the "dogmatism"
and unworthy views of God which are attributed to all of us who cannot
discover sunrise beyond the gloom; and the conviction also that a
more thorough belief in the clanger of sin, as well as its inherent
vileness, and a wholesome "terror of the Lord," would tend to
"persuade men" to entertain with more earnestness the deliverance
promised in the gospel.

The idea which many have formed of punishment is that of a mere
arbitrary annexation of a certain amount of suffering in the next
world to a certain amount of crime committed in this--so many stripes
for so many sins; and, as if obvious injustice were inflicted on men,
by threatening them with coming woe for present wickedness, they
exclaim, "Surely such sins as these do not deserve such punishment as
that!" But if sin itself, by an eternal moral necessity, carries with
it its own punishment, even as the shadow accompanies the substance,
then the real question in regard to the possible ending of future
suffering is merged in the deeper one of the possible ending of future
sin. And if so, what evidence have we from any one source to inspire
the hope, that the man who enters the next world loving sin, and
therefore suffering punishment as its necessary result, will ever
cease to sin, and thereby cease to suffer? It must, remember, be
admitted as an indisputable fact, that life eternal can only co-exist
with a right state of the soul. "This _is_ life eternal, to know thee
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Up to the moment in which the
spirit turns with filial confidence and obedience to God, there cannot
be a cessation either in the curse that must rest upon enmity and
disobedience, or in the pain which must be produced by so terrible a
malady. Some time or other, be it near or remote, in one year or in a
million, there must be repentance in the sinner, a turning away _from_
sin and _to_ God, as the only possible means of bridging over the
otherwise impassable gulf that separates the bad from the good, or
hell from heaven. There is no salvation for man but from sin; there is
no restoration for him but to love.

But if this change in the sinner is not accomplished in this world,
what evidence have we that it can be accomplished in any place of even
limited punishment? In what conceivable way, we ask with deepest
awe, is a moral and responsible being, who ends this life and begins
another at enmity to God, rejecting Christ, disbelieving the gospel,
d