sion of his church, only one holds fast to the doctrine of endless torment as set forth in the Standards, and that one is not the minister. We believe that there are many more such churches within our bounds, and that it is neither honest before God or man for us to longer refuse to inquire :

I. Does the Presbyterian Church continue to honestly believe and maintain these statements?

2. If she does not, what is the true doctrine and how should it be stated?

REPLY.

In reply to the Herald of the Morning, that we teach a thrice inflicted punishment for sin; -1. In Christ, the sinner's substitute; 2. In the death of the sinner, which is the wages of sin; 3. In an infliction of suffering upon the soul after death, we have to say,

I. That we do not hold to the commercial theory of the atonement he attributes to us.

2. While the wages of sin is death, the varied teachings of Scripture require us to believe that the death-process is not completed with the death of the physical frame.

The soul pertains to

Man consists of body, soul, and spirit. embodiment. It may be destroyed in hell. And until its destruction disembodiment is not complete. The parable of the rich man shows that this more ethereal embodiment, the soul, continues to exist after the body dies. The death, then, which is sin's penalty, includes the death of the body, the subsequent death (in the case of the wicked) of the soul, leaving the naked spirit an outcast and in bonds. Whether this spirit retains the personal self-consciousness of the former man or not we do not know. But it is no longer a man. It would seem to be, however, that nucleus of being around which the man is built up again at the resurrection.

3. The fact that the wicked in resurrection have to begin again on a low scale of being, such as they are fitted for, is indeed a consequence of previous sin. But this does not set aside the fact that their rehabilitation in life is a blessing, especially since it is bestowed under the emancipating reign of Christ and His saints,

UPRIGHTNESS IN CONTROVERSEY. Contentions among Christians concerning the teachings of Scripture are inevitable until we all come to the unity of the faith and to the perfect knowledge of the Son of God. It is of prime importance however to this result that such controversies be conducted in a spirit of love and of perfect candor. And yet at no point are we all more liable to err. Our zeal for the truth is often overborne by zeal for intellectual triumph. Hence it is seldom that the intellect of a disputant is toned down to perfectly honest methods in dealing with an adversary. At no point should the Christian be more upon his guard against the tricks and ambitions of "the old man." In no other region of Christian activity more than in this, where the truth by which we live is in question, should he be careful to lay aside all malice and guile, and to seek that wisdom from above which "is without partiality, without hypocrisy."

"

One of the best instances of such honesty we have lately met with is Dr. S. H. Kellogg's paper on the Theory of Second Probation" published in recent numbers of The Truth. His argument barely touches the point we have been urging upon the attention of the church, which is that the whole doctrine of future punishment must be re-studied in the light of the great principle that resurrection is redemptive. We only wish that he had fairly grappled with the question from this point of view. He would then have found some better way of explaining the promises of future blessing to unregenerate Israel, to Sodom, to Moab and Ammon, etc., than the fruitless endeavor to make them apply to some possible descendants of these tribes, hereafter to be discovered and gathered into nations. And yet while differing with him at this and at other points, we cannot but admire the spirit in which he conducts his argument. His synopsis of Andrew Juke's book on "the Restitution of all things" is a model of thorough fairness and completeness of statement.

We regret to say that we do not find the same balanced judgment and candor in Dr. J. H. Brookes' review of the Rev. J. H. Pettingell's books. This brother is a well-known advocate of the doctrine that sin is self-descructive, that sinful man is not by nature immortal, and that he becomes so only as he receives Christ, in

whom God hath given to us eternal life. Here then is a definite doctrine to which at least the letter of Scripture yields an abundant support. The issue raised is independent of the question whether all men live after death, and whether the wicked shall be punished beyond the grave. This Mr. Pettengell does not deny. The question is simply whether the wicked shall live endlessly, through all the ages to come, as long as God lives. And yet Dr. Brookes constantly assails this doctrine as if it were essential to it to hold that in the case of sinful men death ends all. “The one thought (he writes) pervading every page is that all but believers die as brutes die, become extinct, cease to be when the breath leaves the body, as though they had never been."

As Mr. Pettingell, especially in his later books, entirely repudiates the view that the sinner comes to his end until after a resurrection, and at the second death, Dr. Brookes ought to have spared himself so much pains to refute his views of the intermediate state. The state of the soul after death, whether conscious or unconscious is a topic quite apart from the question of its final destiny. No gain can come to the cause of truth by such diversions from the main issue to points which are merely incidental to it. Nor should the vital interests at stake be thus obscured. Similar instances of this confounding of a larger issue with one that is only subordinate and incidental are met with in almost every writer in defense of the current view of endless torment. Men who are seeking to substitute for it another view of punishment, more reasonable and scriptural, are replied to as if they did not believe in future punishment at all.

It is therefore only in the way of just discrimination, "rendering to every man his due," and of perfect honesty of dealing, that we can sift out truth from error either in our own opinions or those of our brethren. The greatest want of the church, in her progress toward the unity of the faith, is just this spirit of uprightness, and a sincere love of the truth above all petty triumphs in debate and all partizan or personal advantage.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A friend asks:

"How do you reconcile to your belief the first eight verses of Rev. xxi? St. John speaks of the new heavens and the new earth. Then in the 8th verse he speaks of those who are condemned to the second death as bearing the character of great sinners on this

earth and in this life only, such sins as we are familiar with, not at all conveying the idea of a second probation."

We reply:

I. A great principle which runs through the Bible and is involved in the whole plan of redemption, such as the redemptive character of resurrection, cannot be set aside by our failure to reconcile a single passage with it, especially if it occurs in so obscure a portion of Scripture.

Almost all classes of interpreters agree that the sinners here specified have been raised from previous death before they suffer the second death.

3. Our correspondent's question assumes that resurrection must so change the nature of all the subjects of it as to make them incapable of this class of sinful acts. That this cannot be so appears in the fact that Scripture acquaints us with but two forms of manhood, the earthy and the heavenly, and two kinds of bodies, the terrestial and celestial. In the first order only the saints can be raised. All others must be raised in mere natural manhood. They therefore remain under the yoke of bondage to the creature and liable to corruption.

4. While restored life after judgment must bring to this class renewed opportunities, this passage implies that some will grossly abuse this new gift of life and be destroyed in the second death. If the nature of this class remains unchanged during the life to come there is no difficulty in supposing that it may develop into the sins specified.

5. The primary object of the passage is not to teach what punishment awaits those who sin in this life, but to announce the fact that out of the perfect and glorified order of the future sinners of every class must be destroyed.

VOL. II.]

MAY, 1886.

[No. 5.

DR. A. A. HODGE UPON HUMAN DESTINY.

While we listened with pleasure and profit to the most of Dr. Hodge's expositions of the leading doctrines of the Christian faith, in his course of lectures recently given in this city, we did not expect to be satisfied when he came to discuss the important question of man's future. We do not think it possible for any man to deal fairly with this momentous subject who ignores or denies the great principle for which we have been contending, that the resurrection provided in Christ for all who died in Adam belongs to the economy of redemp tion. The only allusion which Dr. Hodge made to this issue we have raised was to quote against it the discarded phrase of John v. 29, “the resurrection of damnation." In his view the resurrection of the unjust is wholly retributive. "Unless the sinful man is judged, condemned, and damned in the body, the whole and complete historical person of the sinner is not dealt with according to law and justice, and the supreme holiness of God is not fully shown forth." The fallacy here is not in the principle itself, but in the application of it. This judgment of the sinner in body is precisely that which is visited upon him before his resurrection. Sin begins to kill the body in this life. It thrusts it down. into the darkness and dissolution of the grave. It destroys even the soul in hell. And so it wrecks the man's