God's way of deliverance through accepted death with Christ out of the old order and resurrection into the new. But we shall miss altogether the meaning of the lake of fire if we regard it merely as a place provided for the eternal torment of these lost ones. Like all God's wondrous works and ways its aim and action are beneficent. It is the bath of fire out of which the heavens and earth finally emerge into eternal sweetness and light, a home of splendor and delight for the ransomed millions of mankind. While therefore all the preceeding judgments of this book relate to the living generations of mankind who are dealt with in judgment by the exalted Christ preparatory to His coming, and so precede the resurrection, we are not surprised to find one great judgment-scene depicted as coming in after that event, and as preceding the final crisis which winds up His millenial reign. The first stage of His triumphant reign brought with it the outbirth into His life and glory of only a selected class of men. And the creature did not attain to its final deliverance. It was lightened only with the dawn of its full glory. But in its final throes, and with its complete emancipation, it must cast out all its dead. "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them" (xx. 13). We have already, in examining this judgment scene, concluded that it condenses into one picture a long-continued judgment process, in which all that Scripture teaches concerning the redemptive character of resurrection must have due place. The whole scene connects itself with the great

cosmical deliverance which the next chapter immediately describes.

For,

That there are certain features difficult to understand in these closing passages which allude to future retribution, we may well admit. That there is a hopeless doom for incorrigible sinners in the lake of fire, beyond the resurrection, must be allowed. But that resurrection introduces them immediately to this doom, without any previous benefit or opportunity coming to them with the gift of recovered life, must be denied. as we have seen, this lies in the very idea of resurrection. It is implied in all the glimpses of it that gleam out on the pages of the Old Testament and in the promises of the New. The point we have to consider is whether, in view of all the testimony of Scripture to the effect that some character of blessing has been secured by Christ's redemption to all the families of the earth, both dead and living, and in view of the fact that it uniformly describes the punishment of sin as a subjection to death, and to an immediate hell which long precedes resurrection, we are warranted in allowing a few obscure allusions in this unexplained book to govern or set aside the teaching of all these earlier and plainer scriptures. That they have had this undue influence is manifest. These passages seemed on their surface to teach the doctrine of endless torment. And therefore Christians have generally read this doctrine into our Lord's teaching about hell and its quenchless fires. (Mark ix. 53-50, etc.) But, as we have seen, His sayings plainly refer to a possible destruction of man's present em

Even the

bodied being in an impending gehenna. judgment scene in Matt. xxv does not primarily look beyond the resurrection. A baleful glare from these passages in the Apocalypse has been cast over all this earlier New Testament teaching. Even the sermons and letters of the apostles, which do not contain a single plain reference to the doctrine of an eternal torment in hell, have been made lurid with this borrowed light. And splendid promises of restitution, spoken by the mouth of ancient prophets, have been belittled or annulled. The point for which we are all along contending is that certain great and merciful principles of divine administration underlie the whole plan of God in Creation and redemption; that these crop out through the whole of revelation and must govern its interpretation. Especially must the obscure teaching of this book of hidden mysteries yield to them. One of these deepest principles is His purpose to lift up the human race out of its pit of death through the death and resurrection of a Redeemer; requiring that, in the execution of this purpose, neither death nor hell shall defeat Him, but be made tributary thereto. The resurrection of all, therefore, must be the redemption of all to another standing in life. This itself is a boon. It does not make necessary the salvation of all to eternal life. There is a possible second death beyond the resurrection into which some sink. But neither this threatened doom, nor any threat of the darkest passages we have been examining, must be allowed to set aside this great principle that death cannot defeat God in His

great purpose to bring blessing to all the families of the earth through a conquering seed, and that His answer to the work of the devil who brought sin into the world, so that death passed upon all men, is the gift of a Second Man to be his destroyer, through whose righteousness the free gift has come to all men of justification to another life. Sinners may incur, indeed, a fearful loss of body and soul in hell before this recovery. Moreover, it can reach them only after the just judgment of God has been fully satisfied in their case. And it cannot bring to them assured deliverance from bondage to the creature. Hence their great need of immediate salvation. Let none of this class therefore, because God is a "God of hope,' forget that He is also a consuming fire, and that the longer they go on in sin, the deeper must they sink and the longer must they remain in the abyss of His wrath, the more complete must be their wreck of being, and the fewer the elements of hope in its recovery.

NOTES ON CURRENT OPINIONS AND EVENTS.

HUMAN DESTINY.-In the October number of the Presbyterian Review, Dr. A. A. Hodge in reviewing a book upon this subject by Robert Anderson, a Scottish barrister, endorses the essential orthodoxy of his conclusions. At the same time he observes that the author does not at one point go to the full length of the confession on these awful themes. This point is clearly expressed in the following, sentence,-"But

whether those who have been denied a revelation in this world shall find a place of repentance in the intermediate state, it is not for us to dogmatize." It appears then that even an orthodox man may have a doubt at this point. Dr. Hodge, however, offsets this concession by especially commending the author's refutation, drawn from a full citation of passages, "of the unscriptural modern theory that the phrases in which the words ava etc., occur do not definitely express the endlessness of future punishment."

From this critical notice we infer 1, That the author believes that punishment is eternal. 2. There may be, possibly. a place of repentance for those who have not heard the gospel in the intermediate state.

We have often defined our position to be that, whatever repentance may come to any class of sinners in the intermediate state, the only door of hope that can ever open to them must be through resurrection. What we wish, however, here to call attention to is that the proof of such a possible recovery does not stand or fall with the meaning of the phrase éis ȧiva. One may hold that punishment is eternal and the loss irretrievable, and yet hold the truth that resurrection is essentially redemptive. When we come to see that a man may lose his present estate in life and manhood,-lose it utterly and hopelessly and forever, and yet may be reinvested through resurrection with another life-endowment and given another standing, then we can see that both sides of Scripture teaching-retribution, and blessing to all through redemption are true and reconcileable.

PROBATION.-In the debate at the late meeting of the American Board Dr. Alden, one of the Secretaries, lays down this as the law of Missionary effort. The only divinely appointed probation is in this earthly life. In some way the opportunity is presented to every man in this life, and in this life only."

This only shows how impossible and absurd it is in men