the eternal curse of sin as burning and tormenting as though it issued in flame from the fiery breath of the Almighty! Says Dr. Ballou,

"The question whether all mankind are eventually to be saved, or a part only, is one which no man can regard with indifference, provided he has any sympathy for the eternal welfare of his fellow creatures, or for their moral condition. The interest we feel in a future state of existence is also measured by the eternal well-being, or eternal ill-being, we associate with the idea. According to the laws of our nature, if we train ourselves to habits of indifference to the question involving the final weal or woe of our race, it wil deaden our benevolent affections, smother the Christian principle of charity, and paralyze the power which the great truth of a future existence exerts upon our hearts and lives. So important, so essential is it, that we should have clear and decided convictions concerning what the end shall be in relation to our whole humanity." 3

For such convictions the Gospel in its fulness has solid foundation. Look at its great central fact of the Resurrection; look at its Moses and Elias talking with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration; look at its Apostle, ignorant as to whether in the body or out of the body, granted a vision of heavenly things; read its blessed disclosures concerning the immortal life, of the dead in Adam being made alive in Christ, of the gathering in until there shall be one fold and one Shepherd, of the glad time when there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; — look, and read, and then say whether the Gospel leaves us in the dark, as to the world beyond, and the destiny there of the human family. To our mind it leaves not the faintest shadow of uncertainty upon this subject, but rather clears up all of doubt and mystery, and makes the grave but an illuminated pathway to the Father's house.

The oldest writings of the Scriptures, abound as they may with the crude thought, the childish superstitions of the race in its infancy, are at the same time full of God; and mingling

8 Counsel and Encouragement.

with rude and imperfect conceptions of Him, are to be found the profoundest and sublimest. In the very opening they affirm the grand postulate from which the Creation is but an inference: "IN THE BEGINNING, GOD." This is their startingpoint in solving the problem of the Universe. And from this first setting-out, all the way through; in all they have to say of individual fortunes, of current events, of the growth and decline of a people; there is a profound and reverent recognition of God, His abiding presence and sovereign control.

not

Of" Moses' mistakes" the history may reveal to us a great many, that is, looked upon in the light of to-day they may seem to be mistakes, but when interpreted in the light of his own times may appear to have been the very wisest things that could have been said or done. Of himself it can be affirmed that he was a marvellous man, measured by even the best and wisest men of to-day; very human, and yet in the rareness of his gifts, in the splendor of his genius, in the largeness of his inspiration, an exceptional man; such an one as God, here and there, now and then, raised up in the midst of the centuries, to lead in some new march, to shape a new destiny, or to inaugurate a new age of freedom and progress. In all times there have been these providential men, accidental happenings, not the production of hap-hazard processes, who have at once stepped into places they alone could fill, and gone about a work they alone could accomplish. God works in accordance with a plan. He does not guess at things. In the beginning He lays out His work, and then inaugurates the processes which will surely accomplish it. Through vast periods of time we see this all-enfolding plan gradually developing itself, and the work under it all the while going forward. There is no hurry, no confusion, no interruption, no defeat. When the continents rose up out of the sea from their baptism of ages, and were prepared for the occupancy of man, God saw so much of His plan accomplished; and said that the work was good. It was what He designed it should be. None of the processes of creation had

failed, but all had wrought harmoniously for the production

of a finished world. Are we not assured by this that God can not fail in anything He undertakes; that with Him there is no uncertainty; that in the finishing-up, in the grand consummation, all will be well?

Of the Mosaic writings it may be said that they disclose in a partial way, or furnish glimpses of, the most wonderful Plan of God, enfolding infinite issues. Immediately succeeding the account of the creation of the first human pair and of the transgression, they set before us a prophecy and a promise, dim and obscure, of an end to be reached, a work to be done, by One called the Seed of the Woman. After this, hundreds of years pass away, and then the Plan comes into view again. in the raising up of a man - by no means an afterthought to be the father of a great nation; and there is a repetition of the prophecy and promise in new words; and He who is to be the chief instrument of fulfilment is now called the Seed of Abraham. From this time onward the central figure, at first so dim and shadowy, grows upon the sight as feature after feature is brought out in type, and allegory, and prophecy, until there is fully wrought out for us by the hands of many artists, working under a divine inspiration, the picture of a Man, in whom, more than in any other man, should be enshined the image of God. There are at the same time growing disclosures of the all-embracing Plan with which this Divine Man should stand connected, and of the sovereign Purpose to be consummated through him.

In the life of this Man of prophecy should mingle the broadest contrasts, the strangest paradoxes. He should be a king, and yet a servant; a covert and a shade, and yet a homeless wanderer; the desire of all nations, and yet the despised and rejected of men; the one altogether lovely, and yet with a visage so marred that it shocked the sight; a triumphant conqueror, and yet an heir of humiliation, and shame; the only begotten Son of God, and yet the Seed of the Woman, the seed of Abraham. And what is most strange and paradoxical, prophecy sets power, conquest, dominion, victory, on the weak, the marred, the suffering, the sorrowful side of this

Man. From saying that he was wounded for our transgressions, that the chastisement of our peace was upon him, that on him has been laid the iniquity of us all, that he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, that the faces of men were hidden from him, that he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with transgressors; it turns to say, that while he was thus humiliated, despised, burdened, smitten, his life made an offering for sin, and his grave made with the wicked, he should see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied, and the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in his hand. Thus the triumphant Conqueror, the King who shall attain to universal dominion, is the same person whose visage is said to be marred more than any man's; who is declared to be be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we are given to understand that "out of that contempt, sorrow, humiliation, all might comes, and that the human heart could never be subdued except by one who wrestled with the death and sin which all men share together. Crushed, helpless, broken,- by his very suffering and desolation he becomes the channel of redemption to mankind." What else was there for prophecy to say, other than that the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy; that death shall be swallowed up in victory, and tears be wiped from off all faces!

Now are we to conclude that all that was so minutely foretold was the merest guesswork? that the recorded events we have been noticing were not the working out of a plan? that no provision was made in the Divine scheme of things for such a man as Abraham, or such a leader and prophet as Moses? that God did not know before-hand in what shape these lives would appear, nor how they would weave themselves into history? that when he spoke by the lips of prophecy of a coming Immanuel, of the destruction of death and an end of pain and sorrow, it was not because of any sight or knowledge of what would be, or what would be the conspiring causes of its coming to pass? This conclusion lands us in Atheism, for a God who cannot foresee and foreknow, and with whom, therefore, nothing is certain, is not God.

We go back to the primal period when, having finished the work of creation, God pronounced upon it His benediction. Surveying all that He had made, looking it carefully over, as we would say, inspecting it, with a view to the discovery of faults and imperfections, if any there were, He pronounced it not only good, but very good. We know what this means, or what it must mean when God says it. It means that it was clear to the eye of Infinite Wisdom, as it looked from the Beginning through to the End, that the works wrought would conduce to the most blessed result. This was true not only of the creation in general, but of man in particular. God saw that this work of His hand, the production of a being in His image, with a nature configured to His own, was also very good, because the end for which he was created would be answered by the perfection to which he would finally attain. Created in the image of God, he should come to be filled at last with the very fulness of God.

Suppose, now, God had seen, when inspecting His work, that there was something about this piece of mechanism called Man, some flaw or defect in his mental or moral machinery, so that he would run eternally wrong, or would be liable to get so out of gear that nothing could be expected of him but everlasting failure, thereby bringing upon his Maker great disgrace; can we think that he would have pronounced him very good, or said that he would answer just the purpose for which He intended him?

Suppose, again, that God created man, and called this piece of work very good, and yet did not know how he would turn out, or whether he would answer any good purpose or not; or suppose He created man with reference to some high and holy end to be attained, looked him over, and wrote "very good" upon him, at the same time knowing that he would defeat the attainment of that end, then what? Let the reader say, for we do not like to! We will say this, however, that if we hold that events quite unexpected to God turn up, and that things have a bearing upon each other so different from what He anticipated, that He is disappointed and frus