emblem of peace; a revelation to his sight of God's remembrance of him. By faith he looked through the "olive-leaf pluckt off," and "knew that the waters were abated from off the earth."

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And now he patiently waits for divine permission, and then marshals the remnant of "all flesh" down the peak to a convenient spot, and builds an altar to the Lord. And as of every kind of "clean" beasts there are three pairs and one, while of each kind of those which are "not clean," there is only a pair, he sacrifices the seventh of " every clean beast, and every clean fowl," as a thank-offering for his signal deliverance. And there, just descended from the towering Ararat on whose peak is resting alone and sublimely "the awful monument of the antediluvian world," and just arisen from the valley of the Araxes," the second cradle of the human race," and sending up "a sweet savor to the Lord" in a song of adoration and praise, he celebrates a triumph of faith "by the which he condemns the world." The trial of faith, through which that preacher of righteousness has passed, has been great. Trial upon trial has been laid on him for these six hundred years. When Noah had separated himself from unbelievers, and at the end of the fifth century of his age was found worthy to be commended as "just and perfect," God saw that his faith might safely be tried. And when no ordinary exhibitions of faith would suffice to point the world heavenward, it seemed fitting that there should be an effulgent illumination of that spirit who "found grace in the eyes of the Lord." It would seem that the first sphere of his faith was brought within the second horizon of his sight when, after a long but fruitless season of preaching righteousness to the world, the Lord announced to him, face to face, an approaching retribution of unbelief in a flood of waters. And the second sphere of his faith was brought within the third horizon of his sight when the Lord shut him into the ark and whelmed the world in the deluge. Then, as upward and onward he was borne on the billows, the third sphere of his faith was brought within the fourth horizon of his sight when the Lord revealed to him in the olive-leaf his continued remembrance of the righteous. And as he left that vessel of gopher-wood on the summit of the mountain, the fourth sphere of his faith was brought within the fifth horizon of his sight when the Lord permitted him to erect an altar on the plain below, and lay a divinely provided and designed thank-offering thereon. And the fifth sphere of his faith is brought within the sixth horizon of his sight when he beholds in the cloud the covenant that the Lord will not again destroy the world by a flood. Hitherto he has walked altogether by faith. And now he has approached so near the ultimate objects of his faith, that sight itself almost pierces through its own horizon into that which is within the veil. And as often as the earth receives a gentle refreshing from the heavens, with renewed thanksgivings, he repairs to the altar now arched with the rainbow. And while he gazes from below, the Lord looks from above, and affords him a rapturous beholding by sight of his heavenly beholdings by faith-a rainbow in the realm of his faith, of which the rainbow of his sight is but the symbol. And yet onward and upward "three hundred and fifty years" is he guided by the light of this symbolized glory, when he launches upon the swelling Jordan, advancing and ascending till the triumph over "the last enemy" is gained, and he anchors securely on the mount of God; where the last sphere of his faith is taken into his unbounded beholdings, and he receives from the Adorable and Heavenly Dove the assurance that "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance."

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?"-MARK viii. 36, 37.

This is one of the most grave and momentous inquiries which can be proposed to the human mind. It is intended by our Lord to induce reflection-to awaken and warn the sinner, and influence him to "deny himself and take up his cross and follow" Christ. It implies that the soul may be lost, and that those who strive to gain the world, and are unwilling to give it up for the sake of religion, will lose their souls.

The subject of this discourse is, The Loss of the Soul.

What is meant by the loss of the soul? In answering this question, it is evident that we must rely chiefly on the teachings of revelation. The scene in which the reality is to transpire, is veiled from our sight. The facts about which we inquire, lie beyond the province of the senses. On this subject, conjecture is rash and arrogant. And reason is incompetent to pass judgment upon the divine administration, and to determine, independently of revelation, the proper penalty of sin. Human reason is liable to fall into great mistakes on this subject, on account of our selfinterest, evil inclinations, and ignorance. We must not lose sight of the fact, that the subject has a relation to our own inter

ests, and to the interests of our friends and fellow men; it awakens our self-love and partiality, and our tender and sympathetic affections; and whoever takes upon him to decide upon the guilt of sin, must be supposed to be conscious that the decision has a personal bearing upon himself, and consequently to be exposed to an improper bias and erroneous judgments. To this must be added the blinding influence of depraved inclinations, darkening the understanding and blunting the moral sensibilities. Man is a sinner. The good man, even though he has been convinced of sin, and has seen its criminality in himself, yet is not wholly free from the effect of sin, in obscuring his spiritual discernment, and disqualifying him to be an unprejudiced and righteous judge in his own case.

Besides, human reason lacks information. It can be qualified to judge truly and safely on this complicated and momentous subject, only by obtaining a perfect knowledge of the intrinsic malignity of sin in itself, and in all its relations. One needs to comprehend its relation to God, and how evil and bitter a thing it is to feel and act out disobedience to the great, and good, and infinite Jehovah. He needs to know the relation of sin to the soul, in which it works corruption and whose immortal interests it tends to destroy. He needs to understand the whole amount of good, which sin aims and tends to destroy in this world, and throughout the universe of intelligent creatures, propagating forever its own pollution among them, and spreading rebellion and ruin far and wide. No man has these qualifications. "Such knowledge is too wonderful" for us; it is too high and vast for us to attain. No one is, therefore, competent to judge of the ill-desert of sin, and the penalty which the wicked will suffer. No one can determine by reason independently of revelation, how infinite benevolence, guided by infinite wisdom and justice, will treat sin, nor what influence that treatment will have upon law, and justice, and government, and the welfare of all the worlds of God's intelligent universe. "Who knoweth the power of His anger?" Will you trust a little child to decide what is a proper punishment for a forger, who fraudulently writes a note? The child would be out of his place in judging of such a case, by reason of his limited knowledge of the bearings of the crime upon the interests of society. The wisest of men are not less incompetent to judge of the proper punishment of sin, not only through their ignorance, but through self-interest and prejudice.

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It is the rightful prerogative of God to pass sentence upon the transgressors of his law. The only wise and safe course for us, is to learn from the word of God what that sentence will be. length we shall learn it from the decisions of the last day. It is evident to every serious reader of the Bible, that the language of Scripture is very explicit and strong on this subject. It speaks of losing the soul," of "the perdition of ungodly men," of

"everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." It declares "that the wages of sin is death." What are we to understand by this language?

I. It does not mean annihilation. Those who tell us that the loss of the soul consists in its ceasing to be, take upon them to make an assertion without reason and against Scripture. The visible appearances which follow in the train of death, might favor the presumption that death is the end of man. "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." To the eye of sense his path terminates at the grave, and his plans come to an end. Some have supposed death as threatened to our first parents to be annihilation, and that man by sinning forfeited his existence, beyond this world. This supposition is founded on a superficial observation, and a false interpretation of Scripture.

It requires but little reflection to convince any one that death. is not the destruction of anything-it is a dissolution of parts. But not a particle of the dying body ceases to be. The noble ship, which once rode proudly on the ocean, the glory of her builders, the hope of her owners, freighted with a precious cargo, may be wrecked and scattered in broken pieces over the waters, and parts of it sunk in the depths of the sea. We say that it is lost. But it is not annihilated; not a particle of it has passed out of existence. So death is the separation of the body and soul. The body goes to decay; it may be reduced to ashes; it may mingle with the earth; it may be dissipated in the air, but not a particle of it is annihilated. It rests, awaiting "the voice of the Son of man," at "the resurrection both of the just and of the unjust." The soul leaves the body at death. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." The soul like its eternal Author, is indestructible. No sword can touch it; no weapon of death can reach it. Our Saviour exhorts us to "fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but rather fear him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell." After the body has been killed, there yet remains a living soul-a simple, spiritual, immaterial being. It is capable of existing in a perfectly disembodied state, as Abraham, Moses and Paul now exist,"absent from the body," and as "the spirits in prison" now exist. It is this which, after he hath killed the body, God hath power to cast into hell.

It is equally evident that the sentence to the second death, which is to be pronounced upon the wicked at the resurrection, does not imply a return to non-existence. Nothing short of Omnipotence has power to extinguish the conscious existence of a living soul; and God has never signified to us that he intends to exercise his power in such a way. He has foretold the destruction of the

wicked, he has declared that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." But he has not intimated, that the end of a life of sin is the extinction of consciousness in a sleep that shall "know no waking." There is a force in the terms, "destruction," "death," and kindred expressions of Scripture, which is not exhausted by the idea of the cessation of existence. This was not the purport of the threatening to Adam. It was not comprehended in the execution of the threatening. The declaration to Adam, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” was to take effect at once. It was fulfilled in its true intent: its import in this respect was plain, and cannot be mistaken. He did die that day; any other doctrine impeaches the truth of the Bible. But his death was not a "return to blank nothingness." In the very day of his transgression, Adam died. Man died in the import of the threatening, and that death in effect, includes the sentence, " dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," and all the other specific evils, which God in his infinite justice shall ever see proper to inflict upon the transgressor. threatening did not preclude a remedy. It was such a death as created an exigency for redemption. "For we thus judge," says the apostle Paul, "that if Christ died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again." It is such a death, as they who neglect the great salvation will be dying forever, under a forfeiture of all claim to the favor of God, and subjection to his displeasure.

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The loss of the soul, therefore, is not the extinction of its conscious existence. It lends no countenance to that "Christianized Materialism," which teaches with reverential speech, the seductive error that the soul sleeps with the body at death in an unconcious state, and that the wicked at the resurrection will be annihilated; thus denying the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. No, the soul is immortal. Its state and mode of existence may be changed from time to time, but it will continue to exist evermore; it cannot by extinction, perish; the material tenement is its tabernacle. When it is taken down, the soul enters a new abode.

II. The loss of the soul does not imply any suspension or diminution of its powers and capabilities. We behold among mankind the same tokens of a moral nature, but very different grades on the scale of endowment. The soul that is lost, continues to possess forever all its faculties and susceptibilities, and carries with it all its knowledge and culture. In the future world, it is the same intelligent moral agent that it was here in the body. Wrecked as it may be as to its prospects on the shores of eternity, it will not lose its identity nor its properties. It is, consciously, the same soul that refused here when God called, which in eternity will call, and God will not hear-the same that here repulsed