life, which is the law of God, is that embodiment must be according to character. "Every one must receive in body according to the things that he hath done." So that room is left in this doctrine for all that Scripture teaches concerning God's inflexible hatred of sin, His law of harvest which requires that men must reap as they sow, and that the soul that sinneth it shall die. The warnings of Christ to men to escape the gehenna of fire are all explained. The eternal punishment is seen to be the eternal loss of this present gift of life, with all its rich endowments and possibilities,-with perhaps much of its personal self-consciousness. For Jesus teaches that a man may lose himself. And yet all this wreck of present life and manhood does not preclude the gift of another life, nor shut out these lost ones from the provision which God has made, after they have served out their death sentence, to take up their case again through a resurrection from the dead.

This solution is also freed from the objections which attend those above referred to. The Universalist would bring all men to eternal life without that patient continuance in well-doing by which alone it must be sought, and without that trial in manhood on the arena of which it can alone be won, and in disregard of that peril of a second death of which Scripture impressively speaks. The future probationist conceals from men the present peril to which they are exposed, by proposing a scheme of deferred judgment and delayed death sentence under which men may hope to escape the just consequences of their sins. Whereas the Bible warning is " After death, judgment." The door of hope which resurrection

provides will never open to any man until after the death-sentence of God's law has been visited upon him, and he has received of the Lord's hand double for all his sins. And then it will not introduce him to a second chance to recover what has been lost and lost forever. That second gift of life will bring its own responsibilities and hazards. It will not renew those that are gone forever.

And so, as superior to the solution of the conditionalist, while this doctrine accepts its first principle, that man out of Christ has no principle of eternal life, it maintains that the gift of another life is secured to all, and that the purpose of their resurrection cannot be merely to inflict upon them suffering and anguish, to be followed by another casting of them into the pit of death and hell. Not for any such wrathful end as this has God provided to raise out of death those who have been already the victims of His wrath. They may indeed prove unworthy of this renewed gift of life. They may come back so loaded with the weight of evil character as to make their lapse into the second death well nigh certain. But not for any such retributive purpose, but in the line of His redemptive working along His plan of the ages and in His secret realms of life, has He provided that all who died in Adam shall be made alive in Christ.

But even if we are unable to adjust this doctrine to all the difficulties that may present themselves to our minds or to all the "hard sayings" of Scripture, we are more and more persuaded of its essential truth, and that is God's own solution of the dark problems presented to

us in His word and in this system of the world. The more the light of this "hope toward God" shines in our hearts, the better shall we be able to understand the Scriptures, and to read also the secrets of creation and of human history. And the better shall we who are "the called according to His purpose" discern “what is the hope of our calling" as the brethren of Him who is "the first born from the dead," predestinated to be conformed to His image, and to take part with Him in those administrations of grace and of power, by which in the dispensation of the fulness of times He shall reconcile. all things unto God, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.

ARE THE DEAD CONSCIOUS ?

This is not a question for man's philosophy or science to determine. They can only give us a conjecture. Science is here either dumb, or if it speaks at all, can only speak according to the light that prevails in the realm of things physical. The Word of God alone can speak with authority.

But even among those who acknowledge its authority, a class of readers tell us that it holds out no hope of conscious life for any man until the resurrection of the dead. And this event for all men they believe to be yet future. Abraham and David and Paul and St. John are alike resting among the dead and awaiting the summons of the angel's trump of resurrection to awaken them to

life and blessedness. In proof of this they appeal to such Old Testament passages as "The dead know not anything," and to the New Testament use of the word sleep" as describing the condition of those who "sleep in Jesus." They argue also that no other meaning properly attaches to the word "dead" than this of complete loss of consciousness. They insist also that as man was created with body and soul, the dissolution of these destroys the man. He can be restored to life only as he is re-created at the resurrection.

The Bible speaks of the future of two classes of mankind, the saved in Christ, and the unsaved. With regard to the latter it is plain that it speaks of destruction as their portion, and that it often views this class of the dead as perished. And yet the New Testament makes it plain that this destruction is not complete with the death of the body. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is enough of itself to convince ordinary readers that the soul of the wicked man may survive the death of the body in conscious suffering. But Jesus teaches that the soul also may be destroyed in hell. Thispa rt of man's being, which is his conscious self, while it may survive and suffer long after death, may also perish. About nothing is the New Testament more emphatic than the possible loss of the soul, which, in St. Luke, is also defined as the man's loss of himself. There is at least a destruction qua homo.

There are frequent references in Scripture also to the spirit of man, an element of his being differing from both soul and body. Whether this spirit be a distinct personal entity, retaining self-consciousness apart

from the living soul with which it is conjoined, or whether it be an emanation from the immortal Spirit of God that animates this creature of His hands, and returns to Him who gave it when man dies, is not made plain. This spirit would seem, however, to retain within itself the nucleus or potentiality of the man's being. Otherwise we cannot conceive of his resurrection as possible, For resurrection cannot be the calling up again of that which was extinct. There would be nothing left to be raised.

The wicked dead are therefore conscious up to the time of the death of the soul. Then the sentence against man is fulfilled-" The soul that sinneth it shall die." Whether the spirit, now unclothed and void, retains the personal consciousness of the man who perished, is at least doubtful. As there has been a destruction out of the life and sphere of manhood we should infer that self-consciousness would go with it. This condition would seem to be the silence and outer darkness of Sheol, the prison of gloom, where the dead

await resurrection.

With regard to the other class, there is every reason from Scripture to believe that they are not only con. scious but blissfully so. Even the Old Testament saints were assured that God would preserve their souls alive through the crisis of death, and save them from going down to the pit. And the New Testament emphasizes this as the distinctive blessing of the righteous that, while the wicked man must lose his soul, their souls should be saved. We are sure that the continuity of the soul must carry with it the continuation of self-con