to Brooklyn, was brought under deep conviction of sin. She lingered long without relief, hindered by the clinging remains of her Universalism. At length all other props gave way, except the force of her father's influence. While she was in deep trouble, the father spent a week at her house; and though he saw her trouble and guessed its cause, he evaded every opportunity to explain. At length, as he was on the point of departure, in deep anguish she threw herself upon his neck, and entreated him by the love he bore her not to deceive her, but to tell her truly whether he did believe that all men would be saved. Overcome by the appeal, with great agitation he replied, "I think it very likely that some will be lost forever"—and hurried away. She corresponded with him; and the love he bore her made him advise her to adopt the Presbyterian belief rather than the Universalist. With her last prop swept away, she gave up, and became an humble and rejoicing believer. But that father—what of him? The very man who had made that admission and given that advice, returned to his post, and again became, and continued to be, the chief supporter of the deadly delusion.

Such cases, I say, there is reason to believe, are not uncommon,—the bold exterior, and the misgiving soul. It is not in human nature thus to come in point-blank collision with the plain word of God, without feeling at times that all human assertions are but a frail guaranty that when God threatens "everlasting punishment," he will break his word.

Their uneasiness and consciousness of the falsity of the system often shows itself terribly at the hour of

death. I am not going to deny that some adherents of the system, die sustained by their delusion; nor on the other hand, that evangelical professors are sometimes troubled about their hope in the last hour; nor shall I attempt any comparison between the proportion of such cases. Professors of religion often have doubts about their acceptance with Christ, and because their lives have been such.

But there is one mighty and 'remarkable difference in the two kinds of cases. Whenever a dying Christian is agitated in the last hour, it is with no doubts of the truth of HIS SYSTEM; it is only with fears for his own personal relation to that system. He has lived afar off his own grasp is feeble-his personal evidence is dim; but the system lies before him, an eternal rock. Give him but clear, full assurance that his own heart has laid hold on that salvation, and he goes down with a calmness and confidence that not all hell can shake, with a light that the dark valley cannot dim. That rock is there-his only question is, "do I stand upon it?"

But when the Universalist doubts, as he often does. in that hour, it is of the whole system on which he rests. The very earth on which he stands is crumbling away beneath his feet; he, and his hope, and his system, are sinking down to hell together. It is an awful position;—he clung to the rock that overhung the gulf, but alas! he sees it now cracking away, and rock and man are about to be buried together in the boiling abyss. Such is sometimes the terrible experience of the advocates of the system. On the 29th day of September, 1827, (for example,) in Windham,

Greene county, N. York, died David W. Bell, a zealous defender of this pernicious system, and a writer for the Gospel Advocate. For several weeks while the fatal disease was upon him, he felt the miserable delusion to be giving way beneath him. "Father," said he, "I find eternal punishment, which I have so long disputed, now to be an awful reality. As soon as I am dead, write to brother E., and to Z. T. and S. T., that the doctrine we have tried to propagate is an awful delusion, that it forsook me on a death bed." Sometimes he would cry aloud to God for mercy again entreat his Maker to annihilate him; sometimes he would call on others to pray-again would beg them not to pray for him, for he had already sealed his own damnation. "Oh," said he, "it can alone be for the glory of God and the good of others for me to be damned! I must be damned! I am damned damned to all eternity. I cannot live in peace, I cannot die in peace, without the assurance that my renunciation of the delusive and dangerous heresy shall be as public as my defence of it was. Oh, could I speak to those deluded Universalists." And so he died. "The above recantation," says David Bell his father, "was made by my son when in the full exercise of reason. Of this, there are many witnesses. Neither was it extorted from him or occasioned by sudden. fright. It was from a deliberate and settled conviction for weeks."* Many, no doubt, die firm or stupid; but there are many such cases as this—and in them all, the doubt is not of the man's relation to the system, but

Arvine's Cyc., p. 426.

the system sinks; all, all goes down together with awful crash and horrible despair.

But in the annals of the world is there a case on record, where a dying man lamented his adhesion to the doctrines of grace? And though a Christian pass away under a cloud, his lament is never that he had, but that he had not, clung with all his heart to those doctrines. The despairing Universalist charges his ruin to his confidence in his system-the beclouded believer to non-conformity to his.

But I must close. In my next discourse, I may examine more minutely the Universalist argument. Meanwhile, I think we may say of a system that so contradicts the obvious import of the Bible as understood by the common reader and the great mass of men, by the best Christians and the united body of infidels, as well as the more intelligent restorationists; that is driven to such emergencies; that is guilty of such gross inconsistencies and absurdities; that gathers round it such a mass of immoral sympathies and support; that so contradicts common sense and general conscience; that keeps its advocates in such an uneasy state, writhing, and wrangling to keep their courage up, and yet often breaks down with unmitigated and portentous despair in the most trying hour of life we may say of it, it carries the mark of its Parentage on its brow; and we may say to it "Get thee behind me, SATAN."

LECTURE THIRD.

THE UNIVERSALIST ARGUMENT, DESTRUCTIVE.

Isaiah xxviii: 17, 18. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

I HAVE exhibited the nature and characteristics of Modern Universalism. I have pointed out the more obvious marks of falsity which it bears on its forehead. I come now more particularly to consider it as "a refuge of lies," in its arguings; and shall discuss

THE UNIVERSALIST ARGUMENT.

And here my limits forbid the discussion of the subordinate errors, which fill up the framework of the system and make it false in every part. I must confine my examination chiefly to its main point, viz: its denial of all moral connexion between this life and the future, its assertion that all men, irrespective of character and conduct here, and without any indebtedness to the Lord Jesus Christ, rise from the dead to eternal blessedness.

I. The most incessant and arduous labor of the system—and the most hopeless-is its efforts to grind away the fearful threats of God's word.