you are a sinner, seek deliverance from yourself, but not from God's law, or from God!"*

I have referred to these discourses, thus, at length, because they were delivered a short time since, in our immediate neighborhood, under circumstances somewhat peculiar; were afterward repeated; have since been printed; and now stand before the community as, in a sense, respectively representative of the opinions of the religious denominations out of which they sprang, on the subject which they discuss. I greatly respect the ability which characterizes them, and the spirit which, in the main, animates them; but, for one, I cannot feel that they exhaust the subject, — hardly that they even touch it, in its gravest and most fundamental aspects.

I believe that the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the finally impenitent is, on the soundest principles, a reasonable and true one, yet those principles, it seems to me, lie deeper down among the foundations of things than either of these discourses has gone, with its analysis or criticism. It is with the great sphere of truth as with the great globe of the earth; various, and sometimes apparently clashing and contradictory strata are apt to lie on, and just under the surface, but underneath, at last, you come to the solid substratum granite everywhere. If we wish to know securely which way the tide sets, we must get our answer from the movement of the deep body of the sea; not from the biassed motion of side eddies, nor the surface-drift of emptying streams. So if we wish to know whether a thing is reasonable or not, we must take it down into the presence of the great fundamental laws of the reason, and patiently decide its aspect toward them—not make popular appeals as to the way in which men are struck by this or that aspect of the discussion.

* The Doctrine of Endless Punishment for the Sins of this Life; Unchristian and Unreasonable. Two discourses, delivered in Hollis street church, by Rev. Thomas Starr King. (Published by request.) Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1858.

With no inconsiderable diffidence of my ability to do the matter justice, and, most of all, without assuming any superior profundity, but simply seeking-as in duty bound to aid you, so far as I can, to get really just views in this fearfully important department of theology, permit me to invite you to the consideration of this same question : Is it reasonable that God should punish eternally those who persist in sin, and die impenitent? I wish to be understood, in the outset, as admitting that this is a perfectly fair question. I do not sympathize at all with those who have spoken from among us, who have, sometimes at least, seemed to decry reason as a dangerous adviser in matters of religion; and who have been supposed to take the ground, substantially, that, no matter how unreasonable a thing is, we are bound to believe it if the Bible asserts it. "The first principle of religion," said Lord Bacon, "is right reason." Such is my faith. I believe nothing for myself, I urge no man to believe any thing, on the testimony of the Bible, that is not supported by the soundest action of the human reason. Our Saviour appealed to human reason to sanction the justice of his claims and teachings, saying, even reproachfully to the Jews, "Why, even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right? God himself says to men's reason: "Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard; what could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?" And it is precisely because I believe, with all my heart, that the Bible is sustained, at every point, by reason, that I believe it, and preach it, and urge it upon your faith, and commend it to your life. I make this, then, my first answer to the question: What are the fundamental principles which reason approves with regard to this question of the future punishment of the wicked? —

I. The first principle of reason, with regard to it, is that reason herself is our first, and, in a sense, our final judge in

the matter.

This is so because reason is the faculty which God has

given us for that purpose, and it would be a sin against him, as well as a wrong done to our own souls, not to use it. As he has given us eyes with which to see, and ears with which to hear, and kindred senses with which to ascertain what are the facts of visible nature and our duties toward them, so he has given us reason, which we might almost, in this view, call a sixth and finer sense,—with which to decide what are the facts of the invisible and spiritual world, and what our duties toward them. Here we differ widest from the brutes. They cannot tell whether there is any need of a revelation from God or not, for they have no reason with which to tell. It is only by reason that we can decide this, and when it is decided, it is only by reason that we can settle it, whether the Bible, or the Sybilline leaves of the Romans, or the Shasters of the Hindus, or the Koran of Mohammed, or the Book of Mormon, is that true revelation from God, which we need, and should obey. And if the Bible had the contents of the Koran, and the Koran had the contents of the Bible, we should be justified, by reason, in rejecting the Bible, and receiving the Koran on the ground that reason cannot believe God to be the author of a low, selfish, and sensual volume. But, if reason was given to us thus to guide us among the conflicting claims of different volumes to be the true divine revelation, it is plain that there is an important sense in which she is our first and final judge in all matters of religious truth, whence it follows not merely that we may, but that we ought to question her in reference to the doctrine under consideration.

The second principle which I submit as bearing on this question is:

II. Reason decides, that, while she is the first, and in one sense final judge, with reference to the reception of any thing which claims to be religious truth, by the human mind, she is yet incompetent, without help, to guide that mind into all that religious truth which it is needful for man to know.

This is simply because she sees that she cannot see all that

is essential to human safety and happiness. She is conscious of immense reaches of truth spreading far, on every side, beyond the circle of the horizon that shuts her in; and, though so far that she cannot know them, nor solve the problems which they present, they are not so far but she can see that those problems must have important reference to human wellbeing. She therefore craves help. She looks around for it. This is her need of revelation. She knows, that, though all men may guess, no man of himself can know, any thing concerning that which lies beyond the grave. She cannot believe that this life is to be all of human life, yet-unassisted-she has nothing that she can make the basis of any secure decision with regard to it. When cast down with troubles and tempted to try some sudden ending, her natural language is that of Hamlet:

"To be, or not to be? That is the question:-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And, by opposing, end them? To die—to sleep —

No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die,

To sleep! perchance, to dream;

to sleep;

ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life :

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

Distressed thus, with her own essential incompetency to decide for man some of the most important questions that cluster about his life, reason looks around for help. She decides that it is not probable that that great and wise and good Being whom she discerns at the helm of the universe, would leave his creatures in the dark where light is so essential to their welfare, and this leads her to the enunciation of that principle which I make the third, in her judgment on this subject, namely:

III. Reason decides that since, alone, she cannot solve the gravest questions of human destiny, it is both necessary that God should, and probable that he will, make up this deficiency in her data of knowledge, by a revelation of those facts which must otherwise remain beyond her reach.

In the judgment of reason it is incredible that such a Being, as she readily perceives God in his works of creation and providence to reveal himself to be, should permit that one of his creatures for whose development he shaped, subordinately, all material things, and in whose well or ill being and doing, the problem of the success or failure of the universe must find its resolution, to remain permanently destitute of any knowledge, the possession of which is essential to his welfare. Feeling, therefore, that there is much in regard to this world, and every thing in regard to what comes after this world, the knowledge of which lies beyond the research of the unassisted human powers, yet is essential to human prosperity and happiness; reason decides that it is to be expected that God will make a revelation of this needful but otherwise impossible knowledge. To suppose that he will not reveal it, under these circumstances, is to suppose that he does not wish men to possess it; and to suppose that he does not wish men to possess it, is to sup