But we cannot in truth wonder in the least at Mr. Cox's wish and endeavour to exclude us from making our appeal to the Old Testament, while he freely appeals to it himself when his occasion arises. In passages constantly occurring, it denies probation in that scene which Mr. Cox vividly paints as the great scene of discipline, repentance, and salvation to life eternal. To show this, we will just lay before our readers two passages, one from the pages of "Salvator Mundi,” and the other from the pages of the Old Testament.

According to Mr. Cox, hades is a vast prison in which the spirits of all, good and bad, are assembled who have left this life (199). We will here confine ourselves to his view of those who have left this life impenitent, unforgiven, and therefore, as yet unsaved. All this vast multitude he supposes to be alive. In hades all of them are granted a further probation. The pain and suffering to which they are subjected are not simply for the purpose of a righteous retribution, but also for discipline and amendment. While he seems to suppose that some may still in hades harden themselves against God, and so require in ages beyond further probation and further discipline, he yet evidently thinks that in the vast "hadean prison," a very large proportion of those who enter it unpardoned, impenitent, and unforgiven, will there, by its salutary discipline, be led to repentance, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and be numbered among the saved and redeemed of Christ. Such is the inference we draw from the following passage of his work. Speaking of the supposed error of those who say that there is no probation beyond the grave, that no moral change is possible in that world, towards which all the children of time are travelling," he 86 says: I, at least, am so sure that the Father of all men will do the most and best which can be done for every man's salvation, as to entertain no doubt that, long ere this, the men of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon have heard the words of Christ and seen His mighty works; seen and heard Him, perchance, when He stood and shone among the spirits in the hadean prison, and preached the Gospel to them that were dead, in order that, while still judged according to men in the flesh, they might live according to God in the spirit" (17).

Now what do we, from this and other passages of his work, gather to be Mr. Cox's idea of hades as the prison of those who leave this life impenitent? He supposes it to be a vast scene of life. Myriads upon myriads of the human race are assembled there. The majority of the human family are gathered within it. Among them a work of grace is being carried on-by whom conducted he does not clearly tell ussimilar to that work of love and mercy which Christ when on earth, and His apostles when on earth, and all His ministering servants while on earth, carry on for the salvation of sinners. It would seem, according to Mr. Cox, to meet with a success in the hadean prison which it never met with upon earth. If we read him aright all the men of Sodom, of Tyre and of Sidon, or most of them at least, who sinned in the age before Christ, have ere this been brought to repentance and salvation. What a wondrous vision would this open out to view! If he thinks so well of the men of Sodom and Tyre in hades, of course he would think equally well of all the past generations of mankind whose circumstances were at all similar, i.e. of incalculably the greater pro

portion of those who have lived and died. While to all of them the Gospel has been preached, with most of them it has been preached with a power that has brought repentance and salvation. Hades, with him, is a scene of life. It is a scene of intense action. It is a scene of a work of the noblest, highest, and most arduous kind, in the intensity of whose action, and in the success of it, never even approached at any period of man's experience and God's dealings with him upon this earth. God and His ministering servants are operating upon human souls; human souls are responding to and co-operating with the Divine influence in a manner and to a degree that was never seen or experienced in the most zealous, the most arduous, and the most successful period of the church of Christ on earth. The revival wrought by the preaching of Wesley, the bursting forth of long-imprisoned light at the period of the Reformation, the deep spiritual impressions produced by the labours of good men and true in what are called, and what were, the dark ages of the Church, the marvellous spread of the Gospel in the apostolic age, do not equal or approach that work in hades which Mr. Cox supposes to have been going on and to be still going on there? Now we ask is this the view of Hades which the Old Testament presents? Let anyone examine the various texts where the "sheol" of the Hebrew Scriptures is translated by the "hades" of the Septuagint version, and he will find it described as a lifeless land, a land where no work of any kind goes on. We will just present here one text which gives us as opposite a view to that which Mr. Cox gives us of hades as it is well possible for us to imagine. Speaking of this life and of that hadean world to which all the children of time are travelling, Solomon gives us this advice: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in hades, whither thou goest." Our Authorised Version for "hades" gives "the grave." But Mr. Cox knows, as every scholar knows, that the original Hebrew word is "sheol," invariably translated by "hades" in the Greek. How different the view of hades in the Old Testament from that given us by Mr. Cox! For life we have death. For device we have all absence of purpose. For knowledge we have the blankest ignorance. For work we have absolute inaction. It is no wonder that Mr. Cox tells us not to appeal to the Old Testament in refutation of his views. He would probably be horrified if we said that while the New Testament reveals life and immortality" in some respects more clearly than the Old, this latter is more full on the state of death, or hades, than the New. It is however what we believe and what we say.

But Mr. Cox is not satisfied with excluding the entire of the Old Testament from the field to which we are to appeal. He goes on to make still further limitations of a very extensive and very serious kind. To these we have not room to refer in our present paper, but propose to do in the succeeding one.

HENRY CONSTABLE.

ODE TO SPRING.

RETURNING spring has come again,

Come with its many opening flowers; With blade and leaf, and sun and rain, And pleasant, cool, refreshing showers.

Beneath the trees swift shadows go
And dance upon the daisied sod;
Now swells wild music to and fro,
From hill to hill in praise to God.

The larks their morning matins bring,

The cuckoo sweetly shouts her name; The woods and vales with songs now ring To their Creator e'er the same.

Glad welcome, welcome to the sun;

A welcome to spring's balmy breeze; Death now, it seems, its course has run : This life, this joy, no more can seize.

But are things always what they seem? The moving suns their course must stay; Then light may vanish as a dream,

Or death in chaos lose its sway.

Pray, loose thy hold, thou monster grim,
And pluck no more these flowers fair;

Or, if thou wilt, bear them to Him
Who gives the true immortal air.

So may we give our dead to thee,

Who spake the world and it was done; Who holds the fastness of the sea, And paints with glories of the sun;

Until all lands in colours glow,
And Nature's solitudes are fair
With crimson fringe to mounts of snow,
And rainbows' splendour in the air.

The starry hosts stretched far away,
So vast, yet numbered all by Thee,
Give thanks, that in some future day
Some other glories we may see.

DR. ALEXANDER VINET ON NATURAL IMMORTALITY.

THE

HE French-speaking admirers of Alexander Vinet, the Christian philosopher of the Vaudois, have already been charmed by the appearance at Lausanne of a collection of his letters, in two volumes, including those of some of his correspondents: and we cannot doubt that, in an English form, the collection will before long gladden the eyes and hearts of thousands more. We are assured that even those who have been long familiar with the combined perspicuity, delicacy, and force of his ethics, will discover in these pages new and unexpected flights of a chastened imagination to which only an original thinker such as Vinet could have given birth. This we can easily believe. For our present purpose it will only be necessary to draw attention to a letter addressed to an un-named lady correspondent, who seems to have been troubled with many doubts. Incidentally, the issues of the Incarnation come under review, and thus he proceeds:

"To tell you the truth, madam, the lights which are derived from nature on the immortality of the soul are wofully lacking in the power either to console or to fortify; and all that the ancients knew about it amounted to a very small matter, and of little comfort. Moreover, it is not the immortality of the soul that I believe in; it is the immortality of the man, who is both soul and body in one, complete and mingled. That is to say, I hold with St. Paul the resurrection of the flesh; which is a dogma far more rational than the other. I equally believe, at least there is no proof to the contrary, that God can dissipate this breath, efface this personality, and destroy this Ego or composition of soul and body, if indeed it be a composition. For this article of my faith, as for all the rest, I require that God should manifest Himself in flesh. Banish out of the world the divine love manifested in Jesus Christ, that moral spectacle which captivates alike the conscience and the heart; and everything to me becomes obscure. Nothing but vague presentiments, conjectures and longing desires, remain behind, to supply the place of that steady hope which can alone kindle Life and impart impulse, adherence, and force."

Now this, from Vinet, is very refreshing. Fully sensible, as we had long been, that his chivalrous soul dwelt with blessing rather than with cursing, many of us nevertheless ardently desired to gather from his own lips the assurance of his entire emancipation from traditional fetters. That assurance has reached us at last; enabling us to admire anew the symmetry and integrity of the celestial scheme as mirrored in his receptive mind.

Should any be disposed to take offence at the term "resurrection of the flesh," then let it be understood that it is just an expression borrowed from the French form of the Apostles' creed, and is equivalent to what St. Paul means by the "redemption of the body," the recovery of the manhood in its spiritual corporeity, the renewal of existence, the purchased possession in its glorious fulfilment, the manifestation of the sons of God, just men made perfect.

Well may Vinet declare this to be "a dogma far more rational than the other," that is, than the other old mythological dogma about the