was solicited by a Sister of Mercy for money to buy a pair of shoes for a poor woman. Returning in a few minutes with the purchase, the next word was, "Now, Countess, put them on, for it is not fit for you to go about the streets of Paris in January with such old shoes!" There is a curious antagonism between the creed which made her believe professedly in purgatory, and the study of Scripture, which made her believe that all the truly pious went, at death, to heaven. There is more sentiment in the book than we approve of; but does not the same objection belong to a good many volumes of biographies written by Protestant ladies? Montalembert, or, as he is familiarly called in the letters, "Montal," was an intimate friend of the Countess, as he had been of her husband. Was not this lady one of the "saints in bondage," amid Rome, whom we devoutly wish and pray to become "saints in freedom," by forming a Free Catholic Church? Eugenie de Guerre was a provincial French lady, with all the natural vivacity of the sunny French South. With delicate health from the first, and suffering much from the death of her only brother Maurice, a young poet of the highest promise, she led a meditative and devout life, going comparatively little into general society. She was a close observer of nature in all the varying aspects of the seasons, the habits of different animals, and the effects of the outward scenes of things upon the soul. There is a blended influence of Wordsworth, Cowper, and Lamartine in her journals. Brought less than the other two ladies into contact with the chief men of the Gallican Church, and seldom having anything more than provincial clergy to consult or work with, she gives a sample, much higher than the average, in respect of intellectual culture; shewing in her sex the rural catholic life, of which the lives of Royer Collard, De Tocqueville, and De Barante have lately shewn the aspect towards cultivated men. With Protestantism she seems utterly unacquainted. Partly from most of the Protestant clergy in France being paid by the State, and partly from the low rate of remuneration enjoyed by the Romanist priests (even their bishops' incomes ranging, unless members of the Senate, only from £600 to £800 a-year), there is no stigma of "vulgarity" attached, as especially in the rural parts of England there is, to "Dissent." Still, in France, Protestants and Romanists seem to meet little together; and the holy influence of the evangelical section of the former does not tell. The very names of the Monods and De Pressensé seem entirely unknown to all the three very highly refined and cultured women whose memoirs we have been reviewing. Let us trust that the "Ecumenical Council," in further developing Papalism and Mary worship, may have the effect of leading devout men and women in Doctrine of Future Punishment. 151 (though not of) Rome to come out and be separate, even though, at first, they should get no further than a Free Catholic Church, and the use of such a Scripture version as the Jansenist one of Lemaitre De Sacy. ART. IX.-Tendencies in Connection with the Doctrine of Future Punishment. BEING PRINCIPAL CANDLISH'S INTRODUCTORY LECTURE AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1869-70, IN THE NEW COLLEGE, Edinburgh. HAVE sometimes taken advantage of the occasions afforded at the beginning and close of our sessions, for discussing some topic of theology, or of ecclesiastical controversy as bearing on theology. Of course, at such intervals as come in between, I cannot pursue a regular course; nor, in the brief space of time allowed to me, can I treat any one subject fully and exhaustively. Still, I am inclined to keep that method in view. Accordingly, I mean now to call your attention to the subject of Future Punishment, as it has been recently handled. by a divine of the Church of England, belonging to the school with which alone we can have full sympathy, the school of the Evangelical portion of that church. I do not care to give his name. I think it enough to say that he is one of the ablest and best of that school; and that he occupies a position, personally, and through his manifold relations, entitling him to speak with some authority on their behalf. One reason for my treating his work anonymously is, that I do not despair of his seeing his way to some modification of his views. At present, after a year or two, they stand unchallenged, so far as I know, by any of his own brethren within the Anglican Church. And any observations that have been made from without have not been very conciliatory. I trust I may be enabled to avoid offence, when I try, first, to bring before you the theory maintained by him; and, secondly, to offer a few general remarks upon it.* * I leave this opening paragraph as I gave it. Of course, it would be absurd to have any reserve now. The book I comment upon is "The Victory of Divine Goodness, by T. R. Birks, M.A., Incumbent of Holy Trinity, Cambridge. Rivingtons, 1867." Since the delivery of the Lecture, I have received Mr Birks' Reply to Strictures in Two Recent Works;" the works being the publications of Mr Grant and Mr Baxter, which I had previously seen. In this "Reply," Mr Birks refers to two of his own works, as bearing on the subject: "Outlines of Unfulfilled Prophecy" (1854); and The question is thus raised. On the one hand, "nothing can be more positively laid down by our Lord than that the reward of heaven and the punishment of hell are eternal." But, "on the other hand, a perfect love seems to imply a sincere desire for the happiness of every conscious and intelligent creature, and a perfect victory of Almighty love, seems to imply that this desire shall not fail through the strength of evil, but be at length fulfilled." Hence, apparently, "a hopeless contradiction." It is a contradiction "between direct and repeated statements of Scripture, and inferences, natural and almost inevitable, from one of the most fundamental truths of revealed religion" (p. 41). I need scarcely point out the extreme vagueness and weakness of this last ground of belief, as set over against the other. The urgent point is, the manner in which the alleged contradiction is met. Here his first proposition is,-" Every created being may be viewed in two different aspects; what it is in itself, and also as part of a greater whole. It has a personal and individual, but also a relative or federal character" (p. 42). And his second, "Wherever selfishness is not complete, the same contrast is found in the elements which constitute human joy and sorrow" (p. 43). That is, as I understand it, the man who, as an individual, may have cause of joy, may find his joy becoming sorrow in sympathy with those for whom he cares, or in contemplation of a painful object. And on the other hand, one who is personally a sufferer may have "the sense of severe suffering almost lost in some absorbing object of thought, or joyful tidings of the happiness of others who are deeply beloved." "How often has the wounded soldier or sailor almost forgotten his wounds in his deep joy for his commander's or his country's victory!” (p. 43). This duality of nature and constitution among men, in virtue of which every one may be viewed in two aspects, as being susceptible of two opposite kinds of feeling at the same time, is the psychological starting-point in the argument. Hence his third and fourth propositions,-" All the statements of Scripture with respect to eternal judgment and the opposite issues of blessing and punishment, refer to the personal and individual characters of men." They apply to the "personal and individual character" which every man has, as distinguished from his "relative or federal character. "The result of this personal judgment is a final con "Difficulties of Belief" (1855). I have got and read both of them. With the first, I cannot pretend to deal. On the second, I may have some remarks to make in the footnotes of this article. Doctrine of Future Punishment. 153 trast, an eternal separation, depending on the use or abuse of the probation in this mortal life" (pp. 43, 44). But though that is a scriptural truth, it may not be the whole truth upon the subject. For, beyond the eternal contrast between the righteous and the wicked personally, "there is a farther objective or federal element." The combination of the two may be thus put. Along with "the utmost personal humiliation, shame, and anguish," there may be "the passive contemplation of a ransomed universe, and of all the innumerable varieties of blessedness enjoyed by unfallen spirits and the ransomed people of God; such a contemplation as would be fitted, in its own nature, to raise the soul into a trance of holy adoration in the presence of infinite and unsearchable goodness" (p. 45). That, according to this writer, is the eternal state of the lost. Now, omitting for the present his reasoning in support of his view, I go on to a subsequent portion of his book, in which he more fully explains his meaning. And I refer here, especially, to the chapter on the Nature and Effects of the Atonement; for it is with that doctrine that I am chiefly concerned. The author repudiates what he calls "a distorted and lifeless orthodoxy, from which heresy is often the recoil." He does not say who hold it, though he seems to put it as the only alternative to his own teaching. "The moral government of God can hardly be subjected to a worse travesty than when lowered to this one claim, that a certain amount of suffering must be exacted, it matters not from whom, for a certain number or amount of sins." "A creed in which there is no substitution, and a creed in which there is nothing but substitution, departs equally, on opposite sides, from the truth of God." Let us see what his via media is, as brought out in successive attempts, "with modesty and reverence, to disentangle, one by one, the difficulties in this part of revealed religion" (p. 148). 1. As to the extent of the atonement, he holds it to be universal; quoting, without a word of explanation, the usual texts in support of that opinion, and assuming it to be implied in the very nature of the gospel. "Christ died for all men, and for all their sins" (p. 150). Let us beware, however, of ascribing to that language the meaning which evangelical Arminians would put upon it. He goes considerably beyond them. 2. He raises the question accordingly, "In what sense can Christ be said to have borne the sins of the whole world?" In reply, he teaches "a farther truth." "Christ bore, indeed, the sin of the world, the collective guilt of all mankind." Let that expression be noted. "But all sin has two different, almost opposite, aspects. It is an act done once for all, which cannot be undone. Once committed, it stands engraven on the scheme of Providence, a transgression of God's law, a rebellion against the Supreme Lawgiver, which needs some public vindication of his outraged authority. But it is also the act of a conscious agent, the sign of his present state, which may be changed or even lost, but which, while it lasts, must make him hateful in the sight of a holy God" (p. 151). So far as I can understand him, the writer limits the direct effect of the atonement to sin considered simply "as a debt; a transgression of the law, without or above the sinner" (p. 151). Once committed, sin, as a fact accomplished, comes to be 'without or above the sinner," and to stand engraven, apart from him, on the scheme of providence. It takes a sort of abstract and impersonal character, and in that character it is all dealt with and disposed of in the atonement. So sin, all sin, considered as a debt, is cancelled. The gospel proclaims that as a universal fact. And then, treating sin as a disease, it exhorts all men to faith and repentance. It is hard to see how, upon that footing, the object of faith can be the atonement. But let us go on. 3. It is asked, "What, apart from the atonement, is the state of mankind before God? What is their legal standing, and the nature of the curse and sentence under which they lie?" It is mankind, observe, collectively that is indicated. "The sentence of the broken law is death." But what death? "The death meant must be the same death which was threatened in paradise, and which entered the world through Adam's sin." "It is not the mere act of dying; it is ascribed to the soul even when separate from the body." "In its own nature, apart from Christ's redemption, it would be everlasting." "It is temporal, however, because its future abolition is a revealed promise." It is a contrast-this which the author calls the first death-"to the second death, the final sentence of the last judgment." "When one is inflicted the other is abolished. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire"" (pp. 155, 156). Thus the two deaths are contrasted. The first, that pronounced or inflicted from the beginning is described in the usual terms in which divines represent the state of a fallen man here and his doom hereafter. But "that is swallowed up in eternal victory;" a result "due to a mighty work of redemption alone" (p. 156). The second, however, remains. "The two are pourtrayed by contrasted figures." "The one, the second death, is the lake of fire,' solemn indeed and most awful, yet bounded in its range, shut in by firm land on every side." "The other, the first death, is 'the deep,' the abyss, 'the bottomless pit, evil reigning, rioting, growing, deepening without limit and without end, in its fatal descent, farther and farther from light and happiness and heaven. By the sentence of the |