when a tree _is_ cut down, its final course of
usefulness only then _begins_, by being sawn up and converted into
furniture; much as when a human being's work here is finished, he is
taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of
our existence, whether here or elsewhere,--no stopping, far less
annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love
having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more
reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which
cannot be true if bodies and spirits--even of the wicked--are to be
condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for
the wretched creature's own improvement, is only in accordance with the
voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our
Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase
of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over
the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the
offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being
burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)--He yet "went
and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those
who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this
sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is
not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his
own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and,
if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling,
of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness.
Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved
from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to
live for Him in this world may by some purifying education in the next
come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.

The words everlasting and forever are continually used in Scripture to
indicate a long time,--not necessarily an eternity (see Cruden for many
proofs). Moreover, if all hope of improvement ends with this life (a
doctrine in which such extremes as Atheism and Calvinism strangely
agree), what becomes of all the commonest forms of humanity, its
intermediate failures, too bad for a heaven and too good for a hell; to
say less of insane, idiotic, and other helpless creatures; and the
millions of the untaught in Christ