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which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you : on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busy-body in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf." (1. Peter iv. 12-16.) Others again think that Jehovah is alluded to as the object to be feared, no! on the ground of his ability to destroy in a hell beyond the grave, (for Gehenna, in that day, was not received in any such sense,) but in reference to his power to involve them in a common destruction with that portion of their countrymen who should obstinately reject the gospel. To me this seems the most probable construction of the text; for Gehenna was associated in the minds of Jews with every thing horrid, loathsome, and abominable. Christ tells the Pharisees that they made their converts "two-fold more the children of Gehenna than themselves;" and James, speaking of the tongue, says, "it is set on fire of Gehenna." Should we be at a loss to understand a person who should say, that the converts made to such and such principles were made the children of the penitenliary? The meaning, I think, would be sufficiently obvious to us; we should understand it to imply, that they had become fitted, by the evil principles they had imbibed, for such practices as might subject them to the penitentiary. Well, then, as before observed, Gehenna was a place of as great and of as odious notoriety, in that day, as is the prison, or penitentiary in ours; for the former was not only a receptacle for the unburied carcasses of criminals, and the filth and offals from the vast and over-populated city of Jerusalem, but it was also a place of criminal execution. The Jews, it is well known, held themselves polluted if they came in contact with a dead body, and it may well be conceived, therefore, what a horror they entertained in regard to so nauseous and loathsome a place as by all accounts the valley of Hinnom was.

It is worthy of remark, that neither Christ nor his apostles ever used the word Gehenna except when addressing Jews: to Gentiles the reference would have been unintelligible. Paul,

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who calls himself "the apostle to the Gentiles," never once used it, nor any other term answering to the modern idea of hell. It is somewhat singular-nay, it is very remarkable, that while all other nations had their respective hells, the Jews, who were especially instructed in religion by Jehovah, for the space of 2000 years, were without any ideas on the subject! Should not this fact alone suffice to prove, that the doctrine of a region of suffering beyond death is fabulous?—that it is of heathen origin? and that it has no true and proper connexion with a religion revealed from heaven?

It is probable that the idea of a hell was first taken from those gloomy dungeons, which earthly tyrants have, in all ages and countries, employed as the instruments of their ambition or revenge; hence, with the idea of hell are usually associated the dismal and heart-sickening imagery belonging to such places as the Bastile of France, the Black-hole of Calcutta, and the Inquisition of Spain or Goa; dungeons, chains, racks, torturing implements, darkness, feverish thirst, groans, shrieks, blasphemies, burning, suffocation, desperation, despair, all these start up in connection with that direful word, which has given to priests their magic power over the souls of men, and which has caused man to start back with horror from the contemplation of that futurity which has been opened to him in the gospel as an object of joyful hope.

In this branch of our general subject it is a high satisfaction to us, that we have the judgments of all, of all sects, both Jew and christian, in perfect coincidence relative to the radical and primary meaning of Gehenna; all agree that it comes from the two He brew words Gia and Hinnom, literally signifying the valley of Hinnom. On this point there is no dispute. It is assumed, indeed, that it came by accommodation to be applied to a hell beyond this life; but it surely ought not to be expected that an assumption of such magnitude will be admitted without the most substantial evidence; and none such, so far as I can learn, has ever been produced, nor do I believe it can be.

Critics are also agreed, as before observed, relative to sheol and hades, and even our English hell. These things must be kept in mind by the reader, for they are of great moment in their bearing upon the settlement of the great question before us, relative to the truth or falsity of universalism.

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The celebrated Dr. John Mason Good, in his lecture on the nature and duration of the soul, affirms, respecting the popular tradition, as early as the time of Isaiah, (and Homer, with whom he believes him to have been contemporary,) that "it taught that the disembodied spirit becomes a ghost as soon as it is separated from the material frame: a thin, misty, aerial form, somewhat larger than life; with a feeble voice, shadowy limbs, knowledge superior to what was possessed while in the flesh; capable, undet particular circumstances, of rendering itself visible, and retaining so much of its former features, as to be recognised in its apparition; in a few instances wandering about for a time after death, but for the most part conveyed to a common receptacle situated in the centre of the earth, denominated SHEOL, HADES, HELL, or the world of spirits.

"Such was the general belief of the multitude, in almost all countries, from a very early period of time, with the difference, that the hades of various nations was supposed to exist in some remote place on the surface of the earth, and that of others in the clouds."

It is more than probable that this dim and misty outline of the realm of ghosts was from age to age amplified upon, until it became the abode of the damned, modified amongst different nations according to the diversified policy of their priests, or fancy of their poets by some it has been located in the interior of the earth; by some on its surface in some remote district; by some in the clouds, in the moon, in a comet, or one of the planets. With some it has been held a hell of fire; with others a hell of ice; with others, of alternate burning and freezing; with others, of darkness and dreary wandering amid every frightful circumstance, of hunger and thirst, etc. The latest refinement upon it amongst christians is, that it has no outward or material existence, but is merely a state of moral suffering, remorse, unavailing anguish, and despair.

If hell be a located place, God made it. He made it with a perfect knowledge of the end to which it should answer, and he of course adapted it to that end. He also created those whose doom it shall be to groan in its depths forever; and he of course knew that such should be the issue of their being. And he is infinitely benevolent,

11. " is good to

all, and his tender

mercies are over all his works!!" Let those believe these absurdities who can. I can not, if the penalty be a hundred fold damnation !!!

Thanks be to God! I lie under no such obligation! The light of his word shines sufficiently bright on the pathway of my inquiries on these subjects, to satisfy my understanding and my hopes. It informs me, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," but no mention is made of his having created a HELL!! So, also, at the conclusion, it speaks of "a new heaven, and a new earth," but nothing whatever of a NEW HELL!! Thus, neither firstly, nor lastly, nor intermediately, do the scriptures recognise such a hell, as at this day is proving, to a frightful extent, a source of terror, and madness, and suicide.

It is sincerely hoped that the reader will "search the scriptures," in order to satisfy himself on this point. He will receive but little edification from the perusal of polemical squabbles concerning it. He must "to the law, and to the testimony;" and oh! let him take heed, that nothing short of these high authorities determine him in a belief, so dreadful in its bearings on his own happiness, and so pernicious in its influence on his views of the Divine character.

FOREKNOWLEDGE AND FOREORDINATION.

DOES ABSOLUTE FOREKNOWLEDGE NECESSARILY IMPLY ABSO

LUTE FOREORDINATION?

o momentous are the consequences involved in this question, that very many have been deterred from adventuring fairly and boldly into a discussion of it; for if, on the one hand, it be settled in the affirmative, it seems clearly to follow that God is the author of sin that man is without moral freedom-that he therefore is not responsible for his actions-and, in that case, promises, threatenings, rewards, punishments, appeals to his interests. his f his sense of propriety. &

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FOREKNOWLEDGE AND FOREORDINATION.

281 to follow, moreover, that God has incorporated a lie in man's moral constitution; for man has an ineradicable persuasion that he is free-that not his actions only, but his volitions also, are entirely subject to his own control; which, however, is not the case, if all events are the result of divine foreordination. Such are the difficulties on the one side. Milton has alluded to them with much beauty and force in his Paradise Lost, as follows: "Ingrate, he had of me.

All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

Such I created all th' ethereal powers

And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

Not free, what proof could they have given sincere

Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,

Where only what they needs must do appeared,

Not what they would? what praise could they receive?

What pleasure I from such obedience paid,

When will and reason (reason also is choice)

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,
Made passive both, had served necessity,

Not me?"

On the other hand, if the question at the head of this article be settled in the negative, it would seem to follow that, in a great, measure, things are left to the determination of chance-that Jehovah himself may be disappointed in the final issue of affairsthat he is indifferent to the eternal interests of his creatures, or he would not have suspended them upon uncertain contingenciesthat in innumerable instances the will of man will prevail against the divine will—that, in fact, God can have had no definite purpose in creating, save such as he adopted on the foresight of what man would do; and thus, the doings of the Infinite are shaped and controlled by the ever-changing vagaries of finite beings; and, moreover, the deity is, in truth, as directly accountable for all the events which take place upon the ground of absolute foreknowledge, as upon that of absolute foredetermination.

These difficulties on both sides have induced some to seek a middle position; none, however, have yet succeeded in the search-there is no sailing betwixt Scylla and Charybdis here. Dr. Clarke (as stated in another part of this work) assumes, that God can be ignorant, if he tries, of such events as he chooses not to know. A most gross solecism, this; it implies that the Infinite

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