The question is not now what does Calvinistic orthodoxy teach. It is not what the Bible teaches. I do not claim to be technically orthodox; but I do not think myself unbiblical in believing that death is gain a sowing in corruption, a rising in incorruption; the change from a natural body to a spiritual body; the mortal being clothed upon with immortality. Nevertheless, the query is not whether Calvinistic orthodoxy teaches that death is a natural calamity to the sinful soul-it is unquestioned that it does so teach; nor is it whether the Bible teaches this doctrine. Let it be acknowledged that Mr. Cook and his school think that they read that doctrine in the Bible; I am completely convinced that I read an entirely different doctrine. Our test is reasonableness, by the scientific method; a test Mr. Cook professedly welcomes for the Bible itself.

What natural reason is there for the proposition that death will lessen the moral power of any soul? What is there in the nature of death the change from the natural to the spiritual which would even suggest that its experience will decrease the moral power of any soul? Does Mr. Cook offer any scientific proof of the assumed fact? I can recall none whatever. He has, it seems to me, vitiated his scientific argument by his appeal at this pivotal point to traditional prooftexts which in my view are twisted from their true purport when offered as his Scriptural support, for every one of these passages has been explained by eminent Orthodox commentators in a sense radically different from that which Mr. Cook ascribes to them. This breaking of the "laws of the game," by appealing in a scientific argument to traditionally interpreted proof-texts, appears to me a confession of conscious weakness. While Mr. Cook in my view makes a miserable failure of his exegesis, it is no less a failure in his argument for him to attempt exegesis at all.

What does science teach in regard to death? I limit the question to the immediate application. I do not raise the question whether science teaches that there will be a survival of soul-life beyond the dissolution of the body. I think it

does-but do not think even this so clearly as to make a strictly scientific faith in immortality altogether confident. It is scientifically demonstrable. however, that in death we are done with our material bodies. They go back to the dust; the spirit, if so be the spirit continue to live, is emancipated from its material weight. What scientific reason is there for the assumption that in "the article of death" there is any permanent lessening of spiritual power or resource? Such limitations and temptations as pertain to a material body exclusively, cannot be possible in the spiritual body one instant beyond death. All analogies of experience suggest, if they do not in fact prove, that there will be an immediate increase of spiritual knowledge in the soul emerging from death, and correspondingly stronger appeals to its heavenward aspirations. This occasion of spiritual knowledge'may be a means of divine judgment; but from my point of view this can be no evil, for divine punishments are corrective. Because death must be complete deliverance of the soul from its degrading besetments in this world, it must be an introduction to a condition favorable, rather than unfavorable, to repentance and salvation. The sequences of sin, as I think, will extend into that world. But I know no sound reason for the assumption that repentance beyond death is impossible or improbable. It seems to me altogether contrary to scientific analogies, and an altogether gratuitous and illogical inference from Scriptural teaching, to say that what we call death is, under divine appointment, a calamity to any immortal soul.

III. We come now to the third assumption in Mr. Cook's definition of perdition, namely, that for the soul dying in sin the doom is absolutely endless. Let us endeavor to under stand what this proposition means. I have tried by various mental processes to form a conception of endlessness; but I can go only a little way before the thought transcends my powers of comprehension. The abstract idea becomes plain to us only in illustrative applications. Here is one of many I have used. It was a surprise to me, some time since, to hear it mathematically demonstrated that the cloth woven by

the looms of America in one year, if it were in a continuous web, "would circle the globe thirty-nine times, with some thousands of miles to spare." It takes no little time to imagine such a web of cloth, nearly a million miles in length. Imagine on this web a line of closely written numerals, the first six inches of which will exhaust our multiples of millions, billions, quintillions and nonillions; the next six inches utterly transcending the computing power of our most patient thought. Imagine this line of figures extending to the end of the web, and that every unit of the total stands for a year. It is a mathematical calculation to stagger the strongest mind. Yet it gives no adequate symbolization of endlessness in time. When such a period shall have passed, and shall be repeated, the end will be no nearer. Not so much as a moment's progress will have been made toward the end of endlessness.

When Mr. Cook, therefore, with polemic enthusiasm and even apparent enjoyment, asserts and claims to prove that all souls passing the moment of death unrepentant will be fixed in evil endlessly — absolutely fixed, beyond remedy however remote; and when I see a great audience listen with satisfaction, and hear it applaud with fervor, what must I think? Does Mr. Cook realize what he says? Do the smiling people realize what they hear? If they did, even in the case of one lost soul, for the credit of human nature I must believe that instead of the exultant applause which greeted the lecturer in his oratorical periods, there would have been such a wail in Tremont Temple as would have filled all Boston with horror.

Yet how easy it seems for the genuine Andoverites to continue to assert the condemnation of guilty souls to endless punishment. These doctrinaires tell us that after the finalities of destiny have all been reached after the human race is at an end on the earth, after such a period as we have vainly tried to picture shall have elapsed, after God's plan in the universe shall have been brought to its complete consummation, the lost will continue to remedilessly suffer. Why? Because at the moment of death they had not attained to pre

dominant love of what God loves and hate of what God hates. But to what moral end, for what justifiable purpose? That God's majesty may be vindicated!

This assumption is more than unreasonable: it is shocking to the moral sense.

IV. The fourth implied assumption in Mr. Cook's definition is that good is not an eternally aggressive power in the universe.

Evil, according to this theory, is self-propagating; it has no power in itself to cure itself; therefore, it will endlessly con- . tinue. Even if the premises be admitted and one of the premises, namely, that evil has no tendency in itself to cure, that is, destroy itself, is, I think, clearly disproved-admitting the premises, the conclusion does not follow. The tendency of evil might, in that case be to endlessness, but the influence of counter tendencies must be taken into the account before the conclusion is drawn. The tendency of slavery in itself is to continuance; but the counter-tendency to liberty is a factor in all true prophecy. One might in the night say darkness is self-propagating, with no power in itself to work its own cure, and, therefore, night must be endless. But the sun is a factor to be taken into such a problem. The rising sun in itself, settles the question of the endless continuance of night. So, as I think, the aggressive nature of good deserves consideration in any theory of the destiny of evil.

Two things Mr. Cook and his school must believe, in order to be consistent: First, that God can be reconciled to the endless continuance of evil in his universe. Second, that saved souls in heaven are rendered powerless to save the lost. Each to me is a dreadful thought.

Will it be said that God can never be reconciled to evil, and hence will punish it without end? It is a makeshift of speech. One of two things must be, if evil is to continue forever. God will be either reconciled to it, or he will be unreconciled to it. To say that God is to be reconciled to evil is equivalent to saying there is no God. To say that he will be unreconciled to it, yet suffer its endless continance, is to say he cannot do

his will. To conceive of God being roconciled to his own eternal unreconciliation is self-contradiction. In either case, what a conception of God! As well conceive an opaque ball in the sky to be the sun. A dark sun is no more an anomaly than a God not an aggressive force against evil. The objection to Mr. Cook's assumption is serious; to me his assumption is essentially atheistic. It involves either a God powerless to cure evil or capable of reconciliation to its presence in the uniEither is a denial of the "eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness."

verse.

The other postulate of this theory is, that the saved in heaven are rendered powerless to save the lost. Is the desire to save the lost to be taken out of redeemed souls? Are they to become pitiless toward those who are to suffer a remediless doom? If this be so, let such a heavenly life be given to those who covet it, let me be spared from its experience. Or are the saved souls to know sympathy and pity, such as Jesus showed to sinners in this world, and yet be forbidden. to endeavor to bring lost souls to repentance? What kind of a heaven in that case will be theirs? Will not moans rather than hallelujahs be the music? Can God so blight the better natures of his redeemed children? If he can, is he God? If he does, is there any true heaven for which to hope?

Unutterably serious have my objections to Mr. Cook's doctrine grown. His doctrine logically denies my faith in God; if I were compelled to accept it, it would destroy my hope of heaven.

At every point I proffer my objections to Mr. Cook's definition of perdition. I cannot agree with him that the nature of evil prophesies its immortality; that the divine appointment of death is a real calamity to any soul; that, beyond death, any child of the Father will be a victim of the inconceivable doom of endless suffering: I cannot agree with him that God is not an eternally aggressive force against evil for righteousness.

With courtesy indicative of candor Mr. Cook changed the face of his definition to fence it against minor objections. Will