promised to the dying and pardoned thief, that he should be with him there that very day, because he told Mary, which was the third day after his death, that he had not yet ascended to her Fa.ther and his Father, to his God and to her Ged, which place is the great and final heaven of the saints. In this paradise it was where the souls of Lazarus, of the widow's son, and of Jarius's daughter, were at rest, which Christ remanded when he raised those persons from the dead. It was from thence the soul of the lad, which Elijah the prophet prayed might come again into his body, was remanded; and from whence came the souls of all those saints which arose from their graves at the time of the resurrection of our Lord, and appeared to many in the holy city; and in our opinion, for the reason above given, is where all the souls of all the righteous, from Abel the son of Adam to this present time, and from hence till the death of the last saint, do rest till Christ shall come from heaven, his ancient seat of empire, to judge the world, when the whole company of paradise, with their raised and spiritualised bodies, shall go away with him to eternal glory, in the first and primeval heaven of the angels, from whence they who sinned were cast out. That there is such a place as hell, see Rev. xix. 20. "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet, that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive (after the resurrection) into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." To such a place as a lake of fire, the Revelator has several allusions. See chap. xx. 10. "And the devil that deceived them was [is to be] cast into a lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever." The words here, ever and ever, are repeated merely for harmony's sake; as on and onward, can never furnish an argument-as Balfour supposes of limitation, merely because the words are repeated--and add nothing to their meaning. The often-repeated forever and ever, in both the Hebrew and Greek, is agreeable with the idioms of both languages, and was always used to give force and intenseness, by the best writers of the ages, when those languages were in use. No good scholar can dispute this. The quibble therefore, of Universalists on these words, forever and ever, is but a quibble; because they are found applied to lesser subjects than eternal ones. The terms day and night, likewise, are seized upon by Universalists, to show that all this torment and pain, is suffered in this life, because it is here that day and night exists, but not in eternity: and though they may not, yet may nevertheless be used in reference to eternal sufferings; inasmuch as day and night comprehends all time here; and that while day and night succeed among the globes of God 181 for the accommodation of their inhabitants, while eternity endures; so shall the beast and the false prophet, and they that have his mark in their hand, or forehead, be tormented in this lake of fire. See again the same chapter, (xx.) verse 15. "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life [salvation in eternity] was cast into the lake of fire." Also, chap. xxi. 8. "But the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerors, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire which burneth with brimstone: which is the second death. Now if this language does not in fact, describe literally, the existence of a hell in eternity, we have no conception of its meaning, whatever; as there is no condition in this life, which is not more or less mingled with cireumstances of comfort, while life lasts, and especially with such as walk about at liberty, though ever so wicked. But the Revelator speaks of a punishment which has in it no relief, no circumstances of amelioration, no hope, no comfort, but one unmingled state of suffering and pain. See chap. xiv. 10. "The same [such as worship the beast and his image] shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture, into the cup of his indignation; and he [or they] shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." Can such a condition be realized in this life? Never! But when is this earth to set out on its journey of damnation? We answer: at the end of time according to Scripture-when the bodies of both the good and the bad, shall be made to live again; and the spirits, or minds which once inhabited them on the earth, shall be brought from their respective abodes, hades, and paradise, and be united again. At that time, the good are to be divided from the bad: the former are to be taken to heaven, while the latter are to be left on the earth, when it is to be set on fire, and cast far off out of the family of the universe, into the hell which was created for the purpose before stated; where it will sink down in its dreary depths, and become, by the action of fire, amalgamated with that world of horror. (See the Plate.) The overturning of empires-the sacking of cities, towns and countries-pestilence and death, with all the miseries to which human temporal existence is exposed-is nothing, when compared with the figures if they are but figures which are used in the book of Revelations, and other parts of the Bible to describe the sorrows of the damned in another world. If those appalling descriptions extend to nothing more than what happens in this life-the worst of which, is the way to death, and that is the end of it, according to Universalists then are those descrip tions untrue, and unbecoming the dignity of holy inspiration; as the mind is led thereby to apprehend that which is never to take place, and very much needs the consoling sophisms of Univer salist divinity, to allay unnecessary fears, conjured up in the mind, by reading that book of truth-the holy Scriptures. For this great text book of the Christian world, to say that there is a place of unutterable torment, consisting of the sting of the worm (despair and guilt,) that dieth not, and of a lake of fire, the smoke of which ascendeth up forever and ever; in which the wicked, the beast, and the false prophet, the devil and his angels, are to be tormented without end,-is unaccountable; and surpasses all the stories of tragic romance, produced by the wildest effusions of mad men, if it is to be understood in the way which Universalists doctrinize on such subjects. What sorrow, or temporal affliction, is that, which can be compared to dwelling in devouring flames, or to being cast alive into a lake of fire, even for a day, or an hour? but when we are told that it is to be without end, how much does this exceed all the sorrows of this life, whether of body or of mind; and is it right, is it logical, that the figure should so much exceed the reality? But the reality is not exceeded by the figure; we cannot bring ourselves to believe that these descriptions are false and fictitious, or that effort is made in that book, the Bible, to conjure up unreal fears. If it is Scriptural, philosophical, and agreeable, with the government of God, that anything called a hell in this life, should be a fact, as Universalists contend is the fact, how is it to be shown, that under the government of the same God, there can be no such existence in eternity. If there is no hell in eternity, if there are no fallen angels, no devil, nor a day of judg ment to come, why does not the Scripture say so; as these opinions were held by the Jews at the time of our Lord and the writers of the New Testament; who have not so much as glanced at their non-existence, nor anywhere opposed those errors, but everywhere shown these things to be true, and everywhere warned men to secure themselves from them, by laying hold on the hope of the gospel. But if men will not lay hold of this hope, it makes but little difference according to Universalists, as the poor creatures will soon pass off the stage of life to a sound sleep of both body and soul, in the grave, (or hell,) till the time of the resurrection, when they will awake, some from the grave of a suicide, others from a state of moral degradation, far enough below a brute, to all the joys of holiness at God's right hand. But the idea of such a place is not entirely peculiar to the New Testament, as we meet with allusions to it in the book of Job, chap. xi. 8, where it is said that the wisdom of God is "as high as heaven," and "deeper than hell." If the hell here alluded to is but the grave, the comparison is but a poor one; as the depth of a grave contrasts but poorly with the height of heaven, whether it be the heaven of heavens, or the ordinary height of the atmosphere. In 2d Samuel, xxii. 6, David says that the sorrows of hell compassed him about. Now if the grave alone |