Universalism true, and drunkenness really expedites the march of souls to glory. The retailer, whose infamous traffic spreads poverty, disease and death around him, may now console himself with the reflection, that while he is poisoning the body, he is actually saving the soul; that while he may be filling his coffers with unrighteous gain, and the grave with bloated victims, he is also building up a colony in heaven. In this way one rum-shop may do more towards saving souls than several preachers.

Again; take the case of the duellist. You well remember what a sensation of horror was felt through New England two or three years since, when a member of Congress from Maine, fell in a duel. According to the law of God he died a murder

er.

Before he fell, he coolly and deliberately fired twice at his gentlemanly antagonist; and while in the act of making one more effort to murder a fellow-sinner, his body fell in death, and will you say, his spirit rode off in angelic majesty, apon a rifle-ball, to the perfect bliss of the heavenly world? While he was here, he was in a state of suffering and sin,-or if you please, he was in a Universalist hell-and had he feared God and kept his commandments he would have continued longer in this world of suffering. But his guilt brought relief and instantaneously purified his soul from all sin and elevated him to heaven!! Is not this offering a reward for sin ? Does not your sentiment make the broad road of death, the shortest way to heaven? Deny this and your whole system falls to the ground.

To make this feature in Universalism still more obvious, and to impress it still more forcibly upon your mind, let me introduce another case. Here are three highway robbers, of equal character. They have been trained up together in idleness, rum-drinking and gambling. They become bankrupt both in character and purse. To mend their broken fortunes they all agree to make a joint-stock effort upon the highway. A dark night is selected, and by previous arrangement they meet at a given time and place, and conceal themselves by the road-side, anxiously resolved to go immediately to heaven or to improve their fortunes. They wait the approach of the traveller. At midnight the distant tread of the horse indicates an approaching opportunity for plunder. As the traveller comes up they suddenly rush upon him. One seizes the horse's bridle and demands the rider's money or life. The traveller being armed, immediately draws his pistol and shoots him through the heart. One convulsive struggle and he is gone-gone

to glory. The second robber advances undismayed, to the attack. The traveller jumps from his horse upon him, throws him, overpowers him, and the third takes fright and retreats back into the woods. With the aid of one or more who have by this time come up, the traveller secures his victim and the next morning delivers him over to the officers of civil justice, to wait his trial at the next term of the Supreme Court. Now remember those men were of the same character. They were old associates together in crime and folly. They have been trained up together in the same school of vice. The first, as guilty as either of them, while committing an act of the most daring villany, exchanged his depredations upon the high-way for the bliss and glory of heaven. Where and when did he get his punishment? Not in death, for the best of men die as well as he; besides, he died an easy death compared with thprotracted agony, which even the best of men sometimes ene dure on the dying bed. He did not get his punishment beforehand, for then, according to your system, he would not have committed the act at all. You believe that punishment is reformatory. Well now if punishment reforms the offender, if this offender had received his punishment in advance, he must have been reformed, and would not therefore have committed the deed. The second robber is dragged off to prison, his name and guilt by the newspaper press, are immediately spread all over the land. An accumulated burden of pain and trouble is rolled upon his wife, children and other respectable family connections. His family come to his lonelycell to visit and weep over him with wild and broken-hearted anguish. This adds to his woes. He is at last brought from prison to the court house, and arraigned before" a jury of his peers." The evidence of his guilt is spread before them and the world, and he is solemnly pronounced GUILTY. The judge pronounces the sentence of death-to be remanded to prison, and hung in sixty davs. At last, after sixty days of dreadful forebodings, the day of execution arrives. The jail, from an early hour, is surrounded by thousands, who have assembled to witness the execution. At the appointed hour the sheriff appears, enters his cell, knocks off his chains, dresses him for the solemn tragedy, places a cap on his head, and a rope round his neck, and leads him along, trembling and pale with fearful apprehension, to the scaffold. The rope is carefully adjusted, prayers are offered, the death warrant read, and the poor wretch is swung off!! The day of his death was just six months from the time he and his associates committed the

crime. During this period he suffered the most heart-rending The third robber was never taken. He fled his counagony. try. Some years after, he was seen in Texas, where he draggcd out a miserable life for thirty years, in a Universalist hell, and died of the Asiatic cholera. Now this case illustrates two serious difficulties in your system.

1. It teaches us that if Universalism is true, crime unrepented of, is, in some cases, the shortest road to heaven. Can such be a system of God? Will he who abhors sin, so far break down and reverse the natural distinction between sin and holiness, as to bestow an earlier heaven upon the most desperate rebel, than he does upon his most pious saints? You cannot believe this; and yet you must acknowledge this supreme absurdity to be sound theology, or give up your system.

2. The second point which this case illustrates is this. It shows that an equitable retribution does not take place in this world. The three robbers were equally guilty. If this be a world of perfect, individual retribution, they must have all suffered alike. Was it so? The first experienced one struggle, and ascended to a throne of glory. The second, instead of a paradise, found a prison, and endured the most agonizing torment for six months, while the third suffered the writhings of a guilty conscience for thirty. years. If the first robber, whose crimes gave him a passport to glory, received all the punishment his sins deserved, then the second and third received ten thousand times too much; and if they suf fered too much, then a future retribution is necessary, in order that a holy God may redress their wrongs. If they are never redressed, then they must remain eternally wronged.Please consider these things, and remember that while truth is always harmonious and consistent, error is fated to run crooked and devour itself.

Yours as ever.

LETTER VIL

My Dear Sir:

You must have readily perceived from my argument upon the nature and offices of conscience, that a just and equitable retribution is not always administered in this world, through this operation of the mind. Let us then look once more at out

ward circumstances. Do circumstances operate so equally in this world, as always to punish fully the wicked and reward the righteous? This you cannot as an honest man, pretend. You know that human happiness depends very much upon circumstances; and these circumstances sometimes favor the wicked, and at other times grind the poor, defenseless, and innocent into the dust. Let me illustrate. God you believe is good, equally good to all mankind, and has "created all men FREE and equal, and endowed them with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But are all men equally free? Do all men enjoy liberty and the pursuit of happiness ?No. The unequal operation of circumstances has robbed millions of millions of our own countrymen of this heaven-descending boon. They have been kidnapped from the earliest moment of infancy, converted into "chattels personal,' bereft of all the social, civil, and religious rights of common humanity, and doomed to be branded with red-hot irons, lacerated with the driver's whip, and bought and sold in the market as articles of merchandize. So far as this world is concerned,, they are doomed by the operation of circumstances, to drag out a life of cruel privation and misery, misery more to be deprecated than death in any of its most appalling forms. In all this, does the poor slave receive the just deserts of his moral character? Does the chain he wears, or the bloody whip of his task-master as it gashes his bleeding back, impose a just and equitable retribution? This you will not pretend. You will say the sufferings of the slave are a misfortune, and not a punishment. Very well. So it is. But this very confession destroys your whole system. If the innocent sometimes suffer as much through misfortune, as others do for their crimes, then it follows, of course, that an equitable retribution does not always take place in this world-and if there be no retribution in the world to come, this wrong which is here sometimes inflicted upon the innocent, must remain forever unredressed, an eternal wrong.

Again, the unequal operation of circumstances may be seen in the fact, that all men have not equal religious privileges. God you believe has given his gospel to all men,and has given all the right, and has imposed upon all, the solemn duty of searching the scriptures, and worshipping their Creator unmolested, according to the dictates of their own consciences. This priv ilege you enjoy and highly appreciate. But do you not know that millions of the human race, by circumstances over which hey have no control, have been, and are now, deprived of this

religious light and freedom? At Rome, in Spain, and in many other Catholic countries, the inquisitor has stepped in between the scriptures and the protestant worshipper of God, has committed one to the flames, and the other to a loathsome dungeon.— In New England, you may search and circulate the Scriptures, and preach the gospel, with both compensation and commendation; but in Japan, a profession of Christianity would instantly subject you to imprisonment or death.

Look at the Apostles and primitive christians. They were eminently holy men. And if every body suffers and enjoys in this world according to their characters, they were entitled to unmixed happiness. Did they have it? What are the facts in the case? They were men of great suffering. When they entered the service of Christ, he distinctly informed them that they would not enjoy temporal rewards in his service, but great temporal sufferings. Hear Christ giving them their com

mission.

"Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye, therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues, and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.,' Matt. 10: 16-18.

Here they are not told they shall enjoy temporal happiness proportioned to their holiness, but on the contrary, they are made distinctly to understand, that in consequence of their connection with Jesus Christ, they are to be exposed to much suffering.

Hear the manner in which the Saviour addressed Ananias in relation to Paul, at the time of his conversion. "For I will show him how great things he shall SUFFER for my name's sake!" Acts 9: 16. Hear the Apostle's account of his own sufferings in the cause of his Master.

"In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft; of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep, in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness; besides these