ige and disappear. Secondly, it is upheld and patronized by
many as a useful instrument for frightening the people and through
their fears deterring them from sin. We have ourselves heard
clergymen of high reputation say that it would never do to admit,
before the people, that there is any chance whatever of penitence
and salvation beyond the grave, because they would be sure to
abuse the hope as a sort of permission to indulge and continue in
sin. Thus to ignore the only solemn and worthy standard of judging
an abstract doctrine, namely, Is it a truth or a falsehood? and
put it solely on grounds of working expediency, is disgraceful,
contemptible, criminal. Watts exposes with well merited rebuke a
gross instance of pious frail in Burnet, who advised preachers to
teach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it
or not.33 It is by such a course that error and superstition
reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral
indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical
atheism, debauchery of conscience, and genuine spiritual

30 Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 268.

31 Lange, Positive Dogmatik, sect. 131: Die Aeonen der Verdammten.
Maurice, Theological Essays: Future Punishment.

32 See Beecher's Conflict of Ages, b. ii. ch. 4, 13.

33 World to Come, Disc. XIII.

death. Besides, the course we are characterizing is actually as
inexpedient in practice as it is wrong in theory. Experience and
observation show it to be as pernicious in its result as it is
immoral in its origin. Is a threat efficacious over men in
proportion to its intrinsic terror, or in proportion as it is
personally felt and feared by them? Do the menacing penalties of a
sin deter a man from it in proportion to their awfulness, or in
proportion to his belief in their reality and unavoidableness?
Eternal misery would be a threat of infinite frightfulness, if it
were realized and believed. But it is incredible. Some reject it
with indignation and an impetuous recoil that sends them much too
far towards antinomianism. Others let it float in the spectral
background of imagination, the faint reflection of a disagreeable
and fading dream. To all it is an unreality. An earnest belief in
a sure retribution exactly limited to desert must be far more
effective. If an individual had a profound conviction that for
every sin he committed he must suffer a million centuries of
inexpressible anguish, realizing that thought,