Jesus did not say that those who heard him, and believed not, should be condemned to eternal punishment because they did not believe, but he said, "He that believeth not is "condemned already." That is to say, condemnation to eternal death has already past. Jesus said, I came not to condemn; you are under sentence of condemnation already, I came to rescue from condemnation, so he that hears and believes, shall not perish, or die eternally, but live everlastingly.

The day of damnation, just as true as the day of salvation, is an eternal now before the throne of the infinite and unseen eternal. Theologians argue, that though this may be so, relative to God, it is not so relative to man himself. But the answer is, that man to inherit life everlasting, must be born a god himself. "I have said ye are gods.” And, therefore, whatever is true of the parent in reference to eternity of judgment, must equally be true of the child: and as aborted births are never registered among the living, neither are men, (who in relation to Deity are abortions,) any way recorded among the living, and thus it may be said of them as Job judged, they are as though they had never been born. No one can be registered among the living until he is born, and if men never reach the divine birth hour, they never see the eternal now of everlasting life.

The theological idea of the day of judgment, is in flat contradiction of many important passages of scripture. "There is none that doeth good, no, not one," says the psalmist, when prompted by the spirit of prophecy. If all have come short of absolute good, how can they be absolutely rewarded for doing what they have neither done nor possibly can hereafter do? and if no man can achieve the performance of absolute good, neither can anyone be eternally, that is absolutely, punished for falling short of that standard of perfection. All the evil that any man can do throughout the longest life allowed him is but relative and temporary. Man, therefore, is impotent for absolute good, and equally powerless for absolute evil. Man sins, and perishes, the soul that sinneth shall die, not live, for ever.

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To give eternal reward for good, and eternal punishment for evil, is simply to recognise and endorse the serpent's catechism of theistical good and evil. The Bible asserts, that God is of purer eyes than to behold this iniquity of man. If, therefore, he is of purer eyes than to recognise this evil, how can he eternally punish what his prophets declare he refuses to acknowledge the existence of?

Relative to each other, men do wrong, but that is no argument that Deity is to interfere. If he did interfere, whenever invoked by priests to support their idea of good, and to punish their conception of evil, the human race would have been exterminated ages ago, and the two last priests would have perished with their hands clutching each other's throats.

As men are not absolutely free, they are not absolutely responsible, and consequently not liable to eternal punishment, nor can they claim any inheritance of the estate of eternal life.

Immortality is not a thing for distribution like real and personal property. It is part of that paternal estate which the Father surrenders and SACRIFICES during his lifetime for his children, and all the children share proportionably, irrespective of their relative merits one towards another. There is one book much rummaged by Bible worshippers in the present age. It is the Apocalypse, which is a sort of codification of the unfulfilled portions of Ezekiel and other prophets' predictions. It is a series of word painted pictures, in hieroglyphics of the end of theological civilization.

It is said in these Apocalyptic paintings, that the dead shall appear before the judgment seat of the Son of Man at the last day, but the dead do not come flying through space from Hades back to the earth. The dead are lying at the bottom of the ocean, and scattered throughout the length and breadth of the earth. The dead are to be judged, and how? Certainly not by calling their names out from the book wherein are written those of the living. The adjutant and his subordinates, in a regiment of soldiers, do not call over their muster rolls except to see who are missing from the

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ranks of the living, the dead will eventually be crossed out for ever. The Bible does not say that the dead are inscribed upon the same muster roll as those of the living, for it speaks of two books. One only is the book of life, and if a man is not found written there, he is passed over as one perished; and since it is not said that the dead are to be regenerated into temporary existence, to be condemned to death again, the judge must confine himself to repeating the words spoken by Jesus of Nazareth, and as God is the father of the living only and not of the dead, then the judgment to be pronounced upon the dead is this, that as they are, so they must continue, DEAD for ever.

end, there is no reHe has forgotten

The dead have perished, that is their membrance by God of these lost ones. them, and they are cut off from his life and salvation, God will not shew wonders among the dead, nor his faithfulness in the land of destruction. So that the very fact of their being called the dead is in itself, without further indictment, accusing witness, or trial, their condemnation sentence and execution. The dead are DEAD, and as such they have for ever perished.

The trumpet call of the messenger of final judgment has been described by Jesus of Nazareth in the following way, illustrating by his own word and their effects that which was to be repeated after him :

"The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves "(mortal Adam) shall hear His voice, and shall come forth (appear?); the righteous to the resurrection of eternal "life, and the wicked to the resurrection of condemnation."

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This, he says, just after telling his hearers that he had himself come to call the slumberers in the bodies of dust to awaken to the voice of the Son of God. All who can hear shall live, for as the Father is self-existent, or has life in himself, so has he given the Son to have life and self-existence in himself, and at the same time has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the "Son of Man."

"The words I speak unto you," said Jesus, "I speak not "of myself, the word which ye hear is not mine but the

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"Father's which sent me. He that rejecteth me, and re"ceiveth not my words has one that judgeth him, the word "that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day."

Daniel, a preceding prophet, had said that at the voice of the seventh and last messenger of Deity, many that slumber in the dust of the earth shall be quickened to the real birth of divine and immortal life, but others shall be suddenly roused to consciousness of their being objects of everlasting derision and contempt.

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There is a question that arises here. What is meant by sleeping" in the dust of the earth? It does not mean perished in the earth, for it applies to the quick or living. Jesus made use of a similar orientalism when he said, "the "dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that "hear shall live." He spoke of the present and future, for he says, "The hour is coming and now is." But there is no record of the graves vomiting up their prisoners as he spoke. In another place the expression made use of is "let the dead bury their dead." The speech undoubtedly refers to that premature birth of mankind, which is implied in the phrase mortal life, or deadly life, whence arises the proverb that "in the midst of his life man is in death." Existing as a mere fœtus in the womb of natural processes, man is not born truly until he is born again, and this is what Jesus alludes to when he says the "dead" shall be quickened to the second. birth; it is the same expression as that of Daniel, they "that "sleep in the dust of the earth." They that vegetate or hybernate as it were in the dust of material growth, and who are in relation to the eternal now of everlasting life just as if they were actually and absolutely dead.

The eternal Father judges no man, for that judgment of man implies universal condemnation, and if God judged there could be no possibility of salvation, because before him shall no man living be justified. To rescue from condemnation, or the ordinary fate of everlasting death, is the unceasing work of the Lord and Giver of Life.

The final judgment of mankind has been beautifully

depicted as committed to a child, who has no dreadful apparatus of death about him, no fierce lictors, nor grim and savage myrmidons of the law, with heavy chains for securing rebels in hell fire. He is no stern-featured, be-wigged, and ermined old judge; nothing more dreadful than a simple child, who stands alone, guarded only by his innocence and the rainbow light of his Father's glory. As the nations and people approach him, he puts no question to them, demands no explanations, and neither allows a claim nor accepts an excuse, but when their eyes meet, the people come to judgment read their sentence in that child's silent gaze. There

is no occasion to say anything, the emotion is too awful and overpowering to allow a syllable to be breathed, for they have either become suddenly conscious of the quickening throb of a newly awakened life in them, in their relationship to that child as sons of the same parental Deity, and as such are numbered among the living; or else on the other hand, if the child appears a stranger, nothing different to ordinary mortals, they recognise no such relationship, and feel an unlooked for depression and revulsion of pleasurable feelings. They experience that chill which leaves them for the catacombs of the mouldering dead. If they are not assured by the lightning glance of that child's eye, they will as certainly be petrified into stony stagnation by the freezing repulsion of its icy stare, and they will either slink away disheartened and downcast, left to their natural inheritance of mortality, or spring joyfully to take the place assigned to them in that eternal city, where it has been promised that it shall be said to them, "Ye are the sons of the living God."

THE END.