acter, yet in their official capacity, we assign the words of the prophet, "With lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." And now let me advise the members of my congregation, never to countenance the preaching of that system by your presence. There is nothing to be learned, as you well know. The system, as you are well satisfied, is false. Leave it in its rottenness. I went once to hear it deal with Scripture. I went, however, not from curiosity, but for purposes of use and duty. That duty now is done; for I have exposed to you the corrupt and corrupting character of the system that denies a future retribution.

Let us live, my hearers, henceforth, in view of the great and awful truth to which our minds have been turned in this discussion. Let us remember habitually, "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment"-that "we must all 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." Death rolls on apace; and as death leaves us, the judgment finds us.

Do I speak to some adherent of the system? And shall it be in vain, my friend, that I have shown you the system in a light in which you have not seen it before-its hollowness within-its sophistry and dishonesty-its dangerous and immoral tendencies-the chaotic condition of its very ministry, not daring publicly to avow the sentiments they hold, but ever moving downward and downward, till their infidelity breaks

out of its hiding-place. Shall it be in vain that you look in on their vacillation and discordance? And when these men stand up to be sponsors for God to all eternity-dare you trust your hopes to such blind guides? "If the blind lead the blind," said the Savior, "both shall fall into the ditch."

Remember there are times when some of these men are troubled at heart with their own doings. They may, they must, speak boldly abroad, when their souls quail within. It is not in human nature to defy the whole force of God's word, without fearful misgivings. Within the last six years, there died in Pittsfield, Mass., a rich but very dissolute man,—a Universalist. Just before the funeral, the Rev. Mr. H., a Methodist minister, visiting his brother the Universalist preacher, found him walking his room, apparently in great distress. "What is the trouble," inquired the Methodist. "Ah," replied the Universalist, "they want me to put that man into heaven, but he is not there, he is not there!" You will not be surprised to learn that the preacher soon left the Universalist ministry. But why, oh! why did he not tell that profligate that he would not go to heaven, before he died?

Oh! what an awful responsibility rests on him who flatters men that they shall surely enter heaven, when every step takes hold on death and hell! And what a meeting in that other world, when the deceiver and his victim―he that recklessly preached, and he that greedily heard, the soul destroying doctrine-shall gaze in each other's faces, and shall read, written in lines of eternal despair,- "THE UNRIGHTEOUS SHALL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM of God!"

LECTURE SEVENTH.

RESTORATIONIST VIEWS AMONG UNIVERSALISTS.

Matt. XXV: 46. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into life eternal.

IN these words does the Lord Jesus Christ describe the duration of human retribution,-everlasting punishment, and life eternal. And my hearers will take notice, that though our English version employs two different words,-" everlasting" and "eternal,"-the term used in the original Greek is in each case precisely the same. It is, moreover, the very same term, which, elsewhere in the New Testament, (Rom. 16: 26,) describes the duration of God's own existence, when he is called "the EVERLASTING GOD."

The solemn narration, of which this forms the conclusion, sets forth the final judgment. The Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him. He shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. The sheep, his own chosen flock, he sets on his right hand; he calls them "ye blessed of my Father." They are "the righteous." They include not merely those who may have known the Savior in person, but the righteous through all time; for their Christian offices had been rendered, not unto him, but unto "the least of his brethren." The

kingdom awaiting the righteous, was "prepared for them before the foundation of the world." Those whom he sets on his left hand, he calls " ye cursed." They had not withholden from Christ in person, but they had refused the offices of piety towards him in the least of his brethren. And, as the home of the righteous was prepared before the foundation of the world, so, we are told, the wicked are commanded to depart "into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." "And these shall go away into everlasting or eternal punishment, but the righteous into life everlasting or eternal." Thus the Lord Jesus Christ, in the same breath, declares the duration of the punishment of the wicked, and of the reward of the righteous, by the very same word,—and that, a word than which there is no stronger in the Greek language to denote the coming eternity of God. Enough, then, that the pains of hell shall be coeval with the happiness of heaven, and both of them with the ceaseless years of God.

Against this and other plain declarations of God's word, as we have seen, there is a considerable body of men, who, though pretending to receive the Bible, boldly deny that there shall be any punishment at all after death. Their doctrine I have sufficiently shown to be no obsolete thing, but a living system of the present day, the published doctrine of the Universalist denomination. No different doctrine has for many years been distinctly put forth in the printed volumes of the denomination. So far as can be ascertained, it still holds undisputed possession of the great mass of the Universalist pulpits and periodical literature.

It is the stated spiritual food of the denomination. There are some in the denomination, however, the smaller and better portion,-who do not deny all future punishment, but only its eternal continuance. As the latter view is much less glaringly absurd than the former, and is far more respectable in its social position and influence, it is not unusual for those who hold it, to persuade others and perhaps themselves, that it is somewhat prevalent. And it is not an unheard-of thing, for those who do not hold this view, when hard pressed with the low character of their own system, to beat a temporary retreat behind the shelter and the respectability of Restorationism. In order, therefore, to meet the device, I propose, in the present lecture, very briefly to consider the subject of

RESTORATIONIST UNIVERSALISM.

To do this satisfactorily, requires that I first sketch the history of the system; after which I will examine its foundation.

I. The history of Restorationist views among Universalists.

John Murray was a Restorationist. So were Winchester and Mitchell; and so were the great body of Universalists until the year 1818, or nearly forty years ago. They believed in punishment after death; but in the final "restoration" of all men, without exception, to endless blessedness. About that time, Hosea Ballou openly announced the theory, which he had held in private, that "beyond this mortal existence, the Bible teaches no other sentient state but that which is called by the blessed name of life and immor