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    b # rs shall continue to a later period ! These will constitute the luminaries of the intellectual and moral horizon , shining with a resplendent , though varied , radiance ; while the groveling sons of earth , however great may have been their assumptions while here , however subtle or successful the low

    wisdom by which they strove to decorate the clayey tcnementto which they so closely adhered , will sink into their native insignificance . These last on contemplating , the new scenes of the resurrection , will

    fynd them ill adapted to yield those gratifications to which they had been so fondly addicted ; heaven itself will probably dazzle their dark conceptions by its transcendant brightness ; its enjoyments will be too elevated and refined for their gross perverted taste to be capable of relishing j extended to too wide a scale for their

    narrow powers to comprehend , and altogether too remote and discords ant from the leading objects of their former pursuits , and the habitudes which they will have thus contracted .

    But though this unpreparedness for the great change which awaits us must operate as a grand obstacle to a favourable issue , yet as it does not prevent the change itself from mortality to newness of life , there is reason to believe

    that this obstacle will in time be removed . This restoration of the vital power must still be for a purpose corresponding with the event - ,

    the search alter happiness must now be resumed , with advantages which must facilitate , though by a severe and mortifying process , the destruction of moral and natural evil . The seventy of this process , and the gloomy and fearful ob-

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    scurity which presents itself to the guilty mind in the contemplation of its approaches , is in the New Testament represented , by an

    everlasting fire , preparedjor the devil and his angels into which the beast s the false prophet * and finally death and hades , are described as being injected , and which last event is said to be the

    second death . If , however , the destruction of men , and not of the moral and natural evil which adheres to them * were the design of this process , what occasion could there have been for the

    introduction of these figurative personages as its prominent objects ? The great adversary of human life and happiness is sin ; and the destruction of sin can be no other than

    the promotion of virtue . Death is the inseparable attendant of sin , and its destruction , its injection into- the lake of fire , together with

    hades , the very state and condition of mortality , must imply the final triumph of life and immortality , to which it stands opposed . Of course , men , in whom sin ami

    death continue to inhere are the subjects of this suffering ; but it is their purification , by the destruction of these evil qualities ^ which is its object * And since its object is the destruction of moral and natural evil in those who

    are the subjects of it , it can be effected only in their ultimate attainment to virtue and a happy immortality . That this fire , or principle of destruction , as it respects sin and death , and their attendant evils , should be eternal ,

    and in which they may , by a correspondent figure , be said to be tormented for ages of ages , is essential to its object ; for if sin and death be not eternally de-

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    Considerations in favour of Universal Restoration . 411

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1814, page 411, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2442/page/27/