LETTER X.

GREAT MINDS IN TROUBLE C. F. HUDSON.

Mr. H's book-His dilemma and relief-Quotation from his bookPraying against truth-Sad adjustment-Terrible dilemma Wicked of no account--Conquer your prejudice !-Wicked of some account here, and in the resurrection-Why not after it ?— Why their slumbers broken -Wrong time to perish!-Clinging to the Father-Gloomy prospects-Babel of confusion-Confusion increases-When it will subside.

DEAR BROTHER, —

Permit me, in this letter, to refer to one other person, the Rev. C. F. Hudson, as further illustrating the trial which thinkers experience with the doctrine of endless misery. Mr. H., formerly an Orthodox clergyman, having repudiated that doctrine as unreasonable and unscriptural, is now well known as the author of the very scholarly and elaborate work, entitled, "The Doctrine of a Future Life." In that work, he disproves endless misery, and attempts to prove " annihilation." Involved in theological difficulty equally with Barnes, Foster and Beecher, he neither suffers on with the one, nor finds relief as do either of the other two. He loses his burden neither in future existence, nor in pre

existence; but, in NON-EXISTENCE! Speaking of eternal misery, or as he expresses it, "the eternal evil that remains," he says, "Temper it as he [the Christian] will, it still challenges many doubts. Christian theology has labored for generations past, to find the maximum of reason, and the minimum of doubt. This has been the Conflict of Ages. And the conflict could not be confined to the schools. Filling the minds of all classes of men, and producing the various forms of false theology we have noted, it has borne most heavily upon the engineer of the doctrines of salvation, the preacher of the gospel. It pursues him in every effort to maintain a theodicy. It pursues him in his resort to mystery, and in his appeal to man's innate sense of duty." It meets him at the bedside of the dying and in the funeral of the dead. Whether he feels it or not, it haunts him every where, baffling his skill or marring his labor, in all his efforts to persuade men."- p. 407.

*

"But," he adds, "dispense with the doctrine as unauthorized, and how soon it appears needless. Let the wicked be regarded as if no account, and, as having no part in the world to come, and the powers of that world find their natural adjustment."

The truth of the major portion of the above quo

* We have already heard Barnes say of the difficulties of endless misery, "They meet us when we urge our fellow sinners to be reconciled to God and put confidence in him. On this ground they hesitate." How practical the difficulties!

tation, what thinking preacher of endless punishment has not felt, what observing one, has not seen! How many, like one the author knows, have been obliged to pray against what they have deemed a satanic temptation to abandon that doctrinebut really, against the waking of their own consciousness, reason and affection.

But, says our author, "let the wicked be regarded as of no account, and as having no part in the world to come, and the powers of that world find their natural adjustment." And just by so regarding them, he finds his own theological system, adjusted to his great satisfaction. And though this adjustment may, to many minds, seem quite unnatural, still the contemplation of the annihilation of the wicked is satisfactory, compared with that of their endless woe.

But it is not, after all, a miserable relief we gain, by thus regarding the wicked as of no account in the future world! And must not that be a most terrible orthodox dilemma, from which the soul rejoices, to find deliverance by the dark and gloomy way, every where bestrown with the annihilated shades of our fellow beings, "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh," and soul of our soul! What must be that sorrow, to which it is joy to sit down in a family sepulchre to be reached by worse than no resurrection.

"Let the wicked be regarded as of no account in the world to come." Ah, yes, conquer your prejudices in favor of humanity, sever all the ties that bind you to your race, rend the delicate net-work of the Christian virtues, chiefly interwoven with love to all, insolate yourself from all but the pure and holy, if you chance to belong to that class, and regard all the rest as 66 of no account," and then, you are relieved then your faith has found "its natural adjustment"! Sad relief! The relief of the body by amputation of the heart! But the Bible does not say, if thy benevolent heart offend against thy creed, "pluck it out and cast it from thee!" In reference to such an adjustment, we can but say, in the language of Mr. H. about endless evil, "Temper it as he will, it still challenges many doubts."

But the wicked are of some account in this world. And it is well that they are; for if they were not, it would go ill with our race, seeing "there is no man that liveth and sinneth not." Here, the wicked are loved and blessed; for here, we become perfect as our "Father which is in heaven is perfect," by loving and blessing our enemies ;-a consideration of vast theological importance, lying far down in the ocean of Deity, undisturbed by the winds of contending textual criticisms that whip its surface. Here, the wicked are of so much importance, that God in Christ is looking after them continually.

In the resurrection, too, the wicked are of some account. "For the Scriptures positively affirm, that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust." And if the wicked are of some account in the resurrection, strange if they should be of no account afterwards. Why then are they raised up? "If they have no immortality, why are their slumbers disturbed?" This question, Mr. H. answers in part by saying, "it is as if the unjust, hearing the voice of God in the last call to life, should be putting on a glorious incorruption, and perish in the act.' But surely, the act of putting on a glorious incorruption would seem the very last to perish in; especially, after having lain, according to Mr. H's theory, as nought, in the grave, for ages. And he who tells me that the wicked are raised up, as our author elsewhere says, to "languish back to nought," must excuse me from believing. For still, with God's elder Scripture in my heart and his younger in my hand, I will fast cling to my Father's skirts, and assure myself, not only that all his children shall have a resurrection, but that all shall be of some account afterwards. I can believe that theologies, which are the product of a soul, forced by education into unnatural connexion with monstrous dogma, may "languish back to nought," but not the souls, over which they wildly speculate.

We only add the reflection, that, if the wicked are