"The very use of
the word 'tribes,'" would this simple-minded, and not very profound
expounder of the word of God, say, "is one proof of the truth of
what I tell you. Now, no one thinks of dividing the white men of
America into 'tribes.' Who ever heard of the 'tribe' of New England,
or of the 'tribe' of Virginia, or of the 'tribe' of the Middle
States? [Footnote: The reader is not to infer any exaggeration in
this picture. There is no end to the ignorance and folly of sects
and parties, when religious or political zeal runs high. The writer
well remembers to have heard a Universalist, of more zeal than
learning, adduce, as an argument in favor of his doctrine, the
twenty-fifth chapter and forty-sixth verse of St. Matthew, where we
are told that the wicked "shall go away into ever-lasting
punishment; but the righteous into Vis eternal"; by drawing a
distinction between the adjectives, and this so much the more,
because the Old Testament speaks of "everlasting hills," and
"everlasting valleys "; thus proving, from the Bible, a substantial
difference between "everlasting" and "eternal." Now, every Sophomore
knows that the word used in Matthew is the same in both cases, being
"aionion," or "existing forever.
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