express in language as strong and unhesitating the certainty and dread
nature of future punishment, were men also who, more than any who have
ever lived, loved their fellow-men, wept like their Divine Master for
their sins, and devoted their lives, with untiring unselfishness, to
rescue them from present evil and future woe. Now, if this be so far a
true, if not a full, representation of the teaching of Christ and
His apostles on this momentous theme, I may be permitted to put
two questions of a practical and personal kind to my reader. One
is,--Whether the knowledge of the character, apart from the authority,
of Jesus and His apostles, who spoke in such language of the future
history of some men in another world, ought not to make us pause with
becoming self-distrust and reverence, if disposed to exclaim against
the possibility of so terrible an ending as a thing "unjust,"
"revengeful," and "revolting to benevolence?" Who are we, what have
we been, or what have we done for our fellow-men, that we should thus
presume to have a more tender regard for their well-being than
the Lord Jesus Christ or His apostles had, and to be incapable of
entertaining or of uttering such "harsh thoughts" as they did about
their future state?

The other question which I would humbly suggest for consideration is
this:--What is your real belief in reference to man's future state?
Have you any faith in our Lord's teaching? Any firm practical
conviction in the fact of future punishment? After you have made
every possible deduction from the weight of Scripture testimony, and
explained away every metaphor, parable, and dogmatic statement to the
lowest possible point short of absolute denial of their truth in any
fair sense of their meaning,--may I beg of you to consider what, or
how much, remains to be firmly believed as the truth of God? For it
does appear to me that there exists a wide-spread callousness and