The opinions and sentiments of some of the most ancient heathen writers are reviewed, and Quinctillian's despairing reflections on the death of his two promising boys are thus referred to :-"When we reflect that Quinctillian and Paul were not only contemporaries, but that they dwelt in Rome at the same time; and that, when the rhetorician, the admired of the literati who crowded his lecture-room, was venting his despair in blasphemy against such gods as he believed in, the Apostle, from his cell and bound in chains, was issuing to the Churches his consolatory admonitions, that they should not sorrow over their deceased friends, even as others who have no hope-when we reflect, I say, on the contrast, how shall we sufficiently magnify the glorious Gospel of the Blessed God!""

When reviewing the opinions of Virgil, the author, in passing, compares the Lugentes Campi of the poet with the Limboes of the Popish Doctors, and concludes the analysis thus :-" How affecting to a reflective mind is the whole of the representation! Some may wonder why we have expended so much time and space on what they call such idle fancies. Vain and foolish they are, but they are not idle. They contain the best, the very best, of what Gentile philosophy had excogitated on the subject of Human Immortality-the best for the deterring of the vicious, the best for the animating of the virtuous, the best for the comforting of the bereaved: and this so late as about twenty years only before the birth of Christ. The reflection returns, How gross was the

darkness and how shall we sufficiently magnify the glorious Gospel!"

Turning to the state of opinion under Judaism, he observes:- "The Sinaitic dispensation - the entire Institute of Moses did not contain any express sanction in its legislation, either of eternal rewards or of eternal punishments, whatever it may be thought its promises and threatenings implied. The Abrahamic Covenant, indeed, lay as a stratum below (Galatians iii. 17) and crops up at times in the Psalms and Prophets with its immortal prospects; but these were but dimly seen and feebly apprehended by the greater part even of the spiritual Israel. And not much less for the Jew than for the Gentile was the cry of the necessities of human nature loud for One who should bring Life and Immortality to light.

"When He who was the desire of all nations, in respect of His being adequate to meet their necessities, did at last arrive, how glorious was the sunshine which He shed on the prospects of the faithful, but especially on those of children-elevating them from a condition of neglect and contempt to a station so prominent and high in His kingdom!"

Dr. Anderson next proceeds to expose the manner in which this light has been obscured, especially by Popery and Tractarianism; and in reviewing the state and progress of opinion in Scotland, he makes these observations :

"Our Calvinism, commencing with the Sovereign decree of Election, equitably assigned to those who died

1

in infancy their proportional share of the mercy, but not less equitably their proportional share of the judgment ---the judgment of reprobation or preterition; so that calculating the infants' share by that of the adults, as manifested in faith and a holy life, there was left a vast multitude who perished eternally.-Parental affection early demanded, and easily obtained the modification, that the whole of such children of pious parents as died in infancy should be included in the decree of salvation. With this the heart of Scottish Protestantism for a long time remained satisfied. With the exception of those born of pious parents, and the proportion saved by the General decree, all the rest, in millions upon millions, were doomed to everlasting woe. For two centuries and a-half after the Reformation this was the prevailing dogma. And when, fifty years ago, Common Sense, warming into life out of its dreadful torpidity, began to vindicate the character of God, the rights of Christ, and the feelings of humanity, it was with hesitancy and bated breath, and amid suspicions of their soundness in the faith, that a few voices were heard suggesting the possibility that all who die in infancy are saved.

"The question was agitated in this form for a considerable time, and Common Sense gained ground. About forty years ago, when he who sketches this review entered on the public ministration of the Gospel, there were found a few lifting up their voices in protest and advocacy, that it was not only possible but probable, that all who died in infancy, having been guilty of no actual sin-no rejection of Him who was

He soon

appointed the world's Redeemer, were saved. cast in his lot with the pleaders for such probability, to share the odium of being suspected-suspected! denounced, as being unsound, and licentiously squandering the salvation of Christ.* But Common Sense was with us, and we prospered. Nay, that is not the accurate It protested against our paltering limitation. Mere probability of all being saved implied, it said, the possibility of some or many of infant spirits, who had neither done, nor spoken, nor thought an evil thing, being consigned to the fires of Hell.

account.

Civilization, not
You must pro-

to speak of Piety, will not endure it. gress, Reverend Sirs. So we of the anti-slavery school ascended the platform to proclaim the certainty of the salvation of all dying in infancy,-when the pro-slavery Conservatism of Dogma was now in its turn reduced in most quarters to a feeble protestation that we were wise above what is written-as if it were not written that God is just, which He would not be were He to consign to Hell-fire any infant spirit: "Are not my ways equal?" saith the Lord (Ezek. xviii. 29). All Com

* During the late controversy on the Extent of the Atonement, having met Dr. Wardlaw in a book-shop, and pointed out a passage to him in a book, that morning published by one of the opposite party, arguing the possibility of the eternal damnation of a portion of deceased infants, he said, "That is frightful;" but added, "I regret deeply that in controversy with the Baptists I was seduced into the use of expressions savouring of a limitation of the salvation of deceased infants to the seed of the righteous.' I abhor the thought: and am persuaded that this question of the Extent of the Atonement will yet turn on the question of Infant Salvation."

A

mon Sense says, Amen. You need not try by sophistications to reduce the judgment. Common sense will not now tolerate you, in preaching, as was preached by not a few, even so late as fifty years ago, that there are possibly, if not probably, a multitude of infants, "of a span long," dreeing the penalty of Adam's sin in the abyss of Hell. Such was their phraseology, quoting the Scriptures without any lamentations about it (Lamentations ii. 20.) Simply, it is most dreadful to think with what thoughts of God the mind of Scotland was infected, and that not long since."

But many are now finding liberty to proclaim the salvation of all dying in infancy, universally, on the principle stated by Newton (page 70), and adopted by Dr. Brown (page 173), and Dr. Candlish (page 67), that all who die in infancy "are included in the election of grace;" and Dr. Gill, a standard authority among Calvinistic Baptists, according to Mr. Spurgeon, affirms it as his belief "that they who have fallen asleep in infancy have not perished, but have been numbered with the chosen of God, and so have entered into eternal rest;" so that the stroke of death is never permitted to fall on any infant who was not included in the elective decree.

"That the present publication will contribute largely to the furtherance of this cheering belief there can be no doubt. Its adaptation to the work has already been proved. And when there is such abundant testimony to the good service which it rendered in its original comparatively meagre form, what may