became a living animal." refer you to a few passages :-Isa. ii. 22,

leisure, at pleasure, and with profit thereupon. before us in the subject put into my hands-" ditional Immortality question other question, justify arising from this, being a question and that is: "What

agree on this point, because if it does, our point is settled. whose breath is in-his nostrils; Now, where does that was an immortal well as in Genesis. but I speak with boldness. soul, then for wherein

the Ways of God before Men?" is Conditional

is be to be accounted of?" I speak with all affection, into man's nostrils find that in Isaiah as

leave our friends?

Immortality

If what God breathed of course we shall

Why, the very expression itself embodies the great fact which has already been spoken of by the speaker before me, viz.: that Conditional Immortality and before going further stantial position here. things, "Just for unless foundation to withstand teaches though us that he may have it is another implication man is mortal. implies that man has not got it within himself, embodied in that statement, that we should have a subit is necessary

Now, if that is the immortal part of man, that would be the strength of man, and should be used in the very opposite manner to the way it is used, if theological teaching be correct. the wind of life, which he must breathe to take the word of God as it stands. The fact that this breath is out again and go back to his Take another passage on this

We have learned what the ways of God are in all I now then take you to man's nature, satisfied on this point, unless our and therefore unable Immortality and I hold, mortal, it enemies. that I man hold Conditional is that

and right is He."

kindred dust, and not an immortal soul, is evident to all who are willing

our minds are perfectly the attacks in the first of our place

is sound here, we shall be nowhere,

point-Psalm

ciii. 14, 15, " For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the of what

that we are dust. Now, does this

field, so he flourisheth." or does it not agree with God's statement man was when He made him? not. Psalni Does it agree or not with human in other words. Put not

perhaps

some may

dissent,

teaches us not upon

only that man is mortal, but is wholly mortal, always mortal until that day comes when Jesus him. Christ Himself shall bestow that immortality If I want to understand the intricate character in all its workings a watch, a locomotive, or anything of that parts of a

tradition which men have foisted upon God's word? With the latter it does cxlvi, 3, 4, gives us the same thought to be its own interpreter We want Scripture in this matter-"

of some piece of mechanism, kind, what do I do? Do I go to the fireman? What are we?

If I want to know the component

your trust in princes.vnor thoughts perish." Did David think there any being. time when

in the son of man, in whom there is no help. to his earth; in that very day his

locomotive, how it is made, and its use, to whom do I go for information? Well, he might be able to give me some loose was; but, no, I would go to its maker. of us, as the Psalmist David tells Are not we all the masterpiece of That being so, to whom shall we go The previous speaker referred Well, that does "And the idea of what its mechanism

His breath goeth forth, he returneth

was coming a time when he would not have is a being. fact, that we must the consider, reverse, as that Tbey say there is not a He refers

Are we not everyone

This passage, we have no

us, fearfully and wonderfully made? mechanism of the Great Master?

even some of our friends differ on this point. David

implies

to know our character, to whom shall we go to know of what we are composed but to the One who made us? to Gen. i. 26, where God said, "Let not give us all we want; us make man."

that there was coming a time when he would have no being. to the fact that man is going down to that time being counted when speaking to have no being, his breath

place where he is for the goes forth, and he His breath

but if we read Gen. ii. 7, we read:

returns to his earth, it is not his shell, not his remains, as we so often hear of the departed-it is the man we follow. goeth forth, he returns to his earth. Would that I had a voice that could God by David. Oh, we flock; but having like a little

Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a li ving soul." The Lord God formed man, Orthodoxy and Theology and Tradition say the Lord God formed formed a tabernacle a house for man to live in; the Lord God The for man to dwell in, but what saith the Lord-H

~ake all Liverpool hear that testimony of theliving have a noble cause, though statements we stand Goelon our side we have nothing to fear.

These are plain, unvarnished The teachings

Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground."

Then if this be the

of God's word with regard to man's nature.

TEE
of Conditional only mortal, him immortality Immortality stand clearly before us. Man

BIBLE
is mortal,

STANDARD.
"A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify, A never-dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky." Now let us carefully examine this sentiment of Traditional

19

always mortal, until at the resurrection

Jesus Ohrist comes to bestow upon of the just. (Applause.) First-The

Theology:

TRADITIONAL RESULTS

THEOLOGY AND FOUND

TESTED WANTING.

BY

ITS

soul is represented as something belonging to the individual, Hence erqo,

not himself, but a charge he has to keep or take care of. Something that will live when he is dead, and for which he is held responsible. we hear people swear by their sou!. "Upon my soul it is true!", the soul is something

Address given at the Liverpool Conference. By


THE

THOMAS

VASEY.

the person has to save, hence the pious enquiry-

topic assigned

me by our excellent

Secretary for my address this of

evening, may by some be regarded as uttering a defiant note, and throwing down the gauntlet for controversy, but this really is not the intention the speaker. Taking another standpoint -it our subject will appear in a different to him some rather standard. light susis that of an analyst who has presented

" Is your soul saved?" Not, are you saved? but, as our hymn expresses it" [I have] a never-dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky." Now, beloved friends, "Are these things so?" I know they are generally accepted, and some are ready to turn pale with horror that such long-accepted veri ties should be questioned, but I again solemnly, in the presence of God, put the question, " Are these things so?" ought to be denounced from Land's End to John o'Groat's, to decide the vital question? If they are But who is and we are wrong, egregiously wrong, wickedly wrong, and our Association I reply we have but one authority,

picious compound that he is asked to test, and declare its properties, and point out its defects as compared with the imperial is really our work for a little time this evening. Now this If we have to contend into the cru-

earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we are neither ashamed, nor afraid, we are anxious to put every doctrine cible and prove all things, and hold fast that which is good, that our faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God; yet at the same time we shall aim to speak the truth in love. Now at the outset let us endeavour to clearly define what we mean by our topic-" Traditional Theology." By" traditional" we mean that which is oral, handed from one to another, without written authority (and in our use of it) that which cannot written inspired. W01d of God. By " Theology" the truths,-doctrines Christianity. der through of revealed be clearly and plainly proved by the

that is the Word of God, and to it we turn, and from Genesis to Revelation we cannot find one single expression to countenance this" Traditional Theology" "In about an immortal or "nevel'-dying soul." God judged our " Dust first parents after they sinned, as a man and a woman in their entirety. the day that thou shalt eat thereof thou shalt surely die." thou art and to dust thou shalt return." the world and death by sin." die. "By one man sin entered into it shall to the

Now what we mean is this, God did not

say to Adam Thy body ate of the fruit I forbade, and therefore No, man in his entire being sinned, and man was sentenced Thus God deals with us as human penalty.

beings, and He who has

we mean not simply talk or words about God, but religion, We take the term in its taught as the system of doctrines of human

made us, and whose dear Son has taken our nature, knows of what we are composed. It is clear we can die, and also, blessed be God, be made of which it is the first-fruits. But I say to live again through the Resurrection

common acceptation, as embracing all the mazes

Now from this statement

you must not expect me to wantheology, or to Our intention is simply to to Bible Satan

Then you ask, " Have not all men immortal, never-dying souls? " I say No, on the authority of sacred Scripture, and challenge proof. further that this great and glorious boon of everlasting " And this is the record that Son of God hath not life." life. God in His great love in and through Christ has offered us " The wages of sin is

and labyrinths

anatomize any so-called system of divinity. touch upon a few salient

points, and offer a few plain remarks

loving people. Traditional Theology is no new invention, it is as old as Eden. all down the stream of time the human element Word of God of no effect by their traditions, We think it almost theme. impossible

death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." God hath given to us eternal life, and this Here is our controversy with traditional life is in His Son. '! . He that hath the Son hath life, He that hath not the theology: It goes in for the immortality and dignity of human nature, that there was something inherently grand and worthy of the sacrifice of Christ, as the price of its redemption. teach that We, on the other hand, find the Scriptures away, perishes, consumes away into he ceaseth to be, becomes as though man dieth and wasteth

there had some talk to Eve about God that was far from sound doctrine; has sought to mix with the divine, till we find the Redeemer charging the Jews with making the and the climax has long of men. of our the importance since been reached of teaching for doctrines the commandments to exaggerate

God's Word is settled in heaven, that which He has spoken Tradition, Science, Philosophy, may and The prophet that hath a dreamt

smoke like the fat of lambs,-that he had not been, that also rejoice in the fact that of a higher grandeur

shall judge us in the last day.

this is the ultimate end of the wicked; but we man, ruined as he is by sin, is capable, immortality could have he

do say some pretty captivating things, mere opinion has its sphere, but God Himself has defined the boundary-" faithfully. " " What is the chaff to the wheat? like as a fire? saith the Lord; let him tell a dream, and he that hath My W01d let him speak My Word saith the Lord. Is not My Word

through the riches of divine love and grace, and the redemption of Jesus, and glory than natural conferred upon him, for through nature heirs, higher than joint union with Christ in regeneration,

becomes a partaker of the Divine nature, and thus Christ has raised cur the angels, to be reaJly and truly the sons of God, and live for ever with Him in our the first the but alf this comes to us not through nature heirs with Christ, inheritance;

and like a hammer that breaketh the rock

in pieces?" Now that which is all bad repels by its Vel'y hideousnessthat which is all false betrays its parentage, hence tradition is often a mixture of the true and the false, diverging further and further from the right, till at length the false takes the place of the true.-For Traditional everyone Theology teaches that possesed of an immortal soul,-that example, are all men, women, and children

purchased

Adam, whose mortal

we inherit with its liability to sin, shame,

and death, but from the second Adam, the .Lord from heaven, quickening spirit, the glorious divine Life-giver. It is .to this grandly solemn trust we bear our distinctive that only by union
01'

this is some immaterial,

testimony, possessed of

un definable object that ever and ever.

is lodged within them, and that will live on for

with Jesus Christ

can we become

Perhaps I cannot better convey my meaning than in the

immortality

eternal life, and to this divinely-attested

fact we cling

words of a popular hymn-

whether friends frown or smile.

20
The origin of the traditional It seems to have been hatched idea of an immortal Heathen

rnn

BIBLE

S'rANDARD.
out the man." " The wages of sin is death." "The soul that sinneth

soul dates far back. and poets

in Eden, when Satan said to Eve, " ye philosophers

shall not surely die, but be as Gods."

it shall die." To be cast into the lake of fire, not as a Salamander, but to find it, what God declares it to be, the second death from which there will be no resurrection. whatever teaching Him. Death is the opposite of Life, the extinction of Being, and, This is Scriptural testimony, This accords with the may say to the contrary. without resurrection, its extinction for ever. tradition

nursed and cherished it, and after the lapse of time, Christian teachers began to clothe it out of the wardrobe of Gospel truth, and now the devil's fosterchild is recognised as one of the family, and we are branded as heretics if we dare to expose the cheat. Tell me of Christian charity, and the what an old sinner Noah was, for danger of exposing settled beliefs i-then

of Christ, the Life Giver, and He came sent by His loving am come that they might have life." vain pretension. Hear His " I give

he testified against settled belief for 120 years, that the world would be drowned with water, and he was laughed to scorn, but the flood came and the world of people perished notwithstanding. Moses disturbed Egypt, but Israel were delivered. and all Judreism was revolutionised, complished and unsettled fact. Luther thundered out forgotten Jesus Christ came, became an actruth, and the

Father that men under the judicial sentence of death might live through He says, "I words, are they truth, or an empty boast ?-a twaddle of tradition

unto My sheep eternal life and they shall never perish." eternal. life if we had it before, thus

The miserable not give us sinners.

and Christianity

has cheated us too long, Christ could

Christ is robbed of His glory, the

Heformation was the result, but many good people were very perplexed, before they reached the rock of revealed truth, and so it What The will be in this case also. But then people timidly tell us it is after all not a vital truth. creed of Christendom. Let us look at a few of its fruits or results.

cross of its virtue, and God of His grand beneficence to mortal

But on the other hand, " He tha~ believeth not on Christ shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him," he is doomed to perish, but does God take pleasure in this? listen, "Say unto them, as I live "Turn and yet men, Christian sent Him, to tell the torment, that saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." ye, turn ye, why will ye die, 0 house of Israel?" ministers, eternal whom Christ has sent, as the Father

harm can result from its being allowed to remain as part of the settled huge system of Apostacy rests upon it; prayers to saints, masses for the dead, prayers to tbe Virgin Mary, purgatorial heaven, ghostly apparitions flames to fit souls for or appearances are all based on the assump-

gospel both of the grace and glory of the Blessed God, dare to preach an hell, and immortal souls suffering there eternal hell shall continue the eternal rival of heaven, the groans of the lost

tion that people live when tbey are dead, and before the resurrection live in ghostly shadowy forms, and know more, and are capable of more than tbey were before they died. same remarks Again, Mahomet's paradise, that sensuous The and bis happy hunting do men gather delusion, rests on the same footing-souls grounds in the spirit land. and practices, is another is but a huge assumption, jury,-unproven. Permit me next Theology; Spiritualism, living without bodies.

forming the eternal contrast to the songs of the saved, that the devil will live as long as God, and blaspheme His name, and the new heavens and earth be polluted with the smoke of the torments devils. To state these vile monstrous absurdities ought to be sufficient to What does God HimThere is no away! in the glory worthy of the are passed refute them in the light of God's revealed truth. flourish of trumpets, Almighty, He simply but with the dignity states the "former and things of damned souls and

will apply to the poor heathen result of it;

with its revolting doctrines

but enough,-"

grapes off thorns or figs off thistles? The doctrine, with its pretensions, and our mildest verdict is that of a Scotch of the products of Traditional On this The

self say about them, the eternity of sin, suffering, death?

to test another

Behold I make all things new." But what are the results of this traditional Sunday School Hymn: " There is a dreadful hell, And everlasting pains, Where sinners must with devils dwell In darkness, fire, and chains." We reply, most sceptics. disastrous. It has made thousands of infidels and It is so far overstated that it is powerless to warn as designed, is the result of the rebound of the dogma of eternal say, " Well, I let never preach on theology as taught

I mean the awful dogma of eternal sin and torment.

subject human cruelty seems to have allied itself with Satanic ingenuity to produce the most frightful chamber of horrors ever conceived. scene is a bottomless cavern of liquid fire, where lost immortal souls and devils are being tormented, the devils being the tormentors of the human sinners; sulphurous they are represented as rising and falling on the billows of and this is flame, cursing and blaspheming, and thus adding sin to sin

for ever, that eternal sin may call forth eternal torment,

and thus the guilty pass on and perish. Universalisrn torment, God is dishonoured, truth lies bleeding on the ground, and with stoical indifference thousands of evangelical ministers tbe subject alone," or" I just repeat the passages," "I they have never studied the subject. sent back to their studies. at the Bar, and Christians

represented as the righteous sentence of the just and holy, the good and gracious God, upon sinners of all degrees and ages, ranging from youth to old age. Next to its conception, the most wonderful to my mind is in His own Bible, and also in the person and work of say I wonder how any of us could ever as would for a moment such a gross libel, such a foul slander on that loving believing Christians who have studied the character of their heavenly Father bave entertained His Son Jesus, our Saviour,-I

the subject," or to crown the absurdity, or something worse, they tell us Then it is high time they were The College of Surgeons would not license ought not to tolerate such watchmen won't bark. Brethren, that

the character of God, such a dire perversion of Righteousness hands of an oppressed and outraged humanity.

such Doctors to practice, nor Lincoln's Inn allow such Lawyers to plead don't watch, such dumb dogs that the world's

expose the most sacred and revered earthly Judge to lynch law at the Oh why, as disciples of Christ, do we not unitedly rise in the majesty of the truth that dwelleth in us, and hurl back the foul slander, the gross cartoon that hell has forged and tradition heaven. sold as the true portrait of our loving Father in Surely tbe dust and mustiness of ages and the hollow sepulchral and Traditional Thou shalt die." "So He drove

crisis is come, and truth is more precious than salaries, and fidelity to Christ and perishing men nobler than denominational But we hasten or social position. theology, to our last, but not least, subject of traditional

that which is the crown of redemption and the sacred hope of the Church, the coming of the Lord the second time without eternal salvation of His redeemed. a sin offering for the We can smile at Nothing is too precious for tradition

tones of tradition have frightened men like children in a churchyard, or they would stamp out this foul offspring of a corrupt Theology. hand God's revealed penalty for sin is death-" " Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return."

to garble, mutilate and prostitute to its vile purposes.

"Lest he put forth his

some of its follies, as when it enshrines a dead bone, and shews in a phial the liquefied blood of a dead saint, or gathers as much wood of the real

and take of the Tree of Life and live for ever."

THE
cross as would make a Noah's ark;

BIBLE

STANDARD.
said, "If the ordinances

21
of heaven should cease, the sun that rules the then should Israel cease to be a nation still keep their places and and trust, aye, and the grand primal division of day and night of divine faithfulness

but when it robs us of our eternal the regal dignity

inheritance, and sends us ghosts "beyond the bounds of time and space" to seek a heaven beyond the sky; when it teaches that promised to those martyred indignation tells us that Jerusalem, quibbles tradition saints of Jesus is the reign of those Christian when it of

day, the moon and the stars, before Him." But brethren,

still continues, the grand old constellations shine out, the mementoes that haughty melancholy, solitary restless amid all the tpyes of humanity,

principles for which those martyrs bled and died, we are filled with holy at the gross falsification of the promises of Christ; the coming of Christ was fulfilled at the destruction

that bearded face, that olive complexion, in every town, in

flashing eye, and that lofty brow on which sits pensive may be seen in every clime, wandering individuality unmixed with the nations, yet scattered enigma of the sceptic, and bring him again to and turn away

and that He comes at the death of His saints and in His proeither with silence or the sigh of pity for the blind, but when dares to trample the crown rights and kingdom of Christianity of Lhrist by means

vidence, and in revivals of religion, &c., we are disposed to answer such

amongst them, the seed of Abraham the Jew-the but the demonstration mise that his own land. Now, brethren, but it is Christ's He who scattered Israel will gather

of Jehovah's truth, and giving pledge of the pro-

beneath its feet, and state that all the glowing predictions of inspired truth simply means the spread and universal triumph of Missionary Societies and Church organizations, a lying spirit has entered into these prophets then we are assured that of the Lord, and in the Do you that

Out of Zion shall come the deliverer,

ungodliness from Jacob, do what you can by preaching the Gospel to the Jew, return which will bring about their national return and

name of a groaning travailing creation, and of an outraged, falsified Bible, protest against the wrong and insult thus offered to God and man. think this is overstated? that we wrong traditional theology,

conversion, and, through them, that of the world. We cling to the ancient hope, the return of Christ, and amid the smoke and dust of superstition the east. one scale, and man's "Teke!." and tradition, opinions faith sees the streaks of day in are there. God's own truth in Alas fur is the inscription in the other. The balances of the sanctuary by them,

Christians could never forget the Word on which the Lord has caused us to hope, the kingdoms He has gone to receive, and return that we may reign with him on the earth? Traditional Theology Then let us be more explicit. that God has done with His ancient and all that is peculiar blessings to the teaches

and traditions

those who are deceived

for underneath

people, the Jews, excepting as they become converted and grafted into the Christian Church, that their land and Jerusalem to them Christian Christ's as a people is to be understood Church, that kingdom all that of spiritual

(Loud and prolonged applause.)

EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT PAIN. By


no preamble nor apology.
REV.

is said about the kingdom is only the

NOT EVERLASTING
Conference.

spiritual reign of Christ in the heart of men, in fact that the Church is and the only kingdom that will be set up on earth; and after an that in process of time by the special power of the Holy Spirit jhe leaven of Christianity indefinite will leaven the whole lump of humanity, lapse of time Christ will come at the last day to judgment,

Paper read at the Liverpool

G. P.

MACKAY.

IN a Conference like the present, a Paper with the above title requires It will be understood at once to be a protest torments, from one Withof the wicked. against the (so-called) Orthodox doctrine out parley, we will therefore the right I" There is in Scripture only one passage where the phrase punishment" into occurs, viz., Matt. xxv. 46, "And punishment: but the righteous your everlasting into " everlasting life eternal." made by these shall go away straightway of eternal "charge,"

when all the dead, from Adam downward, will be raised at once, separated the good on one side, the bad on the other, the saints will be taken back to heaven and the wicked sent back to hell. ought to do with the world. ready to question its veracity? Eternity will then begin, the old world be burnt up and done with, neither hell nor heaven .having Friends, are you shocked at the picture and Why, it is simply the catechisms of our Aye, and

amongst the ranks of believers in the destruction

and " God defend

youth, the essence of the sermons we listened to in early life. God. Alas, it is not yet so thoroughly of antiquated

what many of us in our ignorance and blindness received as the truth of discarded as to have a place in a Our Sunday Schools, Has But we ask is it. true? Biblical museum Churches curiosities.

Were you, however, to hear one tithe of the fearful statements " Hell-fire preachers" from this text, your veins, and reason would stagger from her throne. have had a whole eternity human race to prate could conceive of things

blood would chill within The inventive of the have voices of

and Chapels are our witnesses.

genius of such men has had full play in the arena of the lost, for they to dabble with, and a vast proportion All, therefore, that disgusting, horrible, and excruciating, with" about. excited imagination

the refined culture and ripe scholarship of the present testimony of the incarnate Patmos, were but poetry and flow of Eastern

day proved that

the burden of ancient prophets, the theme of inspired apostles, the divine Son of God, and the sublime revelations of the metaphor? Is it so? Is this the teaching they the flights of fancy, the soarings of imagination, of tradition? and hope to rest upon-give them an

been declared to be the portion of the doomed. Happily our ears are not made to tingle so frequently from the pit," nor are our senses shocked with supposed hell," as they would have been fifty or a. hundred years ago. civilization of the age has risen up in arms against public opinion has banned the preaching to "draw which descriptions dare venture of eternal to agony. To u.se a familiar it mild." "damnation," indulges "visions

of Scripture or the mutterings

Dear friends, our Father does not mock His children, and-when ask for truth and fact, for faith Eastern Metaphor. has promised

The very much in the

such recitals, and expression,

The Lord Jesus who is the truth as well as the life,

to come again and receive us to Himself, to sit on His " if it were not so I would have theology, it is not very old, in this own

throne, to share with Him His glory and reign with Him in His kingdom. He says in all sober prose and literality, told you." this idea of a spiritual to reduce it to system country; reign. But let us test this traditional

preachers of to-day are compelled mention burning," eloquent or "eternal torment."

Only very few "everlasting

"hell-fire,"

Dr. Whitley is said to be one of the first

Not many treat

the subject

with such plainness Tabernacle.

of speech as the

and give it a place in a commentary

Pastor of the Metropolitan

He boldly calls upon

but we leave the ideas of others, to come to our Father's

his audience to look down " On Hell's domains, That world of agonies and pains ~" He describes it as " a fllace of miser! where not a drop of water cools

words to His ancient people, Jeremiah and others of God's servants were told many wondrous things about Israel, but the Lord in Jeremiah put His truth in all its plain literality to a strong, clear, plain text. Christ

22
their parched perpetually formalist. tongue; a state of doubt. is banished. the There and terror.

THE BIBLE
and suspense; to come' tbe a

STANDARD.
sense. but death itself it cannot be. which asserts that" It is purely gratuitous presumption

place from which consolation afflicts them.

where the 'wrath licentious.

the second death '. is secondary

death. or death in

in captivity."

he says. "abide

the hypocrite. the profane. God. and hated

the abandoned. away from the of them. too

those who despised glory of His cross;

Christ. and turned

a figurative sense. Ill. Though the punishment is not named in Matt, xxv. 46. in 2 Thess. i. 9, we are told they" shall be punished with (not eternal pain. but) everlasting destruction;" " perdition. destruction from the presence of the Lord, and end is from the glory of His power." of nngodly men;" In Phil, iii. 19, it is said their" and numerous passages

there they are gathered.

tens of thousands

at this day waiting till the great assize shall sit." terrible for him to attempt groans. and shrieks to paiut." where'

After that assize. be

says. the portion of the wicked shall be in " that dreadful place" of tortured ghosts' shall be their

in 2 Peter iii. 7, the day of judgment is called the day of come to mind

sullen moans and hollow only music; where death

where weeping. wailing. and gnashing occupation; where joy is a stranger. itself would be a friend."

of teeth shall ba tbeir perpetual and hope unknown;

teaching that the doom to be pronounced is death. death literal, death eternal. The strongest of language has been used to express this; and the. most vivid and striking says. "We future illustrations have been employed. the following be dashed that that in The Rev. of Samuel Minton, in his "Harmony punishment :-The of Scripture on Fnture Punishment." illustrations pieces like a away. like a consumed

This reminds us somewhat of the Ghost in" Hamlet . who " Could a tale' unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. freeze thy young blood: Make thy two eyes. like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part. And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porcupine." And we are sorry at heart that one who otherwise preaches the gospel of the grace of God so forcibly and fully, should have such God-dishonouring notions of the eternal state of the condemned. least commendable for honesty: "I believed, spoken," is his motto. sound. Yet his action is at have I be and therefore

find in the Old Testament wicked shall

potter's vessel; waterless garden by the moth;

they shall be like the beasts scorched by an eastern

perish. like the un-

timely fruit of a woman. like a whirlwind

passeth

sun. like garments

they shall be silent in darkness, like a lamp put out, like The wicked shall consume like the fat of like tow, like smoke. melt like wax. burn

a dream which flies away. lambs in the fire. consume

consume like thorns. vanish away like exhausted waters." " The illustrations of the New Testament are of the same character. The end of the wicked is there compared to fish cast away to corruption, to a house thrown and destruction down to its foundations, brute beasts. They to the destruction shall of the old world by water, and that of the Sodomites by fire, to the death of natural be like wood cast into quenchless flames, like chaff burnt dry branch reduced to ashes." Such illustrations condemnation exclude entirely the idea of endless life in agony.those who come into the of the 25th of Matthew is of or, indeed. endless life of any kind at all,-for IV. Those who believe that the Judgment not the judgment Christ. before" the Great up, like tares consumed. like a

And if tbe doctrine of everlasting torments in silence. ghastliness, or

of God, all our " orthodox" should either disavowed. sounded blasphemous

orators should ring it out with no uncertain The doctrine or distinctly truth foul to be and

Their voices ought not to be hushed be declared in all its horrible It is either falsehood, a most solemn trumpet to be hounded loudest blast;

and momentous a most off the

forth' with

face of God's earth.

Believing it to be the latter, we desire to do our little part towards its exposure and extermination. Taking Matt. xxv. 46. as a text, let us first note that" everlasting punishment" the doctrine tion. is future punishment. The whole passage goes against between death and resurrecthat as a one from another Christ

of " the great and terrible day of the Lord." White Throne" the punishment of Rev. xx, 11, then to be

of rewards and punishments.

but that of the living nations. to take place at the coming (parousia) are requested to consider what meted out shall be. xix. 11-21. 7-12. In The condemnation proves. passage

It is not until "the

Son of man shall come in His glory"

He shall separate the righteous and the wicked" are not received taught that xiv. 13. 14;) either into happiness men a1e raised the day

of the wicked at that time is This Rev. mystery of And be reby 2 Thess. ii.

shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats; " therefore at deat7: men or misery. distinctly it is after and that they shall be recompensed,of the just."-Luke is tbe one which wicked for the land of Sodom x.15.)

certainly not to everlasting abundantly the latter

pain. but unto swift destruction. and it is corroborated the Apostle says. "The

(" Thou shalt be recompensed men should fear.-(" and Gomorrhain

at the resurrection of Judgment

iniquity doth already work: (hindereth.) then shall that Wicked

only he (the Holy Spirit) who now letteth, he be taken out of the way. deceiver of the nations,)

will let. (hinder.) until [Antichrist,

It shall be more tolerable

the day of Judgment

than for that city."--Matt. is passed.

vealed, whom the L01d shall Isaiah

consume with the spirit of His mouth. and of His coming." A.nd of that time behold. the Lord will come with fire to render His anger with fury. For by fire and by His sword will shall have in the Some

So we conclude, that the punishment

of which we are now treating does It is a punishment We have We think the

shall dest7oy with the brightness says (lxvi. 15, 16), "For.

not come into effect until the judgment-seat

From that time forth, however, it will be eternal. no desire statement to tamper with the question

and with His chariots like a whirlwind. and His rebuke V. When with flames of fire.

as endless as tbe reward into which the righteous shall enter. of duration. made is quite explicit; the punishment

the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many." asked what kind of life the wicked eternal state, we find our orthodox shall be in spirit eternity as unclad. form; friends have various replies. words. that These

shall last for ever.

But that that is not to be eternal pain is clear, for many reasons:I. There cannot be pain without consciousness. and consciousness includes life. If. then, the wicked are to be in endless pain. they must be partakers life eternal,") of eternal life; which supposition directly contradicts. in into language at least. not only this passage before us. (" the righteous but the whole tenor of the Word of God." is "Life called eternal." everlasting is it not a reasonable But can As bad
HS

entirely ignore the material man, and say the future or, in other souls. shivering consider

life of the wicked that when "the

they will wander in

body" is laid wit~in the grave, it is done with for ever. and thus they deny the Resurrection. of the dead. They deny also the statement. " The soul that sinneth it shall die." and substitute instead thereof the bold and unwarranted assertion,-

H. As the reward named inference that the punishment everlasting pain

(not named)

is death eternal? death?

be correctly

death, or worse than it, it may be; or it may be likened unto it in some

" Our souls can never die. Never die, never die; Our souls can never die; No! never die! "

22
their parched perpetually formalist, tongue; a state of doubt, is banished, the and terror,

THE

BIBLE
a the

STANDARD.
sense, but death itself it cannot be. which asserts that" It is purely gratuitous is secondaru presumption

and suspense;

place from which consolation afflicts them.

where the 'wrath licentious,

to come'

the second death"

death, or death in

There in captivity,"

he says, "abide

the hypocrite, the profane, God, and hated

the abandoned, away from the of them, too

those who despised glory of His cross;

Christ, and turned

a figurative sense. Ill. Though the punishment is not named in lIIatt. xxv. 46, in 2 Thess. i. 9, we are told they" shall be punished with (not eternal pain, but) everlasting destruction;" " perdition. destruction from the presence of the Lord, and In Phil. iii, 19, it is said their" and numerous passages end is from the glory of His power." of ungodly men;"

there they are gathered, tens of thousands

at this day waiting till the great assize shall sit." terrible for him to attempt groans, and shrieks to paint," where'

After that assize, be

says, the portion of the wicked shall be in " that dreadful place" of tortured ghosts' shall be their

in 2 Peter iii. 7, the day of judgment is called the day of come to mind is death, death literal, death this; and the, The Rev. of

sullen moans and hollow only music; where death who

teaching that the doom to be pronounced eternal. The strongest of language most vivid and striking Samuel Minton, in his" says, "We future punishment :-The

where weeping, wailing, and gnashing occupation; where joy is a stranger, itself would be a friend."

of teeth shall ba their perpetual and hope unknown; Hamlet,"

has been used to express

illustrations

have been employed.

This reminds us somewhat of the Ghost in"

Harmony of Scripture on Future Punishment," the following illustrations be dashed that that in wicked shall pieces like a away, like a consumed

find in the Old Testament

" Could a tale' unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood: Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine." And we are sorry at heart that one who otherwise preaches the gospel of the grace of God so forcibly and fully, should have such God-dishonouring notions of the eternal state of the condemned. least commendable of God, all our" sound. should either disavowed. sounded blasphemous for honesty: "I believed, spoken," is his motto. Yet his action is at have I be and therefore

potter's vessel; waterless garden by the moth;

they shall be like the beasts scorched by an eastern

perish, like the un-

timely fruit of a woman, like a whirlwind

passeth

sun, like garments

they shall be silent in darkness, like a lamp put out, like The wicked shall consume like the fat of like tow, like smoke, melt like wax, burn

a dream which flies away. lambs in the fire, consume

consume like thorns, vanish away like exhausted waters." " The illustrations of the New Testament are of the same character. The end of the wicked is there compared to fish cast away to corruption, to a house thrown and destruction down to its foundations, brute beasts. They to the destruction shall of the old world by water, and that of the Sodomites by fire, to the death of natural be like wood cast into quenchless flames, like chaff burnt dry branch reduced to ashes." Such illustrations condemnation exclude entirely the idea of endless life in agony,those who come into the or, indeed, endless life of any kind at alt,-for up, like tares consumed, like a

And if the doctrine of everlasting torments in silence. ghastliness, or

orthodox"

orators should ring it out with no uncertain The doctrine or distinctly truth foul to be and

Their voices ought not to be hushed be declared in all its horrible It is either falsehood, a most solemn trumpet to be hounded loudest blast;

and momentous a most

forth' with

off the .face of God's earth.

Believing it to be the latter, we desire to do our little part towards its exposure and extermination. Taking Matt. xxv. 46, as a text, let us first note that" everlastinz punishment" the doctrine tion. is future punishment. The whole passage goes against between death and resurrecthat as a one from another, Christ

of " the great and terrible day of the Lord."

not the judgment Christ,

IV. Those who believe that the Judgment of the 25th of Matthew is before" the Great White Throne" of Rev. xx. 11,
are requested to consider what the punishment then to be

of rewards and punishments,

but that of the living nations, to take place at the coming (pa?ousia) of meted out shall be. xix. 11-21, 7-12. In The condemnation proves, passage of the wicked at that time is This Rev. mystery of And be reby 2 Thess. ii.

It is not until "the

Son of man shall come in His glory"

He shall separate the righteous and the wicked" shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats;" are not received taught that xiv. 13, 14;) either into happiness men a?e raised it is after and that

therefore at death men distinctly

certainly not to everlasting pain, but unto swift destruction. abundantly the latter and it is corroborated the Apostle says, "The

or misery.

they shall be recompensed,of the just."-Luke is the one which wicked x.15.)

(" Thou shalt be recompensed men should fear,-(" and Gomorrhain

at the resurrection

iniquity doth already work: (hindereth,) then shall that Wicked

only he (the Holy Spirit) who now letteth, he be taken out of the way. deceiver of the nations,)

the day of Judgment

will let, (hinder,) until (Antichrist,

It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for that city."--Matt. is passed. It is a punishment We have We think the of which we are now treating does

the day of Judgment

vealed, whom the LOTd shall Isaiah

consume with the spirit of His mouth, and of His coming." And of that time behold, the Lord will come with fire to render His anger with fury, For by fire and by His sword will have in the Some

So we conclude, that the punishment

shall dest?oy with the brightness says (lxvi. 15, 16), "For,

not come into effect until the judgment-seat

From that time forth, however, it will be eternal. no desire statement 1. There includes life. be partakers life eternal,") to tamper with the question

and with His chariots like a whirlwind, and His rebuke V. When with flames of fire. the Lord plead with all flesh: asked

as endless as the reward into which the righteous shall enter. of duration. made is quite explicit; cannot be pain the punishment consciousness,

and the slain of the Lord shall be many." friends have various replies. words, that These They

shall last for ever. and consciousness in

what kind of life the wicked shall

But that that is not to be eternal pain is clear, for many reasons:without If, then, the wicked are to be in endless pain, they must of eternal life; which supposition directly contradicts,

eternal state, we find our orthodox shall be in spirit eternity as unclad, deny form;

entirely ignore the material man, and say the future or, in other souls. shivering consider

life of the wicked that when "the

they will wander in

language at least, not only this passage before us, (" the righteous into but the whole tenor of the Word of God." eternal," is it not a reasonable But call As bad as death? (not named) is death eternal?

body" is laid wit~in the grave, it is done with for ever, and thus they the Resurrection. sinneth of the dead. it shall assertion,deny also the statement, instead thereof " The soul that die," and substitute

IT. As the reward named is "Life


inference that the punishment everlasting pain be correctly

the bold and unwarranted

called everlasting

death, or worse than it, it may be; or it may be likened unto it in some

" Our souls can never die, Never die, never die; Our souls can never die No ! never die!" '

THE
Surely when the doctrine denial lies. and contradiction Divine verity. of eternal of the pain encourages

BIBLE

STANDARD.
special miraculous power preserve them their from death. existence; The

23
fire, the

such barefaced nor the father of

Word

of God as this, it cannot be

agony, the aches, the diseases to which they will be subjected (according to the torment theory) not, it must horrible will all attack of God. and, if they die is too might torbut the God be by His continual interposition. Such action

"God is not the author of confusion,"

We know who it was who first whispered, amid the bowers of say that the in "the second death" with the body shall be of

Paradise, the subtle falsehood, "Ye shall not surely die." VI. Others destroyed, but that soul shall survive, all the powers

to be conceived

The Spanish Inquisitors torture;

ment their victims to within au inch of death, and then apply restorati ves in order to prolong their lives for further of Heaven can never be guilty of such fiendish cruelty as that. The tendency of the present day, however, is to repudiate the oldfashioned idea of physical torment for the lost, and to say that the " everlasting punishment" shall be pain of mind, awakened memory, By this many imagine to escape but we feel they are made uone the less. The passages death that deal with futnre punishor literal torture remorse of conscience, and so forth. the difficulties of the case; shall be only mental pain. ment, and the illustrations

consciousness, which they attribute They believe, with the multitude, between the first death

to it, quickened into intensest life. that the soul is fully conscious and argue, from that false retain its consciousness

and resurrection;

premise, that after the second death it shall

and endure the pains of hell for ever. This view admits that the second death is as real and physical as the first, but, unfortunately, (for itself,) it confines the punishment of death altogether to the body, forgetting that Christ has said, " Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." woe is the death or destruction reason for saying destruction If it be said that eternal it can only of the soul, we reply that

We have in the first place no Scripture for supposing the punishment of it laid before us, show, on the contrary, and destruction,

be so in a figurative and very secondary sense, and would fain hear the of the body in hell is literal death, while destruction of the soul in the same place is not death at all, but endless Lecture, before the view of future the which the

that it is either to be literal both of mind and body. mental agony is really The fancy, therefore, uttermost farthing"

At any rate, instead of being a minor or more tolerable punishment, more excruciating than mere shall physical be paid pain. "to the our For that" in that the wages of sin"

life in agony. VII. The Rev. G. W. Olver, B.A., in the Fernley Wesleyan ministers Conference in 1878, advanced of that denomination. life, and has, in consequence, to some extent

hard coin, intensifies a thousandfold to be purely mental.

the foregoing

hatred to the horrible dogma, instead of reconciling us thereto. But it is impossible several reasons. physically. for future punishment First,-Mental and physical pain cannot be separated. of time suffers in proportion and even death itself and you have death, and you have agony be prolonged, and physical prostraand madness, Deny them

lost caste amongst

They" consider it unorthodox, years ago. immortal

means (to them) that it is not in accordance the founder of their body a hundred bodies of the wicked shall be rendered in order that they may share with their immortal) the pains of hell for ever. be held by the majority of Christians view; but is not, on that by that, to be the truth of God.

with the views taught by His idea was that supposed after the resurrection, to be

He who suffers mentally for any length Let the mental tion will ensue; will be the result. a pandemonium let it be intense, of raving maniacs.

souls (already

Given, then, a hell of mental torment, whose every moment of his insatiable

This also is the view supposed to to-day. Majorities, It is called the orthodox nor is it proved, been but before now, have

an eternity to consider Second reason,-If follows that greatest sufferer. "seared

is a curse upon Almighty

account, to be relied upon;

God, and a condemnation the sinner

cruelty and rage. conscience little. will be the An arrange-

the punishment

be remorse of conscience, then it

found following a delusion and a snare. In God's name we denounce antiscriptural. this view as, not only unscriptural, and in letter the It opposes both in spirit Word of

with the most tender

The hardened in crime, those whose consciences are be made by the All-wise. shall be simply He will certainly not

with a hot iron," will suffer comparatively

revelation; and, to any good Wesleyan who looks askance at such as Mr. Olver on account of his views, we would say, "First cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." If the bodies of the wicked are to live for ever, these, as well as the souls, must be made immortal, or proof against death. Now we no more believe in the natural immortality of the soul than of the body; but, of the two ideas, we certainly and untenable. Whatever our thoughts present mortal; to show that faithful of the nature of-the soul or spirit may be, wc to acknowledge wicked that the body is at A of Scripture can be produced shall ever be otherwise. shall change our vile body, but the man of must put on inis the language of the just,) for whatsocorruptible are all, by sad experience, bound the bodies of the consider the latter the more absurd

ment like this cannot own widely-varying

ordain that the condemned

subjected to pain by their

senses of right and wrong, of blessing and cursing.

If it be said, that the minds of the lost shall be quickened into full activity, so that those whose consciences were formerly dull, blunted, or seared, shall then be rigorously castigated science is the work of the Holy Spirit. sin, and of righteousness, bationary life He does wrestle with the by monitors awakened to the " He will reprove the world of Until the end of this probut that ungodly, for, " As I live, saith But, when it is of no realities of eternal things, we reply, that the rousing of a sleeping conand of judgment."

the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; the wicked turn away from his way and live." conscience,-"

and not a single passage can say, "He "This

further use, the Spirit of God shall not seek to quicken the slumbering My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he it is therefore uuscriptural to say He will keep the eternity. engaged eternally It is ever also is flesh,"-and

follower of Christ

that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body;" the world can have no such hope. corruption, of the Christian, but" and this mortal must put on immortality,"

consciences of the un forgiven at fever heat throughout Besides, if God were to be continually "by way of remembrance," the condemned. but surely destruction;" punishing He would be actively Now, it is true God shall but surely

stirring up their impure minds the doom is "everlasting shall not be jar

and he looks forward with eagerness to the time when are not so; but are like the chaff which the wind not deceived; God is not mocked: but he that For he that soweth to his soweth to the' God must by

the saying shall be accomplished, (i.e., at the resurrection the ungodly driveth away." "Be

punishment; "everlasting destl'oying!

not be jar ever plmishing! He

ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

In the Old Testament ever. Of that, it is said,"

we read of "the everlasting of the work of creation On the seventh

hills," but we do as proceeding for

not, on that account, think

Therefore, if the wicked live for ever after resurrection,

day God ended His work

24
which He had made." "eternal salvation," but" In the New Testament and of" eternal redemption;" men eternally. redeemed Grace hath

THE
(Hebrews), No!

BIBLE
we read of

STANDARD.
made, to defy His power, contemn His authority, and blaspheme His

but God shall not, It is "eternal And so but God shall for

we know, be saving and redeeming redemption;"

us once f01' all." punishment;"

name" throughout all ages, world without end." Yet this is what the advocates of eternal torments would have us believe; and we can but appeal to them to " Stop and think Before they further go ; " Nor dare the truth of God to sink In tales of endless woe. Did the limits of this Paper permit, many other reasons could be pain; but we think and most unreasonable, that

also, on the other hand, it is "everlasting punish once and for ever,

The time is coming when all the righteous ever; also when the wicked shall be The eternal destruction "-destroyed for ever.

shall be saved-saved with

"punished, torment

everlasting men

But if " Orthodoxy" and never punished; eternally

be correct, such everlastingly

a time could never come. being destroyed,

theory is that

advanced for a denial of the dogma of everlasting enough has been said to prove it unseriptural, dishonouring to God, In conclusion, upon the equally false doctrine of inherent and the whole structure falls to pieces.we remark

shall be for ever under punishment,

and never destroyed; being redeemed, that

dying, and never dead; Thank God,

it rests entirely Remove that,

and, logically, at that rate, the righteous and never saved; the Bible is ignorant not from Heaven. But that, we think, sin. which stamps

shall for ever be being saved, as these; which requires and their them is pain

immortality.

and never redeemed, the theory

of such self-contradictions

absence from its pages proves

"Like frostwork in the morning ray, The fancied fabric melts away." So long as men believe they are immortal by descent from Adam, they

the doctrine

of everlasting

must hold to the doctrine of endless misery. of the soul is a tree in whose wide-spreading foul bird but many others roost. poison from its every limb.

Faith

in the immortality not only this

most clearly as a false doctrine, is that In a sermon recently

it involves belief in eoerlastiau) pit of

branches

published, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon says:for ever,-who would be gathered

It is a deadly Upas tree, exhaling with the axe of and may we that the it sturdily;

" The place where they [sinners] will be gathered alarms us-the Hell, the abode of misery and wrath there? Then, their occupation. and venting in inventing descending

God help us, brethren,

truth, "which is the word of God," to strike

They spend their time in cursing God; They go from bad to worse, depravity." Such language is also grow to for, in the then all and, would

yet rejoice in beholding it lie prone upon the earth. In that day shall it be seen that the ways of God are equal; " everlasting punishment" and that Lord." "the gift into which the wicked" of God is Eternal Life, through go away" is Death; Jesus Christ our

fresh blasphemies.

the awful Ladder of detestable

most horrible, and yet, if the wicked are to live for ever, they must sin for ever, as their natures proportions first place, restraints its natural cannot be changed. development Sin must of which we at present can have no conception; would be continued; of their of society, and the Spirit's

influence would be removed; condition

finally, the fearful agonies and hopelessness above. Such a state of things can never

goad the lost ones to devise iniquity, to show their hatred of the God possibly exist. Even in the present day of grace and probation, been reached; the limits of God's forbearance have And can it be that in the day life, those who will "spend

THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST, APPEARING CONNECTED WITH RESURRECTION.

A PERSONAL THE FIRST

men who have sinned against Him with a high hand have

been cut off in the midst of their crimes. of Judgment He will spare for everlasting

A Paper read at the Liverpool Conference, GENERAL H. GOODWYN.


THE event commonly known as "The maintain to be a personal pre-millennial

by

their time in cursing God; in inventing and venting fresh blasphemes?" It appears to us quite blasphemous to think He will. In answer to this, however, it may be said that as God has already allowed sin and suffering amongst mankind eternity for nearly six thousand But there is no years of time, years, He might permit proportion for their generation, whatever everlasting these evils to abide for ever. and six thousand

Second Advent of Christ" appearing

we

of the Son of Man

in power and great glory upon this earth, for the purposes announced in Acts xv. 14-17, confirmed by Heb, ix. 28, which declares that He shall appear a second time, not as before, as a sin-offering, but to judge the living and the dead, and to perfect the result of that sin -offering in the salvation of the residue of the family of God; family not contemplated to be consciously a distinct branch of that saved during this present age.

between

and the presence of sin and pain up to the present day is no argument continuance. Besides, no single .man, or single years. If life is "Why at has sinned and suffered for six thousand

In my opening address I alluded to the truth of " Life in Christ only" being associated with that of the Second Advent, inasmuch as it is at His personal appearing that He will confer life in resurrection and after an eventful reign of one thousand an eternal death on the unsaved. I. One object of the assembly of this Association recall to the people of the Lord their truth and to rehearse of God of momentous import, that apprehension it for their acceptance. and reproach. in this city is to of the above great in the Word and has on the saved, years, pass the sentence of

sinful and painful, it is at any rate short to each of us, so that we, at the most, sin and suffer for but, say, threescore years and ten. even this should be allowed we cannot tell, but we can believe that

the last the wisdom of God will be vindicated and made manifest. We can also believe that somehow He will bring good out of ill. This can not be, however, if thousands throughout ending blasphemy and crime. The whole tenor will yet look with under His feet." rebellious must of the Bible teaches us that complacency upon creation, out of darkness and pronounce God every shall yet bring light,-that chaos shall give place to order, and that He of generations are to suffer torments nevereternity, and to dishonour Him by ever-increasing,

A doctrine I say "of

has fallen into neglect,

suffered both contradiction

momentous imsphere where

port," for it necessarily holds a conspicuous place in Scripture, manifesting the sublime glory of Jesus, the Son of God, within that once a crown of thorns was the Satanic expression of the hostility of man to God. Strongly and emphatically announced as an imminent event the object of the Church's hope, a motive for holy and watchful service, the ground of confidence amid the battles and sufferings of this

thing to be very good, " For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies He who submits be crushed. shall be forgiven, but he who is Almighty God, the Maker of Certainly

heaven and earth, shall not permit the creatures whom His hands have

THE
evil age, and one that So vital is this truth, days,-robbing

BIBLE

STANDARD.

25

is to end the reign of Satan, and sin, and death. that a denial of it is a sign of apostacy of these The pre-millennial doctrine presence of Him Who is " the kingdom of outward

apostate nations to the carrion fowls of the air, anti gather the poisonous vine of the earth into the winepress of the wrath of God! IV. Have or have not the prophecies concerning the First Advent of the Lord Jesus come to pass? same prophets, they fore-aunounced the Is it not a patent First Advent, fact, moreover, that the the in the same passages, and in the same language in which also fore-declare Second Is then the subtle audacity of that old to play the same havoc with results, did

the Lord of His royal rights.

is that of the actual and indispensable Prince of the kings of the earth"; glory to be established the canopy of the heavens. in Christ for the redemption all His holy prophets the ordeal through

of a manifested

on the ruin of the polities of all nations, wide as It is not based, as some think, on a few of creation from the effects of SIN! It is a

Advent with its attested objects? the Word iu modern with credulous Eve?

isolated passages in the Apocalypse, but upon the whole Covenant of God main part in the burden of "all that God hath spoken by the mouth of since the world began." H. If this doctrine had not been of God, it could never have survived which it has had to force its way for many centuries. hatred against God and the the insinuating lie," Ye shall not surely die," a of Christ from "to put an who Who shall tell the extent of that wrathful man which prompted unadorned away sin"! attempts

serpent to be listened to, when he attempts

times that he, with such disastrous God forbid.

V. On the theatre of the universe man is contemplated intended for him as an intelligent his domain for the production it"! nation. on others. according judgment, cry"! being, a steward

in the accountDivinely to prepare to keep point, a at

able position of a delegated ruler over God's works, a position entrusted of the full increase thereof, and" earliest the judgment

But the history of man as a ruler is, from this He who can not

lie that has drawn away the minds of even ministers

failure, and his sin has determined

of God unto condema nature

simplicity of the object of His work on the Cross, with infernal ingenuity to suppress. A crucified

obey a law himself displays

But the doctrine of the Crown is another which Satan now Saviour, High Priest, he loathes to think on, or of; but a King reigning the instruments on earth to plant

variance with the Lawgiver, and is not morally fit to enforce obedience Man stands before God responsible of either to a Divine Standard. for failure, being incaor judicial power a God looked for but behold! earth.") This that pable of the administration but behold! governmental

atoning Sacrifice, an intercessory suffer his bond-slaves to hear His throne in righteousness,

As a prophet has said" for righteousness, 0 God, judge the

is abont to rescue creation from the dire effect of his usurpation, to turn warfare into those of peace and plenty, Zion, and His word from Jerusalem! to send forth

oppression;

of Devil-devised His law from

(See Ps. lxxxii. 8, "Arise,

failure of man the government

as a ruler, has been recorded unquestionable

in Scripture,

as if for the

this is indeed the knell of Satan's Thy kingdom come!" a years, thongh it professes organizations, student, since who was probable over all

express purpose of affording " to order and establish human incompetency;

proof of the necessity and justice

doom, and he will foster, as he long has fostered, any falsehood by which he may stifle the sound of those words-" Ill. Post-millenarianism period for the beginning this work of reconciliation has not as yet succeeded in establishing of its one thousand been, through

should be placed on the shoulders it with judgment have passed

of the Prince of Peace even for ever. to dominion,

Adarn, Noah, kings of Israel,

before us as witnesses of Gentile

whilst the great image

to say that its end shall be when the world is reconciled to God; yet has various human by the Scripture "shall labouring for the length of nearly two millenniums with but scant suc-

spoken of by Daniel the prophet, is still a standing mental impotence in the hands of fallen humanity. Antichristian wild beast" mention has before been made, is the auuihilating cut out of the mountain off the summer threshing mountain [of Israel] floor." without hands" "This

evidence of governThe giving of the blow of "THE STONE that falls upon the

to the burning flame" (Dan. vii. 12.), of which

cess; nor could aught else be expected earthly nation in His eternal pierced" and be saved! purposes,

God has declared that it shall not be till Israel, the first and foremost look on Him deceptions (Rom. xi. 12.) Nor is such an event can never

ten toes of the image, grinds it to powder, and scatters it like the chaff STONE then becomes a great and fills the whole earth"! Observe! here is not the slightest

with Satan at large in the exercise powers and people.

of his baneful

The spread of Christianity

silence the of thorns, or of the plain the

interval between the final destruction

of Gentile power, and the judicial after which we read Again, what .

groans of creation, nor cause the fir-tree to grow instead the myrtle to take the place of briers. rantable literal career; spiritualizing declarations of that ill-used and and metaphorical interpretation

act of THE STONE! which is in fact the Personal Advent in power of the WORDOF GOD described in Rev. xix; immediately of the incarceration "I will overturn, says another prophet, "Remove overtnrn, of Sa tau and the thousand years reign. overturn

Again, if the principle of unwarchapter, Isa. xi., be admitted, storms

the diadem, take off the crown"

conclnsion is inevitable, that the curse will rush onwards in its desolating wars, pestilences, devastating will but add to the to a speedy wail of creation as the so-called Millennium end! No! this is in every way opposed to the inspired definite commencement by the incarceration nations of the thousand of the arch-deceiver" record, that marks a deceive the shall rolls on, until a cry would

it [the dominion of man [, and it

shall be no more until HE come whose right it is. and I will give it to HIM!" (Ezek. xxi. 27.) Witness the accomplishment of this decree iu Rev. xi. 15 to end. of the

ascend to the Lord of Saboath to bring such a Millennium

Here is declared the Investiture years personal reign of Christ that he should By this act the

in heaven (not yet the authority)

Christ of God with the kingdoms destruction. principles Two potentates

of the world previous to the rise of after his It is reign in the same sphere whose the nations," long accustomed set themselves,

the beast, the power of which kingdoms is assumed directly cannot

no more till the thousand

years are finished." throughout

are so opposed as those of Satan and Christ the Lord. and infidelity, in Ps. ii. 2-9. "will "'rhe be augry;"

Word of God will have free course

the earth, and

said, in connection with this event, that" to lawlessness prophetically anointed,

perfect that work for which He will send it. Post-Millenarianism in Rev. xix. 11-15, is also rendered null by the sublime event recorded and 2 Thess. ii. 8, where the whole world in the surprised in its gigantic wickedness by the the

and this is confirmed

kings of the earth

and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His saying, Let us brake their bands asunder, and cast away their He that sitteth in the heavens sore displeasure. shall laugh : the Lord unto them in His Yet have I set My King the Lord hath Thee. Ask Then shall He speak cords from us.

midst of its Satanic orgies, paying divine honours to the Beast, the Man of sin, is, as in a moment, incarnate" heaven opening, and as the lightning flashes across the firmament, dipped in blood," out of whose mouth shall proceed,

shall have them iu derision. wrath, and vex them in His upon My holy hill of Zion.

Word of God" appearing on the scene" clothed with a vesture as a two-edged

I will declare the decree:

sword, that breath that shall consume Satan's infidel impostor, give the

,. said unto Me, 'I'hou art My Son; this

day have I begotten

26
of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen uttermost with a rod of iron; thou shalt presence for thine

THE
inheritance,

BIBLE
and the

STANDARD.
have been saved "by grace through [aitli ;" that branch is the one

parts of the earth for thy possession. dash them

Thou shalt break them in pieces like a potter's as Son of man, on if the purposes of

being in this age gathered out of the world of Jews and Gentiles, viz., the Church, the body of Christ, of whom it is said in regard to Him, " Whom, not having seen, ye love, and though now ye see Him not, yet rejoice with joy unspeakable." faith, not by sight." sight. Contrasted As an apostle also says, We walk by with which, Israel has always lived by were affiliated out of and

vessel." VI. The personal God in the institution His appearinq

of the Lord Jesus,

earth, is herein declared

a pra-millennial

necessity,

of a millennium

are to be fulfilled, as declared by (2 Tim. iv. 1.,) and that" He

Their entire ritual, their temple and gorgeous priesthood, means by which they were nationally This principle of sight appertains they in the saw their enemies

Paul the apostle, viz., that"

He will judge the living and the dead at (1 COl'. xv. 25.) on the earth at a acts

the visible and tangible to Jehovah. people, Egypt, when" is embodied

and dUIing His kingdom,"

specially to an earthly deliverance

must reign till he has put all enemies under His feet." If I take only the testimony time of righteousness of His government. 10-13; knew? ness c. 1,2.) VII. Again. of the Psalms evidence that David's Son and Lord does not appear and peace, but that

and was in force from the time of their

of David, I find sufficient

dead on the sea shore;"

will be till they"

shall look on I Him who was pierced."

The principle discipleThe same

these blessings are secured by lxxii. I-S, 11; xcvi.

words of the Lord to His Israelitish hast seen Me, thou hast believed."

the equity, the mercy, as well as the judicial power and miraculous (Ps. xxii. 27, 2S-xxiv.;

" Thomas, because thou

principle will hold good in reference When, as the prophet and comforted Palestine reconciliation

to the nations who will be saved shall have revived Jerusalem npon world; the the mountains of glad tidings of and when-in who is

during the kingdom, for they, too, as Israel, will be earthly peoples. Hath God cast away His people Israel, whom He foreThe glory nation earth?" restored at a time when gross darkDoes He not moreover condition that such heathen aud tbat of the the place says. the Lord how His peojle, and -alvation beautiful

Is an inspired prophet to be believed who says that" of idolatry shall nation cover the

of Israel's Lord shall rise upon that promise to that idolators "the feet in their

will Le the feet of those who wil! publish to ihe heathen of ocular reigneth " on the throne bare His holy another .

who can say to the

nations, "Jehovah

of David;

shalt flock to the brightness

of their resurrection,

harmony with the principle

faith just alluded to-He,

glory of Lebanon

shall beautify their sanctuary, (Isaiah lx.)

Priest and King, " shall make God." national Israel Jehovah, (Isaiah lii.) Again, says,"

al'm in the eyes of all the after shall recording know that the I, to

of the Holy One of Israel " "

Is not the very name of

nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of Israel's prophet, resurrection, for evermore. I will set My sanctuary and the heathen in the midst of (Ezek. xxxvii.) life but repudiation to testify; but when to the whole world, and so it is declared

the rebuilt and renovated" " The LOIa is there I" business, Himself build the Temple The reply is-In ing for their tribulation that now affirmed Advent is. that great

City of the Great King," Jehovah Shammah, Nay, does He not, as Melchizcdec, (Zech. vi. 12, 13.) It is our of that city? "

(Ezek. xlviii.)

then, briefly to enquire"

When shall these things be ? " repentance and national mournan unparalleled it is Divinely days," (Matt. terrific sin, for which this the circumstance tribulation

do sanctify Israel as witnesses of salvation."

the hour of national and unparalleled

In the early history of Israel there was no gathering of the nations their God, fur naught could be seen in the national of the very God for whom they were commanded this ancient people shall reappear the attraction fruit," 2.) "All "In an astonishment and evidence will be irresistible,
THAT DAY

will have matured "immediate/;y

them at the close of the Dispensation after of those

Now, observe I-of

awfully solemn portents of "The

will be discerned interval

in the heavens heralding the between the

that . Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill shall moles and bats, and the Lord Him." With regard to the judgment with the evangelizing new moon to another, alone

the face of the ioorld. with (lsa. xxviii,

Son of Man with

powe,r and great glory," occurring

the idols of silver and gold be cast to the shall be exalted."

xxiv. 29, 30) ; not an hour's scenes of the sevenfold-heated and the planting Olives, for the "I tell you," timely

furnace of the wrath of an offended God, of persecuted will yet repentant them Jews.

kings shall fall down IN HIS PRESENCE,all nations shall serve of the living, that will be concurrent

of the feet of the Avenging Mediator on the Mount of deliverance Lord,

" Shall not God avenge His own elect crying to Him day and night? " said the Luke "He avenge speedUy I" from [the (Zech. xiv, 1-4; sons of] who" the J acob." xviii. 7-S.) xi. 26.) As an apostle also affirms, " Out away ungodliness At this time shall Israel be saved, so that there is no possibetween and the and oppressor,

work of Israel, it will be for a wise purpose, aB come to pass, that from one to another, shall all flesh against And they shall go forth, have transgressed their fire be quenched; It will act as a de(the Gehenna witness to of the and from one sabbath the Lord. shall

Isaiah tells us (lxvi. 23, 24); "And it shall come to worship before Me, saith

of Zion shall come the Deliverer, and turn (Rom. shall look on Him reign of the Advent and wheat that was pierced;" antichrist

and look upon the carcases of the men that Me: for their worm shall not die, neither and tbey shall be an abhorring our Bible), righteousness Jesus. With regard south of Jerusalem, that unto shall

bility of forcing in a theological blasphemous Lightning blazoned" Tares

wedge of post-millenarianism on whose banner

all flesh."

terrent power when the fire on the land of Hinnom be a visible and justice will characterise Gehenna,"

of the Redeemer, grow together into

will be em-

The Lion of the Tribe of Judah." until this time of harvest, when a to be burnt up as chaff, as the sun in the power will be given to the angelic reapers, who the fiery lake, there shine will at once forth

the reign of the Lord hell," in

divinely-discriminating will cast the former whilst the righteous

to the word"

wrongly rendered" This

our Bible, it is derived from the Greek words Gee-Hinnom, of the land belonging to Hinnom, the south of Jerusalem, &c., used to be thrown an Israelite.

the portion

was a valley to

millennial kingdom I VIII. A second object for tbe establishment the Lord, I will now mention, and the dead; nations-before regenerated object was the solemn work of righteous the other is an election alluded to-through

wbere the carcases of dead animals, of criminals, in the days of the kings of Israel, to be conquenched, never but occasionally burnt Likewise" their worms," i.e., of the carcases,

of the millennial reign of The first of of both the living the residue employment of the

and with tbis I will close. judgment of grace from

sumed by fire; which fire was never itself out for lack of fuel. that are always bred of putrescent

matter,

died as long as there Ixvi. 23,24, when he of the Son of

the missionary of the entire

nation of Israel. family of God that will

was aught for them to feed upon. It is to this spot that Isaiah refers says that the carcases of rebels against

in chapter

There will be but one branch

the government

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
THE
Address

27
IN THE KINGDOM.
Conference.

man shall be consumed. It is to this spot and this circumstance that the Lord referred in His conversation recorded in Mark ix, 43-48. Thus the popular" hell" is deprived of the unwarrantable, because traditional horrors that have been assigned to it ! Search the Scriptures, tberefore, when you will find an i.nesistible proof of the Divine expediency an~ unqyestionable. necessity fo,l' the pre-millennial Advent of God, manifest. 10 th~ glorified humanity of Jesus the Messiah, whose throne is to be estabhshed both m judgment and righteousness, that the prophecy of the angelic heralds may be fulfilled, "On earth peace, and the demonstrative evidence of the Divine goodwill to man." Then shall the universal hymn ascend from " a great multitude of all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues, clothed with white robes, in the presence of the Lamb," " Glory to God in the highest! "

REWARDS
given at

the L-iverpool
DUTTON.

By Capt. J. E.

ADDRESS

FROM

THE

CHAIR

AT

LIVERPOOL

CONFERENCE.

By Capt. H. J.

WARD.

My dear Liverpool friends,-I was asked by a brother just now whether I would like to be introduced to you. I said, "No, I think not; for I am so conn. cted with this movement in Livorpool that I am rather too well known," but, notwithstanding, I must say a word or two about myself, although it is not a subject that I like much to dwell upon. My position with regard to this Society is such that at all events I need not make any confession of faith. That has been repeated over and over again at our meetings in Liverpool, and, in fact, at our meetings in this room. Therefore I am not going to occupy your time by saying what I do believe, or what I do not believe; but one thing you may be sure of, that I should not have been in the position I am, as President of this Society, if I did not endorse all the doctrines which we are here to-night to propound. (Hear, hear.) I am, and I dare say many of my brethren are, asked frequently, "Why do you trouble yourselves about this subject? Why are you so anxious to put it in the fore front? It may be true, but the people do not want to know anything about it, and why trouble yourselves about this subject of immortality?" I have frequently had that observation made to me, and I have always had to answer it. .Well, I have answered it in this way, that necessity is laid upon me, and I can answer for my brethren too, the necessity is laid upon us to speak out in this matter. We prize very highly our Heavenly Father, and we cannot bear to hear His name maligned. We cannot bear to hear false charges brought against that loving Father who has given His only-begotten Son that we might not perish but have everlasting life. We say to our questioners, "If you heard of your earthly father being reviled by others, what would you do? Would you keep silent? " No! Well that is the spirit we have; we cannot allow our Heavenly Father to be maligned in the way He is without protesting against it. Well, deal' friends, I think you will give us credit for one thing, that we do not bring this subject before our Christian brethren for any benefit that we can receive by it in a pecuniary sense, or for popularity's sake, for I am sure we must not seek for popularity in this channel, for we get a great deal of odium, and sometimes abuse. What then is the object we have in view? It can only be one object, and that is the glory of God our Heavenly Father. I cannot stay 10 enter into our experience in this movement, but I must say this, that there are some amongst us who have sacrificed their worldly benefit and worldly goods rather than their consciences, and they at least have testified that they are determined to be faithful witnesses of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I believe this movement has emanated from a love we have for our fellow-Christians. We feel that we have a truth, a blessed comforting truth, and we are naturally anxious that our fellow-Christians should receive the same truth. Can you blame us for that? Will you stand up and oppose us, and point the finger of scorn for that? Why you cannot, if you are Christians. You must give us credit for sincerity. We want to put a stop to the teaching of the present day, which is injurious to the spirit of the gospel; and that is the preaching of the doctrine of endless woe and torment; and the only way by which we can show the fallacy of such a horrid doctrine is to attack another fallacythe immortality of the soul, for if we are wrong about that we are wrong altogether, I know there are some who have undertaken to put us right ill this matter, and we now ask them to prove that man must live eternally, either in happiness or misery. We will make that the subject upon which we will stand or fall. If man is created mortal, and can only get that immortality as a gift from God, then our position is sound and unassailable. (Applause.)

I HAVE a very pleasing part of the work to do to-night, that is, to talk about "The Rewards in the Kingdom," Now in all our witnessing for this glorious truth we rest upon God's Word, and we say to everyone, "we have a 'thus saith the Lord,' for everything that we believe." We have not studied or listened to cunningly-devised fables; it is not tradition or anything of that kind, but it is the Word of our God that abideth for ever; and as when we believe in Christ we rest upon the Word of God, and it gives us peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, so we a~e resting upon these glorious truths that we profess, because they are 10 God's Word. I never like to speak about this subject unless I have my Bible in my hand, and therefore I carry it in my pocket (laughter). And then I like to sit down and talk quietly over the Word with my opponent, or whoever disagrees with me. I like him to have his Bible in his hand and I like him to take and just point out to me where I am wrong, But, friends, I have asked and beseeched my religions acquaintances and orthodox friends to come and show me where I am wrong, and I tell you that though I have believed these glorious principles for six or seven years, I have never had one to set me right (applause). How seldom the atonement of Christ is sung to you! How seldom you hear that good old Methodist hymn" For you and for me He bled on the tree; The prayer is accepted, the sinner is free: That siuner am I who on Jesus rely, And come for the pardon He cannot deny. That pardon I claim, for a sinner I amA sinner believing in Jesus's name." My friends, you know right well, some of you who are Wesleyans, that you hear the hymn" There is a land of pure delight," given out a thousand times where you will hear of the other given out once. Well, the first thing to happen is the judgment; the first thing is the gathering up of God's people to meet Christ in the air.-Now w~ know what that is, for Christ Himself tell us in John v." For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: 'I'hat all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Sou honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and ?elieveth on Him that Rent 1\1e, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath iife in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man." He is the appointed One to judge the world, yes, and to judge the Saints too, because, as Paul tells us, both in the Romans and Cor-inth'ians, "We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ," and therefore you will notice how particular the apostle, and the Saviour too, is to impress upon the minds of Christians that they are not to judge. We are not to judge our brother in regard to doctrine, in regard to the way in which he reads Gael's WOI'd. We are not to judge him, for Christ Himself said: "Judge not that ye be I70t judgeel. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and WIth what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." . , It is said in 1 COT. iv. 5, "'fherefore judge nothing before the, time, until the LOI'd come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God." Then again in Romans xiv. 10, "But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ." Did you ever know a community of Christians who judged their brother as regards doctrine, and separated him from them? and did you ever know that Church to prosper afterwards. My attention was called to this, and I just watched, and I cannot point to one Church which pros, pered where they judged their brethren and cast them off. Pride got into that Church, and when pride gets in the Spirit must go out: there can be no power of the Spirit. Then Christ is to be the Judge, and He says, "Aud behold I come quiekly ; and My reward is with Me, to give every mau according as his works shall be." Now it is as our works shall be; we shall be judged according to our work, not according to .our profession, not according to our knowledge, not according to our standing, but according to our work, So the apostle in 1 COj'. iii. says" Every man shall receive His own reward according to his own labour; " a,,:d then we find" He that giveth a cup of cold water shall not lose ~IS reward." We find Christ saying, "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil things aga~st you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great IS your j'eward in heaven." And then we have the crown brought before us in

28

THE

BIBLE

STANDARD.
Christ from the dead, and so He will raise you and I, and then we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall be ever with tbfJ Lord.

Peter v., where he is talking to shepherds, to those who have the shepherding and the teaching of the flock. He says, " And when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Pan I tells us in 2 Timothu, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a cI'own of righteousness, which tbe Lord, the righteous Jndge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." Orthodoxy teaches that if you win souls you shall have stars in your crown,-I tell you, friends, it is very foggy, very foggy indeed. Now, friends, like my friend Captain Ward, I am apt to look at things in a common sense way, and I read my Bible just as I read my Navigation; one is as plain as the other, only, if anything, the Bible is a little plainer: sometimes I may go wrong in a logartbim but I never can go wrong in God's Word; it is too plain. You read in Matt. xx. of Salome coming with her two sons, and asking Christ that one should sit on the right hand and the other on the left hand of His kingdom. Now we read in God's Word that there some things that are beyond Jesns Christ,-He says, they are" not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father." Man lost his dominion when he sinned; God is going to give it back to him, and I want to impress upon Christians to-night the dnty of laboring for Christ. If you want JOur reward above, why, you will bave to lab or for it. There are two things in our salvation,-there is the gift and the reward. The gift we know is eternal life ; the reward is according to our works. God has not said, " Go to church and hear a good sermon, and do your duty, and somewhere you will get put into the Kingdom, and be very happy." WIJat a foggy idea! No, friends, if I am to reign with Christ, my reward shall be according to my work of lab or down here, and my faithfulness down here. A short time ago, yon recollect the 100th Regiment was raised in Oanada ; it was raised in the country places, and the gentleman who conld raise, I think it was 10 or 15 soldiers, got a lieutenancy, and the man who conld raise 25 soldiers got a captaincy, and the-man who could raise 50 got a majority, and so on, bnt it was according to the number of men, so their position in the army would be. I believe it is just the same in the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, because what does Christ say in Matt. xxiv? He talks about a faithfnl servnnt, whom, when" his master cometh and findeth him so doing,"-what will he do? Make him happy? No, no, make him ruler. Then again we have another parable to show that according to our faithfulness so will we be rewarded. Each of the servants in the 19th chapter of Luke gets a pound; one of them comes and says, "Lord, thy pound hath gained ten ponnds," and Christ said to Him, "Well, thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities." And the second came and said, "Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds," and he said likewise to him, "Be thou also over five cities." . To him that overcometh will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron." I believe the saints will take ruling power in the world, whil- the Jews will take priestly power, for you know that in the 61st chapter of Isaiah, and the 6th verse, it says .. But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord." God intended them as a kiugdom of priests, for if you will look at the 19th chapter of Exodus, 6th v-rse, God there calls them a kingdom of priests," and so they will occupy that same position when they come back again into their wn land. This is true about being rewarded according to our work. My ship was bnilt on the Clyde, and I noticed when the building was going on, that the riverters worke.I very hard and fast at her side; they did not get paid by the day, they got so much the dozen rivets, That was the way they were paid,-it was piece-work. Now our work is piece-work. Think of it, I tell you, honestly anti solemnly before Gud. Our work is piecework, and if you do not lab or you will suffer a loss; and if that labor is anything selfish, anything of the personal prononn I" about it,-ab! that will suffer loss, too, as the disciple tells us in that 3rd chapter of Corinlhians. I don't think we should come to this Conference without our Bibles. It is nut a thing of memory, because memory is very fuulty indeed. I was giving a Bible reading on board my ship the other day, and I said to a gentleman, [see yuu have not got your Bible in your hand." Oh," says he, we keep onr Bibles iu our heads." Well," I replied, you are just the man I want; well, the 3rd chapter of John, 34th verse, how does it read j " I don't know," he answered. Oh, then you have not got the Bible in your head." If you went into my forecastle, you would see the sailors there with their Bibles in their hands. So, friends, it is God's Word that must be our guide; let us therefore bring ourselves to God's Word to-night. Have we been occupying the time, that we know not how short time is? Before I am done speaking the Master may come; yon may be called up to give an account of your stewardship. Another thought and I have done. You see the judgment seat of Christ is only for Christians; no sinners will stand before the judgment seat of Christ; and, therefore, who has been gathering us here? Why, the Holy Ghost. What does Christ say? I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place fur you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself." Who will He receive us from? Why, the Holy Ghost, that has been gathering us, because the Holy Ghost raised

RESPONSIBILITY MEASURED BY PRIVILEGE.


An Address at the Liverpool Conference by
REV.

W. LEASK, D.D.

IN Paul's speech before Agrippa he said, among other memorable thincs that the commission given him by the Lord was to go to the Gentile~ to open their eyes." The function of vision is not to create scenery in the physical or facts in the moral world, but to behold that which exists. Sight is a spectator, not a creator. Hence the absolute necessity of light. The retina of the eye is perfectly dark; if, therefore there be no external illumination, the sense of vision is impossible. And that which is true in the material is true in the mental region. Intellect is like a smooth surface, entirely dark in itself, but let the light of truth fall upon it and it will reflect it. The polished surface, black before, is now bright and beautiful, like a gem dug from darkness, but the brightness and the beauty must be traced to the Divine light of the Gospel. Hence an Apostle's prayer for his friends, That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened." It is clear, therefore, that those who refuse the light of revelation must be in darkness respecting God. " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spint of God, for they are foolishness unto him' neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Thi~ is simply the statement of a fact ; in relation to the divine life in men, and th.e apprehensiou of divine things, it is momentously important, but there is no more mystery about it than there is in the fact that men literally blind do not see the beauties and splendours of creation. When the light that is in a man is darkness, how great is that darkness! The remarkable confusion in the specnlations of men who reject supernatural light proves this. They SIlY, We see; " but, alas! for them and those who follow them. Assuming the proud name of philosophers, they look upon Moses, Isaiah, and Paul as very respectable men for the period in which they lived, but as dwarfed to utter insignificance now under the blaze of the scientific stars of the nineteenth centurv. No doubt these Scriptures were useful iu the infancy of the race, especially to a superstitions people, who believed in miracles and in the occasional intervention of the Diviue Being in the aff-irs of men; but all that has had its day, for the light of science has discovered the laws of nature, and dispelled the priestly notions which dominated the world for so many ages. Science has lifted the vuil, supernaturalism is discarded, and men are free! This is not an exaggeration of the tone of science in relation to Christianity at the present time. On the contrary, it is a mild paraphrase of the sentiments of some of the leaders in the school of "advanced thought," as it is called; but to the man who feels that the future of the human race is absolutely in the hands of the living God, a_ He is revealed in the Scriptures, these sentiments are appalling. 1 large numbers of m=n are to follow such leaders as these, it is not diffioult to forsee a fearful catastrophe near at hand. The li~ht which leads astray in relation to God cannot itself be from God. In His light men are wise iu proportion to the degree of illumination they have received , and as that ill creases they advance towarls the time when the splendid promise shall be Iufille.l , . The wise shall inherit glory;" but 10 'he Jaw and to the testimony, sooner or later, all teachers mu-t bp brought, to be thereby tested; for if they speak not according to this Word it is because there is no Iiaht in them. I wish in this brief paper to sucgest, for surely it requires no argnment, that responsibility io measured by privilege; or, in other words. men who have been favoured with light on the greatest of all subjects are thereby placed nnder oblig-uion to shed thflt light on others. The mere fact of the endowme-it can i-s with it the duty of stewardship. The talents bestowed mean . Occupy till I come." "Ye are not your own; therefore "-therefore, what ? The entire region over which you have to pass before the journey ends will not be placed before you at once, but each succeeding day will unfold a portion, like turniug over a leaf in a book, and on that day you have to glorify God by practical obedience in the use of the mind, tbe heart, the influence, the gold He has given you. Our daily obligation is to the world around us, to the men among whom we live; and if we think any of them in error on subjects affecting eitner their own welfare or the character of God, common humanity and Christian principle reqnire us to set them right; or, at all events, to do what we can to show them a more excellent way, as Aqnila and Priseilla did to the eloquent Apollos, to expound to them the way of God more perfectly. Doctrinal errors, in wrought with theological systems, pervade Christendom; scepticism, respecting the inspiration of the Scriptures

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break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall and the divine origin of our holy faith, abounds among the multitudinclap their hands, Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and ous masses in our great cities; hired lecturers are sent to the hives instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the of industry to alienate men from all belief in any thing purer and nobler Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." than the Epicurean formula-eat, drink, and die; the printing press is Now, this is the key to the position, the principle by which we are to employed to an astonishing extent to endorse and diffuse these miserable interpret thoughts and ways which are above ours. By this note of negations; the complaint from every regiment in the Christian army is comparison we are to understand that they are better, nobler, kinder, either one of extensive desertion, or inability to obtain recruits; whilst wiser than ours; and that the contrary impression is altogetber absurd an insane atheism, losing the little modesty with which it once kept in appropriate obscurity, flaunts itself before the nation, and proudly and false. 2. In connection with our apology to the world for giving it wrong exhibits its deformity in the midst of the first assembly of gentlemen ideas, we should exert ourselves earnestly to put it right. It is not in the world, enough to repent, we must bring forth fruit meet for repentance. We If I am asked what, within view of these sorrowful Iacts, we ought to must prove our sincerity by action. The privilege that has fallen to our do, I reply, first, negatively r=lot is exceptionally great. The redemption of Apostolic truth from 1. In my deliberate judgment we ought not to stand aside from all these theological captivity is a glorious work. The very thought of it is overt or covert foes of Christianity, as if we were altogether innocent of inspiring. It is enough to fire us with holy ardour. Our responsibility the causes which have produced the mournful effect, It is easy to corresponds to the exceptional greatness of the privilege. Our gratitude .gather our robes gracefully about us, and say we have not defiled them to Him who has been pleased to shed light upon problems that have by any contact with the alien army; but it is possible, and, alas! too been so long covered with the shadows of the dark ages, when baptised probable, that we have said things about our Prince which have paganism dominated the world and corrupted the Church, should prompt strengthened the rebellion we wished to subdue. us to consecrate the tongue, the pen, and the purse to this magnificent 2. We must not take refuge in the old supposed cause of unbeliefservice, until on every shore is planted the standard of truth, with this human depravity, Tbis has long been a convenient hiding place for the divine motto floating in the breeze: The wages of sin is death, but the advocates of religion when they found their efforts to increase the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." orthodox territory fruitless, It is clear enough that " the natural man And our efforts in this direction should not be fitful and occasional, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of' God;" human depravity is one but steady and continuous. Smiles cheer us, but if frowns come from of the obvious facts of all history hitherto, and sometimes its manifestabrethren who think we are undermining a buttress of the temple, we tions have been so horrible that we have instinctively shrunk from belief must try to persuade them that we wish to remove an unsightly that members of our race could be guilty of such atrocities, except as conglomeration of pagan and papal rubbish that for ages has hidden agents of an invisible diabolical power; but with all this distiuctly' before much of its beauty and concealed its exquisite symmetry, With the me, I affirm that we shall grossly libel a great number of sceptics if we consciousness of loyalty to Him whose command is-" He that hath My say that their scepticism is the result of moral depravity. There are men who say in their hearts" there is no God;" but the distinct and , word, let him speak My word faithfully," and of love to our fellow men, many of whom, yearning for that heart-rest without which life is simply perfectly conclusi ve reason for this is they are "fools;" and there are a burden, would have entered the temple but for the conviction that the persons whose grossly immoral lives prove that every thought of purity anomalous appearance was part of the original design. But if our or moral law must be hateful to them; but allowing a sorrowfully large brethren refuse to accept our explanation and continue to frown, we margin for these, it is still true that there are many honest thinkers must continue the work notwithstanding. Popularity is a poor unsteady that have a strong sympathy with the ethics and doctrines of the Gospel, thing at best, and no strong man cares for it; and obedieuce, not success, and that positively reverence the wonderfully beantiful character of i, the rule of duty. A general does not go into battle with the foreJesus Christ, who nevertheless shrink from committing themselves to knowledge of victory, but because, whatever the issue, it is his duty to the Christian faith because there are things supposed to belong to it which shock their humanity, and appear to them utterly irreconcilable his sovereign and country. He may fall, but he will obey, that is his with the infinite goodness of God. They are right: and instead of settled purpose at all hazards; and animated by the fervent impulse of loyalty he will do his very best, notwithstanding the odds against him, setting them aside as bad men, we appreciate the sensitiveness of their to win the day without regard to storm or calm. consciences, and assure them, as a matter of absolute fact, that the revelation with which we have been graciously favoured contains no This is precisely our case. Nothing but a sense of responsibility to our glorious Head can sustain us, or can even for one moment justify doctrine to cause pain to the gentlest human heart, or to cast a shadow of suspicion on the ineffably beautiful character of God, our conduct. What have we to gain by stepping out of the beaten track And now, secondly, in reply to the question What is our duty at the of orthodoxy, where the great and good of many generations have presen t time, I submit: walked, and declaring our profound conviction, nay, our certainty, that 1. We ought, in all earnestness, to ask pardon of the world for so long common theology says certain things about the immortality of the soul, teaching it lies in the name of the Lord. This is a very serious matter, and the" eternal torment" of the unsaved, and about the nature of man, which the preachers and teachers of religion should lay to heart. The and the character and government of God which the Holy Scriptures do friends of God have sought to glorify Him by representations of what not warrant? What possible advantage to ourselves do we anticipate by they considered the justice of the Sovereign, which have had the effect this eccentric movement? Popularity, praise, pelf? I do not think of outraging all conceptions of justice as it obtains among men; and there is one among us so lamentably soft in the brain as this comes to: conscious of that fact, as they could not fail to be, they have had bu t if there is, he will soon be cured. recourse to a line of argument, in support of their terrible theory, which At the same time, whilst disavowing all selfishness, in the lower is absurd in logic and directly at variance with Scripture. Assuming senses of that word, in our efforts to bring the light of inspiration afresh as a fact, that which is simply a pagan fiction, the natural immortality upon the Churches of our country, we honestly confess that we desire, of the soul, the argument takes this form: Sin is an infinite evil, and even confidently anticipate, a large reward. The choicest and best because committed against an infinite God, and it must therefore have reward, next to the approval of the Master, is the gratitude of Christian an endless punishment, Now, two things are perfectly clear: that hearts delivered from a dismal burden and brought into liberty and joy. governments are always merciful in proportion to their strength, and Portions of this delightful wages for work we have had already, and we that sin has relation to law, and not to the personal attributes of the are hnngry for more. Our friends, who look upon us as "troublers of King. It follows, therefore, that the Divine government, being the Israel," understand well enough that this kind of pay does not increase strongest, will be the most merciful, and that the penalty of sin cannot the balance at the bankers, will not settle tradesmen's bills, and has exceed that which the law enacts, namely, death; otherwise, it would be nothing in common with ecclesiastical preferment ; and they will surely illegal, a supposition which is, of course, inadmissible under the therefore give us credit for Christian honesty, whatever they may think government of the righteous God, And Scripture expressly reverses the of our worldly wlsdom. We believe, and therefore speak. We cannot proposition under notice. It finds in the Divine Character mercy hold our peace. We have received this mission, and must discharge it, instead of vengeance, hope instead of despair. I am the Lord, relying upon the gracious help of Him from whom we have received it. I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed," "For My Whether the truth which we believe ourselves called to proclaim be thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith received or not, we mean to proclaim it, courteously, fearlessly, earnestly, the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My always. We have put our hands to this plough, and although assuredly ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." we know that we shall have to encounter the rough soil of stereotyped Of course these higher thoughts and ways find their expression and notions, bitter prejudice, superstition, and in some cases gross ignorance, gratification in rich promises of blessing, prosperity, and peace. Thus:we do not mean to look back. Forward!" is our motto, in the name "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and of the Lord of Hosts, for in this case the battle is most emphatically returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth His, and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: If the object of our union wag the extension of any system of so shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not ecclesiastical government, or the increase of any denomination of Chrisreturn unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it tians, I should not be one of its members. Societies for sectarian shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it. For ye shall go out with purposes we have in abundance; so far as the common interests of joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and tile hills shall Christianity, aud the diffusion of Christian charity are concerned, we

30

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than that or that? What if death thus dissolves the innermost from the outermost ? We know that that nerVDUS influence is there. We know also that there is something behind the action of these bioplasts, If I could take out this which is a still finer thing than what we call nerVDUSinfluence, and could have it held up here, 1 do not know but that it would be ethereal enough to go into heaven, for the Bible itself speaks of a spiritual body." Thus the Lecturer suggests that tbe spiritual body of which Paul speaks is this ethereal body which goes out of the physic~1 form at death, N DW,such a view as this completely upsets and nullifies the doctrine of the resurrection. The theory is that this ethereal body, which leaves the material form is the real man, and that it lives on for ever. If that is SD, we are compelled to ask in bewilderment, " What IS resurrection ? " Ior it seems, according to this theory, that resurrection is not the raising up of the real man, but merel:l; of a non-essential part of man. The word "anastasis" means a rebuilding, a making to rise up, or stand up again; nDW, before YDUcan rebuild and raise up anything, it must lJe fallen down and in ruins, and we affirm that unless tile real man really dies man cannot be raised again from the dead; unless man IS fallen down and in ruins he cannot be rebuilt and made to stand up again. The theory of the survival of the thinking conscious being turough tne prDcess we call death, is therefore a denial of the resurrection, and those WhD affirm it have fallen into the error of Hymenreus and Plnletus, for with them the resurrection is passed already. I think if the apostle Paul was here and heard this talk about the survival of the real mall in death, it is just likely he might reply in these words, " ThDU Iool, that. which thou sowest is not quickened except it DIE." The argument that IS used concerning the bioplasts in man, and the intelligent force behinu them, to prove that when the material structure IS down the real .being still exists, would also prove the immortality of every insect ill the earth, for the most advanced scientific research has proved that the bioplasts in man and the bioplasts in every animal, nee, and flower are idemically the same. (Hisses.) Gentlemen, I challenge anyone 10 the room to contradict this statement. (Hear, hear, aud applause.) Take," then, a bird on the wing,-the life of the bird is in the uioplasts, these are weaving and forming the flesh of the bird around thew, and there is an intelligent influence behind the bioplasts, causing them SD to act, but would any man say that when the bird was shut an ethereal bird had gone out of the material form? (Hear, hear.) 'I'he biopiasts weave the oak tree, behind those Bioplasts is the same influence, but when the material oak is cut down and goes to decay, is there still an ethereal oak remaining? A donkey has bones and muscles, arteries and nerves, these are formed by the same bioplasts that weave the buoy of man, behind the bioplasts of the donkey is an intelligent influence, and we can say of the donkey exactly what the Lecturer bald or man. Suppose we dissect a donkey---and that is generally not a very difIicult procesa=-Il.oud laughter); here he is the skeleton merely; here is a donkey made up of muscle, here he is made up of nerves, and here he is made up of Lioplasts, and bere, separated entirely from flesh, is the nerVDUSinfluence,- nDW, would not this be a donkey much more than either of the other forms, aud when the donkey died would not this unseen ethereal Iorm go out and be asptTitual donkey. Well, friends, if. it did, it would not be the only spiritual donkey in the world, Thus the argument which the lecturer uses to prove tile immortality of man would just as logically prove the immortahty of every living thing. But enough of such Jolly. In death, all admit that the bird, the oak, and the donkey have all ceased to be, although the bioplasts that formed their bodies was animated by an unseen spiritual intelligence. We admit that there is an intelligent intlueuce beuind the bioptasts that are in man, but (as in the case of every other living creature) we affirm that when the material organism is dissolved, man, until he is rebuilt. in resurrection, has ceased to exist. If the change which we call death ushers a perfect being into a perfect state of hliss, the doctrine of the resurrection is nut only mystified, but is proved to be entirely unnecessary. (Expressious of dissent.) We are not alone in this opinion, Witliam 'I'yndale, the great translator of DUl" English Bible, says: "If the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? and then IV hat cause is there of the resurrection, in putting departed souls into heaven, hell, and purgatory r YDU destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection." That was Tyndale's testimony, Mr. Darby, also, a well-known orthodox writer, says: . That when the coming of Christ began to be denied in the Churcb, the doctrine .of the sDul's immOltality came in and replaced the dDctl'ine .of the resurrection." Tue resurrectiDn frDm the dead, which was the burden of the apDstles preaching and the real hope .of the Church, is a dDctrine tbat, in .our day, is less spDken abDut thall any dDctrine .of the Christian faith. Our pride will nDt allDw us tD hear of man's being laid in tbe gmve. This. is why we heal" SD little of his being raised frDm it. We hear tbe vDice .of God speaking tD fallen man in thDse mysteriDus and s,,1emn wDrds, . Dust tbDU an, alld untD dust shalt tl10u return." But man has listened tD the tempter's vDice, saying, "Ye shall be as gDds; ye shall not surely die." Strange tD rdate, these tWD Satanic suggestiDns have becDme the very basis .of mDdern theolDgy, fDr DrthodDx.}ill its teaching

have them in superabundance; but your CDnditiD.nal ImmDr~Blity Association contemplates an issue which would ~e an lmm~nse relief to every loving-hearted minister of the Gospel, a Joyful blessing to every Church, an unspeakable boon to Ch:istendDm, and a revenue of fresh glory and fresh love to our Father m heaven. We are the common friends of all men, without respect to part:l;, for we are the common friends of truth. Our brethren should receive us gladly. They have nothing to fear from us, for even if we were strong enDugJ;t to remove from its place an item of the faith once delivered to the. saints, we are not wicked enough to wield the power, There are no sacnleglO1l:s ~ands among us. The sacred casket of Divine truths, aye, every gem m It, ~e would defend to tbe very last. This is no empty boast, but a plain honest truth. DD YDU ask for proof ? YDUhave it in the very existence of our Society. Conscious of our individual w~akness. as witnesses,.we came together, a number of Christian persons, sImply. m that capacity, that we might unitedly testify that there are certain dDgma.s m the Church which formed no part of the original sound doctrine delivered to the saints, false stones which APDStDlic hands did not put in the holy casket. It is these we want to remove ; we ask .our. brethren to help us. Gospel truth will sbine clearer, ~n~ cDm.mend It~elf to men far more forcibly when delivered from association with SPUrIDUSteaching and deceptive gIDSS; and if this Society succeeds in enlisting. many adherents and accomplishing its object, it will prove a blessing to mankind far greater than the most vivid imagination can at present realize.

RESURRECTION: By

SCRIPTURALLY H. B.

CONSIDERED.
Conference.

An Address delivered at the Liverpool


REV. MURRAY.

I FIND myself placed in rather an awkward position, as I have to speak up on a subject that has been touched up on by nearly every other speaker in the Conference. Nevertheless, I may perhaps touch upon a line of thought that has not been taken up by any other speaker, inasmuch as I shall be bold enough to criticise a very great critic. 'I'hose WhDhave attended the meetings of this Oonference will have noticed that there is one doctrine above all others which is especially dear to us viz. the doctrine of the resurrection, "\Veare grieved with modern theology, as it finds no place in its scheme for the raising up of the entire man. It believes only m the raising up of a non-essential part of man. I say a non-essential part, because. If the Christian can perfectly enjoy GDd and glory, without a material body, then such a ,bDdy must be a non-essential part of n;tan. TO.-~lght I want to ask tile question=-Wbat IS Besurrection ? Is It the raising up of man real and entire, .01' is it merely the raising up of a non-essential. part ot mall? that is the question we want answered. Modern 'I'heology teaches us that the real Ego is confined within the body as a prisoner is confine~ within.a ca~tle, the senses are like narrow slits oi windows through WhICh the imprisoned spirrt holds some slight communion with the outside world. Death is not a ceasing to be, uut merely the escapement of the captive spirit. Death, as it were, opens the cage door, and lets the captive bird go tree, Many WhD hold this theory also profess to believe in the. resurrection of the body, when the spirit will re-enter the body it has quitted. 'I'heirs IS a most extraordinary idea. At death they say the spirrt escapes trom a prison ; yet at resurrection the spirit, after having had a taste of glorified freedom, is to reenter its prison, there to abide for ever and ever. One class of modern religionists maintains that there is an immaterial body underlying in every part this material bDOY,and they teach that this spiritual body survives the dissolution of tLe outward fleshly body. This is the theory of Swedenborgianism and other systems of Spiritualism. 'rhus a well-known 'I'ransatlanuc Lecturer says:"What if I should dissect a human body here? I might have a man made up of a skeleton ; then I could have a human rorm made up .of muscle. If I should take out the arteries, I should have another human Iorm ; and just SD with the veins, and SD with the nerves, were they all taken out and held up here In their natural CDndition they would have a human form, would they not j Very well. NDW ~hich Iorm is the man? Behind the nerves are the bioplasts. YDUl:muscles are ll,Dre impDrtant than YDur bDnes, YDur artel'ies thall yDUl" muscles, YDur nerve. than YDur arteries, and YDUl'biDVlasls tl1at WDve) .our nerves are mDre impDrtant than YDur nerves; but YDUdo not reach )'OUl'last analysis here, lDr if YDUunravel a man cDmpletely, there is sDmething lJehillu thDse lJiDplusts. There is i;t my body a nervous influence tbat pla)"s up and down my nbl"ves like dectncity .on tht telegraph wires. I have never seen it, but 1huve felt it. SuppDse tLat I cDuld take th.t .out. SuppDse that just there is my man ruade up 01 nerves, and just yDnder my man made up .of bioplasLs, and tLat .here J. have wuat I call the nervous influence. Sepamled entirely frDm flesh, YDUwDuld nDt see it. But wDuld not this ue a 71,an,very wuch mul"<-

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positively denies that man is a created being. Are we not taught that God breathed into a casket a part of Himself, and that that part of God so breathed in was man. a divine spirit. Thus man is considered to be an emanation from the Deity, consisting of the same pure spirit as God Himself, and this in spite of the plainly-written word, that God created man of the dnst of the ground. Now we know that one lie always .leade to another, and when orthodoxy begins to utter fables, sbe involves berself in such difficulties that she 'is obliged to go on lying in order to hold her first position. 'Orthodoxy having made man as God, must of necessity go a step further, and having asserted that man is a divine spirit, consisting of the same substance as God Himself, she is logically bound to assert that he is in his own nature inherently immortal, and incapable of death; and so when man is laid in the grave, orthodoxy talks of the survival of the soul and of the continued existence of man in an ethereal body-a pagan d~ctrine that was taught by heathen philosophers hundreds of years before the time of Christ. In listening to some modern divines, we might really shut our eyes and imagine we were listening to the Revs. Dt'S. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. We see, then, why orthodoxy holds to the immaterial theory, to admit that this material body is man, is to admit that man dies and returns again to dust, so that before we can show the importance and necessity of the r-surrection, we have to overthrow the theory of the immaterial nature of man. The Egyptians held (as a radical doctrine) that evil was an inherent property of matter, and as they believed man to be immortal, they taught that the soul continued to exist in an immaterial state; this pagan notion was brought into the Church by heathen philosophers and has become a fundamental article of modern religion. Orthodox teaching concerning the glorified state, is that it is -a state where everything material is abolished and nothing that affects the senses remains, the glorious inheritance of the saints has no locality, it .is b-yond the bounds of time and space, and there everything is ethereal, and immaterial. The Churches of to-day laugh to scorn the -idea that this material body is any part of man, the body is despised and spoken of in the most contemptible language while individuality is place cl in an immaterial spirit which is praised in speech and song as the true Ego. Strange to say however, that which modern theology despises Christ has glorified, and, if evil is inseparably connected with matter, then Christ is evil. "Fol' the Word was made flesh. and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. fnll -of grace and truth." In the person of Christ we see matter made eternal and glorious, for the Christ that ascended into glory and is now at God's rizht hand, is a corporeal Christ, a being that was seen, handled and to~ched in the resurrection state. When the disciples saw Christ after His resurrection they were terrified, thinking they saw an apparition, and Christ said nnto them :-" Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in you I' hearts, behold My hands and My feet, that it is I, Myself, handle Me and see for a spirit bath not flesh and bones as you see Me 'have." Now, brethren, how did Christ prove to His disciples that it was He Himself, why, by giving them an opportnnity to handle Him, what .do we infer from this? Why, that if they could not have handled Him, 'it would not have been Himself. Ah, brethren, we, too, like the disciples, have been frightened by the thoughts of ghosts, but when we come to grasp them, we find nothing to lay hold of, so we have given up believing in immaterial spirits, and now we believe in glorified bodies, and our hope i, that one day we, too, shall grasp the Saviour's loving hand, and while we look up in His dear face, and perhaps are permitted lovingly to handle Him, we shall say, This is indeed our risen Saviour. and no immaterial spirit." Thomas Chalmers was once preaching against the foolish notions that some people have, concerning the immaterial .eharaeter of the next state, and in the course of his sermon, he said, .There will be a firm earth as we have at present, and a heaven stretched out over it as we have at present; it is not by the absence of these but by the absence of sin that the abodes of immortality will be .eharacterised, it will be a paradise of sense but not of sensuality, it is not the entire substitution of spirit for matter that will distinguish the future conomy from the present, but the entire substitution of right. .eousness for sin; the object of the administration we are under, is not to sweep away materialism, but to sweep away sin." Modern religionists sometimes say that the spirit-man is composed of immatp7'ial substance. I believe it was Bishop Horsley who was once preaching in a college chapel, and was labouring very hard to prove that there was no such thing as matter, when one of the college wags called .out, "If the Bishop says there is no matter, it is no matter wbat the Bishop says." So, sir, when folks tell us that tbe spirit is an immaterial substance, we are tempted to be facetious and say it is really immaterial what such folks do believe. (Laughter.) The attempt to prove that man as a conscious being exists through the process of death, independently of a material form, is contrary to all reason. Soi- nce and the Bible both teach us that there can be no 'thollght apart from a material organism. No mind apart from matter," in death consciousness and thought have ceased to be, this is the language of Science, it is also the language of Scripture. The Psalmist. was in perfect agreement with the scientific thought of the Nineteenth

Century when he wrote, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man in whom there is no help, His breath goes forth, He retul'neth to His earth, in that very day His thoughts perish." We know that pressure on the brain will cause total unconsciousness, a stunning blow upon the head destroys sensation and renders the mind incapable of reflection. A man receives some bodily injury, and life becomes a perfect blank to him, the mind is totally inactive, he is in a state of oblivion and perfect unconsciousness, and yet modern theology says, injure the body still more, crush it to powder, and, the mind will then emerge into a more active state than it ever enjoyed before. Science teaches us that every mental faculty has its appropriate organ in the brain. By destroying any single organ of the brain you destroy the particular faculty of the mind which was manifest through such organ. This is known to be an undeniable fact, and yet in the face of this, modern theology tells ~s that if the e~tire brain is completely destroyed, every faculty of the mind would still be in existence, in a m01'e perfect state of activity than it had ever enjoyed before. (Lauchter.} We say, "impossible." Mind is dependent upon material organism. Destroy those organs, and the mind ceases to be. One thing is evident, and that is, that we bury all the brains, so that if, when we lay the body in the grave, a conscious being still survives, that being has no brains. To say that after death the mind lives on in a higher state of existence, is contrary to all known facts and experience. Experience teaches us that mind and body are inseparable. We know that mental power only matures in proportion as the body matures. At birth, the human being is no better than an idiot. But as the body grows, so the mind develops. At manhood, intellect reaches its meridian; but as the body weakens and decays, so does the mind again become weak, feeble. and powerless; and yet modern theology tells us that when the body becomes decrepid and useless, and suddenly drops into the grave the mind exists in a higher and more perfect state of development. ' I wish we could knock this doctrine of an immaterial state on the head. We can hardly expect Rome to give it up, seeing that they would have to give up purgatory; and giving up that, of course, away would go the masses for the dead, and thus a very gold mine would be lost to them. But to Protestant Churches we raise a note of waminz. We denounce this immaterialism as a deadly dangerous doctrine. "It has muddled the whole of the Christian faith. By teaching that the dead are alive in a spirit state, modern theology is playing right into the hands of spiritualism, and the devils must exult as they see God's ministers preparing the minds of the people for their deadly delusions. How they must laugh as they impersonate the dead, and lure unwary souls into all manner of unspeakable wickedness. We affirm that man is not an immaterial spirit, but a created material being; and that when man is laid in the grave, he ceases to have conscious existence until he is raised up again from the dead. Thns Scripture always places identity with the body in the grave. Daniel says, " Them that sleep [where?] in the dust of the earth, shall awake some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt." , Christ, in referring to the departed, invariably refers to them as 'in the grave: -" I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and I will raise him up at the last day." Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life. and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." Thus the resurrection and glorification of this material body is placed he fore us in the New Testament as the great object of Christian redemption. We find the apostle dwelling much on the resurrection of the botiu while the redemption ofanything immaterial is nowhere mentioned. W~ hear Paul speaking, in Rom. viii.," If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also make alive your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." In the same chapter he says, We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." So in Phil. "Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we 'look for the Saviour' the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall change our vile body, that it m~v be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself." What this glorious body will be like we do not know-it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know, that when He shall appear, 'we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is; that is sufficient for us. We do not want to know more. We know, however that the spiritual body will be a material body. No immaterial ma~ has ever ascended into heaven. The only instances of ascension that we have are instances of the translation of material bodies. Enoch and Elijah were caught up bodily. Christ ascended bodily. Michael, the archangel, contended not for all immaterial spirit, but for the body of Moses. It must have heen something very precious, or else the devil would not have desired to have it. All the instances of restrrection that

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we have, record the deliverance of the body from the power of death We preach Jesus and the resurrection as the Christian's hope. We affirm that man is material, that in death he sleeps in the grave, and and the grave. It is this same mortal body that is to be made glorious and incorrupt. that resurrection is absolutely essential to any future state of existence, ible. There will be a spiritual body; but the spiritual body of Scripture We believe in the resurrection of the body, and then the life everlasting. We repeat the creed of the patriarch Job, I know that my Redeemer is the mortal body of flesh made incorruptible. The word" spiritual" does not mean "immaterial;" it is used rather as a contrast to that liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall .r which is sensual and corruptible. Our Lord's resurrection body was a see God." (Loud applause.) spiritual body; but it was a body of flesh and bone. Our hope is in the coming of Christ to raise the dead and change the The contrast which the apostle draws in 1Cor. xv., is not between a material and an iminaterial body, but between a body in which sensual living saints. We wait for the great vivifier of mankind to reveal Himand animal nature preponderates, and a body that is entirely controlled self and speak the word that shall regenerate creation. Our life is not in ourselves, but it is hid in Ohrist in God, and when He who is our by holy and spiritual motives. The body will be spiritual, in the sense life shall appear, then, and not till then, shall we appear also with Him that it will be pure and holy. In 1 Cor. xv. 44, we read :-" It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." Now, this term in glory. 'l'hus says the apostle, as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly; the trumpet shall sound, and "natural body," really means" animal body." In the margin of the the dead in Christ shall rise into the glorions likeness of their heavenly revised English Bible, you get" animal body" given for natural body. Father. The living saints will pass through a change that will be In Wycliffe's Bible, the 44th verse reads: "It is sowen a beestli bodi, it shal rise a spiritual bodi. If there is a beestli bodi, there is also a equivalent to death and resurrection, and all will be glorified together. Then all those who have died in the faith,-that great number, whom spiritual bodi. The first is not that which is spiritual, but that which is beestlike, aftirwarde that which is spiritual." The same verse in the no man can number-those who amidst all the trials and cares of life Syriac Testament reads: "It is sown an animal body, it ariseth a have clung to God's Word, and rested on His promise, they who have spiritual body; for there is a body of the animal life, and there is a gone down to the grave with feeble frail bodies, they who have been laid to rest in much weakness and suffering,-these all shall renew tnerr body of the spirit. The spiritual was not first, but the animal and then youth, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and the spiritual." Here are three instances where the translators considered that the not be weary, they shall walk and not faint; they shall rise in the likeness of God, incorruptible and glorious, to enter upon that life term "soma psuchikon" would be more correctly rendered, animal or beastlike body. Dr. Adam Olarke in his comment on the passage also of perfect peace and rest, that life of spiritual delight, that life of fulness of joy which shall never, never end. (Loud applause.) gives" animal body," as a more correct rendering than" natural body." Now what is meant by an " animal body?" Why, a body that in its nature organism and functions, is similar to the beast of the field, similar in appearance and in substance, composed of the same elements, born into the world in the same way, depending upon the produce of the ANN 0 U NeE MEN T S. earth for nourishment and life, and ultimately dying and corrupting, like all other Jiving creatures. Thus Solomon says, "I said in my heart A CATALOGUEf the publications of the Society forwarded post free on o concerning ths estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them I receipt of address. and that they might see that they themselves are beasts, for that which befalleih the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them ANTED, by a Young Man, aged 20, just out of his apprenticeship, a situation as Improver, with a Saddler and Harness Maker as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea they have all one breath, so Address, J. Gibbs, Shoe Warehouse, High Street, Deddington, Oxon. that a man hath no preeminence above a beast for all is vanity. All go unto one place (so that if the dead go to heaven the beasts go there PRAYER NION. Season-s-Every U Monday, some time before noon. too) all are of the dust and all turn to dust again." Object-That God would be pleased to open the eyes of Christians to see Is your pride offended because God compares you to the beasts that (1) That the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul is not found in Holy perish? Why He looks upon you as more insignificant still than that, for Scripture ; (2) That the punishment of the wicked, after resurrection, His word declares that we are as grasshoppers in His sight. however varied in nature and duration, will ultimately terminate m We are sometimes twitted concerning this statement that man hath death.-J. C., London, W. no preeminence above a beast. We are not so foolish as to say that man hath no preeminence above a beast, man is preeminent in every ASSORTEDTRACTPARCELS, post-free :-Gospel Leaflets 9d. per 100; sense, but what we do say is that death humbles man and beast alike in Life Tracts, 4 pages, Is. 6d. per 100; Ditto, smaller, Is. per 100; Rainbow the dust, and that in death, until the resurrection, man hath no preTract Books, Is. per dozen; Life Pamphlets, Is. per dozen, The eminence above a beast. (Loud applause.) Ministry of Evil" and" The Scripture Doctrine of a Future Life," two The present body is soulical, animal, as such it is swayed by desires of the" Rainbow Tract Books," are now again in print; separately, 9d. and passions that are animal-like rather than spiritual. But when a per dozen, post-free. man receives the spirit of God at conversion, a controlling power comes , in to him, and, by the grace of God tbe animal propensities are kept in "BIBLE STANDARD," Conference No. FOl gratuitous distribution, sent check and subdued by God's Spirit within him, but as the nature of our post-free at 2s. per doz., 01 carriage unpaid Is. 5d. organism is the very cause of such animal desires they can never be LIFE ANDADVENT HUINS, a Collection of 55 original hymns, byDr. W. entirely got rid of except, through the complete physical change of the entire organism, this takes place through death and resurrection, and Leask, G. P. Mackay, B. Phillips, Cyrus E. Brooks, and others, post-free at Is. per dozen. A single copy posted for l~d. this I believe is scriptural regeneration. What a strange thought, that the sprinkling of a few drops of water A CORREC1ION.-In Sept. Bible Standard, page 139, appeared "A oould ever accomplish tbis mighty and marvellous change. 'I'his body Soliloquy," by A. Morris, Liverpool. By error, the closing hnes did not is laid in the grave an animal body, it is there freed from the corrupting give the writer's meaning, they should have read :influence of the feverish blood, it is quickened into life by the Spirit of God. That is henceforth the animating principle, and the body is " While they that have not kept the Master's word, consequently holy and pure,-a spiritual incorruptible body. Behold But from His precepts willully have strayed, I shew you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be Will live again to be with sin destroyed, changed. In a moment, in the twinkiing of an eye, at the last trump: And sleep the sleep that never more awakes." for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, for thi corruptible must put an incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible NOTICE. shall have put on inccoruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, MR. H. BRITTAIN'S Paper has been crowded out of this number, death is swallowed up in victory." Once again, amidst the Babel of together with our usual NOTES, and Cash Acknowledgments. Will our theological tongues, we feel it our duty to give expression to what we friends in ordering this paper of local News-agents, supply the address conscientiously believe to be God's truth. We lift up our voices in conof our London Agent as below! demnation of the spiritualistic teachings of the sects. We charge them with reducing the work of Christ to a sinecure, and robbing Him of His glory as the Resurrection and the Life. (Hisses, cries of prove it, prove it." Those gentlemen have asked me to prove it,-I will. Orthodoxy affirms that all men are inherently immortal; therefore they cannot need Christ to give them eternal life again. Orthodoxy affirms Printed by CHARLES AR1ULL, Silver Street, Lincoln; and published that man never dies: consequently they do not need Christ to raise monthly by "THE CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY AS. them from the dead. Thus Ohrist's glorious title of the Resurrection SOCIA'fION." London Agent: F. SOUTHWELL, 19, and the Life is made a vain and empty thing. (Loud applause.) Paternoster Row.

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