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able to account for the bones of fish and pearly shells of ocean that we find on the highest of these mountains.

And was this long ages before the creation of man? Did these mighty changes take place through successive periods of centuries, or were mountain and valley, hill and dale, forced up suddenly in a molten state, through the surging billows of a shoreless ocean, and left to cool while the waters tore their way through rocky dell and leaping cataract, digging the stupendous gorge thousands of feet below, forming river, lake and streamlet? We need not wonder now at the immense fields of the burnt quartz, and the melted ores of the precious metals that are found all through the Rocky Mountains.

We travelled through the Bad Lands for sixty miles, following up the bed of a once powerful river, but now without water sufficient to supply our animals with drink. It abounded in petrifactions, and would have afforded us wide range for collections, but the extreme heat of the weather, the want of mules, and the hostility of the Indians, who sometimes wander through here, prevented our further examination. Our track led us again to the banks of the Missouri, which passes through a treeless prairie ocean here, and timber is not found upon its banks until we reach the Grand Falls, eighty miles above Fort Benton. From Fort Benton our journey lay westward across Sun River and over several ranges of the Rocky Mountains, four hundred miles to Virginia City, in Montana Territory.

ARTICLE III.

WILL THIS PLANET EVER BE HEAVEN ?

THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT.

It is not our purpose to enter the lists with such men of science as Hitchcock, Agassiz and Dr. John Pye Smith; nor with such biblical interpreters as Chrysostom, Augustine and Theodoret among the ancients, and Luther, Knapp and Chalmers among the moderns. We acknowledge the weight of their authority and the soundness of their scholarship. And yet we

must claim the inalienable right of dissent. And the more we study the subject, the more we incline to dissent. We disclaim the dogma that this world is to be purified by fire, and refitted for the home of the redeemed. It is their theory, not Peter's, nor Paul's. And our object in this paper is to review the scriptural testimonies, and state the convictions to which a careful analysis of them has conducted us.

We hold, therefore, that this our globe is to be, not "purified," but destroyed, by fire; "destroyed," not in the sense of annihilation, but of dissolution. The "destruction" of a material body is simply its disorganization. A tree is "destroyed” when it dies and moulders back to dust. A faggot is "destroyed" when consumed in the flame; it is gone, but not annihilated; its substance has only assumed another shape; its particles are all in being somewhere, only now no longer compacted in the wood, but dispersed. He who created can annihilate. But we have no evidence that he ever does annihilate. Amid all the changes around us, the death of plants and animals, the consumption of wood and coal, the corrosion and oxidation of metals, the disintegration of rocks, the decay of substances organic and inorganic, it does not appear that a single atom is lost. There may be a transition into other forms, but not a dismissal into blank extinction.

Not annihilation then, but dissolution, awaits this earth; an entire disorganization; a decomposition and dispersion of its elements. Whether these scattered elements will ever be recombined, and if so, into what forms they will be moulded, and to what purposes destined, is not revealed. But that this planet is to be "purified by fire," and refurnished for the occupancy of the heavenly hosts, must be pronounced a human theory, without sufficient foundation in the Word of God. We believe reconstruction is as far from the truth in one direction, as annihilation is in the other.

I. The biblical language describes a literal dissolution; and without hint of a subsequent reëstablishment. The announcement of Peter, which is the locus classicus on this subject, is: "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the

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The heavens

works that are therein shall be burned up. being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." The obvious meaning of this language is, that the atmosphere will be consumed and dispersed, in a universal combustion; and that the earth itself will be subjected to a heat so intense as to "melt" or reduce to a gaseous form, the elements of which it is composed; itself, and the things which are upon it, will be destroyed. No language could convey to our minds an idea of a more complete disorganization. Our Saviour declared: "Heaven and earth shall pass away"; and will any mind gather from the statement, that they will vanish only for a time, to reappear in finished glory, for the abode of the blest? "And I saw a great white throne," reports the last of the Apostles, from his vision on Patmos, "and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." Since bodies must occupy space, the statement, "there was found no place" for the visible universe, unless John used it for the boldest of figures, is the strongest expression to convey the idea of absolute disappearIf we might suminon witnesses still more ancient than the New Testament writers, we should find that inspiration had uttered all along the same testimony. "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

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When we ask, what is to be the destiny of these decomposed materials, the Bible is silent. Peter indeed claims: "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." But no intimation is given that the new are to be reconstructed from the old. And to understand this language literally, would place it in direct antagonism to another assertion of his, to be presently considered. The ground of this expectation is a

12 Pet. iii. 10-12.
Matt. xxiv. 35.
3 Rev. xx. 11.

4 Ps. cii. 25-27. See also Is.xxiv. 4-8; li. 6. 52 Pet. iii. 13.

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"promise." We must refer this promise to one of two things: One, that the Apostle alluded to God's general pledges of final felicity to the righteous; and these, as will hereafter appear, are far from promising a literal heaven and earth, to be fitted up out of the ruins of the present system. The other is, that he referred to this passage of Isaiah: "Behold I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind." And what were these new heavens and new earth? The next verse interprets: "But be But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy": evidently a purified state of the church, the highest condition it will attain under the Christian dispensation, and this probably as typical of its glorified state in heaven. John appears to have referred to the same passage when he said: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth"; but instead of meaning that the fresh universe which thus dawned on his vision was a birth from the old material clod upon which sin had run riot for so many ages, he places the two in contrast; "for," he immediately adds, "the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea."

A passage in the epistle to the Romans is somewhat relied upon as proof of a final reconstruction of this earth:

"For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manfestation of the sons of God. . . . . Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

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The idea of a reconstruction of the earth is deduced by coupling the expectation and deliverance of the "creature" or "creation" with the "redemption of the body," or the resurrection of the dead. We can not regard this interpretation as admissible.

1 Isa. lxv. 17, 18.

2 Rev. xxi. 1.

3 Rom. viii. 19-23.

The groaning of the creation is a bold figurative description of the disaster consequent upon the original transgression.

"Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost."

But during the millennium, this curse and the baneful effects of human sinfulness will be greatly relieved, almost removed. The Psalmist, prophesying in the form of a prayer, says: "Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee;" and adds, "then," when this takes place, "shall the earth yield her increase," the original fertility restored, "and God, even our God, shall bless us." 1

Isaiah, among the blessings of that period, enumerated these: "They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands." 2 The causes which now shorten the life, and disappoint the labor and enterprise of man, will vanish, and the creation now groaning under the "bondage of corruption," will be brought into "the glorious liberty of the children of God." This is the fulfilment of the prediction to the creature, this lower creation, which was "made subject to vanity" by the sin of man. But Christians look for a still higher deliverance, "to wit, the redemption of their bodies"; and they only are the expectants whom the passage connects with that event.

II. The Bible represents heaven as already prepared, not waiting to be prepared after the judgment.

Our argument is (1) that the inhabitants of heaven are described as in a state of society; (2) that the idea of society necessitates the idea of place; (3) that that place is now, and has been "from before the foundation of the world" in readiness to receive the saved.

According to the Scriptures, heaven is now tenanted by a community of blessed spirits. The throne of God is there, occupied by the symbol and glory of his presence. Christ, as our ascended Redeemer, is there. Cherubim and seraphim are there; and there, saints and angels. John, from

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