ght to be. "The
way in which some people read their Bibles," says Mr. Ruskin, "is like
the way in which the old monks thought that hedgehogs ate grapes. They
rolled themselves over the grapes as they lay on the ground and
whatever first stuck to their spikes they carried off and ate." If the
grapes are of various kinds as are the passages of Scripture we cannot
judge thus of the taste of the vintage. To get the true taste of the
grapes we must press them in cluster. To get the true meaning of
Scripture we must study the whole trend of Scripture. Before we can
accept any doctrine from separate passages of Scripture we must assure
ourselves that it is in harmony, not only with other passages but also
with the ruling thoughts which run through all Scripture, God's
unutterable holiness, God's awful hatred of sin and stern denunciations
of doom against the impenitent, God's love, God's unchangeableness,
God's reasonableness and fairness, and the mysterious golden thread of
hope which runs through all.

Now we glance as briefly as possible at the three theories referred to.

I

_The theory of Everlasting Torment and Everlasting Sin_.

This theory keeps with Scripture in asserting the fatal and irrevocable
result of unrepented sin--but it goes beyond the reserve of Scripture
in defining that result and so defining it as to impugn the character
of God. It teaches that all who are condemned in the Judgment are
doomed to a life of endless torment, in the company of devils--forsaken
of God. Millions of millions of ages shall see this punishment no whit
nearer to its end. It must go on for ever and ever and ever.

It takes perhaps a child's or a woman's heart to realize the horror of
that thought. I remember as a child reading a Sunday-school book that
helped me to realize the meaning of this "for ever and ever in hell."
I was to imagine a huge forest, and a tiny insect coming from the
farthest planet and biting an atom out of one of the leaves, and
carrying it away to his home, the journey taking one thousand years.
Then I was to imagine the ages that must elapse before that whole leaf
was carried off. Then the stupendous time before the whole tree would
be gone. Then, as my brain reeled at the thought, I was to look
forward to the carrying away of the whole forest, and from that to the
carrying away of the whole world. Then came the awful sentence in
italics, _Even then eternity would but have begun_. I sup