THE REV. MR. CARRICK AND ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume IX, Issue 2502, 1 April 1878, Page 3

THE REV. MR. CARRICK AND ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

(To the Editor of the STAB.) Sib, —I had nearly completed a letter in reply to " A Scotchman," taking up every point seriatim, but lound it had grown to such dimensions that publication would have been simply absurd. : Let me try to compress a thought or two into the compass of a nut-shell. 1 am ready to listen to advice from whatever source it comes, always of course reserving to myself the right of judgment as to its soundness or otherwise. Respecting the advice given me by your correspondent to "feel my way" ere I preach the doctrine of Eternity of Future Punishment, I have simply to say that whatever your correspondent may be, I have not hitherto been a trimmer or temporizer; that in fact I have no admiration for the character; and therefore the particular advice, while.entirely gratuitous, must remain practically fruitless. lam responsible to the Master, and as soon as your correspondent or any one, be he " theologian " or not, satisfies my judgment that He endorsed the so-called " Charity " of the day, I shall renounce oiice and for ever belief of the old, and become a zealous propagandist of the new. The very first sermon I preached in New Zealand, as the manuscript testifies, bore impress unequivocal of the staud-point I occupy; I did not consult St. Andrew's; I shall never consult any congregation, as to doctrines that may or may not be locally palatable ; for I am bound, as the servant of Christ, "to declare the whole counsel of God." But my acquaintance with literature is sufficiently broad to warrant the statement which I fearlessly and publicly make, that Biblical criticism of the highest type, whether British or German, is conservative of the " Faith once delivered to the saints." Ministers may possibly have erred —and I have no apology in their behalf—in giving too much prominence to the retribution of the Judge. It is their glorious function to point mankind to the world's great" Light; but they would be unfaithful alike to his precept and example, if through fear of man, they should conceal the portentous cloud that so ominously hangs over the hopeless region of the lost. Those words have, to my mind, a terrible import, standing as they do at the close of the Canon : "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; aud he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." A distinguished clergyman of the Church of England remarks by way of commentary: "Eternal punishment is not so much an arbitrary law, as a result necessarily following in the very nature of things, as the fruit results iffom the bud.. I_ •i&.y.j

No worse punishment can God lay on ungodly men than to give • them up to themselves. The solemn lesson derivable from this verse is: Be converted now in the time left before "I come," or else jfcou must remain unconverted forever. Sin in the eternal world will be left to its own natural consequences; holiness in germ will then develop itself into perfect holiness, which is happiness."—.l am, &c, A. CABRICK.