verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us." Careful meditation will show here the threefold basis of natural retribution :

I. Memory : We saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear."

II. Conscience: "We are verily guilty concerning our brother."
III. Reason: "Therefore is this distress come upon us."

Take another example: Our Lord's intercessory prayer (John xvii.). A careful study will show that there are four forms of prepositions which here reveal our Lord's conception of the relation of believers to the world. I. They are in the world;

II. They are not of the world;

III. They are chosen out of the world;

IV. They are sent into the world.

These four prepositional forms leave nothing more to be said. Again in this chapter we shall find a progress of doctrine that does not at first reveal itself :

I. Separation.

II. Sanctity.

III. Unity.

IV. Glory.

Nothing can be added, nothing can be subtracted; neither can the order of these four be changed.

Again, John iii. 16, is a most familiar passage of Scripture: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

I am sure that I had preached upon this text almost fifty times before I ever discovered the relation of the different words which compose this

text.

After a prolonged meditation upon it, it occurred to my mind that there were in this text ten prominent words:

God-Loved-World-Gave-Son-Whosoever - Believeth -Perish—

Have-Life.

On further meditation it also occurred to me, as by a flash of illumination, that these naturally divided themselves into five groups of two each. There were two of them that had to do with the persons of the Godhead : God the Father and God the Son.

There were two that described the Divine attitude: "Loved" and "Gave."

There were two that described the objects of this love: "World" and "Whosoever." Both of them universal terms, but one collective and the other distributive.

There were two that intimated man's activity: "Believe" and "Have." There were two that represented the extremes of destiny: “Perish” and

'Life."

This is no invention. These words were there, and sustained this relation, though it might have been previously undiscovered by any other reader.

We might venture another illustration from Psalm li., where a series of adjectives may be found which carry our thoughts higher and higher till we reach a climax :

Clean-Right-Holy-Free.

There are manifestly four levels of life:

I. Sin;

II. Rightness, or obedience to conscience;

III. Holiness, or the love of right for its own sake, and from sympathy with God.

IV. Freedom, or the sense of privilege in doing and suffering the will of God, rising above law to love and joy.

Again, in Romans viii. we have a marvellous combination and arrangement of truths which centralize about the conception of the privileges of God's sons. There are ten prominent conceptions, which may be divided into two classes: First, those which pertain to child life; and second, those which pertain to family life, or the position of the child in the family.

First, as to child life, we have life itself: walking, talking, access to God in prayer, and adoption (adoptio, Latin) or the attainment of majority. Second, as to family life: First, heredity, implying, of course, conformity to the Father's likeness; second, harmony, or the convergence of all household provision in the well-being of each member; third, discipline, including education and correction; fourth, liberty, or a growth toward freedom from restraint; fifth, heirship, or the final inheritance in God.

Hence there enters

which reminds us "Le style, c'est

The student of this chapter finds these things here awaiting discovery. These, however imperfect as illustrations, will serve perhaps to show the meaning of what we have said. Now it will be observed that wherever this method of preparing sermons is followed, there comes to be an essentially original and individual element in the product, for the humblest believer may strike some beauty in thought, or in its relations, or both, which has hitherto been unveiled to no other believer. into preaching of this sort a peculiar personal element, of what Buffon says in his fine definition of style: l'homme," the man with all his spiritual knowledge, habits, and attainments, enters vitally into every sermon constructed upon this pattern. Moreover, personal attainments in holiness and in sympathy with God will have much to do with the clearness of apprehension as well as the effective presentation of spiritual truth. A man who lingers in the atmosphere of the closet and obtains there his insight into the Scriptures, will carry the atmosphere of the closet with him into his pulpit-a tone of personal sympathy with God.

There will also be personal sympathy between himself and the souls to

which he preaches by the unveiling to him of human need, in the unveiling of his own. As the high priest bore in two places the names of the children of Israel upon the onyx stones which clasped the two parts of the ephod over his shoulders, and on the breastplate upon his bosom, a true preacher will bear his hearers on his shoulder in supporting their burdens, and on his bosom in his cherishing love for their souls, and as there will be personal sympathy by contact with the hearer, there will be a still higher personal sympathy by contact with God. He will become an ambassador representing God in a human court, and because he speaks and acts within the limits of his instructions he will be conscious that his words carry the weight and the authority of the government which he represents. He will speak as becomes the oracles of God.

The writer confesses that he feels the greatest solicitude for a revival of this kind of preaching in the modern pulpit. There is too much of the essay, or oration, or lecture style of modern discourse. There is too little of the conscious identification of the preacher with God. To get one's sermons, themes, and treatment, from the illumining power of the Holy Ghost will beget a marvellous intrepidity. Such a preacher is bound to speak the truth. With Neptune's pilot he will say:

"You may sink me or you may save me,

But I will hold my rudder true;"

or, like Curran in his defense of Bond, when he heard the clatter of the arms of his threatening antagonists in the court, he said: "You may assassinate me, but you cannot intimidate me."

Such a preacher will be likely to be a man of exceptional purity. The mind, which is the channel of the Holy Ghost's inflowing, and the tongue, which is the channel of the Holy Ghost's outflowing, will not be likely to be given over to the control of impure thoughts or even the coarse and gross forms of jesting in speech. Such preaching is born only of prayer. It has, like General Gordon, its morning signal. It is told of him that during his journey in the Soudan country, each morning for half an hour there lay outside his tent a white handkerchief. The whole camp knew what it meant, and treated the little signal with highest respect. No foot crossed the threshold while that little guard kept watch. The most pressing message waited for delivery, and even matters of life and death, until the little signal was withdrawn. God and Gordon were in communion. The man that wants to preach with power must have his times alone with God. If he wants to be a distributing reservoir he must become a receiving reservoir. If he wants to prevail with man he must learn, first of all, to prevail with God. Such preachers will be found to be full of a Divine energy. They will not count their life dear unto themselves. Their love will seek, not limits, but outlets, and they will renew their strength in waiting upon God. Oh for a new era of preaching that is biblical in the highest sense and spiritual in the grandest sense, because not only identi

fied with a spiritual character and life, but because it is essentially a spiritual product-a product of the Holy Spirit's indwelling and outworking!

IV. AN HISTORICAL STUDY OF HELL.

PART I.-ETHNIC OPINIONS.

BY WILLIAM W. MCLANE, PH.D., D.D., NEW HAVEN, CONN.

THE English word hell, derived from the Anglo-Saxon root helan, to hele, to hide or to conceal, meant, originally, a hidden place. Hell came, therefore, to be applied to the place of the dead, and was used as the equivalent of the Hebrew sheol and the Greek hades, which are translated by it in the received version of the English Bible. Hell, subsequently, came to be limited, in popular language, to that department of hades in which the wicked are, and to designate both the place and the state of punishment for the wicked after death. This is the sense in which the

word hell is used in the present paper. There was a time when the character of the punishment of the wicked, which consisted of torments of body and pains of soul, was clearly conceived by the clergy and confidently believed by the laity. There has been, within recent years, a reaction from belief in the definite punishment of hell which, not many years since, was preached from the pulpit, and believed by the people. If one may judge from the sermons which are now published, there is either a strange silence or a vague indefiniteness of teaching in respect of the punishment of the wicked on the part of the pulpit; there is, undoubtedly, uncertainty and absence of conviction on the same subject in the minds of the people. Women of Christian character, intellectual culture, and high social position complain, saying: "This subject is left so painfully hazy in most of our pulpits;" or "I do not know what the Church teaches or what I am supposed to believe upon such points." Men of intelligence and influence say: "I wish ministers would preach more definitely upon the matter of punishment." And, on the other hand, some conscientious, honest, truthloving ministers say: "I am an agnostic ;" or, "My views have not yet crystallized;" or, 'Honestly, I do not know what I do now believe on the line of future punishment." These cases are not imaginary, nor are they confined to one section of country, nor to one denomination of Christians. They are indicative not of loss of faith, but of an abandonment of some former forms of belief and the absence of definite opinions in their place. This fact should be perceived and admitted. The time has come when Christian men, and especially Christian ministers, should grapple with the subject of hell-that is, with the doom of wicked men-and should continue the study of it until they have and hold some distinct and

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positive doctrine which is capable of being preached. The reply may be made that that unto which men are saved is the main subject of preaching, and the principal motive in drawing men to Christ. But so long as it is true that they who are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," so long will it be true that sinful men will not feel their need of a Saviour until they are convinced that sin is something whose consequences are to be dreaded, and, if possible, escaped.

A scriptural study of hell is what is most needed. A scientific study of the principles and purposes of punishment, so far as these principles are revealed in nature and in human life, would be profitable. An historical study of the subject will be helpful in furnishing data from which the natural instincts and the fundamental convictions of men may be determined. It will also furnish data which may enable the student to determine whether extra-biblical views and opinions have helped to form doctrinal beliefs upon this subject in the past or in the present. For these reasons, this and two following papers, the result of patient research, are offered to the public for the benefit of such students as may welcome any aid or light upon this problem. The facts given have been gathered from the best authorities, and are, mainly, such as are agreed upon by those authorities. A brief list of the principal books and authors consulted will be appended to this article for the information of such readers as may have the time and the inclination to investigate these questions for themselves, and for the assurance of such as have not the time for personal investigation, of the reliability of the statements made in this paper.

The first facts which come under consideration in an historical study of hell are ethnic opinions-that is to say, the opinions of races or tribes of men whose beliefs have not formed a place in any great or widely spread religion of the world.

"Few," says Mr. Tylor, "who will give their minds to master the general principles of savage religion will ever again think it ridiculous or the knowledge of it superfluous to the rest of mankind." What, then, have barbarous or savage men thought of the future if they have thought of it at all? Especially, what have they thought of the future of such as, in their judgment, are wicked men ?

I. The first fact worthy of consideration is the prevalence of belief in a future life. The statement has been made by some writers that certain primitive tribes have been found without religion and without faith in a future life. This claim has been admitted by such an authority as Mr. Lubbock. There are some facts, however, to be taken into consideration which modify the statements upon which the claim rests, and render its truthfulness doubtful. (a) The proof is largely negative. Certain travellers or missionaries have found, or think they have found, no religion in a tribe of savage men, and affirm that the tribe has no religion. They say, as Le Vaillant says of the Hottentots: "I have found no trace of religion" (" Je n'y ai vu aucune trace de religion"). Religious opinions and