Thoughts About Dell

Several letteis have rtcently appeared in the Detroit Evening Journal giving the writers views regardiDg heil and future punishment, eto. Rev. Thomas Holmes, D. D., of Chelsea, is one of the number. He expressed hia convictions as follows : "Ijudge from the ideas that some of your light-minded, flippant correspondenta Fcem to have respecting orthodox views of heil that they (the correspondente) must be preüy well advanced in their dotare, and that they have spent a good part of the past 50 years, at least, in t Rip Van Winkle f-lumber, from whioh the s;enerally received statement of Mr. Crossley - ueither startling nor new - has aroused them. I'oor fellows, how ttuch they have lost ! I have been preaching the same doctrines, stated in almoBt the exact words used by Mr. Crossley, for 45 years, and have never had my orthodoxy Ion that subject questioned, and arn not aware that, in all that time, I ever uvakened from their obüvious e'urabers so many Van Winkies as Mr. Croasicy ha nwnkened nmong the wiseacres of Detroit by a single utterance of it. It is almosi cnou.'h to disgust a thinker, one who does keepabreast of advancing light, to find that fo many, who bonst themeelves of their "libernlity" and "advanced ideas," continually amuse themselves, and suppote they are amusing others, by exhuming the bonea o! dead meo, and exi:laiming, while they hold them up before a gaping crowd: "What a hidenus-looking man is this to be above pround ! " Havmg learned a few advanoed ideas of their thinking neighbors, they compare selves with centunes gone ty, ranK 1110 very neighbora who have instr icted them among the lorg-ago dead, and ridicule them'as fossils. I am not acquainted with all the orthodox ministers oí Detroit, but I consider myself as risking nothing when I guarantee to those frivolous scof(era who have treated with most unbecoming levity a question that is worthy of greatest seriousnesp, that they willnot find in an orthodox pulpit in Detroit (not to say in our whole land) a pastor who believes thut heil is a lake of literal fire and brimstone, or who dissents materially from Mr. Crossley's statement that "memory, imperishable memory, and mercilesg remorse are to be the heil in which men shdll suffer as with fire unquenchable. If any one gupposes that relinquishing the materiulistic idea of' a burning, sulphurous pit is substantial abandonment of the doctrine that a dreadful pur.ishment awaits the persistent and incorrigible impenitent, let him reflect but a moment upon the significance of " imperishable memory and merciless remorse." Death is often called "the king of terrors," but nearly every issue of our daily papers records the fact that deluded meo and women face boldly that dreadful king, taking their lives by their own wicked hands in the vain- undoubtedly utterly vain and futile- attempt to escape that more dreadful "imperishable ruemory and merciles6 remorse." Well have the scriptures said: "Fools make a mock at sin."