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tion, that it does not ignore the difficulties in the way; it does not overlook the hard, stern facts of life. To its believers and followers, it promises no easily won achievement; no Eden of perpetual bliss, only as it is earned by toil and struggle. It does not come in the likeness of an angel, who says to us: "But follow me, and I will lead you in a pathway strewn with roses. You will need no protection for your feet, for there are no thorns in that way. You shall never more know any care or sorrow. No enemies to your higher nature will there molest you. I will remove from your way all difficulties, all obstacles. Evil, with all his agencies of death, shall no more molest you, for I will take you in a way unknown to it."

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Christianity promises to do nothing of this kind for us. How, then, does it address us, concerning our life in the flesh? It comes in the form of a sturdy soldier, clad in the armor of perpetual warfare; and in trumpet tones it says: "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all take the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Christianity furnishes us with this armor for the spiritual warfare, and gives us strength to overcome the evil in the world. It does not destroy the enemies of the moral nature, but it gives us power to conquer them. It lifts no burdens from our backs, but it gives us the strength to throw them off, or gracefully to bear them. The thorn of trouble may not be removed, it may continue to molest and annoy; and yet, it becomes easier to bear, and is even turned to a messenger of good, where the Christ spirit rules in the heart.

Christianity does not promise to give man that which he

already possesses; it adds nothing to his stock of talents; it confers upon him no new faculty. But it furnishes the motive power by which the talents he already holds are called into active service, and are directed toward the highest and noblest ends. It does not lift him, bodily, into a state of freedom from sinful passions and desires; but it so stimulates and quikens the soul-powers, that he rises into a clearer light, and sees himself as he really is; sin and evil are revealed in their true nature, and virtue and goodness are set before him as the things most to be desired.

Christianity does not profess to abolish natural death. To its most devoted disciple it does not promise perpetual life upon the earth, nor an escape into the unknown future through any other door than that which God has ordained for all mortals in the death of the body. The dissolution of all earthly ties comes to saint as truly as to sinner. Death invades the home circle of the pure and noble, the same as that of the vicious and wicked. Like the rain and the sunshine, it falls in equal measure upon the just and the unjust; upon the evil and the good. As upon the field of battle, the bullets and shells make no discrimination between good or bad, rich or poor, high or humble; so there is no discrimination between Christian or Pagan; Jew or Gentile; Greek or Barbarian; when death sends forth his missiles, all fare alike; all are equally subject to his power. Whether one be a Christian, a Jew, a Pagan, or Pagan, or an atheist, it matters not: death shows him no favors. With impartial hand he levels all to common dust.

What advantage, then, has the Christian, in the presence of his own beloved dead, or when he himself stands face to face with death? What does his faith do for him in this soul-trying season! It gives him the victory over death and all its terrors! It explains to him the philosophy of death, what it is, and all it is.. It reveals to him the great truth that death as well as life, is a part of God's great plan; that death has no power over the immortal soul; that when he has done his worst and his best, he cannot touch nor harm man himself. All

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that death can claim or hold is that which is earthly and decaying in its very nature. Over the indestructible principle which the body of clay for a time encases, death has, and can have, no power. Christian faith thus makes man the victor over the "last great enemy," and enables him to look upward and forward, lifting him high above all the shifting and fleeting scenes of earth, and bringing him into the very presence of the Infinite. Rev. S. P. Smith.

ARTICLE VIII.

Rejoinder to Dr. Miller.

ἵνα κομίσηται ἕκαστος τὰ διὰ τοῦ σώματος πρὸς ἃ ἔπραξεν, κ. τ. λ. — 2 Cor. v. 10.

THE question at issue between Dr. Miller and myself in the interpretation of the passage in 2 Cor. v. 10 is exegetical pure and simple, and I have been from the beginning unable to see that it included any important doctrinal matter. That men

rewarded and punished in this life, no one denies. Whether or not they are also rewarded and punished in the life to come, is a question with which speculation or revelation may be concerned, and in regard to which an utterance of the apostle Paul may be more or less important from one or another point of view. If, as Dr. Miller maintains, Paul is occupied in the passage under discussion with the former, then certainly it would be most unwarrantable to assert that he therefore denied the latter. If, on the other hand, he was occupied with the latter, then it must be said to his credit that he stood upon the only ground which is philosophically defensible, while it would be absurd to argue that asserting the latter he therefore denied the former. In either case rewards and punishments are inseparably connected in the apostle's thought, as is evident from the words," according to what he hath done, whether good or evil.”

Now if Dr. Miller attaches any doctrinal importance to this text as he interprets it, it is evidently this, that the penalty for sin is limited to this life, and that there is accordingly no future judgment nor punishment. But the thought of Paul cannot fairly be mutilated and divided so as to exclude punishment from the realm in which reward are dispensed. Wherever this judgment is, its dread decree carries both pain and bliss. And the great apostle may fairly be presumed to have been acute enough to see that a (temporal) dispensation which does not completely reward righteousness can hardly be assumed completely to punish sin. It is a bad philosophy anda worse ethics which denies to the economy of eternity the solemn fact of judgment.

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Dr. Miller's rendering of the clause in question (iva xoμíonται ἕκαστος τὰ διὰ τοῦ σώματος) is, “ in order that each one may receive the things, through (in) the body, (according to that he hath done, etc.)" And he remarks," as will be seen, I had taken ra, things,' the object of zouíonra, may receive,' as denoting the things' received as reward, received also through the body, as source or instrument of the reward and consequently during the life of the body." Accordingly, apostle means just this: "We must all in this life appear be fore the judgment seat of Christ in order that each one may receive through his body the things, according to what he hath done, etc."! And when was this inexplicable judgment to take place? Or had it already fallen? Or was it then in process of execution? If it was past or present, or past and present, why this phraseology? One would rather say of a present and perpetual judgment, not, "we must appear in order that we may receive," but rather, "we stand perpetually in the body (v to owμarı) before the judgment seat and are receiving the reward." But aside from this, what interpreter who respects the memory of his author could cast upon him the burden of such an expression as "may receive through his body as source or instrument of the reward, the things"? In the name of all that is concise and intelligible in speech, what is meant by "the things"? "the things"? What things? The things that

he has done? Dr. Miller has a horror of "done" as savoring of Orthodoxy. The things that he has not done, then? If it be the things that he has done, then it must be the things that he has done "in the body"; if the things that he has not done, then alas for the wretched subject of this unintelligible judgment! Then the darkness and mystery which cover this awful judgment-seat are deepened by the gloss of our interpreter when he speaks of the body as the 66 source or instrument of the reward." These indefinite and mysterious "things," it seems, are to be "received" in the body, and yet they may proceed from it, or be suffered through its instrumentality! Let us pity the defenseless author to whose words such a gloss as this is applied.

Again, let it be asked, what is meant by "receiving the things"? Dr. Miller insists with the utmost pertinacity that the notion of receiving reward is not contained in the verb. "Out of the ten or eleven passages in which it is used in the New Testament," he says, "there are but three, including this, where there is the least pretense that it includes the notion of reward." Grant this, and these three passages are enough to establish this meaning, especially since they are all from the Apostle Paul, and hence show this to be a Pauline use of the word. Here are the passages: Col. iii. 25: “But he that do th wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done" (xoeira ö ǹdízŋoev); Eph. vi. 8: "Whatsoever good thing any man hath done, the same shall he receive from the Lord ” (τοῦτο κομίσεται παρὰ κυρίου) ή 2 Cor. v. 10 : ἵνα κομίσηται ἑκαστος τὰ διὰ τοῦ σώματος, “ in order that each one may receive the things done in the body." Take out the idea of reward from its verb in each of these passages, and what intelligible notion do they convey? These are the very passages quoted in Grimm's Clavis Novi Testamenti, (sub voce xoμíɔ̃w), where after giving the ordinary significations of the verb, such as "receive" in the usual sense, the learned author says: xoμíεoα id quod fecit facti vel præmium vel pœnam, 2 Cor. v. 10; Col. iii, 25; Eph. vi. 8, to receive that which he has done to receive the reward or penalty, etc.

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