waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever."

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Then he summons up Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and makes him prophesy against these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judg ment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." He seems unwilling to cease from his invectives: "These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage."

Now the reason of all this is, that there is nothing in this world. so important as divine truth; for by this, instrumentally, with its sanctions, the souls of men are brought into allegiance to God. Truth, not force, is God's appointed instrument of governing the world. Hence, error is correspondingly dreadful, and the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against it. Here, now, is one important test by which we may try the doctrines which we call the gospel, and which we preach. Do we, like the apostles, feel assured that we are right, and that those who essentially differ from us are essentially wrong? The Apostles felt so. Their love to the souls of men constrained them to of some, say 66 even weeping, they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." In all their writings we find no weak indifference to error, no apology for infidels, but a constant asseveration of the truth, with warnings against those who pervert it. It is nothing to the purpose that bigots and persecutors feel that they are right and others wrong. This of itself, it is true, does not prove a man to be right; yet he cannot be right without this. For an essential feature of the gospel is, that it makes those who believe in it feel and teach that it is essential to salvation. If a man says to us, I preach the gospel, we must require of him this proof, that he believes his gospel to be essential to our salvation, and he must proceed to warn us, if we reject it. Christ and his apostles do this. A minister must warn and threaten me, or he does not preach the gospel contained in Scripture. If we do not feel and teach that our faith is essential to salvation, and do not, therefore, preach against false doctrine and false teachers, it is a sign that we have felt but little, if any, of the power of the gospel. If the

gospel which I preach be not essential to the salvation of others, it cannot save my soul. I am, then, a blind leader of the blind. If so, I may not perish alone. Some of my congregation may perish with me, and their blood will be required at my hand.

I turn from this train of thought to one more grateful to our feelings, and will close by alluding to the example of assured faith in the words of the text: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." Here is assurance of historical and experimental faith. Assurance of experimental faith necessarily implies assurance respecting the truth of the gospel. Our occupation as ministers affords the best of opportunities for both of these; that is, to know the truth, and to enjoy its practical effects upon our own souls. A minister of the gospel ought to be a man of great faith, both as it regards his belief of the gospel, and his assurance of a personal interest in the Redeemer. If we feel the truth of one half the exhortations we address to others, we cannot fail to have assurance of faith in every sense of the word. Thus a Christian minister ought to be the happiest man on earth. He enjoys every means of knowing the truth, and of applying it to his own heart, and of profiting by the experience of others. His study, the sick-room, the house of mourning, the prayer-meeting, the pulpit, afford him the best advantages to be eminent in faith, and a partaker here in a large measure, of the glory which shall be revealed. If we believe all which we say to others, we, as ministers, of course expect to be exceedingly happy in heaven. We have had our minds and hearts cultivated, we are admitted to the very best society on earth, our thoughts and feelings are associated with things into which angels desire to look, we are laborers together with God, ministers of Christ, and "if we suffer, we shall also reign with him." A distinguished fellow-servant of ours once said, "If we only felt what joys are laid up for us in heaven, we should clap our hands and say, I am a minister of Christ! I am a minister of Christ!" Let us only put in exercise that faith which we prescribe to our fellow-Christians, and then we shall not wonder at the assured faith of that great believer, Hugo, which he once expressed in such words as these: "I eat secure, I drink secure, I sleep secure, as though I had passed the day of death, avoided the day of judgment, and escaped the torments of hell

fire. I play and laugh as though I were already triumphing in the kingdom of God." If there be covenant transactions between us and Christ, such as are implied in the text, if we know whom we have believed, and are persuaded that he is able to keep that which we have committed unto him against that day, our hearts will respond as we hear Paul say, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice." Soon, as an early Christian once said, we shall see that adorable head which was crowned with thorns for us." Soon, very soon, from those hands which were nailed to the tree for us, we shall receive that crown which the Lord, the righteous Judge shall give us in that day, and not to us only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

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The occasion admonishes me to say, If, from that fulness of joy you should look back upon a desolate companion and your fatherless children, bereaved not only of you, but of their former means of support, may your heart be comforted with the thought that you bestowed upon some like them, who were tasting the bitter cup of sorrow, a token of your sympathy this day.

May it be the peculiar happiness of those who have known each other here as ministers, in joys and sorrows, in counsel or in controversy, to meet in heaven. Some will be there whom we may not expect to see, and some will fail whose absence will astonish us. May we meet there our beloved and venerable friend, whose presence and voice we miss to-day,* but who will always be pleasantly associated in our minds with this Convention. His face is a benediction; must it be changed into an admonition? That "reverend head must lie as low as ours." It constrains us each to ask himself, Am I a Christian? I am a minister of Christ. I was, or should have been, a Christian before I was a minister; and when at death I cease to be a minister, the great question with me will be, Am I a Christian? Do I know what the gospel is from my own experience? Have I committed my soul to Christ, and is he keeping that precious trust for me against that day? Then "take heed to thyself and to thy doctrine; continue in them; for in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee." Amen.

Rev. John Pierce, D. D., of Brookline, confined at home, as it is feared, with his last illness.

JOHN FOSTER'S LETTER.

A LETTER OF THE CELEBRATED JOHN FOSTER TO A YOUNG MINISTER, ON THE DURATION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT: with an Introduction and Notes, consisting chiefly of Extracts from Orthodox Writers, and an Earnest Appeal to the American Tract Society in regard to the Character of its Publications. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company. 1849. Pp. 119.

THIS pamphlet is anonymous, and we have no knowledge of its authorship; we can speak of it, therefore, with the more freedom. It commences with an explanatory statement copied from Ryland's Life of John Foster, respecting the celebrated letter of Mr. Foster on the subject of future punishment, and is followed by eight pages of extracts from Orthodox reviewers, and others, testifying to the general soundness of Mr. Foster's religious opinions, his great talents, the deliberateness and fixedness of his views with regard to future punishment, his consistent piety notwithstanding his opinions on this subject of future punishment, and his continued good standing in the ministry and Christian Church to the close of his life.

Then follows the Letter of Mr. Foster, which it was supposed would have the more weight with the reader by means of the preceding testimonials to his ability and piety; and also with the managers of the American Tract Society, whose names are printed at the head of the letter which closes the pamphlet, and which is intended as a remonstrance against some of their publications, such as the works of Baxter, Alleine, Saurin, and the authoress of the Peep of Day. In one place the author quotes from these works several hundred expressions on the subject of future punishment, arranging them in alphabetical order, and making an appalling show of terms and expressions on the subject of future punishment.

The whole design and plan of the book may be stated in these words: The Rev. John Foster thought that endless punishment does violence to our instinctive feelings. Hence the American Tract Society should suppress those expressions in their books; or reject the books themselves, which convey, in such appalling forms, the idea that the future punishment of the wicked is to be fearfully severe, and without end.

Many things are said in connection with this main design and argument which it is not important to notice. The great stress of the writer is laid on this, that Mr. Foster could not bring his feelings to admit the endlessness of future punishment. Our chief design in noticing the pamphlet before us will be answered by examining the letter of Mr. Foster.

To

Many of our readers have read this celebrated letter. those who have not read it, and indeed to those who have, the following epitome may not be unacceptable.

A young minister, the Rev. E. White, of Hereford, England, wrote to Mr. Foster for his views on the duration of future punishment. Mr. Foster replied, (Sept. 24, 1841,) saying, (and the remark should be borne in mind,) that he had made much less research into what had been written on this subject, than his young friend seemed to have done, and perhaps had been "too content to let an opinion or impression admitted in early life, dispense with protracted inquiry and various reading." P. 13. "The general, not very far short of universal, judgment of divines in affirmation of the doctrine of eternal punishment must be acknowledged a weighty consideration. It is a very fair question, Is it likely that so many thousands of able, learned, benevolent and pious men, should all have been in error? And the language of Scripture is formidably strong; so strong, that it must be an argument of extreme cogency that would authorize a limited interpretation." P. 13. Nevertheless, he declares himself not convinced of the doctrine by these considerations, and the reason is, that in his view," the stupendous idea of eternity," (P. 14,) is a sufficient answer to all direct proofs on the subject.

He then proceeds to expatiate on the idea of eternity. In grand and awful forms of thought he illustrates this "stupendous idea" of never-ending existence; he carries us along the trackless wastes of futurity till we are bewildered, and we cease to feel the addition of other millions of ages to the already inconceivable extent, and billions, trillions, quadrillions of centuries make no more impression on us than tens or units. He then calls upon us to conceive of a human soul subjected to a state of suffering for such a period, which, however, compared with the duration yet to come, is not so much as a drop to the sea.

Dividing the ages, so to speak, of eternal punishment, by the sins of thought, word and deed, committed by each transgressor