the testimony of Scripture, as to the existence of the soul after death. Here we are happy to meet him, and will give his statements all due consideration. But in the first place, I must lay aside as irrelevant, his endless quotations brought to show the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words translated soul or spirit. I have carefully run them through, and can conceive of no possible benefit to him or his cause, gained by filling out page after page with quotations from a concordance, and ringing perpetual changes upon such euphonious words, as Nesme and Nephish and Ruah and Pseuche and Pneuma, unless it ceme from the impression left on the minds of those who are stupid enough to look upon Greek and Hebrew words, as the mystic symbols of incomprehensible wisdom. If an examination of the original words could throw any light on the subject, not already in possession of the English reader it is well, otherwise it is the silliest pedantry. The English words, soul and spirit, have essentially the corresponding varieties of meaning found in the Greek and Hebrew words. And yet we find no difficulty in expressing distinctly, the doctrines which relate to the immaterial spirit by means of them, and no difficulty in determining when to understand them of animal life, and when of the immortal soul. The numerous passages remarked upon by Mr. B. which have little or no relation to the subject, need not be noticed. Whatever advantage he gets from an expedient, often resorted to, of refuting arguments that were never urged, he is welcome to enjoy. Such artifices show that he is writing for effect upon a class of readers capable of being influenced by such means, and are no compliment to his readers' understanding.

I shall first notice those passages on which he relies to disprove the conscious existence of the soul after death, and before the resurrection, and then those which go to prove the doctrine. Those of the first class, are, Job 14: 10. Man giveth up the ghost and where is he? Psalm 115: 17. The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence. Ps. 6: 5. For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks? Eccl. 9: 5,6. The dead know not

any thing their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished. And verse 10. For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave. In these and two or three others of the same import, is all the force of scriptural argument which he adduced to build his conclusion upon. And there is nothing in any of these passages, which may not be said on the ground, that man has both a mortal and an immortal part. What is here asserted respects man's relations to this world. His existence among the living in this world is said to be done at death:-he cannot join in the praises of God in this world. He cannot praise him as he is here praised-can have no part in the enterprises which engage the hearts of his people here. In one instance the context thus limits the meaning. Their hatred and their envy is now perished, neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun. This shows that the whole assertion respects only man's relations to what is done under the sun,-that they know not anything that is done under the sun. But Mr. B. asks, "Is it any honor to the sacred writers to make them gravely and repeatedly tell us that a dead carcase cannot praise God?" Does Mr. B. need to be informed that all writers have occasion, for the purpose of connecting an argument or of aiding impression, to state truths ás obvious as that? If Mr. B. can show that such statements are not consistent with the scope of the passages in question, the showing will be to the point. Besides, if it be a fact that man is nothing but body, I might retort the question upon Mr. B., Does a Sacred writer tell us that a dead carcase cannot praise God? For there is still less occasion to say it on his hypothesis.

I come now to notice those passages which Mr. Balfour has remarked upon for the sake of showing that they do not prove the doctrine of the existence of the soul after death. Matt. 16: 26. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? That the word here rendered soul, is the same that is in many places, and in the context, rendered life, I admit. And I will go further and admit, that this text was a common proverb in the time of Christ, and that its mean

ing as a proverb was-what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world at the expense of his life? This is admitting even more than Mr. B. has attempted to prove. And yet it is capable of easy proof, that this common proverb is here used in a transferred sense,-accommodated to express the loss of eternal life. Christ in the context urges his disciples to take up the cross, and follow him through every danger. And tells them that whosoever will save his life (by refusing to risk it in his cause) shall lose it, (that is shall lose eternal life). And whosoever shall lose his life, (natural life) for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it, (that is eternal life). That I am correct in here understanding eternal life as used in antithesis with the life of the body, is plain from the parallel passage in John, He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life shall keep it unto life eternal. Having said this, the Saviour quotes the proverb and accommodates it to the case in hand. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own life? Now, what life? Not temporal life, for he is urging them to risk that in his cause, but eternal life, the same as in the verse above. The passage admits of no other construction which does not reduce it to nonsense. If Mr. Balfour had been willing to meet the argument, he would have told us how to interpret the preceeding verse, consistently with his notion,―told us how a man can lose his life as a martyr, and gain the life of his body by the loss.

In the next place, he adduces those passages which speak of saving the soul, and labors to show that they mean no more than saving the life. Here follows his argument to that point. "Many people seem to think that the term salvation can be applied to nothing else, except the salvation of the immortal soul in the future state. But when eight souls were saved by water, all will allow, eight lives or persons were saved. People forget that Paul and James wrote to believing Hebrews just before the destruction of Jerusalem. Our Lord had told his disciples that he who endured to the end should be saved from all the calamities which came upon the unbelieving Jews, and that this is called perdition needs no proof." Thus he makes the saving

of the soul, to be the saving of the life from sharing in Jerusalem's destruction. Let us refer then to some of the instances to test this interpretation. 1 Peter 1: 9. Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. The end of the Christian's faith, then, was the salvation of their lives, when Jerusalem was destroyed. But the men to whom Peter wrote strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Gallatia, Capadocia, Asia and Bythinia, were in no danger of that destruction, and had no need of that kind of salvation. If salvation from Jerusalem's destruction, were the great end of the Christian's faith, for what purpose was that faith offered to other nations than the Jews. If the saving of the life were the great end of embracing the Christian faith, it ill-ly secured its end, for it brought thousands to a violent death. And then just look at the context," of which salvation (saving of the life) the prophets have enquired and searched diligently." This saving of the life of the few Christians that escaped out of Jerusalem, when it was destroyed, is made the object of the prophet's diligent search spoken of as the glory that should follow the sufferings of Christ, and that which the angels desire to look into. Believe it, who can.

Another instance, James 5: 19. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know, that he that converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins. Now how are a man's sins hid by escaping the destruction of Jerusalem? If death were the extinction of being, and the end of all ill effects. of sin, one would think death in the destruction of Jerusalem to be an effectual hiding of sin. And then was it so as this interpretation implies, that the whole world was in such a condition that, erring from the truth exposed a man, let him be where he would, to be buried in the ruins of Jerusalem? If I can understand plain English, the man will have us believe it. another view of the matter. We are told here, that salvation means only the saving of the life of the body. And Mr. Whittemore, (on the Parables p. 262,) says that the happiness of the future world "cannot in the nature of things be affected by the

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conduct of men in this life." Properly speaking then, the gaining of that happiness is not salvation, nor the thing called by that name in the gospel. But then how happens it that the very name which the sect have chosen to adopt, universal salvation, conveys a contradiction to such a principle. They ask us to believe that all the gospel says about salvation relates to the well-being of the body. But surely, this kind of salvation is not universal; men are not all saved from death and temporal calamity.

Again, Math. 10: 28. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. But rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. It is not in the power of man to frame an expression which shall state more plainly, and set more beyond the power of evasion, the distinction between soul and body, and the soul's capability of living after the death of the body. But Mr. B. tells us men can kill the body, but cannot kill the life. As though there were a life left to kill after the body is dead, though no soul or life separate from the body. Well, if the human mind is capable of conceiving of such an absurdity, suppose it to be so suppose there be a life left which none but God can kill, after the body is dead, and yet man has no conscious soul in danger of being destroyed-how is God to be feared by reason of his ability to kill this life. The body is killed, and there is no soul to kill,— nothing that is capable of suffering or experiencing the pangs of death. Why fear God on account of his ability to extinguish an unconscious entity, which by the way he never does extinguish. In his interpretation of this passage he makes a great display of criticism or rather of quotations from the Greek Testament and lexicon, and spins out his remarks to the length of twelve pages; proves to us indisputably, that to kill, means to slay, to put to death, and favors us with glosses of other words equally enlightening, as if he intended to cover up the difficulty by the lumber of words. But any man may read over his exposition a score of times, and then find it impossible to give from it a satisfactory reason, why God is presented as an object of fear, because of his ability to destroy the soul, af