then lay, waiting to pass into an unconscious slumber, only to awaken at the last trump. 'Hark,' she said, listening intently. 'I hear music: don't you hear it? And, mother, I see a door. . . It is open. I see inside. It is a beautiful place. It is heaven. I see forms clothed in white, many, yea, a multitude of beautiful beings, their hands upraised, while they are waving something in their hands.' And then in wonder and astonishment, 'Why, there is pa.' Then she very intelligently gave orders for her burial. Good-bys were said, and in childlike pleading tones she called, 'Come, dear Lord, I am ready.' An effort on her part to close the dear eyes and mouth, a few more agonizing moments, and the open door received her gentle spirit."

Thus we could multiply testimonies of dying men and women, that the soul leaves the body at death. The reader perhaps has witnessed such death-bed scenes as just described. Millions in their last breath have testified to the world that they were then going to the Lord, to the realms of light, or to regions of dark despair. While penning these lines memory goes back a few years to the death-bed of my own sainted mother. Just before she expired she looked up and said, "I see heaven opened and the glory of God descending." She testified she was "going to dwell with Christ." Among her last words she said, "Tell my boy [referring to myself, who was then in the far West] to be true to God at the point of the bayonet." This charge I expect, by God's

grace, to keep. While these departing souls had control of the organs of speech, they spoke audibly, to testify that existence was still real, and when the voice was stifled in the cold stream, some of them held up their hands in token of their yet conscious being. If the soul of man were only a breath, if life were only a spark which expires when the heart ceases to beat, would there not have been an experience of the waning flame? would there not have been at least one testimony, in six thousand years, among the thousands of millions of dying men, going to show a conscious nearness to oblivion? But there is not one such, not one. On the contrary, millions have in their last breath testified to future conscious existence, while absent from the body.

If the soul-sleeping doctrine be true, then the Creator put it in the hearts of his creatures, in the most solemn hour of their existence, to testify to a falsehood. Men who would disdain a lie, are made to speak an unconscious one in the hour of death men filled with the Holy Ghost. Can this be so? Is it possible that the good men of all ages-men whom God has used to effect mighty reformations in the earth, testified to a lie in the hour of death? Was Stephen mistaken when he "looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God"; and a little later addressed his Savior thus: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"? Was the apostle Paul mistaken when he said, "We know" that when this earthly

house, this mortal body, dissolves in death we shall "depart and be with Christ"-be "absent from the body, and present with the Lord"? If all these witnesses were mistaken, and man does not have any existence after death, then we have a shadow more enduring than the substance, for Stephen, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and other great moral natures, have, in their names and histories, an earthly immortality, while they themselves, going into eternity, conscious to the last, and expecting to live forever, have ceased to be. In a universe of harmony there can not be such discord; in a world of truth there can not be such contradiction. Enoch was translated; "for God took him." Moses lies down upon the mountainside, and dies. God himself buried the dust. Elijah steps into a chariot of fire, and by a whirlwind is carried to the skies. Almost a thousand years after, Jesus with three of his disciples goes to a mountaintop, where he is transfigured before them. stantly there appear Moses and Elias talking with him. These men were still living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had long since died, and their bodies were mouldering in the dust; but God said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the dead, but of the living." Amen, and amen.

In

HADES THE WORLD OF DEPARTED SPIRITS.

There are two extremes in the popular teachings of to-day. First, that man receives his full reward and punishment immediately after death. Second, that man at death passes into unconscious slumber and remains so until the resurrection. Both these positions are positively unscriptural. The last we have clearly refuted in the previous chapters. The first of these we will now briefly notice, and fully consider in later chapters. The position that man receives his reward and punishment at death is wrong for the following reasons:

First. If man received his full reward and punishment at death, there would be no need of a future judgment. It is wholly unreasonable to say that God would sentence man to his final punishment before his case was fully decided at the judgmentbar. And again, it is wholly unreasonable to suppose that God would bring men out of Gehenna, the lake of fire, where they had already been punished for centuries, then judge them, and again sentence them to the same place of punishment. Especially is such a doctrine unreasonable when not one single text of Scripture sustains it; but all Scripture teaches directly to the contrary.

Second. Man does not receive his full punishment,

or reward, at death; because all Scripture places that at Christ's second coming, beyond the resurrection, at the judgment. As we shall hereafter prove, it is at the judgment that the wicked will be cast into the lake of fire, depart into hell, and there enter their everlasting punishment. It is at the judgment that the righteous will enter heaven, their future and eternal home. "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." Mat. 16: 27.

2 Thes. 1:7-10 also clearly proves that the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous will be given "when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels." Peter plainly tells us that God hath "reserved the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.' 2 Pet. 2:9.

Additional proof is not necessary. Suffice it to say, that all Scripture harmonizes on this point; viz., that Christ will return again to resurrect the dead, judge the human family, reward the righteous, and receive them into his heavenly kingdom, also to punish the wicked with an everlasting destruction from his presence and the glory of his power.

What then is the state of man between natural death and the resurrection? As seen in 2 Pet. 2:9 God hath reserved the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished. There must then be a place where he has kept, or reserved, the wicked till that great day, when they will be cast into hell.