to have, through his corruptions, a strong recognition of, but in another quality, as temptations to attract him."

From about the period of his sixtieth year, Mr. Foster prepared little or nothing for the press. His last article in the Eclectic Review was published in 1839. From the year 1806 to that period he had written one hundred and eighty-five articles; sixtyone of these were collected and published in two volumes by Dr. Price, the Editor of the Eclectic, only twenty of which have been republished in this country. From the year 1830, we see the mind of this great writer mainly in his letters. They are filled with profound, solemn, interesting feeling and thought. He took great interest in political affairs, though necessarily a gloomy view. He had a most profound sense of the desperate depravity and selfishness of political intrigues, and an intense hatred of the domineering perniciousness of the Establishment.

. In what manner the shades of solemnity were folding and deepening over his soul in the prospect of the eternal world, and what was the ground of his hope for pardon and blessedness, in "the grand Futurity," a few short extracts from his letters will strikingly show. They reveal a solemn anxiety inconsistent with that dismissal of the doctrine of eternal punishment, of which we are to speak. "Whatever may be our appointed remaining time on earth," says he, in a letter in 1836, "we are sure it is little enough for a due preparation to go safely and happily forward into that eternal hereafter." In 1837, speaking of the death of a friend, "I have regretted to understand that she was a confirmed Socinian; greatly regretted it; for it does appear to me a tremendous hazard to go into the other world in that character. The exclu

sion from Christianity of that which a Socinian rejects, would reduce me instantly to black despair." "It is fearful to think what the final account must be at the award of infallible Justice, for the immense multitude of accountable creatures."

In a letter of retrospection, to a dear friend, in 1840, he says, "The pain of a more austere kind than that of pensiveness is from the reflection to how little purpose, of the highest order, the long years here, and subsequently elsewhere, have been consumed awayhow little sedulous and earnest cultivation of internal piety-how little even mental improvement-how little of zealous devotement to God and Christ, and the best cause. Oh, it is a grievous and sad reflection, and drives me to the great and only resource, say, God be merciful to me a sinner! I also most earnestly implore that in one way or another what may remain of my life may be better, far better, than the long protracted past. PAST! What a solemn and almost tremendous word it is, when pronounced in the reference in which I am repeating it!"

In 1841, confined with illness, he says, "The review of life has been solemnly condemnatory-such a sad deficiency of the vitality

of religion, the devotional spirit, the love, the zeal, the fidelity of conscience. I have been really amazed to think how I could-I do not say have been, content with such a low and almost equivocal piety, for I never have been at all content-but, how I could have endured it, without my whole soul rising up against it, and calling vehemently on the Almighty Helper to come to my rescue, and never ceasing till the blessed experience was attained. then the sad burden of accumulated guilt! and the solemn future! and life so near the end! O, what dark despair but for that blessed light, that shines from the Prince of Life, the only and the allsufficient Deliverer from the second death. I have prayed earnestly for a genuine, penitential, living faith on Him." There is much

And

work yet to be done in this most unworthy soul; my sole reliance is on Divine assistance, and I do hope and earnestly trust (trust in that assistance itself), that every day I may yet have to stay on earth will be employed as part of a period of persevering and I may almost say passionate petitions for the Divine Mercy of Christ, and so continue to the last day and hour of life, if consciousness be then granted."

Again, in 1842, "Within and without are the admonitions that life is hastening to its close. I endeavor to feel and live in conformity to this admonition; greatly dissatisfied with myself and my past life, and having and seeking no ground of hope for hereafter, but solely the all-sufficient merits and atonement of our Lord and Saviour. If that great cause of faith and hope were taken away, I should have nothing left."

In October, 1843, the very month of his death, he says to a friend, "I have now not the smallest expectation of surviving a very few months. The great and pressing business is therefore to prepare for the event. That is, in truth, our great business always; but is peculiarly enforced in a situation like mine. It involves a review of past life; and oh, how much there is to render reflection painful and alarming. Such a review would consign me to utter despair, but for my firm belief in the all-sufficiency of the mediation of our Lord." In his last letter to Mr. Hill, he says, "What would become of a poor sinful soul, but for that blessed, all-comprehensive sacrifice, and that intercession at the right hand of the Majesty on High?"

"Af

Of the same affecting and solemn character was the tenor of his last conversations. He frequently spoke of the value, and often turned the conversation on the subject of the separate state. ter the death of any friend, he seemed impatient to be made acquainted with the secrets of the invisible world. On one occasion of this kind, rather more than a twelvemonth before his own decease, he exclaimed, They don't come back to tell us! and then, after a short silence, emphatically striking his hand upon the table, he added, with a look of intense seriousness, But we shall know some time."

"Speaking of his weakness, to one of his two servants, who had lived with him for about thirty years, he mentioned some things, which he had not strength to perform; and then added, But I can pray, and that is a glorious thing. On another occasion he said to his attendant, Trust in Christ, trust in Christ! On another time the servant heard him repeating to himself the words, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Thus in the night, entirely alone, but Christ with him, October 16th, 1843, all that was mortal of a being most "fearfully and wonderfully made," slept peacefully, and expired.

We must now recur to that grand subject of interest in these volumes, on which we have already dwelt in part. We have referred to Mr. Foster's letter to a young minister on the eternity of future punishments, in which he attempted what he called a moral argument against it. This letter was written so late as the year 1841. But in the meantime, what shall we say of the moral argument in support of it, all the while working itself out in Mr. Foster's personal convictions as to the sole ground of safety in Eternity, and enforced so powerfully, with such impressive, such awful solemnity, in some of his writings? What a strange and unaccountable inconsistency for such a man in his letters, in his spontaneous convictions, in his practical writings, to be speaking of the second death, of the inevitableness of despair without reliance upon Christ, of the perdition in eternity, except there be that reliance, and at the same time instituting an argument, according to which there is really no second death, there can be no such thing as despair, and no possibility of perdition! According to which, if a man had asked Mr. Foster, Sir, what is that second death, of which you speak?" he must have answered, "I know nothing about it, except that it is not eternal, but is a mere introduction into everlasting life!" What has a man to do with despair, who believes that the whole human race will be everlastingly blessed, and who, if he reasons closely, will have to acknowledge that any prior discipline of human misery would but enhance the rapture of the blessedness, and might actually be a thing, in the long run, to be chosen?

The inconsistency of which we speak, appears more marvellous still, on comparing the letter to a young minister with Mr. Foster's Introductory Essays to Doddridge's Rise and Progress of religion in the soul. It would scarcely have been imagined that two productions, so dissimilar, so contrary, could have proceeded from the same writer. The whole solemnity and power of the Essay is owing to the doctrine of an endless retribution; take that away, and it is as a gaseous jelly, which sparkled with phosphorescence in the night, but becomes a cold putrid pulp in the day. Take away the belief of the reader in the writer's deep personal convictions of

the truth of what he is uttering, and you disenchant his pages of their power. It is the belief that the consequences impending are eternal, that creates that power. The very blade of Mr. Foster's keen weapon was forged in the fires of that endless perdition, which, in the letters to a young minister, he denies; its handle sparkles with gems that flash forth the warnings of insufferable ruin. He bids the soul tremble at the thought of dying unprepared; he makes it acknowledge that the "entirely depending interest of its futurity is vast and eternal." He bids it think of that existence during endless ages,-an existence to commence in a condition determined for happiness or misery by the state of mind which shall have been formed in this introductory period. He bids it regard the melancholy phenomenon of a little dependent spirit, voluntarily receding from its beneficent Creator, directing its progress away from the eternal source of light, and life, and joy, and that on a vain presumption of being under the comet's law, of returning at last to the sun!

He bids the man of the world remember that nothing will be gained, and ALL BE LOST, by refusing to think of it. He tells him that a preparation to meet God is that one thing, of which the failure is PERdition. He tells him that no tempest nor shock of an earthquake would affright him so much as this horrible neglect of his eternal salvation, if it could be suddenly revealed to him in full light. He speaks of the supreme interest of his existence, and of the whole question of safety or utter ruin, as depending. He speaks of the necessity now of " applying to the soul the redeeming principle, without which it will PERISH." He speaks of the madness of delay. "The possibility of dying unprepared takes all the value from even the highest probability that there will be prolonged time to prepare; plainly, because there is no proportion between the fearfulness of such a hazard, and the precariousness of such a dependence." He tells man that his corrupt nature, if untransformed in this world, must be miserable in the next. He tells him that the subject is one which he cannot let go, "without abandoning himself to the dominion of death." And he arrays the melancholy spectacle of a "crowd of human beings in prodigious, ceaseless stir to keep the dust of the earth in motion, and then to sink into it, while all beyond is darkness and desolation!" Now what is the meaning of all this? To suppose that these solemn adjurations were used merely to keep up an appearance of belonging to the orthodox faith on this subject, would be revolting in the extreme; it would make the reader throw the book from him in contempt and disgust; but to suppose that the author used such language because, though himself did not believe the truth which it would be held to convey, he nevertheless thought it would make the book more impressive-would be very little better. And what would have been the effect, if the author had prefaced the

work with something like the following announcement:-The writer of these pages does not believe in the doctrine assumed in the work to which they are introductory, namely, that the retributions of eternity are eternal, and holds very different ideas as to the mercy of the Universal Father, from those ordinarily held by the divines of Dr. Doddridge's mode of thinking. Nevertheless, something was necessary to give the work a credit and currency with those who hold his opinions; and besides, it must be confessed, that nothing but the idea of eternal consequences is of any weight either to bring men to religion or to keep them from vice. The effect of such a declaration, should the reader of the work keep it in view, would be almost ludicrous, if the subject itself were not too solemn for such an emotion; it would be powerfully neutralizing as to any deep impression; nor could any statement as to the author's belief in limited punishment retain under any efficacious impulse of amendment, the careless hearts to which the work was directed. It would be like attempting to hold a ship, that is dragging her anchor in a storm, by a kedge attached to her bulwarks.

What shall we say of the conflicting states of mind revealed in Mr. Foster's intensely interesting epistolary biography, and intensely powerful practical writings on this great subject? From the age of seventy we must revert back to the seed-time of his opinions, and we shall find the noxious root of a plant exhaling poison that grew into obstinate toughness, in spite of the accompanying growth of all gracious herbs. We have seen that Mr. Foster's mind, richly endowed as it was, seemed to make a disastrous pause in the comparative twilight of Divine truth. He seems to have felt it himself. And the clue to a solution in part may be found in the 21st letter in the biographical collection, in which Foster says he has just been reading an author, "who maintains with very great force of reasoning, that no man could, in any situation, have acted differently from what he has done." "Though I do not see how to refute his argument," says Foster, "I feel as if I ought to differ from his opinion. He refers to Jonathan Edwards as a powerful advocate of the same doctrine. He says such an expression as, I will exert myself, is absurd. It is an expression which, notwithstanding, I am inclined to repeat, as I view the wide field of duty before me."

That this book had a lasting effect upon Foster's state of mind and trains of opinion, is manifest from a letter written about a year after this date, in which he runs the circle of the reasoning of a perfect Necessitarian, and consoles himself, amidst his despairing views of the wretched state of man, with the maxim, Whatever is, is right. "If sin be traced up to its cause," says he, "that cause will be found to have been-the nature and state of man; but this cause was precisely so fixed by the Creator, and evident