or evil. If a mind be not indestructible, it must be a compound of elements that may go to form some other thing, just as the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, which form the plant now before me, may be resolved, and become the aliment and ingredients of other living or dead beings. But one mind or soul can not be a part of another. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, answer a thousand purposes, and exist in a thousand combinations; but mind exists individually only, and with a simple unity of purpose. It is a mind, and can exist only as a mind, that is, to be conscious, or what is the same thing, to perceive and will. The existence of any thing is the expression of God's purpose in that thing; an element answers its end, as the element of some other thing, but a mind answers no purpose but as a conscious being-in perception and will it fulfills the purpose of its creation, and it is thus, and thus only, related to its Maker. Now the intention of the Omniscient with regard to any being is expressed in the nature of that being, but to intend annihilation is really to have no intention, since there can be no purpose in that which is not; God can have no relation to non-existence, and therefore the annihilation of a human soul is an unimaginable event. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him.

Is there to be an eternal tradition of the Divine glory, as manifested in the annihilation of beings brought into existence by Divine energy? Does reason teach us that it would be an appropriate demonstration of God's power, as the creator of light, to extinguish the sun, and blot it out forever? And is the soul of any man a lesser light, to be forgotten of its Maker, or to be spoken of in angelic story as a thing that was? That must be an insane charity that would distrust the judgment of God, and think it impossible for the Almighty to prove His benevolence, without annihilating those whom He created. Our experience

does not speak of such a Father in heaven. Know, O man of tenderness and terror, that perfect love casts out fear, and that thy Maker has more charity than thy small heart can hold. All the love in the infinite universe is but as the breathing of its Maker over it. The full utterance of His heart you can not know, without inhabiting eternity in union with Himself. Not until you so dwell, and so live, shall you be able to fathom the abyss, and see how love is there. It is in vengeance, but still it is the vengeance of love-love that wills that all men should be saved, and that proves He will have mercy rather than any sacrifice but that of self-devotedness to the recovery of the lost. Yet let us not deceive ourselves by our habit of catching sounds instead of sense. The figures of speech employed in the Holy Volume are not like the poetic ornaments of Corinthian discourse, but veritable illustrations of truth, and therefore who can doubt that these words "the place where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched,”—are meant to express a perpetuity of pain existing there? Is Divine justice revenge? We can answer this bold question without denying the eternal condemnation of the wicked and impenitent; but we must enter into the modes of the spiritual world, before we shall be able to apprehend either the darkness of hell or the light of heaven. This we plainly perceive-the seeking of glory and immortality in God insures eternal life in the fullest sense, because it is consistent with His will and nature that he should be the everlasting source of blessedness to all creatures in a state of soul to receive from His fullness with the acknowledgment of his favor.

I hope always to be able to join in the prayer of the Liturgy-That it may please Thee to have mercy upon all men:" God willeth not the death of a sinner; but in order to the possibility of a remission of

the Divine sentence, that banishes a soul from light, it is necessary that there should be a change of mind; for while malignity continues, hell endures. The soul that wills not to be holy denies that God is good, and can not have forgiveness, either in this world or in that to come, but is in the danger of eternal condemnation. But it is the business of theologians to propound and adjust whatever difficulties they may discover in the divine Scriptures; yet we dare not entertain any interpretations at variance with the character of Jesus. In him alone God is manifest. We know nothing of holiness, nothing of divine love, and nothing of justice, but as seen in Him. He came to show how God was just, and yet a Saviour. He told his most beloved disciple that he knew not what spirit prevailed in his heart, when he would have called down fire from Heaven to devour those who rejected Him; and he tells us all, that he came not to destroy men but to save: still it is nevertheless certain that to reject His salvation, as the cure for sin, is to continue under the dominion of evil, and that is itself anathema maranatha.

Ceasing to breathe this common air is not itself alone death. Men are accustomed to call it so because it is that part of mortality that most strikes the eye; but death itself is what sin gets as the wages for its every day's work-a deadliness of heart, a state of affection excluding God. Those who keep the saying of Christ, or obey His teaching, alone live truly and in a godly sense; for, as He says, they can not see death, because they are in spirit one with him who is the resurrection and the life. To feel under the eternal burthen of unforgiven sin, without a hope of deliverance, because without a disposition to receive regenerative life as from the blood of the Saviour's heart, is death, and all the proper purposes of being are then lost in the immortality of torment belonging

to a mind distrustful of its God. Even now we feel that to reflect on the bare fact of immortal existence without a consciousness of God's love is intolerably awful; what, then, must it be to have all our faculties open to the everlasting reality of having voluntarily rejected mercy on the only terms on which it can be offered by the Holy and Omnipotent Author of our being?

CHAPTER IV.

MAN IN RELATION TO HIS MAKER.

WERE not deathlessness a felt fact, there would be no motive for writing or reading a volume like this, which has been commenced, and it is hoped will be completed, with the conviction that both the writer and the reader have an everlasting futurity which must be influenced by present mental engagements and the nature of the will to which we yield obedience.

Qui obdormierunt non perierunt. Because man is immortal, and the awakening up from death will be with a restoration of the past to the spirit, in as far as all intelligence and the final destiny must grow out of remembrance, we have good reason for earnestness whether we set ourselves to meditate upon the means of self improvement, or would rouse other minds to think of the purposes of life and thought.

Man is the only creature on earth that meditates. He alone treasures ideas, compares them with each other, and reasons concerning what he may expect from what he has experienced. Hope and fear look beyond the horizon of earth, and every exercise of intellect influences the tendency of our affections and our faith, either by extending our acquaintance with goodness, with freedom, and with truth; or by binding our souls more closely with the fetters of error and of falsehood. These, like siren sisters, meet us smilingly every day and unless we are fortified by the virtue of an indwelling and uncreated light, we must be deceived by their pleasant songs, and soothed into a slumber from which we shall awake only to find ourselves bound with grave-clothes, and buried deep in the marble dark