frame, and the operation of the laws of nature, and the
consequent moral certainty that many vessels will come out of
this mighty creative furnace in wrong shapes, it is perfectly
impossible to conceive that any of these creatures of God's hand
can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such
an idea, it our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would
be completely overthrown, and we could no longer look up to God
as a merciful and righteous Being. But the doctrine of life and
Mortality which was brought to light by the gospel, the doctrine
that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, but that the
wages of sin are death, is in every respect just and merciful,
and worthy of the great Creator. Nothing can appear more
consonant to our reason than that those beings which come out of
the creative process of the world in lovely and beautiful forms
should be crowned with immortality, while those which come out
misshapen, those whose minds are not suited to a purer and
happier state of existence, should perish and be condemned to mix
again with their original clay. Eternal condemnation of this kind
may be considered as a species of eternal punishment, and it is
not wonderful that it should be represented, sometimes, under
images of suffering. But life and death, salvation and
destruction, are more frequently opposed to each other in the New
Testament than happiness and misery. The Supreme Being would
appear to us in a very different view if we were to consider him
as pursuing the creatures that had offended him with eternal hate
and torture, instead of merely condemning to their original
insensibility those beings that, by the operation of general
laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to a purer state
of happiness.