In commending the reader to the word of God on this great theme, it is unnecessary to suggest to any candid mind the spirit in which we should present our inquiries. Prejudice or passion should not come within the sacred precincts of such an investigation. If God has plainly revealed that all the finally impenitent of our race are doomed to an eternity of conscious misery, we must accept that fact, however hard it may be to find any correspondence between the magnitude of the guilt and the infinitude of the punishment, and however hard it may be to reconcile such treatment with the character of a God who has declared himself to be “LOVE.” If, on the other hand, the record shows that God’s government can be vindicated, sin meet its just deserts, and at the same time such disposition be finally made of the lost, as to relieve the universe from the horrid spectacle of a hell forever burning, filled with sensitive beings, frenzied with fire and flame, and blaspheming in their ever-strengthening agony--can any one be the less ready to accept this fact, or hesitate, on this account, to join in the ascription, “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; _just and true_ are thy ways, thou King of saints”? CHAPTER II. IMMORTAL AND IMMORTALITY. In turning to the Bible, our only source of information on this question, to learn whether or not man is immortal, the first and most natural step in the inquiry is to ascertain what use the Bible makes of the terms “immortal” and “immortality.” How frequently does it use them? To whom does it apply them? Of whom does it make immortality an attribute? Does it affirm it of man or any part of him? Should we, without opening the Bible, endeavor to form an opinion of its teachings from the current phraseology of modern theology, we should conclude it to be full of declarations in the most explicit terms that man is in possession of an immortal soul and deathless spirit; for the popular religious literature of to-day, which claims to be a true reflection of the declarations of God’s word, is full of these expressions. Glibly they fall from the lips of the religious teacher. Broadcast they go forth from the religious press. Into orthodox sermons and prayers they enter as essential elements. They are appealed to as the all-prolific source of comfort and consolation in case of those who mourn the loss of friends by death. We are told that they are not dead; for “there is no death; what seems so is transition;” they have only changed to another state of being, only gone before; for the soul is immortal, the spirit never dying; and it cannot for a moment cease its conscious existence.