by himself (1 Cor. 15: 24), and the day approaches when he will subdue all his enemies under his feet, and glorify, by the severity of their punishment, the justice of the Living God. But already is he removing the thick darkness that covers the nations; he is forming unto himself a peculiar people (Tit. 2: 14), which he makes up of people out of every tribe and nation, of every variety of language and of countenance; he reëstablishes the unity of the human race by founding, through a new creation, an everlasting unity of spirit and of life among all the descendants of Shem, Japheth, and Ham, alike, who believe on him; he hastens the time when all who belong to the kingdom of heaven shall, therefore, speak but one language (for already they are all in heart of the same tongue), and his true church, which is still confounded with the world, glorifies God by manifesting, but to the view of angels (Eph. 3: 10), the manifold wisdom of God.

Finally, will the Son of God leave to his enemy the satisfaction of having inflicted upon irrational creatures innumerable wounds which no one has the wish, no one the power, to heal? No; not in vain shall the earth sigh for its deliverance. The time draws near when waters shall spring up in the dry place, and rivers in the desert which shall blossom as the rose; in the region sacred to the Lord, within the limits of the future kingdom of God, the myrtle shall grow instead of the brier, and instead of the thorn the fir-tree; no wild beast shall go thither, and such as remain in the land shall be changed; the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; believers who are there reunited shall no more be subject to disease; no longer shall be found there a child who shall live but a few days, nor an old man who shall fail to attain fulness of years, and he that may die at the age of a hundred years shall be still young (Is. xxxv. lv. lxv.). Thus will the earth prepare herself, during this epoch of transition, to enter, with its inhabitants, upon an eternal state. Yet it also must pass through a

1 According to the Bible, the history of the earth appears to divide itself into five periods. 1. an epoch of formation, separation and production: the earth is very good; 2. an epoch of disarrangement and transition, from the fall of man to the deluge: the earth passes from its primitive to its actual state; 3. the ex. isting epoch, where the earth sighs to be restored; 4. the epoch of restoration and transition, or the millennium: evil begins to disappear, and the earth passes from its actual to its final condition; 5. the new earth, which shall endure forever, spiritual, like the spiritual bodies of men risen from the dead, and perfectly pure.

death and resurrection; fire shall consume it because of the transgressions of the wicked (2 Pet. iii.), which have rendered a progressive transformation impossible; but thus shall it be purified from all evil and all vanity. Then shall it come forth in its resurrection, glorious and without spot, and become the everlasting Jerusalem, where the redeemed of Christ shall reign forever and ever.

Marvellous things are they, O earth, that are spoken of thee. But you will tell me the earth is too small to be worthy of so glorious a destiny. The voyager, traversing the immense Pacific, and occupied entirely with the magnificent landscape of the island he visits, takes no notice of the little rocks along the shore; and the earth is only such a rock. Its existence even is known to only three or four of the nearest planets; the inhabitants of Saturn, if they are like us, have never seen it, and how can the stars have heard a word about us? Hardly can they have noticed the sun among the ranks of the celestial armies. Man chooses rather to depreciate the earth, under a show of humility, than to aim at regaining the title of king of the universe.1 The earth is so small! you say; but do you not know that the pile of stars which are the glory of our milky way, are to us but an almost undistinguishable spot? And if the creation is not infinite, however vast its dimensions may be, we can suppose a distance from which it must appear to the eye as a mere luminous point, and a position still more remote at which it must entirely disappear. Now if there is nothing so immense but that it may become invisible to man, what, then, are material dimensions for Him who is a Spirit, and hath not his life in space? Is there anything great in the eyes of an Infinite Being? Is there anything little to the heart of a God whose name is love? In the human body, the most important members are not those which occupy most space; and in the history of humanity the largest nations are not the most celebrated; why should heaven be ruled by different laws from earth? The siderial world certainly forms a whole, that is made up of groups of stars; and our solar system has its assigned place in this vast organism. It is the Judea, the Holy Land, of the heavens. And besides, the Lord exalteth whom he will, and dispenses his grace accord

1 Saint Martin, on Truth and Error, Vol. II. p. 117.

2 Compare Europe with the other continents; Greece with Persia; Athens with China; the single city of Rome with the whole of Africa.

ing to his own good pleasure. He chooses even the weakest things to confound the mighty, that no flesh may glory in his presence (1 Cor. 1: 27-29); he is pleased to make his power known by the use of the weakest and most despised instruments. Rejoice, O earth, for thou art a spectacle to angels, whose eyes are fixed upon thee; rejoice, for thou art the celestial Bethlehem; and, although thou art little among the thousands of the stars, yet out of thee shall He come forth who shall be the Ruler of the universe (Micah 5: 2).

ARTICLE II.

GOD'S POSITIVE MORAL GOVERNMENT OVER MORAL AGENTS, ADDITIONAL TO THAT WHICH IS MERELY NATURAL.

By Rev. Samuel D. Cochrane, Paterson, N. J.

MORAL beings have a definite constitution by which they are honorably distinguished from all other beings. This constitution they have no power to annihilate or change; its essence and laws are as imperishable and immutable as the fiat of the Eternal Will and Wisdom which spoke them into existence and endowed them with immortality. By virtue of it, they are, from the moment their moral agency commences, not only capable, but under an absolute necessity, of recognizing a moral law, and themselves as subject to it; of obeying, or refus ing to obey it; and of experiencing certain elements of happiness as results of obedience, and of unhappiness as results of disobedience. Such is their constitution; and the law, or rule of action, they recognize, is the law of God. The elements of happiness they experience, as natural consequences of obedience, are manifold: the approving smile and benedictions of conscience; inward harmony and peace; enjoyment arising from the consciousness of worthily combating and controlling the appetites, desires and passions; satisfaction from the consciousness of deserving the complacency of the intelligent universe; pleasure from witness

ing the good they are able in any way to effect; delight from realizing the light of God's countenance beaming on the soul; blessedness conferred by hope, searching after and anticipating an eternity of virtue and its fruits; and such like things. The elements of unhappiness they experience, as natural consequences of disobedience, are manifold: the frowns and maledictions of conscience; inward tumult and war produced by collision of the perverse will with reason and conscience; conscious enslavement to pernicious and debasing habits, producing selfcontempt and abhorrence; misery created by the consciousness that the frown of God is on the soul, and of deserving it and the execrations of the intelligent universe; jarring remembrances of the past, and tormenting forebodings of woes in the future; selfcondemnation from witnessing the evil they do to others in so many ways; and such like things. These are the natural and necessary consequences of obedience and disobedience to the precept of that eternal and immutable law which binds all moral agents to God and to each other.

Now, it is maintained by some that these are the only sanctions of this Divine Law. They deny that God has promised to the virtuous any rewards, or threatened against the wicked any penalties, additional to these; and they accordingly repudiate all belief in a positive moral government, objecting to it as arbi trary, inconsistent with benevolence, unjust, and such on every account as God would not institute or administer. Of those who maintain this doctrine, some believe in the endless misery of those who die in their sins, and some do not. Those who do not, assume that, immediately upon passing into eternity, or at some subsequent period, they will exchange a sinful for a holy char. acter, and the natural consequences of the one for those of the other, and will thenceforward continue holy and happy. Those who do, assume that, when the wicked die, their sinful character is confirmed, so that they will forever persevere in sin, and of course be forever miserable. They admit, however, that, if any should, at any stage of their future history, become holy, their misery would certainly terminate with their sin. The only dif ference between them, therefore, is, that the one believes that, at death or subsequently, all sinners will be renovated, while the other believes that none will be, who die impenitent. They both believe the connection between holiness and happiness, and between sin and misery, to be simply natural; they both

asperse the doctrine that God has instituted a positive moral government, and will bestow rewards and inflict punishments additional to the natural results of holiness and sin, as imputing arbitrariness to God and incongruous with his true character; and they both eulogize the view they take as the only one that consists with the Divine benevolence, or commends itself to rational assent.

It is a question of the highest importance whether this doctrine, or the one it opposes, is the true one; for it is very obvious that one of them must be true and the other false; and that whichever of them is false, must be radically at war with the entire system of truth presented to mankind in the word of God. Under the conviction that the difference between them is thus radical, we proceed to set forth some reasons why the one we have been exhibiting, should be rejected, and the opposite one maintained. The reasons for rejecting the former, will be direct arguments in favor of the latter.

I. The first objection we urge against this doctrine is, that, if it be true, God has in fact no proper moral government over his intelligent creatures. Moral government consists in the declaration and administration of moral law. The law consists of two parts a precept, in which the rule is set forth in accordance with which moral agents are bound and required to act; and sanctions adequate to the importance of the precept, to allure and urge them to obey it. There can be no law without sanctions; for, without them, the precept would be mere advice, to be followed or not without hope or hazard of any other consequences than such as are the natural results of complying with, or disregarding it. The sanctions operate on the hopes and fears of all moral agents to whom they are actually addressed, alluring them to obedience by the good promised as its reward, and deterring them from disobedience by the evil threatened as its punishment; and the only way in which a ruler, as such, can contribute to the reign of the precept over the hearts and lives of his subjects, and thus actually be a ruler, is by administering the sanctions, using them as attractive lures and urgent goads to keep all on the path prescribed. The governmental function, therefore, is, in its very nature, an active and positive one, authoritative and controlling.

But, if the only rewards of virtue and punishments of sin are the natural consequences of each, it is self-evident that the law