wanted, it will be brought forth. And thus it is that Peter speaks in the very same chapter. He says the salvation that is reserved in heaven is a 66 salvation that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter i. 13). We shall see in future lectures that it is not bestowed upon any until its manifestation at "the appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," of whom it is said that "His Reward is WITH HIM" (Rev. xxii. 12; Isaiah xl. 10). The phrases in question indicate in a general way that "Salvation cometh from the Lord;" and, the Lord being in heaven, it cometh from heaven, and, being yet unmanifested, can properly be said to be at present in heaven. But, on the specific question of whether men go to heaven or not, the evidence is conclusive, as showing that no son of Adam's race is offered entrance to the holy and inaccessible precincts of the residence of the Deity. "God dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto" (1 Tim. vi. 16). The emphatic declaration of Christ is, "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is in heaven" (John iii. 13). Agreeably to this declaration, we have no record in the Scriptures of anyone having entered heaven. Elijah was removed from the earth: so was Enoch; but Christ's statement forbids us to suppose that they were conducted to the "heaven of heavens which " 'belong to the Lord." The statement that they went "into heaven" does not necessarily imply that they went to the abode of the Most High. "Heaven is used in a general sense as designating the firmament over our heads, which we know is a wide expanse, while "the heaven of heavens points to the region inhabited by Deity. If it be asked, Where are they? the answer is, No one knows ; because there is no testimony on the subject beyond that of Christ's which proves that they did not go to the heaven of which he was speaking.

And especially is it true that there is no record in the Scriptures of any dead man having gone to heaven. The record is the other way—that the dead are in their graves, knowing nothing, feeling nothing, being nothing, awaiting that recall from oblivion which is promised by resurrection. Of David it is specifically declared that he has not attained to the sky translation which in funeral sermons is affirmed of every righteous soul. And David, remember, was a man after God's own heart,' and certain, therefore, of admission into heaven at death, if anybody were. Peter says—

"Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day FOR DAVID IS NOT ASCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS" (Acts ii. 29, 34).

This is emphatic enough. If you say Peter is speaking of David's body, then it proves that Peter recognised David's body as David, and the departed life as the property of God taken back again. Again, let Paul speak of the " great cloud of witnesses," who have passed away-the faithful saints of old times, who are supposed to be before the throne of God, "inheriting the promises," and he tells us

"These all died in faith, NOT HAVING RECEIVED THE PROMISES, but having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them. and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb. xi. 13).

And in the same chapter, verses. 39-40, he repeats

"These all having obtained a good report through faith. received not the promises. God having provided some better thing for us that they without us SHOULD NOT BE MADE PERFECT."

Let us now consult those cases in which consolation is administered in the Scriptures in reference to the dead. You know the doctrines. which are enforced with such peculiar urgency by the religious teachers of the present day, when they have to discourse of the departed, such as in the funeral sermons, by way of

You

"improving the occasion." will find a great contrast to these in Scriptural cases of consolation concerning the dead. When Marth: told Jesus that Lazarus was dead, he did not tell her he was better where he was. He said (John xi. 23), "Thy brother shall rise again."

When death had removed some of the Thessalonian believers, the survivors, who had evidently calcu lated upon their living until the coming of the Lord, were filled with sorrow. In this condition, Paul writes to comfort them. Suppose a minister of the nineteenth century had had the duty to perform, what would have been his language? "You must rejoice, my friends, for those who are dead, for they are gone to glory. They are delivered from the trials and vexations of this life, and are promoted to a felicity they could never experience in this vale of tears. It is selfish of you to grieve: you ought rather to be glad that they have reached the haven of eternal rest.

But what says Paul? Does he tell them their friends are happy in heaven? This was the time to say so if it were true, but no; his words

are

"I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them who are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. (When?) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent (or precede) them who are asleep: For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thess. iv. 13.18).

The second coming of Christ and the resurrection are the events to which Paul directs their minds for consolation. If it be true that the

righteous go to their reward immediately after death, Paul would certainly have suggested such a

consolation, instead of referring to the remote, and (in the orthodox view) comparatively unattractive event of the resurrection. The fact that he does not do so, is circumstantial proof that it is not true.

The earth we inhabit is the destined arena in which Jehovah's great salvation will be manifested. Here, subsequently to the resurrection, will the reward be conferred and enjoyed. There is no point more clearly established than this by the specific language of Scripture testimony. Old and New Testament agree. Solomon declares, "Behold the righteous shall be recompensed IN THE EARTH (Prov. xi. 31). Christ says

Blessed are the meek; for they shall INHERIT THE EARTH " (Matt. v. 5).

In Psalm xxxvii. 9-11, the Spirit, speaking through David, says—

"Evil-doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall INHERIT THE EARTH. For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be; yea thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

Some corroboration is to be drawn from the following promise to Christ, of which his people are fellow-heirs with him.

"I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE EARTH for thy possession" (Psalm ii. 8).

In celebrating the approaching possession of this great inheritance, the redeemed are represented as singing

"Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue, and people and language; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign ON THE EARTH (Rev. v. 9, 10).

And the end of the present dispensation is announced in these words :

"The Kingdoms of THIS WORLD are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever (Rev. xi. 15).

"

Finally, the angel of the Most High God, in announcing to Daniel,

the prophet, the same consummation of things, says

"The kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom UNDER the whole heavens, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him" (Dan. vii. 27).

Without going into the particular question involved in these passages of Scripture, which will be considered afterwards, it is sufficient to remark that they unmistakably prove that it is on the earth that we are to look for the development of that divine programme of events, so clearly indicated in the Scriptures of truth, which is to result in "glory to God in the highest, and ON EARTH peace, goodwill toward men.

DESTINY OF THE WICKED.

In the

If we seek for information on this question at the religious systems, we shall be told of an unfathomable abyss of fire, filled with malignant spirits of horrid shape, in which are reserved the most exquisite torments for those who have been displeasing to God in their mortal state. foreground of the lurid picture, we shall see cursing fiends mocking the damned: men and women wringing their hands in eternal despair; and stretching away on all sides, and down to the deepest depth, a weltering ocean of blackness, fire, and horrible confusion. We shall

be told that God, in His eternal counsels of wisdom and mercy, has decreed this awful triumph of Devilry! Do we believe it? There are certain elementary truths, that, by an almost intuitive logic, exclude the possibility of its being true. If God is the merciful Being of order, and justice, and harmony, exhibited in the Scriptures, how is it possible that, with all his foreknowledge and omnipotence, he can permit ninetenths of the human race to come into existence with no other destiny than to be tortured? The Calvinistic theory has, of course, its answer, but its answer is mere words; it does not touch, or alter, or even soften the difficulty; the difficulty-the

dreadful difficulty

[LECT. III.

remains to agonize the believing mind that really grasps what the popular idea of hell-torments means. The effect on the majority of reflecting minds is disastrous, in a too easy revolt against the Scriptures. Rather than believe such a doctrine, most men reject the Bible altogether, and even dispense with God from their creed, and take refuge in the calm, if cheerless, doctrines of Rationalism. This is what many are driven to, in unfortunate ignorance of the fact that the Bible is not responsible for the doctrine. It is a pagan fiction. It ought to be known, for the comfort of all who have been perplexed with the awful dogma, and who have yet hesitated to renounce it, in fear of being also compelled to cast aside the Word of God, that it is as thoroughly unscriptural as it is distressingly dreadful.

,,

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The whole teaching of the Bible in regard to the destiny of the wicked is summed up in four words from the 37th Psalm, verse 20: "The wicked shall PERISH. Paul gives the explanation of this in Rom. vi. 23: "The wages of sin is DEATH.' Death, the extinction of being, is the pre-determined issue of a sinful course. "He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corrup tion (Gal. vi. 8). That reaping corruption is equivalent to death, is evident from Rom. viii. 13: "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall DIE.' Corruption results in death, so that the one is equal to the other. The righteous die, as well as the wicked; therefore, it is argued, there must be some other than physical death. The answer is that the death that all men die is not a judicial death—not the final death to be dealt to those who are responsible to judgment. Ordinary death but closes a man's mortal career. There is a SECOND death-final and destructive. unjust are to be brought forth, at Christ's appearing, for judicial arraignment, and their sentence is, that, after the infliction of such punishment as may be merited, they

The

the orthodox believer to say to the following

"And they (Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude), shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are GONE DOWN TO HELL WITH THEIR WEAPONS OF WAR and have laid their swords under their heads" (Ezek. xxxii. 27).

It is but necessary to ask if men's immortal souls take swords and guns with them when they "go to hell?" This may sound irreverent, but it shows the bearing of the passage. The hell of the Bible is a place to which military accoutrements may accompany the wearer. The nature and locality of this hell may be gathered from a statement only four verses before the passage quoted. "Asshur is there and all her company; his graves are about him, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about HER GRAVE. The references point to the Eastern mode of sepulture, in which a pit or cave was used for burial-the bodies of the dead being deposited in niches cut in the wall. As a mark of military honour, soldiers were buried with their weapons, their swords being laid under their heads They went down to "HELL with their weapons of

war.

It will be seen that hell is synonymous with the grave. This is proved, so far at least, as the Old Testament is concerned. The original word is sheol, which, in the abstract, means nothing more than a concealed or covered place. It is, therefore, an appropriate designation for the grave, in which a man is for ever concealed from view. Every use of the word "hell" in the Old Testament, will fall under this general explanation. As regards the New Testament, there is the same simplicity and absence of difficulty. The original word is, of course, different, being Greek instead of Hebrew; it is in nearly all cases, hades. That hades is equal to the Hebrew word sheol is shown by its employment as an equivalent for it in the Septuagint

(Greek) translation of the Hebrew Scriptures; and also in its use by the writers of the New Testament when they quote verses from the Old Testament where sheol occurs in the Hebrew. For instance, in David's prophecy of the resurrection of Christ, cited by Peter on the day of Pentecost ("Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell," c. v.), the word in Hebrew is sheol, and in Greek hades. In this instance, hell simply and literally means the grave, in view of which, we see the point of Peter's argument. Understood as the orthodox hell, there is no point in it at all; for the resurrection of the body has no point of connection with the escape of a so-called immortal soul from the abyss of popular superstition. A similar consideration arises upon I Cor. xv. 55; "O grave (hades) where is thy victory?" This is the exclamation of the righteous in reference to resurrection, as anyone may see on consulting the context. Our translators, perceiving this, instead of rendering hades by "hell,' have given us the more suitable word " grave"; but if hades may be translated " grave " here, it may, of course, be translated so anywhere else.

"

There is another word translated hell, which does not mean the grave, but which at the same time affords as little countenance to orthodox belief as hades. That word is Gehenna. It occurs in the following passages: Matt. v. 22, 29, 30; X. 28; xviii. 9; xxiii. 15, 33; Mark ix. 43, 45, 47; Luke xii. 5; Jas. iii. 6. The word ought not to be translated at all. It is a proper name, and like all other proper names, should have been transferred to the English version without alteration beyond the process known as 'Anglicisation." It is a Greek compound signifying the valley of the Son of Hinnom. Calmet in his Bible Dictionary, defining it, has the following: "GEHENNA or Gehennom, or valley of Hennom, or Valley of the Son of Hennom (see Josh. xv. 8; 2 Kings xxiii. 10), a valley