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human race to sin; that he has established a kingdom, consisting of those who yield themselves to his influences, and allow themselves to be led captive by him at his will; that Christ came to destroy this kingdom; that at the end of the world, after having put down the power of this malignant spirit (which is the crushing of the serpent's head spoken of in the original promise, and the bruising of Satan under the feet of believers), he will cast him and the wicked together into that eternal fire that was prepared for him and his angels; and that there he shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Unless, now, the doom of Satan can be explained away, the first step is not taken towards erasing from the pages of the Bible the doctrine of eternal punishment in the proper sense of the term. But it cannot be explained away. There it stands on the sacred record, like some mighty mountain of granite, rising rugged and awful from the unfathomable depths of the sea, and hiding its head amid dark thunder-clouds. God has placed it there, as a beacon to an apostate world, and man cannot remove it.

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IV. Resurrection of the unjust.

This is another fact of terrible import revealed in the Bible. "The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Why are the unjust raised from the dead? According to the Scriptures, it is that they, as well as the just, may appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." It is that the righteous may be publicly acquitted and received to the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world, and the wicked publicly condemned, and sen

1 John 5: 28, 29.

2 Acts 24: 25.

3 2 Cor. 5: 10.

tenced to everlasting punishment with the devil and his angels. This is an end whose magnitude corresponds with the stupendous miracle of the resurrection. The improbability of the idea that the dead are raised by a miracle to be annihilated, staggers even our author. He may well ask: "If they have no immortality, why are their slumbers disturbed?" 1 He attempts to solve this difficulty by a reference to certain natural processes.

Damaged seeds that are sown, often exhaust their vitality and perish, in germination. And we have noted the fact, that of insects which pass through the chrysalis state to that of the psyche, or butterfly, many, from injuries suffered in their original form, utterly perish in the transition. p. 263.

If the resurrection were a natural process, these analogies might be in place. But since it is wholly supernatural, they utterly fail. According to the Scriptures, the resurrection of the wicked is as complete as that of the righteous, that of both being accomplished by the direct power of Christ, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." Although it does not become us to pronounce positively respecting what is, and what is not, becoming to the wisdom of God in the arrangements of the final judgment, there is, according to the commonly received doctrine, a congruity between the resurrection of the unjust and their final destiny, which the author's view fails to make manifest.

V. Degrees of future punishment.

The Scriptures teach, in the most unequivocal terms, that there will be degrees in the final punishment of the wicked, not less than in the final rewards of the righteous. The general principle laid down by our Lord: "That servant which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes," he himself

1

p. 263.

2 Luke 12: 47, 48.

applies to the awards of the final judgment: "it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judg ment, than for thee."1 Now the common doctrine of eternal punishment admits, as we have seen, of degrees innumerable. Though all will be punished without end, the misery of one may be twice as great as that of another. But if the doom of all the wicked is annihilation, and this is that✓ "everlasting punishment" spoken of by our Lord, where are the degrees of suffering in non-existence? Beyond doubt it is the vengeance which Christ takes at the day of judgment on them that know not God, that shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for Capernaum. But this vengeance is expressly defined to be "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." If now annihilation be what is meant, how can that be more tolerable for Sodom than Capernaum? But if it be the suffering that precedes annihilation, then we have "everlasting destruction," which is the vengeance which Christ takes on the wicked, before it begins. How much better to abide by the plain meaning of Scripture, than thus to involve ourselves and God's word in endless contradictions!

ARTICLE V.

CONGREGATIONALISM AND SYMBOLISM.2

BY PROF. WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, ANDOVER.

THE Constitution of the Congregational Library Association proclaims that it is the object of this society, to establish a material centre for the denomination, about which it

1 Matt. 11: 24.

2 An Address delivered before the Congregational Library Association, Boston, May 25th, 1858.

shall collect its scattered elements, and from which it shall radiate its forces. It is its design, in the language of its statutes, "to found and perpetuate a library of books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, and a collection of portraits,” and to lay up in its archives "whatever else shall serve to illustrate Puritan history, and promote the general interests of Congregationalism." "It shall also be an object of the Association," says the constitution, "to secure the erection of a suitable building for its library, its meetings, and the general purposes of the body." Interpreting these articles and statutes in a broad and enterprising spirit, we find in them a desire to combine and unify the somewhat diffused characteristics of the Congregational denomination, by furnishing it a visible centre. This species of centre, and this sort of consolidation, though not of the highest order, though external in its instrumentalities, and external in many of its results, is nevertheless of great importance in the history of any organization. The influence of the national temple, the common visible home and resort of all the tribes, upon the Jewish church and state, is well known; and no external event, perhaps no event, contributed more to the downfall of the Old economy, and the Jewish cultus, and thereby to the progress and triumph of the new dispensation with its simpler and more spiritual worship, than did the siege of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the old ancestral temple. That building of the pagan temples which began in Greece, immediately after the Persian war was brought to a glorious close, did more than even that war itself, to bring the various Grecian tribes into something akin to unity; and that socalled Sacred War which was signalized by the robbing of Delphi, and the scattering of its treasures, was at once the cause and the effect of the decline and destruction of Grecian patriotism, and Grecian unity. Medieval Catholicism embodied its ideas, and centralized its forces, in the great Gothic cathedrals. That outburst of architecture in the thirteenth century, when Rheims, and Rouen, Paris, and Cologne, shot up their spires, and threw out their flying buttresses, with a suddenness and energy that looks like

magic,'-that majestic series of material centres for the Papal church did much to strengthen it in its corruption, and to postpone the Reformation.

The power and influence, then, of a centripetal point, even though it relate to externals, is not to be despised. It is indeed true that neither the library, nor the museum, neither the collection, nor the edifice in which the collection is garnered up, can be a substitute for the living spirit of learning in the mind of the individual scholar; and neither can the temple, nor the cathedral, nor any of the mechanism of an ecclesiastical denomination, be regarded of equal importance with the animating principle of piety in the hearts of church members. And yet neither science nor religion, neither the state nor the church, can wholly neglect these outward instruments of organization and union, without somewhat scattering their elements of power, and wasting their force.

Are we not then summoned by this "Library Association" to consider the need of more centripetal force in Congregationalism, in order to its greater efficiency as an ecclesiastical denomination? The Congregational edifice, the library, and the portrait-gallery, imply that we require an ecclesiastical home, and are emblematic of the truth that the denomination needs to control its tendencies to vagueness, and diffusion, and to render its distinguishing characteristics more intense by concentration. But this cannot be done by merely erecting a building, or collecting a library and portraits. These are but the secondary, though, as we have remarked, the necessary instrumentalities. Our unity, and our consolidation, as one of the legitimate churches of Christ in the world, must ultimately proceed from a deeper

1 "The 13th century as a building epoch is perhaps the most brilliant in the whole history of architecture. Not even the great Pharaonic era in Egypt, the age of Pericles in Greece, nor the great period of the Roman Empire, will bear comparison with the 13th century in Europe, whether we look at the extent of the buildings executed, their wonderful variety and constructive elegance, the daring imagination that conceived them, or the power of poetry and of lofty religious feeling that is expressed in every feature and every part of them."Fergusson's Handbook of Architecture, Part II. Book III. c. 9.

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