The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1914-02-13

and feelings, at least the same persona
attachments TO relatives and friends tina
they now have, and also the same reluc
lance to acquisce in the will OF God anC
| in the results OF the finaliud gment
The Sadducean puzzle, that in the resur.
rection we shall have the old relation:
OF husbands and wives, parents and
children, and attachments correspond
| ing with them, is at the bottom of all
these speculations. Our Savior to such
persons in vain teaches that then We
shall be like angels, without sex, with
out animal attachments, as without
mortality. But to those who think with
him there can be no difficulty on this
view of the subject. The fact that God
himself is infinitely more merciful than
man, and that the whole human race is
nearer and dearer to Him than ever
were to each other, husband and wife,
parent or child, is now and ever will be,
to every intelligent being, an impotent
argument to reconcile all Gods children
to his judgmentin every particular case.
No human being ever loved another as
much as God once loved the devil and
his angels, and yet He has not only ex-
PEELED them from heaven but bound
them fast in chains of darkness, to the
judgment of the great day, and has pre-
pared for them an unquenchable fire, a
punishment everlasting. So the Mes
siah himself unequivocally declares.
The relation of Creator and creature
is relation we cannot comprehend. 1t
is incomparably nearer than that OF
parent and child. And as affection and
love are measured by the nearness OF
relation, we have reason topresume that
for all those creatures to whom our
Father Creator has impaired so much
of himself as intelligence and moral
susceptibility, he has love lnconceiva-
BILE and ineffable. From all such prem
ises, as well as from express scriptural
declarations, we have reasons to infer
that there will be such perfect acqul-
escence in his final adjudication of the
whole intellectual and moral universe
as to fill every pure heart with Joy UNI
speakable and full Of glory, even when
that judgment may condemn to eternal
anguish a relation now dear to us as
that seraph once was to God whose name
and character have been changed to
Satan. And yet this view OF the SUBJ
ject is by no means irreconcilable with
the persuasion that, as Paul anticipated
an eternal Joy and an unfading crown
from the relation subsisting between
him and those by him converted to
God, so we shall have peculiar pleas
ure and felicity in those of our kindred
who have been by our fundamentally,
or by that OF others, redeemed to God.
From which considerations and retiec-
tions we may readily perceive how lit
tie philosophy or reason there is in the
assumption OF those who plead for abso-
Lutte destruction on the ground that it
will contribute more to the eternal hap
piness OF the saved than belief OF the
eternal existence OF sinners and torment.
The natural evidence supposes only
that a man is rational, accountable
creature; and, this being the true, foun-
dation in nature for the belief OF the
immortality, the true action OF nature
must needs be this, that man, as such,
shall live to account for his doings.
| Consider the celestial highway, lighted
as it wer@ by myriads OF twinkling,
diamond-like stars. Shall no feet tread
this illumined pathway? Are there nc
footprints on these streets OF gold? Shall
no eye behold these walls OF iasperi
Can none partake OF the waters of that
crystal stream2 Are there none to pluck
the fruit OF that liie-giving tree9 Shall
there be no Bonded knees round thai
Great White Throne?
These questions were asked in remot'
est times and have come thunderinf
down the ages as the iron-clad horse
on his 'steel-shod pathway" Yet to
some it is as but a mist floating DER yon
green valley to be vanished when the
God Of Day" sends forth his beams,
Think you that all nature is but mere
happen-so, and perchance may moi
come again, or some visionary halluci-
nation that may return at any moment
View this luminous Watchdog of ma
ture' as he traverses his imaginary