I must furthermore believe that man has not an immortal soul. That death is annihilation of both body and soul, a passing into unconscious nothingness, there to remain till the resurrection. And to sustain this important pillar of the system, I must believe that when God appeared to Moses in the bush, after the death of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and asserted himself to be the God of these Patriarchs, it was not true as Christ supposed, that He was therefore at that time, and in respect to them, the God of the living. And for the same reason I must believe, that when we are commanded to fear not them which kill the body, but him who can destroy both soul and body in hell-though the death of the body is the extinction of the soul, yet man has a life capable of being killed after both body and soul is extinct, and this life God and not man can kill, and the killing of this mysterious indefinable life is the matter to be dreaded and provided against.

I must furthermore believe, if I would attain to the exalted blessedness of Universalism, taste its fruits, and exhibit its practical results, that the souls' condition in the future state, is not at all affected by conduct and character here. Or in the language of Mr. W. that "the future state of immortality and incorruption, cannot in the nature of things be affected by the conduct of men in this life, but that whatever men there enjoy, will be the effect of the constitution in which they are raised from the dead." The same idea is put out in a more practical form, in the following quotation from the Trumpet, a periodical edited by Mr. W. It is from the number dated, August 3, 1833, as follows:- Many people profess religion for the purpose of pleasing God. This we must be permitted to think is not the design of religion. If we rightly understand it, its design is to please and benefit man. If we do not err in judgment very much, it is great folly to suppose that the Almighty is pleased or angry, just as far as man is religious or irreligious.” So we must believe, not only that our good conduct can do nothing as to bettering our condition in the future world, but also that God is no better pleased with us on account of it. That to please man is the leading purpose

of the religion of Christ, and of course, that this religion is to be received or rejected, or any way used, according to man's good pleasure. That if I am the best pleased to understand it as having higher and holier ends than the pleasure of man, it is well. Its end is answered, so far as I am concerned. Or if I please to understand it as a licence to sin, it is well, or if I am pleased to treat it with utter contempt it is well. If I please to say it is vain to serve God, and what profit shall we have if we pray unto him, and that I canfind no pleasure in his religion, that religion having come for my pleasure and found that I have no pleasure in it, will of course urge no demands upon my acceptance. In short, I must believe that as the whole design of religion is not to please God, but men, it is incumbent on God to shape it so as best to suit the pleasure of men. If men find pleasure in wickedness, he must adapt religion to encourage them in wickedness. Do you say that the pleasure and benefit of man are the same? Not always. But be it so. On your hypothesis religion can never seek the benefit of man by crossing his will. For if you require a man to conform to the will and pleasure of God, contrary to his own inclination, then is your religion for the pleasure of God, rather than of man. It is then no longer true that God is not pleased or displeased, according as man is religious or irreligious.

Further I must believe, that when the apostle says, It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment, he means-It is appointed unto men to die, and after death the decomposition of the body. I must see my way clear to believe that man can lose his life as a martyr, and then receive as the reward of his martyrdom, his life in this world by the loss. I must believe that Christ, when he made to the penitent thief an answer to his dying request to be remembered when he came into his kingdom, said to-day shalt thou be with me inthe grave. I must believe that the souls which John in vision, saw under the altar interceding for the execution of justice on their murderers, were no souls, but the blood of those martyrs, praying that their, that is the blood's blood might be avenged. I must believe that Paul, knowing death to be the entrance upon un

conscious nothingness, had a desire rather to die than live, and serve Christ and his church on earth. And that this state of annihilation was being with Christ and better than living in this world in the full perfection of that enjoyment, which Mr. B. calls eternal life. Or in other words, that annihilation is better than eternal life. And in order to find the way to the conclusion, that the words translated hell means no such thing, I must believe that words have no meaning, but what were given by inspiration. And I must insist on admitting no meaning to any word until I find a-Thus saith the Lord-this word means so and so.

Further, if you will be a true Balfourean, you must believe that Christ was not compassionate enough for the occasion, provided there be an eternal hell, and you must build strong conclusions on his want of zeal for a dying world-that the apostles were not zealous enough, to prove that they apprehended any future punishment, for the unbelief of men. That though the belief of the future punishment of the wicked, should have wrought up the apostles to ten-fold greater exertions than they put forth in missionary enterprises, the whole business of missions now, for those who believe the same doctrine, is a contemptible affair. You must furthermore believe that there is no devil, and that the langurge of the Bible which speaks of such a being, means anything and everything, but what it seems to mean-now lust or desire-now Sabean and Chaldean free-booters-now the anger of Jehovah-now hunger, now flesh and blood, now the glory and grandeur of the world, now rigidity of the back-bone, now a secret purpose to betray Jesus, now a determination to execute this purpose, and last, though not least, the persecuting Jews. You must furthermore believe, that Universalism is the fruit of more thorough acquaintance with the Scriptures, of more patient examination, more abundant and better plied means of biblical instruction than exists in sects that are superstitious enough to believe there is a devil-in short, that the Universalists are the people and wisdom will die with them.

This system lays a grievous tax on our credulity in another

quarter, requiring us to admit new and strange principles of interpretation. It every where assumes that it is enough to show that a word or phraze may have in some connexions the desired meaning, in order to prove that it has it in the case considered. It cuts short the labor of applying acknowledged principles of interpretation, and from them determining what the writer means, but searches out instances without regard to connexion, where the word is used in the desired sense. For instance-it wants to prove that everlasting punishment is a something limited to this life, and it overlooks the multitudes of cases where the word everlasting is used in the literal obvious sense, and finds a few cases where it is used in a metaphorical and limited sense, and thence jumps to the conclusion that everlasting punishment means a temporal punishment. So when it is attempted to show that paradise means the grave, and not a place of happiness for departed spirits, it is not even pretended that the word is used in any author, sacred or profane, in that sense, but that there is a word in some of the Shemitish languages, enough like it to be its root. And that this word means "to separate," and that therefore the word means an enclosure, and therefore the grave. And whenever it happens that even such a method is impracticable-and one would think the cases might be rare-then without any exposition of roots, or any instances of a like meaning-we have Mr. B.'s assertion, that the word means so and so. See his comments on John 12: 48, the word translated judge. When the whole of Mr. B.'s leading principle of interpretation seems to be, that if by any process of torturing plain language, the desired meaning can be extracted from it, it is lawful and safe to do it. But if the laws of the commonwealth were interpreted after this manner, they could not be put in force. If the blackest offender were allowed to use the same quibbles in his defence, he could easily enough show that there is no law against him. We are required then to believe that the enactments of heaven are to be subjected to principles of interpretation, that would reduce to wreck and nonsense the plainest laws of the land.

Again, the true Balfourean must believe, that any quotations brought from the writings of any believer in future punishment to sustain any of the parts of Mr. B.'s system, are good and sufficient reasons for believing in the soundness of those parts. If among all that has been said by such a diffuse and fanciful writer as Adam Clark, or among all the wild assertions of Parkhurst, a name of no authority, an interpretation of a passage can be found that favors his scheme, it is the practice of Mr. B. to bring it forward, as if we were bound to receive it as inspired because it came from a believer in future punishment. No small part of Mr. B.'s books consist of quotations real and perverted, from the writings of believers in future punishment, with a design to make out that we must believe this and that, because such a man has said this and that. Mr. W. has made still more reliance on this kind of proof. And recently I have seen a notice in his paper, commending a forth coming work, which consisted entirely of compilations of such a sort, from such a class of works. So that we are to understand that this is a favorite method of proof with them. So then I am called upon to believe that as soon as all the parts of Mr. B.'s system can be made out from collections of all the foolish and erroneous interpretations, yea, from the scrapings of the nails of the thousands of orthodox writers, I am bound to receive them as the revelation from God. How would Universalism be able to stand before such methods of argumentation? Suppose every opinion that was ever uttered by a man bearing the name of Universalist adverse to the views of Mr. B. were brought forward as good and sufficient reasons for disbelieving his system, how much of that system would be left? And yet Mr. B. supposes that what the learned Adam Clark has said in his wildest moods, no believer in future punishment is at liberty to gainsay. The admission of such a principle is not the least of the exorbitant requirements of the system before us.

Again, before I can subscribe to the assertions and comments of this author, I must discredit the testimony of my own eyes, with regard to authorities on many essential points. I