. F. Hudson, author of "Debt and Grace," a learned,
earnest, and able work, pervaded by an admirable spirit.

27 Ballou, Ancient History of Universalism.

28 Whittemore, Modern History of Universalism.

29 Knapp, Christian Theology, Woods's translation, sect. 158.

in God to justify this procedure of his government."30

A few devout and powerful minds have sought to avoid the gross
horrors and unreasonableness of the usual view of this subject, by
changing the mechanical and arithmetical values of the terms for
spiritual and religious values. They give the word "eternity" a
qualitative instead of a quantitative meaning. The everlasting woe
of the damned consists not in mechanical inflictions of torture
and numerical increments of duration, but in spiritual discord,
alienation from God, a wretched state of being, with which times
and spaces have nothing to do.31

How much better were it for the advocates of the popular theory,
instead of forcing their moral nature to bear up against the awful
perplexities and misgivings as to the justice and goodness of God
necessarily raised in them whenever they really face the dark
problems of their system of faith,32 resolutely to ask whether
there are any such problems in the actual government of God, or
anywhere else, except in their own "Bodies of Divinity"! It is an
extremely unfortunate and discreditable evasion of responsibility
when any man, especially when a teacher, takes for granted the
received formularies handed down to him, and, instead of honestly
analyzing their genuine significance and probing their foundations
to see if they be good and true, spends his genius in contriving
excuses and supports for them.

It is the very worst policy at this day to strive to fasten the
dogma of eternal misery to the New Testament. If both must be
taken or rejected together, an alternative which we emphatically
deny, what sincere and earnest thinker now, whose will is
unterrifiedly consecrated to truth, can be expected to hesitate
long? The doctrine is sustained in repute at present principally
for two reasons. First, because it has been transmitted to us from
the Church of the past as the established and authoritative
doctrine. It is yet technically current and popular because it has
been so: that is, it retains its place simply by right of
possession. The question ought to be sincerely and universally
raised whether it is true or false. Then it will swiftly lose its
prest