Nevada County picayune., 1890-02-19

great Apostle expresses it, the wages of sin is death.
 Perhaps the strongest argument Tn favor of death being finality, and not everlasting in its nature, Is drawn from the character of the death suffered by our Savior for the world. As to his humanity, he died soul and body on the cross for the sins of the world. The remarkable exclamation wrung from him by the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane witnesses to the death of his soul; My soul is exceedingly sorrowfui, even unto death" and again it was said of him in the language of proph- ecy. when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days. and the pleasure of tue Lord snail pros- per in his hands. And again. therefore, will 1 divide him DOT ton with the great, and he shall di- vide the spoil with the strong, be- cause he hath poured out his soul unto death. y Now. If the Lord Je- sus Christ was our substitute, if he died in our room and stead. if he really tasted death for every man, as we are told in another place. then the average death penalty will measure up to the standard of his death, as he is the second federal head and representative of the human race. The doctrine that the final penalty for unrepented sin is eternal death, necessitates the eternal death of the blessed Savior, logical consequence from which every renecting mind will turn with abhorrence.
 It is remarkable that the phrases eternal death. everlasting death. im- mortal and undying soul. are not to be found any where in the sacred >criptures-they are the inventions of heathen philosophers, and were incorporated into the creed of the church toward the close of the second century. The natural, iaalienable immortality of the soul stands or fall with. the doctrine of an endless hell of suffering-the one is correlative of the other. and both will sink in pro- cess of time to the heathenish bar barism from which they sprang. The immortality of the soul iS believed by vast multitudes-in fact. it is conti- dently proclaimed and believed by the great majority of the human fam ily, while scarcely anybody really be- lieves in what may be termed upon a Bible basis the correlative theory of an endles, burning hell. The reason why the former is believed Is because it fatters human pride and vanity :; the reason why the latter is practi- cally repudiated, though advocated by many in theory, is because the human mind is SO constituted that it cannot embrace such hideous and cruel dogma. No man can re- tain his sanity who sincerely and tru- ly believes such supremelE horrible and Notwithstanding doe urine.
 Thousands have discarded the Bi- ble and Christianity, because they were led to believe they promulgated this awful doctrine of an endless, burning he'll The true interpreta- ton of the sacred oracles would re- store these misguided but honest peo- pie to the Christian fold. God is not vindictive in his administration of punishment on the contrary, he k love. and ;he Gospel is the highest and noblest expression of his love for fallen man. No one accuses God of injustice or cruelty because he does not work a miracle to save the drunken man who throws himself up on the track in front of au advancing train at night; neither can any one justlv censure our Heavenly Father for not saving the man who persist ently violates the divine law. and recklessly exposes himself to the in- evita5le consequences of death in soul and body.
 In our next we propose to consider the true doctrine of immortality, as unfolded in the New Testament Scriptures.