354 EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS.

■worm that never dies^ and a fire that is not quenched. (Mark ix. 44.) "Except a man be born again/' he will wish one day he had never been born at all. " Better/' says Burkitt, ''have no being, than not have a being in Christ." Let us grasp this truth firmly, and not let it go. There are always persons who dislike the reality and eternity of hell. We live in a day when a morbid charity induces many to exaggerate God's mercy, at the expense of His justice, and when false teachers are daring to talk of a '^ love of God, lower even than hell." Let us resist such teaching with a holy jealousy, and abide by the doctrine of Holy Scrij^ture. Let us not be ashamed to walk in the old paths, and to believe that there is an eternal God, an eternal heaven, and an eternal hell. Once depart from this belief, and we admit the thin edge of the wedge of scepticism, and may at last deny any doctrine of the Gospel. We may rest assured that there is no firm standing ground between a belief in the eter- nity of hell, and downright infidelity.