With reference to the punishing of the wicked, my brother asks something which I suppose he means to be an inquiry, whether such punishment can be anything but cruelty. I answer, that every government of which we know anything, while it honors virtue and protects rights, shuts up in prison the persevering disturber of society; I can only add, Jehovah's government will do the same.

Now pos

Having answered this objection, I have but a single argument further to offer, and then I will relieve your patience for to-night. I wish to give you, as a closing remark, another reason why I cannot be a Universalist. Please God, I shall give you one every night. My reason is this,— Because, in a fundamental doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, Universalism and the bible are contrary to each other. Let me give you an extract from Universalism. Universalists maintain that men now possess the same constitution, physical and moral, as was originally given to the progenitor of our race. Physical and moral-the same! sess the same! The same constitution, moral and physical, as was given to the progenitor of our race! This is a doctrine of Universalism; it is so stated to be by the Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer, D.D., in his Review of Mr. Hatfield. Now, my friends, I cannot believe that doctrine; because, in the first place, we are told God created man upright. Such, it seems to me, was man's moral constitution—upright. Let us take a few plain texts of scripture to ascertain what man is now. "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me," said the Psalmist. Again, says the same Psalmist, "The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Again, we are told, "Foolishness is bound upon heart of a child." In Romans 5: 12, the apostle tells us, "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, and death

the

by sin-and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." Again, says the Psalmist, "Their inward part is very wickedness." The inspired writer seems to labor for an expression sufficiently forcible to depict the depravity of man. Again, Paul says to the Corinthians, "If one died for all, then were all dead,"-that is dead, not physically, but morally dead. Again, writes Paul to the Ephesians,

and sins." stitutions?

66 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses Was this a demise merely of their natural conWas it not a moral death? Again, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, was only evil continually." Again, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins." Again, Romans 3: 9, "What then? are we better than they? No; in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one. Their heart is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes."

There is Paul's description of the human family. Had Adam such a character when God made him? If not, I cannot be a Universalist, because Universalism conflicts with the Scriptures.

FOURTH EVENING.

The Throne of Grace having been addressed by the Rev. Mr. CAMPBELL, of Yonkers,

DR. SAWYER said :-I wish once more to call your attention to the question in debate and to the matter thus far introduced in its discussion. The question is, simply, "Do the holy scriptures teach the final salvation of all men?" From the holy scriptures we learn, as I have already shown, that there is a God of infinite wisdom, and goodness, and power; a God who is, by his nature, love, and the father of the whole human race. As he is the sovereign fountain of reason and knowledge, I have shown that he must have had an object in view in the creation of man in his own image. What was His object, I have asked again and again. It must be something consonant with his natural character as a Being of infinite perfections, wisdom, goodness, and infinite love-something, in a word, worthy of the Heavenly Father. My opponent and myself are, I believe, now agreed as to this original purpose of God in the creation. You also, I trust, who have listened to us thus far, must be entirely satisfied on this primary point," the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever." That is the end for which God made all men at first; that he has ever changed or abandoned this, his original design, no man can for a moment pretend, and it seems to me no man can reasonably even imagine; so far from it, indeed, the scrip

tures clearly show that God has never forgotten this, his design; has never lost sight of it; but, amid all the outward changes of the world, and through the various dispensations of his providence, and his grace, has steadily pursued it, and is pursuing it now, and will continue to pursue it, until he has finally and perfectly attained it. In proof of this proposition I endeavored to bring to your acquaintance, last evening, several scripture texts that seemed to me of great weight; as, for instance, the declaration of God in the garden of Eden, when he had called our first parents, after their transgression and fall, into his presence, to pronounce his sentence upon them; when the temptation was traced back to the serpent, and upon that serpent the heaviest possible curse was pronounced, in a declaration that the seed of the woman should bruise his head, while he should bruise his heel. I showed you, or, at least, endeavored to show you, that the bruising of the serpent's head, thus promised by the Lord our God, implied the death of the serpent, or his destruction; and I fortified this opinion by a reference to a passage in the New Testament, where we are taught that, since the children were "partakers of flesh and blood," Christ also "took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, had been all their life-time subject to bondage."

I endeavored to enforce the fact that, whatever you might understand by the term serpent, and whatever your notion of the devil might be; however malignant, great, or mighty you might conceive him to be, there is One mightier than he, who has assured us, by his holy word, that he shall be destroyed. I, furthermore, showed you that God had, very graciously, in the early ages of the world, revealed himself to the patriarchs, and gave promises of what he would, in due time, accomplish through them and their seed. "In thee

and thy seed, shall all the nations and families of the earth be blessed;" such was the promise given and repeated by Jehovah. That seed, we learn from Saint Paul, is no other than Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, then, God proposed, away back in the dim past, to reveal himself as the renewer of a tarnished world, as the restorer of lost souls; and, thus, to bless the whole human family.

I wish, this evening, with your indulgence, to pursue a similar train of thought, to show you that this doctrine lying so at the commencement of Revelation, and traced up through the patriarchal ages, runs through the whole Old Testament, and is also still more plainly fixed and evidenced in the New-I say, still more plainly in the New. It is no doctrine interposed here and there in obscure and dark verses; but it seems to me to stand out clearly everywhere that God has been pleased to speak of it; forming a silver chain running through the whole volume of Revelation, in the most intimate relation with the divine character and purposes. You will observe, in the first place, that this original purpose of God, declared in his word to the patriarchs, made a lively and profound impression upon the better and more spiritual minds of the Jewish people. Those declarations, and the truths they set forth, were seized hold of by the psalmist particularly, wrought up in the most beautiful poetry, and thenceforth made part of the national education, and an instrument of national worship.

Speaking of Christ, who was ultimately to crush the head of the serpent, and in whom, as the seed of Abraham, all the nations and families of the earth were to be blessed, the Psalmist says: "His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed." "All kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him." Thus we see him blessing all and blessed of all, the