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bte , and we shalljbe changed . " This is the Bible immortality , and this Jeni * revealed . How could be reveal it , but from direct intercourse with God ? How could it be proved , but by his own resurrection ? - If the evidence for the resurrection
of Jesus be true , we must accept the evidence for Jesus himself having also raised the dead by the power of God directly imparted to him . * If it be not true , we shall lie in tfie grave ; death is an eteroai sleep ; and immortality the dream of poets and the romance of philosophers .
If Jesus were " the best and wisest of men , ' it must be believed that he had direct communication with God , for he himself declares so . If he declared so falsely , he was an impostor ; and although he might be the wisest , he could not be the best of men . The
ascribing the cures of Christ to any other means than supernatural agency , whether magical , as with the ancient sceptics , or medical * as with the modern , constitutes the blasphemy agaiust the holy spirit . C . A . E .
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Doctrines of Destruction and Eternal Torments . 397
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Sir , April 21 , 1817-" A CONSTANT READER , " [ p . XX , 101 , ] does not seeaa aware , that vengeance , as it respects God , can only be used in accommodation to human speech and comprehension ; so resentment , repentance , and many
other terms . As to his question , " are not all punishments vindictive ? ' I answer decidedly , no , —Does a father punish his children from a spirit of vengeance > Such a father is accountable for this indulgence of hi * evil
passions . A good father punishes to reform . God is said to pity us , " father pitieth his own children . " Eternal torment , as " Constant Reader' * acknowledges , does not consist with the attribute of benevolence : but neither
could annihilation answer any other end but that of vengeance , and vengeance is inconsistent with the character of a father . The dealings of Providence with respect to criminate in this life , and
the peculiarities of humaa character strengthen the probability that future punishment is remedial . Such is the tendency of all the penal consequences attached to vice and immorality in the present worML We
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see also many depraved characters of whose possible correction and amendment there is a moral certainty , were . occasion allowed and proper means applied : yet they are cut off from life .
There is in fact no character so depraved , as that a philosopher would be hardy enough to pronounce the depravity incurable . Is it credible that our Maker , who saw us before we were formed in the womb , would deny his creatures those means of amelioration
hereafter , which the circumstances in which they were placed denied them here ? But is not the justice of the Creator , no less than his benevolence , impeached , by either hypothesis of
eternal conscious pain , or lingering annihilation ? Man is the work of God ' s hands . In creating him , he foresaw that he would err ; yet he created him . In foreseeing the existence of moral evil he therefore willed it . Even on
the ignorant supposition of a personal evil being , derived from the allegorical language of Scripture , moral evil could only exist by God ' s permission ; and this is equivalent to his wilL Isaiah , however , speaks of God from authority , as the creator of evil as well as good
in the mysterious , but beneficent dispensations of his providence . " I make peace and create evil : I , the Lord , do all these things * " xlv . 7 . May we not then , with reverence and humility , inquire , whether it is just to have created man in the first instance liable
to error ? Or , in the second , to consider him , when erring , as an object of vengeance ? Is the justice of the Creator reconcileable either with the theory of everlasting misery , or of painful destruction ?
From abstract reasoning 'we are , however , referred to Scripture . The passages and terms referred to , are by no means conclusive ; they are at most ambiguous . The original word for torment and punishment , means in its primitive sense , a touchstone , and implies therefore question , search ,
corrective suffering . As to the word rendered everlasting , it is limited or extended b y the word in connexion with it , and is sometimes used in the same sentence to designate measured and infinite duration t the punishment may therefore be for a period of ages , the life for ages without end . As to the ** -second dearth , " a phrase which ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1817, page 397, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2466/page/21/
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