Nevada County picayune., 1889-08-21

AFkallSaS M6JlOulob Ol tuc 'GIl lllSt., with the above caption, over the signature of E. l.. Beard, in which the writer criticises an article written by me and published in the NEVADA 1 COUNTY PICAYUNE, on the subject of the 1.-Two Deaths and Two Resurrec- tions.' Bro. Beard evidently thinks that, after having summarily dis posed of all the other evils in the universe, 1 have left unexplained the presence of the lake of fire, and asks, What are you going to do with it?' In reply, l would refer him to the passage of Scripture quo ted at the head of this article, in which the Apostle John, lifting the curtain of the future post judgment state, after having told us that death, and hell with the devil and wicked spirits were cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death, pro- ceeds to reveal the important fact that there shall be no more dedth, neither sorrO'c nor c,ying, for the former things are passed d,cdy." This was predicated after the inliic- tion of the second death, and was designed to show us that in the process of making all things new" all former evils of every kind had passed away, including even the Lake of Fire, ''
 In the short account in Genesis of the creation of the material unirerSe it is said, ''In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth, which phrase, according to learned commentators, includes every mdte- ridl substance in the phOle unircrSe; and in the twenty-iirst chapter of Revelation, the Apostle John, after closing his description of the general judgment, says, "And l saw a new Heaven and new earth: for the first Heaven and the first earth were passed away" which is corroborative of what is said by God himself in the fifth verse of same chapter, Behold, I make all things ne,c;" all of which amounts to the most conclusive proof, that the whole fabric of the first material universe alluded to in Genesis had passed away, and that it had been substl- tuted by an entirely ne,c Hearen aud nelc earth. As the Lake of Fire" was necessarily included in the 'former things" it, too, must have passed away, as it had doubtless accomplished the object for which it was intended, viz. the destruction of death and hell, and all evil and evil doers. It is well known that fire is q consuming element, and it is said in the Bible that God, out of Christ, is a consuming fire. It is a little re- markable that the prophet Malachi, in the closing chapter of the Old Testament, indicates the same process of combustion and extinction for the wicked that John sets forth in the closing book of the New Testa- ment: "For, behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven and all the proud, yea, and all that do wick
 edlv, shall be stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up; saith the Lord of Hosts, that 1t shall leave them neither root nor branch. :"
 As to the phrases "everlasting pun ishment, forever and ever," etc., which are sometimes used in charac- terizing the doom of the wicked, we remark that the true meaning of these phrases is to be ascertained by the nature of the subject of which they are predicated; when they are predicated of things naturally and necessarily temporal and temporary, like the priesthood of Aaron, the service of the temple, an earthly in- heritance, the leprosy of Gehazi, the life servitude of the bondman, or when the everlasting hills, and mountains, and doors, and chains, and fire, and punishment are spoken of, they are evidently limited by the nature of the subject, and by the common sense of those addressed.
 It is very remarkable, and surely can not have escaped the attention of the critical reader, that, while the phrase everlasting life" is often predicated of the good, in not sin- gle instance is the antithetical phrase of everlasting death" predicated of the wicked in the whole Bible. This phrase is very current in our ortho- dox theology and hymns, but it is to be found nowhere in Gods word. Surely in a matter of such transcend ent importance, such an omission could not have been accidental. The truth is, the phrase itself is an ab- surdity, a contradiction in terms {; for death, the most usual term em- ployed to represent the punishment of the wicked, is finahty, a cessa- ton of existence, a total extinction of consciousness and individuality, and hence is utterly inconsistent with the idea of immortality or end less duration. Hence, when the term "everlasting" is applied to the punishment of the wicked, it should he limited by the death penalty, so far as the duration of actual positive suffering is concerned; but in the negative or primitive sense of loss or deprivation, it may well he said to be eternal, as the wicked are thereby ] forever cut off from all the blessinps