reward, it should never be employed to express the condition of enjoyment or existence in a future life.

The word punishment is used with as much vagueness and obscurity as the word reward. Sometimes it is used to signify an arbitrary infliction of pain or suffering, as a satisfaction for some wrong done. Sometimes it is used to mean arbitrary chastisement or discipline, not for the satisfaction of the person who inflicts the suffering, but for the correction and warning of the person who endures the suffering. But in both cases it is usually understood as being arbitrary, without any invariable law, but at the mere pleasure of the one who inflicts the suf fering. It may be much or little, for a long period or a short period, according to his pleasure at the moment; whether inflicted vindictively for his own satisfaction, or only as a proper correction and warning for the sufferer.

In both these senses the word punishment is used by religionists with reference to the future life. By one, God is represented as consigning all the wicked of every degree, old and young, civilized and savage, to an eternal and unmitigated hell of misery, and this is called the expression of God's anger, his wrath, his vengeance, satisfaction for offending by the transgression of his holy law. By another, God is represented as subjecting all the wicked, who die without penitence and reform, to a suffering for discipline, for correction or preparation, after which they shall be transferred to the place and companionship of the virtuous and holy. To describe this condition as well as the other, the word punishment is used, implying that chastisement or correction is arbitrary

also,- much or little, long or short in its duration, according to the pleasure of God,

only that it will soul be trans

ultimately terminate, and then the ferred to the place of unbounded and everlasting felicity. The word punishment almost invariably conveys to every mind the ideas of wrath, vindictiveness, ideas which never can with any propriety be associated with the attributes and character of the Supreme Being. God is love, and infinite love; and God is infinite and unchangeable in every perfection. Unless the word punishment can be used and always understood as dissociated entirely from every idea of wrath or vindictiveness, it never should be used to express the action of God, whether with reference to the condition of souls beyond the grave, or the condition of human beings in this present mortal life.

After this examination of these several phrases, you will easily understand how one may say, with the greatest propriety, I am no believer in universal salvation, no believer in universal restoration, no believer in rewards or in punishments in a future life, nor in rewards and punishments in this present life. For as they are commonly used and commonly understood in religious speech, in theological and pulpit phraseology, no one of these phrases conveys any reasonable, consistent, or satisfactory idea to the mind.

Of the author of such a declaration you might inquire, What then do you believe? That you might weigh it carefully, and test its reasonableness, its consistency, and its reality, he might give you this plain reply: I believe that there is but one life

of the soul, which begins at the soul's beginning or its birth, and continues on for ever; a life of freedom, of development, of retribution and progression,death being but a single event in the soul's life, an event which relieves it from the restraints, propensities, and peculiarities of a fragile and decaying frame, the moral character of the spirit being the same a moment after death which it was a moment before death, only that the soul finds itself in a new and larger sphere, ready to proceed in the unfolding of its spiritual life from the exact moral point at which it left this mortal existence.

This one life of the soul is a life of retribution. There is no partiality, no favoritism; there are no elect ones as the recipients of anything called salvation. God rules the whole material world by a uniform and established order. He also rules the whole moral world, the whole world of mind or spirit, by uniform and unvarying laws. The most enlightened man in the most enlightened Christian country, who through ignorance or wilfulness transgresses a natural or moral law, must and does experience similar effects to those experienced by the Pagan or barbarian, on the opposite side of the globe, who transgresses the same natural or moral law. In both cases, if the transgression be one of ignorance, the natural effects must follow, but it is no sin. And in both cases, should the transgression be wilful, the effects must follow, and the transgression is a sin. The difference in both cases between the transgression which is sin, and that which is not sin, is in the moral effects upon the mind or conscience. So that every human being each day

and hour, in the exercise of free will, forms its own moral character. Each action of every being reacts in some way and to some extent upon himself, for good or evil, and not only upon himself but on others, and this reaction is retribution. This is what I mean by a life of retribution. Each being at the event of death continues its existence and development, from the moral life which it had formed up to that moment for itself, and proceeds in the spiritual state, enjoying happiness according to its own moral capacities; and this is what I mean by a life of progression.

Thus we discover the necessity of a clear idea of words. And the words salvation, restoration, rewards and punishments, should never be used, unless they can be separated in the mind entirely from the ideas of wrath, vindictiveness, or any arbitrary action on the part of God, whether favorable or unfavorable to man.

God is no respecter of persons in this life, nor in any other. He appoints laws to regulate the whole of man's nature, and leaves man free to learn, understand, and experience the effect of those divine and universal laws, to increase enjoyment or reduce his capacity for enjoyment in proportion as he obeys or disobeys them.

DISCOURSE XI.

THE BATTLE OF THE INVISIBLE POWERS; OR GOD AND THE DEVIL.

THOU THOUGHTEST THAT I WAS ALTOGETHER SUCH AN ONE AS THYSELF; BUT I WILL REPROVE THEE. - Psalm 1. 21.

THOUGH there may be occasionally found among us a stranger who is a Mahometan or Pagan worshipper, and though numbers of Jewish worshippers are frequently found, yet our civilization is called Christian. We are said to live in Christian society. Most men directly encourage the external offices. of religion, and nearly all pay more or less regard to religious observances. But among those who encourage the external offices of religion directly, many appear to regard only its externals. Their religion appears to be unexpressed by any controlling principles regulating their general transactions; it appears to be expressed by no uniform spirit pervading their whole lives, manifest in their words, acts, and whole deportment, by characteristics corresponding with what are agreed by all to be the peculiar features of the religion to which they avow their