he never failed to exercise a prayerful watchful faith in God's merciful superintending providence over his own life and destiny. There is a striking resemblance between his experience, and that of the author of the 73d Psalm, though absolutely the reverse in almost every point, and a resemblance of powerful contrast. The scepticism in the Psalmist's mind was in regard to the allowed prosperity of the wicked, and the seeming want and denial in the divine economy, of any adequate retribution. It took such a deep hold of the soul, and spread such a "lurid and mysterious shade" over God's dispensations, that the mind was almost driven from its balance; the feet of the saint had well nigh gone, his steps had almost slipped, and he was on the point of renouncing his faith in the goodness of the Deity. He was losing his hold on the goodness of God, because it seemed to him that God had no retributive justice. He was brought back, his feet were placed upon the rock, he was brought as a madman or a beast to his senses, by coming into God's sanctuary, and there knowing what God would do in the eternal world. Was there ever a more instructive lesson? Was there ever a more instructive and solemn contrast and resemblance between this man's doubts and the cure of them, and Foster's doubts, with his failure of a cure, until he went not merely into the sanctuary of God, but into eternity itself! Foster's scepticism was as to the goodness of God, because of his justice, because of the undeniable looming up in the Christian system of the doctrine of ETERNAL RETRIBUTION! There was no resource in the sanctuary for that; there was no help in God's Word for that; nor any cure, even if one should rise from the dead, for the scepticism of a man who would not believe on the power of God's Word in that. If a man persisted in that doubt, there was no cure for such scepticism, but to go into eternity, to enter what Foster called the absolute unknown, but which, in the light of God's Word, is as absolute a known as, to the eye of faith, God could make it.

Pressed, then, by this doubt on the one side, and the awful language of the Word of God on the other, and yet exclaiming, It is too horrible! I cannot believe! ETERNITY, my soul shudders at the thought! God cannot be good, and yet appoint an Eternal Retribution !-exclaiming thus, and still holding to the scepticism arising from his limited view of the Divine government and attributes, and his intense fixedness of contemplation on one point, ETERNITY, we do not wonder that such a mind even as Foster's had well nigh slipped, nor that he, like the Psalmist, was as a beast before God. But let the contrast be profoundly marked. The Psalmist doubted of God's goodness for want of retribution. John Foster doubted of God's goodness because of retribution. The Psalmist was convinced and made submissive and trustful by what he was assured would be in Eternity; but Foster was racked

with distrust and doubt by what he feared would be in Eternity. The Psalmist was convinced by God's Word, and rested on it; but Foster's mind was thrown into anguish by the plain interpretation of that Word, and sought to evade it. Foster would not bow unhesitatingly before the majesty of God's Word; he wanted a firm unquestioning trust in it; he wanted faith. His grand defect was a gloomy self-reliance on his own reasoning powers, in lieu of an humble inquiry, What saith the Lord? He stood like Thomas in the presence of his Lord, demanding the wounds in his side and the prints of the nails.

Nor can anything be more unphilosophical and erroneous in principle, or dangerous in example, than Mr. Foster's mode of reasoning on this subject. He demanded, on a subject of faith alone, an evidence destructive of the nature of faith. He demanded that God should force conviction on every mind. He demanded that the doctrine of eternal retribution should be so presented, "as to leave no possibility of understanding the language in a different, equivocal, or questionable sense;" that it should be so presented, as to render "all doubt or question a mere palpable absurdity." Now, it is plain that this, in regard to anything that demands belief, and is not matter of experience, personal experience, is impossible. The very fact that GOD IS cannot be so stated, as to leave no possibility of understanding it in a questionable sense. The doctrine of eternal retribution, as demanding belief, cannot be so stated as to preclude belief, and form experience. This world must be changed from a world of preparation for the eternal world into an experience of the realities of that world, before this can be the case; in other words, God's present system of probation under the power of the atonement, by which the penalty of his law is kept from execution, and men are warned of it, and commanded and urged to prepare against it, and to prepare for blessedness instead of misery in the future world, must be broken up; and instead of warnings of what is to come, and descriptions demanding belief, and the revelations of principles requiring faith, the fires of the eternal world must be kindled in this; and instead of a picture so graphic, and a description so awful, of the sinner in the place of torment, that anything beyond it would transcend the province of faith, and set aside all the laws of the human mind in regard to evidence, there must not only be exhibited here a sinner in torment, but every individual accountable agent must be put into the same torment, and then told this is what punishment means, and this is to be eternal! But even then, this latter truth as to the eternity of retribution could not, without the experience also of that, be so framed as to preclude all possibility of question. For when the declaration had been made, and in the most explicit terms that human language can command, the mind of the sceptic might say, This cannot be! there must be

some other way of understanding this! it is absolutely inconsistent with God's goodness, and must have a different interpretation. And if God should speak the truth audibly to every individual, every day of his existence, instead of leaving it simply written in his Word, the case would be the same. And if he should write it in characters of fire in the firmament, or make such a disposition of the planets in heaven, as that they should read it nightly to the soul, the case would be the same. There would be no possibility of forcing conviction without experience, no possibility of doing this, and still leaving to the soul the alternative of believing or of disbelieving.

A conviction absolutely irresistible, can only be that of experience. But this would destroy the element of free-agency, and the possibility of the voluntary formation of character, the choice of principles of action. It would destroy the system of preparation for the Eternal World, under which we evidently are placed, and would make this world, instead of that, the world of retribution. On the theory that eternal retribution is true, it is impossible to make it a matter of experience in a world for the trial of character, but it must be left as a matter of faith, as in the Scriptures. On the theory that it is not true, the Scriptures, which are the only authentic source of the idea of eternal retribution, and of all our information in regard to it, are, on that subject, glaring with falsehood. On the theory that it is true, there is no conceivable mode. of presenting it to the mind as an article of belief, which the Scriptures have not taken; and their main power over the soul consists, in the acknowledgment even of those who deny the doctrine, in the awful terror in which the retributions of eternity are actually there shrouded. The dread power of the doctrine over Foster's own mind, proves the tremendous distinctness with which it has been somewhere revealed; but an original distinct source of it anywhere but in the Word of God it is impossible to find, except we take the universal intimations of conscience in answer to that Word, and the intimations of retribution in the souls of the heathen, as such a source.

Now it is a remarkable fact, that in regard to another [fundamental truth of the Christian revelation, which Foster, with his whole heart accepted, but which others have denied (as indeed, where is the truth revealed in the Scriptures which men may not deny, if they will, not being forced into conviction?), he adopted a mode of reasoning diametrically opposite to that which he attempted in regard to eternal retribution, and destructive of it. In one of his admirable letters to Miss Saunders, after a simple repetition of many of the passages in the Word of God in regard to the atonement, he meets the objector thus: "There are persons who revolt at such a view of the foundation of all our hopes, and would say, Why might not the Almighty, of his mere immediate

benevolence, pardon the offences of his frail creatures when they repent, without any such intermediation and vicarious suffering? It is enough to answer, that Supreme Wisdom was the sole competent judge in the universe, of what was the plan most worthy of holiness and goodness; and that, unless the New Testament be the most deceptive book that ever was written, the plan actually appointed is that of a suffering Mediator."

Now, a candid mind cannot read the New Testament free of all attempt to evade its plain meaning, without finding the truth of an eternal retribution as fully and explicitly revealed as that of a vicarious Redeemer. And to Foster's own objections on the score of his limited views of the Divine Benevolence, it is enough to answer, that Supreme Wisdom was the sole competent judge in the universe of what was the plan most worthy of holiness and goodness; and that unless the New Testament be the most deceptive book that ever was written, the plan actually appointed embraces an eternal retribution.

Furthermore, if the condition of faith in a suffering Mediator be the only condition of eternal salvation, a truth fully received by Foster, then, on the ground of his own reasoning in regard to eternal retribution, that truth ought to have been so presented "as to leave no possibility of understanding the language in a different equivocal or questionable sense;" it ought to have been so presented, as to render all " doubt or question a mere palpable absurdity." For if the danger of eternal retribution be so awful, as that God ought thus to force conviction on the soul, the only condition of eternal salvation is so infinitely important, that he ought in like manner to force conviction of that also. And if any alleged possibility of doubt in regard to the meaning of the language is to be held a sufficient ground for denying the first, the same possibility is an equally sufficient ground for denying the last, and Foster's mode of reasoning would cut the soul equally from the belief in a suffering mediator and an eternal retribution. But Mr. Foster never seems to have had the shadow of a thought that the condition of eternal salvation, as the only condition, was not revealed with sufficient distinctness, or that, if it be the only condition, it ought to be revealed with a power absolutely overwhelming, and forestalling all possibility of doubt. Why, then, attempt any such reasoning in regard to the truth of eternal retribution? In neither case was it possible to force conviction by experience; in both cases the evidence comes as near to absolute physical demonstration, as could have been, without violating the laws of the human mind in regard to belief. In both cases the evidence is positive, clear, incontrovertible; not to be set aside in any way without evasion; and in every way so palpable, that if it be denied, the New Testament instantly becomes the most deceptive book that ever was written.

Precisely the same reasoning annihilates the force of Mr. Foster's remarks as to the unreasonable shortness of the time of our probation, if an eternal retribution be the evil from which we are to escape. So, likewise, if the condition of eternal salvation be the only condition on which man can be saved, a truth which Foster constantly, and with all the power of his intellect, asserts, the shortness of the time of our probation is equally unreasonable for meeting that condition. The objection which would release the mind from its obligation to believe the one truth, is equally valid against the other; though of utter futility and falsehood in both cases. And the same may be said of what Foster has advanced in regard to the preaching of the truth of eternal retribution; namely, that if true, it ought to be screamed into the ears of every creature; it ought to be proclaimed, as with the blast of a trumpet, "inculcated and reiterated, with ardent passion, in every possible form of terrible illustration, no remission of the alarm; for the most prolonged thundering alarm is but as the note of an infant, a bird, or an insect, in proportion to the horrible urgency of the case." Assuredly, the same may be said of the ONLY condition of eternal salvation, that if true, it ought to be proclaimed in like nanner, as with the blast of a trumpet, no remission of the alarm. And accordingly, it is so proclaimed; both these mighty docrines being true, they are, with equal passion, inculcated and reiterated, in every possible form of terrible illustration. The sacred writers do but turn from the one to enforce the other, and use the one to burn in the other; so that the whole material of revelation, well-nigh, is the mutual support, reverberation, and "thundering," as well as persuasive proclamation of these truths. "Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." By his terrors we persuade them to embrace his love, and by his love we persuade them to shun his terrors. And this doctrine of a suffering Mediator, which Foster avows, is proclaimed with no less thundering alarm, than that doctrine of eternal retribution which he hastily and presumptuously rejects. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."

It would have gone beyond even Mr. Foster's power in the use of human language, to have invented stronger terms than these, or to have proclaimed a suffering Mediator and eternal retribution in notes of more thundering alarm. For the passage is, in spiritual meaning, power and distinctness, like the crash of an earthquake, like the thunder of the Almighty from one end of heaven to the other. And not to name the scores of similar notes of alarm proportioned to the horrible urgency of the case," the passages in the sixth Hebrews, 4-6, and tenth Hebrews, 26-31, are sufficient examples of the united and equally awful sanctions of terror in preaching both a suffering Mediator and eternal retribution.