I will read three verses from the 5th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians:--

      "But of the times and of the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you." The apostle had been speaking of the second coming of the Lord and the resurrection of all the dead. "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night." I think this is a quotation of the Savior's own words on the subject, and that this is the reason the brethren all knew it. "For when they shall say, peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape." The prophets rebuked Israel of old for crying out peace, peace, when there was no peace; and one of the prophets declared, There is no peace to the wicked, saith my God. There is no doctrine of the Bible, having any conspicuity, that has not excited objections among men, and I presume there is no teaching of the Good Book which has called forth as many, and as vehement objections, as that which I endeavored to set before you in the morning discourse, the teaching concerning the future punishment of sin.

      As I announced this morning, I propose to-night to discuss some of the leading objections which are commonly urged against that teaching. Many of these objections [28] are based upon passages of scripture: I will not enter into a discussion of these. I believe that I have examined every one of them after reading carefully the books written by men who deny the Bible teaching concerning future punishment, and I have not found a single one that did not carry with it a perversion of the text; and I will dispose of all that class of objections to-night, so far as you and I are concerned, by telling you, whenever you hear a passage of scripture quoted in disproof of the future and eternal punishment of the wicked, if you will turn to the passage and read a few verses before it, and a few after it, you will invariably find that the meaning of that passage has been mis-stated or mis-applied by the objector. Now you will do yourselves a service, and the truth a service, if you will follow that rule the rest of your life, when you hear discussions on this subject.

      I prefer to-night to occupy our attention with objections which appear to have great force in them, and which are not so easily answered as those that are based upon "scrapping" the word of God; and first of all, it is claimed that such a doctrine as the future and everlasting punishment of sin is inconsistent with the goodness of God. That God is a good father, by which we mean that He is benevolent and kind and tender hearted towards all of his creatures, is a proposition not to be denied, but to be insisted upon and emphasized with all the powers that we can bring to bear for the purpose of impressing it upon the souls and the hearts of ungodly men. And if the teaching concerning the future punishment of the wicked which I set forth this morning, is God's teaching, it only shows that such is the unspeakable enormity of sin that it extorts from the most benevolent Father in this universe, precisely that kind of suffering and punishment; and it ought to heighten our conceptions of the [29] heniousnees of sin, it seems to me, above everything else that we know about it.

      But, is it inconsistent with the goodness of God to thus punish sin? I am very free to confess that if I had, as God has, almighty power and almighty wisdom, I can not for the life of me see that I would allow any human being to be plunged into a lake that burns with fire and brimstone, or to be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, even for one day or one hour. And, furthermore, I am free to confess that if I had the power to prevent it, I would not allow one single human being to ever shed a tear, to ever feel a pang of the body or the heart. I would never allow any more widows in this world, nor any more orphan children. I would not allow pestilence to walk abroad, nor death to waste. I would have no grave-yards in this world. It seems to me that I could not get my consent, with the view that I have and the feeling that I have of what is good and benevolent and kind, to allow any suffering at all among my fellowmen.

      But what does all that prove in regard to God? It only proves that I would act differently from the way that God acts. It does not prove that God acts improperly or inconsistently. It only proves beyond all question of doubt that a human being invested with infinite power and wisdom, would manage this world very differently from the way that God manages it; for we know, the whole world knows, that if there is a benevolent, kind, and merciful God in Heaven, he has allowed all the suffering and pain and anguish that has made this world almost a charnel-house from the beginning to the present day, to go right on before his face. And all this, as was shown you this morning, is in consequence of man's sin against Him. He has done that. "He that is unjust in [30] that which is least," says the Saviour, "is unjust in that which is much;" and if the Almighty has had sufficient reasons to reconcile it with His infinite goodness and love, to allow the amount of suffering which has already taken place in the history of our race, to go on, who can say, who dares to say, that He may not be able to reconcile with His goodness and mercy and benevolence, that kind of pain and suffering on account of sin as long as the universe exists? I think we can very safely say, then, that there is nothing in that line of argumentation--that the facts in the case reverse the argument, rather than establish it.

      In the next place, it has been very vehemently argued and insisted upon, that such punishment for sin would be unjust on the part of God, because the penalty would be far beyond the demerits of the sin for which it was inflicted. To inflict punishment such as is described in the Bible upon a human being, and that continuing without end, for the sins which he committed during the brief stay which he experienced here on earth, is out of all proportion, when viewed as a matter of justice. Justice demands that the penalty shall be proportioned to the crime. Well it does look that way; it undoubtedly does. No father would inflict that kind of punishment upon his son for any conceivable offense against the father, it is argued, and I believe that is true. I would hate to see the man that would. He would not be my friend. It would show not only a want of justice, but an audacious rebellion against all sense of the goodness and mercy and love, of which we have already spoken. But now then, whilst it does appear that way; and if I were the Judge I would not give that sentence; if I had the trial of the matter, I am sure that I would not allow that sentence to be passed; yet, who am I? Well, I am a sinner; and [31] who is to be the judge of the punishment that a sinner ought to get? The sinner himself? We do not argue that way in the affairs of the world, in our courts of justice, or in our family discipline. The little rebel who has risen up against his father's will stubbornly--is he ever set up to decide what punishment he deserves? The men who violate your laws in the city here every day, and take life in it, do you think they would be the proper men to put on your juries to try the crimes that they themselves have committed? Do you think it would be wise to select the law breakers as your law makers? You sometimes do that. You sometimes appoint men to make your laws in the city and in the State who are law-breakers continually, but you did not intend to do it, and you feel ashamed of yourselves because you have allowed them to get into those positions. What community that ever lived would, if a man were to be tried for murder, have a murderer on the bench, a jury made up of murderers, and the witnesses for the defense all murderers? Why, you know our laws do not allow a man that has ever killed another to sit on the jury in a murder trial. Our law-makers know better than that. And who, if he wished adequate laws for the punishment of gambling, would elect gamblers to the Legislature to pass the laws; or, if he were aiming to suppress theft and murder, would select a lot of thieves and murderers to make the laws and fix the penalties? Why, we are instinctively shocked at the idea of appointing men that are guilty of any particular sin or crime, either to make or to execute the laws in reference to it; and why? Because they necessarily have a strong bias in favor of the criminals, being themselves of the number. Well now, if that is true, who will select a sinner to decide the punishment that is just toward a sinner? Who will say that [32] the greatest minds among men, I care not how wise they may be in all other things, may pass judgment upon what Almighty God says shall be done with the sinner?

And no rogue ever lived that would allow the halter to draw on rogues. Well, in honesty, my dear friends, as long as I am conscious that I am a sinner myself, I feel that honesty and candor and justice demand that I shall keep my mouth shut in regard to the demerit of sin and let my God settle that question for me. If it goes against me, I can not help it. He alone is the Judge. In order to have a fair and equitable decision as to what sin deserves, you must have it from some being who is totally separated from sin--who can stand off and look at it, and see it as it is. It may be that angels can do that; I do not know; but one thing is certain, God can, and He is the only being in this universe of whom we feel entirely certain that He can pass a dispassionate judgment upon the demerit of sin--the only being, therefore, competent to decide what shall be done with the impenitent sinner. We are, I think, bound as candid, as fair-minded and honest men, to say on this subject, "Lord, speak, Thy servant heareth."

      In the next place, it is claimed that such a punishment of sin is inconsistent with the wisdom of Almighty God, because it would involve the whole human creation that he has established in this world, in an awful failure. Why, it is claimed that if God had foreknown, before He made this race of ours, that such was going to be the result in regard to a very large portion of them, that surely He would have been too wise to have made the first human pair. And the argument goes on further to say, that if this doctrine of final punishment is [33] true, it will involve so vast a majority of the human race in eternal misery and wretchedness, that the saved will be but a very small portion of the whole, and thus the creation of man will prove to be a stupendous failure on the part of a God whom we supposed to be infinitely wise. Well that looks as if it might be so. All of these reasonings are extremely plausible; but let us look a little while at the facts in the case--some facts that are overlooked by the parties who argue thus.

      Is it true that according to the teachings of the Bible, in their widest range, a vast majority of the human race are to be involved in everlasting punishment? I do not think it is. We are told by those who study the statistics of human life, that at least one-third of all the children that are born into this world die before they come to years of accountability. What becomes of them? They have committed no personal transgression, and whatever may be true with respect to hereditary depravity, certainly there is not one word said in the Bible about the eternal punishment of those who have not committed personal sins. Then, all that third that have been born up to the present time, are saved, and such will continue to be saved until the end of the world.

      In the second place, although in all the ages past, close up to the time of Adam himself, a majority of the human race have lived in sin and died in sin, and, according to the teachings of Christ, can not go where He is, yet there has been a very large number redeemed by the blood of our Lord--a host so numerous that no man can count them. These are to be added to the one-third who die before personal transgressions have been committed.

      In the next place, if we believe the prophecies contained in the Old Testament and the New, there is [34] coming a time in the history of men, when all the kingdoms of this earth shall be the kingdoms of God, and his Christ; when, if the world universally, to the last man and woman in it, will not be Christian, it will certainly approach that state of things; and when that time comes, if the world moves on increasing in population as it is increasing now, the number of living human beings on the earth will be manifold more than it ever has been in these preceding wicked ages, and it would require but a very few generations of the teeming population which will then fill the whole earth with the praises of God, to out-number all that have lived and died before. I do not believe God is going to allow this world to go on forever in the hands of the devil. And who can tell; who can tell, but what, of our fallen and unhappy race the number of those redeemed and saved and brought home into everlasting life, as the result of the working of that simple Gospel which we believe, shall be so vast that the number of the lost, great as it is, shall be insignificant in comparison?

      Now then, what shall we say of the wisdom of God in ibis matter? Is it still insisted that an infinitely wise God would not allow the creation and history of a race that would involve the everlasting woe and despair of any? The answer is, that God has made us. He has taken the responsibility to do it, and the presumption is that in foreseeing the final result He saw that, notwithstanding the fact that some would be forever lost and doomed to eternal woe, the good accomplished for the race, and for other races in His universe, would infinitely surmount and overbalance the evil; and if this be true, it is a ground on which God might wisely and justly proceed as He did. I believe that God has good and infinitely wise reasons for [35] everything that He does, and I believe the day is coming when you and I will have information enough, will have mental capacity enough, to see that wisdom. I think we me yet like little children; and where is the little four-year-old boy or girl who is able to appreciate the wisdom of many things that the father does, or the justice of them? They will bye-and-bye; bye-and-bye they will thank you for that which makes them weep now. They will see your wisdom and goodness to them in that which makes them now rebel against you; and when they come to be fathers and mothers, they will practice the same thing which they once thought was very unwise and very unkind. We are all but little children compared with God. Ah! my friends, the difference between the capacity to understand what is right and wise and just, of a four-year-old child, and that of his cultivated father and mother, is insignificant compared with the difference between the ability of the wisest man that ever lived on this earth, to understand what is wise and just and good in the universal Ruler of men and angels, and that of God himself.

      But then, there is still another objection to this Scripture doctrine, which I believe has more weight with the people; strikes with greater force every mind that hears it; and weighs more heavily upon every heart, than all of these others combined; and that is this: A man says, "If I should be so fortunate as to get to heaven, and know that my wife or my children are weltering in such a hell as the Bible describes, heaven would be a hell to me." I heard a man once say in a discussion I held with him, "I would have to be turned into a fiend before I could dwell in heaven and be happy, while my friends and my family were in hell;" and the man seemed to feel what he said, and the audience, when [36] he said it, seemed to sympathize with him--it thrilled that audience. Have you never felt the same feeling, and thought the same thought? Well, I answered the gentleman about thus: The time was, that the Lord Jesus, the Son of the living God, was here on earth, a man like us, with all the human sympathies and tender feelings that belonged to the tenderest of human hearts; and while He was here, He stood with the weeping women who had come out to comfort Mary and Martha, and Mary fell at His feet and said, "Oh, Master, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Jesus groaned within himself, and wept. Those were tears of sympathy. He was not weeping because Lazarus was dead, for He knew he was soon to arise from the dead. He had stayed away two days to let him die. It was all plain in His mind. The only way you can account for his tears, and the heaving of His breast, and the deep groans within Him, is by pure sympathy. He wept because they were so distressed; and moved by that, He went to the grave, and said, "Lazarus, come forth;" and he stood alive again. Those tears were all dried up. That is the way He felt, and when He stood on the Mount of Olives the last time He was approaching the City of the Great King, and looked down upon it, as it spread out like a map or a book in your hand before him; we are told that he wept again. And why? He says, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another: because thou knewest not the time of thy [37] visitation." He wept over their misery, and wretchedness, and ruin, though they were yet thirty or forty years off. But Christ died, as we have to die. He went down into the ground, and arose again, and went up to Heaven; and now, every day He looks down upon thousands of Marys and Marthas weeping at their brothers' tombs; He looks down every day upon myriads of widows and orphans with their hearts crushed; and upon wretchedness, woe and pain, such that if you or I were placed where we could see it all at once, I do not believe we could live. But Jesus does not groan up in Heaven. Jesus does not shed any tears up there. Has He turned into a fiend since He left this world? To ask that question, is to answer it. We may not be able to explain how it is that this tender, compassionate, loving, weeping friend can now sit on the throne of God in Heaven and look down with infinite complacency upon that which once racked His soul with pain, and filled His eyes with tears, but that change has gone over Him, unquestionably it has, and if you and I follow Him, obedient to His will, and die and are buried, and are raised again, and taken up there to His own right hand, as He assures us we shall be, will He not enable us to look upon the same class of events with the same infinite composure and peace of mind? These men and this reasoning that I speak of, are to be answered just as Christ answered the Sadducees when they presented to Him the case of a woman who had been married to seven different men--legally married to them; and these seven men, brothers in the flesh. The Sadducees thought this a demonstration that there could not be a resurrection from the dead and a future state; and after stating the case, they said, "Master, whose wife shall she be of the seven?" If there shall be a resurrection of the dead, will there [38] not inevitably be cases of strife and conflict between brothers in the flesh? For how can men endure to share the affection of one woman between seven? It is impossible here on earth; they thought it would be impossible in heaven. Do you know what Jesus said to them? "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." Because the Scriptures teach the doctrine of a resurrection, that ought to be enough for you; and ye err, "not knowing the power of God;" for "in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage." All of those affections that grow out of the married state here on earth, will be gone; and how strange that is! The holiest and tenderest ties that bind human beings together are those between a true husband and a true wife. While we live here on earth these family ties are absolutely necessary to our welfare. When we go up there, they will be of no use to us, and hence they are gone. Just so, while I am living here on earth, the thought that one of my children may go to hell ought to make me pray morning, noon and night, and work and talk with them, and get them to come to Christ and to live for Christ and be saved; that is the reason that this feeling is in me. Have I a wife who is not a Christian? The fear of her being involved in the fate of the wicked ought to make me wretched every day until she comes to be saved; and if a woman has a husband who is living in sin, and exposed to the fate depicted in the Bible for those who die in sin, she ought not to let her head rest upon her pillow a single night in perfect ease, until that husband's soul is saved. But when it is all over, when the judgment has been passed through, when every human being's fate is settled forever, and these feelings can do no more good, then, like the other things just mentioned, they will pass away, and we will be like the angels. [39]

      Angels are hovering around us. Do not think of that now as a nursery story. Angels are hovering over us. The Apostle says they are all sent forth to be ministering spirits to them that shall be the heirs of salvation. We do not hear their wings or see their forms, but they are here, and the other night when you were so unhappy and miserable, do you suppose that the angels who guarded your bed wept for you? We are told that they are happy beings. They are sympathetic beings, full of tenderest care and regard for all of us, and when they are started out on missions of mercy or love, they come on glad wings to minister to our wants; but there is something about those angels that keeps them happy notwithstanding the miseries of those for whom they are ministering. Oh! my brethren, Heaven has a balm for every wound; for every pain; for every sorrow. It cures every ill to which human hearts can be exposed, and by some strange power that the Almighty alone can exercise, or has wisdom to devise, your souls shall be free from care. In reality, this that I have just told you is a great deal the most incredible thing in the Bible. You come to me when I am getting old, and I have never--I can't recollect the day or the night of all my past life when I have not had some pain of the body, or some uneasiness, or uncertainty of the soul, some unpleasant remembrance and some timidity of apprehension--you come to me, when I am about finishing up such a life as that, and say, Old man, you will leave this world in a few days, and then you will go away to a place where you will never have the slightest unpleasant remembrance of anything that ever took place, and you will not forget anything either. Even your sins and your shameful deeds will not cause the slightest disturbance of your perfect peace of mind up there. Why, old man, you will never shed another [40] tear, nor feel like it. You will never experience in all your frame the slightest uneasiness, much less pain; and you will not think of anything, future, past or present, that will cause the slightest fear." You tell me that? If ten thousand men were to tell it to me, I could not believe it. Why, really, when I try to imagine myself in that condition I can not do it. It is beyond the utmost reach of my imagination; and why do I believe it? There is only one reason on earth why I can believe it, and ought to believe it, and that is, because God says it; that is all. It would be incredible, otherwise.

      And why ought, why does anybody believe that part of the Bible? You do not have to argue with men and persuade and convince them by long continued effort, to make them believe that part of it. Why? Oh! that is an easy thing to believe. You can very easily believe God with respect to that which gratifies you; with respect to peaceful rest and joy and blessedness, in this world, or the world to come. But now, when God says that other about the fate of the wicked, why don't we believe that? Bob Ingersoll said in one of his lectures that the most infamous passage in the whole Bible is that in the 16th of Mark, which says, "He that believeth not, shall be damned;" and he says that Jesus of Nazareth, that good man, never could have said such a thing, although it did come from his lips after he had risen from the dead. And why does Bob think it such an infamous thing? Because he knows he is lost if that is true. And the reason it is hard for us to believe about the fate of the wicked in the eternal world, is because we are wicked; our friends are wicked, and we are wicked, and that is the only reason. But, brethren, it is time for us to make up our minds to take things as they are--and to take the Almighty God according to his word, and to deal with Him like honest men-- [41] to deal with Him as creatures ought to deal with their Maker. We ought to say, "Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth." As I said this morning, if I had the power to make men realize what sin is, there would not be many sinners left after I had preached to them a few times. Every one of them would quit it. But I can not do that. As I said, I can not realize, as I feel I ought to, the enormity of sin myself; and of course I can not make others feel it. If we could only realize what it is to sin against God, we would never sin another time. Measure it by the solemn facts set forth this morning, that when a man dies in his sins, he immediately goes into torment; that when he rises from the dead he will be sent into torment beyond the judgment, which is excruciating beyond all imagination, and is to endure it world without sin, and try to estimate it that way yourself.

      And now, is there any sinner here to-night? Yes, the house is full of them. I pray you in God's name, and for the sake of your own souls, quit those sins, whether great or small. Humble yourselves before the feet of God every night, and plead with Him so that your sins may be forgiven. Through the blood of the everlasting covenant, of which I shall speak hereafter as a remedy for our sins, you know they can be forgiven; let your last breath, on this earth be a prayer to forgive your last sin, and go into His presence with none charged against you.

      Is there any one here to-night who is not a Christian, who has lived in sin up to this hour, and whose every single sin, great and small, is still before the eyes of God in the book that He keeps? Oh! I beg you to fly away from those sins now; to curse and stamp them under your feet, and hate them, and love the Lord who proposes now after all that has been done, to forgive all, if you will come to Him in Jesus' name. You know the way. [42] I beg you, for the sake of your own soul; for the sake of the eternity of which we have spoken, to come and confess Christ now, that you may be among the redeemed, the blessed, and the happy, in the Great Day. [43]

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