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conferred in that same aion is inextinguishable. "Those who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world neither marry nor are given in marriage; NEITHER CAN THEY DIE ANY MORE, for they are equal unto the angels" (Luke xx. 35-36). "There shall be NO MORE DEATH" (Rev. xxi. 4). "They shall never perish" (John x. 28). "He will swallow up death__in victory" (Isaiah xxv. 8). "This mortal must put on IMMORTALITY (1 Cor. xv. 53). If immortality had an end, it would not be immortality. Aionian life is unending life. We hnow this, not from the use of the word aionian, which would tell us nothing on the subject, but from testimonies like those quoted.

The second class of those who do not attain to life, are those who, never having seen the light, have never rejected it, and for that reason cannot be liable to the judgment that awaits those who have. What

is to be done with them? It is common to suppose they will be among the saved. Who can entertain such a supposition in view of the fact that they are sinners, and already excluded from life? Besides, if darkness and unenlightenment be a passport into the kingdom of God, why did Jesus send Paul "to turn the Gentiles from darkness to light.

THAT THEY

MIGHT RECEIVE INHERITANCE among them who are sanctified?" (Acts xxvi. 18). If salvation in barbarism is certain, it would be better to let men remain in ignorance than imperil their eternal destiny by the esponsibilities of knowledge. We must remember that the very circumstances that preclude the class in question from being rejectors of the Messiah, also prevent them from

"As

accepting him in whom alone is hope and life. They have none of the responsibilities of the rejectors of the gospel, but they have also none of the privileges of its enlightened and obedient believers. What then is to become of them? Paul answers the question in Romans ii. 12: many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law." Paganism, heathenism, idiotcy, and infantile incapability are amenable to no law. Therefore, resurrection does not take place in their case. Death has passed upon them under the only law they were ever related to, viz., the law of Adam; and they sleep, never to be disturbed. Their position is described in the following passage from Isaiah xxvi. 14—

"They are dead, they SHALL NOT LIVE, they are deceased, they SHALL NOT RISE; therefore, hast thou visited and DESTROYED them, and caused their MEMORY TO PERISH."

A similar declaration is made in Jeremiah li. 57, in regard to the aristocracy of Babylon, who belonged to the identical class of whom we are speaking—

"I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her captains and her rulers, and her mighty men, and they shall sleep ▲ PERPETUAL SLEEP, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the Lord of Hosts."

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God is just, and in this His justice is made manifest. He could not punish them with justice, and He could not reward them with justice; therefore He puts them aside.

This completes the sum of what has to be advanced in reference to the conditional nature of immortality, as a gift to be bestowed at the resurrection. The proposition is plain, and the evidence conclusive. May it be the happy lot of all who read these pages to inherit the glorious gift.

JUDGMENT TO COME

AN

RESPONSIBLE

N examination of the Bible will show that Christendom is astray on nothing more than on the subject of judgment to come. The common idea of "judgment to come, is that at a certain time, popularly known as the "last day,' God will bring every human being to individual account-that heaven will be emptied, and hell emptied, of their countless myriads of souls, which will be re-united to former bodies (resurrected to receive them) and added to earth's living population and brought to judgment. There is no exception to this rule in orthodox minds. does not seem to strike them as a strange thing that there should be a judgment day for anyone, if every case is settled at the occurrence of death. Neither does it appear to them

their

It

any difficulty that the manifestly irresponsible classes of mankind should be brought to judgment. "Heathens," pagans, barbarians of the lowest type, human brutes of all sorts, idiots, infantseveryone-absolutely every human soul that has ever had a being, in what condition soever it may have existed-according to current theology, will be resuscitated, and brought to account. That there are difficulties-great and insuperablein the way of such an idea, can be attested by the agonising efforts of many a thoughtful mind. That the idea itself is thoroughly unscriptural we propose now to show.

We have in reality done so in previous lectures. But the matter

is deserving of a closer and more systematic consideration. We have quoted statements that declare the non-resurrection of those who, being unenlightened, are non-responsible. Further evidence is found in David's description of the position occupied by the class in question (Psalm xlix. 6-20).

"They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him (for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever); that he should still live for ever, and not see corruption. For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations nevertheless, man

being in honour abideth not, he is like the beasts that perish. This their way is their folly; yet their posterity approve their sayings. LIKE SHEEP THEY ARE LAID IN THE GRAVE; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. (Ye that fear my name shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet-Mal. iv. 3). And their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for he shall receive me. Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dieth, he shall carry nothing awayhis glory shall not descend after him, though while he lived, he blessed his soul and men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself; He shall go to the generation of his fathers; THEY SHALL NEVER SEE LIGHT. Man that is in honour and understandeth not, Is LIKE THE BEASTS THAT PERISH.

"

This is reasonable. It would be unreasonable to bring the brutish of mankind to individual account. Judgment has its basis in responsibility, and responsibitity is a

question of circumstances and capacity. Human beings in a state of barbarism may have the latent capacity to be responsible; but this does not make them responsible for the simple reason that the capacity is latent. The actual condition of mind which gives the ground of responsibility does not exist. This is the case with children. They possess reason and moral capacity in the germ, but because these qualities are not developed, by universal law they are held not responsible in human matters. Is God less just than man?

Human responsibility to the Deity primarily arises from human capacity to discern good and evil, and power to act upon discernment. Beasts are not accountable either to man or God, because they are destitute of the power to discriminate or choose. They act under the power of blind impulse. Idiots are in the same category of irresponsible agents in the degree of their incapacity, and many men not considered idiots are little better as regards their power of acting from rational choice.

The nature and extent of human amenability to a future account can only be apprehended in view of the relations subsisting between God and man, as disclosed in the history presented to us in the Scriptures. Apart from this, all is speculation, theory, and uncertainty. Philosophy is at fault, because it disregards the record. Accept the record, and all is simple and intelligible. The progenitor of the race was made amenable to consequences placed within the jurisdiction of his will in a certain matter. Disobedience occurred and the law came into force: Adam and all his posterity came under the power of the law of sin and death, which was destined in their generations to sweep them away like the grass of the earth. Had God intended no further dealings with the race, responsibility would have ended here. The gravepenalty would have closed the account; and human life, if indeed

it had continued on the face of the earth in the absence of divine interposition, would have been the unredeemed tale of sorrow, which it is in the experience of all who are "without God and without hope in the world," unburdened, it may be, with the responsibilities but unalleviated by the hopes and affections with which the day-spring from on high hath visited us, and lightened this place of darkness.

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But, in His great mercy, Jehovah conceived intentions of benevolence which He is working out in His own wise way. He did not-in haste and blunder, as our short-sighted philosophers insist His goodness ought to have prompted Him to do,-at once and summarily, and without condition, reprieve the sentenced culprit. This would have been to violate those deep-laid principles of law which guide all the Deity's operations, "in nature and in grace," and preserve the conditions of harmony throughout the universe. It would have been to perform a work not of mercy, but of destruction, confusion, and anarchy. The method of benevolence conceived in the divine mind was intended to work beneficence toward man comformably with the law that had constituted him a death-stricken sinner, a law which involves "glory to God in the highest " as well as "goodwill toward men." This intention necessitated those successive dispensations of His will which the world has witnessed in times past, and which have rescued both human existence and human responsibility from the bottomless profound to which the law of Eden consigned them. The enunciation of His purpose in promise and prediction, and the declaration of His law in precept and statute, re-opened relations between God and man, and revived the moral responsibility which otherwise would have perished. It is, however, a divine principle that this result is limited to those who come within the actual sphere of opera

tions.

created by contact with divine law in a tangible and authorised form, holds good in every form of human relation to the Almighty. Noah's immediate family were within the pale of the divine cognition, and responsibility in reference to another life may arise out of that; but their descendants wandered far out of the way of righteousness and understanding, sinking below moral responsibility, degenerating to the level of the beast, and establishing "those "times of ignorance" throughout the world, which we have Paul's authority for saying were "winked at."

In the call of Abraham, the member of an idolatrous family, but who possessed the latent disposition to be faithful, God arrested the tendency to repeat the universal corruption of antediluvian times. The germ of a more direct responsibility was planted among men by his election, and by the bestowal of promises upon him which had ultimate reference to the whole of

of

the race. Abraham individually, while constituted a man of privilege, was also constituted a man responsibility. Abram, the idolater, was his own-his own to live, like the insect of the moment-his own to die and disappear like the vapour. Abraham, the called of God, was no longer his own, but bought with the price of God's promises. He entered upon a higher relation of being. He was exalted to a higher destiny, and had imposed upon him Godward obligations, unknown to his former condition. Success or failure in the ordering of his life, was of much greater moment than before. Faith and obedience would constitute him the heir of the world, and the subject of resurrection to immortality: unbelief would make him obnoxious to a severer and farther-reaching displeasure than fell upon Adam. In this respect, the children of Abraham by faith, that is, those who walk in the steps of the faith which Abraham had ..being yet uncircumcised (Rom. iv.

12), who, being Christ's, are Abraham's seed (Gal. iii. 29), through believing the gospel, and being baptised into Christ, are like their father. By nature children of wrath, even as others, they were in the days of their ignorance "" without God and without hope in the world (Eph. ii. 12), " strangers from the covenants of promise" (ibid), "aliens from the life of God, through the ignorance that was in them" (Eph. iv. 18), living without law, and destined, as the result of that condition, to perish without law in Adam; inheriting death without resurrection -death without remedy; having neither the privileges nor the responsibilities of a divine relationship. But when called from darkness to light, by the preaching of the gospel, whether they submit to that gospel or refuse submission, they are "not their own." They neither live nor die to themselves as formerly. They have passed into a special relationship to Deity, in which their lives, good or evil, come under divine supervision, and form the basis of a future accountability, unknown in their state of darkness, at which God winked.

The law of faith established by the promises made to Abraham, constituted a centre, around which responsibilities of this description developed themselves. All who acquired Abraham's faith came under Abraham's responsibilities. Doubtless, many entered this position in the course of the Mosaic ages. The law was added because of trans

gression (Gal. iii. 19), and the purpose of its addition is indicated in its being styled a schoolmaster. Its mission was to teach the first lessons of Jehovah's supremacy and holiness. It was not designed as a system through which men might acquire deliverance from Adamic bondage. Its purpose was purely preliminary and provisional, having reference to that result in its ultimate bearings, but not intended directly to develop it. Paul's comment on it is as follows: "If there had been