force of virtuous restraint, we more than suspect the preponderating mass, who had no fear of God before their eyes, though ready to fight for their traditional opinions and their idolised teachers, found a license for wicked behaviour in the creed of denial in which they were reared. The words of the Baptist, and of the "Master " Himself, lately quoted, are too pregnant with meaning to be explained away. Their guiding maxim was: "Let us eat and drink "-gratify our animal instincts-" for to-morrow we die". to-morrow, it is done with us for ever! Nothing is to be gained in the future, nothing to be dreaded in its awful depths; and with human nature as it is ordinarily constructed, having a balance so disproportionate between its controlling forces and selfish desires, we can predict, without aspiring to the character of seers, what indulging the animal desires in too many cases would mean.

Such being the moral photograph of the Sadducees, we are unable to avoid the conclusion that when those accustomed to push themselves, or to be pushed, into the foreground, addressed their question to our Lord, they were not without guile. All the evidence conflicts with the supposition that they were really wanting to have a difficulty removed from their minds. The narrative before us, we grant, leaves this uncertain; though, had we seen the airs they assumed, and heard the tone of their speech, and watched the play of their countenances, we might have required no other testimony against them. The proof, however, from other sources is too strong. They came to perplex Jesus-to turn the laugh against Him; and a multitude of spectators being in attendance with open ears, they naturally looked upon it as a choice opportunity to win a triumph at His expense. They knew "a resurrection" formed one of His conspicuous doctrines, and as it struck at the root of Sadducism, they rose full armed to save their system ere it was overthrown and cut in pieces before their eyes.

II. THE QUESTION OF THE SADDUCEES.

The narrative on which the question was based need not be repeated, though it ought to be called to mind at this stage of our progress. According to it, the husbands in succession died, and "last of all the woman died also." Already has it been explained that the Sadducees accepted death in the most literal signification of the term, as involving nothing less than a return to perfect insensibility. We do not intermeddle exactly here with the appended notion that this state of non-being was to continue during ceaseless ages. We can make no advance till the words employed in their narration are comprehended; that is, till we understand their estimate of death, for thereby we possess the surest guide and only key to the exact and underlying meaning of the question which the domestic story introduces. The same term, death, for example, may hold a different idea, as used by one speaker, from what it

contains or represents when employed by a second. Hence the importance of having language precisely defined, especially in such a momentous interview as the one we are attempting to understand. Let us pursue this thought for a moment longer.

When the Sadducees affirmed the persons alluded to DIED, we have a distinct conception of their meaning. But when one educated in the now prevailing opinion informs us a certain individual is dead, would not the idea embodied in the phrase be widely different from the Sadducean doctrine? When analysed, it would be resolved partly into literal death-that is, of the body; and partly into a liberation-that is, of the soul from the corruptible organism, permitting the mysterious essence, supposed to be the seat of human identity and personality, to remain still conscious of itself, and observant of outward things, pleasant or the reverse. Nay, it would take this vastly heightened significance, that in certain circumstances the soul has departed to the acme of bliss, and in other conditions to the most tragic intensity of woe. Verily, to a Sadducee, a strange picture of death! How different from his own conception, that the man, the soul, has gone down to "Sheol," the abode of silence and night! He had no thought of liberation in his mind. To him, death was expulsion from life in a complete and melancholy sense: and this we gather, not from the word death alone, but from the circumstance of his denying a resurrection; his denying also the existence of angel and spirit, and from accounts of the tenets of the sect furnished by history, quite reliable, though uninspired. Right or wrong, such, without an atom of misrepresentation, was his faith. So you gather that the term DEATH may express your ideas, if you side with the popular theology, and the Sadducean one likewise; and though covered and enclosed by the same word, they are confessedly at a long distance from being identical.

And now we beg to remark, that so far as DEATH is concerned their notion bore a striking resemblance, to say the least of it, to the teaching of the Bible in their possession. A rapid survey of quotations from the Old Testament will make this apparent, and our only request of the reader is patience and candour while they are brought forward.

(To be continued.)

THE END OF ALL EVIL.*

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away."-Rev. xxi. 4.

ET me call your attention to the opening chapter of all history, the beginning of the Mosaic cosmography, the revelation which

* A Sermon by the Editor. From the Reporter's manuscript.

God gave to Moses in order that he might give it to the world. You must have observed that almost every successive act of creative power is followed by this verdict: "And God saw that it was good." Six times that verdict is given; and then the seventh includes them all, thus: "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Now, a thinking man must make something out of that. Is it possible, let us ask, before turning to our Scriptural proofs, is it possible that the Almighty and Omniscient Creator could have borne such testimony to His own creative acts separately, and then as an emphatic approval to His creative acts collectively, if He had seen (and He could not but see), that this world, which pleased Him so exceedingly, should be the scene of interminable woe-that man, the grand monarch of all other creatures in the world, should be an immortal sufferer and an immortal sinner? Could He build such a house, knowing that such would be the issue throughout the countless ages of eternity?

Brethren, the question is one of profound importance, and carries its logical issues through the whole thing from beginning to end. Could He see that that splendid dwelling-place, created purposely for the human race, should be the cradle of woe, the home of grief, the sport of devils, the prison-house of endless agony? Could He have made man if He intended that the vast majority of the race should be black and bad as the very Satan that spoiled the paradise where our first parents were placed? I, for one, cannot entertain the thought for a single moment; to my mind it amounts to open blasphemy. "Very good," and yet the devil to triumph, man to be a follower of Satan, law to be a mockery, the Gospel to be rejected, and Christ crucified!

"Christ!" Here we arrive at the grand remedy; this is the name of the glorious One who was to take up this "very good " world and make it vastly better, who was to lay hold of the heart of man and bring him into subjection to the authority of God, and by-and-bye so work out His scheme that one of His apostles in vision should say, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth." All tears wiped away, death destroyed, absence of all sorrow, no crying, neither pain for ever. Why? Why? "For the former things are passed away." The intermediate times have gone; the preparatory processes have been completed, and now the issue is before us. There have been two worlds: there will be a third. The first world was that before the flood; it was not destroyed, but renewed by the flood, the material remaining as it was, leaving marks of the great cataclysm which we find in thousands of spots upon the surface and in the crust of the earth to this day. This in which we now dwell, therefore, is the second world; and this world is kept in store for the action of purifying fires-probably only over the surface, so as to purify it-and then there will be the new world. The heavens and the earth which are now are kept in store

for the purifying and cleansing process, and we look for new heavens and a new earth characterised by this marvellous change: "wherein dwelleth righteousness."

Let me now call your attention to some very important Scriptural facts.

First of all, I should wish you to refer to Matt. xxv. 46, as I have something to say about it which I hope you will ponder well before you reject it. It is a description of what the translators are pleased to call the last judgment; instead of which it is a description of the first judgment, that is to say, the judgment in the commencement of the next dispensation. There have been many days of judgment in the world which are long past, which wound up the then circumstances of the nations or individuals that were involved in them. There was the judgment of the flood, of which men had 120 years' previous warning; that judgment swept away all but a family from the face of the earth, finally doing away with them. And then we have had the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah; their day of judgment is past, long past. We have had the judgments of Babylon and a number of empires and places; these are all past. But this is the first judgment under the present dispensation, or, rather, it takes place at the close of the present dispensation. And what are we told about it?"These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."

The

This passage has been quoted ten thousand times in support of the horrible theory of everlasting conscious suffering; it has also been quoted in support of the dogma of universal restoration. Now I shall endeavour to put before you the utter impossibility of either of these things being true. The Greek words translated "everlasting punishment are κόλασιν αἰώνιον. What do these words mean? I shall tell you presently. But, first of all, let me put before you the great fact that the doctrine of restoration or universalism cannot be based upon this passage, because it has to do only with mortal men, and not men in resurrection life. King sits upon His throne of glory, and deals judgment to the nations; you know He is expected as King; He shall come as King, and in this parable of the sheep and goats He calls before Him all nations and separates the righteous from the unrighteous; and the righteous shall enter into His glory, and the unrighteous shall enter into punishment. Is there anything analogous to this in the history of the world? Have you ever read of a conqueror calling before him the tribes and the nations that he had conquered and dealing with them thus― bringing the obedient and submissive under his sceptre and putting the rebels to fire and sword? I need not send you back through the world's history for instances of this, for they have been furnished in very recent times. Well, that is the idea; they are going into punishment. What does this word kóλao

mean? It means pruning, punishing. Now the universalists have said that as this word means pruning as well as punishing, these people are to be pruned and thus restored. Just take one of your flower-pots to-morrow and cut off a branch from the plant; what will take place? The branch will die. What will be the effect upon the flower? It will improve it. This process is cutting off the rebellious ones who will not submit to the sceptre of King Messiah; and a double result ensues. First cut off, punish, kill, destroy; and the effect of that is everlasting. The second result is that the loyal nations are vastly improved when they have got rid of these corrupt branches which are doing all the mischief f; the pruning, instead of being hurtful, cuts off the rebel and benefits the loyal subject; and that is what King Christ will do when He comes in glory to exercise judgment. Never again have the idea of resurrection in connection with this passage, which refers entirely to the King coming to His throne, a proof that He will pacify the world and bring in a rule of peace, of glorious peace, a reign of victory and conquest and the putting down of evil.

Now let me refer you to 2 Thess. i. 9 and we will go back to the 6th verse-" Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire"-when the Lord held His court on Sinai long ago, you know, He was attended by myriads of angels, unhappily translated "myriads of saints," and many people think they were the souls of departed men; but the word was angels, as we learn elsewhere, angels in ranks; when He returns He will have these ranks of angels-" taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." Here we have oλelpor aiúrior. Destruction, ruin, death; these are the definitions of the term used in 2 Thess. ; not life, but death.

2 Peter iii. 7-"But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men." This word anwλtiac signifies to kill, to destroy, to perish utterly. Now the men to whom we are indebted for our Greek lexicons had no peculiar doctrine to substantiate; they had as scholars to give the proper literal definitions of the terms. So that here in Peter and Thessalonians the meaning is absolute literal destruction of the person and of his life. "But," you say, "do not the Scriptures teach that the finally impenitent are to be tormented?" Let us see. I do find men tormented in the Book of Revelation (ix. 4-6), but I also find the fact that they are alive and in the flesh, and wish to die to escape the torment, and death flees from them. There is no instance in the Book of God of disembodied souls subjected to