cannot show a pistareen, you talk of ten words when you cannot show one in proof of your third proposition that does not sustain the affirmative of the second. Aei indeed signifies endless whether in aioon or aidios; for whatever force it has in the one it has in the other: yet because of oon, being, in the former, (for it is a real compound,) aioon is positively more indicative of absolute eternity than aidios 6-Your escape from the second fatal leap on "casting off forever." Paragraph 14 is equally halt and blind. You prove that punishment cannot be endless because God says he will not contend endlessly, or without end; showing that aci, endlessly, means without end when you please. The wit of your 14th paragraph is disposed of by a single remark-that God is not said to cast off forever; and not to cast off for ever the same persons. You assume that the objects are the same, and that the difference is in forever: but this, like all your assumptions, is one-sided; for some he will cast off forever, and others he will not cast off forever; as we shall abundantly show under your fourth proposition. 7—There are some things so exceedingly puerile in your present communication as to preclude the merit of exposition. Such are your remarks upon immortality, par. 5., and on implication, par. 6., on perpepetui y, par. 7., and on aperantos, par. 8. This last word, derived from a, negative, and peras, boundary, signifies, in respect of place, without limit; and is therefore but figuratively used for duration. Pera, peras, and peran are used by the best Greek writers almost exclusively with regard to place. Let any one who doubts, examine Stokius on these words. Your assertions upon Greek words, you must now perceive, can have no credit with your friends or the community, and therefore you had better try things awhile, as you say you are now "desirous to rise from words to things." If you had taken my advice at the beginning, you would never have been in such a miserable plight as that in which you w stand. But the school of experience is the cheapest school that certain gentlemen can find. 8-Pardon me for omitting to notice some of the beauties of your interpretations; such as that on Jude 6., which represents the everlasting chains of darkness which confine the fallen angels, to be "the divine counsels," such as those which confine the elect angels, the choicest spirits in the universe. "Everlasting chains of darkness" and "everlasting love" are thus beautifully identified so far as the divine counsels are concerned. 9—I say, pardon me for passing by all these beauties, and for not answering such wise questions as that you ask on 2 Cor. iv. 17., about something that exceeds eternal-"a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory"'-as if this Hebrew superlative, "a far more exceeding," applied to "eternal" as an epithet of an epithet: for to expose these beauties, and to answer these questions, would only be a new exposure of the same errors and blunders already noted: for let me assure you that while eternal here applies to weight, the phrase "a far more exceeding" cannot syntactically apply to aionion. No person that understands the structure of the sentence could possibly ask such a question. 10-I regret the pedantic appearance which you have compelled me to assume. Our readers are all witnesses that it has been forced upon me. They cannot forget that from the beginning I alleged that there was no necessity for such a logomachy-that any English scholar could decide this matter as well as the most learned. Your party, sir, like yourself, are constantly dabbling in Greek and Hebrew, as if they were adepts in those languages, or as if they could furnish better arguments from dead languages than from a living tongue, or from the common translation. This I have now shown to be unequivocal pedantry, and that it is the want, rather than the possession, of a thorough acquaintance with those languages that impels you to this foolish course. 11-Modern Universalism is quite quadrupedantic. Its four classic legs are philology, theology, philosophy, and prophecy. The philological leg has, to say the least, been broken, and the creature limps. The theological is already severely wounded. This limb is chiefly occupied with the perfections of Deity, called benevolence and mercy. The philosophical stands upon the position, that all punishment is remedial, curative, and salutary for the subject that it must cease from the very nature of the case-for it is of right and of necessity designed for the reformation of the transgressor. The prophetic leg moves through all that is foretold of the future destinies of mankind in the declarations, promises, and threatenings of the Bible. It is remarkable that you have "ten words" for the toes of your philological foot, and that you have also ten arguments for the theological extremity. 12-Your ten theological arguments have been reviewed, and now it becomes our duty to examine how far my exposition of them has been disposed of. This will not be a very serious affair. After your elegant allusion to the mountain in labor, and my immense distance from your "hailing" point, and my "false assumption," &c. &c. in par. 18 you proceed to rebuild what I then called your philosophy, or your philosophic theology.* Your defence now is-that temporal suffering, or limited punishment, differs from eternal as means differ from the end. To use your own figure, "the one is a painful journey to a happy and glorious termination-the other an interminable journey of pain and woe, never ceasing, ever increasing, without the least possible good to any being in the universe." This is all easily said, and this is your defence. The two points in this part of the debate are here unequivocally assumed. The first, that all limited punishments end in perfect holiness and happiness, because so designed; the second, that eternal punishment must be without the least possible good to any being in the universe. Neither of these assumptions can be proved by any living man, and therefore you wisely never attempt it; but after a reinforcement of five assertions, you hobble off on the a priori toes of your prophetic leg. What a shrewd and logical and sagacious opponent I have found in you, sir, the Goliah of Universalianism! Your scheme is now fully developed. I understand it perfectly. You put the philological leg foremost, then the theological, then the philosophic, and finally you stand upon the prophetic. You prove your philology by your theology, and then you prove your theology by your philosophy, and then your philosophy is to be proved by your scriptural declarations, and these are again to be proved by your philology. This is your everlasting circle. Like the fabled Sisyphus, grandfather of Ulysses, you have to roll this immense stone up hill forever. * I now see you rely more upon a new leg purely philosophic and therefore for distinction I will henceforth regard your ten arguments before me as theological. The lad who said the heavens rested upon the earth, and the earth rested upon the back of a large tortoise, and the tortoise rested upon nothing, was certainly the beau ideal of your dialectics! Your plan being now fully developed, I can anticipate you to the end of the chapter. 13-My exposition of your ten arguments is met by the single assertion that all punishment is for the reformation of the subject of it, and that all temporal sufferings are means to the end holiness and happiness. The elements of this assumption shall be arranged and labelled in due season. But I wish our readers to survey your defence of your ten speculative theological arguments. Your whole defence is found from par. 18 to 22 inclusive. 14-The 18th contains your five naked assertions. Your 19th assumes that the angels rejoice in heaven on seeing God take vengeance on his enemies and those of his people, because these judgments end in their reformation; for which you have not one word to offer from Genesis to the final Amen. Your 20th justifies all the nameless and countless miseries of the unoffending brutal creation, on the ground that still they cling to life as a choice of evils! Glorious vindication of Eternal Providence! Yours is the theology of Mr. Compromise, who proposed settling his accounts with the Deity on striking a balance between his good and evil actions! Your 21st concedes that from your a priori reasonings on the divine perfections, you could not have anticipated the present mixed system, and affirms that still less could you have anticipated an eternally mixed system. You never seem to have read these words 'He that is unjust in the least is also unjust in the much,' and so of every perfection of the Deity. He that causes one unnecessary pang, and he that causes a million, differ not in kind, but in degrees; as he that steals a farthing, and he that steals ten thousand talents, are dishonest only in different ratios. Not having observed this principle, you think that it is all just, merciful, and benevolent to punish a defaulter for ten thousand moons or years, (for you believe in indefinite post mortem punishment)-but unjust, unmerciful, &c. to punish him forever! And to perfect your sytem of contradictions, you will have it, that, without any anticipation of sin, God planned a system of suffering in the brutal creation by furnishing lions, tigers, vultures, eagles, &c. &c. with instruments of torture. Read again, benevolent sir, your paragraphs 20 and 21, and ponder upon the character which you have drawn for the Creator, as arranging a suffering creation without any justifiable cause. 15-Your last effort is an a priori preface to your lifting your fourth limb-your direct scriptural proof. This a priori or hypothetical philosophy is generally consummate nonsense. It is peculiarly so in theological inquiries. A person would as soon make a cable of sand as prove even the being of God from a priori reasonings. From what cause could any one descend to the being, the nature, or the character of God! The very proposition, sir, to approach the scriptures by a priori reasonings, is begging the whole question. It is sending the Bible a-begging to the school of Plato or Aristotle, or infinitely more humiliating, to the school of every sectarian scrap-Doctor. 16-Wise men, like Bacon, Newton, Locke, and all the authors of true science, reason a posteriori, not a priori, in eliciting truth, fact, and law. I am a pupil in their school, and therefore look from and through nature up to its Author-you, a pupil in the school of Aristotle, look from the Author down to nature. You start from hypothesis-1 from fact. You begin with what ought to be-I with what is. I reason from the things that are, to those that shall be-you, from the things that ought to be (as you think,) to the things that must hereafter be. How different, then, must be our conclusions. You have put this label upon your own philosophy by your own fingers. Re-consider, sir, your four last paragraphs. 17-Your a priori system of the universe, or your beau ideal of a godlike universe, is, that it must ultimately be without sin and sorrow. If I had drunk as deeply as you at the Castalian fount, 1 would have built an a priori system better than yours; for I would have had a universe in which sin and suffering had never been known. Not a leaf would have ever withered; no wasting breath would have ever blown; not a murmur nor a sigh would have ever been heard; but everlasting verdure, bloom, and beauty-unfading youth, undecaying vigor, eternal peace, serenity, and love; unspeakable joy and bliss would, without palling or satiety, have pervaded all. But you assume the best of all possible things to be a universe that after many thousand years will come to such a perfection as to reform itself and be ultimately and eternally (aei) happy. 18-But I must omit your fine allusion to Burns and your pious strictures upon it, and request our readers to examine your reply to my pars. 19, 20, and 21, and see how handsomely you have dodged the whole matter, and evaded a discussion upon the very pith of your ten arguments. My 20th and 21st paragraphs you practically acknowledge to be unanswerable. Your failure there is complete, and shows the foundation on which you rest. 19-Your philosophy now rises full-orbed. It is that punishment cures sin that punishment is the means and holiness the end. Christ has then died in vain; the Devil is getting better; the Jews are more holy now than they were 2000 years ago; Penitentiaries, if they have punishment severe enough and long enough, cannot fail to sanctify all the murderers and miscreants within their walls; for Nature's laws are universal. A few years in your post mortem Purgatory will save more than the sacrifice of Christ. If the Creator, then, would occasionally rain fire and brimstone on all the cities, as on Sodom and Gomorrah, instead of giving them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons-instead of filling their hearts with food and gladness, he would have acted more wisely than by showing forth his goodness and love; for, according to your reason, the wrath of God, rather than his love, leadeth men to reformation; for "all punishments are chastisements," and "all chastisements are punishments;" and all men and demons are partakers of these reforming institutions, &c. &c. 20-This single cluster from your vine I present as a pledge of what may be the vintage when your philosophy is ripe, and the time for gathering the grapes has fully arrived. Sympathetically and controversially yours, A. CAMPBELL. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN PAUL IN A MODERN, AND PAUL IN AN ANCIENT AREOPAGUS. Philosophers of Athens, LET me ask your attention for a while to the discussion of a question which has occupied the heads and employed the pens of many of your noble ancestors. I presume that no disciple of Plato will be opposed to an examination of his master's theory; for Plato taught the necessity of searching rigidly for truth upon all subjects. Suffer not your prejudices to be too easily excited against me, because I stand in opposition to all the philosophy of Greece and Rome. The question I propose to discuss is this: "Is the soul of man mortal or immortal?" Now, sage Philosophers, let me here remark, that I am a member of the sect of the Nazarenes; and I am going to show this day, that you all are in the deepest darkness on this important subject. You believe that the soul of man is a delegated portion of the Deity-that it is immortal and immaterial-and that at death it shakes off its cold clay tenement becomes a thin, airy, shadowy ghostwhich can appear, and in a low tone, or echo, hold converse with this world's inhabitants. Thus you have given to "airy nothing, a local habitation and a name." You have all been indoctrinated with that old idea of the soul's immortality. This notion had its rise in ignorance of human nature. Plato himself was mistaken in thinking that the mind was an intangible substance. The true philosophy of man is, that his corporosity is divisible into three parts-body, soul, and spirit. Body is.composed of flesh, blood, and bones; and these are again divisible into their original elements. Soul is that which gives life, or is the life given, which lives, when we wake, in the blood, and when we sleep, in the brain. To illustrate: Man, notwithstanding all his pride, is only a locomotive cabbage! The soul of a cabbage is that leaf-expanding, fibre-strengthening fluid which passes through its roots from the soil. Man's roots and fibres are in his stomach, whence they minister to the teeth and toe-nails that which we call life. Some say the blood is the life of the animal: but, my friends, all men are not anatomists: if blood were the soul or life, it would be as active in the bowl as in the arm. The blood is that which carries the life from the heart to the extremi |