The Popular Ideas of Immortality, Everlasting Punishment, and the State
of Separate Souls Brought to the Test of Scripture. By Rev. W. Ker, (Simpkin and Marshall)—The kind-hearted clergyman who has written these sermons, a believer in the literal inspiration of the Scriptures, had been " bitterly exercised for forty years of ministerial life by the awful doctrine of everlasting punishment," when it occurred to him to search the Scriptures for himself. He then discovered, to his groat relief, that, according to the literal text, immortality of the soul is the special gift of God, not the inheritance of man ; that it is conferred through Christ on believers at the judgment-day, when the wicked re- ceive their doom of everlasting death, i. e., death lasting for ever, and that between the decease of the body and the judgment-day the souls of both alike remain in Hades. Hero the heathen have the gospel preached to them, and hence disembodied spirits pass to revisit the earth, pro- ducing the phenomena of demoniac possession, spiritualism, &o. The author enforces these views at great length, and with a great marshalling of texts, some of which are curious enough. The study of the volume may at least be recommended to those who think that they are securing orthodoxy by insisting on the inspiration of every jot and tittle in the Bible.
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