DEATH AND HELL.

"Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Mark 9: 48.

A CENTURY ago, in the churches, men were told of the law of God, and the holiness of God, and the justice of God, to convince them of sin, and to make them feel their need of the Saviour. The church in these days is as the children of Israel were, in the time of Isaiah; "That will not hear the law of the Lord: which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits" (Isai. 30: 9). The cry now is, You must not preach the terrors of the law of God, you must preach only love. This is now being done so much that humanitarianism is taking the place of the Gospel. God is set aside; His word, His law, and His plan of salvation set aside; the first and great commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, is put aside; and in their place is preached, You must visit, feed, wash, clothe, educate, and give ethical culture to the masses, to elevate them; and so make them ready to receive the Gospel. They who do this are "ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation" (Rom. 1: 16). All these results in raising man always follow

the faithful preaching of the Gospel; and never precede it. This unfaithfulness of the church is not only lulling the world to continue in its false security, but has weakened the faith of many of the children of God; so that many of them are led to doubt what is said in the previous chapter concerning the total depravity of man; and to doubt what the word of God teaches concerning an eternal death and an eternal hell. The reader must bear in mind that the following extracts are from the Word of God. Whether we believe them or not affects our eternal destiny, but cannot alter that word. That word says, "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6: 23). "The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek. 18: 4). The first temptation of the devil was to destroy man's faith in the word of God. "The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die (Gen. 3: 4). Eve believed the devil, and ever since her descendants have been led by him and are his slaves. Adam and Eve by their creation were under the law of God. They were created holy, with the power and the use of a free will. They were put under a particular test of obedience; and charged not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; with the penalty of, "in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2: 17). In the original Hebrew it reads, "Dying thou shalt die.” An everlasting dying; an everlasting death.

The Bible further tells us, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). All past history, and the present state of the world confirm this word of God. Death has passed upon all.

The fearful consequences of continuing in sin, the awful penalty of the everlasting death, dying thou shalt die forever, is not preached as it should be. It was almost the constant theme of John the Baptist, of Christ, and of the Apostles when preaching. John the Baptist aroused all Judea, by calling upon them to escape "The wrath to come" (Matt. 3: 7). A very large portion of the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ contains the same warnings; and describes in many ways death and hell. For example: "Hell" (Matt. 5: 29, 30; 10: 28). "The damnation of hell" (Matt. 23: 33). "Hell fire" (Matt. 5: 22). "Everlasting fire" (Matt. 18: 8). "Everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25: 41). As a place where they are "in torments," separated from others by "a great gulf fixed" (Luke 16: 20, 23, 26). In His description of the last judgment, Jesus said: "In the end of the world the Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 13: 40). "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness:

there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth' (Matt. 25: 30; 8: 12; 22: 13). "So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 13. 49; 22: 13). "Into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9: 43, 46, 48). This awful doom is not for those only who are great sinners in the eye of the world, but the servant, who did not employ the one talent committed to him by his lord, received the sentence. "Take therefore the talent from him. . . . And cast ye the nnprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 25: 28). We should bear in mind that these words were uttered by Christ, who came, and died, to save men from such a fearful everlasting death. In the description of the Millennium, given in the 20th chapter of the Revelation, when all the kingdoms of this world shall be Christian for a thousand years, we read, His people "shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: the number of whom is as the sand

of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them." This falling away after the Millennium, has not received the consideration of those, who insist that Christ is coming personally on the earth to reign a thousand years in Jerusalem, which it should have. Since the day of Pentecost, He has been in closer union with His Church and with every individual believer in Him, than he He could be if bodily present in Jerusalem only. Beside, it cannot be thought, that He is to undergo a second humiliation on the earth, by seeing all nations forsaking Him and shutting Him up with a few saints in Jerusalem. He is on the throne now, and never will be humbled again. The account goes on to describe Hell. "And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the Beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life: and the dead were judged out of those things, which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave