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every temptation to sin, with the most violent recoil."19 19 John Foster, Letter on the Eternity of Future Punishments. If an endless hell is to be the lot of the sinner, he ought to have an infallible certainty of it, with all possible helps and incentives to avoid it. Such is not the case; and therefore, since God is just and generous, the doctrine is not true. Finally, the injustice of the dogma of everlasting punishment is most emphatically shown by the fact that there is no sort of correspondence or possible proportion between the offence and the penalty, between the moment of sinning life and the eternity of suffering death. If a child were told to hold its breath thirty seconds, and, failing to do it, should be confined in a dark solitary dungeon for seventy years amidst loathsome horrors and speechless afflictions, and be frightfully scourged six times a day for that entire period, there would be just proportion nay, an inexpressibly merciful proportion between the offence and the punishment, in comparison with that which, being an absolutely infinite disproportion, does not really admit of any comparison, the sentence to an eternal abode in hell as a penalty for the worst kind and the greatest amount of crime a man could possibly crowd into a life of a thousand years. Think, then, of passing such a sentence on one who has struggled hard against temptation, and yielded but rarely, and suffered much, and striven to do as well as he could, and borne up courageously, with generous resolves and affections, and died commending his soul to God in hope. "Fearfully fleet is this life," says one, "and yet in it eternal life is lost or won: profoundly wretched is this life, yet in it eternal bliss is lost or won." Weigh the words adequately, and say how improbable is the thought, and how terribly unjust. Perhaps there have already lived upon this earth, and died, and passed into the invisible world, two hundred thousand millions of men, the everlasting doom of every one of whom, it is imagined, was fixed unalterably during the momentary period of his mortal transit from cradle to grave. In respect of eternity, six thousand years and this duration must be reduced to threescore years and ten, since that is all that each generation enjoyed is the same as one hour. Suppose, now, that all these two hundred thousand millions of men were called into being at once; that they were placed on probation for one hour; that
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