the holy constellation of his moral attributes, is just as great as that of any other of those attributes. It is just as great as his total moral glory. It is so a branch or radiation of his glorious perfections, that without it there would not be one perfection left. What other quality in any moral being, created or uncreated, could avail-if that being were a liar! What is left from the wreck of his glory? Is he any longer just, wise, trustworthy, merciful, holy, or good? Nay, his moral excellence were clean gone forever. It is a perfect epitome of the character of the Devil, that he is a liar; or, in the awful words of our Saviour, He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it. On the contrary, and by a contrast of extremes the widest in the universe, it is said of God, His work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. We are assured that it is impossible for God to lie; that if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

With these recollections of the moral perfections of God, let us remember the following principles:

1. If Universalism is true, then all men, bad and good, especially the former, are going, each one, though by different roads, circuitous or direct, painful or pleasant, to eternal glory in heaven, their common and blessed home.

2. God knows this perfectly; he never can mistake or forget the fact, so glorious and so necessary to his plans, in one of his dispensations or manifestations toward us.

3. He mediately wrote the Bible, in his wisdom and his veracity, as well as his great goodness, not only in entire and veracious consistency with the fact of universal salvation, but necessarily as honesty requires-to reveal it to mankind; and from its very nature-being central, characteristic, and cardinal in the system of his works-it must be the most frontal, palpable, and characterizing, in his revelations concerning them.

4. The Bible, however, in the estimate of about ninety and nine hundredths of its most eminent and learned and pious students, in all ages, and in all countries, since the writing of its inspired Books, the bible has been considered and declared to teach, most plainly, the eternal destruction of the wicked-their punishment, retributory and everlasting, in hell!

Nor can any man seriously doubt their sincerity by whom the award is made, in relation to what the Bible teaches. They are the holiest and most learned men that ever lived; of whom it may be said-of each of them,

He loved the world that hated him; the tear
That dropt upon his Bible was sincere.

And he that forged, and he that threw the dart,
Had each a brother's interest in his heart.

Of all

The testimony of God for any thing, is plainly the highest and the best rational evidence in the universe. possible evidence, there is only one kind superior to it, and that is experimental. The Author of the Bible is determined to convince every man of the reality of hell-fire; where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched; and if his full and oft-repeated testimony is nullified by their superior wisdom, or in any other way fails to convince them, it is plain that they must have their own experience! They will know what he means by all the doctrines, the comminations, the predictions, and the testimonies of his Word of Truth, by experimental evidence, convincing them forever! The writer having studied the Bible, chiefly in the original, now for nearly one-third of a century, cannot affect ignorance or doubt as to the meaning of the Book of God. He knows of no alternative. If the Bible is the Book of God, Universalism is an impious and impudent lie. Nor is it possible for him, in all charity, to believe that a good motive, truly such, ever made a Universalist, or actuated one in holding or in propagating his doctrine. True, a man may be, in a kind, sincere; but it is plainly a sincerity of a sort fully described,

and as fully condemned, in the oracles of God. It is criminal and inexcusable. It is the sincerity of delusion-with Satan alone to help it. It is often sent on men judicially, for abusing and resisting the light of the Gospel. Hear God himself account for it: And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, BECAUSE they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause [Siù Touro-on account of this] God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, [very sincere] that they all might be damned. This solemn passage occurs in 2 Thess. 2: 10-12.

Having thus far given a few of our own convictions on the subject, we recur to the volume of Mr. Lane. It is a performance intended for common as well as professional readers, consisting of thirteen "Sabbath evening Lectures," in the form of familiar sermons on the doctrine of future punishment." It is patiently and well reasoned, illustrated, and enforced, in its positions and principles; and as such, adapted to general usefulness in a peculiar and eminent degree. The author shows his heart and soul in all he says, evinces an excellent and practical acquaintance with the subject, and has furnished us with a work of great merit. Instead of philosophizing forever, dealing in learned abstractions and nice distinctions, instead of theorizing mainly, he grapples with the facts and the realities of his awful theme like one in earnest. He seems peculiarly to understand his adversaries, to state and expose their views, their sophisms, their ways of talking, and their modes of delusion. This he does every where in the light of Scripture, knowing the authority of the sacred text, rescuing its passages from perversion, showing the true view and the false view in convincing contrast, and coming down on the moral consciousness of his hearers, often, in the right place, and with the powerful incumbency of one, who speaks the truth of God, knowingly, and with the authority of God. We have perused his work with increasing interest, with cordial approbation, and not without personal benefit and edification. Nor can we withhold

the testimony of sincere gratitude to Mr. Lane. He has done good service to the cause of truth. He has written a work proper to be put into the hands of our youth, and fitted to instruct all readers in the important truth of which it treats. Is it the interest of a man to be deceived?—in the matter of his soul?—and for his everlasting undoing? Is it, we say, his interest? We waive now the question of his duty. We wholly omit all argument of his obligation to God and his fellow creatures. We regard him, as it were, in his own politics alone as acting for self, for his own interest, for his personal safety, happiness, and ultimate good. And we inquire, Is it his interest to be deceived? Plainly, it is not; unless it be his interest to miss of salvation; to make an irretrievable mistake; to rush precipitately by all the places of mercy and all the opportunities of salvation, and madly to incur, with a bound and a plunge, the unnutterable miseries of damnation !

In the first Lecture, Mr. Lane considers passages of Scripture adduced by Universalists in support of their doctrine; in the second, the same, with remarks on the Greek terms, thelo and boulomai; in the third, he views the doctrine of endless punishment according to the law and the testimonyremarks on sheol, hades, gehenna; in the fourth, he furnishes direct arguments from Scripture to prove the doctrine of endless punishment; in the fifth, the same; in the sixth, the same; in the seventh, he disproves the position assumed by Universalists, that the wicked receive all their punishment in this life; in the eighth, he considers the moral influence of Universalism; in the ninth, he evinces that the endless punishment of the wicked is not inconsistent with the justice of God; in the tenth, he shows its consistency with the love of God; in the eleventh, he proves that God is glorious in holiness in the endless punishment of the wicked; in the twelfth, he argues from the fact that Universalism is rejected by the pious; and in the thirteenth, he avers the immutability of man's moral character and condition in the future world. These positions are well sustained, and in a common sense

way illustrated, from reason, from Scripture, from the moral consciousness of man, from the absurdities of the contrary, from history and anecdote, from the nature of things, from the nature of virtue, and from many other allied considerations -which a man can resist only as he hates the light. Dreadful indeed will be the account of those ministers of Satan who have deceived the impenitent and edified their wickedness in presumption! God will judge them; because with lies they have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom he has not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.

Mr. Lane has managed his work in a happy medium between metaphysical ratiocination, and a popular but loose exhortation, of style and manner. He has lost no time in speculation and hypothesis. His way is that of manly argument and straight-forward application. He gains as he goes, both in the quantum and dependence of his thoughts, and in the profound interest he awakens in the reader and sustains increasingly to the end. Having read his volume of 130 pages through, we are competent thus to speak in its commendation. We are not indeed idolaters, and we have seen an end of what they call perfection here below.' not a faultless monster, and we are not blindly praising it. But taken as a whole, we welcome its appearance, and dare almost predict for it a prosperous career of usefulness.

We furnish a few specimens of his manner.

The book is

"That the wicked will be reclaimed in or after death, supposes that there are means for reclaiming and saving sinners, more powerful and efficacious than those of the gospel. Why are not those means now employed? Is it not as easy for God to employ efficient measures at the present time, if there are such, as it ever will be? If the love of God will ever call them into existence, why does it not now call them into existence? If it is said that it is the change which death will produce, that will renovate their moral characters, why does not God renovate them now, by producing a change equivalent to death? He can easily do it."

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"God's love is impartial. He loves the happiness of all beings according to their worth. He does not love the happiness of an ani