tions, to do with duration of being. Immortality is not a business of right and wrong. It hangs by constituted tenure. It belongs not to any province of law. It is an established order of nature. It simply regards existence. We may well and deeply consider all moral rules and proportions. These researches concern man. They may be converted to his wellbeing. There we must stop. He is man. He is immortal. Over that he can have no control. It is independent of him. He is not consulted on that arrangement. He is "made thus." It is a passive effect. But his conduct is the subject of responsibility. may be what he will. That is his question. It is his only business. It is in his keeping and power. The question of duration is strictly detached from all that is moral,-it is exclusively physical!

It

LECTURE VIII.

แ

FOR THUS SAITH THE LORD; BEHOLD, THEY WHOSE JUDGEMENT WAS NOT TO DRINK OF THE CUP HAVE ASSUREDLY DRUNKEN; AND ART THOU HE THAT SHALL ALTOGETHER GO UNPUNISHED? THOU SHALT NOT GO UNPUNISHED, BUT THOU SHALT SURELY DRINK OF IT."

JEREMIAH xlix. 12.

It is an overpowering reflection !-but we have sometimes emboldened ourselves to inquire, What would bring relief and support to the lost in hell? What could allay the load of their despair? What could dull the gnawing of that worm? What could soften the keenness of that flame ? And two considerations have raised themselves in our mind as those which, could they be indulged, might yield the assuagement that we had ventured to suppose. Torment, under the influence of such considerations, would lose its sharpest severity: the worm would be unfanged, the fire would be appeased, and endurance might brave them!

The first consideration we should demand is, that the sufferer of the doom might feel that it was inevitable. The idea of fate sets us free from the sense of blame.

The wicked often resort even now to this subterfuge, and find ease in this excuse: "We are delivered to do these abominations." Yet they know better. Otherwise their heart would be more quiet: it, at least, would wrap itself in a sullen peace. And did this conviction make its way into those abodes of darkness, did it there find hold, that no different course, that none other form of character, that none other stress of effort, could have prevented that which is suffered there, that it was irreversibly ordained, that it was inexorably decreed, they who were charged with guilt would be self-acquitted, the whole responsibility of personal conduct would cease to hang around the conscience, and those spirits with a strong rebound would defy and conquer the circumstances of a condition which no pains nor determination could have averted, by a resolved abandonment to that stern grasp in which they were held passive, and from which there is no escape. It would be joy to those captives, let them only think, We are the victims of ruthless destiny!

The second consideration which might subdue the fierceness of infernal agonies, would be that they are undeserved. Punishment is related to crime. The doer of the wrong knows the penalty which he incurs. Whatever he may think, society has adjudged the relation between the wrong and the penalty. That which may be undue in human legislation cannot be supposed of the Divine. God loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. All his laws are based on

essential, eternal, rectitude.

And were it possible for

the lost to persuade themselves that aught of caprice entered into their sentence, that the minutest moral distinction was slighted in it, that it was dealt in cruelty,―would they not, in a new revolt, rise up against the injustice and tyranny, and be even soothed by the assurance that the wrong was done to them; that they were the injured and the aggrieved; that, though the power was against them, the claim and the right were theirs; that though crushed, they could challenge the universe to their vindication, and enlist its sympathy on their behalf? It would be joy to those prisoners, let them only think, We are the victims of arbitrary injustice!

Spirit has not, however, passed into such regions with either of these consolations, nor found them there! Spirit never, in fearful soliloquy, spake : Necessity wrought this chain, and Malignity locked it! Spirit never exclaimed: Despite of myself I was dragged hither, and here in violation of all truth and equity I am chained!

It is the converse of these thoughts that deepens the outer darkness, that accumulates the horrors of

the pit. "It need not have been." What a selfupbraiding! "Justice had none other recourse." What a self-condemnation! "Why would ye die ?" is the rebuke for ever in their ear! "We indeed justly," is the confession for ever on their tongue!

These principles cannot be too strongly established in our minds. There is no future suffering, any more than present, which is not the desert of sin and the infliction of justice. It is the forewarned consequence

of the freest and most spontaneous action. Suffering is punishment. "Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins ?" Suffering, though always connected with sin, may, in a probationary state, be overruled to good. Taking place beneath the operation of the Christian redemption which repeals the curse, it may become healing and corrective. In itself it has no such tendency and design. It is judicial recompense of moral evil. And when we contemplate future suffering, we mark unallayed punishment. There is none other purpose nor use. But then, though it be mere punishment, it supposes, and itself asserts, a perfect benevolence of ends; for it is goodness in its entire opposition to sin, and it always, in its warnings, exposed and deterred the creature's only misery."

Among the theories of a contrary character we may notice that which assumes a high philosophical rank. It is the system of Necessarian optimism. It regards evil as the means of good. Man is placed in circumstances which are his only motives. These cannot but induce that for which this theory may find another name, but which we call sin. He is, then, placed in circumstances in which he must suffer and amend.

a "Ah! Seigneur

dans vous, je ne vois que des sujets de confiance, parce que je ne vois dans vous que bonté et que miséricorde. Mais comme cette bonté est essentiellement opposée au péché, et que, sans changer de nature, toute bonté qu'elle est, elle est justice, elle est colère, elle est vengeance à l'égard du péché, voyant ce péché dans moi, il faut que je craigne jusques à votre bonté, jusques à votre miséricorde même.”—Bourdaloue: Sur le Jugement Dernier.