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opponent sided with this modern class who rejected all future punishment; at all events, a large class rejected all punishment, except in this life. And how is this punish ment in this life inflicted? Oh, by mental anguish! There fore, if a man commits a sin once a day, he endures a certain amount of mental anguish; if he commit it twice a day, under the same circumstances, he endures twice the amount of mental anguish; if he commits it ten times a day, other circumstances remaining the same, he endures ten times the amount of mental anguish! This is according to the system of Universalism: how is it according to reason and experience? Let us take an illustration. A young man swears once, takes the name of God in vain once, and then he suffers a certain amount of mental anguish. Well, he does it again; and now his anguish shall be doubled, (other things being equal) to keep even-handed justice. Suppose he commits the crime ten times a day, then, other things being equal, he should suffer ten times as much mental anguish. And if a hundred times, the anguish of mind. should be increased a hundred-fold. But, is it so? How are the facts? We ask a young man if he remembers the first time he ever uttered an oath. He says, "Yes, I do ; and then came to my mind the instructions of a pious mother, the teachings of a godly father; that profane word grated on my soul and troubled my conscience." But you did it again; you increased the frequency of the act; you got to be so that you could do it ten times a day; and how was it then? Was the anguish increased? "Oh, then I could swear, and swear without thinking anything about it." Where, now, is the mental anguish? Is this mental anguish proportional to the enormity of the offence? Rather, it is diminished! What sent Gibbs, the murderer, who suffered the penalty of his crimes by being hung on your island? Why, he said, "The first man I murdered I hardly slept a

wink for twenty-four hours afterwards; I shuddered at every sound; I trembled at my own thoughts; but I did not think so much of it the second time; and still less the third; until soon I could revel in human blood and human butchery." How about your proportion of mental anguish to crime in that case? "Yes," says the objector; "but when a man comes to death, he suffers enough in a few hours to stand against all his crimes."

See the assassin, waylaying his victim in the forest; he means to murder and rob him; but, instead of that, the intended victim perceives him in time, fires, sends a bullet into his forehead, and down he drops, dead in an instant of time. With murder in his heart, he dies, having no time for anguish, yet he goes straightway to realms of endless life and joy! Does he, indeed ? It cannot be, for he rejected Christ, and where is his punishment? Where is his turning to Jesus to obtain peace? And we are told that, unless he does obtain it, he cannot escape punishment! Oh! Universalism is not only opposed to God's Sacred Word, but it clashes with all the facts in the history of man; it contravenes even common sense itself. I therefore cannot be a Universalist.

My friend has given me a challenge to meet him, at some future time, to discuss the question of endless punishment. I never give a challenge; I never decline one. I accept it.

*It is understood that the discussion here proposed and accepted, will take place in September next, (1854,) of which due notice will be given.

EIGHTH EVENING.

REV. MR. MOORE, of Newark, having offered prayer:

REV DR. SAWYER said: We have great occasion, certainly, to be gratified with the continued attendance on this discussion, and especially by the presence of such an audience as this on such a stormy evening It shows how deep an interest you take in the great question which is being agitated-one that can never be addressed to a human heart without meeting a ready and earnest response. Last evening my opponent drew a very touching and humorous picture of Universalism, as settled at some convention, at which he thinks I was present and assisting, about fifteen years ago. My friend, though a mortal enemy of poetry, is, after all, I think, somewhat of a poet himself, for this whole representation of his is a specimen of as sheer a fiction as ever poet's brain conceived, no such convention having been held, and no such doctrine established; and if it had been, I am sure I should not have been on the affirmative part of it. My views, I suppose, have transpired to your I am not a understandings, with respect to that matter. Calvinist, by any means; I think whatever of the leaven of Calvinism might once have been in me has all been worked out. We have some among us, in a denomination made up, to a very considerable extent, of individuals brought from every sect and party in the United States, who

have brought with them their old theoretic philosophy, and the influence of their modes of faith, and the feelings they formerly entertained. Such men, by not an unnatural process, are very apt to look upon this life as the only scene of moral action. It is precisely what our orthodox friends do when they refuse to regard the future as holding any immediate moral relation to the present. There we are no longer moral beings; at least we have no moral capacity-we cannot act freely as we do here. My opponent still insists that the bible teaches, in almost every page, that God's mercy will cease, and that, I infer, at no very distant day. I have only to say, in reply, that, if it be so, the scripture contradicts itself, by representing God as changeable, when we are assured by the same scripture, that there is neither variableness nor the shadow of turning in him, by giving the lie direct to a great many passages, which, in the most direct terms, say that his mercy endureth forever. The passage which my brother quoted last evening, with such an air of triumph, and, I must say, of apparent satisfaction— "I will love them no more forever"—is not exactly in the bible; at least the word "forever" does not happen to be there. It was put there by my brother, in the heat of argument, for the purpose of making the passage mean what he supposed it to mean. The prophet Hosea was speaking of Ephraim; and then we have these words-"All their wickedness is in Gilgal; for there I hated them." Gilgal was the place where they worshipped their false gods or idols. I wonder my brother did not quote that too; there God hated them. "For the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house; I will love them no more; all their princes are revolters. Ephraim is smitten; their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit; yea, though they bring forth yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of the womb. My God will cast them away because they did

not hearken unto him; and they shall be wanderers among the nations." Wanderers among the nations! That is the meaning of the passage; it has no reference whatever to the future world; all its threatenings relate to this, and it has no application whatever to the subject for which my brother introduced it. In the last chapter of the same prophet, speaking of the same, he says:-"I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him." And "Ephraim shall say—what have I to do any more with idols?" If we take the bible first in its literal sense, we make out that God repents, changes his modes of feeling and action every day; sometimes loves men, sometimes hates them, sometimes is good to them, sometimes curses them, sometimes extends mercy to them, and sometimes punishment. Is there no method by which to understand these things? Are we to look on God as we do on man, as a being of a thousand conflicting passions, betimes of love and mercy, and again of hate and cruelty? I pity the theology that is obliged to take the bible thus in its literal sense, without a single particle of reason about it.

My brother, you will remember, presented to us the case of an 'assassin, a very difficult case for salvation, but one which Universalism would, he thought, provide for speedily enough. He supposes him lying in wait for his victim; being suddenly struck with a musket-ball, he falls dead; and then, without any repentance, without any preparation to fit him for a better life, he says, according to Universalism, he takes his flight directly to heaven. Now, suppose this man, instead of having been perceived, and shot, had committed the murder, been arrested, gone through the process of the law, been convicted, sentenced, and visited by our evangelical clergy, he then would have swung from the gallows directly into heaven; while, in all probability, his victim, whom he had sent out of this world unprepared