ical
conviction in the fact of future punishment? After you have made
every possible deduction from the weight of Scripture testimony, and
explained away every metaphor, parable, and dogmatic statement to the
lowest possible point short of absolute denial of their truth in any
fair sense of their meaning,--may I beg of you to consider what, or
how much, remains to be firmly believed as the truth of God? For it
does appear to me that there exists a wide-spread callousness and
indifference, an ease of mind, with reference to the fate hereafter of
ungodly men, which cannot be accounted for except on the supposition
that all earnest faith is lost in either the dread possibilities of
future sin or of its future punishment. Men seem to have made up their
minds that they have nothing to fear in the next world, whatever they
believe, whatever they are, or whatever they do in this. We are,
verily, not incapable of experiencing fear, but in a vast number of
cases we are great cowards, in spite of all our bravery,--cowards when
there is nothing actually present to alarm us; and each one of us
seeks to his very utmost to keep danger or suffering far away from
himself or from those he loves. Accordingly, the possible or
near approach of mere bodily pain, or of domestic sorrow, or the
anticipated loss of money--not to speak of such horrors as public
disgrace from loss of character, imprisonment, transportation as
a felon, or execution as a criminal--would induce thoughtfulness,
anxiety, wretchedness. Yet, strange to say, the very same persons who
would tremble for such calamities as these, treat with indifference a
coming punishment, which cannot, even in their own estimation, be less
terrible, and which, as sure as Christ's words are true, they may
themselves, because of their present character, be liable at any hour
to enter upon and endure.

But many of those readers, who, up to this point, may heartily
sympathise with me in my feeble efforts to quicken a more earnest
thoughtfulness on this subject, will be disposed to avoid its further
consideration. I would not blame them for so feeling. God knoweth I
have no wish to "dogmatise" on this subject, but to approach it with
real sympathy for the difficulties, the pains, the perplexities, which
the noblest, the truest, and the most reverential have experienced
when they have attempted really to believe in it What chiefly induces
me to submit a few thoughts upon a theme so solemn, is