the judgment of the last day. How then could he believe that all men would be saved! It was in this way: all men were to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ; at that place and time, the sinner and his sins would be separated: the sinner, compared to sheep, would be placed upon the right hand in glory; the sins, likened to goats, be sent away into everlasting punishment!!

But Mr. Winchester regarded this interpretation as absurd as would be the conduct of a sheriff who allows the criminal to escape, but very gravely presents the coat of the guilty to the court, with the request that that might be tried and punished. He asserted that the passage was to be understood literally to signify a punishment of such terrific duration, as to justify the term endless; a punishment, which should run on for millions and millions of ages. He called upon the impenitent to avert their doom by timely repentance. Mr. Ballou, thinking such a punishment, so dreadful in duration, was too much like the notions of the Orthodox to allow a distinction, reached the profound conclusion that that Scripture did not refer to the future life at all, nor teach any punishment. It revealed this idea sim

ply, that men were to be cast into the love of God, to be purified and made fit for heaven. And going away into everlasting punishment, simply meant to go away into the love of God.

At this crisis Mr. Balfour came to the rescue he discovered a valley on the south side of Jerusalem, to which this and all kindred passages referred. In this valley of Hinnom, all, or nearly all, the threatenings of the Bible had their fulfilment eighteen hundred years ago, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem. In the book of Mr. Balfour, to which the Universalists are indebted for their knowledge of sheol and gehenna, we have this reference settled. When Christ says, "It shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment, than for" those who heard and rejected Christ, Mr. Balfour says it was in the destruction of Jerusalem. When Paul informs the Gentile Thessalonians that "the Lord Jesus will take vengeance upon all those who know not God, and obey not the Gospel," "in the day when he shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire," Mr. Balfour says this threatening, addressed to Gentiles, was fulfilled in the destruction of the Jews. And when Peter assures us, that the "heavens

and earth are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and the perdition of ungodly men," Mr. Balfour informs us that this also had its fulfilment when Jerusalem fell; notwithstanding it was spoken to Gentile Christians, who had no more interest in the fall of Jerusalem than we have in China.

But this was a great discovery for the Universalists; it changed the whole current of their theology. All their interpretation of Scripture was made to fit the new application; and poor Jerusalem now bears the curse of the whole earth. By this new mode of interpretation, more importance is attached to the sacking of Jerusalem than to the deluge. Pella, which sheltered a few Christians during the siege, is of more consequence than the ark which preserved all who perished not in the flood. Can such a system be of God?

V. Universalism is open to the objections which are urged against Atheism.

A nation of Atheists was never known. A nation of Universalists has not yet appeared. Not only have the whole Christian world, with few exceptions, rejected this doctrine, but also all the nations of the earth. Find a nation, and you find them in possession of

faith in a Supreme Power, and faith in the doctrine of future retribution. Even among those who, from habits and customs, might have been disposed to limit all suffering to this world, you find the most fearful descrip tions of future woe, and the most "fearfui looking for of judgment." If Universalism. were true, it would be written somewhere. God is not the God that Universalism represents him to be, if it is his purpose to save all men; for he has created us with a faith in future punishment, and written upon the conscience of no nation the doctrine of universa. salvation. The patriarchs knew it not. spired men of old wrote of the misery of the damned. Luke xvi. 29-31. The chosen people of God, instructed by his inspired prophets, have ever believed that eternal death is the doom of the wicked. The entire mass of the Christian world, with those few exceptions that hardly deserve a notice, have found the same truth written, not only in the New 'Testament, but also "in the Law, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms." And all the nations of the earth, savage or civilized, bond or free, enlightened or degraded, have alike, with one consent, rejected the doctrine that all men

will be saved. We say that Atheism is false, because the common sense of all nations has rejected it. All nations have rejected Universalism, which, by the same rule, is false.

VI. The Bible is not written as a text-book upon Universalism would be written.

That doctrine does not appear upon the face of the Bible, if it appears at all. To support Universalism at all, the Bible must be explained and re-translated. The labor to deduce the salvation of all men from it, is great. Men do not get the impression, when they read the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, that he was a coward, or ignorant of the first principles of military tactics, and, when at the head of his army, the flower of France, and the best disciplined in the world, was frequently routed by a handful of stragglers gathered from the streets and fields. No one would attempt to show from the history of Washington that he was the enemy of his country and his race. Yet this would be an easier task than to convince the common sense of the world, that the Bible does not teach the truth that all are bound to the judgment, that all who die in sin are exposed to punishment after death, and that this life is given to prepare for another.