III. The third of the prevalent opinions to which I shall refer depends upon the second. 'There being 'a religion which men are required to accept, there 'must be sanctions to enforce it. They must consist 'of the most brilliant rewards for obedience, of the 'most tremendous punishments for disobedience. Pains. 'and pleasures are the motives by which men are 'stimulated to act as the human legislator wishes them 'to act. The pains and pleasures which a Divine Legislator holds out cannot be limited by the threescore years and ten during which we stay upon this 'earth. They must stretch through illimitable ages; 'there can be no term to them.'

'Yes,' the believer in the Jesus of Renan says, 'beyond all doubt this must be the opinion of those 'who accept what you call the Gospels, who suppose 'them to have proceeded from a Divine Author; who 'think that they express the judgment of a Son of God; of one that rose from the dead. The words everlasting life and everlasting punishment are, those Gospels say, His words. Modern divines have not 'introduced them. Rather it has been the habit of 'our time to hide them from view, to explain them 'away. Only a few are honest enough to take them ' in all their horrible significance. Even those only use 'the threatening part of them occasionally for great 'offenders or desperate heretics-even they do not 'speak of the devil and of demons as the Gospels

We are

speak continually, almost in every page. 'told that we must acknowledge the existence of such beings; but in general little is said about them. It 'seems to be thought that they had tremendous power 'in Palestine, while Jesus walked the earth, but that 'their influence is not much exerted over us. We are 'very depraved, of course, utterly depraved. But that 'is the fault of our own nature. Malignant spiritual 'influences were believed in during the Middle Ages, 'were thought then to be present and active. What 'cultivated man dares confess a similar conviction 'now? Does not a clergyman, going into districts 'where such superstitions exist, labour to discourage 'them? Does not the English Clergyman denounce 'the Irish Priest for making use of them, that the 'people may tremble at his curse, and hope for his 'exorcism?'

I acknowledge at once that we have evaded the express statements of the Gospels respecting eternal or everlasting life, respecting eternal or everlasting punishment. I acknowledge it as an indication of the same habit of mind, that we give so little prominence to the story of our Lord's temptation by the devil, which stands at the very threshold of the Gospel narrative, to those stories of the casting out of demons which form one of their capital and obvious characteristics. I think any objector has a right to demand the reason of these omissions and prevarications. No

reason seems to me so entirely to meet the facts of the case as this. We have regarded those phrases about everlasting life and everlasting punishment as the sanctions of a religion. We have translated the Gospels into Bentham-Dumont Traités des Peines et des Recompenses. We have believed that we were to outdo the Benthamite legislator by producing heavier punishments and greater recompenses than he could produce. And therefore these words have been kept as a reserved force, to be brought forth at the end of discourses, to clench the arguments and rhetoric of preachers. And the preacher has been supposed to exhibit his discretion in distributing promises and threatenings according to some theory of his as to the persons who might need the one and might not need the other.

Now when we read the Gospels, we find that the first announcement of the Christ is this: 'He shall baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire. His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into the garner; but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.' No one can suppose the Gospels to be true and to have any order in them who does not take these words as cardinal words, words of which all the subsequent history is an illustration and fulfilment. The Evangelists never suffer us to forget them. The characteristic of the Christ is that which is indicated

by the name; He is anointed with the Spirit. All

His exercises of power are the works of the Spirit. They are not acts directed towards the outside of the man, but to the man himself. If they affect his body, they affect the springs of life in his body; that which determines its condition, but which the eye cannot see. And the conflict is always represented as being with powers which have usurped dominion over his thoughts, over his will-powers which have made him a slave. The Holy Spirit is at work to deliver him from this captivity. What would this regenerating baptism of the Spirit be worth if it were not accompanied with a fire to burn up whatever defiles man and the societies of man? Can that fire be a poor material fire, which, like all material things, must die out? If it is to purge an immortal being-a fellowship of immortal beings-must it not be an unquenchable fire, one that no evil with which it comes into contact can

overcome or extinguish?

Such a divine fire must be that with which the Son of man baptises; even as with such a fire He was Himself baptised.

But are there not threatenings of an 'outer dark'ness,' of 'weeping and gnashing of teeth,' of a 'damnation of Hell,' which it is most hard to escape? Fearful indeed are these threatenings; fearful in the frequency of their repetition; fearful in the occasions which called them forth. Oh, let us meditate them well! Let us observe that they are not reserved for

publicans or harlots, or heretics and heathens; that they are reserved, strictly, carefully reserved, for the most religious men, for those who were practising the most exclusive religion, for those who were using the sanctions of this religion, habitually, perseveringly, against publicans and harlots, and heretics and heathens. Let us ask ourselves whether the outer darkness is not that exclusion from the love which was seeking to embrace publicans, harlots, heretics, heathens; whether the weeping and gnashing of teeth is not for the loss of the fellowship with the Son of Man and with the race for which He died through this exclusiveness; whether the deep hell into which the Jewish nation and its rulers were sinking was not the hell of Covetousness, of Hypocrisy, of Malignity, out of which the Spirit of God was seeking to raise them, which the fires of God were seeking to consume in them. If we think over these things, the Epistles will interpret the Gospels to us. We shall understand how the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus delivered Saul of Tarsus (who had been living under the sanctions of his religion, and enforcing those sanctions upon all other men) from the law of sin and death; we may understand what his conversion meant, and what his Gospel to the world meant, and why that Gospel exposed him to the same bitter persecution which he had once enkindled.

And then, also, we shall never feel tempted to