times" (1 Tim. ii. 1-6). So also he speaks of the living God, as the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe (iv. 10). To what can this refer, if not to the fact that while believers are made the subjects of a special salvation, all men have been ransomed to another life than that which all had lost in Adam, and that there was something in this ransom for which all should give thanks? If too blind and ignorant to do this for themselves, the church, as standing for all men, should do it for them. To Titus also he writes that "the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men" (ii. 11). But that this was not the salvation bestowed upon the church is made plain by the statement in verse 14, "Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works." These varied statements are harmonized only by the supposition that the redeeming work of Christ, in securing the salvation of the church, has secured also such a salvation of all men from the ruin wrought in them by sin and death, that all have a new standing in life before God. They cannot be reconciled with the view that no portion of the human race have yet obtained any interest in this salvation but the small proportion of regenerated believers, and that before all the rest there is no hope of relief from the agony of an endless hell.

Even if, however, our readers should refuse to go with us in accepting these passages as positively sustaining this larger hope, the negative argument with which we started out remains unchanged, and cannot be assailed. The uniform silence of St. Paul's epistles

upon this doctrine of an endless torment in hell proves that he did not hold the doctrine. It formed no part of the message he was inspired to deliver to men. It did not enter into the whole counsel of God which he shunned not to declare (Acts xx. 27). He was familiar, of course, with the words of Jesus from the letter of which this doctrine has been unwisely drawn. But it is impossible, if he had received these words in the sense put upon them in later times, that not a single passage in all his writings should give a clear testimony of this unspeakable peril.

Before closing this examination it is proper that we should add a few words upon the testimony of the epistle to the Hebrews. It was very likely not written by St. Paul, but all its severe statements about “a fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries" (x. 27), and that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (31), are in entire harmony with St. Paul's views of retribution. These passages are commonly misunderstood and mis-applied because most readers overlook the primary fact that the epistle is throughout addressed to Christians, and speaks throughout of the sore chastisements that await them if unfaithful. Even the passage, "Our God is a consuming fire" (xii. 29), which, from its use of the term "our" and its whole connection is seen to relate to judgments that must come upon Christians, if disobedient, is constantly quoted as if it read, "God, out of Christ, is a consuming fire." Whereas it is God in Christ, a consuming fire to all the evils remaining in His own children, and who

Scourges every son whom He receives (xii. 6), who is here brought to view. The passage teaches precisely the doctrine of 1 Cor. v, where a gross offender is represented as handed over to Satan, as the agent of God's consuming fire, "for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." The harshest statement of all in this epistle is, "Whose end is to be burned" (vi. 8). But this is used of unfaithful Christians, unworthy branches of the Vine (John xv. 6), and the harshest meaning they could bear is that such will be forever destroyed. But in the light of the case of the Corinthian fornicator, we may well doubt whether anything more is meant than such a burning as shall consume the whole evil structure of such a. man's life, or such a fire as is referred to in I Cor. iii. 13-15, which must search the whole fabric of such a Christian's life work, and burn it up, if it be not "gold, silver, precious stones," and out of which he can be saved only "so as by fire." There are many passages in these epistles about which we shall go astray unless we discriminate between the absolute and final salvation secured to all believers in Christ, and the relative salvation and reward for which, in their character of "branches" or "servants they are still on trial before the judgment seat of Christ.

CHAPTER X.

RETRIBUTION IN THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES.

Passing on to the Catholic Epistles we find the same doctrine of retribution with that contained in the epistles of St. Paul. It is only to meet the requirements of a pre-conceived theory, that any one would think of deriving from their references to future punishment the doctrine of an everlasting punishment in hell. Indeed they all relate either to threatening judgments which must overtake the ungodly in this world, or to that destruction of being which begins with bodily death, and is consummated beyond it in the loss of the soul, and the consequent ejection of the spirit into the outer darkness. But in no case is it affirmed or implied that this punishment lies beyond the resurrection. On the contrary it is something immediate and impending. The resurrection of the ungodly is not indeed distinctly taught. But there are some indirect allusions to it. And these imply that it must be even to them a deliverance.

Taking up these epistles in the order in which we find them, we come first to that of St. James. This epistle assumes throughout-as do all the others—that there is a way of life and a way of death. The last verse declares that "he which converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death." This indeed is the one clear, emphatic, oft-repeated testimony of Scripture upon this whole subject—that "sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death” (i. 15).

Human tradition asserts that man can never die. It makes death to mean eternal life in misery. Because, forsooth, the term "death" is often applied in Scripture to that spiritual condition in which man is “alienated from the life of God," it is assumed that death never means death. But the reason why this spiritual state is so called is, that it inevitably leads to the destruction of the being that is thus severed from God. If anything is plainly taught in Scripture, it is that there can be no eternal life for man apart from Him. Hence the sinner who dies in body, must also lose his soul. His whole being is thus dissolved, and all that gave him life and heritage in manhood is gone. Such a man is dead-blotted out of existence as a man -but not yet wholly extinct. Personal identity must still be latent in the outcast spirit. Otherwise the same man could not be brought back through resurrection. But resurrected life, unless it become linked in with the life of God, cannot be eternal. And hence to those to whom it does not bring this highest good, a second death becomes possible. And as no resurrection is promised out of this second death, we infer that it is total and final. This view of the penalty of sin preserves to the uniform teaching of Scripture that "the wages of sin is death,' its proper meaning. At the same time, it provides room for those Scriptures which assume the prolonged existence of the soul after the body dies, the subsequent extension of the death-process to the soul, the re-habilitation of the outcast spirit through resurrection in virtue of the redeeming work of Christ, before