ughtful and
sober moments. We cannot read the Scriptures without the dark vision
passing before our eyes with more or less gloom. Conscience whispers
to us about it. It recurs to our thoughts amidst the penitential
confessions and earnest prayers of public worship. The theme is
constantly discussed in works and periodicals widely read, and not
even professedly theological.

There are few, we presume, who will assert that every man, whatever
his character may be when he leaves the world, shall after death
immediately pass into glory, and be received into fellowship with God
and His saints. With such a belief earnestly entertained, suicide
would cease to be an evidence of insanity, and murder would become
philanthropy.

Most men are prepared rather to believe, apart altogether from any
Scripture statements on this momentous subject, that punishment of
some kind or other must be awarded to crime at last, and in some
degree proportionate to the character of the criminal,--that somewhere
or other, by some means or other, not yet discovered or revealed,
reformation if at all possible must necessarily be effected in order
that peace and happiness may be secured. Man's undying sense of
righteousness, and what _ought_ to be, is not satisfied by the
prosperity which, in spite of every drawback, so frequently attends
the most selfish and unprincipled villain to his grave. Like the
Psalmist, we all are disposed to exclaim when contemplating such
histories, "As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had
well-nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the
prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death, and
their strength is firm; neither are they plagued like other men....
Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than their heart can
wish.... And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge with
the Most High?"

But when we open the Word of God, it is impossible for any honest
man to deny, that whether its teaching be true or false, the fact of
future punishment is an essential portion of what is taught. By no
conceivable perversion of the words of Christ, so often repeated on
this subject, and by no interpretation of His parables, can it be
denied that it was His intention to give the very impression which the
universal Church has received, that there is a "wrath to come," and a
state of being which to some is "cursed," and so very dreadful that,
with reference to one of His