sins," asking or demanding nothing from that world but to believe, accept, and rejoice in that grace, and then, for their own happiness and well-being, and not as a price or condition, to repent, and turn from their sins, iniquities, and idolatries to serve the living and true God. And it is alike marvellous that she should so soon depart from a gospel by the sole power of which she had attained to her greatness and glory. Well, what shall we say of her from the second to the nineteenth century?—That she is not the Church of Christ ?—God forbid! Her gold is changed, her "most fine gold" (her hope and her faith in the free, unconditional, pardoning mercy and love of God to all sinners) "is become dim." But she is still the kingdom of God that was to come. Take her as a whole, inclusive of the first Church at Jerusalem, with all her daughters-Catholic and Protestant-she preaches Christ, she conserves the Bible, the oracles of God, for which the world is infinitely her debtor; also for the maintenance of the public worship of the true God, and she is greatly to be praised for charity and zeal. We love her, as a whole-she is our mother. Had she not kept the oracles of God we could not have learned what little we know of God and Christ and of their love to the humanity. God "will send reapers to gather and burn the tares from her wheat in his time, and she shall be saved as by fire," and she will return to her first love "in all the joy of faith." As in the day of her espousals to her head, Christ and she shall rejoice in the oneness of the whole humanity with him; and her

ministers, being all ambassadors for Christ, will in his stead (not threaten sinners with the wrath and vengeance of God) but will beseech and pray them to be reconciled to God, "assuring them of God's covenant with them through Christ to be merciful to their unrighteousness and remember their sins and their iniquities no more, and even their sins which are as scarlet, and red like crimson, shall be in his sight as wool and as snow."

And then we may confidently hope that, as in the first estate of the Church, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost of Christ, will fall upon believing sinners, who will flock in clouds as doves to her windows. And in that day the believers will not "neglect the assembling of themselves together for thanksgiving and praise, not that they may escape eternal torments, or to placate the wrath of a vengeful Deity, but that they may commune with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, and with one another, and thereby increase their joy of faith. And every Christian minister shall understand and feel that he has no warrant from God or Christ to speak of their divine wrath or vengeance, nor to use the profane language of hell and eternal damnation, nor in any wise to allude to future or everlasting punishment; nor the condemnation of the law, nor to any law except that which shall "go forth from the spiritual Jerusalem," the Gospel-church, which is simply the law of love. In resuming our remarks, we are impelled to note some of the effects of the departure of the Church from her first estate, upon her own body, and the influence thereby exerted upon the

world. From the history of the Church during her first estate-a period, as we have seen, of about thirty-four years—we learn that the simple gospel of the grace of God won its great victories over the hearts of the nations, and their kings and queens, solely by the power of infinite mercy and forgiving love, neither needing nor seeking the aid of wealth or the worldly splendors of costly and magnificent temples for worship, or a splendid literature, or of pompous ceremonies, or worldly aggrandisement of any kind. And in no instance did the Church attempt to grasp political power. Neither did she make or practise wars, either between portions of her own body, or offensive or defensive with any other power. The Church was, in her first estate, a literal fulfilment of the prophecy, that there should be nothing to hurt nor destroy in all God's holy mountain. But what is the record of the same Church almost immediately after she received the dogma of infinite evil and sin-an infinitely wicked devil, and the consequent wrath and vengeance of God, eternal hell torments, vicarious atonement, imputed or transferable righteousness? History answers that certain of her bishops and other church dignitaries used their influence in the church for their personal aggrandizement and power, from whence ensued war and fighting, and a struggle for political power and universal dominion; hence the long reign of terror in the church and the most cruel and bloody persecutions for heresy and schism. And all these, persecutions and cruelties, the gibbet, the rack, and burning at the

And history further estate of the Church,

stake, were under the sanction of the Church, and as they believed and taught were for the good of the Church and the glory of God. shows that during the second that is, these seventeen centuries, she has not ceased to sanction war. All Christian nations continue to learn war, to lift the sword, nation against nation, in desolating, bloody strife. Now in the first estate of the Christian Church there was no persecution by her for heresy or other cause, although she was persecuted even unto death, nor was there any usurpation of power by her ministers, neither did she learn or practise war or sanction it.

What, then, is the cause of the lapse and fall of the Church from her primitive faith and glory? Is it not found in the attributes she ascribed to God, as necessitated by her belief in the existence of infinite evil and sin, viz.: infinite anger, wrath, vengeance, and hatred even of his own offspring? Did she not rationally conclude that if God eternally hates and punishes all finally unrepentant sinners in hell, she is only imitating him by hating and tormenting and burning heretics? And also that she is doing God's service by warring against all nations which are enemies to the Church?

CHAPTER XX.

SIN AND SINNERS.

SINNERS do not know the true God, and therefore cannot sin against him; the moment they know him, as revealed in the Gospel, they love him as an all-gracious and all-loving God and Father. Some great and learned divines have argued that sin is infinite, because committed against an infinite Being. As well might they say that divine service is infinite because it is rendered to an infinite God; those divines know and teach, on other occasions, that the being of God only is infinite. Sinners sin not against God objectively, but subjectively, being bound by his law of equity toward their fellowmen, and of love both toward God and man, and cannot do or cause any greater evil than to inflict physical or mental pain and suffering upon them in this life, finite beings as they are. And who shall dare to say that infinite wisdom and goodness shall not be able so to direct that suffering in its greatest intensity that it may result in positive eternal good? And who shall doubt such a consummation is as certain as the existence of that wisdom and goodness?