Or
What living men believe concerning punishment after death
Together with recorded views of men of former times
The whole field explored
Every source of wisdom, past and present, made tributary
To the illumination of this theme
Man's final destiny
A standard book for all time
Illustrated with a full- page engraving of each author
Sold only by subscription
Springfield, Massachusetts
C. A. Nichols & Company, Publishers
1889
In the course of recent public discussions which attracted wide attention,
especially in America, and which involved questions concerning the state of
human existence after death, it appeared, if not to participants, at least to
many on-lookers, from near and far, that there was much uncertainty and
vagueness in men's minds, we will not say as to their opinions, but as to each
other's opinions.
This is as much as to say that there was wanting one of the primary conditions of intelligent and profitable discussion. No waste of words and arguments is more useless than discussion which imputes to an antagonist opinions which he does not hold, or makes him responsible for inferences which he repudiates.
Not only to furnish a basis for intelligent argument among theologians, but among all thoughtful and reasonable men to give what- ever of definiteness and certainty can be attained on subjects which to all serious minds are invested with a grave interest and an awful fascination, there was need of a source of information for which the libraries of the world might be searched in vain. This is the need which the present volume proposes to supply.
What are the beliefs of the present day concerning the Life to Come? The answer must be sought from sincere and thoughtful men among our contemporaries, representing various schools and tendencies of theological opinion. And it is to these we have appealed. Among the names of the writers for this volume will be found some whose fame is co-extensive with the English language; and others who through wide regions and communions are honoured as leaders or representatives of religious thought. And, unless we have failed of our purpose, no important school of theological opinion is without its able and adequate representative here.
The volume might have been more curious if it had ranged over a wider field. But to enhance its real interest and value, the writers have been requested to treat of the future life in its penal aspect only.
The intelligent reader will expect to find, as the natural and helpful introduction to such a volume, some sort of exhibit of the opinions of former ages. And he will not be disappointed. A catena of the utterances of ancient Father's and Doctors of the Church, as well as of more modern Theologians, prepared under the direction of one of the most eminent of living scholars in ecclesiastical history, occupies by no means the least important pages of the book.
It remains only to commend the book, with all its wide diversity of belief and argument, to the thoughtful attention of this most serious and thoughtful age.
The Publishers.
Springfield, Massachusetts, 1889.
Each of whom has
written expressly for this work.
REV. LYMAN ABBOTT,
D.D., Pastor Plymouth Church, Brooklyn; Editor The Christian Union.
REV. JOHN COLEMAN
ADAMS, D.D., Pastor St. Paul's Universalist Church, Chicago.
REV. JOSEPH ANGUS,
MA., D.D., President Regent's Park College, London, England. Member Of The Bible
Revision.
REV. LEONARD
WOOLSEY BACON, D.D., Philadelphia.
REV. L. C. BAKER, A.M.,
Editor Words Of Reconciliation, Philadelphia.
REV. S. C. BARTLETT,
D.D., LL.D., President Dartmouth College.
REV. JAMES M. BUCKLEY,
D.D., Editor The Christian Advocate, New York.
REV. F. W. CONRAD,
D.D., Editor The Lutheran. Observer, Philadelphia.
REV. HOWARD CROSBY,
D.D., LL.D., Late Chancellor Of New York University.
REV. JOSEPH
CUMMINGS, D.D., LL.D., President North-western University, Evanston, Ill.
REV. E. DEPRESSENSE,
D.D., Life Member Of The French Senate, Paris, France.
REV. F. W. FARRAR,
Archdeacon Of Westminster, And Chaplain To The Queen Of England.
REV. GEORGE P. FISHER,
Professor Ecclesiastical History, Yale University.
REV. T. W. FOWLE, M.A.,
Islip Rectory, Oxford, England.
REV. CHAS. H. FOWLER,
D.D., LL.D., Bishop M. E. Church.
REV. W. H. FRENCH,
D.D., Pastor United Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, O.
REV. E. V. GERHART,
D.D., Professor German Reformed Sem., Lancaster, Pa.
REV. CHAUNCEY
GILES, D.D., LL.D., Pastor New Jerusalem Church, Philadelphia.
REV. WASHINGTON
GLADDEN, D.D., Pastor First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio.
REV. FREDERICK
GODET, D.D., Professor Theolog. Faculty, Neuchfitel, Switzerland.
REV. EDWARD
EVERETT HALE, D.D., Pastor South Cong. (Unitarian) Church, Boston.
REV. GEORGE HARRIS,
D.D., Professor Christian Theology, Andover Seminary.
REV. E. R. HENDRIX,
D.D., Bishop M. E. Church (South).
REV. AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT,
D.D., Superior Of The Paulist Institute, New York.
REV. JOHN H. HOPKINS,
S.T.D., Burlington, Vt.
REV. J. W. HOTT, D.D.,
Editor The Religious Telescope (United Brethren).
REV. F. D. HUNTINGTON,
D.D., LL.D., Bishop Protestant Epis. Church Of Central New York.
REV. ABRAM S. ISAACS,
D.D., Editor The Jewish Messenger, New York.
REV. HENRY E. JACOBS,
D.D., Professor Evangelical Lutheran Seminary, Philadelphia.
REV. JAMES LEGGE, D.D.,
Professor Chinese Literature And Language, Oxford University, England.
REV. A. II. LEWIS,
D.D., Editor The Outlook And Sabbath Quarterly.
REV. DANIEL A. LONG,
A.M., D.D., LL.D., President Antioch College, Ohio.
REV. CHRISTOPHER E.
LUTIIARDT, D.D., Leipzig, Germany.
REV. R. S. Mac-ARTHUR,
D.D., Pastor Calvary Baptist Church, New York.
CARDINAL HENRY E. MANNING,
Archbishop Of Westminster, England.
REV. A. A. MINER, D.D.,
LL.D., Pastor Columbus-Ave. Universalist Church, Boston.
REV. A. P. PEABODY,
D.D., LL.D., Professor Harvard University.
PROF. STANLEY LANE-POOLE,
Translator " Speeches And Table-Talk Of Mohammed."
REV. C. W. PRITCHARD,
Editor The Christian Worker, Chicago.
PROF. T. W. BUYS
DAVIDS, London University, Late Judge Of The Court In Ceylon.
REV. J. W. RICHARD,
D. D., Professor Theological Seminary, Springfield, Ohio.
REV. AUGUSTUS
SCHULTZE, D.D., President Moravian Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, Pa.
REV. JOSEPH T. SMITH,
RD., Late Moderator Presbyterian General Assembly, Baltimore.
HON. G. G. STOKES,
President Of The Royal Society Of England. Member Of Parliament For The University
Of Cambridge.
REV. N. SUMMERBELL,
D.D., Pastor Christian Church, Milford, N. J.
PROF. DAVID SWING,
(Independent,) Chicago.
REV. T. DEWITT
TALMAGE, D.D., LL.D., Pastor Brooklyn Tabernacle.
REV. W.M. J. R. TAYLOR,
D.D., Pastor Dutch Reformed Church, Newark, N. J.
REV. H. W. THOMAS,
D.D., Pastor People's Church, Chicago.
REV. CHARLES F. THWING,
Pastor Plymouth Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
REV. EDWARD WHITE,
D.D., Professor In New College, London, England.
IN the course of recent public discussions which attracted wide attention, especially in America, and which involved questions concerning the state of human existence after death, it appeared, if not to participants, at least to many on-lookers, from near and far, that there was much uncertainty and vagueness in men's minds, we will not say as to their opinions, but as to each other's opinions.
This is as
much as to say that there was wanting one of the primary conditions of
intelligent and profitable discussion. No waste of words and arguments is more
useless than discussion which imputes to an antagonist opinions which he does
not hold, or makes him responsible for inferences which he repudiates.
Not only to
furnish a basis for intelligent argument among theologians, but among all
thoughtful and reasonable men to give whatever of definiteness and certainty
can be attained on subjects which to all serious minds are. invested with a
grave interest and an awful fascination, there was need of a source of information
for which the libraries of the world might be searched in vain. This is the
need which the present volume proposes to supply.
What are the beliefs of the present day concerning the Life to Come? The answer must be sought from sincere and thoughtful men among our contemporaries, representing various schools and tendencies of theological opinion. Aral it is to these we have appealed. Among the names of the writers for this volume will be found some whose fame is co-extensive with the English language; and others who through wide regions and communions are honoured as leaders or representatives of religious thought. And, unless we have failed of our purpose, no important school of theological opinion is without its able and adequate representative here.
The volume
might have been more curious if it had ranged over a wider field. But to
enhance its real interest and value, the writers have been requested to treat
of the future life in its penal aspect only.
The
intelligent reader will expect to find, as the natural and helpful
introduction to such a volume, some sort of exhibit of the opinions of former
ages. And he will not be disappointed. A catena
of the utterances of ancient Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as well as
of more modern Theologians, prepared under the direction of one of the most
eminent of living scholars in ecclesiastical history, occupies by no means the
least important pages of the book.
It remains only to commend the book, with all its wide diversity of belief and argument, to the thoughtful attention of this most
serious and
thoughtful age.
The Publishers.
Springfield, Massachusetts, 1889.
Opinions of Former Ages of the Christian Church Concerning Future Punishment, in the Language of Representative Writers.
-
First Patristic Period: The First Three Centuries.
-
Second Patristic Period: A. D. 301-600.
- The
Scholastic Period.
- The Reformation
Period.
By
the Reverend Lyman Abbott, D.D., Congregational Pastor of the Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, N. Y., and Editor of the Christian Union, New York City.
Revelation
the Only Source of Knowledge on this Subject.
-
Changed Views of God's Character and Administration.
- This
Change Leads to New Conceptions of the Future Life.
- The
New Views a Return to the Scriptural as Against Pagan Teachings.
- Free
Will Necessary to Virtue.
-
Persuasion, Not Compulsion, the Condition of Salvation.
-
Spiritual Self-Destruction Altogether Voluntary and in Face of the Divine
Pleadings.
-
Fatal Objection to the "Larger Hope" Theory
-
Unending Conscious Sin and Torment Not a Bible Doctrine.
-
Errors alike of "Orthodox“ and Universalist Writers.
-
Continuity of Being Belongs Only to Those Who Accept Immortality in Christ.
- No
Locality in the Universe where Sin is in Supreme and Unending Activity.
- All
the Resources of Divine Love Will Go Forth to Every Soul Before its Destiny
Becomes Final.
By Reverend
John Coleman Adams, D.D., Pastor of St. Paul's Universalist Church, Chicago.
All
Punishment must be Salutary, Disciplinary, Remedial, not Vengeful; and whatever
Punishment may be Needed in the World to Come, to Bring Souls to Repentance,
will be Administered Parentally, not Vindictively. - Salvation from Sin and its
Deformities is the Normal Destiny of Every Soul.
-
Repentance and Abandonment of all Evil the Means to this End.
- The
Spiritual Progress wrought by Christianity is and must be toward the Universal
Emancipation from Vice.
- The
Good of the Race Manifestly Attainable by a Terminable Punishment.
-
Christianity Tends to Conviction that there ought to be a Higher Aim in Punishment
than Vengeance.
-
God's Judgments and Retributions are in the Nature of Love and Reclamation, not
in Hatred.
- An
Aimless, Unmitigated, and Eternal Curse upon any Creature not Characteristic of
the Beneficence of
Deity.
- The
Work of Salvation not Limited to the Present Physical Life.
- This
Fact Covers all the Relations of Christ and Eternity to the Heathen and to
those who Perished before He
came
on Earth, or who have never Known Him in this Life.
-
Suffering and Discipline for Confirmed Sinful Choice extend into the Future
World, until, in God's
Economy,
the Will finally makes Free Choice of Good.
- The
Losses and Penalties Entailed by Sin in the Moral Nature are Repaired, in the
Future Life, only after
Periods
of Unknown Duration.
By
Prof. Joseph Angus, M.A., D.D., Baptist, Regent's Park College, London, England.
The
Final Condemnation of the Impenitent is Not Inconsistent with the Divine Fatherhood,
the Divine Love, and the Tenderness of Christ, all of which are Ranged on Man's
Side, to influence him in Choosing God and Hating Evil.
-
Diverse Influence of Butler's "Analogy" and Tennyson's "In
Memoriam," in this Discussion.
-
Great Effect of the Poet's Phrase, "the Larger Hope," on Sensitive
Natures.
-
Mistaken Notion Prevalent that God's Righteousness is Subordinated to his Mercy,
in dealing with Sinners.
-
Testimony of Dr. Watts, and other Preachers, to the Efficacy of Fear, rather
than Persuasion, in Producing Conversions.
- The
words "Wrath" and "Vengeance" of God often Used to his
Dishonour.
- Man
to be Punished not for any One Sin or Act, but for a General and Wilful Drift
of Evil Character through Life, i.e., Voluntary and Habitual Sin.
- But
Single Sins may lead to Irremediable Habit.
- This
Fact, and the Perversity of Man's Will, Justify the Divine Warnings and
Threatening.
-
Eternal Life for the Righteous, and Eternal Death for the Wicked, begin Here.
- Punishment
is not Reformatory, nor is there any Re-adjudication of Destiny in the World to
Come.
By
Rev. LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON, D.D., Congregationalist.
Six
Points that are very common in the Traditional Orthodox Treatment of the
Subject, which the Writer positively Rejects:-
1.
That Punishment is to be without Gradation or Discrimination-the Code of Draco
imported into Christian Theology. -
2. The
False Assumption that the Human Soul is Essentially Indestructible.-
3. The
False Criterion of Salvation or Perdition set up by the Edwardean Preachers.-
4. The
Arguments from Utility and Expediency that are set up on all sides of this
discussion.-
5. The
Vicious a priori Method of much Orthodox Theologizing, which is, in the worst
sense of the word, Rationalistic.-
6. The
Unchristian Tone and Temper with which the subject is treated: the Serene and
Composed; the Violent; the Jocose.
The
Subject being thus cleared of Factitious Difficulties, we are prepared to
receive Four Points of Scriptural Teaching:-
1. The
Judge of All the Earth will do Right, in the Human Sense of the Word.-
2. The
Scriptures, while Distinguishing absolutely between the Righteous and the
Wicked, also Recognize Gradations in both Classes.-
3. The
Divine Judgment includes among the Saved the Righteous Heathen.-
4.
Some Cases under the Divine Jurisdiction are subject to a Doom which is Final,
Irreversible, Eternal.
-The
Meaning of " Hell-fire."
Various
Evasions of the Austerity of the Current Orthodoxy proposed by its Advocates:-
1. The
"Andover Hypothesis," or Future Probation.-
2. The
Representation that Punishment is Mental, not Material; and is effected by
Natural Causes.-
3. The
Argument concerning "Eonian."-
4. The
" Music Hall Hypothesis," or Regeneration in Articulo Mortis.-
5. The
" Princeton Hypothesis," or Salvation of Foetus in Utero.
-All
these Attempted Theodicies are Valuable as Confessions of Discontent with the
Traditionary Doctrine.
By
Rev. L. C. BAKER, Presbyterian, Editor of Words of Reconciliation,
Philadelphia, Pa.
A.
Promise of Future Blessing Underlies the whole Retributive Scheme of
Revelation.
-Grave
Mistake of Modern Theology in Disregarding the Old Testament Conceptions of
this Subject.
-Germinal
Promise in Genesis, that in a Chosen Seed all the Families of the Earth should
be Blessed.
-The
"all" Embraces the Dead.
-Hope
of Deliverance and of Renewed Opportunity in Life Foreshadowed.
-The
Penalty of Sin is an Impending Loss of Body and Soul preceding Resurrection.
-The
Redeeming Power of Christ to Reach all the Regions of the Dead.
-Through
the Primal Curse to be met by a Fair and Just Probation for all, after Judgment
is Rendered, Penalty Executed, and the Law Satisfied.
-Man
not Inherently Immortal, but a Future Life secured for all through Resurrection
from the Dead.
-"Every
Man in his Own Order."-Even the Inferior Resurrection of the Unjust is a
Rescue and a Benefit.
-Endless
Torment not one of the Alternative States of Future Existence Announced by
Christ.
-The
Soul Perishable as well as the Body, and Torment can Continue only during such
Process of Destruction.
-Renewed
Life must Bring Renewed Opportunity as well as New Risk.
-All
Phases of Religious Thought on this Subject may be Reconciled under this
Principle of the Penal Character of Death and the Redemptive Value of
Resurrection.
By
Rev. S. C. BARTLETT, DD., LL.D., President of Dartmouth College.
God's
Word Alone Enlightens Us.
-The
Difficulties Environing the Subject Do Not Alter the Declared Fact.
-Sin,
Responsibility, and Penalty, Inevitable.
-They
Constitute an Inherent Part of the Almighty's Governmental System
-Calls
to Repentance Fill the Old and New Testaments.
-Free
Pardon, through Christ's Atonement, to Every Penitent.
-This
is Offered to the Living, but Nowhere to the Dead.
-The
Issue Presented, Met, and Irreversibly Determined Here.
-Cumulative
Trend of Scripture Showing God's Treatment of Sin Here and Hereafter.
-Disregard
of Christ's Emphatic Assertion of the Continued Conscious Existence and
Suffering of the Impenitent.
-Vain
Assumption that God's Character is More Tender than His Word.
-Fallacies
of "Progressive Orthodoxy" Speculations.
-Its
Revolutionary Attitude Toward Inspiration and the Fundamental Doctrines of
Revealed Christianity.
-Disastrous
Progress of this System of Naturalism.
-
Imminent Danger to the Church.
-A
Great Conflict and Defection Impending.
By
Rev. JAMES M. PAJCKLEY, P.D., Editor of the Christian Advocate, Methodist
Episcopal, New York.
The
Ground of Doubt with Some.
-Human
Freedom, the One Mystery of the Universe.
-This
World the Scene of its Action, and the Consequences Never-ending.
-Explicit
Utterances that the Punishment of Some Will Not Cease.
-Unwarranted
Methods of Interpretation Resorted to.
-Exclusion
and Misery on the One Hand, and Acceptance and Bliss on the Other Hand,
Unequivocally and Concurrently Taught as Eternal.
-Two
Classes Distinctively Described by All Sacred Writers.
-Review
of Various Passages Claimed to Teach Salvation for All at Last
-Opportunity
for Repentance After Death a Strained Hypothesis.
-A
Reverent Estimate of the Gospels Essential to their Correct Understanding.
-The
Fruits of Faith, and How Brought Forth.
-Effect
of the Suggested Possibility of Continued Choice Beyond the Grave.
-No
Reason for Assuming that the Majority of the Human Race Will be Lost.
-His Righteousness,
Truth, and Love Made Manifest.
By
Rev. F. W. CONRAD, D.D., Editor of the Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia.
There
is a Definite Place of Punishment for Sin, not Merely a State of Mind.
-That
Place is not the Present World.
-Precise
Location is not Made Known to Mortals.
-Emphatic
Significance of Christ's Repeated Use of "Gehenna."
-Other
Bible Terms are equally vivid, such as a Prison, a Furnace, a Lake of Fire,
Everlasting Chains, the Blackness of Darkness, the Gnawing and Undying Worm,
Torment whose Smoke Ascended for Ever and Ever, etc.
-The
Mind Cannot Conceive nor Language Express more Terrible Descriptions of the
Doom of the Impenitent.
-The
Abode of the Lost will be no House of Correction or Reformation, or Place of
Disciplinary Chastisement.
-No
Annihilation, or State of Eternal Repose or Unconsciousness, but the Wicked
will be Alive, Conscious, and in the Highest Degree Susceptible to Suffering.
-The
Unending Character of the Inheritance of the Saints and the Unending Punishment
of the Lost Taught by Every True Interpretation of the Scriptures.
-The
Different Capacities of Different Orders of Moral Beings Measure the Degree of
Sin's Desert.
-Possible
Dethronement of God and his Moral Government, had he not Summarily and
Effectively Punished the Angels who Sinned, by Casting them down from Heaven
into Hell 189
By Rev.
HOWARD CROSBY, D.D., LL.D., Presbyterian, Late Chancellor of New York
University.
The
Notion of a Future State Not Inherent in Man's Nature. It is Imparted Directly
by God.
-The
Asserted Silence of Moses on this Subject Denied.
-The Prophecies
and Promises Necessarily Involve a Life Beyond.
-Unquestionable
Perpetuity of those Begotten and Beloved of the Lord.
-Immortality
not Originated but Illumined by Christ
-Continued
Consciousness, not Annihilation, Taught by "Unquenchable Fire."
-The
Wicked Excluded from Heavenly Life, but Not Extinct.
-They
Forever Sink in Sin and Corruption.
-Two
Classes Separated by an Impassable Gulf.
-Ultimate
Universal Forgiveness, or Restoration, would Include the Sin for which Christ
Most Solemnly Declared there was "No Forgiveness" in Either World.
-Error
of the Materialistic View.
-God,
whose Inspired Definition is Love, can be No Cruel Executioner.
-All
Suffering Self-Inflicted
By
Rev. JOSEPH CUMMINGS, D.D., LL.D.. Methodist Episcopal, President of North-western
University, Evanston, Ill.
Awful
Characteristic of Retribution after Death as Compared with Earthly Suffering.
-Anti-Scriptural
Opposition to this Ancient Doctrine Notably Developed of Late Years.
-Citations
from the Gross and Shocking Views of God's Character which have prevailed.
-The
True Theory is that Punishment is the Inevitable Sequence of one's Own Chosen
Conduct.
-The
Universe, alike Material and Spiritual, Founded on Divine Laws.
-Order,
Harmony, and Happiness, the Ordained Outcome of Obedience to these Laws.
-All
Disorder, Physical and Moral, is Produced by Disobedience.
-Explanation
of the Origin of Evil as Found in the Free Agency of Man.
-Man's
Voluntary, Intentional, Unrepented Sin, alone Culpable.
-A
Vastly Greater Number of those Born on Earth will be Saved than will be Lost
-The
now Favourite Theory that Punishment is Reformatory and Preventive, is Proved
False by most Abundant Evidence.
-Though
Justice Involves Punishment in the Case of Intentional Guilt, the Acceptance of
Christ's Atonement Secures Forgiveness.
-Unequal
Penalties Characterize Earthly Laws and Courts, but the Award of God is
Unerringly in Accordance with the Deeds done in the Body.
-No
Additional Motives or Opportunities for a Moral Change Possible in Another
World.
-God
is without the Shadow of Passion or Vindictiveness in Dealing with Sinners.
Rev. E.
Depressense, D.D., Life Member Of The French Senate, Paris, France.
Historical
Review of the Subject
-The
Fathers, the Catholic Church, the Reformers, the Modern Rationalists.
-Punishment
Founded in the Divine Justice, which is Love.
-Among
Evangelical Christians, two Main Opposing Opinions: 1, Eternal-ism; 2,
Universalism.
-The
Former Class divided into (1) Strict Calvinists, and (2) Those who Maintain the
Freedom of the Will.
-The
Latter Sustained by the Scriptures.
-The
Doctrine of Eternal Punishment not Conclusively Derived from Scripture.
-Bible
Implications of Redemptive Activity beyond the Grave.
-God's
Mercy Endures forever.
-Universalism
equally without Conclusive Warrant of Scripture.
-A
Dark Possibility. (3), An Intermediate Hypothesis: Conditionalism.
-This
Hypothesis Untenable 243
By
FREDERICK W. FARRAR. D.D., Archdeacon of Westminster, Chaplain to the Queen of
England, Author of the Life of Christ, etc.
Belief
Held by Many for Fifteen Centuries.
-Some
Different Views by Eminent Religious Teachers.
-Sermon
Preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 11, 1877, on " Hell
-What
It Is Not."
-Repudiation
of the Ghastly Averments of Augustinianism, Calvinism, etc.
-A
Gracious Shadow Cast Over the Lurid Dogma.
-Défense
of the Deity Against Being infinitely Implacable and Remorselessly Cruel.
-No
Such Sermon Heard in the Abbey for Six Centuries.
-Electric
Thrill of Gratitude Flashed Through Two Continents.
-Dean
Stanley's Earnest Congratulations.
-Honours
from the English Episcopate, Universities, and Innumerable Clergymen.
-No
Formulary of the Church of England Contravened.
-The
Conscience and Reason of Mankind True to the More Benign View
-Letters
of Relief and Joy from Bereaved Fathers, Mothers, Husbands, Wives, etc.
-Mistaken
Conception of Eternity as an Infinite Extension of Time.
-Scraps
of Isolated Texts and Misinterpreted Jewish Metaphors Not Decisive.
-No
Eternity of Punishment Deducible from the Old Testament.
-Rabbis,
Fathers of the Church, Schoolmen, and Others Cited.
-God's
Direction in developing Human Understanding of His Word and Works.
-His
Boundless Compassion for His Creatures Unchanged by the Accident of Death.
-No
Subordination Scripturally Permissible of Christ's Advocacy and Propitiation.
-"Will
the Lord Cast Off Forever
By
Rev. T. W. FOWLE, M. A., Rector of Islip, Oxford, England.
Perils
of the present Transition of Opinion.
-Solution
of Difficulties to be found in the Silence of Jesus Christ concerning the
Future Life.
-Sources
of Misinterpretation.
-Judaism
corrupted by Admixtures of Pagan Eschatology.
-The
Messianic "Age to Come," not the "World to Come."
-The
"Conclusion of this Age," not the "End of this World."
-Parables
of The Tares, of The Pounds, of Lazarus and Dives.
-A
Fallacious Foundation for a Gigantic but Unsubstantial Superstructure.
-The
Critical Proof of Christ's Silence as to the Future Life confirmed, 1, by his
Character as a Teacher; 2, by the Character of that Old Testament Dispensation
which he came to Fulfill.
-The
Characteristics of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, at this Point,
distinguish them from the Pagan Eschatology.
-And
harmonize them with the Ideas of (1) the Sphere of Law; (2) the Worth of
Humanity; (3) of Progress by Evolution and not Catastrophe; (4) Spiritual
Immortality.
By
Rev. C. H. FOWLER, D.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Some
Prevailing Misconceptions Pointed Out
-One
of these is the holding to Literal Flames.
-Again,
Hades is not, as is Commonly Supposed, a Receptacle for Bodies, but for
Spirits, and Gehenna is the place of Doom for the Wicked, after being
Sentenced.
-Reasons
why Retribution is Antagonistic to Human Acceptance.
-Human
Sentiment, or Sympathy, however Creditable in itself, is Relative and
Imperfect, as a Standard of Judgment.
-The
Solution of Future Destiny, whether of Happiness or Misery, Dependent Solely on
Individual Volition.
-Fear
is Not a Degrading but Rightful Motive, as the Sense of Peril must Precede the
Desire to Escape it.
-Accountability
is a Strong and Necessary Restraint upon Conduct in this World, as well as on
that which Concerns the World to Come.
-A
Future without a Hell would make a Hell of the Present.
-As
the Jews Believed in Eternal Punishment, the Meaning was Clear.
-The
Opposite of all this Agonizing Fate was the Blessedness of those who
"Entered into Life"
By
Rev. W. H. FRENCH, D.D., Pastor of the United Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati,
Ohio.
Immortality
is the Heritage of AIL
-Revelation,
not any Outside Sources, gives Knowledge of the Fate of the Wicked in that
State.
-God's
Government is under his Own Laws and Penalties, Human Government under the Laws
of Man.
-Retribution
is the Loss of all Good, and the Infliction of all that is Evil.
-The
Picture of Hell is not Revolting to Enlightened, Uncorrupted Reason.
-Equity
of the Retributive Principle is Engraver on Man's Heart as well as Written in
God's Word.
-Moral
Agony in the Future World Ordained by God as the Sure Consequence of
Disobedience.
-The
Philosophy of Heaven in this Condign Treatment of Sin not Fully Made Known.
-The
Doctrine of Future Rewards and Punishments Taught from the Beginning and
Believed in by the Ancient Jews.
-"Everlasting"
Undeniably means Perpetuity, when applied to Happiness, and as Unequivocally so
when applied to Woe and Sorrow.
-Sublime
Heights to which Seraphs and Saints Soar, and Dreadful Depths into which God's
Foes Fall.
-The
Fullness and Fearful Intensity of Eternity's Sorrow Veiled from Present
Knowledge.
By
Rev. EMIL. V. GERRART, DM., LL.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary,
Reformed Church, Lancaster, Pa.
The
Essential Nature of God is not Power, nor Sovereignty, nor Holiness, but Love.
-The
Primary Argument in this Discussion is Based, therefore, on the Righteous Love
of God for Man and the Reciprocal Love of God for which Man is Designed.
-Genuine,
Normal Manhood is True Fidelity, Absolute and Relative, to this Divine Ideal,
Love, and the Opposite State is Abnormal.
-From
Violation of God's Unchanging Law, " Thou shalt love," issue all
Grades of Moral Disorder and all Forms of Physical Evil.
-This
Aversion to the Fundamental Absolute Good incurs God's Judgment and the Anguish
and Torment of Self-Condemnation as well.
-The
Penalties are Penetrating and Burning according to the Heinousness of the Wrong
and the Capacities of the Subject.
-Divine
Justice is a Quality of Divine Love, but, when Exercised toward a Transgressor,
becomes Negative or Condemnatory.
-Reconciliation
in this Life, and Renewal of Fellowship, made possible to the Wrong-Doer by his
voluntary Faith in Christ's Mediatorship, through the Holy Spirit.
-After
Death, the Interior Human Conditions and the Divine Environments still Abide.
-The
Life of Love with God is there Victoriously Unfolded and Perfected, while, on
the other hand, Wrong-Doers Retain their false Self-Assertion and Aversion to
God.
-The
latter are the Subjects of Retributive Justice, or Penal Anguish, from God and
from Within.
-Neither
Rewards nor Punishments are Arbitrarily or Optionally Bestowed by God.
By
Rev. CHAUNCEY GILES, of the "New Jerusalem" Church (Swedenborgian).
Divine
Order the Basis of Man's Present and Future Condition.
-This
Order Made Known through Revelation and Human Instruments.
-Swedenborg
an Interpreter of Spiritual and Natural Laws.
-Man's
Personality, Environment, and Experience Far More Positive in the Spirit World.
-Parallel
between the Present and Future Existence.
-Evil
is the Voluntary Violation of God's Law in Man's Moral and Material
Constitution.
-As
the Author of this Law, the Lord is One with those whom He Creates.
-Sin
Ruptures this Connection, and Penalties Naturally Follow.
-Self-Preferred
Guilt, and not the Lord, "Slays the Wicked."
-The
Broken Harmony of the Normal Relation Brings Torture.
-Wickedness
the Reigning Objective which Delights and Enslaves Them, in their
Companionships and Occupations.
-Their
Former Selves, Faces, Limbs, Thoughts, Motions, Transformed into Hideousness.
-No
Material "Fire and Brimstone," but Hell is Bred and Burns within.
By
Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D. D., Pastor of the First Congregational Church,
Columbus, Ohio.
Revulsion
from the Harsh Views Formerly Held on this Subject.
-Retribution
now Dressed in a Different but more Credible Costume
-Conservative
Theologians forced to Admit that Children and "a Great Multitude"
dying Ignorant of Christ, are now Praising Him in Heaven
-The
Countless Myriads of Heathen no longer Deemed to be Hopeless Candidates for
Perdition.
-Growing
Recognition of Christian Consciousness in the Development of Religious
Doctrine.
-Christ
the Leader and Inspirer of this Progressive and more Benign Teaching.
-Fiendish
Sentiments quoted from Thomas Aquinas, Edwards, Hopkins, Knapp, and other
Accepted Exponents.
-The
Moral Law of Cause and Effect, Ordained by God, is Universal and Immutable, so
that it is Necessarily "All with the Wicked and Well with the Righteous."
-The
Startling and Impressive Message from God to All.
-It is
not alone a " Revelation," but a Positive Natural Law, from which
None can Escape.
-Its
Adaptedness as an Appeal to Man's Conscience, as the Most Urgent Motive to Avoid
Sin and Follow after Righteousness.
By
Rev. FREDERIC GODET, D.D., Professor In the Theological Faculty, Neuchatel,
Switzerland.
The
Fact of Future Punishment being Universally Agreed upon, Questions Arise as to
the Object and End of it, if there be an End.
-I.
The Universalist Solution: That Punishment will Issue, sooner or later, in
Conversion and Salvation of all the Condemned.
-II
The Conditionalist Solution, which Denies that the Soul is Essentially Immortal
mid Holds that the Obstinately Wicked Perish out of Existence, while Believers
Receive Eternal Life as the Gift of God.
-III.
The Eternalist Solution, which Maintains an Immortality of Conscious Suffering.
-Without
Pronouncing Peremptorily on so Difficult a Question, it Appears that the
Impression made by the Scriptures, in their Simple and Natural Sense, is in
Favour of the Last Solution.
-May
not a Fourth Solution be Sought, in the Continued Impersonal Existence of the
Soul, after its Personality has been Destroyed?
By
Rev. EDWARD E. HALE, D.D., Minister of the South Congregational Church,
Unitarian, Boston, Mass.
Error
of the Augustinian Theory that this Earth is for Man a Scene of Prescribed
Moral Trial.
-The
Assumed Judicial Process of his Examination after Death, a Degrading Injury to
the Morals of Mankind.
-The
Analogies of a Home, rather than of a Court-Room, are alone Legitimate to Man's
Existence on Earth and its Relation to the Hereafter.
-In
this Home, God is Father, and We are Children.
-As a
Man necessarily Reaps according as he Sows, it is thus that Retribution Follows
the Use of his Powers Scantily, Selfishly, or Meanly.
-Similar
Results Attend him, but in Keener Perception and Wider Range, when he Passes to
the Spiritual World.
-Punishment
of Each Act, or its Reward, Begins when the Act Begins.
-Preposterousness
of the Idea that a God of Wisdom and Love has Chosen to Divide Human Beings, by
any Arbitrary Line, into Two Classes only, one to be Called the "
Good," and one to be Called the " Bad," or that the Universe is
Mapped off so that one place is " Heaven" and another place is "
Hell."
By
Rev. GEORGE HARRIS, D.D., Professor of Christian Theology, in the Theological
Seminary, Congregational, Andover, Mass.
Promise
of a Better Future, or the Complete Triumph of God's Kingdom, set forth in the
Scriptures.
-Punishment
not a Means of Reformation, but God's Vindication.
-The
Loss of Existence to the Incorrigibly Wicked is not Extinction, but Loss of
that Spiritual Life for which Man was Constituted.
-No
one will be Doomed to Eternal Punishment who, under Clearer Knowledge and
Stronger Motive, would become a Child of God.
-Erroneous
Theory that "wherever there is Light there is Christ"
-All
such Revelations as are in Nature, Conscience, Judaism, are Inferior to that of
Christianity, as the Essential Gospel of Salvation.
-If
the Revelation of God in Christ is not given availably to Men in this Earthly
Life, it may be Presented to them after Death, before their Judgment is Fixed.
-The Physical
Death is nowhere Affirmed in Scripture to be the End of Gracious Opportunity.
-Destiny
"according to the Deeds clone in the Body" is Predicated of those who
have had the Gospel.
-To
this Class is also applicable the Warning that "Now is the Accepted
Time," etc.
-Christ's
Preaching to the Spirits in Prison, and the Preaching of the Gospel to the
Dead, indicate Grace beyond the Grave to the Unenlightened and Unevangelized in
this Life
By
Rev. E. R. Hedrix, 1.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.
Present
and Former Character of Preaching Contrasted, with Reference to this
Discussion.
-Cause
of the later Comparative Silence on the Subject
-The
Convicting and Converting Power of Fidelity to the True Bible Doctrine.
-Any
Rejection of Eternal Punishment that is Logical must also lead to the
Abandonment of the whole Redemptive Scheme.
-The
False Substitute of a "Second Probation."
-Hell
an Awful and Present Reality.
-Salvation
Obtained only by Repentance and Faith in Christ, the Necessity of this being
Urged by Christ and his Apostles.
-Their
Descriptive Terms as Applied to Retribution neither Altogether Literal nor
Wholly Figurative.
-The
Words of Christ more Terrible than all others in this Connection.
-The
Old Testament equally Emphatic with the New, that " the Wicked shall be
Turned into Hell."
-God's
Laws are Supremely Good, and cannot therefore be Broken without Commensurate
Guilt.
-For
such Transgression, Man, being a Free Agent and Voluntary Actor, is
Responsible.
-There
could be no Penalty if Man Sinned from the Necessity of his Constitution
instead of his own Option.
-His
Deeds to be passed upon, when he " shall give an Account of himself to
God."
By the
Very Rev. AUGUSTINE F. Hawn', D.D., Roman Catholic. Superior of the Paulist
Institute, New York, Author of Problems of the Age, etc.
The
Latin "Inferiaus," with its Hebrew and Greek Equivalents, Denotes the
Eternal Abode of Angels and Men Excluded from Heaven.
-Sin
the Cause of this Deprivation. The Penalty is Never-Ending, because the
Subjects of it are Immortal.
-All
Penalties Proportioned to Demerit
-Angels
Constituted in a State of Probation to Win or Lose the Higher Beatitude.
-The
Human Race Similarly Constituted.
-The
Kingdom of Heaven Forfeited by Original Sin
-Christ
Reopens the Door of the Kingdom, with Probation for Each and-All
-Such
Probation Ends with this Earthly Life in the Body.
-Original
Sin, in the Case of Infants, the Cause of Exclusion from Heaven.
-Rigid
View of Original Sin-Milder and More Common View.
-Punishment
of Actual Sin.
-The
Rigid View.
-Milder
Views of some Theologians.
-Mitigation
or Partial Condonation Advocated by some Theologians.
-Views
of the Greeks.
-Theory
of St. Gregory of Nyssa.
-St.
Augustine on the Good which Remains in the Reprobate.
By
Rev. JOHN H. HOPKINS, S.T.D., Burlington, Vt.
Variety
of Opinions, in the Primitive Church as well as Now.
-Bishop
Pearson's Opinion given in full from his Standard Treatise on the Creed
-This
the Common Opinion in the Church.
-Agrees
with Prayer Book and Catechism.
-Milder
Opinion of Origen, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Hilary
of Poictiers, St. Firmilian, Didymus of Alexandria, and many Others.
-No
Condemnation of their Teaching.
-Various
Texts of Holy Scripture appealed to by them.
-Use
of the Hebrew word olam and the Greek word aeon.
-Canon
Farrar quoted in full in Favour of the Milder View.
-The
Words "Damn " and "Damnation."
-The
word "Hell."
-Sheol,
Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus.
-Dr.
Pusey and Canon Farrar.
-Phrases
in the Prayer Book consistent with the Milder View.
-The
Church Universal has never dogmatically Answered the Question.
-Therefore
there is Liberty of Opinion.
By
Rev. J. W. Hott, D.D., of the United Brethren in Christ, and Editor of The
Religious Telescope, Dayton, Ohio.
All
Souls have an Eternal Conscious Existence, after the Death of the Body.
-The
Present Life is a Probationary State, and the Awards of Good or Ill Conduct
will be Pronounced at the Future General Judgment.
-The
Soul's Existence is not Dependent on that of the Body, nor does it Share the
Body's Nature
-Its
Being is still Continued when Unclothed by Mortality, and the Exercise of its
Powers is Undiminished.
-Earthly
Character Crosses the Threshold of Eternity, and forever Determines its Condition
there.
-God's
Dealing with Sin is According to its Absolute, Inherent Quality, while Man's is
one of Limitations, Expediency, and Restraint.
-The
Moral Ultimatum, in each Individual Case, and which Decides Future Destiny, is
Reached this Side of the Grave.
-For
those who have Served Christ there is in store the Never-Ending Blessedness of
Heaven, but to those who have Rejected Him the Door is forever Shut.
By Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., LL.D.,
Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.
Unity and Mutual Relations to Each
Other of the Different Doctrines of the Christian Faith.
-No Change Wrought by Death in the Principles that Govern Man's Substance,
Action, and Welfare.
-Life and Death are the Accidents, Not the Essence, of Being.
-The Mystery of the Plan and Process of Salvation, and its Slow Results, No Bar
to Patient Faith and Work.
-Deference Due to the Undoubted Wisdom of the Almighty's Chosen Methods.
-Finality of Probation in the Present Life Distinctly Set Forth in the
Scriptures.
-Faith's Unforbidden Hope is that Many Who Lived and Died before Christ, or Who
Never Heard the "Good News," will Stand Accepted in the Judgment.
-Not so with Unrepenting Sinners in Christendom.
-God's Fatherhood No Pledge of his Endless Toleration of Disloyalty and
Wrong-Doing.
-The Period of Trial So Extended as to Preclude any Charge of Rigor.
-The Wicked "Go to their Own Place."
-Extra-Scriptural and Blasphemous Imagery of Hell Indulged in by Some.
-" The Wages of Sin is Death."
By Rev. ABRAM S. ISAACS, D.D., Editor
of the Jewish Messenger, New York.
Judaism a Religion of God's Laws and
Statutes, rather than of Theology and Dogmas.
-Righteous Thoughts and Deeds, not Creeds and Philosophy.
-Approbation in this Life More Important, than Probation in the Other.
-The Doctrine of Everlasting Torment No Part of Judaism; Counter-Argument too
Strong, viz., that " God does Not Retain His Wrath Forever."
-God is a Deity, and a Father, Not a Demon, nor an Executioner.
-All Nations will be Partakers in Future Bliss.
-Diverse but No Authoritative Views held by Hebrew Sages and Writers in
Different Eras.
-Gehenna, or Hell, as a Place of Torment for Souls, Unknown to Hebrews.
-Sheol Simply a Grave, or Hollow Pit.
-Both with the Righteous and the Wicked, the Moral Consequences of Life
Immediately Follow Disembodiment.
-Resurrection Takes Place at a Period Remote and Unknown
By Rev. HENRY D. JACOBS, D. D., Norton
Professor of Systematic, Theology, Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary,
Philadelphia.
Man's Spiritual Life was Lost with the
Fall of Adam.
-Absolute Necessity of Regeneration for Admission into God's Kingdom.
-Eternal Death the Inevitable Development of Spiritual Death at Birth.
-The New-Born Child a Fountain of Corruption and of Criminal Germs.
-All, by Nature, are the Children of Wrath.
-Grace Closes with the Close of this Life.
-"Now is the Accepted Time" implies a Time that is Not Accepted.
-No Ground for Believing in Another Trial after Death or any Termination of
Future Penalty.
-No Universalism, No Restorationism, No Annihilationism, No Conditional
Immortality, to be Found in the Bible.
-State of Remorse and Woe for Unbelievers at once after Death; a Fuller
Retribution at the Resurrection and Final Judgment.
-Degrees of Misery, as also of Glory, in the Future Life.
-According to Luther, the Wicked are not Finally Consigned to Hell until the
Last Day, but their Destiny is Determined at Death.
By Rev. JAMES LEGGE, D.D., Professor of
the Chinese Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, England, and
for
Thirty-four Years a Missionary among
the Chinese.
The Two Indigenous Religions of China,
Confucianism and Taoism.
-I. Confucianism.
-Primeval Belief, in China, of a Future State, and of Mutual Influence of
Embodied and of Departed Spirits.
-Offerings to the Dead.
-Power of the Dead over the Living.
-Good Spirits abide in the Presence of God.
-A Heaven but no Hell.
-Confucianists Know Nothing of Future Punishment.
-II. Taoism.
-Ancient Taoist Parables as to the State of the Dead.
-A Primeval Darwinism.
-Trans-rotation of Births.
-Modern Taoism affected by Buddhism.
-The Ten Courts of Purgatory.
-Recent Taoist Revelations concerning "the Everlasting Tortures of
Hell."
-Whence Derived?
-An Incident of Mission Work
By A. H. Lewis, D.D., Seventh-Day
Baptist, Editor of the Outlook and Sabbath Quarterly, Plainfield, N. J.
Future Punishment Based on Man's
Inherent Immortality.
-His Destiny Determined by his own Choices, and for which lie alone is
Responsible.
-As Man's Entity is Indestructible; so also are the Results and Consequences of
his Actions, and there can be no Annihilation of Either.
-All Punishment is Resultant, the Fruitage of Man's Independent Volition, and
is not of Divine Retaliation.
-The Gross Conceptions of a Physical Hell are clue to Paganism and the
Ignorance of the Middle Ages.
-Evil Actions and their Tendencies become Repetitious, Educative, Imperious,
Crystallized, and the Logical Outcome is therefore Inevitable The Struggle to
Escape from Old Choices and to Form Right Ones is Met by Divine Help and
Forgiveness of the Past.
-This Change is to be Made in the Present Life, Character being, so far as we
know, Irreversible at Death.
-The Messages of Christ are Invariably Addressed to Man in this Life, and Never
Beyond, Acceptance and Salvation being Here and Now
-Forgiveness is always Conditioned upon Repentance and
Obedience, as Required by Justice.
By Rev. DANIEL ALBRIGHT LONG, A.M.,
P.D., LL.D., President of Antioch College, "Christian," Yellow
Springs, Ohio.
No Pardon for the Impenitent Hereafter
ever Taught by Christ.
-Man Determines in this World what is to be his Condition in the Next
-The Property of Persistent Sin is to Intrench and Perpetuate Itself.
-Men who are without the Gospel are yet. Amenable to God's Law Implanted in the
Heart.
-Fear of Judgment is Inherent in Man's Moral Nature.
-Eternal Justice, and her Indefectible Necessity.
-God's Truth and Supreme Wisdom the only Oracle of Instruction on this Subject
-The Impenitent Man would be more Miserable in Heaven than in Hell.
-The Most Unwelcome of all the Tenets of Religion is, therefore, that of Future
Punishment.
-It was Held by the Early Church to be Endless.
-Not Remedial, nor Educative, nor Vindictive, but Vindicatory.
-Disobedience to God's Written Law Worse than that against the Light of Nature.
-The Doctrine of Eternal Retribution not to be Overthrown by False Philosophies
and Theologies, for it is Inwrought by God with the Human Reason
By Professor CHRISTOPHER E. LUTHARDT,
D.D., Ph.D., University of Leipzig, Germany.
The Language of Jesus Christ, in
Matthew 25, Involves many Propositions, among them these:-
1. There is a Final Judgment,
distinguished from the Judgments of History, which passes upon All Men, and
Knows but one Alternative, Salvation or Condemnation.-
2. The Consequences of this Doom are
Eternal.
-Attempts to Evade tins Awful Fact:
-(a) Restorationism; (b) Conditional Immortality.-
3. The Awards of it are according to
Conduct in the Bodily Life.-
4. The Final Judgment will be held by
Jesus Christ as Mediator between God and Man.
-Which Implies, 5, that Men will be Judged by their Conduct toward Christ
-But this Involves the Difficult Question, O, Concerning those who have never
heard of Christ in the Bodily Life.
-On this, the Scriptures leave us much in the Dark.
-Untenable Answers: (a) That the Gospel has actually been Preached in all the
World; (b) The General Witness of God to the Heathen; (c) the Preaching in
Hades.
-But on this Matter we must speak with Caution and Diffidence
By Rev. R. S. MAC-ARTHUR, D.D., Pastor
of the Calvary Baptist Church, New York, N. Y.
Universal Belief of Mankind that, in
the Future Life, Evil shall be Punished.
-All Nations and Religions Partake of this Belief.
-Character Constitutes the Man and Shapes and Decides his Final Destiny.
-It is a Law of Moral Gravitation, and not an Arbitrary Enactment, that
Punishment Follows Wrong-Doing.
-The Heathen, not knowing the Law or the Gospel, are Judged by Another
Standard.
-God's Revelation the All-Sufficient Authority for Believing that the Doom of
those who Reject Christ is one of Unutterable Wretchedness and Remorse.
-The Figures of Speech employed by Christ in Describing this were neither
Ill-Considered nor Deceptive.
-Cessation of Existence not Predicted as the Sinner's End, for Man's Soul
Partakes of God's Immortality, and therefore cannot be Annihilated.
-The Day of Probation may be over even before the Close of this Present Life,
whilst a Future Probation might only Enhance the Degree of Guilt Incurred and
its Consequences.
-God alone Knows the Infinite Odiousness and Disastrous Results of Sin in his
Moral Universe, and its Penal Deserts will be Determined by Him in Perfect
Wisdom and Love. 641
By His Eminence, The Most Rev. HENRY
EDWARD MANNING, D. D., Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster, England.
That there is a Son], Destined to
Survive the Body, is Witnessed,
I. by Reason and Nature.
-The Principle of Beason and Will is Independent of Matter, both in its
Existence and in its Activity.
-Being Simple, it is Indissoluble.
-This Conclusion of Reason is Confirmed by the Consciousness of Moral
Responsibility.
-II. The Common Sense of Mankind Affirms that a Personal Identity is to Survive
the Body.
-This Belief Pervaded the Consciousness of the Old World, Especially of Greece
and Rome, and did not Cease with the Advance in Culture; Exemplified in (a)
Aristotle and (b) Cicero.
-III. The Existence of the Soul and of a Future State, being part of the
Religion of Nature, are Confirmed and Guarded by the Catholic Church.
-The State of the Soul after Death is Eternally Fixed at Death, and is one
either of Happiness or of Misery.
-There is no Third State.
-Happiness is for those who die in Union with God, Pain is for those who die
Culpably Separated from God.
-God has not Revealed how be will Deal with those who have not Heard the
Gospel.
-But to say that Pagans, Jews, Heretics, and the like receive no Influx of
Grace, is contrary to the Catholic Faith.
- To All Men Grace is given Sufficient for Salvation.
By Rev. A, A. MINER, D.D., LL.D.,
Pastor of Columbus Avenue Universalist Church, Boston, Mass.
Mistaken Views of Scriptural Teaching
on this Subject
-Repudiation of the Commonly Held Opinion by the Universalist Church and
Others.
-Sectarianism, Tradition and Prejudice, and Distorted Interpretation, Arrayed
against the Manifest Trend of Scripture.
-The End of Law is Not Retribution, but Obedience.
-God's Righteousness, through Retribution in Part, will Secure Universal
Justice.
-Universal Justice is Universal Obedience.
-Universal Obedience is Universal Salvation.
-Just Retribution Secured by the Energy of the Moral Law Mingling with the
Operations of all Other Laws.
-Retribution is Fruitage, rather than Penalty Inflicted, the Bitterness Ceasing
when the Producing Cause is Removed.
-Moral Influences of God's Kingdom Operative in the Next World as in This, with
Every Conceivable Advantage to Sinlessness in the Former.
-Transforming Effect upon the Sinner, of the Light bursting upon him as he
Passes Beyond the Veil.
-The Earthly
Tabernacle, when Dissolved, is
Succeeded by the Heavenly.
By Rev. A. P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
The Dogma of Eternal Penal Suffering
too often Treated by Writers and Thinkers with Levity or Bigotry.
-Denial of the Doctrine by Origen, John Foster, Erskine, Stanley, Farrar, and
many other Eminent Scholars.
-The Solemn Impressiveness of the Subject has led their Minds to this
Conclusion.
-The Idea of Punishment in the Sense of Arbitrary Infliction by the Divine
Government not to be Thought of.
-In Human Governments such Infliction comes- Solely from the Necessity of
Social Self-Défense.
-Freedom from the Body and its Passions, by Death, is no Aid to Repentance and
Spiritual Renovation.
-The Full Identity and Continuity of the Soul and the Laws of its Moral Being
remain Undisturbed.
-God's Discipline, Loving, not Malignant, is Prolongedly and Severely Merciful.
-Christ's Wisdom in not foretelling all the Divine Plan.
-The Meaning of the word "Eternal," or "Everlasting," as
used by him, is "Age-Long," or "As Long as Sin Lasts."
-As in This Life, so in That Beyond, Suffering, in Accordance with God's
Purposes, may Exist until Sin is Purged Away, and Happiness is thus Finally
Attained
STANLEY LANE-POOLE. Member Of the
Asiatic Society, Anther of Picturesque Egypt, history at the Moors in Spain,
and other works.
Free Range of Arabian Imagination in
Depicting the Agonies of Hell, or " Gehenna."
-In this respect, Islam is the most Uncompromising Religion in the World.
-A Death-in-Life of Perpetual Torture.
-It is Purely Physical, not Mental, in its Hideous Nature and Demoniacal
Brutality.
-Questions and Answers at the Soul's Trial by the Black Angels.
-The Bed of Fire, the Hot Blasts, the Iron Clubs, and the Crawling Serpents.
-At the "Last Day," the "Blast of Consternation" is Sounded
and the whole Universe Shattered.
-After Forty Years, the "Last Trump„ Sounds, and all the Dead Arise and
Stand for Many Years Naked before God.
-The Wicked, their Brains Boiling like a Pot, Breathless, Suffocated, Maddened.
-Hell in Near View.
-The Fearful Bridge "Sirat," Finer than a Hair and Sharper than a
Sword.
-Gabriel himself, with Mighty Scales, Weighs the Deeds of All.
-The Angels ask, "Art Thou Full?" and Hell answers, "Are there
More?"
-The Burnings of the Wicked Cease Not and Destroy Not.
-They Burn into Coal, and God Revives them for Fresh Torments.
-Their Food, their Drink, and their Companions.
-Literal Truth of the Koran Maintained by all Scholars, Jurists, Philosophers,
and Authorities of Islam.
-The Torments thus awaiting all who Deny that Faith will be Eternal.
By C. W. PRICHARD, Minister in Friends'
Church, and Editor of the Christian Worker, Chicago, Ill.
Not Human Opinion but the Divine Word
alone the Source of Truth Concerning a Future Life.
-Christ Illustrates its Character, Definitely and Solemnly, by the Parable of
Lazarus and the Rich Man.
-Hades, as well as Heaven, a Place, not a State or Condition.
-The Individuality of their Inhabitants not Destroyed or Lost.
-Destiny, too, Unalterably Fixed by an Impassable Gulf.
-No Restoration from Hades to Heaven Possible.
-The Consciousness Shown to Exist After Death Forbids the Idea of
Soul-sleeping, or of Annihilation.
-Salvation is a Free Gift to Believers in Christ.
-For Refusing or Neglecting tins Gift, and Disbelief in Christ, Sinners are
" Turned into Bell."
-No Foundation for Doubting the Fact of Endless Punishment After Death.
-Duration of " Eternal Life" and of "Eternal Punishment"
set forth in Scripture Co-equally.
-Wresting of Holy Writ in Advocating Heresy.
-Rationalistic Character and Paralysing Effect of the Second Probation Theory,
and of the Denial of Eternal Punishment.
Prof. T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS, Ph.D., LL.D.,
of University College, London, Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society.
Fundamental Ideas of Buddhism as to
Finite Being: 1, It is Impermanent; 2, It is Painful; 3, It is only in a Limited
Sense Individual.
-The Doctrine of Karma.
-Man's Life is a Link in an Endless Chain of Causation Reaching Before and
After.
-These Three Ideas, of Impermanence, Painfulness, and Karma, Imply a Conception
Contradictory to the Western Notion of the Soul, which Involves Continuance of
Memory and Consciousness of Identity.
-Buddhism holds to a Future Retribution or Happiness or Sorrow, so far as
Consistent with Rejecting Personal Identity and a. Personal Lawgiver.
-The Joy of Heaven, being Transient, is Unworthy of the Desire of the
Converted, who Seek the Goal of Existence in Nirvana.
-Questions for the Study of Christian Theologians.
By Rev.
J. W. RICHARD, D.D., Protestor of Sacred Philology, in
the Lutheran Theological
Seminary, Springfield. Ohio.
Personal Faith is in Every Case
Absolutely Necessary to Salvation,
-Every Man will Receive according to his deeds, and the Relation of Sinners to Christ,
as well as their Consequent.
Fate, is in All Cases Self-Determined.
-Man's Immortality, and the Ceaseless Activity of the Soul, render the Future
of the Condemned one of Conscious Pain.
-No Annihilation or "Eternal Sleep of the Soul," nor is there
Redemption or Restoration for Sinners, in the World to Come.
-All Adults, and even little Children who have done no Actual Transgression,
are under Condemnation as Destitute of Original Righteousness.
-Eternal Condemnation rests alike upon Unbelieving Adults in Christian Lands,
and upon the Heathen Adults whose Ancestors Lost the gospel first Promulgated
in the Garden of Eden, and who Consciously Sin against the Law in their own
Hearts.
-Infants Baptized, or unbaptized, Not having Sinned against Law, are Not Cut
off from Salvation.
-The more Wickedly a Man has Lived, the more Severe the Torments he will have
to Endure,
-Hell is a Distinct Place, entirely
Dissociated from heaven.
By Rev. AUGUSTUS SCHUTZE, President of
the Moravian Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, Pa.
Physical Death does not End Conscious
Existence, but is a Birth into a World of Eternal Realities.
-It Alters the Surroundings but not the Character.
-The Final Judgment, which Declares the Future of Each and All, will not take
place until After the Resurrection.
-The Object of this General Judgment
-Between the Death of the Body and this Great Event is an Intermediate State.
-During this Interval, Christians are in Communion with their Saviour, their
Condition being that of a Quiet, Joyful Anticipation of Heaven.
-The Opposite State is that of the Unbeliever, passing as he does into a
Dungeon, which Gives him a Foretaste of Hell.
-No "Purgatory" for the Atonement of Sins, no "Second
Probation" for those who have Wilfully Rejected the Offer of Salvation.
-The Gospel of Christ will be made Known to All Men before the Final Judgment
and will constitute its Criterion.
-Christ himself, more than any Apostle, Inculcated and Impressed upon Men's
Minds the Certainty of Everlasting Punishment.
-The Cross of Christ is Found to be a more Powerful Incentive, both to Conversion
and Holiness, than the Fear of Damnation.
By Rev, JOSEPH T. SMITH, D.D., Late Moderator
of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Baltimore, Md,
All Souls are by Nature Immortal, and
at Death they Return Immediately to God.
-The Body also is Immortal, for Death is not Destruction.
-The Body and Soul Exist Apart during the Whole Period of the Intermediate
State, to be Reunited in the Resurrection Day.
-The Bodies of the Just are Raised to honour, and of the Unjust to Dishonour.
-No Loss of Personal Identity in any ease, and Individuality and Responsibility
are Unimpaired.
-All Souls at Death enter upon a Fixed and changing State of Eternal Happiness
or Eternal Misery, according to their Earthly knowledge and Character.
-All Elect Persons are Saved who are Incapable of being Outwardly Called by the
Ministry of the Word.
-Salvation Possible only in the Present Life and Time, is the Creed of the
Church Universal.
-Throughout the Old Testament, the World that now is and Present Judgment
always placed in the Foreground, and no Intimation of Salvation in the Grave.
-In the New Testament, the Lord of the Unseen World shows Irrefutably, by the
Parable of the Rich Man, the Impossibility of the Reclamation of the Lost in
Hades.
-The Duration of the Doom of the Wicked described by the Same Term as is
applied to the Blessedness of the Righteous and to God's Being, Attributes,
Dominion, and Glory.
By GEORGE GABRIEL STOKES, President of
the Royal Society, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and
M. P. for the University.
What Reason is there for Believing that
there will be any Future State at All?
-The Scientific Argument.
-The Moral Argument.
-The Scriptures Teach that Man has a Spiritual Nature, but not that he is by
Nature Immortal.
-Enigmas Solved by the Scriptural Account of the Fall and the Restitution.
-Immortality made Possible through the Redemption The Discriminations of the
Great Day, and Righting of All Unredressed Balances.
-The Benefits of Christ's Death Extend beyond those who in This Life have Known
of it.
-The Intermediate State between Death and Resurrection may be Regarded as a
State of Unconsciousness.
By Rev. N. SUMIERBELL. D. D., of the
"Christian" Church.
Modification of the Common Protestant
View, by the " Christian" Denomination.
-The Doctrine of Ceaseless Agony Not Accepted as Scriptural.
-Reason a Help in Judging of Revelation.
-God's Law of Life and Death.
-Sheol, Gehenna, and Tartarus employed as Figures of Illustration.
-Interpretation of Condemnatory Passages.
-Real Meaning of the " End" of the Wicked.
-The Unseen Beyond, between the Grave and the Resurrection.
-The Tartarus Theory of Torment Non-Christian. No Endless Life in Hell.
-The "Worm" that Dies Not is Not a Soul.
-Age-Lasting Significance of the Term.
-What is Logically Begotten by an Everlasting Gospel.
-The Eternity of Sorrow Not God's Plan.
-Cruelty Inconsistent with Divine Equity.
-The Wicked, After Judgment, May Utterly Perish.
-Sin Thus Brought to an End.
-An Intermediate State Precedes Access of Saints to the Highest Heaven.
-Final Struggle bet7een Satan and the Saints.
-Triumph, Under Christ's Lead, of Those who are Written in the Book of Life.
-Their Universal Ascription of Love, Glory, and Power to Him that Sits upon the
Throne, and to the Lamb Forever.
By Rev. DAVID SWING, Pastor of the
Independent Church, Chicago, Ill.
A Revelation Cannot Contain Any More
Light than what is Contained in the Human Rendering of its Language.
-Different Interpretations from the Time of Origen and Tertullian down to the
Andover School.
-No Specific Biblical Details, or Exact Statement, Descriptive of the Future
Life.
-The Problem is to be brought, therefore, to the Tribunal of both Scripture and
Reason.
-The Notion of Perdition that Sprang up, probably, After the First Century.
-Its Appalling Blackness and Blight Embraced, in Time, all Christian Homes and
Cities.
-Upright Moralists, Honest Doubters, as well as the Heathen, Doomed to Excruciating
and Endless Pains.
-Such a Horror should have Died in a Whisper at its First Utterance.
-Scripture Teaches Simply the Accountability of each Man at Last to his God.
-Eternity of Pain Not Necessarily Correlative with Eternity of Joy, God's
Nature being such that his Anger is More Easily Shortened than his Love.
-The Latter is Infinite and Universal, the Former is Temporary and Exceptional.
-Growing Amelioration of Former Dark and Vengeful Views.
-No Conceivable Motive for God's Transferring the Human Race to a World Less
Favourable to Morals and Happiness than This.
By Rev, T. De WITT TALMAGE, Pastor of
the Brooklyn, N. Y., Tabernacle, Presbyterian.
Not Human Assertions or Opinions, but
the Bible, Authoritatively Settles the Question here Discussed.
-The Absolute Truthfulness of that Source is the Ground for Believing in the
Doctrine of Future Punishment.
-It is such a Question of Imminent Personal Safety as Forbids all Lightsome
Criticism, or Cavilling, or Superficial Polemic Treatment.
-The Representations used by Christ himself, and by his Apostles, concerning
Future Retribution are Not Mere Similes or Metaphors, but Statements of the
Actual Horrors of Hell.
-God's Indignation and Wrath are as Emphatically Taught in the Scriptures as
his Love and Mercy.
-Twenty-eight Times is his Love there Spoken of, Sixty-one Times is his Anger
or Wrath Declared, and in Fifty-six Instances is the Reality of a Hell
Depicted.
-If Any One Makes that his Abode, he is a Suicide of his Own Immortal Soul.
-Every Reasonable Inducement is Set before Man, Urging him Heavenward.
-Soon the Road of Sin and Death will become Utterly Forsaken, void of any Traveller.
-In Future Centuries, it will be Matter of Amazement that any Man could Turn
his Back on God and Happiness
By Rev, WILLIAM J. R. TAYLOR, D.D.,
Pastor of Clinton Avenue Reformed Church, Newark, N. J.
Born in Sin, all are Children of Wrath,
and Must be Born Again, in order to Enter God's Kingdom.
-No Intervening "Purgatory" for the Purification of Imperfect
Believers.
-Deliverance through the Mediation and Grace of Christ, who Rendered
Satisfaction to Divine Justice for the Sins of the World.
-Value of the Church's Sacramental Offices, Creeds, Liturgies, Songs, etc.
-The Bible, the Source and Authority relied upon for Doctrinal Light and Truth.
-Christ's Prophetic Revelation of the Last Judgment no Word-Picture or Poetic
Description.
-The Scriptural "Death of the Soul" is its State of Alienation from
God.
-Punishment, whether in the Constitution of Human or Divine Assizes, not
Remedial or "Reformatory," consequently there is no Restoration from
Hell.
-The Closing Act in the World's Tragic History, as Portrayed by Christ Himself,
Declares the Irreversible and Endless Doom of Some, and there the Curtain
Falls.
-A New Enthusiasm, the "Enthusiasm of Rescue," Needed in the Church,
emphasizing the Fact that Perdition is as Real as Salvation.
By Rev, H. W. THOMAS, D.D., Pastor of
the People's Church, Chicago, III.
Old Beliefs are, in the Progress of
Thought and Knowledge, being Modified and Improved, or Abandoned.
-This is Especially the Case concerning the Punishment of Souls after Death.
-Future Torments, like President Edwards's Fiery Oven, Wesley's Burning Limbs,
Spurgeon's "asbestos-like body" unconsumable in Hell's Flames, etc.,
less acceptable than formerly.
-They are Terrible Caricatures, and Blasphemous Imputations upon the Character
of a Good God.
-Though Yielding in some degree the point of Character and Intensity, the
Endlessness of Future Woe is Still Adhered to.
-The Deep, Dark Line is also Drawn at the Moment of Death,
-Fled Jesus Christ intended to Teach such Punishment, there were Greek Words in
Abundance, that, so far as Words can Go, would have Placed the Subject Beyond
Doubt, but he Did Not Use Theirs.
-Future but Not Endless Punishment Taught by Christ.
-In the End, however, Existence will Prove a Blessing, and Not a Curse, to All
Souls.
By Rev. CHARLES F. TWING, Pastor of
Plymouth Church, Congregational, Minneapolis, Minn.
Reasons for Rejecting Six of the Seven
Theories held on this Subject.
-It is Not Denied, however, that of Each of These Something may be Said in Favour.
-On the other hand, it is Not to be Asserted that no Arguments can be brought
Against the Orthodox View.
-No Sinner will be Punished for the Exterior Evil Conditions of his Life, nor
for Another's Sin, nor for Vicious Appetites, not Self-Originated, nor for
Innate Tendencies.
-For the Sins of Heredity and of Previous Generations, Man Suffers by the
Operation of Natural, not Punitive, Law.
-One's Own Acts Alone Punishable, and this According to the Degree of Conscious
and Avoidable Guilt.
-Individuality, in all Cases, Survives the Resurrection, and Determines One's
Condition and Experiences in the other World.
-All the Lost are not Involved in one Common Condition of Punishment
-The Erroneous Tendency to Emphasize the Indiscriminate Severity of Punishment,
in Quantity and Quality.
-Much of the Current Disbelief or Unbelief in Future Retribution Due to this
Wrong Conception.
-The Number of the Saved Unspeakably Greater than of the Lost.
-The Few in the Narrow Way and the Many in the Broad was True of Christ's Time,
but Not of the Present Age.
By the Rev. EDWARD WHITE, Professor of
Homiletics in New College, London, lately Chairman of the Congregational Union
of England and Wales.
Current Traditionary Doctrine
Concerning the Eternal Suffering of the Unsaved Masses of Mankind, Contrasted
with the Biblical Doctrine of the Destruction of the Unsaved, and of
Immortality only through Christ
-The Biblical Doctrine as Enunciated by Christ.
-Natural Immortality of the Soul Distinguished from Survival of the Soul.
-Summary of Argument for Immortality through Christ:-
1, Natural Immortality is Taught
neither by Reason, nor by Primeval Tradition, nor by Revelation.-
2. Natural Immortality is Denied by the
Scriptures, both Implicitly and Expressly.-
3. The Scriptural Doctrine of
Redemption is in Agreement with the Idea that Immortality is the Gift of God
through Regeneration, and with no other Idea.
-This Appears (a) in the Nature of Christ; (b) in the Nature of Justification; (c)
in the Prominence given to Regeneration; and (d) to Resurrection.
-I The Practical Results of the Doctrine of Life in Christ, both in Christian
and in Heathen Lands, Confirm the Conclusions thus Reached.
Opinions
of former ages of the Christian church concerning future punishment, in the
language of representative writers.
JUSTIN MARTYR-A. D. circ. 100-165?
[THE
writings of this author represent the general agreement of Christian believers
on this subject, up to his day. Whatever important doctrinal differences
prevailed in the Church at that time related to other subjects, especially to
the second coming of Christ. The quotations from Justin and the other writers
in the first Patristic period are taken from the translations in Clark's
Ante-Nicene Library.]
[THE writings of this author represent the
general agreement of Christian believers on this subject, up to his day.
Whatever important doctrinal differences prevailed in the Church at that time
related to other subjects, especially to the second coming of Christ. The
quotations from Justin and the other writers in the first Patristic period are
taken from the translations in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library.] And that no one
may say what is said by those who are deemed philosophers, that our assertions
that the wicked are punished in eternal fire are big words and bugbears, and
that we wish men to live virtuously through fear, awl not because such a life
is good and pleasant: I will briefly reply to this, that if this be not so, God
does not exist; or if he exist he cares not for men, and neither virtue nor
vice is anything, and, as we said before, lawgivers unjustly punish those who transgress
good commandments. But since these are not unjust and their Father teaches them
by the word to do the same things as himself, they who agree with them are not
unjust-Apologia, ii., O.
And Plato in like manner used to say that
Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked who came before them; and we say
that the same thing will be clone, but at the hand of Christ, and upon the
wicked in the same bodies united again to their spirits, which are now to
undergo everlasting punishment; and not only, as Plato said, for a period of a
thousand years.-Apologia, i., 8.
[Justin has sometimes been erroneously cited,
with others of the Fathers, as favouring the theory of annihilation.
The
Fathers not unfrequently argue against the belief that the soul is
self-existent; and in opposition to such a theory they affirm that the soul,
like every other creation of God, is upheld by divine power, and will continue
to exist as long as he shall choose to maintain it in being. Remarks of this
kind have been construed as indicating the belief that the souls of the wicked
will one day cease to be. For instance the following passage:-]
The Fathers not unfrequently argue against the
belief that the soul is self-existent; and in opposition to such a theory they
affirm that the soul, like every other creation of God, is upheld by divine power,
and will continue to exist as long as he shall choose to maintain it in being.
Remarks of this kind have been construed as indicating the belief that the
souls of the wicked will one day cease to be. For instance the following
passage:-] Trypho. Those philosophers know nothing then about these things; for
they cannot tell what a soul is.
Justin. It does not appear so.
Trypho. Nor ought it to be called immortal;
for if it is immortal, it is plainly unbegotten.2-Dial. with Trypho, ch. 5.
[But
the context of the very passage appears to exclude this construction.]
[But the context of the very passage appears
to exclude this construction.] Trypho. But I do not say indeed that all souls
die, for that were truly a piece of good fortune to the evil. What then 1 The
souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the unjust and
wicked are in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment. Thus some which have
appeared worthy of God never die; but others are punished so long as God wills
them to exist and to be punished. . .
Justin. For this reason souls both die and are
punished: since if they were unbe-gotten, they would neither sin nor be filled
with folly, nor be cowardly, and again ferocious; nor would they willingly
transform into swine and serpents and dogs: and it would not indeed be just to
compel them if they be unbegotten.-Ibid.
Wherefore God delays causing the confusion and
destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and men
shall cease to exist, because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they
are the cause of preservation in nature.* . .
*This
is Dr. Donaldson's rendering of a clause on winch scholars differ both as to
reading and rendering.
But since God in the beginning made the race
of angels and men with free-will, they will justly suffer in eternal fire the
punishment of whatever sins they have com-mitted.-Apol., ii., 7.
But we will not receive it (i.e., the
salvation of the Gentiles) of all your nation since we know from Isaiah [00:
24] that the members of those who have transgressed shall be consumed by the
worm and unquenchable fire, remaining immortal; so that they become a spectacle
to all flesh.-Trypho, Ch. 130.
And that he [Satan] would be sent into the
fire with his host, and the men who follow him, and would be punished for an
endless duration, Christ foretold.-Apol., i., 28.
IRENEAUS-A. D. 120-202
[This
writer has also been interpreted by some as favouring the doctrine of
annihilation. But the following passage seems to indicate the contrary.]
[This writer has also been interpreted by some
as favouring the doctrine of annihilation. But the following passage seems to
indicate the contrary.] Inasmuch then as in both Testaments there is the same
righteousness of God [displayed] when God takes vengeance, in the one case
indeed typically, temporarily, and more moderately, but in the other really,
enduringly, and more rigidly: for the fire is eternal and the wrath of God
which shall be revealed from Heaven from the face of our Lord entails . . . a
heavier punishment on those who incur it,-the elders pointed out that those men
are devoid of sense who, [arguing] from what had happened to those who formerly
did not obey God, do Endeavor to bring in another Father, setting over against
[these punishments] what great things the Lord had clone at his coming to save
those who received him, taking compassion upon them; while they keep silence
with regard to his judgment, and all those things which shall come upon such as
have heard his words, but have clone them not, and that it were better for them
if they had not been born [Matt., 20: 24], and that it shall be more tolerable
for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment than for that city which did not receive
the word of his disciples [Matt., 10: 15]. -Adv. Haer., iv., 28, 1.
And to as many as continue in their love
towards God, does he grant communion with him. But communion with God is life
and light, and the enjoyment of all the benefits which he has in store. But on
as many as according to their own choice depart from God, he inflicts that
separation from himself which they have chosen of their own accord. But separation
from God is death, and separation from light is darkness; and separation from
God consists in the loss of all the benefits which he has in store. Those,
therefore, who cast away by apostasy these forementioned things, being in fact
destitute of all good, do experience every kind of punishment. God, however,
does not punish them immediately of himself, but that punishment falls upon
them because they are destitute of all that is good. Now good things are
eternal and without end with God, and therefore the loss of these is also
eternal and never ending. It is in this matter just as occurs in the case of a
flood of light: those who have blinded themselves, or have been blinded by
others, are forever deprived of the enjoyment of light. It is not [however] that
the light has inflicted upon them the penalty of blindness, hut it is that the
blindness itself has brought calamity upon them.-Adv. Haer., v., 27, 2.
And this same thing does the Lord also say in
the gospel to those who are found upon the left hand " Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, which my Father bath prepared for the devil and
his angels " (Matt., 25: 41); [This reading of Irenaeus agrees with that
of the Codex Beza at Cambridge.] indicating that eternal fire was not
originally prepared for man, but for him who beguiled man and caused him to
offend; . . . which [fire] indeed they too shall justly feel who like him
persevere in works of wickedness, without repentance, and without retracing
their steps.-Adv. Haer., iii., 23, 3.
MINUCIUS FELIX-circ. A. D. 300.
[The
nature of the penal fire.]
[The nature of the penal fire.] There [in
hell] the intelligent fire burns the limbs and restores them, feeds on them and
nourishes them. As the fires of the thunderbolts strike upon the bodies, and do
not consume them; as the fires of Mount /Etna and Mount Vesuvius, and of
burning lands everywhere, glow, but are not wasted; so that penal fire is not
fed by the waste of those who burn, but is nourished by the unexhausted eating
away of their bodies.
But that they who know not God are deservedly
tormented as impious, as unrighteous persons, no one, except a profane man,
hesitates to believe, since it is not less wicked to be ignorant of than to
offend the Parent of all, and the Lord of all.-Octavius, 35.
TERTULLIAN-A. D. cire. 150-216.
[This
extract is one of the earliest examples of a certain spirit and temper in the
contemplation of the subject, of which there are many manifestations in later
writers.. It is taken from Gibbon's translation.]
[This extract is one of the earliest examples
of a certain spirit and temper in the contemplation of the subject, of which
there are many manifestations in later writers.. It is taken from Gibbon's
translation.] At that greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal
judgment, how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold
so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many
magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the
Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their
deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own
sufferings; se many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish than ever before
from applause.-De Spectaculis, xxx.
[Suggestion
of an Intermediate State (Hades) and of purgatorial discipline therein.]
[Suggestion of an Intermediate State (Hades)
and of purgatorial discipline therein.] You have a treatise by us, De Paradiso
[not extant], in which we have established the position that every soul is
detained in safe-keeping in Hades until the day of the Lord.-De Anima, lv.
In short, inasmuch as we understand the prison
pointed out in the gospel to lie Hades, and as we also interpret the uttermost
farthing to mean the very smallest offense which has to be atoned for there
before the resurrection [Matt. 5:25, 26], no one will hesitate to believe that
the soul undergoes in Hades sonic compensatory discipline without prejudice to
the full process of the resurrection when the recompense will be administered
through the flesh besides.-Ibid, lviii.
CYPRIAN-circ. A. D. 200-258.
[The
extract seems to foreshadow the doctrine, so often since held, of the delight
of the saved in the sufferings of the lost. The writer was a disciple of
Tertullian.]
[The extract seems to foreshadow the doctrine,
so often since held, of the delight of the saved in the sufferings of the lost.
The writer was a disciple of Tertullian.] What will then be the glory of faith?
what the punishment of faithlessness? When the day of judgment shall come, what
joy of believers, what sorrow of unbelievers; that they should have been
unwilling to believe here, and now they should be unable to return that they
might believe! An ever burning Gehenna will burn up the condemned and a
punishment devouring with living flames; nor will there be any source whence at
any time they may have either respite or end to their torments. Souls with
their bodies will be reserved in infinite tortures for suffering. Thus the men
will forever be seen by us who here gazed upon us for a season; and the short
joy of those cruel eyes in the persecutions that they made for us will be
compensated by a perpetual spectacle, according to the truth of Holy Scripture
which says, " Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be
quenched and they shall be for a vision to all flesh." (Is., 66: 24). . .
, The pain of punishment will then be without the fruit of penitence; weeping
will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late they will believe in eternal
punishment. -Adv. Demetr., xxiv.
[Arnobius
(circ. A. D. 308) is hardly to be quoted as a representative of his age. He held
it as an individual opinion that the soul gains immortality by perseverance in
goodness, and that consequently the wicked go out of being. But his more
distinguished pupil, next quoted, is very explicit in the contrary sense.]
LACTANTIUS-d.
A. D. circ. 312.
If the soul, which has its origin from God,
gains the mastery, it is immortal, and lives in perpetual light; if, on the
other hand, the body shall overpower the soul and subject it to its dominion,
it is in everlasting darkness and death. And the force of this is not that it
altogether annihilates the souls of the unrighteous, but subjects them to
everlasting punishment. We term that punishment the second death, which is
itself also perpetual, as also is immortality. We thus define the second death:
Death is the suffering of eternal pain; or thus: Death is the condemnation of
souls for their deserts to eternal punishments. Instit., 2: 13.
[The
most important divergence from the ordinary doctrine in the first three
centuries is found in the Alexandrian theologians, Clement and Origen.]
[The most important divergence from the
ordinary doctrine in the first three centuries is found in the Alexandrian
theologians, Clement and Origen.]
CLEMENT
OF ALEXANDRIA-circ. A. D. 200.
[Punishment
aims at the sinner's own good.]
[Punishment aims at the sinner's own good.]
The general of an army by inflicting fines and corporeal punishment with chains
and time extremist disgrace on offenders, and sometimes even punishing
individuals with death, aims at good, doing so for the admonition of the
officers under him.
Thus also he who is our great General, the
Word, the Commander-in-chief of the universe, by admonishing those who throw
off the restraints of his law, that he may effect their release from the slavery,
error, and captivity of the adversary, brings them peacefully to the sacred
concord of citizenship. . . .
Plato, who had learned from this source [i.e.
Moses], says beautifully: "For all who suffer punishment are in reality
treated well, for they are benefited, since the spirit of those who are justly
punished is improved." . . .
Now hatred of evil attends the good man, hi
virtue of his being in nature good. Wherefore I will grant that he punishes the
disobedient (for punishment is for the good and advantage of him who is
punished, for it is the correction of a refractory subject); but I will not
grant that he wishes to take vengeance. Revenge is retribution for evil;
imposed for the advantage of him who takes the revenge. He will not desire us
to take revenge who teaches us to " pray for those that despitefully use
us." . . .
But it is not inconsistent with the saving
word to administer rebuke dictated by solicitude. For this is the medicine of
the divine love to man by which the blush of modesty breaks forth and shame at
sin supervenes.
For if one must censure, it is necessary also
to rebuke, when it is the time to wound the apathetic soul, not mortally but salutary,
securing exemption from everlasting death by a little pain.-Pced., i., 9.
On the other hand, he [God] is in no respect
whatever the cause of evil. For all things are arranged with a view to the
salvation of the universe by the Lord of the universe, both generally and
particularly. . . . Now everything that is virtuous changes for the better. . .
. But necessary corrections through the goodness of the great overseeing Judge,
both by the attendant angels, and by various acts of anticipative judgment, and
by the perfect judgment, compel egregious sinners to repent. -Stromata, vii.,
2.
ORIGEN-circ. A. D. 185-circ. 254.
[This writer holds, with Clement, that all
will finally be restored to holiness. It is important to observe the connection
of this belief with other parts of his system. He held that the will does not
lose its mutable quality, or issue in that permanence of character which is an
essential idea in the Augustinian anthropology. Original sin lie explained on
the supposition of a pre-existence of souls (a doctrine derived from Platonism)
and of a moral fall prior to birth.
In his
work on the fundamental principles of Christianity he discusses this subject at
length. Only much abbreviated extracts can be given.]
In his work on the fundamental principles of
Christianity he discusses this subject at length. Only much abbreviated
extracts can be given.] These subjects indeed are treated by us with great
solicitude and caution, in the manner rather of an investigation and discussion
than in that of fixed and certain decision. . . .
The end of the world, then, and the final
consummation will take place when everyone shall be subjected to punishment for
his sins; a time which God alone knows, when he will bestow on each one what he
deserves. We think indeed that the good-ness of God, through his Christ, may
recall all his creatures to one end, even his enemies being conquered and
subdued. . . .
But those who have been removed from their
primal state of blessedness have not been removed irrecoverably, but have been
placed under the rule of those holy and blessed orders which we have described;
and by availing themselves of the aid of these, and being remoulded by salutary
principles and discipline, they may recover themselves, and be restored to
their condition of happiness. From all which I am of opinion, so far as I can
see, that this order of the human race has been appointed in order that in the
future world, or in ages to come, whenever there shall be the new heavens and
the new earth spoken of by Isaiah, it may be restored to that unity promised by
the Lord Jesus in his prayer to God the Father on behalf of his disciples:
" I do not pray for these alone, but for all who shall believe on me
through their word: that 38 they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and
I in thee, that they also may be one in us." (Jno., 17: 20, 21.) . . .
But whether any of these orders who act under
the government of the devil, and obey his wicked commands, will in a future
world be converted to righteousness because of their possessing the faculty of
freedom of will, or whether persistent and inveterate wickedness may be changed
by the power of habit into nature, is a result which you yourself, reader, may
approve of, if neither in these present worlds which are seen and temporal, nor
in those which are unseen and are eternal, that portion is to differ wholly
from the final unity and fitness of things.. But in the mean time, both in
those temporal worlds which are seen, as well as in those eternal worlds which
are invisible, all those beings are arranged according to a regular plan, in
the order and degree of their merits; so that some of them in the first, others
in the second, some even in the last, times, after having undergone heavier and
severer punishments, endured for a lengthened period, and for many ages, so to
speak, improved by this stern method of training, and restored at first by the
instruction of the angels, and subsequently by the powers of a higher grade,
and thus advancing through each stage to a better condition, reach even to that
which is invisible and eternal, having travelled through, by a kind of
training, every single office of the heavenly powers. From which I think this
will appear to follow as an inference, that every rational nature may, in
passing from one order to another, go through each to all, and advance from all
to each, while made the subject of various degrees of proficiency and failure
according to its own actions and endeavours, put forth in the enjoyment of its
power of freedom of will.-De Princip 1, 6, 1,
ff.
We find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire
with which each one is punished is described as his own; for he says: "
Walk in the light of your own fire, and in the flame which ye have
kindled." By these words it seems to be indicated that every sinner kindles
for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire which
has been already kindled by another, or was in existence before himself. Of
this fire the fuel and food are our sins, which are called by the Apostle Paul
wood, hay, and stubble (1 Cor., 3: 12). And I think that as abundance of food
and provisions of a contrary kind and amount breed fevers in the body, and
fevers too of a different sort and duration, according to the proportion in
winch the collected poison supplies material and fuel for disease . .; so when
the soul has gathered together a multitude of evil works, and an abundance of
sins against itself, at a suitable time, all that assembly of evils boils up to
punishment, and is set on fire to chastisements. . . .
Another species of punishment may be
understood to exist; because as we feel that when the limbs of the body are
loosened and torn away from their mutual supports there is produced pain of a
most excruciating kind, so, when the soul shall be found to be beyond the
order, connection, and harmony in which it was created by God for the purposes
of good and useful action and observation, and not to harmonize with itself in
the connection of its rational movements, it must be deemed to bear the
chastisement and torture of its own dissension, and to feel the punishments of
its own disordered condition. And when this dissolution and rending asunder of
soul shall have been tested by the application of fire, a solidification
undoubtedly into a firmer structure will take place, and a restoration be
effected.
There are also many other things which escape
our notice, and are known to him alone who is the physician of our souls. . . .
To understand now that in the same way in
which physicians apply remedies to the sick, in order that by careful treatment
they may recover their health, God so deals towards those who have lapsed and
fallen into sin, is proved by this, that the cup of God's fury is ordered
through the agency of the prophet Jeremiah (cf. 25: 15, 10) to be offered to
all nations, that they may drink it, and be in a state of madness, and vomit it
forth. In doing which he threatens them, saying that if any one refuse to drink
he shall not be cleansed (cf. Jer., 25:28, 29). By which certainly it is
understood that the fury of God's vengeance is profitable for the purgation of
souls-De Princip., ii., 10, 4.
[The
two following extracts are taken from Origen's work "Against Celsus,"
a defence of Christianity.] Observe now here at the very beginning, how in
ridiculing the doctrine of a conflagration of the world, . . he [Celsus] would
make us, "representing God as it were a cook," hold the belief in a
general conflagration, not perceiving that . . it is a purificatory fire which
is brought upon the world and probably also on each one of those who stand in
need of chastisement by the fire, and of healing at the same time, seeing it
burns indeed, but does not consume, those who are without a material body which
needs to be consumed by that fire, and which burns and consumes those who by
their actions, words, and thoughts have built up wood or hay or stubble in that
which is figuratively termed a building (cf. 1 Cor., 3:12). . . .
But that, we say, God brings upon the world,
not like a cook, but like a God, who is the benefactor of them who stand in
need of a discipline of fire, will be testified by the prophet Isaiah in whose
writings it is related that a sinful nation was thus addressed: "Because
thou halt coals of fire, sit upon them, they shall be to thee a help (cf. Is., 47:
14, 15).:Now the Scripture is appropriately adapted to the multitudes of those
who are to peruse it, because it speaks obscurely of things that are sad and
gloomy in order to terrify those who cannot by any other means be saved from
the flood of their sins, although even then the attentive reader will clearly
discover the end that is to be accomplished by these sad and painful
punishments upon those who endure them. It is sufficient however for the
present to quote the words of Isaiah. " For my name's sake will I show
mine anger, and my glory will I bring upon thee, that I may not destroy
thee" (cf. Is., 48: 9, Septuagint).
We have thus been under the necessity of
referring in obscure terms to questions not fitted to the capacity of simple
believers, who require a simpler instruction in words, that we might not appear
to leave unrefuted the accusation of Celsus, that God introduces the fire
[which is to destroy the world], as if he were a cook.-Against Celsus, 5: 15.
But the remarks which might be Made on this
topic are neither to be made to all nor to be uttered on the present occasion;
for it is not unattended with danger to commit to writing the explanation of
such subjects, seeing the multitude need no further instruction than that which
relates to the punishment of sinners; while to ascend beyond this is not
expedient for the sake of those who are with difficulty restrained, even by
fear of eternal punishment, from plunging into any degree of wickedness, and
into the flood of evils which result from sin.-Against Celsus,: 20.
[During
this period there is more dissent from the prevalent doctrine of endless
punishment. The first writer to be quoted, perhaps the most eminent of the
ancient Greek theologians, expresses himself distinctly on the side of
universal restoration.]
[During this period there is more dissent from
the prevalent doctrine of endless punishment. The first writer to be quoted,
perhaps the most eminent of the ancient Greek theologians, expresses himself
distinctly on the side of universal restoration.]
GREGORY
OF NYSSA-A. D. 331-370?
Let
there be granted that a certain vase was made of clay; that this however was
filled by fraud and on the sly with molten lead; that the lead moreover had
hard- cued after it had been poured in, and so remained that it could not be
poured out; that the master however desired to preserve the vase; since however
he had the skill of the potter, he broke the vase with the lead and then formed
the vase over again into its former shape for his own use, emptied of the
matter which had been put into it. So then when a sin has been introduced into
that part of us which is endowed with sensation (for I call that so which is in
the body), the potter of our vase, having broken up the material which had
received the sin, will make up the vase again through the resurrection, unmixed
with its opposite and will restore it to the beauty which it had in the
beginning. . . .
Since in truth it is necessary that the stains
which have taken seat in him, being begotten in him by sin, should be removed
by some medium; therefore in the present life indeed the remedy of virtue must
be applied for curing these wounds. But if this cannot be, the cure is reserved
to the future life. But just as in the body there are certain different kinds
of diseases of which some indeed more easily, but some only with difficulty,
admit of cure, in which both cuttings and cauterizing’s and bitter medicines
are applied for removing the disease which is seated in the body; sonic such
thing also judgment declares will be in the future for curing the disease of
the mind, which indeed threatens the wicked and foolish and portends heavy and
severe sufferings, that by the fear of harsh and bitter things which are to be
visited upon us, we are to be chastised and instructed to the fleeing from sin.
.
For just as those who remove nails and warts,
which are born upon the body contrary to nature, by cutting and burning, apply
the remedy to him whom they treat in kindness yet not without pain, but not
however to the harm of him who suffers it; so also whatever superfluous callous
growths have been nourished in our minds which have been rendered carnal
through contact with disturbing influences, are cut off at the time of
judgment, and rubbed away by the unspeakable wisdom and virtue of that One who
heals those who are sick; as it is said i? the gospel, for there is no need, it
says, of a physician for the whole but for the sick.-Oratio Catech., ch. viii.
[He is
speaking, in one of his Orations, of those who have not been baptized in this
world.]
GREGORY
OF NAZIANZEN-circ. A. D. 320-300
[He is
speaking, in one of his Orations, of those who have not been baptized in this
world.] Many will perhaps first at that time be baptized by fire, which is the
last baptism and more severe and enduring, and destroys matter like hay and
consumes all frivolity of vice.-Orat., xxxix., 10.
I know of a purifying fire which Christ has
come to kindle on earth; this fire has the power to eradicate matter and all
evil propensities. . . I know also of a fire which does not purify but punishes
. . . which is connected with the worm that never dies, and which cannot be
extinguished, but perpetuates itself for evil doers. For all this has the power
to destroy and bring to an end, unless indeed [a view which Gregory seems
himself to prefer] it please one to think of this fire too as salutary and
worthy of him who punishes.-Orat., xl., 36.
LACTANT1US-d. A. D. 312.
[Of the resurrection bodies of the wicked, and
the nature of hell-fire. The points of contrast between this Latin writer
(already cited, p. 30, in contradiction of his master, Arnobius) and the Greek
writers just quoted, are very notable.] But, however, the sacred writings
inform us in what manner the wicked are to undergo punishment. For because they
have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh that
they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with
which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible and
abiding forever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting
lire, the nature of winch is different from this fire of ours, which we use for
the necessary purposes of life, and which is extinguished unless it be
sustained by the fuel of some material. But that divine fire always lives by
itself and flourishes without any nourishment; nor has it any smoke mixed with
it, but it is pure and liquid and fluid, after the manner of water. For it is
not urged upwards by any force as our fire, which the taint of the earthly
body, by which it is held, and smoke intermingled compels to leap forth, and to
fly upwards to the nature of heaven with a tremulous movement.
The same divine fire therefore, with one and
the same force and power, will both burn the wicked and will form them again,
and will replace as much as, it will consume of their bodies, and will supply
itself with eternal nourishment, which the poets transferred to the vulture of
Tityus. Thus without any wasting of bodies, which regain their substance, it
will only burn and affect them with a sense of pain.-Instit., vii., 21.
(Clark's Ante-Nicene Library.)
· to
elevate mankind to a higher stage of being than that on which he stood or which
was possible to him as a descendant of Adam. Beyond its negative effect, the
work of Christ, the second Adam, conferred a positive good, by lifting up the
race to a higher destination. And this work would eventually take effect on
all.]
[The next two writers are the great
representatives of the Antioch school of theology of that age. They hold the
restorationist view. In their theology, the Incarnation was not only for the
deliverance of man from sin, but its design and effect were · to elevate
mankind to a higher stage of being than that on which he stood or which was
possible to him as a descendant of Adam. Beyond its negative effect, the work
of Christ, the second Adam, conferred a positive good, by lifting up the race
to a higher destination. And this work would eventually take effect on all.]
DIODORE
OF TARSUS-d. A. D. 394.
A perpetual reward is prepared for the good on
account of their labours and the right justice and equity of the Rewarder; but
the punishment of the unjust is nevertheless not perpetual, nor shall the
immortality prepared for them be made useless to them, but they may be tortured
for a short time, according to the merit and measure of their sin and impiety,
and according to the amount of Malice in their works. They shall then suffer
pain and torment for a short time, but the happiness of immortality which shall
have no end shall remain for them. Indeed, if the rewards of good works are so
surpassing, how much could the length of eternity prepared for them exceed the
length of time of the limited strife’s in the career of the present age; the
punishments indeed which are to be inflicted for the many and weighty crimes
shall be far exceeded by the greatness of compassion. It is not then for the
good, so far as this is concerned, that the grace of the Resurrection is
reckoned, but even for the wicked. For the grace of God honours the good indeed
munificently and freely; but pitifully and mercifully does he determine the
torments of the wicked-In Asseman. Bibl. Orient., Vol. III., p. 823.
THEODORE OF MOPSITESTIA-sire. A. D. 350-428.
In the world to come those who have chosen
good things shall with praise receive the fruit of their good works: but the
wicked who have done wrong throughout their life, after great and fearful
punishments, shall come to their senses, and choosing the good, not among the
good, but among the wicked, since they have sinned, shall learn to hold
themselves steadfast, and in this way shall obtain a knowledge of the blessed
doctrine of the fear of God, having learned to believe in it with a good will.
Then at last they shall merit the enjoyment of the divine liberality. For he
would never have said, "Until thou shalt return the last farthing,"
unless it had been possible that it should be clone; that removing the
punishment of sin we should be set free from them. Neither would he have said,
" He shall be beaten with many stripes and he shall be beaten with few
stripes," if there was no end to the infliction when men had. suffered a
punishment commensurate with their sin.-in Assenion. Bibl. Orient., III., 323.
[These
views, which coincide in some degree with those of Origen, fell under the disfavour
and proscription levied against Origen's philosophy and theology by Jerome and
others. Augustine strenuously defended the doctrine of endless punishment,
though in the face of many dissentients in his time. The importance of his
position in the history of doctrine justifies copious extracts from his
writings. The quotations are from the translation published by T. & T.
Clark.]
AUGUSTINE-A.
D. 353-430.
I must now enter the list of amicable
controversy with those tender-hearted Christians who decline to believe that
any or that all of those whom the infallibly just Judge may pronounce worthy of
the punishment of hell, shall suffer 'eternally, and who suppose that they
shall. be delivered after a fixed term of punishment, longer or shorter
according to the amount of each man's sins. . . . Which opinion if it is good
and true because it is merciful will be so much the better and truer in
proportion as it becomes more merciful. Let then this fountain of mercy be
extended and flow forth even to the lost angels, and let them also be set free
at least after as many and long ages as seem fit. . .
It behooves us [then] to inquire why the
Church has not been able to tolerate [this] idea. . . . For so many holy men .
. . did not grudge to angels of any rank or character that they should enjoy
the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom after being cleansed by suffering, but
rather they perceived that they could not invalidate the divine sentence . . .:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- pared for the
devil and his angels" (Matt., 25: 41). . . And there is also that declaration
in the Apocalypse, "The devil was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, . . . and [he] shall be tormented day and night for ever" (Rev.,
20: 10), In the former passage " everlasting "is used, in the latter,
" forever "; and by these words Scripture is wont to mean nothing else
than endless duration. . . . And if this be so, how can it be believed that all
men, or even some, shall be withdrawn from the endurance of punishment after
some time has been spent in it? How can this be believed without enervating our
faith in the eternal punishment of the devils? . . .
Then what a fond fancy is it to suppose that
eternal punishment means long continued punishment, while eternal life means
life without end, since Christ in the very same passage spoke of both in
similar terms in one and the same sentence, "These shall go away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal!" (Matt. 25: 40.)
If both destinies are " eternal " then we must either understand both
as long continued but at last terminating, or both as endless. . . .
And this reasoning is equally conclusive
against those who in their own interest, but under the guise of a greater
tenderness of spirit., . . . . assert that these words are true, not because
men shall suffer those things which are threatened by God, but because they
deserve to suffer them. For God, they say, will yield them to the prayers of
His saints. . .
[Here
follows a long argument to show that if we can pray the wicked out we can also
pray out the devils.]
[Here follows a long argument to show that if
we can pray the wicked out we can also pray out the devils.] But we must not
pray for the devils, as we know it is impossible for them to repent, while the
Church prays for sinners and enemies, because it does not know that they cannot
repent. And this is also the reason why . . . she does not even in this world
pray for the unbelieving and godless who are dead. For some indeed prayer . .
is heard; but it is for those who, having been regenerated in Christ, did not
spend their life so wickedly that they are to be judged unworthy of such
compassion, nor so well that they can be considered to have no need of it. As
also after the resurrection there will be some of the dead to whom, after they
have endured the pains proper to spirits of the dead, mercy shall be accorded,
and acquittal from the punishment of eternal fire. For were there not some
whose sins, though not remitted in this life, shall be remitted in that which
is to come, it could not be truly said, " They shall not be forgiven, neither
in this world, neither in that which is to come " (Matt., 12: 32). . . .
As for those who find an empty threat rather
than a truth in such passages as these " Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire," and " These shall go away into eternal punishment"
(Matt., 25: 41, 46), and "They shall be tormented for ever and ever"
(Rev., 20: 10); and "Their worm shall not (lie, and their fire shall not
be quenched" (Is., 66: 24),-such persons, I say, are more emphatically and
abundantly refuted, not by me so much as by the divine Scripture itself.
[A
number of passages of Scripture follow.]
[A number of passages of Scripture follow.]
But let us now reply to those who promise deliverance from eternal fire . . .
only to those who have been washed by the baptism of Christ, and have become
partakers of his body and blood, no matter how they have lived, no matter what
heresy or impiety they have fallen into. But they are contradicted by the
apostle where he says: " Now the works of the flesh, which are manifest,
are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft,
hatred, variances, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envying, drunkenness, revelling,
and the like: . . . for they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom
of God" (Gal., 5: 19-21). . . .
It remains to reply to those who maintain that
those only shall burn in eternal fire, who neglect alms-deeds proportioned to
their sins, resting this opinion on the words of the Apostle James, " He
shall have judgment without mercy, that bath showed no mercy" (Jas., 2:
13). . . .
Such persons, indeed, as decline to abandon
their evil habits of life, for a better course, cannot be said to do charitable
deeds. For this is the purport of the saying, " Inasmuch as ye did it not
to one of the least of these ye did it not to me " (Matt., 25: 46). He
shows them that they do not perform charitable actions even when they think
they are doing so. . . For God considers not the person to whom the gift is
made, but the spirit in which it is made.-Civit. Dei, xxi., 17-27.
[Concerning
the justice of endless punishment.]
[Concerning the justice of endless
punishment.] Some, however, . . . think it unjust that any man be doomed to an
eternal punishment for sins which, no matter how great they were, were
perpetrated in a brief. space of time; as if any law ever regulated the
duration of punishment by the duration of the offense punished. , And just as
the punishment of the first death cuts men off from this present mortal city,
so does the punishment of the second death cut men off from the future immortal
city. . . .
But eternal punishment seems hard and unjust
to human perceptions, because in the weakness of our mortal condition there is
wanting that highest and purest wisdom by which it can be perceived how great a
wickedness was committed in that first transgression. The more enjoyment man
found in God, the greater was his wickedness in abandoning Him; and he who
destroyed in himself a good which might have been eternal, became worthy of
eternal evil. Hence the whole mass of the human race is condemned: for he who
at first gave entrance to sin has been punished with all his posterity who were
in him as in a root, so that no one is exempt from this just, and clue
punishment, unless delivered by mercy and undeserved grace. And the human race
is so apportioned that in some is displayed the efficacy of merciful grace, in
the rest the efficacy of just retribution. For both could not be displayed in
all. . . .
But many more are left under punishment than
are delivered from it, in order that it may thus be shown what was due to all.
And had it been inflicted on all, no one could justly have found fault with the
justice of Him who taketh vengeance.-Civit. Dei. xxi., 11.
[Concerning
the fate of infants, his earlier opinion inclined to a milder view.]
[Concerning the fate of infants, his earlier
opinion inclined to a milder view.] But to this argument a certain complaint is
accustomed. to be made by the ignorant concerning the deaths of infants. . . .
In which place men are accustomed to
investigate the sacrament of the baptism of Christ, how it benefits infants
when, after having been received, they very frequently die, before they could
have understood anything concerning it. In which case it is right piously and
correctly believed that the faith of those by whom he is offered fur
consecration avails for him For how much did the faith of the widow avail her
son which (faith) since he was dead he had not; to whom nevertheless his
mother's availed that he should be raised from the dead? But concerning the
torments of body by which infants are afflicted, who by their age have not
sinned, it is said: "What evil have they done that they should suffer thus?
" As if there could be any merit in innocence, before any one had been
able to do wrong. . . .
But . . . who knows what God hi the secret of
his judgment of right compensation may reserve for these same infants, who,
while they have done nothing aright, have nevertheless not in sinning endured
any of these things'? For not in vain does the Church commend for reception as
martyrs, those infants who were killed when the Lord Jesus Christ was sought to
be slain by Herod.-De Lib. Arbit., iii., 23.
[Later,
following the logic of his system, he expresses a more austere judgment.]
[Later, following the logic of his system, he
expresses a more austere judgment.] If those who are baptized, by reason of the
virtue of so great a sacrament, although with their heart and month they do not
that which pertains to believing and confessing, are nevertheless reckoned
among the number of believers; surely those to whom the sacrament has been
lacking are to be reckoned among them who believe not on the Son; and for that
reason if they depart from the body devoid of this grace, there follows for
them that which is said; " They shall not have life, but the wrath of God remained
upon them " (John, 3: 35, 30). Whence then is this, since it is clear that
they have no sins of their own if they be not held guilty on account of
original sin?-De Peccat. Merit., i., 28: 20.
[Concerning
gradation in punishment.]
[Concerning gradation in punishment.] We must
not, however, deny that even the eternal fire will be proportioned to the
deserts of the wicked, so that to some it will be more, and to others less,
painful, whether this result be accomplished by a variation in the temperature
of the fire itself, graduated according to every one's merit, or whether it be
that the heat remains the same, but that all do not feel it with equal
intensity of torment.-Civit. Del, xxi., 16.
[The
further history of the doctrine cannot be intelligently studied without taking
into view the modification of it through the growth of the doctrine of
Purgatory, the foundations of which are to be found in the writings of
Augustine, for example, in the following passages.]
[The further history of the doctrine cannot be
intelligently studied without taking into view the modification of it through
the growth of the doctrine of Purgatory, the foundations of which are to be
found in the writings of Augustine, for example, in the following passages.] It
is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful,
whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in
proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that,
perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it. This cannot, however, be the
case of any of those of whom it is said that they "shall not inherit the
kingdom of God," unless, after suitable repentance, their sins be
forgiven.-Enchiridion, lxix.
For our part we recognize that even in this
life some punishments are purgatorial.
„ But temporary punishments are suffered by
some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but
all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer
temporary punishment after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains
which are to follow that judgment; for to sonic, as we have already said, what
is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is they are not
punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.-Civil. Del, xxi.,
13.
PELAGIUS-circ. A. D. 300-circ. 935.
[The
antagonist of Augustine, while strenuous for the doctrine of future punishment,
is less positive as to the fate of unbaptized infants. He says:-] Where they
are not, I know; where they are, I know not.
AMBROSE-A. D. 340-307.
[Concerning
the fate of the unbaptized.]
[Concerning the fate of the unbaptized.] No
one ascends into the kingdom of heaven, except by means of the sacrament of
baptism. . . . For unless a man has been born again. of water and the Spirit,
he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Moreover to this there is no exception, not
the infant, nor he who is unavoidably prevented. They have however immunity
from pains. Whether they have any honour of the kingdom, I do not know.-De Abrah.,
ii., 11.
JEROME-A. D. 340?-420.
[Concerning
gradation in future punishment. It is questionable whether the
"Christians" here spoken of as damned are not thought of as in
Purgatory.]
[Concerning gradation in future punishment. It
is questionable whether the "Christians" here spoken of as damned are
not thought of as in Purgatory.] And just as we believe there shall be eternal
torments for the devil, and all sceptics and impious ones who have said in
their hearts, there is no God, so also for sinners and impious ones. And
nevertheless for Christians whose works are to be tried and purified, we
suppose that there will be a moderate sentence, and one mixed with clemency.-Comm.
in Jerem., lxvi., ad fin.
CHRYSOSTOM-A. D. 347-407.
[Of
the nature of hell-fire.]
[Of the nature of hell-fire.] For truly when
thou hears of the fire, take care not to think that it is like this fire: for
this lays hold of anything, devours and consumes it; but that burns those whom
it once lays hold of forever, nor ever desists; and therefore is called
inextinguishable. . . . But how horrible it is, it is impossible even to tell
in words; but from the experience of lesser things we may be able to obtain
some slight conjecture of the greater. If ever thou hast been in a furiously
boiling bath, think then of the hell of fire: and if ever thou hast been on
fire with a more consuming fever, carry the mind back to that flame, and then
thou wilt be able to discriminate correctly.
. . Truly we shall grate our teeth, borne down
with labours and intolerable sufferings, and no one will bring succour; but we
shall groan heavily, while the flame presses ever more fiercely upon us; we
shall see no one except our companions in torture and. an immense solitude. . .
. That fire does not consume, neither gives light, otherwise there would be no
darkness. . .
But if some one say: How shall the soul be
able to bear such a degree of torture and hold out through infinite ages in
torment? Let this one think how many have certainly borne long and grave
sickness. But if they have died, this has happened not because the soul was
consumed, but because the body has given out. . . Wherefore, after it [the
soul] shall have received that incorruptible and indissoluble body, nothing
will prevent its pain being dragged on through eternity. Here it is not
possible that both should happen at once, the vehemence, that is, and the
length of the suffering; but the one strives against the other, because the
nature of our body, frail because of corruption, will not bear their
combination: but in the immortality to come, this strife will be settled, and
both evils shall lay hold on us, with great violence, to eternity.-Ad Theod.
Laps., i., 10.
[The
meditation of hell a source of comfort and safety.]
[The meditation of hell a source of comfort
and safety.] Would that it were possible at our dinner, and our supper, and our
baths, and everywhere, to be discoursing about hell. For we should not then
feel the pain at the evils in this world, nor the pleasure of its good things.
For what would you tell me was an evil? poverty 1 disease 1 captivity? maiming
of the body? Why all these things are sport compared to the punishment there,
even should you speak of those who are tormented with famine all their life
long; or those who are maimed from their earliest clays and beg their food too,
and that in addition to the former evils. Let us then certainly employ
ourselves with talking about these things. For to remember hell prevents our
falling into hell.-Fiont.; xxxi., ad Born.
[The
next two writers represent the rapid maturing, in the Western Church, of the
doctrine of Purgatory, from its germ in the conjecture of Augustine. See p. 44.]
[The next two writers represent the rapid
maturing, in the Western Church, of the doctrine of Purgatory, from its germ in
the conjecture of Augustine. See p. 44.]
CAESARIUS
OF ARLES-circ, A. D. 480-543.
All the good who serve God faithfully, who seek
to apply themselves to reading and prayer, and to persevere in good works,
building up (cf. 1 Cor., 3: 12)-neither capital crimes, nor small sins-but good
works, shall pass through that fire of which the Apostle speaks. But those who
are apt to commit small sins, and are negligent to make amends, shall come into
eternal life, because they believed in Christ, and committed no capital crimes,
but before that, they shall be purified either in this age by the justice of
God by means of the bitterest tribulations, or by their own acts, by many
charities, and especially when they are mercifully kind to their enemies, and
shall be freed by the mercy of God; or else certainly they shall be tortured
for a long time by that fire of which the Apostle speaks; that they may attain
to the future life, without spot or wrinkle.
But those who have committed homicide, or
adultery, or the rest like these, if a worthy repentance has not come to their
aid, shall not deserve to pass through the fire of Purgatory to life, but shall
be cast down to death in the eternal conflagration. -Homes, viii., 8.
POPE GREGORY THE GREAT-A. D. 540-004.
For certain light faults, it is to be believed
that there will be a purgatorial fire, before the judgment, for the reason that
the truth says this sin shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in
that which is to come (Matt., 12: 31, 32). In which it is given to be
understood that some faults may be forgiven in this age, and some in the age to
come, for since it is denied concerning one thing, the logical consequence is
evident that it is conceded of certain others. But nevertheless it is to be
believed that this may be clone only concerning the small and most minute sins,
such as incessant idle talk, immoderate laughter, or the sin of care of family
matters, which are rarely thought about without fault even by those who know
how to avoid fault; or an error of knowledge in unimportant matters. Dial.,
iv., 89.
[Of
masses for the dead.]
[Of masses for the dead.] Faults are not
ineradicable after death. The salutary and sacred offering of the host is wont
to be of advantage to souls after death so that sometimes the souls of the dead
even may be understood to long for it.-Dial., iv., 35.
[During
this period little difference of opinion existed on this subject. The doctrine
of a final restitution, set forth by the writer next named, had no considerable
following.]
JOHN
SCOTUS ERIGENA-circ. A. D. 800-891.
The first return then of human nature is when
the body is dissolved and is reduced into the four elements of the sensible
world, of which it is composed. The second will be completed in the
resurrection, when each one shall receive his own body from the mass (communion)
of the four elements; the third when the body shall be changed into spirit; the
fourth when the spirit, and, as I may say more broadly, the whole nature of
man, shall revert to its primordial causes, which are always and unchangeably
in God; the fifth when nature itself shall be transformed into God as air is
transformed into light. For God shall be all in all, when there shall be
nothing but God alone. . . . And the change of human nature into God is. not to
be considered as an annihilation of substance, but is a wonderful and ineffable
return into a former state, which it lost by transgression. -De Deo Nat, viii.,
282.
THE "ELUCIDARIUM"-A. D. circ. 1125.
[A
work of great authority in its time. The extract illustrates how the School-men
elaborated the doctrine as it had come down to them, without essentially
altering it.]
[A work of great authority in its time. The
extract illustrates how the School-men elaborated the doctrine as it had come
down to them, without essentially altering it.] Discipulus. What are the
infernal regions or where?
Magister. There are two infernal regions, the
higher and the lower. The higher is the lowest part of this world, which is
full of suffering, for here abounds the most excessive heat, great cold, etc.
But the lower is a spiritual place where the fire is inextinguishable . . which
is said to be under the earth, so that just as the bodies of the wicked are
buried in the earth, so the souls of the wicked are interred in the infernal
regions underneath the earth. Cap. lxii.
D. In which infernal region were the righteous
before the coming of Christ?
M. In
the upper, in a certain place joined to the lower, in which they were able to
regard one another. To those who were there, although they were free from
suffering, it seemed that they were in the infernal regions, since they were
separated from the kingdom. But to those who were in the lower infernal
regions, it seemed that those who were in that infernal region which is joined
to the lower, were in the consolation of paradise, whence Dives asked Lazarus
that a drop [of water] might fall upon him.
D. What suffering had they who were in that
infernal region which is joined to the lower?
M. A
certain darkness, so great that of it, it was said: " On the dwellers in
the regions of the shadow of death, on them bath a light sinned." Certain
of them were in certain suffering. The Lord came therefore to the upper
infernal regions in being born to redeem the captives from the tyrant, as it is
said, " Say to them that are bound, Go forth, and to them who are in
darkness, Comfort yourselves." He calls the bound who were in suffering,
the others also who were in darkness, all of whom the King of Glory sets free
and brings into glory.-Cap. Lxiv.
[Of
the manner of the coming to judgment.]
[Of the manner of the coming to judgment.] D.
How shall the Lord come to judgment?
M. As a general (imperator) entering a city.
His crown and other insignia shall be borne before him, by which his advent may
be known. And Christ is coming to the judgment in that form in which he
ascended with the orders of angels. Angels bearing his cross shall go before
him, they shall raise the dead to meet him with trumpet and voice. All the
elements shall be thrown into confusion, a tempest of mingled cold and fire raging
everywhere.-Cap. lxx.
[Of
the nature of expiatory pains.]
[Of the nature of expiatory pains.] After
death there shall in truth be an expiation, either an immeasurable heat of
fire, or a great stress of cold or any other you will of the germs of pains, of
which however the least is greater than the greatest of which it is possible to
conceive in this life.-Cap. lxi.
[Of
gradation among the just, and among the unjust.]
[Of gradation among the just, and among the
unjust.] M. There is one order of the perfect, judging with God, another of the
just who by the judgment are saved; a third of the impious perishing without
judgment; a fourth of the wicked who are condemned by the judgment. . . .
D. Who are they who judge?
M. The
apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, monks, and virgins.-Cap. lxxi.
PETER
LOMBARD-circ. A. D. 1100-1160.
[Of
mutual relations between saved and lost.] Both the good shall see the wicked
and the wicked the good until the judgment. After the judgment the good will
indeed see the wicked but not the wicked the good. lib. iv.
[Of
the delight of the blessed in beholding the anguish of the wicked.]
[Of the delight of the blessed in beholding
the anguish of the wicked.] The elect will behold the torture of the impious
and as they see them they will not grieve. Their minds will be sated with joy
as they gaze on the unspeakable anguish of the impious, returning thanks for
their own freedom.-Sent,, lib. iv.
[Of
punishment by remorse.]
[Of punishment by remorse.] The reprobates in
hell shall thus repent, but they will not on that account forsake their evil
will; and this evil will shall be to them for an additional punishment, by
which however they shall merit nothing, for nothing counts as merit except in
this life.-Sent., 50, A.
[Of
masses for the dead.]
[Of masses for the dead.] Neither is it to be
denied that the souls of the dead are comforted by the piety of their living
ones, when the sacrifice of the Mediator is offered for them, or gifts are made
in the Church.-Sent., 45, B.
The question is accustomed to be discussed
concerning two persons, equally, but only moderately, good, the one rich, the
other poor. . . . For the first, special and general prayers are made, and many
benevolent gifts; but for the poor man nothing but the general gifts and
prayers. . . Shall the poor man be helped as much as the rich? . . . It may
reasonably be said that . . . the special gifts have been helpful to the rich
man, not indeed for anything different, or greater, but for the same which the
general supplications were helpful, so that from many different causes a single
advantage is reaped . . . and that these many aids have conferred upon the rich
man a quicker, but not a fuller, absolution.-Dict., 45.
THOMAS AQUINAS-A. D. 1225?-1274.
[Limited
value of intercessory prayers for the dead.]
[Limited value of intercessory prayers for the
dead.] Charity which is the bond uniting the members of the Church, extends
also to the dead who die in charity. . . . The votive offerings of the living
are helpful to the dead, just as to the living. But it is nevertheless not to
be supposed that the offerings of the living avail for them so that their
condition is changed from misery to felicity, or vice versa, but they avail to
the diminution of pain or something of that kind, by which the condition of the
dead is not changed.-Qu., lxxi., art. 1.
[Of
the envy of lost souls.]
[Of the envy of lost souls.] So great will be
the envy of the damned that they will envy even the glory of their relatives, .
. . but nevertheless less than others, and their suffering would be greater if
all their relatives were damned and the others saved, than if some of their
relatives should be saved.
[He
then quotes the story of Dives and Lazarus.]-Qu., xcviii., art. 4. [Of darkness
and light in hell.]
[He then quotes the story of Dives and
Lazarus.]-Qu., xcviii., art. 4. [Of darkness and light in hell.] The
arrangement of hell will be such as to best accord with the misery of the
damned. Whence according to this there are there light and darkness as they
best comport with the misery of the damned. . . . Whence speaking simply, the
place is dark, but nevertheless by the divine disposition, there is there some
light, so much as suffices to see those things which can torture the soul.-Qu.,
xcvii., art. 4.
[Of
the joy of the saints over the sufferings of the damned.]
[Of the joy of the saints over the sufferings
of the damned.] But in the future, they (the wicked) may not be transferred
from their misery. Hence there can be no compassion for their misery, according
to a proper choice, and therefore the blessed who shall be in glory will have
no compassion for the damned. . . .
And in this way the blessed shall rejoice over
the punishment of the wicked, viz., in considering in them the rectitude of the
divine justice and their own liberation for which they rejoice. And thus divine
justice and their own liberation shall be the cause of the rejoicing of the
blessed per se, but the punishment of the damned Mei-dentally.-Qu., xciv., art,
23.
[Of
the respective places in Hades, of the saints who lived before Christ, and of
unbaptized children.]
[Of the respective places in Hades, of the
saints who lived before Christ, and of unbaptized children.] The limbus potrum
and the limbus puerorum differ without doubt, according to the nature of the
reward or punishment. For there is not present to the children the hope of
future happiness which was present to the fathers in limbo on whom even the
light of faith and grace shined. But with respect to the site, it is probably
believed that this is the same for both, unless it be that the resting place of
the blessed till then is to be in a higher place than the limbus puerorum.-Qu.
lxxix., art. 6.
[Of
material fire as applied to disembodied spirits.]
[Of material fire as applied to disembodied
spirits.] Others have said that corporeal fire cannot consume the soul.
Nevertheless the soul apprehends it as hurtful to it, and by such apprehension
is brought to a state of fear and suffering.-Qu., lxx., art. 3.
MASTER ECKHART-A. D. 1200-1320.
[The
philosophy of hell-torment, as given by this most. eminent of the mystics of
that period.]
[The philosophy of hell-torment, as given by
this most. eminent of the mystics of that period.] The question has been
raised, what is it that burns in hell. The masters generally say it is
self-will. But I say in truth, it is not having (nicht) which constitutes the
burning of hell. Learn this from a parable. If you were to take a burning coal,
arid put it on my hand, and 1 were to assert that the coal is burning my hand,
I should be wrong. But if I be asked what it is that burns me, I say it is the
not having, that is the coal has something which my hand has not. You perceive
then that it is the not having which burns me. But if my hand had all that
which the coal has, it would possess the nature of fire. In that case you might
take all the fire that burns and put it on my hand without tormenting me. In
the same manner I say, if God, and those who stand before his face, enjoy that
perfect happiness which those who are separated from him possess not, it is the
"SOT HAVING " which torments the souls in hell, more than self-will,
or fire.-Predigt auf den ersten Sonnt. Nack Trin.; Stud. u. Krit., 1839.
SITSO-A. D. 1300-1305.
[Illustration
of eternity of suffering in hell, by a pupil of Eckhart.]
[Illustration of eternity of suffering in
hell, by a pupil of Eckhart.] Oh, sobbing, sighing and weeping, unceasing
howling and lamenting, and yet never to be heard! Give us a millstone say the
damned as broad as the whole earth, and so large as to touch the sky all
around, and let a little bird come once in a hundred thousand years, and pick
off a small particle of the stone, not larger than the tenth part of a grain of
millet, and after another hundred thousand years, let him come again, so that
in ten hundred thousand years he would pick off as much as a grain of millet;
we wretched sinners would ask nothing but that when this stone has an end, our
pains might also cease; yet even this cannot be.-Buch. v. d. Weish., c. 11.
[The
reciprocal influence between poetry and art on the one hand, and theology on
the other was very great. The painters of that period revelled in vivid
delineations of all that was horrible and grotesque in the way of torments,
either in purgatory or hell.]
[The reciprocal influence between poetry and art
on the one hand, and theology on the other was very great. The painters of that
period revelled in vivid delineations of all that was horrible and grotesque in
the way of torments, either in purgatory or hell.]
DANTE
ALIGHIERI-A. D. 1265-1321.
[The Divina
Commedia, in its three parts, is framed according to the theology of Aquinas,
whom the poet calls his master. It was however only over the gate of one of the
regions which the poet explored that there was written the inscription:-]
Lasciate
ogni speranza, von ch' entrate. Abandon every hope, who enter here.
[The
theology of the Reformers on this subject was affected by the fact that the
Reformation movement had its inception in an attack on the doctrine of
Purgatory, the theory of Indulgences, and the claim of the Church to a partial
control over the lot of the departed. On this subject the confession of Zwingli
and the articles of the Church of England, standing at the opposite poles of
the Reform movement, are hi accord.]
[The theology of the Reformers on this subject
was affected by the fact that the Reformation movement had its inception in an
attack on the doctrine of Purgatory, the theory of Indulgences, and the claim
of the Church to a partial control over the lot of the departed. On this
subject the confession of Zwingli and the articles of the Church of England,
standing at the opposite poles of the Reform movement, are hi accord.]
ZWINGLI'S
CONFESSION-A. D. 1523.
The holy Scriptures know nothing of any purgatory
after this life. The fate of the departed is known to God alone, and since God
has revealed so little to us concerning these things, we ought not to seek to
know much concerning them. If anyone, anxious for the dead, prays to God for
them, I condemn it not; but to set a time therefor (seven years for a deadly
sin) and to be willing to lie for gain is not human but diabolical: Article
lxvii., lxx.
ANGLICAN ARTICLES-A. D. 1571.
The
Romish doctrine concerning purgatory [and] pardons is a fond thing, vainly
invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but rather repugnant to
the word of God.-Art. xxii [Except for this the Reformers held to the
Augustinian eschatology in its most rigid form.]
AUGSBURG
CONFESSION-A. D. 1530.
Also they teach that in the consummation of
the world [at the last day], Christ shall appear to judge, and shall raise up
all the dead, and shall give unto the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting
joys; but ungodly men and the devils shall be condemn unto endless torments.
'They condemn the Anabaptists, who think that to condemned men and to the
devils shall be an end of torments.-Art. xvii.
Of baptism they teach that it is necessary to
salvation, and that by baptism the grace of God is offered, and that children
are to be baptized, who by baptism being offered to God, are received into
God's favour.
They condemn the Anabaptists, who allow not
the baptism of children and affirm that children are saved without baptism.-Art.
ix.
[But
some of the Calvinistic confessions affirm the-damnation of infants only by
implication: and some distinctly repudiate it.]
[But some of the Calvinistic confessions
affirm the-damnation of infants only by implication: and some distinctly
repudiate it.]
WESTMINSTER
CONFESSION-A. D. 1647.
Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated
and saved by Christ through the Spirit.-Chap. x., 3.
SECOND SCOTCH CONFESSION-A. D. 1580.
In special we detest and refuse the usurped authority
of that Roman Antichrist . . . his cruel judgment against infants departing
without the sacrament: his absolute necessity of baptisms.-
JOHN CALVIN-A. D. 1509-1564.
[While refuting the opinion of those who hold
baptism to be essential to salvation; lie implies the damnation of infants of
heathen parentage.] It is further evident that their notion ought to be
exploded because it adjudges all unbaptized persons to eternal death. Let us
suppose their tenet to be admitted, and baptism to be administered to adults
alone: what will they say will become of a youth who is rightly instructed in
the first principles of piety, if he desires to be baptized, but contrary to
the expectation of all around, happens to be snatched away by sudden death. The
Lord's promise is clear: " Whosoever believeth on the Son shall not come
unto condemnation: " but " is passed from death unto life "
(John, 3: 16; 5:24). We are nowhere informed of his having condemned one who
had not yet been baptized. By this I would not be understood as implying that
baptism may be despised with impunity; for so far from attempting to excuse
such contempt, I affirm it to be a violation of the covenant of the Lord; I
only mean to evince that it is not so necessary as that a person who is
deprived of the opportunity of embracing it, must immediately be considered as
lost. . . Moreover they sentence all infants to eternal death, by denying them
baptism, which according to their own confession is necessary to salvation. Let
them see now how well they agree with the language of Christ, which adjudges
the kingdom of heaven to little children.-Instit., IV., xvi., 26.
I again ask how is it that the fall of Adam
involves so many nations and their infant children in eternal death without
remedy; unless that it seemed meet to God. I admit that it is a dreadful
decree.-Instit., III., xxiii., 7.
[But ZWINGLI
(A. D. 1484-1531) held that not only infants, but the virtuous heathen, are
partakers of salvation.] [The Protestant theologians of the second and third
generation carried their opposition to Purgatory so far as to obliterate the
whole doctrine of the intermediate state.]
WESTMINSTER
CONFESSION-A. D. 1047.
The souls of men after death pass immediately
into a state of reward or punishment, the souls of the wicked being cast into
hell, where they remain reserved to the judgment of the great day, when they
shall receive according to what they have done in the body, shall be cast into
eternal torments, and punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord. . . . Besides these two places for souls separated from their
bodies, the Scripture acknowledges none.-Ch. xxxii., 3.
JEREMY TAYLOR-A. D. 1013-1607.
Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, caused eight
hundred to be crucified, and, whilst they were yet alive, caused their wives
and children to be murdered before their eyes, that so they might not die once,
but many deaths. This rigor shall not be wanting in hell. . . . 1VIezentius
tied a living body to the dead until the putrefied exhalations of the dead had
killed the living. . . . What is this in respect of hell, when each body of the
damned is more loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs g . . . What
comparison will there be between burning for a hundred years' space, and to be
burning without interruption, as long as God is God 1-Contemplations, ii., 6,7.
ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON-A. D. 1030-1004.
[This
suggestion of an alternative view is contained in a sermon preached before Queen
Mary.]
[This suggestion of an alternative view is
contained in a sermon preached before Queen Mary.] He that threatens keeps the
right of punishment in his own hand, and is not obliged to execute what he path
threatened any further than the reasons and ends of government do require. . .
.
Nor is this any impeachment of God's truth and
faithfulness, any more than it is esteemed among men a piece of falsehood not
to do what they have threatened. God did absolutely threaten the destruction of
the city of Nineveh; and his peevish prophet did understand the threatening to
be absolute, and was very angry with God for employing him in a message that
was not made good. But God understood his own right, and did what he pleased
notwithstanding the threatening he had denounced. . . .
Now considering in what terms the threatening
of the gospel are expressed, we have all the reason in the world to believe
that the punishment of sinners in another world will be everlasting. However,
we cannot be certain of the contrary, time enough to prevent it; nor till we
come there and find by experience how it is: and if it prove so, it will then
be too late either to prevent that terrible doom or to get it reversed.
[The
philosopher and theologian, John LOCKE (A. D. 1632-1704), is the most noted
representative, in English theology, of the annihilation doctrine. His views
are set forth in his work on The Reasonableness of Christianity. A later
advocate of the same view is Richard Whately.]
ARCHBISHOP
WHATELY-A. D. 1787-1863.
On the whole then the Scriptures do not, I
think, afford us any ground for expecting that those who shall be condemned at
the last day as having wilfully rejected their Lord, will finally be delivered.
. .
If we suppose the hearers of Jesus and his
apostles to have understood, as nearly as possible in the ordinary sense, the
words employed, they must naturally have conceived them to mean (if they were
taught nothing to the contrary) that the condemned were really and literally to
be "destroyed," and cease to exist; not that they were to exist
forever in a state of wretchedness. . . .
On the whole, therefore, I think we are not
warranted in concluding (as some have done) so positively concerning this
question as to make it a point of Christian faith to interpret figuratively and
not literally the " death " and " destruction" of the
Scripture as the doom of the condemned; and to insist on the belief that they
are to be kept alive forever. . . .
Some would wish that the final extinction of
the condemned should be positively declared, because they wish to believe that
doctrine true; and some again from thinking it a dangerous doctrine, wish to
have the opposite one positively declared. But nil such wishes are quite
foreign from the subject.-Future State, 180, 181, 185.
[His
views on the intermediate state are also of interest.]
[His views on the intermediate state are also
of interest.] One thing, however, . . . is perfectly clear and certain
respecting what that intermediate state is not; namely, that it is not a state
of trial and probation; . . . since we are plainly taught in Scripture that
this present life is the whole of our state of trial and that we shall be
judged at the last day according to our conduct here on earth. . . .
Upon the whole, then, I think, that the notion
of the soul, when separated from the body, entering immediately on a state of
enjoyment or suffering, which is to last till the resurrection, has at least as
strong reasons against it as for it.
The only alternative . . . is that the soul
remains in a state of profound sleep -of utter unconsciousness-during the whole
interval between its separation from the body by death, and its reunion at the
resurrection.-Future State, 54, 80.
JOHN FOSTER-A. D. 1770-1843.
[This
esteemed writer is one of a number of recent eminent English theologians who
have set forth the doctrine of universal restoration. The following extract is
front a letter to a friend.]
[This esteemed writer is one of a number of
recent eminent English theologians who have set forth the doctrine of universal
restoration. The following extract is front a letter to a friend.] It appears
to me that the teachers and believers of the orthodox doctrine hardly ever make
an earnest, strenuous effort to form a conception of eternity; or rather a
conception somewhat of the nature of a faint incipient approximation.
[He then goes on to give an illustration
similar to that previously quoted from Suso (see p. 50) and continues:-] Now
think of an infliction of misery protracted through such a period, and at the
end of it being only commencing-not one smallest step nearer a conclusion:-the
case just the same if that sum of figures were multiplied by itself. And then
think of man -his nature, his situation, the circumstances of his brief sojourn
and trial on earth. . . . He comes into the world with a nature fatally
corrupt, and powerfully tending to actual evil. He comes among a crowd of
temptations adapted to his innate evil propensities. . . .
Now this creature, thus constituted and
circumstanced, passes a few fleeting years on earth, a short sinful course; in
which he does often what, notwithstanding his ignorance and ill-disciplined
judgment and conscience, he knows to be wrong, and neglects what he knows to be
his duty; and consequently for a greater or less measure of guilt, widely
different in different offenders, deserves punishment. But endless punishment!
hopeless misery, through a duration to which the enormous terms above imagined,
will be absolutely nothing! I acknowledge my inability (I would say it
reverently) to admit this belief, together with a belief in. the divine
goodness My resource in the present case, then, is simply this-that since the
terms do not necessarily and absolutely signify an interminable duration, and
since there is in the present instance to be pleaded, for admitting a limited
interpretation, a reason in the moral estimate of things, of stupendous, of
infinite urgency, involving our conceptions of the divine goodness and equity, and
leaving those conceptions overwhelmed in darkness and horror if it be rejected,
I therefore conclude that a limited interpretation is authorized.-Life, ii.,
234, ff.
ROBERT HALL-A. D. 1704-1831.
[The
doctrine of eternal misery not an essential article of faith.]
[The doctrine of eternal misery not an
essential article of faith.] I would only add that in my humble opinion the
doctrine of the eternal duration of future misery, metaphysically considered,
is not an essential article of faith, nor is the belief of it ever proposed as
a term of salvation; that if we really flee from the wrath to come, by truly
repenting of our sins, and laying hold of the mercy of God through Christ by a
lively faith, our salvation is perfectly secure, whichever hypothesis we
embrace on this most mysterious subject. The evidence accompanying the popular
interpretation is by no means to be compared to that which establishes our
common Christianity, and therefore the fate of the Christian religion is not to
be considered as implicated in the belief or disbelief of the popular doctrine.-Works,
v., 527.
F. D. MAURICE-A. D. 1805-1872.
Those who would not own Christ in his
brethren, who did not visit them when they were sick and in prison, go away, he
said, into eternal or everlasting punishment. Are we affixing a new meaning to
these words, or the very meaning which the context demands, the only meaning
which is consistent with the force that is given to the adjective by our Lord
and his apostles elsewhere, if we say that the eternal punishment is the
punishment of being without the knowledge of God, who is love, and of Jesus
Christ who has manifested it; even as eternal life is declared to be the having
the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ?
If it is right, if it is a duty, to say that
Eternity in relation to God has nothing to do with time, or duration, are we
not bound to say that also in reference to life or to punishment, it has
nothing to do with time or duration? . .
Suppose we enact an article declaring that all
are heretics and deniers of the truth who do not hold that Eternal means
endless and that there cannot be A, deliverance from eternal punishment. What
is the consequence? Simply this, I believe; the whole gospel of God is set
aside. The state of eternal life and eternal death is not one we can refer only
to the future, or that we can in any wise identify with the future. Every man
who knows what it is to have been in a state of sin, knows what. it is to have
been in a state of death. He cannot connect that death with time; he must say
that Christ has brought him out of the bonds of eternal death. Throw that idea
into the future and you deprive it of all its reality, of all its power. .
I dare not pronounce what are the
possibilities of resistance of the human will to the loving will of God. There
are times when they seem to me . . . almost infinite. But I know that there is
something Which must be infinite. I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love,
which is deeper than the abyss of death,-Theological Essays. Concluding Essay.
I am not a Universalist, . . I have
deliberately rejected the theory of Universalism. . . . The word al6vtor is
with them (the Universalists) a word of Time. They eagerly dwell on the fact
that an age (aeon) must consist of a certain number of years; it is terminable
by its very nature. . . . I have an utter want of sympathy with statements,. of
this kind, they clash with all my convictions. -Letter to Dr. Jelf
THOMAS
ERSKINE OF LINLATHEN-A. D. 1788-1870.
I have a hope which I would not willingly
think contrary to the revelation of mercy, of the ultimate salvation of all. I
trust that He who came to bruise the serpent's head will not cease his work of
compassion until he has expelled the fatal poison from every individual of our
race. I humbly think the promise bears this wide interpretation. You believe
not, I know. Well, the Judge of all the earth will do right. . . I hope for the
departed; I hope in that unmeasured love which gave the Saviour; in fact my
soul refuses to believe in final ruin, when it contemplates the blood of
Christ.-Letters, p. 02.
My sympathy follows the dead more than the
living. You know the universality of my hopes for sinners. I hope that He who
came to bruise the serpent's head, and to destroy the works of the devil, will
not cease his labours of love till every particle of evil introduced into this
world has been converted into good.- Ibid., p. 105.
CHARLES CHAUNCY-A. D. 1705-1787.
[Dr. Chauncy's work in defence of Restorationism,
The Salvation of All Men Examined, was printed in London, 1784, The following
extract is from another work.] Upon the whole, therefore, what I mean to prove,
in the following essay, is that the scheme of revelation has the happiness of
all mankind lying at bottom, as its great and ultimate end; that it gradually
tends to this end; and will not fail of its accomplishment when fully
completed. . . . [Those] who have proved incurable under the means which have
been used with them in this state, instead of being happy in the next will be
awfully miserable; not to continue so finally, but that they may be convinced
of their folly, and recovered to a virtuous frame of mind. . . And there may be
yet other states before the scheme of God may be perfected, and mankind
universally cured of their moral disorders, and in this way qualified for, and
finally instated in, eternal happiness.-Sensible Thoughts on the State of
Religion in New England. Preface.
[Dr.
Chauncy was answered by Jonathan Edwards. In this discussion the aim of
"The New England School " of theologians, of which Edwards was the
leader, was to reconcile the doctrine of eternal misery with the character of
God.]
[Dr. Chauncy was answered by Jonathan Edwards.
In this discussion the aim of "The New England School " of
theologians, of which Edwards was the leader, was to reconcile the doctrine of
eternal misery with the character of God.]
JONATHAN
EDWARDS-A. D. 1700-1758.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell,
much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,
and is dreadfully provoked: . . you are a hundred thousand times more
abominable in his eyes than the most hateful ser- pent is in ours: . . and yet
it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every
moment. . . . There is no other reason why you have not gone to hell, since you
have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your wicked
manner of attending his solemn worship. . . .
If we knew that there was one person and but
one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what
an awful thing it would be to think of! If we knew what it was, what an awful
sight it would be to see such a person How might all the rest of the
congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him. But alas! instead of
one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! -Sermon on
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
SAMUEL HOPKINS-A. D. 1721-1803.
[This
pupil of Edwards's expatiates on the spectacle of eternal torment as a source
of delight to the saints.]
[This pupil of Edwards's expatiates on the
spectacle of eternal torment as a source of delight to the saints.] It has
already been observed and shown how well suited and necessary endless punishment
is, to make a full and most glorious display of the divine character, in the
view of the blessed. . . . The smoke of their torment shall ascend in the sight
of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve as a most clear glass, always
before their eyes, to give them a constant bright and most affecting view of
all these. And all this display of the divine character and glory will be in favour
of the redeemed, and most entertaining, and give the highest pleasure to all
who love God, and raise their happiness to ineffable heights, whose felicity
consists summarily in the knowledge and enjoyment of God.-Works, p. 459.
JONATHAN
EDWARDS THE YOUNGER-A. D. 1745-1801.
[Of
the fate of the virtuous heathen.]
It is
sometimes said if a heathen be truly virtuous and holy, what will become of
him? Will he be cast off merely because he is ignorant of Christ, though if he
had known him, he would most cheerfully have received him as his Saviour On
this I observe, no doubt if any heathen be truly virtuous and holy; if he love
God supremely, as an infinitely great, wise, holy, and good God, and his neighbour
as himself, he will be saved. . . . But such a heathen has not yet appeared.
Let him be pointed out, and it will be of more weight in the argument than a
thousand conjectures.- Works, ii., 465, 6.
ALBERT BARNES-A. D. 1708-1870.
[Absence
of delight in the contemplation of human anguish.]
[Absence of delight in the contemplation of
human anguish.] In the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess I see
not one ray to disclose to me the reason why man should suffer to all eternity.
I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a
moment's ease to my tortured mind. It is all dark-dark-dark to my soul and I
cannot disguise it.
[Of
the large mass of polemic literature that has appeared in America since the
organization of the Universalist denomination, it is not necessary to give a
detailed account.]
[Of the large mass of polemic literature that
has appeared in America since the organization of the Universalist
denomination, it is not necessary to give a detailed account.]
FRIEDRICH
SCHLEIERMACHER-A. D. 1768-1834.
[Before giving, in his own words, the views of
this eminent leader of German religious thought, it is well to indicate briefly
some of the traits of that school of evangelical Lutheran theologians which is
called by his name.
These writers often insist on the prophetic
and fragmentary character of the eschatological teaching of the New Testament,
comparing it in this respect with the Messianic teaching of the Old Testament.
They caution us, in this way, against presumption, and against an over-literal
interpretation.
On the-subject before us, they incline to the
idea of an opportunity of hearing the gospel, to be granted, beyond the bounds
of this life, and prior to the last judgment, to those who have not heard of
Christ here, or who have imperfectly apprehended his gospel.
The problem of the ultimate restoration of all
is discussed; but an affirmative solution is seldom unequivocally expressed.
Many on the other hand would decide this question in the negative.
This class of theologians, however much they
may qualify the old formulas and conceptions of inspiration, stand firmly upon
the Protestant principle, that the Bible, fairly interpreted, with a comparison
of Scripture with Scripture, is the rule of faith.
The
founder of this school is more decided in favour of universal restoration than
his followers have been.]
The founder of this school is more decided in favour
of universal restoration than his followers have been.] The figurative words of
Christ, by reason of which men have been impelled to maintain a condition of in-diminishable
misery for those who have died out of communion with Christ (Matt., 25: 4;
Mark, 9: 44; John, 5: 29), as opposed to the eternal blessedness, will be seen
to be brought to this meaning with difficulty, when they are more closely
examined. Partly these passages cannot without arbitrary management be
separated from others which must necessarily refer to something earlier (Matt.,
24: 30; John, 5: 24,25); partly other passages are set over against them which
do not admit of the thought of a definite victory of evil over a part of the
human race, from which much more is to be inferred from the fact that before
the universal resurrection evil is to be absolutely destroyed (1 Cor., 15: 25,
26). Far less can the statement of an eternal damnation bear close examination,
whether considered on its own merits or in relation to eternal salvation.
For if it be once made plain that in eternal
damnation there cannot be understood condemnation to bodily pain and suffering,
since we cannot think away the mitigating power of custom, if the human nature
is not to be entirely destroyed; and since also the consciousness of the power
of bearing that which is imposed carries satisfaction with it, consequently a
misery perfect and capable of no diminution does not follow from it: we thus
find no longer any fixed point on which to stand fast. . . . If we now consider
eternal damnation in connection with eternal happiness, it is easy to see that
the latter can no longer exist if the former exists. For even if both spheres
are entirely 'separate, such a high state of happiness cannot be reconciled
with an entire ignorance of the unhappiness of others. . .
For unless the perfection of our nature is to
be in a backward direction, this [knowledge] must embrace the whole human race,
and sympathy with the damned must necessarily disturb the happiness of the
saved, and the more as it is not, like every similar feeling hi. this world,
alleviated by hope. . . . And the sympathy therefor [the condition of the
damned] cannot be destroyed by [the belief in its justice]; since we here also
rightly accord a deeper sympathy to deserved punishment than to undeserved. But
there belongs also to personal permanence, a remembrance of the former
condition where always some of us have been connected with some of them in a
common life. .
We ought not therefore to maintain such a
position, without such decisive testimony therefor that Christ himself foresaw
it, as we by no means have. Therefore may we at least with equal right admit
that milder view of which there are traces in the Scriptures (1 Con, 15: 26,
55), viz., that, by the power of redemption, some day there shall result a
universal restitution of all human souls.-Christl. Glaube. Works, iv., 503. ff.
KARL IMMANUEL NITZSCH-A. D. 1787-1808.
[Possible
apprehension of salvation in a future world. Eternal punishment possible, if not
actually to be realized.]
[Possible apprehension of salvation in a
future world. Eternal punishment possible, if not actually to be realized.]
Inasmuch as there is no want of allusions to the fact that departed believers
have not yet, through death alone, become partakers of perfect, blessedness
(Heb., 11: 39, 40), so are there traces of a capacity, in another state of
existence, for comprehending salvation, and for a change and purification of
mind (1 Pet., 3: 19; 4: 5, O).
[He
argues against the Annihilation doctrine.]
[He argues against the Annihilation doctrine.]
The Redeemer opposes to man's fear of death, not the fear of being killed by
God, and to his fear of corporeal death not the fear of absolute death; not to
kill but to "destroy the soul" to "cast into hell", is the
utmost that God has the power to do. . .
.
Scripture teaches the eternal condemnation of
human individuals, because such is a necessary hypothesis, inasmuch.as grace
being neither compulsory, magical, nor mechanical, allows of man's final
resistance; perseverance in opposition to unbelief is possible, consequently,
if there be a final judgment there must be de futuro, and, on this hypothesis,
an eternal condemnation. Absolutely and in concreto the devil alone, that
incomprehensible and inconceivable individuality, and those who are his, are
eternally damned. . . .
Eternal damnation is either only an
hypothesis, and as such the unconditioned necessity of universal conversion, or
it is absolute non-being, or it is inconceivable being in non-being, or it is
an individual being with absolute passive and exclusive consciousness of
redemption and the kingdom of God, and equally bereaved of every good as of
every evil activity, a ruin which is at the same time a triumphal monument of
holy and true love. In each of these cases it is apparent how the apostle who
so boldly and resolutely preached eternal condemnation, yet in his final
eschatology (atisserste Esehatologie) in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians
passes above and beyond this contrast.
. . For the unconverted as such, who have
resisted conversion and remain unconverted, there is in no wise any hope of
conversion and sanctification in the other world. The moral restoration of all
free beings is so much the less to be assumed as a general article of faith, as
in that case the history of the kingdom of God would be changed into a natural
process.-Syst. of Chr. Duct., 300, ff., English Translation.
JULIUS MULLER-A. D. 1801-1878.
[The
anterior presumption of a Restoration. The possibility of forgiveness after the
Judgment suggested by the words of Christ.]
It is
clear in the first place that those theories of Restoration which represent it
as taking place in the interval between death and the general Resurrection,
directly violate the New Testament eschatology. Holy Scripture, as we have
already seen, teaches that the conflict between the kingdom of God and its foes
will become more and more marked as the consummation of all things approaches,
and that there will be a final judgment at the end of all earthly history; but
upon the theory referred to, nothing would remain to 'be separated and judged.
Arguments, therefore, based upon such texts (1 Cor., 15: 22 and Rom., 5: 18,
19) must be put aside. . . . If we consider the arguments derived from the
dictates of Christian consciousness concerning Restoration no one can reflect
upon them without feeling their weight. We cannot, however, regard them as
decisive. It does indeed seem almost inconceivable that this world's development
should terminate with an unharmonized discord, that any opposition to God's
will, in the wills of his creatures, should forever continue. A correct
conception of punishment, however, will help us to solve this difficulty.
Opposition to God's will does not continue, but is wholly subdued, if the state
of the being in whom it is be one of punishment, and if the fettered evil be
not allowed to disturb the perfect harmony of the new and perfected world. . .
And yet the divine love as the highest
principle seems absolutely to demand an affirmative harmonizing of the discord.
. . But if this love be regarded as working by way of metaphysical necessity,
the development of the moral world and God's providence over it are reduced to
a mere process of nature. . .
While universal restoration cannot be
established upon internal grounds, Christ's declaration concerning the sin
against the Holy Ghost expressly excludes it Awful as is our Lord's statement,
exceeding great and precious hopes lie bid within it. The words " all
manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men" , . . inspire the
glorious hope-not in the unbelieving, for they despise Christ's word, but in
the Christian-that in the world to come, in far distant icons, they who here
harden their hearts against God's revelation, and can expect only a verdict of
condemnation in the day of Judgment, shall find forgiveness and salvation.
But while Christ's words thus favour the
doctrine of Final Restoration up to a certain point, they explicitly deny the
universality of Restoration. Divine love draws all to itself who do not resist
its holy influence; but the stiff-necked and disobedient . . . are cast away
like dross.-Christian Doctrine of Sin, Vol. 2., p. 525 et. seq. Edinburgh
Edition.
RICHARD ROTHE-A. D. 1799-1867.
[As one of the few eminent German theologians
who adhere to the theory of the eventual extinction of the wicked, Rothe's
views require special attention. They stand Connected, in his system, with his
view of the relation of spirit to matter, and of the development and
immortality of the soul as, contingent on its own holy action.
The
subject is simply discussed in his posthumous Dogmatik, pp. 132-169, 291-330.
But the argument cannot be briefly stated by extracts of his own language, and
is accordingly presented in a careful summary.]
The
most of the Saviour's utterances on this subject (he asserts) relate to what is
to occur prior to the last judgment. At the first glance, Jesus appears to
teach the endless punishment of all who enter Gehenna. This however is not the
fact. The word aionios which occurs in Matt., 25: 41, 46, is used in the
Scriptures in a snore lax sense. It signifies, not an indefinitely long time,
but the longest time which can belong to an object, in accordance with its
nature. There are many examples of this restricted meaning: e.g., Ex., 21:6; Deut.,
15: 17. In Jude (ver. 6, cf. 2 Pet., 2:4), a stronger term is applied to a
terminable period. As to the opinion of the Jews, in the time of Christ,
respecting the duration of future punishment, they were not agreed on this
point; and, if they had been, this does not authorize us to conclude that he
followed the popular view. Eternal life and eternal death are spoken of
together; but if " eternal " denotes the longest time which the
conception, or nature, of an object admits of, that fact presents no
difficulty. Of the wicked it is only said, in Matt., 25:41, 46, that "
during the continuance of their stay in Gehenna, their pain will not cease,
without any determination of the question whether that stay will, or will not,
be endless." The statements of Jesus in Matt., 5: 26; 12:32 (cf. Mark, 3:
29), oblige us to restrict the sense of aionios. The few passages in his
teaching which do not refer to the intermediate state (for to this Rothe
applies all those cited above, even Matt., 25: 41, 46) indicate that the
unpardoned will gradually be deprived of sense and being. This opinion was not,
Rothe affirms, unknown to the Jews: it is expressed in the apocryphal 4th Book
of Ezra. The terms by which the apostles denote perdition most naturally
signify annihilation of soul, as well as of body; especially as Paul (Tit., 1:
2; Rom., 10: 25; Eph., 3: 9) uses aionios in the looser sense of the term. Rev.
14: 11; 20: 10 must be understood in the light of Rev. 20: 14; 17: 8. The idea
of annihilation is involved in many passages of the New Testament both in the
gospels and the epistles, such as Matt., 10: 28, 30; 7: 13; John, 3: 15, 10;
10: 28; Phil., 1: 28; 6: 8; Heb., 10: 27, 39; 2 Pet., 2: 1, 3,12, 19; 1 John,
3: 15, and many others. Rothe presents a concise statement of the objections
which have been brought, on grounds of reason, and Christian feeling, to the
doctrine of endless punishment, and subjects them to criticism. On the
supposition of a final impenitence in the condemned, eternal punishment is
fully suited to their guilt. The possibility of final impenitence cannot be
denied. The end of God, so far as the individual is concerned, may be baffled
by his own perversity, though not the comprehensive end of God in creation.
Reformation is not the sole-is not the proper and immediate-design of
punishment. This has its end in itself. Punishment need not and ought not to
cease for the reason that the recovery of the transgressor is no longer to be
hoped for. The pain of the lost may not consist in such reproaches of
conscience as might involve an actual or possible repentance, but rather in the
incessant experience of the absolute fruitlessness of their rebellion against
God, of the hostile relation of the whole created universe to them on account
of this rebellion, and of the rage and hatred against God and all his creation,
which perpetually blaze up anew within their souls. But other objections to the
doctrine of endless punishment, Rothe considers valid. The necessary
disturbance of the happiness of the redeemed, and the divine plan of the world,
with which the endless continuance of sin is held to be incongruous, are among
these objections. No conceivable reason can be given why the hopelessly wicked
should be kept in being: the notion that their endless suffering is required as
a warning is groundless. Final impenitence, on the supposition that the pains
of hell are never to cease, would be psychologically impossible. Yet in this
life, and in the interval prior to the judgment, all the means of grace will
have been exhausted upon such as at that time remain impenitent. The only
satisfactory solution of the problem is found in the supposition of a gradual
wearing out and extinction of their being. This will be the lot of those who
persist to the last day in their resistance to the Spirit-of those who are
guilty of the unpardonable sin. Rothe lays great stress on the results to be
expected from the grace of God, beyond the bounds of this life, in the
intermediate state. Among the passages on which he founds this expectation are
of course 1 Pet., 3: 19, 20; 4: O.
ISAAC AUGUST DORNER-A. D. 1809-1884.
[Possibility
of growth and training and of the presentation of the gospel in the future
life. Psychological nature of punishment. Persistent freedom of will.
Hypothesis of extinction.]
Moreover,
not only is the Last Judgment a crisis, but death also brings one in its own
way. Of course the importance of the bodily life and the account to be given of
it are taught in the New Testament. The passages quoted above according to
which the pious enter at once a better place, exclude a purgatory as a state of
punishment or penance, but by no means exclude a growth in perfection and
blessedness. Even the departed righteous are not entirely perfected before the
resurrection. . . . But those not as yet believers, so far as they are not
incorrigible, remain at first under training which aims at decision for Christ
(Rom., 8: 35,39). But in regard to those who die unbelieving or not yet
believing, to them also the ground of their souls is laid bare; hence also
their impurity, their discord, and alienation from God is unveiled. These must
become conscious of discord in themselves. If they were subject 1 to evil
inclinations and passions, they will busy themselves with corresponding objects
of desire, and yet have their longing unappeased, and will be given over in a
sense to their thoughts and desires as torments. . . But in no wise will the
di- vine government be to blame for this result. The gospel will be decisively
presented to all who had not come to a final decision in this life, and all who
do not shut themselves against it will be saved.
Clear as is the utterance of the New Testament
on the principle that unbelief damns, not at all clear is its answer to the
question what persons are judged and treated on that principle. That some are
damned rests on preponderant exegetical grounds (but that gives no dogmatic
proposition, because this must be derived also from the principle of faith). .
. . The objective reason why dogmatically no positive categorical statement can
here be made, lies in human freedom. This does not allow the assertion of a
universal process necessarily leading to salvation, because such a process is
and remains conditioned by non-rejection and free acceptance. . . .
But a third theory seems, now to meet
increasing approval, . . . the hypothesis of the annihilation of the wicked,
which likewise thinks it can attain categorical statement respecting the
question of persons.
[He
then considers the arguments on either side, and concludes:-]
Although,
further, this hypothesis seems exceedingly favourable to the unity and
harmonious consummation of the world, there remains still the disturbing
element, that such glorious spiritual capacities . . . are supposed to perish,
and be annihilated after the manner of mere finite faculties. Accordingly this
hypothesis also can lay no claim to unreserved acknowledgment and dogmatic
authority, and we must be content in saying that the ultimate fate of
individuals remains veiled in mystery, as well as the question whether all will
attain the blessed goal or not. Enough that we have the certainty of eternal
life and of the consummation of God's kingdom, however this may be brought
about.-The Future State, 104 if, 126
HANS
LASSEN MARTENSEN-A. D. 1808-1884.
[This
distinguished Danish theologian is a Lutheran of the evangelical type. In his
doctrinal system, he states the antinomy of Scripture and of Reason, on this
subject. This antinomy not solved by the hypothesis of extinction.]
Shall
then the development of the world end in a dualism? Shall his condemnation
remain forever on those miserable ones, or shall it be repealed at last, even
though after eons . . . The Church [i.e., the Lutheran] has never been willing
to accept the latter, and not only in the Holy Scriptures does it seem to be
upheld in this conclusion, but also by the feeling that in giving up the
doctrine of eternal destruction, the Christian consciousness of redemption
would lose its deepest meaning. But on the other hand it must be conceded that
the doctrine of a universal restoration which of late years has returned to the
Church, has also a starting point in the Scriptures; that it has sprung not
only-as was formerly the case-from lightmindedness, but from a deep feeling for
humanity which is grounded in the very being of Christianity. And therefore it
must be said that the deeper Christian thought goes into this question, the
more is it brought to an antinomy, which as it seems from present knowledge is
not to be brought to a full, determinate, and satisfying resolution.
If we
turn to the Holy Scriptures we are encountered by the same antinomy, without
any definite solution. There are places which, taken at their full weight,
declare eternal condemnation in the most positive way. . . .
But in other passages in the Scriptures there are
declarations which have equal claim to be taken in their whole unweakened
meaning. . . . One cannot without limiting the force of these passages remove
the conception of a universal restoration.
But the same antinomy which is in the
Scriptures appears in thought. It has often been said that no speculation can
evade the acceptance of a universal restoration. This seems to establish
itself, as long as thought proceeds from the stand-point of the teleology of
God's love, which is certainly for Christian consideration the highest and the
most comprehensive. . .
As, proceeding from the idea of God, we are
brought to restoration, so on the other hand the anthropological, the
psychological, and ethical considerations, yea, life and truth itself, bring us
to the doctrine of eternal punishment. Psychological experience shows indeed
also that the human soul can reach a mighty turning point where the old is
broken off from, and the development of character reaches a new stage. . . .
As long as time exists there must be a
possibility of conversion. . . . But when not only this or that particular
portion of time, but time itself, is gone, it is inconceivable how conversion
is possible, since conversion cannot be thought of without a history of
conversion. . . .
If we wish to discover in the world around us
examples of everlasting condemnation, we must look for them in individuals who
have been changed by sin into ruins of moral beings. . . .
So when we see Lady Macbeth wandering in her
sleep, washing off the blood stains from her hand, breathing forth those
horrible sighs in which suppressed conscience seeks to obtain vent for itself,
must we not say that the presentation of an everlasting condemnation impresses
itself on us as a reality? For it is no true, no fruitful repentance under
which she is suffering. . . And when we see her wandering so, does it not seem
as if she must so wander continually for mons, weeping the tearless wails of
hell? . .
It has been attempted to remove the difficulty
by the supposition that the damned . . . must sink down into complete
annihilation. In this way every mental bar to the love of God would be removed
. .; but just as this supposition has no sup- port in the Scriptures, so it
does not remove the principal difficulty, viz., that beings who have been
destined by the Creator for an endless life, and who have been brought by a
process of guidance over against the goal, must at last be allowed to be lost
sight of, by the foreknowledge of God, and must be given up by the paternal
might which was not able to bring them to their destiny but was obliged to
allow them to drop clown into the night of annihilation. . . . We have here the
antinomy as a cross for thought which from the stand-point of the church
militant neither shall nor ought to be removed.-Christliche Dogmatik, § 283,
ff. German Transl.
The foregoing extracts present, with such
fullness as the necessary limits of space permit, the opinions of many of the
principal leaders of thought in the Christian Church, in different countries
and successive ages down to the present. Inasmuch, however, as, by the design
of this volume, actual contemporary opinion is represented in it by living
authors, speaking each for himself, in papers expressly prepared for this use,
the names of living theologians have been purposely excluded from this
preliminary historical exhibit.
This article has been prepared under the kind
supervision of Professor GEORGE PARK FISHER, of Yale University, and on the
basis of his instructions, both published and unpublished. But for the work of
selecting the extracts from different writers, of collating, transcribing,
condensing, and in some instances of translating, the undersigned must be held
responsible.
THEODORE DAVENPORT BACON.
There is very little in the New Testament to
warrant belief in endless conscious sin and suffering; much in it showing that
the end of sin is absolute death.
By the Rev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D.,
Congregational Pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., and Editor of
the "Christian Union," New York City.
THE aim of this book, as I understand the plan
of its projector, is to give the public the various views now held in the
Christian church respecting the future state, for the purpose of throwing light
on current theological discussions respecting the extension of Christ's
redemptive work beyond the grave. Polemical theology appears to me to have in
it very little value. Engaged in a debate, we become more anxious for personal
victory than for the victory of truth, and if I were asked to enter the lists
in a theological tournament, and debate the pending question with a theological
disputant, I should certainly decline. But to give the reader the various views
upon this subject which different students of life, of church history, and of
the Scripture have evolved by their study, is a very different mat- 6 ter. Most
readers get their theological opinions either from the pulpit or the sectarian
press. In this way they get, necessarily, a one-sided if not a narrow view, and
rarely comprehend the opinions of other schools than that in which they are
themselves educated. Such a volume as this aims to be, should be valuable, if
for no other reason, because it will give a broader knowledge and therefore
promote a more comprehensive charity. My object then in this paper is not to
antagonize the view of any other writer or school of writers, nor to represent
the view of any school, but to give, as well as I can in so brief a space, the
views which have grown out of my own personal study. Before entering directly
on the allotted theme, three preliminary observations seem to be necessary.
1. In my judgment substantially all our
knowledge of the future life is derived from Revelation. The dead are dumb; the
grave is silent, and, when questioned respecting the future, maintains its
impenetrable silence. Were it not for the voice of Revelation, especially were
it not for the testimony of Christ himself, even personal immortality would be
but a hope, not an assured certainty. All that class of arguments expressed in
the current phrases " we must suppose " or " God must do so and
so," are to my thinking utterly without weight. We know too little
respecting the vast universe, too little respecting the nature and the
resources of God, to place any confidence in the conclusions of any such
hypothetical reasonings.
2. Revelation gives us far less knowledge
respecting the future ......
than men have been accustomed to suppose. The
Scriptures are not written to gratify curiosity, but to promote godly living,
and they give no more knowledge respecting the future than is necessary for
godly living. The Bible is not a text-book of science, the object of which is
to furnish a complete exposition of the moral government of God; it is a book
of law, and of grace, whose ends are accomplished in thoroughly furnishing a
godly man unto good works. This furnishing is in many respects better accomplished
by vague than by definite knowledge respecting the future. All Scripture
warnings are of a danger indefinable, and all Scripture prophecies are of a
hope indefinable. The object of the one is to excite a healthful fear of sin
and its consequences, of the other to arouse that hope which prompts us to
purify ourselves even as He in whom we have this hope is pure. If, therefore,
the views expressed in this paper seem to my readers to be somewhat vague, it
is well that they should comprehend beforehand my conviction that vagueness of
belief on questions of the future is a virtue, not a vice.
3. The questions concerning the future state
are chiefly important because they are the outgrowths and manifestations of a
profounder question, which concerns the nature of God, and the divine
government, and thus belong in the very substructure of theological thought. In
so far, for example, as the much debated question of a future probation is one
concerning what is called the Intermediate State, it might well be dismissed as
of no particular consequence. But what has brought this question to the front,
is a change in the whole method of looking at both the divine character and the
divine administration, and this change is radical and I believe will prove in a
true sense revolutionary, at least to Puritan theology. To make intelligible
what I have to say about the future life, I must first indicate briefly this
general change taking place in theological thought, for out of it have grown,
in my opinion, all the changes that are taking place in our conception of the
future life.
What is known as the Old Theology, though as
formulated theology it is not older than Puritanism, regarded God as the moral
governor of the universe; justice as his essential and fundamental attribute,
mercy as coming in temporarily to modify, and for a brief epoch restrain,
justice from carrying out its ends; the Bible as a code of laws demanding exact
and profound obedience; redemption as a scheme or plan of salvation, the object
of which is to reconcile mercy and justice, so that God, notwithstanding he is
just, may still be the justifier of a certain portion of the human race,-according
to Calvinism, the elect; according to Arminianism, all those who in this life
repent and exercise faith in Jesus Christ. What is termed the New Theology
regards God and his government from an entirely different point of view. I call
it here in accommodation to popular phraseology New Theology, though I believe
it to be the theology of Paul and the primitive church, from which we have been
carried away by the incursion of Pagan thought into religious philosophy, as
the church was carried away from the simplicity of Christian worship by the
incursion of Pagan rites into church worship. According to this so called New
Theology, God is regarded as the Father of whom the whole family in heaven and
on earth is named; the whole human race are the children of his compassionate
love, they are all the offspring of God; God's mercy toward them is the
essential and fundamental attribute of his character and endures forever;
justice is the instrument of mercy, working out its beneficent ends; there is
no incongruity between justice and mercy which needs to be reconciled; the
Bible is a book of promise far more than a code of laws; the end or object of
God's government is the redemption not of an elect,-few or many,-but of the
entire human race; all punishment and suffering are means to this end in the
penology of the universe, as we are beginning to make them in our own reformatories
and penitentiaries; and the gospel of Jesus Christ reveals God as possessing a
justice which justifies, a righteousness which rightens, all those who can be
brought to receive his justifying and lightening influence. Out of these two
systems there must needs grow two widely divergent conceptions of the future
state, and especially of future punishment. It can scarcely be needful for me
to say that the second is the view which appears to me to be clearly taught in
Scripture, and I gladly accept the corollaries respecting the future which
proceed from it. These corollaries are four in number.
1. God's mercy endures forever. Were he to
cease to be Merciful, that is, full of mercy, he would cease to be God. It is
not his wisdom, nor his power, but his goodness and his love which constitute
him God. Wisdom and power under the administration of wrath or selfishness are
simply abominable, and if they could be conceived of as infinite and eternal
they would simply be infinitely and eternally abominable. God is love, and
mercy which is love towards the sinful and the unworthy is the highest phase of
love. One might better conceive the sun as losing its illumination and warming
power and call the blackened orb a sun, or a mother's heart as losing its
tender compassion for the child and call the bloodless valve a heart, than
conceive of God as knowing of sin and misery anywhere in the universe, without
compassionating it and desiring to redeem from it, and still call him God. This
is the first and fundamental fact, any denial of which is in so far Pagan,
carrying us back from a religion of filial reverence to one of awful and
chilling fear.
There lies before me as I write a letter from
a Japanese in this country who has been drawn toward Christian faith and hope,
and who writes to a Christian friend to ask him what the Christian religion
teaches respecting the fate of his mother, who died a heathen. The first and
fundamental answer to be made to all such questioning is this: They who have
died have gone before the judgment throne on which sits Christ, the Saviour of
the world, who never condemned a sinner, if compassionate love could save him
from his sin. The human race rushes like a herd of buffaloes across the
prairie, each line driven as by the force of the following herd, over the edge
of a precipice into an unknown abysm below. Whither does it fall? We know not;
we only know that each generation falls into the arms of the everlasting love,
for God is in all the universe and where God is there is infinite love. What
his compassion has devised or can devise, I know not, but this I do know, that
I may trust myself and all others in the compassionate care of Him whose
mercies never fail. My knowledge is very limited, but my trust may be
illimitable.
2. Does this then involve the doctrine of
universal salvation? Because God's mercies endure forever, because his
compassions fail not, do we conclude that all the sheep will be brought back
from the wilderness, and all the " prodigal sons " from the far country?
It does not seem so to me, though it is difficult perhaps to state in a
paragraph the philosophical reason which prevents me from accepting so
attractive a conclusion.
If salvation were something independent of
character, if it were a matter of external condition, if it were deliverance
from torturing fear, if it were admission to a golden-paved city, and the
possession of a harp and a crown, if in this way lay happiness, and happiness
were the object which love seeks for its beloved, I should believe in universal
salvation. The resisting will of an individual is no reason why he should not
be forcibly saved from self-destruction. We put a strait-jacket on the lunatic
and. feed him with a spoon that he may not starve himself to death. At hazard
of life the hero will plunge into the water and rescue the would-be suicide.
God's love cannot be less than man's love; and if God could save 'men from
destruction against their will it is impossible not to believe that God would
do so. But salvation is character, and character lies in the free act of a free
will. The only crown which love seeks for its beloved is the crown of virtue,
and virtue is the free choice of truth and goodness and love as the supreme
good. No man can be saved against his will, because salvation is the conformity
of His free will to the eternal and immutable moral law. Salvation and
compulsion are contradictory terms; salvation can only be accomplished by
persuasion. If I were a fatalist I should also be a Universalist. I am not a
Universalist because I believe in the absolute free will of man. The most awful
fact in human life is the fact that man can resist all the sympathetic
pleadings and persuasions of God; choose death rather than life, and destroy
himself in spite of his Father's love. He who believing with me in this awful
fact would persuade me of the truth of the larger hope, that all men will
finally be saved, must show me, either that Scripture holds out this hope, or
else that human life points that way. But human life does not point that way.
On the contrary it points to the possible choice of death against all gracious
influences. And though I have 71 read Restoration treatises and commentaries,
some of them able and eloquent, I have never found one which seemed to me to
reconcile the hope that all men will be finally persuaded to accept the love
and law of God with the warnings and teachings of Scripture. With all that they
say respecting the illimitable mercy of God I heartily agree; but they have not
persuaded me that it is within the power of omnipotent love to save a soul
against its own will.
3. -The doctrine that some of God's creatures
will continue in conscious sin and suffering forever is not the necessary
alternative of the doctrine that all God's creatures will be finally restored
to holiness and happiness. This awful conception of the final outcome of life,
which I once reluctantly held, I hold no longer. It seems to me to be based
partly on a false view of God, as a moral governor of whom justice is the
fundamental attribute, rather than as a loving Father of whom mercy is the
fundamental attribute; partly on an ignoring of some passages of Scripture, and
a misconstruction of others; and partly on a false philosophy both of human
nature and of redemption. Respecting the first error I need add nothing to what
I have said above. To give at length the Scripture teaching on this subject
would far transcend the space allowed to me. It must suffice here to say that
if Universalism ignores or explains away those awful passages which speak of
the wicked as being cast into utter darkness, or entering into eternal
punishment, or being punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of
God, or being cast into a second death from which apparently there is no
resurrection, orthodox scholars have also ignored or explained away those
passages jubilant with triumph, which intimate a song of redemption with which
no sighs or groans shall be intermingled, when every knee shall bow, and every
tongue confess Jesus to be Lord to the glory of God the Father, when Christ
shall have reconciled all things unto himself, whether in heaven or on the
earth or under the earth and such as are in the sea, and when all created
beings shall join au a universal choral to the Lamb for ever and ever. On the
other hand it has misconstrued into images of torment what were clearly in
their original use and to the original hearers images of destruction. A single
illustration must suffice as a type, with the parenthetical observation that a
quarter of a century's study of the New Testament has convinced me that, unless
perhaps in the book of Revelation, and one or two incidental figures in the
parables of Christ, there is not in the New Testament a passage which, properly
interpreted, points to conscious suffering as the final penalty of sin. The
figure which has entered most fully in Christian literature from Scripture as a
figure of torture certainly bears no such meaning: namely, the fire that is not
quenched, and the worm that dies not. Outside of the walls of Jerusalem, in the
valley of Gehenna, was kept perpetually burning a fire, on which the offal of
the city was thrown to be destroyed. This is the hell fire of the New
Testament. Christ warns his auditors that persistence in sin will make them
offal to be cast out from the holy city, to be destroyed. The worm that dies
not was the worm devouring the carcasses, and is equally clearly a symbol not
of torture but of destruction.*
The
notion that the final punishment of sin is continuance in sin and suffering is
also based in part on, what seems to me, a false philosophy as to man. This
philosophy is that man is by nature immortal. The conviction has grown on me,
that, according to the teaching both of science and Scripture, man is by nature
an animal, and like all other animals mortal; that-immortality belongs to the
spiritual life; and that spiritual life is possible only in communion and
contact with God; that, in short, immortality was not conferred upon the race
in creation whether it would or no, but is conferred in redemption, upon all
those of the race who choose life and immortality through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Let me add, what may be regarded as rather a sentiment than a reason,
that while the thought of eternal suffering might perhaps be endured, the
thought that there is to be any corner in God's universe where sin,
lawlessness, rebellion, selfishness, deceit, malignity, shall continue
eternally is a thought which has grown to me spiritually not only unbearable
bat unthinkable; not any longer to be reconciled with faith in, I will not say
the love, but even the purity, of God.
I cannot be dogmatic respecting the future
state; I seek not to know what God has not clearly revealed. I cannot with
curious eyes peer into that utter darkness which lies beyond the shut door. I
can only say, as the result of a quarter of a century's study of the New
Testament, that in my judgment there is very little in it to warrant belief in
endless conscious sin and suffering, and much in it to warrant the belief that
the end of sin is death, that life and immortality are the gift of God through
Jesus Christ our Lord, that when God shall have finished the work of redeeming
grace, and the song of triumph shall ascend from his redeemed. children, no
groan and no rebellious and despairing discords shall mingle with and mar the hymns
of praise.
4.. It only remains in a brief sentence to add
a word respecting the much disputed topic of what is called future probation.
If any man avers that Christ's work of redeeming mercy ends for any soul at
death, the burden of proof rests upon him to make good the assertion.
Presumptively Christ's work of redeeming love will continue so long as love can
see any hope of achieving redemption, and no longer. I see no ground in
Scripture whatever for the assertion, on the one side, that this work of
redemption continues for every man till death, or ends for any man at death.
Christ uniformly represents the end of his redemption as coming not at death,
but at the last judgment, and he who asserts that it ends at death, and he who
undertakes to assert that it will certainly be carried on beyond death, are
wise above what is written. To say that every man has had a fair chance, and
that he will be judged according to the light which he has had, is not
pertinent to one who holds that God is love. For the question such an one will
ask, must ask, is not what justice requires the judge of all the earth to do,
but what mercy will prompt the Father of all his children to do. He who looks
on life and sees how little apparently is done for the redemption of some
souls, cannot but hope that more will be done hereafter than has been done
here. There is nothing in Scripture to forbid this hope, though nothing to
convert it into an assurance of conviction. Only we can be sure that God's love
will let no wandering child of his die, until all the resources of infinite
mercy have been exhausted in the endeavour to bring him back to his home, to
holiness, and to God.
Universalism holds that the whole tenor of
scripture points to the final recovery and holiness of the whole human race.
By
Rev. John COLEMAN ADAMS, D. D„ Pastor of St. Paul's Universalist Church, Chicago,
Ill.
THE position of Universalists in reference to
the belief in future punishment may be stated in few words. They hold that, as
it is clear that many men die in their sins, and as it is equally clear that
the Scriptures teach that God purposes to save all men from their sins,
therefore, two inferences follow: first, that all punishment must be salutary,
disciplinary, remedial; and, second, that whatever punishment may be needed, in
the world to come, to bring souls to repentance, will be administered. Whatever
differences of opinion there may be as to particulars, this general statement
covers the faith of all classes of Universalists.
It is, however, well understood that as to
these particulars there has been some variety of belief among the modern
Universalists. The early believers in this faith, in America, held to the
doctrine of limited future punishment. Hosea Ballou, in his later years, held
that " the Scriptures begin and end the history of sin, in flesh and
blood; and that, beyond this mortal existence, the Bible teaches no other
sentient state but that which is called by the blessed name of life and
immortality "; and beyond the teaching of Scripture he refused to
dogmatize or speculate. Many of his followers, however, were not so scrupulous,
but disbelieved in any future punishment. For the last thirty years there has
been a reaction from the opinions of this class of Universalists, and it has
been more and more widely taught that the present and the future life are
organically one, so that the moral consequences of conduct and the character of
the soul run beyond the limit of death, affecting at least the beginning of the
soul's disembodied condition. In justice to those who have been popularly known
as "Ballou Universalists," it is to be distinctly remembered that
neither they, nor Ballou, ever held that death wrought a miraculous change in
the soul, but only that the ineffable glory and impressiveness of the future
would so affect the mind and heart that the impenitent soul, just entering the
immortal life, would be irresistibly drawn to the disposition of humility and
love. Death was not in their thoughts a saviour of souls, but merely the
transcendent opportunity for impressing, persuading, and converting the soul.
It is probable that the views of the majority of believers in Universalism, in
this country, are expressed in the words of a minute adopted at the Boston
Ministers' Meeting in 1878. " Whatever differences in regard to the future
may exist among us, none of us believe the horizon of eternity will be
relatively either largely or for a long time overcast by the clouds of sin or
punishment, and in coming into the enjoyment of salvation, whenever that may
be, all the elements of penitence, forgiveness, and regeneration are involved.
Justice and mercy will then be seen to be entirely at one, and God will be all
in all."
It is to an exposition of the views of that
portion of Universalist believers who accept the doctrine of future punishment
that I address myself.
In the first place, it is assumed and asserted
that the human race needs salvation. Sin is universal with our race. The moral
life of man is narrowed and corrupted by moral evil. The selfish and
disobedient use of the will demoralizes human nature. It throws the soul into
disorder, deranges its functions, and disorganizes its life. It is not merely a
retarder of the soul's development; it distorts the inner nature, and smites it
with disease and deformity. So that something more than progress is necessary
to bring the soul into true and normal relations with God and his law.
Salvation implies the correction of evil and abnormal conditions, the removal
of corrupting influences, the consent of the will to the divine order and
commandment. If that condition of the soul is not brought about in this life,
if death finds the soul still in revolt, still in subjection to evil
dispositions, still defiant, perverse, or corrupt, clearly that soul is
unsaved. Nor is salvation possible, in any true sense, until the soul has been
reclaimed from these conditions, and inwardly renewed. Universalism is at one
with the whole course of Christian belief from the beginning, in recognizing the
evil of sin, its essential character as resistance to the divine order, the
necessity for its removal by repentance, conversion, and regeneration,-that is,
by a recognition of its enormity, a resolve to forsake it, and the assumption
of a right disposition and life toward God. That this condition has not been
reached by multitudes, perhaps one may say by the majority, of those who pass
out of this life, is a proposition which needs no word of supporting argument.
It is universally conceded.
But this condition of salvation is the good
toward which, in the providence of God, all souls are moving. This is the most
natural inference from the world's past as that is read by science; it is the
prophecy of the world's future, as announced in the pages of revelation.
For the inference to which a knowledge of
man's past leads intelligent minds is, that the moral life of the human race is
a long march of gain and progress. The earliest moral beings may have been
innocent. They did not long remain so. Sin entered into life, and the weary
struggle for virtue began. The progress of that struggle has been a steady
triumph of the better over the worse, the higher nature over the lower. The
work of past ages has all tended toward the moral emancipation of mankind. The great
virtues which are characteristic of man's higher life have commended themselves
more and more to human souls; and justice, purity, benevolence, self-sacrifice,
love, have come to fill a larger and a more favourable place in human ideals.
Warlike and brutal instincts are slowly weakening. Man's susceptibility to
improvement increases with each generation. In the language of Dr. Flint
(Theism, p. 231), "In the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the
ages, victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good. The
vices die,-the virtues never die. Some great evils which once afflicted our
race have passed away. What great good has ever been lost? Justice carries it
over injustice in the end." The consenting voices of all candid students
of history affirm the moral progress of the race from the earliest clays up to
the present. And it is impossible not to project the lines thus started into
the future, and predict the final emancipation of the race from all evil, and
prophesy its ultimate freedom from sin. One prophet of the scientific school
has already done this in words which voice the general consent of thoughtful
minds: " The future is lighted for us with the radiant colours of hope.
Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The
dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great
musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and, as we gird
ourselves up for the work of life, we may look for- Si ward to the time when,
in the truest sense, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of
Christ, and he shall reign forever, King of kings and Lord of lords."-John
Fiske's Destiny of Man, p. 119.
These hopeful predictions of those who have
made a study of the history and the tendencies of the human race are, of
course, but the inductions from experience. For the Christian they must still
be compared with the utterances of revelation. If the believer finds a conflict
between what reason derives from man's past and what inspiration announces as
to the future, he must be plunged into a double perplexity. If he finds an
agreement he will be doubly strengthened in his faith. Universalism holds that
the whole tenor of Scripture points to the final holiness of the race. The
announcement is early made that the seed of the woman shall bruise the
serpent's head. It is followed by the promise to Abraham that in his seed shall
every nation of the earth be blessed. The prophet affirms, in the name of the
Lord, the decree that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to
righteousness and strength in the Lord, and declares of the Divine One that he
shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. These words, uttered out
of the assurance of hearts that had not yet seen the Messiah, are more than
echoed in the declaration of our Saviour himself and of those who carried his
gospel abroad. Again and again are reiterated those promises which lead us to
trust in the final recovery of all souls. He who was described as the Lamb of
God that takes away the sins of the world, and of whom it was said that he
.tasted death for every man, and that he gave his life a ransom for all,
himself declared that he would draw all men unto him, that the Father had given
all things into his hands, and that of all that had been given him he would
lose nothing,-thus justifying his title, the Saviour of the world. To the same
effect are the prophetic outbursts of the apostles announcing a clay when the
creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, when God shall have
gathered together all things in Christ, when by the blood of the cross he shall
have reconciled all things unto himself, the day of restitution of all things,
when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things
in earth and things under the earth, when they all shall say, Blessing and honour
and glory and power be unto him that sits upon the throne and unto the Lamb
forever, the day in which there shall be no more curse, and in which death and
hell shall be cast into the lake of fire; the day in which Christ' shall have
delivered all things unto the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and
all authority and power, and God shall be all in all. In such a day, prophesied
by the consenting voices of scientific knowledge and. of inspired prophecy, we
implicitly believe.
A faith so radical and so comprehensive as
this involves, of necessity, a thorough re-examination of our conceptions of
the nature and object of penalty, under its double form of punishment and
discipline. It has never been possible to assign a reason for endless
punishment which did not clash with our faith in the divine love and wisdom.
The only assignable cause for it has been, at last, that repugnant word,
vengeance. For it has never been shown why the good of the race could not be
secured just as well by a terminable punishment; nor why an endless term of sin
and suffering contributed in any wise to the glory of God, or to the joy of the
redeemed. Justice does not demand it and mercy cries out against it. And
whoever attempts to defend the dogma which teaches it, finds himself dealing
with the whole subject of retribution upon a plane of thought and sentiment
which the world has been outgrowing for the last thousand years. For it is one
of the marks of the influence of Christianity upon human thought, that it has
led men to the conviction that there ought to be a higher aim in punishment
than mere vengeance. In all enlightened communities men are coming, year by
year, to insist that the aim of punishment shall be to reform the offender, at
the same time that it deters others from crime. It has already become apparent
that human society will never rest satisfied with any method of penalty which
does not at once involve the principles of restraint and. cure. Already, at
this comparatively early date in the history of penology, men are extremely
reluctant to admit that any case of confirmed criminality is incorrigible.
" Give us time and resources," they say, " and we could reclaim
the most inveterate sinner." The effect of this reasoning upon theological
thought has been inevitable. It has unsettled all the old notions of the nature
of divine punishments. Christian thought, to-day, runs strongly toward the
Universalist belief that God's judgments are sent in mercy. He pursues us with
his retributions, because of the infinite and tender love he bears us; a love
which is outraged by the disobedience of the sinner, and is absolutely and
forever committed to our salvation. He who believes implicitly in the love of
God, believes in a retribution as sure and relentless as the unchanging nature
of God himself. He believes in a retribution which will not let the sinner go
until it has brought him to the gates of salvation: a penalty whose end and aim
is to deliver and to purify. The divine wrath is no mere spleen of the Infinite
against a neglectful or defiant creature. It is not merely the reaction of
outraged justice. It is not the outbreak of exhausted patience, or of affection
turned to hatred. It is the inevitable and inherent hostility of the Infinite
Purity against what is unholy and depraved. It is the parent's repugnance to
whatever can sully the nature of his child. God's penalties are not the outcome
of a vengeance untempered by mercy. They are, first, last, and always, the
promptings of pity, the precautions of mercy, the effort of love to save and
deliver. They are the warnings of the Heavenly Compassion, they are the
chastisements of the Divine Will. They are co-ordinated with all the milder
persuasions and drawings of the divine nature for the salvation of souls. Any
other conception of punishment in God's hands must inevitably make it an
offense against the highest instincts of OUT nature, the implications of
experience, the dictates of reason. To conceive of punishment as endlessly
prolonged, with no effect but to harden the object of its severities, is to
charge upon Deity the infliction of an aimless curse unmitigated by any
redeeming sign of beneficence. The endless infliction of pain, with no ulterior
aim, would not be punishment; it would be revenge.
We are greatly assisted in our thoughts of the
moral economy of God in respect to punishment, if we comprehend the teachings
of Jesus as to the eternal life. The kingdom of heaven is not of this world. It
is not framed with reference to the cycles of time which limit the life of the
body and its earthly dwelling-place. Its lines run above and beyond the
limitations of this earth's centuries. The eternal life is the life of the eons
or ages. It takes no account of physical incidents or accidents, not even of
death itself, being related to the immortal soul and to its undying essence. To
limit the work of salvation to the present life is to pervert the very
substance of the gospel. Death assumes no importance in the sight of our Lord.
To him it was an entirely subordinate incident of our spiritual existence. To
him eternity is a present fact, eternal laws in present operation, eternal life
within reach of present effort. And the life thus begun goes on without
interruption by death. The laws thus ordained are in force wherever there are
moral beings. The work of salvation is not limited to the world of our physical
life. It begins here, indeed, but its development is beyond the line of death
and sense. It is started in the body; but before it is done the body has
fallen. The reign of the Son of man is a period which transcends the limits of
time and death. It is a vast cycle which, dating from the birth of Jesus the
Christ in this earth, ends only with the subjection of all things in holiness
unto God. "Then cometh the end." But the work of salvation is the one
distinguishing feature of this kingdom and reign of the Lord. It is for this
that he came, for this that he labours. And if his reign among souls is to
continue until " he hath put all enemies under his feet," clearly the
work and the period of salvation must be coextensive with each other, and must
reach far beyond the sight and knowledge of our present faculties, into the
future life.
This thought furnishes an answer to those
inevitable questions in regard to the heathen, to those who perished before
they ever knew Christ, to those who passed from the earth before he came. If
his kingdom overruns this life, and goes on in other states and conditions, we
must think of him as having a relation to souls in the life beyond, as reigning
in the unseen world. The New Testament describes him, after life on earth is
over, as "sitting on the right hand of God." What other meaning are
we to attach to that phrase than to conceive it as the announcement that he has
a work in the heavens? He labours for souls wherever souls are to be laboured
for. Redemption is not a process of this earth merely. It is a work of the
ages. Salvation is a word not based on time relations, but upon principles
enduring into the sons. While there is a soul unsaved that work must go on.
When all are saved " then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him
that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."
It is a striking fact that this teaching of
the New Testament, respecting the kingdom of Christ, is supported and further
enforced by the philosophical principle, so conspicuous in modern thought, of
the unity of the divine methods. It is a necessary corollary of the belief in
one God, whose sceptre sways all worlds, that we should believe in the unity
and the uniformity of his government. If there is one God for all worlds, then
for all worlds there is one moral law. The principles of the Almighty's reign
are neither transient nor variable. In all times and in all places he executes
his purposes with unalterable fidelity to his own nature. Since that cannot
change, the fundamentals of the moral law cannot alter. Neither can the soul's
relations to this law and its workings. This much we are entirely safe in
affirming as necessary results of a belief in God's universal government.
And of course it follows, from these
reflections, that we only do what the mind has a perfect right to do, in
projecting the principles of the divine government, in its dealing with sinful
souls, even into the future life, and claiming that the same distinctions, the
same moral laws, hold good for the unseen life, as hold in this visible O SO world.
We may safely imitate the physical philosopher, who affirms the universality of
the law of gravitation, and assures us that we could use our text-books on
geometry in any of the stars. So it must be true that the laws on which God has
framed his moral universe arc everywhere the same, and that they apply with the
same force to souls in the unseen life as in this. The moral law is a unit. Its
workings must always be the same Under given circumstances.
If, now, we assume the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul, and the belief of the perpetuity of personal identity,-two
propositions which it is taken for granted we agree to,-and if we allow the
universality of the moral law, have we not ample foundations upon which to base
a belief in the continuity of both discipline and penalty into the future life?
Under the laws of this moral universe in which we live, the doers of
righteousness are invariably blessed, while the doers of evil are uniformly
afflicted. So long as a soul continues to make a choice of evil things, it
must, rest under the displeasure of God, as well as suffer the penalties which
flow out of that abhorrence of the All-Holy, for iniquity. Unless it can be
distinctly shown, either by the laws of man's moral nature, or by the express
declaration of Scripture, that the soul ceases to choose evil immediately after
death, we must believe that it is exercised in the future by the same
suffering, and chastened by the same discipline, as are inflicted in this life
for the same sinful choice. The presumption must be, if we hold to the doctrine
that immortality is the continuity of the life of the soul in a spiritual body,
that the soul retains its moral quality, its affections, and its antipathies,
for a time, at least, after it has left the environment in which these were
begotten. Without the most explicit grounds for a contrary belief, we must
regard the soul as retaining in the next world the character formed in this,
until the conditions of that state have time to work out the salvation which it
is the aim of all God's economy to effect.
It will be said, of course, that the physical
body is the cause, or the inducement, to sin, and that when the body is struck
off the soul will cease from the acts which were the consequences of physical
conditions. But we must protest, in the strongest manner, against a theory like
this, which completely inverts the moral facts of the soul's life, and reads
the spiritual history of man upside down. It is not true to the facts to lay
the blame of man's sinfulness upon his body. For what is sin? It is a
conscious, wilful violation of law. But can the body either be conscious of, or
will, a violation of law? The conscience, which apprehends the law, the will,
which elects to violate it, and the consciousness, which appropriates these
acts as those of a person, are all spiritual faculties. They are entirely
independent of the body, and inhere in the soul. The whole process of a sinful
act is therefore inward and spiritual, and can occur without the co-operation
of the body. The physical act only carries out what has already taken place in
the mind. And in the face of so many sins, like envy, hate, deceit,
insincerity, pride, stubbornness, which are entirely independent of the body in
their origin, it is not wise to say that all sin has its occasion in the body.
The affirmation is not true. And any assumption of immediate loss at death of
disposition to sin, based on this theory of the connection between the soul and
the body, must be given up. The disposition to sin lies in the soul. No sinner
is saved until that disposition is changed. Removal of all occasions or
provocations to sin by no means removes the disposition. So that it is not to
be granted that the separation of the soul from the body removes the
inclination to evil choice. That is a fault of the affections and the will.
Granting that the separation of the soul from the body removes it from many
temptations; granting that it destroys the hold of many gross appetites; it is
nevertheless to be distinctly remembered that this is not the conversion of the
soul. The will, which in this life so often chooses righteousness, in spite of
the solicitations of the senses, does not, in the next life, lose the
inclination to sin because the outward suggestion of wrong has gone. That will
not be overcome until the heart has learned the hatred of sin.
It must be said, in this connection, that this
doctrine of salvation by cancellation of the opportunities and the suggestions
of sin is not warranted by our experiences in this life. The divine method here
is not to save the soul by subtracting from it all passions and powers which
might lead it astray. The very problem of life supposes the constant presence
of these possibilities of evil, and requires us to find a way of doing right,
in spite of them all.
Souls are not saved in this life by the sudden
and complete removal of temptation, the benumbing of every sense which might
convey an unholy hint, the amputation of every offending member. No amount of
stripping away the surroundings of life alters the complexion of the soul, any
more than picking a child out of the gutter washes his face. The will is not
converted when it is put where it cannot reach the means of executing its evil
inclinations. That removal by no means implies an inward renewal. There can be
no such thing as salvation, in this or any other world, under the moral economy
of God, without cost to the sinner. He must pay the price of submission. He
must surrender his own perverse will to the Divine Will, must make the supreme
effort of personal consent to the law of the universe, or he is yet in his
sins. And however useful the removal of this body may be, as a means of
salvation, the fact is never accomplished until the will makes free choice of
good.
The belief that the punishment of sins
committed in this life extends into the future is strengthened by the fact that
this present life affords many instances of what may be called cumulative
punishment. It often happens that the consequences of sin, either physical or
mental, are held in the leash for a time, and do not fall in force upon the
sinful heart until the sin itself is long past. The penalties seem to gather
slowly about the soul, until they break in a sort of crisis, and heap disaster
on the guilty heart. Penalty does not keep even pace with transgression. As the
old proverb runs, " God does not pay us our wages every Saturday
night." Still less does he always pay as fast as the work is done. The
divine judgments are not all of them as swift as the bolt which crashes through
the air when two clouds surcharged with the electric fluid near each other.
They are frequently as slow in culminating as are those storms which gather,
through many serene days, and finally end a long period of tranquil weather
with a violent and devastating gale. This is the case with many an: evil life
in this world. In many cases, in which death intervenes before any such climax
of catastrophe is reached, we feel sure that nothing but the removal of the
offender from the earth has saved him from complete overthrow and humiliation.
Nor can we repress the question whether death has, after all, diverted the
steady drift of events towards such a culmination, or whether in the invisible
world there be not in store for him the same judgment of disclosure, shame, and
overthrow, as might have overtaken him had he lived on in the earth.
The familiar maxim about getting our
punishment as we go along is true only in part. It makes no account of those
frequent periods in which judgment is held in suspense, and the leaden feet of
Justice delay the blow from her iron hand. There are countless cases in which
the mind can find no satisfaction for its sense of justice, except in the
thought that the future life hides in its own bosom a scourge of thorns, and
that the retribution, which seems only to have befallen in part, will culminate
behind the veil.
It remains to speak briefly of that phase of
penalty which always endures, even after the act of penitence has removed the
sense of alienation from God and the sting of self-condemnation. There 90 are
sequences of sin which outlast the punishment of sin. Punishment endures only
so long as the soul is consciously violating divine law. Repentance brings
forgiveness, and with forgiveness come the remission of sin and the cessation
of those retributions which follow the sinner so long as he is a sinner. But,
long after he finds that his punishment has ceased, in so fat as that was
penal, the consequences of his sin endure, in weakened faculties, in lost
ground, in degenerate moral fibre, a discipline and a chastisement to his soul.
There are losses in moral stamina, in faculty, and in inward capacity for
blessedness, which not even forgiveness can immediately remove. They linger
even after punishment has ceased. But they are punishments no longer. They have
been transformed into chastisements. They are now like the refining and
purifying powers by which heaven purges away our evil and our bitterness.
Nor can we hope that even the blessed.
environments of the immortal world will at once rejuvenate in the graces and
powers of the Spirit, by repentance, in all, the weakness and degeneracy
wrought by a wicked past. The scars of transgression may remain after the
healing of penitence. Nor does it lie within the range of human speculation to
estimate how far into the future this negative phase of penalty may run. Even for
those who go into the future life with contrite hearts, there may still be in
store long periods of remedial disciplines, the necessary intervals in which to
remove our defects and correct our imperfections. Upon this point revelation is
silent and reason can affirm but little. We have to fall back upon the
analogies of God's method in the beginning of the spiritual world, which we
have already discerned it is characteristic of the moral order, as already made
manifest, that the sanctification of the soul is accomplished by discipline and
by correction.
If, therefore, the peculiarities of this
kingdom are preserved in the world to come, it may be expected that whatever
remedial or educational influences are necessary to our growth in that life
will be applied even to those who have learned submission and obedience. But
the agencies by which these disciplines are secured are very different from
punishment in its proper sense. The former are compatible with happiness and
moral peace; the latter is not. And while discipline will be needful for all
who enter the next world, punishment, it may be believed, will only be
inflicted where old courses of sin have not yet worked out their results of
penalty, or so far as a continuous disposition to do wrong calls for retribution.
We have spoken of death as only an incident in
the progress of the work of salvation. But while we accept this for true there
is every reason to believe it is an incident fraught with redemptive
consequences to the soul. It translates it to new surroundings. It impresses it
with realities which a lifetime could never make clear. It is a release from
many a phase of temptation. It removes the impediments of bodily frailty or
evil habit. It pours a flood of light into the mind. It must powerfully affect
the emotions.
Is it possible to conceive that this supreme
experience of the soul, the most impressive and the most amazing it has ever
known, should be the very one, which, in the providence of God, is made to have
no effect on character? If we have any right to our conceptions of death, it
should be regarded as the most tremendous event, in its power over the
understanding and the affections, which ever has befallen the soul. It is no
more than a reasonable inference to believe that death itself, in freeing the
spirit from the body with all its environments, in lifting it into the light of
a new knowledge, and in thus putting before it new motives and new aspirations,
must powerfully affect the will toward righteousness and reconciliation. And
thus death itself may go far to hasten the end. of those retributions which it
cannot in itself interrupt.
Future punishment is entitled to and is now
receiving special study.-a broader and more suitable line should be drawn as to
the probably saved or lost, whether in heathendom or Christendom.
By Prof. Joseph ANGUS, M.A., D.D., Baptist,
Regent's Park College, London, Eng.
1. THE doctrine of future punishment has
become within the last fifty years a subject of grave discussion. It has for
the time a chief place in modern controversy; and not a few writers think that
the evidence of a state of eternal conscious punishment has been greatly
shaken. It .is, therefore, a wise arrangement to call attention to the facts
and to .try to obtain a general view of the prevailing tendencies of the age in
relation to it.
2. It will be helpful to remember that the
varying views of our age are none of them new. All forms of modern belief were known
and discussed in earlier times. In the fourth century, Arnobius, the
Rhetorician, taught that annihilation was the punishment of the wicked. Origen,
the founder of the philosophic school in the city of Alexandria, held that
probably all will be restored, though scrupling to affirm or to publish this
conclusion. Most of the Fathers, including the more eminent of them,-Cyprian,
Hippolytus, Chrysostom, Augustine,-held and taught the common faith. In the
last century Dodwell maintained that man is in his entire nature mortal and
that future punishment is sooner or later annihilation. Dr. Chauncy, of Boston,
and Elliman Winchester, held universal restoration, and were answered (among
others) by Jonathan Edwards, in America, and by Andrew Fuller, in England. In
our modern diversity of opinion, therefore, no new thing has happened to us.
What is new is the increased number of those who doubt the common faith, and
the lines of argument by which their doubts are sustained.
3. The history of the revival of these doubts
and of the new arguments that support them has practical interest. Two very
different writers have had to do with both-Butler and Tennyson. The Analogy of
religion, by the former, is the most masterly philosophic defence of religion
ever published. It has never been answered, and, from the writer's stand-point,
never will be. Granted that nature and providence are from God, then
revelation, which is based on the same principles and contains the same
difficulties, may also have come from him, and probably did. But if a man holds
that there is no God, or doubts whether nature or providence did come from him,
then Butler's argument only doubles the mystery, spreads from religion to
nature and from revealed religion to natural: and the divineness of both is
questioned. It is on this ground that writers like Tholuck deem The Analogy to
be rather a Hindrance to faith than a help. To Tennyson we owe the phrase
"the larger hope." But, though he holds the wish that it may be true,
to be the likes God in the human breast, he admits that, if nature is to be
interpreted by her facts, the chances are very largely against it. Still, from his In Memoriam, with
all its tenderness and beauty, has come not only the phrase, but a large amount
of the sympathy with which the doctrine is now regarded.
More influential than these great names are
forces of another kind: some of them innocent and commendable; others of them
neither commendable nor innocent. Men have learned to appreciate more justly
the divine Fatherhood and the divine love. They have been touched by the
infinite pity for sinful men which was so conspicuous in Christ. They have
tried to form their theology from the general drift of Scripture, rather than
from particular texts. They have sought to commend the gospel to sensitive
natures, shocked as they think by the awful denunciations of Scripture. And, as
they have yielded to these influences, they have leaned to the larger hope and
have even proclaimed it. Nor can it be questioned-to name less commendable
influences-that sinful, selfish natures have no adequate conception of the
degree or of the desert of their sinfulness, and are ever prone to honour the
divine love at the expense of the divine righteousness,-tendencies that make
future punishment at once distasteful to their feelings, and, in their
judgment, improbable.' The result has been widespread misgiving, even when
there has not been positive disbelief.
4. On the other hand, views of truth which
have been appealed to in favour of " the larger hope," become, when
more carefully studied, arguments on the other side. Moot points have got
settled: and fresh evidence has been found in favour of the common faith. This
statement admits and requires illustration.
One of the peculiarities of our modern
theology is the prominence given to the doctrine of the divine Fatherhood. God
now occupies the same relation to the race, it is said, as he did of old to the
Israelites. He is the God of the Gentiles, and not of the Jews only. As the
Father of spirits, he looks with infinite tenderness on all his rebellious
children. He would have all men to be saved, and in Christ he is reconciling
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.
In a deep and important sense, this teaching
is true, and we gladly accept it. God is the Father of all rational spiritual
natures. As Creator, he takes an interest in all and desires that all should be
good and happy. His holiness and his benevolence alike prompt and sustain this
desire. But this Fatherhood does not save men. " How often would I-but ye
would not " was God's exclamation of old: and it is God's exclamation
still. The Jews were God's own people, called and chosen. Only this fact is
quite consistent with another-that multitudes of them in every generation
perished and that he finally rejected the nation because of their rebelliousness
and unbelief.
There is indeed a Fatherhood of another kind.
It begins when men are renewed in the spirit of their minds, and is connected
not with the first birth, but with the second. This does save: but it is a
Fatherhood more real and spiritual than the other. Penitent and holy Jews
shared the blessings it gives as penitent and holy Gentiles may share or may
have shared it. Men who are not penitent and holy, whether Jews or Gentiles,
are not God's children in any sense that saves them. Arguments, therefore,
based on the general Fatherhood of God, though thought to have force, really
prove nothing. Among the Jews, that Fatherhood left multitudes unsaved. To
affirm the deeper spiritual Fatherhood of God in relation to the race-the
Fatherhood that begins with individual renewal-is to beg the question and to
affirm what is contradicted by New Testament teaching and by the experience of
us all. The Fatherhood that saves is by faith of Jesus Christ-and all men have
not faith: and not to have faith and renewal is to be condemned.
Nor less certain is it that men of our age
have juster conceptions of the divine love than some of our fathers had-both of
its intensity and of its comprehensiveness. He hated nothing that he hath made.
With an oath he affirms that he desired not the death of a sinner. And we
gladly accept this teaching, only again it must be remembered that as many in
the nation to whom these words were
first spoken did not believe, so, now, when the words have wider scope and are
enforced by greater tenderness and by more awful sanctions, men still reject
the counsel of God against themselves and die in their sins. The love that is
not suffered to renew and save becomes, indeed, an aggravation of the
condemnation.
The infinite pity of Christ for sinful men is
admitted. He was grieved at their hardness of heart. He beheld the city and
wept over it. And yet his announcements of the doom of those who die selfish,
impenitent, loving evil and hating good, are the clearest and strongest in the
New Testament.
Theology is properly the sum of New Testament
teaching, and particular texts are to be interpreted by the general spirit and
tenor of the New Testament. But this principle tells in favour of the common
faith. The preaching of. the gospel to the lost, or to those who have another
chance, is spoken of, it is thought, in one passage; but it is one .passage
only (1 Pet., 3: 19), and that passage is explained in another sense in the
same epistle (1 Pet., 4: 6), nor is the explanation given to it consistent with
the context, or with other general statements on the same subject (1 Thess., 1:
9; Matt., 25:41).
That the religion of love only, that milder
interpretations of the threatened consequences of sin, may commend the gospel
to the sensitive nature of some men, is probable enough. But our sensitive
nature is not the entire man. The claims of conscience need to be met and
conscience claims that sin must be punished: and continued sin means continued
punishment. Nor is this statement a theory only. It represents a great fact.
Dr. Watts records his experience that of all the persons to whom his ministry
had been efficacious only one had received the first effectual impressions from
the gentle and attractive aspects of religion; all the rest from the awful and
alarming ones-the appeals to fear. And this, it is added, is all but
universally the manner of the divine process of conversion. The great
awakenings of Jonathan Edwards's time began, as is well known, with his sermons
on God's "just right to damn men." Nor is the explanation difficult.
The gift of eternal life-the free gift-means that men have de- served the
opposite; and to know that is often among the surest means of quickening them
to repentance. " That the gospel of speculative philanthropism is carrying
just now the vote of the world more and more largely may be quite
probable," says Bushnell; " but I have thought much in comparison of
the older, more rugged, rough gospel: and I feel obliged to say that it looks
more real and capable and. great. There is nerve in this and there is none in
the other."-The Vicarious Sacrifice: Part iii., c. 5.
The very arguments, therefore, which have been
used to justify the larger hope tell, when more carefully considered, in favour
of the common faith.
5. Nor must we overlook the deeper sense men
now have of the divine righteousness and of the evil of sin; though it must be
admitted that this deepening sense is by no means universal. Our fathers long
since taught that virtue is the love of justice and truth, as well as of the
happiness of others: and that men are even better judges of the first and
second of these than of the third (Butler); that the love of holiness, not
benevolence simply, is the most glorious of the divine attributes (Edwards);
that justice and righteousness are essential parts of the divine nature
(Booth);-and these opinions are gaining influence. In some quarters, indeed,
all virtue, both human and divine, has been resolved into benevolence. Men
think that because God is said to be love and is never said to be
righteousness, love is the diviner attribute of the two. But unless we include
in love the love of righteousness this notion is a mistake. Love, as
distinguished from righteousness, delights in the happiness of its objects:
righteousness delights in their holiness. Love is only subordinately moral:
holiness is essentially moral. And hence it is that some of our modern writers,
not generally deemed pre-eminently Christian, have done noble service to Christian
morality-Thomas Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, among them. The former has
emphasized in most of his writings the sanctity of law and the supremacy of
truth and holiness. The latter has defined God himself as "a force-a
personality-that makes for righteousness."
Side by side with the deeper sense of the
claims of holiness there has grown up a deeper sense of the evil and guilt of
sin. The God who loves righteousness hates iniquity. This is the great lesson
of both Testaments. Nowhere is the degree and the desert of human sinfulness
more clearly revealed, and experience corroborates its teaching. Even now, the
world would be a blessed place, but for selfishness and wrong-doing. Only
holiness is needed to make " a new heaven and a new earth."
These convictions are not easily maintained,
but they are growing. Philanthropy is beginning to see that what is wrong is
not Providence, but man; not his acts, so much as his nature, and philosophy
lends support to these views. Our profounder writers see the evil of sin and
begin to form juster conceptions of the guilt of it-the love it slights, the
holiness it offends, the disorder it introduces, the misery that is inseparable
from it. None have written more forcibly on this theme than Maurice, Manning,
Martineau: and we cite them as competent and unprejudiced witnesses.
In proportion as these views prevail, sin is
seen to be the chief mystery of the universe, not suffering: the punishment of
sin is felt to be a necessity; and the continuance of sin means, in fact, the
continuance of punishment. They also rebuke a common mistake. Some 'speak as if
God were bound in justice to save men: as if they could not love him, unless he
put right all the evils which sin has introduced; as if, in short, creatures
were largely blameless, and the Creator himself the chief offender. But
Scripture and analogy concur in condemning this teaching. Throughout the Bible
God repudiates all share in the sin he punishes; he forbids it, condemns it,
mourns over it, sends his Son to deliver men from it, and is ever ready to help
any who wish to forsake it. In providence and nature, penalty follows sin, and
is largely inseparable from it. Even God himself may find it impossible to make
selfish, bad men happy. The only mystery is that men are made capable of
sinning and that they commit sin- which from its very nature as their sin must
be their own act. But without such capacity, they would perhaps be incapable of
holiness. In any case they are judged according to their works and cannot
justly complain. And there; with our present knowledge, we may rest content.
6. Two other facts connected with this
sinfulness of the race deserve mention: the tendency of every act to become
character, the law of habit, as it is called; and the perverseness and power of
the human will. " The righteous shall hold on his way, and he that bath
clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger." "Evil men and seducers
wax worse and worse." Single acts not only reveal character, they form it.
What was at first hard becomes easy, pleasant, permanent. A " second
nature " is the result-a completed holiness in the one case; an
"eternal sin " in the other. Such is the law of habit, that is at
work in us all. Nor is the mysterious power of a free will to be overlooked. If
a man is willing to do His will he shall know and believe. If a man is not
willing, there is little knowledge and less real belief. And, worse than this,
the strength of unwillingness grows till men successfully resist the Holy Ghost
and even blaspheme him. Threatening and promise, wrath and love, are alike
powerless to move them. Their hearts are set in them to do evil. If after men
have received the knowledge of the truth, they go on sinning wilfully, there is
nothing more that can be clone. All that remains is judgment and fiery
indignation.
How much these great facts have to do with the
condemnation of men we do not know, but they are recognized in Scripture as
potent factors both in our ruin and in our recovery. Men become holy as men
perish, by little and little, and their tendency is ever to completeness of
character and destiny. Most of the good that is done in a world where virtue is
still militant is clone by men of 103 strong will-and most of the evil. Nor
need we be surprised to learn that, in the case of a good man, his will becomes
so holy that he cannot sin-the condition of the blessed God himself: or that,
in the case of the bad man, his heart and will are so perverse that he cannot
cease to do evil even in the land of uprightness.
7. The impression produced on the minds of
most of the Baptist ministers and churches in England, so far as I know them,
is that the common faith on this subject is sustained by solid reasons, and
that the objections brought against it admit of a satisfactory answer. Above all,
the feeling is that the question is to be settled by a careful interpretation
of Scripture alone. The divine Fatherhood, the divine love, the yearnings of
human hearts for a universal salvation,-the supposed practical effects of the
doctrine of eternal conscious punishment,-cannot themselves solve the problem.
The real, the only, question is-what is the teaching of Scripture? And in that
inquiry progress has been made in certain directions, though it may be conceded
that we still need a careful exegetical discussion of the whole question; such
a discussion as is found in Dorner's volumes on The Person of Christ, or, with
less satisfactory results, in Miller's Doctrine of Sin.
1. Meanwhile, certain facts may be regarded as
exegetically proved. If a reader will examine the passages of the New Testament
which speak of future punishment, he will find that, in most of them, it is not
a single sin which ends in ruin, but a settled habit. Each precept of the law,
each principle of the gospel, has been violated by men who are now safe with
God. The tenor and the words of Scripture imply, when fairly interpreted, that
it is not a single act that destroys men, but a character; not the evil doing
of a day, but the drift of a life. Sometimes the truth is concealed by our
English version, as when it is said that if we sin wilfully, when the meaning
is, if we forsake the new way and resume the old, if we go on in sin;
sometimes, by a misunderstanding of the meaning, as when men conclude that a
word against the Holy Ghost will condemn them. I cannot further discuss the
question. I only repeat the conviction that future punishment is the result of
habits of sin-of ungodliness and disbelief. Men may be saved by acts-true
penitence and faith, for example, in a dying hour; men are destroyed only by
character-by the sin or the impenitence that is habitual.
Not that single sins are other than fearful
evils. Under law and in the case of holy beings, a single sin consciously
committed is a fall and may leave results that are irremediable. Even under a
dispensation of grace, a single sin is ruin, if the sinner appeal to law.
Single sins, moreover, in the lives of us all, reveal character and form it.
All this is true, only it leaves untouched my previous affirmation.
Further: many strong statements, familiar and
accepted for ages, are now regarded as questionable, or even unscriptural.
Within the last two hundred and fifty years, there have been creeds or
interpretations of creeds that doomed. those dying in infancy to eternal conscious
punishment. There are creeds now that doom all the heathen and all Christendom,
with comparatively small exceptions, to the same destiny. And there are
reasoners who press these views, that men may be driven to seek relief in the
doctrine of annihilation or of Universalism.
But it becomes us to beware of such language.
The creeds which were thought to favour it are now admitted to be capable of
another meaning. The Westminster Confession teaches that elect children dying
in infancy are saved, and the Church of England holds that all baptized
children dying in infancy are saved. These epithets were long thought to
restrict salvation to the elect and to the baptized, respectively. But it is
now found that all dying in infancy before actual sin may be deemed elect, and
are therefore saved: and that while baptized children are certainly saved, the
state of the unbaptized is not revealed. We cannot give them Christian burial;
but God may receive them after all. Baptists have been charged with denying the
kingdom of heaven to infants by refusing to baptize them; but in fact they have
generally held that all dying in infancy, before actual sin, are saved; and
this conviction they still hold.
So of Christendom. Avowedly Christian men are
still a small minority in almost every community. But there may be many more
Christians than those connected as members with our churches. Some men are of
Moore's mind and deem it part of their religion to keep it to themselves-a
question, as they say, between God and their conscience. Some are drawn to
Christ, but kept out of the church, by inconsistencies they witness; or by
their own mistakes. Some, like Nicodemus, find it hard to profess their
discipleship, though, like him, they may be ready to defend his cause when
professed disciples desert him. Some are real Christians, though they stand by
themselves; nor will they know that they have been doing things for Christ till
the Lord himself honours and rewards them (Matt., 25: 37). Many are better than
their creed, make fearful mistakes on lesser questions, and are yet "
looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." Many
are better than their lives: they are of necessity refused admission into our
churches, or are excluded from our fellowship; and yet they may have the root
of the matter in them. Many there are who, with little knowledge and few
advantages, just reach the haven, guided and sustained by a single text, or by
the single verse of some hymn. I am not defending the imperfections these facts
imply. I even believe that every imperfection brings with it loss and mischief.
I am only gathering comfort from the view they give of the number of the saved;
and note how they lighten the objections sometimes urged against the common
faith.
So of the heathen. Peter had no hope of the
salvation of the Gentiles, even after he had studied under Christ for nearly
three years and had received the anointing of Pentecost. He could "touch
nothing common or unclean," yet he learned from the case of Cornelius-a
man whose alms and prayers had come up with acceptance before God, while he
knew nothing of Christ-that, in every nation, he that fears God and works
righteousness is accepted of him. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul affirms
that when Gentiles who have not the law do by nature the things of the law,
they are a law unto themselves, since they show the work of the law written on
their hearts; and he asserts that, to those who, in the way of patient
continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, honour and incorruption, God will
give eternal life-whether they be Jews or Gentiles.
These are hints only. All may not feel that
they justify the belief that many of the heathen are saved. But they give
ground of hope: and they rebuke the assertion which aggravates the mystery of
future punishment by affirming that all the heathen are doomed to it. Of
course, this presupposes that there may be efficacy in Christ's work even for
those who have never heard his name: and that the Good Spirit has access to the
souls of men in ways of which we know little. And both suppositions are
rendered probable by the case of children, and by facts in many countries and
in both Testaments; or, to put it in another form: whenever God has led men to
feel the evil and guilt of sin, and is enabling them to strive after holiness,
teaching them to trust in his free mercy for forgiveness and acceptance-there
is nothing in the gospel that justifies us in saying, God cannot save them. All
they need to be told is how God in Christ is at once "just and the
justifier of the ungodly": and they are ready to join with intense rapture
in harmony which ascribes to him who died for them, honour and glory for ever
and ever. There must have been many in this state under the old economy.
Whether there are many, or any, in heathendom, we do not know. It is enough to
affirm the principle and so far to defend the doctrine of future punishment
against an unfounded objection-that it dooms men, irrespective of their
character and aspirations, To endless woe, For ignorance of what they could not
know.
But
exegetical studies have gained other results. Among the words that have created
difficulty in this inquiry are wrath, vengeance, punishment. We are forbidden
to let the sun go down upon our wrath and are commanded to be perfect as our
Father in heaven is perfect. Can he cherish the wrath he bids us to put away?
Is not vengeance passionateness and retaliation, and can these be right? And
surely punishment is intended to reform the offender; a purpose clearly
inconsistent with the common doctrine of final condemnation. But these
objections are founded on mistakes. It is now admitted that the wrath which is
forbidden in Eph. 4: 26 is never used to describe the wrath of God. His wrath
is the moral sentiment of a holy nature in relation to selfishness and sin. It
is the feeling of the magistrate who vindicates the law (Rom., 13:4). Intense
moral disapprobation, or the expression of it, is the meaning of the word. The
quality is, in truth, inseparable from the divine holiness. He who loves
righteousness must hate iniquity. " Vengeance " is properly the
French form of "vindication "-of law and right or of honour.
"Avenge " is truer to the real meaning; just as " revenge "
leads us still further astray. The common Scriptural word for vengeance means
what vindicates outraged justice-once it represents what vindicates out- raged honour,
Heb., 10: 29). . . The notion that the chief purpose of punishment is the
reformation of the offender is a mistake. Punishment is intended, primarily, to
vindicate law and to protect society against outrage. The recovery of the
criminal may be important, but is really secondary and is often disregarded
altogether. The New Testament word for loving discipline or fatherly
chastisement " for our profit " is entirely different (Heb., 12: 6;
Rev., 3: 19), and is never used of the final punishment of the wicked.
Other three words are important -life, death,
destruction - and have been carefully studied. The reward of the righteous, it
is said, is life. The reward of the wicked is death-" destruction from the
presence of the Lord." And it is added, as life is existence, so death is
non-existence, or destruction-the cessation of life. This is the interpretation
of English, Irish, and American advocates of Annihilationism-as it was the
argument of English annihilationists in the last century. And no doubt those
who believe have eternal life before them, and are waiting for it; as the
finally impenitent have death and perdition before them. But these are
half-truths only. The believing have eternal life now; as the impenitent and the
disbelieving are dead now. If we have believed, our everlasting is begun. If we
have not believed, we are dead in sin: dead even though " living in
pleasure "; and so long as we remain unbelieving, we " abide in
death." Our everlasting life is only the perpetuation and the perfecting
of what we have already; and as the present state of death and destruction in
the case of sinners is not annihilation, neither is the perpetuation of that
state. These ideas of a present and a complete salvation, of death and
destruction, present and still to come, are familiar to all thoughtful readers
of Scripture. Believers are justified, adopted, saved; and yet they are looking
for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life; are waiting for their
adoption; and their salvation is now nearer than when they believed. So bad and
un-believing men are condemned already, are dead now and are waiting the formal
confirmation of their sentence and the completion of their destiny, in the day
of God. This teaching pervades the New Testament; as, with less distinctness,
it pervades the Old. The life to come is the completion in blessed or awful
reality of the life that now is.
10. Among the most important results which
have been reached by recent exegetical inquiry are those that refer to the word
eternal or everlasting-forms or combinations of-forever, forevermore, forever
and ever, eternal, or everlasting. The following conclusions may be regarded as
established. (a) Every form of expression used in the New Testament to describe
the everlastingness of the blessedness of God and of the happiness of the
redeemed is used to describe the duration of the punishment of the wicked. (b)
Every form of expression (some fifteen in all) used in the Old Testament to
describe the duration of the blessedness of God and of the happiness of the
righteous is used in the Old Testament to describe also the punishment of the wicked:
and generally all are described in the Septuagint by forms of, even when the
Hebrew uses different expressions. (c) Other Greek expressions which, it is
said, would have expressed eternity without ambiguity are either never found in
the Septuagint or in the New Testament; or they are generally used in the New
Testament in a sense purely temporary; and are therefore less suitable than the
forms of aic6r. (d) In the New Testament, eternal (or its equivalents), which
is said to have an indefinite meaning, is used only of God, and the redeemed,
and of the punishment of the wicked. There is, therefore, no indefiniteness or ambiguity
in the New Testament usage, unless the punishment of the wicked be an instance.
(e) The duration of punishment' is generally expressed in Scripture in the same
passages that describe the duration of blessedness. The last is
"everlasting life," the first, "everlasting contempt "
(Dan., 12: 2). The righteous go away into "everlasting life"; the
wicked into "everlasting punishment." The everlasting life (still the
same word), the everlasting glory, the everlasting kingdom, the everlasting
gospel (Heb., 9: 15; 1 Tim., 6: 12; 2 Tim., 2: 10; 1 Pet., 5: 10; 2 Pet., 1:
11; Rev., 14: 6), have, as their counterparts, the everlasting judgment, the
everlasting punishment, the everlasting fire, the everlasting destruction of
the wicked (Heb., 6: 2; Matt., 25: 46, 41; 2 Thess., 1: 9). The fact is, as
Moses Stuart put it years ago, " If the New Testament has not asserted the
endless punishment of the wicked, neither has it asserted the endless happiness
of the righteous, nor the endless glory and existence of the Godhead."
(Exegetical Essays, p. 45.) As a question of exegetical interpretation,
Martensen's conclusion is irrefragable -"Ex inferno nulla redemptio."
(Christian Dogmatics, p. 482.)
11. The strongest words of Scripture, in
relation to the destinies of the wicked, were spoken, it will be noted, by our
Lord and Paul and John. He was incapable of exaggeration or temper. Whenever he
spoke with indignation, it was righteous indignation and was blended with pity
and grief. They mourned over the sins of men and were examples of all that was
tenderest and self-denying in seeking to save them. In the day of judgment, it
is Christ who will say, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into eternal fire
prepared for the Devil and his angels." The men, Paul tells us, who are
finally condemned are punished with (" pay the just penalty of ")
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his
power, when Christ comes to be glorified in his saints and to be admired by all
them that believe. And John, who tells us that the wrath of God abides on the
unbelieving, has described in the Revelation a condemnation as awful as the
everlasting life is blessed and glorious.
The authors of these announcements reveal no
suspicion that they were dishonouring God or shocking the consciences of men.
They never soften the harshness of the truth by speaking of "a larger
hope." They have all described the condemnation of the gospel as
destruction. Christ knew that if he were "lifted up" he would draw all
men unto him. Paul taught that all things were to be subject to Christ. And
John foretells a universal kingdom. But these blessed and glorious results of
the incarnation and death of our Lord must be interpreted consistently with the
decisions of the day of judgment and the doom pronounced on the selfish and the
disbelieving-the rebellious and the ungodly.
And even if we are not perfectly sure how the
two are to be harmonized, the only safe course is to deliver the gospel as it
was delivered to us by Christ and Paul and John. "We may think that
destruction ' is literal, and that the time will come when all sin and sinners
will have ceased out of the universe of God; or, we may think that Christ's
supremacy means that all intelligent natures will be at last lovingly subject to
him, and that the enemies, the cursed,' who become the footstool of his feet,'
are among his dearest friends. Finding relief in such an issue, we may be
tempted to omit, or to tone down, or to explain away the sharp, strong,
decisive utterances of our Lord, addressed so often to the selfish, the
impenitent, the disbelieving. But this temptation we must resist. Christ, who
was love and righteousness incarnate, who knew the meaning of the texts that
are quoted in favour of a larger hope, never allowed them to stifle his
warnings or to soften his descriptions of 'the wrath to come.' To preach to
sinners a larger hope, i.e., another chance, or the final salvation of all men,
is not the message of the gospel. It is without sanction in the appeals of
inspired men; and it may precipitate the very ruin it professes to deplore.
Fear and love are among the motive forces whereby men are won to God; and it is
at our peril that we cease to use either of them. Surely, it is not too much to
ask that we use Christ's own warnings; and so commend our message to men's
consciences, as well as to their hearts. To find offense in him or in his words
is not the spirit of faithful servants."
The Expositor, Oct., 1887, p. 280.
The facts and statements of these latter
paragraphs I have reason to believe have found general acceptance with our
ministers and churches,
Positive disbeliefs and positive beliefs
concerning future punishment.
By Rev. LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON, D.D.,
Congregationalist.
IT will be helpful to the clear setting forth
of my positive belief on the subject of Punishment after Death, if I begin by
indicating some of those arguments and conclusions, familiar to me in my youth,
from which my mind has strongly reacted.
1. I reject the notion that the punishment of
the wicked is to be without discrimination or gradation. The very principle
which Plutarch quotes as absurd in the bloody code of Draco-that the least
crime deserves death, and there is no severer penalty that can be imposed upon
the greatest*-has been deliberately laid down as the principle which must
dictate the penal code of the divine moral government. "The legal
sanctions of a perfect moral government include . . . the highest degree of
natural evil possible, in each case of disobedience." " The legal
penalty must consist of the highest possible degree of misery to the
disobedient subject." " The suffering of the transgressor, if it be possible,
must be unmingled and eternal." I do not undertake here to controvert the
finespun a priori reasoning by which such conclusions are maintained. I simply
reject the conclusions as being flatly contradicted by the authority of Jesus
Christ, who teaches the opposite doctrine.
Dr. N. W. Taylor on Moral Government, Vol. I.,
pp. 160, 164, 167. Italics as hi the original. See also the works of Jonathan
Edwards, Vol. I V., sermons ix.-xv., Ed. New York. The theologians and
preachers of this school, dwelling on their favourite argument that " sin
is an infinite evil and requires an infinite punishment," do not always
refuse to notice that " there is as great a difference among infinites as
among finites . . . to be forever in hell is an infinite evil in respect of the
duration; but yet the damned are not all equally miserable." Bellamy's
Works, I., 104, note. Ed. N. Y., 1811. And yet their prevailing tone of
instruction implies that the resources of omnipotence and omniscience are to be
exhausted in inflicting the utmost possible suffering on every sinful soul for
ever and ever.
2. I likewise reject the notion which for so
many Christian centuries has been posited as one of the fundamentals of natural
theology, and the basis of much argument both in natural theology and in revealed-the
notion that the human soul, or life, is essentially indestructible, in its own
nature immortal. This thesis (which I recognize as the starting-point of much
of the preaching which I used to hear in my boyhood, before the subject of
future punishment had ceased to be a subject of systematic pulpit argument)
used to be maintained by two classes of arguments: those that prove too little,
and those that prove too much. It is really astonishing to look back and see
what illogical pages have been written by great logicians on this point, as if
any reasoning was good enough to support a proposition which, until lately,
none but a few very low-grade atheists have thought of denying. The arguments
which prove too little are those which show, or tend to show, that for some men
there is to be a future life, and from which the prodigious flying leap is
taken to the conclusion that all men must have an eternal future life. The
arguments that prove too much are those which prove that the soul is in its
essence immaterial, and therefore indissoluble into parts or elements, and
therefore indestructible-arguments which are not only just as applicable to the
life-principle of an oyster or a toad-stool as to the soul of man; but which
are just as conclusive regarding the past eternity as regarding the eternity to
come. No one has ever yet found an answer to the objection against this sort of
argument, which was written down two thousand years ago by Cicero, that
whatever can have a beginning can have an end.
I am not at all arguing, at this point,
against the proposition that every human being that ever has lived or ever
shall live, will continue to live for ever and ever. This is in the power of
God, and I am not now denying that it may be in the will of God. All that I am
now seeking is to clear the subject, which has difficulties enough of its own,
from the factitious difficulties that have been superinduced upon it by this
utterly worthless line of arguments, that for so many ages have been let pass
unchallenged.
3. The school of preaching and theologizing
under which my youth was passed was that which was formed under the influences
of " The Great Awakening " of the last century, in the hands of the
New England theologians. It has never lost the marks of its origin, not only in
the religious revivals that have attended upon it, but in the Revivalism which
has sometimes dominated it, as if the kingdom of heaven consisted in having
revivals, and the only way into it was through " a revival
experience." Those whose memory does not go back to the time when that
epoch-making book, Bush-nell's Christian Nurture, came into the world of
American theology amid a thunder-storm of denunciations and anathemas, can have
little idea of the dominance, not to say the domineering, of that one-sided and
narrow-minded conception of Christianity, over American Christendom. My mind
very early reacted from the criterion of salvation or perdition which seemed to
be set up by the most characteristic preachers of this school, and which, grossly
stated, pointed out the escape from an eternity of anguish as being by way of
the "anxious bench " or the " inquiry meeting," through a
certain sequence of emotions and convictions.* The inference as to the
condition of the populations of the world, past and present, Christian as well
as heathen, was sufficiently sweeping and awful. But it did not hinder the
revivalist from reasserting his scheme of " experimental religion "
as the one alternative of infinite and eternal woe.
"Thus
are all you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power
of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again and made
new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new and before
altogether unexperienced light and life-you are thus in the hands of an angry
God." Jonathan Edwards's Sermon on " Sinners in the Hands of an angry
God."
4. My mind has also reacted against the
argument from utility or expediency as applied to this subject. There are many
subjects on which theology has had a detrimental effect on preaching; on this
subject, the supposed exigences 'of preaching, especially of so-called
"revival-preaching," have had a bad effect on theology; they have
been allowed largely to govern the studies of exegetes and the reasonings of
dogmatizers. The same people who have been " very jealous for the Lord
" in denouncing their fellow-servants for taking counsel with human
wisdom, and accommodating their message to the needs of human nature, have
constantly urged it as one of the main motives (we may not say, arguments) for
holding firmly to the traditionary doctrine, and for tolerating no
re-examination of it under penalty of an ecclesiastical boycotting,-that it is
a doctrine which does immense execution in revivals, and that to raise any
doubts about it is to " cut the nerve of missions." On all sides of
this polyhedral discussion there has been quite too much pushing of this
consideration of utility. It has its legitimate use as one of the tests of
truth; but that use is a very subordinate one, and requires to be applied with
great caution against mistake. The proposal to insist on certain theological
statements in order to stimulate the compassion of the Church, and promote
donations, and irritate " the nerve of missions," has been aptly
compared to the policy of raising alarms of fire in order to keep the
fire-engine companies in active discipline.
5. In like manner, from hearing them
reiterated. to the point of fatigue, in my boyhood, by the disciples of Dr.
Nathaniel Taylor, I have come to dislike as well as profoundly to distrust
those wiredrawn, attenuated a priori arguments concerning what God must do, by
which to coerce our interpretation of every declaration or hint that he has
given us of what he will do. These arguments 'are founded in speculations on
the nature of government, a subject which (according to Comte's classification
of human sciences) is in the region furthest removed from the possibility of
exact knowledge;* and to the uncertainties inherent in this subject are
super-added the absolutely boundless possibilities of error involved in the
attempt to construct the divine government upon the analogies of this human
pattern. The whole method is vicious. The objection to it is that it is, in the
worst sense of a good word, rationalistic.
The
line of argument by which Dr. Taylor conies to the tremendous conclusions
concerning future punishment which I have already quoted is indicated in the
analytical Table of Contents prefixed to his Lectures on Moral Government: 1.
What is a perfect moral government? or, moral government in the abstract. 2.
The moral government of God as known by the light of nature. 3. The moral
government of God as revealed in the Scriptures It is a bold " spider
" (to use the favourite word of Edwards) that ventures so far out into
infinite space supported by the thread that he spins out of his own bowels.
1. Finally, my mind has been revolted by the
tone and temper with which this doctrine is commonly set forth, whether in
theological treatises or in preaching. I find it impossible to share the
admiration so often expressed for the calm composure with which Jonathan
Edwards quietly delivered his soul of that frightful sermon on " Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God," while listeners were crying out, or falling
convulsed, or clinging in terror to the columns of the church; a less complete
self-command would have seemed more admirable in the preacher. The gross
anthropopathy which describes the fury of God against the sinful in terms of the
most savage and unchristian of human passions,* has seemed to me to be imputing
to the All-Holy that which is "unlike God within the soul." The
excited declamations with which, safe behind the pulpit breastwork, the flushed
revivalist used to hurl the warnings of this fury into the midst of the people
was only less painful to the reflection than the serenity of Edwards. But the
argument with which it was sought to comfort bereaved and broken hearts,
agonized over the thought of tortures multiplied from age to age throughout
endless ages of ages, upon those whom they most tenderly loved, by the promise
that they should themselves experience so deep an inward change that the
spectacle of the anguish of their friends, their children, would enhance the
raptures of their heavenly bliss-let me refrain from characterizing it. We
ought not to attach undue significance (as many do) to the fact that the most
impassioned preachers of the doctrine of eternal conscious anguish, in its most
intense form and its most comprehensive application, are nevertheless not
incapacitated thereby from ordinary enjoyment and even amusement. Such recourse
has human nature in its deepest and most genuine distress. But it is quite
another matter, when we recognize, as my experience, at the North and at the
South alike, compels me to do, that in circles, especially of the loftiest
orthodoxy on this subject, and of the most conscientious intolerance of any
variation and mitigation of belief, when casual allusion is made in
conversation to the eternal torture of the unbelieving, it is commonly made in
a humorous vein.
*E.g. In Edwards's sermon on " Wrath upon
the Wicked to the Uttermost."
I do not distinctly remember to have heard
this line of argument used in the pulpit, though I am credibly informed of a
conspicuous living evangelist who uses it with lively illustration and
noticeable effect in his sermons to children. But it has a very important place
in the systems and sermons of the earlier Edwardean systematisers and
preachers.
Such indications as these, of the tone and
temper of much current teaching on this subject, give point, not to say venom,
to the sarcasm with which Dr. Holmes speaks of those who press the red-hot end
of the doctrine of everlasting anguish down upon other men's souls, while they
themselves keep hold of the cool handle.
Having cleared the subject thus of factitious
and needless difficulties with which it has been incumbered, I find it easy to
come back to the divine Scriptures, and seek the meaning of them without
prejudice or prepossession.
1. Among my positive convictions the first and
most fundamental is this axiom: that " the Judge of all the earth will do
right " [Gen., 18: 25], not that whatever he does will be right because he
does it, but that he will do it because it is right and ought to be clone.
Neither is this assurance, coming to us in the forefront of the Scriptures and
attending us to the end of them, to be nullified by the pettifogging plea that
right has a very different meaning when applied to a divine act from what it
has when applied to human action-a meaning which quite transcends human
apprehension. Throughout the Scriptures, God is continually putting himself on
trial before the bar of the human conscience, and demanding to be judged by the
criteria of right and wrong which he himself has set up within us. " Hear
now," he says, " are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?"
[Ezek., 18: 25, 29; 33: 17, 20.] Thus he invites us to read all of his
revelations of himself in the light not only of our reason and our common
sense, but in the light of our moral sense as well. He declares his allegiance
to the eternal standard of right to which he demands that we too conform. The
allegation that God is under no obligation to love and pity a sinner and seek
his recovery-that it would have been absolutely right for him to " cast
off forever " without one fatherly thought of rescue-may doubtless be
found in sermons and in theological tractates, but it is not to be found in any
word of God. It is contradicted by every word of praise that is offered for his
moral attributes and acts. Why praise God because his mercy endured forever, if
it is equally right and praiseworthy to have no mercy at all? We have the
fullest assurance that he who changed not will have the same fatherly heart of
love in future ages of ages that he has now, and that whatever of pain may
befall in the world to come, even though it should be to each one of the
greater part of his human creatures " the highest possible degree of
misery " for ever and ever, it will come then, as now, from the hand of
one who "doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men."
2. I find most clearly declared in the
Scriptures two points, each of which has been missed, in turn, by one class of
readers and another: first, that to the divine judgment the human race is
cleanly and sharply divided into two mutually exclusive classes, the righteous
and the wicked. As I read, this seems to me one of the most constant and
characteristic things in all the Scriptures, Old and New. They seem to lend not
the slightest countenance, at any point, to the favourite idea of some, that
there really is no absolute difference between good men and bad-only a
difference of more and less. The Scriptures are astonishingly clear, positive,
and consistent on this point. It is not a matter of " proof-texts "
(so called because they never prove anything) but of habitual and unvarying
usage. I can see how one may miss it through the violence of his reaction from
the opposite error; but it is not easy to see how one coming to the Scriptures
with an undisturbed mind can mistake it. Secondly, that the same divine
judgment which "discerns between the righteous and the wicked "
(Malachi, 3: 18) will discriminate among the righteous and among the wicked-between
the ruler of ten cities and the ruler of five, between the servant that is
beaten with many stripes and the servant that is beaten with few. The
Scriptures do not countenance the popular notion that there shall be in the
future life only the two conditions of supreme bliss and absolute anguish. They
clearly and explicitly teach the contrary. There are degrees of guilt among the
guilty, and the punishment will be equitably proportioned to the guilt. Especially
will the fullest allowance be made for men's ignorance (Luke, 12: 48; Rom., 2:
12).
3. The criterion of divine judgment is not
such as to exclude from full absolution, forgiveness, salvation, and welcome
into the joy of their Lord, those among the heathen, who, loving and serving
their fellow-men whom they have seen and known, have therein unconsciously been
serving the Lord and Saviour whom they had not known. This, if anything is
revealed anywhere in the Scriptures, is declared in that discourse in the
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew which describes the judgment of the heathen. It
would really seem, if men had but ears to hear, as if this discourse of Jesus
gave a sufficiently explicit answer to the perplexities of some honest souls as
to the doom of the heathen.
3. It is plainly declared that there are cases
under the divine jurisdiction the judgment of which is final and irreversible-sins
that have never forgiveness, either in this world or in that which is to come-punishments
that are eternal. There are some such cases which our Saviour expressly
stigmatizes as the object of his own and his Father's peculiar horror and
detestation. No class of sins is more often so characterized by him than that
which is called in the common version of the New Testament "offending
"-the laying of stumbling-blocks to entrap others into sin. It is habitual
with him to denounce against this the utmost severity of the divine anger. The
character of the tempter, the seducer (he seems to say) purposely infecting
other souls with the taint of evil, is one for which God can have no place in
his universe. There is nothing for such a soul as that, but to be flung out
upon the offal-heap of creation.
I have tried thus to recover the original
meaning of that tremendous metaphor in which our Lord likens the destiny of
corrupt and corrupting souls to "the Gehenna of fire"-the burning,
reeking heaps of the Hinnom-valley. It may not be easy to ascertain whether the
metaphor in this application was original with the great Teacher; and it is not
important. The language in which it is framed (Mark, 9: 48) is borrowed from
the prophecy (Isaiah, 66: 24) which describes the carcasses of the enemies of
God and his people, cast out to be consumed on those loathsome heaps, crawling
with vermin, where constant fires were maintained. Original or not, it
certainly had not been hackneyed by eighteen centuries of theologizing and
preaching, bent on extracting from the language every terror that it could be
forced to yield. It was the fresh quotation of a verse in which the great poet
of the Restoration describes the ignominious and utter destruction of the
bodies of the slain, after the victory and triumph; and it was applied to those
who set themselves against the kingdom of Christ, and corrupt and seduce his
brethren.
Of course, after the Platonic doctrine of the
essential indestructibility of the soul had been imported into Christian
theology,* it became possible to transform this symbol of utter and ignominious
destruction as of a thing worthless, infectious, contaminating, into an
argument of the eternal conscious existence of the soul in flames and anguish.
Perhaps we ought rather to say, it became impossible to make anything else of
it. But this baseless philosophical presumption being cleared away, the
metaphor, so long strained out of its place, springs back at once to its proper
meaning.
But what then becomes of that "larger
hope,"-
That
not one soul shall be destroyed,
Or
cast as rubbish to the void,
When
God bath made the pile complete.
Really we need not be " careful to
answer" a question like this. It has not been so easy a matter to
emancipate the beliefs of Western Christendom from the domineering influence of
Dante and Milton, that we should be ready lightly to " give way by
subjection " to our contemporary laureate. By one who "testifies of
that which he knows," and whose sense of what is righteous and divine many
of us would sooner trust than even that of my Lord Tennyson, we are warned,
with curious similarity in the form of expression, that the soul which proves
itself incurably mischievous and noxious shall meet this very punishment-shall
be "cast out as rubbish," shall be "destroyed"; and that
this punishment shall not be a temporary one, from which some future
resurrection may bring back the perished soul in his own identity. It shall be
eternal.
It is characteristic of recent writers on this
subject, in proportion as their doctrine is austere, first to asseverate that
it is in accordance with righteousness, and if not with human standards of
righteousness, at least with the inscrutable standards of divine justice; and
then to offer some consideration in the way of a theodicy, that shall further
" justify the ways of God with men." It is difficult, as we read
these various theodicies, to avoid the impression that the writers are
conscious of some inward discontent, in the reason or the moral sense, with
their main doctrine.
1. There is the suggestion, identified with
the -name of Dorner (illustrious in recent evangelical theology) but known in
America as "the And hypothesis,"-that since without faith in Christ is
no salvation, those who in this world could not believe on him of whom they had
not heard, nor hear of him without a preacher, may, after death and before the
final judgment, receive the knowledge of Christ, and have the offer of
salvation through faith.
I do not find myself called either to concede
or to deny a hypothesis the only value of which is to aid in solving a
difficulty which does not exist for me. There are arguments for it, and
arguments against it, to be adduced from the Scriptures. But I do not hesitate
to take my stand, as against the cautious and conservative theologians of
Andover, with those bolder and more revolutionary innovators in theology who
are opposing them, in the missionary Board, in the civil courts, and in The
Independent newspaper, and whose position regarding the unevangelized heathen
is that the knowledge of Christ and faith in him are not necessary to
salvation. I freely admit that this is a far more radical departure from the
belief of our fathers and grandfathers, than the other; that it is I26 an
admission into Protestant theology of the Romanist doctrine of fides implicita;
that where "the Andover hypothesis" seems to wound " the nerve
of missions," this cuts it clean across; and, finally, that it is
encountered by a most formidable array of "proof-texts." But
notwithstanding all this, the authority of such Scriptures as Acts 10: 34, 35,
and especially the discourse of our Lord on The Judgment of the Heathen, in
Matthew 25, seems to me unmistakable and conclusive. Uncongenial as it is to me
to take sides, in a current controversy, with a triumphant not to say insolent
majority, I am nevertheless constrained at this point to accept their position,
which certainly is not orthodox, because I believe it to be true.
2. My own mind fails to apprehend the measure
of relief which some seem to find in insisting that the warnings of future
punishment will all be completely fulfilled in the operation of natural laws of
matter or mind, without any positive infliction from the hand of God. It is
impossible to discover any mitigation in the argument which substitutes memory
and shame and remorse for the actual fire and gnawing worm, when that argument
begins with claiming that the spiritual torment is not less than the material.
It does not abate the fierceness of the punishment; it only reduces, fur common
minds, the effective terrors of the threat. Neither is the divine justice and
mercy one whit vindicated by representing that the punitive acts of God, like
other divine acts, are wrought through constant laws and second causes. It is a
reasonable and probable argument, but has no bearing on the difficulty which it
is often adduced to relieve. It only becomes dangerous and ruinous when it goes
so far as to allege that the legal bond that binds evil consequence upon the
heels of evil doing, can never, by any act of divine mercy and forgiveness,
through all eternity, be broken. To -this miserable point of despair are men
sometimes led when, following the argument from natural law, they find the
doctrine of Universal Salvation suddenly lapsing into a doctrine of No
Salvation at all.
3. In quite another line of argument is the
subtle and painful effort to establish a new definition of the word "eonian
" as meaning, not eternal in the common acceptation of the word, but
" that which stands in no relation to time." Applied, as it commonly
is, to fortify the doctrine of the final restoration of all souls in punishment
to the divine favour and blessedness, it seems to defeat itself. A punishment
which is discontinued after the lapse of no matter how many ages, and succeeded
by glory and. bliss, is very far from being eonian in the proposed sense of the
word. It is temporal, not eternal. Its relation to time is distinct and
definite.
2. A singular expedient has been suggested, by
which the austere and most sweeping doctrine of future punishment may be
reconciled with our human affections and sympathies on the one hand, and with
the divine perfections of mercy and love on the other hand. Mr. Joseph Cook,
among others, while stoutly maintaining that salvation is impossible except on
condition of the conscious act of repentance and faith, while recognizing that
only in an infinitesimal part of the human race is any evidence of such an act
to be found during life, and while rejecting with indignant eloquence the
hypothesis of an opportunity of salvation after death, has suggested that in
the interval, however momentary, between the loss of consciousness and of the
power of speech, and the very " article of death," there are unknown
and absolutely boundless possibilities. Not only may bereaved parents and
friends console themselves in view of the decease of the most depraved wretch
who " dies and makes no sign," and comfort themselves with the hope
of his entrance into glory; but the cheerful peradventure, with its
"larger hope," is equally applicable to the entire race of man, from
creation to consummation. This eccentric form of hypothetical Universalism, to
distinguish it from " the Andover hypothesis," may be characterized
as "the Boston Music Hall hypothesis." It is believed, by its
advocates, not to " cut the nerve of missions." It does not depend on
Scriptural proof; the only quotation in its favour being the alleged epitaph
over some reprobate who broke his neck in a steeple-chase:- Between the saddle
and the ground, I mercy sought and mercy found.
But considered as a proof-text this seems
insufficient.
5. Perhaps the most whimsical attempt at a
theodicy on the part of any recent advocate of the Edwardean doctrine is that
of the late Dr. Archibald Alexander Hodge of Princeton. Calmly and distinctly
recognizing as a fact the everlasting anguish, not only of all the heathen
nations, but of the enormous majority of Christendom, he proposes that divine
mercy shall recoup itself with infants and idiots. Claiming, contrary to the
clear implication of the Westminster standards, that all children dying before
a certain indeterminate "age of discretion," whatever their general
or individual heredities, are become heirs of salvation, he builds up on this
assumption a mathematical computation as to the proportion of the human race
who die in infancy. Adding to these the number of abortive. foetus in utero, he
claims to have made out a considerable not to say a large majority for heaven
over bell, and so to have triumphantly "justified the ways of God to
men."' The great evangelists of the world are measles, scarlatina, and
cholera infantum. The real enemies of the human race and of the kingdom of heaven
are the missionaries who go to India and China to dissuade the people from
infanticide, and the legislators at home who try to punish and suppress the
practice of abortion. But for some reason this "Princeton hypothesis
" has never been accused of "cutting the nerve of missions."
I would not unduly disparage any of these
attempted theodicies. The most irrational of them is not without value. The
value of it consists in the evidence it gives that the author is more or less
vaguely conscious of holding an eschatology which is unsatisfactory to the
reason and moral sense.
*Popular Lectures on Theology. 1886.
For the few distinct points which come to my
mind as positively declared by revelation of God, I find no need of apology or defence.
That eternal life, the gift of God, should be bestowed by him on every sinful
soul that is willing to return to him and trust in him, is no more than might
be expected of the infinitely patient love revealed in Jesus Christ. That it
should be withheld, with every expression of fatherly displeasure and grief,
from the obstinately, hopelessly froward and irreconcilable soul, that remains
amongst living souls only to corrupt and poison them, is not less like Christ,
like God. The consciousness of parental love and duty is that which brings us
nearest to the apprehension of him " from whom every fatherhood in heaven
and earth is named." The tenderest love of father and mother, towards the
children whom God had given them, could do no more, no less, in the case of one
whose corrupting influence had been spreading contamination through the home,
when hope of recovery at last was gone, and the habit of disobedience had
settled into fixed, irreconcilable, insolent rebellion, than pronounce the
heart-breaking word of exclusion and renunciation. It is in analogy with the
teachings of the human affections at their best, and with the methods of
nature, that the ultimate sanction of the law of our Father in heaven should be
nothing less than final, eternal exclusion from his family-that is, from the
universe of God.
Wherein do these teachings need to be "
justified to men," or evaded by cunning little devices of theologues? They
satisfy that divinely sanctioned "hunger for righteousness" which
cannot be content in contemplating those inequalities of retribution in this
life that burdened the soul of Asaph when he saw the prosperity of the wicked:
and which craves the promise of another life in which these inequalities shall
be redressed by the Judge of all the earth. And in nothing do they offend the
tenderest compassion that ever pitied human suffering. No created spirit has
immortality in and of itself. It lives forever only as it " lays hold of
the eternal life " of God. The sons of God alone are heirs of their
Father's immortality. The faithless and ungodly have no lasting tenure upon
life. With what argument could pity itself intercede before him who only bath
immortality, for this petition, that the future life of utterly worthless,
noxious, and finally incorrigible souls should be made a life eternal? And why
should we continue to perplex this whole subject, and bewilder simple minds,
and give occasion to adversaries to blaspheme, by gratuitously assuming that,
for persistent malefactors in the realm of God, hateful and hating, corrupting
and corrupt, "like natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed,
utterly perishing in their own corruption," the divine omnipotence will in
every case and forever intervene to hold them up from that final and
everlasting destruction to which they tend, and which the divine Scriptures
solemnly declare to be their doom?
The solvent principle. Resurrection, as the
recovery of man from that death-state which is the wages of sin, has always a
redemptive value.
By Rev. L. C. BAKER, A. M., Presbyterian,
Editor of Words of Reconciliation, Philadelphia, Pa.
THE mind of the Church is in painful suspense
in regard to the mysteries of future punishment. Biblical criticism and science
have each shed such new light on old faiths that the old formulas on this
subject no longer satisfy. They are no longer preached nor sincerely believed.
Intelligent Christians are perplexed and confused by what seem to be two
opposing lines of Scripture teaching,-the one of which sets forth the love of
God, the other his treasured wrath.
The prevalent doctrines on this subject are:- 1.
The orthodox view. The confessional statement of it is that the wicked at death
are consigned to hell to suffer in soul its tormenting fires, and after
'resurrection they are again cast, soul and body, into the same pit of woe, to
be " tormented without intermission, with the devil and his angels in
hell-fire forever." [Westminster Confession, chap. xxxii., quest. 89, L.
C.] This severe doctrine is now generally softened into the view that death
ends opportunity, the results of evil character are fixed, and the sinner's
heritage of woe made perpetual.
4. The view that man is not inherently
immortal, and that, after adequate punishment, the end of all who are not made
partakers of eternal life through Christ will be destruction.
5. The restoration view,-that all men will at
some time be brought back to God and be eternally blessed.
To these may be added what is now known as the
"New Theology " view, which is that no man will be finally condemned
before he is tested by the gospel, and that, in an intermediate state, those
who have not definitely rejected Christ in this life will have their
opportunity.
Each one of these views gathers up some phase
of Scripture truth. There is, however, a Scripture principle, underlying the
whole scheme of revelation, which enables its to combine whatever is true in
each of these partial views into the one perfect system of the gospel. That
principle is that resurrection, as the recovery of man from that death-state
which, is the wages of sin, has always a redemptive value. By resurrection we
mean essentially the provision for man of another life beyond his captivity in
death. As to the time and nature of this change there are differing opinions.
But, whenever it occurs, it is essentially a deliverance. No principles are more
firmly rooted in Scripture than these. 1. The death-state, so long as it
continues, is a penal state. 2. Resurrection is an opening of the prison door
to those who are bound. 3. It is clue to the redeeming work of Christ and is
therefore a boon to all the subjects of it. 4. It is a process of sorting and
judgment as well as of deliverance.
Our Reformed Theology, as shown in the
previous quotation, strips the resurrection of the unjust of every redemptive
feature, and makes it the prelude to an undoubled and endless retribution. St.
Paul, however (Acts, 24: 15), includes it in his "hope toward God."
And we are sure, from a careful study of Scripture, that, however inferior and
long delayed and fraught with new perils it may be in contrast with the
"resurrection of the just," it opens even to this class a door of
hope.
To prove this it is only necessary to go back
to the Old Testament and search out the underlying principles of its redemptive
plan. It has been the grave mistake of modern eschatology to make up its
doctrine from proof-texts in the New Testament, without a previous study of the
Old Testament conceptions upon which these expressions are based.
Turning then to the Old Testament, we find
that, while it begins with a sentence of pain and death upon man for sin, and
while it shows on all its pages how inexorable is this law of God that "
the soul that sinned it shall die," it begins also to trace the outlines
of a great plan of redemption. Several times in Genesis is the germinal promise
given that in a chosen seed all the families of the earth should be blessed.
The simple question now before us is, does this promise relate merely to some
remote living generation of men, or are the countless generations who have died
without the sight a part of the "all "? Is he the God of the dead
also, as well as of the living? To say that he is not is to throw away the only
key to the right interpretation of Scripture.
For no sooner were these promises made than
God began to show men that their fulfillment reaches over into the realms"
of death. Abraham must receive back Isaac from the dead in a figure. He must
look for the full heritage of blessing across the borders of that unseen
country. In Deuteronomy, 32, we have a key-passage- the song of Moses-in which
all God's dealings with his people are summed up, their sins recounted, and
their future forecast. The story would be one without a key and without hope,
except for the glimpses given of a future intervention in their behalf by him
who wounds and heals, who kills and makes alive (v. 39). But so radical and
far-reaching would be this deliverance that, in anticipation of it, the nations
are summoned to rejoice with his people (v. 43). This profound chapter
furnishes the key-note for all subsequent psalm and prophecy. The limits of
this article will not suffice for the complete proof of this. But we can assure
our readers that the whole of the Old Testament will shine with a new light,
when they come to see that the ultimate captivity into which men, both Israel
and the nations, were cast for their sins, is bondage to death, and the
ultimate deliverance promised is release from Sheol, the prison-house of death.
Bondage in Egypt, in Assyria, in Babylon, were but forecasts of that deeper
bondage, the wages of sin, into which Israel must pass, and where they must
abide under the chastising hand of God until he might redeem them.
The Hebrew Sheol is therefore always conceived
of as a place of darkness, of privation, and of penalty. This point is well
proven by Professor Shedd, in his recent book, The Doctrine of Endless
Punishment. He fails to see, however, that even the unjust are not viewed in
the Old Testament as shut up against all hope of rescue. Such hope is
foreshadowed in such passages as Leviticus, 26: 25, 38-45; Deut., 30: 4.
Although "delivered into the hand of the enemy," and "driven out
unto the outmost parts of heaven," yet, if they should "accept the
punishment of their iniquity," the Lord their God from thence would send
and fetch them. The primary reference in such passages is doubtless to an
earthly exile. But the same principle of divine dealing applies to that deeper
bondage in death of which all minor captivities were a figure. And no
deliverance would meet the case which should fail to reach this final need. It
would leave Jehovah's enemy master of the field. It would not vindicate the honour
of his name. Hence 137 he says, "For the Lord shall judge his people, and
repent himself for his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there
is none shut up, or left" (Deut., 32: 36). " Even the captives of the
mighty shall be taken away and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered; for
I will contend with him that contended with thee, and I will save thy children
" (Is., 49: 25). In the Psalms, these captives are described as "the
children of death " (79: 11; 102: 20), prisoners whose sighing he would
hear. In Jeremiah, 31: 11, 16, they are captives in the land of the enemy, whom
the Lord would ransom from the hand of one stronger than they. Certainly, in
the application by St. Matthew of this passage to the slain infants of
Bethlehem, the lost ones who were to "come again to their own border
" had gone down to death. These are but a few instances from a very
numerous class of passages of which we shall miss the full meaning, unless we
discover in them a purpose of God to follow his people, even his sinful and
wandering ones, into the realms of death, there to vanquish and destroy their
chief enemy and destroyer, and to bring them release when they had received of
the Lord's hand double for all their sins. The righteous were indeed to be
shielded and saved from going down into the pit. But even the unrighteous of
his people were not beyond the pale of his conquering and redeeming power. For
this is the class in view in most of these passages. Especially is this true of
the passage which most plainly affirms that his deliverance would extend to the
spoliation of Sheol and the destruction of death. The prophecy of Hosea relates
throughout to a debased and apostate Israel, an Ephraim joined to his idols.
And yet it is of this Israel, who had destroyed himself, that the Lord declares
(13: 14), " I will ransom them from the power of the grave (Sheol); I will
redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy
destruction."
But not only the unregenerate of Israel were
ultimately to be reached. Sinful nations who had debauched and oppressed
Israel, and who had been destroyed under the heaviest hand of God's judg- ments,
are mentioned as to be restored from their captivity in the latter days. This
is declared of Moab (Jer., 48: 47), of. Ammon and Elam (49: 6, 39). Egypt and
Assyria were to receive blessing with Israel "in that clay " (Is.,
19: 18-25). Even Sodom, whose inhabitants were all destroyed, and whom Jude
refers to as an example of "suffering the vengeance of eternal fire,"
is declared by Ezekiel (16: 48-68) to have been no more wicked than Jerusalem,
in the blessing of whose restoration Soclom should share. In this instance, at
least, nothing but a recovery from death would meet the terms of the promise.
And indeed all Old Testa-ment promise becomes paltry and meager, unless it
contemplates the raising up of a Redeemer for mankind, who should deliver it
from this last enemy, and manifest God's redeeming grace and power not only
toward the living, but through all the regions of the dead, where the vast
majority of the race lay bound and helpless. In brief, a resurrection of all
the dead, each in his own order, is implied. His purpose in this way to baffle
the enemy who brought sin and death into the world is the granite foundation on
which these Scriptures rest; although it may seem to crop out but here and
there above the torn and jagged surface of its human history and its
forebodings of wrath against sin.
When we turn to the New Testament, the
outlines of this great plan grow clear and definite. The Messiah was now born.
As the Old Testament had begun with terms of universal blessing, so the New
proclaims the birth of the promised Deliverer as "glad tidings of great
joy which shall be unto all people." He was to be a light to lighten the
Gentiles, as well as the glory of his people, Israel; to give light unto them
that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death (Luke, 1: 77-79). He had come
to "take away the sin of the world," "not to condemn the
world," but to save it. Now one of two things must be true. Either these
expressions look forward to the final salvation of all men in eternal life, or
they relate to such a salvation from the primal curse and its disabilities as
would put all men under a fair and just probation for it. It is 139 the second
of these alternatives which we adopt. For the Scriptures do not warrant the
supposition that sinful man is inherently immortal, or that all the material of
humanity will finally prove worthy of being wrought over into the fashion of
that divine manhood in which Jesus was raised, which is the only fit receptacle
of eternal life. But they do bring to all men the hope of another life beyond
this pit of death into which sin has cast the race, through a resurrection from
the dead.
This much of universal salvation then is
required to fulfill the ancient promises and to satisfy that line of New
Testament teaching which declares that Christ is the propitiation for the sins
of the whole world (1 John, 2: 2), that he is the Saviour of all men, tasting
death for every man, and giving himself a ransom for all men, the testimony to
be borne in its own times (1 Tim., 2: 5, 6). And it is definitely declared in
such passages as Rom., 5: 12-20, 1 Cor., 15: 21-23, that in respect to this
recovery from death at least, the more abounding grace of God has secured for
all men a "justification to life." " For since by man came
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die,
so also in the Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own
order."
These last words, "But every man in his
own order," suggest the principle by which this universal blessing is
limited. And this leads us to notice an important line of Scripture teaching
relating to it.
The type of humanity, in which is eternal
life, and which is the heir of all things, is the risen and glorified Christ.
And he is pre-eminently the promised seed in which all the nations of the earth
are to be blessed. But he is only the firstborn among many brethren, predestined
to be conformed to his image, and joint heirs with him. This elect company
under him constitute in its fullness the chosen seed of blessing, the first
fruits of God's creatures. The Old Testament, especially in the visions of Isaiah
and Daniel, and in the Psalms, constantly looks forward to the time when an
anointed race should fulfill all God's promises of blessing to mankind and
possess the kingdom. Daniel's conception of this coming kingdom (chap. 7) is
expanded, in the New Testament, into that of the " kingdom of God."
Jesus began his teaching by declaring to men, and especially by instructing a
chosen company of disciples, how one can become an heir of that kingdom. He
laid. the axe at the root of the tree. It was only by a complete denial of
self, a mortification of " our members which are upon the earth,"
that one could enter it. To Nicodemus he said that there must be a new birth
into a new life. In the epistles this requirement is further amplified and
explained to be a complete death out of this old Human nature, with its
affections and lusts, and a resurrection into the same sphere of pure and
eternal life as that into which Christ was raised.
Now, the common mistake of New Testament
readers is in taking this line of teaching, with its radical tests, as defining
for all men alike the sole conditions of blessing under the Messiah's kingdom;
whereas they prescribe the conditions of heirship in the kingdom. There are
subjects in every commonwealth as well as heirs. The fact is that the mission
of Jesus was first to gather this chosen seed, the ancient seed of promise, the
little flock who should with him inherit the kingdom, and unto which many
should be called but few chosen. But the rest of mankind were not forever shut
out from all blessing, as the old. doctrine of election maintains. This chosen
company is gathered for the very purpose that they may become the centre of
blessing to a far wider circle,-that they may be associated with the Head, as
that Christ-Body which is to carry out to completion God's cherished thoughts
of love toward the world.
We are thus prepared to understand the
teachings of our Lord and of his apostles upon these dark themes of
eschatology, over which the mind of the Church has so long stumbled. We
discover that those proof-texts from which she has derived the doctrine of the
endless torment in hell of wicked men were spoken for another purpose. They
define the conditions of entire self-sacrifice upon 141 which a man may now
become an heir of eternal life and of the kingdom. In doing this they describe
the punishment which awaits sinful men in death and beyond it. But they were
never designed to exclude this class from all hope of resurrection out of this
death. It was not indeed' in the purpose of Jesus to let in the full light of
resurrection-hope upon the world until after his own resurrection from the
dead. This relief to his " hard sayings " did not come until after
that event. But in the light of it we now see that the penalty referred to is
that immediate loss of body and soul which lies this side of resurrection. Let
us turn, for example, the light of this interpretation upon Mark, 9: 43-50.
This conversation as here reported, and as also referred to in St. Matthew,
supplies the basis for the current conception of a hell of unquenchable fire,
and of an undying worm, prepared for the sinner's endless torment. But we
observe, first, that these words, and this is true of all this class of our
Lord's teaching, were spoken in private to his disciples (v. 33-35). They were
designed to teach them the law of perfect self-surrender and mortification of
sinful passion-such as they had just shown in the desire to be greatest-to
which they must submit in order to enter into life. Every one, who would yield himself
in sacrifice on God's altar, must be salted with this fire.* But what is the
nature of the peril described, and which doubtless is one common to all men?
*So able an interpreter as Dr. A. A. Hodge, in
his late Popular Lectures on Theology, stumbles here. He founds a main argument
for the doctrine of everlasting punishment upon the fact that Jesus addressed
this kind of teaching to the multitude, warning them in terms familiar to them
of the awful fate before them if they died in their sins; whereas, all this
class of teaching was addressed to disciples, and frequently after pains were
taken to withdraw them from the multitude. Even that crucial passage, the
pillar-text of this doctrine, Matt., 25: 41-40, which tells of the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels, and the eternal punishment into which
the unrighteous depart, is esoteric. It occurs in a discourse which Jesus spoke
to a few of his disciples who came to him privately to ask him about the end of
the age. See Matt., 24: 3; Mark, 13 3. If the inconceivable danger defined in
our current theology were in the mind of Jesus throughout his ministry, how
shall we account for it that all his severest words were not spoken in the ears
of the crowds that thronged him, but privately to disciples Man is conceived of
throughout Scripture as a composite being, made up of body, soul, and spirit.
The body goes back to dust.
But
the soul also is perishable and may be destroyed in hell (Matt., 10: 28).
" Hell" is a concrete expression for the destructive forces of nature
which make havoc of man's embodied being and which are already at work upon it.
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus plainly teaches that the soul does not
die with the body. It may go into torment in hell (hades). But if it is
destructible, this torment must be experienced during the process of its
destruction and cannot therefore be endless. The " soul" would seem
to be an intermediate structure between the spirit and the body-the more
ethereal vesture of the spirit. And when it also dies,-for Jesus plainly
teaches that it may be so lost or saved-the spirit becomes a homeless outcast
in this created system. There is destruction qua homo. That the unclothed
spirit retains the individual, personal, consciousness of the man is scarcely
probable. A bodiless demon is not a man. Nor can it rise into the prerogatives
of manhood except through another investiture in embodied life. Lost spirits of
men must retain the potentiality of such recovery. However, whatever of
speculation there may be in all this, the Scriptures speak of a possible,
immediate, loss overhanging sinful men, and which it constantly defines as
" destruction," "perishing," and by all the terms of death.
It is this immediate peril then which Jesus here refers to. When he warns
disciples that they might far better cut off a hand, or pluck out an eye, than
suffer the loss of the whole body in hell-fire, there is not the slightest
warrant for locating this penalty after the resurrection. For it is not a
remote risen body of which he is speaking, but this present life fabric which
must be consumed by the fire that sin has already kindled in it, and which can
be saved only in the way of complete self-surrender to him. The monstrous
mistake of modern eschatology is in referring all this class of passages to a
punishment to be inflicted on the sinner after his resurrection. And yet the
rich man passed at once to hell and its torment.
Even
the judgment scene of Matt., 25, belongs this side of resurrection. It
describes the consummation of that work of ruling and judging the nations upon
which Jesus declares he should enter before that generation passed away. It
corresponds, therefore, to that single parallel passage from St. Paul's
writings (2 Thess., 1: 9), which speaks of the eternal destruction to be
visited upon those who know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. But the context of this passage shows that it is a generation of men
living on the earth who are thus overtaken, and not dead men raised. It is surprising
how much more easy and natural is this interpretation which views all these
passages as defining the death and banishment to be visited upon the ungodly
before their resurrection. It is this alone which adapts itself to all the Old
Testament promises, and the grand inspiring hopes of the New. And this alone
explains why, after the light of Jesus' resurrection had illumined these
promises and explained his own words, we find the apostles so reticent of any
doctrine of endless torment. Not once is it presented, or even fairly alluded
to, in any of their recorded sermons. Prof. Austin Phelps has sought to account
for this by supposing that this view of hell was a fixed and familiar belief in
the minds of their hearers. But familiar beliefs are those we most rely upon in
urging men to duty. Moreover, if we admit that some of their audiences had
become acquainted with the teachings of Jesus upon this subject, this certainly
could not have been true of the rude Lyeaonians, or the cultured sceptics at
Athens, who, if a doctrine of Tartarus was embraced in their mythology, had
come to treat it as a mock and jest. There is no possible way of accounting for
the absence of this doctrine of an endless hell from all these apostolic
addresses, and from their subsequent epistles, except by the fact that they did
not put that construction upon the words of Jesus which the Church afterwards
embodied in its creeds. We have seen that all the leading proof-texts of this
dogma quoted from the words of Jesus occur in warning addresses to disciples,
and speak of dangers to which they were exposed. The same flagrant misuse is
made of the apostles' words, as, for instance, in the case of such texts as
these from the book of Hebrews: " For the Lord will judge his people."
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." " It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." " For our
God is a consuming fire." The popular misquotation of this last passage
illustrates What we mean. We constantly hear, " For God out of Christ is a
consuming fire "; whereas the whole doctrine of the book is that our God,
God in Christ, is a consuming fire.
Did our limits allow we could show that the
whole eschatological teaching of the New Testament, including that of the
Apocalypse, adapts itself much more readily to this principle-that the
judgments of God for the sins of this life are immediate and lie this side of
resurrection, and that that change, whenever it reaches man, is a deliverance.
It was this hope of resurrection which the quickened Christ proclaimed to the
" spirits in prison " of 1 Peter, 3: 19-21. The message heralded
(ix/km.4v) could not have been that gospel offer which promises eternal life to
all who now believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and which, so far as we know, is
a crown which can be won only on the arena of manhood. These spirits were given
a hope of restoration to this arena through their release from the bands of
death. If there be any probation in hales, it is a corrective trial for this
boon of resurrection, the time and nature and potency of which must all be
determined by the harvest law which prevails in all God's realms of life, that
all must receive in body according to the things done. [See the Greek of 2
Cor., 5: 10.] And this leads us to notice another class of passages which
doubtless has occurred to the minds of our readers during this examination. Of
these, John, 5: 21-29 is the most marked.
We are
there told, not as in the Old Version, that a portion of mankind will be raised
to be damned, but, as in the New Version, to be judged. The Lord declares that
the Father had given him power over all the realms of life and death-that even
the dead should hear his voice and live. This power of judgment was given in
order that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. In
the execution of it, men were now being quickened into life. And hereafter all
men should come forth from their graves. But this judgment is plainly not the
final assize of medieval theology. The reference is to that large Old Testament
conception of his office as the Judge of the world in righteousness-a world
which includes both the living and the dead. The Old Testament always invests
this office, even on its retributive side, with a beneficent character. It does
not appear to us that the resurrection of his body, the Church, is at all in
view in verse 29. They are of the class already quickened and risen with him,
referred to in verses 24 and 25. But other men have also a resurrection
according to their deeds. If these have been good their resurrection is
"of life." It brings with it the potency of eternal life and starts
them on the path that leads to it. If they have done ill, their resurrection
must gather up the fruits of wrongdoing and bring them again, as men, under
judgment. Under such condemnation men now are, the wrath of God abiding on them
(John, 3: 18, 36). Sin always keeps men under the judicial and corrective hand
of God. Only one form of created life rises above all judgment and inherits all
things,-that which is conformed to the risen Christ. All this class of mankind,
therefore, remain under the control and discipline of the universal Judge. The
question of their eternal life, or of their final loss of all life, and ejection
from the noble heritage of manhood in a second death, remains to be settled. We
are plainly taught that at least one form of sin is incorrigible, and that no
forgiveness is provided for it in the world to come (Matt., 12: 32). All this
accords with the view that the judging and redeeming administrations of the
Messiah go on in the ages to come, and that resurrection under these is always
a redemptive blessing, although it can reach men only in their own time and
order, and must still keep under judgment those who do not submit to the
transforming grace of Christ, and so pass out of death unto life. We have only
room to glance at some of the important bearings of this doctrine.
1. It furnishes a common ground for the
reconciliation of the principal phases of religious thought on this subject.
(1.) It makes room for all that is essential
in the orthodox doctrine, in the mollified form in which it is now held. The
harsh literal terms of the old dogma of endless torment are now exchanged for
the terms "fixity of character," " eternal shame and loss,"
etc. So a resurrection which is redemptive may gather up the results of
previous character, and restore the unjust only to those outer circles of life
and blessing which are far removed from the central light and glory of God's
presence. It is precisely such a solution that Dr. E. D. Morris gives of the
possible fate of the heathen in his recent book, Is there Salvation after Death?
(p. 191). And although it is irrational to assume with him that there is no vis.
mediatrix, no power of recovery and progress, in their possession of a restored
life, we can well accept the general principle that there are blessings and
dignities connected with this present opportunity of life which, if once lost,
are lost forever.
(2.) It concedes to the conditionalists that
man, the sinner, is a perishable creature and can receive eternal life only as
the gift of God through Jesus Christ. It shows how a destruction of body and,
after bodily death, of soul, awaits him, unless the soul be saved in Christ. It
maintains, however, that the outcast spirit must retain, if not consciousness
of its former personality, that potentiality of it which makes a resurrection
possible. But, as it connects eternal life for man only with his investment in
the glorified manhood of the Christ, it denies that any such monstrosity is
possible in creation, or is conceived of in Scripture, as an evil being
immortally embodied. And as no resurrection is promised out of the second
death, it is fair to presume that the opportunities of the second gift of life
in manhood are final, and that to the incorrigibly evil the second death will
be their end.
Room is thus made for that phase of Scripture
teaching which represents that in the end God will be all in all,-all things
being reconciled to him, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven.
(1.) It especially provides a more reasonable
and more Scriptural hope for the countless masses of mankind, heathen and
infants, than that which ordinarily goes under the name of "future
probation." It is a grave mistake to suppose that the bulk of this class
have here any true probation for eternal life. For this is defined to be the
knowledge of God in Christ. The race-probation was in Eden. But the Christian
heart refuses to believe that God will forever damn any man without opportunity
of this saving knowledge. And hence the growing belief that death does not end
all opportunity. The objections however to locating this opportunity in the
"intermediate state " are serious. The view is without warrant in
Scripture. It contradicts all that we have referred to concerning the immediate
loss of the soul, and the abyss which now yawns beneath the feet of sinful men.
It is only after judgment is rendered, and penalty executed, and the law
satisfied, that the grace of God can interfere to again take up their case.
This is the meaning of resurrection. It is another opportunity in life. And
therefore the probation for eternal life of those who have not known Christ
here, and therefore have had no such probation, lies beyond their resurrection.
This view, on every hand, is free from the objections which lie heavily against
what is known as the Andover view. At the same time it preserves the force of
those Scriptures which warn men of their present peril, and urge them to fly to
the only refuge. It does not teach that resurrection, to the unjust, is assured
salvation. It only launches them again, after their loss of life, in another
barque upon the perilous sea.
2. It supplies a double motive for missions,
in that it reveals the immediate danger of sinful men everywhere of sinking
into that pit of death and hell to which they must be consigned under the just
judgment of God, and sets before them Christ as the only Name by which they
must be saved. At the same time it opens the gospel door of hope for the
generations of their dead, but shows how this grace must reach them through the
gathering out of a chosen seed from amongst themselves who are willing to put
on Christ and so to be " baptized for the dead." The law of the
firstborn as holding a priestly relation to their kindred and to the later born
is thus shown to be a law of the human race, and the necessity is seen for the
gathering of a " church of the firstborn " out of every nation, who
shall recover for their brethren their lost heritage in life and raise up the
name of the dead. Modern missions have thus far largely failed because they
have shorn the gospel of its large human hopes, and converted the God of all
the families of the earth into an arbitrary sovereign in whose breast justice
is ever at war with love. A right view of resurrection as a gracious boon, and
not an untold curse, to these multitudes of quick and dead would go far to
remove the " face of the covering that is cast over all peoples," and
lead them to say, " Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, we will
be glad and rejoice in his salvation." (See Is., 25: 6-10.)
3. It is manifest that this doctrine would
furnish the Church a good and consistent working-doctrine of future punishment,
a thing which, in her sad bewilderment, she greatly needs. At the same time it
would satisfy that growing instinct of the larger hope which is the inevitable
outcome of her increasing sympathy with the compassion of Christ toward all
sinning and suffering men.
4. It would greatly aid in harmonizing the
teachings of science and of revelation. Resurrection, or the birth out of death
into another life, seen to be eclectic and progressive, fits in with that
doctrine of evolution to which every class of scientists have given their
assent, and is itself an assertion of the law of the "survival of the
fittest." It surpasses science, however, in showing how the fittest are
saved, not merely on their own account, but as channels of a subsequent
recovery to life of the less fit.
5. It would do more than anything else in the
circle of truth to harmonize the conflicting conceptions, in the breasts of
Christians, of the character and purposes of God, of his righteousness and
love,-a conflict that throws into confusion their knowledge of God, and so 149
dwarfs and distorts their Christian experience, and introduces confusion into
their testimony, a confusion that betrays even our pulpits into inconsistent
utterances and dishonest evasions and suppressions of what the Church really
believes. And it would aid immensely in saving those who have been brought up
under her influence, and even in her households, from infidelity and ignorance
of God.
6. It would be the most useful factor in
promoting the unity of the Church. She is now distracted and divided mainly
because she does not perceive the true goal of humanity under the redeeming
plan of God, and of her own priestly calling under it,-a calling which cannot
be fulfilled until she attain that unity of the faith which shall convince the
world that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of mankind.
7. It would tend to adjust the strained
relations between the Church and the masses who have become alienated from her
because they believe she does not understand them. Our doctrine shows that
while the Church is a priestly class, it is made so as a present and future
channel of blessing to all men, who, as having the promise of a future life,
are viewed not as doomed to endless despair, but as within the circle of God's
love and care, and as under his judicial training for a life to come.
8. It would remove from Christian doctrine an
incongruity which has repelled from it many thoughtful and even honest minds,
in that, while it maintains in its integrity the doctrine of salvation to
eternal life in the way of faith in Christ alone, it yet shows that all men
have been saved to another opportunity in life, and that their standing in this
life to come must be according to character. Christianity, as commonly
preached, has no system of future rewards for good conduct in this life, unless
that conduct springs -from the new birth in the soul of a divine nature. And
yet, if the Bible, Old Testament and New, is emphatic upon any one point, it is
that every man must receive according to his works. Now, a resurrection which
shall restore the unjust to such plane of being as keeps them under judgment,
but which gives them still the opportunities of renewed life in manhood, will
make room for every grade and potency of embodied life, and so yield the
amplest opportunity for the operation of God's great harvest-law of life,
"To every seed his own body," and, "Whatsoever a man soweth that
shall he also reap." And every motive to right moral conduct and
self-discipline in this life is preserved, even though moral men and devout
heathen may fail of immediate entrance upon eternal life. Such may come forth
to " the resurrection of life,"-that is, their recovery from bondage
in death will precede that of others doomed to a deeper and more bitter bondage
in hell, and will lift them to such an endowment of life and such a rank in
manhood as shall make sure their success in the new race in life upon which
they enter, while evil men may be so loaded with the weight of former sin, as
to make its beginning with them long delayed and far down the scale, and with a
painful and fearful gravitation toward that second death which, so far as we
know, is final. We are persuaded that the time is not distant when the great
judgment passages, Matthew, 25: 31-46, which represents the judgment by the Son
of man of the living generations of men, and John, 5: 21-29, which speaks of
his judgment of the dead, will be explained upon this broad principle, as not
bringing to view primarily the division of mankind into the two classes of
saints and sinners-the saints are already judged and have entered into life-but
as dividing mankind at large, with special reference to the heathen who had not
heard of Christ, into the classes of just and unjust, and on the basis of a
test which does not presuppose 'their knowledge of the gospel, but their
practice of "good" or "ill," of humanity or inhumanity, in
the light of the law written on every man's conscience, and universal in the
government of God.
From every point of view, therefore, it will
be seen that this principle of a redemptive value in resurrection is the only
one which properly adjusts the promises of the Old Testament to the gospel in
the New. In it both sides of the divine character and dealings meet and blend.
The judgments of the Lord are seen to be true and righteous altogether. And at
the same time it is seen how goodness lies at the very heart of things in this
system of the world.
What shall come after death? Is a question
admitting of no human but only a divine answer; the character of one's present
life is decisive of future destiny; no probation after death, not even for the heathen.
By Rev. S. C. BARTLETT, D. D., LL.D.,
President of Dartmouth College.
THE question, " What shall come after
death," is natural and almost inevitable to the rational mind. It has
spread through all nations and all ages. Only a wilful determination can banish
it from the thoughts,-a determination confined almost wholly to the artificial
conditions of human life, and, singularly enough, to the regions of special
religious light. But, as all history shows, it is a subject that will not down.
Momentous and urgent as is the question, no
human being can answer it decisively. It is a question of fact, on which no man
can testify, because no man has been on the other side and returned to tell.
Unless there be some superhuman authority, we are shut off from any certain
knowledge on the subject; and, whatever their speculations, the philosopher and
the savage are equally ignorant of the facts.
We claim to be lifted out of this state of
absolute ignorance by a Divine revelation. All that we know on the subject
comes from that revelation, the Word of God. Our instincts and reasonings, and
our observations of God's ways and human action, may indeed confirm these
teachings,-as it has been often and powerfully shown that they do; but the
declarations of that word are and must be the sole authority. Our wishes,
hopes, notions, speculations, reasonings, cannot for an instant be put in the
place of that authoritative utterance. They cannot supplement it with
additional facts. Outside of its express teachings and what they clearly
involve, all other utterances are alike valueless; and the ignorant or "
intelligent Zulu " knows as much as the learned German.
The main teachings of the Scriptures as to
future retribution have never been matter of doubt, either to the great body of
earnest Christians or to the great body of unbelievers and opponents. The
doctrine of a twofold endless retribution, after and dependent on the present
life, has been a constant theme of reproach and ground. of hostility on the part
of open opponents; while the Church in all ages, with only minor and sporadic
exceptions, has recognized this doctrine as the transparent teaching of the
Sacred Word, and the steady trend and outcome of its whole scheme of Divine
government. Earnest believers have, indeed, often felt pressed and oppressed,
and their sensibilities have been tried with difficulties and perplexities
attendant on the doctrine of future punishment, as was the case notably with
John Foster, and many others; but they have been obliged to admit, as did
Foster, that the Scripture is "formidably strong " on the subject. No
thoughtful and tender mind can fail to contemplate this exhibition of the
Divine government with the profoundest awe; and undoubtedly there are aspects
of it which can be viewed with equanimity only under the fullest sense of the
terrible evil of sin, and with the deepest confidence in the wisdom, goodness,
and justice of God, the Sovereign Ruler. They are as harassing to the
sensibilities as are the details of some plague, famine, earthquake, flood, or
cyclone, or the numberless cases of collective or individual agony, which are
yet facts under the government of the same great Ruler, and which, however
unendurable in the contemplation, we are compelled to accept; which, moreover,
are in some respects more mysteriously awful than the punishment of sin,
because so often they cannot be traced directly to any ill-desert. But in
neither case can the painfulness of the contemplation or the difficulty of
explanation affect the evidence of the fact.
Penalty is not the only ground of difficulty
in this connection. Responsibility itself is equally perplexing in its relation
to final justice. For it cannot be shown that, through all the world and
through all its history, any two persons have had precisely the same or equal
opportunities. In Christian lands, as well as in pagan lands, human privileges
have differed by every shade of gradation from the lowest to the highest. How
to deal justly with all these degrees of opportunity and responsibility is a question
entirely con-founding to the human mind. But the fact of universal
responsibility remains. Indeed the most formidable and insoluble of all the
difficulties connected with the Divine government is the primal fact that sin
itself should have made its way into a world governed by a wise, holy, mighty
God.
But sin is here, and God has told us how he
will deal with it. Responsibility is also here. Men know that they are
responsible, and God has also declared that he will hold all men responsible.
These two great facts of sin and responsibility are known and read of all men.
The third great fact of penalty hereafter, as we have said, is definitely known
to God alone, and is definitely made known by him alone. It lies on the surface
and is embedded in the substance of his written word. It offers itself there to
the unhesitating apprehension of plain people, and abides the careful analysis
of the scholar. It is found not alone in separate declarations and single forms
of speech, but in every varied mode of utterance, and is part and parcel of the
whole coherent system. From beginning to end the gospel presents itself as a
message of salvation offered to this lost world. It pronounces all men sinners,
responsible, condemned for their sin, and answerable for just the light they
have. It sets forth Christ's atonement as the sole ground of forgiveness and
hope to the penitent sinner, and on the basis of that redemptive work it offers
free pardon to every penitent, trusting soul. Its declarations and implications
constantly set forth that work as taking effect, if at all, in this world,-an
offer for the living and not for the dead. Its constant burden is that
"Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners," and that what he
accomplished for them was a transaction in this stage of existence, the results
only to be reaped hereafter.
The ground on which the great creeds of
Christendom have excluded the notion of any decisive probation after this life,
has been far broader than the statements of individual passages of Scripture,
explicit as these are. It underlies the whole system of revealed truth. All
proceeds on this supposition. This world is assumed to be the scene of
responsible activity and critical opportunity. The whole pressure of obligation
is brought to bear on this life. So heavy is that pressure that some, like
Warburton, have wrongly held that the Old Testament recognizes no other world
than this. Around this same sphere are accumulated, in that older dispensation,
the precepts of duty, the warnings against sin, and, what is especially to the
point, the calls to repentance. To men who never in the remotest form had heard
of Christ, God was addressing, age after age, his stern rebukes, his perpetual
summons to turn from sin, and his denunciations for disobedience. The
obligation to repentance now and here in this life was complete and absolute.
Wherever sinners were, there were men wholly inexcusable in sin, and wholly
inexcusable for not repenting of sin. It would almost seem that this stringent
pressure upon sin, this uncompromising demand for duty and repentance in this
life, with scarcely a reference to another life, may have been especially
designed to rule out beforehand any thoughts of a future probation.
The same uniform recognition of this life as
the scene of critical moral agency, of opportunity, and of effective
achievement for good. or ill, runs through the New Testament. The Saviour even
identifies the limitation of his own redemptive labours with the common lot of
men (John, 9:4, 5).
To the same purport is the great body of
representations as to the scene of the Saviour's redemptive activity and its
influence. It is this world. As Logos, " There was the true light which lighted
every man, coming into the world. He was in the world and the world knew him
not." " The light has come into the world and the world loved
darkness." " God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through him might have life." "I am the
light of the world." "For judgment am I come into the world that they
which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind."
"I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should
not abide in darkness." " I came not to judge the world, but to save the
world." "For this purpose came I into this world, that I might bear
witness to the truth." " Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners." " Seen of angels, believed on in the world." " He
sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him."
"He that hated his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal." Such is the steady utterance-a work in this world. It is a
perpetual and solemn strain on this one string.
The same unmistakable impression is made by
the extreme urgency of the calls to immediate repentance. If not always
formulated in words, the undertone of all the calls and warnings is, " Now
is the day of salvation." It is vain to say that this urgency is on the
ground of the hardening nature of sin. The New Testament does not ground its
appeals on metaphysical principles and general dangers. Behind all these
warnings looms up the thought of an offered opportunity, limited to this life.
If it be said that these calls are to men to whom Christ has actually been
preached, we reply, they are no less urgent upon those to whom he had not been
preached. Before his special announcement of Christ, John was proclaiming to
vast crowds the same uncompromising call to repent and to flee from the wrath
to come. The first message with which the twelve were sent forth, while they do
not appear to have mastered in any degree Christ's atoning work, but simply
declared that " the kingdom of heaven is at hand," was nevertheless a
preaching " that men should repent." And in singular contrast to the
notion that "no one can be lost without having had the knowledge of
Christ," is the Saviour's command to the twelve, on their first journey,
to go " unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
On any other supposition, also, how is it
possible to explain or justify the extreme urgency of Christ and his apostles
for the preaching of the gospel, at whatever cost? Paul could exclaim, "
Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." And yet in his sphere of labour
there were thousands to one who gave no heed to his message. Those who heard
him, did so under such prejudices and such conspicuous disadvantages of
education, race, environments, such difficulties and dangers, that it is a
pertinent inquiry, why endure such toils and trials, and why subject the thousands
and tens of thousands to the imminent liability of fatally rejecting the
message here, when they might have it hereafter, free from all these
distractions, hindrances, and misapprehensions? " Their conduct," it
has been well said, "is capable of no rational explanation, except on the
assumption they believed themselves to be offering to men their only chance of
escape from eternal perdition." And when the modern missionary proceeds,
with his foreign ways, stammering speech, and awkward methods, to carry the message,
how does it appear that he is not imperilling the highest welfare of the
heathen, by depriving him of a better chance hereafter,-if there were such a
chance,-and why was not the sneering secular journal right, 159 when it spoke
of those heathen as fortunate who kept out of the way of the missionary?
All these things proceed on the assumption
that there is no provision for the rescue of the sinner, except it be done in
this world. So do all the more general declarations of the Saviour. Lazarus and
Dives, in their respective states of retribution, had had but "Moses and
the prophets." Those on whom the door will have been shut and who will
knock in vain, refer only to the events of this life as the ground of their
appeal for mercy, " We have eaten and drunken in thy presence and thou
bast taught in our streets." It is too late for the foolish virgins when
the bridegroom comes. The retribution for the use of the five talents is at the
coming of the King.
And that this twofold retribution may take
place with those who have had no conscious knowledge of Christ and who
explicitly disclaim any doings with direct reference to him, clearly appears in
the passage, Matt., 25: 31, "where all the nations " are gathered
before the judgment seat. As Alford says (after Stier and Olshausen), "
These [blessed of the Father] who are judged, know not that all their deeds of
love have been clone to and for Christ, and are overwhelmed at the sight of the
grace that has been working in and for them; it is a love which was their faith,
which felt its way, though in darkness, to him who is love." The Saviour
thus recognizes a virtual, implicit, or inchoate faith without the knowledge of
his person or work. And in case of both the accepted and the rejected the
decision is founded on the deeds of time.
These general aspects of the gospel system are
cited to show how thoroughly the more specific assertions that probation is
limited to this life are sustained by the whole scheme. It is unnecessary here
to cite or defend those texts. We can unhesitatingly affirm that the Scriptures
nowhere contain a clear allusion to any offer of forgiveness through Christ
being made for the first time to the inhabitants of any other world than this.
The heavily overworked passage, 1 Pet., 3: 19, is no contradiction to this
statement; for were we to concede-as we do not-its reference to a transaction
in the other world, it contains no word concerning repentance, forgiveness,
faith or salvation, or the preaching of the gospel.
In accepting the Scripture doctrine of an
endless penalty following the unrepented sins of this life, the great body of
Christians have rested their belief not upon inferences, speculations, or
supposed exceptional implications, but upon explicit assurances, numerous,
varied, and concurrent.
The Scripture doctrine has been abundantly
resisted and denied, and by some who profess to receive the gospel. But their
objections, when thoroughly analysed, prove to rest on other foundations than
the gospel, fairly dealt with. The proposed substitutes for the Scripture
doctrine have been immediate universal salvation, final restoration, extinction
of the wicked, and probation after death. But the most respectable body of
advocates of final restoration, the Unitarian Convention of the United States,
were obliged to express in their carefully considered declaration in 1853 (May
24), their " firm conviction that the final restoration of all men is not
revealed in the Scriptures," but they regard it "as a glorious
hope" which seems to them "a warranted inference from the cardinal
principles of Christianity as well as from the great verities of moral
science." The advocates of universal salvation, while ostensibly resorting
to various texts of the Bible, have always made their most effective appeals to
certain notions of God's character, drawn from human parallels, and certain
postulates as to what such a Being must do and must not do; and several of the
earlier prominent writers have not hesitated to intimate that a book affirming
the eternity of punishment could not be received as authority. Those who
maintain the final extinction of the wicked, do so by resolutely disregarding
the many declarations involving continued conscious existence and suffering,
and by an equally resolute wresting of certain forms of speech into meanings
singularly at variance with their idiomatic signification in similar
connections, and grossly inconsistent with their constant usage elsewhere in
the sacred writings. The speculators for a probation after death, when challenged
to produce distinct Scriptural declarations in its support, have been obliged
to decline the attempt.
All these several theories of the future which
stand in conflict with the received doctrine of the churches and the creeds,
will he found to be the offspring of supposed emergencies, philosophical,
ethical, theological, or sentimental, rather than the outcome of divine
revelation. Thus Mr. C. F. Hudson, the ablest advocate of annihilation, claimed
that his theory gave us " a valid Theism," and. he " doubts if
an exclusively Scriptural argument will prove satisfactory to very many."
It was the constant claim of the earlier Universalists that " first
principles should govern all our investigations," that " we should
reject every principle that stands opposed in its nature or tendency to
love," and, in the same spirit, "if God is the Father of all men,
endless misery is false; or, if endless misery is true, God is not the Father
of all men, and the Bible is false." Thus also, as we have seen, the
American Unitarian Association argued from " the cardinal principles of
Christianity and the great verities of moral science," and not from the
affirmations of Scripture. In like manner the representative American volume
which argues for probation after death, Progressive Orthodoxy, is throughout,
actually and avowedly, a series of conclusions following " for the most
part a single line of inquiry, under the guidance of a central and vital
principle, the principle of the universality of Christianity " (p. 8),
" the general philosophical conception of God and his relations to this
universe, which underlies these essays " (p. 16). It was a similar
supposed emergency which induced a well-known divine, some years ago, to
publish a volume in advocacy of a pre-existent state, a vagary which appears to
have found no following.
These various unscriptural theories all belong
in the same category, as different human devices to solve the underlying and
indisputable, and perhaps insoluble, difficulties attendant on the present moral
condition and prospects of the human race. No one of them.
were it true, makes much progress towards a
full solution. Back of them all rises the question, why was this state of
things permitted to be? Temptation, danger, and sin, why were they suffered to
enter? The final answer perhaps must be mainly, "Even so, Father, for so
it seemed good in thy sight." The difficulties attendant on the subject of
Scripture penalty can be abundantly shown to be not exceptional in God's
government nor novelties in human experience. And all the extra-scriptural
objections to the Scripture doctrine-objections which have constituted the
staple argument of Universalism-are effectually demolished in two pages of
Butler's Analogy (ch. ii., part i.), at least for any consistent thinker who
holds that the present system of things is under the management and control of
a personal God.
Doubtless the ultimate ground of entire rest
and peace is the simple assurance that God will do right. To a certain extent
we can see the rectitude of his dealings with the heathen. The Scriptures
clearly indicate, in general, what that method will be. Men will be judged
according to the light they had. They that have sinned under the law and under
the gospel, will be judged by the law and the gospel. They that sinned without
the written law, will be judged without the law. No doubt the moral condition
and prospects of the great mass of the heathen are sufficiently forbidding, and
none the less so by reason of the fact that they so long refuse and resist the
gospel when offered to them. But their sinful character and life are voluntary,
and they stand condemned both by God's law and their own consciences. They have
some light, " the light that lighted every man " (John, 1: 9), that
light of nature which renders them " without excuse " (Rom., 1: 20).
The work of Christ, whether known to them or not, is sufficient to secure their
pardon on repentance; and well-known facts, both within and without the word of
God, show that the influences of the Spirit moving towards that repentance are
exerted beyond the regions where Christ's work has been made known. In proof of
such a salvation we have but to remember the great company of Old Testament
saints, recognized in the New Testament, as possessors of a " faith "
that " wrought righteousness and obtained promises " (Heb., 11), and
therefore were saved through Christ the "only name," although clearly
without the definite knowledge of him and his work. When Abraham "
believed God " it was " accounted unto him for righteousness,"
and that generic faith in God was manifestly identical in character with the
specific faith in a revealed Christ. Even Progressive Orthodoxy is constrained
to concede that "it is argued, and with justice, Abraham and multitudes of
his descendants before the time of Christ were saved by faith, and of course
without the knowledge of Christ." It avails nothing to call these multitudes
" exceptional cases." They are admitted facts in the economy of
redemption.
For the further fact that so it may be with
many heathen, we have indications in the word of God, and occasional apparent
instances in the history of missions. Thus Peter declares to Cornelius (Acts,
10: 35) that "in every nation he that feared him and worketh righteousness
is accepted with him "; while Paul informs the Athenians (Acts, 17: 27)
that God had made his providential arrangements for all nations, "that
they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find
him." In Romans (2: 14, 26-27) we read that "when the Gentiles, which
have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having
not the law, are a law unto themselves," and " if the uncircumcision
keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for
circumcision? "
Accordingly, we are not without instances,
apparently illustrating these conditions-actual repentance and the germ of
faith in the gentile world. We need not fall back on the stock names-some of
them sufficiently questionable-of " Socrates, Cato, Aurelius,
Buddha," and the like, but certain clearer instances of seeming sorrow for
sin, and of an entire readiness to accept the offered Saviour, existing already
when the offer was made. We have in mind such cases as the remarkable Indian
who puzzled Brainerd, who would remonstrate with his people for their sins and
flee mourning to the solitude of the woods. The Hottentot Cupido, accidentally
hearing Vanderlingen as he proclaimed that Christ Jesus could save sinners from
their sins, said at once, "That is just what I want, just what I
want," went to the missionaries, heard of Jesus, and immediately began to
preach the gospel. There is an account of a Chinaman so pressed with a sense of
his sins, that after long and vain efforts to get relief by various acts,
including the building of a temple, he yoked his oxen and rode some eighty
miles to the missionaries, to seek and to find Christ. Dr. Legge was visited in
Hong Kong by an aged Chinese, longing for the truth and almost in despair over
his condition, and so " prepared for the Lord " that, on reading a
Christian tract, he said it was "as if scales fell from his eyes,"
and he at once accepted the offered salvation. The first known convert in Japan
was a man who had sent to China for a copy of the Scriptures, and to the
missionary Verback to come and explain it, and. who said of himself, " I
cannot tell you my feelings when I first read of the character and work of
Jesus Christ. I was filled with admiration, overwhelmed with emotion, and taken
captive by the nature and the life of Christ." He yielded at once. Other
cases equally striking might be cited, showing a genuine yearning of the heart
for pardon and deliverance from sin, and an existing readiness to accept the
very conditions of the gospel, a spirit needing only the opportunity to pass
forth into act. We may fairly call it a true repentance and an inchoate, or
implicit, or germinal faith. And the belief that such heathen are in a saved
condition, and that Christ's work, though unknown, avails for them, is a
Scriptural position, substantiated by the facts of the ancient dispensation,
and justified by the utterances of the gospel. How many or how few of the
heathen will be found at last so to have met their responsibility, and used
their natural light, as to have been thus reached by the redemption of Christ,
no man knows, and it would be presumptuous, as it is unnecessary, to
conjecture. Some have applied to them the passage in Rev., 5: 9-11; but without
warrant, since the passage apparently describes the total result of the
preaching of the gospel. There is, however, no good reason to doubt that such
instances of penitent heathen may be far more numerous than we have the means
of ascertaining. . The worst aspect of the case, undoubtedly, is the extreme
difficulty which the missionaries ordinarily find in inducing the heathen to
abandon their sins and accept the offered Saviour. And while it must be added
that their relative disadvantages are very great, it is to be remembered that
they are hardly greater than those of vast numbers in Christian lands.
We thus find a thoroughly Scriptural answer to
the inquiry, What are the responsibilities and possibilities of the heathen?
and we reach a solution of the moral problem, to this extent, that we can refer
the case to the general acknowledged methods of the Divine government. There is
therefore no occasion to resort to any theory of post-mortem probation. It is
not only extra-scriptural, but, in its method, anti-scriptural. Its lack of
valid basis is by no means the worst thing about it. Its most dangerous feature
is its revolutionary mode of dealing with not only the entire redemptive
system, but with the authority of the Scriptures. In the face of the constant
teaching that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, it affirms
(Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 45) that the Incarnation would probably have taken
place had there been no sin in the world. In defiance of Scripture and human
consciousness it declares that men could not even be lost without having had
the knowledge of Christ (p. 250). In equal disregard of admitted
"exceptional cases" of Old Testament saints, it still persists that
men cannot be saved except as they have heard of the historic Christ (p. 248).
It presumes to declare (p. 74) that " all men are to be judged under the
gospel," though Paul declares quite otherwise concerning those who have
sinned without law, and those who have sinned in the law (Rom., 2:12). In
direct conflict with the Scripture teaching that salvation is of grace and not
of debt, it holds that justice absolutely requires the exercise of mercy (p.
63), and avers that "it would not be just for God to condemn men hopelessly
who have not known him in Jesus Christ" (p. 64), and sets forth "the
divine right of every individual of the human race in Christianity " (p.
136). In derogation of the Divine resources and the power of the Holy Spirit,
it maintains on the one hand that historic Christianity alone furnishes
sufficient material for the natural and efficacious work of the Spirit (p.
116), and, on the other, that no sinner will be given over to final darkness,
till all the resources of God to convert him are exhausted (p. 74).
In these and other particulars the so-called
Progressive orthodoxy offers quite "another gospel." So great is the
transformation, inasmuch as the great majority of the race to the present time
have never heard of Christ, that this scheme would transfer his redemptive work
chiefly to another world than this. Indeed, the Andover Review has gone so far
as to declare (Aug., 1887) that " opportunities of grace " in another
world " will be granted to those who had been reached by no motive of
redeeming love here" -not message but "motive." This declaration
sweeps so wide that, as was well said by an eminent missionary secretary, it
would include four-fifths of the inhabitants of this Christian country. It
required but such a proposition to reveal the fog-like character, indefinable
boundaries, and measureless inclusiveness of the speculation, and to become its
reductio ad absurdum.
It would be in order also to call attention to
the inherent inadequacy of the speculation to the end proposed. What possible
relation, or analogy even, could such a post-mortem condition have to human
probation towards Christ in this world? A set of disembodied spirits on the one
hand, shut off from all the conditions and environments of this life,-Christian
society included,-with evil propensities matured, and the alleviations and
gratifications gone, with possibly a desperate brooding over the past and the
present, and, on the other hand, no longer the Son of man, as once on earth,
mingling in all human activities and sympathies, sweetly and winningly taking
them by the hand in the walks of daily life, with the mild radiance of the
incarnate God, but now the Son of God necessarily divested of those
relationships, and unavoidably seen in his fully revealed Divinity. The
conditions are wholly unlike. The proposal will not abide analysis.
But in order to indulge in these speculations,
which are chiefly a web of what the Germans call brain-spinning, their
advocates are preparing the way for "another gospel " by
"progressive " views of the old gospel. Here, after all, is the
radical and fatal defect of the whole movement. Its deliverances on the subject
of inspiration, though naturally cautious, are somewhat definite and quite
significant. Progressive Orthodoxy asserts (p. 194) that we have no right to
affirm "a special operation of Almighty powers " to give the Bible
" its highest qualities "; but that " the forces visible in
sacred history appear to the best human vision to have produced the
Bible." The words " supernatural gift " and " revelation
" are indeed used, but we are told (p. 201) that "the revelation of
which each apostle was the bearer is not to be thought of as a set of religious
ideas made over to him to be held as an external possession. The man could not
be himself without having it." Again (p. 203) " the apostolic
teaching is the expression of the spiritual life of its authors," and much
more to the same effect, namely, that the doctrine rises no higher than the
" personality " or character of the man. The unavoidable conclusion
that it must have been tinged with their remaining sin meets an ineffectual
caveat (on page 207), and we are distinctly informed (p. 208) that "we can
hardly believe that the truth as revealed through the apostles had such
absolute purity as if perfect beings had been the media of. revelation,"
also (p. 209) that " we may dismiss the question of absolute perfection in
the apostolic teaching as having no living interest." To make sure the
meaning, we read on the same page "that not the apostles alone possessed
the spirit of wisdom and revelation," but "every soul in which He
dwells," and that "some souls in ages since the apostolic have been
the spiritual luminaries of their own and the following centuries," for
" in this matter of revelation man is never isolated from his
fellow," and inspiration "is not a constant quality, but varies with
the individual." That is, revelation and inspiration belong to all good
men, as to the apostles, in proportion to their goodness. This is following
very close in the steps of their master, Dorner, who has taught that "the
supreme fact in the contents of faith is the Christian idea of God, and from
it, as the highest unity and truth, are all statements of faith and all
Christian truth immediately or mediately derived." It is the same dogma
which has recently asserted itself under the already cant phrase of the
"Christian consciousness," with its power to adjudicate the
Scriptures.
These unscriptural teachings have already
begun to bear bitter fruits upon young men subjected to them. Probably they
will make further progress in the same direction. As a scheme of naturalism
this movement has developed its inherent tendencies more in a few years than
Murray's Universalism or Channing's Unitarianism in a generation. The Christian
Leader (Universalist) calls it "incipient Universalism." We may well
stand prepared for any result. For the vital issue, we repeat it, is the
inspiration and final authority of the Scriptures.
The great danger to our churches lies in the
excess or abuse of charity, in extending aid and comfort to a system that
contains growing germs of entire antagonism to the evangelical system. And,
most unfortunately and singularly, men who openly repudiate the system are
gaining for it a welcome by demanding that it shall have the free range of the
churches and the missions. It does not relieve the case that good men have
broached the error. Bad men cannot propagate a heresy in the Church.
Future probation, be it remembered, is but an
incident to a deeper conflict. And that conflict apparently is at hand, and
upon us. For it would seem clear from the lessons of ecclesiastical history and
theological drift, that this movement, unless arrested, will issue in a grave
defection, into which the ministry may be drawn more extensively than the
Christian laymen-a defection in many of its circumstances not unlike that of
three-quarters of a century ago, and probably with similar results. For there
will continue to be, as heretofore, an evangelical Church ready to accept God's
Word and strong to do Christ's work.
Those who love darkness rather than light
cannot be saved. The doctrine of eternal punishment for such is awful, but
Jesus Christ is its authority.
By Rev. JAMES M. BUCKLEY, P.D., Editor of tile
Christian Advocate, Methodist Episcopal, New York.
I UNDERSTAND the purpose of this volume to be
to present the views of its contributors upon the most solemn question
propounded by man to his own soul, his fellow man, or to the religion which
claims his reverence and faith: " What fate awaits us when we die?"
and that the inquiry is limited to the condition of those who reject the
gospel. Further: that it is the desire of the editor that the belief of the
respective writers should be clearly stated, with an outline of the grounds of
their convictions; but that a full discussion of them is not expected or
desired; for even in the absence of express intimations, the limitations of
space would compel this view of the work.
In this instance, what is believed is no new
doctrine, but simply that human life to all rational beings is a probation
which may practically end before death, but by a decree of God ends at death.
That salvation depends upon the soul's being in a state of submission to God,
accepting what it believes to be the truth, and obeying what it believes to be
the will of God. Where the gospel is preached, it implies accepting and obeying
the gospel; where it is erroneously set forth, or where it is not known, the
condition of salvation is living in obedience to the light which has been
given; Further, that persons who have lived a sinful life, and have like the
prodigal "come to themselves," and like the publican cried, "God
be merciful to me a sinner," are subjects of salvation through the mercy
of God, who pardons their iniquities and graciously receives them. This implies
that the writer's view does not confine the number of the saved to any sect of
Christians, nor to the whole Christian Church; but speaks of Protestants,
Christians, Romanists, Mohammedans, Pagans, and those who make no outward profession
of religion: all who answer the description above given, who are trying to
" work out their salvation with fear and trembling," and are in such
a state of mind that all truth, seen to be truth, will be gladly accepted, and
the life faithfully conformed thereunto, belong-whether ignorant or learned, in
doubt upon some points or clear upon most-to the fold of Christ. It is further
believed by the writer that all children and irresponsible persons, though they
have had no probation, as a part of the plan of God are admitted as personally
innocent beings, are purified and numbered among the saved. A more condensed
statement is that all persons who love darkness rather than light, and who die
in such a state, will not be saved; and that all who love light rather than
darkness will be saved.
The grounds of this belief at the last
analysis depend upon the interpretation of the New Testament. Believing those
writings to contain the only final revelations from God to man, the province of
reason is to ascertain what they mean. To profess to believe the New Testament
to be of God, and to reason away its obvious teachings, or, failing to do that,
to reject them, is inconsistent to absurdity. The saying, attributed to
Theodore Parker, that he " believed that Jesus Christ meant to teach
eternal punishment, but he would not accept it upon his authority," is
fearlessly consistent, but it involves the rejection of Jesus Christ as a
teacher come from God. I believe that Jesus Christ was a teacher come from God,
and, though the doctrine of eternal punishment is awful, I accept it upon his
authority. If it were possible to believe otherwise I would gladly do so, nor
can I comprehend the state of mind of any one living upon the earth who can
take any other ground.
This thought has been employed by some to cast
doubt upon the doctrine, for they have said: "How can that be true which
all Christians would be glad to see proven false? " This, though
plausible, is a sophism. There are no Christians perfect in knowledge, much
less in wisdom or purity; therefore there is no Christian upon the earth
competent to decide the demerit of sin, or to frame a system of laws for the
universe, or to determine the necessities under an infinite administration
growing out of the one mystery of the universe,-Human freedom. That the
mother's heart will not see the justice of the punishment of her son for a
crime, while all others assign the necessity thereof to the welfare of
humanity, reflects no light upon either law or equity. If Jesus Christ announce
a fact, those who believe him to be divine must not make that fact the standard
by which to judge his wisdom or ignorance.
Two propositions seem to me incontrovertible,
namely: Jesus omitted to say those things that he would naturally have said if
he designed to teach " eternal hope "; and he said those things that
he would naturally have said if he had designed to teach that this life is a
probation, and man's only probation.
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I cannot find a
word of hope for those who die unsaved. The answers to questions, and the
constant assumptions, contain the implication that they are lost, and the
parables are constructed as they would have been if that view were in the mind
of Christ, while there are positive statements that the punishment of some will
not end. In Matthew 5 and Mark 9 occur the passages concerning the whole body
being cast into hell " where their worm dies not and the fire is not
quenched." The ground of the terrible appeal concerning the right hand and
the right eye would be destroyed if hope existed in hell. In Matthew 10 is the
declaration to the apostles that they are not to fear them which kill the body,
but rather fear them which are able to destroy both soul and body in hell. The
original of this passage is stronger than the English. Some have quibbled,
declaring that he hath indeed power, but the text does not declare that he will
exercise it. Then the ground of the appeal is destroyed. The manner in which
Luke states this is even stronger (12: 5).
But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear:
Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say
unto you, Fear him.
The Sermon on the Mount closes in a manner
which leaves no hope for the finally rejected. Matthew 10: 32 represents Jesus
as denying before his Father which is in heaven those who deny him before men.
Matthew 12: 31, 32 speaks of the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is not to be
forgiven in this world nor in the world to come. From this some have tried to
infer that some sins would be forgiven in the world to come, an intimation
which, if not plainly contradicted elsewhere, might contain a germ of hope.
Mark 3: 28 states this in another but equally positive form: "hath never
forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." Luke's version
dispenses with the controverted word translated " eternal " in Mark,
and declares that " unto him that blasphemed against the Holy Ghost it
shall not be forgiven."
Matthew 13 abounds in statements of separation
and exclusion which derive their meaning from the idea that the separation is
eternal. The parable in the same chapter beginning with verse forty-seven is
unequivocal. The declarations of Christ in Matthew 16: 24-27, concerning those
who lose their lives by trying to save them, even though they gain the whole
world, taken in connection with the reward of every man according to his own
works, find their most natural interpretation in the same view of the condition
of those excluded. In the twenty-second chapter of Matthew is the parable of
the marriage of the king's son which ends with the command to " bind him
hand and foot, and take him away and cast him into outer darkness; there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The parable of the ten virgins, and of
the talents, and of the judgment scene in the twenty-fifth of Matthew can be
explained by no natural method except by the teaching which, in the new
version, completes the series, "and these shall go away into eternal
punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." Matthew 26: 24 speaks of
the man by whom the Son of man is betrayed; " it had been good for that
man if he had not been horn." The attempt to make this a mere proverbial
expression belongs to a method of interpretation which can make the Bible mean
anything or nothing.
In Luke 13 the question is plainly propounded
to the Lord, "Are there few that be saved? " He does not directly
answer, but explicitly affirms that some will not be able to enter in. "
Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I say unto you, will seek to
enter in and shall not be able." The parable of the excuses ends with the
declaration that "none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my
supper." That of the rich man in Luke 16 represents Abraham as saying, "And
beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they
which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us that
would come from thence." It is common to say "this is but a parable,
and no discriminating person would attempt to prove a doctrine by a
parable." Certainly not; but the parable derives its value for instruction
and as an incitement to holy living from certain underlying truths; and if all
the parables are such as one who meant to teach eternal punishment would use,
and such as one who did not hold that view would not naturally employ, the
cumulative force of these parables-though not to be used as proof-texts -is
great.
In the Gospel of John, our Lord makes
believing upon him necessary to save from perishing, and as the condition of
eternal life. " They that have clone good unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation." John 8:
21-24 is a passage of great importance because in the original it contains no
words of indefinite or doubtful signification.
He said therefore again unto them, I go away
and ye shall seek me and shall die in your sin: whither I go ye cannot come.
The Jews therefore said, Will he kill himself, that he saith, Whither I go ye
cannot come? And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye
are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye
shall die in your sins: for except ye believe that I am he, ye shall die in
your sins.
Whither I go ye cannot come is declared to be
the consequence of dying in sin.
When the apostles went forth to preach this
was the doctrine which they taught. St. Paul declares that they which commit
such things are worthy of death; that God " will render to every man
according to his deeds; eternal life to them who by patient continuance in
well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality; but indignation and
wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that death evil."
This is to occur at " the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God."
In the Epistle to the Corinthians Paul
demands, " Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom
of God? " and the second epistle divides the whole world into two classes,
those who are saved and those that perish. To the one his preaching was a
" savour of death unto death "; and to the other of " life unto
life." In the Epistle to the Galatians the works of the flesh are
specified, and those who do such things " cannot inherit the kingdom of
God." " He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption." The end of certain persons is "destruction "
because they are " enemies of the cross of Christ" (Phil. 3: 18).
"No whoremonger nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater,
bath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." In Hebrews the
warning is (4:1), "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of
entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." And in
the sixth and tenth chapters it is taught that persons under certain circumstances
are in a condition from which it is impossible to deliver them.
These passages seem incapable of sustaining
any other conclusion than that Christ and his apostles meant to teach the
endless punishment of some sinners. The passages which are alleged as laying a
foundation for eternal hope I have examined many times under the guidance of
those who claim to find underneath all a ground to expect the entire
destruction of moral evil, and the happiness and purity of all rational beings.
To me they seem to be special pleaders, finding what they go forth to find.
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."
"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that.
the world through him might be saved." "And I, if I be lifted up from
the earth, will draw all men unto me." It is necessary only to read the
rest of the chapters in which these passages are found to see that Christ did
not mean that all men would accept him, and that he did mean that those who did
not accept him could not be saved. All passages of this kind teach universal
redemption, and that salvation is possible to all; but do not teach universal
salvation. Paul's famous passage, " For therefore we both labour and
suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all
men, especially of those that believe," belongs to the same class with
John's "And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only,
but also for the sins of the whole world." God is called the Saviour of
all men because he desires and offers to save all; he is especially the Saviour
of those who believe, because belief is the indispensable condition of
salvation.
Acts 3:21 taken by itself has furnished the
materials for many plausible discourses, though if one read the twenty-second
and twenty-third verses the meaning becomes plain; the statement being that
Jesus remains invisible to men, having retired into the heavens until all
things are filled up which have been spoken by the prophets since the world
began, at which time the wicked are to be punished.
Eph., 1: 9, 10: " Having made known unto
us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath
purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might
gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and
which are in earth; even in him."
From this passage it is to be observed that
hell is omitted. If it were included then indeed would the passage be complete.
In the same epistle (3: 15) the finally saved are described as "the whole
family in heaven and earth."
Ephesians 4: 17-19 and 5: 5 state fully the
sentiments of the author of the epistle upon the condition of those who reject
Christ; they are " past feeling " and have no inheritance in the
kingdom of God.
Col., 1: 19, 20: "For it pleased the
Father that in him should all fullness dwell; and, having made peace through
the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I
say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven."
It is to be observed that " things under
the earth " is omitted from this passage. These were not reconciled then
and are not now. Paul was in danger and died, but the blood of the cross was
adequate.
Phil., 2: 10, 11: " That at the name of
Jesus every knee should how, of things in heaven and things in earth, and
things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Here " things under the earth " is
found; but the declaration is not that they shall be reconciled to Christ; the
meaning is that through the whole universe every knee should bow to Christ,
recognizing that he is Lord, but it is not to be inferred from this that the
whole universe accept Christ and are saved. For the fifteenth and sixteenth
verses, after urging Christians to work out their salvation with fear and
trembling, declare that if the counsel be taken, and Christian character
attained, the writer " may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not
run in vain, neither laboured in vain."
In the same epistle he declares that the end
of those who do not accept the truth is destruction. 1 Tim. 2: 4 says (King
James version), " Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the
knowledge of the truth." The word is elsewhere translated desire, and the
meaning plainly is " Who desired all men to be saved." The same word
is found in this sense in Luke 13: 34: "How often would I have gathered
thy children together, as a hen cloth gather her brood under her wings, and ye
would not "
1 Cor. 15: 32 declares that "As in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." This passage relates
to the resurrection, and has no bearing on final salvation apart from that. The
final exhortation, as well as many other passages, shows that salvation is
contingent. It is in this very epistle that the apostle says, "But I keep
my body under and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." No reference is made
here to the wicked. " Every man in his own order; Christ the first fruits,
and afterwards them that are Christ's at his coming."
Considerations are drawn from the general
principles of the gospel which lead some to affirm, and others to hope, that
the final salvation of all men is compatible with God's Word. The endless.
punishment of any being whom he has created is said to be inconsistent with the
laws which he has given us with regard to the treatment of our enemies. "
God makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on
the just and on the unjust." He seems to be here spoken of as a Father in
his treatment of wicked men in this state of probation, and those who make this
use of this passage continually proclaim that the wicked are punished in this
life; a notion which they must give up if they fancy that God is now treating
the just and the unjust in the same way. It is not incompatible with love to
have necessary punishment inflicted upon the incorrigible. He who uttered these
words closed the Sermon on the Mount by pointing out the certain destruction of
sinners. Paul teaches the same doctrine when he says: " Or despises thou
the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; not knowing that
the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" This is the purpose. What
is the consequence if this purpose be not accomplished? " But after thy
hardness and impenitent heart treasures up unto thyself wrath against the clay
of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."
The very ground upon which God instructs his
people not to seek for vengeance is this: " Vengeance is mine, I will
repay, saith the Lord." He who wrote that said, "Alexander the
coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his work."
It is affirmed to be incompatible with the
love of God that any creature whom he has made should be endlessly miserable
and alienated from him, and that with his foreknowledge he should create beings
who could possibly reach such a destiny. All we know of God's love is in the
gospel. We must accept all that it represents, or reject all. The present state
cannot be harmonized with any plan of infinite love. Some speak as though the
whole universe were without sin or evil, except one dark island where sin, punishment,
and woe reign eternally. It is sometimes stated thus and an ad eaptandum appeal
made: " Is not God a loving Father? Is he not more loving than any earthly
parent?" When these questions are answered in the affirmative the
conclusion is, " What parent would punish his son forever?"
But suppose a parent with a family of sons and
daughters, and one son intending and attempting to poison the rest that he may
seize the inheritance, what father would fail to restrain and exclude him? It
is not right to take the case of the sinner apart from the rest of the universe
and ask, " Where is love seen in his damnation?" Love includes all,
and the Bible represents God as saying, What
more could I have done to my vineyard that I have not done?
Philanthropists found an orphan asylum, though
they know that some will not submit to discipline. They expect the final
results of the whole to do a great good to a great number. The unmanageable
will be persuaded, pleaded with, restrained, and corrected, with a desire to
save them. But when it appears that they cannot be reclaimed, the good of the
whole will require their expulsion, even if it make them worse than though they
had never been there at all. The founder may shed tears of sorrow when he sends
them forth, but out of love to all he must sacrifice his feelings. Thus when
our Lord drew near the city he " wept over it."
The passage concerning Christ's preaching to
the spirits in prison seems to me terribly strained when employed to support a
hope of an opportunity for repentance after death. It can be explained in any
one of several ways more reasonably than by interpreting it to mean a saving
proclamation to the dead. And in no case could one puzzling utterance overthrow
an unbroken current of teaching, unless the mind be predetermined to reject, or
at least to doubt, that teaching. St. Peter in both of his epistles, as well as
in his sermons reported in the book of Acts, speaks positively as to the
condition of those who die in sin. It is he who says that those only who make
their " calling and election sure shall never stumble: for thus shall be
richly supplied unto you the entrance to the eternal kingdom of our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ." It is he who affirms that the false teachers who
deny the Master that bought them, " bring upon themselves swift
destruction "; he who says that the angels were spared not when they
sinned, " but cast clown to hell and committed to pits of darkness to be
reserved unto judgment "; that the unrighteous are kept " under punishment
unto the day of judgment."
I have confined myself to showing that Christ
and his apostles did not speak as honest men who believed in eternal hope would
have spoken, and that they did speak as only those could who believed life to
be a probation in which eternal destiny is decided. John W. Chadwick, who does
not believe in the authority of the New Testament upon the hereafter, says:
"I know how learnedly the Unitarians and Universalists have written about
the Greek word moneon translated 'everlasting' and about the word Gehenna which
is translated bell.' But I also know that all of this is. special pleading, to
which good men are compelled to resort because they feel that they must have
the authority of the Scripture on the side of their humane views of the
hereafter. I know that they would never think of arguing as they do if they
could feel themselves at liberty to dispense with the authority of the New
Testament."
So it appears to me; and because I do not feel
at liberty to dispense with the authority of the New Testament, either directly
by denying its divine origin, or indirectly by explaining away its plain
import, I must acknowledge my acceptance of a doctrine "everywhere spoken
against." Nor does it appear so unreasonable to me as some would have it
to be.
The moral effect of doubt upon this subject is
to require an entire change of the estimate of the gospel. Paul gave as the motive
which explained his action and supported him in his labours and appeals,
"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." The
faith that man, now lost, can be saved in this life by Christ, has been the
inspiration of missions, and the support of all the efforts which have carried
the gospel around the world; and that only impels men to lay down their lives
for others. It is not that they expect to be saved by fear. But the Word of
God, observation, and experience show that human nature is absorbed in
self-indulgence, and will not at first listen to the pure principles of the
gospel, or open its heart to receive the love of God. The fear of the
consequences of sin, or even of neglect, 183 compels thought; unwilling thought
directed to the cause of danger recognizes sin. Reflection aided by the Holy
Spirit leads to repentance, repentance to faith, and faith brings forth its
fruits in the soul.
It is this appalling truth which fixes a man's
attention upon his soul, and compels him to consider his destiny if his course
be not changed. To inform the world that there would be another trial would
destroy to a great extent and in most minds the effect of this. This philosophy
is explained by Ezekiel in the thirteenth chapter, "Because with lies ye
have made the heart of the righteous sad whom I have not made sad; and
strengthened the hands of the wicked that he should not return from his wicked
way, by promising him life."
Concerning the character of that punishment, I
must say that the considerations adduced by those who make immortality
conditional, and cherish the hope of the annihilation of the wicked, from a
strictly New Testament point of view, seem insufficient. As a reasonable
conception, the eternal life of those who know and love God, and the
destruction of those who will not be conformed to his, will, leaving the
universe without the spot of evil, is simple and beautiful. But our information
as to the fact is not to be derived from the conceptions which we are able to
form of simplicity and beauty, but from the 'Word of God; and that appears to
teach the compatibility of what the New Testament calls "
destruction," "perished," "perdition,"
"lost," with existence. That the orthodox Jews believed in the
existence of the wicked after death is beyond doubt. That Jesus recognized the
current views is equally clear. The wicked are represented as comprehended in
the doom of fallen angels. Degrees of punishment are found. Evidences of misery
in the state spoken of as "outer darkness " are exhibited. The spirit
is spoken of in the New Testament as capable of existing, knowing, and feeling
after the destruction of the body.
In the descriptions given of the misery of the
wicked, and of the happiness of the righteous, material symbols are employed.
Fire consuming the flesh and worms that die not are the strongest material
symbols of misery; gold, harps, white robes, symbols of bliss. It is not more
necessary to believe that these are other than symbols in the former case than
in the latter. The figures employed of the doom of the wicked are designed to
represent the greatest possible misery, and those applied to the destiny of the
righteous, to portray the highest conceivable bliss.
It is an error to think and a
misrepresentation to allege that those who hold the views herein set forth-the
doctrine that life is a probation ending at death-must needs believe that the
majority of the human race will be lost. Infants, irresponsible persons, all
God's true children in every age and country, even those who doubt if they be
true to the light which is in them, form the multitude that no ran can number.
Nor is it necessary to invent a plan not revealed in the Scriptures to save
those of the ancient children of God to whom the gospel was not explicitly
preached; nor such of the heathen as are saved, nor to condemn such as are not
accepted as heirs of heaven. For Peter's words to Cornelius, and even Paul in
the Epistle to the Romans, as well as various parables and words of Jesus, show
that the test at the judgment seat of Christ is applicable to any degree of
light sufficient for responsibility as a moral agent.
It is not true that this belief, if connected
with a firm faith in the promises of God, fills the soul with insupportable
horror. There are crises when the sinner feels his guilt and acknowledges the
justice of his doom. If then he see no way of escape, a horror as of great
darkness rests upon him. But at the instant when reason 185 would fail lie
flees "for refuge to the hope set before him in the gospel "; as he
begins to comprehend what it is to perish, he knows as no other can the meaning
of salvation.
So when the souls of those whom the Christian
loves are misled, and he fears that they will be lost, he may know the agony of
Moses when he said, " If thou wilt not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy
book," or of Paul when he said, "I have great heaviness and continual
sorrow in my heart: for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for
my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." But from this depth the
same confidence in the wisdom and goodness of God which supports the Christian
in his greatest sorrows, together with prayer, effort, and hope that they will
yet turn, is adequate to raise him. The prophecy concerning Christ is, "He
shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied." Human nature,
fallible, may ask how he can be satisfied if but one of those for whom he
suffered be lost. But if Christ himself declares that some will not come unto
him that they might have life, what is man that, like Peter who understood not
to whom he was speaking, he should begin to "rebuke him "?
Over one island in the sea of eternity
Christianity leaves a dark shadow; but not one innocent or penitent soul is
there; not one who did not choose death rather than life; not one whom God
could save without absolving him without repentance from the consequences of
his sin, repudiating the essential distinction between sin and righteousness,
and degrading himself (an impossible conception), is under that shadow. To all
others this truth will be made known. God's love will be fully declared; his
righteousness made plain; every act of his government and every dispensation of
his providence will receive the willing approval of his children; and he also
has promised to wipe away all tears from their eyes-will wipe away " those
noblest, perhaps hottest, tears,-tears over the lost."
When the burden of anxiety is too oppressive
the Christian can Endeavor by faith to anticipate the song of Moses and the
Lamb, " Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." When he
does this he seeks relief as in other cases by " looking not at the things
which are seen, but at the things which are not seen," a method safer than
any of man's devising.
The future punishment of the wicked will begin
immediately after death; it will differ in severity according to the degree of
guilt incurred by each; and it will never come to an end.
By Rev. F. W. CONRAD, D.D., Editor of the
Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia.
IN the discussion of the doctrine of future
punishment, we propose here to consider it as it is presented in the Word of
God, and without deriving its truth or authority from any traditions or
theories of ancient or modern times.
As place is conditional for all being, there
can be no punishment, except there be a place where and a subject upon whom it
may be inflicted. The opinion that there is a place of future punishment has
been held by the Church universal. Origen, however, among the ancients, and
Thederlein among the moderns, have maintained that future punishment is not
inflicted in any particular place, but that it is connected with the mental state
of the damned, in whatever place they may be. The Albigenses and the Kathari
are said to have held that this world was the place of punishment, which would
end with man's probation. These notions have been revived by some modern
Universalists. Such an explanation, however, is contradicted by the whole tenor
of the Scriptures, and can only be extorted from them by disregarding the
acknowledged rules of interpretation. It is self evident, that if the wicked
are to be punished, it must take place somewhere in the universe of God, but
its precise locality has not been revealed, and it remains unknown to mortals.
The place of departed spirits was called
Hades. This word was employed by the Greeks to signify the under world, or the
abode of the dead in general. It is used in the same sense in the New
Testament, and accordingly embraces two departments, the one Paradise, where,
as Jesus represents in the parable, Lazarus was taken, the other the place of
punishment, to which the rich man was condemned. It is used eleven times in the
New Testament, in eight of which it has the general signification just
mentioned; but in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus where it is said,
"and in hell, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment," it is
equivalent to Gehenna, and means that department of Hades to which the wicked
are consigned. And in the two passages quoted by Matthew and Luke, "Thou,
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell
(Hades)," it evidently has the same signification. The place of punishment
was also called Gehenna. Christ says, "Fear not them which kill the body,
. . . but rather fear him that is able to destroy both soul and body in hell''
(Matt., 10: 2S). The word translated hell, in this passage, is Gehenna, which,
on account of its frequent use by Christ in referring to future punishment, is
invested with peculiar significance.
Gehenna was a portion of the valley of Hinnom,
west and south of Jerusalem, where the idolatrous worship of Moloch had been
celebrated. The image of the idol was made red hot, and children placed in his
arms were burned alive. Desecrated by these sacrilegious rites, it was set
apart as a place of execution and the receptacle of all the filth of the city,
where perpetual fires were kept burning, and thus it became the symbol of the
awful abode of lost souls. It is used twelve times by Christ as reported by the
Evangelists, and in every case, except one, to describe the place and character
of future punishment.
By the frequent use of the word Gehenna,
Christ represents the sufferings of the lost, by their being consigned, as
outcasts, to the valley of Hinnom, and doomed forever to breathe its
pestilential atmosphere, to burn in its fires that can never be quenched, and
to be tortured with the gnawing of a worm that never dies. This conveyed to a
Jew the most awful idea of misery conceivable.
The place of punishment is also called
Tartarus. " God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to
hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment
" (2 Pet., 2: 4). The word here translated hell is Tartarus, which is used
but once in the New Testament. It was employed to represent the infernal
regions of the Greeks and Romans, where, according to their mythology, the most
guilty and impious of mankind were punished. It was surrounded by a brazen
wall, and its entrance was continually hidden from sight by a cloud of darkness
" three times more gloomy than the darkest night." Virgil represents
it as surrounded by impenetrable walls, and that Phlegethon -a river of liquid
fire - flowed through it, and that neither gods nor men could open its gates.
It is probable that the ancients had obtained
some knowledge of the sin and punishment of the fallen angels by tradition, for
it is doubtful whether, without any other source of knowledge of the future
world, except their own reason, they could have incorporated so many of the
Scriptural aspects of the abode of the wicked in their description of it. The
ideas presented by Peter are taken from the character of ancient prisons as
places of punishment. Accordingly, hell is described as a huge prison in which
the damned are incarcerated, without any hope of either deliverance or escape,
deprived of motion, and bound with chains; shut out from the light, and
shrouded in the gloom of " the blackness of darkness forever."
Future punishment is also said to consist in
being cast into an unquenchable fire. This is expressed by Christ in the
sentence of condemnation pronounced at the judgment, " Depart, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." " The
wicked shall be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be
quenched." It is further stated that the wicked shall be cast into a furnace
and into a lake of fire.
The question now arises, Is hell composed of
material fire, or is its character only fitly set forth under the figurative
representations just mentioned? Different answers are given to these questions,
and many authorities may be cited on both sides. While it cannot be denied that
many passages referring to this subject must be interpreted figuratively, it
must, on the other hand, be admitted that the number, form, and emphatic
character of those that represent the punishment of the wicked as inflicted
upon them by fire, is so great, that it is not strange that they should
generally have been understood literally. The Jews believed that hell would be
composed of literal fire. Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine among the
Fathers, Estius and Luke of Bruges among the critics of the Middle Ages, and
Pool and Edwards among the moderns, held the same opinion. Griffin states that
this has been the general opinion of the churches in all ages, that no
commentator denied it, and that none could prove it to be false. Barnes,
Dwight, Saurin, Stuart, and many others, however, maintain the negative.
A positive answer concerning the material
character of hell cannot be given; nor is it necessary in order to receive the
impression that the language employed to describe it was designed to make.
As a God of truth, he could not have so
overstated the punishment he declared he inflict upon the lost as to torture
the living with the apprehension of its horrors, and terrify them into his
service. If it could he set forth literally, then God has done this; but if
this was impossible, then the figurative descriptions given of it must be
understood as only an approximation of its reality, and that a literal
representation of it cannot he made in human language.
It is set forth as a penal condemnation or
damnation. This term is frequently employed by Christ in referring to future
punishment. To the Pharisees he said: " How can ye escape the damnation of
hell?" The scribes, who devoured widows' houses, said he, "shall
receive the greater damnation."
The word translated damnation, in King James's
version is used twenty-eight times in the New Testament, and is also rendered
by the words judgment and condemnation, but does not always refer to the
punishment of the lost. It sometimes denotes the condemnation and consequent
punishment of the civil tribunal. " They that resist (the power) shall
receive to themselves damnation (condemnation)" (Rom., 13: 2). At other
times it denotes exposure to temporal judgments. "He that eateth and
drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation (condemnation) to himself
" (1 Cor., 11: 29). It also denotes the sentence of conscience on what has
been voluntarily done. " He that eateth (doubteth) is damned (condemned)
if he eat " by his conscience.
But most frequently the word damnation is used
to express the judgment, condemnation, and punishment which God will inflict
upon the wicked. "The hour is coming in the which all that are in their
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and conic forth: they that have
done good unto the resurrection of life. and they that have clone evil unto the
resurrection of damnation " (John, 5: 28,29). From this and other passages
of Scripture it is evident, that future punishment cannot be regarded as part
of a remedial system, but that it belongs to the retributive department of
moral government; that it will begin immediately after death; that it will
differ in severity according to the degree of guilt incurred by each; and that
it will never come to an end. The wicked will, therefore, not be placed in a
house of correction and reformation, nor subjected to a disciplinary
chastisement, nor undergo a process of purgatorial purification, under the
reformatory influence of which they are eventually to be fitted for heaven, but
consigned to a place of real punishment, in which they will be associated in
infamy and misery, with devils and ungodly men. Neither will they be
annihilated, nor remain in a state of eternal repose or unconsciousness, but
they will be alive, conscious, and in the highest state of susceptibility to
suffering. "The Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust to the day of
judgment to be punished " (2 Pet., 2: 9). " Who shall be punished
with everlasting destruction from the presence of God and the glory of his
power." The foregoing representations of the nature of future punishment
are most frequently set forth by the sacred writers, but there are many others
which the space assigned us will not permit us to present.
That the inspired writers of the Holy
Scriptures intended to teach that the future punishment of the damned will
never end, may be logically drawn from a due examination of the following
classifications of the passages in which they refer to its duration:-
1.
Passages in which the eternity of the happiness of the saved and the misery of
the lost are contrasted and positively declared: The Greek words which are
translated "forever"; and the phrase, which is translated "for
ever and ever" in the New Testament, are used twelve times to designate
the unending character of the inheritance of the saints, and five times to
designate the unending punishment of the lost. " The saints shall reign
for ever and ever " (Rev., 22: 5). " The smoke of their torment ascended
up for ever and ever " (Rev., 14: 11). The Greek word, translated "
eternal" and " everlasting," is used fifty-five times to denote
the eternal life of the righteous in the future, and seven times to denote the
everlasting punishment of the wicked. "And I give unto them eternal life
" (John, 20: 28). " These shall go away into everlasting
punishment" (Matt., 26: 46). In these and other passages, the same words
are used to express the eternity of the punishment of the wicked that are used
to express the eternity of the reward of the righteous. And as it is admitted
that they denote the unending blessedness of the saved, it cannot be
consistently denied that they denote also the unending wretchedness of the
lost. The Greek and Hebrew words rendered by "eternal " and
"everlasting " are the strongest words in those languages to declare
the whole of an age or period, and the entire duration of the subject to which
they are applied. The Greek word means in the original the state of always
being, and is the most emphatic way of expressing the idea of never ending but
always continuing. If the inspired writers intended to teach the eternity of
future punishment, the terms used by them would be the very ones they would
choose to declare it; and if this be not their meaning, then it cannot be
taught in the Hebrew, Greek, or any other language.
2. Passages in which the eternity of future
punishment is expressed in figurative terms: The torment of the lost is
represented as the gnawing of a worm that never dies, the burning of a fire
that can never be quenched, the blackness of darkness that lasts forever, as
bound with " everlasting chains " and doomed to " everlasting
destruction." These are the most emphatic figurative representations of
eternity that the mind can conceive or language express.
5. Passages in which the unrighteous are
represented to be forever excluded from heaven: Paul declares that they shall
be forever excluded "from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his
power." Christ says to the Pharisees, " where I am ye cannot
come," and that the unbeliever " shall not see life, but the wrath of
God abided on him." In these passages, as well as in the parable of the
rich man and Lazarus, the everlasting separation between the saints in heaven
and the damned in hell is positively taught.
4. Passages that teach the unchangeable
character of the ungodly: " What thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy
might, for there is no knowledge, nor device, nor wisdom in the grave to which
thou goes." Two things are indispensable to enter heaven, pardon and
holiness; and as without faith in Jesus Christ no man can either obtain pardon
or become holy, it follows that those who do not believe in Christ in this life
will never have another opportunity of doing so after death; their characters
will remain forever unchangeable, and their doom irrevocably fixed. This Christ
expressly teaches in these words: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust
still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is
righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy
still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man
according as his work shall be " (Rev., 22:11, 12).
This will appear from the following
considerations:-
1. THE
CHARACTER OF GOD.
-
Endowed with reason, man has an insight into moral distinctions. He knows right
from wrong, and can discern in the character and consequences of certain
actions, that they are blameworthy and ought to be punished; that some acts
possess this character in a greater degree than others, and hence deserve a
severer punishment. When, therefore, such punishment is inflicted, and the mind
sees that there is a correspondence between the degree of ill desert and the
severity of the punishment inflicted, its decision will be that such punishment
is deserved, in other words, that it is just.
Justice in a human ruler is that disposition
which induces him to treat every one of his subjects according to his deserts,
rewarding the good and punishing the evil. If therefore justice be a necessary
trait of character in the rulers of this world, how much more must it be an essential characteristic of
God, the Ruler and Judge of the universe?
As God possesses an accurate knowledge of the
sins committed by every rational and responsible being, and of the precise
punishment, in degree and duration, which each deserves; and as justice is one
of his essential attributes, it is impossible that he, as the Arbiter of
destiny, should inflict any punishment upon any of his creatures which was not
deserved by them; and as he has inflicted eternal punishment upon Sodom and
Gomorrah, and upon the fallen angels; and as he declares that he will inflict a
similar punishment upon the souls of the ungodly, it cannot but be just.
This conclusion is verified by express
declarations of Scripture. Paul testifies, concerning those who reported that
he and his associates taught that men could do evil that good might come, that
their " damnation was just." Although this declaration of Paul had
reference to the guilt of those who circulated false reports about the
teachings of the apostles, it embodies a general principle applicable to the
guilt of all unrepenting sinners; viz., that their damnation will be just.
"Is there unrighteousness with God, who taketh vengeance? " " He
is clear when he judges and just when he condemns." " Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right? "
As the Scriptures ascribe perfection to God,
all his attributes must be exercised consistently with each other. The mercy of
God cannot, therefore, exclude his justice, for, as the poet Young declares,
"a God all mercy is a God unjust." Neither can his justice conflict
with his wisdom or goodness. The rejection of God's offer and terms of mercy to
men involves guilt, and the infliction of punishment vindicates justice. The
introduction of punishment into moral government, as a means of restraining
from sin and securing perseverance in holiness on earth and in heaven, exhibits
the wisdom of God, and renders his administration of government firm,
consistent, and honourable. Such procedure of God. displays no less his
goodness. For when his goodness, which should have led the ungrateful and
incorrigible to repentance, has been despised and per- verted, justice demands
that it should in due time be withdrawn and punishment inflicted upon them,
which is thus transformed into a manifestation of goodness towards saints and
angels, culminating in the promotion of loyalty in the moral government of God.
Who can tell where the rebellion inaugurated by Satan and his hosts in heaven
would have stopped, if God had not cast them down to hell in order to exert a
deterring influence on all the unfallen angels of heaven? With the testimony of
the corrupting power of sin, as exhibited in Sodom and Gomorrah and the
antediluvian world, what would its demoralizing influence have been on the
cities and nations of the post-diluvian world, without the revelation of the
judgments inflicted upon them, and the punishment threatened against ungodly
men? No assurance can be given, that, but for these demonstrations of the
justice and displeasure of God against sin, rebellion would not have overrun
heaven, sin taken possession of the earth, God dethroned, and moral government
overthrown!
2. THE HEINOUSNESS OF SIN.
-
Heinousness is the term used. to express that quality in an act of sin that
renders it odious, blameworthy, and deserving of punishment. This odiousness
increases in degree according. as such acts violate moral obligations. To this
characteristic Paul refers when he speaks of " the exceeding sinfulness of
sin," and by this the severity of punishment must, be regulated. The
degree of heinousness which attaches to a single act, or to a life devoted to
sin, may be approximately estimated from the following considerations:- From
the worth of the being against whom sin is committed:-Worth is determined by
the capacities which God has conferred upon different orders of moral beings.
As GO is exalted above all creatures, and is infinitely perfect, he is clothed
with infinite worth, and sin against him becomes therefore infinitely heinous,
and deserving of corresponding punishment.
The character of the government against which
sin is a rebellion:-Human governments differ in the degree of their perfection.
Just in proportion, therefore, as a government approaches the standard of
perfection, will rebellion against it become heinous. And, as the government of
God is absolutely perfect, sin, which involves rebellion against it, becomes
infinitely heinous. And as rebellion is aimed at the life of the sovereign, and
the overthrow of his government, rebellion against God involves the destruction
of his life and government, and constitutes moral treason, the highest crime
that a creature can commit, and which, therefore, deserves infinite punishment.
The perfection of the law which sin
transgresses: - Human laws differ in their character and adaptation to secure
obedience and promote the welfare of man. Just in proportion, therefore, as a
law is so constituted as to secure its legitimate ends, will it approach
perfection, and its violation increase in heinousness. As the law of God
presents the strongest motives to induce obedience and prevent disobedience
that law can exert, it is perfectly adapted to promote the holiness and
happiness of all moral beings, and sin, which " is the transgression of
the law," becomes infinitely heinous, and deserving of corresponding
punishment.
The measure of light conferred to prevent sin:
- The degree of the heinousness of sin is determined by the light enjoyed in
different ages of the world. Under the light of reason, God wrote his law on
the hearts of the heathen. In the patriarchal age, he added tradition, and in
the Mosaic and the Christian dispensations, supplemented it with written
revelation. Just as the light of revelation increases will the heinousness of
unbelief and sin increase and the measure of its punishment be determined, so
that " every transgression and disobedience may receive a just recompense
of reward " (Heb., 2: 2).
The evil erects that result from sin: - The
moral universe, established by God according to " the eternal fitness of
things," was designed and adapted to secure the moral excellence and
uninterrupted happiness of all rational and accountable beings. Sin is an
incongruous act, destructive of the order and moral harmony of the universe,
productive of all manner of evil, and its true character and just deserts must,
therefore, be determined by its effects. Judged by this standard, the
Scriptures represent sin as an evil, deceitful and abominable thing, under
whose delusive and corrupting influence the sinner calls evil good and good
evil, makes a mock of sin, becomes "desperately wicked," and, in the
judgment of God and of his Christ, deserves the eternal damnation of hell.
3. THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE.
- Man,
as a rational spirit, has an insight into moral distinctions, and can know
right from wrong. But right and wrong are determined to be such according as
the acts designated by these terms agree or disagree with a rule of conduct.
Hence, reason enables man to apprehend a rule of right, both in what it enjoins
and in what it forbids. Endowed with a will in liberty, he can either obey or
disobey the rule of right; that is, he can choose between right and wrong. When
such choices agree with the rule of right the feeling of approbation is
awakened, and the soul finds complacency in its own character; when, on the
contrary, the choices made violate the law of right, a feeling of
disapprobation ensues, character is injured, and the soul becomes debased in
its own eyes. In such an experience we discover the workings of conscience,
which consist in such a knowledge of the rule of right as is accompanied by a
sense of obligation, and which is followed by feelings either of approval or
disapproval, according as such obligation has been met or violated. And as all
men are endowed with this power of conscience, their characters and deserts are
determined, both in their own estimation and that of others, by its decisions.
The workings of natural conscience among the
heathen, under the light of nature, are set forth by Paul, as follows: "
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, in
that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience
also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing
one another." This shows that the heathen, although destitute of
revelation, have such a knowledge of the law of right through the insight of
their own reason, as to apprehend clearly many things that are inculcated, as
well as many other things which are forbidden by it, and that when they do
wrong, they realize that they are guilty and justly exposed to punishment. The
degree of guilt felt by them under the reproaches of conscience, and the
severity of the punishment which they dread · in consequence of their
sinfulness, are manifest from the painful and protracted penances and tortures
they inflict upon themselves, as well as from the costly sacrifices which they
offer up, in the hope of appeasing their gods and escaping future punishment.
Now, neither the imperfect knowledge which they have of the law of right, nor
the estimate which they put upon the heinousness of their sins, nor the
erroneous views they entertain concerning future punishment, affect the logical
force of the argument, which is sustained by the fact, that whatever that
punishment might be, they acknowledged that they had justly deserved it.
The testimony of conscience under the light of
reason is reliable as far as it goes; but, as the knowledge thus obtained is
imperfect and. easily perverted, a higher light becomes necessary, and this God
has given through revelation and especially in the Ten Commandments. Its
positive precepts include all the duties man owes to God and his fellow men,
and its prohibiting precepts embrace all manner of sins that can be committed.
As " by the law is the knowledge of sin," it follows, that just as
men become acquainted with the spirit and letter of this law, will they become
conscious of their sinfulness, feel the guilt which they have incurred, and
acknowledge the justice of the punishment which it threatens to inflict upon
them.
The working of the law in convincing Paul of
his sin and guilt, he describes as follows: " Howbeit, I had not known sin
except through the law. And I was alive apart from the law once; but when the
commandment came, sin revived and I died." That is to say, that while he
apprehended the import of the law according to its letter he thought that he
had perfectly obeyed it and was
blameless; but when he apprehended its spirit he saw that his depraved
nature had developed " no good thing " in him, but had brought forth all
manner of sin. His conscience, therefore, wrung from him the confession that he
was " the chief of sinners," and had contracted such a measure of
guilt as to deserve death. For " lust when it has conceived bringeth forth
sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death."
In consequence of the deterioration of the
human reason, resulting from the fall, its apprehension of the law, even under
the light of revelation, is still imperfect, and an additional light became
necessary to enable the mind to obtain a true apprehension of the requirements
of the law, as " holy, just and good." That light is imparted by the
Holy Spirit. Christ declares that the Spirit whom he would send, should "
reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of a judgment to come." To
reprove means to convince of a fault or sin, and this the Holy Spirit
accomplishes by a superinduction of spiritual light, enabling the reason to
have a clearer insight into the spirit of the law as its essence, and into the
letter of the law as its form. And when the soul obtains this supernatural
insight into the spirituality of the law, and is convinced of sin, the
conscience testifies to its heinousness, to the guilt incurred by its
commission, and to the exposure of the soul to punishment at the judgment to
come.
But Christ emphasized the fact that the Spirit
should reprove the world of sin, because they believed not on him, that is, of
the sin of unbelief. For as unbelief not only disregards the motives of the law
of God, addressed to hope and fear, but also sets at naught the higher motives
of the law of redeeming mercy, addressed to faith and love, it becomes the
source of all disobedience and the greatest and most heinous sin that man can
commit. Hence, Christ said: "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they
had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. . . . If I had not
clone among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but
now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."
The truth of all this was verified, when,
according to his promise, Christ poured out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Peter, after stating that God had exalted Jesus to his right hand, and that he
had shed forth that which they saw and heard, added: " Let all the house
of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have
crucified, both Lord and Christ." When they heard this, the Holy Spirit
pierced their hearts with the conviction that they had rejected their own
Messiah, had " killed the Prince of Life," and were exposed to his
just judgment and condemnation.
However profound and comprehensive the
knowledge of the law of God and the heinousness of its violation obtained by
the Christians in this world may be, it is nevertheless imperfect in comparison
with that obtained of it by the saints in heaven. They see God as he is. In his
infinite perfection they recognize his absolute right to govern all moral
beings, and the wickedness of man in refusing to acknowledge it. They
comprehend the true character of his moral government, and can form a just
estimate of the criminality of rebellion against it. They apprehend the
perfection of the law upon which his government is based, and understand how
heinous the transgression of it is. They see Jesus, the Redeemer and Saviour,
the greatness and glory of his work of redemption, as well as the turpitude and
guilt of impenitence and unbelief. They behold the place of punishment, and
can, without experiencing it, realize in some sense the severity of the anguish
the lost endure, and possess the highest competency to form a just judgment
concerning the correspondence between the heinousness of their sins and the
degree of their punishment. The testimony of their consciences concerning the
justice of God, as exhibited in their doom, is consequently the most accurate
and reliable attainable from the redeemed in heaven, and is corroborated by the
very angels of God. " I heard a great voice of much people in heaven,
saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord
our God; for true and righteous are his judgments" (Rev., 19: 1, 2).
"And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord,
which art, and vast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus." "
And I heard another (angel) out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty,
true and righteous are thy judgments" (Rev., 16: 5, 7).
The testimony of conscience under the light of
heaven will be echoed under the sentence of condemnation pronounced upon the
unrighteous, by Christ, at the judgment of the great day. Paul declares that at
the judgment " every mouth shall be stopped, and all the world become
guilty before God." In this there is an allusion to the ancient practice
of gagging criminals to prevent their, outcries when led to execution, and the
meaning of it is that when the ungodly shall be condemned to eternal perdition,
not one of them will open his mouth against the sentence, but that the
testimony of their consciences under the conviction of their guilt will respond
to its justice. And what is thus declared would be the case is described by
Jesus himself as actually occurring at the judgment. When he pronounced the
sentence, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire," not one of them
denied the justice of the sentence, but simply asked for an explanation of one
of the charges brought against them, and, when that was given, they
acknowledged their guilt and the justice of their punishment by their silence.
Nor will the testimony of the consciences of
the damned ever be reversed in hell. For, under the full realization of their
sins, their guilt, and their sufferings, no evidence is given that any one of
them ever questioned the justice, nor ever charged God with acting unrighteous
in his condemnation. The rich man confessed that he was tormented in the flames
of hell, and asked for a drop of water to cool his burning tongue, but he
uttered not a word against the justice of his punishment.
From the facts and arguments just presented,
the conclusion is inevitable, that the testimony of the conscience of every
rational and responsible being in the moral universe, on earth, in heaven, and
in hell, corroborates the testimony of the perfect conscience of God, that the
eternal damnation of the wicked is just. To suppose the contrary would change
the whole condition of a lost soul, the character of God, and the relations and
perfection of his moral government. The condemned sinner would appear as a
martyr under the arbitrary exercise of the power of God, and become an object
of sympathy to all moral beings, while suffering an undeserved punishment; the
character of God would be exhibited as tyrannical and cruel, and such an
unrighteous and atrocious course would furnish justifiable grounds for
instigating and carrying on an eternal rebellion against him.
In closing this subject, we are compelled to
confine ourselves to a few remarks:-
6. As
the evidences of Christianity establish the inspiration and truth of the sacred
Scriptures, we set up the testimony of their authors on the subject of sin, its
heinousness, and the character, duration, and. justice of its punishment in the
future world, over against the opinions on all moral and religious, social and
political subjects, held and promulgated by atheists, sceptics, heretics, rationalists,
nihilists, socialists, communists, and anarchists, as destructive of all law
and order, peace and security, truth and righteousness in the earth.
7. As the teachings of the Scriptures on all
essential truths are said to be so plain, that even " a wayfaring man,
though a fool, need not err therein," and as, according to an acknowledged
rule of interpretation, all the more obscure and doubtful passages referring to
any subject must be explained consistently with the manifest meaning of the clear
and explicit ones on the same subject., Universalists, by wresting a meaning
from vague and irrelevant passages, which contradicts that of the explicit ones
bearing on the character and eternity of future punishment, reverse the rule of
interpretation just mentioned, and expose themselves to the just charge of
perverting the meaning of the word of God.
8. As Christ and the Holy Spirit who inspired
the apostles, knew the mind of God on future punishment, the sacred writers
must have expressed it in intelligible language, and the general impression 206
which it has made must have been that which they intended to make. And the
impression actually made by the manner in which they set forth the eternity of
future punishment was such that it is found in the Athanasian creed as an
article of faith held by the universal Church.
With respect to the opinion held by some
otherwise orthodox divines, of the probability of another state of probation,
in which lost souls that had never heard of Christ might be saved, however well
meant by those who indulge this hope, it must be regarded as a mere
speculation, without any Scriptural warrant. It should therefore be rejected,
because it would lessen the sense of obligation imposed by Christ upon his
disciples, to preach the gospel to all nations, and would undermine the
confidence of the Church in the Bible as a full and complete revelation from
God.
To the law and the testimony; if they speak
not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them (Is., 8:
20). " I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of
this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the
plagues that are written in this book, and if any man shall take away from the
words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the
book of life" (Rev., 22: 18, 19).
There is an everlasting punishment for the
wicked; a retribution eternal after death; and this retribution will be the
action of sin in the soul, subjecting it to perpetual tortures.
By Rev. Howard CROSBY, O.D., LL.D.,
Presbyterian, Late Chancellor of New York University.
WHAT we know of the condition of man after
death we must know from an ab extra revelation. The human mind has no light of
its own on this subject. Aspirations on one hand and fear of retribution on the
other, as these are found native within us, have no necessary reference to a
future state. The aspirations are for attainment, but that attainment has its
sphere in this life. The fear of retribution is a fear of immediate or speedy
punishment, but no future-world idea belongs to it. A notion of an invisible
world whence the punishment will come is not to be confounded with a notion of
a future world. So far from this is the case that the supposed avoidance of
retribution is found in suicide. The man kills himself that the rod may not
afflict him. When the body is placed in the grave, it is the natural thought
that the man is placed there, and there he decays, and that is the end of him.
There is nothing left outside which one can see as a suggestion of a life
beyond. So all plans and calculations of man are bounded by death. He never
plans or calculates for a future state. It does not come within his horizon of
view. There is actually nothing within him which connects him subjectively with
a future world.
Against this position we cannot quote the
happy hunting grounds of the Indian or the Nirvana of the Buddhist or the
Paradise of the Mohammedan any more than the Heaven of the Christian, for all
these are the results of revelation. The notion of a future state, not found in
man by nature, has been imparted to him by the teaching of God, has continued
down the ages, and has been modified to suit the tastes of different styles of
mind. We see at once that the notion of a future state which we have has not
the same basis in our minds as our notion of cause and effect or our notion of
right and wrong. These last are connected with our whole life and enter into
every action, but the first lies on the shelf and is used only at times and by
a deliberate act of the will. It bears the stamp of an importation, and hence
many have no hesitation in rejecting it, while they cannot reject the native
notions of the mind.
This being the case, whatever thoughts we have
concerning a future state, having come to us from a revelation, must be
corrected by appeal to revelation. That revelation which has become corrupted
by its oral transmission through centuries must be corrected by appeal to the
written revelation that never changes, and so we must get fresh from the original
source the truth all unknown to our unaided thought.
We are therefore shut up to the Bible for our
knowledge, and a careful consultation of the holy oracle is our reasonable duty
211 and our inestimable privilege. What, then, says the Bible concerning a
future state? This is the sole question that we have to consider.
It is very often said that the Old Testament
is silent on the subject, and this is emphatically asserted of the Pentateuch.
Warburton's argument is well known. Notwithstanding all the learning of the
Bishop, we do not believe that the Mosaic economy is so dumb. We do not believe
that the whole doctrine of a future state was left to the prevailing public
sentiment of the Israelites and carefully excluded from the written record for fear
of Egyptian extravagance or for any other reason. It is very true that the
prominence of the future existence in the Egyptian system must have made the
Israelites perfectly familiar with the idea, and it would therefore be absurd
to suppose that their minds were not active on the subject. It must be believed
that had there been no allusion to a future state in the Mosaic law (including
Genesis, as part of the Torah), nevertheless the people of Israel would have
had the doctrine lying at the basis of their creed. And sure we are that no
such law as that of Israel could have stood for a moment on any other basis, a
law which ordered the state of the heart as well as the outward conformity to a
ritual. But, with all that, we cannot accept the theory that Moses was mute
regarding this basis.
If we first take up the book of Genesis, which
must have been a hand-book of history familiar to every Israelite, we find
prophecies to individuals whose fulfillment demands their existence long after
their departure from earth. These prophecies cannot be exhausted by application
to a posterity. The man himself is to enjoy the blessing, and he must exist
somewhere to enjoy it. Such are the prophecies to Noah's children and those to
Abraham. It was not only unto Abraham's seed that God was going to give
Palestine, but also to Abraham himself (Gen., 17: 8), and yet Abraham never
enjoyed the possession during his earthly life.
So again the very carrying of Joseph's bones
from Egypt into Palestine could have no meaning if Joseph was non-existent. If
the man's existence had ended, they might take his wealth, but they would not
take his bones, which were destitute of all value. But if it be said that there
was a sentiment in it, a tribute of affection and memory, we ask on what is
that sentiment founded but the continued existence of the one beloved? Moreover
this carrying of Joseph's bones was an injunction of Joseph himself as a
prophet (Gen., 50: 25; Exod., 13: 19), so that there was in it a divine
teaching of his continued interest in Israel (after his bodily death). On no
other ground can we account for the instruction and its fulfillment. The
keeping up a connection with the ancestors who have passed away must have
beneath it the idea of their continuance. Neither nature nor God would bind us
to nonentities. This thought is illustrated in what our Saviour says regarding
God's words to Moses at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac and the God of Jacob." Our Lord uses those words to show that the patriarchs
were not extinct. " God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living." We are so accustomed to cherish memories of the dead, that the
original reason for it in the continued existence of the departed is forgotten,
and the habit remains only as a habit, with its primal significance faded. or
gone. It is in perfect accordance with these views that we find the sacred
writer declaring that the patriarchs were looking for a heavenly country, and
that Moses had respect unto the recompense of reward (Heb., 11: 16, 26). They
were thus represented to Israel as looking forward to the life beyond. And so
when the inspired writer told the Israelites of Abraham going to his fathers
(Gen., 15: 15), and of Jacob being gathered to his people (Gen., 49: 33), it
was impossible for them to construe such language as to mean extinction. They
could not have had the slightest doubt of the perpetuity of those who were
begotten of God (Deut., 32: 18), beloved of the Lord (Deut., 33: 12), and whom
the Lord knew face to face (Deut., 34: 10). The aged Joshua declaring that he
was going the way of all the earth and yet declaring his determination to serve
the Lord (Josh., 23: 14; 24: 15) was a clear testimony to his and to Israel's
belief that service extended beyond earth and its scenes.
When we leave the Hexateuch for later books of
the Old Testament we find repeated references to the future state, not in the
form of instruction, for the people had no need of being taught the fact, but
in the form of allusion. Such allusions would not be looked for in the
historical books, which chiefly record events occurring in the life of the
nation, and yet these are not without them. Samuel's appearance to Saul at
Endor, Nathan's words to David, "Thy throne shall be established
forever," the use of the phrase " God's inheritance " of Israel,
and Elijah's going up into heaven are clear indications that a knowledge of a
future state was possessed by Israel. But when we come to the devotional and
prophetic books, the allusions are frequent.
David's words are very plain. Only persistent
blindness can mistake them. " I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy
likeness." "My flesh also shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave
my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption;
thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy: at thy
right hand there are pleasures for evermore." It is only as "the bill
of the Lord " and " his holy place " in the 24th Psalm refer to
heaven as a future abode that the Psalm has meaning, and in the parable or dark
saying of Ps. 49 the " morning " of ver. 14 can refer only to the
life to come, for part of the lofty song is, " God will redeem my soul
from the power of Hades, for he shall receive me." And the very last Psalm
in the series (except the final doxology of Ps. 150) has all its beauty and
force as belonging to the final judgment and the triumph of God's saints as his
assessors: " Let the saints be joyful in glory, let them sing aloud upon
their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged
sword in their hand, to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon
the people, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of
iron, to execute upon them the judgment written. This honour have all his
saints."
Compare this with our Lord's utterance in the
Apocalypse, "To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my
throne," and with Paul's words, " Know ye not that we shall judge
angels? " (1 Cor., 6: 3.)
In the prophets all the comforting assurances
of the Messianic day are for the faithful of the prophet's day, and. the
glories to come they are to enjoy. As with the great Messiah himself, for the
joy set before them they are to endure their crosses, while the opposers of
God's truth are represented in the future world wandering in the darkness of
the pit. " Hades from beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coining; it stirred
up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth. . . . All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? " (Is.,
14: 9, 10.) Surely a consciousness in the future life is the ground of such a
picture. Death is also to be swallowed up in victory (Is., 25: 8) for the
Lord's redeemed ones. They are to be ransomed from the power of the grave and
redeemed from death (Hos., 13: 14), while on the other hand as to
transgressors, their worm shall not die, nor their fire be quenched (Is., 66:
24, quoted and interpreted in Mark, 9: 44). In the New Testament Christ Jesus
has illumined life and immortality through the gospel (2 Tim., 1: 10). The
gospel did not bring immortality to light, but enlightened it, lighted it up,
illumined. it. Christ's resurrection made the subject clearer and his teaching
removed the gloom that the fables of the scribes had hung around it. We use the
phrase "bring to light " of that which was unknown before, but the verb
has not that extreme meaning. If we study the New Testament on the subject of
the future state, we clearly see an immortality for all men whether good or
bad. That such phrases as " will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire
" do not refer to annihilation is evident from the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus, where the unquenchable fire is seen with the continued
consciousness of the sufferer.
Our
Lord constantly holds out to his disciples the enjoyment of a perfected kingdom
of heaven (Matt., 5: 3, 10), while he declares the only alternative to be the
casting of body as well as soul into hell (Matt., 5: 29, 30, and 10: 28). In
heaven the righteous soul would lay up its treasures (Matt., 5: 20) to enjoy
them forever, while the wicked were to be cast out into outer darkness, where
there should be not unconsciousness but weeping and gnashing of teeth. That
this suffering does not belong to this life is plain from the parable of the
tares (Matt., 13: 40-42) and from that of the drag-net (Matt., 13: 49, 50). The
fire of the future judgment is connected with human suffering and not with
annihilation. It is a representation of torture of some kind. The punishment of
Matthew 25 has an eternity of duration as much as the life.
The apostles repeat the testimony of the
Master. In the Epistle to the Romans Paul declares the final punishment of the
wicked to be "tribulation and anguish " (Rom., 2: 9), which are
contrasted with the glory and peace of the righteous. It is very evident,
therefore, that when he declares that the wages of sin is death (ch., 3: 23),
the death is not annihilation but the absence of the divine life, the same that
is described (2 Thess., 1: 9) as punishment with everlasting destruction from
the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. The wicked who are
excluded from the kingdom of God (1 Cor., 6: 10) are the same as those whom
John sees (Rev., 22: 15) as " without" the heavenly Jerusalem in the
grand finality. They are not extinct. They are still dogs. They still love and
make a lie. And as there is no escape from doom by annihilation, so there is no
refuge in the " alls " of Scripture. " In Christ shall all be
made alive " has reference only to believers. So the " all men "
of Rom. 5: 18 is but another form of the." many " which follows in
the next and parallel verse. A universal application of the word in those
places would contradict the whole teaching of Scripture and would obliterate
all distinction between the righteous and the wicked.
The opposite of the eternal life promised the
righteous is called not only death, but corruption (Gal., 6: 8), which is
regarded as a bondage (Rom., 8: 21) begun by the wicked here„ in this world (2
Pet., 1: 4) and which is the very essence of their permanent condition (2 Pet.,
2: 12). Perishing in their own corruption is exactly equivalent to dying in
their sins (John, 8: 24). It is a fearful thing and not an anaesthetic which
Jesus threatens. Their sins were to continue (see " eternal sin " in
Mark, 3: 29, Revision) beyond the earthly state as their eternal environment.
They do not perish away from their corruption, nor die away from their sins,
but they sink forever into the corrupt and sinful state. All the force of the
curse is in this perpetuity. To tell a grievous sinner that at the moment of
death he should become unconscious and non-existent would be to renew his
strength in sin and to end the function of conscience, if he believed the
telling. Surely this was not the purpose of either the Saviour or his apostles.
But when this argument is granted, we find a
new entrenchment behind in the doctrine of restoration. An eonian punishment
will .be followed by a return to God and righteousness. We shall not argue this
on psychological principles and ask the question, "How can a sinning soul,
with God excluded, ever desire God?" and the other question, " If
grace can compel in the future world, why can it not compel now? " but we
shall confine ourselves to the testimony of Scripture, which, as we showed at
the beginning, is our only guide in the matter.
In the first place the application of eonian
to quality and not time is untenable, nor, because the noun from which it comes
means a limited time, though long, can we leap to the conclusion that the
adjective partakes of this character. Usage is against this. Usage demands that
it shall refer to time, and that the time shall be as everlasting as the nature
of the thing spoken of admits. Unless in the nature of the case man is limited
in the time of his existence, as applied to him is " everlasting."
But the restorationists declare man an everlasting being. They do not say with
the annihilationists that he is ephemeral. Now, if they grant he is an
everlasting being, then eonian punishment for man is a punishment everlasting,
i.e., as long as the nature of man admits. Furthermore they must treat the eonian
punishment exactly as they treat the eonian life of the contrast, as far as the
adjective is concerned. Restricting one is restricting the other. All that can
be said of life as to its duration is said of punishment as to its duration.
It is certainly, also, a marvellous thing,
that if a final restoration is to take place, the Scriptures are so silent
about it, when we should expect a very clear statement of the happy
consummation. For those passages which are so frequently quoted by the restorationists
are wholly wrested from their evident meaning. We instance a few that they
count the strongest. In Acts 3: 21 the " restitution of all things "
is mentioned, and that at once is seized upon as the restoration of all souls
to godliness and salvation. But the whole passage shows that the times of this
restitution are the times spoken of by the Old Testament prophets, and,
besides, Moses is quoted as one of those prophets, and a part of the quotation
is that "every soul which will not hear that Prophet (the Messiah) shall
be destroyed from among the people." So here we have destruction as the
last thing for the disobedient. The times of restitution are to be times also
of destruction, and this is in exact accord with all the prophets who
invariably couple destruction and salvation together as the last things (see
Is. 24: 21-23 and the prophets passim). And so the last things as given by the
last prophet, the Revelator, are the glorious city with its saintly inhabitants
and the " without " with its dogs, etc. (Rev., 22: 14, 15). Another favourite
passage of the restorationists is Eph. 1: 10, " That in the dispensation
of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven and which are on earth." Strange to say, they
take this passage out of a context which especially emphasizes the "
elect," those chosen out of the rest and made the children of God by
adoption. It is a most unfortunate neighbourhood in which to look for a text to
prove that all have the same ultimate destiny.
The
gathering together of all things in Christ, like the restitution of all things
(in the passage in the Acts), is the complete acknowledgment of Christ as King
by men and devils, when all principalities and powers of opposition shall be
subdued; but that is very far from restoration. The passage in Col. 1: 20 is of
the same sort. All things are to be reconciled unto Christ, but not all in the
same way. Two classes are noted, one of which is reconciled by faith " if
ye continue in the faith " (ver. 23), implying that the other
reconciliation must be without faith and therefore by the mere acknowledgment
of the conquering power of the divine arm. There are two ways of establishing
peace, one by the hearty yielding to authority, and the other by the constraint
of prison and chains. Reconciliation may be by love or by terror, all
opposition ceasing in each case. Reconciliation does not necessitate love and
friendly union. It only declares a peace, where there was war. That peace shall
be established, when all heaven, earth, and hell shall recognize Christ as
supreme, whatever may be the subjective conditions of the King's subjects. The
fact that things in heaven as well as things in earth are to be reconciled
shows that the word cannot mean the making of friends out of those who were
before enemies. It only declares the establishment of a perfect harmony, of
which Christ is the head. That harmony, when it is caused by the yielding of
the affections to Christ in faith, is the special reconciliation of the
believer, between whom and the unbeliever a broad deep line is drawn by the
word of God everywhere (" what part hath he that believeth with an
unbeliever? " 2 Cor., 6: 15) even into the world beyond, where the
impassable gulf lies between Dives and Lazarus.
It is certainly a bold thing to stand against
the overwhelming evidence of the word to the blackness of darkness reserved
forever for the wicked (2 Pet., 2:17; Jude, 13) and build a fortress to resist
it on a technical construction of this word " reconcile."
The positive assertions of God's word are too
many, that this boldness should be commended. When that word declares to us
that for the wilful sinner there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a
certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall
devour the adversaries (Heb., 10: 26, 27), how can we speak of the sacrifice of
Christ revived in its power for that wilful sinner in another world? When that
word again declares that for the resister of the Holy Spirit there is no
forgiveness either in this world or in the world to come (Matt., 12: 32), with
what face can we assert a universal forgiveness that shall include this very
sinner?
The restorationist and the annihilationist are
thus both contradicted by the repeated and express teachings of Scripture.
There is an everlasting punishment for the wicked, a retribution eternal after
death. Following the revelation of God, which, as we have seen, is our only
oracle on the subject (but which finds a full approval in reason and
conscience) we know that this retribution will be the action of sin in the soul
(Mark, 3: 29), removing it far from God (2 Thess., 1: 9; Matt., 25: 41) and
subjecting it to perpetual tortures, symbolized by the bodily tortures of fire
(Luke, 16: 24). Beyond this we cannot go. The coarse material view of future
punishment arose from a failure to see the symbolic character of Scripture
language, and doubtless this coarse view caused many souls to revolt from the
whole idea of future punishment. We are also to guard against any view which
would make God a cruel executioner delighting in blood. God is love, and we
have no right to impair in any way this inspired definition of God. The everlasting
punishment of the wicked is the legitimate result of their own sin, the
outworking of their rebellion against God, in accordance with those eternal
laws of mind by which man is an independent and responsible being made in the
image of God (see Ps. 82: 6, 7, " I said, Ye are Elohim, but ye shall die
like Adam"). As God stands behind all and has created the whole frame-work
of being, so God is said to punish the wicked in this highest sense, but
beneath this transcendent sense the wicked punish themselves by the necessary
action of their own opposition to God, and in the everlasting burnings (Is.,
33:14), their own spirit, as fire, shall devour them (Is., 33: 11). Such is
God's word on future retribution, before which man can only bow in acquiescence
and according to which he must shape his philosophy.
The general doctrine of the church in all ages
is, that, in a future state, the wicked shall be excluded from the presence of
the lord and the glory of his power.
By
Rev. JOSEPH CUMMINGS, D.D., LL.D.. Methodist Episcopal, President of
North-western University, Evanston, Ill.
THAT all men must die no one denies, and there
are relatively few who deny that there is a future state, a life beyond the
grave, which, by its nature, is unending. It is a question that most deeply
concerns all, and one that cannot be regarded with indifference, what will be
the nature of that life. That those who are acceptable to God, the righteous,
the justified, and the holy, will dwell in his presence, having endless joy and
blessedness, all believe; but the great question is, what shall be the state of
those who reject God, spurn his grace, and die in their sins. The general
doctrine of the Church in all ages is, that in a future state the wicked shall
be excluded from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power, that they
will ever be under condemnation, and will forever suffer the penalty of sin. We
all know suffering and have a dread of pain, but the anguish we here endure is
but temporary, and we are cheered by the expectation of relief; but the awful
characteristic of retribution after death is, that it is endless, without hope
of remedy or release. It is impossible for us to realize what is implied in
such a state, and we shrink from its contemplation.
We think a plain, candid man, who, without
instruction from others, shall read without note or comment the Word of God as
spoken by Christ and inspired men, must believe that for devils and impenitent
men it reveals endless punishment as their doom. The record says: " When
the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; and before him shall be gathered all
nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divided his
sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep at his right hand, but the
goats on the left. Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from
me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,
and these shall go away into everlasting punishment " (Matt., 25: 31, 46).
"If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into
life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that shall
never be quenched, where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched
" (Mark, 9: 43, 48). "Fear not them which kill the body; but are not
able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell " (Matt., 10: 28). " Unto him that blasphemed
against the Holy Ghost it shall never be forgiven " (Luke, 12: 10). "
He that believeth not shall be damned " (Mark, 16: 16). "At the end
of the world the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the
just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire " (Matt., 13: 49, 50).
" The hour is coming in the which all 225 that are in the graves shall
hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of
damnation " (John, 5: 28, 29).
Would such a candid reader believe that
Christ, who uttered these fearful warnings and taught such statements, believed
that the time would ever come when wicked men and devils would be happy in the
presence of God?* Should the man, in the case supposed, deny that the doctrine
of endless punishment is taught by the Scriptures, he would be far more
unreasonable than Theodore Parker, who said, " I believe that Jesus Christ
taught eternal torment; I do not accept. it on his authority."
Within a few years past there has been
developed by many, strong opposition to this ancient doctrine, as abhorrent to
their sympathies, and every way contrary to their ideas of the great, good, and
merciful God, on the part of members of the churches in whose literature the
doctrine is interwoven, and whose liturgies express it as does the prayer of
anguish, " From thy wrath and from everlasting damnation, good Lord,
deliver us."
Some of the reasons for this change are
readily suggested. There is more independence of thought, individuality of
opinion, and less respect for the authority of religious opinions than in times
past. The Church now tolerates opinions contradictory to its standards and
creeds, that fifty years ago would have led to prompt investigation and the
expulsion in disgrace from its communion of those entertaining them. There is
also a strong, natural, and be-coming revolt against former doctrines of the
Church, relative to the nature of God and the modes of future punishment. God
has been represented as vindictive, as taking delight in the torments and
anguish of his creatures which he directly inflicts upon them. The language of
the Bible relative to material things and the anguish produced by their use,
such as " the lake of fire," " the fire and brimstone,"
" the worm that dies not and the fire that is not quenched," has been
declared to be literal, and horrible descriptions of the sufferings of the lost
were given, from which intelligent, sensible persons now shrink with horror.
These Bible representations of material things are now regarded as figurative,
as there is no more reason for believing in a literal lake of fire and
brimstone, than for believing in a city whose length, breadth, and height are
equal, whose streets are gold, and whose gates are pearls, or in believing in
the literal water of life and the tree of life whose branches bear twelve kinds
of fruit.
As there is ever a tendency to pass in
opinions from one extreme to another, it is not surprising that people were
frighted and shocked at gross and terrible descriptions of punishment, and were
led to deny the existence, in any form, of punishment in a future state.
Former representations of punishment were so
horrible, we hesitate to repeat them, but present a few as illustrations out of
many of a similar nature.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell,
much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors
you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he
looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of
purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times
more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
God holds sinners in his hands over the mouth
of hell as so many spiders; and be is dreadfully provoked, and he not only
hates them, but holds them in utmost contempt, and he will trample them beneath
his feet with inexpressible fierceness, he will crush their blood out, and will
make it fly so that it will sprinkle his garments, and stain all his raiment.
The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire,-a
vast ocean of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always
be in tempest, in which they will be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or
night, vast waves or billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of
which they shall forever be full of quick sense within and without; their
heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, and
their vitals, shall forever be full of glowing, melting fire, fierce enough to
melt the very rocks and elements; and also they shall eternally be full of the
most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, nor for
one day, nor for one age, nor for two ages, nor for a hundred ages, nor for ten
thousands of millions of ages one after another, but for ever and ever, without
any end at all, and never, never be delivered." * Rugged old Tertullian,
in whose torrid veins the fire of his African deserts seems infused, revels
with infernal glee over the contemplation of the sure damnation of the heathen.
'At that greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment,' he says,
how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many
proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates
liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so
many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so
many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many
dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish than ever before from applause.' t Jeremy
Taylor says, in that discourse on the ' Pains of Hell,' where he has lavished
all the stores of his matchless learning, and all the wealth of his gorgeous
imagination, in multiplying and adorning the paraphernalia of torture with
infinite accompaniments of unendurable pangs and insufferable abominations: We
are amazed at the inhumanity of Philaris, who roasted men in his brazen bull;
this was joy in respect of that fire of hell which penetrates the very
entrails, without consuming them. . . . Husbands shall see their wives, parents
shall see their children, tormented before their eyes. . . . The bodies of the
damned shall be crowded together in hell like grapes in a wine-press, which
press one another till they burst. . . . Every distinct sense and organ shall
be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings.' The Bishop
of Toronto has recently published the authoritative declaration that "
every child of humanity, except the Virgin Mary, is from the first moment of
conception a child of wrath, hated by the blessed Trinity, belonging to Satan,
and doomed to hell! "
A Christian writer assures us that when "
the damned are packed like brick in a kiln, so bound that they cannot move a
limb or even an eyelid, God shall blow the fires of hell through them for ever
and ever." * In a tract for children and young persons, called " The
Sight of Hell," by the Rev. J. Furniss, C. S. S. R., published, permissu
superiorum, by Duffy (Dublin and London), is a detailed description of the
dungeons of hell, and a few sentences may serve as a sample. " See! on the
middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl; she looks about sixteen years old.
Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings. . . . Listen! she
speaks. She says, I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years. Day and
night my only standing-place has been this red-hot floor. . . . Look at my
burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off this burning floor for one moment, only
for one single short moment.' . . . The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle. .
. . In the middle of it there is a boy. . . . His eyes are burning like two
burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears. Sometimes he opens his
mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. But listen! there is a sound like a kettle
boiling. . . . The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain
is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones. . . .
The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven. . . . The little child is in this
red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists
itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It
stamps its little feet on the floor. . . . God was very good to this child.
Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and
so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in his mercy called
it out of the world in its early childhood." * Thomas Aquinas says: "
That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly, a
perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted them."
Hopkins says of the wicked: " The smoke
of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed for ever and ever,
and serve, as a most clear glass always before their eyes, to give them a
bright and most affecting view. This display of the divine character will be
most entertaining to all who love God, will give them the highest and most
ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eternal punishment cease, it would
in a great measure, obscure the light of heaven, and put an end to a great part
of the happiness and glory of the blessed." t As an illustration of modern
views relative to future punishment, the American Board of Commissioners of
Foreign Missions say: " To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of
great exigency. Within the last thirty years, a whole generation of five
hundred millions have gone down to eternal death."
Again, the same Board say, in the tract
entitled The Grand Motive of Missionary Effort: " The heathen are involved
in the ruins of the apostasy, and are expressly doomed to perdition. Six
hundred millions of deathless souls, on the brink of hell! What a spectacle!
"
In his discussion of the Parable of Dives, Mr.
Spurgeon says: " See how his tongue hangs from between his blistered lips!
How it excoriates and burns the roof of his mouth, as if it were a
fire-brand."
Principal Tulloch says truly, that a "
Christian theology must not be made responsible for these lurid pictures,"-such
as we have presented from leading authorities.
Canon Farrar properly denounces " that
hideous play of the imagination employed for the ignoble purpose of promoting
virtue by stimulating a sense of abject terror, of which some religious writers
have been so dangerously guilty."
The fearful and revolting representations
presented by those who claim to speak for the Church, relative to the nature of
punishment and the vindictiveness of God, have shocked earnest thinkers of
modern times, and led them to adopt extreme views, relative to divine mercy,
which are dangerous in their tendency to induce false security in continuance
in sin.
The true theory removes all vindictiveness
from the Ruler of the universe, and makes punishment the inevitable result of
conduct. God inflicts no punishment he can avoid, and takes no delight in the
suffering of his creatures.
All the universe is under law, which is the
constant and regular order according to which a ruler or agent governs. In
nature it is a certain order in which events or changes transpire. In the case
of intelligent beings it is a command or rule for the regulation of conduct.
Law implies power and authority in an intelligent being, who imposes it or
governs by it, and in no case, in any proper sense, is it a cause.
In the divine mind, before creation, was a
perfect plan, according to which he formed the material universe, and
established the relations in which all intelligent beings exist, and the
principles and rules that should regulate their conduct. These principles and
the direct expressions of his will constitute the moral law. Were it obeyed,
the most perfect order and harmony would be maintained throughout the universe.
All disorder, all evil, all suffering, come
from disobedience to his law.
God has connected the happiness of intelligent
beings with obedience to law, and, when they are in right relations to other
forms of existence, their highest possible good is secured. Disregard of these
relations, and disobedience to law, cause pain. It is contrary to our natural intuitive ideas that directly
opposite causes should produce the same results. When the organs of the body
are exercised according to God's will, the greatest pleasure results. The
nerves in their right use give exquisite pleasure, but if they shall be
injured, abused, and wrongly or excessively used, each nerve will become a path
on which the scorching feet of pain will travel, and anguish and indescribable
misery will result. The same principles apply to the senses and the physical
powers, and to the intellectual and moral faculties, the affections and
desires. In these principles we see the explanation of the origin of evil, in
which is no more mystery than is connected with the creation of free beings. It
is impossible to conceive of the creation of free beings who shall not have
power to obey or transgress the moral law, and thus become happy or miserable,
and cause good or evil to others. Granted that free agents were created, it is
inconceivable that God could prevent evil and misery. Complaint against the
present arrangement is not wise, unless it be affirmed that the creation of
free agents capable of improvement was a mistake and an evil.
Inasmuch as in God's government, compensation
is provided for all that innocently suffer, and as all other suffering comes
from the intentional sinful acts of the sufferers, it would be irrational to
declare that the righteous should not exist because the wicked will pervert the
powers they have received. Those who break God's laws and will suffer endless
misery constitute but a very small part of the number of free agents in the
universe, even as the number of criminals in a well ordered community forms but
a small part of all its inhabitants. A vastly greater number of those born on
earth will be saved than will be lost. There will be a great multitude whom no
man can number, who will be admitted from this world to the holy city, where
sin and misery will never be known. All real evil and continued suffering
result only from voluntary and absolutely unnecessary, inexcusable sin, of
which the sufferer refuses to repent.
Suffering comes from the violation of the
moral law, or wrong exposure to the action of natural laws. We may ignorantly
and without guilt place ourselves under the action of natural laws, but the
consequences will be the same as though we intended thus to expose ourselves.
We may by mistake take poison, or in the dark fall over a precipice, and
misery, anguish, and death will follow. But in these cases there is no
punishment or penalty, which only follows guilt.
Relative to the transgression of law there is
much confusion. Man only transgresses moral law; no created being can
transgress physical law. No atom of matter is ever exempt from the law of
gravitation; other forces may overpower it, yet it is ever exerted to its full
extent. When a man puts his hand into the fire or into a strong acid, it is
injured, and the consequent pain is termed a penalty for the violation of
natural law, but the consequences really result from the regular action of law.
When a joint of meat is placed in a hot oven, it is cooked and greatly changed
from its former condition. Should a man's hand be placed therein and destroyed,
there is no more violation of physical law in one case than in the other. When
gunpowder is exploded and the vast mass of rock that obstructs navigation is
removed, or when by a similar explosion a sovereign is murdered, there is no
more violation of physical law in one case than in the other. The law that is
violated is moral law that forbids the wrong use of physical laws.
There are natural consequences connected with
conduct, whether righteous or sinful, and there are peculiar consequences
connected with guilt. God himself cannot connect these last with the conduct of
the innocent; and under the present provisions of his government, he cannot
exempt a hardened impenitent man from these penalties. He cannot, for the same
act, treat two intelligent beings of precisely the same character differently.
An all-wise, perfect, and powerful being, he cannot in the natural world do
things that are contradictory and absurd. He cannot make a substance with all
the properties of lead and yet as light as hydrogen gas. He cannot make an
object that shall at the same time be a cube and a sphere. He cannot make a
straight line with a crook in it. The same fixedness of character is true
relative to moral principles. He 233 cannot do all things that are possible to
men. He cannot lie, rejoice in blasphemy, or be impure, or a murderer, or a
suicide. He cannot treat the holy and the wicked alike. He cannot cast a holy
archangel down to hell, or raise Satan to heaven. This necessity arises from
the divine nature, and not from external restraint.
Fatalism to us is degrading, because it
implies controlling force from an external source. When the affirmation is made
that it arises from perfection of character no man objects. It is no compliment
even to the freedom of a man to say there is no base, low thing, under the sun,
he cannot do. Far more desirable is it that it should be said he is absolutely
incapable of the least shade of meanness. God is unchangeable, but the most
gifted created being can fall from holiness to lowest sin.
Consequences that follow conduct are not the
appointments of an arbitrary ruler, but result from the nature of the case, and
are inevitable. Justice, righteousness, and holiness have essentially the same
basis, and are conformity in real things, dispositions, and actions, to the
divine plan.
The true nature of punishment appears from the
principles we have announced. It is the consequence of guilt, and is inflicted
for known and intentional transgression. The same principles are connected with
the divine government relative to a future life, that are involved in proper
human government. Punishment is not reformatory, nor is its primary object to
prevent crime, which is with many a favourite theory. Of course they do not
believe in capital punishment in society, or in endless punishment under the
government of God. It is associated with morbid sympathy for criminals, and its
effect is injurious to justice and the welfare of society. The great criminal
becomes a great hero, and the surest way to public favour is through crime,
followed by real, or pretended, repentance.
The reformatory theory of punishment demands
that prisons should be hospitals. It does not inflict punishment for crime, but
according to character. In keeping with this, a murderer, if reformed in a
week, should be discharged, while an unreformed thief may be detained fifty years. There is nothing
in punishment that leads to reformation. Of course it must not be confounded
with the chastening mentioned in Scripture. Pain inflicted as a penalty does
not exert moral influence, but it often exasperates and excites a desire for
revenge. Evidently, in this discussion, things are often confounded which are
entirely different, namely, the nature of law, the effect of a penalty, and the
effect of a threat of a penalty. The law points out our duty, a penalty is the
consequence that follows crime, and a threat of a penalty deters from crime.
Suppose a man has committed a crime and is punished, but has reason to believe
that, for a repetition of crime, no penalty will be inflicted,-will he be kept
from sin by past pain? What reason is there, in the nature of the case, to
expect this? The fear of a future penalty may deter, but not the pain that has
been inflicted. The records of prisons show that punishment does not tend to
reform. Criminals become hardened, and in any community where a crime has been
committed, the old convict is the first person suspected. There is a universal
feeling that a man who has committed a crime is more likely than any other to
commit another. In crimes committed against one's self, we see no tendency in
suffering from disobedience to law to restoration. A hand or eye may be lost
through carelessness or vice, but there is no tendency in consequent suffering
to restore them. Debased affections and low desires may have injured the body
and caused disease and anguish, but in them there is no remedy for the results
of sin. There is no moral power in pain to make a man patient and benevolent.
It has no moral convincing power, and when there is no hope of deliverance, no
good temper is produced by it in criminals, who, on the contrary, are made
worse. It is the duty of government, and. of all kind Christian people, to
strive to reform criminals; but this reformation can only be secured by moral
means. Imprisonment, and some other forms of punishment, may afford the
opportunity for the exercise of moral influences, which are most readily
produced by those who in no way are the agents for the infliction of
punishment. When such influences are not exerted, the records of prisons show
that criminals become worse. So it was in prisons, in former years, and the
terrible sufferings there inflicted. In the description of the future state,
the wicked are wicked still. " The wicked shall do wickedly." "
Without are dogs, sorcerers, whore-mongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and
whosoever loveth and makes a lie." There is no representation of
penitence, no humility, no submission. In this world there is perpetual
suffering for sin, but it does not reform the criminal. It was said of one in
former times: " In the time of his distress he did trespass yet more
against the Lord." In the apocalyptic vision, it is said when the fourth
angel poured out his vial upon " the seat of the beast, and his kingdom
was full of darkness," "they gnawed their tongues for pain, and
blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their evils, and
repented not of their deeds." That such is the effect of punishment of men
in this life is everywhere evident.
It is not the primary design of punishment to
deter men from crime and thus protect society. It has not the right to inflict
pain simply that the public good may be secured. Suppose a government had only
one subject; for what purpose should his crimes be punished? In all theories
that do not make guilt the ground of punishment, but the benefit to be secured
to the criminal or to the community, punishment has no reference to the past,
to deeds done, but to the future; being designed to secure a future good. All
experience shows the criminal is not benefited, but, on the contrary, is
hardened, made bitter in his feelings, and revengeful in his purposes.
Moreover, the sight of punishment inflicted has not improved public morals. The
more severe and public the punishment the greater was the public
demoralization. When men, women, and children were hung for pilfering,
criminals were multiplied, and crime was committed among the jeering crowds
that surrounded the gallows.
The true theory of punishment is that men are
guilty and deserve it. We do not say that a sick man deserves medicine, or a
lunatic a hospital, but we do say that a guilty man ought to be punished.
Under all ideas of just punishment is this,
that it is merited. There is also this idea, that just punishment is not
arbitrary, a matter that a righteous judge can inflict or not, as he. chooses,
but that from the nature of the case it is inevitable. We can conceive of God
as laying aside a portion of his happiness, and his glory, in our eyes, is not
diminished; but we cannot for a moment entertain the idea of his parting with
justice or right. We may discuss the question whether God can suffer, but we
cannot entertain the question whether he can sin. Punishment is demanded by
justice. God cannot arbitrarily pardon. Pardon is given only through personal
appropriation, on the part of the sinner, of the merits of Christ. We cannot
now discuss the merits of the atonement, but the death of Christ was necessary
that there might be forgiveness of sin. Outside of the provisions of the
atonement, there can be no forgiveness. There is not in any government the
power to pardon by prerogative. In human governments there is power to release
condemned men from undeserved suffering, but no right to release from that
which is merited. Judges and juries are imperfect, and testimony is often false
or mistaken, and the innocent are condemned. There should be power, not to
pardon,-a word that has no place in human government,-but a power to do
justice. The innocent man who has suffered unjustly does not receive pardon,
but tardy justice, which gives no recompense for the wrong he has endured and
the anguish he has suffered. Still further, - the law inflicts penalties that
often are practically unjust. Such are the characters and circumstances of some
men that they suffer more in a month than hardened men do in a year. When it is
apparent that any one has suffered all that the law contemplated, he should, as
a matter of justice, be released from the continuance of a sentence he does not
deserve. The magistrate who yields to motives and influences addressed to his
self-interest, his fears, or who is overcome by the tears of suffering
relatives of criminals, and releases a condemned man from deserved penalty, is
false to his trust and unworthy of his office.
Too often, moral teachers have shown great
carelessness or ignorance relative to the nature of justice, in their
statements as to the degrees of punishment due to different crimes and
criminals of widely different characters and circumstances. Preachers have
affirmed the terrible, revolting, absurd doctrine, that the child which sinned
but once in a moment of passion or strong temptation, and then died, will be
punished forever in the same degree as the pirate who has lived three-score
years and ten in vice, and has been guilty of all the crimes and baseness he
could devise, whose right hand is thicker than itself with brother's blood. We
wonder not that men have shrunk with detestation from such views. God has
declared that every man will be rewarded according to his deeds. As the stars
differ in brightness, some being of the first magnitude and shining with
resplendent glory, while others, small and dim, are revealed only by telescopes
of the greatest power, so will it be among the righteous. Some will have an
abundant entrance, and stand near the throne, while others, saved as by fire,
will receive far less reward, far less joy; so, among the condemned, will there
be distinctions corresponding to their crimes. Our circumstances are widely
different. Some have great endowments, and are favoured with highest
opportunities to know the truth, and the strongest motives to gain all
excellent things. If such shall fall from their high estate, reject the voice
of conscience, the teachings of the sacred word, the strivings of the Holy
Spirit, and become debased in sin, they will be worthy of far greater
condemnation than those less favoured, having fewer gifts, having lived in
darkness all their days, even if more atrocious deeds shall be committed by
them. Our Saviour said of the cities where he proclaimed the truth, that it
would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for
them. How much greater than the punishment of those cities will be ours, if we
reject Christ.
Lost spirits will never be forced into a place
unsuited to them. They, unchanged, could not enjoy heaven. In common life,
ungodly men prefer the license of vice to the customs and restraints of 238
virtuous society. There is wretchedness, disease, and ruin, in the course of
wickedness; and peace, and joy, and holiness, in the life of virtue. Yet the
bad will not seek the company of the good and pure. The finally lost cannot be
conceived as having even faint desires and aspirations for a holy state. There
is no sorrow for sin, and their temper toward God is angry and defiant.* The
doctrine of the eternity of punishment is rejected with horror by many. As
punishment is connected with a sinful character, and as in part it is the
repugnance of the good, as the holy can never have fellowship with the
blasphemous and the vile, it is evident punishment can only end with a change
of character. So long as wickedness shall continue, so long as there shall be
irregular indulgence of the passions, and hatred of God, punishment must
endure. We may grant that when sin shall cease, when man shall submit to God's
will and believe in Christ, then will penalty cease, and joy, peace, and
communion with God will follow. What has time to do with the treatment of
character? It is continuous sin that is punished. While the conditions are the
same, why are consequences that are just for an hour, not just for a thousand
centuries, or an eternity? It is a fearful law that sin hardens the heart, and
renders it more and more insensible to the reasons for a change.
All the motives that can influence men to
reform are given in this life; what additional motive can there be in a future
life to an unchanged spirit, that is drifting farther and farther from God here?
The spirit will be in its nature ever essentially the same, The wicked now hate
holiness; so will they ever do. We have positive evidence that those who once
dwelt in the presence of God will forever be separate from him. The angels that
sinned were cast out of God's presence, and excluded from all participation in
those glories they were formed to share. They have their portion in outer
darkness, and misery, and remorse, and despair. Is there any tendency or sign
of their return? As unworthy beings they are excluded from the presence of God.
They have no likeness to God. Shall men by temporary companionship with the
lost, with evil spirits, be prepared for heaven? What is there revolting in the
idea of continuance of penalty? If a sinful man may suffer a score of years,
what is there inconsistent in his suffering a century, provided his character
and desert continue the same?
It is a common law that in the material world
endless consequences result from the exertion of power. Every pebble dropped
into the ocean produces movements that will continue as long as the ocean shall
roll. Every stamp of the foot on the solid earth produces changes that shall
continue until the earth and the heavens shall be no more. Indeed, can there be
named a single exertion of power, on matter or mind, that will not continue
forever? Why, then, do we expect the consequences of sin to cease? Such are the
endless effects of sin that the redeemed in heaven will never stand as high as
they might have stood, had they never transgressed God's law. They will have
joy and glory in communion with God, but will have less of exalted glory and
joy than they would have had, had they ever been holy.
It were surely absurd to suppose that one who
should live fourscore years in sin, perverting all God's laws, grovelling in
lowest debasement and committing infamous crimes, and repenting in life's last
hour, should hold as high a rank among the blessed as one who should live a
life of four-score years in holiness and sacrifice and toil in the cause of God
and humanity. The consequences of sin are endless, from the nature of the case,
and, as peace can never come except by regeneration and pardon, what sign of
hope is there that this change will take place beyond this life?
All reasoning that proclaims that sin cannot
endure forever must proceed on principles that prove that sin could never
begin. There is a tendency to permanence in character. The fearful saying,
"Let him that is unjust be unjust still," proclaims, by its very
terms, that the agent in this eternal sin is entirely free and can only blame
himself. Man will be punished only so long as he shall sin. Would we know how
long punishment will endure, ask how long sin will continue. Most marked is the
tendency to permanence of character. The condition of sinful man is
dissimilarity to God,-the greater the sins the greater the dissimilarity. There
is no power in pain or penalty of any kind to change character. Does man by
licentiousness tend to purity, or the blasphemer, by blaspheming, to reverence?
As the soul must be the same, and motives be the same hereafter, what
possibility will there be of change?
Our theory shows God's kindness and
consistency. As punishment is necessary and inevitable, as God cannot possibly
prevent it, we see how he can entreat the sinner to change his course and have
pity on his perverseness. He stands in the sinner's path, and beseeches him to
turn from his evil ways. He declares in the most solemn and emphatic words he
has no pleasure in the death of him that dies. "Turn ye! turn ye " he
cries; " for why will ye die, O House of Israel!"
There is no passion or vindictiveness in the
government of God.
We see in this view of the divine government
the object of the warnings of Scripture. They are not words of anger and
vengeance, but rather the entreaties of one who pities and would save. Should a
man be discovered in the rapids above Niagara in great peril, but who might, by
great exertion, reach the shore, would you deem the earnest cries and shoutings
of pitying spectators, announcing his peril and impending death, as the
manifestations of cruelty and vindictiveness? would the ill-fated man from his
boat scoff and shout back that he would not be driven by threats, and then ply
his oars and run faster down the stream? He fearfully mistakes the threatening
of the Bible who does not regard them as kind warnings of impending evil. The
sinner makes his own doom, and, in spite of the Almighty, plucks down ruin on
his head.
A comprehensive survey. The variations of
modern Protestantism on this subject. The failure of each party to find
conclusive arguments in scripture.
Rev. E.
Depressense, D.D., Life Member Of The French Senate, Paris, France.
THE question of future punishment has always
aroused active discussion in the Church, wherever (as in the case of
Catholicism) this has not been bent under the yoke of an indisputable
authority.
During the first centuries of Christianity,
before the body of doctrine had been fixed and defined by the great councils of
the fourth and fifth centuries, this question was answered in very diverse
ways. While Irenaeus, in the creed which he gives as a summary of the Christian
faith (Contra Hcer., i. 3), solved it in the sense of the eternity of
punishment, it is not mentioned either in that of Tertullian (De Virginibus
Velandis, i.) or in that of Origen (De Princip., i., Prcefatio, 4). This proves
that the eternity of future 244 punishment was not regarded as an essential
article of faith. The confession of faith demanded of the catechumens of the
Alexandrian Church, as we have it in book vii., of the Apostolic Constitutions
of that church (chap. 41), holds this language with regard to it, in speaking
of 'the second coming of Jesus Christ: " He shall come again with glory at
the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead, and his kingdom shall
have no end." The so-called Apostles' Creed goes no farther. Clement of
Alexandria does not speak conclusively on the subject of future punishment. He
contents himself with admitting a continuation of progress in faith and love
beyond the grave, since, according to him, the work of purification also goes
on beyond the grave (Stromat., vi., 15).
The decisiveness with which Origen, when
speaking his own mind on the subject, rejects eternal punishment, is well
known: " The love of God for Christ," he says, " will bring
every creature to the one faith; his enemies themselves being conquered and
submissive; for the end must be like to the beginning " (De Princip., vi.,
1). With the fourth century, this comparative freedom in dealing with the
question of the future life ceases entirely. The orthodox doctrine of the Church
at that period was concisely stated in the declaration of Augustine: "
There will be two distinct cities, one of Christ and the good, the other of the
devil and the wicked, who shall continue in misery" (Enekir., c. 31).
The entire Catholic Church has accepted this
doctrine, adding to it that of Purgatory. It admits the purification, after
death, of those souls for whom the Church creates posthumous merits in some way
or other, by its intercessions, masses, or indulgences, through which the
merits of the saints are imputed. The great reformers naturally rejected the
doctrine of Purgatory, which carried into the other world the error which they
attacked most vigorously here, that of the merit of works and of rites,
opposing to it the doctrine of justification by faith. They were unanimous in
concluding in favour of the doctrine of eternal punishment.
The question has been re-opened in our day, as
a result of the greater latitude allowed to Christian thought. Different
solutions are offered. We shall be content to state them briefly and to
formulate succinctly our own opinion; bearing, however, continually in mind the
profound mystery which surrounds the regions beyond the grave.
At the very outset we are confronted by an
absolutely negative solution, which greatly simplifies the question by
rejecting any idea of retributive justice which might be implied by the law of
God against the sinner. This is the opinion of the rationalistic Protestant
schools, from Unitarianism, which still holds to a belief in the supernatural,
to the extreme tendencies, so largely represented in the Protestantism of the
continent of Europe, in which there is no longer to be discerned anything more
than a spiritual philosophy clothed in Biblical expressions, even when it does
not issue in a scarcely veiled Pantheism.
For Protestant rationalism, there has been no
fall of man at the beginning of human history; sin is a weakness, rather than a
rebellion against God; for many, indeed, it is a beginning of enfranchisement,
a stage of our evolution. Hence there can be no question of positive
redemption, any more than there can be of penalty, in the future life.
Suffering is inherent in our condition and is simply a means of education. This
relaxation in the idea of divine justice has obtained in our day a footing in a
school far superior to the older rationalisms of modern times. We are speaking
of that school which calls itself by the name of Ritschl. What constitutes the
originality of this illustrious theologian is that he endeavours to base his
theory on the Scriptures themselves.
In order to obtain a firm basis for our own
conception of future punishment, we must, before coming to the divergences of
different evangelical Christians, establish succinctly that God's right to
punish sin, in this world as well as in the other, is inherent in his justice,
as is testified by all our sacred writers. It is needless to insist on the
declarations of the Old Testament, for the whole economy of the old covenant
rests on the thought of the divine justice. It is 246 its fundamental thought,
which is summed up in the declaration which was given forth in the thunders of
Sinai: "Cursed be he that confirmed not all the words of this law to do
them " (Deut., 27: 26). Sin is always followed by punishment, as it was
announced to the first man when it was told him that death would be the result
of rebellion, as the sanction of the law of God. Neither is it necessary to
recall the declarations of Christ himself.
He of
whom it was said that he has shown us what love is in laying down his life for
his brethren (1 John, 3: 16), never ceased to bring impenitence face to face
with God's punishment both in the present world and in the world to come, in
terms of unequalled force, which we shall subsequently examine more closely
(Matt., 18: 8-25, 42). It was sufficient that he should offer himself as a
vicarious sacrifice for our ransom from sin, in order that God's righteousness
should be completely affirmed, even when he pardons and is reconciling the
world unto himself. It is in the epistles of Paul, who may be called the first
Christian theologian, that the right of God to punish the sinner is formulated
most clearly. We shall apply this farther on. To him justice does not consist
in the perfect realization of good as if appears to us in God, and as it is
required of man when it is presented to us as holiness. It has also its
judicial side. It is not content to shine as a high ideal above our misery and
crime. It manifests itself also as a living law which must be obeyed and which
must have its sanction. God's justice, so understood, maintains and increases
the happiness of the obedient, but condemns and punishes the sinner. It does
not act in an impersonal manner, like a law of iron, precisely for the reason
that it is inseparable from the fatherhood of God. It does not remain
insensible to the rebellion which has violated its laws. It becomes what Paul
calls the wrath of God (Rom., 2: 5).
This
anthropomorphism does not imply any admixture of our miserable human passions.
This wrath is but the indignation of God's love, which has been despised, and
which was the law of the moral world, a law not to be broken with impunity. It
is impossible, moreover, that it should manifest itself in the same way toward
those who reject it as to those who accept it, lest thus it should become
nothing more than a haughty indifference, that is to say, the exact contrary of
love. The condemnation of the sinner is the other face of the blessing awarded
to him who is holy and pure. Love always manifests itself in its true aspects,
with its true applications. It would be impossible for it to tolerate the
disorder of ultimately successful rebellion, without infringing the essential
law of its being. This is what is implied in the wrath of God. The punishment,
which is its inevitable manifestation, is not simply the consequence of evil
working out somehow its own results. It is the will of God, for it maintains his
righteousness, and it must continue to exist until sufficient reparation has
been done to satisfy his justice. It is impossible to eliminate this divine
righteousness and to allow it to dissolve away into a love without severity and
therefore without compassion. Thus Ritschl and his school are in direct
opposition to all that is most characteristic of the Pauline conception.
Having established the fact that the right to
punish, whether now or hereafter, is inseparable from the justice of God, or
rather from his holy love, we must now consider the different solutions offered
to the question of future punishment by those within the pale of that which,
because it bows to the authority of the gospel and accepts its fundamental
propositions, has come to be known as evangelical Christianity.
All the different tendencies represented under
this name recognize the justice of God and its sanction. The redemptive work of
Christ is its most striking confirmation. It is sufficient to accept the fact
of this redemption, independently of the particular interpretations of it.
These we shall leave entirely to one side. The indefeasible right to punish,
then, confronts the impenitent who reject this redemption. It remains for us to
inquire whether eternal punishment is authorized by the teaching of the Bible
taken as a whole; for it is only thus taken that it is authoritative for us.
Without entering into the question of the inspiration of the Scriptures, we
shall be content with stating that the revelation of God to us has been
progressive, and that, in consequence, we must place ourselves at the
conclusion of this revelation in order that we may obtain it in its complete
and final form. Furthermore, this revelation is not bound to the letter, as if
the Scriptures were a code of laws from which it were possible to detach
isolated articles. We are to find in it a clear testimony that shall bring us
into the presence of the great Teacher who is (to use the phrase of Luther) the
King of the Bible. It follows that we can recognize as authoritative, only that
which is clearly sustained by the unanimous testimony of the apostles, his
first messengers.
We find ourselves at the outset face to face
with two contrary and contradictory solutions. On the one side, we have the
representatives of the old orthodoxy, who maintain the eternity of punishment,
and, on the other, the Universalists, who believe in the sure restoration of
all things. We shall see that, between these two extremes, there is room for an
intermediate solution.
Let us begin by discussing the two main
opposing opinions.
We must also make a very important distinction
among the adherents of the doctrine of eternal punishment. They are divided
into two categories: First, the strict Calvinists; second, the adherents of the
doctrine of the freedom of the will, who attribute to it the capacity to bring
man down to final and total perdition, by bringing on himself either a
punishment which can have no end, or the annihilation of his being. The strict
Calvinists (who are still largely represented in evangelical Christendom,
although their numbers have sensibly diminished) start from the idea of the
absolute sovereignty of God. According to them, all things are to be traced to
his decrees. Some souls he has predestined to salvation and has vouchsafed to
them, by his grace, the feelings and acts of will which caused them to
appropriate the merits of Christ, with the additional gift of final
perseverance. The eternity of heavenly blessedness is thus assured to them by
this free gift, which has never seriously called their free will into
requisition. The sons of men 249 who are not the objects of this eternal
election are excluded from the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, and are
destined to eternal torments. I reject with all the energy of my moral being,
and of my faith in the holy love of God, this conception of a limited
redemption. But before setting it aside by the direct authority of the
Scriptures themselves, I wish to testify my respect for the religious
inspiration which caused it to triumph in the days of the Reformation, as
formerly in the Augustinianism of the fourth century, and later in the
Jansenism of the seventeenth.
The
doctrine of predestination was inspired by a sacred jealousy for the law of God
and the sovereignty of his grace, which were unworthily misconceived by all
forms of Pelagianism, beginning with that of the Catholic Church, which,
according as it diminished the merits of Christ, aggrandized its own power by
making merchandise of the divine pardon. The Reformation, by casting man
powerless before the feet of the Most High, raised him up again, freed from all
ecclesiastical authority, and with this one stroke smote down the priestly
hierarchy. Thus it was that the predestinarians of the sixteenth century
brought about the enfranchisement of the Church from the yoke of the papacy,
while at the same time making an infringement upon moral liberty. At the
present clay it is possible to retain that liberty which belongs to the will of
God, without detracting in the least from that sovereignty, which he has never
so strongly affirmed as when he has voluntarily limited it in order not to
break the spring of moral action in the creature of his choice.
Let us first show, briefly, how this freedom
does indeed issue from the teaching of the Scriptures; for punishment, in this
world or in the next, cannot be justified unless the condemned are really
responsible. I pass rapidly over the obvious points, such as the constant
appeal to man's free will, in the Old Testament. It is impossible to weaken the
importance of such declarations as these: " See, I have set before thee
this clay life and good, and death and evil; . . . the blessing and the curse;
therefore choose life, that thou mayest live " (Deut., 30: 15, 19).
"If ye be willing and obedient," says the ancient Hebrew prophet,
"ye shall eat the good of the land, but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall
be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it "
(Is., 1: 19, 20). "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man
his thoughts: and. let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon
him " (Is., 55: 7). When John the Baptist brought from the desert his
burning appeal to repentance, he was but echoing the voice of all the ancient
covenant.
The teaching of Christ was a constant appeal
to human freedom. I will cite only a few passages: " Ye will not come to
me that ye may have life " (John, 5: 40). " If any man wills to do
his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak from myself " (John, 7: 17). " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . .
how often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . and ye would
not" (Matt., 23: 37).
It is of extreme importance in this question
to determine Paul's real thought, for it is on him, above all, that the
doctrine of predestination is founded. Let us recognize that, taken as a whole,
and not in certain paradoxical expressions, Paul's conception implies the
freedom of man as much as the freedom of God. The latter is doubtless
sovereign, man's is derived, and is efficacious only through relation to its
source in that infinite love from which flow forth all good and all grace; but,
though derived, it has never been destroyed. How much more, then, must it have
existed in the beginning I When the apostle exhorts the faithful to the
practice of holiness, when he tells them to give themselves to God, to devote
all their members to him, not to be weary in well-doing, to stand fast in the
faith, to abstain from every kind of evil, and to be imitators of God, and when
they think they stand to take heed lest they fall, he is evidently addressing
himself to free agents. We must not limit this liberty to Christians; for Paul
clearly recognizes the responsibility both of the Jew and of the Gentile,
measuring it according to the amount of light received, insomuch that the Jew
is more guilty before God in his transgression than the Gentile. The Jew, be
says, will be condemned before the Greek (Rom., 2: 9).
When Gentiles who have not the law do by
nature the things of the law, these, having no law, are a law unto themselves.
. . . Circumcision indeed profited if thou be a doer of the law: but if thou be
a transgressor of the law, thy circumcision is become uncircumcision. He says
to Israel: "But after thy hardness and impenitent heart [thou] treasures
up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath " (Rom., 2: 14, 25, 5). True,
this freedom of fallen man is quite insufficient; it is destined to defeat,
since it is only the ruins of the original freedom, which existed in primeval
man as an integral part of his being, and which was alienated by transgression
alone. Repentance, which in the writings of Paul is presented in such a
striking and tragic manner, and to which he is continually calling both the
unconverted and the backsliding Christian, is a decisive attestation of moral
freedom, for if it were not that man is free, it would be but a pitiless
mockery which could not attract intelligent beings illuminated by the clear
light that falls from the brazen sky inhabited by a fatalist divinity.
If that ninth chapter of Romans should be
cited against us, in which the divine sovereignty is set forth in an aspect so
absolute that the apostle ends by comparing human beings to vessels fashioned
by a potter, which he can devote to whatever use may best suit his good
pleasure,-to perdition as well as to salvation,-we appeal to the general
thought of this much debated passage. This thought is a broad, not a narrow
one. The apostle wishes to destroy, with a single blow, the Jewish
particularism, which, intrenching itself in the election of the fathers, from
which they claimed to derive an inalienable right, was unwilling to abdicate
before the universality of Christianity. It is sufficient, in order to confute
these pretensions, to go back to the purpose which determined this election.
This purpose was not the exclusive privilege of a single people, but the
salvation of all men. He has willed, says the apostle, to " have mercy
upon all " (Rom., 11: 32). This is God's 252 plan, in all its amplitude.
The election of Israel had no other aim than the realization of this plan. This
people was chosen out of all the world, that it might receive the revelation of
God, and, to begin with, that law of Sinai which plays so important a part in
preparing for the final redemption. This election of a particular nation was
the result of God's free choice; and it is in testifying to this sovereign
freedom that Paul does not shrink from expressions of awful boldness, which,
however, cannot destroy the general meaning of the context. Had he not
elsewhere said that this earthen vessel, which is called man, is of the race of
God? and had he not dealt with it as a free agent? Did not Israel's election
arise from Abraham's faith, which was imputed to him for righteousness? There
is nothing arbitrary in this, although it is an act of absolute sovereignty. This
is so true, that it has been of no avail to those sons of Abraham who have
rested content with their natural descent. " For they are not all Israel
which are of Israel: neither because they are Abraham's seed, are they all
children " (Rom., 9: 7). Nothing proves this more decisively than the
actual fall of the chosen people as a whole. For, by attaching itself to a
haughty and selfish bigotry, it shut itself out from that grace which in
consequence was spread abroad over all mankind. Thus religious nationalism is
absorbed into the universality of the gospel, which had been from the first the
ultimate object of the plans of the divine love. Paul recognizes that the whole
work of redemption, both general and individual, comes from God, who had pity
on fallen man, and that it goes back to his compassionate purpose. For, "
it is not of him that willed, nor of him that runs, but of God that bath mercy
" (Rom., 9: 16). Not only has he willed all things, he has also foreseen
all things, in his foreknowledge, and his acts of will, in their absolute
freedom, have nothing arbitrary in them. They are fixed and determined with
full reference to human freedom, as well in the election of nations as in the
election of individuals, without the necessity of any merit on the part of the
individual, since from the days of Abraham down to our time, God has counted
for righteousness the faith in his love made manifest in Jesus Christ.
It was necessary to maintain, against all
objections, the great idea of moral freedom, in the Pauline theology, in order
fully to understand the drama of man's religious history, as it is unfolded
before our eyes. If moral freedom were nothing but an illusion, the right to
punish would be nothing but arbitrary power. If we do away with liberty, we
destroy thereby the responsibility of the moral agent. It is easy to understand
that future punishment is the sanction of the law of holiness.
There remains now the question of the duration
of this punishment. We have seen that declared advocates of moral freedom have
arrived at the belief of its eternity. Their main argument is exegetical. We do
not think that, taken alone, it is decisive, as has been very well shown in a
recent essay by a distinguished French theologian, M. le Pasteur Mattei.
The important thing to determine is the exact
meaning of the word (aionios) which our versions translate by the word eternal,
implying thereby that its duration is endless. The adjective (aionios) is
derived from the noun (aion), which in Greek literature signifies a period of
time, especially the period of a life-time; eons were generations or ages
(Col., 1: 26). Since former generations, or those to come, are lost in the
obscurity of time, the word eon readily took on the sense of a long and
indefinite period. The term was thus assimilated to the meaning of the Hebrew
word slam, which comes from the verb olam, to conceal, to cover; slam is thus
an indefinite period whose beginning or whose end is lost to sight. Thus, when
a slave who has the right to be set free prefers to remain with his master
(Ex., 21: 6), " his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he
shall serve him le slam." This we translate by " forever," but
it does not mean " throughout all eternity," but during the
indeterminate period of * See La Reintegration Finale, in Essais de Theologie,
de M. Mattei, p. 131.
254 his life on earth. The New Testament
sometimes contrasts the present eon, the actual world, with the aeon to come.
At other times, it speaks of successive aeons, which we translate by the word
ages, using the word in an indefinite sense.
The Apocalypse (14: 11) describes the
'torments of the damned by saying: " The smoke of their torment goes up
unto eons of ons;" and adds a hint which explains other passages in the
Scriptures, " They have no rest day and night," i.e., their torment
is incessant. This is also expressed in other passages, by saying that they
shall be in " unquenchable fire and their worm dies not." In Luke 1:
70, Zacharias speaks of the "prophets which have been since the world
began"; he cannot have meant since eternity began; but it is by the use of
this word (aion) that this period is expressed. (See also Acts 3: 21.) Since
then the noun (aion) has not the same meaning as our word "
eternity," we cannot attribute that meaning to its derivative: (aionios).
If the texts are cited, in which Christ applies the word (claim; (aionios) to
the happiness of believers, as proof of its having the sense of endless
duration, I reply that it is for other than purely grammatical reasons that
their happiness has no end. It is enough to remember that they are united to
him of whom it is said: " He that hath the Son bath the life " (1
John, 5: 12). He shall never die. We cannot rely solely on a single word to
settle the question,-all the less since we have other declarations of the New
Testament which might open the way to the very widest hope by apparently
announcing a universal pardon. Jesus Christ, in one of his latest discourses,
declares that when he is lifted up he will draw all men unto himself (John, 12:
32). Does not Paul say: " God bath shut up all unto disobedience, that he
might have mercy upon all " (Rom., 11: 32)? The sense of the word all is
the same in both members of the phrase; the number of rebels is identical with
the number of subjects of the divine mercy. "God willed that all men
should be saved " (cf. 1 Tim., 2: 4). " The mystery of God's will is
that, in the fullness of the times, he will sum up all things in Christ "
(Eph., 1: 9, 10; cf. Rom., 5: 18, 19). " For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ shall all be made alive "-or, " shall live again "-(1
Cor., 15: 22). Life in Christ cannot mean the existence of the condemned in
hell. The seer of the Apocalypse hears him that sits upon the throne say:
"Behold I make all things new " (Rev., 21: 5); and when this work of
regeneration shall be accomplished, the end will have come; the denouement of
this long story, with its ceaseless catastrophes, will have been reached.; God
will be all in all.
This is what may be said against the doctrine
of eternal punishment from the exegetical point of view. This doctrine cannot
be said to be derived conclusively from Scripture texts; for these, according
to our interpretation, permit the hope of final restitution. Nevertheless,
those which we have cited must be supplemented by other statements of the
Scriptures, which; without destroying this hope, prevent our having an exact
certitude of its realization. We shall see, further on, that this certitude is
met by a fundamental objection which for us is decisive. The texts to which we
allude are those which speak of the unpardonable sin, which shall not be
forgiven, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come (Matt., 12: 32),
the sin which is unto death (1 John, 5: 16), of a state of the soul in which it
is declared impossible for it to return to God (Heb., 6: 4-8; 10: 26, 27;
12:11-17). It is for such sins that it is said that the worm shall not die and
that the fire is unquenchable (Mark, 9: 48). We conclude, from these texts,
that there are sins, or rather that there is a state of sin, which would be
equivalent to absolute impenitence. This sin is within the realm of
possibility; hence eternal punishment is likewise so. It is quite a different
thing to affirm that this possibility will certainly be realized. It is
permissible to hope that the divine freedom will finally persuade or conquer
the most rebellious will.
Such is our first answer to those theologians
who affirm, with perfect certainty, that the eternity of future punishment will
be realized.
They found their arguments also on the
eschatology of the New Testament, which announces the final judgment, when the
just shall arise to eternal life and the wicked to condemnation (John, 5: 29).
According to them, this judgment is to be the final closing up of human
history, and its decrees are to be irrevocable. There will be no place for the
wicked, except under the implacable severity of the divine justice. For these
same theologians, the irrevocable condemnation begins for every man from the
end of his earthly life in accordance with the text, "After death cometh
judgment " (Heb., 9: 27).
We reject absolutely this alleged irrevocable
character of the judgments of God, whether those at the death of every man, or
after the great judgment which is to put an end to the present era.
Regarding the period which follows the present
life, we have one positive text which implies that the redemptive activity may be
continued in the mysterious region beyond the grave. It is that in which Peter
declares that Jesus Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison, alluding
to the Hebrew Sheol (1 Peter, 3: 19). To endeavour to apply this, by
anticipation, to the warnings addressed by Noah to the men at the time of the
deluge, is a desperate attempt, not to be entertained for a moment. The whole
ancient Church understood this text in its most simple and natural sense. We
have withal something more than an isolated text, we have what is called "
the analogy of faith." Either we must admit that it is possible to be
saved without faith in Christ, or we must recognize a possibility of knowing
and accepting his salvation, for all those who have not been in a position to
hear the gospel on this side of the grave. I go further, and assert that there
must be equality in the possibility of salvation for all men. This preaching of
Christ to the spirits in prison extends much farther than to the pagan world.
If it be objected that we are coming back to the doctrine of Purgatory, we
reply that there is no analogy between this possibility afforded to poor souls
thrown like shipwrecked mariners on the coasts of the other life, to join
themselves to Christ, of whom they have been ignorant, and the doctrine of
partial expiation by personal suffering and the transfer of human merit. The
Catholic theology, by its doctrine of Purgatory, carries over into the other
world its mortal error of justification by works, while we maintain on both sides
of the grave the doctrine of justification by faith. As to the last judgment,
we see in it only the winding up of a dispensation-the denouement of human
history on our planet; but nothing forces us to admit that everything in the
lot of these poor children is irreversibly concluded, and that there is no
longer any chance for their return. When Jesus Christ speaks of a sin which
shall not be forgiven, neither in this world nor in that which is to come, it
is thereby implied that there are sins which might be forgiven in the world to
come; the only one which would be unpardonable would be final impenitence, if
such impenitence there should be.
It is enough for me to know that God is love,
to be convinced that .be never ceases to love his poor creatures, even though
fallen to the lowest depth. Only his love never ceases to be a holy love and
saves only when it has been responded to by repentance, which is the
renunciation of rebellion. Now this response can only be made by accepting the
work of Christ which makes us, through faith, one with him in his life and in
his death. Therefore, it is he alone, as Paul says, who can reconcile all
things. To state it briefly, no obstacle to the conversion or salvation of a
sinner can ever, either in this world or the other, proceed from God. It is the
sinner who condemns himself by his impenitence. To suppose any cessation or
diminution of the fatherly love of God would be to admit a sort of failure in
the idea of God. He would be as it were diminished in the love which is his
essence, and we should be brought back to the despairing belief of the old
Germans that there may be, as it. were, a Gotterdammerung, an obscuration of
the gods.
What we have said of God may be equally said
of the blessed who have come through great tribulation. If they could be truly
blessed without caring for their condemned brethren, the saints in heaven would
be less than the least of Christians on earth. To suppose, with Spurgeon, that
their memory has been taken away from them, in order that their happiness may
not be disturbed, would be to admit that they had lost their true personality.
No, they remember, they pity, they are more and more united to their great
High-priest, of whom it is said that he intercedes for us in glory. Are not the
angels God's messengers to serve the purposes of his mercy? What nobler office
for glorified saints, than to be admitted to the fellowship of this sublime
mission? Let us conclude by recognizing that God never ceases to love, but that
he loves as the Most Holy One-that is to say, by demanding the response to his
love which must begin with repentance. Therefore it is that impenitence may not
be forgiven, either in this world or the next.
We have in our discussion given our answer
also to the Universalists, who maintain that future punishment must, of
necessity, come to an end. This necessity is excluded by the very nature of the
freedom of the will. To declare that free will must inevitably end in the
choice of the right, is to do away with free will. When we consider that God
has chosen to maintain the liberty of his creature with a choice so fixed that
he would not infringe upon it even to prevent the terrible consequences of
resistance to his love, and that being both almighty and all-merciful he has
not put a stop to this drama of blood and tears which we call history, though
offering to us continually all the resources of his goodness,-we must recognize
that he can no more break down the conditions of the laws of the moral world in
the future life than he can in the present. We may hope, as we have said, that
his love will finally regain the most rebellious, and that (to use an
expression of Vinet), by that divine eloquence which is called grace, he will
persuade every will. But, in order to the existence of these wills, they must
ultimately remain the masters of their own destiny. Consequently the
possibility of eternal punishment remains. Further than this we do not go.
259 We recognize what obscurities remain-what
thick shadows stretch out before our short-sighted view, over the fathomless
abysses of eternity. For this supreme question, more than for any other, we
must say with Paul that we see but darkly. And yet through these shadows is
shining a divine light which nothing can extinguish or obscure; the first
certainty which separates itself from the gloom is that God is love, that love
is the essence of his. being, and that he will always manifest himself as love.
The second is that salvation is possible only by faith in the Redeemer, by
which we are made one with him. The third is that freedom cannot be abrogated
even to insure the final restitution; for this restitution, obtained on any
other conditions, would be the destruction of the moral being made in the image
of God.
A theological school which has made great
progress of late has suggested a method of reconciliation between the advocates
of eternal punishment and the Universalists. It is what is called
Conditionalism. The Reverend Edward White has developed. this hypothesis in a
book which has produced a profound impression.* According to this theory, which
we can discuss only in the briefest manner, man is not immortal by nature-his
immortality is conditional, and is achieved only by union with God, the
universal principle of life. Faith in Jesus Christ, with all which it implies,
is the only effectual means to this union. Without this faith, in case of
persistent impenitence, the hardened sinner sinks down into annihilation. That
death of which it is said that it is " the wages of sin," is to be
taken in its most literal sense. Thus the freedom of the will would be
maintained, and yet there would remain at the end of the world none but the
redeemed, the dark kingdom of evil having disappeared. The smoke of the abyss
could no longer go up to the heaven of glory, to darken it. We cannot ourselves
accept this conception of future punishment. The texts of Scripture which are
brought into discussion 'by its defenders indicate perdition, a state of
misery; but do not imply annihilation. The verb (apollumi), which is ordinarily
cited (Matt., 10: 28; John, 3: 16; Rom., 9: 22), signifies to ruin, to corrupt.
The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Matt., 18: 11;
cf. Luke, 19: 10).
When it is said that the devil suffers in the
lake of fire and brimstone, it is wholly incompatible with the idea of
annihilation. What we object to, principally, in the exegesis of the
conditionalists, is that they materialize too much the ideas of life and death
in the Scriptures, and that they see in them only the maintenance or
suppression of existence, as if the meaning of the texts did not go much
farther, and did not imply the possession or the loss of a moral good which far
surpasses the literal meaning of these expressions. It is sufficient to recall
the words of Paul to the Christians at Ephesus: "Ye were dead through your
trespasses and sins" (Eph., 2: 1). It is, above all, the anthropology of
the conditionalists which we reject. They trace back to the Platonic
philosophy, as a superannuated error, every essential distinction between the
soul and the body, reducing man in his primal nature to a sort of psychic life,
in which there is nothing either divine or immortal. According to them, the
superior element is somehow superadded. Faith alone is able to uphold it, and
when faith fails, it fails. Under such conditions, annihilation is possible,
since physical death, when final, destroys the entire being. We ask, how, on
the one hand, does the pardoned believer pass through this physical death, and,
on the other hand, why the wicked do not entirely succumb to it, and what kind
of a resurrection it is which is inflicted on them for no purpose but to render
their annihilation final by a second death? The conditionalists have never
explained themselves clearly on this point, but always-their main error-constantly
revert to that monistic anthropology (to use a modern expression), which sees
in man, in his origin, nothing but a kind of animated matter, into which the
divine life may be engrafted if he makes no resistance. But if he can resist,
he is therefore free, there is an element in him which transcends the simple
psychic existence; consequently he possesses a higher self. It remains for us
to show that this " monistic " anthropology is not in accord with the
conception of man in the Scriptures. We recognize that, except for the sublime
passage in the first chapter of Genesis, on the creation of man in the image of
God, the Old Testament is content with a rudimentary anthropology which does
not busy itself in distinguishing between the different elements of our being.
But in the New Testament this is all changed. The distinction between the soul
and body comes out with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired, in that
saying of Jesus Christ: " Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in hell " (Matt., 10: 28). Evidently two kinds of
condemnation are here in question.
The prologue to the fourth gospel recognizes,
in the most decisive manner, the superior divine element in man, in this great
text: " This (the Word) was the true light, even the light which light-eth
every man coming into the world " (John, 1: 9). But it is to Paul that we
must go, above all, on this grave question, because it is possible to deduce
from his epistles a genuine anthropology. He speaks continually of man's
intelligence and. will; and since we have no reason for supposing the contrary,
we must conclude that he uses these words in their ordinary sense. But
furthermore, the distinction between body, soul, and spirit is clearly implied
in such statements as the following: "Glorify God therefore in your body
and your spirit " (1 Cor., 6: 20). " May your spirit and soul and
body be preserved entire and without blame at the coining of our Lord Jesus
Christ" (1 Thess., 5: 23). In speaking thus, he was simply in harmony with
the saying of the Master: " Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul " (Matt., 10: 28). It is not then legitimate
to attribute to Paul the rudimentary psychology of the Old Testament, though
even that does not go so far as is claimed, since the land of shadows, the dark
Sheol, is sometimes lighted up with a ray of hope. How could Paul have said to
the Athenians that they were the offspring of God, if man in his essence did
not participate in some measure in God's nature? That divine law which the
apostle recognizes as at the basis of our being, to reveal to him the good and
to prohibit the evil, cannot be resolved into an animal psychism, even though
it be carried to a high degree of development.
Those who claim Paul as favouring the monistic
view, argue from the terminology, so frequent in his writings, by which he
gives to the word " flesh " a comprehensive meaning which is applied
to the natural, unconverted man. We admit the fact without hesitation, but we
do not see what conclusion can be drawn from it. . It does not prevent this
word " flesh " from losing absolutely its ordinary meaning, when to
this natural, unregenerate man there are attributed faculties, intuitions, and
acts, which absolutely cannot be explained by a simply animal existence. Let us
not forget that one of the first effects of sin is to overthrow in us the hierarchy
of the various elements of our being and to bring the life of the senses into
predominance over that of the intelligence and will, without our being able to
identify evil with matter or sin with the body. If sin is called "the law
which is in our members," it is because it has rebelled in two closely
connected ways at once, the rebellion of our will against God, and that of the
lower part of our being against the higher. Paul's anthropology, according to
our understanding of it, comprises, first, the body properly so-called; second,
the psychic life of the senses; third, the intellectual element, which he calls
ourselves, and which is easily distinguished; fourth and finally, the
conscience, which has the intuition of God's law. It is in the last two faculties
of man that his receptivity for the divine is found. In our actual life this
only brings out the painful contrast between the lower self developed by sin,
and the higher self which aspires to union by obedience with the God it has
knowledge of. This higher element once recognized in man, it is impossible
either, on the one hand, to admit the possibility of its annihilation by the
simple fact of death, or, on the other, to reduce the condemnation merited by
sin to extinction of existence. The proof lies in the fact that the Christian
is declared to be saved from the present time, although he has yet to die. If
it be admitted that by faith we are from that very moment transformed,
consoled, healed of the deadly malady of our fear, reconciled with God and made
able to conquer the evil which is ruining and distressing us, it follows that
the moral suffering included in this fear of God's judgment, this overwhelming
feeling of ruin and impotence, all those cruel tortures of the soul separated
from its own true principle, inheriting the condemnation allotted to sin,-all
this means far more than simple physical death, which nevertheless is
inseparable from it. Separation from God, a consequence of what the apostle
calls his wrath, that is to say, his just indignation against the sinner, this
is pre-eminently the punishment incurred by sin, which becomes its own
punishment when suffered to run its own free course. For the worst damnation is
the degradation of our own higher self in impenitence; and this begins on this
side of the grave, and is to take on its infinite proportions in the life to
come, although we are not to admit that the divine love is ever left without
resources with which to triumph over it. The mere fact that the Scripture
admits of degrees of punishment in the future life, so that they are
proportioned to the gravity of the offense, which is declared to be greater in
proportion to the knowledge of the offender (Matt., 11: 23), is sufficient to
set aside absolutely this summary punishment of annihilation, which can but
strike down all sinners as with a single blow.
Whether this higher element which we have seen
to belong to the essence of human nature could be taken away from him and
return to God as a ray of light to its source, if the sinner should persist in
impenitence, is a question which we cannot undertake to decide by a passing
word. At all events this element abides independently of the physical organism,
and subsists, therefore, after physical death, ready to be clothed upon in
other conditions, according as God shall determine. In its existence, it may suffer
that purely moral condemnation which is the consequence of separation from God.
It depends on itself to render this separation irrevocable, or to find in its
suffering a supreme appeal for return to God. The one certain thing is this,
that, in the condemnation, as in the salvation, of the moral agent, God's holy
love will remain unclouded. And. this is the prominently important thing, for,
so long as God remains to us, everything remains. Eternity will be, can be,
nothing but the glorification of that holy love which can never change.
Present-Day Beliefs On Future Retribution.
By FREDERICK W. FARRAR, D.D., Archdeacon of
Westminster, Chaplain to the Queen of England, Author of the " Life of
Christ," etc.
I HAVE several times been required by public
duty to express my views on the solemn subject of the Future Destiny of Man
beyond the grave. I have done so, especially, in the two volumes entitled
"Eternal Hope," and " Mercy and Judgment "; nor will it be
expected that I should again grapple with the whole argument in a few brief
pages. In this paper I am not even asked to deal with the question in general,
but only to speak of the present state of general belief respecting it.
I cannot do this better than by giving an
account of some personal experiences. Those who have read my books will, I
hope, acquit me of being given to
egotism, which is indeed entirely distasteful to me. But to allude to myself is
here inevitable, because the present state of belief on the subject of
"Eternal Torments" has been materially influenced by controversies in
which, without any desire of mine, I have been compelled by circumstances to
take a considerable part.
In November, 1877, I was "in residence
" as Canon at Westminster Abbey; and, owing to various deathbeds which I
had recently witnessed, my whole soul had been stirred within me to its inmost
depths, by contemplating the brutal and unmitigated horror of the doctrine of
" Eternal Torments "'as it was then currently believed. By the vast
majority of Anglican and Nonconformist clergymen-though the fact may now be
vainly denied-the doctrine, often characterized as "orthodox," was
either openly preached, formally defended, or, at the lowest, acquiesced in
silently. A few there were who had tacitly let it drop out of their teaching
and phraseology, though they had not deliberately abandoned it; and there were
some who, among their intimate friends, ventured secretly to whisper that they
could no longer believe in it without large modifications. One or two living
teachers who were known to have adopted the views either of Universalism (like
the Rev. Samuel Minton) or of Conditional Immortality (like the Rev. Edward
White) were more or less boycotted in ecclesiastical circles as erratic if not
as heretical, and they had much to suffer. Of great foreign divines there were
scarcely any who, like Bishop Mortensen of Seeland, combined a reputation for
orthodoxy with any acceptance of "the larger hope." Of earlier
English writers only a handful had ventured timidly and tentatively to express
their doubts or hesitations. In living memory one Bishop-Bishop Ewing of Argyll
and the Isles; one great theological thinker-Prof. F. D. Maurice; one eminent
and religious layman-Mr. Thomas Erskine of Linlathen; and one or two able
Non-conformists, like Dr. E. White, Dr. Allon, Rev. S. Cox, author of Salvator
Mundi, and the late Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, were more or less isolated from
their brethren by their opinions on this subject, and their views were
stalwartly denounced by the most popular of living Baptists, Mr. Spurgeon.
Prof. Maurice had been in youth my honoured teacher, and was in manhood my dear
and kind friend. Ever since I had read the controversy on the meaning of the
word "eternal," which caused his ejection from his professorship at
King's College, my own mind had been absolutely made up, and I had already come
to the conclusion which, at no period of my life, have I attempted to conceal.
At last, however, it became my duty to express them more unmistakably. "
While I was musing, the fire burned and at last I spoke with my tongue."
I well remember the dim, drizzling afternoon
of Nov. 11, 1877, when I walked through the rain from my house to the Abbey to
preach the sermon on "Hell-what it is not," which is now printed in
" Eternal Hope." I was perfectly well aware of the gravity of what I
intended to do. I had to repudiate a doctrine which had been more or less
universally preached by the majority of Christians for fifteen hundred years. I
knew that to do so was an act which would cost me dear. I knew that during six
centuries of the history of the present Abbey it was probable that no sermon
had been preached which even greatly modified, much less repudiated with
indignation, that popular teaching about hell which seemed to me a ghastly
amalgam of all that was worst in the combined errors of Augustinianism,
Romanism, and Calvinism, unrelieved by the more soft and tender elements which
threw a gracious shadow over the lurid regions of the two former systems. The
ordinary teaching, such as I had heard assumed-rather than either proved or
dwelt upon-from my earliest childhood, seemed to me no gospel at all, but for
the vast mass of mankind a doctrine of frightful and irredeemable despair. The
teaching of Jonathan Edwards, of Father Furniss, of Mr. Spurgeon, seemed to me
to represent God as a Moloch for all except an infinitesimal fraction of the
human race. If God could deal with the miserable and tempted souls of the
innumerable dead in the way represented by these teachers, it seemed to me that
the very bases of morality were undermined. For under these aspects God was
represented as infinitely implacable, with a remorseless cruelty which would be
infamous in the very vilest of mankind. And yet similar teaching-only rendered
innocuous by the vis mediatrix of that human love and pity which is " likes
God within the soul "-was everywhere received. The doctrine of hell then
prevalent-as it is NOT now prevalent either in the Old World or the New-I
thrust aside with something perhaps of passion, but certainly with no
ambiguity, and no reservation. The phase of belief which I then flung from me
with every nerve and fibre of my moral conviction may be most briefly described
as that which, since then, has more and more openly been cast to the moles and
to the bats,-the doctrine of endless and inconceivable physical torments of
flame and brimstone, as the destined fate for the vast majority of the human
race.
I knew of course that such a sermon could not
escape the most savage animadversion. " He who goes about to persuade a
multitude " that one of their cherished idols of the theatre is a hideous
and worthless fetich; that a doctrine which they have identified with religion
itself is not only wrong but blasphemous;-can hardly hope to escape paying the
penalty of martyrdom in some form or other. The odium theologicum is as
proverbially and as disgracefully virulent and anti Christian in this day as it
ever was. The "religious " newspapers are often as unfair and as
remorseless as the Inquisition itself, though Fagot and stake were desperately
sincere, Our cooler martyrdoms are done in type.
I confess, however, that I was not prepared
for the sort of electrical thrill which that sermon flashed through two worlds.
I did not for a moment suppose that this was due to any merit, unless it were
the merit of sincerity, in the sermon itself. For there was nothing elaborate
in the sermon. It was written in a few hours in the ordinary course of the
week's ordinary duties. The effect which
it produced was due to the fact that I had, however rudely and violently,
smitten a chord of feeling, rarely touched at all, which vibrated
sympathetically in a hundred thousand hearts. As we left the Abbey, Dean
Stanley, who very rarely spoke to preachers about their sermons, thanked me
with an unusual energy of emotion and. approval. Before a week was over,
letters began to pour in upon me from every part of the United Kingdom, as they
soon did from every part of the world. Without my consent, or even my
knowledge, the sermon had been taken down by reporters, and was published in
the Christian Age. I believe that in this and similar unauthorized forms the
circulation of that sermon in a short time exceeded one hundred thousand copies.
Then it began to rain denunciations. I was assailed in scores of pamphlets;
annihilated in hundreds of reviews; lectured against by university professors;
and anathematized by Anglicans, Baptists, and Methodists in (perhaps) a
thousand sermons. The Emperor Constantine, when told that his statues had been
pelted with stones by the mob of Alexandria, raised his hand to his head and
exclaimed, " Strange! I don't feel hurt." I could safely say the
same. Compelled in mere self-defence to print in a corrected form, and with
some explanation, the sermons which had kindled such a burning and apparently
interminable controversy, I published the volume entitled " Eternal
Hope." In England alone more than twenty-six thousand copies of that work
have been sold, and I know not how many thousands in America, in Australia, and
in various translations which have themselves passed through many editions, and
have produced, I am informed, a specially powerful effect in Norway and Sweden.
Why? Simply because, as was said to me soon after the book was printed, by a
leading London clergyman, " You have spoken out what nearly every one of
us secretly thought." However that may be, the literature of books,
pamphlets, and articles which has sprung up anent that volume of sermons-the
refutations, the replies, the examinations, the reviling, and the defences of
it-would alone fill a small library. One great and important branch of the
Church was within an ace of being rent asunder
by schism in consequence of the discussion raised upon this question. Nothing
can more decisively prove the greatness and rapidity of the change of view
which has taken place, than the fact that by every Bishop of that Church whom I
came near, and by multitudes of its clergy, as well as by very large numbers of
the American clergy of all denominations, I have since then received a welcome
far kindlier, and more friendly, than could possibly have been the case if they
had regarded my views as either heretical or dangerous. And meanwhile two facts
deserve record. On the one hand not a single voice of any real authority was
raised in my condemnation in my own or any other branch of the Church. I was honoured
by the kindest friendship of Cardinal Manning, and both the English
Arch-bishops; the Bishop of London invited me to preach his ordination sermon;
I stood on an entirely friendly footing with all the best and most learned
members of the English Episcopate, and, while I continued to receive from them
many tokens of regard and approval, not one of them addressed to me a single
word of disapproval. I was invited, year after year, to preach in many of our
principal cathedrals; to read papers at Church Congresses both in England and
America; to preach before both our English Universities and to address the students
of our greatest Scotch Universities and of various theological seminaries.
Though I had openly disclaimed a form of teaching which many professed to
regard as fundamental, no one could show that I had used one word which ran
counter to any formulary of the Church of England; even Roman Catholic writers
declared that I had said nothing which contravened the Catholic faith; and,
however hostile might be their animus, no society and no individual in the
Church of England ventured to run the risk of prosecuting me for views, which
might not indeed be theirs, but which they very well knew to be perfectly
tenable in the Church of England. Indeed those views-though few of them knew
this-had not only been always and everywhere tenable in the Church of God, but
had been undisguisedly expressed. by some of the profoundest of the Fathers and
some of the greatest of canonized saints. Since the year 1877 more than one
English clergyman has been promoted to a Deanery, and at least one has been
elevated to an important Bishopric, who had publicly avowed his agreement with
me in my general views on this subject. In 1877 it required some courage and
some self-sacrifice to bear the brunt of a popular indignation at once learned
and ignorant, by expressing the views which I then expressed. It does not
require the least courage to repeat them-as many clergymen repeat them-now.
I left the attacks made upon me unnoticed, and
the books written against me unanswered. I knew that time, and the conscience
and reason of mankind, were on my side, and I cared nothing for onslaughts of
which not a few were childishly incompetent, and entirely base. It was
impossible for me to take any notice of writers who could stoop, as many of
them did, to be vulgarly unfair, and studiously impertinent. The Majority of
their books and pamphlets were but sluggish and bitter ripples "on the
Dead Sea of Commonplace." Not one of them survives at this moment. Without
any effort on my part they have sunk long ago into deserved oblivion, and are
as dead of their own deathfulness as the lazy weeds which rot on Lethe's wharf.
Many of them were, from first to last, a mere ignoratio elenehi. Their writers
had failed to understand even the basis of my argument. They could not grasp
what is meant when we say that the idea of Eternity is not the infinite
extension of Time, but the absolute antithesis to it. They could not comprehend
how the word och6vms may express a qualitative conception, not an endless
sequence. They thought that the whole question could be triumphantly settled by
scraps of isolated texts, and shreds of misinterpreted metaphors. They had not
risen to the stand-point from which alone this question can be judged. They
retained and cherished their ignoble thoughts of God. They thought that they had
proved a terrific dogma, when they had only snatched a few missiles from their
broken stone-heap of Scripture 274 to hurl with due hatred at the head of an
opponent. They showed that they were animated by the "eternal spirit of
the populace." It would be wholly unbecoming in me were I to say with De
Quincey of such objections that "I could have brained their mushroom heads
with a fan." It is not in that spirit that I am writing. But I may safely
say that the intense Pharisaism and transparent injustice of many of the
reviews of my "Mercy and Judgment" gave me a safe refuge in healthy
scorn of controversy so conducted. Peace be to the ashes of all who have
garbled my words, evaded my arguments, misrepresented my opinions! I did hot
regard them as foemen worthy of my steel. I have never retaliated. I freely
forgive them. It is not in vain that I have read in Dante:- Lascia dir le
gente.
But there were other directions in which I
found unlimited comfort. The total results to me were not summed up in the
anathema maranatha of party writers. I was surprised, touched, unspeakably
supported, by the many letters which I received from persons of the most
reverent faith, of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy, above all of the deepest
personal holiness. Fathers, and mothers, and wives, and brothers; mourning over
those whom they had lost, and who, in the pathetic language of Shakespeare, had
" died and made no sign," poured out to me with tears their thanks,
sometimes because I had given expression to the inmost conviction of their own
hearts, sometimes because I had rolled away from their spirits the incubus of
an intolerable despair. Missionaries, who had been toiling among the heathen
for long years of noble self-sacrifice, wrote to tell me that they, amid the
awful world of Paganism, had found it impossible to hold the hideous dogma in
which they had been trained. The saintliest Bishop whom I have ever known
personally sought me out to tell me that, in his own work amid poor heathen
races, he had been insensibly driven by the sheer logic of facts to lean more
and more to the very views which I had expressed. A divine, who is justly
regarded by many as the greatest and most thoughtful of living theologians, as
well as the deepest of Scriptural students, called on me, during the densest
storm of denunciation, to tell me that, for twenty years at least, he had
taught the same truths that I had done, and that no trace of the then popular
dogma could be found in all his works.
But now occurred the most remarkable event in
the entire controversy. For in 1880 appeared Dr. Pusey's book, " What is
of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment? In reply to Dr. Farrar's challenge in
his 'Eternal Rope.' " We read in the Old Testament of a certain prophet
who was invited to curse Israel, but he blessed them altogether. Something like
this occurred in the case of Dr. Pusey. He was put forth to answer my sermons,
and lo! he conceded to me every single point for which I cared anything at all!
He argued indeed against Universalism; but I have never been a Universalist,
and therefore all that part of his argument was no reply to anything that I
said. A Universalist is one who believes that all mankind, without exception,
will ultimately be saved. That is my own fervent hope; but to cherish a hope is
a different thing from affirming a doctrine. I have been impressed for years
with the conviction that, as regards the Future Life, God has designedly left
us in a complete darkness and uncertainty concerning all details. In all
Scriptural allusions to the world to come there is an indefiniteness of outline
which is amazingly unlike the glib and graphic delineations of future bliss and
woe in which so many ignorant persons think that they can indulge with the
utmost facility. Nothing is more remarkable than the general silence of the Old
Testament even on the subject of immortality; and while, in the New Testament,
immortality and the great laws of reward and punishment are revealed, enough
knowledge is granted. us for our amplest guidance, but not enough for our
morbid curiosity. It is sufficient for any Christian to know that Christ died
and rose again, and that thereby for us also the last enemy-Death-is doomed to
destruction. It is sufficient, further, for any man to know that in the future
life we shall receive according to the deeds done in the body;-but yet that
there' is a forgiveness of sins, through Christ's propitiation and his eternal
advocacy. I believe that God has not revealed more, because more than this
would be incomprehensible, and might be harmful to us. We have all light enough
to guide our footsteps here, and beyond the grave will be the new Heavens and
the new Earth To which our God himself is moon and sun.
I was therefore not concerned with any
reasoning which Dr. Pusey urged against the theory of Universalism. On the
other hand, as I have said, he absolutely conceded the only points which I had
assailed,-namely (1) the doctrine "that the vast majority of mankind were
doomed to perdition "; and (2) "that the endless punishment of hell
was of the character of unimaginable physical and material torture." If
those two maddening and abhorrent dogmas were rejected, I was unconcerned to
deal with any debris of the old " errors and terrors " which might be
left. Now Dr. Pusey emphatically declared that the loss of the majority, which
had for ages been so assiduously taught, was in no sense of the word a Catholic
doctrine, and had never been sanctioned as such by the Church of God. He also
declared that, while himself inclined to believe in material fire and
brimstone, that was no more than an individual opinion which any one was free
to hold or to reject as he pleased. But he went very much further than this.
Indirectly and directly he implied that God might reach unknown millions of
souls as they passed through what he called " the almost sacrament of
death." He thought it possible that Abel, and Absalom, and Solomon, and
Nebuchadnezzar, and Ananias, and even the Antichrist Antiochus Epiphanes might
have been saved. "The church," he remarked, "has its long lists
of saints; it has not inserted one name in the catalogue of the damned."
He even used this most startling sentence, in which he went very far beyond
anything which I had said: "'Take the worst case almost that can be
imagined, the case of a soul dying immediately upon the commission of some
deadly sin. Take the case of one falling in a duel but repenting for the love
of God, .after he had been mortally wounded (such a history has been recorded
and believed): or that (which made much impression) of an unbeliever who had
lately been inculcating unbelief, and who rose from an adulteress's bed, to
fall back and die in the arms of the adulteress; or of one who committed
suicide and repented when the means employed had begun to work their effect.
Extreme cases we must "leave to the mercy of him who died for them. They
have been before their Judge." He wrote much more to the same effect.
Clearly his view was different from mine, inasmuch as he attributed to the
action of God upon the soul in articulo mortis the merciful and blessed results
which it seemed to me more Scriptural and more natural to attribute to the free
workings of the divine justice and mercy in the state beyond the grave. But
with a writer who held such views as these-views so wholly unlike the doctrine
I had attacked-I had no quarrel. He did indeed traverse many of my arguments,
but he did not write in the wretched spirit of unfairness and baseness which
had animated so many others. He wrote like a Christian, a scholar, and a
gentleman. I could argue with one whom I could respect and love; and in my
"Mercy and Judgment" I endeavoured to prove that he had not shaken
one of my positions, and that he had not really broken the force of anything
which I had asserted about the opinions of the Rabbis, the Fathers, and others.
But all this part of the controversy merely affected the less essential
details. Competent readers may judge of them for themselves. Dr. Pusey never
answered my "Mercy and Judgment," and not a single other writer has
as yet attempted to do so. But meanwhile the substantial agreement of Dr. Pusey
with views far less terrible than those of ordinary religious teachers was a
matter of historical importance.
For Dr. Pusey was regarded not only as a
theologian, but almost as an oracle. His name was profoundly respected by the
mass of the Anglican clergy as a magnum et venerabile nomen; and if my sermons
had never produced any other effect than to elicit his answer, they would have
produced a result most memorable in the progress of this controversy. The mere
ipse dixit of Dr. Pusey would weigh more with many of his followers than ten
thousand of my arguments, however cogent they might be. And when the acrid
Pharisaism of some writers charged me with presumption for saying that Dr.
Pusey had admitted all that I required, they were unaware that I had before me
this letter of Dr. Pusey himself, dated August 3, 1880.
My Dear Canon Farrar: It is a great relief to
me that you can substitute the belief in a future purification for those who
have not utterly extinguished the grace of God in their hearts. This, I
believe, would put you in harmony with the whole of Christendom. * * * "
Yours faithfully, E. B. PUSEY.
In a previous letter to me, dated July 30,
1880, he had used these remarkable words:- Reverend and Dear Sir: * * * * * * *
* * * * *
If I had had time I would have rewritten my
book and said, You seem to me to deny nothing which I believe.' You do not deny
the eternal punishment of souls obstinately hard and finally impenitent. I
believe the eternal punishment of no other. Who they are God alone knows. I
should have been glad to begin with what we believe in common, and so to say
there is no need then to theorize about a new trial." * * * Yours
faithfully, E. B. PUSEY."
From the use of the word " substitute
" in the first-quoted of these two letters it might be inferred that my
opinions had been in some way altered by Dr. Pusey's book. Such was not the
case. I wrote back to say that I had no need to " substitute " the
notion of future " education " or future " purification "
for that of an extended "probation " beyond the grave, because, in
arguing for larger views of God's infinite compassion, I had not, I believed,
used the word " probation " at all, nor had I in the least attempted
to theorize on the particular methods by which God's mercy might be brought
home to erring souls. All that I had done was to show that the common teaching
about hell went to lengths 279 which were entirely unwarranted by Scripture,
and were not required to be believed by any faithful member of the Holy
Catholic Church.
The controversy has many aspects, and in my
" Mercy and Judgment " I have touched on several of them. In that
book I have approached the question from various points of view, and I must be
content to refer to the arguments there adduced.
Historically I claim to have proved absolutely
in that work that many Fathers, Schoolmen, and Divines, in all ages of the
Church, have used language which involves broader and more merciful conclusions
than those which have ordinarily been taught. Without once more summoning that
" cloud of witnesses " it is sufficient to state that, by the
admission of St. Augustine himself, " Some, nay very many,"
(nonnulli, immo quam plurimi) in his day, did not believe in endless torments;
and that no less a person than St. Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of the great
St. Basil, the probable incorporator of the additional clauses into the Nicene
Creed, the pillar of orthodoxy in his day, and a canonized saint, openly and
undisguised]y expressed opinions which can only be interpreted to imply
Universalism, and that St. Gregory of Nazianzen, the only Father or teacher to
whom, except to the apostle St. John, has been accorded the title of " The
Theologian," the president of the second great (Ecumenical Council, held
language of the same purport. Also that the current Protestant dogma was far
more intensely horrible than that of either the Western or the Eastern Church;
since the Western Church has accepted the mitigating doctrine of Purgatory, and
the Eastern Church attributes the same effects to "the Probatory
Fire." Also that "the endlessness of torments " is repudiated by
many of the greatest ancient and modern Rabbis as forming no article of the
Jewish belief, and therefore as not being, in their opinion, deducible from the
280 Old Testament writings. " The Eternity of Punishment," says Rabbi
B. Artom, Hallam of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, late Chief Rabbi of the
Sephardic congregation, " we consider to be thoroughly opposed to the will
of the Lord, the Father of Mercy."
Scripturally it has been decisively proved
that the current dogma was deduced from isolated phrases, and that the
exorbitant inferences which have been extorted from those phrases ought to be
very largely modified by consideration of the context; by recognition of the
characteristics of Jewish metaphor; by observing that it does not by any means,
always or necessarily, connote endlessness; and, above all, by learning that
there are antinomies in Scripture on this question-concurrent lines of
revelation which point to varying conclusions, and of which the apparent
differences are not by us completely reconcilable. Let me, however, assure
those who adopt a miserable micro logical method in arguing this question, that
it can never be settled in this peddling, pelting way, by atomistic fragments
of Scripture texts. There is a light which is ever lighting every man that is
born into the world. There is a continuous teaching of man by God, in history
and in the development of human thought. The Reformers rightly fell back on
Scripture against the asserted infallibility of a corrupted church; but, as J.
Macleod Campbell said, " these three hundred years have taught us how
little unity and harmony a free appeal to the written Word would secure, and so
we are thrown back on the promise, ' And they shall all be taught of
God.'"
There are many prima facie but untenable
inferences from this or that passage of Scripture, which must be corrected by
an appeal to its general scope and tenor, and above all by a more adequate
conception of Christ's advocacy and Christ's propitiation. "
Perhaps," says Bishop Wordworth of St. Andrew's, "a careful study of
the Gospels and Epistles teaches one to think that there are, if I may so say,
two parallel lines of revelation, which can never meet in this world, but will
meet, as we humbly trust, in the world to come. But anyone who reflects what the
everlastingness of future punishment really means, and who feels the moral
difficulty of believing it, and the need of caution and consideration in laying
it clown, may be allowed to plead earnestly that, whatever be our own opinion
of it, it should not be rudely flaunted as a point of faith in the eyes of men
who are strangers to the entire code of Christian doctrine, and who will look
upon it, not as a part of a great system, but as an isolated tenet of
unspeakable horror."
I hold, as firmly as any human being can do,
the existence of a great law of retribution which is part of God's scheme for
the education of man; but I am taught by Scripture, and by the Church, to
proclaim that God loved us while we were yet sinners, and that even unto death
he yearns to welcome his repentant prodigals. Neither Scripture nor the Church
warrants me in the assertion that the accident of death turns God's unbounded
compassion and. forgiveness into implacable hatred and inconceivable cruelty
and wrath. The eternal fact of a natural horror repudiates the hopelessness
with which man's terror and superstition have shrouded the life to come. We say
with George Fox, "And I saw that there was an Ocean of Darkness and Death,
but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness; and
in that I saw the Infinite Love of God." It is not in virtue of our
irreligion or our disbelief, but in virtue of all that is noblest and most
Christlike in our human nature, and all that is deepest in our faith, and all that
is strongest in our hope, that we refuse to believe of God that which would be
evil in men. When we contemplate the hour of death and the day of judgment we
can use the language of the Psalmist: " Will the Lord cast off for ever?
Will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? Doth his
promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? and hath he in
anger shut up his tender mercies? And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will
remember the years of the right hand. of the Most High."
The age to come and the world to come.
Christ's teachings concerning the first, and his silence concerning the second.
By Rev. T. W. Bowls, MA , Rector of Islip,
Oxford, England.
IT is sometimes said, and perhaps more often
hoped, that the received doctrine concerning the future life, in other words,
heaven and hell, is yielding to the influences of humanity, and to the growth
of a kindlier spirit, and so is taking a silent departure from the beliefs of
man. This may very probably be true, but it involves the Christian religion in
a serious, not to say mortal, danger. For Christianity maintains its hold upon
the mass of men through the life, the character, and the teaching of Christ, as
presented to us in the gospels; and of these three the last, namely, his
teaching, has a special evidential value, because it can, more easily than the
other two, be tested by the intelligence and moral judgment of those to whose
acceptance it is submitted. If, then, men resolve to reject the received
doctrine as contrary to justice, to reason, and the love of God, and if, as
they very well may, they come to the conclusion that all dogmas concerning an
unknown and inconceivable future are only productive of embarrassment and
delusion, then there will emerge a plain contradiction on a vital point between
the teaching of Christ, as commonly received, and the best and final thoughts
of man concerning himself and his destiny. The belief that Christ taught the
popular doctrine, together with the certain fact that Christianity has
promulgated it in his name, will prove, as indeed it always has clone, a
stumbling-block over which the best spirits, otherwise drawn to Christ, will be
sure to fall.
It is of no use, in such a crisis as this, to
resort to a nice interpretation of his recorded language, in order to raise
plausible doubts as to his exact meaning, or to mitigate some of its more
glaring harshness. By so doing, we only compromise his character as a teacher
more gravely than ever, and lay ourselves open to a charge of dishonesty-for
there is nothing that honest people dislike more than " explaining
away." And if Christ intended to make an authoritative revelation about
the future life, if that were the principal object of his thoughts, then we
ought to admit boldly, because men will say it whether we like it or not, that
he should not have spoken on such serious and difficult subjects in vague and
obscure language, calculated to leave the mind in doubt and misapprehension. It
will be said, and with justice, that if he had nothing clear, precise, and,
above all, true, to disclose, he ought never to have spoken at all.
And this is the plain truth of the case-HE HAS
NOT SPOKEN AT ALL. All our errors and difficulties have come just of this: That
we have attributed to him declarations concerning the future life, when he was
thinking and speaking of something else. How to bring this statement home to
the reader's mind in the limits of a brief essay, or how, even, to touch upon
the many serious considerations involved in it, is, I am painfully aware, an
almost impossible undertaking; however, we will start from the well-known
crucial passage, which brings the whole subject dramatically and positively 287
before our minds. In the parable of The Sheep and the Goats (Matt., 25), our
Lord, seated upon the judgment throne, summons before him all nations, awarding
to some eternal life, to others eternal punishment, the test being whether they
have or have not performed deeds of mercy and kindness. Now, were the persons
thus described supposed by him to have died bodily and risen again, or not? If
the former, then it is not easy to imagine how words could be chosen to affirm
more decisively the received doctrine of a division into two classes, the
eternally lost and the eternally saved. Attempts to evade the plain meaning of
the words used, more especially when they are perhaps only a translation of
what he said, may possibly succeed in making his meaning unintelligible and
inconsistent, but at what a cost to his authority as a divine teacher! But if
the second alternative be true, i.e., that our Lord was contemplating human
beings in their relation to him under present mundane conditions, then the
parable ceases to concern the future life at all, and becomes, as a very
cursory examination shows that it must be, a description of our Lord's
Messianic kingdom, which began with his resurrection, and exists now as
Christian civilization. The punishment describes the condition of those (with a
special reference to the Jews of that time) who, whether as nations or
individuals, are for their own fault excluded from the blessedness of the
Christian religion; the reward is the realization in all its fullness of the
Christian life.
This, then, raises very clearly the question
we have to discuss: Did our Lord contemplate here and elsewhere the
establishment of the Messianic kingdom, or the state of rewards and punishments
in a future life? In the popular theology of the day, both ideas-one derived
from the Old Testament, the other from Persian or oriental sources-were
combined together, and embodied in a number of phrases, which teachers who
wished to address the people in language familiar to them must of necessity
employ. Now, their use in the New Testament is a question for criticism to
decide, and I shall make bold to affirm that a very small expenditure of the labour
and acumen, now at the disposal of criticism, would speedily set the matter at
rest forever. No doubt the union of two incongruous ideas in the same
phraseology presents some difficulties, nor is it always easy to decide how far
the language is to be taken metaphorically. To this must be added a plentiful
crop of corrupt readings, incorrect translations, and false traditional
interpretations, which, growing up under the shelter of the popular theology,
have given it a fictitious support, and have greatly delayed the day of
exposure and overthrow. But to any critical mind, nay even to the ordinary
reader, our Lord's language, when once it is clearly put before him, vindicates
for itself, as, if he be the Light of the World, it needs must, a meaning quite
simple, natural, and consistent with itself. From the corrupt eschatological
influences which were perverting the national religion, and bringing swift and
terrible ruin upon the Jewish people, our Lord's teaching could and did escape,
though it was obliged to use the popular language and to that extent was
influenced by it.
It would be difficult to lay before the reader
even a bare outline of the argument for the Messianic interpretation, were it
not for the existence of one remarkable phrase which affords a key to the
problem. In our Lord's time, the periods before and after the coming of Messiah
were called the then present Jewish and the future Messianic ages,
respectively. Now, our Lord used these words frequently in their acknowledged
meaning, speaking also of the conclusion of the then age as a time of judgment
upon the Jews, before the Messianic period could be established. But this is
the point at which, by a fatal error, the whole scope of his teaching is
perverted, and an eschatological meaning substituted for the Messianic.
Translate the words meaning " conclusion of the age " by the
expression " end of the world," and the mischief is done. In spite of
the plain sense of a common Greek word, in spite of the phrase having a well
understood, almost technical, meaning, the Revised Translation has not been
able to free itself from the incubus of traditional error, backed up by
theological prepossessions, but has been content to remit the truth to the
margin, there to maintain a precarious existence as best it may. An example of
the erroneous impression thus conveyed may be found in the words of our Lord
(Matt., 12: 30), " it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world
(i.e., age), neither in the world to come," where the contrast is not
between two different worlds, but between two different dispensations, in
neither of which was pardon -possible for wilful obstinacy.
But a
worse example is to be found in the parable of The Tares (Matt., 13: 39), in
which he is made to describe the approaching harvest as the "end of the
world" (as though the harvest could possibly be in any sense the end of
the field!), instead of the conclusion or winding up of the age, i.e., the
Jewish dispensation represented by the crop of wheat and tares then existing
upon the earth and ripe for judgment. A candid reader would indeed soon
convince himself that coming events pertaining to the setting up of Messiah's
rule on earth (how wonderfully fulfilled we know!) occupied his mind, to the
exclusion of dogmas concerning the world to come. A few words may be added, to
set the mind that cares to know the truth, upon the right track:- From the time
that our Lord commenced his public ministry by the proclamation, "the
kingdom of heaven is at hand," down to that supreme moment when he closed
it by the solemn warning to his judges, "henceforth (i.e., from this
moment) ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the throne of power and coming
in the clouds of heaven," he seems to have had the one specific object in
view of announcing himself as the Messiah, whose kingdom he proclaimed with
every special mark of time and place, that could give precision and vividness
to his words. This truth he expounded in parables as simple and easy as can be
imagined, if we confine their application to that for which he intended them,
but dark and perplexed just in proportion as we read eschatology into them. One
of his most characteristic expressions, " being cast into a furnace of
fire where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," lends itself
very easily to an eschatological interpretation, till we remember that the time
is fixed as immediate by the phrase "conclusion of the age " (Matt.,
13: 42); the pace, Jerusalem, is suggested in Luke 13: 28, 34; and the
fulfillment of the doom definitely connected with the destruction of the Jewish
nation foretold in Matt. 24. and again in chapter 25 (sec verse 30), the two chapters
being joined together by the word " then '' in chapter 25: 1.
It
was, indeed, because the popular mind was blinded by eschatological
prepossessions, that our Lord failed to gain their attention .to those signs of
the times that were so rapidly closing in upon them, and strove in vain to call
them away from dreams of the future to the terrible realities of the present.
There are a few inure illustrations, showing what was in his mind:- The general
expression, " the kingdom of heaven is at hand," was enforced by the
plainest statements as to time and place. "Verily I say unto you, ye shall
not have gone through the cities of Israel till the Son of man be conic "
(Matt., 10: 23). "There be some of them that stand here which shall in no
wise taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom "
(Matt., 16: 28). "Verily I say unto you this generation shall not pass
away till all these things be accomplished " (Matt., 24: 34). The
punishment to be inflicted, both upon the nation that rejected him, and the
individual servants who were unfaithful to him, was described as being cast
into Gehenna, a. symbol of absolute destruction, explained in John (who
naturally did not use the popular phrases) as "ye shall die in your
sins." In one ease, however, as if to show how purely figurative the
language was, " Hades," as the symbol of nothingness, was employed,
as when he said of Capernaum, in the clay of judgment "thou shalt go down
into Hades." It is upon the establishment of this kingdom, upon the relation
of Pharisees and sinners, or of Jews and Gentiles, or of good and bad
disciples, towards it, that the parables turn, all of them pointing to
something that was coming to pass immediately. The parable of The Pounds, for
instance, is a plain and. exhaustive prophecy of the coming Messianic rule, the
judgment upon his servants who had received the money in trust being carefully distinguished
from that upon His enemies, the Jews, who " would not thud .1 should reign
over them," and therefore were slain before his lace (Luke, 19: 27). The
parables, therefore, are the revelation of the will of God towards men and
nations in respect of their relations to the Messianic, kingdom, called by us
Christianity, and men will discern their profound moral significance exactly as
they free themselves from that application of their meaning to the conditions
of a future life, which we have inherited from corrupt Judaism.
There is then an overwhelming hotly of
evidence to show that our Lord was thinking and speaking of the Messianic
kingdom upon earth; what is there to show that he was thinking of the future
life as well? That lie should exclude it from his teaching altogether is hardly
possible for the Victor over death and Hades; on the other hand, it is equally impossible
that, if he had intended to convey precise and definite ideas about it, he
should not have used plain and unmistakable language. The silence of Christ is
really marvellous. When pressed by the Sadducees with their foolish question
about marriage, lie gives them a brief answer, just sufficient to meet the case
propounded, and even in this, by the use of the word " that" age, he
distinguishes the future life from the coming Messianic age about which alone
he had a commission to speak. The parable of Dives and Lazarus can only be
taken for a revelation of the future life, by turning a parable into a history;
it is rather the use of Jewish popular mythology to depict the state of various
classes of the people, or of the whole people, as contrasted with the heathen,
when Christ's kingdom should be set up on judgment. Lazarus is just as much a
real man as the sower or the steward; Hades (not Gehenna, be it remembered) is
just as much a figure as the vineyard or the harvest field.
There are, however, just two instances in
which our Lord's teaching passed for a brief moment, and for a single step,
beyond the verge of death and the grave. To the penitent thief he promised
Paradise that night with himself, and to the disciples-with per haps a special
reference to Judas-who might be tempted to betray their trust for fear of
death, he addressed this warning, "Fear him, which after he hath killed
hath power to cast into Gehenna " (Luke, 12: 5), with which may be
compared. Matt. 10: 28, where the idea of absolute destruction is more clearly
brought out. Now, without dwelling on the well-known difficulty in this last
passage, as to whether God. or the Evil Spirit is intended by it, but taking
the two merely as they stand, it comes to nothing more than this: that our
Lord, upon two occasions, for a special purpose, indicated that the
consequences both of penitence and of treachery worked themselves out in a
future life. He used two common popular phrases, one of which points to
destruction rather than to punishment (can there be existence of any sort in
Gehenna?), and he added no word of his own to clear up the meaning of the
figures he employed. Any Jewish rabbi would have used just the same terms,
though he would have applied them to very different persons. Does this look as
though our Lord thought it desirable, or possible, to give definite and useful
information about the conditions of the future life?
Such, then, is the foundation for the gigantic
superstructure that has for centuries overawed the minds of men, and even now
hangs over Christendom as unsubstantial in itself as a cloud, but like a cloud
capable of darkening the ways and appalling the spirits of the human beings who
go about in that dread. of the possible wrath of God, which so soon passes into
rebellion against the superstitions by which they have been deceived, and
against the religion which has adopted them as its own, and too often grown
powerful and domineering by means of them. Yet the case is as I have stated it,
and-for the matter is too serious for hesitating humility-have elsewhere
abundantly proved. What remains is to deal with difficulties of an a priori
character, which so naturally occur when any revolution in opinion is proposed,
and men are asked to think differently from what they have done upon serious
religious questions. Such are, amongst others, the reasons of our Lord's
silence, the source of the common mistake about his teaching, the effects upon
Christianity and upon the evidence for its truth; upon all of which it is only
possible to offer on the present occasion a few suggestions.
We might state the matter thus: Although the
meaning of our Lord's doctrine must be discovered in the first place by
critical examination of his recorded words, without any prejudice as to what we
ourselves should prefer, yet when once fair cause has been shown for placing a
new interpretation upon them, then it becomes matter for further inquiry
whether the new or the old be more consistent with the character of the Teacher
himself, with the nature of the religion out of which the teaching grew, with
the needs and beliefs of those to whom it was addressed, or for whose benefit
it was-designed. From this category, however, it is necessary to exclude
expressly the sentiments, however natural and reasonable, which revolt against
the older view, because men deem it inconsistent with the divine attributes of
mercy and justice. We may not take Christ's teaching for a special revelation
of the will of God, and then reject any part of it which may chance to seem
wrong to us: to do so is to fall under that suspicion of unfairness which men
so strongly resent. The protest of outraged humanity affords both reason and
motive for raising a critical inquiry into the true import of his teaching,
just as a sense of wrong provokes an appeal to courts of law; and it is,
moreover, quite a sufficient excuse for rejecting the religion which contains
doctrines abhorrent from the point of reason and humanity. But criticism is
prejudiced exactly in proportion as it is influenced by appeals, however well
meant, to feelings, however respectable. It is the certain conviction, founded
on criticism, that Christ never taught the common doctrine of the future life,
that enables us to proceed to inquire next, whether, taking all circumstances
into account, this is not far more probable than the other alternative.
Consider, first, the character of the Teacher
himself. Was Jesus Christ, being such as we suppose him to be, more or less
likely than not to have discoursed on the conditions of the future life? Now
294 it is essential-so all are agreed-to his hold upon our affections and
confidence, that he should be perfectly human, that is, should fulfill all the
conditions implied in his own designation of himself as the Son of man. Now, before
we as men can describe actual states or conditions, we must know them, and. to
know them they must be presented to consciousness in experience: whatever may
be true about ideas, objective things must be understood by objective means.
Information as to the future life is impossible to man, and therefore to Christ
if he be "very man," for all purposes of human conduct and teaching:
the words that purport to convey it can have no real meaning when applied to an
absolutely unknown sphere. The future, on the other hand, of the Messianic
kingdom, so far at any rate as concerns its establishment in the next forty
years, lay plain before him, drawn from innumerable sources both within and
without, though even here he expressly disclaims knowledge of details that
could only become known by time and experience. " Of that day and hour
knows no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father
only." Is it credible that he who could not reveal to the disciples, who
were so deeply interested in knowing, the time of rapidly approaching events,
should nevertheless be able to reveal the exact conditions of another world? Is
it not rather certain that he was silent on both topics because knowledge could
only be gained by experience?
Again, if be knew the mysteries of eternity,
why did he not speak more plainly? Why use figurative popular phrases when one
clear, undisputed sentence of his own would have settled the matter at once,-"
There is a place of endless happiness and another of endless torment after
death, and I am come to save mankind for one and from the other." Surely,
the matter is too serious to be left quite as he left it, nor does his
language, if he knew more, betray that candour and openness which are
distinctive marks of perfect teaching. Why, again, occupy himself with the fall
of a city, if the eternal destiny of myriads of human beings were present to
his mind and hung suspended upon his words? If, on the other hand, the fall of
a city were a type, for all ages to come, of God's dealings with mankind, in
this sphere of preparation and probation, then its importance is abundantly
justified. The Messiah speaks of Messianic things.
Consider next the nature of the dispensation
which prepared the way for Christ's advent and which he expressly came to
"
Nov, it is part-indeed an essential part-of
the case, for the truth of the Christian revelation, that it did not, as it
were, spring into the world full-armed, but that the Jews had been called and
set apart, so that Messiah, when he appeared, might come to his own, might find
a place in history prepared for him, might claim for himself that he was
fulfilling the law and the prophets. Now, it is certain that the Jewish
religion, down to the captivity, contained no teaching concerning the
conditions of the life to come, and no theory of rewards and punishments. The
stress of this fact is so strong, that people are apt to grow angry when it is
pointed out; but they must really bear to be told that God's chosen people did
as a matter of fact worship, and preach, and repent, and serve God, with no more
than a doubtful allusion in their sacred books to the possibility of a life to
come. And it is equally certain that, as the national inspiration ceased,
foreign eschatology entered in under the influence of the Paganism to which
they were subjected: in language, feeling, and temper, the Rabbinical teaching
of our Lord's time was purely Pagan, except so far as it was modified by the
Messianic tradition, which was their unique characteristic possession and
prerogative. So that the alternative is reduced to this: Did the Messiah
foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures adopt their spirit and their silence,
or did he restate, with all the sanction of his divine authority, the Pagan
doctrines from which the nation had been set solemnly apart? If it be contended
that the absence of a belief in immortality was an imperfection in Judaism
which he came to correct, in this, as in other respects, the answer is that he
did this not by supplementing the Old. Testament from heathen mythology, but by
bringing the fact of life after death within experience by his resurrection
from the dead.
This contrast between Holy Scripture and other
religions, in respect of the doctrine of a future life, is of special
importance at this particular moment, when the study of comparative religion is
making known to us the analogies between Christianity and other systems, and
tracing so much of it back to the instincts and experiences of mankind. Now, in
respect of all that is good, reasonable, and natural, such analogies are to be
heartily welcomed, because they go to establish a general harmony with the
course and constitution of nature, of whose author Christianity claims to
declare the will and reveal the methods. But then this process, the further it
goes, inevitably forces upon us the difficulty, which as a matter of fact
weighs heavily upon the mind, whether there is any specific difference between
the Christian and other religions, which entitles it to be called true in a
sense in which the others are not. Does any part of it look as if it came from
another than human source, or betray tokens of a divine origin?
In answer to this, let us assert the
uniqueness of the Bible in that it, and it alone, has escaped from those
eschatological speculations which carry upon their face a purely human
parentage, and have exercised so potent an influence, for good and for evil,
upon the history of man. For eschatology is nothing more than a survival of
beliefs and passions from primitive times, purified by an ardent moral endeavour
against vice and on behalf of righteousness, and so lingering on as part of the
inherited beliefs of man concerning his eternal future. In its effects it may
now be pronounced anti-human and anti-social, because it draws away the minds
of its votaries from what may be realized and achieved here upon earth, and
fixes attention upon the salvation of the individual, rather than the
redemption of the community-two capital defects according to the modern way of
thinking. Now, from all this, the Bible stands aloof, and so Christianity, if
it is to be faithful to its own Founder and its own books, will decline to
speculate about matters whereof knowledge is impossible, or to give names for
places in an unexplored territory, or to administer the laws of an unknown 207
country. Take eschatology away from other religions, and you strike at a vital
part; take it from Christianity, and you remove an unnatural and disfiguring
growth. Destroy the belief in Nirvana or Paradise, and Buddhism or Mahomedans
lose much of their raison d'ętre and of their religious attractiveness. Destroy
the belief in heaven (as a place of happiness in contrast with hell), and you
do but replace it with the Messianic kingdom of righteousness, joy, and. peace
upon earth, without depriving the Christian spirit of one legitimate hope of a
life to come, with which the instinct of immortality touched by the
resurrection of Christ has endowed it.
Seeing, then, that our Lord was silent upon
the conditions of the future life, it follows that the subject should be left
an open question, free from all dogmatic prepossession whatever. Now this
amounts to a revolution in religious thinking, as complete as can well be
imagined, the precise tendency of which may well arouse intense interest in our
minds. Perhaps it may be best described as a return to naturalness in the
sphere of religion, or, more correctly, as the establishment of analogy with
the higher as opposed to the lower nature. Eschatology can indeed claim kinship
with nature, but it is with the nature of primitive man, undisciplined,
selfish, the slave of appearances, the victim of superstitions. Hence it is
that the higher forms of eschatology, e. g., Buddhism, are but the reaction
from the evils of earlier times, from which man feels he must escape somehow;
and so, projecting the experiences of the present life into the next (the
essence and the error of all eschatology), he comes to the conclusion that it
is better not to be, than to exist amid the strife and confusion which mark and
attend the struggle for existence. The Bible, on the other hand,-for so by its
silence it allows us to claim for it,-is in analogy with the best thinking of
men about themselves, that is to say, with the results of philosophical
inquiry, so far as they have been accepted as true. A few illustrations of this
far-reaching truth will fittingly conclude our subject.
In the first place, it is getting to be
understood that good cannot be promoted, nor evil extirpated, by rewards and
punishments inflicted by external authority. The power of law, as St. Paul
proclaimed, is limited; it is political rather than moral; its office is to
preserve society from harm, rather than to save souls from sin. Now, the
received doctrine is merely the application of law, that is, the fear of
punishment and the hope of reward, to induce men to be good, and therefore it
is doomed to failure that grows more marked with every step in man's moral
advancement, and at every successful vindication of his higher nature. We may
indeed cheerfully admit that much good has resulted, in past times, from the
experiment of trying to control conduct by a future state of happiness or
misery; it was in the nature of things inevitable, and the belief itself has
lasted so long, and prevailed so widely, just because it expressed the
unselfish antagonism to evil, and zeal for righteousness at all costs, which
constitute man's highest moral achievement. But for artificial and outwardly
inflicted penalties, must now be substituted the spiritual idea of good and
evil working out their own eternal results, and, further, as being
distinguished from each other in the same character, rather than as separating
man from man or class from class. The moral continuance of man, meaning thereby
that justice will be wrought not by intervention but by consequence, brings
religion into harmony with the highest truths that the human intelligence has
so far attained, while freedom from unsubstantial speculation will leave the
way open for an outlook upon the future inspired by deep spiritual intuitions,
and full of practical helpfulness in the increasing struggle for personal
existence. And, at the least, men will cease to have their reason perplexed by
propositions concerning the unknowable, their sense of justice tormented by the
material notion of endlessness, their freedom overawed by superstitious terror,
their instinct of development and expansion thwarted by a stereotyped state of
illusory bliss or imaginary woe.
Consider next the silence of Christ in its
relation to the growing consciousness of the worth and importance of humanity,
of the essential unity which binds the
race into one organic whole, of the increasing purpose which links age with age
and man with man. The very sense of humour, itself one of our highest gifts,
which in former clays found vent for its instinctive protest against the
popular creed by associating with it all kinds of ludicrous notions, images,
fables and questions, has in later days turned aside with ironical disdain from
the futile attempt to sum up the eternal destiny of man under the conceptions
of an outworn Paganism. Thus it is quite possible to give to the moral aspect
of the future life far too exclusive a place in our thoughts concerning it.
There are more things in life, whether here or hereafter, than rewards and
punishments, nor is religion conterminous with morality, even when touched by
emotion. If, according to the famous saying, conduct is three-fourths of life,
then it follows, not that religion is also three-fourths of life, but that
conduct is three-fourths of religion. For Christianity is all life and all
nature viewed in relation to the Creating and Redeeming God, and the higher we
come to think of man, the more certain we shall be that he belongs not to
himself but to God, and that the future life subserves other purposes besides
that of meting out to conduct its clue reward. It is a sure sign of feebleness
in religious thinking, when it is made to turn exclusively upon the wants, the
objects, or the destinies of the creature, rather than upon the will, the
purpose, and the glory of the Creator, who may surely be supposed to have
designs for the future of the human race (as part of a universal law or system
of things), far transcending our powers of even guessing at. But if we must
needs occupy ourselves with the doctrine of the life to come, then what we
require is to be left alone, and unfettered by dogma, so as to allow nature,
through which God works, to shape, in the absence of revelation, our opinions,
as surely as it will ultimately shape our destiny.
Another deeply interesting result of modern
thinking is that of progress by evolution rather than by catastrophe. Now,
eschatology, like all primitive thinking, tends to be catastrophic: it delights
18 300 in sudden overwhelming changes: it is always at root an exaggeration of
some one condition, or set of conditions, to the exclusion of others. Thus
sensuous pleasure, intellectual rapture, the triumph of good over evil, rest
from the pain of existence though bought at the cost of annihilation, in turn
play their part upon the scene, so fanciful, so humorous, such a mixture of
honest moral endeavour and idle untutored imagination. Now, in opposition to
all this moral and intellectual waste, the silence and self-restraint of the
Bible concentrate the forces of religion upon the task of establishing upon
earth a heavenly kingdom, that is, of reducing the world to that state and
order which may be supposed to represent the ideal residing in the creating
mind, and realized, as the word heaven indicates, elsewhere in the universe of
God. And if this be so, then the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, or the
rule of Christ, here, is the best preparation for life hereafter; and for each
man to take part in bringing that result about is the surest way of attaining
whatever " reward " life hereafter has in store for us.
And thus we gain an insight into the meaning
of spiritual immortality which will guide our conduct and strengthen our
resolution, and cheer our hearts, at least as much as the popular doctrine,
which is slowly and sadly dying before us, as old people die who have outlived
their strength and use. Immortality is the survival of that which has proved
itself fittest to do the will of God under temporal conditions, and is
therefore "selected" to work out the same will in the life eternal.
Nor does Jesus Christ leave his people in doubt as to what the " fittest
" is; for it is the sacrifice of self that rises from the dead, and tells
us almost in the act of doing so-" Where I am, there shall also my servant
be."
Punishment is not the great aim or design, but
an incident, of god's moral government; yet it is so important, that the
doctrine concerning hell is fundamental in Methodist teaching.
By
Rev. C. H. FOWLER, D.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
METHODISM holds nine fundamental doctrines,
viz.: concerning God, moral government, free agency, sin, atonement,
resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell. These doctrines are woven into a
harmonious system. They are so related that no one of them can be eliminated
without mutilating all the others. Thus, while punishment is not the great aim
or design, it is an incident, of the moral government; and it is so necessary a
part of the system that the doctrine concerning hell is fundamental in
Methodist teaching. A clear and comprehensive statement of eschatology removes
very many of the difficulties supposed to embarrass the doctrine concerning
hell, and makes the statement of the argument simple and satisfactory.
There is some confusion in the public mind
concerning what is really taught in the Scripture on this subject. Many of the
distinctions there observed and maintained are often omitted in the popular
conceptions on this subject. Hell is understood to be a place of everlasting
torment, where the lost are exposed to the horrors of literal fire and
brimstone for unending ages.
This conception distorts the belief of
Methodism on this theme, by holding to the literal flames. It overlooks, also,
all the conditions of the intermediate world and gathers the substance of its
faith from the fate of the damned after the judgment. This popular conception
of hell, freed from the " physical flames," very forcibly represents
the ultimate retribution that shall come to the finally impenitent.
The teaching of the Bible on this subject, as
we understand it, is substantially this, namely, at death the soul is separated
from the body and enters into Hades, the receptacle of disembodied spirits,
whether good or bad. Hades contains both classes. The good are in the Paradise
of Hades, or in Abraham's Bosom, and the bad are in Hades, or the Tartarus of
Hades. After the experiments of probation are finished with the human race, and
tithe is ended, comes the resurrection of the dead, when all spirits shall be
called out of Hades, and all bodies out of the grave (" the sea and the
earth give up their dead'') and these spirits and bodies, being reunited, shall
be judged at the general judgment, according to the deeds done in the body.
After this judgment, the righteous with their
resurrection bodies are received into heaven, the final and eternal home of the
blessed, and the wicked are cast into Gehenna, or hell, into everlasting
punishment. Hales ceases at the judgment. Heaven and Gehenna begin after the judgment.
In corroboration of these views, it is
important to remember that the word hades occurs eleven times in the New
Testament and is translated ten times as hell and once as grave, and in no
single case does it embrace the idea of a receptacle for bodies. It is simply a
receptacle for disembodied spirits.
Hades is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew
word sheol of the Old Testament. Sheet occurs sixty-five times, and is
rendered, in English, thirty-one times, hell, and thirty-one times, grave, and
three times, pit, but in the Septuagint it is rendered, with two exceptions, hades,
and this meaning, receptacle for the dead, is its proper equivalent. If the Old
Testament writers had meant the grave they would have used kehber, had they
meant pit they would have used Bohr, but they meant receptacle for the dead and
used sheol.
Gehenna occurs twelve times in the New
Testament, and all but once, where it is exceedingly figurative (James, 3: 6),
is used by our Lord and refers to the doom of the wicked after some judgment or
sentence. With this brief eschatological map before us, we are prepared to
arrange and classify the facts involved.
It is not possible to project so profound and
agonizing a fact as eternal retribution into the thought of mortals without
awakening every possible antagonism. Sinners pressed with a sense of guilt, and
stirred with enmity against God, will not confront such a horrible possibility
without seeking every conceivable reason for rejecting it. Instead of being
surprised by these objections, let us consider them briefly, and estimate their
full value.
It seems hardly necessary to state that these
questions can be finally settled on no other ground than the Word of God. Human
speculations concerning the subject are unable to penetrate the future. Plato,
who stands as the foremost representative of mere human struggling for light on
the future, dies, saying, " Such is my view, since you wish to know it,
but whether it be true or not the 806 gods only can say." Tacitus said,
" What torments us is not the tempest but the nausea." And Pliny prayed,
" Give me new consolation, great and strong, of which I have never heard
or read. All that I have heard or read comes back to my memory, dud my sorrow
is too great." Cicero said, " The philosophers of the Academy affirm
nothing, they despair of arriving at any certain knowledge." Seneca
wailed, " No man is able to clear himself, let someone give him a helping
hand." If anyone doubts what these confessions purport, the helplessness
of humanity without this "helping hand," let him undertake for himself
to answer the questions of the future without reference to the Scriptures. It
will not require many experiments to establish the need of divine help in this
big problem. Remembering, then, that the ultimate authority must be the Word of
God, we pause, before entering fully into the subject, to consider some of the
more serious difficulties in the way of the view we present.
Certain sensitive natures fill the atmosphere
with mist, that, like fog in the valley, distorts and exaggerates the real
figures to be measured. Canon Farrar exclaims, " Was there any human
being, worthy of the dignity of a human being, who did not revolt and sicken at
the notion of a world of worm and flame? " This is fine, though excessive,
rhetoric. It is the declamation of a nervous orator. One sensitive nature cries
out against the punishment of the guilty on account of pity for his sufferings,
but all forgetful of the sufferings of his victims, or of the truth crucified
by the sufferer's malice. Let us not discredit any human sympathy, nor lower
the price of any human compassion; but let us be careful not to exalt it to a
sphere where its exercise is cruelty and its triumph is torture. Doubtless
Canon Farrar expressed his sentiment when he cried out against the doctrine of
hell, and sickened " at the notion of a world of worm and flame." But
when it is reduced to a question of sentiment we appeal to another great
Teacher, who had the;307 only perfect nature ever found in the race; was the
only perfect flower that ever unfolded on the stock of humanity; who had the
most profound sympathy for suffering that the world ever saw; whose sentiment
was not. a fine saying, but was perfected in the dust of the highway, where the
leper and the harlot cried for help, where beggars and cripples thronged the
path. It is to this Teacher we appeal. He has no conception of offending the
delicate taste of a lost world. He never hesitates, as if it were of doubtful
expediency to warn of danger, or of doubtful taste to describe the terrors of
the broken law. He cannot get through his speeches to the race, without crying
into the ears of all the generations his warnings about being " cast into
hell," about the final sentence of the Judge,-" Depart from me, ye
that work iniquity, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels." Contrast the statements of these teachers:- Jesus. "It is
better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands, to go into
hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dies not,
and the fire is not quenched." (Repeated three times.)
Farrar.
"Was there any human being worthy of the dignity of a human being who did
not revolt and sicken at the notion of a world of worm and flame? "
It is not difficult to choose between these
two teachers. One easily becomes wise above what is written. Surely the
disciple is not above his Lord.
While we have profound regard for the great
host of saints who are working mightily for God in spite of this error, we can
find no term to express the revolt of our souls against this barbarism that
buries human liberty and accountability with the moral government and divine
character in one grave, and seals it with the wrath of an infinite monster,
while every intelligence in the universe utters its hatred against such
injustice. Mr. Beecher is not far from the 30S truth when he cries out: "
If, now, you tell me that this great mass of men, because they had not the
knowledge of God, went to heaven, I say, that the inroad of such a vast amount
of mud swept into heaven would be destructive of its purity, and I cannot
accept this view. If, on the other hand, you say that they went to hell, then
you make an infidel of me, for I do swear by the Lord Jesus Christ, by his
groans, by his tears, and by the wounds in his hands and in his side, that I
will never let go of the truth that the nature of God is to suffer for others
rather than to make them suffer. . . . To tell me that back of Christ there is
a God who, for unnumbered centuries, has gone on creating men and sweeping them
like dead flies, nay, like living ones, into hell, is to ask me to worship a
being as much worse than the conception of any medieval devil as can be
imagined; but I will not worship the devil though he should come dressed in
royal robes and sit on the throne of Jehovah. I will not worship cruelty. I
will worship love."
To all this as hurled against Fatalism, we
say, " Amen." In the choice between Fatalism and Universalism we
could not take Fatalism. Universalism tears up the pavements of heaven for
materials with which to roof over hell, but Fatalism breaks up the pillars of
the eternal throne for weapons with which to mangle and mutilate the Eternal
King.
The Bible avoids all these evils by giving
every man a fair chance, in that it modifies the trial to meet the equities of
opportunities, requiring much where much was given, and accepting little where
little was intrusted.
Literalism mourns over material torments. This
is of value only to raise a dust out of this materiality. Few thoughtful men
hold to this " material. torment," though every thoughtful man must
confess inability to determine absolutely what the manner of being will be in
the next world. As mere figures of speech the material terms only intensify the
real case. We therefore accept the issue in a profounder character, the greater
containing the less.
This arrays the power of human fife against
divine administration. The touching tenderness of parental love is appealed to
with confidence to protest against the torments of the lost. This objection
deserves attention.
When a man says that he could not enjoy heaven
while other mortals were enduring the torments of the damned, he does not speak
advisedly. He does not so go down into the sorrow and woes of others here. Men
rot in jails and he never even visits them, but enjoys his liberty. Men are
to-clay awaiting the hangman's rope. This sensitive man, who turns away from
heaven with such a fine saying, can try his genuineness by insisting on being
hung with the next criminal. All this talk is the merest talk. It does not even
deceive the talker.
The case of the parent is more difficult, and
requires more thoughtfulness. " A father, knowing that his son was in hell
suffering the torments of the damned, could not be happy." The law of
relative affection comes in here, and relieves the difficulty. It is a
necessary law of the human heart, that, when two affections conflict, the
stronger overcomes the weaker. Suppose a case. You have a son and a friend, you
love each and trust each implicitly. Your friend is the joy of your social
hours. By and by, you learn that this friend has slandered and ruined the
character of your son -has done everything in his power to torment him. By the
law of relative affection you must turn against him. Your higher affection for
your son commands you, and you drive this man from your sights, if not out of
life.
Now, then, substitute a child in the place of
that friend, and Christ in the place of that son, and let it be made clear to
you, as it will be on the clay of judgment, when sentence is passed upon that
child, that he has been mocking and reviling and slandering Christ, your best
friend (for such he must be by the conditions of salvation), then you cannot
avoid withdrawing your affection for your child, even if that affection was
expected to outlive the purpose and use for which it was given, and even if it
were possible to love an unlovely thing.
Again, the charge that a loving parent could
not allow such torment to overtake a child, is void in the presence of the fact
that just such things do actually transpire in this life in the administration
of the good God. The flood came in wrath. Fire fell on the cities of the plain,
out of the home of the great Father. Famine in India made mothers eat their own
babes. All this goes on in the government of the good God. These are not facts
for orthodoxy any more than for scepticism. What is going on cannot be called
impossible. It is evidently absurd to strike out any Scripture truth or
statement simply because some one may be confused with it, or be unable to
comprehend it. Such a law would strike out every Bible doctrine and plunge the
race into infinite and dawn-less darkness.
It is objected that the appeal to a fear of
punishment is an unworthy motive. It is a sufficient answer to this that God
constantly appeals to this motive and tells us whom to fear,-" Fear him
who can destroy both soul and body in hell." He cries out to us, "
Flee from the wrath to come." This is based on the deepest philosophy. Not
the whole, but the sick, need a physician. The sense of peril must precede the
desire to escape it. God slays that he may make alive. He extorts the cry,
"I owe ten thousand talents and have nothing to pay "; then lie
freely forgives.
Men talk about their not being affected by the
fear of hell, and call it an alarm for the timid. We wish to affirm that,
nearly always, such talk is without foundation in fact. God sounds the alarm
bell in the camp of our fears, because he knows we have such fears. Any pretence
of courage that scoffs this action usually awaits the approach of death to
dispel its loftiness. Men rush on in selfishness, eager for gain or power, with
their ears full of the din of the mart or the shouts of triumph, and they do
not hear the voice of the Man of Sorrows calling them to life. But God explodes
a shell of damnation in their faces; they stop, think, turn toward Calvary,
gaze on him who is strong to deliver and mighty to save, repent, believe, and
are made new. They are arrested by the retributions of sin, and saved by the
magnetism and power of the cross.
It ought not to be omitted here that these
retributions are a necessary part of the argument in the control of men. Only a
small per cent. of men would ever repent if there was no peril in the path of
sin. There is a general conviction among men, that men cannot be trusted without
these restraints. When a man cuts loose from all idea of future accountability,
society brands him, the law refuses to believe him under oath. Without these
restraints, men follow the tide of their desires. The removal of the restraints
of future retribution is followed by the paralysis of religious power, by the
destruction of public morals and private virtues, and by the general decay of
society. Cicero, about fifty years before Christ, taught that sin is not to
receive future retributive punishment. This leaven corrupted the whole lump;
soon society was a moral cesspool. Men cried, " God is indifferent,"
and even the great fabric of the Roman empire went down in the mire. The
Prophet of Nazareth, warning of the damnation of hell, arrested this disintegration.
From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries Rome sold indulgences, and for
money took up divine retributions. Soon, immorality engulfed the Papal world.
Sin became too vile for record, and nothing saved the world but the
Reformation. In the reign of Charles II., of England, after the Restoration,
when the Puritans were subdued and philosophers professed to deliver men from
the fear of hell, the corruption of England rivalled that of Rome. Parliament
endowed the illegitimate children of the king and nearly a score of mistresses
who were honoured at court and pampered on the public treasury.
This is the law of human society. Cut away the
divinely appointed stays, and men drift to corruption. Few men are so elevated
as to shun temptation's allurements merely by their hatred of sin.
Montesquieu says, " Where the people hope
for heaven without fearing retribution, civil laws have no force." Lord
Bolingbroke said, " I Will not decide against the doctrine of future
rewards and punishments, on the principles of good policy." Take hell out
of the future, and you soon inaugurate it in the present. The profligate
Catullus comforted his mistress and himself with the hope that death ended all.
Socrates said, " If death be extinction, this will be good news to the
wicked." There is no mistaking the drift of this irresponsibility. Society
needs the shield of future retribution to save it from present destruction.
This motive finds its vindication in the fact that every great revival that has
actually reformed and saved men has commenced in a Christly presentation of the
future retributions of sin.
The " goodish " preaching that
substitutes development for regeneration, philosophy for the gospel, mere
consequences for retribution, and the ambiguous sentimentality for the clear
and burning words of Jesus, has yet to record its first great success in saving
men. With the Captain of our salvation leading us on, and warning sinners of
the unquenchable fire and of the undying worm, we come to the main question.
Having sufficiently cleared up these mists, to
see distinctly the forms that move before our eyes in this dread future, let us
examine in detail the terms in which the Scriptures handle this profound
subject. Hades and Gehenna, both rendered in English by the word hell, contain
the substance of the truth which we wish to apprehend. Hades is a receptacle of
all disembodied spirits, and endures from death to the resurrection and general
judgment. Gehenna is a receptacle for lost mortals after the general judgment.
If this distinction is maintained by the Scriptures, then the doctrine of
retribution is clearly before us. All classes of scholars agree in the
definition given of hales. Canon Farrar, in his Eternal Hope, says, "Hades
is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, as a place for both the bad and
the good. Weaver, Williamson, Austin, Ballou, and almost every prominent writer
on the subject, "among the liberalists," agree with all orthodox
authorities in this statement concerning hades. Dr. Whedon, John Wesley, Dr.
Hodge, Dr. Lange, Dr. Adam Clarke, unite with universal scholarship in the view
that hades is the receptacle of disembodied spirits good and bad. It remains
for us to examine its use in the New Testament.
Christ says (Matt., 16: 18), " Upon this
rock I will build my church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against
it." Gates represent the strength of the forces, as the point against
which attacks are directed and from which sorties are made; so this represents
the evil forces in the unseen world. In Luke 16: 22, 23 we read, " The
rich man also died and was buried, and in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in
torments." Whether this be parable or narrative, this much must be certain,
that Christ represented the condition of the disembodied soul in hades as in
suffering, and that, while the five brethren of Dives were still living on the
earth. On the day of Pentecost, Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, quoted the
words of David concerning Christ, "Because thou wilt not leave my soul in
hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Peter
used these words of David, " Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that
God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to
the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he seeing this before
spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hades,
neither his flesh did see corruption " (Acts, 2: 27, 30, 31). The soul was
in hades, the body in the grave, and, at the. resurrection of Christ, the body
came out of the grave, and the soul out of hades. Paul uses these words (1 Cor.,
15: 55), "O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"
Hades held the spirit, and death the body, and in the resurrection both were
vanquished. In Luke 10: 15 we read, " And thou, Capernaum, which are
exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust clown to Hades." The same is repeated
in substance in Matt. 11: 23. Hades, used figuratively, is a condition of
death.
Christ says (Rev., 1: 18), "I am he that
lived, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the
keys of hades and of death." Death and hades are frequently coupled
together, as given in Revelation 6: 8, " Behold a pale horse: and his name
that sat on him was Death, and Hades followed with him." First Death
killing the body: then Hades taking the spirit. And in Revelation 20:14, "
And Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire." This is the closing
paragraph of the description of the judgment, in which we see the great white
throne, the falling away of the earth and heaven, the rising of the dead, small
and great, the opening of the books, and the surroundings of the judgment, the
sea gives up the dead which were in it, and death and hades deliver up the dead
which were in them. Certainly, this Scripture sets forth that hades is the
receptacle of departed spirits, good and bad.
Gehenna. Concerning the origin and literal
meaning of this word there is no controversy. All agree that it is derived from
Hinnom, from the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, once the site of the
idolatrous worship; where idolaters burned their children as offerings to
Moloch. This is the most degraded idolatry known among men. King Josiah broke
up this idolatrous worship, so that no man should make his son or daughter pass
through fire unto Moloch. The Jews devoted this place to the basest purposes;
they cast into it the carcasses of dead beasts, made it the receptacle of the
offal of the city. It became so foul and pestiferous that it was necessary to
keep fires constantly burning there. The worst criminals were executed there.
This soon came to represent to the Jew everything that was loathsome and
terrible in vileness. Since long before the days of Christ it was regarded as
the emblem of the punishment of God's enemies, and the symbol of the perdition
awaiting the wicked after death. It is only necessary to collate the New
Testament passages where this word is used, to make its meaning clear.
The Jews believed in eternal punishment. Men
who reject this doctrine claim that the Jews picked up this belief from the
heathen, and hold that we are not any more obliged to believe this part of
their doctrine than any of the other errors into which they fell. But the point
we need to consider is simply this, that the Jews believed in eternal
punishment. It will be easy to see what impression Christ made on their minds
concerning this doctrine by his use of Gehenna, when he left the word to have
its full effect, without a single modification concerning it. If he allowed
them to believe, on the strength of his teaching, in eternal punishment, then it
becomes a serious question with us when we attempt to modify it. That the Jews
did believe in eternal punishment there is little ground for doubt. Josephus so
represents them, saying, " The souls of bad men are subject to eternal
punishment " (Wars of the Jews, ii., 8:14). Again, " They led the bad
to a gloomy, tempestuous cavern full of never-ending punishment " (Wars of
the Jews, ii., 8:10, 11). And the Targums present the same doctrine where the
" ungodly are judged and delivered into hell in eternal burning."
Christ says (Matt., 5: 22), " Whosoever
shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Gehenna." This cannot refer to
the literal valley, for punishment by burning was not practiced in the time of
Christ, and the offense was not one followed by that penalty, and Christ
distinguishes it from the offenses preceding, which were punished by the civil
law, saying, " But I say unto you," and Christ had no authority to
prescribe this penalty under the law literally. Neither could this be taken
nationally, for the punishments are individual, and not national, in character.
There was nothing in the destruction of the Jewish nation that corresponded to
the grades of punishment here mentioned, nor a judicial sentence that involved
it. It is a rule for personal conduct applicable through all time.
In Matthew 5: 29, 30, we have a long statement
in which Christ repeats these words, " And if thy right eye offend thee,
pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of
thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into Gehenna."
This is repeated of the right hand and of the right foot. And in Mark, where
this, passage also occurs, it is added, " than having two eyes to be cast
into Gehenna lire, where their worm dies not, and the fire is not
quenched." This fierce formula is repeated three times over. It places
going into Gehenna and entering into life as opposites, either excluding the
other; so we are precluded from regarding it as a penalty here, in this life; for
the sacrifice that removed the obstacles in the way of spiritual life here,
does not save from the very utmost punishment here, as is evinced by the death
of the martyrs. We cannot literalize the Gehenna, limiting it to the valley of
Hinnom, and not literalize the rest of the passage concerning the eye and the
hand and the foot.
In Matthew 10: 28, Christ gives us another
marked use of Gehenna, saying, " Fear not them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna." There seems no escape from this passage;
it is certainly some punishment that comes after death, for it is " after
he bath killed the body," for he says, in Luke 12: 5, " Fear him who
after he bath killed bath power to cast into Gehenna." It does not relieve
the case to say that by soul he meant animal life, for the passage would then
read, "Fear not them who kill the body and are not able to kill the animal
life,"-mere nonsense. And it is not thinkable that Christ should warn men
to fear God rather than men, unless there was reason for fearing him-unless the
reason given is a veritable reason and not a pretence.
When does Gehenna come into human experience?
We answer, after the judgment. In Matthew 5: 22, " But whosoever shall
say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Gehenna fire." Here Gehenna fire is
threatened as a doom, sentenced upon individual, spiritual sins.
In Matthew 5: 30, "And not that thy whole
body should be cast into Gehenna,"-a sentence executed; Matthew 18: 8,
" Everlasting fire." In Mark 9: 43, 44, this passage is continued and
Gehenna is defined, " Cast into Gehenna, into the fire that never 317
shall be quenched, where their worm dies not and the fire is not
quenched."
In Luke 12: 5, in an exhortation to his
friends, who were to be compelled to choose between offending earthly rulers,
with their tortures of the body, and God with his retributions, Christ says,
" Fear him which after he hath killed bath power to cast into Gehenna";
evidently after death, and as a sentence. Gehenna is defined, Mark 9: 43, as,
" Fire that never shall be quenched." This is equal to "
everlasting fire." This is the post-judgment fire of Matthew 25: 41,
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels." This "fire prepared for the devil and his angels
" is identical with the "lake of fire and brimstone where the beast
and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented clay and night for ever and
ever," and into which the devil was cast. Revelation 20: 14: This is the
"lake of fire "into which death and lodes, after the resurrection and
judgment, are cast. Revelation 20: 15: The "lake of fire " into which
"whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life " was cast.
Revelation 21:8: " Which is the second death." Here we stand in the
presence of " the lake of fire and brimstone," "everlasting
fire," "fire that never shall be quenched," "Gehenna."
It is beyond the resurrection and beyond the judgment., death and hades are
cast into it. There are no provisions for dying or rising, no change; it stands
with no ray of hope, with no glimmer of respite; it is the ultimate doom of sin
reached by God's revealed administration.
We now have before us the terms used to
describe the condition of the finally impenitent, and have sufficiently set
forth the terrible doom of the wicked. It remains for us to undertake some of
the other arguments supporting these conclusions.
4. The fact of sin. Mortals cannot doubt it.
5. The disintegrating character of sin is too
manifest in the history of society to require further proof or illustration.
6. The hardening power of sin. Conscience is
soon silenced. Crimes, whose very name once created alarm, are by and by
practiced with infernal delight. Men murder their fellows for the five
shillings their bodies will bring on the 'dissecting table.
4. Destruction, by courses of sin, of the Godward
faculties is too common for intelligent doubt. Men are not wanting who have
killed their sympathies to save their pennies from paupers and to extort their
clues from widows; then they kill their honour, then their integrity, then
their manhood, then their breadth, until, by and by, they are concentrated into
one all-dominating passion for gain, or for self, or for honour. Faith has been
neglected and trampled upon, till it lies among the passions, helpless as a
babe among wolves. Doubt has been cultivated as criticism and as brilliancy,
till it usurps control of the mind, and the light of the soul is extinguished.
How great is the darkness of such a soul! Sixty years of sin often deaden every
emotion, shut out all desire for the world of spiritual life and power, and
leave their victim to drift without light, or compass, or helm, or pilot, out
on the dark sea of eternal night.
9. The natural history of sin is a history
with only one self-obtained end. Sinking from bad to worse, with accumulating
power for evil, and diminishing power to resist evil, it soon reaches a point
where impenetrable darkness and absolute helplessness for good are in plain
view. Outside help must come soon, or come too late, to find any remaining
receptivity awaiting it.
10. There is no probability of a better chance
hereafter. God is as merciful as he ever can be; and the Spirit is as powerful
and persuasive as he ever can be. Christ is as meritorious as he ever can be.
Delay only reduces the chances. When the Son has left the mercy-seat and taken
the judgment throne, and the Spirit has departed on the outer verge of
probation, the hope or probability of a change, even in human estimate, is too
infinitely small to merit the attention even of a lost soul. The supposition of
a second probation being without authority in the revealments of the future, is
a mere supposition which involves a contradiction. It must be possible for it
to fail, or it would not be a probation, but a destiny.
Therefore, the demand that provided a second
must also provide a third, which must also embody a possible failure and a
successor to achieve what it failed to do, and so on, infinitely, till we reach
the contradiction, an eternal probation,-a stairway that leads nowhere,-and is
a probation for nothing.
7. God hates sin. " The wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who
hold the truth in unrighteousness "(Rom., 1: 18). Consult, also,
Deuteronomy 32: 40, 43; Leviticus 26: 21, 25. The Bible is full of these
declarations. "I will mock when your fear cometh " (Prov., 1: 24,
27). " The works of the flesh are manifest; they which do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God " (Gal., 5: 19-21). "Because of
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience " (Eph.,.5:
3-6). The great bulk of the Bible is occupied with the infinite variety of ways
in which God expresses his hatred of sin. It is not ignorance getting knowledge
out of " the narrow cleft of a passage," but it is the great body of
Scripture teaching.
8. God punishes sin retributively even here.
The fate of the antediluvians (Gen., 6: 5-8) demonstrates this principle. The
cities of the plain are in point (Gen., 19: 23-28). The judgment on Ananias and
Sapphira leaves no room for doubt concerning God's exercise of retributive justice.
9. God separates the righteous from the
wicked. This is the spirit and bent of all his redemptive work, and of his
entire administration over men. The sheep are separated from the goats (Matt.,
25:32), the tares from the wheat (Matt., 13: 24-30, 36-43). The net and fishes
(Matt., 13: 47-50). Believers are saved and unbelievers are damned (Mark, 16:
16). The entire body of Scripture teaching exhibits the gulf fixed between the
righteous and sinners. This provides a substantial place of torment. All
sinners, unrestrained by the presence and influence of the righteous, mingling
in the fierce exercise of their mature malignity, leave no room for doubt on
this subject.
10. God's pictures of the condition of the
lost exhaust the power of the human mind to conceive or comprehend their
fearfulness. They are not more terribly portrayed simply because there are no
terms in which to describe them and no human ability to comprehend them. Outer
darkness, flames, unquenchable fire, undying worms, weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth, are peaks of horror that stand on the outmost horizon of
human conception of torture.
11. The New Testament, with increased light of
revelation and of mercy, surpasses the Old Testament in words of warning. Jesus
himself eclipses all other declarations of future agony. Surely, this does not
promise well for assumed and uncovenanted mercies.
So far, in these suggestions, which have been
condensed from great bodies of argument, presented in various books on this subject,
we have not pressed 'any passage to extort from it any desired meaning. We have
simply given the march and movement of the great body of facts and instruction
in the Book.
It remains for us to call attention to the
fearful fact that the Bible declares that the punishment of the wicked or
finally impenitent is eternal. The wicked depart into everlasting fire. The
smoke of their torment ascended up for ever and ever. They shall weep and wail
and gnash their teeth. They have no rest day nor night. The door is shut and
the wicked are ordered to depart. The sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be
forgiven, " neither in this world nor in the world to come." "
Good were it for that man if he had never been born " (Mark, 14: 21).
" The fire never shall be quenched." Dives had his " good things
"-no heaven beyond that. "He that believeth not the Son shall not see
life; but the wrath of God abides on him " (John, 3: 36). " Who shall
be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and
from the glory of his power " (2 Thess., 1: 9). Surely, wrath could not
abide upon that which does not exist. " There remained no more sacrifice
for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation,
which shall devour the adversaries " (Heb., 10: 26, 27). This must be
under such conditions as to be consistent with tribulation and anguish, which
imply continued existence. " These shall go away into everlasting punishment"
(Matt., 25: 46). Our Lord, in his exhortation in Matthew 25, uses the strongest
terms to describe the duration of the punishment of the. lost. lie couples
their fate with the fate of the righteous, and seals them with the same eternal
seal. If one ends, the other cannot continue.
Read this summary from Dr. Townsend: "The
terms used to describe the duration of future punishment are the strongest
terms in the language. The Hebrew olam (everlasting) is sometimes used where
the nature of the subject limits duration, for example Genesis 19: 26,
everlasting hills,' but that involves all the duration of the subject. It is
never, even in an accommodated sense, used for a subject that admits of
existence or duration after the term has exhausted its meaning. The Greek
adjective (everlasting) is used sixty-six times,-two in relation to God and his
glory, fifty-one times concerning the happiness of the righteous, six times of
miscellaneous subjects, but with the plain signification, endless, and seven
times concerning future punishment.
The phrase (forever) uniformly denotes endless
duration, and is employed sixty-one times, six of which relate to future
punishment. The expression (forever and forever) is found twenty-two times in
the New Testament; eight of these refer to God's glory and honour. It is used
fourteen times in Revelation: twice of Christ's kingdom, three times of God's
power; six times it refers to God's existence, and the three other times it
measures the duration of the punishment of the wicked."
Surely, one can find no hope of escape through
these terms. The doctrine of eternal punishment must be true.
With the possibility of sin a necessity to
character, and with Gehenna kindled in the bosom of sin, character is the most
costly thing in the universe. With such a prize before us, and such a peril
lying in our pathway, the compassionate Christ could not but cry out the alarm.
This fiery gospel chips with compassion. Jesus offers to quench our Gehenna in
his own blood. Let us choose.
The nature of sin is such that every
transgression of the law deserves death, and there is no sin so small but it
deserves damnation.
By Rev. W. H. FRENCH, D.D., Pastor of the
tinted Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Time is the seed-plot for eternity;
Eternity
the harvest-field of time.
WHAT a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
There is a future before men, for immortality is the heritage of all. Who sows
to the flesh must reap as he sows. A time of awards is coming, and the future
holds in reserve a crowning or a scourging, as man's life has been. Future
punishment consists in the pains and penalties inflicted in that time. The
future is veiled from mortal eyes; it can be revealed only by him to whom all
things lie "naked and open." In vain, therefore, is a knowledge of
the future of the wicked sought from any source outside the Word of God. It is
a question of revelation, and so the Church views it. He who gave laws to his
creatures executes them, and he alone can tell what the just penalty of an
offense, what the fate of the false, shall be, how long the torture of the
transgressor shall continue. Civil governments issue laws with the penalty
attached, and decide what the transgressor shall bear for his transgression.
This right in God's government belongs to God. So does the United Presbyterian
Church view the doctrine of future punishment. She teaches in her Confession of
Faith, chap. vi., art. 6, " Every sin, both original and actual, being the
transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, cloth, in
its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over unto the
wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made subject to death with all
miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal." It teaches also that the
nature of sin is such that every transgression of the law deserves death, and
that there " is no sin so small but it deserves damnation." With
respect to the last judgment and the appointing of the day of judgment it teaches,
chap. xxxiii., art. 2, " The end of God's appointing this day is for the
manifestation of the glory of his mercy in the eternal salvation of the elect,
and of his justice in the damnation of the reprobate who are wicked and disobedient.
. . . But the wicked who know not God and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ
shall be cast into eternal torments, to be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his
power." In this is set forth the doctrine of the Church as to the fact of
the punishment in the future state, and of its duration.
It further teaches what shall be the nature of
this punishment, as in the Larger Catechism, quest. 29, the answer is given,
"The punishments of sin in the world to come are everlasting separation
from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and
body, without intermission, in hell-fire forever"; or, as in the Shorter
Catechism, "All mankind are, by the fall, made liable to . . . the pains
of hell forever."
Retribution is, in these articles of our
creed, represented as the punishment of loss and the punishment of sense. It is
the loss of all good; it is the infliction of all that is evil. It is a
separation 327 from God, as is intimated in the words of doom, " Depart,
ye cursed "; it is an infliction of pain, as in the same word of doom,
"into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels "
(Matt., 25: 41), and (verse 46), "These shall go away into everlasting
punishment."
We cannot determine what shall be the future
of the wicked or of the righteous by the principles of natural law or by
anything in the material world. It is a doctrine to .be learned of the Word of
God, and the teachings of that word are always in accord with sound reason and
true logic. There is no conflict between the teachings of God's word and the
understanding of the creature which his hand has formed. He adapts the
receptacle to that which he prepares to be received. There is a harmony between
the Word of God and the natural logic of the human mind. Hence, while reason
may not be adequate to the determining of the fact and of the nature of the
punishment which God will inflict upon the wicked in the world to come, it may
yet accord with the declarations of the Word and with the logical deductions
from the nature and attributes of God. To ignorance, the picture of hell is
revolting, but enlightened reason assents to the Word of God in all that it
teaches respecting it, and in all that it is declared to be. Natural justice-instinct
of right-assents to the fact and nature of the future punishment of the sinner,
whatever the Word of God declares it to be. The conflict that may seem to be
between human reason and the Word of God is due to the corrupting of the soul
and blinding of the mind by sin. The enmity of the heart against God brings it
into conflict with his teachings and to a rejection of the Word of God. The
heart that is " enmity against God " and is "not subject to his
law " refuses assent to the doctrines taught. As in heaven there is a
complete conformity to the law of God and doing his command, and so a
"hearkening to the voice of his word," so there would be on earth,
were the human mind unbiased, un-blinded, and unalienated. Uncorrupted reason will
always harmonize with the teachings of revelation. The Church therefore goes
direct to the Word of God, as the true and uncorrupted teacher, to learn what
God declares of his purpose to punish transgressors, founds her declarations of
principle and faith upon it, and then inquires of the real and true in human
reason that assents to it all. It is the teaching of reason that the government
that issues laws and attaches a penalty to them will and must execute the law
and inflict the penalty; otherwise the government cannot exist, it is powerless
and dead.
The
British government cannot declare what shall be the penalty of the law against
theft in the United States; she may declare what it shall be in Great Britain,
but not in America. In eternity, or in heaven, God declares the penalty of the
law, but men on earth do not legislate for God. " He that sits in heaven
shall laugh at them and have them in derision." He will execute his own
law and fix the exact punishment of its transgression. While, therefore, we
cannot consult reason first, and learn what the punishment of sin shall be, we
may ask of reason assent to it, as declared in the Word.
It cannot be predicated of anything that it is
true, simply because all men assent to it. Common consent may be the fruit of a
common influence or of education, in which case it would prove no more than
such influence and instruction; but an assent which is general, and which
arises from the law of our being, or an instinct of our nature, is testimony
and important. If it is an instinct,-if engrafted on our being,-it is the
writing of the hand that gave us being. He that fashioned the human soul and
engraved upon it his own name has written nothing false upon it, and what is
engraved upon it is manifestly true.
We can no more reject the lesson which an
implanted appetite teaches than we can reject the entity of that appetite;
hence we reason from the entity of the appetite to the existence of something
to meet its craving. If there is an actual instinct of danger, we at once
conclude that the danger is real. God did not clothe the terrapin with its coat
of mail or encase the oyster in a house of shell without cause. When we see
this provision of nature, we reason of a corresponding evil to be feared or an
enemy to be shunned.
329 Nor will it do to confine this to the
natural world; it has a like application in the moral and spiritual world.
Intelligences do not fear instinctively when there is nothing to be feared.
They have instincts that teach of real evils. There is a higher and nobler
instinct in man than that which is in the animals. The instinct which seeks to
escape danger is evidence of the danger to which the creature is liable.
Neither beast nor bird secretes itself when there is no sign of danger. You may
look quietly upon them and they, unconscious of your presence, remain in their
state of exposure; but the sound of disturbance that indicates danger awakens
fear, and they hasten to protect themselves and flee to a place of safety. Just
so is it with man. The instinct of punishment after death is wrought. All men
have it. Some, following the teaching of the Word, and learning of it the truth
of the judgment to come and the doom of the wicked, have beforehand sought
safety and have betaken themselves to the refuge provided. Others have sought
to revel in wanton ways in stout denial that there is a punishment to follow;
but when the alarm came, and the danger signal was seen, or the trumpet of
warning sounded, they trembled and cried for safety. They that have restrained
prayer and have denied God and a future state of punishment, when there Vas no
apparent or immediate danger, have been loud in their appeals for mercy when
danger was near. This is truth so patent and so well known that it needs no
instances to confirm it. There are many such, as Volney and Voltaire, bold in
the day of prosperity, and clamorous and terror-stricken in the day of
adversity. What was their cry and prayer? It was nothing more nor less than
nature asserting herself-the instinct of their being claiming its proper
office, which it had long been denied. Instances are upon record in which
intense physical pain was almost forgotten in the apprehension of future
punishment, in terror of God's anger. This is not education, it is not a matter
of instruction merely, but a law of our nature engraved upon the mind and
heart. That universal apprehension of future punishment, of the account to be
rendered to God, 330 is evidence that God has written upon the human heart the
truth of a future punishment, and that the written word is a transcript of this
law which was originally engraver on the heart of man. It is God's lesson to
man, teaching him that there is a punishment after death from which there is no
release. In every man is a conscience, and Conscience makes cowards of us all.
That fear of a something, as yet unseen, that
rankles in every sinner's soul, teaches us of the future retribution. No sooner
is a sin committed than the sense of its desert troubles the soul; and
sometimes, oftentimes, pursues it and haunts it to the grave. This has been the
testimony of murderers, that from the hour in which the murder was committed
they were never free from apprehensions of evil. Secretly they have committed
the crime, but the consciousness of their guilt clings to them, and, though
they have been, for a time, unsuspected, they have come with a confession of
their guilt and given themselves up to the civil authorities; outward
infliction of punishment being less dreaded than the inward consciousness of guilt,
they gave themselves up because they could not escape the accusations of
conscience-accusations that evince the being of the accuser; that prove that
the Author of their being has inscribed upon their very nature that they shall
be punished for their transgressions of the law of God. It is therefore a
question of God's veracity. Not one who admits that the Bible is God's book
will admit that a good God could write a falsehood there; neither can he write
falsehood on the soul of man, on the nature of any creature. Conscience bears
testimony to the future punishment of the wicked; for it is not a present
danger that is feared by the transgressor, but a punishment to be inflicted
hereafter. The common sentiment of future retribution therefore proves future
retribution.
Government supposes law; and when we speak of
the divine government, we immediately and instinctively think of the law of 33
God. We have laws in the material world; our systems of philosophy and astronomy
are simply arrangements of these laws of the material world, as they have been
discovered by students of nature. Law reigns throughout all the realm of
nature, and law reigns in the moral world. The Bible contains the code of laws
by which God governs men. It reveals to us the " rule of our
obedience." It tells us of that which God would have us do, and it issues
the command not as an expression of will or of desire merely, but with
authority. It commands. Law has its penalty attached. The penalty of the law
was announced to our first parents in the garden of Eden, in these words,
"In the clay that thou eats thereof thou shalt surely die." It is
also said, "The soul that sinned, it shall die." Whatever that death
is, whatever it may embrace, it is attached as a penalty of the law, and the
government of God would be overthrown if that penalty were never inflicted upon
the transgressor of the law; its claims would be practically relinquished. To
fail in the infliction of the penalty were to prove weakness on the part of the
government, or to prove falseness on the part of him who gave the law, which is
equivalent to a denial of his government; for, if God is, he is true and can do
nothing but that which is just and true and good. The very fact of the government
of God is proof of the punishment of the wicked for their sins. That
retribution does not take place in this life, and must be reserved for the life
to come. There is no accounting for the diversity of states and conditions, for
the difference between the righteous and the wicked, in this life, except as we
allow the difference to be adjusted in a. life to come. So was Asaph troubled,
and his trouble could not he removed until he saw the end of the wicked, and
then he said, "So foolish was I and ignorant " (Psalm 73). The fact
of government proves the enforcement of law, and, of necessity, the infliction
of the penalty-the punishment of the transgressor, future punishment. The
equity of the divine administration does not appear in the "unequal
distribution of good and evil here below," and can be made known only as
the rewards in the world to come shall show.
The doctrine of future punishment is one of
revelation. Philosophy can contribute nothing to it. To no purpose is appeal
made to science, or consultations held with human reason. One of America's
greatest statesmen and orators, when asked of the doctrine of the Trinity, how
three could be one and one three, replied, quaintly, that he did not understand
the arithmetic of heaven. May it not be said of the philosophy of heaven, that
it is beyond and above us? May there not be principles, scientific and
philosophical, developed in the future world, that will open to us the
necessity for the punishment of the wicked, and that shall reveal a much more
certain connection between the violation of God's law and eternal punishment
than we now see between the violations of the laws of the material world and
the immediate and unavoidable consequences of them?
That the Word teaches future punishment is
evident from the common understanding of it by all classes of Christians. The
Jews so understood the teaching of the Old Testament; they believed it taught
future retribution, and the Saviour when in the world neither corrected this impression
nor taught contrary to it, but, on the contrary, warned them of it: "If
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; it is better for
thee to enter into life maimed rather than, having two hands, to be cast into
hell-fire," or, as in Luke 18, "into everlasting burning." And
it is true to-clay, that the Scriptures are understood by the masses of the
readers of them, as teaching the doctrine of the punishment of the wicked after
death.
The Word of God contains the only decisive
answer to the question, Is there a place and state in which the wicked are
punished after death? The Bible is the court of last resort. "To the law and
to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word it is because there
is no light in them " (Is., 8: 20).
Future rewards and punishments are taught in
the Word of God from the beginning. We cannot believe, in the light of the
Word, that the punishment of Cain for the murder of his brother Abel consisted
merely in the physical and material disadvantages to which he was subjected.
Driven out from the presence of men and from the presence of the Lord, there is
a deep and peculiar bitterness in the lamentation, " My punishment is
greater than I can bear," or "Mine iniquity is greater than that it
may be forgiven." The grief came from an apprehension of loss that was
irreparable, and of the loss of the divine favour N'vhich he had. in some
measure before enjoyed. It was the sense of God's anger and, no doubt, the
feeling that he was cast out from that favour forever. Hope died within him,
and with it peace and happiness. Esau did not suffer, at first, the sense of
his loss; he, when he learned what he had done, sought the birthright "
carefully and with tears." He had not risen to a sense of its importance
and to the knowledge of all that was involved in it, and afterwards lamented
his folly in vain. It was the loss of the inheritance which involved in it
everlasting life, and that was the loss of the soul; it was "future punishment."
Daniel speaks of the resurrection of the dead,
and declares (12: 2), " Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting
contempt." In the New Testament we have also many texts that teach us of
the future state of rewards and punishments. Notable among these is the
description of the judgment given in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. After
the judgment is pronounced, it is declared of the wicked, " These shall go
away into everlasting punishment." Evidently this refers to the state to
come. The time shall be after the coming of the Lord Jesus in power and great
glory, and after all nations have been assembled before him and separated one
from another, "as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats," that
these shall be driven away. This can be nothing else than a future punishment.
or a punishment in another world. Again, it is said of the wicked. that they
"shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the
Lord and from the glory of his power."
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus
teaches the state of both after death and the diverse condition; Lazarus
carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man died and was buried,
and in hales he lifted up his eyes, being in torment. Whether this be history,
or parable, the lesson of it is the same, and it has no teaching more clear
than that the rich man suffered after death torment for sin. The warning he
would have sent to his five brethren, lest they should come into " this
place of torment," has the same lesson in it. These passages teach future
punishment, whatever that punishment may be.
The meaning of a word is sometimes learned by
placing terms antithetically. The fact and nature and duration of the
punishment of the wicked are learned by this method. The eternity of the
happiness of the righteous has never been called in question. Men are quite
willing to accept the word " everlasting " in its true meaning, when
it refers to the happiness of the righteous, but unwilling to regard it as
signifying perpetuity when it speaks of woe and sorrow. When, in Matthew 25, it
is said, " These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the
righteous into life eternal," it is the same word in the one case that is
used in the other. If this passage teaches the everlasting happiness of the
righteous, the everlasting punishment of the wicked is also taught. The words
so placed will not admit of a diverse meaning. In like contrast we have the
words "saved " and "lost." Jesus Christ came into the world
" to seek and to save that which was lost." Whoever are the saved,
the lost stand in contrast with them. If life enters into the idea of the state
of the saved, death is in the idea of the state of the lost. If infinite reward
is in salvation, infinite-penalty is in the non-salvation. If in the
blessedness of the one party we have real happiness, in the woe of the opposite
party we have real wretchedness and torment.
There is also presented in parable the
gathering of the wheat into the garner and the burning of the chaff with
"unquenchable fire"; the gathering of the good. fish into baskets and
casting the bad away; the going in of the bridegroom to the marriage and the
remaining of some without, the door being shut against them. There is the
within and the without. Those written in the Book of Life of the Lamb shall
enter in by the gate, but "without are clogs and sorcerers," etc. The
one intimates a gracious reward and the contrast unquestionably an opposite
doom.
There are clearly set forth in the Scriptures
two classes -distinct characters and distinct dealing with them; separate sentences
and opposite awards. There are those who do God's will and those who do it not;
those who by " patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour
and immortality," and those who are "contentious and do not obey the
truth, but obey unrighteousness "; the good and the bad; the sheep and the
goats; the regenerate and the unregenerate; people of God and the men of the
world; believers and unbelievers; the saint and the sinner; the pure in heart
and the evil of spirit; the merciful and the oppressor; the humble and the
proud; the wise and the foolish; the blessed and the cursed; those that are
found watching and those that begin to beat the men servants and the maid
servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the sincere and the hypocrite;
the church and the world; the righteous and the wicked; and of these classes
opposite judgments and dooms: come and depart; received into the kingdom and
shut out of the kingdom; blessed and cursed; "peace be to you,"
" woe unto you"; doors open to them and doors shut against them. We
have also persons set in contrast: Abel with Cain; hiem with Ham; Jacob with
Esau; Moses with Pharaoh; John with Judas; the Rich Man and Lazarus; a
sacrifice accepted and one rejected; a covenant blessing bestowed, and "
no place for repentance found; dying in peace upon the mountain and overwhelmed
in the Bed Sea; leaning on the bosom of the Saviour and departing and going to
his own place; carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, lifting up his eyes
in hales, being in torment. Mounts Ebal and Gerizim stand over against each
other still for blessing and cursing.
Songs issue from the throne, there are golden
harps and censers full of incense; but weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth
from beneath, and the bitter cry, "I am tormented in this flame."
Such antitheses prove something. They prove diversity and extremes, and teach
us that, as there are heights that are sublime and to which seraphs and saints
soar, there are also depths that are dreadful, into which the foes of God shall
fall; that God punishes transgressors and reserves for the impenitent "
wrath against the day of wrath."
There is a veil drawn over the world to come,
and the Scriptures reveal what is to be expected in figure and in language adapted
to us in the present state of existence. A veil is drawn over the heavenly
world, and we can know what it will be only by what is declared of it and what
is enjoyed of it on earth. What we enjoy of faith gives all our experimental
knowledge of what the enjoyment of sight will be. Our communion with God in the
present state gives us experience of what shall be our communion in heaven; and
so of the world of woe. Sorrows in time will be of the same kind with the
sorrows of eternity, and the anguish of conscience which the sinner has in this
life is the same that he shall have in the world to come. The bold transgressor
who has sinned away his clay of grace and is given over to the anguish of
despair suffers in the sense of the loss of the wooing’s of God's Spirit and
feels the sense of being forsaken of God. This is a foretaste of the sorrows of
the soul during its banishment from the presence of God, and its anguish will
be in the loss forever of that which it refused when it was offered to it as an
everlasting enjoyment. The remorse of the sinner for rejecting God and turning
away from him, the grief for the supreme folly of the neglect of the salvation
of God, and choosing a life without him, will be an element of this punishment.
What
souls of sinners have suffered on the bed of death because of the withdrawing
of God's presence and from the sense of their sins and folly, and from the
anguish of an accusing conscience, is a dim 337 shadow of what they shall have
hereafter. The element of hopelessness is added to heighten that grief. It is
the punishment of loss and of sense-privation and infliction.
Who wants the place where Christ doth dwell
Partakes already half of hell.
They shall be driven from the presence of God
and his people, and driven to the society of demons and the lost. Beyond this
we scarce dare go in the description of it. " There shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." There
shall be " the blackness of darkness forever." The worm shall never
die and the fire never shall be quenched. This perhaps describes not literally
the punishment; but is rather a picture of its intensity. The abode of the lost
will be one of desolations. Destitution will characterize it. The barren and
desolate places of earth, the bleak cliffs and desert plains, may be suggestive
of the desolateness and poverty of the place of perdition; the cravings of
earth unsatisfied, suggestive of the cravings of hell. Whatever we see of
natural destitution and physical desolateness on earth suggests to us kindred
evils intensified in the world of woe. On earth men suffer want and famine, and
God threatens judgment on the people through famine not of bread and water but
of the Word of God, a calamity much more to be dreaded. This suggests hell as a
place of lost blessings, lost opportunities, lost associations, lost joys; and
though the soul crave them they are lost forever. The consequences of rejecting
them are irremediable. Insatiable desires never met; cravings with nothing to satisfy
them; that which lost souls crave denied them; and perhaps inflicted torture,
in having imposed upon them that to which they had given the affections they
owed to God, until, satiated, wearied, their pleasure is converted into pain.
What the infliction, none can tell. The servant that knew not his Lord's will
and did it not shall be beaten with few stripes, but he that knew his Lord's
will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes. Let human tongue never
utter what these stripes shall be, or what the tortures of the inmates of that
" deepest deep." The carousals and combats and contentions and
controversies of the fiercely angered, disappointed, distressed, distracted,
hopeless wretches of the prison of hell are but intensified sorrows of the life
of godlessness and carousal in this world. To this is added the accusings of
conscience, "the worm dies not "-inflicted evil, "the fire never
shall be quenched." Forever! that is an element in their portion that
deepens despair. O, if a thousand, if twice ten thousand, ages could release
the suffering or end the sorrow! but to all the other elements of the dire,
dreadful portion, this one is added, it shall be forever-" the blackness
of darkness for ever and ever."
The eternity of the punishment is just. The
soul remains spiritually dead, and of consequence is always adding sin to sin,
never delivered from it, always contracting new guilt, and never paying its
debt to divine justice, or its obligation to the law. To this state is the
sinner brought by his first sin; and by this sin's fearful desert is shown. The
infliction of everlasting punishment upon one intelligence establishes the
principle of the justice of such sentence. If this may be the fate of one
intelligent transgressor, it may be the fate of many. The devil is so punished.
Satan, together with the beast and the false prophet, is to be " tormented
day and night for ever and ever." The Greek words in this clause admit of
no equivocation. The most perfect language ever spoken could not give it any
more plainness. Now if Satan, because of his sins, may be doomed to everlasting
punishment, why not other intelligences? This fact proves it just, for it is
done by Him with whom is no injustice, and proves that it may be the doom of
sinners. It is just that their punishment should be everlasting.
Blessed be God for his Son Jesus Christ, who
came into the world to save souls from such death.
Rewards and penalties continuous.
By Rev. EMIL. V. GERHART, D.D., LL.D.
Professor in the Theological Seminary, Reformed Church, Lancaster, Pa.
THE doctrine of punishment is inseparable from
the doctrine of reward. Rewards and punishments are the necessary opposite
alternatives in the experience of moral agents subject to the disorganization of
moral evil. Whether a member of the fallen Adamic race will become morally
active is not a problem. He will do the right; if not, he will do the wrong.
Which of these two contrary lines of action he will pursue may be uncertain
during the incipient stage of his personal history; but not whether developed
personality will choose the one or choose the other. A possible third kind of
ethical action, different from these two contraries, is excluded by the nature
and relations of the relative autonomy of the human will.
A valid judgment on wrong-doing cannot be
formed exclusively by the study of wrong. The moral necessity of doing right
conditions the possibility of transgression. And a sound doctrine of
righteousness, or of true ethical human life, conditions a correct judgment of
unrighteousness, or of false ethical life. The Creator conditions the creature;
the holiness of God conditions the wickedness of Satan; so do sound views of
right condition correct opinion on wrong.
There is the same interdependence between
rewards and punishments. No true judgment of punishment can be formed by
studying only the judicial consequences of wrong-doing. The penalties of wrong
can neither be clearly discerned nor correctly understood, unless the reason
can adequately judge the presuppositions and character of wrong-doing; but as
wrong is the contradictory of right, and as right-doing is followed by rewards,
it is a sound doctrine of rewards which renders possible a sound doctrine of
punishment.
1. Right-doing and wrong-doing, rewards and
punishments, are forces and experiences grounded in the moral order of mankind.
The elements and laws of all sub-human kingdoms, from the mineral to the
animal, enter into the complex organism of the individual person and of society;
but neither inorganic substances, nor the vegetative process, nor animal
nature, describe the manhood of man. No possible combination of the laws and
qualities of subhuman kingdoms can evolve, or issue in, the human kingdom.
Manhood centres in personality. Contradistinguished from the animal, man is ethical-spiritual.
Conduct is the predicate of self-conscious will. Personal activity always bears
a relation to moral law, being either in harmony with moral law or contrary to
moral law. In the constitution and organization of our race this principle is
universal. Individual conduct, family relations, the status of a community, and
the organization of the state, or of civil government, each and all are shaped
ethically from within, and are moving on the path of weal or woe, according to
the attitude of the individual and of society toward the law of right. Human
life, in 343 all its possible spheres and grades, is moral life; conjoining
authority and freedom, either normally or abnormally. In the degree that a person
is right, and does the right, he occupies the normal status; he is true to the
manhood of man. In the degree that he is wrong and does the wrong, his status
is abnormal; he is untrue to the manhood of man. Ideal relation to moral law is
the pivot on which genuine manhood turns. All questions concerning the welfare
or misery of individuals or of communities are in the first instance to be
answered from this point of view.
Questions concerning the infliction of
penalties are bound up with the broader and more fundamental question
concerning the positive working of the moral economy. Views on the genius of
this moral economy, whether dissidents are fully aware of it or not, will
always determine views of the manner in which it affects the doers of right and
the doers of wrong. The sentiment that man embodies and fulfills a moral no
less than a physical order is common to all civilized nations, pagan no less
than Christian. Defective and false as may be the moral judgments of the
heathen, yet the idea of right and wrong, of rewards and punishments, is the
central idea in government and in ethical philosophy.
2. When we pass from the region of ethnic
religions to the distinctive realm of Christianity, we pass from the native
intuition of justice to the communion of righteous love. Here all questions
concerning good and evil, rewards and punishments, acquire a different setting
and tone by their relation to the character of God as revealed in the person
and personal history of Jesus Christ. The essential nature of God is love, not
power, nor sovereignty, nor holiness. Love is the satisfying communion of God
with himself,-the living fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
After the image of righteous divine fellowship
man was formed. Formed in God's image, he is by his nature capable of the
righteous communion of love, and designed for it; designed for positive
devotion and service in a twofold direction: the reciprocal communion of love
with God, and the sympathetic fellowship of man with man. Love is the
foundation of ideal human society, and of normal individual personality.
God's love is righteous love. He loves the
perfection of the good, the true, the beautiful. This absolute perfection he is
in his own self-existent constitution. God lives for the good as his
self-satisfying end; lives for the good only. Toward the good and for the good
he is with infinite devotion eternally active. His love is unchangeably
righteous.
Formed after the likeness of God, man is
formed for righteous love. His constitution is fashioned to the end that he may
live a life set apart to the service of the good, the true, the beautiful.
Genuine human love is distinctively ethical; the free self-surrender of the
whole man to God, the absolute good, and in the might of this divine
self-surrender an equally free devotion of self to my neighbour, the relative
good. Hence the unconditional command: "Thou shalt love." The
relative good is the ideal creation, the work of God, formed according to the
wisdom of love for God. All kingdoms, together constituting an organic whole,
are by his immanent will so connected, so upheld, so governed, that when all
kingdoms are active in harmony with the laws and purpose of existence they
realize, each according to its relative position, the wisdom and might of love.
Of the entire creation the noblest exponent and noblest fulfillment of all its
processes and prophecies is human personality. Man fulfilling his office
normally is, in the realm of creation, the chief good. Therefore the general
principle: " Thou shalt love," branches off in a twofold direction,
and speaks by a twofold command: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart," and, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself." God, the original, self-existent good, is the object of supreme
love. Man, the created good, is the object of subordinate love.
Our Lord expounds the ethical genius of love
when he says: "If ye love me keep my commandments." Obedience to his
will is the genuine action of love to him. On the basis of this philosophy, we
are required to hold that love is not impulse, nor spontaneous sentiment, nor
inclination of mind, but free determination of will or personal activity in the
service of the good,-the absolute good. and the relative good, God and man.
The twofold command addresses us in messianic
revelation, not only because God in his sovereign government of the world has
so willed, but also because the twofold fulfillment of love by man is the inner
unchangeable necessity of his ethical-spiritual being. Love to God and. love to
fellow men is the original law of human personality. Human nature developed to
maturity in free, conscious selfhood is, according to the divine ideal of
humanity, constructed and fashioned solely for the good, the ultimate end of
love. No revealed law other than: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart," would answer to the creative word embodied in our ethical
constitution. Any authority less comprehensive and less thorough would be both
undivine and unhuman.
No revealed law other than: " Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself," would answer to the original structure and
intent of the family or of human society. The divine idea of family life and
social life involves this ethical principle. God in messianic revelation thus
expresses his will, inasmuch as by the creation of man in his image the
necessity of mutual love became the fundamental law of the social economy.
Reciprocal human love, the love of man to man, is the inner irrepressible
demand of personality itself.
3. These truths are fundamental. Conceding
their validity, we may answer the following questions from the Christian point
of observation: What is the moral order of mankind? What is right-doing? What
is wrong-doing?
The moral order is the order of righteous
love. Viewed under its divine aspect, supreme love to God is the first and
unchangeable obligation. Viewed under its human aspect, supreme love to God is
the profoundest necessity and strongest impulse of normal human nature. Man was
made good; in other words, by his original constitution he is fitted for this
fellowship of supreme love to God, and in the first instance fitted only for
such fellowship.
Righteous love includes the social economy.
Viewed in its divine relation, the love of man to his fellows according to the
measure of normal self-love is an obligation. Social life is by the creative
word designed to be exclusively a community of love; of sympathy, mutual
service, and perpetual concord. Viewed under its human aspect, the love of man
to man is a necessity rooted in the organic structure of the family and the
state. There is no genuine self-satisfaction, no real reciprocal
complementation of individual needs, but in as far as each person loves his neighbour
as himself.
This moral order, this original organization
of human nature and human personality on the foundation of twofold love, is the
permanent, the unchangeable order. It underlies the entire history of our race,
and embraces personal existence in time and eternity.
If we accept these truths of Christian
revelation it is easy to answer subordinate questions. To do right is to be
active toward God and toward man according to the law of love. To love God
supremely and to love my neighbour as myself is the right attitude and the
right activity. The ethical obligation of twofold love is fundamental; always
fundamental, before death and after death. Right in all subordinate relations
depends on the fundamentally right personal attitude toward God and toward man.
To fulfill the requirements of love in these two primary relations is the doing
of the right; if we understand right-doing in the Christian sense.
The perversion or inversion of this
established moral order is the wrong. To substitute the creature for the
creator as the highest good, or to make man and nature the object of supreme
interest, is the violation of fundamental ethical law. When I love myself
supremely I do wrong; wrong to God and wrong to myself. Or, if I am active with
supreme interest in the acquisition of a thing, silver and gold, or in the endeavour
to obtain an unsubstantial ideal, fame or worldly dominion, I am at war with
all ethical relations springing from the normal economy of the family and
social life. In both cases, whether predominantly absorbed in selfishness or
worldliness, I am active with supreme devotion in the service of an end which
is not the end for which my soul and body are fashioned. My ethical attitude
and my ethical activity contravene the law of love immanent in the moral
order.* Confusion ensues, an interaction of ethical and physical forces in the
individual and in the social economy, which at all points contradicts the
organic structure of humanity, formed by the goodness and wisdom of divine
love.
4. When men are active agreeably to the
twofold law of divine love, or in the degree that they are thus active, they
have a reward. The reward is twofold: the approval of God and self-approval.
Reward is not a good arbitrarily or outwardly annexed to a life of righteous
love by God's sovereign will. If theology severs God's will from God's love, or
separates God's will from man's ethical constitution, then I may even say that
the reward of obedience does not turn on the exercise of sovereign will. Reward
is of the essence of righteous love. These two things, reward and the positive
action of love toward God and man, are inseparable. If the question be put:
What is the reward of righteous love? I answer, it is blessedness. Blessedness
is not merely happiness. Happiness oscillates between want and supply,
satisfaction and desire, and may be moral, intellectual or physical, individual
or social. Blessedness moves on a different and higher plane. Its conditions
are exclusively spiritual and ethical. When a person is active toward God and
toward man agreeably to the genius of righteous love, he attains to an ethical-spiritual
kind of life and freedom which is worthy of himself, his divine image ship, and
worthy of God. The unique demands of personality are met, and the authority of
absolute love is obeyed. The reality of manhood answers to its divine ideal. Of
such free consummation the experience is blessedness.
Under these conditions blessedness is
necessary. Whether a man living a life of righteous love shall enjoy the reward
of blessedness is not a question. It cannot arise. Such normal ethical life is
itself the reward.* With profound reverence I may say: God himself, when these
required conditions prevail, cannot withhold it. The will of absolute love
active in the manifold dispensations of Providence does not contradict the same
will upholding, and immanent in, the moral order of mankind. The reverse
proposition is however equally valid. The reward of blessedness cannot be
experienced in the personal history of the individual or of society, if the
righteous activity of love toward God and man be wanting. With equal reverence
it may be affirmed, if we have sound views of God's moral government, that as
God cannot by a sovereign act withhold the highest rewards from a life of
righteous love, so he cannot by any supposable act of forbearance or mercy
arbitrarily annex rewards to the personal life of men governed by selfishness
or worldliness. The supposition would contradict the autonomy of human
personality. God's providence would be at war with God's creative word,-the
authority of his moral government with the immanent action of his will. Whether
a man who lives a life in which the service of love toward the supreme good is
wanting, or a life that is a perversion of normal human personality and thus a
course of persistent wrong-doing, can enjoy the rewards of blessedness is
therefore also not a valid question. Logically it cannot arise. The ethical
conditions that render divine rewards inseparable from a life of righteous love
are the only conditions. If these unalterable conditions be wanting the rewards
of blessedness are a moral impossibility.
Rewards have a twofold immovable basis: the
essential nature of God, absolute holy love; and the original nature of man
formed in the image of holy love. When men live a life according to this
twofold law, being freely active in the service of the true good, the holy will
of absolute love is fulfilled, and the fundamental requirements of the moral
order of the world are satisfied. And the reward of blessedness becomes in the
person and history of men a necessary experience. The necessity is founded in
divine justice.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned; and in
keeping of them there is great reward (Ps., 10: 11).
Justice maintains the constant union of
blessedness with a life of active self-surrender in the service of the good. 5.
Thus understood, rewarding justice is the possibility of a contrary judicial
experience. When a man takes the creature instead of the Creator to be the
highest good, the object of supreme devotion, and uses his fellows as means for
selfish ends, he is living a personal life at war with the normal ethical
conditions of blessedness. From this false attitude toward God and man, this
self-assertion against the unchanging law, Thou shalt love, all grades of moral
evil, all forms of physical evil, grow forth. The immediate consequence is
misery; and of human misery the principal ingredient is guilt.
When in place of God I love myself supremely,
or the objects of external nature, I become the subject of a thorough
contradiction. I set myself against God. God says: Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart; but I say, and persist in saying: I will love myself.;
I obey my own will. The contradiction is of myself, the free act of
personality. I do the wrong, and in doing the wrong I fall under condemnation.
God condemns man's aversion and antagonism to the absolute good. But God's
condemnation does not obtain by itself, nor does condemnation come from without
only. That is only one aspect of condemning judgment.
In this judgment the wrong-doer participates.
By his refusal to love the absolute good he is at issue with the normal
structure and original instincts of his ethical nature as really as he is at
issue with the revealed law of God. Formed for the communion of love with God
and with his fellow men, his ethical nature demands this twofold communion,
and, so far as his original constitution asserts itself, his nature continues
to demand the constant communion of love. Hence he who sets his heart against
God, making self the chief end of devotion, is likewise condemned by himself.
At issue Wilfully with himself, his personal activity in conscious purposes and
conduct at issue with his ethical nature, he is a living contradiction.
Condemned by the divine judgment, and
condemned by his own conscience, the wrong-doer experiences the penalties of
judicial suffering. Penalty is the anguish and torment of personality
inseparable from wrong-doing. Punishment is of the essence of moral wrong. When
a man does wrong he in the act of doing it not only is liable to a penalty that
may follow the wrong clone, but he suffers the penalty in doing the wrong. This
is especially true in immediate personal relations between God and man. The
penalties are penetrating and burning in proportion to the heinousness of the
wrong and the capabilities of the subject.
Divine justice is a quality of divine love; in
the first instance justice is positive. God's love makes responsive personality
blessed; for it imparts its own fullness to those who reciprocate God's love.
To this end the command: Thou shalt love. Why this command? Why impose an
obligation so tremendous and solemn? To the end that, loving God with all the
heart, God may make man unspeakably blessed in this communion of love with
Himself. Of those who live in this communion blessedness is the inheritance. It
is their clue, their reward. It cannot fail; for justice eternally maintains
the blessedness of righteous love; therefore a blessedness unattainable by any
law of right or of grace other than the free reciprocity of personal love. But
when these ethical conditions are by self-will reversed, divine justice becomes
negative. Love cannot do otherwise than eon-detain the violation of the law of
love. God cannot approve the wrong. Man cannot approve the known wrong. The
holiness of divine love condemns it with infinite strength. The conscience of
mankind condemns it with an unalterable sentence. The ethical instincts of the
soul are in accord with the judgment of God in pronouncing sentence of
condemnation on the violation of the twofold law of love.
The
wrong-doer cannot escape; neither from God's righteousness, nor from the
righteousness of his own personality. The miseries of condemnation are his immediate
inheritance. Justice ever joins in one the miseries of condemnation with the
personal history of the wrong-doer. Universal experience, no less than the word
of God, demonstrates penal sufferings to be an inalienable quality of
wrong-doing.
As rewards are not annexed to right-doing, so
penalties are not annexed to wrong-doing. In the government of the family and
of the state there may be arbitrary penalties, even unjust penalties; and
sometimes penalties are inflicted on those who merit rewards. But in the moral
government of God there are no arbitrary inflictions. Here, all penalties come
by the constant and unalterable operation of ethical law. They are the fruits
of wrong done, or of false ethical action. Just because God, with infinite
pleasure, approves supreme love to Himself, the absolute Good, he condemns
supreme Love to the creature with infinite displeasure.
The argument may here suggest the inquiry:
Since we are by nature predisposed, even before personality is developed, to be
selfish, how may the twofold law of love be obeyed? How may the judicial pains
of a twofold condemnation be superseded and done away? The limits of this paper
do not allow a. discussion of the question; nor is it requisite. Whilst I do
not ignore the solemnity of the problem, it will suffice to affirm the teaching
of Scripture, that the solution is to be found alone in the mediatorship of
Jesus Christ, the author of a new creation, in which the obedience of faith
fulfills the fundamental law of love, and the pains of guilt are resolved into
the peace of reconciliation.
6. From the judicial relation of the righteous
love of God to men in the present world, I turn to the study of God's judicial
relation to men in the world to come.
The moral order anterior to the second coming
of our Lord consists of two periods. The one embraces the history of
personality in the natural body, the other extends through that undefined age
of personal existence that lies beyond our life on earth. The two periods do
not differ in kind; the interior positive conditions of normal manhood being
the same in both. The turning point is the article of death. Human death,
superinduced by apostasy, is an epoch in the organic history of personality.
The epoch is ethical-spiritual, no less than physical; and has twofold
significance. In one direction death is a destructive force; the internal
connection with all earthly conditions
of human existence is dissolved. In another direction, death is a constructive force;
the internal connection with the necessary post-earthly conditions of a
continuous personal history is evolved and formed. The whole man makes a
transition from one realm to another realm, a transition, if we accept the
suggestions of Scripture, which is analogous to natural birth. Birth severs the
organic connection of the child with the physical constitution of the mother;
birth is at the same time the beginning of an independent individual existence.
The race-type, national type, family type, and the type of individuality remain
unchanged and unchangeable under a complete change of environment. Whilst by
death the earthly relations of the personal organism are dissolved, the
interior human conditions and the divine environment uninterruptedly abide. The
self-conscious person continues an ethical-spiritual history under changed
outward conditions. On these future outward conditions it is not in place to
speculate. Of chief importance is the truth that the fundamental law of human
personality is 'the same law in both periods.
Death does not affect personal character.
Character affects the quality of death. A man who has been living in the
communion of righteous love by faith in Christ, lives on in this communion
through the crisis of death. Whatever may be the experiences in the instant of
transition, to us now unknown, the matter of chief moment is not unknown. The
personal life of love in communion with the absolute Good not only survives
death, but asserts itself in fuller measure; and asserts itself according to
the law of righteous love. Faith, hope, love, abide, in kind the same hereafter
as here. But love is greater than faith, greater than hope." The person
who is the subject of righteous love, during his earthly history and in the
crisis of exit, is the subject of righteous love when personality opens its
ripening powers into freer and stronger action hereafter. The two periods are
integral parts of the same ethical system. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall
he also reap. Righteous love reaps righteous love.
The idea of the unbroken continuity of
personal life involves the momentous fact of inalienable character. Character
begets weal or woe. The subject of righteous love enjoys the reward of
blessedness hereafter as here. The ethical law of human personality is
unchangeable. As the holy love of God is ever identical with itself, so is man
formed in the image of God as to his original constitution ever the same.
Hereafter, men fulfilling the twofold law of love enjoy, of necessity, the
reward of blessedness, the bliss of approval from above, and the satisfying
response of self-approval from within. The reward of blessedness presupposes
these two inseparable factors: the law of God's holy love, and man's free
activity responsive to the law of love. This response answers to the original
and unchangeable demands of the human soul. The demands of the soul and the
authority of divine love arc equally real, equally continuous. Both are met by
men living in the communion of love with God. Therefore they are blessed, and
progressively blessed in the future world, as this communion advances from
strength to strength.
No less after death than in our earthly life,
this communion of love with God is possible for our fallen race only in and
through the Mediator, Jesus Christ. He is the Founder and Head of a new kingdom
comprehending both worlds, a kingdom of grace, by which the principle of love
is victoriously asserted, unfolded, and perfected.
The moral order, including the earthly period
and the period of personal existence after death, embraces all classes of men.
Whether men love God supremely or are supremely devoted to selfishness and
worldliness, whether they live a righteous life or an unrighteous life, they
are bound up with the processes and issues of the moral order. By virtue of personality
they are unchangeably members of it; and, being members, they are subject to all
its conditions. Personal beings here, personal beings hereafter, they exist as
human persons, subject to the permanent interior conditions of personality
after death, as really as they so exist before death.
In the history of the personality of men
averse to the communion of love with God, death is only an epoch, a crisis in
the unbroken continuity of individual history. The future existence of a
wrongdoer and his earthly existence are parts of one organism. The moral habit
of his personal life on earth becomes the moral habit of his personal life
hereafter. The article of death does not regenerate a transgressor. It cannot
make him a new creature in Christ Jesus. Nor does death dehumanize a
transgressor. It cannot transform him into an animal or a demon. When a living
member of Christ closes his eyes on the scenes of earth, he awakes, beyond, a
living member of Christ. The crisis does not transmute a good man into a bad
man. So of wrong-doers. The crisis does not transmute bad men into good men.
Those who have persisted in rejecting the only Mediator between God and man
awake characterized by the same wilful rejection. Aversion to God continues to
be aversion. Selfishness is self-persistent. It remains, as it was on earth,
false self-assertion against God. Personality imparts moral qualities to the
epoch of transition, and to a man's history in the period into which this epoch
introduces him, just as personality imparts moral qualities to human life on
earth. Hatred of Christ reaps hatred of Christ.
7. On the basis of these general principles,
the question concerning future punishment is to be studied and answered.
Principles inherent in the ethical constitution of humanity, they are affirmed
by pre-Christian and Christian revelation, and are the postulates both of
redemption and of the lofty ethical system taught by the word of God.
Viewing the question of future retribution in
its connection with the moral order of mankind, Christianity authorizes the
following theses:-
1.
Jesus Christ is the author of regenerate human life, a new communion of
reciprocal love between God and man; and the only author. As the first man-was
not self-created, much less can apostate man recreate himself after the image
of Christ.
2. The author of a new creation, Christ is at
the same time, by his death and resurrection, the living atonement, the only
redeemer, by whom the law of moral evil is abolished and the false judicial relation
between man and God is done away.
3. The life-giving and saving virtue of Jesus
Christ avails by the agency of his Holy Spirit for the personal benefit of all
who by a free act of the heart receive and appropriate Jesus Christ.
4. As men are personal beings, free moral
agents, the fullness of Christ, whether he be regarded as the author of the new
creation or as the living atonement, cannot avail for men who are averse to his
redemption, and persist in their aversion. To speak of deliverance from
condemnation, through God's mercy, of an individual confirmed in the habit of
aversion to Jesus Christ, is a contradiction in terms. Christian salvation does
not mean only the removal of the penalties of wrong-doing, but means chiefly
the formation of a personal character in which supreme love to God is the
animating and controlling principle.
5. A person's exit from this world is a birth
into another period of existence,-a turning point in human life, whose force
for weal or woe hinges on the personal character of the subject. And personal
character hinges on personal relation to God. In the case of all who maintain
an attitude of aversion and resistance to the mediatorship of Jesus Christ, the
exit is a crisis in the development of moral evil.
What, then, in the next world, must be the
character and condition of those who, by a perversion of freedom, set
themselves against God's righteous love, and against the moral order of the
kingdom of man? The fundamental law of personal blessedness they have not
obeyed, and do not obey. Wilful transgression is contrary to truth, divine
truth and human truth. The truth of the Godhead and the truth of manhood are
both persistent. The imperative: " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart," is the unchangeable imperative. It binds men with the same
inflexible authority hereafter as here. For God is immutably God; and man does
not cease to be man. The binding authority of the law of love presupposes only
these two conditions; none other are either requisite or in rational inquiry
admissible. The categorical imperative is accordingly twofold: coming from
without, and from within. The authority is of God. It is his immutable will,
because the law of love has its ground in his immutable being. The authority is
also of man. It springs from his ethical constitution. Fashioned in the image
of love, obedience to the divine law is the abiding inner demand of manhood.
Aversion to God, or the refusal to love God with all the heart, invades the
fundamental law of man's ethical constitution, and thus of personal
blessedness, as really as it transgresses the divine command. The transgressor
hereafter continues his personal existence under a twofold condemnation: the
judgment of God and the judgment of himself, the one in the other. God's
condemnation sounds forth in self-condemnation. Self-condemnation, asserted by
the conscience, is the answer from within to the judgment of God's righteous
love abiding on the person of the wrongdoer.
God's condemnation, abiding on the false
ethical attitude of the wrong-doer, and uttering itself immediately in
self-condemnation, is a moral necessity. This moral necessity is retributive
justice. And retributive justice is the reverse side of positive or rewarding
justice. Righteous love is related to contrary ethical subjects. Active toward
the subjects of responsive obedience, love cannot do otherwise than approve and
beatify. The answer of human love to divine love involves the bliss of heaven.
Active toward the sub-jects of the response of wilful disobedience, righteous
love cannot do otherwise than condemn and punish. The answer of aversion and
hatred to divine love invokes the infliction of the anguish of guilt.
The same necessity of penal anguish reveals
itself from within by the action of the human soul. The man who loves God with
all his heart and his neighbour as himself stands before God self-approved. The
same fundamental law, when wilfully violated, works contrary effects. The man,
set against God and set against the inner demands of his soul, stands before
the bar of his conscience self-condemned. Self-condemnation is the reverse
action of the internal conditions of self-approval. When the soul is wronged by
aversion to God, the authority of ethical life begets the bitterness of
remorse. Contrary judicial experiences are begotten by the same ethical
constitution. If self-condemnation were not immanent in wilful wrong-doing,
self-approbation would not be immanent in the free obedience of love, or in
right-doing. The denial of retributive justice is equivalent to the denial of
all justice. Or, I may say, the denial of future retribution is a denial of the
permanence of the moral order of mankind, and by consequence the denial of the
absoluteness of righteous love.
The future punishment of the wrong-doer is in
kind none other than his present punishment. A statement of judicial experience
before death is, the ethical conditions being the same, a statement of judicial
experience after death. Penalties in the divine government are not optional.
God does not arbitrarily bestow rewards. The fear that God might withhold his
infinite approval from a person who, through faith in Christ, lives in the
communion of love with God, would contradict the genius of the kingdom of
heaven. Equally contradictory would be the notion that on those who, in will
and conduct, are continuously active against the known authority of his love,
God may bestow the infinite blessing of his approval. In the divine government
there are no arbitrary dealings either under the positive aspect or the
negative aspect of justice.
Nor is there room for the supposition that
man's ethical constitution works fitfully or uncertainly. Judicial consequences
are necessary when viewed in their relation to human personality. Whether a
person who lives in the love of God and of man will stand self-approved cannot
be a question. The normal activity of personal life involves the blessedness of
self-approval and self-satisfaction. To deny this is to deny the fundamental
law of personality. But when we affirm the certain connection of blessedness
with the normal activity of personal life, we by implication affirm the
connection of penal suffering with the abnormal action of personal life.
Whether men, addressed by Christianity, who to the end persist in the refusal
to accept the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, are or will become the
subjects of self-condemnation is not a question. The conscious wrong-doer must
condemn him- 3.58 self. The self-condemnation as to degree will be intense and
thorough in proportion to the grade of the wrong done, and the grade of wilfulness.
Penalties are self-inflicted; and when the conscience from its immeasurable
deep comes forth and gains access to the sphere of developed and unclouded
personality, it inflicts its penalties with a pitiless rigor, as appalling as
any figure of speech by which the Word of God pronounces its anathema. " I
am fearfully and wonderfully made."
Let it be borne in mind, that the moral
order-of God and of man is one system embracing two periods, personal existence
as it now is and the personal existence which is to be. Ethical history on
earth is a type and prophecy of ethical history hereafter.* The wrong-doer here
will be the wrong-doer there. As now, so then, he will be the heir of a double
condemnation, the condemnation of God and the condemnation pronounced by
himself. The two forms of penal suffering are correlative. The conscience
responds amen to the divine judgment; for the divine judgment and the
conscience are the indissoluble members of one abnormal ethical relation. They
exist abidingly in reciprocal connection. Should the ethical constitution of
the wrong-doer fail, should he cease to condemn himself for the wilful
violation of the communion of love with God, the condemnation of God would
cease. Or, if we might suppose that God's condemnation of the wrong-doer could
fail, then self-condemnation would likewise vanish. Archetype and image, God
and man, divine righteousness and human righteousness, answer each to the
other. Future retribution is the bitterness of present retribution.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden
(Gen., 3: 8).
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
leopard his spots then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil (Jer.,
13: 23).
And this is the judgment, that the light is
come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for
their Works were evil. For every one that doeth ill hated the light, and cometh
not to the light (John, 3:10, 20).
And ye will not come to me, that ye may have
life (John, 6:40).
The doctrine of the future misery of the
wrong-doer, the persistent transgressor of the communion of divine love, is not
affected by denial based on an appeal to God's mercy. Divine mercy is infinite
and unchangeable. God sympathizes with an unfathomable sympathy, with the penal
sufferings of those who hate the law of righteous love. This sympathy is not
turned back upon itself by the incident of death. But of what avail is mercy,
rejected and despised? God's mercy in Christ has, by the false attitude of
self-will, become the occasion of multiplying and deepening guilt. On earth,
incarnate Mercy weeps over the stubborn resistance of Truth. Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Divine love is unchangeably merciful.
But hereafter, as here, the mercy of divine love is by hostile personality neither
accepted, nor desired. The rich man in hacks, being in torments, cried and
said, " Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may
dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue." Ile desired to be
relieved of pain; but his heart did not turn to the God of Abraham, nor did he
pray to be received with Lazarus into the bosom of Abraham. The good things he
had in his life-time received, became, through selfish misuse, the occasion of
anguish; but anguish did not effect a moral change of heart.
For those who violate the communion of love,
there is hereafter no mercy of a kind other than the mercy which Jesus Christ
realized in his person and work.* The unchangeable condition of personal
salvation is the acceptance and appropriation of that mercy. Just here may be
seen the infinite solemnity of human personality. Divine mercy can gain access
to the inner chambers of the soul only when the soul opens the door and
embraces divine love as the chief good. When, instead, the soul shuts out Jesus
Christ, and, turning against the communion of love with God, embraces self as
the chief good, or takes the creature in place of the Creator, to be the end of
personal existence, there is developed a permanence and persistence in
wrong-doing that becomes the fixed habit of personality. The wrong-doer who
sets himself against the mercy of Christ, through his whole earthly history,
sets himself against the same mercy in his future history. " He that
soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." They who
minister to the pride of self-will, intensified by aversion to Mercy, inherit
the pride of self-will.
"For
if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth,
there remained no more a sacrifice for sins" (Heb., 10: 20).
The penalties of condemnation are continuous;
continuous inasmuch as the violation of the law of love is continuous. After
death, as before death, these two things, the violation of divine love and
penal sufferings, are joined by God and joined by man.
Can there be a transition, in the world to
come, from penal misery to beatitude? The scriptural and psychological answer
is that a transition is supposable only on the assumption that the subject of
habitual false self-assertion against God may become the subject of righteous
love. As on earth, so hereafter, the change from misery to beatitude, if
supposable, must turn on a thorough change of personal status relatively to
Jesus Christ, and of positive ethical character. But the supposition that men,
who have lived and died in persistent aversion to the love of God, realized in
the person and work of Jesus Christ, may not reap the perverse ethical habit of
soul which by false self-assertion they have formed during the present life,
has no warrant either in the teaching of Holy Scripture or in the unchangeable
moral order of the world. The obstacle then will be the same that now resists
the transforming virtue of the gospel,-the self-determined in version of human
personality.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his
own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the
Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life.
No vengeful retribution at the creator's hand:
but the tortures of the wicked are the fruit of their voluntary preference for
sin.
By Rev. CHAUNCEY GILES, of the "New
Jerusalem " Church (Swedenborgian).
IT is impossible to come to any rational and
just conclusions concerning the punishment of the wicked after the death of the
material body, without a true knowledge of man's nature as a spiritual being,
the laws of life in the spiritual world, and the relations of its inhabitants
to the Lord. Personal opinions, the decrees of councils, and all theories
derived from human governments, are of no avail in understanding the question,
except so far as they are in accord with the laws of the divine order.
These laws are revealed in the sacred
Scriptures; they are embodied in the material creation, and organized in the
nature of man. These three modes of revealing the laws of the divine order, and
of the Lord's methods of rewarding obedience and punishing disobedience to
them, are the complements of each other. Immutable law takes on various forms
which manifest its nature in greater variety and fullness. The Lord uses the
created Word to give men the written Word. He employs human instruments to
reveal the divine Word. They must agree. The Lord, who is infinite wisdom,
cannot contradict himself. Each form of his truth must be interpreted by the
other. What the Lord has revealed to us in the sacred Scriptures, concerning
the nature and punishment of sin, must be interpreted by the nature of man as a
spiritual being, by his inherent and essential relations to the Lord, and by
the divine methods of creating, rewarding, and punishing man while he lives in
the material body. In a word, spiritual law must be interpreted by natural law.
This is the method pursued and strictly
adhered to by Swedenborg in-bis statements of the doctrines of the New Church
concerning the punishment of sin, and all other questions of man's nature and
spiritual destiny. It is the purpose of this article to state as clearly as
possible what the doctrines of the New Church teach upon this subject. I
propose to state them affirmatively and in my own language, but it must be
understood that I am not expressing merely personal opinions, but the doctrines
of the New Church as disclosed in the writings of Swedenborg and generally
accepted by its members.
The condition of man as a spiritual being,
after he has been raised up from his material body, is the subject we are
considering. It is necessary that we get a distinct and true idea of what he is
as a spirit. The doctrines of the New Church affirm that he is a human being in
the human form. He possesses all the faculties that belong to a human being. He
is organized within and without, in general and particular, as a man. He sees,
hears, feels, talks, and acts as before. He is the same person, is in the same
form, and possesses the same character. He has not lost nor gained any
knowledge by the change of worlds. He acts from the same motives. If the love
of self and the world had been the ruling motive of his life while he dwelt in
a material body, it remains so still. He preserves his identity in general and
particular. He has simply passed from one province of the universe to another.
This transition has been effected by his removal from the material body. It was
not a passage through space, as we go from one country to another. He was in
the spiritual world while he dwelt in the material body, though unconscious of
it. The change consisted simply in casting aside the material body, which is
the instrumental means by which man lives in the material world, while it also
acts as a veil to the spiritual senses and prevents all consciousness of the
presence and influence of spiritual beings and spiritual objects.
The world into which man is consciously
introduced by his resurrection from the material body is a substantial world in
the true and fullest meaning of the word. It has its atmospheres which the man,
now a spirit, breathe, and by means of which he gains his consciousness and
hears the voices of friends. It has its sun, and he sees by its light, and
gains sensations by contact with spiritual substances and forces. He walks upon
a spiritual earth which is as solid to the spiritual foot as the material earth
is to the material foot. He is environed by a great variety of objects
corresponding to those in the three kingdoms of nature. But they are not
material. They are of the same nature as the substance of which the spirit is
organized and bear the same relations to every spiritual sense. Everything is
more substantial and distinct to his spiritual senses than the objects of the
material world are to the material senses.
The good and the 'evil alike are welcomed by
the inhabitants of the spiritual world, who delight to render the new-corner
every service. in their power. He is left in perfect freedom to think and speak
as he pleases, to go where he chooses, and to associate with those who are the
most congenial to him. He is not questioned as to his former life. He reveals
it by his actions, the society he prefers, and the thoughts and feelings he
expresses. If he is a wicked man, he talks and acts like one, and selects
associates of a similar character. In this way he convicts and condemns
himself. The principle is precisely the same that is in universal operation in
this world. He is drawn by the forces of spiritual attraction by which like
seeks like. He is not driven away by the Lord, or repelled by the angels. On
the contrary, they offer their friendly services to instruct him in the truth
and lead him to good. But as he does not like the truth he will not listen to
it. As he does not feel in freedom with the pure and wise, he leaves them and
seeks companions who are agreeable to him.
This process of judgment., called the
separation of the sheep from the goats, is truly effected by the Lord, but not
-in an arbitrary way. No violence is done to man's freedom. The wicked depart
from the good because all the principles of love and wisdom which constitute
heaven are repugnant to them. They join the wicked because they are attracted
by kindred evil affections. They are repelled by all the divine forces which
constitute the life and joy of the inhabitants of heaven. This repugnance
between the pure and the vile, the true and the false, is not a sentiment that
can be changed by merely willing to do it. It is caused by difference in the
organic states of the wicked and the righteous. The wicked cannot breathe the
air of heaven. Their lungs have become. so perverted and deranged in form that
the pure, vital atmosphere of heaven would torture them. They would gasp like a
fish out of water. The light of heaven is so bright and clear that it would
dazzle and blind them. They would be like owls and bats in midday brightness.
This inability of the wicked to associate with
the righteous follows as a natural consequence of sin. It is essential to a
correct understanding of our subject, therefore, that we should have a true
knowledge of what sin is. This question, then, demands our careful
consideration. The answer which the Lord gives, and the one generally accepted,
is that sin is the violation of law. Its meaning will be modified, however, by
our conception of the nature of the law broken. Is it natural law according to
which the material body and the material world act? Or is it of the nature of
civil law enacted by legislators, or imposed by an arbitrary ruler? Our
doctrine of the punishment of sin will be greatly modified by which of these
two theories we adopt.
It is the doctrine of the New Church that all
moral and spiritual laws are natural, and not in any respect artificial or
arbitrary. They are the ways in which the Lord creates and sustains all things.
They are the ways in which he creates the material world, the material body,
and the human spirit, and adjusts one substance and form to another, in the
infinitely complex relations of matter and spirit, to attain the purposes of
his love. His methods are perfect because his wisdom is infinite; it is the
perfect form of a perfect love. Sin is a violation of these laws of the divine
order organized and enacted in man's spiritual nature. It is disobedience to
these laws. It is a perversion of man's own nature. It is a violation of the
divine order in which he was created. Man as a spiritual being is created,
governed, rewarded, and punished according to natural law. The fact that these
laws are expressed orally, and given in the form of commandments, does not
change their intrinsic nature. We find perfect examples and illustrations of
this kind of law and of the Lord's methods of rewarding and punishing men, in
our own persons and in the material world. The laws of physical life and all
the relations of the material body to the substances and forces of nature are
organized in the body. The conditions of seeing are organized in the eye; the
conditions of hearing in the ear. Each of the senses is organized with
exquisite and perfect adaptation to the forces that are to act upon it. The
laws of their action are enacted in their forms and nature. They were not in
any sense imposed upon them from without by arbitrary authority. In the same
manner the laws according to which all the substances and forces in the three
kingdoms of nature act in here in them, and are inseparably connected with
them. They are the Lord's methods of creating and sustaining the material
universe. The plant is not first created as a man makes a machine, and the laws
of its growth and decay imposed upon it from without. So far as human
observation extends, the Lord creates and governs the material universe and the
physical nature of man and animal according to natural laws. Plants, animals,
and men attain their physical perfection by obedience to them; and they suffer
loss by sinning against them.
In all cases the rewards of obedience and the
penalty of disobedience are inseparably connected with the law. If the laws of
physical life are violated, the penalty is loss of strength and physical pain.
It is not inflicted by the Lord. If a man takes arsenic, or lives in a
poisonous atmosphere, or breaks his bones by a fall, every rational man would
repudiate the idea as too absurd to be entertained for a moment, that God was
angry with him for breaking a law of physical life, and had punished him with
pain and physical death. The pain and death follow as an inevitable consequence
of sinning against a law of physical life. They were not inflicted by anyone.
They were effects inseparably connected with their causes.
The same principles and methods of government
are universal in the spiritual kingdom. Man as to his spirit is in the human
form organized of spiritual substances, and all his mental or spiritual
faculties bear the same relation to the spiritual forces that act upon them
that man's physical organs hold to material forces. As man was created in the
image and after the likeness of God, the divine attributes are finited in him.
The laws of the Lord's life are the laws of his life. Regarded in and of
himself man has no inherent self-derived and self-existing life. As to his
spirit as well as his body, he is merely a form capable of receiving life from
the Lord, which constantly flows into the organic forms of his spirit, and
gives them the power of action and consciousness. God constantly breathes into
man's nostrils the breath of life, and makes him a living soul. His spiritual
organization is perfectly adapted to the nature of the divine life. It moves in
harmony with it. The Lord dwells in us and we in him by means of it. We become
conjoined to him. "In him we live and move and have our being."
It is evident that any derangement in this
order would impair our union with the Source of life, disturb the harmony of
our relations with the Lord, of our spiritual faculties with the forces which
flow into them, and of their relations to one another. If the eye is so
exquisitely adjusted to the light that the least derangement in its form
impairs our sight, and, if the derangement increases, causes intense pain, and
may end in total blindness, any deviation from the normal order of the more
delicate and perfect organization of the, spirit must exclude in some degree
the inflow of the divine life, and so change the form and derange our spiritual
faculties as to cause exquisite pain. If the perversion were continued and
increased, the result must be spiritual death.
According to this law of relation between man
and the Lord, and the nature of his spiritual faculties, the penalty of
disobedience inheres in the violation of the law; it follows as an inevitable
consequence. The Lord does not say to sinners, You disobeyed me when you lived
in the world, and now I will punish you eternally for it. Evil and not God
slays the wicked. He does all he can for them. He does not chive them away from
his presence; they cannot bear it; they are tormented by it. Its light blinds
them. The inflowing of his love torments them, and they flee from him as. the
only way of escape from agony. The organization of their spiritual faculties
has become so perverted, and the faculties themselves so distorted and
malformed, that they cannot act in harmony with the inflowing currents of the
divine life, and the action of those forces causes suffering More or less
exquisite according to the derangement and sensitiveness of the organs.
This is a law with which we are perfectly
familiar in our own personal experience and observation of others. When any
organ of the material body becomes diseased, the inflowing life of the spirit
is obstructed, and that resistance to its currents causes pain. The inflamed
eye shuns the light; the relaxed and disordered nerve shrinks from every
contact and motion; a congested muscle throbs with pain caused by the action of
more interior forces. In all cases pain is caused by want of harmony between
the forces of life and the vessels that were formed to receive it and vibrate
in harmony with it. It is impossible to inflict pain upon the material body in
any other way than by deranging the order of its forms, and disturbing the
harmony of their relations. The spirit is governed by the same law in all its
activities. The wicked are inflamed with passions which torment and consume
them. By the perversion and distortion of their faculties, they have excluded
themselves from the harmonies of the divine order; and those forces which were
intended by infinite wisdom to give them joy and peace and rest, now smite
them. They have placed themselves in opposition to the currents of the divine
love; they regard everything from a wrong point of view. As a consequence their
thoughts must be false and their affections evil. Their minds are peopled with
illusions, and their hearts are tormented with fears. "The wicked are like
the troubled sea when it cannot rest.
. . . There is no peace, saith my God, to the
wicked." They cannot feel at home in the presence of the pure and good.
They are at war with one another. Spiritually they are in the same condition
that a man would be physically if he was so diseased that he could not bear the
light, that food tormented, and the air suffocated him.
In none of these eases does the Lord inflict
pain in an arbitrary way as a punishment for disobedience to the laws of life
enacted in the organic forms of the material or the spiritual body. He did not
organize man's nature in any of its planes, spiritual or material, for pain. He
created it to be a vessel for the reception of his love and wisdom, and the
subject of delight and happiness. He gives his love to man to be his love, his
wisdom to be man's wisdom, his joy and peace to be man's joy and peace. Man was
made to be an organized and embodied joy. If he perverts the means the Lord has
provided for his happiness, it is not the Lord's fault. As these are the only
means by which happiness can be gained, he puts it out of the Lord's power to
save and bless him.
By indulgence in error and sin, the
deformities of man's spiritual nature become fixed. His heart is hardened; his
understanding becomes blinded, and all his faculties so disordered and
perverted that they cannot be restored to their normal order. If the penalty of
sin were arbitrary, its remission could be made by the mercy or good pleasure
of the Lord. But if sin is a violation of the laws of organic life, the penalty
can only be remitted by the restoration of the organism to its normal order. The
real penalty is the disease; the privation and suffering come with it, and can
only be remitted by curing the disease. If the penalty could be remitted by an
act of omnipotent power, we cannot conceive it to be possible that a being of
infinite love and wisdom would hesitate a moment to speak the word and let the
imprisoned soul go free. But if man, as to his spirit as well as his material
body, is an organized, substantial human faun, the penalty of sin can only be
removed by a restoration of the spiritual organism to its normal order, and
this can only be done by man's voluntary co-operation. The punishment or the
consequences of sin after the dissolution of the material body, and the
conscious introduction of the sinner into the spiritual world, must continue as
long as he remains a sinner His only possible escape from it is escape from
himself. It can be gained only by a change in his whole organization. The
nature and severity of the punishment must be measured by the extent and
malignity of his disease. The duration of it must be determined in the same
way. It must continue until he is cured. We can only come to any rational and
true conclusion concerning the possibility of such a change by considering the
nature, capacities, and limitations of man's spiritual faculties, the
conditions in which he is placed, and the means that can be provided that will
be efficacious in restoring his faculties to order.
It is a well-known fact that the will and the
understanding, or the affections and the intellectual faculties, are formed by
the truths learned and the affections exercised. The limit of our knowledge is
the horizon of the mind. Knowledge is the only means of thinking upon any
subject. Our affections lead our thoughts and direct them to the objects we love.
Pure and good affections turn our thoughts to heavenly truths and the means of
doing good to others. Selfish and worldly affections cause our thoughts to centre
in ourselves and to seek the means of gratifying our desires. By indulgence in
these selfish and worldly affections the whole mind becomes inverted. It was
organized to turn to the Lord and open to the influx of life from him. It was
made to look to the good of the neighbour. The two great commandments are the
laws of life organized in man's nature.
But when man loves himself supremely instead
of the Lord, and the world instead of the neighbour, he sees everything in a
distorted form and a perverted order. He mistakes error for truth, evil for
good, darkness for light. He regards everything from a false point of view, and
judges everything by a false standard. He says to evil, Be thou my good. To
error, Be thou my guide. These forms of thought and states of affection become
fixed after man passes into the spiritual world. The will and the
understanding, or affection and thought, become so closely united that he
believes everything to be true which he loves. Thought becomes the form of his
affection. If the affection is corrupt the thought will inevitably be false. In
this world this perfect union of affection and the intellectual faculties has
not taken place, and this is the only ground of the possibility of man's
salvation. He can see and know that to be true which he does not love. By
compelling himself to live according to the truth, his whole mind gradually
turns to the Lord, and the Lord creates a clean heart and renews a right spirit
within him. But how can he be changed when these forms of his mind become
united and fixed? By teaching him the truth? He cannot bear it. It does not
seem to him to be the truth because it is opposed to all the principles from
which he acts. It hurts him as light hurts an inflamed eye. It is repugnant to
every taste and affection. Tell him he must love the Lord with all his soul,
mind, and strength? He cannot do it by force of will, for all his affections centre
in himself. There is no ground in his nature for a desire to love the Lord or
his neighbour. The whole organism of his spiritual faculties has been reversed.
To restore his nature to true order by almighty power, if that were possible,
would be like untwisting every nerve in the material body. It would cause an
agony which no human being could endure. An organic form can only be gradually
changed by its own co-operation.
Some think that the spirit will become
purified by suffering. But a little observation will show that suffering has no
power to cleanse from sin and restore either body or mind to health. Pain of
every kind is caused by the derangement of physical or spiritual organs. It
ceases with the disorder that caused it; but it has no power to heal. It may
act as a restraint from the indulgence which caused the disease, but it
possesses no saving virtue. There is no hope in suffering, for the final
salvation of the sinner. Having no love for goodness and truth, and
consequently no desire for them, there is no motive and no ground of hope in
themselves for any change of character. There is no ground of hope for help
from the Lord, or any other source, not because it is withheld, but because the
wicked will not accept the offered help and co-operate with the Lord in the
application of it to their own lives.
Such is a brief statement of the principles
which, according to the doctrines of the New Church, determine the condition of
the wicked iii the spiritual world. These principles are universal in their
operation. They apply to the righteous with the same immutable certainty that
they do to the wicked. They are not rewarded by their faith or works, but
according to them. Their joy and peace in here in and grow out of their
characters, as the quality of fruit is determined by the character of the tree
that bore it. Tile degree, quality, and extent of their happiness are measured
by their capacity to receive it from the Lord. Their allotment is not made by
any arbitrary power. Everyone goes where his nature takes him, enjoys what he
is capable of enjoying, and suffers the pain that is caused by his opposition
to the laws of the divine order.
The final question to be considered is the
nature and special forms of punishment the wicked suffer according to this
immutable law. The most terrible penalties of sin are generally supposed to be
the suffering that the sinner must endure. But little account is made of what
he loses. Yet this is the most terrible consequence of sin. The Lord has
endowed men with immeasurable capacities to know, to love, and to enjoy. There
can be no assignable limit beyond which they cannot and must not pass when they
are unfolded in the order of their nature. In this respect a spiritual organ
differs from a material one. The capacity of the natural senses to receive
either pleasure or pain is soon reached. The maximum of physical power is soon
gained, and there is no possibility of passing beyond it. But it is not so with
the spiritual faculties. The more we put into the mind the more it contains.
Every new truth becomes a vessel for the reception of more truth. The
affections enlarge and gain strength and purity by exercise, and a capacity for
larger and more exquisite delights. When the faculties of the mind are
exercised according to the laws of the divine order, they grow deeper, broader,
higher, purer, and their exercise is rewarded with more exquisite joy. This
process of development will continue without interruption and without end. The
righteous will draw nearer to the Lord and will receive larger Incas- 374 tires
of life from him. They will draw nearer to one another, be more helpful to one
another, and live in ever-increasing harmony and joy.
Directly the reverse must be the condition of
all those who have destroyed the divine order in their natures. Being out of
its harmonies, all the divine forces by which man is created and sustained in
existence, and the faculties of his mind developed, are resisted and perverted
in their action. They cause disturbance instead of harmony. They repress
action, and tend to destroy rather than promote it. Consequently there are no
means of improvement, for all the means that are essential to it tend to the
repression rather than the enlargement of the spiritual faculties. We see the
results of disorderly action on every side in this world. The penalty of
unlawful and excessive indulgence in eating, drinking, or any other sensual
pleasure, is the loss of the delights of vigorous and healthy action.
The same principle operates in social and
industrial life. The love of self and the world close the heart and the
understanding against the possibility of enjoying the manifold delights that
bless every member of a community when love to the Lord and the neighbour reign
in it. Every individual looks to the common good and seeks to promote it, and
the whole community regard the highest good of every member of it. The time and
strength and money that are now spent by individuals and nations in destructive
competition and war, would be employed for the common good. This loss of
attainable good is one of the most terrible penalties of sin. Sin closes the
doors which open to every form of natural and spiritual good. This effect is
more prompt and universal in the spiritual world than it is in this life. There
the environment of every one corresponds to and represents his character. His
thoughts and affections become objective. The sinner creates his own world and
peoples it with forms corresponding to his own perverted faculties. He dwells
in darkness because he loves darkness rather than light. He is deaf to all the
finer harmonies of the divine order. His senses are dull. He is stupid and
gross and vile and incapable of any but the lowest animal delights. These
penalties are not inflicted by the Lord.
They follow as the necessary consequence of
error and sin. The other penalties, and the ones that have chiefly engaged the
attention of theologians, are the sufferings which the wicked endure. We can
form some conception of what they must be from our own experience and
observation of the suffering caused by violating the laws of the divine order
in this world, for they are the same beings they were here, and the relation of
effects to causes is the same; the only difference being that the effects
follow more promptly and fully.
'The wicked are organized into societies
according to the special nature of the evil of which they have become the
embodiment. They are not constantly tormented. They have their rulers, laws by
which they are governed, their employments, and their vile delights. They
associate with each other and converse freely upon all questions that interest
them. The love of self and the world being their only motive of action, they
are in the constant effort to rule over and make slaves of others. They envy
those above them, and they plot and contrive to supplant them. Their hearts are
full of hatred and revenge. They are inconceivably cruel, and their greatest
delight consists in tormenting others. There is no love, no kindness, no
respect, no virtue, no regard for others. They have no conscience and no shame.
They are restless and. tormented with fears of harm from others, and
disappointed at their constant failure to gain power and inflict pain.
They cannot act from any affection without
doing injury to others, acct they cannot do that without being severely
punished. This may be administered by others, for they delight to cause
suffering. But for the most part the penalty of disobedience grows out of it,
as the penalty of violating a law of physical life does in this world. The
government of the hells is like that of a penitentiary. There is order, but it
is enforced from without. There is a constant desire to resist it, which is
only restrained by fear. The passion to make slaves of all others, and punish
them for the least resistance to their will, smoulders like a concealed fire,
and is in the constant effort to break out and consume. They have no freedom;
no one can act as he desires. They are all miserable slaves, and their life is
a constant servitude.
In personal form they become the perfect
embodiment and expression of their own evils. The law which we see in universal
operation here, according to which the dispositions cherished and the habits
formed mould the features of the face into their own likeness, rules without
any hindrance there. The spiritual body becomes the thought and affection in
organic form. Every feature and limb and motion becomes the exponent of vile
passions, of ignorance, hatred, and revenge. The vilest become hideous and
ghastly monsters, with hardly a semblance of the human form. Their habitations,
food, clothing, and all the appointments of their lives correspond with their
persons and character. The perversion of their own nature destroys all harmony,
all beauty, and all order in everything around them, and in all their relations
to the Lord and to one another.
They are not tormented by conscience, for they
have none. If they had they would not be in hell. They do not suffer from
remorse because they are incapable of it. They love sin, and are filled with
madness because they cannot indulge in it without restraint. They have no
regrets for the past. The natural memory of all, of the good as well as the
evil, is closed when they pass into the spiritual world. It is not, however,
obliterated, and it can be revived when there is occasion for it. They live in
the present. Neither the future nor the past troubles them. The wicked do not
continue to grow worse and sink to deeper and ever-increasing woe. On the
contrary, by constant suppression from the fear of punishment, their passions
become less active, according to a universal law of our natures. They become
more stupid and devoid of life, and consequently their sufferings are less
acute. It cannot be said that they grow better, but less active in evil. They
come into a constrained order which becomes habit and ameliorates their
condition. The Lord does all he can to alleviate their sufferings and bring
them into the highest state of order they will permit him. He holds them up
from sinking into lower deeps; he gives them all the good they will receive
from him, and does all lie can to make their condition tolerable. The angels
are not silent and passive spectators of their suffering. They are active in
suppressing the fury and cruelty with which the wicked pursue and strive to
torment one another, and they have a powerful influence in quieting disorder
and mitigating their sufferings. The highest angels, whose hearts are full of
tenderness and mercy, delight in this service.
According to this view, hell is not an inquisition
in which its inmates are tortured for what they did and believed or failed to
do and believe while they lived in this world. It is not a penitentiary where
the finally impenitent are imprisoned by the Lord and punished for the deeds
done in the body. It is an asylum for the incurably insane, in which every
provision that infinite mercy can suggest and infinite wisdom effect is
provided to assuage their misery and make their hopeless condition as endurable
as possible. Their sufferings are terrible, beyond the power of words to
describe. But no more restraint is put upon them than is necessary to prevent
them in their madness from inflicting severer torments upon one another, and
disturbing the peace of the righteous. They are not deprived of a delight or
comfort by the Lord. No pain or sorrow or suffering is inflicted by him. They
could not breathe the atmosphere of heaven; it would suffocate them. They could
not bear its light; it would blind them. They could not endure the society of
the pure and wise; it would be utterly repugnant to every principle of their
nature and a horrible torment to them. The condition of the wicked is as
perfect a testimony as the blessedness of the righteous, to the divine
declaration, "The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all
his works."
The whole of sacred Scripture when correctly
understood testifies to these principles of the Lord's government of the
finally impenitent., and his provision for their wants. The universal truth is
constantly implied and plainly taught that " evil slays the wicked."
Every one is finally judged and rewarded according to his work. It is true that
the wicked are turned into hell. But they are turned into it by their own evil
passions and false principles. They make hell and carry it with them wherever
they go. A society of wicked men and women is a hell, whether in this or the
spiritual world. They dwell in darkness, because they love darkness rather than
light.
Darkness in the spiritual world is ignorance
and error. The terms that are generally employed to reveal the condition of the
finally impenitent are now regarded as symbols of the truth and not literal
facts. No intelligent Christian believes that the wicked are thrust into a lake
of fire and brimstone by an angry God, tossing on its billows, writhing in
agony, consuming but never consumed, while the Lord by a mere act of mercy
could relieve them from their torment in a moment. The fire that consumes and
torments them is their own lusts. " The worm that never dies " is the
false principles which constantly lead them into torment. They think God is
angry with them because lie is opposed to all the evil and false principles
from which they act. They judge him and estimate all good by their love of
dominion and their efforts to subject him and all human beings to their own
power. They are out of the divine order, they array themselves against the
mighty currents of the divine power by which all things and all beings are
created and subsist, and consequently all the divine forces smite them. The
Lord has not changed, he causes the sun of his love and wisdom to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sends the rain of his truth on the just and the
unjust.
Such is a brief statement of the belief of the
New Church concerning retribution. I have not attempted to do much more than
state some general principles and illustrate them by facts which are well known
to all intelligent men. These principles are unfolded in the writings of the
New Church in manifold ways, and confirmed by the nature of the human mind and
all the Lord's methods of creating, punishing, and rewarding men, so far as
they come within our own observation. They commend themselves to our reason;
they are in perfect accord with the revelations which the Lord has made of
himself in his word and works when understood; they present him to us as a
being of infinite love and wisdom, whose only purpose is to create human beings
capable of receiving and reciprocating his love, of being enlightened by his
wisdom, and blessed by a life according to his commandments.
Under the laws of his own moral nature, and by
his own volition, man fixes his own destiny.
By Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., Pastor of
the First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio.
IT seems to be generally believed that the
opinion of the Church with respect to retribution has been greatly changed
within the last century. As to the forms by which the doctrine is set forth this
belief is well founded. It is not very long since hell was universally supposed
to be a literal lake of fire and brimstone, and the physical sufferings of the
lost were depicted in flaming colours on the canvas of the popular evangelist.
I remember hearing Elder Knapp describe the writhing’s of the lost in that pit
of flame; and it is impossible to forget the extremely realistic rhetoric in
which he pointed out the damned crawling up the sides of the crater, and the
devils standing with pitchforks on the edges to fling them in again. These
picturesque delineations were delivered, with perfect assurance, to a crowded
audience of Christians, of which I, as a small boy in the gallery, with two
good eyes and two good ears, was an insignificant but very sensitive part; and
if they provoked dissent or disgust in this Christian congregation, the same
was not visible or audible to me. Elder Knapp's methods of presenting the
doctrine of retribution were considerably coarser than the average of those
which were current in his generation; but there are many men and women now
living who have often heard from the pulpit similar descriptions of hell as a
place of physical torment. A few evangelists are now traveling who adhere,
though rather shamefacedly, to this method of presentation,-insisting that
" the Bible always means just what it says "; but from no intelligent
teacher, even of the most conservative school, is any such doctrine heard. The
costume of the theory of retribution has greatly changed within the last century.
It must also be admitted that the content of
the doctrine has been considerably reduced. It is not very long since the
damnation of many infants and all the heathen was generally taught; in utter
despite of logic room has been found for all the little children in the
heavenly home, and the doctrine of the " essential Christ " permits
the staunchest of the defenders of Orthodoxy to say that "a great
multitude " of those who never heard on earth of the Man of Nazareth are
praising him to-day in heaven. That the statements made by the representatives
of the majority in the recent debates upon the platform of the American Board
of Missions, would have shocked and scandalized the good men who, fifty years
ago, were managing that organization, is too plain for argument. " Within
the last thirty years," said those good men, in one of their official
documents, "a whole generation of five hundred millions have gone down to
eternal death." And again: " The heathen are involved in the ruins of
the apostasy, and are expressly doomed to perdition. Six hundred millions of
deathless souls on the brink of hell! What a spectacle! " The unshrinking
affirmation is that the heathen, as heathen, are " expressly doomed to
perdition." No hint is here of any " essential Christ "; no
suggestion that one man of all these millions ca? be saved by living up to the
light vouchsafed him. It would be utterly impossible for " the most straightest
sect" of the Orthodox to make any such affirmation to-day. No more
effectual method could be found of " cutting the nerve of missions "
than the proclamation of this horrible doctrine. Certainly it would be thought
by men of good will in this generation hardly worthwhile to spend much time or
money in proclaiming a religion that had no more hope than this fur the
millions of mankind. " The enthusiasm of humanity " would not be
greatly stimulated by working with or for a deity who could hurl whole
generations of crippled and blinded souls into the abyss after this fashion;
nor is it entirely clear that faith in such a god would do the heathen any
good.
There is a good deal of sneering, in certain
quarters, at the Christian consciousness of the age as one of the factors in
the development of doctrine; but it is a power, after all, which teachers of
every school are compelled to take into the account, and to which the wisest of
them now pay profound respect. It is tins Christian consciousness, quickened by
the abiding presence in the Church of Him who is the Life and the Light of men,
that has discarded those dreadful theories of universal doom, and opened so
wide a door of hope to all men everywhere who follow the light that has been
given to them. It is because the ethical judgments of men are steadily growing
clearer under the tuition and inspiration of Christ himself, that those
monstrous dogmatic shapes have disappeared from the teaching of the Church
concerning retribution.
Certain it is that great changes have taken
place in the belief of the Church, on this question, during the last century.
The most strenuous of the Orthodox have been busily depopulating hell; they
reject and even resent the ancient assumption that the vast majority of the
human race will suffer there forever. Nor would it be possible for any teacher
of this time to say, without raising a suspicion of his sanity, what Thomas
Aquinas said in the thirteenth century: " In order that the saints may
enjoy their beatitude more richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the
damned is granted to them; " or what Jonathan Edwards said, in the last
century:
The sight of hell torments will exalt the
happiness of the saints forever. . . It will make them more sensible of their
own happiness. . . A sense of the opposite misery in any case greatly increases
the relish of any joy or pleasure; or what Samuel Hopkins said, about the same
time: " The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the
blessed for ever and ever, and serve as a most clear glass always before their
eyes to give them a bright and most affecting view. This display of the divine
character will be most entertaining to all who love God, and will give them the
highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eternal punishment
cease, it would in a great measure obscure the light of heaven, and put an end
to a great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed." The time has
come-let us say it with devout thankfulness-when no such fiendish sentiments as
these are uttered in the interest of Orthodoxy. The most conservative teachers
of this generation are not in the habit of asserting that the blessedness of
the redeemed depends on an unobstructed view of the torments of the damned; nor
would they say, respecting the city that hath no temple, that it is not the
Lamb, but the sulphurous fire of the pit, that is the light thereof. Is anyone
disposed to lament that the Church of this generation has departed, in some
respects, from the teaching of the fathers concerning retribution?
But it is alleged that the Church of this
generation has not only cast off these heathenish hypotheses, but that it has
also thrown away the substantial truth respecting the punishment of sin; that
the great facts of retribution are obscured or slurred over in the teaching of
this time; that the law of God is not enforced as it ought to be, and that the
morals of this generation are suffering from lax views of penalty. The doctrine
of punishment preached in the churches of this generation, it is said, is as
much understated as the doctrine of a former time was overstated.
It would not be strange, indeed, if such a
result should follow. One extreme is apt to produce another. There is some
truth in the complaint which we have just quoted. The doctrine of punishment,
as it is set forth in many of our pulpits, is a feeble and ineffectual
expression. It seems to have lost its grip on the conviction of those who utter
it, and it makes little impression on the consciences of those who listen to
it. As a deterrent from sin it is practically nil. From many pulpits little is
heard about retribution. And there is ground for the charge that this
tremendous fact is considerably obscured in the current Christian teaching.
One reason for this defect we have already
hinted at. The reaction of the purified Christian consciousness from the horrible
assertions and implications of the old theology has led to a revulsion of
feeling toward the whole subject. Many good men have felt that a motive which
has been so injuriously overworked could be safely permitted to rest awhile.
The situation is not unlike that of the Hebrews departing from Egypt, where
future retribution had been harped on till it was an outworn tale, so that
Moses, in the legislation of the Pentateuch, left the future wholly out of the
account.
Still another reason why this teaching has
fallen into desuetude is found in the fact that the philosophic framework of
the doctrine has broken down, and the facts are left without any adequate
explanation. The theology of the past century has been, for the most part, what
is described as a governmental theology. The analogies by which the divine
operation in human society has been explained are analogies drawn from the
processes of human government. The law of God has been assimilated, in these
theories, to the statutory regulations of Congresses and Parliaments; its
penalties have been conceived of as judicially determined and inflicted; and
just as human law would be dishonoured and crippled if government did not
rigidly enforce it, so, it has been reasoned, the divine law must be maintained
by a rigorous execution of its penalties. Very much has been made, in all these
theorizing, of the necessity of maintaining the honour of the divine government
by inflicting the penalty of the law upon offenders, or by finding some
equivalent for this penalty. This is the crux of the governmental theology. For
it is evident that men continue to transgress the divine law for many years
without being arraigned and punished. The theory that this life is a period of
probation meets this difficulty; and it is declared that when the gates of
death open to the sinner the door of mercy is closed upon him; that he is then
arraigned, convicted, and sentenced to hopeless suffering. But the whole
process, as thus conceived, is forensic, or judicial; the methods, the
principles, the expedience, the delays, of our human administration are imputed
to the divine administration; because our judges and governors, in their
maintenance of the law, find it necessary or prudent to do or not do this or
that, it is supposed that the Judge of all the earth must administer his
government in the same manner. It is this theory that is obsolescent. It begins
to be pretty clear to a good many thoughtful Christians that reasonings of this
nature are of dubious validity. It is gravely questioned whether the Omniscient
and Omnipotent One follows the maxims and the models of our courts in his
procedure. The governmental fabric, on which the whole weight of our
theological systems has been piled, has broken down under them; and the
doctrine of retribution, whose formularies were all stated in terms of this
theory, has become a logical wreck. Those who have been explaining the reason
of retribution and the methods of retribution by these governmental analogies,
find themselves very much at sea when it becomes evident that these analogies
are wholly inadequate to set forth the facts of the moral order of the world.
The governmental theology is still taught in
most of our theological seminaries, and by many is supposed to be the necessary
form of Orthodoxy; but the Church has grown out of it; multitudes of men know a
great deal about the relations of God to men that cannot be expressed by means
of its analogies: the deepest facts of the spiritual realm lie wholly outside
of its phrases; when they are repeated before an intelligent congregation by an
intelligent preacher, they have a hollow sound to him who speaks and to those
who listen; there is an uneasy consciousness that they misrepresent the facts
of the case. It is for this reason that the truth of retribution is so
inadequately presented. The old philosophy of retribution is badly out of
repair; it serves no longer as a vehicle to convey the truth to the reason of
men; therefore those who have found no new philosophy which more adequately
explains the facts, are fain to avoid the whole subject.
But it will be observed that this uncertainty
of touch is found among those who still adhere to the govern mental philosophy.
It is our conservative brethren who are derelict in the teaching of
retribution. Those who are most strenuous in their demand that the doctrine of
punishment be taught are the very ones who say least about it. Now and then
they preach, in a perfunctory way, a discourse on eternal punishment; but the
statement, as they are able to frame it, does not clearly correspond with the
realities of life, so they make up in emphasis what is wanting in conviction,
and fling the sermon into the drawer when it is preached, with the thankful
feeling that nothing more on that subject will be required for some time to
come.
A sign that the received philosophy of
retribution has ceased to represent any real belief is seen in the scarcely
concealed tendency everywhere observable among the champions of the old
theology to treat the whole subject lightly. The theme is one around which the humour
of these defenders of the faith is often suffered to play in ministers'
meetings; many facetious allusions of one sort or another are made to it; if it
must not be said of some of them that hell is a huge joke, it is certain that
it cannot be regarded by them as an awful reality.
The fault of neglecting the teaching of
retribution must be laid, then, at the doors of those who adhere to a
philosophy of religion which has become inadequate to explain the facts of
religion. Strange as the assertion may seem to many, it is the conservative men
who are now practically ignoring the truth of retribution, and it is the
progressives who are enforcing it. My own belief is that the real terrors of
the law are now more clearly announced from Universalist pulpits than from the
pulpits of our most Orthodox teachers. Not long ago, after I had been preaching
on this subject, a very intelligent man, now an active member of an Orthodox
38S church, said to me " That is an awful truth. I heard it put in the
same way once before, and it was the first time that I was ever startled and
alarmed on account of my sin. I had heard many sermons on punishment, but this
was the first one that frightened me, and made me feel my need of deliverance
and salvation. And that sermon," added my friend, " was preached in a
Universalist church by a Universalist minister." It is very true that the
force of this teaching is neutralized in Universalist pulpits by the dogmatic
assertion that all men, somehow or other, in spite of themselves, are going to
be saved by and by; but the fact remains that these teachers do see and set
forth in vigorous fashion the consequences of sin.
Those who refuse to make these dogmatic
assertions of universal restoration, because they find neither in Scripture nor
in reason any warrant for them, but who insist upon dealing with the subject of
moral evil on the basis of an experimental rather than a governmental
philosophy, find a doctrine of retribution which they can teach-a doctrine
plain enough and terrible enough to serve all the purposes of moral impression.
It is in what Dr. Munger calls "the appeal to life " that we get firm
ground for our teaching of retribution. This is the method of study which our
Lord has taught us: He, above all other masters, has shown us how to turn from
scholastic systems, and metaphysical refinements, to the plain facts of
every-clay life. When we follow this method we reach a doctrine of punishment
which, although it differs considerably in form from that which has been
current in the Church, is full of awful meaning, and can be preached with
demonstration of the Spirit, and with power. No man who understands this view
of the subject will ever be heard treating it facetiously; no man who believes
it will be content to preach it once in a while, for the easing of his
conscience; he will feel that the terrible fact must continually be kept before
the eyes of transgressors.
Not long ago I heard a popular representative
of the old theology saying that nobody knew anything about retribution except what
is revealed in the Bible. If that were true, then the case is certainly hard
for the thousands of millions who have lived and died without ever hearing of
the Bible. "Six hundred millions on the brink of hell," yet they have
no intimation whatever of the existence of such a place! Those who have no
knowledge of retribution can have no notion of the moral law of which
retribution is an essential element. They cannot therefore be responsible
beings. Can this be true, that the existence of a moral order depends on the
publication, in any community, of the Bible? Nowhere is this statement more
emphatically contradicted than in the Bible itself.
Before one word of the Bible was written this
was a moral universe, moral from foundation to cap-stone; the everlasting law
of right was in force in every part of it; the rewards of righteousness and the
penalties of transgression were as sure as they are to-clay. How comes it to
pass that it is ill with the wicked and well with the righteous? Is it only
because the Prophet Isaiah, seven hundred years before Christ, said that it
should be so? Does the penalty wait for the precept? If the Decalogue had not
been written would it not have been wrong to steal, and would there have been
no retribution for the thief? Such suppositions are sufficiently absurd upon
the face of them. In every part of this universe the moral laws are in full
force and their penalties are visited unerringly upon every transgressor. Into
the very nature of man, into the very order of the universe, the moral laws are
incorporated, and the sequences of sin are joined to the sins themselves by the
laws of cause and effect. No man can violate the moral laws without suffering
the retribution that waits on such transgression.
What is the moral law? Christ's statement of
it is the perfect statement: Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart and
thy neighbour as thyself. We call this a moral law, but it is as truly a
natural law as is the law of gravitation. The universe is so made that no man
can live happily and perfect his own being who does not love God supremely and
his neighbour as himself. The words of Christ did not originate the law, it is engraved
upon the very life of man. That man has an intuitive knowledge of it need not
be asserted; it is sufficient to say that his life is founded on it, and that,
in due time, by studying his own nature and its laws, he is just as sure to
find it out, as he is to find out the law of gravitation or the law of the
circulation of the blood. Our Lord revealed it to us indeed, but what is
revelation? It is simply the disclosure of that which was hidden. It must. have
existed before, else it could not have been revealed.
Sin is the transgression of this law, and the
wages of sin is death. How much does this mean?
We should say, on first thought, that physical
death is the consequence of the violation of physical law, and spiritual death
the consequence of the violation of spiritual law; and that, inasmuch as the
law we are now considering is in its essence spiritual, physical death cannot
result from disobeying it. That might be true if the physical and the spiritual
natures of man were totally distinct. But their relations are so close that
each is greatly affected by the other. If I violate the laws of health, my body
suffers, and my mind is to some extent injured by the condition of my body;
perhaps my perception of the truth is dulled or my temper is soured or my will
is weakened. If I tell a falsehood or commit an act of dishonesty, the remorse
that I feel for the act may disturb my sleep, affect my appetite, and irritate
my nerves, impairing my bodily health. Thus the body and the mind react upon
each other, and if this law were exclusively spiritual disobedience of it might
result in bodily disorders that should end in premature and painful physical
death.
But the law is not spiritual in any such sense
that it does not have to do with the physical nature of man. It is addressed to
the whole man. " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " is the
law. That involves a rational love of ourselves, and a rational care for
ourselves, for our bodies as well as for our spirits. Any transgression of the
laws of health is therefore sin. Intemperance, gluttony, any form of physical
vice or abuse, is an infraction of the moral law. The wages of such sin is
disease and death.
*How life would come to its term, if sin had
never entered the world, it is not possible to say: our translation might be
some happy euthanasy; but the Scriptures always assume that the sting of death
is sin; that physical suffering and corruption are closely connected with moral
transgression.
391 But this is a small part of the sequences
of sin. The death which results from the violation of the soul's law is that
swift and terrible decay of the whole nature, mental and moral, as well as
physical, which sin always produces.
Insensibility to spiritual truth is one of its
first symptoms. Those who persist in disobedience become less and less
responsive to the higher forms of truth; the thought of God awakens in them a
diminishing desire to know him; appeals to their gratitude do not stir them;
prayer seems to them a dismal mummery; of things unseen and eternal they have
little consciousness.
This creeping paralysis of the spiritual
nature is always accompanied by moral decay: The man who will not obey the law
of God, who neither respects the laws of his own being, nor the welfare of his neighbour,
nor his obligation to his God, is one whose moral sense is constantly becoming
less acute, and whose moral power is continually waning. Every sin that he
commits makes the difference between right and wrong much less clear to him
than it was before; gradually he learns first to palliate, and then to excuse,
and then to justify deeds that once he abhorred. The better principles that
once ruled him lose their influence over him, and he sinks under the thraldom
of baser motives. The instinctive hatred of meanness and cruelty that once
quickly kindled within his soul is smouldering; he is ceasing to feel much
hatred for wickedness that does not hurt him; he is learning to question the
utility of. any virtue that does not bring him profit. He flatters himself that
he is growing wiser; in truth he is growing sharper and harder. His wisdom is
but a snaky variety, compared with which the clear insight of forgotten days
was as much better as the sweet juices of the spring are better than the bitter
sap of autumn. Base motives, grovelling tastes, sinister passions, rule him; he
revels in the things that he ought to loathe, and hates the things that he
ought to love. Such a process of moral deterioration and decay is the certain
history of every soul that continues in sin.
The process of sin, says Dr. Newman Smyth,
"is ever downward, destroying all that is manly or womanly, extinguishing
in the lusts of the flesh the light and glory of the soul. Our very words for
sins are derived from the natures of the lower animals and the coarser
characteristics of the material world. As the man enslaved by his appetites and
passions sinks lower and lower, he seems to lose soul, to lose the power of
discriminating between good and evil, and the capacity of entering into the
delights of a pure, happy home. The mark of the beast, comes out upon his very
countenance; down even beneath the level of the brute creation does sin seem to
sink the soul, even in this present world, until -utterly hard and coarse, a
thing rather than a man-the drunkard, the debauchee, the criminal, meets the
hour of his extinction."
So much we see and know. About this is no
guess-work. No faith is required for the acceptance of this awful truth,
nothing but the power to see what is in plain view. The Bible tells us all
this, and God writes it far more plainly in the faces of the men we know, in
the dark history of many a soul that is hurrying with a constantly accelerated
pace along this downward way. That sin, like leaven, like infection, spreads
its corruption silently but surely over the whole nature; that evil deeds are
evil seeds that spring up and bear fruit after their kind-a prolific harvest-in
the soul of the sinner; that the law of the progress of sin is, in Paul's
phrase, " iniquity unto iniquity," sin upon sin,-every sin dragging
after it a horrible train of shame and degradation; that he who sows to the
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, thirty, sixty, a hundred fold, this
is no speculation but one of the awful certainties of science.
Some theologians may be oblivious of this
momentous fact, but the analysts of human nature are not; the sociologists are
not; nay, the novelists have it always before their eyes. Read the story of
Tito Melema, in Bomola; of Bartley Hubbard, in A Modern Instance; of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde. The fearful and fatal consequences of sin are not hidden from the
eyes of those who study the laws of the soul and the realities of life.
* The Orthodox Theology of To-day, p. 93.
We watch this process, in many. lives, until
death draws its veil, and hides from our sight its later stages. That evil
doers wax worse and worse as long as they are in this world is certain; some of
them sink very low indeed before they leave this world; others are traveling
steadily in the same road when death overtakes them, but they have not gone so
far in it. What change does death make in their condition? Does death arrest
the spread of this moral decay over the soul? There is no reason whatever for
believing anything of the kind. There is no evidence that death has any
regenerating power. Whatever this change which we call death may do for us, it
is impossible to believe that it effects any revolution in our moral nature.
Therefore the same tendencies that were at work in our characters here will continue
to work beyond the grave; if we complete the curve by the arc that we can
measure, it must be true that beyond the veil, as on this side, the downward
way grows steeper and easier to travel at every step, and the probability of
turning round in it becomes less and less as duration lengthens. Every sign
that we can see points to a final permanence of evil character. We cannot look
far enough into the future to tell what the end will be, but we know that the
degradation to which this path leads down is dire and unspeakable.
All this, I say, we know. We know what are the
cumulative consequences of sin in this world, and we cannot imagine that the
moral laws under which they are suffered will be suspended at death. Therefore
we can show every man who is walking in the ways of selfishness and sin whither
he is going; to what a bestial and horrible doom his path leads clown; and how
increasingly improbable it is that he will pause and retrace his steps. And
this is no arbitrary infliction, but the natural fruit of his own doings. The
pit into which he is sinking is one that he is digging for himself.
Those who have learned that the moral laws are
also natural laws; that retribution is part of the natural order; that penalty
is joined to sin as an effect to a cause; that death is the wages of sin, paid
down with fearful promptness and certainty, have a message to deliver to men
which they can utter without faltering. It does not appeal to faith, it appeals
to. sense, to sight. The most inveterate sceptic cannot doubt it. The streets
are full of living witnesses to its truth. The preacher can speak with the
accent of conviction. I was taught to believe the governmental notion of
penalty, and I did believe it; the doctrine of retribution that I preach to-clay
I do not believe, nor do I ask any man to believe it; I know that it is true,
and so does every man to whom it is clearly spoken.
It is not only certain, it is adequate. For
the purposes of moral impression it is far stronger than the old view. The
picture that it shows a sinner of the doom toward which he is tending is far
more terrible than the flame of a judicial hell. It fixes his attention not on
what he will suffer, but on what he will become; it shows him the foul and
horrible thing that he will be if he goes on in sin. Thus it appeals not to his
dread of pain, which may be wholly selfish, but to his conscience, his moral
feeling. It is from sin that he flees and not from suffering; it is toward
righteousness that he turns and not toward happiness. That this motive is far
more efficient hi securing genuine conversion than the other motive which
addresses primarily the fear of pain, is a fact well known to every true
shepherd of souls.
If any man thinks that this view of
retribution has in it no restraining power, it is simply because he has failed
to comprehend its import. A little calm study of the facts of life will
convince him that the retributive forces which are incorporated into the order
of nature and into the soul of man are strong enough, without the addition of
any arbitrary penalties.
It will be found, of course, that the adoption
of this view of sin and penalty will require several other important changes in
the philosophy of religion. If retribution is part of the natural order and follows
transgression as the effect follows the cause, the doctrine of probation, as
generally understood, at once drops out of the creed. We can quite well afford
to let it go. The conception by which death is fixed as the definite limit of
opportunity for moral beings is wholly out of relation to the whole scheme of
morality. It contradicts, absolutely, either the doctrine of the freedom of the
will, or the doctrine of the righteousness of God, or both. To say that no man
can repent after death is to say that no man after death is a moral being,-that
death has wrought a revolution in his moral nature, and robbed him of the
essential attribute of personality. We would not suffer the old fashioned
Universalist to teach that death regenerates men; we are equally forbidden
ourselves to teach that death dehumanizes men. If the doctrine that probation
in all cases terminates at death does not imply the lack of power to repent,
then it implies the refusal of God to grant his grace to a penitent sinner, and
this implication is worse than the other. Let us not assert that the Father in
heaven will ever, in any world, turn a deaf ear to the cry of any soul that
seeks to escape from sin Can a man lose his soul, himself,-lose the power and
the wish to turn from his sins to God? Doubtless he can. The Scripture clearly
teaches that he can, and there is too much evidence of the truth of the
Scripture teaching. How does the man lose this power and become the bond-slave
of iniquity? Simply by hardening his own heart, in resisting truth and doing
iniquity. The process is gradual, the suicide is slow, but it is fatal. In the
use of his own volition, under the laws of his own moral nature, the man
destroys himself. But to take this power of choice away from him by arbitrary
interference, at any period of his moral history, would be to cancel the fact
of freedom and annul the first principles of morality. To say to a moral being,
"A certain date in your career is fixed, irrespective of your own moral
condition, beyond which you shall either have no power of choosing
righteousness or else your choice shall avail you nothing," is to subvert
the moral order. The man hardens his own heart, fixes his own destiny.
Doubtless the time does come, in the history of every incorrigible sinner, when
there is no more power to repent. But that time is reached by the free action
of the soul in rejecting the light and fighting against moral motives.
That
the term of the soul's moral power is reached in every case at death is quite
incredible. If death is the limit of effective moral action, that limit must be
fixed by an arbitrary decree, and this supposition is subversive of morality.
To some, to vast multitudes, doubtless, moral paralysis comes long before
death; to others it may come long after death. The fact that death does not
close the door of opportunity is no assurance of salvation after death. The
opportunity may be slighted and spurned on the other side as well as on this
side; and there is no particle of reason for supposing that the man who has
always resisted the Holy Ghost here will yield to his gentle persuasions there.
The awful juncture in the history of every
sinning soul upon which its attention should be fixed is not the hour of death,
but the hour when the heart shall be hardened against spiritual influences. The
constant reference to death as the end of probation tends to turn the attention
of men away from this critical period of their history, and to blind their eyes
to their real peril. Even though many teachers do recognize the danger of this
moral crisis, and know that it may be reached before death, the emphasis which
they put upon death as the end of probation obscures the nearer and more
fearful fact. The concentration of thought upon death as the end of probation
has been a fruitful source of moral procrastination.
The relation of this doctrine of retribution
to the doctrine of redemption can only be alluded to in closing. Those who get
a clear view of the natural law of retribution will see at once that there is
no hope in any salvation that is not supernatural. From above Nature the Power
must come to rescue man from the ruin into which he has plunged himself. But it
is evident that this salvation will not be forensic or governmental, but
remedial and vital. The, ruin to be repaired is not in the government of God
but in the soul of man. It is from sin rather than from punishment that he is
redeemed; for his one deepest need is the inward working of "the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," to set him "free from the law of
sin and death:"
The three proposed solutions of the problem of
future retribution. Is a fourth solution possible.
By Rev. FREDEREC GODET, D.D., Professor in the
Theological Faculty, Nenchdtel, Switzerland.
THE subject submitted to us is one which is at
the same time painful and delicate; painful by the agonizing application that
it may have for persons whom we meet, know, and love, and to ourselves;
delicate, because the different solutions which are given to this problem all
suggest great difficulties, both philosophical and Biblical.
We are all agreed on this point: that a future
punishment awaits those who have wilfully broken the moral law, whether of
conscience or of Sinai, and who have obstinately rejected the pardon offered to
them by the preaching of the gospel. If such a course of action did not end in
punishment, the divine law would be without any sanction whatever, and the most
solemn declarations of the Scriptures would be of none effect.
Among the questions arising concerning the
subject of future punishment, is one which is pre-eminently worthy of our
attention: the question, What is the object of it? Is its object the
repentance, the conversion, the final salvation, of all the condemned? Will it
end by an atrophy to which they will finally succumb, or by an act of divine
power which shall destroy them, in other words, by their annihilation? Or
finally will this punishment to come be without termination, eternal, like
everything that stands outside of the category of time?
In favour of the first solution stands first
of all whatever we know by revelation of the character of God. Having foreseen
all, can God, in his infinite goodness, have given existence to beings of whom
he knew that they would fall short of their proper destiny, and their existence
would issue in an awful condemnation? And as to man, is it supposable that he
should not be conquered by suffering indefinitely prolonged, and that he should
not at last give up his insensate resistance?
There are alleged moreover positive
declarations of Holy Scripture: "As through one trespass the judgment came
unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free
gift came unto all men to justification of life" (Rom., 5: 18). "As
in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive " (1 Cor., 15:
22). " That God may be all in all " (1 Cor., 15: 28).
It is impossible not to feel the weight of
these reasons, and the heart would fain be able to array itself on this side;
but it is held back by serious considerations.
Are we quite in a position to pronounce on
what God may have thought good to do or not to do? May he not have motives of
action which belong to a plan whose greatness is beyond our grasp? Love is
doubtless found in all his ways; but can it be said that love is their only
explanation? Is love really the basis of the divine essence? I doubt it, and
believe that this supreme honour belongs rather to holiness. When in the
presence of God the seraphim lift up their voice in the heavenly sanctuary
(Is., 6: 3) they say not: Good, Good, Good; but Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord.
of Hosts. Holiness is the unchangeable love of good, that is to say, in
speaking of God, the absolute love of himself, since he is the living Good, and
that in him Being and Good are one. From holiness so understood are derived
co-ordinately his love and his justice. Since he desires the good, he desires
creatures who shall freely realize the good, and, since he desires them, he
loves them, lie creates them, cares for them, and labours to make them become
good like himself. Such is his love for us. It is evident that it proceeds from
his love of the good, from his holiness. On the other hand, justice emanates
equally from holiness. Justice is not the offspring but the sister of love.
Holiness, which seeks the realization of the good, and which consequently
wishes for the destruction of the evil, adapts its procedure towards free
beings to the moral attitude which they themselves take, according its
approbation and all that follows therefrom to those who perseveringly seek to
do the good (Rom., 2: 7, 10), but inflicting its condemnation with all the
consequences thereof on those who attach themselves to the practice of evil
(Rom., 2: 8, 9). Such is justice, and precisely because it proceeds, not from
love, but, like love, from holiness, it is impossible to explain the ways of
God by love alone. The two attributes which proceed simultaneously from
holiness enter as factors either simultaneously or successively into all the
dealings of God toward his creatures (cf. Rom., 11: 22).
If matters are understood in this way, the
reasonings drawn from the nature of God, on which the partisans of universal
restitution principally found their arguments, will be seen to fall to pieces
of themselves.
I do not believe that there is any better
ground for the assertion that at length sinners, overwhelmed by the weight of
their suffering, will necessarily end by throwing down their arms and
surrendering. Even if the fact were certain, this would not be a real
conversion. It is not enough that they should be vanquished, they must be
convinced.* It is not to force, but to holiness, that man must bow. And, if we
assume that this favourable result cannot fail of being brought to pass at some
time in every case, do we not thereby compromise the essential fact of human
free-agency, which to be perfectly real must be able to oppose to God a resistance
which nothing can overcome?
Neither is it possible to put complete
confidence in the conclusion drawn from the Scriptural passages cited. The
first (Rom., 5: 18) speaks of a universal redemption acquired de jure by all
men, but Saint Paul never fails to affirm that faith is a necessary condition
on the part of man in order that this universal justification obtained by
Christ may be applied to the individual (see Rom. 1: 17, and in this very
chapter above quoted, the fifth, in verse 17th, the expression "they that
receive"). In the saying, "In Christ shall all be made alive "
(1 Cor., 15: 22), it is not impossible that the apostle means to. speak only of
believers. But it seems to me more probable that the word all is used in the
absolute sense in the second clause, as well as in the first, and that Paul is
thinking of the universal resurrection of the just and of the unjust, as the
work of the Son of man who died for all (see John 5: 28, 29). Finally the great
saying, "That God may be all in all " (1 Cor., 15: 28), must be
interpreted by the context. Saint Paul is here describing the end, that
mysterious act which is to be accomplished when the Son shall deliver up the
kingdom to the Father, in order that thereafter God himself may be all in all, as
he has been all in the Son. It is evident that there can be no question here of
any other persons than those who at this final moment shall belong to Christ.
It is impossible therefore to make this word all comprehend those who were
afterwards to be converted, some after years, others after ages of torment.
On the other hand it seems to me that we know
many sayings of Jesus and the apostles which are fitted to awaken in our minds
an
opinion
utterly different from that of a final universal salvation; for instance the
saying in Matt. 12: 32: " This sin shall not be for- given him, neither in
this age, nor in that which is to come." It may doubtless be objected that
the age to come will not perhaps be the last, that it will even be followed by
many others. (Cf. the expression translated in our version "for ever and
ever," in Greek, "unto ages of ages.") Very true! But Jesus says
not one word which is in any way adapted to soften the absolute character of
the expression which he used. Just so in Mark 9: 48: " Where their worm dies
not and the fire is not quenched." As in the former case the expression is
the most absolute possible. This expression, "the fire which is not
quenched," in the second clause, does not allow of a hope of an end of
future punishment in general, and the expression " their worm " in
the first equally debars the expectation of an end to the future punishment of
the individual.
Each one of us has pondered over and. over
again the saying of Jesus (Matt., 25: 46): " These shall go away into
eternal punishment; but the righteous into eternal life." No doubt it is
not without reason that the position is taken on the meaning which the words,
eternal, to eternity (olam) often have in the Old Testament, where they
designate sometimes duration indefinite, but not without end. In this sense,
for instance, the expression is applied to the destruction of Jerusalem and the
Jewish people. But what is most striking in this saying of Jesus is the
parallel use of this adjective to designate the duration of the blessedness of
the just. It would seem that the impression under which Jesus wished to leave
us, when he expressed himself as he did, is that of the contrast between two
states, opposite, but alike unchangeable. Let us add these three sayings: Phil.
3: 19, " Whose end is perdition." The end! What is there after the
end? 2 Thess. 1: 9, " Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal
destruction," a passage to which we will return. Lastly, Rev. 14: 11,
"The smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever."
I should not venture to permit myself to
pronounce peremptorily on a question so formidable and so mysterious, but I am
forced to recognize that the final impression which we receive of the sayings
of Jesus and his apostles is not that of a final universal salvation. If we are
to choose between affirming and, above all, preaching this solution, or denying
it; the former course seems to me by far the more presumptuous.
II.
In order to satisfy what the love of God seems
to demand without at the same time compromising the demands of his justice, a
party, which at the present time is growing more and more numerous, holds that
the future punishment which shall follow the judgment will have an issue
indeed, but one very different from that adopted by the preceding theory. After
the condemned shall have suffered for a certain time, they will perish either
by the exhaustion of their vital force, or by an act of divine power.
The soul, say these thinkers, is not immortal
of itself; " God," saith Saint Paul, only hath immortality." The
soul once left to itself necessarily perishes. All Scriptural terms which
designate future punishment and which we apply usually to a purely moral
perdition, such as death, perdition, destruction, etc., designate in reality,
non-existence, extinction, annihilation, in the proper sense of the words.
And. in truth who could suppose that in the
perfect state of things towards which God is leading on the creation, there
should remain an eternal contrast between beings perfectly happy, and others
eternally miserable.
And must there not be in the awful state of
the latter something which as long as it exists must disturb the joy of the
former? Unless therefore we are willing absolutely to deny future punishment,
it is necessary to assign an end to it.
Christianity will only gain by this solution,
for the moral sense of man revolts at the thought of the monstrous
disproportion which there would be between a life on earth of a single day,
which the creature has never asked for, and an eternity of torments avenging
the sin committed during this short passage.
What are we to think of this reasoning? We
cannot but be struck by its plausible aspect. And, without the light of
Christian revelation, it would seem to me difficult to arrive at any other
conclusion. Nevertheless, as we begin to recover ourselves from before this
apparent demonstration, we find difficulties arising in the mind. We ask
ourselves, what is the good of this suffering in view of which God brings back
the dead to life by the resurrection, if it is to end simply in nothing? This
would be justice, if you will; but even from the point of view of those who
reason thus, such justice would itself stand in need of being justified.
The soul, we are told, is not immortal by nature,
it can only become so by the communication of the life of Christ. By refusing
this higher life, the soul commits suicide. That God is able to destroy the
soul is certain; it is in this sense that he alone has immortality. But that
the soul is perishable by nature, I cannot believe; that which is not material
is not exposed to dissolution. But the fact of self-consciousness is so
absolutely simple, that it excludes any idea of a composite being and attests
the immortality of the subject endowed with this faculty; which implies its
natural immortality. This is one of the traits of the image of God in man.
The Scriptural expressions, death,
destruction, perdition,* have nowhere in the Scriptures the metaphysical sense
(diminution or loss of existence) which is attributed to them. To confound the
good with existence, and evil with non-existence, is Platonism and not
Christianity. In Scriptural language, life is a very different thing from
existence, and death from non-existence. When Saint Paul writes to the
Ephesians, who were formerly pagans (2: 1), "you were dead through your
trespasses and sins," no subtlety of exegesis can prove that the apostle
meant by this death the non-existence to which sin would have brought his
readers, if he had not brought them the gospel. When the book of Revelation
speaks of a second death, it would be necessary, in order to prove that this
expression designates extinction, to erase from this book this saying:
"The smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever." The second
death designates therefore simply the separation of the soul from God, as
death, in the ordinary sense of the word, designates the separation of the soul
from the body. When Jesus says, in the parable of the barren fig tree,
"Why doth this tree cumber the ground? " it is clear that this verb
to which it is wished to give the meaning of extinction, signifies simply,
according to its etymological meaning, to deprive of strength, of productive
power.
The barren tree makes useless the ground that
bears it, but does not destroy it. So also Rom. 6: 6 and 1 Cor. 15: 24 (cf.
Matt. 25: 41). As to what is said of the last enemy in verse 26 one may
hesitate as to the meaning to be given to the word, because death is here an
abstract being personified, for which no longer to act is no longer to exist.
When Saint Paul says, 1 Cor. 15: 18, that, if Christ hath not been raised, then
the Christians who have died in faith in him have perished, are lost, he
certainly does not mean to say that on this hypothesis they are already
extinct, for that would be to say that without the resurrection of Christ there
would be neither resurrection nor final judgment to come, a thought not at all
that of the apostle. Cf. Rom., 2:12. But, above all, this thought would be
without any relation to the preceding statement with which it is connected by
the conjunction then also. In this preceding statement Paul says in substance:
If Christ is not raised up, you are still in your sins. After that if he adds:
" Then also they who are dead in Christ have perished," it is clear
that the word perish signifies not extinction, but remaining under the weight
of unpardoned sins.
Besides this there is also cited, Matt. 10:
28, " Fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell "
(Gehenna), as if this passage implied the extinction of these two elements of
our being. But there are different modes of perishing, according to the nature
of the beings. A plant does not die like an animal, nor an animal like man;
neither does the body die like the soul. Of the body itself it cannot be said
that it is annihilated when it dissolves; its elements subsist. The word
destroy can therefore take a moral sense when it applies to a being of a moral
nature, as well as a physical sense when it applies to a being of a physical
nature. I could multiply .these examples, and show that when the Scriptures
speak of life in the full sense of the word they imply, not existence only, but
existence filled with God, and when they speak of death, they designate thus,
not the cessation of existence, but existence deprived of God. But there is
still another passage to which I desire to call attention; it is 2 Thess. 1: 9,
where Saint Paul says of those who have been unwilling to know God and obey the
gospel, that they " shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from
the face of the Lord and from [in French 'far from'] the glory of his
might." Those who attribute to the apostle the idea of the annihilation of
the damned translate naturally: an eternal ruin caused by the face of the Lord
and the glory of his might; in this sense, that it is the lightning glance of
the Lord which shall destroy the rebels; and in consequence they apply the word
eternal, not to the ruin, which will be instantaneous, but to its eternal consequence,
which will be annihilation. But this interpretation does not seem to me to
conform to the thought of the apostle. The expression eternal, seems to be in
close relation with the words following and therefore the idea must be this:
" Eternal, not by, but far from the face of the Lord (compare for an
example of this sense of in Rom. 9: 3).
But it is asked, will a transient sin be
visited by an eternal and consequently disproportionate punishment? But in
asking this question it is forgotten that this punishment is inflicted on
sinners not only for the sin as a past act but for the rebellion as an actual
and persistent state. There comes a moment to the sinner when after having
voluntarily repelled all the divine calls it passes from the free and variable
state to the passive and unchangeable state in evil. Up to a certain point the
same thing may be said of the opposite state, that of holiness (1 John, 3: 9).
Every instant brings us nearer to the decisive point where liberty of choice is
exhausted, whether for good or for evil.
The most plausible reason in favour of a
cessation of future punishment is that which is drawn from the impossibility
for the elect to enjoy complete happiness, feeling that so many beings whom
they have known and loved are horribly miserable. But if this reason were well
founded, it would follow that the happiness of the just will not be complete
until after the years or ages of suffering which shall pass between the
judgment and the annihilation of sinners. Is this admissible? It must be then
that there is some way of feeling things, especially sin and its punishment,
more nearly conformed to that of the divine holiness than we can conceive of in
this life. We shall then be able to give our full acquiescence to the
realization of the final absolute order of things, in which shall vanish all
sensible personal impressions. It must of course be remembered that future
punishment in the absolute sense of the word will be visited upon those only
who have resisted God's grace, not only in this world, but in the world to
come, trampling under feet with full knowledge all the appeals of God's grace,
thus committing the sin for which there remained no more sacrifice (Heb., 10:
26).
It has been claimed that if the theory of the
annihilation of the wicked should finally replace the conception which has
prevailed in the Church, it would be a long step taken toward the conquest of
the world by the gospel, since nothing else repels the world from Christianity
as much as the idea of eternal torment. As for me, I believe that the antipathy
of the natural man for the gospel rests on moral reasons more profound than
that.
It seems to me that the idea of annihilation
can be maintained only on condition of admitting also that even after the
resurrection and the judgment there will still remain a possibility of
conversion, and that extinction will await only those with whom all favourable
possibility shall have been finally exhausted. But does revelation permit any
such conception?
Is then the idea of a punishment without end
one in which we must rest? For my part I believe that this is indeed the
impression under which the Scriptural declarations leave us, when taken in
their simple and natural sense. And persuaded as I am that revelation is
adapted to our moral needs, especially perhaps when it most contradicts our
human thoughts, I would beg of my brethren who are called to teach the Word, to
remain humbly subject to it, remembering the words of Deuteronomy 29: 29,
" The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but the things that are
revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the
words of this law." It is possible that a message as severe as the Scriptures
pronounce concerning the future punishment of the wicked is necessary in this
world for our vain and carnal heart.
I well understand all that there is revolting
to our feeling and to our reason in the idea of a punishment without end, and
consequently, as it seems, without purpose! Without purpose for the guilty, it
is true, but not for the whole of God's creatures. To maintain the eternal
freedom of choice in doing evil, is to maintain the eternal freedom of choice
in doing good; it is to maintain the reality of the good which Satan denies.
Moreover it is possible that there are still in this mysterious matter hidden
sides on which we yet can scarcely look. When the glass, having passed from the
hand of the workman, once cooled off has taken its fixed form, if this does not
answer to his intention he can no longer change it. But he does not therefore
look on the material as lost. Instead of throwing it away as vile refuse, he
puts it back in the furnace and, after having recast it, he seeks to give it
the new form which shall answer to his thought. Can one not imagine something
similar with regard to the man who has refused to fulfill his destiny? May
there not be at the bottom of this ruined personality an im- personal human
existence which God can take back into his hands to draw from it by a
subsequent development a personality which shall answer to his thought? We know
so little what being is and what relation there is between the verb being and
the substantive a being. The most profound thinkers have exhausted themselves
on this problem. The last great philosopher, Schelling, devoted to it the
meditations of an entire life, and was not able to see clearly into the
question. It is perhaps at the bottom of this abyss that there is hidden the
solution of the formidable problem which has occupied our attention.
While waiting, let us not try to anticipate
the light to come. And let us remember that we are the servants not the masters
of the Word.
Retribution must, in the nature of things, go
on; and, if the new tabernacle has larger powers and more intense perceptions,
that retribution must be vastly more keen than it is now.
By Bev. EDWARD E. TULE, D.D., Minister of the
South Congregational Church, Unitarian, Boston, Mass.
This human life of ours is regarded by two
schools of people in different ways.
One school regards the earth as a scene of
trial. It supposes that, after earthly life, man is examined, as by a judicial
process, and rewarded or punished for his deeds in this life. Simply, while he
is here, he has been on trial. There is nothing in human affairs quite
analogous to the supposed trial. But it is somewhat as if you should put forty
freshmen on trial in the gymnasium, and, at the end of three months, should
select the ten who do best, for the football team. If the conscience of men
were enough debased to take the thirty other freshmen who fail to pass the
standard, and punish them for the rest of their lives with the most exquisite
torture, we should have a tolerable parallel with one feature of the
Augustinian system of life.
I believe this view to be absolutely wrong;
and I believe the proclamation of it to be a degrading injury to the morals of
mankind.
The other school does not regard the world as
a court-room in any sense. It regards human life as an opportunity for
education. Babies come into the world with bodies very weak, with minds wholly
undeveloped. These children are to be trained by the use of these bodies and of
these minds, so that when this life ends they may pass into other service. That
service may be higher service. They will leave the bodies which they have; in
which, for instance, they have five senses by which to communicate with others.
In, place of these, each of them may have a body with a thousand senses, all
different from these. The business of this life is to prepare this infant soul
for the life which thus follows: Instead of the analogies of a court-room, we
are to follow the analogies of a home. It is the home where God is Father, and
where we are children.
I believe this second school is right. I
believe these analogies, though confessedly imperfect, are the best we have.
And I believe that, the more men come to see that they are simply in training
here for other life, with larger powers, the better is the chance that life
will be pure and peaceable, kind and merciful, charitable, just and true.
Language, of course, can hardly cope with such
themes. They are just what human language is not fit for. When a painter tries
to paint a spirit, he makes a sad botch of it, the exact peculiarity of a
spirit being that spirit is invisible. So it is with spoken language. Paul
himself, a better master of language than most of us, frankly owns the
impossibility, when he uses, intentionally, the paradoxical phrase, "a
spiritual body." It is just as if he spoke of " dark light,"
or-of " cold heat." Because human language is made, confessedly, from
the records of the five senses, human language breaks down, of course, when it
tries to describe the life which transcends them all. It fails as the
caterpillar fails if he tries to fly.
415 It is necessary to say this at the very
outset of such a discussion as this which engages us. If Paul were willing to
use prophetic language, to say that these infinite realities are "things
which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of
man," * when he hints at the life of those who love God, one may well
hesitate before, he uses human language as if eye could see, or ear could hear,
or the heart could conceive the things which are prepared for those who do not
love him. Paul says with great precision that these things are taught only by
the Spirit, and that the spirit of man learns them from the Spirit of God,
while they cannot be adequately stated in human language.
We speak familiarly, for instance,' of life
above, and life on earth, as if spirits lived in the sky, and not elsewhere. As
matter of poetry, this may be just tolerated. But not as matter of fact. As
matter of fact, we know nothing, and can know nothing, of the place of the
spirit. But the analogies all show that life in the "spiritual body "
is very much larger, or, as I said, has many more outlooks or senses, than life
in the earthly body. We have reason to imagine a disembodied spirit as living
in this world and in other worlds, or, as God lives, in all worlds. But of such
life, we are utterly unable to conceive the methods.
So, again, our familiar phrase, in which we
speak of the life " there " as contrasted with the life "
here," is dangerous. Or when we speak of a friend as having "passed
away." It should always be remembered that these phrases are excusable
merely as poetry, just as when we speak of " God's wings " or his
" hands." It is far worse when we speak of a dead friend as "
lying in the ground." Such language should never be permitted.
The word "future," when we speak of
future retribution, is really open to the same difficulty. True, our human life
is made up of present, past, and future. But God's life is hemmed in by no such
limitations. God is. That is his name. I AM. To him, a thousand years are as
one day; and the converse is true, that one day is as a thousand years. To him,
then, there is no " future " retribution. If we must use language
which we know is imperfect, we say all is " present " to him. But
those words are almost as bad as the others. Men cannot conceive of this, while
they live in these bodies. But there is no reason why they should, and there
are many realities of which they cannot conceive. An analogy may be found in
the difference between an oyster's idea of space and our idea of it. To an
oyster, space is simply what he knows between the limits of his two shells. He
lives there. But a man lives in a much larger space. He lives in a room, or he
lives in a house, or, if he were on a mountain top, you might say he lived in
the whole circle of his horizon. I do not see why midnight should affect this
"space." It is perfectly easy, indeed, to conceive of a man who
should be connected, by ties finer than electricity, with the whole world. Such
a man would live, not on a surface of two square feet, or four square feet, but
in space vastly wider. Of this enlargement we can form some little conception.
That conception helps us to know how a man who did live in one instant of time
may be so changed as to live in millions of millions of myriads of ages. We
cannot conceive it, but, as I said, there are many realities which we cannot
conceive. All which I say because the word "future," when we speak of
retribution, is to be accounted one of the merely poetical words.
We are to understand all along that we are to
speak simply of the retributions which "follow" earthly life. We do
not understand that they are future in the eye of God. Nor do we understand
that, in another body, human life is to go forward with the same clocks and
almanacs which it uses now.
Indeed, in talking with people who are trying
to see the invisible, and to solve the insoluble, I find that a determined
error here underlies many of their difficulties. In the Arabian story, a man
goes through adventures which require a hundred pages in their narration, and
yet, at the end, it proves that all this passed in vision to him, between his
dipping his face in a basin and taking it Out again. Most of us have had
similar experiences in dream-land,-that is, we have lived for many days,
perhaps for many months, in an instant, which, measured by ne clock, would not
exceed a second. This being so, we ought to be able to see that our friends,
who are in larger life than ours, may regard the fifty years which are left to
us of what we call "earthly experience," as being the mere swing of a
short pendulum in that infinite life of theirs. If one will so regard life in
this body and life in that body, one will not be so apt to say, " How can
he be happy there, when he knows I am unhappy here?" There is a dear
friend of mine, with whom I am bound by such ties as I cannot describe, which
have not been wounded nor touched in twenty years. But, twenty years ago, my
love for that friend brought me exquisite torture for perhaps one-tenth of a
second, when I thought his life in danger. Still, I am not aware that I ever
recur to that torture except with a sense of pleasant satisfaction. Whoever
will take even the hardest and most rationalistic view of infinite life will
see that it compares in somewhat such fashion with any fifty years, or fifty
generations, of earthly life, against which we may choose to measure it.
With these cautions, let us now see what we
know of retribution. We know, in this world, that as a man sows, so shall he
reap. We know that a boy who is careful and neat with his copy-book will write
legibly. We know that a man who uses plenty of hot water and soap, ten times a
day, generally has clean hands. We know that a person who drinks a great deal
of whisky, without any restriction of time, place, or quantity, becomes the
slave of his intemperate habits, and probably dies in delirium tremens. We know
that a man or woman who studies a foreign language carefully, under a good
system, with a good teacher, comes out with an adequate knowledge of that
language. This is what we mean when we say, " as a man sows, so will he
reap."
The world knows this so well that our language
is formed out of observation of it. The word " character " is the
word which we use to describe the essence of a man. It is a word true to its
derivation. " It is a Greek word, wholly unchanged, which the Greeks
derived from the word which we pronounce harass. They pronounced it charass,
and it had the same meaning which it has now. They spoke of a coin in the mint,
which was hammered and tortured by the sharp edges of the die, as being stamped
upon, indeed, as a poor charassed thing, as bearing a character. A man's
character is thus made up of the results of his varied experiences of
life." Infallibly he reaps what he sows. If he sows wild oats, he reaps
wild oats; if he sows wheat, he reaps wheat. If he sows lazily, he reaps
scantily. If, when he sows, he helps nobody, when he reaps, nobody will help
him. If, while they are sowing, he is helpful and generous, when it comes to
reaping, others are helpful and generous to him. If he studies, he will be
learned; if he does not study, he will not be learned. Such is the infallible
and certain law of human life, as we see it in the body which we know, the body
which has five senses.* Let us try, in this examination, to rid ourselves of
all thought of the mere circumstances of the man. We are considering the man,
and not his clothing. We are not considering his body, whether he be tall or
short. We are not considering his mind, whether he be imaginative or
unimaginative, whether his memory be quick or slow. We consider laws which are
as true of a stupid boy, whose first memories are of the brutalities of a
slaver's deck, as they are true of the life of Goethe or of Shakespeare. Mind
and body, be they strong or weak, are but the tools which the man uses.
According to his use of them is his growth or his decline. And this growth or
decline is the " retribution " about which we are inquiring. So the
man uses his tool faithfully, he grows, and his power enlarges. But, if he uses
it meanly, he is dwarfed; his life is less and less. We are not to ask, then,
whether the man runs fast, or paints skilfully, or remembers accurately, or
imagines brilliantly, but whether he lives well. If we can answer this
question, we shall know whether his life enlarges, or whether it becomes small.
Let us, then, compare two lives, beginning,
say, with two boys of fifteen, at which age, it will be granted, conscience has
some power and the will asserts itself. I mean that then the boy does not
longer plead that he must do as he is told. And suppose that one of these boys,
with steady purpose, obeys the present God. Such law of right as he can find is
his law. He wills to do God's will.
I may take for an illustration the boy who has
what we are pleased to call "the poorest chance " in our nineteenth
century civilization in America. Let him be a boy from a starved poor-house of
a starved village. He is turned out on the world because he is old enough
" to earn his living," as it is said. He has no memory of father or
mother, or of any care but such as the Bumbles of the poor-house will give him.
But some gospel has confirmed to him the voice of the Holy Spirit in his heart,
and he knows the difference between right and wrong. He determines to follow
the right. He will look up and not down. And he follows it. He does not live
for himself; he lives for what he believes to be the will of God. Day by day,
he seeks to understand what that God is doing, and to enter into his work. Day
by day, he seeks to find out what boys and girls around him need, and to help
them as he can. He cannot read the Scripture, but he can "bear his
brother's burden." Now, day by day, from the absolute law of life, this
child's life grows larger. Day by clay, he knows God better, he knows God's
work better, he can enter into God's work better. He loves. God more, and can
understand better how God loves him. At the same time, he knows men better, he
loves men more, and knows more and more of the life which he is to lead till he
is promoted to higher life. As that boy sows, he reaps, and one needs no
imagination to see that he finds in daily life a larger life, for every week,
than he had the week before, and with every year that his recompense comes to
him. As harvest follows seed-time, under the law by which this world is
governed, he grows in life, from day to day, and from year to year. It is not
that he is taller, or more handsome. It is not that he knows more things, or
remembers better. These are things which may have been added to him or not.
However that may be, this is sure, that he is more. His life is on a higher
plane. It extends to larger and larger possibilities. His interests range
farther and broader. The service which he can render is more extended service.
The phrase of Scripture which describes such enlargement, says that he
"partakes more completely of the divine nature."
The other boy, against whom we will contrast
him, shall have every advantage we can devise, in what we call our modern
civilization, for the training of his mind and body. But, instead of seeking to
do the will of the God, who maintains the universe and gives to it its life, he
determines, with his eyes open, to serve himself and to gratify himself. If
God's laws fall in with his wishes, he will follow them; if not, so much the
worse for God's laws. He will not follow them. We need not suppose that, like
Satan, he intentionally says, "Evil, be thou my Good." We simply
suppose that he determines to please himself, so as to be quite indifferent
whether he does or does not defy the law of the universe. Infallibly now, as
the harvest follows the seed-time, his life becomes less and less. He becomes
less and less. " When he yields to the temptation, and uses his reason
only about himself, uses his memory to remember his own affairs only, uses his
imagination only to build his own castle, his skill in the mathematics only to
compute his own fortune,-then the punishment in store for him is the punishment
most terrible. For the time is before him when he shall not be able to turn his
thought away from the central figure. He shall go to the theatre to see the
marvels of the drama, but the scene shall pass before his eyes, he noticing
nothing, because he sees nothing but himself; he sits acting over some
mortifying failure. Or, he shall buy the last romance, and take it home to
read; but there is no story for him, no lover and no mistress, no plot and no
denouement. He cannot separate himself from these steadily recurring memories,
to which he has taught the fibres of his brain to recur. Or, he shall travel,
but alas! he takes his familiar with him, and with mockery, like that of
Mephistopheles, in every Alpine valley, in every picture gallery, and at every
pageant, here the old chatter begins again about 'me,' and mine,' and I,' and
myself,' which it would be such mercy to leave at home. Poor wretch, he cannot
leave it at home! He thought, when he was a boy, that the simple words, he made
himself of no reputation,' had no meaning for him. But he learns that the
punishment is that a man has no company but himself, while that self grows
smaller, poorer, and more mean."
Dismissing all thought of what becomes of
Body, or of Mind, in these two cases of earthly life, one will certainly see
that in one, the Man, the Infinite Being, enlarges; in the other, he grows
smaller and meaner.
At the present moment, we have a very terrible
and admirable example of such decline, in the awful experience of declining
life which Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson has described in his novel called The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Such are the retributions which follow on
every moment of a man's life, while he lives in this body. Now I am asked what
are the retributions of that part of a man's life which passes when he leaves
this body behind him, and is clothed upon with the spiritual body. The answer
is clear enough. They are just such retributions as come to him before, with
any accession or enlargement which may belong to the new range of life in which
he lives. For instance, a drunken man, I suppose, is punished most severely
when he sees and knows the suffering which his selfish indulgence of sense
inflicts on a very considerable circle of his friends. He is more punished if
he sees how he fails to fulfill God's purpose in bringing him into the world.
Certainly he is punished if he apprehends what might have been, had he been
pure, and able to follow on in the steps of the wisdom which is from above. Now
let that man's perceptions be enlarged, at his death, twenty-fold, by new
senses. Let him know twenty-fold better what is God's will, and what are the
consequences of his own failure or success. It is clear enough that the
punishment which comes upon him, his sense of his own failure, his
mortification that he was relied upon vainly, are all increased twenty-fold. Or
if, on the other hand, a person is ascending in the grade of moral life,-if,
with such consciousness of heaven, such sense of God's presence, as we have
now, one succeeds, in a little way, in carrying out God's purpose, there is
reward indeed, amounting to what the books call "blessedness," in
having a perception a hundred times as clear of what God's purpose is,
recognizing his presence and his love a hundred times more readily. As the
gospel says so well, one enters then " into the joy of his Lord."
A mathematical friend of mine, to whom I am
perhaps more indebted for my education than to any other persons excepting my
father and my mother, used to put this in the form of a mathematical formula.
He used to say, " People are either improving the powers which they have,
or they are standing still, or their powers are diminishing, with their own
consent, or by their own failure.
Let us say of the advancing set that they are
represented by the formula 1 x 2 x 2 x2 x 2, and so on to infinity. Of them it is
truly said that
'Nature
always gives them more
Than
all she ever takes away,'
and
for them the spiritual life is represented by a constant advancement.
Of that midway set, who are neither one thing
nor another, who do not advance nor decline, but just live on, the formula is,
1x1x1 x 1 xl, and it goes on forever. At the other end of eternity, if you
choose to use language so foolishly, such people are just what they are to-day.
Of the third set, those who are diminishing,-as
Mr. Hyde diminished, in Mr. Stevenson's celebrated and invaluable parable,-"
the formula is, and so on forever. These people are never annihilated," my
friend would say. " They always exist, fine by degrees, and miserably
less.' But, he would say, with an exquisite humour, which, I think, always
allied itself with his high talks upon the infinite, and an exquisite smile of
delight, with which he always looked forward to life untrammelled by bodies of
as poor mathematical powers as ours, "these people, you observe, are never
extinguished. And their wills are free; and the time may come,-will come,
because God is good,-when, in the very lowest depth of a fraction whose
numerator is unity, and whose denominator is numbered by billions, they also
shall turn, and begin to enlarge their lives. Well, infinity is before them,
and they also shall ascend, no man shall tell how far."
I have no idea that we can go any farther in
our view of spiritual life, by which I mean life without the present body, than
we can by the help of these analogies. For the purpose of practical morals, it
is better to call steadfast attention to the truth that the punishment of each
act, or its reward, begins when the act begins. Murder cannot be said to begin
at the moment when the fatal bullet is fired, or the fatal dirk strikes home.
Murder begins earlier than that. It begins with the fierce passion, as of
bitter hate, or unchecked jealousy, which drives the murderer to his deed. And
with the passion, as with the hate or the jealousy, begins the inevitable punishment
of passion. Our friends of the New Church do not use language too strong when
they say that, from the moment of such a beginning, the guilty man is living in
hell. He does not know that he is there,-that is, he does not use language in
that way,-but he is without the joy of life which a man has whose passions are
under his control, to whom you cannot even describe intelligently such hate or
such jealousy.
And we shall find, I believe, that, in
proportion as men fairly try the great experiments of life here, as they learn
what is meant by an enlargement of life, or by what the Bible calls drawing
nearer to God,-as they open their eyes to see, and their ears to hear, the
realities of their own being, so that living with infinite purpose is not a
phrase, but a reality, to them,-in that proportion will they understand the
inevitable law of retribution. In the same proportion will they understand that
that retribution, from the nature of things, must go on, even though this
particular tabernacle should drop off; and that, if the new tabernacle has
larger powers and more intense perceptions, that retribution must be, from the
nature of things, vastly more keen than it is now.
If I understand the plan of the book of which
this is one chapter, I am asked to write as representing the Unitarian Church.
I hope that no one will read. the book who is so ignorant as to suppose that
the Unitarian Church has any creed, or binds its members by any written formula
of opinion. For aught I know, there may be many Unitarians who do not share my
belief on the subject of which I write. But, so far as I know the utterances of
the distinguished men of our communion, they have, without exception, rejected
as preposterous the idea that a wise God, who is a God of love, can be satisfied
to divide human beings, by an arbitrary line, into two classes only, one to be
called the " good," and one to be called the "bad." No
Unitarian, I think, would agree to any such statement. I may also say with
certainty that no Unitarian supposes that life after death is limited in any
way, so that one place in the universe can be mapped off as heaven, and another
place mapped off as hell. Such a mythology would be dismissed by any of our
writers as belonging to the same class of inventions as the circles of Dante's
Inferno.
Punishment
[s unending, but the number of the hopelessly lost is relatively small. It is
not likely that the great mass ole heathen, who have not heard the gospel, sink
into perdition at death; they and all men will have a Christian probation
before the final awards.
By Rev. GEORGE HARRIS, Professor of Christian
Theology, In the Theological Seminary, Congregational, Andover, Mass.
THE opinions which may properly be held
concerning punishment after death depend on the views taken of the significance
and scope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is necessary first, therefore, to
indicate the Christian doctrine of eschatology in general, in order to
determine the intent, the nature, and the conditions of punishment after death.
1. Biblical predictions of the last things.
A distinctive feature of the Scriptures, both
of the Old and New Testaments, is the constant looking forward to a better
future, from which existing evils will be wholly absent. This better future is
the consummation of the kingdom of God. The present state and progress of the
kingdom are understood in the light of its destination. The teleological
character of God's government is explanatory of all its movements. Believers
are assured that the kingdom will triumph gloriously in spite of all
oppositions. Incidental and secondary to the complete victory which is
approaching will be judgment on the wicked, who will be overthrown, condemned,
and punished under the wrath of God. At length the kingdom of righteousness
will be supreme in fact, as it now is in idea and potency. Evil then will have
no power to antagonize good, will have no object which it can hope to gain,
will be impotent and self-consuming. In many cases, especially throughout the
Old Testament, these triumphs are expected in the course of earthly history, in
the form of temporal blessings and of political and national deliverance, but
even thus are symbolic of a final triumph which is to be universal and
permanent. In the New Testament, the consummation of the kingdom of Christ is
represented as complete in a heavenly state, in which the individual has
eternal life and takes his place in the perfected society of the redeemed. This
consummation involves the failure of wickedness and also execution of the final
sentence of condemnation on those who persist in opposition to the. kingdom.
These predictions of the last things are not concerned with the relative number
of the righteous and the wicked, but with the establishment and vindication of
righteousness. In importance, however, the consummation of the kingdom is
first, the downfall of evil is secondary and incidental. The condemnation of
the wicked is the dark shadow which is incident to the effulgence of light. We
are not taught by the Bible to think of holiness as a spot of light in the
midst of surrounding darkness, but we are to think of wickedness as at the last
a spot of darkness in the midst of surrounding light. The object, then, of
predictions concerning the last things is to explain to believers the
movements, and to assure them of the triumph, of the kingdom of God, a triumph
which is represented now as the full Fruit of holiness, now as the final condemnation
of sin, but always as complete and irreversible. Eschatology is the realization,
in prophetic vision, of that teleological character which plainly belongs to
the gospel of redemption, and it furnishes the perspective in which the
punishment of the wicked, as well as the slow and at times retrograde movement
of the kingdom, is to be considered.
2. The condemnation and impotence of
wickedness are realized in the punishment of those individuals who have
persisted in opposition to the kingdom of God. The nature of this punishment is
determined by its reasons and object. It consists in the failure and
wretchedness of all who remain perverse in opposition to God's great purpose
for the redemption of men. It involves conditions of existence in essential
contrast with the conditions under which God realizes the perfection of the
individual in his kingdom. It is visited upon the wicked when the consummation
of holiness is already gained, and as part of that consummation, not when the
consummation is yet waiting till they shall be regained to holiness. At the
final triumph of the kingdom of God, a point of separation is reached when
there is to be no more commingling of the wicked with the righteous, and when
there is no expectation that the wicked will be reclaimed.
Hence the punishment which is pronounced on
the wicked at the day of judgment is not prolonged suffering of a reformatory
character and which will issue in the restoration of all the wicked to the
kingdom of righteousness. The Biblical representations describe the judgment as
the end of history, or of the world age, when wicked men still exist, upon whom
punishment is visited, not as a means of reformation, but as part of the
vindication and triumph of the kingdom of God.
Neither is punishment the loss of existence.
It is not represented in the Bible as the extinction, either instantaneous or
by slow degrees, of the incorrigibly wicked. The death to which they are doomed
is the loss of spiritual life, and deadness to all that is good, but not the
cessation of existence. The representations of Scripture indicate the wicked as
enduring actual suffering. Immortality is grounded in man's rational rather
than in his religious life and is not conditioned on his moral character.
Punishment is the loss of the individual to
his intended uses, a loss which is accompanied with more or less of unhappiness.
Sinners are lost, not in the sense that they are destroyed, or that it is not
known where they are, but in the sense that they are lost to their proper uses.
Thus, all sinners are lost, for their owner has not the use of them. Christ
redeems or restores those who trust him to their real uses. Those who are not
redeemed by Christ, but who refuse his restoring grace, are finally and
hopelessly lost. Such loss, whether or not they are conscious of all its
meaning, is accompanied by unhappiness, as every perversion of man's powers to
wrong uses must be.
It is scarcely possible to conjecture the
thoughts and feelings of those whom hope, and perhaps desire, of recovery never
stirs, and from whom the improving influences of a community including the good
are withdrawn. There may be loss of sensitiveness, the dulling or deadening of
feeling. It is not certain that acute remorse is a constant condition. The
remorse depicted in Scripture at the scenes of the judgment is associated with
the first discovery that the soul is lost. On the other hand, mental distress
may continue unabated. Such regret as is felt seems, however, to be more at the
prospect and continuance of misery than at the impossibility of recovery to
holy character.
I agree with nearly all who believe that
punishment is unending, in the opinion that the number of the lost is
relatively small. At the same time, the existence forever of any number of lost
souls presents a disturbing problem which is only alleviated, but not solved,
by the consideration that they are relatively few.
3. The inquiry of profoundest interest
pertains to the subjects of eternal punishment. Who will be hopelessly lost?
Under what conditions are human beings doomed to unending woe? They must
evidently be those who are of a certain character. The separation is moral
rather than local, or local only because essential moral differences produce
separation in space. The lost are not all who have sinned in whatever degree.
Not all sinners suffer punishment after death, for all men who attain
blessedness have sinned. It may be that all who have sinned, however little,
deserve unending punishment, but as matter of fact many who have sinned become
heirs of eternal life. The lost are those who have a character irrevocably
established in unlikeness to God, and in enmity towards that which he requires,
so that no truth nor motive can avail to change the disposition from sin to
holiness. Those who are cast out from the kingdom are the incorrigible, the
irreclaimable, the hopelessly impenitent. It can hardly be believed that one
who under clearer knowledge and stronger motive would become a child of God
will be doomed to hopeless despair. It is with the same meaning that some say,
" God will do all that can be done for the salvation of every soul."
This would seem to mean that the most influential motives will be addressed to
all.
The highest truth or motive which God brings
to men is the revelation he has made of himself in Jesus Christ. He is thus
revealed as a Being of great compassion, who at the cost of Christ's
humiliation and sufferings seeks to save men from sin, and to form their
characters after the likeness of his dear Son. The New Testament frequently
affirms that no higher nor more persuasive revelation of God is to be expected.
This we believe, not merely because it is so proclaimed, but because the person
and work of Christ are the crowning manifestation of God's love. For this
revelation, all that went before was preparatory both in Jewish and in heathen
history. Those who prove incorrigible under the light and motive of the gospel
are hopelessly lost. It would seem that God can do no more to awaken penitence
and restore men to holiness. It may be that only under an actual knowledge
somewhat in correspondence with the real truth of the gospel can character
crystallize into its permanent state, but no higher truth is available than
that which constitutes the gospel. It is the final and supreme revelation of
God's grace to sinful men, and it may be to the whole universe of rational
beings. The permanent exclusion of Christ from the innermost choices and real endeavours
of life is at the same time the exclusion of the person from God's kingdom of
peace and righteousness and love. What Christ is to a person is a crucial test
of his character. The response gained by Christ reveals the real condition to
which he appeals. He can be the Judge of the world, because the affinities or
repulsions he awakens will be an infallible test of real disposition. The
apostle says, " We must all "-not appear but-" be made manifest
before the judgment seat of Christ."
4. Are there any to whom this revelation is
not given, and does character become irreversibly set towards good or evil
apart from the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ?
There are many to whom the gospel of Christ,
in any sense which I can comprehend, does not come during the earthly life.
Previous to the coining of Christ, he certainly was not known. Of only one
nation can it be affirmed that there was so much as a faint expectation of his
coming. Since the beginning of the Christian era, several great nations, some
of them for many centuries, have had no knowledge whatever of the gospel of
Christ, as it was enacted in history and is described in the Bible. Are these
multitudes who have had no knowledge of God's love in Christ to be considered
exceptions to the principle that eternal death awaits only those who reject the
gospel? When the gospel fills the earth, and no one will fail to gain a clear
knowledge of it, the principle will not be questioned. Then also it will
probably be the general belief that the generations of previous times, to whom
Christianity was unknown, were enlightened after death. But, at present, is the
opinion defensible that a large portion of mankind will be brought to final
judgment, and some perhaps to final condemnation, who have not known God in
Christ, or have not known him thus till their characters had become
unchangeably determined?
The statement made above that a considerable
portion of mankind do not have the gospel during the earthly life has been
disputed of late in some quarters. Under stress of debate, the singular
position has been taken that all men do practically have the gospel, because
" wherever there is light, there is Christ." This position, in my
judgment, cannot be sustained. I do not deny, but on the contrary firmly
believe, that all the knowledge of God which men have is mediated through the
Logos, the revealing principle of the Godhead, and that thus every man in some
degree is enlightened by Christ. But this fact does not prove that all
revelations of God mediated by Christ have saving power. Because the light of
nature is the light of Christ, it does not follow that the light of nature is
the gospel of man's salvation. The superiority and necessity of the gospel, as
these are emphasized in the New Testament, are always in marked contrast with
the light of nature, and with Judaism, although they were truly mediated by
Christ. If it is true that the light of nature and conscience is sufficient for
salvation, because God's creative power in the material world and the
constitution of man was exercised through Christ, then the conclusion would
follow that Peter's declaration, "for there is none other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," really means that men
may be saved under any name, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, for these are only
other names for Christ, since the truths of nature and conscience they taught
(and they all taught some truth) were mediated by Christ. If this line of
reasoning is adopted, it is difficult to see how Christianity is radically and
essentially different from the great religions and superstitions of what we
call a human origin which have dominated vast sections of mankind. This laboured
attempt to identify all truth with Christianity is a virtual admission of the
principle already stated, namely, that the judgment and punishment of all men
will be determined by their relation to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that no one
will be lost who has not rejected Christ. But that all men really have, in this
earthly life, the gospel of Christ, in the ordinary and proper acceptation of
the term, cannot be successfully maintained.
Before we conclude that a portion of the race
receives the final award without having had knowledge of Christ, because they
do not have that knowledge on earth, we need to inquire concerning the alleged
universality of the gospel. The New Testament is explicit in affirming that the
gospel is universal, for all men, for the race. God sent his only begotten Son
because he loved the world. Christ died for the sins of the world. He tasted
death for every man. Paul. argues that the gospel is not for the Jews only but
also for the Gentiles. He teaches that the relation of Christ to men is as universal
as the relation of Adam. The invitations, promises, and threatening of the
gospel are in universals. The judgment of the world by Christ indicates the
universality of his gospel. The deepening conviction of the universality of the
gospel is no doubt one reason for taking the position noticed above, that. all
men in reality do have the gospel, even the devotees of Hinduism and the wild
tribes of Africa. Yet how can it be claimed that all men have the gospel, in
view of the enormous exceptions which in former ages and at this very hour
exist? Is it true that the gospel has thus far been available for all mankind?
A theory which at present has some currency
amounts to this, that by reason of Christ's stupendous sacrifice it is possible
and right for God to forgive the sins of all who truly repent. The penitent may
have no knowledge of the gospel, but he can be forgiven on account of the
universal atonement made by Christ. If Christ had not died, the sinner might
repent, but God could not forgive. Now, God can forgive any repenting soul
because the atonement of Christ was made for the whole world. God stands in a
changed relation to every man since Christ suffered and died.
This theory, however, seems an inadequate
explanation of the universality of the gospel. It provides no way to accomplish
that which is a principal function of the gospel, to lead men to repentance.
The gospel, for large classes of men, ceases to be motive, influence, or even
revelation, and is only an arrangement God has made with himself, of which they
know nothing whatever. They have neither the motive which induces repentance,
nor any assurance that God is reconciled to them. It is in the completeness of
the gospel as reconciliation, the bringing of God and man together, that its universality
is taught. Besides, if the universality and power of the gospel are practically
expressed or exhausted in providing a way for God to forgive, it is not clear
why the historical realization of Christ's suffering was necessary. It would be
enough that God had it in his heart from all eternity to subject his
well-beloved Son to pain for the satisfaction of justice. No, this is but an
arid explanation of Christ's sacrifice for the salvation of the world. It is
part of the truth, and, in its relation to the human side of incarnation and
atonement, a most effective and glorious truth. But if it is separated from all
uses of it as motive in the knowledge and hope of men it is insulated and
powerless. The conclusion is to me inevitable that the gospel which is for all
mankind is not as yet made available, in the earthly life, to the knowledge and
hope of vast numbers of those for whom Christ died.
Must we then suppose that this great multitude
go down to eternal death without having had the opportunities of the gospel of
Jesus Christ? Must we admit that everlasting woe awaits those who have not
known God in the highest, clearest, most gracious revelation of his character,
which has, however, been given to others of their fellow men? Is it necessary
to conclude that there is more than one principle of judgment, and that
characters of several kinds are outside the kingdom?
Of the various theories which have at one time
or another been held, some seem to me untenable in the present state of
religious opinion.
I could only with great difficulty, if at all,
bring myself to believe that the mass of heathen who seem to be corrupt, yet
who have so great disadvantages, are forever lost, and without any other light
than they have here. That they are in many respects guilty does not remove my
difficulties. I should have to assume that, in spite of appearances to the
contrary, the great majority of them do somehow have a disposition which is
holy, and I should have to confess that the assumption is based on a hope
rather than on any clear evidence. What they may deserve for their own sin, or
for Adam's sin, would not establish to my thought an harmonious explanation of
God's dealings with his children in mercy and love. The theory that the great
mass of heathen do actually at death sink into perdition is really a resort to
the doctrine of election on the basis of a limited atonement. It is the
exclusion of multitudes of mankind from the privileges of the gospel. It is an
affront to the impartiality of divine grace, and makes what is styled justice
mightier than love. Unless the universality of Christ's person and work is a
fiction, the multitudes of heathen cannot thus be cut off from the operative
grace of the gospel.
To the theory that all men virtually have the
gospel in this life, so that on their penitence they can be forgiven, I have
already stated my objections. It should also be remembered that, even if
salvation is possible without knowledge of Christ, and if some eminent
characters can be cited as examples of righteousness, yet the vast majority of
heathen give no sign of exercising the penitence and obedience which constitute
a change of character from sin to holiness.
Is there then no solution of the dark problem?
The gospel, according to its own declarations and its very character, is for
all mankind, and is absolutely necessary to salvation; yet large numbers of the
human family die without having heard the name of Christ.
I find myself shut up to one of two positions.
One position is agnosticism. I can relinquish
all efforts to solve the problem or to find relief concerning it. I can rest
back on the wisdom, goodness, and mercy of God, and admit my inability to fathom
his counsels in respect to the destiny of the unevangelized nations. If I
should thus endeavour to dismiss the difficulty from my thought it would be
because I could not, in any event, go back to theories of arbitrary election,
or limited atonement, or the perdition of the mass of the heathen. It would
also be because I could not relinquish belief in the universality of the gospel
and in the final determination of destiny in relation to Christ. I should
confess ignorance also because certain objections to a theory which remains to
be mentioned would prevent my acceptance of it as anything more than a remote
possibility. Indeed, I feel disposed, at times, to halt at this point. Holding
fast the gains which have been made by modern theology in respect to the
universality of the gospel, and concurring in the verdict of the Christian
consciousness that the myriads of heathen will not sink into perdition, I
sometimes think that it may be wiser to have no opinion concerning the
application of the universal gospel to those who in this life do not have it.
And yet, there is another position in which,
on the whole, I rest with more satisfaction, although some difficulties remain.
In my present opinion, it is probable that those who have no knowledge of the
gospel in this life will, after death, come under its enlightening and saving
influences. How, when, where, I do not profess to know. But it seems to me
reasonable to suppose that, before Christ confronts men as Judge, he will have
been made known to them as Redeemer. In support of this conjecture, I recognize
the necessity and universality of the gospel, God's ways of mercy towards the
children of men, the fact that Christ is to judge the world, and the teaching
of the New Testament that the consummation of the gospel for the human race is
at the day of judgment, while I do not find it anywhere affirmed that the
physical death of every individual is the end of gracious opportunity.
I do not discover any passage of Scripture
which necessarily forbids the belief that some may have the gospel after death.
The assertion of Paul, that we must all be judged according to the deeds clone
in the body, plainly refers to those who do have the gospel. The saying, "
He that is righteous let him be righteous still, and he that is filthy let him
be filthy still," is uttered when the final consummations of the gospel
are in view. The apostle's statement in the second chapter of Romans,
concerning the heathen, is in the course of an argument which shows the guilt
and inexcusableness of all men, both Jews and Gentiles, and which has for its
object to prove that there is no hope of salvation except in the gospel. He
argues that all men are guilty sinners, in danger of perishing, and are shut up
to the gospel of Christ for their redemption. The argument is fatal to the view
that multitudes of the heathen are saved without the gospel. The present time
is emphasized in various passages, but always because the gospel has been made
known. Now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation, because now
the gospel is preached. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commanded'
all men everywhere to repent, because now God is revealed it' Christ. There are
also passages which suggest the extension of grace to certain classes beyond
the period of earthly life, such as the solemn warning of Jesus that for the
sin against the Holy Ghost there is no forgiveness in the world to come, and
the allusions of Peter to Christ's preaching to the spirits in prison who were
of the times of Noah, and to the preaching of the gospel to the dead. If the
New Testament were explicit and. final on this point, there would be no room
for discussion; but, since it is nearly silent concerning the fate of the
unevangelized nations, we may either resolve upon silence also, or may feel at
liberty to follow out the central principles of the gospel to. their apparent
conclusions. One who is silent or agnostic must admit that God may give to the
heathen knowledge of the gospel after death.
I am not unaware of remaining difficulties and
objections.
The theory may be used by some who have the
gospel, as an excuse for the delay of repentance. If it is believed that there
are any who may have opportunity of salvation after death, it will be inferred
by some that this may be the case with themselves. But every enlargement of the
apprehension of the gospel into correspondence with the grace of God is made a
pretext by some for procrastination. This theory also emphasizes the urgency of
the gospel, since for all who have it the issues of life and death are
involved. It is not a legitimate application, but a palpable and often perverse
misuse, of this hope for the unenlightened, which employs it as a sedative to
conscience.
That it dethrones the moral law and weakens
the sense of sin, I do not for a moment admit, for its assumption is that all
men are sinners and can be saved from sin only by faith in Christ. I cannot
argue this point in the limited space at my disposal, as it involves a
consideration of moral law, and the various grades of ethical. development
which actually exist on the face of the earth.
To my thought, the motive to missions is
strengthened, rather than weakened, by this theory. An object of missions is to
save men from eternal death, but the principal object is to hasten the progress
of the kingdom of God on earth in obedience to Christ's last command. The
opinion that vast multitudes are saved without any knowledge of Christ seems to
me quite as likely to abate from the urgency of missionary zeal.
The objection that the theory of a future
probation for some makes hades the principal scene of Christ's work, seems to
me trivial. Take the generations together, in view of the expectation that the
time is coming when all men will have the gospel in this life, and the number
of those who die without knowledge of Christ may be relatively small. Also, if
the assumption is correct that the preponderating majority of men enter hades
without knowledge of Christ, we must again ask, What becomes of the
universality of the gospel? It is not so preposterous, either, to consider the
period as temporary during which multitudes do not have the gospel, when the
reasons are recalled by which it is argued that only a comparatively few are
lost; such as the long succession of future ages when faith in Christ may be
nearly universal, and the countless inhabitants of other worlds who may never
have sinned.
My position, then, is, that the gospel of
Jesus Christ will ultimately gain a complete realization in the establishment
of righteousness, and in the overthrow of all wickedness which is incorrigible;
that this consummation is reached at the day of judgment, at which time all
mankind will have had knowledge of God's grace in Christ with opportunity of
repentance; and that the lost will be those who at some period of their history
have irrevocably refused the offers of redemption. In a word, I believe that
all men will have a Christian probation, and will be saved or lost in
consequence of their innermost preference in respect to the Lord Jesus Christ.
This view is at the same time simple and comprehensive.
The solution of all the perplexing problems of
sin and punishment is to be found in relation to Jesus Christ, and not in
relation to Adam or the perverted condition of his descendants. God's character
and gracious dealings with men, rather than nice weighing of actual good and
ill desert, apart from the gospel, are decisive of the future. The principle is
to me perfectly clear, that the gospel of God's love in Christ, in some
practical availableness, is to be decisive of the character and therefore of
the destiny of all the children of men, who are also the children of God. As to
the method by which the gospel will be made available to certain classes of
men, I cannot have the same positiveness, and must either admit ignorance, and
relegate the whole matter to God's unrevealed counsels, or entertain the hope
that, after death, needed knowledge will be given to those who before death
remain in dense ignorance.
After all arguments and speculations, those
who believe that some souls may be hopelessly lost, even under the light and
motive of the gospel, must stand appalled before the dark mystery. And we
should advocate the opinions we hold on such a subject, without acrimony, and
with that humility of spirit which confesses that now we know only in part.
The doctrine of endless punishment is
inseparably bound up with those of original sin, vicarious atonement, and
regeneration, and must continue as long as sin continues.
By Rev. E. R. HENDRIX, D.D., Bishop of the
Methodist Episcopal Church South.
THAT the doctrine of future retribution or
punishment after death is less frequently a theme of the pulpit than was the
case a generation or more ago is doubtless true. There are three reasons, in my
judgment, why this is so. One is that the preaching of our time is more largely
to believers than to the unconverted, and hence the doctrine is not so much in
the line of the preacher's thought as when the address was more evangelistic
and when sinners were warned to " flee from the wrath to come." Is it
not the exception, rather than the rule, to hear a sermon addressed to sinners,
save in times of revival or deep religious interest? It is then that the
preacher feels most keenly the peril of souls and faithfully warns them of the
impending doom of the ungodly. This service is now too often relegated to an
evangelist and to special seasons. The motives ordinarily appealed to are those
of gratitude rather than fear, of affection and duty rather than dread of
punishment, because the class of hearers mostly addressed are not supposed to
be in great peril.
Another reason for the comparative silence of
the pulpit of to-clay on this dreadful theme, is that our preaching is less of
the nature of an exposition of the Scriptures than formerly. The topical style
is more favourable to oratory and invites a wide range of themes and a varied
discussion of them. It is true that Chrysostom, and other golden-mouthed
preachers of the first few centuries, found no difficulty in discussing any
subject which they chose, under the expository style of preaching, but with
less regard to unity than is required by good taste. But on the other hand,
with the abandonment of expository preaching, the pulpit may become the home of
sentiment rather than dogma. Men are appealed to from the standpoint of the
well-being of society, the love of humanity, the development of character. The
preaching thus becomes ethical rather than doctrinal. In these more popular
themes the preacher may forget his duty as an ambassador to proclaim a specific
message and to persuade men to heed it. The pulpit loses much of its tone of
authority when it uses a Scripture text as a motto, rather than as an
expression of the mind of the Holy Spirit, which must be faithfully interpreted
to dying men. The secret of Jonah's wonderful success in awakening Nineveh was
his strict obedience to his commission: " Preach the preaching that I bid
thee " (Jonah, 3: 2). None will question that should our preaching become
more evangelistic and more Biblical it would become more powerful, as it would
faithfully proclaim the " wrath of God revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," " who treasure up unto
themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God." The wise hunter loads his gun for the very game he
seeks. Draw the charge from many a sermon levelled from the top of a pulpit and
no one need wonder at the small results. The great commission (Have all
preachers read it?) contemplates the salvation of sinners and is loaded to the
very muzzle with the doctrine of endless punishment.
The third reason of this comparative silence
is doubtless the fact of mental perplexity on the part of not a few preachers.
The doctrine of future punishment is not clearly and firmly fixed in their
minds. A preacher's traditional beliefs must become his personal beliefs or be
laid aside. When the fearful truth of future retribution is being weighed by a
mind mature enough to apprehend something of its awful meaning, a period of
silence is apt to take place. This silence is broken, on the one hand, as the
result of the careful study of the doctrine in the light of the Scriptures,
when the preacher sees that it is inseparably bound up with the doctrines of
original sin, vicarious atonement, and regeneration, and that punishment must
continue as long as sin continues, and that while like Jonah he would prefer
some other message he has no option but to preach it, and his preaching is now
marked by a tenderness and power in saving men unknown before; or, on the other
hand, the preacher seeks to settle the question mostly from the stand-point of
sentiment and sympathy, and breaking his silence proclaims himself in favour of
the doctrine of a second probation, or of countless probations, if necessary,
or, drifting from revelation, he arranges matters wholly to suit himself. To be
consistent, when the silence of anxious thought is to be broken by the open
antagonism of the Word of God, the advocate of the new doctrine should cease to
a2pear as an ambassador of God. Jonah may refuse to warn Nineveh, but let him
not appear in its streets proclaiming as a messenger from God any other "
preaching " than what he was bidden to preach. No man can thus antagonize
a doctrine preached by Christ and contained in the great commission and retain
public respect as an accredited preacher of the gospel. In fact, if those who
reject the doctrine of eternal punishment are of a logical turn of mind they
soon come to reject the whole redemptive scheme, because Christ came to redeem
men from eternal death. If there be no such thing as eternal death, if penal
fires will purge away sin and thus prepare men for some future Probation during
which they will approve themselves to the divine favour; then there was really
no occasion for Christ's coming, and his death is at best only a moral
spectacle, a little more striking perhaps than the death of Socrates, but
influencing men only as the death of any other martyr.
While affected by the above named causes in
common with other churches, though doubtless in a less degree than some others
who have not been so aggressive in calling men to repentance, it has been for a
century and a half a characteristic of the people called Methodists to warn men
to " flee from the wrath to come," because they profoundly believed
in "the wrath to come." Foremost of the five points of Methodism-Repentance,
Pardon, Regeneration, Witness of the Spirit, and Sanctification-is that of
Repentance. Sin is something which kills both soul and body and must be
repented of and hated. Under the sense of the guilt of sin that made hell an
awful and a present reality, most Methodist preachers themselves entered upon a
Christian life, having an intense desire to flee from the wrath to come. This
deep conviction of personal danger on account of sin leads to an equally clear
sense of pardon and peace in believing in Jesus, with a firm apprehension of
the atonement as one's only hope as a satisfaction of the divine justice. In
proportion, as, like White-field, they live in the light of the mediatorial
throne, Methodist preachers have with great clearness seen two things; namely,
man a lost sinner, and Christ coming to seek and to save the lost. The constant
preaching of a present salvation has kept them from theorizing about some
possible future chance of salvation. This preaching has been on the great theme
of salvation from sin by penitence and faith in Jesus Christ, who made a
vicarious atonement, and hence the wonderful results which have confessedly
followed their labours. The marked reformation in morals in Great Britain from
about the middle of the eighteenth century, saving the English people from a
reign of terror for which they were fast ripening and which appeared in such
fiendish fury across the Channel, Lecky and Green justly attribute to the
vigorous preaching of the Wesleys and their followers. " Their voice was
soon heard in the wildest and most barbarous corners of the land, in the dens
of London, or in the long galleries where, in the pauses of his labour, the Cornish
miner listens to the sobbing of the sea." It is the deep response of the
human soul to these great truths which has given such preaching its almost
universal hearing. A well-known infidel lecturer, when asked how he accounted
for the success of the Methodist Church, promptly and forcibly replied,
"Because they believe in a hell, and are not ashamed to preach it; they
believe in heaven, a place of blessedness for the good, and love to talk about
it; and they believe in a God who is always willing to boost, if a sinner is
willing to climb."
The Church with which the writer stands
connected accepts as a matter of revelation, and believes on rational grounds
as well, the doctrine of the future and endless punishment of sin. Within the
last twenty years and with extensive opportunities of knowing the drift of
belief, the writer has known of less than five preachers of his denomination
whose public or private utterances indicated any departure from the belief of
the Church on this doctrine. They either had the manliness to retire from the
ministry or were soon expelled on the ground of gross immorality. They either
preached a second probation because they knew that they needed it, or the
belief in a second probation made them relax their efforts to properly use the
first one. In every instance, whether such views were the causes of, or were
adopted to justify, looseness of life, great indifference to moral obligation
appeared sooner or later.
In speaking of Methodist belief and preaching,
it is hardly necessary to acid that it is virtually one, regardless of
denominational differences. Questions of polity rather than of doctrine have
led to any separate organizations in the family of Methodism. The themes of the
pulpit may be less varied than with some other churches, but they are the great
doctrines which Paul most preached because Christ had preached them before him.
So far as there has been any change in Methodist preaching on the subject of
future punishment it has been as above indicated, unless it be in the manner of
preaching the doctrine. Formerly there was a more general belief in a literal
fire and. consequently more stress was laid upon the physical tortures of the
lost. Not only were the strong terms used in the Scriptures freely employed, as
they should have been, but vivid imaginations did not hesitate to amplify and
elaborate such expressions as " the lake of fire and brimstone,"
" the bottomless pit," " the worm that never dies," and
" the smoke of their torment ascended forever," as they painted the
bodily contortions of the lost. Using, as our Lord had done, the terms best
suited to impress the masses, they did not pause to determine how much was
literal and how much was figurative. Perhaps the difference may be best stated
as follows: the preachers of a hundred years ago deemed these terms more
literal than figurative, while those of to-day deem them more figurative than
literal, while neither would venture to say that they were altogether literal
or wholly figurative. Those who deem the terms to be mostly figurative, so far
from relaxing their views as to the poignancy and endlessness of the suffering,
see in this use of language an imperfect endeavour to indicate the appalling
agony of the lost, who, in calling upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon
them and hide them from the face of the Lamb, would fain welcome any physical
pain that should make them unmindful of mental agony. Dives seemed to dread a
greater evil than being "tormented with this flame," and that was the
endless reproaches of his five brethren, should "they come to this place
of torment." The "binding of the tares in bundles to be burned"
would seem to indicate that his dread was only too well founded as companions
in sin thus become companions in woe.
If there has been a substantially uniform
method in Methodist preaching on this awful theme, it is because of the
acceptance of the doctrine as a matter of unquestioned revelation and of its
fundamental relation to all the other cardinal doctrines of our holy religion,
as well as because of the rational grounds on which it commended itself to the
practical men who saw sin in many of its most odious forms. The same infidel
lecturer who attributed much of the success of the Methodists to the fact that
they believed in hell and were not ashamed to preach it, nevertheless denied
that the doctrine of endless punishment was taught in the Old Testament or in
the first three Gospels, although conceding that it was taught by the apostles.
The confidence of those who preach this doctrine, with such confessedly good
results, is based upon those parts of the Bible thus supposed to be silent on
the subject, and especially upon the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
himself declares what he, as Judge of the quick and the dead, will do with the
wicked in "that great day." Perhaps two texts from the Old Testament
will be enough to show whether it is silent on the fate of the ungodly. "
The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God "
(Psalms, 9: 17). "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt " (Daniel, 12: 2). What better description of the fate of the
finally impenitent-everlasting contempt! The spiritual suicide will hate his
own life and would fain take it, were it but possible!
And in those gospels, supposed to be silent,
what words from Christ's own lips, words that he declares he will pronounce in
that day! " Then shall he say unto them on his left hand, Depart from me,
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. . .
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matt., 25: 41, 46).
" But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never
forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation " (Mark, 3: 29). "
And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment" (Luke, 16: 23).
"Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good
for that man if he had not been born " (Matt., 26: 24; Mark, 14: 21). All
these are Christ's own words, in which he declares the absolute hopelessness of
the impenitent. He even intimates certain sins that are unpardonable because of
the light in which they have been committed, when the spirit of man antagonizes
the Eternal Spirit and blasphemes him, He points out one of his disciples as
destined to the appalling fate of a lost soul, when he declares that " it
had been good for that man if he had not been born." If at any time,
however remote, a lost soul should be pardoned and restored to the divine favour,
would not his ineffable bliss for an endless future make him count his life a
priceless boon, despite its period of shame and remorse? If ever thus pardoned
and restored, could it be properly said of him it were good for that man if he
had not been born? It is only when the doom is irrevocably sealed that such
language can be understood. It is the endlessness of punishment that makes the
hopelessness of a sinner's doom. The tender heart of Adam Clarke prompted the
inquiry as to whether the suicide of Judas might not have been due to
penitence. He indeed took back the unholy price which he received for betraying
his Lord, the price of a slave, but remorse might have done this. True
penitence never commits suicide-that is the deed of remorse and despair. The
penitent thief confesses his sin and prays for pardon: " the son of
perdition " (John, 17: 12) finds no place for repentance, and seeks in a
suicide's death relief from the pangs of remorse.
We still preach this solemn truth, because the
nature of sin, rightly apprehended, impresses us with the reasonableness of its
ceaseless punishment. Sin implies the existence of a just God, and of a subject
capable of voluntary action. If there is no Ruler of the universe, or if its
government is not a righteous one, then its laws may be broken without sin. Or
if the evil deeds that curse the race are necessitated and not free, man is not
a sinner, and hence will never know remorse. Hell is impossible without
remorse, and remorse is impossible without voluntary action. If man is a
responsible being it is because he is free, and there is some One to whom he is
responsible. It is because he is thus free, and because his choices and acts
give such insight into his character, that importance attaches to his every
word and deed, and a careful record of them is kept which he must ultimately
meet. Such a record is being kept also by his own memory which shall be
quickened into such activity "in that 451 day " as to unfold the
story of one's whole life, when each of us shall give an account of himself
unto God. If these fundamental facts be denied there is no stop this side of
the baldest atheism and fatalism, although some, hesitating to avow an opinion
that does violence to their intellectual nature, prefer the more indefinite
theory of agnosticism, which is the despair of the human mind.
Sin, abstractly considered, is a spirit's wilful
transgression of the law of God, whether by neglect or other infraction. It is
a created spirit antagonizing the Eternal Spirit, the Father of spirits,
despising his authority and refusing to obey his righteous will. Sin is anomie -lawlessness.
Whether such a mob-spirit be clue to indifference to the divine authority
because of a wilful neglect of God's revealed or even his natural law, or
whether it be due to defiance of his authority born of hatred of his person and
character, it cannot be ignored by a just and holy God. Such a spirit of
lawlessness cannot exist unrebuked and unpunished in a righteous government. It
is anarchy itself! Out of it conies every possible transgression of God's law.
It does not hesitate, as in the case of the Devil and his angels, to assail the
eternal throne. Such is sin, whether committed by angel or man. Can it go
unnoticed and unpunished? What the specific sin of Satan and his angels was we
do not know, and cannot know until we witness their trial at the judgment, for
they are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day. But
we do not need to know the specific sin when we know the generic sin whence all
the species spring. In the case of Satan and his angels, we see sin as it
really is, free from all personal questions, and we find it intrinsically
hateful and worthy of punishment forever. We cannot imagine a moment when it
will cease to be vile and hateful. Impurity will never cease to be hateful to a
pure woman. Dishonesty will be despised forever by the honest man, and
falsehood will be eternally hated by the truthful. So long as sin exists it is
the same vile, loathsome thing, and time or eternity cannot hide its hideous
deformity. Sin must therefore be punished as long as it continues. Hence there
is never any sympathy expressed for a fallen angel, and the fate of Satan never
calls forth tears. His sin is recognized as so wilful and in the face of such
clear and unmistakable light that his fate awakens the sense of justice which
we feel is satisfied only by the punishment of his odious guilt. " Sin
when it is finished bringeth forth death." Grant the continued existence
of sin and conscience and you have all the brimstone and fire that is needed
for endless punishment. Satan like every other fallen spirit, whether angel or
man, took his own brimstone with him.
As Dr. South well said, " Sin is the only
perpetual motion and needs nothing but a beginning to keep it incessantly
going." It is the spirit of deicide and wants only the opportunity to hurl
the Almighty from his throne and murder him as it murdered his incarnate Son.
Its vileness is usually in proportion to the light it refuses and despises. No
heathen orgies are viler than those practiced in Christian lands. Profanity, or
the blaspheming the name of God, is unheard in heathen lands until uttered by
the lips of sailors or merchants who have come thither under the flags of
Christian nations. Can paganism produce a Sykes or a Fagin, a Uriah Heep or a
Peck-sniff, a Lady Macbeth or an Iago? Could Satan himself, if incarnate,
out-Herod Herod? Sin is suicide. It is a final act; when it is finished it
bringeth forth death. Sooner could a suicide recover life than a malignant
spirit recover from its chosen fate. Judas, "the son of perdition,"
went to his own place. His suicide was no more an act of choice than his sin,
and both were beyond recall. We do not complain of a hell prepared for the
Devil and his angels. We are prepared in advance for the sentence which we
shall hear in " that day " committing them to the bottomless pit. So
the sentence pronounced upon sin in the last day will be as final as it will be
just, and will commend itself to every intelligence in the universe. Only those
of like character with Satan and his angels will be swept into the outer
darkness and go away into everlasting punishment. The essential holiness of God
requires the disapproval, and punishment of sin and these will continue as long
as sin itself.
If we concede, therefore, that the divine
justice will protect all from the sentence of endless death save those whose
sin requires such sentence, what hope is there that such sentence will ever be
reversed? Will sin ever cease? Will it burn out its malignity and cease to be
odious? Must not the object of hate die before hate will die? Does sin grow
less intense with time? We might as well ask, Does not a falling body fall more
slowly the longer it falls? Alas! it does not even fall equal distances in
equal times, but its velocity becomes the more appalling the longer it falls. Thus
hate acquires such momentum with time that one cannot let the sun go down on
his wrath lest it should get beyond his control. Murder or theft are not less
murder or theft because they were committed one thousand or five thousand years
ago. Does time make a man less a felon than when he was first put within prison
walls? If punishment will purify men from sin, then was Christ's death
unnecessary and a judicial murder. No, we are compelled to believe that Satan
and his angels are no better now than when hurled from the battlements of
heaven. Time and punishment have but intensified their hellish hate of all that
is pure and good..
Nor is it the design of punishment to reform.
It is true that from a human stand-point human punishment often serves the twofold
end of the reform of the criminal and the protection of society. But this does
not explain its nature nor justify its infliction. If expediency rather than
guilt justified punishment, the offender would at times go unpunished when he
most deserved it. Punishment must be based upon a principle that will always
make it possible to punish sin. If reform were the end, the more hardened the
criminal the less probable would be his reformation, and he might escape all
punishment whatever because it would be unavailing. Or if such hardened
criminal were the only living subject of God's government, having ruthlessly
destroyed all his fellow-beings, society could not be protected by his
punishment and, unless it were justified on other than these grounds, he would
escape. So the most thoughtful writers on jurisprudence explain punishment by
retribution for crime and not by expediency. The man has sinned and must suffer
even though he be not reformed or society be not protected. Society represents
the divine justice in inflicting punishment, and is justified in doing what an
individual may not do.
While this is the nature of punishment,-pure
and simple retribution,-which left to itself is not calculated to reform men,
may not moral influences be brought to bear that may reform the condemned just
as such influences have led to repentance, faith, and regeneration, in the case
of notorious criminals in our prisons? In other words, is it not reasonable to
expect that a second probation will be granted, and that it will result in
permanent changes of character such as all the influences of a first probation
failed to effect? Assuming that only those deserving punishment are permitted
by the divine justice to suffer it, and assuming that such second probation
were granted (of which there is not the least assurance in the Scriptures),
would it be calculated to awaken genuine repentance and produce saving faith?
What added or stronger motive could be brought to bear upon the will? Would
there be any clearer view of sin possible in the second probation than in the
first? Centuries of punishment could not produce clearer views of sin than the
spectacle of the sufferings of the innocent Christ. It is the sufferings of the
innocent, and not of the guilty, that best portray sin. It is not the murderer
on the gallows, it is the corpse of his innocent and mangled child that tells
the nature of sin. Penal fires can never do more than the agony in Gethsemane
and on Golgotha. Then, are the scenes of Calvary to be repeated, and must there
be another crucifixion of the Son of God? No, " there remained no more
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
indignation, which shall devour the adversaries " (Heb., 10: 26, 27).
" Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after
this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many "
(Heb., 9: 26-28).
If no stronger motive can be used, is there
greater moral nerve born of these years of resistance to moral obligation to
enable men the better to obey the voice of conscience? Have ages of
impenitence, of doubting and denying retribution, of resisting and defying the
divine tribunal, softened the hearts of the wicked into penitence, and awakened
perception of the evil of sin and hatred of it as such, with genuine sorrow
that the authority of God has been slighted and his goodness abused? If the
sentence of all were alike just, then such second probation should be granted
to Satan and his angels not less than to wicked men. The probability of
repentance in one case is no greater than in the other, and in neither case is
there the slightest likelihood of godly sorrow for sin. If they did not have
light enough in the first instance, they should never have been sentenced. If
they spurned all possible motive and light during their first probation, which
was made up of as many probations as there were years or months, or even clays
and hours, then it is too much to hope that, with weakened moral natures and
the habit of impenitence, they will avail themselves of any number of
probations. Sin is choice and choice is character. The character is alike fixed
and proven by the persistency of the evil choice. Each has gone to his own
place, the place of his own deliberate choice.
Only one thing remains to be clone, if the
Almighty, for the sake of a weak and nerveless sentimentalism, would seek to
purge the universe of the hell originally prepared for the Devil and his
angels. If its penal fires cannot reform the wicked and produce godly sorrow
for sin, or if their cessation during a period of a second probation cannot
avail because a weakened moral sense no longer responds to the spectacle of a
once crucified Redeemer, then, despairing of all hope of changing their moral
natures, shall God proclaim a universal amnesty, regardless of the character of
the wicked or of the consequences to the righteous? Perish the thought that
destroys heaven even more than hell! It would turn heaven into pandemonium and
in anticipation would topple every government of earth. This is the wild vision
of anarchy! No, even then could not endless punishment be destroyed, as these
wretched and self-condemned spirits, whether angels or men, gazing upon
whatever of happiness or purity is left in the universe, would severally cry,- Me
miserable which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and Infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And,
in the lowest deep, a lower deep, Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To
which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."
God's veracity the basis of catholic dogma and
belief; the dogma in this case is that there is a hell, or state of eternal
condemnation.
By the Very Rev. AUGUSTINE F. HEWITT, D.D.,
Roman Catholic, Superior of the Paulist Institute, New York, Author of Problems
of the Age, etc.
WHAT I propose in the present paper is,
chiefly, to explain what is taught in the system of dogmatic theology derived
from the Fathers and the great Latin schoolmen, respecting the essential dogma
of Catholic faith, in regard to eternal punishment. This exposition will,
however, lead to some consideration of various doctrinal commentaries upon the
essential dogma, and of certain aspects of Greek theology.
The criterion by which dogmas of Catholic
faith are determined is the clear and distinct teaching of the Church that the
respective doctrines are revealed truths, and therefore to be firmly believed,
by divine faith in the veracity of God.
The Catholic dogma is simply and strictly
this, no less, and no more, There is a hell, or state of eternal condemnation.
This is the statement of Petavius, Perrone, Kenrick, and of theologians
generally. The Latin term rendered into English by the word hell is infernus,
an adjective used in the absolute sense, as a noun, and literally signifying
underworld. Sheol and hades are the Hebrew and Greek equivalents. In the most
general sense, it includes all abodes. of departed spirits below heaven. But in
the particular sense we are now considering, a state of existence is
designated, in which all angels and all men who are finally excluded from the
kingdom of heaven abide forever.
As this definition is negative in form,
describing the infernal state by its opposition to the supernal state of
celestial glory and blessedness, it is better understood by a positive
definition of its opposite.
The state of blessedness, the everlasting
life, the kingdom of heaven, which is the inheritance of the saints in light,
consists essentially in the Beatific Vision. This vision is an immediate
intuition of the Divine Essence in the Three Persons, and of all created beings
in the mirror of the Trinity. This intellectual vision is accompanied by an
equal complacency of the will in the divine object as the supreme good. It is a
participation granted to a rational creature in the act of contemplation and
complacency which constitutes the eternal life and blessedness of God. It is a
kind of apotheosis or deification of the creature, less than that which the Son
gave to his human nature, but similar to it, and. a reflection of it. It is a
sharing with the Son in the fellowship which subsists be- tween the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. All else in heaven -the circumstances of place, of
hierarchical order, of spiritual and material splendour, of mutual friendship,
perfection in natural knowledge, activity in any kind of ministration and
service of God, enjoyment of natural good, in a word, all that can be imagined
as belonging to the sum total of celestial beatitude-is something accessory. It
is the consequence, the accompaniment, the environment, of the state of
supreme, essential glory and blessedness in God.
The opposite or infernal state is related to
the supernal state, as the nadir is to the zenith. Essentially and absolutely,
it is a state in which the supreme beatitude is wanting, with all that which
necessarily depends on it, according to the order of the universe, and would be
impossible or incongruous, if the supreme beatitude did not exist.
This state is moreover infernal in respect to
fallen angels and men, not merely because it is below the celestial state, but
because they are below the plane of their original destiny. Not only do they
lack supernatural beatitude, but they have been deprived of it. The cause of
this privation is sin. The state of privation is therefore a state of
condemnation, which is eternal because it is final, and the subjects of it are
immortal.
What the positive conditions of this state are
is not determined, except in so far as they are necessarily implied in the
notion of the perpetual existence of a rational being, deprived of supreme
blessedness. The definition in its entire extension describes what is universal
in regard to the state and all who are in it, as in common and equally subject
to the sentence of exclusion from the kingdom of heaven. Within this universal
category, there is room for vast and numerous disparities of subjective
character. The conditions of existence must be as various and different as the
characters of classes and individuals, and, in particular, all positive
penalties must be proportioned to the degree of demerit, according to a measure
of justice and equity.
The underworld, considered in its physical
being, as the abode and external environment of these immortal spirits, both
disembodied and embodied, may be a vast sphere including many mansions
differing extremely from each other; or a vast system of worlds, separate and
distant from one another in space.
It is impossible not to wish and to seek to
penetrate into the mysteries of this infernal world, remote from the sphere of
celestial blessedness. What is the moral and physical condition of its
inhabitants; what is their environment, what is the kind and quantity of evil
in their final and perpetual state? is there any good remaining in it, and, if
so, of what kind and quantity?
The mere negation of celestial qualities and
conditions, and of those which are special to the terrestrial state as one of
probationary and mixed character, does not determine anything positive
respecting the physical, mental, or moral constituents of this outlying world,
as a part of the natural order. The elements of good and evil, felicity and
misery, their proportions and circumstances, the actual modus vivendi, in its
diverse conditions, of this multitude of rational beings, are left vague and
undetermined.
They can only be determined by reference to
other doctrines. The relation of rational nature to a supernatural end must be
determined, before one can form a reasonable concept of the state of immortal
existence without any power or means of attaining this end. The nature of sin,
and the proportion between sin and punishment, must be apprehended, before we
can understand what is involved in the notion of a state of eternal
condemnation.
The only rational beings of whom we know that
they exist and that they were destined to a supernatural end culminating in the
beatific vision of God, are those pure spirits commonly called angels, and the
human race of Adam. It is the Catholic doctrine that the angels were created
and constituted in a state of grace; which was an inchoate beatitude, enabling
them to rise to a state of confirmed sanctity and perfect beatitude, by the
acts of their intelligence and free-will. They were placed in a way of trial
and probation, to win or lose the crown of glory proffered to them. Some were
faithful and won the crown they can never lose; others were faithless, and lost
the crown which they will never have another opportunity of winning.
Adam at his creation was constituted in
sanctifying grace, integrity of nature, inchoate beatitude, with power to
attain confirmed sanctity and perfect beatitude by the acts of his intelligence
and free-will. Besides his own individual privileges and rights, which lie must
forfeit if he were disobedient to the law of his Creator, he had the right of
transmitting the same to his posterity, likewise subject to forfeiture as the
penalty of disobedience. He was disobedient, and thus forfeited all the
privileges of person and race which depended on his fidelity to the conditions
of this first probation.
The right to the kingdom of heaven was the
chief of all these boons of divine grace, which he lost for himself and all his
posterity. All men are, by reason of their origin, under this condemnation,
which is by its own nature eternal.
Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, has
re-opened the shut door of the kingdom of heaven to mankind. In this new order
of grace, each individual must be singly regenerated, and, if he attain the
full exercise of reason, bear the burden and meet the risks of a personal
probation. The unregenerate are excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Those who
come to the end of this probation, which finishes with this earthly life in the
body, in the state of actual, mortal sin, descend into hell, their eternal
abode, and receive a punishment proportioned to their sins.
When we look into the Latin theologians for
the amplification and explanation of the dogmatic doctrine which all hold as of
divine and Catholic faith, we do not find unanimous consent in respect to all
important points.
In respect to original sin and its eternal
consequences, rigid and severe opinions have had more or less currency at
different periods, and have been: opposed by others which are much more mild
and lenient. The first class of authors magnify original sin. They treat of it
as something like a minimized actual sin, a positive habit which produces
aversion from God, a real though not a total depravation of human nature, as an
object of the divine displeasure, and as a real ill-desert. It is a natural
consequence from this view of original sin, that the state of infants who die
unregenerate should be regarded as one which is more or less miserable. Those
who assert an innate need and longing for the intuitive vision of God in
rational nature, must deny the possibility of an order of pure nature which is
normal and final, and therefore reject the idea of natural beatitude. Those
rational creatures who are deprived of supernatural beatitude must therefore
suffer, at least from sadness and a sense of loss. Some have supposed that a
latent hatred of God, a principle of active wickedness, breaks out in such
souls as soon as they become developed in the future life. Besides the pain of
loss, and the pain of the interior senses, it has been supposed that there is
also a pain of the sensitive nature from some external cause, like the fire, of
whatever nature that may be, to which sinners are sentenced.
Such rigorous views as these have never
prevailed or gained ground. On the contrary, they have been diluted and modified
until even the adherents to the more rigid doctrine on original sin allow that
those who remain forever subject to its penalty enjoy an inchoate and imperfect
felicity. Moreover, the extent and influence of this peculiar east of doctrine
are very limited, and the current of scholastic philosophy and theology has
always trended in another direction.
From the philosophical point of view, in the
prevalent system, the connatural object of the created intellect in its motion
towards and in its final attainment of its maximum, is God, as apprehended by
an abstractive contemplation of his perfections as they are manifested through
the medium of creation. This is natural knowledge. The connatural object of the
created will is the same, and is attained by natural love of the supreme object
of natural knowledge. The union of the creature with the Creator, at its
maximum, is the essence of natural beatitude, which, in its integral
completeness, includes also the knowledge and ordinate love of created objects,
in proportion to the capacity of the subject.
Theology presents a supernatural knowledge and
love of God; which culminates in the immediate vision of the essence of God and
a corresponding complacency of the will in this absolute and infinite good; as
an elevation of intellectual created nature above its natural plane to the
plane of the supernatural and divine, by an act of pure and gratuitous grace.
By original sin, human nature, at first
conditionally entitled to this elevated state, has become disinherited, denuded
of supernatural endowments, and despoiled of the right to the final apotheosis
which constitutes the supreme blessedness of the adopted sons of God in the
kingdom of heaven. This is the state of lapsed nature, which is distinguished
from the state of pure nature, only as the state of denudation differs from the
state of nudity. Human nature in this state is essentially good and perfectible
in its own order. Its proper final term is natural beatitude. Moreover it is
congruous to the goodness and mercy of God in Christ, that some light from the
kingdom of heaven should be shed upon this outlying realm, and gratuitous
blessings within the receptive capacity or its inhabitants should be given to
them through the merits of the Redeemer of all mankind, who is their king as
well as the king of saints.* In respect to the punishments of actual, mortal
sin in hell, there have been from the olden to the latter times in the Church,
explanations of the dogma of eternal condemnation varying between two opposite
extremes of severity and leniency.
I call the extreme of severity that conception
of the state of the reprobate which places it at the greatest possible distance
from a state of natural beatitude. I call the opposite extreme of leniency that
conception which makes the final state of the reprobate approach the most
nearly to the state of natural beatitude.
In Latin theology, the prevailing tendency has
been, and is, to draw nearer to the extreme point of severity than to its
opposite. The severe or rigorous sense is one which magnifies the evil of sin
and intensifies the pain by which it is punished. The evil of sin is magnified.
to the utmost, by presenting it in the aspect of an infinite offense against
the Infinite Majesty. It is magnified in another sense, by representing it as a
habit which completely dominates over the whole nature of the reprobate,
consuming all natural virtues, enslaving them under a violent, irresistible,
and incorrigible hatred of all good and propensity to all evil. A sin which is
infinite and endless demands forever an equal punishment. Since an infinite
punishment cannot be inflicted, justice demands that it should be the most severe
which the subject is capable of enduring, and tend toward the infinite by
continuing without end. As to the nature of the pains which are endured, the
consciousness of having lost heaven by wilful sin, the privation of all natural
felicity, the interior sense of remorse and despair, every kind of anguish in
the spirit, and a torment of the whole sensitive nature by some physical agent,
which is aptly represented by fire, make up its elements. Such an existence is,
evidently, deprived of everything which makes life desirable. Extinction would
be a boon. The only end of such an existence is to suffer, for the vindication
of the law, the justice, and the sanctity of God. Dante's Inferno, illustrated
by Dora, is the most vivid and terrible representation which has ever been made
of this idea of an abode of everlasting woe.
It is impossible to conceive a more extreme
and aggravated idea of a state of evil, both moral and physical, which is
permanent and unchangeable. The only way of imagining a more infernal state is
by supposing that sin and misery go on forever increasing and multiplying. But
this notion has no place in Catholic theology.
It would not be correct to say that this
extreme doctrine is one which is proposed and defended as a true and. certain explanation
of the Catholic dogma by the common consent of the great Latin theologians.
Their common and concurrent teaching cannot. be reduced to any simple and exact
formula. The extreme of severity is the point toward which Latin theology,
generally speaking, approaches more nearly than to the opposite point. And the
theology of sermons, books of religious reading, minor and more popular works,
has been generally, in more recent times, with some late exceptions, more
positive and more darkly coloured than the soberer, more exact writings of
scientific authors.
On the other hand, as the prevalent tone of
Latin theology has been severe, the tone of Greek theology has been mild and
clement, by comparison; though without prejudice to the dogma of. Catholic faith.
Origen has been generally accused of denying the doctrine of eternal
punishment. He has been ably vindicated. But I let this controversy pass. The
extravagant doctrines imputed to him were repeatedly condemned by Eastern
councils, and are out of the question.
But there are Catholic authors who make a
charge of unsound doctrine, or at least of hesitation and doubt, in regard to
the dogma of 4G7 eternal punishment, against St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St.
Gregory of Nyssa, and even the Latin Fathers, St. Ambrose and St. Jerome.
The case of St. Gregory of Nyssa is the most
serious one, and needs more careful consideration than the others. It is
obvious that there must be some apparent reason for the opinion which grave
authors have formed in respect to his doctrine. They impute to him a certain
theory, which, they say, he proposed on philosophical grounds, and
hypothetically, but not in a dogmatic manner, and which they concede to be in
contradiction to the doctrine of his theological writings. The supposed theory
is that all punishment of angels and men is purgative and temporary, and that
after this penal expiation of sin has been completed, there will be a final
restoration of all sinful beings to the perfect holiness and blessedness of the
kingdom of heaven.
I am convinced that this is a misunderstanding
of the meaning of St. Gregory. I understand his doctrine in quite another
sense, viz., as follows: There is an eternal punishment in hell. There are also
additional punishments which are temporary and purgative. After being purified
and renovated in this purgatory, all rational beings who have lost heaven by
sin are restored to a state and condition called beatitude. Precisely to what
extent this beatitude was supposed to involve the exclusion of all suffering
and the enjoyment of perfect felicity cannot be determined from the language of
St. Gregory. For the Greek terms which we translate into the English words
"blessed " and " blessedness " or " beatitude,"
denote primarily and directly the intellectual and physical perfection and
immortality proper to rational beings. So much St. Gregory seems to affirm:
that all those who are condemned to hell finally come into a state in which
they are not vicious, do not sin, give glory and worship to God, and enjoy a
relative and imperfect felicity. * This is the extreme which is opposite to the
extreme of severe doctrine.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus hints at something
similar, but in very See article on "The Eschatology of Origen,"
Catholic World, Feb., Mar., Apr., 1883.
few words and those not explicit. All the
other ancient authors, Greek and Latin, from whose works passages are cited in favour
of a mitigated view of future punishment, may be said, in a general way, to
approach, less or more, the extreme position of St. Gregory of Nyssa.
The general idea of a punishment consisting in
intense absolute misery, uninterrupted and perpetual, is mitigated, when the
pain is represented as of less intensity, as interrupted at intervals, or
relieved by the cessation of some part of the suffering, or a diminution in its
degree, or the existence of some remainder of enjoyment. Beyond and distinct
from all this is the admission of an entire condonation in some special
instances. The possibility of this complete remission, as an exception to the
general law, is admitted by St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and among the Greeks
it is a traditional belief that such exceptions are made, and, in the common
opinion of the modern Greeks, are even quite numerous.
The notion of certain intervals of relief from
pain is found in Prudentius and others, and there is a trace in antiquity of a
popular belief, that while the Paschal candle was burning the fire of hell was
extinguished.
Of much more interest and importance is the
opinion, which is supported by very respectable authority, that the pains of
hell are mitigated by the cessation of some which are in their nature temporary,
or by some relief which is granted from time to time from their intensity, by
the mercy of God, which can be propitiated by the intercession of the Church
and the faithful. The Greek prelates at the Council of Florence maintained this
opinion openly and strongly, without any reclamation from the Latin
theologians, and without incurring any censure from the council.
In Latin theology, from the time of St.
Augustine, the opinion that the punishments of hell may be mitigated, and that
the prayers of the faithful may avail to obtain, at least in some cases, this
mitigation, has been generally treated as one not to be positively censured or
rejected, nor yet to be decidedly affirmed. St. Augustine, Peter Lombard, Pope
Innocent III., St. Thomas, Gerson, and others are cited as having expressed
themselves in this sense. Hugo Eterianus in the twelfth century, Robert Pullus,
Prepositivus, a once famous but now forgotten theologian, and the theologians
generally of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are cited by M. Emery as
leaning more decidedly to the opinion in favour of mitigation. Since the
thirteenth century, the current has tended the other way, and some have
strongly reprobated the opinion, which became for the most part forgotten,
until it was revived at the close of the last century and the beginning of the
present, and is now more and more attracting attention and seemingly gaining
ground.
Mgr. de Pressy, Bishop of Boulogne, who is
said by M. Emery to have been esteemed as one of the most pious and learned
prelates of France, advocated and recommended to his clergy as opportune and
useful for answering objections against religion and consoling troubled minds,
the milder view of the punishments of hell. He maintains as consonant both to
faith and reason, that the souls of men who are finally condemned do not become
any worse than they were in this life; that there is no sufficient reason for
the common assertion that they all blaspheme God; that the pain which they
suffer is not so intense as is generally supposed; that it may be mitigated,
and that the prayers of the living may obtain such mitigations.
M. Emery, who was superior-general of the
Sulpitians from 1784 to 1811, was led into an investigation of this subject by
the writings of Mgr. de Pressy, and by a suggestion of Leibnitz, whose works he
held in great esteem. Leibnitz, in commenting on a passage in St. Augustine,
proposed the idea of a gradual and indefinite diminution of the pains of hell,
which would never, although continuing without end, terminate in a cessation of
all punishment; illustrating his hypothesis by the geometrical law of the
asymptotes. M. Emery published the results of his investigations in a treatise
entitled, Dissertation sur la Mitigation de la Peine des Damnes, filled with
citations from many authors. This dissertation is contained in the edition of
M. Emery's Works, published by Migne. Dr. Carle, a graduate of the Roman
College, in a recent work of his, inserted this assertation with additions of
his own, after having submitted it to the examination of the Congregation of
the Index, which decided that nothing worthy of censure was found in it. The
Abbe Meric, professor of moral theology at the Sorbonne, has also inserted it
in a work published in 1881, entitled L' Autre Fie, which has received high
commendations from eight of the most eminent bishops of France.
The conclusion reached by M. Emery is: that
the doctrine of the more rigid theologians does not pertain to faith, that the
milder view is innocent, free from censure, and probable. He adds a piece of
practical advice to the clergy.
Would it not, then, be wiser for preachers at
the present day, to be more careful to avoid exaggeration, and to confine
themselves ordinarily within the limits of the doctrine which is of faith? And
since men make their objections rather against the nature and the excessive
rigors than against the reality of the punishments of hell, do not charity and
prudence prescribe to the ministers of the gospel, that they should, when there
is occasion, bring to their notice, that what seems to revolt them the most in
the kind and severity of these punishments does not pertain to the faith, that
in the bosom of the Catholic schools there exist opinions concerning the nature
of the fire of hell, concerning the intensity of its pains, and particularly on
the possibility of obtaining their mitigation, to which they can adhere without
scruple, and which are well fitted to calm the revolt of their imagination.
Archbishop Kenrick in his Dogmatic Theology
(Tr. x., ch. 3) says: " Of the kind of punishments which the condemned
undergo the Church has put forth no definition. No one has satisfactorily
explained what punishments are designated by the name of lire in the
Scriptures. It is sufficient to regard the suffering as proceeding from the
condition in which sinners are placed as being remote from the kingdom of
heaven. It is not necessary to conceive of God positively inflicting
pain."
Taparelli, an author of the highest repute, in
a passage which Liberatore quotes with approbation in his text-book of ethics,
points out the nature of that violence in the condition of sinners which
constitutes its character as a punitive retribution.
From what has been said it appears that
punishment is not a torment of the sensitive man, but a recoil of order against
disorder, and that, in the moral as well as in the physical world, this
conservative reaction is equal and opposite to the destructive action.
Vindictive justice, therefore, far from being a blind impetus of passion, is
founded on that essential tendency to truth and order, which constitutes the
very nature of human intelligence. Every disorder being a disposition of things
contrary to their true relations, and being consequently a falsity, is essentially
repugnant to the mind, wherefore reason demands a violent return to that order
which has been disturbed, and this violence is the punishment.
The sin of despising his last end in the
kingdom of heaven recoils upon the sinner by the law of the supernatural order
which dooms him to perpetual exile in the infernal world. The sin of abusing
the creatures and natural good gifts of God by seeking for happiness in them in
an inordinate and unlawful manner, recoils on the sinner, by the law of the
natural order which asserts its absolute, irresistible dominion over him. There
is no more intellectual perversion or illusion possible, by which evil can
present itself in the guise of a desirable good. There is no capacity left for
finding enjoyment in an inordinate activity, and there are no objects within
reach from which any immoral pleasure can be passively received. The
re-established and perfected order of the universe is imperturbable. The spirit
is immovably fixed in its essential relations to God, itself, other rational
beings, and. the entire natural environment. All are essentially good, and the
only obstacle to rational, innocent felicity is in the mode and habit of the
subjective condition which the sinner has created within himself by sin. He has
brought himself into discordant relations, and this discord is the source of
his misery. The nature of the physical environment, special and particular
pains, all other circumstances, are incidental and accidental to the subjective
state of the immortal and rational spirit, as alienated from God. All other
discords are the consequence of this.one fundamental discord. The real and
lasting felicity of a rational creature arises from his concord with his
Creator. Discord is a privation of this felicity, that is, it is misery, and as
this discord approaches the utmost extreme of a total destruction of concord,
the creature tends toward absolute misery. If he reaches this term he is wholly
deprived of all felicity. If he is immovably fixed in this term, he is in a state
of eternal privation of felicity in a complete and absolute sense. This total
alienation from God signifies an entire reversion of the natural disposition to
love God to an opposite term, and a privation of all effects of the divine love
and mercy, leaving the subject the recipient of no other action of God in
himself but preservation in existence as an. object of punitive and vindictive
justice.
This rigid and severe theology can be modified
and mitigated in principle, only in one way; namely, by changing the notion of
total alienation into that of an estrangement and discord which are partial.
Harmony, and concord in all its relations, especially those toward God,
constitute the natural beatitude of a rational creature. The misery of the
sinner's punishment in hell is in the privation of this beatitude. The notion
of a misery which does not exclude all felicity, and the notion of a lessening
of the degree of misery by the concession of some incoming felicity, is not
reasonable, unless it is granted that some remains of peace, of concord, of
order in relations, survive. If this be so, then there is some natural love of
God left in those who are most alienated from him. There is an emanation of
divine goodness and love, and it may be of mercy, also, reaching to the lowest
and remotest limits of the Outer Darkness. If the good which is left surpasses
the evil, existence is more desirable than extinction, endless life is still a
boon, and one may suppose that God preserves the beings who are doomed to the infernal
world, not for the sole purpose of making them suffer, but for the sake of the
good which is still in them, and that of which they are capable.
I will consume the remainder of the space
which is allotted to me, in quoting some passages from St. Augustine bearing on
this point, wherein some pure philosophy out of his deep fountain is contained.
The work of God remains good in all works,
however evil, of the wicked. . . . And the unclean spirit, himself, is a good
thing, as a spirit, an evil thing, as impure (De Pecc. Orig., ii., 44). Those
things which are made need His good; namely, the supreme good, that is, the
supreme essence. They are, however, less than they were, when, by the sin of
the soul, their movement toward him is lessened; nevertheless they are not
entirely separated, for so, they would become altogether nonentities (De Ver.
Relig., xiv.). There is a nature in which there is nothing evil, and moreover
in which there can be nothing evil; but there cannot be a nature in which there
is nothing good. Wherefore, neither is the nature of the Devil himself an evil
thing (De Civit. Dei, xix., 31). "Neither, indeed, did God withhold the
largess of his goodness from that creature which he foresaw would not only sin
but persevere in the evil of sinning, so as not to create it. For as even a
shying horse is better than a stone which does not shy, because it lacks proper
motion and sense, so a creature which sins by free-will is more excellent than
one which does not sin because it has no free-will " (De Lib. Arb., iii.,
15). " If the whole angelic creation had fallen away from his precepts by
sinning, he would regulate all things in the best and most becoming manner by
his own majesty; not even in this case envying the spiritual creature its
existence" (Ibid., 35). " Grief for lost good in a state of
punishment is a witness of a good nature. For he who mourns the lost peace of
his nature grieves over this loss by means of some remains of this peace"
(ibid., 23). "As there is a kind of life without pain, but there cannot be
pain without some life, so there is a kind of peace without any war, but there
cannot be war without some peace; not inasmuch as it is war, but inasmuch as it
is carried on by or in those which are natures of sonic kind, which they could
in no wise be, if they did not subsist in some kind of peace. Wherefore, there
is a nature in which there is no evil, or even in which there can be no evil;
but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good" (De Civit. Dei,
xix., 13). " Wherefore, let not the fact that sinful souls are vituperated
move you to say in your heart that it were better that they should not exist.
For they are vituperated by comparison with themselves, while we think what
they would have been if they had not sinned. Nevertheless, their Creator, God,
is to be praised to the highest degree that our human faculties will permit,
not only because he disposes of them justly when they have sinned, but also
because he has made them such, that even when they are defiled by sin they are
in no respect surpassed by the dignity of corporeal light, on account of which,
he is notwithstanding justly praised " (De Lib. Arb., iii,, 12). " If
any one should say: I would rather not be than be miserable; I will answer: You
speak falsely " (Ibid., 18). "It is in DO way possible that any one
should prefer not to be " (Ibid., 23). "Consider, therefore, so far
as you are able, how great a good is being itself, which both the blessed and
the miserable desire " (Ibid., 20).
From all the foregoing, it is apparent that
Latin theology allows a view of the state of eternal condemnation which
mitigates its misery and admits that it may be to some extent diminished. The
advocates of the mitigating view can draw reasons and arguments in its support
even from the writings of the great Doctor whom the more rigid theologians
venerate as their master. In fact Leibnitz took the suggestion of his theory of
progressive diminution from passages in St. Augustine.
I have, endeavoured to show what is clearly
proposed in Latin theology as a dogma of faith respecting eternal punishment,
and to mark the distinction between this dogmatic teaching and private
doctrines, more or less prevalent. I leave what I have written to have its due
weight with sincere and considerate readers, hoping especially that it may help
them to find the harmony which certainly exists between the revealed truth, and
the dictates of reason and the moral sense.
Everlasting life a dogma of the catholic
church. Ever-lasting death an opinion, not a dogma.
By Rev. JOHN HOPKINS, S.T.D., Burlington, Vt.
THE Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed
contain a statement of those great truths which are "of faith." To
these may be added the definitions of the undisputed General Councils, before
the great schism between the East and the West. Everything that cannot be
clearly decided by these great and primary authorities is matter of opinion,
and not matter of faith.
The Apostles' Creed declares that we believe
in " the life everlasting." The Nicene Creed says that we look for
" the life of the world to come." That this life to come will be
everlasting for the righteous,-a life of everlasting happiness, "forever
with the Lord," -all Christians in all ages are agreed.
But do these words in the creeds mean to
assert the everlasting life of the wicked as well as of the righteous, and the
eternity of the punishment of the lost as well as the unending joys of the
blessed?
In reply to this question I shall give, not my
own individual' opinion on the subject, but simply an historical statement of
facts.
As in all matters not clearly defined, there
is great freedom of opinion. This freedom, on this subject, existed notoriously
in the earlier ages of the Church, and exists quite as widely among us now. One
view,-that which many would call " the old orthodox view,"-may well
be presented in the words of Bishop Pearson, in his great treatise on the
" Creed," which is included in the list of works set forth by our
House of Bishops as text-books for the instruction of candidates for Holy
Orders. In his explanation of "the life everlasting "-the last
article of the Apostles' Creed-he first considers its application to the
wicked, as if that were the primary object of the words: and he thus ends that
part of his explanation:*-
To
conclude this branch of the Article, I conceive these certain and infallible
doctrines in Christianity: That the wicked after this life shall be punished
for their sins, so that in their punishment there shall be a demonstration of
the justice of God revealed against all unrighteousness of men: That to this
end they shall be raised again to life, and shall be judged and condemned by
Christ, and delivered up, under the curse, to be tormented with the Devil and
his angels: That the punishment which shall be inflicted on them shall be
proportionate to their sins as a recompense of their demerits, so that no man
shall suffer more than he hath deserved: That they shall be tormented with a
pain of loss, the loss from God, from whose presence they are cast out; the
pain from themselves, in a despair of enjoying him, and regret for losing him:
That they farther shall be tormented with the pain of sense inflicted on them
by the wrath of God which abides upon them, represented unto us by a lake of
fire: That their persons shall continue forever in this remediless condition,
under an everlasting pain of loss, because there is no hope of heaven; under an
eternal pain of sense, because there is no means to appease the wrath of God
which abides on them. Thus the Athanasian Creed:
They
that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done
evil into everlasting fire.' * Then, again, in his final summary of the entire
Article, he says:- This belief is necessary, 1st, to deter us from committing
sin, and to quicken us to holiness of life, and a speedy repentance for sin
committed, etc. " 2d, To breed in us a fear and awe of the great God, a
jealous God, a consuming fire, a God that will not be mocked; and to teach us
to tremble at his word," etc. "3d, This belief is necessary to teach
us to make a fit estimate of the price of Christ’s blood, to value sufficiently
the work of our redemption, to acknowledge and admire the love of God to us in
Christ. For he which believeth not the eternity of torments to come can never
sufficiently value that ransom by which we were redeemed from them, or be
proportionately thankful to the Redeemer, by whose intervention we have escaped
them. Whereas, he who is sensible of the loss of heaven, and the everlasting
privation of the presence of God, of the torments of fire, the company of the
Devil and his angels, the vials of the wrath of an angry and
never-to-be-appeased God, and hoped to escape all these by virtue of the death
of his Redeemer, cannot but highly value the price of that Blood, and be
proportionably thankful for so 'plenteous a redemption,' . . .
I do fully and freely assent unto this, as
unto a most necessary and infallible truth, that the unjust, after their
resurrection and condemnation, shall be tormented for their sins in hell, and
shall be so continued in torments forever, so as neither the justice of God
shall ever cease to inflict them, nor the persons of the wicked cease to
subsist and suffer them; and that the just, after their resurrection and
absolution, shall as the blessed of the Father obtain the inheritance, and as
the servants of God enter into their Master's joy, freed from all possibility
of death, sin, and sorrow, filled with all conceivable and inconceivable
fullness of happiness, confirmed in an absolute security of an eternal
enjoyment, and so they shall continue with God and with the Lamb, forevermore.
And thus I believe the life everlasting.' These words fairly represent the
common opinion of Church people from the earliest ages until now, all the world
over. There is no discrepancy between this view and the petition in our Litany:
"from everlasting damnation; Good Lord, deliver us." And in the
Catechism, in the explanation or paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, the words
" deliver us from evil " are 'made to mean and include a deliverance
" from everlasting death."
But the Church Universal has never, in any
General Council, defined this view of the question as being a matter of faith.
From early ages a milder view has been held, and taught, and never dogmatically
condemned. One of the earliest and most influential teachers of this milder
view was Origen,-the most learned, the most laborious, and the most brilliant
of all the Fathers. He interpreted " the times of the restitution of all
things," spoken of by St. Peter, [Acts, 3: 21.] to mean fully what the
words would seem to mean, and held that this restitution would include, in the
end, not only all the wicked, but even the Devil and all his angels, so that
God would be really " all in all." His views in this respect did not
originate with him, but he quoted in support of them many previous writers,
whose works are not now extant. In the point under discussion he was followed,
more or less fully, by St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St.
Hilary of Poictiers, St. Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Didymus of
Alexandria, and many others, not one of whom has ever been condemned as a
heretic. There was no condemnation of Origen's doctrinal teaching, on any
point, until the Fifth General Council, some two hundred years after his death;
and even then it is not clear that his ideas as to the point now under
discussion were condemned at all.
There are numerous texts of Holy Scripture
appealed to by the maintainers of the milder view, besides those already
alluded to. For instance: " The Son of man is come to save that which was
lost." Matthew, 18: 11. It would be a strange interpretation of these
words to suppose that they mean, that this same Son of man, as our Judge, will
condemn the vast majority of all our race to everlasting damnation in eternal
fires. So, again: " The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which
was lost." Luke, 19: 10. And, again: " The Son of man is not come to
destroy men's lives, but to save them." 9: 50. So, also; in the parables
of the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver, the only sheep which was lost,
is found; and the only piece of silver which was lost, is found also. So, too,
in the declaration that " he that knew not, and did commit things worthy
of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes," Luke, 12: 48. it is hard to
make these "few stripes" mean an " everlasting punishment,"
no matter of how mild a type. In St. John's Gospel, the glorious saying: "
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," John, 1:
29. can hardly mean that he retained, the sins of the great bulk of mankind,
and punishes them in endless torments. And, again, His own blessed lips
declare: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
me." 12: 32 The same St. John, in his First Epistle, says: "He is the
propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the
whole world." 1 John, 2: 2 And, again: " The Son of God was
manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." 1 John, 3:8.
But it would be a curious way of destroying those works, if that same Devil
were left in eternal possession of the great majority of the human race, while
the Lord Christ, after all His sufferings and the "travail of his
soul," should be "satisfied " with only "a few" of
them for His share.
St. Paul, too, has many wonderfully strong
sayings. For instance: " Where sin abounded, grace did much more
abound." Rom., 5: 20. Can this mean, that grace saved only a few, while
damnation abounded among the great mass of all mankind in all ages? And, again:
"The creature itself, also, shall be delivered from corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God." Rom., 8: 21. And, again: " God hath concluded them all
in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all; " 11: 32. which does not
look as if the great body of mankind were shut out beyond God's mercy, to all
eternity. So, also, the words which we hear at every Church burial: "As in
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 1 Cor., 15: 22.
And, again: " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them." 2 Cor., 5: 19 And, again: "
That he might gather together in one all things in Christ." Eph., 1: 10. And,
again, in almost the same words: "It bath pleased the Father . . by him to
reconcile all things unto himself." Col., 1: 19, 20. Then look at these
precise words, with their searching force: " That at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under
the earth." Phil., 2: 10, 11. In the First Epistle to Timothy, too, we
have the very significant assertion: " The living God, who is the Saviour
of all men, specially of those that believe." 1 Tim., 4: 10. And in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, we read that he "should taste death for every man
"; Heb., 2: 9. and, again: "Now once, in the end of the world, bath
he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Heb. 9:26. Many
other texts might be added to these.
And from the general principle laid down in
Scripture, that "Mercy rejoiced against Judgment," it is plausibly
argued that these more numerous passages should rule the interpretation of the
fewer passages which seem, at first sight, to teach the sterner doctrine. The
Old Testament is appealed to, as favouring this principle of interpretation.
For there, after reading the terrible denunciations uttered against rebellious
Israel, we find a similar rule of interpretation in the subsequent declaration
of the Lord himself: " For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with
great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for
a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the
Lord thy Redeemer." Is., 54: 7, 8. Great stress is laid, by the advocates
of the milder theories, on the Hebrew and Greek words which are commonly used
to. express what our English version calls " eternal " and "
everlasting." In Hebrew, the word is generally olam, in some of its forms;
and in Greek, aion, or its derivatives. And neither of these words has the sharp,
clear, and definite sense which we give, in English, to the words by which they
are commonly translated. There is so much of peculiar individuality about every
variety of human speech, that it is well-nigh impossible to find such an exact
equivalent for any one word in another language, that the one word may always
be translated by the other one word. Hence our dictionaries give us, in most
cases, such a long list of various meanings or shades of meaning, for each and
every important word; and which one of them all is to be used, in any
particular case, depends entirely upon the context, or upon the reader's notion
of what the context requires. Also, the more primitive a language is, the more
certainly is it deficient in what we now understand as philosophical accuracy
of expression. And the Greek-though less open to this criticism than the Hebrew
-yet has its own nebulosity’s in the range of those ideas which were not
familiar to Greek thought.
In the Old Testament, the word olam, or
le-olam, is used in a great variety of senses, sometimes referring merely to
the life-time of a man; sometimes with reference to the eternal existence of
God. The meaning of the phrase depends entirely upon its context. If not, then
the ordinance of circumcision, the structure of the Temple, and even the
earthly life-time of a slave, are as endless as the existence of God himself.
Canon Farrar says: "The phrases which are asserted to imply endlessness
are again and again used of things which have long since ceased to be. If olam
meant eternity,' how came it to have a plural (olamim)? and how came the Jews
to talk of forever and beyond'? The latter expression alone was decisive to the
clear mind of Origen. He says that the authority of Holy Scripture taught him
that the word rendered eternity' meant limited duration.' " Among the
things in connection with which olam is used, Canon Farrar enumerates, "
The Passover sprinkling, the Aaronic Priesthood, the inheritance of Caleb,
Solomon's Temple, and the smoke of Edom. To take but one or two books,
combinations of olam (which is rendered by aion four hundred and thirty-nine
times in the Septuagint) occur in Exodus at least twelve times out of fourteen,
of things which have passed away; in Leviticus, twenty-four times, always of things
which have come to an end; in Numbers ten times; in Deuteronomy, about ten
times out of twelve; and so on throughout the Old Testament. If the word were
used but once in a finite sense, it would be enough; but the fact is, that it
is so used repeatedly, and more often than not." This seems to make a very
strong case as to the indefiniteness of the meaning of the Hebrew word olam.
And so with the Greek word aion, and its
derivative aionios, in the New Testament. Canon Farrar says: " The word by
itself- whether adjective or substantive-never means endless. If such were its
meaning, or that of its Hebrew equivalent, the Jews would have been perfectly
justified in rejecting the Christian religion, which proclaimed the annulment
of ordinances which, in their law, they had again and again been told were to
be eternal' and forever.' If they could have established that meaning of the
word, they would have had an unanswerable argument against Christianity. . . .
Josephus shows that aionios did not necessarily mean endless. He applies the
epithet to the period between the giving of the Law and his own writing; and to
the imprisonment of the ty- rant John by the Romans; and to Herod's Temple,
which was already destroyed when he wrote. And when he wants to assimilate
Jewish theology to Greek teaching, he is so well aware that aionios will not
convey his meaning, that he purposely uses instead the word aidios, and employs
no less than four expressions, of which everyone is alike unknown to the Old
Testament and the New,-namely, 'endless prison,' endless vengeance,' incessant
vengeance,' and immortal vengeance.' As for the usage of Philo, there could not
be a better authority than his editor, Dr. Mangey, who says that he never used
aionios for endless duration." And, again, Canon Farrar says: " If we
had so much as once been told, in the Bible that Gehenna, or that punishment,
is ateleutetos, or aperantos, or aidios, or adialeiptos, or that the life in
such punishment should be aphthartos, there would have been no dispute as to
the literal meaning of such words. Josephus, and some Christian writers, when
they want to speak of endless retribution; do use such words. Our Lord and the
Apostles might again have spoken of men as bound in chains which can never be
loosed (alcatalutos). Or they might have said of evil, as they have said of
good,-that it would last through all the coons,' or through all the generations
of the coons,' and even to ' the ends of the (Eons.' Any one out of many Greek
phrases would have sufficed them, to express the meaning which they have never
once expressed so unambiguously as to make even Universalism an impossible hope
in the minds of Christians. Such phrases have been used by multitudes of
Christian writers in later ages; but they are not found in Holy Writ."
As to particular kindred phrases, often used
in this connection, the Canon says:-
1.
'Everlasting death,' though used in our Liturgy, is a phrase quite unknown to
the Scriptures. They never speak even of eonian death, [They do speak of eonian
punishment, however. Matt., 25: 46.] often as they speak of eonian life.
2.
'Everlasting damnation' is a mistranslation of eonian judgment.' It occurs but
once, in Heb. 6: 2. In Mark 3: 29, it is, in all probability, a misreading for eonian
sin.'
3. 'Everlasting fire' is 'eonian fire.' It
occurs once in Jude (verse 7), of the earthly and temporary fire which
destroyed the Cities of the Plain; and twice in Matthew, once in a parable, and
both times as an equivalent for the vague Hebrew le-olam. In the Gospels, it is
the 'fire not of earth,' the ' spiritual' fire of God's wrath against obstinate
wickedness.
4.
'Everlasting punishment' is eonian correction in the world to come.'
5.
'Everlasting vengeance,' so far from being an inspired expression, has no
Scriptural parallel whatever. It comes first from the athanatos timoria, in the
Greek misrepresentation of Jewish eschatology by Josephus; and, afterwards, in
some of the Fathers.
6.
'Endless torments' is an expression for which there is not one iota of direct
Scriptural authority."
Among the many authorities quoted by Canon
Farrar, we give only the following:-
OLSHAUSEN.-‘
The Bible is deficient in an expression for timelessness. . . . All the
Biblical expressions imply or denote long periods.' In looking at the
lexicographers, ancient and modern, we are met by this remarkable fact: The
later lexicographers-after the fifth century-give to the words aion and aionios
the occasional meaning of endless,' though of course they are all compelled to
admit that they also imply limited durations. After that time, the words were
often used with the connotation of endlessness,' because by that time theology
had read that sense into them. But the oldest lexicographers are entirely
silent as to such a meaning.
Thus Hesychius, who is the oldest of them,
defines aion as the life of man, the time of life, and sometimes it is used for
a long time.' The SCHOLIAST on Homer (II. v., 685) says that aion is 'the life
of man.'
ARISTOTLE'S
definition is given in De Coelo, i., 9: The limit which includes the time of
the life of each is called the aion of each.'
APOLLONIUS.-'
The aion is the measure of the human life.'
THEODORET
(Migne, iv. 401) says: 'Aion is not any existing thing, but an interval
denoting time, sometimes infinite, when spoken of God, sometimes proportioned
to the duration of the creation, and sometimes to the life of man.'
ST.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS defines aion as (1) the life of each man; (2) the life of this
world; (3) the life to come.
It is
not till we come to PHAVORINUS, in the sixteenth century, that we find: 'Aion,
time, life. . . Aion is also the eternal and the endless, as it seems to the
theologian! That last clause is very suggestive!
The Roman games which were called secular were
held (nominally) once in a century. The word secular' was rendered aionios by
Greek writers. Did they mean the 'endless games'?
Let me conclude in the weighty words of Bishop
Rust, the successor of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in the See of Dromore: 'It is
notoriously known that the Jews, whether writing in Hebrew or Greek, do by olam
and aion mean any remarkable period and duration, whether it be of life, of
dispensation, or polity. And even by such phrases as to eternity and beyond,'
they do not mean a scholastic eternity, unless the nature of the things they
express requires such an interminable duration. Every lexicographer and
expositor will furnish you with authorities enough to confirm what I have said."
Great stress is laid, by the advocates of the
milder view, upon the mistranslation of other words, or the intensification of
meaning in the English words by which they have been rendered. The words
"damn " and " damnation " do not occur in the Old Testament
at all:- In the New Testament, they are the exceptional and arbitrary
translation of two Greek verbs or their derivatives, which occur three hundred
and eight times. These words are apollumi and Icrino. Apoleia, ' destruction'
or waste,' is once rendered damnation (2 Pet. 2: 3), and once damnable ' (2
Pet. 2: 1); Icrino, judge,' occurs one hundred and fourteen times, and is only
once rendered damned' (2 Thess. 2: 12). Krinza, judgment' or 'sentence,' occurs
twenty-four times, and is seven times rendered damnation.' Krisis, judging,'
occurs forty-nine times, and is three times rendered 'damnation.' Katakrino, 'I
condemn,' occurs twenty-four times, and is twice only rendered be damned.' Now
turn to a modern dictionary, and you will see ' damnation ' defined as '
exclusion from divine mercy; condemnation to eternal punishment.' In common
usage the word has no other sense. But to say that such is the necessary
meaning of the words which are rendered by 'damn ' and damnation,' is to say
what is absurdly and even wickedly false. It is to say that a young widow who
marries again must be damned to endless torments (1 Tim. 5: 12, having
damnation,' krima), although St. Paul expressly recommends young widows to do
so, two verses later on. It is to say, that every one who 'ever eats the Lord's
Supper unworthily, eats and drinks ' eternal punishment' to himself, though St.
Paul adds, almost in the next verse, that the 'judgment' (krima) is
disciplinary or educational to save us from condemnation (1. Cor. 11: 29-32).
It is
to say that 'the Day of Judgment ' ought to be called the Day of Damnation'
(John 5: 29). It is curious that our translators have chosen this most
unfortunate variation of 'damn ' and its cognates only fifteen times out of
upwards of two hundred times that krino and its cognates occur; and that they
have used it for krisis and krima, not for the stronger compounds katakrima,
etc. The translators, however, may not be to blame. It is probable that damn'
was once a milder word than condemn,' and had a far milder meaning than that
which modern eschatology has furnished to modern blasphemy. . . . However, this
may be, the word has, as the Bishop of Chester says, undergone a modification
of meaning, from the lapse of time, and it is an unmixed gain that both it and
its congeners will wholly disappear from the revised version of the English
Bible. Judgment'
and ‘condemnation'
are the true representatives of 'crisis and kata-krisis; and they are not
steeped, like the word damnation,' in a
mass
of associated conceptions which do not naturally or properly belong to them.
The word "hell " is the centre of
even worse confusion. It is used to translate the Hebrew sheol, as well as the
Greek hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. The sheol and hades are the same thing; but
are totally different from Gehenna. How it would shock us, if the aged
patriarch, on being convinced that Joseph was dead, should be recorded as
saying: " I will go down into hell, unto my son, mourning!" Canon
Farrar tells us that "sheol occurs in the Old Testament sixty-five times;
is rendered hell' thirty-one times; grave ' thirty-one times; and 'pit ' three
times. . . . It ought to be rendered always either sheol or the underworld.'
" The same gradual intensification of meaning which we have seen in the
word "damn," is also true of the word " hell." Canon Farrar
says: "Archbishop Usher, in his Answer to a Jesuit, tells us that (since
helan meant to cover') to hell the head' used to mean 'to put on a hat,' and a
hellier ' meant a slater.' It was the name given to the place under the
Exchequer Chambers, where the king's debtors were confined. It was used also
for the place where a tailor flung his shreds."
The Greek word hades-meaning the
"invisible " place-occurs in the New Testament eleven times, and in
ten of them is translated " hell." The one exception is in 1 Cor. 15:
55, where, at every burial, our people would be astounded if we should read,
" O hell, where is thy victory?" In not one of these eleven places is
the true meaning that which is now understood by "hell."
The word " hell " is also incorrect
in translating the word Tartarus, in the only place where it is used; for St.
Peter (2 Pet. 2: 4) is there referring to a temporary, not an endless, state.
As to the last of those four words, Gehenna,
it is used twelve times in the New Testament, and is always rendered
"hell." On this word Canon Farrar says:- a. The word means Valley of
Hinnom, or, as it is sometimes called, of the Son or Sons of Hinnom.
b. The
Valley of Hinnom is mentioned thirteen times in the Old Testament.
a. In no one of those thirteen passages does
it mean 'hell.' . . .
a. In
the New Testament, Gehenna is alluded to by our Lord seven times in St.
Matthew, three times in St. Mark, once in St. Luke, once in St. James. In not
one of these passages is it called endless.' The only possible inducement to
attach such a notion to it is the addition, in St. Mark, of 'the quenchless
fire and deathless worm ';-expressions purely metaphorical, and directly
borrowed from a metaphor of Isaiah respecting earthly consequences. Seven of
the ten allusions to Gehenna come out of one single passage of one single
discourse (Matt. 5, repeated partly in Matt. 18, Mark, 9), and it is extremely
questionable whether,' in all seven, the primary allusion is not to an earthly
Jewish punishment.
The other references are of the most general
description. The word does not occur once in all the thirteen Epistles of St.
Paul, and hades only once, though he had declared to his converts 'the whole
counsel of God.' Nor does it occur once in the pages of him who leaned on the
Lord's bosom; nor in the Epistle to the Hebrews; nor in the Epistles of the
Chief of the Apostles.
Origen, one of the few Fathers who studied
Hebrew for the express purpose of interpreting Scripture, tells us that he had
found by inquiry what the Jews really meant by Gehenna; and that Celsus and
others (like most men now) talked of it with no knowledge of its real
significance. Besides its primary meaning of the Valley of Hinnom, outside
Jerusalem, it had come, he said, to acquire the secondary meaning of a
purificatory punishment. There he stops short, with a mysterious remark that he
does not think it wise to dwell any further on his discoveries.' It is
impossible to doubt that he had discovered that normally the Jews did not apply
the word to an endless but to a terminable punishment,-terminable, partly by
deliverance from it, partly by extinction of sentient life. It was in
accordance with Origen's avowed use of ceconomy,' in treating of the subject,
that in a popular book he should have kept
his discovery in the background. Then, as now, there were men who regarded
popular misconceptions as too useful to correct.
Here, then, are three words, of which the
first and commonest (sheol, or hades) does not necessarily imply a place of
punishment at all; and of which all three are demonstrably used to describe an
intermediate and normally terminable condition. And yet they are
indiscriminately rendered by one word, which is normally taken to mean endless
torture in material flames . . . Even for us who believe that souls may pass
into endless loss, the word hell is irrevocably mingled with masses of false,
superstitious, and unscriptural fancies. Our revisers, by seeming to sanction
the error that the words Gehenna and hell are accurate equivalents, perpetuate
misconceptions which are more dangerous than any others to the general
acceptance of the gospel of Christ. If they had rendered Gehenna ' by Gehenna'
they would have been responsible for nothing. They would have followed a divine
and unerring example. It cannot be otherwise than dangerous, to diverge from
the example which made the Apostles and our blessed Lord Himself keep a Hebrew
technical term in its Hebrew technical form.
But enough has been said to Serve the purpose
of this sketch, which is, not to discuss fully the question of future
punishment, but merely to show the present state of opinion on the subject
within the Anglican Communion. Bishop Pearson-with whom we began-is a fair
representative of the older and sterner school. Canon Farrar is the most
popular and most famous of those who take the milder view, and therefore we
have quoted so fully from his pages. In the controversy betwixt him and the
venerable Dr. Pusey, the two opposing writers come much nearer to a substantial
agreement than was supposed possible at the beginning. Among the clergy and
laity of the Church, may be found every shade of opinion between Pearson and
Farrar. None will now be found more severe than Pearson;-few as severe. Some
take the ground of the final annihilation of the incorrigibly wicked. Some,
like Dr. Jenks, would advocate the final " restitution of all things,"
when indefinite ages of purificatory punishment have done their work. Canon
Farrar does not go so far as this, and the number of those among us who would
go beyond his position is not large.
We have before mentioned the phrases in the
Prayer Book which are not inconsistent with the severer view. But the advocates
of the milder view appeal to the words in the Litany:- That it may please thee
to have mercy upon all men; We beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord.
And of like tenor are the words of one of the
special Collects for Good Friday:- Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels,
and Heretics; and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt
of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may
be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under
one Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord.
In both these places, it will be noticed that
there is no limitation, in the words of the petition, to those who may be yet
living at the time the prayer is offered. The prayer is for "all men
";-for "all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics." And surely a
man does not cease to be a man the moment he ceases to breathe.
In conclusion, it may be said, in brief, that
the " life everlasting " of the Creeds is clearly asserted of the
righteous. It is not equally clear that those words are meant to apply to the
wicked. The Universal Church has never made, in any General Council, any
decisive statement on that point: and therefore there is full liberty among us
for the private interpretation of such passages of Holy Writ as bear upon it.
Nor is there the slightest probability that this existing liberty will ever be
curtailed by any dogmatic decision of the Church upon the subject.
The wicked who depart out of this life
unpardoned, dwell in a place separate and apart from the righteous, and in this
place of sin and torment they suffer everlasting punishment.
By
Rev. J. W. Hott, D.D., of the United Brethren in Christ, and Editor of The
Religious Telescope, Dayton, Ohio.
THE condition of the wicked in the future life
is the most uninviting of all subjects in the range of theological discussion.
A study of the benevolent and loving character of the moral Ruler of the
universe leads us to wonder at the existence of such conditions of evil as
appear in our world. Yet we are driven to a recognition of the difference in
the moral character of men, and a corresponding difference in the merit and
demerit of their conduct.
It is woven into the very nature of man to
expect good results and rewards from worthy deeds; and, on the other hand, it
is as natural to expect that, in a moral government, wrong deeds shall not only
be naturally followed with ill results, but that their perpetrators shall
suffer punishment from the hands of a just and wise and impartial ruler. Men do
not hesitate to accept the theory of punishment for wrong-doing under temporal
government. This idea forms the basis of a great penal system of legislation.
Indeed, this idea is incorporated in all natural law, so that it is impossible
to violate the laws of nature without suffering the consequences, which
invariably in the end cause pain and loss.
In the realm of moral law and human conduct,
some have been inclined to stagger at the acceptance of the doctrine of the
endless punishment of the wicked. A partial view of the goodness and mercy of
God has led some to adopt various views as to the condition of the wicked after
death, which set aside the commonly accepted idea of eternal punishment. But it
must not be forgotten that the existence of sin and suffering and punishment,
on earth, as certainly involves the character of God as does their eternal
existence. If the supreme Ruler of the universe allows the existence of sin,
suffering, and punishment, for any length of time, he may allow them for any
other length of time. If his nature allows punishment for sin at all, that
punishment may be eternal, if the nature of the wrong done be such as to demand
it. Evidently the difficulty here lies in the inability of man to grasp those
truths which are involved in eternal duration. The problem becomes the greater
when we come to consider man in an abnormal relation to his Creator. We are ill
prepared to understand the extent of the results of a rebellion in the moral
universe. We do not comprehend the nature of results, or what we may properly
term evolution in evil. Man can only punish wrong as,a method of restraining
vice. God has the authority to punish sin for what it is, as well as what it
does. This does not belong to man.
The
early confession of faith of the United Brethren in Christ contains no specific
pronouncement upon the question of the future
condition of the wicked. Rev. Philip William Otterbein, who organized
the first society in Baltimore, Md., in 1774, and under whose superintendency
the first annual conference was held in the same city, in 1789, prepared a
confession of faith, embracing the essential features of an Evangelistic
Church. This creed was in use before 1789, and was adopted by the first general
conference held in 1815. Its general doctrinal statements, and those respecting
the general judgment, are such as clearly imply the acceptance of the commonly
received doctrine of future everlasting punishment to the wicked. This
confession of faith, with slight amendment, has remained the same through the
entire history and growth of the Church. Its interpretation has always been
that which has just been suggested. The object of the founders of the Church
was to furnish to their followers a simple working creed, rather than a full
doctrinal statement. As the Church attained a consciousness of its real
beliefs, it more and more developed that it held strong grounds on these
doctrines. For nearly forty years it has been the law and the custom of the
Church to examine carefully its preachers, in their course of study, upon the
subject of the future punishment of the wicked. In the administration of the
disciplinary affairs of the Church, it has sometimes been put to the test by
some of its ordained ministers teaching and preaching Universalism, and kindred
doctrinal views as to the final condition of the wicked. In every case the
ministerial bodies have expelled such persons from the ministry, if not from
the Church.
The general conference of 1885 appointed a
commission, composed of twenty-seven persons, chosen from throughout the
Church, embracing five bishops, with educators, pastors, and laymen, whose duty
it was to revise the confession of faith, with the constitution, and submit the
results of their deliberation to the authorities and membership of the Church
for approval, or rejection, by vote. This commission met in November, 1885, and
after some months submitted its work to the Church. Its proposed amendments to
the confession of faith, received with much favour by the advanced and
progressive thinkers of the Church, as well as by the ministry and membership
in general, were adopted by a large vote at a general election held in
November, 1888. This creed contains the following:-
We believe in the resurrection of the dead;
the future general judgment; and an eternal state of rewards, in which the
righteous dwell in endless life, and the wicked in endless punishment."
In a fuller statement, it will be the aim of
the following pages to set forth the belief of the Church as indicated by the
text-books which have been adopted at different times by the general
conferences, prescribing the course of study for ministers, and as indicated in
the teaching of the theological seminary, as well as in the various utterances
of the teachers and writers of the Church. A few Scripture quotations will be
appended, such as form apart of the basis of such belief; that is to affirm:-
2. The
eternal conscious existence of all souls, after the death of the body.
3. That the present life is a condition of
probation; and the destiny of the soul, after this life, is dependent upon the
character attained while in the present probationary state.
4. That the unrepentant and unpardoned wicked,
who die rejecters of Christ, pass at their death into a state of eternal sin,
suffering, and punishment.
Under these propositions, into which the
question is compressed for the sake of brevity, a few somewhat more extended
statements may follow.
1. The existence of the soul is not dependent
upon the body.
The soul is not of the same nature and essence
with the body. It does not form any part of the body. The existence of the soul
is not caused or produced by the natural material organism. It does not die in
the death of the body. However the exercise of the powers of the soul are
limited or controlled by the body, while it dwells in the flesh, this is only
on account of the condition of the existence of 499 the soul, and not because
it shares the nature of the body. When the body dies, the soul passes out into
the unseen world, and continues to maintain its being unclothed by mortality.
These views are clearly in accord with the words of Christ, and indicated by
him, thus: "And be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not
able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell " (Matt., 10: 28).
2. The soul of the wicked, having passed out
of this life, retains its consciousness, and the remembrance of things past,
with the exercise of those powers which belonged to it in the earth-life.
The manner of producing thought may be
different, in the world to come, from that employed in the flesh, but it is
reasonable to conclude that the soul, when unclothed of flesh, will be able to
communicate with the world about it, and to receive from others impressions in
a manner not wholly unlike the communication held in the flesh. It is
altogether more probable that the soul shall have additional faculties in the
world to come, than that it shall have less. The most full and comprehensive
treatment given by the New Testament, to the questions involved in the
condition of the wicked after death, is given by Christ, in his account of the
rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 10: 23-31. Whether this utterance be historic, or
a parable, the case does not change the teaching of the awful narrative. The
lesson is plain, and Christ presents us a picture of a lost soul in the
exercise of all the powers of a soul as manifested while in the flesh.
7. The soul of the wicked carries with it
through death the consequences of the deeds done in the body.
Character attained in this life crosses the
threshold of eternity. That character determines the condition of the soul in
the unseen world. The acceptance or the rejection of the salvation offered in
Christ, in this state of probation, determines the relation of the soul to God
and his moral government, when the soul has passed out of probation. The soul
which rejects Christ, and dies rejecting his salvation, and passes out of this
life unpardoned, is " thrust down in his evil doing " (Prov., 14:
32). " When the righteous man turned away from his righteousness, and
committed' iniquity, and dies therein, in his iniquity that he bath done shall
he die " (Ezekiel, 13: 26). " Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his
own flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption " (Gal., 6: 7, 8).
Bishop E. B. Kephart, D.D., writing upon this
subject, says, "If this probation life be passed in sin and rebellion
against God, by the soul of the evil doer, and he be removed out of his state
of probation into a non-probationary state, with his sinful nature unchanged
and his sins unreconciled, how in the natural course of things will it be
possible for him, in his non-probationary state, when removed from the graces
and influences of a state of probation, to throw off his unholy hatred to God,
break the iron fetters of habit, and retrace his steps? How otherwise are we to
interpret such Scripture as this? Who shall suffer punishment, even eternal
destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might.' The
wicked is driven away in his wickedness.' He that is filthy let him be filthy
still.' These stupendous terms, with many others in the Scriptures, used in
respect to the closing up of the earth-life of the wicked man's career of
guilt, seem to warrant the conclusion that with him the moral Rubicon is
crossed, and crossed forever. The state of his nature, as well as the place
which he occupies, would seem to render his case hopeless, and make it utterly
impossible for him to abandon his moral orbit. I believe that in the moral
universe moral forces are at work upon moral agents, good and bad, and that the
moral intuitions that have been and are now being formulated in perfect accord
with the free will of the moral agent, and which determine the whole trend of
its action, reach their ultimatum somewhere, and determine forever the career
of the soul, in respect to good and evil. And may we not say that that
somewhere ' is reached on this side, rather than on the other side, of the
grave?"
4. The condition of the wicked after death is
one of suffering and torment.
Beyond this life, there is no presentation of
pleasure and enjoyment to the wicked. Many hold, and with great plausibility,
that the wicked shall abide in eternal fire, or an element similar to fire,
which itself will be a source of ceaseless suffering. Others regard the
language of the Scripture in many places, which suggests this manner of
punishment, as figurative and intended to teach the idea of the most extreme
suffering, by the use of these figures. Such language is often used in the
Bible, and among the strongest is that from Christ, " Depart from me, ye
cursed, into the eternal fire " (Matt., 25: 41).
5. The sufferings of the wicked after death,
so frequently spoken of in the Bible, under various forms of language, are in
punishment for the sins committed while in their state of probation.
The relation of cause and effect presents one
of the most far-reaching laws in the whole universe. Every act affects some
other act. Every condition of life affects some succeeding condition. This law
seems to be more remarkable and definite, in the moral world, than in the
natural. Under this law, it is common in the consciousness of men to recognize
two things respecting evil acts: First, that they naturally tend to evil
results. Secondly, that there is a moral power in the universe, whose nature
and will it is to punish wrong-doing. In the faith and consciousness of mankind
the thought is deeply rooted that there is a vast difference between right and
wrong, and that a wise, just, and good God is bound by his love of virtue as
well as by his hatred to wrong, to punish the vicious. The same reason and
nature which lead him to give peace and pleasure to the virtuous, dispose him
to bestow evil and punishment upon the vicious. This is, in fact, the basis of
all human law, in every government which seeks to restrain vice and promote
virtue, and to protect the virtuous and law-abiding against the vicious. The
sufferings of the good and of the wicked in this life are too nearly the same
to warrant the belief that the moral Ruler of the universe has here, in the
lives of men, wrought out the just infliction of punishment for evil, and bestowed
adequate rewards to virtue. In many cases, the afflictions of the good and the
prosperity of the wicked, in this life, show the greatest earthly blessings to
have been realized by the most impious. Nor can it be supposed that the
chastisement of a guilty conscience will be adequate punishment to the wicked.
It is well known that the greater the sinfulness of men, and the more enormous
their crimes, usually the less have been the pangs of conscience. Sin
diminishes the voice of conscience, rather than increases it. The adequate
punishment of the wicked is reserved until the end of probation. In that day,
God will vindicate the claims of virtue over sin, " who will render to
every man according to his work; to them that by patience in well-doing seek
for glory and honour and in-corruption, eternal life: but unto them that are
factious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and
indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil
" (Rom., 2: 6-9). "And these shall go away into eternal
punishment" (Matt. 25: 46).
6. Permanency of character is attained in this
life. The doom of the wicked, in suffering and punishment, after death, is
eternal.
The tendency of character is toward a fixed
state. It is the nature of man to establish himself in the soil and
circumstances in which he grows. This life, in its very nature and results, is
calculated to determine the bent of the character and destiny of man for all
time to come. The downward tendency and course of man's nature will be kept,
always, unless some divine power press upon that nature and arrest its downward
course. One of our authors says, "Not unfrequently do-we see the poor
victim of vice writhing under all the misery, wretchedness, and ruin that sin can
entail upon its victim, and yet, seemingly, not a single emotion is apparent,
upon the part of the sufferer, for a better life; not one effort is put forth
by him to rid himself of the cause of his suffering. Wedded to his career of
guilt and habit of sinning, his moral nature seems to be so firmly fixed that
nothing whatever can check him." So far as we can see, the punishment of
unpardoned sin against the love, mercy, and offer-of salvation from God, must
be eternal, because there is infinite demerit in this sin. It is a disregard of
infinite and eternal obligations. The safety of the moral universe demands the
adequate punishment of the wicked. Without it, anarchy would overthrow the
throne of God, and turn the moral universe into chaos. Bishop J. Weaver, D.D.,
in his work on Universalism, says, " To require men to discharge certain
duties while living, and at the same time inform them that it will make no
difference after death whether they obey or disobey, is contrary to the
principles of all religions. It is contrary to reason and our highest notions
of justice." Thus the Church discards what is sometimes spoken of as the
" restoration theory," as diminishing the force of the divine
government as well as the value of the atonement, and its necessity. The Church
has also always rejected the annihilation theory, as totally out of accord with
the suggestions of reason, philosophy, and the teachings of the sacred
Scriptures. It is held that the Bible teaches the endless punishment of the
wicked, in the same language, respecting its duration, in which it teaches the
eternal happiness of the righteous, and that this is presented in the strongest
words expressing the idea of eternal, or endless, duration, in use in the
languages in which the Bible is given to man. "These shall go away into
eternal punishment; but the righteous into eternal life."
With these statements, it is seen that the
Church necessarily adopts two views:- (1.) Probation ends with this life.
Reason does not furnish sufficient grounds to
form a hypothesis that there may be allowed a state of probation to the wicked
after death, or that they will there have presented to them the offer of that
salvation which they rejected here. Nor does reason even indicate that, if
there were such offers made, they would be more readily accepted there than
here. If we could form a hypothesis of a probation after death, this would
imply, by the same processes of reasoning, that there should be another
probation, and still another, so that we should reach the idea of eternal
probation. This would be at variance with all moral. reasoning, as well as the
Word of God, and would set aside the demerit of sin, and the ultimate difference
between right and wrong. Another of our writers says, " Let men know that
they can have another trial after this life, and they will not regard the first
one. The influence of this theory is therefore practically immoral." The
entire presentation of the blessings of the gospel, in methods and form of
language, plainly teaches us that the opportunities presented in this
probationary state are placed under limitations, and, if rejected by those to
whom these blessings are offered, they will be withdrawn. There is not a shadow
of an intimation that the means of grace, offered in this life, are extended
into the condition which follows the departure of the soul out of this state of
probation. " What shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world
and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? "
(Matt., 16: 26.) " Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the
day of salvation" (2 Cor., 6: 2).
(2.) Punishment in the future world is not
expiatory.
So far as we are able to understand, the only
ground of salvation, and pardon of sin, is the atonement made by the death of
Christ. If punishment were propitiatory, remedial, and regenerative, then the
atonement is useless. While punishment for sin does not wipe sin out of being,
nor cover it up, it no more separates the soul from guilt, nor delivers it from
the power and love of sin. So far as we know, men who go farthest in sin have
the least power, and the least disposition, to forsake that sin. "And in
none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under
heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved " (Acts, 4:12).
7. The wicked shall be raised from the dead,
and the soul and body shall be reunited, and share together the punishment
which shall be appointed by God at the general judgment.
The body and soul, having been partners in
sin, become rightfully partners in the punishment which finally overtakes them.
The souls of the wicked pass immediately at death into a state of punishment,
which shall continue until the consummation of all earthly things, when the
full results of the wickedness of the wicked shall have been made known. In the
end of the world, the bodies of all the dead shall be raised, and the wicked
shall be judged 'according to the deeds done in the body, and the full measure
of punishment be allotted to them by Christ the Judge of All. " And many
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan., 12: 2). "Marvel
not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear
his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of
judgment " (John, 5: 28, 29).
8. The wicked who depart out of this life
unpardoned dwell in a place separate and apart from the righteous, and in this
place of torment they shall suffer everlasting punishment.
The location of the abode of the lost is
unknown to mortals. The Church discards the idea of a purgatory, and of an
intermediate place, occupied only by the soul between the death of the body and
the resurrection. When the Old Testament writers speak of the future condition
of the soul, in the use of the word sheet, they refer simply to the state of
the departed. The New Testament word Hades has the same signification. These
words usually indicate only the regions of the dead, or the state of the soul
after the death of the body. The words may, however, as they sometimes
certainly do, include in their meaning the place of the departed soul, though
they do not in their use refer to place. The word Gehenna, so frequently used
in the New Testament, refers to a place, and to the place in which the wicked
abide in the unquenchable fire, prefigured in the fires of the Valley of
Hinnom. The passages of Scripture teaching the separation of the wicked from
the righteous are numerous and convincingly clear in statement. Bishop Weaver,
in the book already quoted from, says: "It is not and cannot be true that
those who continue in sin to the last will be made holy in, 506 or by, death.
It is not and cannot be true that those who live and die in sin will be made
holy between death and. the resurrection of the body; for the Scriptures
nowhere inform us that any man will be made holy after death. It is not and
cannot be true that any man will be made holy in, or by, the resurrection, for
nothing more than the body will be raised up. Inasmuch, therefore, as sin
inheres in the moral nature of man, the raising up of the body cannot change
that moral nature. Besides, the Scriptures abundantly prove that there will be
a manifest distinction of character in the resurrection. As the Word of God
nowhere informs us that any man will be made holy in the resurrection, we are
forced to the conclusion that there will be a separation between the righteous
and the wicked, for nothing unholy or unclean shall ever be admitted into the
kingdom of glory." The pure in heart shall see God. " He shall
separate them one from another, as a shepherd divided his sheep from the
goats."
Jesus Christ will save every soul. That
consents to be saved; irremediable loss to those who #name?
By Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., LL.D.,
Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.
EACH particular doctrine in the integral sum
of the Christian faith must be studied in its relations to that whole, must be
interpreted by that, and can be rightly approached only through that. Much of
the explanation of a dismembered Christendom is to be found in a violation of
this rule, that is, in a fragmentary and disjointed theology. The law of
Christian unity is in the origin of the Christian religion. This religion was
at first embodied in one living Person, and therefore was organically a unit.
Out of him it all came in its distributed but not disunited parts; and not only
out of his mouth, as much religious language might lead one to suppose, but out
of his entire divine-human personality. The Gospel of St. John only emphasizes
the Synoptics and the Epistles in teaching 510 that by the incarnation the
gospel and kingdom of God passed into humanity in a living form, the Second
Adam, for the new birth of our race. Hence it is impossible to detach and
separate any dogma of the Church from the " Word made flesh," or to
understand it apart from the central and all-pervading purpose of the Lord's
coming among men.
So it must be with what pertains to the
spiritual experience and history of man after physical death. " Thy
kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endures throughout all
generations." There can be no break in the continuity, no change in the
constitution, no revolution in the economy, in the dependent on the mere
circumstance of dying. Changes immense and inconceivable there must be in the
phenomena and methods of existence; none at all in the principles that govern
and regulate its substance,. action, and welfare. The Jesus Christ in whom God
and man were made one, because He is one, is the same yesterday, to-day, and
forever.
What was the divine purpose in the mediation?
Clearly it was to reunite with God all human life that had broken itself off
from God, by bringing into the life of man the very life of God, making the
union of these two, by adoption and grace, a personal reality. This is offered
to every human soul, in all lands and times, that can be reached; and it is
offered without the suppression of man's freedom, or the abrogation of his
responsibility, or the operation of a perpetual miracle. It is offered to the
individual through the ministrations, helps, sanctifications, of the company of
faithful people, the body of the Church. There is, then, so far as the purpose
of the Saviour's coming is accomplished, by his message, sacrifice, and
resurrection as prophet, priest, and king, a substitution of life for death,
spiritual life for the death of a world "dead in trespasses and
sins." The external facts of life and death remain apparently as they
were, the " accidents," so to speak, and not the essence of being;
they are changed, to the Christian, by Christ, in the spirit in which they are
met and borne, and in their effects upon character.
It would take long to cite the multiplied and
varied forms in which Christ repeats his explicit declaration that he gave
himself that his disciples might have " life," and have it more
abundantly, and have it forever. With our uninspired but God-created
understanding, our common-sense, our faculties of intelligence, it is difficult
to see how we can be wrong in concluding that mankind, so far as they are not
reached by the personal or corporate agency of this gospel and kingdom of a
crucified and risen Redeemer, are just where they were before he came. It is
very remarkable and very instructive to notice how little our Lord and his Apostles
said on that subject. It is a part of the larger and profounder mystery of the
entire plan and process of salvation,-so gradual is it, so slow, so irregular,
so far still from covering the earth. Why there should be an elect nation at
all; why it should be Israel; why Christian history should be so largely a
history of mistakes, retrocessions, corruptions; why there should be many
millions of unconverted heathen to-day, -who will dare to begin to tell? If we
cannot be content to live and do our work, and bear our testimony, and make
sacrifices, and support missions to spread the knowledge and glory of our Lord,
without penetrating and solving that manifold mystery, seeing how the Lord
himself and our fathers wrought in the patience of faith, then we are
rationalists; that is all. I use the word " mystery " not in its
distinctive New Testament sense; not as signifying that which has been hidden
in the past and is now revealed, but in the ordinary sense as signifying what
is beyond the bounds of our knowledge. For one I ought to be willing to work
on, subject to these limitations of my understanding, observing that not only
have much wiser men done so before me but that even in the affairs of this
world multitudes of men work, and work both effectually and cheerfully, without
comprehending the designs, the masters, or the ends which they serve.
Apprehending sufficiently what is to be done for the welfare and saving of men,
and how much remains undone, I am not disposed to exercise myself largely on
the question why the Almighty has chosen his own way of managing this or that
portion or period of his universe, or why, having chosen it, He does not see
fit to explain to me the reasons of his choice.
But there is something more to be said. It is
asked what be-conies of the souls of those who die and disappear not having
been reached here by the " good news " from God, by the manifestation
of Christ in his gospel and kingdom. To answer, " Nobody knows,"
would perhaps seem disrespectful to the object of this publication and harsh to
some anxious minds or heavy hearts, however true the answer might be. Varying
the question, What ought they to say, as ministers, missionaries and others,
who conceive that they have it for a duty to speak religiously to their fellow
men, about the state and place of the un Christianised or unconverted dead? Are
they in spiritual life, or in spiritual death? We venture several suggestions.
The Christian teacher may always consider
himself safe in conveying any fact or doctrine to his hearers in the language
of Holy Scripture provided he does this so as not in any way to pervert that
language, and with such respect for the original, the context, the analogy, and
the laws of all language, as not to misrepresent the meaning of what is written.
With the present apparatus of ancient and modern exegesis this rule involves no
insurmountable difficulty. As to its liberty, it will probably be found larger
on examination than it looks at first sight. A catena of passages carefully and
honestly selected from all parts of the New Testament will show that no
reasonable preacher who confines himself to them need feel himself cramped or
shortened in his utterances on any topic relating to future punishment or the
post mortem condition of any portion of his audience. All he will want will be
the courage and the gentleness to deliver the words with neither exaggeration
nor timidity, with the firmness of St. Paul and the tenderness of St. John,
balancing the severity of Jonathan Edwards with the sweetness of Charles
Wesley, the fire of Bossuet with the compassion of Bernard. Frederick Robertson
was certainly wrong in saying in one of his admirable sermons that the Son of
God employed, in his appeals to mankind for obedience and righteousness, only
the pleadings of pity and affection, that he never addressed himself to their
fears, or tried to move them by warnings and threatening. The statement is
amazing in its inaccuracy. It is not our intention to quote texts in this
paper; in view of recent discussions that would be superfluous. We have only to
say that whoever wishes to assure his auditors of the finality of probation in
the present life, and the certain and irremediable loss (damnum) of those who
have to the last rejected the offer of eternal life in Christ, will not need to
look outside of the Four Gospels, the Epistles, the Acts, and the Apocalypse to
find terms suited to his intention. On the other hand, any preacher who desires
to preach a probation after death may hold himself justified in undertaking it
if he can state and include the doctrine in words taken out of the Bible in
their natural sense. On either hand, these limits do not appear to be too
restrictive for a Christian pulpit, or a Christian theology. The case, it must
be remembered, is one of a disputed tenet which so far hardly rises above the
dignity of a speculation. It is therefore not unfair to bring it to a narrower
and sharper test than would be applicable to whatever the ecclesia docens
proclaims as de fide, or to the generally admitted truths in religion and
morals. This much is due to precedent if not to creeds, due to the consensus of
evangelical bodies. The debate must be carried on where the battles of
orthodoxy and heresy have always been fought and determined, on the Word of
God. The great councils themselves are but witnesses and interpreters of the
charter and the trust-deeds.
Much relief would be gained to the natural
mind if it could he made out as the teaching of Scripture that the future
suffering of the lost will consist, at least with the less aggravated and less
obstinate degrees of disobedience, in deprivation rather than in infliction, in
rejection from an offered and forfeited privilege rather than in a penal
torture imposed ab extra. There are passages that seem to bear that meaning.
The foolish virgins are self-excluded from the Bridal Feast. This being the
original sense of damnum, may not the derived term " damnation " be coloured
with the same signification? We reconcile our ideas of justice readily to the
operation of natural laws. None can complain if they " go to their own
place." Is a failure of salvation, i.e., of admission into the kingdom and
life of Christ; the same thing with eternal misery adjudged in a judicial
sentence? There may be au eternally chosen companionship with the bad, the
sensual, the lost. Would not that, with a gradual death in the soul of all the
purity and honour and love and peace of a spiritual consciousness, be hell?
The spirit of inspiration is practical, and is
not in the habit of proposing to clear up difficulties till it comes to them in
the prosecution of its magnificent and yet practical purpose. You say, "
How about the heathen, who have not heard of Christ?" Well, when you get
to the heathen, and stand face to face with one of them, or a congregation of
them, if you know your Christian business and are doing your Christian duty you
are not speaking to a mind that has not heard of Christ, but to a mind that has
heard of him through you, and is hearing of him at that moment. You have a
plenty of unquestionable truth to declare, a plenty of undisputed doctrine to
deliver, simplify, and enforce, a plenty of explainable difficulties to
explain, a plenty of plain duties to enjoin and illustrate. As fast as
Christianity advances into Pagan communities and dark continents it carries
with it the message of its ambassadorship; the herald speaks the name of the
King. He proclaims pardon in that royal name. He holds up the lamp in one hand
and the cross in the other. There is no more occasion for starting an inquiry
as to the duration of retributive penalties or the chances of a posthumous
repentance than. there was after the first sermon at Pentecost. Those anxious
Jews and foreigners did not say, " Men and brethren, what shall we do -about
being saved after we die if we are not saved to-day? " It is easy to
imagine what " Peter and the nest of the apostles " would have
answered them if they had. " Now is the day."
It is said to us, " Are you unmindful of
the awful weight of this problem of the Hereafter as it presses upon minds of a
certain constitution; of the sore perplexities of inquisitive and sceptical
intellects; of the difficulty we have in satisfying doubters who find your
forbidding menaces a stumbling-block to all belief? " A man and minister
who has been for fifty years in familiar and frequent conference with such
minds is not altogether likely to be ignorant of their hindrances, or unfeeling
towards their griefs. As a private thinker, within the lines of permitted
reflection, as a student of religious philosophy, nay, even as a reverent pupil
in the divine school of theodicy where St. Paul and Gregory, Augustine and
Leibnitz, Mystics and Schoolmen, are masters, I know nothing to prohibit my
entertaining a comfortable confidence that the Father of all the families and
nations of the earth will have with him and at his right hand, in eternity,
many who lived and died before Christ came, and many far beyond all knowledge
of his person; that voices which never spoke the blessed name on earth will
sing it in heaven; that multitudes which " have not the law," but
"do by nature the things contained in the law," " which show the
work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing
witness," will stand accepted in the judgment. Revelation itself again and
again sets a sign of adoption on ethnic saints who followed a light kindled
beyond the pale of the gracious covenants. By what unknown paths God leads them
it is not ours to see or to ask. Faith joins with charity in accepting
gratefully this unforbidden hope. Faith in the Father of men demands it. Faith
in the Saviour of the world encourages it. Faith in the Spirit of Light and
Love makes it easy and welcome. "They shall come from the east and the
west, from the north and the south." The city lieth four square, with
gates open on every side.
Quite different is the sentimental plea for
unrepenting sinners, who knew their Lord's will and did it not, in Christendom.
I go to a spiritual adviser and say to him, " May there not be a hope the
other side of the grave for a man who dies faithless and prayerless and
Christless?" If that Christian priest is fit for his office he will reply
to me: Do you ask that for yourself or for other men? If for other men, you are out of your province. God
will govern his universe; the secrets and sentences of the omniscient Judge,
infinite in wisdom and goodness, are not opened to you or me. If you really have
faith in him as your God you can afford by it to leave any friend you have
loved and lost in his just and merciful hands. You are not expected to believe
in God because. you see through his doings and conclude that they are right;
you are to conclude that his doings are right, whether you can see through them
or not, because you believe in him,-believe in him as the God and Father of
Jesus Christ our Lord, who has shown us *hat he is, and who will save every
soul that consents to be saved. Any faith less than this is scanty, pinched,
and halting. Who am I to set up one of the hidden things of Providence. after
another as a criterion of my subjection, and to keep my loyalty to Heaven
waiting for my tardy understanding? "Now we see through a glass darkly."
" What is that to thee? Follow thou me." How many men or women can be
found in the most benighted corner of a Christian land who do not know that God
is good, that their conscience is on God's side, that there is a moral law, and
that they have not kept it? What is the temper and what is the deserving of
these self-serving defendants who say, secretly or openly, to the plain demand
of duty: " Yes, but what if I don't? How long shall I be scourged? "
What but a dastard is he who for ten or twenty or fifty years has gone on
rejecting and resisting both the divine law and love, and then whines because
there is an end to that rebellion and he has the damnation that he has
persistently chosen? What if the Prodigal Son had made an annual excursion into
the far country, and had come back every year to recruit at the old homestead?
" Let me have another trial; " " Give him another
opportunity;" these are specious phrases. They belong to an age of loose
thinking, disrespect for law, emasculated manhood, thin-blooded piety, and a
degenerated Church, such as may be expected, if it is unreformed, to precede
the revelation of the Man of Sin. God's Fatherhood is a precious evangelical
truth, but it is no pledge of his endless toleration of wrong-doing. The good
father of a family administers a government. What might take place between a
ruler and a single and solitary offender is no measure of what is just in a
court or a state. There is a social order to be maintained. There is a throne
set. Justice and judgment are its habitation. The innocent and loyal are to be
protected. Critics of Christianity cry out at the cruelty of a final
opportunity. Human life in all its departments and callings, in mind, body, and
estate, is a succession of final opportunities. Once wasted, forfeited, lost,
they are lost forever. That law, understood, acted upon, submitted to, is not
in this life regarded as a dereliction in Providence or incompatible with the
divine benignity. An opportunity that extends .on an average over a period of
thirty years can scarcely be pronounced arbitrary, vigorously exacting, or
tyrannical.
These considerations are aspects of the main
subject rather than a scientific treatment of it, though at some points they
touch the heart of it. Science deals with facts discovered and recognized,
reports them, arranges them, classifies them, treats them in their relations,
before and after and round about. We talk about eschatology; but really there
can hardly be said to be such a thing as eschatological science. If it exists at
all it is only as a very limited department of the general science of theology.
What the "last things " are who knows? We look in that quarter whence
alone knowledge can come; we strain our eyes: we listen, laying our ears to the
ground, or holding our heads aloft. We see " darkly." The voices that
reach us are few and low. The earth may tremble but we have no geology to
interpret the undulations. The One Voice which might tell us so much speaks
sparingly and with a reserve that is almost a rebuke. What does it say? Beyond
time, or including it, eternity; personal identity and consciousness and
responsibility preserved; two separated states, good and evil, blessedness and
pain, with no bound set, and both social; God, Christ, angels, imperishable
realities. What more can we bring within a scientific purview? That there is
vast room and range for exegetical skill and expository ingenuity is obvious
enough. That, in the 518 sacred writings which make up the revelation or word
of God, there are some passages of intelligible and tremendous literal import,
with many more that are tropical or symbolical yet meant to foreshadow both
awful and glorious certainties, will be generally admitted. On the side of
promise, encouragement, felicity, these figures of speech are likely to be
taken without abatement or qualification; for there can be no overstatement of
heavenly joy. " Eye bath not seen; ear bath not heard." On the side
of threat and doom an instinctive dread, a healthy conscience, a guilty memory,
a reasonable apprehension in men, will find underneath the terrible images a
sure prospect of unmeasured misery. But here is a new phenomenon. If the
language of condemnation and torment seems in any case to overpass the line of
what is possible, or what is in keeping with the moral character of God, then,
whatever the truth may be, it will probably happen that the mind will resort to
some expedient for either mitigating the sense of the language or modifying its
application. Human nature being what it is, this will be done. It will be done
not- only by bad men who deserve damnation, or damnum, but by believing and
religious men. It is doubtful whether the sternest Calvinistic father does not
privately discover some sort of permissible exception or relief to his logical
doctrine of election and reprobation in favour of his own dying children. It
can never be known, in this world at least, how it open or concealed
Universalism and Restorationism may be due to extra-scriptural representations
of hell, or to Scriptural imagery wrongly because blindly used. I have beard a
noted revivalist of our time instruct a large assembly of little boys and girls
in a sanctuary that, when all the pious and saved children should hereafter be
collected for a grand feast, what would make them happier than anything else
would be to look out at the windows and see the hungry little outcasts of the
streets, without tickets, peeping in with despairing faces. That was itself
infernal. It was not " another gospel "; it was blasphemy.
Swedenborg furnished a considerable solace to
his followers, under the frightful fire of continental pulpits, by the
substitution of "the hells " of half-contented and tolerable though
foul and excrementitious" punishment for physical burnings, chokings, and
thirst. Souls find their own places, their own companionships, and get used to
them. This would seem to make hell more of a hell to those outside of it and
above it than to those within it. Except for its association with much else
that is incredible and the fatal fallacy involved in the cognomen of a
"New Church," this idea might have proved more potent than it has
actually been.
More prevalent among "evangelical "
people, we suppose, than any other view not owned by Catholic and orthodox
divinity, and far more plausibly defended by a Scriptural argument, is that one
which is variously designated as "Eternal Life in Christ,"
"Annihilation of the Wicked," " The Second Death," and
" Conditional Immortality." Under the positive rather than the
negative sense of these names it has undeniably taken a strong hold of a great
many strong minds and benevolent hearts in our own day. Thirty years ago Rev.
Charles Hudson, a close student, with Second Adventist opinions, came from Ohio
to Cambridge and searched ecclesiastical history in several libraries, from
Origen to Isaac Taylor, for proofs to support this theory. Most of what he
gathered is in his moderate volume called Debt and Grace. It can hardly be
regarded as trifling, or taking liberties with the New Testament, to accept its
terms literally, so far as to make them teach that the only future existence
which deserves to be called " life " is that which is had by and in a
spiritual union with the Son of God and Saviour of men. Much vagueness,
however, hangs about the act or process of the second death in the rejected
soul, as to whether it is immediate or remote, swift or slow, easy or
distressing, and indeed about several other questions pertaining to this
interesting speculation. Mr. Hudson and his school appear to obtain comfort
from the idea of a system which ultimately may eject and eliminate evil and
suffering from the universe without enfeebling the restraints upon willing sin.
This however supposes that extinction of being is generally regarded by the
wicked as a curse and a retribution, which is not certain. As a theodicy the
theory is less unsatisfactory than as a moral force for producing and
maintaining righteousness. So far as we have learned, the ministers in the
Episcopal and other orthodox communions who have tried to preach it have
desisted, supposing it possible with a clear conscience to retain it as an
individual belief or hope, but one which they are not commissioned to proclaim,
and believing, as doubtless some preachers do who withhold their convictions respecting
a second probation, that to hazard the salvation or occasion the ruin of even
one sinner by holding out to him a chance which God in his Word has not held
out' would be an audacity so presumptuous as to endanger the preacher's own
lasting peace.
No limitations of our knowledge can excuse
flat self-contradiction. I have heard a minister in excellent standing begin an
extemporaneous prayer at a funeral of a respectable citizen by giving thanks
that the departed spirit was at that moment rejoicing in heaven and singing the
ceaseless song of the redeemed, and then to go on and at the end ask that the
same spirit might at the last day arise and enter heaven and join in that very
song. Unless their affliction had suspended their thinking faculty the mourners
must have gone away from the grave in some confusion of ideas as to that
consolation of St. Paul by which he was able to comfort them which are in any
trouble by the comfort wherewith he himself was comforted of God. The Church
Catholic has not been afraid to reaffirm, from age to age, even in an archaic
form, her faith in an intermediate state of life before the final adjudication.
Whenever her servants, however devoted or learned, have attempted to go farther
and depict the modes or define the nature of that expectant condition they have
been entangled in hopeless and disputatious theorizing. There is not in the
Protestant Episcopal Church universal assent to Bishop Pearson or any other
commentator on the sparing statement of the creed. The literature is extensive.
Canon Luckok, in his scholarly treatise on the state of the faithful dead and
their relationship to the living, entitled After Death, has arrayed with
exemplary care the evidences from antiquity of a general practice of
intercession for those in Paradise, showing that such prayers did not
contemplate a rescue or salvation of ally souls, but only an accession of light
and beatitude for souls not Yost. Yet there is hardly an approach to uniformity
in any practice based on these conclusions, even to the extent of praying for
the dead at all except in a most general way and in connection with the Church
militant. Rome would have very likely abandoned Purgatory, as no less unhistorical
than unscriptural, but for its commercial convenience and the habitual
obstinacy of her superstitions. A few years ago, while the dead body of a
wealthy politician was lying unburied in a city of central New York, two
equally prominent priests were engaged in a warm controversy as to his
whereabouts. What with sentimentalism and thrift, apostolical truth and
primitive simplicity have been grievously wounded. But to those who teachable
look for them the outlines of a doctrine which cannot be gainsaid may be easily
discerned. What is wanted is a wise contentment with the few plain verities
which it has pleased the Holy Spirit to disclose. For the clergy the way is
made reasonably clear by the binding requirement of the ordinal upon the
conscience, "to teach or maintain nothing as necessary to eternal
salvation but that which (they) shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved
by the Holy Scriptures."
Having sufficiently indicated what, in our
judgment, is the limitation placed on freedom of utterance for those who are
set apart as ambassadors of the great King, and the prohibition laid upon them
against exceeding the express instructions of the king and court sending them,
with the religious duty of accepting cheerfully whatever intellectual
self-denial is involved in a strict obedience to that authority, we may be permitted
to remember, notwithstanding such restriction, how large a liberty is left, and
how greatly the negative side of the message is overshadowed in dignity and
majesty and benignity by the positive side. Surely this ambassadorship is
primarily and chiefly one of promise. The religion of Christ is a gift; its
ministers carry the offer of that gift. There is wrought into it a law of
reception which is a law of accountability. A rejection of the gift brings an
irremediable penalty. But, in any right and worthy proportioning of the work of
the evangelist, the greatness of the offer and the glory of the gift must
always be first in his thought, not the loss of the unbeliever or the guilt of
the rebel. It was not deemed necessary that in the angelic hymn which sounded
down upon the ears of the shepherds and across the plains of Bethlehem there
should be any Dote of alarm. It was not in our Lord's loftiest meditations or
most characteristic discourses that he opened the chambers of horror or warned
Pharisees and hypocrites, a generation of vipers, to flee from the wrath to
come. He did not, as we have seen, withhold the prophetic thunderbolts of
judgment; but he pointed out that the judgment he executes here is a moral
judgment, convincing of their blindness those who pretend to see, and tearing
off the coverings of the refuges of lies. Who that comprehends the grand scope
of the New Testament can doubt that it was a painful and reluctant
condescension of the Son of man when he turned from the exalted themes of his
mediation, from the character of the Father, from the life and love of the
Heavenlies, from the splendour of righteousness, from the order and lustre of
the kingdom he was setting up, from its graces, its virtues, its exceeding
great rewards, to threaten base and hollow sinners with the consequences of
their depravity? If his miracles in outward nature were a patient accommodation
to minds that would not behold the nobler miracles of his power on the
spiritual man, in the restoration and multiplying of spiritual health and life,
much more was it a pathetic descent from what we may call the natural action of
his supernatural mediatorship when he cried to men to arrest them in their
plunge towards destruction, instead of inviting and helping them upward towards
the heights of his holiness.
With
what a sense of relief the apostle to the Gentiles must have passed from the
dark and repulsive portrayal of heathenish abominations to exclaim with joyous
satisfaction, "There is now no condemnation to them that are in 523 Christ
Jesus! " And then if we note what the profounder students of the gospels
and epistles have exhibited of the real progress of doctrine from the first of
those inspired writings to the last, how indisputable it is that the spirit of
the last of the Twelve mounted to a region of serene contemplation and yet of
intense devotion where all lower aspects of discipleship and all the coercions
of fear are lost sight of in direct union with Him whose " nature and
whose name is Love"! If we thus learn that the real and essential power of
Christianity lies in its appeal to the higher elements in human nature, to
gratitude and trust, to love and faith, to aspiration and hope, and if we see
that it was to these that Christ spoke in the supreme hours of his ministry,
may we not learn that, as the race advances, the time may come when more and
more his messengers may well address themselves to the same superior motives;
when the wonder will be, not how much or how long the sinner will be scourged,
but why sin can stay at all in a world on which the light of the face of Christ
has shone; when it will strike serious thinkers and workers as a strange
spectacle that leaders of the sacramental hosts should be gravely determining
their aggressive policy in converting heathendom, and in sending missionaries
to plant the cross on the far islands of the sea, by a criterion of more or
less suffering in ages to come, after earth and sky have been rolled together
as a scroll; when.it will be reason enough for both the obedience of faith and
the world-wide propagation of THE FAITH that in the Son of God the kingdom of
God has actually come among the nations and families of men?
The subject is too august for paradox or
exaggeration. A medieval story runs that a venerable bishop met in the streets
of the city a woman, with a face of fierce but solemn determination, and a
rapid step, bearing in one hand a pan of burning coals and in the other a
bucket of water. To the bishop asking her whither she was going she answered;
" With this fire to burn up heaven and with this water to quench hell,
that men may learn to serve God for himself alone." What the bishop
further said we are not told.
He might have said, Let heaven and hell both
stand, and stand open. While heaven is costly, and man is free, there must be a
potential hell. But just so fast and so far as mankind grow into the likeness
of Christ they will indeed seek righteousness for its own sake, and "serve
God for himself alone." "This is his commandment, that we should
believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another."
"Herein is our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of
judgment." "He that hath the Son bath life, and he that bath not the
Son of God hath not life." " This is life eternal, that they might
know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord."
There
is punishment for the evil doer in this world and in the next; but the divine
purpose is to reclaim, not to destroy, or doom to everlasting torment.
By Rev. ABRAM S. ISAACS, D.D., Editor of the
Jewish Messenger, New York.
JUDAISM is primarily a religion, not a
theology. It has duties, not dogmas. Its character is practical, not
theoretical. It is a system of laws and statutes, not doctrines. It is not a
speculation, but a life; not philosophy, but action; not a formal creed so much
as righteous thought, righteous deed. If we were to sum up the entire teaching
of the Old Testament, it would be in the one sentence: " Ye shall be holy,
for I the Lord am holy." The rabbi in Talmudic times who was asked to tell
the whole law and replied, "Do not to thy neighbour what is hateful to
thee," could not have expressed more pithily the spirit of Judaism.
This practical religion is emphasized
throughout the Bible, the Talmud, and the ethical writings of the later sages. "
Righteousness, righteousness, shalt thou pursue," is the Mosaic precept.
" Just weights, just measures," is the Mosaic practical injunction.
" Not learning, but the deed is the principal thing," is the
rabbinical aphorism. " Put away the evil," " wash ye, make ye
clean," is the direct admonition of the prophets. All laws, all statutes,
had. this aim in view-individual perfection. " Ye shall be perfect."
There shall be no trace of sin, of error, of impurity, of injustice. For God is
perfect, just, merciful, and pure.
Judaism, then, throughout all its periods of
development from Mosaism to Prophetism, from Rabbinism to the religion of
Israel to-day, is emphatically a religion furthest removed from purely
speculative inquiry. It is said that a class of Buddhist monks live among the
fastnesses of the Himalayas as far remote as possible from human habitation, so
as to attain the highest purity and felicity in philosophic revery. The reverse
of the picture would constitute the Jewish ideal, which is the perfect man, the
perfect family, the perfect commonwealth. It is the development of humanity to
perfection, which forms the loftiest theme of the Jewish prophet. And when he
essays with reverent spirit to describe the world to come, there is no ecstatic
rhapsody, no soul-intoxicated mysteries of the Apocalypse, no fleshly
imaginings of the Arab seer, but we have a vision of peace on earth-the wolf
shall lie clown with the lamb, all warring elements shall disappear, and "
the world shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the
sea."
The religion of Israel being thus eminently
practical, based upon a belief in one God who had revealed a system of laws and
ordinances to teach and maintain purity, righteousness, and justice in. the
world at large, and to keep alive a certain Jewish national consciousness and
solidarity among the Hebrews themselves, we are not to expect that the subject
of the future life would receive such elaborate attention that its geography,
so to speak, would be absolutely clear to all. Many thousand years have passed
since the Mosaic injunction against wizards and soothsayers was uttered. Modern
prophets and seers have certainly not added to our definite knowledge of the
future life: if in our later age, with all its improvements, so little has been
done in this direction, one may pardon the old-time antipathy to diviners and
enchanters which was early implanted in Israel. The future was meant to be a
terra incognita. This world of ours was terra cognita enough. " The secret
things belong to God,"-the thought would appear almost designed to prevent
that idle speculation, always weakening and often positively mischievous, which
has been characteristic of many races and ages, but never of Israel as a people
in all its manifold wanderings. Rabbinical fancy in Talmudic times may have
spun curious theories about the life to come, here and there in the Middle Ages
a rabbi's fantastic dictum may be heard upon the theme; but as a people the
Jews have never speculated upon the subject. " With whomsoever the spirit
of mankind is satisfied," so runs' a rabbinical saying, " the spirit
of God is satisfied." In other words, the question of approbation in this
world is a far more important topic than that of probation in the world to
come.
And
the Jew would seem to possess intuitively a kind of gentle optimism, which
expresses itself in the Biblical phrase that has comforted millions of doubting
hearts: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? " Surely the
Jew believes there is punishment for the evil-doer in this world as well as the
next. But as to the nature and the extent of the penalty, he has nothing
definite to state. He may repeat the words of one of Maimonides' articles of
faith: " God rewarded the good according to his works and punished the
wicked according to his wickedness." But the doctrine of everlasting
punishment was never part and parcel of Judaism. The Psalmist's words: "
God does not always strive, nor retain his wrath for ever," formed too
strong a counter-argument. The God of Israel is a Deity, not a demon, a Father,
who hath compassion on his children, not an executioner. And the Jew is not
disquieted by apprehensions respecting the future life of non-Israelites: he
believes with Maimonides, the leading Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, that
the righteous of all nations will be partakers in future bliss. Judaism is more
partial to the heathen than many think-its poet- king David springs from
non-Jewish stock. Its God is the God of the heathen, too. Its picture of future
happiness is not exclusive for Jews. " The stranger within thy gates
" was also to be treated like a brother. Solomon in his famous dedication
prayer thought of all mankind, as well as Jewry. "It is a fundamental
characteristic of Israel," 'writes Delitzsch, " to embrace all
nations as future sharers of like salvation with a warmth of hoping love that
is unheard of otherwise in antiquity."
In one
word, the universalism which is one of the pillars of Jewish belief stretches
across the mystery of the life beyond; nor could the travail of centuries, the
loss of temple and state, the successive exile, persecution, disfranchisement,
that followed, make the Jew as a race less broad in his conceptions of the
future life. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."
To give a full and. comprehensive sketch of
Jewish views as to the future life, and embracing necessarily opinions as to
immortality and the resurrection, one must traverse the entire past of Jewish
history and familiarize one's self with the trend of Jewish thought in every
era. The Pentateuch itself is more charged with the idea of immortality than
most critics and readers imagine. I am inclined to attach more and more weight
to the suggestions and intimations of immortality which the Five Books of the
Law contain, and do not believe that a gradual unfolding of the belief took
place. The Pentateuch is more than root and bud: it is blossom as well; and the
forget-me-nots of ethical and religious teaching that bloom amid the formal
statutes and ordinances in the earliest period of Jewish history are of
wonderful suggestiveness. There is more than dry bone in these primitive books:
there is abundant flesh as well. No positive inculcation of immortality as an
article of belief meets us, it is true. It must be understood that the law was
addressed to a nation, not an individual. But the very purpose of the law to ensure
moral perfection presupposes another life for which we here are trained.
Moses was no metaphysician: he has nothing to
teach about eschatology; but in his farewell address he bids the people "
choose life," and the sudden ending of his own career would have been a
sad commentary on his wisdom and religious principles, if this life were all,
not life eternal. The death of Abel, the translation of Enoch, the expression
"gathered to his fathers," Balaam's "Let me die the death of the
righteous, and let my last end be like his," are gleams of immortal hope,
precept, and illustration, while the trials and cares of the patriarchs formed
object-lessons to teach the individual Israelite that there were even and
enduring currents in the life beyond. The Hebrew word for "life,"
Haim, has been adduced from its plural form as a tacit argument in favour of
immortality.
The historical books, the Psalms, the
prophets, the Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, are replete with passages
that refer to a future life, and prove that the teachings of the Pentateuch
were bearing good fruit in broad and spiritual conceptions of the other world,
which became the common property of the people and sprang from Jewish ground to
remain part and parcel of Jewish belief for all time. The texts illustrating
the doctrine are too many to be cited: they form a liturgy in themselves. But a
still more convincing proof of the spread of the belief on Jewish ground is the
reference to it in the Apocrypha. Take these words from the Wisdom of. Solomon
5: 15, 16: " The righteous live for evermore. . . . They shall receive a
glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand." Or in the
story of the seven sons who met death because they would not eat swine's flesh,-do
not these thoughts show the strength of Jewish belief in immortality? "
Thou like a fury takes us out of this present life, but the King of the world
shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, to everlasting life " (2
Macc., 7: 7-9.)
We have reached the period of Christianity,
and, if all other sources were absent, the New Testament itself would furnish
powerful illustrations of the persistency of Jewish belief in the future life.
St. Paul, who confesses himself " a Pharisee of the Pharisees," refers
to the belief as an inheritance from his fathers, and the controversies on the
point between Jewish schools of the clay are repeatedly alluded to in the
narrative, while Moses and the prophets are often cited as authority for the
doctrine. But there is a combined mass of testimony on this subject, apart from
the New Testament. Josephus, Philo, the Talmud, and the Midrash are plentiful
in illustration. The teachings of the Pharisees, who were the great mass of the
nation, formed the teachings of the synagogue. The views of the Sadducees, it
must not be forgotten, are preserved for us in the writings of their
adversaries. No Sadducee literature is extant. It is possible that they denied
not immortality in general, but only the survival and resurrection of the body.
They formed, however, but a small portion of the nation, and have survived in
the philosophy, not the history, of their race.
In the early rabbinical period, the belief in
a future state became fixed, so to speak, as a norm of the synagogue. The most
authoritative book of the Tradition, the Mishna (Sanhedrin), denies future
salvation to him "who asserts that the resurrection of the dead is not
taught in the Law." A most interesting light is thrown on this topic by
Talmudic discussions on the resurrection, in which the Sadducees or Epicureans
take the negative side. It is related that once they came before Rabban
Gamaliel and asked: How can it be proved that God will cause the dead to rise
again? The rabbi referred to the Pentateuch, the prophets, and the hagiography
for his authority. In Deut. 31:16 we read: "And the Lord said unto Moses,
Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and he shall arise." But this
verse did not satisfy the doubters, who maintained that the words quoted could
not be torn from their context, according to which the passage would read:
" Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers and this people will rise up
and follow strange gods," evidently referring in no way to the
resurrection. Next the rabbi took the text from Isaiah 26: 19, "Thy dead
shall live, with my dead body they shall arise: awake and sing, ye that dwell
in the dust." But the Sadducees still refused to be persuaded: they
claimed that 533 the verse referred only to those dead who were revived by
Ezekiel (37: 10). Then the rabbi adduced the passage from the Song of Songs (7:
9): "The roof of thy mouth is like the best wine for my beloved, that goes
down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak." The
Sadducees said, in objection, that the verse only alluded to the fact that the
lips of the dead sometimes moved in their graves; for it was a saying of R.
Jochanan (Talmud Berakyoth) that if a decision is pronounced in the name of a
deceased teacher, his lips moved in the grave.
Finally
R. Gamaliel cited these words from Deut. 1: 8: " Behold, I have set the
land before you; go in and possess the land which the Lord swore unto your
fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and their seed after
them." As the patriarchs during their life-time did not possess the land
of Canaan, and God's promise is not made in vain, they must again arise from
the dead to dwell in the land. And now the Sadducees were convinced.
The Ethics of the Fathers, a Mishna treatise,
which has been so popular and practical a compendium as to be transferred from
the Talmud to the liturgy and find its way into what may be termed the book of
common prayer,-this . treatise gives perhaps the most striking view of the
interrelation of life and eternity. " This life," so runs one
passage, " is but the vestibule to the life to come. Prepare thyself so in
the vestibule that thou mayst be admitted into the hall." A still more
suggestive passage is the following: " The born are to die, and the dead
to revive; and the living to be judged; for to know and to notify, and that it
may be known, that He is the framer, and He the creator, and He the discerner,
and He the judge, and He the witness, and He the 'adversary,' and He is about
to judge with whom there is no iniquity, nor forgetfulness, nor respect of
persons, nor taking of a bribe, for all is His, and know that all is according
to a plan. Let not thine imagination assure thee that the grave is an asylum;
for perforce thou was framed (Jer., 18: 6), and perforce thou was born, and perforce
thou lives, and perforce thou dies, and perforce thou art about to give account
and reckoning before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be
he " (Taylor's version).
Many are the eloquent spurs to immortality in
Talmud and Mid-rash, and the brief apothegms that are preserved, the sayings
and parables, have not lost their potency. The how and the when of the future
life cannot be described: "All the prophets prophesied about the Messianic
time, but the future life, no eye has seen it, save thine, O God; He prepares
it for those who put their trust in him " (Isaiah, 64: 3). " The
future life," so reads another sentence (Be-rakoth), "is different
from present existence. There is no food, no drink, no marriage, no business,
no envy, no anger. But the just refresh themselves there with 'crowned heads in
divine contemplation." The Lord has placed in the life to come the reward
for good deeds, that the righteous may live in faith, not calculation, is
another rabbinical saying. There is no hell, but eternity itself is a hell to
the wicked. There is no hell, adds another, but a fire issues from the wicked
which burns and torments him. "Whither goes thou? " inquired Hillel's
pupils of him, as he left them. "I am going to provide for my guest."
" Hast thou then a stranger in thy dwelling? " And the master
answered, "Is not the poor soul the body's guest? To-day it is here,
to-morrow in heaven." "Ye fools," was the exclamation in the
presence of a sage. " Do ye believe that the dead will be restored to life?
The living dies and the dead shall live again! Is this possible? " "
Ye fools," re-joined the sage, " who believe not that the dead can
rise. For he who was not, is. Why cannot he who was be renewed again? " In
this world, so reads a rabbinical apothegm, he who is small can become great,
and he who is great can become small. But in the world to come, the small
remains small forever, and the great eternally great. When it is asked whether
the bodies of those who in their life-time had been lame or otherwise deformed
will rise with or without such defects, it is answered: " They will rise
with their defects and then be healed " (Sanhedrin). The further inquiry
is made, whether the dead rise naked or clad. And the answer is given by reference
to the grain of wheat, which put in the ground naked comes up with abundant
raiment: similarly the bodies of the righteous that are buried in their shrouds
will not rise naked-an illustration which perhaps lies at the basis of Paul's
argument in 1 Cor. 15: 37, 38.
The views of the sages of Talmud and Midrash
respecting the future life have been merely glanced at, nor can we present with
any fullness the opinions of the later rabbis of medieval times. Naturally
there was a diversity of views among the thinkers of the synagogue. Jewish
thought was never stagnant but always alive. The Talmud itself is but a record
of conflicting opinions. The later rabbis that arose in the more general
dispersion of the Jews and their more or less active participation in the
thought and movements of their time, both in Europe and the East, present just
as salient differences. The prevalent philosophy spurred on to speculation.
They too were rationalistic or conservative, like their Arab contemporaries.
They too defended the Aristotelian doctrine or opposed it with dialectic heat
and skill. The dawn of a new and more critical school of Biblical
interpretation, the birth of a more logical and comprehensive system of
religious philosophy, were not without their influence on Jewish views of
immortality and the future life. Then, too, the Kabbalists were spinning their
fancy pictures of divine judgment, and their hyperboles have thrown discredit
on rabbinical eschatology. It is to the credit of the Jews, however, that the
great mass were uninfluenced by this mystic impressionist school, and its
reveries and rhapsodies will not be noticed here. Nor have we space to refer at
any length to the opinions of more than two prominent rabbis, Maimonides
(1135-1204), and Joseph Albo (about 1400). Naturally in any detailed history of
the doctrine, the views of other rabbinical master-spirits, like Saadya, Levi
ben Gerson, Kreskas, and Judah Hallevi, could not be omitted. But the opinions
of the two selected are usually regarded as most authoritative, not of course
in the sense of binding, but entitled to especial weight.
Maimonides in his colossal work, Yad
Irachazakah, a kind of digest of the Talmud and the entire Oral and Written
Law, gives a special section to repentance* and its influence on the divine
judgment of the soul in the future world, together with a discussion of future
reward .and punishment. The rationale of repentance in general need not concern
us, but only so much as is connected with the future life and the question of
retribution. Maimonides' general position may be stated thus: The soul is
permitted to expiate its offense through God's tempering his justice, by
passing through a process of penal purification commensurate with the guilt
incurred, after which it is restored and permitted to enter future bliss.
" All Israelites have a portion in the world to come, even though they
have committed sins; and in the same way the pious among the Gentiles share in
the world to come." But a certain class, the unrepentant wicked, offenders
against society, are doomed to " excision," "
annihilation." They will not share in the resurrection. Sincere penitence,
how- ever, will condone all their offenses and restore them to salvation. The
nature of the punishment of the incorrigibly wicked is not described, save as
"annihilation,"-" the hardened sinful soul is destroyed,
perishes, and ceases to be "-it is cut off " from future bliss.
Maimonides confirms the view expressed in his Yad in his commentary on the
Mishna (Sanhedrin): " The coming-to-life of the dead is the basis of the
fundamental principles of Moses our teacher, and there is no religion or
adherence to the Jewish religion in him who believeth not this; but it is only
for the righteous."
The subject of future rewards and punishment
is discussed at greater length by Joseph Albo in his " Book of Principles
" (licka-rim). After describing different opinions held on the subject, he
maintains that retribution is partly temporal and partly spiritual. As to the
nature of the spiritual reward after the separation of body and soul, there is
a division of opinion. The future bliss of the righteous cannot be defined, as
it bears no affinity to earthly enjoyments. The further temporal reward is the
resurrection of the truly righteous, who will arise to proclaim the true faith
or to attain a still higher degree of wisdom. These saints, however, are again
to die; then their souls, through their virtuous deeds during their second
state of earthly existence, will be rewarded with spiritual bliss far excelling
that which had before been granted them. The intellectual soul of man thus
attains the highest perfection. On its first separation from the body after
death, the soul is restless and for a year it hovers about, ascending and
descending; and then it ascends, being reconciled to its altered condition and
appreciating the bliss it has attained.
As to the punishment of the wicked, Albo holds
that this consists in a state of anxiety and terror due to conflicting
impulses: " The soul of the wicked is attached to the lower world by its
habits, and it desires to attach itself to the higher world according to its
nature; but it is equally unable to obey either impulse." Its agony is
keen and indescribable. Its duration and intensity are graduated by God's
justice, according to the good and evil in the man's mortal existence. After
twelve months, the soul is released from its suffering and joins the blessed.
But there is still longer punishment meted out for the atheist-a word which in
the Middle Ages had a stronger taint than it appears to enjoy to-day. Future
reward emanates entirely from the divine mercy and is eternal; while future
punishment, which if based on strict justice should also be eternal, is by
divine mercy limited and not everlasting.
It may be added just here that the expressions
used in connection with reward. and punishment, and which have given rise to
extensive discussion,-such terms, for instance, as hell and paradise,-are to be
taken figuratively. Gan-Eden was called the abode of future bliss of the
righteous because it was the abode of Adam and Eve before they sinned, the
earthly and the heavenly paradise. Gehinnom was the name given to the future
dwelling-place of the wicked, because it was a spot of abomination near
Jerusalem-the valley of Hinnom -where children were sacrificed to Moloch. As to
the word hell, in its common meaning, which is largely Miltonian, rather than
Scriptural, the Hebrews knew nothing whatever of such a place of torment, Sheol
being simply a grave, a hollow pit.
The subject of the future life is not referred
to at any great length, but only incidentally, in the Jewish pulpit to-day.
There are no rapt visions of ecstatic bliss to be described-it is held that if
the pulpit fits its hearers for this world it fits them for the next. In
matters of opinion, as has already been stated, diversity has always existed
among the Hebrews; in matters of practice there has been more uniformity. The
belief in immortality finds a ready acceptance in all contemporary schools of
Jewish thought; the only divergency is, whether the resurrection is bodily or
spiritual. Occasionally the topic is discussed in special sermons or essays,
and is alluded to in religious catechisms and the weekly press. In a sermon by.
Rev. Prof. Marks, a liberal Jewish preacher of
London, on " Future Judgments," published in the third volume of his
Lectures and Sermons (London: 1884), we find the following passage in reference
to everlasting punishment:- If there be one truth more than another in our
Scriptures that is exhibited in all its majesty and glory, it is God's
inexhaustible love, magnified by his mercy and benevolence. Here we are taught
that the divine justice is vindicated by the correction awarded to the
evildoer, clearly showing that the divine purpose is to reclaim and not to
destroy. True it is, as has already been remarked, that God will distinguish
between the good and the bad; and this warning is of itself sufficient to make
us all think seriously of the tribunal before which we shall have to appear.
But in the whole volume of our Bible there is nothing to be found on which the
supposition can be based, that the divine justice will be glorified by the
destruction of the sinner, or by dooming him to everlasting torment. There is
nothing to show that God has only created to destroy.
It
does not follow, however, because the notion of hell and its economy finds no
support from the Hebrew Scriptures, that there is nothing to be apprehended
beyond the grave by the persistent and unrepentant transgressor. Though nothing
be revealed touching the nature of the punishment that awaits those whose whole
lives have been stained by iniquity, it is assuredly no slight retribution for
them to know that sooner or later they will have to render an account to Him
who knows all the thoughts of mankind and 'considered all their deeds.' "
The views of Isaac Leeser, for many decades
identified with the history and progress of American Judaism, are best
expressed in the catechism first edited by him in 1830. In reference to
retribution for good or evil, he observes that we can form no clear conception
of the how and the when of the future life; but " we suppose the reward to
consist in a much more perfect aspect (i.e., knowledge) of God, his attributes
and mode of governing the world; in short, in an extension of its (the soul's)
knowledge of things, which are here beyond the reach of its power of
comprehension, and the acquisition of which will afford it the purest
uninterrupted felicity; and in the same way we believe the punishment to
consist in a state full of shame and compunction of the soul, which must be to
it the most painful and afflicting state imaginable."
Rev. Dr. M. J. Raphall in his essay on
Immortality (New York: 1859) states the subject briefly as follows: Jewish
doctrine recognizes three distinct states of being for the soul: this world,
the union of soul and body in one's life-time on earth; the world to come, or
the condition of the disembodied soul in the abode assigned to the spirit after
it has left the body; the resurrection of the dead. Between the first and
second of these states of existence the connection is direct and immediate; for
it is during the sojourn ill the body that the soul prepares for the position
to be held in the world to come-either favourable by obedience to the will of
God or unfavourable by self-willed indulgence in sin. As soon as the soul is
freed from the trammels of the body, it is placed in judgment, and enters on
its condition in the world to come, directly after death, according to some,
after an interval of twelve months, according to others. And this condition in
the world to come is distinct for every individual soul, which is responsible
for its own acts and receives its own reward or chastisement. The resurrection
is placed last of all in a period remote and unknown, and general to all
permitted to join therein by the will of God.
Grace Aguilar in her Jewish Faith
(Philadelphia: 1864) devotes several chapters to the proofs of immortality furnished
in the Old Testament. One paragraph of singular moral beauty may be quoted
here: " The more we give the soul or spirit ascendency while on earth, and
so advance it more in-the knowledge of our God and his unseen worlds, the
better are we prepared for the higher and purer state of being which we know
awaits us, and the higher shall we rank amidst those immortal hosts of heaven
which surround his throne. We dare not hope to attain spiritual felicity in
heaven, if we strive not for it on earth, or realize its blessedness, unless
the awakened and ripened intellect has led the spirit to contemplate its
own."
Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler, in an article in the
London Homiletic Magazine (1884) on " The Foundations of the Belief in the
Immortality of Man," writes very pithily: " Even as this hallowed
volume (the Old Testament) does not seek to demonstrate the existence of God by
laboured processes of thought, but assumes it as an indisputable verity in its
initial words, thus it does not attempt to prove the doctrine of a life
hereafter. But such strong indirect allusions pervade the Hebrew Scriptures
that the truth must force itself upon every unprejudiced reader, that the
immortality of the soul formed an integral portion of Jewish belief from the
most ancient times."
Moses Mendelssohn made the soul's immortality
the subject of his Phaedion. The work is not a Jewish book, but the views of
the Jewish philosopher reflect the sentiments of Judaism, especially in the
closing words: " He who fulfills his duty here on earth with consistency,
despite all difficulties, and who bears all adversities with resignation to
divine will, must enjoy the reward of his virtues hereafter. And the man of
vice cannot pass away without being brought to the knowledge, in some mode or other,
that evil doing is not the path to happiness. In one word, it would be contrary
to all the attributes of God, his wisdom, goodness; justice, if he had created
rational beings that strive for perfection for a merely temporary, evanescent
existence."
One subject remains to be discussed-what is
Jewish opinion as to the future of the "heathen," of non-Israelites
in general? Leopold Zunz, the Nestor of Jewish learning of this century, who
died at an advanced age in 1886, has grouped together in his classic essay,
"The Memory of the Righteous " (Berlin: 1845), the views of about
seventy Jewish authorities, stretching over eighteen centuries, on this very
topic. I resist the temptation to cite them, however interesting the anthology;
but Zunz shows conclusively that the large majority of the most eminent in the
list recognize divine love and justice for all men, and this message is heard
wherever the Jew is allowed to breathe. And neither persecution nor
disfranchisement could rob the rabbis as a class of the broad universalism
which is at the basis of their faith. Narrow utterances doubtless can be found
among them, wrung from them in some period of agony and terror. But these were
individual. The great majority never forgot the verse of the Psalmist, "
The Lord opened his hand and satisfied the desire of every living thing "-both
in this world and the world to come. " The Lord is near to all who call
upon him, to all who call upon him in truth; " Jew or Gentile, bond or
free! Perhaps the opinion of R. Isaac Arama (1480) may be quoted as being
characteristically Jewish. He comments thus on the saying in the Mishna,
"All Israelites have a portion in the future world": "It would
be unjust to humanity if Israelites only on this account were sharers in future
bliss. But Israel means the righteous, and every truly pious one is an
Israelite: hence the phrase, Son of Israel,' is synonymous with the phrase,
'Son of future life.' "
It is suggestive that centuries before the
French Revolution and the rise of the new yet old spirit of humanity which is
permeating all faiths and marshalling
them slowly but surely on one common ground, any rabbis, forgetting the shame
and sorrows to which they were subjected, could have claimed a place in future
bliss for those who had consigned them to present torture and future
extermination. When the true history of the Middle Ages comes to be written, it
will be found that the survival of the Jews was less a miracle than their
steady preservation of the old-time Universalism which gives beauty and potency
to the message of their seers and spans the Bible with the rainbow of hope.
The doctrine of future retribution, in its
relation to the order of salvation; with a brief statement of its treatment by
Lutheran theologians.
By Rev. HENRY E. JACOBS, D.D., Norton
Professor of Systematic Theology, Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary,
Philadelphia.
THERE is no spiritual life apart from union
and communion with God. Such union and communion man enjoyed in the estate in
which he was originally created. What the soul is to the body, such was God to
the soul; viz., the very life of its life. When sin intervened, this union
between God and man was severed; and spiritual life was followed by spiritual
death. Divine mercy towards man, even in his sinfulness, delayed executing the
full penalty due sin, and prevented sin from bringing forth all its bitter fruits
at once. Otherwise humanity, as it existed in our first parents, would have
been immediately removed from earth, and consigned to all the miseries of
eternal death. But here already a divine plan to remedy the results of the fall
begins to become manifest. The race
continues to develop. Generation after generation is born. That which is born
of the flesh, however, is only flesh. Earth can give nothing by inheritance
that is higher than earth. The race, as developed by natural generation, is
only the unfolding of that which is germinally existent in those from whom the
race springs. Spiritual life, lost by the fall, is no longer a natural
endowment. If it is to reanimate the soul, it must be introduced by a direct
act of God upon each individual. Nor can this direct act of God occur in the
bringing into being of each soul. Parents are parents of the entire personality
and not only of the body. Whatever we have from God at the beginning of our
lives, we derive through the medium of corrupted humanity, which constantly
sends forth with the growth of the race its poisonous and desolating streams,
marring every gift of God passing through it. We are born then with an absolute
necessity for regeneration, if spiritual life is ever to become ours. In this
condition which prevails, unless we be rescued by the working in us of divine
grace, we are without the affections of love and confidence towards God which
are the requisites for admission into his kingdom, and besides we are hostile
to all that is in accord with God's will. Eternal death is only the full
development of the spiritual death which we have at birth. It is an error which
the study of Scripture quickly disproves when it is imagined that the child
comes to earth in a state of moral indifference, or moral equilibrium, with its
heart a blank tablet, for the inscription of either good or evil, but it is at
the very moment of birth already a fountain of corruption, with the sinful
habit, which it has inherited, containing in the germ all the crimes that, if not
arrested by divine grace, will stain its future, and with all the guilt
attending the possession of such a habit. The great guilt of men lies, not in
that they are murderers and adulterers and false witnesses, but that they are
without the fear of God; the crimes are only the necessary result of this
defect. As the pustule which appears upon the body in a malignant disease is
alarming, not on its own account, but from the fact that it is an unmistakable
symptom of a disease pervading the entire system, an exponent of a depraved
bodily habit, so every sin which we discover has its chief significance in the
fact that it is the symptom or exponent of that morbid condition of soul, the
prolific soil whence all sins emerge, and of itself meriting God's wrath, which
is thus our natural heritage. By nature, we are the children of wrath, and the
whole world is guilty before God.
Viewing mankind, therefore, from all eternity,
as a mass of corruption and perdition, God, out of pure grace and mercy,
devises a plan of salvation. Had this plan, as its end, only the rescue of but
one member of our race from spiritual death and its consequences, no charge of
injustice could be made. If there be a forbearance of the execution of strict
justice in one case or more, no one can make the charge that it is unjust to
execute justice in the other cases. Upon this point we lay particular emphasis,
since, in the discussions on this subject, it is so often forgotten that man,
already at his birth, is a lost creature, alienated from God, and that the plan
of salvation had, as its aim, not the offer to all men, upon equal terms, of
the alternative of life or death, but the rescue of those already lost, and
justly condemned.
But entirely just as God would still have
remained, had his plan of salvation been thus restricted, that plan has been
far otherwise. What it is we learn, not from our own speculations, but solely
from divine revelation. Let us briefly review its several parts: Man had
fallen, not by God's will, but by the abuse of his own will. He was spiritually
dead, not by God's will, but by the abuse of his own will. He was to perish
eternally, not by God's will, but by the natural development of the state of
sin into which he had fallen, and in which his will continued to acquiesce. In
his only Son, Jesus Christ, " the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation
of the world," God provides salvation. His incarnation was not solely, nor
even chiefly, for " the completion of humanity," or the infusion of
his own life into that of the race, or affording man a model, or the
manifestation of any divine attribute, whether love or justice or holiness,
however important such ends may be when regarded as subordinate to his main
mission.
He came to earth, first of all, to fulfill
every condition whereby man might be rescued from corruption, and be restored
to his original relation to God. The guilt of man's sin he removed by paying
its extreme penalty; the obedience demanded of man he rendered in man's place
by his exact fulfillment of every duty prescribed by the Law. He exchanged
places with man, becoming in God's account what man is, and making man in God's
account what he is. The doctrines of the vicarious satisfaction of Christ, and
of the forensic character of justification, most intimately cohere, and must
stand or fall together. The former can be surrendered only when we erase from
our Bibles such passages as Is. 53: 5; John 1: 29; 2 Cor. 5: 21; 1 Pet. 2: 24;
and the latter only as the entire argument of all Scripture, and especially of
the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, is ignored. Nor are we surprised to
find that where the work of Christ is reduced to a mere exhibition of divine
love in order to move man's heart to reciprocal affection, or of the
earnestness of divine justice, or of the heinousness of sin, in order to lead
to repentance, its efficacy should be regarded as limited to the relatively
small number of those before whom this exhibition has been actually made, and
that, hence, an extension of the period is sought in which it may continue its
work. But Christ's sacrifice had as its end, not merely a subjective change
within us, but an objective change without us, in our relation to God, and in
God's relation to us. The efficacy provided in the sacrifice, is, moreover,
co-extensive with the sphere of man's sin. Redemption has been made for all
men, and for all the sins of all men.
Nevertheless the enjoyment of this salvation
is not as universal as its provisions. The condition of faith must intervene,
that man may take to himself what God has provided and freely offers. If faith
be repelled, justification, and with it, salvation, is repelled; man continues
in his estate of spiritual death; and spiritual death continues uninterrupted
in its progress to eternal death. Nor does this occur only where faith is
consciously repelled; but wherever the new spiritual life acquired for us has
not been personally appropriated. But as it is God's will that all should
believe no less than that all should be saved, the work of the Holy Spirit in
communicating faith is extended not merely to a few, but to all. To this end,
be comes to men through his Word, to which, as a means of grace, the sacraments
are added, not as co-ordinate, but as subordinate, sealing the promises of the
Word. For revelation makes known to us no other means for the exercise of his
efficacy than the knowledge of the truth. Nor can man attain faith by his own
powers, or by any other agency than by the Word, as declared in the gospel
(Rom., 10:14). There is indeed a knowledge of God, antecedent to that given in
revelation; but its office is not to communicate faith, but only to convict of
sin, and to impel man, in despair of that which nature gives, to the most
urgent search after that truth which is to be displayed in the gospel, and
which, when there found, becomes the source of faith. Thus the Holy Spirit
works through the law inscribed in our very nature, conscience_ itself showing
the beginning of that work, whereby he leads towards faith in the merits of
Christ. But his calling and illuminating grace may be arrested at any stage by
the persistent opposition of the heart upon which he acts. Hence the great mass
of those who have been redeemed do not accept redemption, close eyes and heart
to the influences of the Spirit, and remain in the state of death. So universal
is this resistance, that the Word of God declares all, viz., Gentiles as well
as Jews, those who have only the natural, as well as those who have the
supernatural, knowledge of God, without excuse (Rom., 1:20). That is, the
possibilities of spiritual life come to every one, through the new powers which
attend the truth, even though it be only in the most primordial germ, as it
addresses every conscience. When, by the work of the Spirit of God, men yield
to the little truth which has been given them, the divine law is continually
verified that declares: "To him that hath shall be given," while
"to him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath."
The full proclamation of the gospel does not reach the heathen, because they
repel the feebler beams of truth which actually reach them.
550 Considerations such as these must always
be borne in mind, in the discussion of "future retribution." Men
perish, not because of the greater or less degree of guilt involved in their
rejection of Christ, but because in this life even, they are already condemned,
and they fail in appropriating the means which God furnishes for their
deliverance from this condemnation. " But why," it is asked, "
is the period of the offer of grace restricted to this life? May it not be
that, throughout all eternity, the loving Father will follow his lost child
with his tenderest entreaties, and be always ready to exultantly welcome its
return?" Thus it has been asserted: "No one who has, or can have, the
will to be converted, is ever lost." Very true, and yet, in its
application to this subject, very false! for " the will to be
converted" arises not from natural powers, but from Him " who worketh
to will " (Phil., 2:13). With the close of life man is removed from the
sphere in which are found the means of grace whence " the will to be
converted " is derived; and enters another, in which the will, acquiescing
in sin, although restive under punishment, remains forever averse to
conversion. His future retribution consists in his being left forever to
himself, without any interruption of the natural results of his depravity by
the processes of divine grace. Such is the clear teaching of the divine Word in
numberless passages. Such is the burden of the many warnings contained in the
Holy Scriptures. That there is "an accepted time" means that there is
a time not accepted; that there is " a day of salvation " means that
there is a period which is not a clay of salvation; and because there is
"an accepted" and a not accepted time, "a day of salvation"
and a day that is not one of salvation, God pleads with men, in "the
accepted time," and " the day of salvation," not to harden their
hearts, i.e., not so to resist divine grace that " the will to be
converted " can never enter (2 Cor., 6: 2). Let our Lord's tears and
protestations over his beloved city be ever in mind as a most forcible proof
that when " the time of visitation " is not properly used even love
cannot deliver (Luke, 19: 42-44). It is useless to accumulate testimonies. They
meet us in nearly every chapter of the New Testament; while what can be more
emphatic than such warnings of the Old Testament, as Prov. 1: 24-31?
Nor can we by any just interpretation derive
any hope that the misery of the lost may after a long period be terminated. As
certain as eternal life is life without end, just so sure is eternal death,
death without end. And if it be urged that as eternal life may be enjoyed
already in this world (1 John, 5: 13), so men may have their eternal death
here, it must not be forgotten that such inference is valid only in so far as
it means that what is possessed in this world is only the seed of what is to
develop all its capacities and endowments in an infinite progress hereafter. No
encouragement whatever can be afforded, by any word of Scripture, for any
doctrine either of Restorationism or of Annihilationism.
But among those who firmly maintain that,
after the resurrection of the dead, and the general judgment, the state of
every man is unalterably fixed for good or evil, there are some who,
nevertheless, plead for a continuance of the preaching of the gospel in the
state between death and the resurrection, and the possibility of conversion
under such preaching. Concerning such preaching of the gospel, it is sufficient
to say that there is no declaration in the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine is at
most a pure hypothesis, suggested by general inferences, for which a support is
sought from several passages which really have no bearing on the subject. Men
reason, upon grounds we have above shown to be invalid, that it would be unjust
to condemn to eternal punishment those who have not heard in this life the
gospel in all its fullness. " The work of Christ," it is urged,
"was chiefly to manifest the divine love; and, if his work is for all,
then he must be proclaimed to all, if not here, then hereafter. Provision must
be made that all hear the gospel message upon like terms." Then, under the
influence of such reasonings, which are only intrusions of human speculation
into spheres whereof we are expressly warned (Rom., 11: 33), such a passage as
1 Pet. 3: 19, 20, is eagerly pressed into service. But the entire context excludes
all hope concerning those to whom it is said that Christ preached. The epistle
has as its chief end the consolation of believers amidst the sufferings which
surround them. The great argument is that the example of Christ should
encourage them to patience. There was a time when he had to encounter the same
defiance and persecution as those which now meet them. But his hour of triumph
came, when he proclaimed his victory as already accomplished to those who, when
alive, had been the bitter enemies of the cause which he represented. Among
these, the antediluvians are especially mentioned, because their proud contempt
and scornful words under the preaching of Noah showed that they were only the
predecessors of those who, in a later clay, were asking: " Where is the
promise of his coming? " Yet how brief their hour of triumph The flood
whose approach was so long derided at length came. The contrast, therefore,
between Christ and the spirits iv cptaregi2 is full of consolation for his
followers, who, sharing in his sufferings, must also share in his glory, and of
warning for those inclined to doubt what seems long delayed, and
inapprehensible to the tests of the senses. As Christ was at last made manifest
as a Mighty Conqueror, so also shall his followers' cause be amply vindicated,
and their claims, unrecognized here, be acknowledged.
Nor, in the absence of other passages to the
same effect, is it allowable to refer to 1 Pet. 4: 6, as a preaching of the
gospel to men after death. As the judgment of "the dead " in the
preceding verse looks forward to the quickening of the dead before the judgment
occurs, so in this verse the preaching is retrospective, and designates the
gracious offers made " the dead " while they were living. The great
body of the dead there mentioned were probably Old Testament believers, and,
thus, the identity of the plan of salvation under the two covenants is
suggested.
Were the preaching of the gospel in an
intermediate state to those who have not heard its full message here conceded,
the greater part of humanity would hear the gospel for the first time, not
until this life had closed. What, then, would properly be the period of grace,
and what, the clay of salvation? Or were the Pe-trine passages accepted as
teaching a preaching of the gospel to men. after death, it would require an
additional word of revelation to prove that such preaching still continues.
Where does the apostle say that Christ is preaching, or Christ will preach, to
the departed? There certainly is no such teaching in the aorist As to the state
which follows death, it may be confidently affirmed that while to believers it
is one of great blessedness, and to unbelievers one of great woe, with their
relation to Christ and salvation unalterably fixed, both await their fuller
retribution at the resurrection and final judgment. For the account in Matt.
24, and like passages, cannot be referred to the formal declaration of what had
previously occurred. Only then, in the full sense, do both believing and
unbelieving find their retribution. Of the mysteries that intervene, little is
known except that all hope of a transition from the one class to the other is
excluded. It is possible that with the exception of that recognition of the
change of state, and its relations, described in Luke 16: 19 'seq., the state
of those who have departed, out of Christ, is one in which the soul is thrown
back upon itself, and left to its own remorse, and apprehensions of the future,
with an interruption only by some special act of God, as in 1 Pet. 3: 19,
whereby at the very centre of the history of the universe, viz., Christ's
victory, the great fact is communicated to them even in their bodiless
condition. So, too, it is possible that those in Christ are left in
contemplative communion with their Lord, awaiting the glorious disclosures
which they are to experience on the morning of the resurrection, save only that
to them also the great fact of the incarnation and all accomplished through it,
which agitated earth and heaven and bell, has also been made known. To pursue
the argument for this would lead us too far from the scope assigned.
The heart, indeed, yearns to gain more light
than that which revelation offers! Here, on the one hand, enters the question
concerning unbaptized infants, in the light of such passages as John 3: 5. We
cannot solve the difficulty by any resort to a limbus infantum. And yet why
should we desire to know more than that they are in the hands of One whose
loving care for them is infinitely greater than ours can be? Believing, as we
do, that baptized infants have faith, yet how undeveloped it is, and how little
conscious are they of its contents! In the infant, faith is only that turning
of the heart towards God by the working of the Holy Spirit, whereby the
beginning of a new spiritual life is implanted. The faith which connects with
God, and gives entrance into the kingdom of heaven, is not always a conscious
faith; for it is not faith in our faith, but faith in Christ, that saves. What
do we know of the means which God may have for imparting this faith, hereafter,
where the child has not been brought to him in the way of his appointment? We
have no word of Scripture on the subject; but the Church has for many centuries
expressed her hopes in the words: "Non defectus, sed con-temptus
sacramenti damnat." How, with those who died under the Old Testament? Here
revelation is not uncertain as to the fact of their blessedness. They have
rested in Abraham's bosom, which Luther interprets as the promise concerning
Christ. But how is this indefinite conception concerning the promise of the
coming Saviour made definite? How is their faith in what all the prophets
declare, developed into the full appropriation of Jesus of Nazareth as the
Messiah, and the full revelation found in him? May it not then be, that among
the heathen there are those who hold a place very similar to that of the saints
under the Old Testament; some very few, who have learned to know to a degree
what sin is, who have lamented it, and who, while gratefully using all the
light which God has given, have not heard the full tidings of the gospel,
although, by divine grace, they are in a receptive condition for it? We are
bewildered by such questions. We cannot say, " Yes," without at once
seeming to concede an efficacy to the natural knowledge of God, which we cannot
admit that it possesses; and yet we cannot say, " No," without danger
of going beyond what revelation explicitly declares.
Certain it is, that there is no salvation
without faith in Christ; yet where does faith in Christ begin? An
"intermediate state" certainly offers no solution. Whatever hope we
may entertain rests upon the disposition of the heart to the truth which, up to
the moment of death, has been learned, and upon the full appropriation, when
Christ is revealed on the day of judgment, of what had been only incipiently
received before. Yet we tremble even to entertain such hope; for we recall the
words of our Lord to Peter, when he asked: "Lord, and what shall this man
do?" and heard the reply: " What is that to thee? Follow thou me!
" (John, 21: 22.) What we have in revelation has been given, not to answer
our speculations concerning others, but to point out to us the way of life, and
warn us of the consequences which must attend the rejection of that light and
knowledge which we enjoy. God does not bind himself, but he binds us to his
appointed means of grace. The fate of all who have heard the gospel call, and
rejected it, is clear. The fate of the great mass of the heathen world,
according to Rom. 1, is also clear. The inadmissibility of repentance within
the intermediate state, or of salvation without faith in Christ, must also be
maintained. But we must beware of inferences as to what God can or cannot do,
as to what God will or will not do, consistently with these established
principles of revelation, within a sphere concerning which he himself has not
seen fit to make an explicit declaration. It is not the sphere of divine
justice which occasions any difficulty; it is the mysteries of the divine mercy,
into which we cannot penetrate, and to which we dare fix no limits, save those
which we are sure that God himself has announced.
That there are degrees both of glory and of
misery in the future life, especially after the resurrection and judgment, cannot
be doubted. This offers a partial answer to some of the difficulties which
agitate the Christian heart concerning the inequality of the light and
knowledge afforded here.
Such are our personal convictions, which we
believe harmonize with the testimony of the Lutheran Church. We recognize a
distinction between what is intra- and what is extra-confessional; and that
while in regard to certain points, the demands of the confessions are absolute,
in regard to others, undetermined by the confessions, there not only may be,
but also has been, from the very beginning, some degree of freedom and
variation. The latter, however, cannot be affirmed of the cessation of future
punishments, or of theories of restorationism, or of conversion between death
and the resurrection. Another hand, we are informed, will trace the history of
the doctrine as held by Lutherans. Hence we present a mere summary of results
which we have gathered. Luther's opinions, of course, are not all confessional.
We, however, present in theoretical form, the leading features of his doctrine,
and are constrained by historical fidelity to include even one (Thesis VIII.)
from which we, in common with almost all Lutherans, must dissent.
1. Questions concerning the state of the
departed are relatively unimportant, and must not absorb the attention which
should be devoted by the living to secure their own salvation.
2. There is no salvation without faith in
Christi-
3. Faith in Christ cannot be imparted except
through the preaching of the gospel.
4. When salvation has been received by the
heathen, it has been only through the word of faith, containing the promises of
the gospel, as brought to them by their contact with God's people.
5. If there be salvation for any who have
departed without faith in Christ, they must attain faith in the world to come;
and concerning this God's Word says nothing.
6. The state of the soul between death and the
resurrection admits of no opportunity for the hearing of the gospel on the part
of those who, in this life, have rejected it. Nevertheless the inference of an
absolute unconsciousness must be avoided.
7. The destiny of the soul of the godless is
determined at death, although the question of their conscious misery before the
resurrection is involved in obscurity.
8. Nevertheless the decision is not in all
cases so absolutely certain as to make prayer for them sinful.
9. Strictly speaking, the wicked are not
consigned to hell, until the last day.
10. The coming of Christ has made a difference
among departed believers. What was Abraham's bosom before is Christ's bosom
now.
1 Luther's Works, Erlangen Edition, LIII.:
140; De Wette's Luther's Briefen, II.: 220.
2 Luther's Works, XXII.: 30; De Wette's
Luther's Briefen, II.: 455.
3 Luther's Works, XLVI.: 80-92.
4 Ibid., XXXII'.: 385.
5 De Wette's Luther's Briefen, II.: 455.
6 Lutheri Opera Exeget., XII.: 198; Works
(Erl. German), XLI.: 326.
7 Op. Ex., VI.: 120.
8 Ibid., pp. 122, 124.
9 Luther's Works (Erl. Germ.), XVIII.: 261; XXX:
370.
10 Ibid., XLI.: 378; XIII.: 13.
1. Ibid. Op. Ex., VI.: 118.
It was
Luther's tender heart, rather than his discriminating judgment, which prompted
what is stated under Thesis VIII. No one knew better than did he, that there
could be no true prayer without some specific word of promise, upon which it
could rest. The passages may speak for themselves. Thus in 1523, in his sermon
on Luke 16: 19 sqq.: "It is not a sin for you to pray for them; but in
such way that you leave it uncertain, and say: ' Dear God, if the soul be in
such state that it can still be helped, I pray thee to be gracious to it; ' and
when you have done this once or twice, let it be enough." In his "
Confession concerning the Lord's Supper " (1528): " For the dead I do
not regard it a sin to pray thus: 'Dear God, if thou bast such relation to
souls that thou canst help them, be gracious to them,' and, if this occur once
or twice, let it be enough."
When he comes to the treatment of the
Descensus and the preaching to the spirits in prison, he shows great
vacillation, and sometimes is inconsistent with a few of the premises of the
above theses. He declares that in all Scripture no text is more obscure than 1
Pet. 3: 19, 20, and that he cannot understand the apostle. [Luther's Works,
LI.: 458 (1523). De W. L. B., VI.: 79] In 1523 he interprets it as a preaching,
through preachers of the Word, to unbelievers living in bondage to Satan. [lb.,
LI.: 560.] Eight years later, when Bugenhagen proposed the same solution, he
wrote on the margin very curtly: " Non est verum." [De W. L. B., VI.:
30.] In 1537, it appears to him a preaching to the infants and simpler among
the antediluvians. [Op. Ex., II: 222.] In 1544, he warns against curiously
inquiring as to what it meant. [Op. Ex., X.: 219.] In 1545, it was a preaching
of the gospel by Christ, after his body had left the tomb, to the
antediluvians. [Luther's Works, Jena Ed., IV.:638.] Yet beneath all these
fluctuations was his belief that the great significance of the Descen-sus lay
in Christ's victory for us over hell, and his appearance there as a mighty conqueror-a
position not inconsistent with the other explanations which he rather gave as
conjectures, than matured convictions. His sermon at Torgau is almost a classic
in Lutheran theology because of this doctrine; and in 1555, nine years after
Luther's death, Melanchthon, in an " Opinion " prepared for the
Council at Hamburg, explains at length this position of Luther, as that to
which he had attained after much discussion, and beyond which he discouraged
all investigation." [Corpus Reformatorum, VII.: 666 sq. Compare on all
these passages Kostlin's Luther's Theologie, II.: 427 sqq.]
Melanchthon reaped the fruits of Luther's
struggles, and hence speaks so clearly in his Responsiones ad Articulos
Bavaricos (1559): "Let the true doctrine handed down in the prophetic and
apostolic Scriptures be held, which presents only two ways to the dead. It
affirms that those converted to God and believers are certainly heirs of
eternal salvation, and that those not converted to God are certainly cast into
eternal punishment. This is most explicitly taught by the sermon of Christ,
Matt. 25, nor is a middle way after death presented."
Hence the Lutheran Confessions are so explicit
in their statements concerning retribution. The subject is dismissed in so few
words, simply because their authors regarded it as so universally received as
to admit of no serious opposition. Even Art. 17 of the Augsburg Confession
would scarcely have appeared, if John Denk had not caused dissensions at
Nuremberg by teaching the doctrine of restitution, and thus rendered it
necessary for the Lutheran churches to publicly proclaim their condemnation of
these departures from the faith, especially in view of the attempts of Eck and
others to hold them responsible for all such extravagances.* Beside Art. 17,
Art. 2 is also explicit to the same effect. Incidental allusions are also found
in the Small Catechism, Part 2, Art. 2, and Large Catechism, p. 446: § 56.
Among the theologians of the next generation,
the most important consideration of the subject is found in the article De
Purgatorio of Chemnitz's Examen Concilii Tridentini. For the treatment in the
next century, the student turns naturally first of all to the systems of
Gerhard and Quenstedt. An interesting collection of Lutheran monographs on the
subject, together with a condensed view of the entire field of controversy from
the Patristic period, was made by V. E. Loscher in 1735. It republishes the two
treatises of J. Meisner of 1665.
Since the revival of Lutheranism in Europe
from the rationalistic reaction, and its self-assertion within and without the
Prussian state church, clearness on this article has been in proportion to the
theologian's loyalty to the Lutheran Confessions. As the name "Lutheran
" stands for a type of doctrine, rather than an organization no one can be
regarded a Lutheran who, by such doctrines as " Conditional
Immortality," "Annihilationism," " Restorationism,"
"Universalism," etc., would depart from Arts. 2 and 17 of the
Augsburg Confession. There is, indeed, a school of theologians, sometimes
termed Lutheran, who, under the powerful influence of Schleiermacher, to a
greater or less degree have made concessions to theories of restorationism and
future probation, but their classification as Lutheran is only relative. Dorner
had probably more sympathy with the Lutheran than with the Reformed type of doctrine,
but his protest against the Lutheran Confessions is most pronounced, as may be
seen in his History of Protestant Doctrine. Martensen's deep spirituality was
accompanied by many eccentricities-far more, however, in the work of his youth,
his Dogmatics, than in that of his mature old age, his Ethics which forfeit
every claim which he might otherwise have to be a representative Lutheran.
Nitzsch represents the same mediating tendency. Kahnis is in general sympathy
with the more conservative wing; but has manifested a freedom and independence
on some of the most important articles, that make his warm words in attack of
our Lutheran dogmaticians for denying a preaching of the gospel to the dead, a
matter of no surprise.
A few testimonies from some of the more
prominent representatives of confessional Lutheranism, now living, or only
recently deceased, may here be appropriately introduced:- THOMASIDS (d. 1875):
" Upon the lot of unbelievers there rests the darkness of a mystery; but
if the life to come is the result of the present life, and if blessedness
depends upon communion with God in Christ already present, the state of those
who have inwardly closed themselves thereto, and completely sundered themselves
therefrom, can be only one alienated from God, and, therefore, also an unhappy
one. Death can produce no magical transformation of human personality; it does
not change the relation to God, but introduced the personality into a fixed
condition, corresponding to what has heretofore existed. The godless goes to
his place.' What that is, is more readily experienced than expressed. Only the
visible return of Christ will shed light upon this darkness."
PHILIPPI
(d. 1882): "No doctrine more unwarrantably contradicts Holy Scripture than
that of the so-called Apokatastasis. The denial of the eternity of future
punishments must, with all earnestness, be repelled as a soul-destroying error,
upon the ground of the indubitable word of God-and that, too, in a double
measure in these days of arrogant and carnal exaltation against God and his
Holy- Law. It is (with the doctrine of God's wrath because of the Adamic
corruption of nature, and with that of the power of the devil over the fallen
human race) the especial stone of offense to unchristian as well as to Christian
subjectivism. 'Wherever, then, it falls, there falls also the doctrine of the
holiness, the sublime majesty, and the retributive justice of God, and,
therewith, the foundation of salvation, and the sure gospel."
FRANK
(now Professor at Erlangen): " Can it be otherwise when the season of
grace has been passed in a guilty neglect of the conversion which God has
rendered possible? Of this Scripture knows nothing, but teaches an end of the
season of grace, an endlessness of condemnation (cf. Heb., 9: 27 with 10: 26
sqq., Matt., 12: 31, 32; Mark, 9: 42-48; Matt., 25: 41, 46, etc.). It
harmonizes with the spiritual-moral experience during the earthly period of
salvation that the capability of return subsides and vanishes with the
long-continued resistance to divinely regenerating influences, so that here
such a confirmation and complete maturity in evil occur, as may be shown with
respect to good. The continuation of the way by which we have thus gone, leads
as little to an Apokatastasis, as to an annihilation of the godless, but to a
universal and decisive judgment." Elsewhere he places all Christian hope
in the salvation of any among the heathen, not upon the ground of any relative
fulfilling of the Law, but upon that of a positive influence upon them, of
course in this life, " of the potencies of redemption," which, he
maintains, may be applied even where "the knowledge of the plan of
salvation " is not fully given. " The extent of the knowledge is
never, and, hence also, not here, commensurate with the reality; and an
inwardly converting operation, introducing the movement of the godless man
towards God, may, therefore, occur, even when the sight of the spiritual eye is
more or less clouded by darkness."*
KLIEFOTH
(Oberkirchenrath in, Schwerin), in his recently published extensive and clear
work on eschatology, not only argues at length and in the most decisive manner
against the Apokatastasis, but has also the following to say concerning the
theory of a "future probation ": "It directly inverts the view
of Scripture. According to it, this life and the intermediate state cohere as
one progressive development of life, in which death does not, in any notable
way, make a break or interruption. Just as man departs here, so he continues
there. The preaching of the gospel, the offer of salvation and its
appropriation, proceed there, just as they do here. Death has scarcely any
other significance than that of a change of place.
Thus, this short life, when compared with the
long intermediate state, becomes an insignificant fragment of the entire life.
But not only is it longer; man is placed under more favourable conditions, for
within it, man, destitute of sensuous corporeity, can, in a spiritual life,
emerge from doubt in a hereafter, and its retribution, and, while sinking more
quickly and deeply into evil, may also attain repentance and Conversion sooner
and more thoroughly. It follows naturally that in the short space of this life,
only a few, but in the long and more favourable intermediate state far more,
will be called and converted; and the decision is reached, that the true significance
of human life is in the intermediate state, and that here the not called are the
rule, and the called are the exception. Scripture teaches directly the
opposite: For this life on earth, man was created in soul and body. It was not
originally God's will that man should depart from this bodily life on earth.
Death has intervened only as a consequence and punishment of sin; and with
death has come the intermediate state. . . . It, therefore, can be only an
intermediate state, i.e., a state of waiting for con-summated blessedness or
damnation. On the contrary, this life is full life, and, because the beginning
of life, also the foundation for its consummation. In this life has God
instituted his plan of salvation; in this life the Son of God came, and in it
completed his work of redemption; for this life has the Lord given his Word and
sacraments, and established his Church; in this life he has commissioned his
ministers to proclaim salvation to all nations of the earth; for the call
pertains to men in this life, that they should re-pent and be converted, that
they should believe in Jesus and be saved. As in this life that which is to be
man is born, so also in this life he who is to be a new man must be born again
by repentance and faith.
The solution which he offers concerning the
possible salvation of some who have not heard the gospel in this life differs
from that of Frank only by being carried further into details. He maintains the
possibility of sudden conversions, and suggests that such may occur at the
return of Christ to judge the world, in the case of such heathen who, while living,
have already obeyed the vocatio generalis, and whose disposition towards God
and revealed truth was thus determined already at their death. To the above,
the testimony of others might readily be added; but this will suffice to show
the prevailing character of the teaching among contemporaneous Lutheran
theologians in Germany. Among Lutherans in America, there has been no
controversy whatever on the subject. However much they may differ on other
topics, all agree in rejecting every form of any limitation to the eternity of
future punishments, and just as unanimously condemn the doctrine of a future
probation.
Beliefs of Confucianism and other Chinese
religionists, as to a future life.
By Rev. JAMES LEGGE, D.D., Professor of
the Chinese Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, England, and
for
Thirty-four
Years a Missionary among the Chinese.
IN proceeding to furnish a paper on the above
subject, let me say, at the outset, that, in dealing with "other Chinese
Religionists," I shall confine myself to an exhibition of the views of the
Taoists. Confucianism and Taoism were both indigenous in China. The former is
named from Confucius, the great sage of the country, who, in the fifth and
fourth centuries B. C., did much to preserve the monuments of its ancient
literature, and to develop and enforce the lessons of morality and religion in
them; the latter is named from the subject of the speculations of Li Erh or Li
Tan, better known to us as Lao-tsze, a contemporary of Confucius, but of a
somewhat earlier date. That subject he called the Tao, and there remains to us
his work, called Tao Teh King, or " The Classic about the Tao and its
Characteristics."
In our first Christian century, Buddhist
missionaries went from India to China, and Buddhism began in our third century
to have a very considerable following among the people. Since the Tang dynasty
(A. D. 608-906), if not from an earlier period, the government and people have
always spoken of "The Three Religions," or systems of teaching,-those
of "the Literati " (the followers of Confucius), of " Shih
" (Shakyamuni or Buddha), and of "the Tao." But I have no doubt
that along with my paper there will appear one on the views of the Buddhists on
future punishment by some scholar who has made them a special study, and
therefore I will not touch on them save by an allusion, in passing, in what I
say about the Taoists; still less is it necessary that I should advert to the
views of the Mohammedans and Christians among the Chinese.
The ancient Chinese believed in a future
state, or in the continued existence of the souls or spirits of men, after
their period of life on earth had come to a close; and not in their existence
simply, but in their continued possession, somehow, of their higher faculties,
so that they were conscious of service rendered to them by their descendants,
and could exercise an influence on their condition in this world.
The practice of sacrificing to the dead is as
old as the first traces that we have of the history of the Chinese people. It
existed, I believe, from time immemorial, certainly from the twenty-third
century B. C. And along with it there existed a higher service,-the worship of
one Supreme Being, and of other spiritual beings. With these services there
were associated also sacrifices to departed men of other times besides those of
the worshipers, and to the more conspicuous objects of nature, such as heaven
and earth, the sun and moon, the starry host, hills and streams, forests and
valleys.
I will not pause to inquire which of these
services had the precedence in time. Herbert Spencer, indeed, holds that
"the rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead
ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of working good
or evil to their descendants " (On the Origin of Animal Worship, Essays,
III., p.102). But there was and is no idea of propitiation in the Confucian
sacrifices,- offerings would be a better name for them than sacrifices. The
highest service, that to God, is expressly said to be " the deepest
expression of reverence," and " the greatest act of thanksgiving to
heaven " (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxvii., pp. 413, 427). The
services to parents and ancestors were a tribute of filial piety, of which virtue
we have the following account from Confucius: " The service which a filial
son does to his parents is as follows: In his general conduct to them, he
manifests the utmost reverence; in his nourishing of them, his endeavour is to
give them the utmost pleasure; when they are ill, he feels the utmost anxiety;
in mourning for them, he gives every demonstration of grief; and in sacrificing
to them, he displays the utmost solemnity" (S. B., vol. iii., p. 480). The
offerings to the departed of other times are a recognition of the services
which they rendered to their own times, and for all future time. "
According to the institutes of the sage kings, sacrifice should be offered to
him who Lad given laws to the people, to him who had laboured to the death in
the discharge of his duties, to him who had strengthened- the state by his hard
toil, to him who had boldly and successfully encountered great calamities, and
to him who had warded off great evils " (S. B., vol. xxviii., pp. 207,
208). Confucius taught that " the offerings to heaven and earth were
services to God" (Chung Yung, ch. xix.). "As to the sun and
moon," it is said, " stars and. constellations, the people look up to
them; while mountains, forests, streams, and valleys supply them with the
materials for use which they require. Only men and things of this kind were
admitted into the sacrificial canon " (S. B., vol. xxviii., p. 209).
It is necessary to consider here some sayings
attributed to Confucius. Tszea, the most forward and Peter-like of his disciples,
once asked him about serving the spirits of the dead, and his reply was,
"While you are not able to serve men (in life), how can you serve their
spirits?" The disciple went on to ask about death, and the master said,
" While you do not know life, how can you know about death? "
(Analects, xi.: 11). The oldest comment on this (about the middle of our third
century) is to the effect that Confucius avoided answering the disciple's
questions because spirits and death are obscure subjects, unprofitable to talk
about. More recent scholars endeavour to show that, by seeming to put the
questions aside, the sage was really replying to them most profoundly.
More explicit was the language of Confucius,
in another passage, found in the Narratives of the School, a book which, though
not so authoritative as the Analects, has come down from our third century. In
the second chapter of it, towards the end, Tsze-Kung, another disciple, asks
him whether or not the dead have knowledge (of the services, that is, rendered to
them), and the answer is, " If I were to say that the dead have such
knowledge, I am afraid that filial sons and dutiful grandsons would injure
their substance in paying the last offices to their departed; and if I were to
say that they have not such knowledge, I am afraid that unfilial sons would
cast their parents away, and leave them unburied. You need not wish to know
whether the dead have or have not such knowledge. There is no present urgency
about the point. Hereafter you will know it for yourself."
Whether this answer was really given by
Confucius or not, his own conduct was not consistent with any doubt of the
continued existence and knowledge of the dead, which it may be supposed to
indicate, for we are told (in the Analects, iii., 12) that he sacrificed to the
dead as if they were present, and to the spirits as if the spirits were
present; and that he said, “I consider my not being present at the sacrifice,
as if I did not sacrifice." Nothing can be more clear to me than that the
Chinese have always believed in the continued existence, in the spirit world,
of their dead. We read in the Record of Ritual Usages, that, " when any
one died, they went on the housetop, and called out his name in a prolonged
note, ' Come back, So and So' After this, they filled the mouth (of the
deceased) with uncooked rice, and set forth as offerings to him packets of
uncooked flesh. They looked up to heaven, and buried the body in the earth. The
body and the animal soul go downwards; and the intelligent spirit is on high"
(S. B., XXVII., pp. 368, 369). Such were the belief and practice that came down
to Confucius, and they have been handed down to the present day. It may be
safely said that the teaching of the old Chinese books, on this subject, was
more full and explicit than any teaching about it that we find in the
Pentateuch.
But in what condition, and where, did the
souls or spirits of the departed exist?
For one thing, the good among them were and
are believed to be in heaven, in the presence of God. In the ancient history of
China, there is no name more famous than that of King Wan, the founder of the
Chan dynasty. He died in B. C. 1135, and was succeeded by his son FA, who
became sovereign of the whole nation in 1122. Another son, Tan, the duke of
Chan, celebrating the virtues of their father, thus sang of him :- The royal
Wan now rests on high,
In
glorious state above the sky.
Chan,
as a state, had long been known,
And
heaven's decree at last was shown.
Its
lords had won a famous name,
God
kinged them when the season came.
King
Wan ruled well when earth he trod,
Now
moves his spirit near to God.
(S. B., III., pp. 377, 378.)
In the same way do the sovereigns of China
speak at the present day of their forefathers. In the sacrificial canon of the
present dynasty for 1826, the concluding hymn or prayer of the reigning emperor
in the ancestral temple may be thus rendered:- “Now ye confront, now ye pass
by, Unbound by conditions of place Here ye ascend, there ye descend, Nor leave
of your movements a trace.
Still and deep is the chamber behind, Restful
and blessed its space Your spirits their home have in heaven; The shrines there
their tablets embrace.
A myriad years their course shall run, Nor
e'er our filial thoughts efface."
For another thing, the spirits of the departed
could dispense blessings on their posterity, if they pursued the course of
well-doing, and punish them if they did wrong;-subject, however, in both cases,
to the will of God.
I will confine myself to two cases, out of
many, in illustration of these points.
FA, or King Wu, the first king of Chan, as
mentioned above, fell very ill, in the second year of his reign. While the
other ministers were considering what should be done, the king's brother Tan
privately built three altars to their father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather, and offered to them a remarkable prayer, in nearly the
following words: " FA, your chief descendant, is dangerously ill. If you
three kings have in heaven the charge of watching over him, let me Tan be a substitute
for his person, and die in his stead. . . . He was appointed in the hall of God
to extend his aid to all the kingdom, and establish your descendants in this
lower world. O do not let that precious heaven-conferred appointment fall to
the ground, and our former kings will also have a perpetual reliance and
resort." In answer to this prayer, the king soon got better, and Tan
himself also was spared, to become, when King Wu did die, some years
afterwards, the guardian of his young son, and the great consolidator and
legislator of their new dynasty (The Sha King, Part V., Book vi.).
The other instance is of an earlier date and
from the same classic (Part IV., Book vii.), where there is an account of the
transference of the capital to a new site, by Pan-Kiln (B. C. 1401 to 1374),
the seventeenth king of the Shang dynasty. He was convinced of the necessity of
the measure, which was occasioned probably by one of the inundations of the
Yellow River, which have in the course of history made it to be called "
The Nation's Sorrow," and with the latest and a terrible occurrence of
which the government and people are now struggling. The people murmured and
groaned under the hardships of the movement, and were encouraged in their
dissatisfaction by many of the ministers. Pan Kang explains to them the reasons
for the measure, expostulates, exhorts, and threatens. If he were not to do as
he was doing, he would be failing in his duty, and his High Ancestor (the
founder of their dynasty) would send down punishment on him, and say, "
Why do you oppress my people? " To the offending ministers he especially
addressed himself. When he offered the great sacrifices to his predecessors,
their predecessors were present to share in them. Their fathers and ancestors
were asking his High Sovereign to inflict great punishments on their
descendants. Finally, he carries the removal through, and says, " God
being about to reward the virtue of his High Ancestor, and secure the good
order of the kingdom, I have made a lasting settlement in this new city."
This last instance shows that the dead were
believed to retain, in their spirit state, an interest in the things which had
occupied them when they were alive, and to exercise over them a guardian care.
We must suppose that the parties spoken of were happy in heaven. They had been
good on earth, and their spirits were happy above. But nothing is said about
any punishment of the bad after death; nothing about the place and. conditions
of their existence,-if they indeed exist. They are punished, but the punishment
ap-pears in the overthrow and ruin of their worldly estate.
Writing, on the account of Pan-Kang, nearly
twenty-five years ago, I said, " He held that good sovereigns continued to
have a happy existence in heaven, which their good ministers shared with them.
But he gives no hint, and there is none in any of the old classical books, of
what becomes of bad sovereigns and bad ministers after death, nor of the future
state of men in general. There is a heaven in them, but there is no hell, and
no purgatory. Their oracles are silent as to any doctrine of punishment in the
life after this. Their exhortations to well-doing, and their warnings against
evil-doing, are based on a reference to the will of God, and on the certainty
that in this life good will be rewarded and evil punished. I see no reason,
after so many more years of study in the literature of China, to modify those
statements, and the religion of China, even as vouched for by Confucius, must
be considered as unsatisfactory and defective. It was, I conceive, a feeling of
this, among thinking men, that led to the view that this world is the sphere of
retribution, both for good and bad, taking effect, if not in their own persons,
yet in those of their descendants. There is a distinct enunciation of this in
one of the appendixes to the Yi King (S. B., vol. xvi., p. 419): " The
family that accumulates goodness is sure to have superabundant happiness, and
the family that accumulates evil is sure to have superabundant misery."
The same teaching appears in the second commandment of our Decalogue; it
obtained in China before Confucius, and he was indebted to the recognition of
it, in its application to himself, by one of the ministers of Lu, for two of
his wealthiest disciples (Chinese Classics, vol. i., Prolegomena, pp. 63, 64).
An important and wholesome truth it is that the sins of parents are visited on
and in their children; but do the sinning parents themselves escape the curse?
It is in this form that the doctrine of future retribution now appears among
the literati, or professed followers of Confucius. They do not deny the
existence of the spirit after death, and they present their sacrifices or
offerings to the dead; but it is with little or no consideration of whether
they were good or bad in their life-time.
I will refer, in illustration of this, to the
sacrifice which the reigning sovereign offers, twice a year, to the sovereigns
of all the dynasties which have preceded the present. In the sacrificial canon
of 1826 (chapter x.), the sovereigns so sacrificed to, from Fotisi in the
thirty-fourth century B. C., down to the close of the Ming dynasty in A. D.
1643, amount to one hundred and eighty-eight. These, of course, are not nearly
all the sovereigns that have reigned during the period of five thousand years
or thereabouts. Who are admitted, and who excluded, depends on the reigning
emperor and the members of the Board of Rites. Shih Hwang Ti, of Ch'in, of
course does not appear, nor sovereigns who have caused the ruin of their dynasties.
Success seems to be the great consideration ensuring a place. The second and
greatest of the Manchu emperors laid it clown as a rule for his canon-makers,
that the characters of the rulers were not to be too critically examined into.
The prayer or address at the first offering runs thus:- I look upwards, and
think of all you sovereigns. Your dynasties rose in the revolutions of time; Ye
played the part of rulers and teachers, Ye established your governments with
toil, And thereby enlarged your inheritance. Ye maintained the cause of truth
unchanged. Wise and heroic like those before you, Your influence and teachings
continue still; Your merits and virtue are to be praised; I acknowledge them by
this grateful service. Be present, O spirits, in your tablets, And accept the
offerings.
At the end of the seventeenth chapter of the
canon there is a short notice of the sacrifices to be offered by the common
people to their ancestors, extending only to the great-great-grandfather at the
different terms of the year, and on the first day and full moon of every month.
But nowhere is there any mention of punishment in the future and spirit world.
On the duty of man in the relations of society, husband and wife, father and
son, elder brother and younger, ruler and subject, friend and friend, the
teaching of Confucius is admirable; but the sacrifices of the state religion, I
am afraid, tend to weaken it. Confucianists know nothing of punishment after
this life. I might by this one sentence have dismissed the subject on which I
had been asked to write. I thought, however, that it would come with greater
effect on my readers, after all the details which I have deemed it well to
submit to them.
It may be assumed as certain, that, at a very
early time, there was in China a system of what is called the Tao, different
from that preserved by Confucius,-a system in which a belief in the continued
existence of the spirits of the dead played a principal part. The name of Hwang
Ti (B. C. 2697-2598) is associated with it, but it is impossible, from the want
of historical documents, to tell what
his doctrine was, or to trace its subsequent development. There is just one
shadowy intimation in the Shu King (S. B., III., p. 257), and. in a passage of
the Narratives of the States (VI., 2, article 1), going back, perhaps, to the
twenty-fifth century B. C., of " Communications between heaven and earth,
and descents (of spirits)," of which the ancient rulers disapproved, and
which they took measures to rectify. We learn nothing on the subject from
Confucius, for " spiritual beings " was one of the four themes which
he excluded from his conversations with his disciples (Analects, VII., 20). It
is only when we come to Lao-tsze that we find the doctrine of the Tao set forth
in the Tao Teh King, in which, however, there is little or nothing of what can
be called religion.. The author evidently believed that his Tao or Way conduced
to the tranquillity of men and the prolongation of life. There are only a very
few passages that, have any bearing on the future life. The thirty-third
chapter concludes with the sentence, "He who dies and perishes not has
longevity." On this, Kumara-jiva, one of "the four suns of
Buddhism," who went to China in A. D. 401, says enigmatically, " To
die and yet not be dead may well be called longevity "; and we have a
longer exposition of it from Lu Nang-shih (A. D. 1042-1102): " The
exemption from change of Lieh-tsze, from death of Chwang-tsze, and from
extinction of the Buddhists, have all the same meaning as this sentence; that
the human body is like the covering of the caterpillar or the skin of the
snake; and that man occupies it but for a passing sojourn." In another
chapter, the last, Lao-tsze refers to the manes, saying that " when the
kingdom is governed according to the Tao, they will not manifest their energy
as spirits;-not that they have not that energy, but they will not exert it to
injure men."
The greatest writer of the Old Taoistic
school, after Lao-tsze, was Chwang-tsze (fourth century B. C.), but in his
works, much more voluminous than the Tao Teh King, there is as little
indication that Taoism had. yet become a religion. I will introduce, however,
three paragraphs here from his 18th Book as helping us to 577 understand the
amalgamation of Buddhism and Taoism, which took place at a subsequent period,
giving the system that form in reference to the subject of this essay, which it
has among millions of the Chinese people at the present day.
When Chwang-tsze's wife died, we read, "
Hui-tsze went to condole with him, and found him squatted on the ground,
drumming on the earthenware vessel (of ice), and singing. The visitor said, 'If
a wife have lived with her husband till their children are grown up and she is
old, when she then dies, if he do not wail for her, it is enough. When you go
on to drum on this vessel and sing, is it not an expressive demonstration (of
your unconcern)? ' Chwang-tsze replied, The case is not so. When she first
died, was it possible for me not to be touched with sadness, as other men are?
But I reflected on the time when she began to be, how there was then no
(movement of) life; how not only was there no movement of life, but there was
no (appearance of) form; how there was not only no appearance of form, but
there was no (symptom of) the (vital) breath. By some secret intermingling in
the chaotic obscurity, there came a change, and there was the vital breath;
another change, and there appeared the form; a (third) change, of the form, and
there was the (movement of) life. Now there had come a further change, which
had resulted in her death. These various changes had been like the procession
of the four seasons, spring, autumn, summer, and winter. There she lay,
stretched. out asleep in the great chamber (between heaven and earth). (It
occurred to me that), if I were to fall wailing for her, I should be showing
myself unacquainted with the appointed course (of things), and therefore I
stopped (in my demonstrations of grief).'" Such was the thought of the
philosophic Taoist on the death of his wife. Passing over a paragraph, we come
to the following: " Chwang-tsze, having gone to saw an empty skull,
bleached white, but retaining its shape. He touched it with his horse-switch,
and asked it, saying, Sir, was it through your excessive desire of life, and
neglect to deal with it in the proper way, that you were brought to this? or
was it that, in your service of a perishing state, you met your death from an
axe? or was it through your evil conduct, which reflected disgrace on your
parents and on your wife and children? or was it from your hard endurances
under cold and hunger? or was it that you came to the end of your term of
years, and so were brought to this?' Having thus spoken, he took the skull,
made a pillow of it, and went to sleep. At midnight, the skull appeared to him
in a dream, and said, 'All that you, sir, spoke to me, in 'such a rhetorical
style, had reference to the troubles in which this life involves men. But in
death there are none of those things. Do you wish to have- me tell you about
the dead? "I do,' said Chwang-tsze, and the skull went on: 'After death,
there are not (the distinctions of) ruler above and subject below, nor are
there the changes of the four seasons. There is no disquiet, and the lapse of
time is commensurate to us with the duration of heaven and earth. No king in
his court has greater enjoyment.' Chwang-tsze did not believe it, and said, 'If
I were to get the Ruler of our appointed course to restore your body to life,
with its bones, flesh, and skin, and to give you back your parents, your wife
and children, and your village acquaintances, would you like me to do so? ' The
skull stared angrily, knitted its brows, and said, ' How should I cast away the
enjoyment of a king in his court, and undertake again the toils of a life among
men? '" The above is one of Chwang-tzse's parabolic stories, but it shows
that the condition of the dead had been revolved by him, and the ideas about it
which sometimes passed through his mind.
The book concludes with the following
narrative: " Lieh-tsze (once) upon a journey took a meal by the roadside,
where he perceived a skull a hundred years old. Drawing aside the bushes (under
which it lay), he pointed to it, and said, There are only you and I who know
that there is neither life nor death (as men think of them). Do you indeed find
(in death) occasion for sorrow? Do indeed I find (in life) occasion for joy?
The seeds of things are minute, (floating) on the water, they form its green
579 and slimy surface. When this reaches where the soil and water meet, it
becomes (what we call) " the clothes of frogs and oysters." Growing
on mounds and. heights, it becomes the plantago-grass; this, when on manured
soil, becomes the ranunculus. The roots of the ranunculus become grubs, and its
leaves butterflies, the hsii. This butterfly is transformed into an insect,
which comes to life, in the ground where there had been a fire, with the
appearance of a skeleton, and is named the ch'ii-to. The ch'ii-to, after a
thousand days, changes into a bird, named kan-yii-kfi, the slime of which
becomes the sze-nai, and this again becomes the shih-lisis. The i-lo is
produced from the shih-hsi; the hwang-k'wang from the chifi-ya; and the man-jur
from the putrid ch'wan (insect). The yang-hsi (plant) uniting with an old
bamboo which has not for a long time sent forth shoots, there is produced the
ch'ing-ning (insect). The .ch'ing-ning produces the leopard; the leopard
produces the horse; .and the horse produces man. Man then again enters into the
machinery (of evolution), from which all things come forth (at birth) and into
which they enter (at death).' "
My readers will pronounce all this to be a
farrago of nonsense, .and I do not differ from them; but I adduce it to show
that the early Taoism had in it the idea of transformation, and that the body
was thus prepared for its acceptance of the Buddhist dogma of transmigration
or, as I prefer to call it, trans rotation of births. 'The whole of the strange
passage, and more of the same kind, is found in the works of Lieh-tsze (Book
I.), and Ernst Faber, the translator of Lieh-tsze, says on it, " Here is
the Darwinian hypothesis in a Chinese form! " I do not stay to inquire
whether it be so or not, having no other object in the quotation than what I
have just stated.
Centuries elapsed after Chwang-tsze, before
Taoism assumed the shape of a religion. The Chan dynasty passed away in B. C.
255, · . and, in that of Ch'in, which superseded it, we find the system rampant
in the belief of the "Fairy Isles " of the Eastern Ocean, where ..the
herb of immortality grew, and putting the emperor Shih Hwang 580 Ti in fierce
conflict with Confucianism. Passing on to the Han dynasty, it appears divided
into as many as thirty different schools, but all apparently united in a belief
in descents of spirits, in pursuing the processes of alchemy, and in
sublimating the body, by means of the elixir of life, till it is in a condition
to ascend on high without dying.
In A. D. 34, there was born a Chang Tao-ling,
who devoted himself to study and meditation, till at length he succeeded in
compounding " the great pill," or elixir, and, along with his wife,
when he was one hundred and twenty-three years old, ascended to heaven in
bright day. A descendant of his, in the fourth generation, is found residing at
the Lung-hii (dragon-tiger) mountain, in Chiang- Chang Tao-ling is represented
as the first patriarch of the Taoist system, and that dignity is enjoyed by one
of his descendants at the present day. There was an interruption, indeed, in
the line of the succession, in the fifth century, in 423, when a K'au
Ch'ien-Chih, by his intrigues, got himself appointed patriarch by the second
emperor of the Northern Wei dynasty. It appears, also, that this intruder was
the first to receive the patriarchal title of T'ien Shih, " Heavenly
Master," or " Master of Heaven," which was then carried back to
Tao-ling. The Confucianists make game of this title, but the "
heavenly," or " of heaven," in it, is to be understood in a
peculiar Taoistic sense.
In A. D. 748, the emperor Hsiian Tsung, of the
Sung dynasty, enacted that the dignity of patriarch should be held only by
descendants of Chang Tao-ling; and in 1016, the emperor Chiln Tsung, of the
Sung dynasty, conferred on the then patriarch a grant of the Lung Hu mountain,
and a large tract of ground around it, to be held forever by succeeding
patriarchs. This, then, is the seat of the Taoist patriarchate. The residence
of the patriarch is called T'ai Ch'ing Kung, " the Palace of Great
Purity." It is said that round about it there are thousands of jars in
rows, all tenanted by malevolent spirits which the patriarchs have shut up in
them; and the great business of the professors of Taoism is to guard the people
against such spirits, by means of their solemn services, and by amulets and
charms. This is the characteristic of the system at the present day. The fear
of spirits is now the nightmare of the China-man's life. Though we see them
not, hosts of them may be near us, seeking opportunity to inflict various
injuries. I quoted, above, a passage from the Tao Teh King, to the effect that
" when the kingdom was governed according to the Tao, the manes would not
exert their spiritual energy to injure men." Taoism seems to give the
proof itself that there is now little of the Tao in the empire. Millions and
millions of the people live in constant dread of the spiritual energy of their
manes. Anything wrong in the sites of their graves is supposed specially to
excite the anger of the dead, and the Taoist monks are called in to rectify the
error by their skill in geomancy, often receiving very large fees from the
distressed and trembling family.
But what is the teaching of the modern Taoism
about the future state of the dead, and, most of all, about future punishment?
To answer this question, I must bring up the influence on it of Buddhism. When
the two systems came together, they were attracted to each other by their
common opposition to Confucianism, and various other affinities. The better
organization of Buddhism, moreover, made Taoism feel its own deficiencies. The
Trinity of the " Precious ones " gave rise to that of the " Pure
ones," and the Sze or monasteries of Buddhism to the Kwan or monasteries
of Taoism. Above all, the doctrine of the trans rotation of births appeared in
a cruder and savage form, in the Taoist Courts of Purgatory, and the
repetition, apparently ad infinitum, of their tortures, when one trial and
another of them have failed to produce the desired reformation. Those courts
are supposed to be at the bottom of a great ocean, somewhere in the depths of
the earth, ten in number, through some or all of which everyone must pass, to
suffer their torments before they can be sent back to live again in seine other
form, unless, indeed, it be found, on his arrival at the first court, that he
has lived so well that " his spirit may be at once escorted, by dark-robed
boys, 582 to the realm of bliss and happiness in the west." Such fortunate
cases, however, are few and far between.
It is impossible-thus far at least I have
found it so-to ascertain exactly when the two systems became thus blended
together in their views about the future; after they first encountered, they
continued long in conflict, notwithstanding imperial attempts to amalgamate
them, each struggling to supplant the other in the imperial favour. For some
centuries, however, their mutual jealousy seems to have ceased, and I have
often seen their respective monks co-operating in the same service. Ordinary
Chinamen generally regard them, as to all intents and purposes, the same. I am
sure that many of the millions of Chinese carried, by foreign students, to the
credit of Buddhism, should be transferred to the side of Taoism.
When the Kan Ying Tien, or the book of
"Actions and their Recompenses," by an unknown author, probably of
the Sung dynasty, a Taoist work, though containing both Confucian and
Buddhistic elements, appeared, its teaching about future punishment was the old
doctrine of which I have already spoken under the views of the Confucianists:
" When the term of life is exhausted, death ensues. If at death there
still remain guilt unpunished, the judgment extends to the culprit's
posterity." But during the present dynasty one manifesto after another has
appeared, " for the admonition of the world," professing to make
known the horrors of the purgatorial courts, and the processes of their
administration. The revelation was first published by a Taoist called Tan
Ch'ih, who had himself, according to Mr. Wylie (Notes on Chinese Literature, p.
179), penetrated to the realm of hades, and brought back the account of what he
had seen. I have a collection of those manifestoes, varying from one another
more or less,-the last published in 1871. Mr. Herbert Giles, however, must have
met with one of still more recent date, of which he has given a translation in
an appendix to his Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (London, De La Rue
& Co., 1880), with some passages from which I will draw my account of
Taoist views to a conclusion.
In the preface, the Ruler of the Infernal
Regions is made, on a certain occasion, to say: "' My wish is to release
all souls, and I would wholly or partially remit the punishment of erring
shades, and give them life once more in one of the six paths [that is, one of
the six conditions of sentient existence, as Devas, Men, Asuras, beings in
hell, pretas, and animals; all Buddhistic phraseology]. But, alas! the wicked
are many, and the virtuous few. Nevertheless, the punishments in the dark
region are too severe, and require some modification." The judges of the
ten courts then deliberate as to what the modification should be. Their
decisions are submitted to the Ruler, and, being approved by him, he proceeds,
with the judges, to submit them finally to God. God also approves, and says,
" Good indeed! good, indeed! henceforth let all spirits take note of any
mortal who vows to lead a virtuous life, and, repenting, promises to sin no
more. Two punishments shall be remitted to him. And if, in addition to this, he
succeeds in doing five virtuous acts, then he shall escape all punishment, and
be born again in some happy state; if a woman, she shall be born as a man. But
more than five virtuous acts shall enable such a soul to obtain the salvation
of others and redeem wife and family from the tortures of hell."
Another passage from the preface, telling of
the deliberations of the ten judges, may be quoted: " Those who are
disloyal, unfilial, who commit suicide, take life, or disbelieve the doctrine
of cause and effect (that is, that the state of any one life is the result of behaviour
in a previous one), saying to themselves that when a man dies there is an end
of him, that when he has lost his skin (in Shakespearian phrase, shuffled off
this mortal coil '), he has already suffered the worst that can befall him,
that living men can be tortured, but no one ever saw a man's ghost in the
pillory, that after death all is unknown, etc., etc.,-truly these men do not
know that the body alone perishes, but the soul lives for ever and ever; and
that whatsoever evil they do in this life, the same will be done to them in the
life to come. All who commit such crimes are handed over to the everlasting
tortures of hell."
My readers have now a sufficient account of
the present views of the Taoists about future punishment. I will not attempt to
go into a description of the Courts of Purgatory. The wildest imagination of
the most cruel inquisitor never fashioned tortures so grotesquely cruel. And
all this to be repeated over and over, not necessarily issuing, as in Buddhism,
in the Nirvana, even if we suppose that to be absolute extinction, annihilation!
Where did Taoism, which has not shown a faculty of original invention,-where
did it get the idea of the everlasting hell?
I bring my paper to a close, with the
following incident. I was one day walking alone, across the country in the
interior of Canton province, when I overtook a stalwart peasant jogging along
with his hoe over his shoulder. Accommodating my pace to his, I entered into
conversation with him, and by and by asked what he thought would become of him
at death. "At death," he replied, " all is over; " but, on
continuing to talk with him, I found that he did not really think so, but was a
Taoist. When I pressed him further, he said, " Well, I'll tell You the
truth; I have not been a good man, and I expect to be sent into the world
again, as a dog or a horse! " The man was serious. Of course I endeavoured
to set forth to him Jesus and the resurrection, till our ways parted, and we
separated with mutual good wishes. I never saw him again.
We accept Christ’s words, " these shall
go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."
By Rev. A. H. Bawls, D.D., Seventh-Day
Baptist, Editor of the Outlook and Sabbath Quarterly, Plainfield, N. J.
THIS paper aims to state a belief, rather than
to detail the steps by which that belief is reached.
Metaphysically considered, life is indestructible.
It assumes many forms, but cannot cease to be. A man is personalized life, thus
becoming an entity in the realm of spiritual existences. The power' of choice
between right and wrong is an essential characteristic of this personalized
life. Through the exercise of this power, character is formed, and. destiny is
determined. The man, his character, and his influence thus become permanent
facts, and factors in the realm of existences and influences.
Man has a triple nature, or, rather,
personalized life expresses itself as spirit life, animal life, and material
body. The real, spiritual man, while on earth, resides in a material
dwelling-place, a " tabernacle," which we call the body. Life
precedes organization, in the development of this body. It is the life which
produces the organization by drawing matter together and constructing the
tabernacle. This is true of all organized matter. Thus science forbids the
theory that human life in any of its forms is the product of organization. In
plants, animals, and men, the life-germ precedes and produces the organization.
All material tabernacles are temporary. When their purpose is accomplished, the
life lets them go back to dust-" Then shall the dust return unto the earth
as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." The
counterpart of man's material body is seen in the organic life below him, where
the material form is the outward expression of the unseen, but real, life. The
analogy is further apparent in the fact that the unseen life of the plant
reappears after what we call death, life being preserved in the seed. This
gives even the plant continuous existence through successive stages. In a much
higher sense, man continues to exist whether in his temporary dwelling-place,
or after the earthly tabernacle is dissolved, and he enters into the "
house not made with hands."
Character and responsibility are associated
with the spiritual man, and not with his material body. All power to discern
concerning right and wrong rests with the spiritual. All choices are determined
by it. All actions are the fruit of its choices. If the hand performs a wrong
act, we hold the man responsible for the act, knowing that the hand is but his
servant. Hence, in judging of character, and in punishment for wrong-doing, God
deals with the man, and not with the physical tenement. Future retribution is
possible only on this conception of man's nature, responsibility, and continued
existence. The first basis, therefore, for a philosophical argument in support
of future punishment is man's inherent immortality; i.e., his continued
existence as an entity in the moral universe, whose destiny is determined by
his choices.
Philosophically considered, it is impossible
to annihilate life. Its changing forms of expression only prove its perdurable
nature. The fundamental conception of God-the author of all life-as the
Self-Existent, forbids the thought of annihilating life. Morally speaking, the
balance of the universe, the justice of God toward the individual, and toward
the race, are all destroyed, if we accept the possibility of annihilating the
man, who, as a distinct entity, has been permitted to establish a character, to
generate influences, and to become the recipient of results. If it were
logically possible to annihilate such an entity, the character already
established, and the influences set in motion, with their results, would
remain. All these must continue as everlasting verities, for which no one would
be responsible, if their author, the man, were removed. Neither would there be
any direct recipient of the effects which must constantly flow from choices and
actions already made by him. The theory which annihilates man after he has once
become a part of the moral universe contradicts the fundamental ideas of
justice, righteousness, and order which underlie God's government, and which
are demanded by all moral consciousness. We therefore believe the axiom, which
the Scriptures everywhere recognize without argument, that each man, from his
nature as a personalized, character-making entity, in the world of spiritual
existences, must continue through all time. Having entered upon existence, and
by his acts and influences become a part of the everlasting fabric of human
history and destiny, he cannot be withdrawn.
All punishment is resultant. It is the
fruitage of individual choice. While this is sometimes spoken of as though
inflicted directly by Jehovah, Judge of men, the deeper meaning of the
Scripture, the testimony of consciousness, and. the facts of experience, show
that God brings upon man the result of his choices, according to this law of
fruitage. Retribution, present or future, is not a given amount of punishment,
ab extra, for a given amount of wrongdoing, as in a commercial transaction;
much less is it an act of retaliation. It is a result inevitably produced by
wrong-doing, or, better still, by wrong choosing. The universal law, so tersely
told in Genesis, according to which each created thing produces " after
its kind," is absolutely true in the realm of human choices. This fact
forbids all "chopping of logic " over the question whether
punishment, be it greater or less in character or duration, can be justly
inflicted for a given amount of disobedience. All disobedience involves its own
punishment, as the seed involves the plant. Since no man can escape from
himself, each must carry with himself, wherever he exists, the fact and the
results of his choices. Such punishment is also the expression of divine
justice, and of God's hatred for sin.
We have already seen that responsibility is
attached to the man who chooses, and not to the body which does his bidding.
Therefore, even in this existence, physical punishment is only incidental.
After man leaves the body, all punishment must be immaterial,-fitted to the
spiritual existence, rather than to existence within the material environments
of his life on earth. This is axiomatic. Such a conclusion is not forbidden by
the fact that this truth must be conveyed to the human mind by figures of
speech which involve material representations. All thought is subject to this
law of materialization in language. This does not necessitate the illogical and
impossible notion of physical punishment in the future life.
Neither does this spiritual conception make
future punishment a myth. Even now, all experiences, whether of joy or sorrow,
more or less intense and real, as they touch the spiritual nature. That which
gives highest joy, or deepest grief, is wholly immaterial, touching the soul.
alone. Hence we discard the theory of physical punishment in the future life.
The gross conceptions concerning hell, borrowed from paganism, and exaggerated
by the ignorance of the Middle Ages, have no place in these years.
Future retribution must be intensely personal.
It is the result of personal decision which centres in the individual life
making the choice. Whatever influences may combine to induce a given choice,
the final determination, with its results, belongs only to him who makes it.
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This personal
nature of future punishment holds each man in the terrible grasp of his own
choices, and is not mitigated because many others suffer with him. That others
are miserable cannot remove the effects which abide with self-ruin.
Another most important consideration enters at
this point, viz., the universal tendency of human choice to repeat itself, and
to assume continuous and permanent action. We recognize this law in every
department of experience. In the simplest affairs of life, in the development
of intellect, in all forms of education, we are confronted by the fact, that,
having chosen, and begun to act in any given. direction, permanency of choice
and unavoidable repetition of action soon obtain. Parents and teachers hasten
the processes of education, lest the child become " too old to
learn." This is but another way of saying that if the repetition of
choices, which we call habit, and their crystallization, which we call
character, be not fixed in the right direction at an early period, they never
can become thus fixed. In all physical training, and all intellectual
education, this law is so imperative that early education and training
determine success or failure. The same truth is yet more clearly shown in moral
and spiritual experiences. Appalling as the fact may be, the trend of character
for all life is usually decided as early as the tenth year of childhood. The
fundamental choices and tendencies of men are but slightly modified after
twenty or twenty-five years of existence. This universal truth is recognized by
all people, acted upon in all ages, and has direct bearing upon the question of
future punishment. Whatever line of choice a man enters upon hardens rapidly
into permanency, and becomes the determining power throughout existence. No
problem connected with the justice of God can be more difficult of solution
than is the counterpart of this truth in common experience. Every teacher knows
that the child " who does not become an adept in spelling the English
language during the first twelve years of life will never become
proficient." Many teachers, struggling in vain against the fixedness of "bad
spelling " in the pupil of eighteen, and many men confronted by the shame
of repeated mistakes at fifty, have been led to question both the wisdom and
the justice of that law of intellectual development which compels a man to
become proficient in manufacturing words while he is in early childhood, or be
forever compelled to keep company with the Nemesis of poor orthography.
This simple illustration indicates the
universal law whereby the tendencies and choices of this life become the
tendencies and choices of all life.
To all intents and purposes, the immeasurable
is the everlasting. When we have reached the limits within which we can measure
the extent of influences and choices, when we have entered the realm of the
" Infinite," we are as helpless at its hither boundary, as at any
other point. That which our thought cannot grasp, nor our language express;
which stretches before us limitless and boundless, whether it be unmeasured
space, or unmeasured time, is practically endless, everlasting. Beyond this we
cannot go. All efforts to define the indefinable, to measure the immeasurable,
to compare the incomparable, only emphasize our weakness and ignorance. If,
following the line of hope or desire, one should say, " Although fixedness
of choice and permanency of character come rapidly in this stage of our
existence, and although men are hopelessly bound in the chains of bad choices
before they have grown to be gray-haired, may it not be possible that in the
life beyond some new law will be introduced that will give relief from this
fixedness, and set in motion influences that will compel to new and right
choices? " Such a question must forever remain unanswered, in this life.
Neither consciousness, nor logic, nor knowledge, nor experience can solve it.
A hope however eager, a wish however earnest,
a speculative theory concerning that which may be possibly probable, is not
sufficient ground for a practical faith. Such a foundation is worse than
shifting sand. The thing we know, and that which is taught by all experience,
is that human choices are rapidly fixed, and that their results are
unavoidable. The only relief which comes, even in this short existence, is
through the most blessed truth, that, whenever a soul, struggling against the
results of evil choices, determines by a new choice to enter the way of right,
divine forgiveness ratifies that choice, and removes the past with its guilt.
God supplements this forgiveness by the help and up leading influences of the
Holy Spirit, which conduct the soul along the pathway of newness of life, and
strengthening each right choice, by the same law of fixedness through
repetition, unto eternal life.
Universal consciousness proclaims that human
life, and human choices with their results, continue forever. The darkness of heathen
ignorance does not extinguish this consciousness, and the resultant belief that
wrong-doing will be punished hereafter. The crude and imperfect conceptions
which exist in the minds of the heathen concerning the character of future
punishment do not lessen the value of the argument from universal
consciousness. Neither can cultivated intellect, through speculative
philosophy, drown the voices of consciousness, and conscience, which combine to
compel faith in future existence, and future punishment.
That masterpiece of reasoning concerning
future punishment, Hamlet's Soliloquy, shows the best which philosophy can do,
when, crushed by the burden of this life, it would gladly escape to the next:- But
that the dread of something after death,
The
undiscovered country from whose borne No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And
makes us rather bear the ills we have, Than fly to those we know not of'?
Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all.
Even the perverted theology of the
Annihilationist, which by imperfect definitions builds the shadow of a faith
against man's inherent immortality, no sooner reaches its false conclusions,
than, like a man stifling in the smoke of a burning building, it rushes to the
light again, claiming a "glorious resurrection" unto immortality, for
all who do well, and eternal punishment in the final destruction of the wicked.
The consciousness that we are, and shall continue to be, after death, and that
punishment will follow all evildoing, clings to the human soul as did the blood
spot to the hand of Lady Macbeth; who, when all efforts to remove it failed,
must say:- Here's the smell of blood still;-all the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten
this
little hand. . .
What's done cannot be undone."
The Scriptures deal with the question of
future existence, and punishment, along the line of the facts noted above. They
summarize the results that spring from certain fundamental truths which are
accepted without argument or question. The Old Testament, fitted to the
childhood of the race, deals less with the future life than with the present.
The New Testament deals mainly with the future life and its interests. Christ
opened the doorway of the spiritual realm by coming hither from it, talking and
teaching familiarly concerning it, and openly returning to that realm. The New
Testament deals with man as temporarily housed in this earthly tabernacle. In
matters pertaining to character and responsibility, it deals wholly with the
spiritual choices of the individual. Christ approves or condemns the purpose of
the soul, and not outward acts. Righteousness and unrighteousness, purity and
impurity, salvation and condemnation, all pertain to man's spiritual being.
While Christ uses language with which the people were familiar, and which would
best convey to them so much of the deeper truth as they could understand, his
teachings give a more terrible meaning through spiritual analysis. The passages
which are supposed to bear upon the question of future punishment, directly or
indirectly, may be grouped as follows:-
1.
Passages which suggest or declare that salvation is full and free. Such are the
following: Luke, 19: 10; 1 Tim., 2: 4-6; 1 John, 2: 2; John, 3: 17; Acts, 2:
39; Matt., 16: 5; Luke, 14: 21. These passages reveal Christ as the mediator
between God and men, seeking that which is lost, giving himself a ransom for
many, and manifesting the mercy of God, and his desire for the salvation of all
sinners. They include Christ's commission, in which the Church is commanded to
preach these glad tidings to every creature. These passages present the love of
God and his redeeming grace in a glorious light. They indicate his patience,
and his anxiety to save. In this respect they sound the key-note of the gospel.
But,
whether considered separately, or as a representative group, both these and all
similar passages show that all advantages arising from this offered mercy are
based upon the acceptance of God's redeeming love, through the choice of the
individual. They also show that the messages are addressed to men in this life.
There is in them neither word nor hint of any application to the life beyond.
While they indicate what God offers to do, and what he commands us to do, they
show with equal plainness that he who refuses to accept the love of God as thus
expressed, and to obey his will as thus set forth, brings upon himself positive
ruin. The most gracious invitations of the gospel are powerless to save,
against the individual choice. Added to this are the repeated warnings,
throughout the New Testament, against delaying to accept God's mercy. The
conditions on which salvation is offered in these passages, viz., repentance
and faith, all involve choice and obedience on the part of the sinner. If these
offers of the gospel are to be repeated in the future life, there is nothing in
the manner in which they are here put forth to teach that fact, or to justify
us in building upon it.
2. A second group of passages, closely allied
to the foregoing, indicates the readiness of God to grant forgiveness and
salvation. It is claimed that this abounding love of God is too great to permit
future punishment, or to refuse the offers of salvation in the next world. The
following are representative passages in this group: Psalms, 3: 8-10; Luke, 6:
35, 36, also 7: 41-50; Rom., 5: 8, and others. These passages interpreted in
the light of their contexts, and the Scriptures in general, show that the
fullness and readiness of divine mercy are always associated with eternal
justice, and are offered according to the dictates of wisdom. Forgiveness is
never offered without conditions. Those conditions require repentance and
obedience on the part of those who are forgiven. The refusal to accept
forgiveness thus freely offered is openly condemned in many instances, and by
solemn implication it is always forbidden. There is no suggestion in any of
these passages that the offers extend beyond this world, or can be available to
any who will not accept them by compliance with the conditions.
3. Those who would weaken the truth concerning
future punishment, or turn it aside, offer certain passages as suggesting that
such punishment is limited, although it extends into the future. For example,
Christ warns men who fail to agree with the adversary while in the way with
him, that, being cast into prison, they shall not be liberated until they have
paid the uttermost farthing. This, and similar passages, using the facts and
similes with which the people were familiar, are rather meant to teach the
impossibility of salvation through any system of repayment, and therefore
enforce the necessity of salvation through faith, and the divine forgiveness.
It is also suggested, that, since Christ taught that some should be "
beaten with many stripes, and others with few," it is implied that those
beaten with few stripes may be at last released. On the contrary, these
illustrations show that there are grades in the character of human
responsibility which are measured by knowledge, ability, and opportunity.
Representative passages in this group are found in Matthew 5: 25, 26; Luke 15:
11-32; Psalms 103: 813, etc. These passages are usually associated with that
interpretation of the Greek word, and its derivatives, which seeks to make it
represent limited time. In John 17: 3, the term rendered " eternal,"
describes the quality of existence, rather than its duration. This is however a
figurative use, by which the state of the redeemed is described as life in the
highest, noblest, most expansive, and glorious sense. This use is not common,
and can be applied in but few instances. It may also be admitted that, in Rom.
16: 25 and Eph. 3: 9-11, we have a use of
in a somewhat measured sense; but when all has been said, the term
usually signifies unmeasured existence, sometimes, perhaps, measured, within
the unmeasured, the latter including the former. The exceptional use as noticed
above cannot set aside or weaken the general meaning of the term as it appears
in the New Testament, everlasting.
The passages thus far noticed are only claimed
as bringing " inferential " proof, or suggesting the possibility of
modification, or cessation of punishment, after dead? The much discussed
passage in 1 Peter 3: 18-20 is claimed as indicating that the gospel has been
offered to men in the other world. We are not called upon to explain all the
difficulties which this passage involves, but we venture the following
suggestions: The writer is drawing a parallel, by way of illustration, between
Christ's work through Noah, previous to his incarnation, and his work after his
incarnation; which work he left to his disciples. The evident aim was to
encourage believers in carrying forward Christ's work, through all difficulties
and trials. The writer evidently expected that the purification of the world by
fire was near at hand, hence the natural parallel between the historic
purification by water in the time of Noah, and the impending purification in
the time of those to whom he wrote. Such a lesson seems to be fairly taught by
the passage and its contexts. To make a passage so obscure the basis of a
" supposition," and to build a belief upon that supposition, partakes
of speculative dreams more than of solid truth. The credulity which could
wander thus far, discarding the deductions from philosophy and Scripture which
we have already presented in this paper, is too wild and visionary to be
dignified with the name of belief.
Another isolated passage, 1 Cor., 15: 29, is
adduced as indicating that Paul recognized some possible salvation after death,
which salvation was gained by the baptism of the living in behalf of the dead.
This, too, if it were a correct deduction from the passage, is too indefinite
to be made the foundation of a belief. It is too much like " drifting out
to sea on the splinter of a Greek accent." To us, this passage is not
difficult. Read in the light of certain ideas which prevailed in the
water-worship cult of the heathen world, Paul here makes an argument ad
hominem. He is discussing the resurrection of the dead. Those to whom he wrote
believed that the dead were conscious, and might be aided to salvation through
baptism on the part of their friends. He seizes upon this fact to emphasize the
clearer truth of the resurrection. As though he said: " You believe in
baptism for the dead, and in so doing acknowledge the fundamental truth on
which the doctrine of the resurrection rests." A parallel argument appears
in his discussion with the Athenians, where he appeals to the teachings of
their own poets as proof of the universal fatherhood of God. Thus viewed, this
passage is not difficult to understand, nor is it opposed to the doctrine of
future punishment, as it appears in the Scriptures.
Without entering further into the examination
of specific passages, which the limit of this paper forbids, we note one
important point which remains. God being just, every man " must have a
fair chance." This we fully believe. The objector says, "How can future
punishment be true, when so many do not have a fair chance here?" God only
can determine what a fair chance is, and we gladly leave it to him to decide
"who then can be saved." All just judgment is graduated in view of
light and opportunity. The waif born and bred in Baxter Street, or Farther
India, will not be judged by the light which glows at Princeton, or Andover.
Paul teaches this truth when he shows (Rom., 2) that those who have not the
revealed will of God, as in the Bible, do nevertheless know his will, and are
judged according to that knowledge. We gladly accept Peter's conclusion (Acts,
10: 35) that every man who fear-eth God and worketh righteousness is accepted
of him.
Mysteries are everywhere. It is but a step in
any direction to the boundaries of human experience. Our knowledge of the
future must come from the Scriptures, and from the revelations of truth in
consciousness. We cannot anticipate any revelations which God may, or may not,
make, when men enter the next world. We build no " air castles " on
what the Bible does not say, nor on the dreams of fancy concerning possible
probabilities. We make our wish and hope that all may find happiness an
incentive to earnest labour, that all may be led to choose the right, rather than
allow hope and wish to determine belief. We do not "split hairs "
over the length of eternity which none can measure, nor the boundaries of the
boundless. We trust the love, mercy, justice, and wisdom of God, to solve those
problems which human fingers touch only to tangle. We face the terrible
realities of life, and destiny, leaving with God what we cannot understand, and
trusting his mercy for salvation from the punishment which neither sophistry
nor speculation can avert. We accept Christ's words: " These shall go away
into punishment, but the righteous into life." Beyond that God knows.
The eternity of hell-torments is acknowledged
through- out scripture; no literal fire, worm, or brimstone, these words being
employed figuratively, to show the intensity of future punishment.
By Rev. DANIEL ALBRIGHT LONG, D.D., LL.D.,
President of Antioch College, Christian, Yellow Springs, 01110.
ALTHOUGH I am a member of the Christian Church
and President of the American Christian Convention of the United States and
Canada, I want it distinctly understood that I shall only attempt, in language
suited to the average reader, to give a few reasons for my individual belief.
The Bible is our creed. According to that momentous saying of the Saviour, so
wise that an angel may be instructed by it, and yet so simple that a child can
understand it, that " the tree is known by its fruit," the Christian
Church holds that a man is to be known by his life, and, therefore, that
Christian character, and not peculiar opinions about future re- 604 wards and
punishments, is the true test for Christian fellowship among men. Thus we are
led to withhold regard from dogmatic or polemic theology in the education of
youth, and bestow our confidence upon the acted religious life, rather than
upon the professed faith.
I will give my opinion, in part, on the
subject in hand, in a supposed conversation between wife and husband.
W. Do you think the preponderance of Scripture
is on the side of the eternity of bell-torments?
H. I really do not know. I incline to the
notion that the eternity of hell-torments is acknowledged throughout Scripture.
Do you not remember that it says the "fire of the damned will never be
extinguished, nor the worm die "?
W. And do you believe in literal fire, worms,
and brimstone, in hell?
H. Certainly not. These words are used
figuratively. I think the Scripture is decisive as to the principal punishment
consisting in a hopeless separation from God.
W What is the meaning of the words hades and Sheol.
I do not know. Prof. Campbell, of Aberdeen, Scotland, says, "As to the
word hades, which occurs in eleven places in the New Testament, and is rendered
hell in all, except one, where it is translated grave, . . . in my judgment, it
ought never, in Scripture, to be rendered hell, at least in the sense wherein
that word is now universally understood by Christians. In the Old Testament,
the corresponding word is Sheol. In translating that word the Seventy have
almost invariably used hades" (Is. 14: 9, seq., Luke, 16: 23, seq. See
Lowth, Lect. on Heb. Poetry, VII. Campbell, Prel., Diss. VI., pt. 2). But the
term hell is commonly applied to the place of punishment in the unseen world.
Jews, Mussulmans, and Christians have all depicted the horrors and the punishments
of hell, as their several fancies have conceived of it.
W. Where do you think the Jews supposed hell
to be?
H. Near the centre of the earth. They call it
"the deep " and destruction; they also term it " Gehenna,"
which signifies the valley of Hinnom, or the valley of the sons of Hinnom,
which was, as it were, the common sewer of Jerusalem, and the place where
children were sacrificed to Moloch.
W. Then, what is your opinion of the meaning
of the words, " the gates of hell," mentioned by our Saviour? (Matt.,
17: 18.)
H. I think they signify the power of hell, for
the Eastern people call the places of their princes gates.
W. Now, in regard to punishments after death,
do you not think it is time for the ministers and religious teachers of all
classes to stop talking about hell, hades, Sheol, and all that, and present the
love of God and his Son, with more light and sweetness to their people? It is
strange to me that tender-hearted men could teach that an all-merciful God
would punish any one after death.
H. Let us look a moment at the method of
teaching used by Christ. He certainly had opportunities of teaching that those
who went to the grave impenitent and unpardoned might obtain pardon hereafter.
Read what he says about the barren branch, the tares, the servant who hid his
lord's money. Against the foolish virgins " the door was shut." It is
the tender-hearted Christ who places the picture of the "gulf fixed,"
without bridge or cable, between Gehenna and Paradise. It may be that all men
will be saved. Yet I do not find a single passage recorded from the Saviour's
lips from which I am authorized to preach probation after death. Just suppose I
should say, " It was appointed unto man once to die, and after that the
probation." You would correct me at once, and say, " the
judgment." While the pious sagacity of the world is divided on this
subject, and many of the theistic evolutionists of the present day are seeking
to make the people regard future punishment as inconsistent with the goodness
of God, the fact remains that Christian consciousness and the Holy Scriptures
lead us to believe that we determine, in this world, what is to be our
condition in the next. Who is it that declares that " every idle word that
men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by
thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be
condemned"?
W. Why do you think the apostles said so
little about the intermediate state of the dead, and appeared to think the day
of judgment was so near at hand?
H. It appears to me that they regarded
character the most valuable thing they could present. Repentance and the pardon
of sin were more to be desired. So far as our destiny is now concerned, our
Judge is in reality at our door. In a few days we shall leave our children, and
our souls will leave our bodies. How true that death and the final judgment are
always near at hand I Yet, from the first chapter of the Old Testament to the
last chapter of the New, we never read of a single unrepenting man rising up
from torment to eternal happiness. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed two
thousand years before Christ appeared. Speaking of those who did not receive
his disciples, he said, " Verily I say unto you, it shall be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for
that city."
During those twenty centuries, the Sodomites
had remained un-forgiven. It may be that they have all been forgiven since, and
made perfectly happy. If so, the fact is not recorded in the Scriptures, and I
have no authority for preaching anything of the kind. John, the beloved
disciple, was, perhaps, just as good, as tender-hearted, and understood the
Scriptures about as well as any of our modern theologians. Now, if you will
turn to John 3: 36, you will read these words: "He that believeth on the
Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyed not the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God abides on him." Mark (10: 29) reminds us that we must
wean our minds from too much love of houses and lands "in this time,"
if we expect " in the world to come eternal life."
For the sake of argument, grant that all men
may have a probation,-that sinful men will change their minds, and obtain
forgiveness after death. Then you must be logical and say that good men have a
probation in which they may, if they so desire, deny Christ.
Prof. Edwards A. Park says, "Men say that
there is a mystery in the Bible doctrine of future punishment. There is a
deeper mystery in the doctrine of future pardon. It is easy to imagine that a
malefactor may feel remorse forever. It is not easy to imagine that throughout
eternity he will never feel compunction in the remembrance of his most cruel
sin. When the Apostle Paul reflects in heaven on the persecuting spirit which
he once indulged, and which is now completely forgiven, he can only solve the
mystery by saying, 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God! ' "* W. How can a man's probation end, until his character is
fixed?
H Have we not life and death set before us? I
am inclined to think a man's character is about fixed when he makes up his mind
to go in the way of death. The fearful thing about sin is that it appears to
perpetuate itself. It will do no good to keep talking about God's having no
governmental limitation to his executive clemency. What assurance have we that
a man who persists in sin, from day to clay, against the light of nature,
against conscience, against all that is pure and holy, will obtain pardon
hereafter?
W What will you say about little children?
They are not supposed to be moral agents. Will they not have a probation?
H. Baptized or unbaptized, I do not think they
need a probation. With intonations sweeter than an angel's whisper we hear the
words, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not."
W. Then, if little children, who are ignorant
of the gospel, shall be saved by a loving Saviour, why should not men in
distant lands be excused, and saved, who are without the Bible?
H. I incline to the view that those men who
have not rejected the gospel will be punished if they reject the law. Jews and
Gentiles all have the law of God, whether they have Bibles or not. It is out of
the question to think of all the millions of men, women, and little children in
Gentile lands going to endless punishment.
Those of us who with superior opportunities
violate God's commands and neglect to aid them may have them to rise in
judgment and condemn us. Yet we should be unjust to them if we did not remind
them that they would be punished if they violated the law written on their
consciences as by the finger of God. Read Romans 2: 14, 15, 16.
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law,
do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a
law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts,
their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while
accusing, or else excusing one another; in the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men, by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. If any are punished it
is not because God is either unjust or unkind.
W. Look at the revolution of opinion in regard
to physical science.
H. It is true that there have been great
revolutions of opinion in regard to physical science. The old geocentric
(Ptolemaic) theory, that made the earth the centre, was overthrown when the
heliocentric (Copernican) theory was adopted. Who will say that Jesus Christ
was not the centre of the Christian system yesterday-that he is not the centre
to-day-that he will not remain the centre forever?
Men have a " fearful looking for of
judgment "; but they would have no fear of judgment if the truth were not
found in man's moral nature. It is found, too, in every man's conscience.
There is no such thing in the Bible as "
eternal hope." The conscience of a guilty sinner is hopeless.
Eternal Justice, like Fate in the old poets,
which is even above Jupiter, announces her law with an iron indefectible
necessity, the ground of which we are unable to explore. Of this, examples:
Punishment, according to Horace, never leaves out of her sight the culprit who
stalks audaciously away before her, but limps unremittingly after him until she
overtakes him. Innocent blood cries for vengeance (Bible). "The notion of
ill-desert and perishableness," says Kant (Pralctische Vernunft, 151. Ed.
Rosenkranz), "is necessarily implied in the idea of voluntary
transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes that of happiness in all its
forms. For though he who inflicts punishment may, it is true, also have a
benevolent purpose to produce by the punishment some good effect upon the
criminal, yet the punishment must be justified, first of all, as pure and
simple requital and retribution: that is, as a kind of suffering that is
demanded by the law without any reference to its prospective beneficial
consequences; so that, even if no moral improvement and no personal advantage
should subsequently accrue to the criminal, he must acknowledge that justice
has been done to him, and that his experience is exactly conformed to his
conduct. In every instance of punishment, properly so called, justice is the
very first thing, and constitutes the essence of it. A benevolent purpose, and a
happy effect, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment; but the criminal
cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right to reckon upon it."
Dante's legend over the portal of hell is,
" All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Read Dr. Shedd's Endless
Punishment, p. 143, last lines. The word of God is, "Now is the accepted
time; now is the day of salvation " (2 Cor., 6:2). Hope is characteristic
of time and earth.
W. Do you not think that all fear of future
punishment is a mere superstition? Look at the account of Rhadamanthus.
H. You must remember that mankind have always
believed in future punishment by reason of their moral sense. Prominent men
have made war on the tenet in every age. Had it been a pure figment of the
imagination, a superstition, men would have gotten rid of it long ago. Why is
it that some new theologian does not take the field and try by an eloquent
oration, or an elaborate argument, to satisfy the people of the United States
that they Should not fear Rhadamanthus? This proves, beyond a doubt, the
firmness with which the belief in future punishment is intrenched in man's
moral constitution." With what majestic grandeur do the following words
flow forth from the lips of the pious and learned Dr. Shedd: "If there
really were no hell, absolute indifference toward the notion would long since
have been the mood of all mankind, and no arguments, either for or against it,
would be constructed " (Doctrine of Endless Punishment, chap. iii.).
Losing the soul.-There are some things which we
cannot buy back, losses which cannot be restored. The man who forges a
signature to a check may receive the money named on its face, but that money
will never buy back his lost innocence. Millions would not do it. Judas
Iscariot returned the thirty pieces of silver, but the unspeakable infamy of
the awful transaction was fixed forever. In all guilt there is this element of
hopelessness; a loss which we cannot restore, and, when God's great remedy is
neglected, the ruin becomes final. In addition to this ruin of guilt, which
renders the soul unworthy of the divine fellowship, the gospel also recognizes
a loss of spiritual faculty or power. The eye is a little spot, the vital point
of vision smaller still, but, if it receives a fatal hurt, all the light of the
universe is lost. The glory of the summer day, the beauty of mountains,
meadows, and brooks, the smiling faces and loving glances of friends, are all
blotted out. If the ear loses its hearing, all familiar voices, tender tones,
and sweet strains of music go with it. So, when a soul loses its spiritual
power, all is lost. Truth is gone, God is gone, heaven is gone, all is gone.
There is deep significance in the figures used to describe the soul lost in
sin: it is blind, deaf, a heart that perceives not, and the final habitation is
" outer darkness." How solemn, therefore, the Saviour's question:
"What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
"
The man who takes the Bible as his guide in
religion does not take an arbitrary dogma. He who comes to the foot of the
cross takes the position of a learner. To undertake to understand every-thing
in a moment would be for the novice to turn teacher. "The pages of the
Bible," says Prof. Fisher, "are like sheets written with invisible
ink, on which, when exposed to the heat, messages of love and warning come out
in bold, distinct characters. Doctrines of the Bible that seemed unintelligible
or repulsive are capable of assuming another aspect " (Faith and
Rationalism). And so, to quote the familiar words of Bacon, in The Advancement
of Learning, "we ought not to draw down and submit the mysteries of God to
our reason, but contrariwise to raise and advance our reason to the divine
truth."
That which is supported by the human
conscience is rational. The opponent of future punishment does not draw his
arguments from the words of Christ or from pure truth and reason. His
objections to future punishment are sentimental, and not ethical. He finds no
consolation in a guilty conscience, for that expects punishment. What is it
causes him to dread " the fearful," when reading Heb. 10: 27? "
The fearful looking-for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour
the adversaries." We are told that impenitent sinners " sorrow as
those who have no hope " (1 Thess., 4: 13). Will not the sinner's own
conscience " bear witness " and approve the sentence, " in the
day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ"? (Rom., 2:
16.) Dives is silent when reminded of the justice of his suffering. The pious
sagacity of those who framed the Westminster Larger Catechism caused them, with
all the evangelical creeds, to say, . . . " the wicked, upon clear
evidence and. full conviction of their own consciences, shall have the just
sentence of condemnation pronounced against them " (Ans. 89). But who
shall punish according to the degree of the crime? The solution of this
difficulty can only be found in supreme wisdom. The opinion of Blackstone
(Com., Book IV., ch. i.) ought to be as good on human and divine punishments as
that of most professors of theology. "The end, or final cause, of human
punishments is not atonement or expiation for the crime committed; for that
must be left to the just determination of the Supreme Being." A man is not
compelled to commit suicide. If, however, he kills himself, he cannot bring
himself to life again.
We are not forced to sin. If we sin, we
cannot, without God, get back to holiness of heart or to the place we were
before sinning. Think of the fearful moral bondage. Christ said,
"Whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin" (John, 8: 34). And is it
not true that " sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death "?
(James, 1:15.)
Judas went " to his own place "
(Acts, 1: 25). An impenitent persistent sinner prefers hell to heaven-and
though he may be miserable in hell, he would be still more so in heaven, if he
were forced to go there.
What says South, in regard to the burden and
anguish of a guilty conscience? Some " have clone violence to their own
lives, and so fled to hell as a sanctuary, and chose damnation as a
release."
Go to yonder dram-shop, and say to that
bloated father, My friend, let us leave this place of hunger, wretchedness,
disease, and death, and seek Christian society, where you will find plenty,
happiness, health, and life. He would say, "No." Unless the Divine
Spirit touched his heart, and he repented and forsook the evil, he would still
prefer the gambling brothel to the virtuous Christian home. If you were to bind
him and take him to church, and force him to hear the songs of praise for
redeeming love, he would not be happy. Force him to keep company with virtuous
men and women at all times, and his misery would only increase. Until his heart
and his heart's desires were changed, no force would make him happy. Man begins
his hell as soon as he begins to do and love the wrong. Sin and its slaves, or
Satan and his followers, " love darkness rather than light," hell
rather than heaven, " because their deeds are evil " (John, 3: 19).
What says history? Let us not stop our ears to
her warning voice. Take the history of morality and human civilization. What do
we find? " The age which is most reckless of law, and most vicious in
practice, is the age that has the loosest conception of penalty, and is the
most inimical to the doctrine of endless retribution " (Dr. Shedd's
Doctrine of Endless Punishment, chap. iii.).
A virtuous and religious generation adopts
sound ethics, and reverently believes that " the Judge of all the earth
will do right " (Gen., 18: 25); that God will not " call evil good,
and good evil, nor put darkness for light and light for darkness " (Is.,
5: 20); and that it is a deadly error to assert, with the sated and worn-out
sensualist: " All things come alike to all; there is one event to the
righteous and the wicked "(Eccl., 9: 2).
I believe that the idea of future punishment
is the most unwelcome of all the tenets of the Christian religion. You will
always find a growing disbelief in future punishment where the people deny the
divinity of Christ, or listen with approval to such infidels as speak of the
Bible as the carpenter's story of creation. "
says South, "is the only perpetual motion
which has yet been found out, and needs nothing but a beginning to keep it
incessantly going on."
Aristotle I regard as the greatest logician
among men. Read the seventh book of his Ethics, and observe how clearly he
distinguishes between strong will to wickedness and weak self-indulgence. The
condition of the former he regarded as worse than the latter. So I think that
the man who reads the Sermon on the Mount, and then sins against the moral law wilfully,
sins more determinedly than the man who " sins against the light of
nature." Read Dr. Shedd on Doctrine of Endless Punishment, and see if yon
do not agree with him, when he says, in substance, " future punishment
must have a foothold in the human reason, or it could not have maintained
itself against all the recoil and opposition which it elicits from the human
heart." Founded in ethics, in law, and in judicial reason, as well as
taught by the Author of Christianity, it was the prevailing opinion in the
Early Church that the punishment of the impenitent would be endless. Origen and
Clement took the position that " the punishments of the condemned are not
eternal, but only remedial; the Devil himself being capable of amelioration
" (Gieseler, I., 214). It is not necessary to quibble about hades, and Sheol,
the whole matter in a nut shell being this:
Is the suffering to which Christ sentences the
wicked for the purpose of educating and correcting the sinner, or is it for the
purpose of satisfying and vindicating God's law, which the sinner has broken?
Since the Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century, Annihilation-ism, Universalism, Restorationism, have all been taught.
No man can deny original sin, regeneration, and vicarious atonement without
being a Universalist. Suffering that is merely educational does not require a
crucified Saviour to release from it. But suffering that is judicial and
punitive can be forgiven the transgressor, by being inflicted upon a
substitute. During the last seventy-five years, the philosophy and theology of
Germany have given more encouragement to Universalism than all the world
beside. Rationalism is bitterly opposed to what it sneeringly calls "
evangelical truth." The anti-rationalistic theologians of Germany and the
United States who accept the idea of apostasy, incarnation, and redemption, and
yet depend on the teachings of Schleiermacher more than on the teachings of
Christ, to explain the doctrines of eschatology, are doing, perhaps, more to
spread the doctrine of Restorationism than is usually supposed. It is wonderful
to see how in any forms of Universalism these learned German theologians have
started. Take, for example, Nitzsch (Dogmatics, 219). He teaches
Restorationism. From his dogmatic and sweeping assertions, you would suppose
that Christ and his apostles never taught anything else. Yet lie cites only two
passages from the entire Bible to support his Restorationism, 1 Pet., 3:19, and
Heb., 11: 39, 40. And then he explains, "There are traces of a capacity in
another state of existence for comprehending salvation, and for a change and
purification of mind." And, further, he asserts, " It is the
apostolical view, that for those who were unable in this world to know Christ
and his truth and grace, there is a knowledge of the Redeemer in the other
state of existence which is never inoperative, but is either judicial or
quickening." Dorner (Christian Doctrine, III., 77) says, " The final
judgment can take place for none before the gospel has been so addressed to him
that free appropriation of the same was possible." In the same book he
says (IV., 416-428), after giving the arguments for and against endless
punishment: " We must be content with saying that the ultimate fate of
individuals, namely, whether all will attain the blessed goal or not, remains
veiled in mystery."
I am satisfied that some of the wisest and
best men and women believe and teach Universalism; but Christ says, of the
wicked, "These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous
into eternal life."
I believe that fire is a symbol for a doom
otherwise indescribable. I am glad to believe that theology is not the truth
itself, but the opinions of men about the truth. The Bible and the universe are
the repositories of truth. Theology, philosophy, and natural science are man's
interpretation of those facts, and must vary continually with his knowledge of
them. That knowledge is constantly advancing. So far the doctrine of eternal
retribution has held its way in spite of all the appeals to human sentiment. It
has passed into literature. It is from future punishment that the grand epic of
the sublime Milton derives its awful grandeur. Who that has studied
Shakespearean tragedies has failed to observe how they sound and stir the depths
of the soul, by their " delineation of guilt, intrinsic and eternal "?
And when I think that this idea of future punishment must be inwrought, by God,
into the human reason, and that the Judge of quick and dead taught the doctrine
of endless retribution (Matt., 25: 46; Mark, 9: 44; John, 6: 29; 2 Cor., 15:
25, 26), I cannot believe that the man who places his faith in the chance of
reformation after death can approach his grave with sins unrepented of in this
life, and not feel that Universalism has a " slender exegetical
basis."
Dear reader, do not think that we are urging
you to go to church, as you would go to an insurance agent, through fear of
future fire. I trust that the love of Christ constrains us. If we think
differently, we will think differently in love. Minds differ like faces, and
like everything which God has made and sin has marred. Let us cherish ' the
charitable hope that, when these thick fogs of time, looking through which we
so often misinterpret God's truth and misjudge each other, shall vanish at the
radiant appearing of that One who shall shed from his face the glorious
sunshine of heaven, the light of that countenance may be seen in the features
of our souls, forever transfigured by his glory.
The final judgment of Jesus Christ, and its
eternal consequences for all mankind.
By Professor CHRISTOPHER E. LUTIIARDT, D.D.,
Ph.D., University of Leipzig, Germany.
WHEN the Son of man shall come in his glory,
and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and
before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one
from another, as the shepherd separated the sheep from the goats: and he shall
set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King
say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: . . . for inasmuch
as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto
me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: .
. . inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me.
And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal
life (Matt., 25: 31-46). How often have we read and heard these words, how
often reasoned about them! But they appeal to us always with a new power. It is
not only their majestic poetry that stirs the imagination. Rather is it their
awful solemnity, which penetrates the spirit and will not release us from its
grasp. The words of this passage are perhaps the most majestic and powerful of
Scripture. And they are not merely poetry, but truth. For the mouth of the
Truth gave them utterance. And they comprehend in themselves a multitude of
single truths.
We select from this number the following: (1)
There is a final judgment, which passes upon all men, either to salvation or to
condemnation; (2) this judgment determines the fate of all men forever; (3) the
separation is effected according to conduct in this earthly life; (4) the
separation is effected by Christ and is, therefore, (5) made dependent upon
him. In accordance with this must we judge, (6) concerning the future judgment
of the heathen, and in general of those who in this life have not heard the
gospel of Christ. These propositions will form the subject-matter of the
following discussion.
1. There is a final judgment, which passes
upon all men, determining them to salvation or to condemnation.
It is indeed said: The history of the world is
the world's judgment. That is a half-truth. Divine judgments do in fact take
place in the present, in the lives of individuals and of peoples. The destinies
of men are not merely destinies; but in them are enacted ethical judgments of
God. And it belongs to the loftiest attainments of the soul to perceive, in the
course of the history of nations, the ways and works of divine justice. These,
however, are only single steps in the progress of the divine justice toward its
goal. These are not the judgment itself: they are only preparatory to it. For
much remains unsolved; in the present there is no unmixed result. The history
of the world is the world's judgment-if we choose to so speak-only because
there is a final judgment. For everything must be brought to its own end and
purpose. History is the great process between light and darkness, truth and
falsehood, justice and injustice. At the end, God will pronounce judgment,
justifying the one part, condemning the other. There is a judgment that is
final.
This judgment is the decision and consequently
the separation. It knows but one alternative; it is either-or; it has no middle
term. Tertium non dater. Men have but seldom the right to pronounce a
definitive final judgment upon men. For we cannot look into the depths of
souls. Appearances are deceptive. What is visible upon the surface may possibly
not be an expression of that which is beneath; and what is hid in the depths of
the soul may possibly be incapable of manifestation. Not our bodies only, our
souls also wear garments and go clothed in various vestments, in which they can
show themselves, but can also conceal themselves, so as to appear other than
they are. This world is a world of deceptions. We deceive even our own selves.
To know one's self, in reality to know one's self, is a rare art and rare
wisdom. For we are entangled in the affairs, operations, efforts of this world,
which easily impose upon us in regard to ourselves. At death we emerge from
this world. As in death the body by which we stand connected with this material
world disappears, the material world disappears also. As we forsake the body,
we forsake also the world of appearances and deceptions. Emerging from this
world, we enter the world of God, we pass from the world of appearance into the
world of truth. We shall stand naked before God, without the garments which
this world has wrapped about us. When we stand before God, it is in the
presence of One before whose eyes all things are naked and laid open (Heb.,
4:13). In the profoundest depth of every soul, none the less, a decision will
have taken place. However concealed and obscured, it will be inevitably
present. In the last analysis, we are all either for, or against, God. A middle
position is impossible. For though indeed there are in the material world
things indifferent; in the moral world of personality there is no indifference,
no neutrality, but only determinateness; only an either-or. But God looked upon
the heart, i.e., the most inward relation of the soul to himself. This most
inward decision of the soul for or against God corresponds, therefore, to that
last historical and actual decision and separation by God in the final
judgment.
The decision of God, therefore, in the final
judgment, will be either salvation or condemnation, and these only. For, in
exact accordance with the inward choice of the man, for or against God, will
the sentence stand for fellowship with God or rejection from him. " Come,
ye blessed," " Depart, ye cursed." There is no mean. "
Come,"-this is the sentence of salvation, for salvation is fellowship with
God. In it all is comprehended. There is no other and no higher blessedness.
For to be a man of God is the original destiny of man. This is now
accomplished. For to have attained his divinely ordained destiny makes man's
blessedness. To all, therefore, who attain blessedness, the blessedness is the
same; but the glory will be different. God will set some over much, others over
little. " One star differed from another in glory." But the
possibilities of these gradations are endless. "Depart,"-this is the
sentence of condemnation. For to be excluded from God's presence is the
greatest evil for man, because the contradiction of his destiny. For as created
by God, so are we also created for God. He is our life, light, and goal.
Excluded from God and the world of God, limited to one's own God-resisting will
and the instigator of it, Satan, and yet placed beyond the possibility of
actively employing this will-this is the fire that is not quenched and the worm
that dies not. This condemnation is the same for all; but its degrees will be
different for different individuals. For, according as more or less was given
to each one, will each suffer more or fewer stripes (Luke, 12: 47, 48). This is
the final judgment.
2. But
this judgment determines man's fate for eternity.
There is no more awful thought than that of
eternal damnation. When we reflect upon it, and plunge ourselves into it, it
makes the blood run cold. The mere thought seems insupportable. It is no
wonder, then, that attempts have been continually made to mitigate it. The
doctrine of apokatastasis, so-called, or restorationism, is well known. Down to
our own day it has been constantly reappearing in the Church. This is the
doctrine: At the end all things will come into harmony with God; for God shall
be all in all. Hence, not division, but union, must be the goal of all things;
in other words, all will finally attain to blessedness. The thought has
something attractive about it; we find it difficult to escape its fascination.
But it has Holy Scripture against it, for this speaks of an eternal perdition
in the same terms as of the eternal life. " Eternity " is the same in
both instances. What is true of the one eternity must be true of the other.
There is an " eternal fire," an " eternal punishment "
(Matt., 25: 41, 46), " a worm that dies not, a fire that is not quenched
" (Matt., 9: 48; Is., 66: 24), " and they shall be tormented day and
night for ever and ever " (Rev., 20:10). Ex inferno nulla redemptio is,
therefore, a saying of the Church. And.so it must be indeed. For what should
alter their condemnation? Either the love of God or the power of God. But the
love of God, as toward these, has reached an end, for it has exhausted itself,
and resigns its office to justice. And the power of God can accomplish nothing
against the human will. For in the sphere of personal and moral life the power
which compels must yield to the will which determines. Deus non cogit sed
trahit. God does not coerce, but draws and persuades the will. That is the
order of the moral world, which God himself has established as its law, in
which the power of God prevails, and by which he also distinguishes that sphere
from the material world. But the will of the wicked has declared itself against
God, and thereby has separated itself from him. But no man can attain to
blessedness against his will. There is, then, no apokatastasis, no final
restoration of all men. But this dual issue is still comprehended in the unity
of God's will. For God is holy love. He cannot deny himself.
"Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his throne " (Ps.,
89: 15; 97: 2).
Or men have endeavoured to avoid this, thought
by means of the doctrine of conditional immortality, so-called, or the doctrine
of soul-annihilation,-that the souls of the damned finally wear themselves out
and cease to be. Originated by German philosophers and philosophical
theologians, this theory has been especially advanced in recent times among the
theological circles of England and France. But the word of Scripture concerning
the eternity of damnation contradicts this theory also, and the essential
attributes of human personality refute it. For material things and forms may
indeed be dissolved and perish, but personality is a life comprehended in
itself, a proper selfhood which cannot be dissolved and cannot be annihilated.
Hence, the final judgment decides man's fate forever.
3. The sentence of God is pronounced according
to human conduct in the bodily life.
It is appointed unto men once to die, and
after this cometh judgment (Heb., 9: 27). This word of Scripture means, that,
with death, the function of the earthly life is completed, so that the man now
comes before the tribunal of God; that that whereunto this life is ordained is
not continued after this life, but that in this life in the body, the relation
toward God, in accordance with which .the man is some time to be judged, is
inwardly determined. We have not to wait for another period, or to put off to
it, with specious hopes; but here our future fate is inwardly decided,
according as we have placed ourselves in relation to God, for him, or against
him. For this life in the body is hereunto appointed. Here, in the body, the
voices of God appeal to us, from within and without, which call us to him, that
we should turn to him and be his own. Here, in this world, and in the bodily
life, is the time of our probation, which we must recognize before it is too
late. This is the constant, indisputable doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. We
shall one day be judged according to the deeds done in the body (2 Cor., 5:
10). The apostle does not defer this to the time after death, but speaks only
of the time before death; to this he limits the norm of our future judgment. We
too, then, must limit ourselves to it. From passages such as Matt. 12: 32, and
the like, nothing can be shown to the contrary. For when our Lord denies
forgiveness for both this life and that to come, it is simply a denial of it in
toto which is meant, and not the suggestion of a possibility of a change of
mind, or anything of the kind, for the time after death. We should be depriving
this bodily life of the decisive significance which belongs to it, if we set up
beside it a second period, a time after death, so that to this period after
death might be assigned the same function and significance as to the bodily
life here on earth. In the case of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke, 16: 19,
seq.), the contrasted destinies of the future were determined at the time of
death; and just because the present bodily life is decisive, does the rich man
in torment request that a special warning and admonition may be granted to his
brethren upon earth. This present life is the scene of God's revelation of
grace, and of men's willingness or unwillingness to put it to the proof. Now is
the time of sowing, then the time of reaping (Gal., 6: 7). We have no right to
extend the time of sowing beyond this life, into the time after death. This
present world is the field upon which the seed is scattered, and where it is
decided whether or no it will bear fruit, whether the growth is of wheat or
tares, etc., as the parables of the Lord teach in Matt. 13: 3, seq. If,
according to the teaching of Holy Writ, the judgment takes place "
according to the deeds "-where else shall these deeds be accomplished,
save here on earth? Only- here on earth is there opportunity and possibility of
feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, etc., and,
in general, of all deeds of kindness. After death, all occasion and possibility
disappear. For if, at death, the world and the body forsake us together, then
we pass at death from the world of activity into the world of tranquillity and
rest, and cease our employments. For the body is the organ of all activity. We
are placed, then, by death, beyond the sphere of activity. The opinion that
departed spirits may also possess the power, or capacity, to make known their
presence by all kinds of actions pertaining to life, the opinion which
conceives their condition as altogether according to the analogy of the present
life, is erroneous. The condition after death is not a copy of the bodily life,
but of quite a different sort; for it is bodiless. But the body was created for
us by God as the organ for our conscious activity. Without the body, no deed of
man is performed. The case of angels cannot be cited to the contrary. For these
spirits were created by God to be the powers of the spiritual world. Man,
however, is not an angel, neither does he become an angel at death. He belongs
in a different category of God's creatures. He is, and remains, man, i.e., a
combination of body and soul. At death, an essential change takes place in him,
inasmuch as the body disappears, and therewith the possibility of activity. He
enters into rest. Accordingly, at death, all action ceases. Therefore must the
standard of the judgment be taken from the relation to God in this life. Hence,
the Scriptures, throughout, designate this temporal bodily life as a gracious
respite. As the Lord weeps over Jerusalem, because it knew not the day of its visitation
(Luke, 19: 44), so must we posit for every individual, that he have also a time
of visitation, when the Lord is here made known to him. This it is which
imparts to the word of preaching here upon earth its deeply solemn
significance, and to the admonition to repentance its impressive weight. "
To-day, if ye will hear his voice " (Heb., 3: 7; 4: 7); this " to-day
" is decisive, i.e., the time upon earth. "Behold, now is the
accepted time, now is the clay of salvation " (2 Cor., 6: 2). "
To-day," not to-morrow, i.e., after death; "now," not in the
future, i.e., in the intermediate state. To this we must hold, if we allow
ourselves to be guided by the Scriptures, and not by our own speculations. The
contrary doctrine is a suggestion of false hopes. It destroys the seriousness
of this life, and the responsibility for our conduct-the preaching of the
gospel included. For from us, to whom is intrusted the preaching of it here on
earth, will the Lord require the souls dependent on it, not from supposed
future preachers in Hades.
Doubtless, the condition entered upon at death
is not the final one. The last decision will not be pronounced till the
judgment at the end of the world. Then will the sentence of God be uttered,
which determines the fate for eternity. It is nevertheless a decision which
takes place at death. For if in the depth of the soul men separate themselves,
here upon earth, on the lines of their relation to God, at death they enter the
corresponding condition-either for or against God; and, since the time after
death is a time of waiting, it must be a waiting for that final sentence whose
kind will be determined by that choice which had inwardly been accomplished in
the earthly life: either a blessed waiting with Christ for the glorious
manifestation of Christ and of the children of God, or a fearful looking-for of
judgment and of the fiery indignation of God. The sentence of judgment and its
future is already anticipated in the condition after death. Christ will only,
in his own time, give it reality for eternity. Hence, the judicial decision of
God is determined according to man's conduct in the bodily life. This is the
third proposition.
4. The fourth proposition, suggested by the
words placed at the head of the discussion, is, that Jesus Christ will hold the
final judgment. So the Church has taught, with one voice, according to the
unquestionable testimony of Scripture.
The Son of man shall sit upon the throne of
his glory, and shall gather before him all peoples, to utter the sentence of
eternity. Purposely is the term used, " the Son of man "; for is it
no other than he who became man, in whom humanity should find its destination
and the history of the race its goal. All previous history, with its judgments,
only looks forward to this goal of all history.
In it the ways of God unite. But it is he who
became man, Jesus Christ, who will hold in his grasp this goal, and will give
it reality. For this reason, Paul, in his address from the Areopagus at Athens,
declares, that God "hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the
world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained " (Acts-, 17: 31).
A man is to judge humanity, and none other than the Son of man, who is the goal
of its history and the realization of its destiny. This is the witness of Jesus
concerning himself. When we plunge ourselves into the thought, there is indeed
something overwhelming in it, that this man Jesus, even while upon earth he
went to and fro, a man among men, acted among his disciples the part of a human
teacher, stood before the Sanhedrin as a criminal, should yet designate himself
as judge of the world, and the throne of divine majesty as his future judgment
seat. Here must we lay aside all ordinary standards of philosophical judgment.
Only as more than human, could he so speak, because he was the eternal Son of
the Father, and hence was lifted above all human and cosmic limitations; but,
on the other hand, had entered into humanity, in order to comprehend it in
himself and to bring it to its final purpose and goal.
But if in this fashion he stands over against
humanity as its judge, there must be also a relation of humanity to him, by
which it is fitted and adapted to be the object of his judgment. Humanity must
have been before appointed for him, so that he might enter it as its
consummation. Since he calls to him all that are weary and heavy-laden, that
they may find in him refreshment and rest for their souls (Matt., 11: 28,
seq.), he therein designates himself as the end and aim of every human soul.
Hence we are all, from the beginning, created with regard to him. True, it is
elsewhere stated that we are created for God. "Tu nos fecisti ad te,"
says Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions. No word can be truer than
this. But here is meant the God of revelation, who has condescended to be the
God of men. He is this through his Son, the mediator of his revelation and the
manifestation of his nature.
Therefore we are created for God in Christ,
that is unto Christ. " All things have been created through him and unto
him " (Col., 1: 16), not merely through him, but " unto him,"
the former because the latter. Therewith must be posited a relation of mankind,
and consequently of the world, in their creation, to Christ. For the creation
stands in connection with Christ, and every relation of men to God
creature-wise, whether of consent or of rebellion, positive or negative, is
impliedly by mediation; it is therefore a relation to Christ, even though
unconsciously to the man. To this end, accordingly, did Christ become man, to bring
to historical actuality this relation already laid down, impliedly, in the
creation. That which now is actually imparted by Christ the Redeemer-the right
relation of man to God-this is announced to the world since his time, in the
gospel, in order that men may declare themselves for or against it, and Jesus
Christ, he who became man, will give expression to this at the judgment day,
and will thereupon determine the endless fate of men. For this reason, Paul, in
those words of the address on Areopagus, connects the two, the judgment by
Jesus Christ and conduct toward him in repentance and faith; " the times
of ignorance God overlooked; but now he commanded men that they should all
everywhere repent: inasmuch as he hath appointed a day, in the which he will
judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he
bath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead
" (Acts, 17: 30, 31). The times of ignorance are those in which men knew
nothing of Christ, hence of ignorance that they had been created unto him and
must find their salvation in him. These times of ignorance must now give way to
the times of knowledge,-knowledge that in Christ our goal is presented, so that
we may and can yield to him suitable conduct, by repentance and faith, by the
renunciation of our present condition of sin in opposition to and exclusion
from God, and by obediently turning to God in Christ. In this proposition,
accordingly, that we shall be judged by Christ, there is implied at the same
time the further one.
5. That we shall be judged in accordance with
our conduct toward Christ.
This also is a doctrine which pervades all
Scripture. Not conduct in general, not ordinary morality. and immorality, not
conduct toward men, forms the standard of the judgment Christ will hold, but
conduct as toward himself. For, although Jesus appears to mention, in that
judgment-parable of Matt. 25, only general works of mercy, it is those shown or
refused to him, which are meant as such. " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye did it, or did it not, to me."
Consequently, they are works which presuppose faith in him, and which are the
proper outworking of this faith, hence an acknowledgment of Christ. This is the
uniform sense of Christ's words: whosoever confesses him before men, him will
he also confess before his heavenly Father; whoso denies him before men, him
will he also deny before his heavenly Father, and before the angels of God, in
the judgment (Matt., 10: 32; Luke, 12: 8, 9). This thought is continually
returning in varied forms. " Whoso is ashamed of him, of him will. Christ
also be ashamed, when he shall come-to judgment-in his glory and the glory of
his Father and of his angels " (Luke, 9: 26). The eternal judgment
attaches to him. " Whoso loses his life for his sake shall save it; whoso
will save it with denial of Christ, the same shall lose it" (Luke, 9: 24;
17: 33). And if the earlier gospels are already full of this thought, still
more the gospel of John. In the strongest terms, continually repeated, does the
Lord here make eternal life dependent on himself and on faith in him. "He
that believeth on him hath eternal life; he that believeth not is
condemned." We should need to eliminate half the gospel to refute this. In
short, it is as the aged Simeon says of the child Jesus, " He is set for
the falling and rising up of many." As this was true for Israel, then, so
now it has become true for all the world. And the apostles make known the truth
thus applicable to all the world. "There is salvation in no other, and no
other name is given among men whereby they may be saved, but the name of Jesus
" (Acts, 4: 12).
That this is the universal teaching of the
apostles, needs no proof. Jesus, accordingly, is alone the Door that gives
admittance to the kingdom of heaven. It has no other door, and there is no
other way of salvation. Christ alone opened and no man shuts; he alone shuts
and no man opened (Rev., 1: 7). For this very reason, because there is
salvation in Christ and in no other, must the word of Christ be preached to the
whole world; and for this the apostles went forth into the world, with the
witness of Christ, to preach the gospel to men, that they might believe on him
and be saved. "For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be
saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how
shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and. how shall they hear
without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent? "
(Rom., 10: 13-15.) Therefore it is the first duty of the commonwealth of Jesus
to be his messengers to men, to assist them to faith by the word, that they may
be saved in the day of judgment.
6. But how is it with those who have heard
nothing of Christ in the bodily life?
That is the question which involuntarily
arises from the foregoing considerations, and which is the last question which
concerns us, but also the most difficult; since it is that for the answering of
which the Scriptures afford us the most scanty data. It is easy to see why the
Scriptures leave us so much in the dark on this point. When the disciples, on
one occasion, asked the Lord, Are there many or few that be saved? he gave them
the answer: " Strive to enter in by the narrow door " (Luke, 13: 24
f.). The Lord will not answer questions prompted by the mere desire of
knowledge, still less those of curiosity, but those of a desire for salvation.
And we are not to be anxious for other men, but to take thought for the
salvation of our own souls. This we must keep constantly before our eyes. But,
nevertheless, various questions press upon us, to which we may attempt to give
an answer. Only 632 we must not forget that self-distrustfulness befits us, and
must not crave more of an answer than the Lord has seen fit to give us in the
Scriptures.
On the one hand, it is positively established,
as we have seen, that no one cometh unto the Father but by the Son; that Christ
alone is the Door of the kingdom of heaven, and no man has salvation save
through Christ. If, then, salvation is dependent on Christ alone, all are lost
who have remained apart from Christ. On this account, the conclusion would seem
inevitable that the heathen, who have heard nothing of Christ, must fall a prey
to eternal damnation. But, on the other hand, it is equally positive that God
in Christ "loved the world" (John, 3: 16), i.e., not merely a select
number of men, but the race in its entirety; that it is his will that all men
should be saved (1 Tim., 2: 4); that the grace of God in Christ is manifested
to all (1 Tim., 2: 11); that God desired not the death of any, but that all
should come to repentance (2 Pet., 3: 9); and many like passages. But
repentance and faith presuppose the preaching of Christ. Hence the conclusion
seems to be drawn, unavoidably, that God has taken care that the gospel also
should cone to all men, in order that faith in Christ might thereby be made
possible to them. To this, however, the actual condition of things seems
opposed. We might now content ourselves with this, that we leave the matter in
God's hands, as to how he will bring into harmony these two apparently
contradictory requirements. And ultimately this must indeed be our final word:
God will find ways and means to extend the possibility of faith even to those
who, so far as we see, were in life deprived of it. But there may be answers to
these questions which should be rebuked, because they contradict other
well-established truths of Holy Writ. Hence, we cannot entirely avoid the
necessity of entering upon these questions, if only to reach fixed conclusions
on the negative side, contenting ourselves, on the positive side, with
probabilities and possibilities.
The old Lutheran dogmatists solved this
problem simply with their doctrine that, just as from Adam down to Noah's time
the preaching of salvation was made known to all men then living, so in the
days of the apostles also, the gospel was preached throughout the whole world.
A few apostolic statements appear to convey this meaning, such as Rom. 1: 5;
10: 18, and the like. But Rom. 1: 5 only indicates the world-wide nature of the
task whose accomplishment belonged to the future, and which was not fulfilled
in the time of Paul. Rom. 10: 18, also, quoting the 19th Psalm, speaks only of
the universal nature of the gospel, but does not say that the preaching has
come to all and every land. This was in reality not the case. All lands were
not as yet so much as discovered! Which apostle must we hold. to have visited
Australia or America? Neither were postal relations with these countries
established. Hence, it cannot be the meaning, that these countries were offered
at that time the gospel, but rejected it, and that later generations bore the
guilt of their predecessors. Further, we are not concerned with the heathen
alone. In Christendom also, and among the Jews, far too many individuals grow
to maturity and die without having heard of Christ, or having received a
suitable message about him. All these, accordingly, have failed totally of the
possibility of believing on Christ. But Christ is set "for their falling
and rising up." Hence, he alone is condemned who believed not though
baying opportunity to believe. " Ye would not,"-this word of the Lord
to Jerusalem must be true also of those who are judged. " Ye would
not;" not, "Ye could not."
There is, indeed, a general witness of God to
the heathen also. "He hath not left himself without witness," says
Paul, even of the heathen, whom God left to their own devices (Acts, 14: 17),
and on the Areopagiis at Athens he designates as the purpose of the divine
control and guidance of the career of the nations, " that they should seek
God, if haply they might feel after him and find him " (Acts, 17: 27). By
means of this general witness of God, and its effect in man's inward nature, a
relation to God is made possible. And we shall be driven to acknowledge that
even among 634 those who are far from God, there is still a difference: seine
are nearer, some farther from him. And the Lord himself recognizes this
difference. When he says that Tyre and Sidon would have repented if such signs
had been done among them as in Chorazin and Bethsaida, and even that in the
judgment it shall be more tolerable for Sodom than for Capernaum (Matt., 11:
21, 24), he implies that there is a difference among those who stand outside
the kingdom of God, and that many even would have had faith, hence would have
been saved, if the gospel had been offered to them.
A separation does accordingly take place, in
consequence of the general manifestation of God, in the inward relation to him,
and its result is that some are drawn nearer to the kingdom of God, others
remain further removed from it. But even the former are not really participants
in it. For Christ alone opens the door; Christ alone leads to the Father.
Doubtless, there is at the same time, in this general relation to God, a
coincident inclination toward Christ. For Christ is, as we saw, the end and aim
of the creation, and hence also of that relation to God which is made possible
and actual by the means of the creation. But the principle remains,
nevertheless, unshaken: only faith in Christ rescues from perdition. Should not
then the opportunity for this faith be offered to men?
It has become a favourite proposition, with
the newer theologians, that the descent of Christ to Hades, the descensus ad
inferos, is the offering of this opportunity. The two Petrine passages, 1 Pet.,
3: 19, and 4: 6, have been advanced, in many treatises and discussions, in
support of this opinion,-in my view erroneously. " Being put to death in
the flesh "-so it reads concerning Christ, in the first passage-" but
quickened in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in
prison, which a foretime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God
waited," etc. That this does not refer to the preaching which Noah performed
a foretime to his own generation, before the flood, stands, in spite of the
authority of an Augustine, among others, in no need of proof. Too much
testifies against it. On the contrary, it is said of Jesus Christ, that his
bodily life came to an end in death, but thereupon a new life in the spirit
began,-not in and by his death, but after his death, for he was "
quickened,"-hence after he had died; and, furthermore, for a life which
was altogether in the power of the spirit, in distinction from the preceding
life "in the weakness of the flesh." This is not the condition of the
soul in death, for that is not a condition of "being quickened," but
the revivification which Christ experienced, when he took his life again "
to himself (John, 10:18), in his quickened and glorified body, before his
resurrection. In such spirit life as this, hence with the glorified body, he
went and made proclamation to the primeval world, which perished in the flood,
and had since remained under sentence, by the manifestation of himself. It is
an act of Christ's. As in the case of men, so also in that of Christ who became
man, the condition of death was a state of rest, because bodiless (cf. Acts, 2:
24). Not until the quickening again of the body did a time of renewed activity
begin for him,-in the now glorified body,-first in the underworld, toward those
under sentence from the primeval world. For their salvation? But, in that case,
why should it be noticed with such emphasis, that God had previously waited in
long-suffering, and waited in vain, that they should turn from their
disobedience of unbelief to the obedience of faith? Here, prominence is given
to their guilt, hence it is the ground of judgment, not of salvation, which is
exhibited.
To the believers of the old dispensation,
Christ's glorification and resurrection, i.e., the complete realization of
redemption, became the way of life, as the guarded statement in Matt. 27:52,
seq., allows us to infer; to the unbelievers, he was manifested as their future
judge. Only concerning the believers and the unbelievers does the Scripture
here give us any information. Concerning those who had not as yet received any
gospel, it tells us nothing. We have, therefore, hardly the right to make use
of this statement, to answer the question of the salvation or perdition of the
heathen.
If we do this, we quit the ground of Scripture
and follow our own speculations. But the edifice of Christian doctrine cannot
be reared with hypotheses.
The second passage, 1 Pet., 4: 6, speaks to this
effect, that they also who have died before Christ's second coming do not on
this account escape the judgment of Christ. For he comes to judge " the
quick and the dead," i.e., both such as he shall find alive, and such as
he shall find dead, at his coming. " For to this end was the gospel
preached even to [the] dead " (dead men, 4ot "the dead," in the
original); that is, to such as Christ at his coming shall find dead-for so,
according to the connection with the preceding, must we interpret the word here
also-" that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live
according to God in the spirit": that is, for this very purpose the gospel
is preached to men in the body, that, inasmuch as they are human, the universal
death-sentence might indeed be passed upon them, but that they might
nevertheless have opportunity, according to the inward man, to become partakers
of the life in God. If they reject this opportunity, they become amenable to
the judgment of Christ, and do not in any way escape it on the ground of having
died before the second. coming of Christ. Hence, there is nothing here of a
preaching in the underworld; in general, no teaching is given us concerning the
dead and their fate, only of the persecutors of Christ and the Christians it is
said, they do not escape their judgment. For they have rejected the opportunity
to win the life of God. This information the apostle gives to the Christians to
whom he writes, concerning the experiences they will have to meet in the world,
that they may not allow themselves to be confused or led astray thereby. These
passages, accordingly, afford us no solution of the problem of the fate of
those who in this life have learned nothing of Christ. The Scriptures tell us
nothing, in direct language, about it. We are therefore thrown back upon
inferences which may be drawn upon the -basis of Scriptural statements.
It is certain, then, that God desires the
salvation of all men; that this salvation again is dependent upon Christ,
whence we may conclude that God will offer the opportunity of this salvation to
all men. It is further certain, that God, by means of the creation and of
created life, does indeed bear witness of himself to all men, and that, in
accordance with men's attitude toward this witness, an inward difference is
brought about by it, among them, in consequence of which some can come nearer
to the kingdom of God, but that these do not thereby become members of the
kingdom, and are not partakers of salvation, since this is conditioned on
faith, and consequently on the testimony of Christ. Beyond this, the Scriptures
tell us nothing of any preaching to those who in life have received no
knowledge of the gospel, communicated to them after death in the underworld.
It is further in contradiction to the
stand-point of Holy Scripture in other passages, that such actions as
repentance, conversion, faith, etc., can take place in the state of death, i.e.,
the bodiless condition. On the other hand, the Scriptures do teach that one day
all peoples shall be gathered before the judgment seat of Christ, and that all
men's hearts shall be revealed before him, and hence that they must all stand
in the presence of the glorified Christ, in the resurrection body.
We may therefore infer that the hitherto
unconscious preparation for Christ, or for repulsion from him, as it has taken
place through the inward attitude toward the revelation of God in nature and
the testimony of conscience, will now develop into conscious faith or unbelief,
and, by reason of it, the cry, "Come," or " Depart," will
be experienced.
But let us remember that this is no statement
of the Scriptures, but mere probable inference from such statements; that we
must, accordingly, speak on this matter with caution and diffidence; that, on
the other hand, we may leave it to God with complete confidence: he will make
both his love and justice glorious, and justify them in the sight of all men.
And, finally, let us remember the word of the Lord, "Strive to enter in at
the narrow door" (Luke, 13:
We have the word of life. Hence, whether the
heathen be excused or not, we at least should have no excuse if we rejected
this word, but would be just victims of a future judgment. May God forbid it!
Amen.
Future punishment, which is eternal, is not so
much an external infliction as it is an inward condition.
By Rev. R. S. MAC-ARTHUR, D.D., Pastor
of the Calvary Baptist Church, New York, N. Y.
THEOLOGICAL discussions have their fashions.
Particular periods, from the earliest ages of the Church, have been marked by
the discussion of certain doctrines. In this way great epochs have been made
in' the kingdom of God. A generation ago, theological discussions gathered in a
marked manner about the person of Christ. They were, in large part,
distinctively Christo-centric. That was the period in which appeared so many of
the Lives of Christ. Then there came, in connection with the work of
distinguished evangelists, a period when the personality of the Holy Spirit was
the leading topic of remark; in connection also with the work of these
evangelists, there followed a series of sermons, lectures, and volumes on the
premillennial reign of Christ. These various views led to modifications of
opinions previously held, and the resultant is gathered up into the body of
generally accepted doctrines. All the doctrines thus carefully examined at any
period may become afterward the subject of occasional comments, and, in process
of time, they will receive a careful re-discussion.
The whole subject of eschatology has long
needed a thorough re-examination; and many influences have recently combined to
make at this time a re-examination necessary and inevitable. All true
Christians seek only the truth. If they have been in error, they are the first
to rejoice in discovering their mistake. They welcome truth from whatever
quarter it comes, and by whomsoever it is brought. They rejoice in all the new
light which breaks forth from God's Word; they simply wish to know that it is
true light; that it is from the divine source of all light and wisdom. In this
spirit, we enter on the discussion of the subject indicated at the head of this
chapter. We are conscious of the great solemnity which attaches to the subject.
In no light spirit should it be examined; in no spirit of mere controversy
should it be discussed. The inquiry leads to solemn realities in human
experience; and one may well uncover his head, and tread with reverent feet on
ground so sacred. When the destiny of immortal souls is involved no man may
speak lightly. When God's Word is the only authoritative guide, every man ought
to pursue his investigations with submission and yet with assurance.
The term retribution, in its general meaning,
is the act of retribution, or of repayment. In its special meaning it is reward
or punishment, as given at the general judgment. It thus applies, in the broad
sense, either to the righteous or to the wicked. All forms of language are
employed in Scripture in the effort to describe the incomprehensible
blessedness of the righteous. Our Lord calls the place of their abode a house
with many mansions. Again, the conception is enlarged, and it is called "a
city which bath foundations, whose builder and maker is God " (Hebrews,
11: 10). With this figure in mind, a gorgeous description is given in Rev.
21:2, of the New Jerusalem: "And I, John, saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband." It is, furthermore, a city with its River of the Water of
Life, its twelve manner of fruits, and its leaves for the healing of the
nations. Its blessedness is such that human faculties are utterly incapable of
conceiving its incomparable splendours (1 Cor., 2: 9). Some of its elements,
however, we can understand. The redeemed shall enjoy the beatific vision of
Jesus Christ; they shall enjoy the revealment of many mysteries of grace and
providence; they shall experience the ineffable and eternal love of God; they
shall know an indescribable enlargement of all their faculties of knowing and
loving God; they shall come into a noble fellowship with martyrs, apostles,
patriarchs, and heavenly intelligences of various ranks and degrees; and they
shall enjoy the entire absence of all sin and sorrow, and an ever-increasing
knowledge and love of all that is great, good, and holy. The heart becomes
mute, in wonder and adoration, at the thought of the glory to be revealed. The
imagination almost reels in the presence of these marvellous possibilities. We
have now no faculties capable of taking in these thoughts in all their symmetry
and glory. We bide our time, assured that the day will dawn when we shall awake
in Christ's likeness, and be satisfied with the beatific vision.
But the term retribution is especially and
technically applied to the wicked; it refers to their punishment, rather than
to the reward which the righteous shall receive. Three lines of argument may be
followed, to show that the wicked shall receive the due reward, the just
punishment, of their deeds.
In the first place, the punishment of the
wicked is implied in the universality of the belief that, in the future life,
men shall receive their due recompense for the evil done in this life. This
universal belief is a strong presumption in favour of the truth of that which
is thus so universally believed. However much nations have differed, as to many
things, in their religions beliefs, they have agreed with a remarkable
unanimity as to the certainty and severity of the punishment of the wicked in
the life to come. This is true, also, of nations widely differing in their
civilization, their culture, and their character; nations widely separated in
their place of residence, and broadly distinguished in their philosophies and
religions. The Greeks and the Romans bad their judges and their penalties.
Minos and Rhadamanthus filled an important sphere in their eschatological
system. When we turn to the Egyptians, and other Eastern nations, we see that
they entertained the belief that the actions of the dead, while they were in
life, are solemnly weighed in the balance before Osiris; they firmly held to
the view that the future condition of men was determined by the preponderance
of good or evil in this life. In their paintings and papyri, there are striking
illustrations of judgment scenes conducted on these principles. When we turn to
the great Indian religions, we find these principles carried out into minute
details, with every possible degree of reward and punishment. Indeed, an
examination into the religious beliefs of almost all nations discovers a system
of rewards and punishments in the future life, as an inseparable part of their
theological beliefs. We might specify these views with considerable
amplification, but the general statement will not be contradicted. We do not
give it as conclusive proof, but as strong presumptive evidence, of the truth
of the opinion that is so generally held. It seems difficult to account for its
existence on any other hypothesis than that of its truth. The student of general
history, and especially of comparative religions, finds this belief everywhere.
He is bound to account for it. How shall he account for it? What is its origin?
It is easier to explain its existence on the supposition of its truth, than to
account for its existence if we deny its truth.
A second ground for belief in future
retribution is the relation between character and destiny. Habits tend to
become fixed; this fixity of habit becomes character. Character is the
distinctive mark which thought and act make upon the soul. Character is the sum
of qualities which make the man; it is the man. Character is eternal. All that
we know of natural law leads us to believe that the habits now observed will
continue to reproduce themselves, making the character formed more intense,
except some other force come in to counteract the law now in operation. These
habits must continue, and this character must become more fixed, in all future
ages. This is a solemn thought. There is a moral gravitation, as truly as natural
gravitation; a law of gravitation in the moral, as in the natural, world. Like
seeks like. We read in Acts 4: 23, of Peter and John, "And being let go,
they went to their own company."
This statement suggests a great law. Bring a
group of men from the country into the city, and let them loose on the corner
of any one of our streets, and they will go unto their own company. One man
will go to a saloon, another to haunts of deeper shame, another to the house of
God. The law of moral gravitation irresistibly leads to these goals. Let that
company of men be brought to the confines of life, and then loosed, and the
same law will hold. It is said, in Acts 1: 25, that Judas by transgression fell
from his ministry and apostleship " that he might go to his own place
"; every man will go to his own place. Heaven is a place; this we are
distinctly told, but it is a condition as well. The same remark will apply to
hell. Future punishment is not so much an external infliction as it is an
inward condition. You cannot punish an innocent man. This the omnipotent God
cannot do. Put a man who loves God anywhere, and he will have something of
heaven; put a man who hates God anywhere, and he will have much of hell. Empty
hell to-day into heaven, and it would not be heaven for the wretched creatures
who might thus be summarily introduced. Milton makes Satan say, " Which
way I fly is hell; myself am hell."
It is the truth. Men must have heaven within
them here and now, before they can ever be in heaven here and hereafter. Men go
into hell, hereafter, because hell has already gone into them here. God sends
no man into perdition. The election of God is unto life; the election of death
is voluntarily made by men. Hell was prepared, not for men, but for the Devil
and his angels. We say it deliberately, no man will ever go to hell but the man
who wishes to go, who is determined to go, who has elected to go; every man
will go where, in his deepest nature, he wants to go. We have only to analyse a
man's deepest choices, to discover whither he is going. If he selects a course
of life whose end is death, he selects hell as the inevitable goal of such a
life. While he persists in so living, God cannot keep him out of perdition.
When the end comes, that man goes downward, as certainly as the man who loves
God goes upward. God cannot keep a man who loves him out of heaven; that man
has heaven wherever he is, whatever he does, and through whatever experiences
he may pass. God is not arbitrary, fickle, and capricious. He will not violate the
laws according to which he has created us. Christ will not break down the
heart's door; he will stand for a time and knock, and if any one will open he
will enter, but not otherwise.
These principles have their application to the
question of the future of the heathen. Men ask, if a heathen is found who
always did the best he could, and always walked in the light he had, will such
a man be lost? We could reply by saying, show us such a heathen, and we might
give you our answer. There never was such a heathen on this or any other
planet; there never was such a man on God's footstool, whether heathen or
nominal Christian. But we will not take refuge under this impossibility. If we
rightly understand what punishment means, we shall not think of the heathen as
suffering equally with a rejecter of Christ and his salvation. No man can be
punished for rejecting a Saviour of whom he never heard; the very idea of
punishment includes, at its heart, the thought of remorse. Where there is no
sense of guilt, there cannot be, in its deepest sense, an experience of
punishment. There may be suffering, and intense suffering, but not the sense of
punishment, which is inseparably associated with the consciousness of guilt.
The heathen will suffer much. They will lose indescribably, but they 47 will
not suffer, they cannot suffer, as men must who have neglected greater
opportunities, and who have turned their back upon brighter light. The same
principle may be applied to them as shall be applied to all others; all men
must suffer punishment according to their guilt. The man who had great
opportunities, and who mis-improved them, must suffer greatly; the man who knew
his Master's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes; the man
who knew it not, and did it not, with but few stripes. The man who lived under
law must be judged according to the law; the man who knew no law shall be
judged by other standards. The general principle, therefore, holds, that
punishment comes, not as the result of an arbitrary enactment, but as the
inevitable consequence of the violation of moral laws eternal as God and
universal as gravitation. It is a kindness, therefore, in God, to shut up in
the blackness of darkness, men who hate him, and who would be a thousand-fold
more wretched in his presence than they are in the prison-house of woe. There
are men who would be wretched in a prayer-meeting to-day. The sweeter its
songs, the tenderer its spirit, the more conspicuous the presence of the
Master, the more intense would their wretchedness be. Transfer such men to
heaven, and. they would pray for the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them,
to hide them from the face of Him that sits upon the throne. A man of this
stamp is forming a character which is treasuring up wrath against him, at the
day of wrath, for his own soul.
These laws of God sweep through the universe.
If we put ourselves in line with them, they will bear us into the region of
peace with God here, a peace which deepens and sweetens and heightens until
earth gives place to heaven, faith to sight, and prayer to praise. If, on the
contrary, we oppose these laws, we do not break them, but they break us. They
move on in their resistless march and glorious majesty, ripening our character
for evil, until all the angelic within us is transformed to the satanic, and
until we become fit only for hell.
The third argument is found in the direct and
indirect teachings of the Word of God on this solemn and momentous subject.
Here human wisdom cannot speak with authority. The contents of the problem are
too vast for human expression or conception. What God, in the vast reach of his
government into all space and time, may include as right and just, not even
angelic intellect may fully decide. To the Word of God we must make our final
appeal. Let it be true, though all human reasonings be false. To the law and
the testimony we turn with confidence and comfort. By this authority we must
now decide; by this authority we are ourselves to be judged. We believe that
the Word of God clearly teaches that the wicked are to be excluded from the
presence and favour of God; that they are to suffer because of the unrestrained
dominion of their sinful natures; that they shall experience the fearful
accusations of remorse; and that they shall suffer from the ever-growing evil
of their environment. Their state is described in the Word of God under many
and terrible figures of speech. In Matthew 8: 12, it is spoken of as outer
darkness, in 25: 41, it is described as eternal fire, in 25: 46, as eternal
punishment; in Mark 3: 29, it is eternal sin; in Romans 2: 5, it is the wrath
of God; in 2 Thess. 1: 9, it is eternal destruction from the face of the Lord;
in Rev. 21: 8, it is the second death, and in 9: 2, 11, it is the bottomless
pit. These statements are symbolical and figurative. But why are these terrible
symbols and figures chosen? Manifestly because they express the truth better
than any other symbols and figures which could be chosen. The thing symbolized
is ever greater, not less, than the symbol. We do not understand our Lord to
speak of literal fire. Literal fire could act only on material bodies, but the
Devil and his angels have not such bodies, and yet we are told that they are to
suffer the torments of eternal fire. Neither do we suppose that streets of gold
and gates of pearl constitute the essential elements of heaven, but they are
symbols of the purity of heart and life, and the glory of the environment, of
its blessed inhabitants. In like manner, the material descriptions of hell are
the best pictures of the unutterable wretchedness of its guilty subjects.
Christ is the embodiment of truth. He cannot, for a moment, misrepresent the
essential truth which he intends to teach by the figure of speech which he
employs. If any other figure of speech would, with equal accuracy, express his
thought, that figure of speech he doubtless would have employed. There must
always be a relation between the outward condition and the inward character.
All sin tends toward suffering; all spiritual depravity tends to physical
deformity. Diseases of the body are often the result of crimes of the soul;
physical pains testify to spiritual crimes. We speak of hell as a place, but
its essential elements, as we have already implied, are found in the inward
conditions and not the outward circumstances. The external and material
description is the reflection of the internal and spiritual condition.
Some, however, suppose that this future
punishment consists in annihilation. The word- punishment (kolasis)
etymologically means a cutting off. Eternal punishment, therefore, according to
the view of some, is an eternal cutting off; but it has been well remarked that
the word had lost, in practical application, its strictly etymological
significance. We find the word in Matthew 25: 46, as we shall hereafter have
occasion to remark; the only other passage where it is found in the New
Testament is 1 John 4: 18, where it is translated in the 'Old Version
"fear bath torment." We see by its use here that the idea of cutting
off is excluded. If we study carefully the account of man's creation, we shall
see that his soul was made in the image of God, and that it partakes of God's
immortality. When God breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a
living soul, he partook of the immortality of the Creator himself. Those who
teach what has been called " conditional immortality " use words of
Scripture in an utterly unworthy sense. To say that life means simply continued
existence, and death the cessation of such existence, is to use words without
any conception of their true meaning in the Scriptures. To assume that when
eternal death is threatened annihilation is declared, is to rob the Word of God
of its glory, and language of its true significance. We know that the world is
to be burned up; but we know also that combustion is not annihilation. There is
no evidence in the Word of God, and there is equally no evidence in human
experience, that any substance can really be annihilated. The forces which
operate in creation may cease, but their cessation is not their annihilation.
Scientists, in various ways, have conclusively taught us that no force is ever
lost. We may say, indeed, that God who created can destroy; but we are not now
speaking of his power, but of his methods and purposes. Does he destroy?
Neither in his words, nor in his works, do we learn that it is his purpose
really to destroy anything which he has created. In no instance are we
warranted in saying that God will ever destroy a human soul. He certainly does
not destroy Satan. Nowhere are we taught that death is a cessation of being.
Annihilation, furthermore, is contradictory to all the passages of Scripture
which represent punishment as eternal. If the soul be annihilated, it cannot
continue to be punished. What has ceased to be, cannot continue to be the
subject of God's wrath. To speak of this cessation of being as in itself i
punishment is at variance with all right use of language. Annihilation is also
contradictory to all the passages of Scripture which speak of degrees in future
punishment. That there are degrees in future punishment is plain from many
passages of God's Word. In illustration of this statement, we need refer only
to Luke 12: 47, 48; · Romans 2: 5, 6; 2 Cor. 5: 10; Rev. 2: 23; 18:5, 6. The
truth here taught is also in perfect harmony with our own deepest convictions
of right and wrong. We cannot but conceive that God will deal with men, in the
life to come, according to the deeds clone in the life that now is. If a soul
were annihilated, then these teachings of God's Word, and the inferences of our
own reasoning, would be incorrect. Then, indeed, God's justice might be
impeached, because the greater the sin which any man had committed, the less
would be his punishment in the life to come; for, according to this reasoning,
his powers would the more speedily become weakened as the result of his sin,
and they. would the speedier be extinguished.
According to this reasoning, we might expect
that Satan, long ere this, would have been annihilated; but, instead, there is
reason to believe that his cunning and his wickedness are increasing. It may be
that the continuance of sin furnishes God an opportunity for continually
displaying his holiness and manifesting his power.
We do not find that the Word of God anywhere
gives the promise of a new probation, or final restoration, for the wicked,
after death. All students of the New Testament, or of contemporaneous.
literature, must admit that the Jews, both under the old dispensation and the
new, believed in the perpetuity of the punishment of the wicked. Nowhere do we
find our Lord or his apostles refuting that doctrine. Many other doctrines they
did refute; but nowhere did they utter one word inconsistent with this
teaching. The statement by Farrar, " that the Jews in our Lord's time did
not believe Gehenna to be a place of eternal punishment, and that his hearers
would understand him according to the common view, unless he said the
contrary," is manifestly an incorrect statement. Edersheim, and other
authorities, according to Dr. Broadus, " make it manifest that the great
Jewish schools, about the time of our Lord, did believe in Gehenna as a place
of perpetual punishment for some persons." A careful study of such
passages in Scripture as Eph. 1:10 and Col. 1: 20 can be satisfactorily
explained without accepting the idea of the restoration of all men at any
period of the future. What is meant by the " all," who are to be
reconciled to God, in these passages? Certainly not all things, in the sense of
the whole universe; nor all fallen rational creatures; but, as Dr. Hodge
suggests, the all is the all spoken of in the context, i.e., the whole body of
the people of God, all the subjects of redemption.
Restorationists, in their appeal to Rom. 5:
18, fall into grievous errors of exegesis, when they teach that, as all men are
condemned for Adam's offense, so all men, irrespective of character, are
justified because of Christ's righteousness. They give, substantially, the same
interpretation to 1 Cor. 15: 22, but any unprejudiced student of these passages
must see that the " all " is limited by the context. It is " the
all who are in Adam, that die; and the all who are in Christ, that are made
alive." These passages decide nothing in favour of the view of the
Restorationists. They must be understood in harmony with the general drift of
Scripture. A similar remark will apply to 1 Cor. 15: 22. In 1 Tim. 2: 4, the
word thelei simply teaches that God delights not in the death of any, and not
that he purposes that all men shall certainly be saved. Similar views of the
teaching of other passages, which are sometimes quoted by Restorationists, can
be fully substantiated. They foretold the triumph of right and truth, and not
the deliverance of all men from the consequences of their sin; they promise
harmony in the universe of God, and not the restoration of men who are
suffering the just reward of their evil deeds. The parable of the rich man and
Lazarus clearly contradicts the idea of a future probation. The penalty is
endured; the gulf is fixed. The rich man does not even ask for any favours for
himself, but only for his brethren, who are still on the earth. Other passages
show clearly that, while there is a joyous resurrection for those who have done
good, there is only a resurrection of condemnation for those who have done
evil.
The day of probation may be over even in this
life. So far from extending it into the life that is to come, it may not
continue even unto the end of the life that now is. Even under the law of
nature, men may be given over "unto a reprobate mind." Most men seem
ready to admit that, while men continue to sin in the life to come, they must
continue to suffer. What reason has any man for supposing that the time will
ever come when the lost shall not sin? All that we know of the tendency of
existing laws leads us to believe that they will continue to exist, and that
character shall become more and more established. In this life, men continue to
sin, in spite of every possible motive to the contrary. What motive can God use
in the life to come, that has not been used in the life that now is? There can
be no second Redeemer. There can be no other Calvary. The Spirit cannot more
tenderly and powerfully strive with men than he strives now. It is true, as Dr.
Strong in the chapter on eschatology, in his Systematic Theology, page 591, has
suggested, that " if the doctrine of the unlimited ability of the human
will be a true one, then restoration in the future world is possible. Clement
and Origen founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment. If
will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will may act
independently of all character and motive, there can be no objective certainty
that the lost will remain sinful. In short, there can be no finality, even to
God's allotments, nor is any last judgment possible. Upon this view,
regeneration and conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they
are to-day." But Dr. Strong very properly teaches, in this connection,
that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as well as unlimited
freedom to turn to God. Continuance in evil is certainly far more probable than
any form of restoration.
If men determinedly refuse here and now to bow
down to the authority of Jesus Christ and to live lives of purity, what
possible influence can turn them from sin in the life that is to come? We know
that the sinful soul becomes constantly more fully the slave of its own sinful
tendencies. Habit continues to solidify into character; it tends constantly to
perpetuate and reproduce itself. No motive that God brings to bear here breaks
down this tendency to evil. Does any man suppose that the sufferings of hell
will be more potent than the wooing of God's Spirit, the promise of God's Word,
and the sufferings of God's Son? We all know that pain, in itself, has no power
to change character. The sufferings of the lost, except some special influence
of the Divine Spirit accompany them, will only confirm the soul in its evil
choice and characteristics; and nowhere is there the slightest promise in God's
Word, or hint even in the nature of the case, that the Spirit will exercise his
present office work upon those who die in impenitence. The Whole drift of
Scripture teaching, in its incidental illustrations, not to mention its direct
affirmation, leads us to conclude that men will remain forever in the spiritual
condition in which death finds them. If men's lives were prolonged upon the
earth for a thousand years, some of them would have less hope of repenting and
turning to God than they have during their present allotted period. Their
characters become more and more fixed, the longer they live in their opposition
to God and his truth. Their first open conscious refusal to accept God's mercy
gives a positive trend to the soul; every subsequent refusal strengthens that tendency;
each means of grace, resisted, hardens the heart and stiffens the stubborn
will. Suffering in our prisons hardens criminals. Many experienced officials
affirm that there is almost no hope for a man who has been repeatedly in prison
and who, because of disobedience, has been subject to the penalties prescribed
for such crimes. Physical pain has no tendency to cure bodily ills. Where, in
nature, or in revelation, is there room for the so-called " larger hope
"? -Where the possibility of a soul's release from the love of sin and
from its inevitable condemnation? What would men call a reasonably long
probation? Certainly, all, upon any system of belief, ought not to be subjected
to the same degree or kind of suffering. Granted that there was release from
these sufferings, at the expiration of some period of time, how long would men
make that period? Why should men go to heaven by way of hell, even if that were
possible, when they may go by the way of the cross? Why should men pass through
an interim of suffering, being purified, as it is called, by purgatorial fires,
when they now may be cleansed from all sin by the precious blood of Jesus
Christ?
But do men claim this second probation that
the heathen, and others who never heard of Christ, may now have that
opportunity and may return to him? If our explanation of punishment, already
given, be correct, the heathen will not be condemned for rejecting a Christ of
whom they have never heard. Never were there speculations more utterly
groundless in reason and in revelation, than are those in which men are now
indulging with reference to the second probation. So far as we can tell, a
second probation would acid to the guilt of the great majority of the lost. The
omnipotent God has already exhausted himself in the salvation he has prepared,
and in the methods by which he urges men to accept that salvation. What more
can God do, that he has not done, for his fallen creatures? Were he to do more,
he would but add to the guilt of those who now persistently and wickedly refuse
the offers of his love. It has also been well remarked, that the statement made
in Matthew 26: 24, regarding Judas, could not be true if a final restoration
were possible. We quote the words: " The Son of man goes even as it is
written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good
were it for that man- if he had not been-born." Birth would be a blessing
to any man if, even after a lapse of vast periods, he were to enter upon
unspeakable blessedness. If Judas could ever come back from his own place, and
enter the place which Christ prepared for his believing ones, it would be good
for him that he had been born. The strong words of our Lord, who knew the other
world as he knew this, refute, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, the theory
that Judas could ever be restored, even after the lapse of untold ages.
We believe that the Word of God plainly
teaches that the punishment of the impenitent is endless. There is certainly a
strong presumption in favour of this view of the teaching of Scripture, in the
fact that the great majority of churches, in all ages, have so understood the
Word of God. This uniformity of belief is not due to the influence of any
philosophical doctrine brought in from heathenism, such as the dualism of good
and evil, or the inherent immortality of the soul. Neither can it be accounted
for, as Dr. Hodge implies, on the ground that the doctrine is congenial to the
human mind, and is believed for its own sake. The opposite of this is
emphatically true. Every true man shrinks from its acceptance. He believes it
as the word of the living God, and not the teaching of finite and fallible man.
To believe the Bible is to believe this doctrine. On few points are its
teachings so clear and emphatic. If Christ and his apostles had wanted to teach
it, they would have used precisely the language which they have used. As we
have before implied, they found the doctrine generally believed among the
people, and they nowhere contradicted that general belief. If this belief were
erroneous, Christ and his apostles did much to confirm the men of that period,
and of all times, in a painful error. Who can believe that they were capable of
such deception? Nowhere do they teach anything in opposition to this belief;
everywhere are their teachings in harmony with its fullest meaning. The use of
the words aion and aionios clearly shows the intention of the inspired speakers
and writers. Let us somewhat carefully examine these terms: These words are
found in various connections, and these connections indicate the modifications
of meaning with which they are used. We frankly admit, at the outset, that the
etymology of the terms has not been satisfactorily ascertained; but, as Dr.
Broadus has said: " It is now past question," as several authorities
which he quotes fully prove, "that aion, originally aiwon, is the same
root as aiei and aei, always; the same as the Latin aev-um, from which came
ae(v)-ternus, borrowed by us in the form eternal: the same as the Gothic aiws,
aiw, the German ew-ig, everlasting, eternal, and the English ever in
everlasting, forever, etc. And the words aion and aionios, in the Greek, as
well as in the other languages mentioned, certainly have the use in question,
whatever may have been the primary sense of the root. You cannot persuade those
who speak English, that the meaning of everlasting is doubtful, simply because
philologists have not determined the primary sense of the root ev." We
also admit that the words, etymologically, do not necessarily imply eternal duration.
They sometimes express the idea of "age-long." In 2 Tim. 1: 9, and
Heb. 9: 26, the word implies an end, the word in other passages also implies a
limited duration; but, as Dr. Strong, and many other writers, have in substance
remarked, even in these connections the words express the longest duration of
which the subject to which they are applied is capable. They are passages in
which the Hebrew olam, or the Greek aionios, is applied to things finite, as
the everlasting hills, or "an ordinance forever"; but when so used it
simply indicates indefinite existence, that is, an existence as enduring as the
object to which it is applied will admit. If the term be applied to the soul,
and it be immortal, then, according to the same principle, it denotes a condition
which is absolutely without end. We sometimes, in common phraseology, speak of
giving a thing to a man forever; but we do not imply that he is to possess it
to all eternity. We speak of "the everlasting trouble " between
certain men, or in certain churches. This language is perfectly intelligible.
It is hyperbole which misleads no one. The extent of the meaning of everlasting
is-governed, therefore, by the nature of things to which it is applied. Farrar
himself admits, as quoted by Dr. Broadus, that aei, always, would have been
regarded as decisive and that anew telous, without end, " would preclude
all controversy." But we have already shown that aionios has, according to
the highest authorities, the same root as aei. When these words are applied to
imperishable subjects, they are to be taken in the full significance of their
literal meaning. The condition of the soul, which these words describe, must
extend so long as the soul itself exists. We know that these words are used in
Scripture to express the duration of God the Father, Son, and Spirit. We have
in Rom. 16: 26, "the commandment of the eternal God "; 1 Tim., 1: 17,
"Now unto the King eternal," etc.; Heb., 9: 14, "the Eternal
Spirit," and other passages similar in meaning. This word also sets forth
the unending happiness of the saints: Matt., 19: 29; John, 6: 54, 58; 2 Cor.,
9: 9. If these words, when applied to the punishment of the wicked, do not
affirm their endlessness, then it may be said that no words in the Greek, that
most expressive of all languages, can state that idea. Dr. Strong quotes G. F.
Wright, in his volume, Relation of Death, to Probation, as stating that "
Plato contrasts ehronos and aion, as we do time and eternity, and Aristotle
says that eternity, aion, belongs to God. . . . The Scriptures have taught the
doctrine of eternal punishment as clearly as their general style allows."
Those who state that this is simply punish-ment which takes place in an aion,
without reference to duration, certainly rob the words of their proper
significance, and assume a position which by no reasonable exegesis can they
maintain. Several authorities tell us that the word "aionios is used in
the New Testament sixty-six times-fifty-one times of the happiness of the
righteous, two times of the duration of God and his glory, six times where
there is no doubt as to its meaning eternal, seven times of the punishment of
the wicked; aion is used ninety-five times-fifty-five times of unlimited
duration, thirty-one times of duration that has limits, nine times to denote
the duration of future punishment."
We now come to what is, in some respects, a
crucial, as it certainly is in all respects an authoritative, passage, as to
the meaning of the word aionios. This passage has received the critical
attention of all scholars, on all sides of this question. We refer to Matt. 25:
46, "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the
righteous into life eternal." In that passage, as all readers know, the
same word is used in both clauses to describe the sufferings of the wicked and
the blessedness of the righteous. It must have the same meaning in both
clauses. If the happiness of the redeemed is unending, then all fair
interpretation shows that the misery of the lost is also unending. The wicked
go eis kolasin aion-ion, and the righteous eis zoen aionion. The New Version,
in rendering this phrase, preserves to us the harmony of the original by
rendering the word, in both clauses, " eternal." It would not do to
say that the word eternal here refers to the quality of the life alone; that it
is a life lived in eternity, an aionian life. That idea, indeed, is not
excluded; but certainly that idea does not exhaust the meaning. The life begins
here and now; when one becomes a believer, he enters upon this eternal life,
but this new life finds its completion in the future and endless life. The same
is true of the life of the wicked. Eternal life, in both cases, distinctly
denotes the future and the endless condition of both believers and unbelievers.
It is simply an incidental thought, that the believer, even in this world,
enters into this spiritual life. This thought does not exclude the primary
meaning of the word as referring to the unending future; nor is the meaning
exhausted when aionion punishment is made to refer to an approaching aion, age,
or period. None of these explanations can really weaken the import of the word,
whether applied to the punishment of the wicked or the blessedness of the
righteous.
The apostle Paul shows us clearly, in 2 Thess.
1: 9, that the wicked " shall be punished with everlasting destruction
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power." So, in
Jude, verse 6, we are taught that the angels which kept not their first estate
are "reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of
the great day "; and, in verses 12 and 13, we see that there is reserved
for apostates " the blackness of darkness for ever." In Rev. 14:
9-11, we have the words, " their torment ascended up for ever and ever;
and they have no rest day nor night."
There are other passages of Scripture which
indirectly teach the same solemn doctrine. In Isaiah 33: 14, we have the
expression "everlasting burnings "; in Isaiah 66: 24, " their
worm shall not die, nor shall their fire be quenched." The prophet Daniel,
12: 2, tells us that some " shall awake . . . to shame and everlasting
contempt "; and, in Luke 3: 17, we read that Christ shall "gather the
wheat into his garner, but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable."
In Mark 9: 42-48, our Lord himself tells us that it is better " to enter
into life maimed, than, having two hands, to go into hell, into the fire that
never shall be quenched, where their worm dies not and the fire is not
quenched." Dr. Hodge, in this connection, reminds us that these awful
words fell three times, in 660 one discourse, from the lips of the Master
himself. These indirect statements are not less forceful than those which more
immediately and designedly bear upon the subject in hand. We can certainly say that,
whatever meaning is given to the term eternal, in Matt. 25: 46, as applied to
one class, must also be given to it as applied to the other. The interpretation
which closes hell closes heaven. The exegesis which would end the sufferings of
the lost must end also the blessedness of the saved; the reasoning which would
make the sufferings of the wicked cease, would bring the existence of God to an
end. There seems to be no possible way of getting rid of the solemn teachings
of this solemn verse.
It is not surprising that objections are made
to the manifest teachings of the Bible on this terrible subject. These
objections may be divided into several classes. One is the rational objection.
Upon this we have touched already; we may briefly allude to it again. It is
said that suffering is necessarily self-destructive, and so, sooner or later,
must by its own laws cease to exist. We have simply to say, in reply, that no
man can prove this statement. Certainly God could so create the soul as that it
might continue in existence while enduring horrid suffering. This, Dr. Broadus
considers, is the most probable meaning of our Lord's solemn words, in Mark
9:49, "Everyone shall be salted with fire." Fire, we all know, is
naturally destructive; but there may be, as there certainly seems to be, an
unquenchable fire which, like salt, preserves that to which it is applied.
There are, also, moral objections to the doctrine, which are deserving of our
careful consideration. It has been said that unending punishment is inconsistent
with the justice of God. To this objection it may be replied that no man is
capable of passing an intelligent judgment on this point. We have no adequate
conception of the penalty which sin merits. God alone can rightly determine the
relation between sin and its appropriate penalty. If he pronounces the
judgment, we can safely leave the matter to his infinite love and infinite
wisdom. He is more concerned for his justice than it is possible for his
creatures to be; his heart is more loving than was ever the heart of earthly
father or mother. God cannot be unjust and be God. If unjust in a single act,
or for a second of time, he would vacate his throne. Sin in its very nature is
alienation from God. God is infinitely holy. Holiness is the essence of his
being; it is his darling attribute. The man who loves sin cannot be in God's
presence. We do not say that sin is an infinite evil because committed against
an infinite God, but no man can measure the evil of a single sin; no sin is
single; sinful acts become sinful character; and, as that evil continues
forever, there is a sense in which it is an infinite evil. We know no limits to
the possible results for evil of even one sin. So long as a man loves sin he
must be miserable; and the very fixity of the laws of nature makes it certain
that evil must remain evil, except God reverse all the laws of his moral
universe. It must be borne in mind, also, that the purpose of punishment is not
reformatory. It aims at the vindication of everlasting right. Punishment of
sin, neither in this life nor in the life to come, is remedial. It is rather
vindicatory of God's justice and love. It is the out flashing of God's
righteous wrath against all the opposers of truth and God. There is no hint in
the Bible that suffering in the future world is intended to work out the
redemption of the soul. No such ray of hope falls athwart the dark path of the lost.
No such possibility lights up the terrible gloom. Endless sinfulness is
inseparable from endless wretchedness. It must be endless, except by the
supernatural intervention of God in changing the character of the sinners
themselves. But of that intervention we have not a hint in the Bible, nor a
hint in the laws of nature with which we are familiar. No man can expect a
reversal of these immutable laws of God's moral universe. The doom of fallen
angels in the past, and their sufferings to the present, suggest that even one
act of rebellion may produce fatal and eternal consequences. It has been said
by Farrar, and by others, that the doctrine of endless punishment has made many
men infidels. Doubtless there are cases where this doctrine has produced this
result, but other cases may be cited in. which that doctrine has 662 led many
to forsake sin and to seek holiness and God. That it is impolitic, as has been
said, to preach this doctrine, some are ready to affirm. Doubtless there were
those who thought that it was unpopular and impolitic for Paul to preach the
doctrines of Christ crucified, but he continued to preach them, though they
were a stumbling-block to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. In his heart of
hearts he knew that this doctrine was the wisdom of God, and the power of God,
and, most of all, he knew that he had simply to obey the command of God by
preaching his whole counsel.
This doctrine is not opposed to the goodness
of God. The time has come when we must utter God's hatred of sin. A sentimental
weakness has robbed God of his moral fibre, the gospel of its moral grip, and
the pulpit of its divine authority. This sentimentalism shrinks from preaching
the gospel in its symmetry. It fails to sympathize with the high moral
indignation of God against all forms of wrong, both in time and in eternity. It
is also urged, in this connection, that God cannot be just and punish all
alike. Who among those who hold this doctrine of future retribution affirms
that God does punish all alike? Certainly the Scriptures clearly show that men
are punished according to their actual wrong-doing, and according to the
advantages and opportunities which they have enjoyed in this life. It is most
clearly taught, as we have already shown, that eternal punishment does not mean
the same thing for all classes and conditions of men. We read, in Matt. 11: 22,
" It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment
than for you"; and, in Luke 12: 47, 48, "And that servant which knew
his Lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will,
shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things
worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." We read, also, in
Romans 2: 12, that those who have "sinned without law shall also perish
without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law
"; and, in 2 Cor. 5:10, we have the words, "that every one may
receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it
be good or bad." Many persons who object to this doctrine on the ground of
the justice of God have entirely overlooked the teaching of these Scriptures.
Because the punishment of the wicked is referred to under images of great
severity, they have assumed, without warrant of Scripture or human reason, that
the same degree of punishment must certainly come upon all. We are certain that
the Judge of all the earth shall do right; we are certain that everlasting
punishment, so far from being inconsistent with God's justice and goodness, is
in harmony with both,-is a manifestation of both. Due allowance will be made
for all the hereditary tendencies in the nature of men, for all the differences
of early environment and educational advantages, for every special exposure to
temptation,-these will be taken into account, and the Judge, who is too wise to
err and too good to be unkind, will apportion punishment in harmony with exact
justice, kindness, and infinite love. If these certainties as to God's methods
of punishment and apportionment of rewards were taken into the account, many
thoughtful students of Scripture who have been seeking relief in Universalism,
and in the unscriptural hope of a second probation, might find perfect peace in
accepting God's Word as it is revealed.
Sin was permitted at the beginning of human
history, and suffering has been permitted all along the line of that history.
These seem to have existed here, in harmony with our belief in the justice and
benevolence of God; may they not exist in the future, as well as in the
present, and not be inconsistent with that justice and benevolence? We find it
no harder to retain our belief both in the justice and benevolence of God, now,
in the presence of sin and suffering, than to retain that belief when the sin
and suffering are in the future life. If suffering be inconsistent with God's
goodness there, is it not equally inconsistent here with the idea of that
goodness? If any punishment can exist, and God be good, why may not future
punishment exist, and God still be good? If the temporary existence of sin and
sorrow are not inconsistent with God's goodness, why may not their eternal
existence be consistent with that goodness? God must punish moral impurity,
whether the punishment is to result in the good of those punished or not. There
are other creatures in God's universe, also, whose welfare must be considered,
when we are speaking of the punishment of the guilty. God's treatment of the
bad must have in it elements of instruction for all moral beings. There may be
some relation between the punishment which inevitably comes upon men who choose
evil rather than good, and the salvation of those who choose good rather than
evil. There is great beauty and truth in the words of Dr. Shedd, as given by
Dr. A. H. Strong, in his Systematic Theology, regarding the extent and scope of
hell. "Hell is only a spot. in the universe of God. Compared with heaven,
hell is narrow and limited. The kingdom of Satan is insignificant, in contrast
with the kingdom of Christ. In the immense range of God's dominion, good is the
rule and evil is the exception. Sin is a speck upon the infinite azure of
eternity; a spot on the sun. Hell is only a corner of the universe. The Gothic
etymon denotes a covered-up hole. In Scripture, hell is pit, lake; not an
ocean. It is 'bottomless,' not bound- less. The Gnostic and Dualistic theories
which make God and Satan, or the Demiurge, nearly equal in power and dominion,
find no support in revelation. The Bible teaches that there will always be some
sin and death in the universe. Some angels and men will forever be the enemies
of God. But their number, compared with that of unfallen angels and redeemed
men, is small. They are not described in the glowing language and metaphors by
which the immensity of the holy and blessed is delineated (Ps., 68:17; Deut.,
32: 2; Ps., 103:21; Matt., 6:13; 1 Cor., 15: 25; Rev., 14: 1; 21: 16, 24, 25).
The number of the lost spirits is never thus emphasized and enlarged upon. The
brief, stern statement is, that the fearful and unbelieving . . . their part
shall be in the lake that burned with fire and brimstone ' (Rev., 21: 8). No
metaphors and amplifications are added to make the impression of an immense '
multitude which no man can number.' " Dr. Hodge says: " We have
reason to believe that the lost will bear to the saved no greater proportion
than the inmates of a prison do to the mass of a community."
These truths which we have been discussing are
as solemn as they are profound and Scriptural. Whatever God has clearly
revealed, that his ministers are plainly to teach. But much depends upon the
spirit in which these truths are taught. They are to be spoken plainly and
tenderly. The preaching which fails to recognize the doctrine of eternal
punishment, fails to give due honour to the holiness of God; it fails to
emphasize aright the sinfulness of sin, and the greatness of Christ's atoning
work. If man be not eternally lost, then the Cross of Calvary is either a
gigantic blunder or an unpardonable crime. If punishment be not eternal, then
the Word .of God imposes upon the credulity of men. Many a Christian man knows
that, in looking back over his Christian life, the fear of future punishment
was the first means which turned him from sin to God. This is certainly not the
highest motive, but it is often the most influential, in the beginning of the
Christian life. To that motive our Lord most certainly appeals; to that motive
thousands of believers must attribute their salvation. Among that great number
is this present writer. The New Testament uncovers hell. Men had known but
little of this fearful abyss, but for the teachings of the loving Lord himself.
As the cross most fully displayed the love of God, so the teaching of him who
died upon the cross most fully reveals the wrath of God against all unrighteousness.
Never was preaching so characterized by what men have called the "
hell-fire " element, as was the preaching of the Son of God. He uttered
the most fearful woes that ever came from human lips; but these most terrible
woes were baptized in tears of infinite love. A cold, hard, mechanical
statement of these terrible truths may awaken opposition, and make these truths
themselves repellent; but when they come from a preacher whose heart glows with
the love of God and with love for the souls of dying men, they become
irresistible in their tenderness, and awful in their authority. No human
sentimentalism can take these terrible truths from the Word of the living God.
When the reasoning of atheistic and pantheistic and all other forms of human
philosophy have passed away, the Great White Throne, the Eternal Judge, and the
two divisions of the human race, the one going joyously to bliss, and the other
hopelessly to death, must abide.
The soul before and after death.
By His Eminence, The Most Rev. HENRY EDWARD
MARRING, D.D., Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster. England.
THE question, What will be the future state,
assumes that we shall survive after death; for to non-existence there can be no
state. Nevertheless, as they who inquire into the future state are often if not
chiefly men who doubt our survival after death, it is safest to begin with this
point. My purpose then will be first to show by the light of reason and the
facts of nature that such a survival of our personal identity is at least in
the highest degree probable; and that the onus of proving that we shall not
survive the change of death rests exclusively upon those that deny it; and,
secondly, that the common sense or consciousness of mankind, apart from
revelation, has always affirmed, I may say attested, the survival of our
personal identity after death; and lastly, that revelation has confirmed their
common sense, and brought " life and immortality to light," by the
laying open of the unseen world to faith.
We will begin by the lights of reason and of
nature. If there be such an entity as a soul, then its survival is certain. If
there be no such entity, then pelvis et umbra sumus [we are but dust and
shadow]. Let it be always borne in mind that what I am about to say, under this
first head, is confined strictly within the horizon of natural reason, to the
exclusion of supernatural revelation.
1. If I am asked for a definition of the soul,
I answer, "Est prin-elpium per quod komo sensitivus est, cogitat, et volt
"; it is the principle by which man perceives, thinks, and acts; or again,
more simply, " It is the principle of life, and of the vital acts of
thought and will."
2. If I am asked for a definition of life, I
say it is "Activitas qua ens seipsum. mover [the activity by which a being
moves itself]. By motion in man is intended not only physical, but
intellectual, moral, and mental.
3. If anyone shall ask for a metaphysical
definition of principle, I answer, it is " that which produces
anything." "Principium est id quod rationem continet, cur illud sit,
cujus dieitur principium" [the principle of a thing is that which contains
the reason of the existence of the thing]. The idea of principle is that out of
which anything proceeds, as a tree from a root, or a stalk from a grain of
wheat. And yet the word " principle " is not a metaphor of
similitude, but of proportion as a root to a tree, so a principle to its
product. A root and a principle may be dissimilar in everything but in the one
point of production, yet the analogy or ratio of proportion holds good. The mistaking
of analogies for metaphors or images is the source of endless confusion. It is
like believing Providence to be an eye.
4. The soul is not something superadded to man
or to human nature. Man has no existence till soul and body are united in one
suppositum.
5. A material organism is not human nature, or
man. Powers and emotions without a principle do not consti Lute man. They are
not produced by organism. The onus of proof lies on those who say so.
6. Matter is not the prineipium vita': for the
greater mass of matter is without life.
9. Matter is not even organic, till an
organism supervenes.
10. But organism does not give life, for large
regions of organized matter exist without life. Therefore,-
11. The union of matter and organism, neither
of which gives life, does not give life.
12. No material organism therefore can be the
principle or cause of life. Nor can it be " the base or the nidus "
of life: unless life supervene as a distinct element. The subject then is
lifted above all mere material organism.
13. Organized matter, "superveniente vita
vegetativa" [vegetative life being superadded], becomes a plant. This
supervening of another and higher element creates a new kingdom of organic
being: but the vegetative life is not contained in nor produced by either
matter or organism: nor by both. Life is heterogeneous to that which is
lifeless, i.e., to matter, but not to plant, or animal, or man.
14. Organized matter, "superveniente vita
sensitiva et animali" [sensitive and animal life being superadded],
creates another and still higher kingdom of organized being, which, from its
highest element, we call animal. But organized matter has in itself neither
animal life, nor sensation, nor the perceptions of sense. All these are beyond
its limits.
15. Nevertheless there can be no animal life
without material organism, as the condition of its manifestation and exercise,
though the animal life is distinct from it.
16. This animal life is called by courtesy
"anima brutornm" [the soul of brutes]; but when the material organism
is dissolved, the life ceases to live and to exist, " eonditione naturce
debita" [according to the due course of nature], by a law of nature
ordained by the Creator, the lower animals having no moral personality, no
probation, and no judgment after death. The term of their existence is in and of
this world: and their end the service and use of man. All mere animal life is
therefore mortal.
17. An organism which is material, sentient,
and animal, " super-veniente vita intellectiva, rationis et voluntatis
" [intellectual life, the life of reason and will being superadded], is
man: or "natura rationalis," or "animal rationale" [a
reasoning nature or animal]. But reason and will are no more powers or
functions of matter, or organism, or vegetable or animal life, than these are
of organism and matter.
18. Organism is a higher element or perfection
superinduced upon matter, vegetable life is a perfection superinduced upon
material organism, animal life upon all these, and the rational life upon all
these again; yet it is distinct from all, includes all, and is independent in
its higher functions of all. And this higher element is the " principium
operationum vitalium" [principle of vital functions]-i.e., of reason and
will -and by these terms we understand a rational nature, or a soul.
19. This " principium," or soul, is
independent of external sense in many of its highest functions-e. g., in the
formation of abstract notions,-as of goodness, justice, and the like,-in
judgments of the agreement or disagreement of terms, and in the philosophical
processes of induction and deduction, in mathematical reasoning, in discernment
of good and evil, in the consciousness of the facts of internal sense; in all
these and many more, the rational powers of man are independent of sense, and
abide in an inward world of our personal consciousness.
20. Now, the soul does indeed perceive by the
senses all objects proper to the senses; but this is a lower function of the
rational nature. Its chief and higher prerogative is its independence of all
matter, both in its existence and in its activity.
21. It is for those who deny the existence of
the soul after death, or for those who make the soul a function or a power of a
material organism, to prove that matter or organization can possess the powers
of thought and will. We affirm it to be repugnant to the divine order to make
thought a function or power of matter which is not capable in and by itself
even of sense. But no proof has ever been offered, except that the scalpel has
not yet found the soul. If you say matter we know, but soul we do not know, I
answer, not knowing disproves nothing.
22. When Horace said, " Hon omnis moriar
"-"I shall not all die "-or the whole of me will not die-he did
not only mean that he would live in his Odes and Satires. He meant that he was
conscious of something in himself independent of the body, which would survive
when the body should die. He meant to say, My poems and I will live on when
this material organism, in which and by which I feel, and have cognizance of
sensible things, shall be dissolved. Thus that which distinguishes me from the
world of irrational animals cannot be affected by the dissolution of the
material organism in and by which I eat and drink.
23. The denial of this would make us read,
" Omnis omnino mo-riar,"-I shall altogether die, or I shall die every
bit of me, and leave nothing behind but my memory, good or evil, and old
clothes.
24. The dissolution of the material organism
withdraws from our senses the phenomena of a personal mind and agency; but it
in no way proves that the personal mind has ceased to exist. It in no way
proves the cessation of that which existed and acted independently of sense.
But reason and will are, and act independently of sense. Reason and will are
not the phenomena of matter; they are intrinsically independent of matter, as
in thought and volition; though they may also act through and upon matter, as
by the eye, or by the arm. They are independent of our material organization,-(1)
in consciousness of existence; (2) in the sensus intimus; (3) in the perceiving
of internal facts of intellectual and moral consciousness; (4) in abstract
reasoning; (5) in the power of numbers; (6) in moral sense: in conscious
responsibility both now and hereafter.
25. I therefore affirm that the person, the
principle and radix of rational operations, and therefore the rational
operations themselves, cannot be proved to cease, because the material organism
which man has in common with the lower animals, with plants, and with crystals,
is dissolved.
26. The onus probandi lies wholly on those who
assert it. The personal survival is in possession, and cannot be dispossessed
till it is turned out of the consciousness of mankind by evident reason.
27. But we may go further. Thought and will
are not material. Therefore they are not dissoluble. The radix of thought and
will which I would call soul, if people would let me, is, like its products,
not material, therefore not dissoluble. I affirm this on a self-evident law of
all existences; every product is homogeneous with its root. The vital actions
of the soul are immaterial, that is, simple, therefore indissoluble, and
therefore, unless by the intervention of some other law, imperishable.
28. In the case of the lower animals which.
have a vegetative and sentient life, there is this other law: the sphere and
term of their existence is in their transient state. They serve man in this
earthly period. They have no moral personality, no probation, no judgment to
come. The law of their creation is that their life should be terminable. When
the material organism is dissolved the ox dies. "Omnis moritur." He
dies every bit of him. There is no life extending beyond and independent of the
material organism. Like the vine and the cedar, so the ox serves man and dies
by the law of its own nature.
29. But of man none of these predicates can be
made. There is that in him which lives, feels, thinks, wills, independently of
matter. He can both act through his material organism and independently of it:
"Animus velox sine corpore currit" [the swift mind runs without the
body].
30. Nay, further, there is strong presumption
that the vital actions of thought and will are even extended after the
dissolution of the material organism through which they acted before death. The
body localizes, narrows, confines them. The body is mensurable in quantity. The
vita intellectiva has no mensurable quantity in genere continui [in extension],
that is, as bodies have. It rests, again, upon the objectors to do what has not
been done yet,-I mean, to show that thought and will cease when the body dies.
The presumption is not only that they live, but that they are extended in their
range and their activity.
31. Such was the judgment of Aristotle, who
may be taken as the highest witness of the evidence of natural reason. In the
Tenth Book of the Ethics he says that happiness, eautpovia, after death will
consist not in well-doing, or agQ4a, as in this life, because there will be
none to whom we can do good, for there will be none who need it; but in Osovia,
or contemplation, by which be affirms the survival of the vital operations of
the intellectual life; and if it be bliss, it implies the extension and
perfection of the intellectual power, and therefore of the nature or radix from
which they spring: or, as he would say, and we may say with him, of the soul.
32. I have affirmed with all, except those who
deny the existence of the soul as an immaterial entity, that it is in its
nature uncompounded, or incomposite,-that is, it is made up of no parts or
elements which, as they cohere, so they may be dissolved. It is, therefore,
absolute in its simplicity.
33. But what is simple cannot be dissolved.
(1) It has no separable or soluble elements.
(2) It is indestructible by external force.
(3) It cannot commit suicide. Eternal death is
eternal life of evil and remorse.
34. Therefore the soul survives, that is, it
lives on, eadem numero, in all its personal identity after death. Its state is
changed: its identity is not changed. To use modern terminology, the physical
ego is changed, so far as the material organism: the psychical ego is not
changed, for extension of its sphere, energy, and powers is not change, but
perfection.
35. The reliquice upon earth, by word, by
action, by writing, survive not personally, but only in the intelligence and
will, in the life and formation of other men and of nations. But this is not a
survival of the soul, but of the work wrought by the soul. It is impersonal in
itself, and exists only in the persons of other men.
36. The sum of my argument is this:-
That
matter as such has no life in itself.
That organism as such has no life in itself.
Therefore,-
That
organized matter has no life in itself, for neither element can give what it
has not.
That organized matter plus vegetative life
becomes a plant.
That vegetative life is heterogeneous as
regards matter and organism, and therefore is not contained in them, but it is
the differentia or necessary constituent part of a plant.
That organized matter plus sentient and animal
life becomes an animal nature.
That this sentient and animal life is
heterogeneous as regards the matter and organism, but is the necessary
differentia of an animal nature.
That a material organism plus vegetative,
sentient, and intellectual life becomes human nature.
That this intellectual life is heterogeneous
as regards the matter and organism of the body, and also the vegetative and
animal life, but it is the necessary differentia which constitutes the human
species or human nature. Without it, humanity or man does not exist.
That the dissolution of the material organism
affords no proof of the cessation of the intellectual life, because the
intellectual life is not material. It is heterogeneous as regards matter, and
therefore not included in the same laws.
That the cessation of the vegetative life,
when the material organism is dissolved, is no proof of the cessation of the
intellectual life in man, which is heterogeneous as regards the vegetative
life, and not subject to the same laws.
That the cessation of the animal life is no
proof of the cessation of the intellectual life, because the intellectual life
is heterogeneous as regards the animal life, and is not included in the same
laws and destinies.
From this I conclude that the death of the
body affords no proof of the cessation of the intellectual life. But the
intellectual life is the vital action of the soul. Therefore the soul does not
die with the body, but survives when the body dies.
37. Finally, "Non omnis moriar " is
a consciousness of my rational nature. It clings to me at every moment. It is
confirmed by my hopes and by my fears, by the dictates of my reason and by the
instincts of my heart, by my conscious relation to a Supreme Law-Giver, by my
whole sense of moral responsibility to him, and by a sleepless anticipation of
an account, a balancing, and a completion hereafter of my moral life and state now.
And this consciousness is not derived from sense, nor dependent upon sense. I
am more sure of its truth than of any reports of sense, and of any syllogisms
of logic. Moreover, what I find in my own consciousness I find to exist in the
consciousness of others; and not of one or two here and there, but of all about
me. And I read of it as having existed in all men, at all times and in all
places. And this communis senses of men is a certain evidence of truth, not so
much by reason of the number or multitude of witnesses, as by the universal
voice of human nature, which is the voice of its Maker and of its Judge.
To this we will next go on.
The argument, thus far, rests upon the
observed facts of nature. Sceptics may deny the arguments, but they cannot deny
the facts. And how much soever they may deny the arguments, they cannot prove
their denial by reason. I have affirmed that the consciousness of a personal
identity which will survive the death of the body has been universal in the
human race. So far as any records remain, evidences of this belief continually
appear, both explicitly or implicitly.
1. For, first, it is certain that all mankind
has seen and suffered death. The first sight of death-whether it came by
murder, or by disease, matters not-must have raised the question of the future.
To suppose that the father and mother, the kindred surviving the dead, thought
only of the body without life, and had no care or even curious thought of the
life or the living and personal identity which had been their joy, is an
incredible imagination, or, I will say, a heartless and senseless scepticism.
2. But every generation of man, and every man
in every generation, has been familiar with death from the beginning of the
world; the funeral rites of all nations have compelled men to think of death,
and of the state after death. It may with truth be said that a belief in the
existence of God, and of the soul, and of its survival after the death of the
body, pervaded the consciousness of the old world so profusely as to degenerate
not into atheism, but into polytheism and pantheism; not into materialism, but
into the anima mundi; not into Comtism or Agnosticism, but into the elaborate
visions of Elysian Fields and of the Plutonian realms. Atheism and materialism
are modern aberrations from the consciousness of the human race.
3. If it be said that the rearing of pyramids
and the embalming of bodies in the Egyptian dynasties signified only the memory
of the past, I must answer that this is to beg the question. If it proves
nothing, it disproves nothing. To perpetuate the memory of the past is to imply
a hope of a perpetuity to come.
4. However this may be, it is certain that the
literature of Greece and Rome is pervaded by a belief not only of a future
state, but of a retributive justice which will dispense happiness or misery,
according to justice and mercy. Homer and Virgil are proof enough. The words
"Quisque suos patimur manes" affirm survival and a retribution. But
perhaps it will be said that in proportion as the human intellect advanced in
cultivation, scepticism as to the existence of God, of the soul, and of its
survival after death, rose into the ascendant. Vie are told that Aristotle did
not believe in God, and that Cicero was a sceptic. It may not be amiss to let
them speak for themselves, for they are, without doubt, the two culminating
intellects of the Greek and of the Roman race.
5. So far were the highest intellects of the
Greek world from disbelieving the existence of the soul, that they, each one,
had a theory of its nature. Alcmmon said that it was in perpetual motion and
immortal; Diogenes, that it was air; Democritus, that it was fire and motion;
Anaxagoras, that it was essentially distinct from everything else, the source
of motion, endowed with cognitive power,
and separate from all without. Empedocles thought it to Partake of the four elements,
with love and hatred as principles of motion; Pythagoras held it to be a
mixture of contrary elements and qualities, with a universality of cognition;
Xenocrates said that the soul is a number (or indivisible unity) moving itself.
Last of all, Plato unites psychology, or the science of the soul, with
cosmology, or the science of the world. He thought the world to be a divine
immortal being, having a rotatory body and a rational soul, with cognition and
motive-power. He believed every man to possess a debased copy of the perfect
rational soul of the cosmos or world. All this is quoted not for pedantry, but
to show how far they are from the truth who imagine that the intellects of the
old world were unconscious of the soul. They so profusely believed in its
existence as to speculate intensely as to its nature. In all their diversities
they believed it to be something independent of the material body, and in its
separate state to be:- A devouring flame of thought, A naked and eternally
restless mind.
6. All these theories were too indefinite and
too vague for Aristotle. He believed the soul to be a form which brings the
potential into actuality; a substance endowed with energy and motion. The
highest element in the soul, he says, is vows, or the intelligence or reason;
and the perfection of the soul is, according to him, in the highest energy of
the highest part or power of the soul exercised on the highest matter subject
to it. He adds that even well-doing to others is less perfect than
contemplation of the divine; and that perfect happiness is in contemplation.
Therefore the life of the gods is the happiest. But they have no deeds of
well-doing to discharge. So also when well-doing is impossible to men, what
remains but contemplation? and men only are capable of contemplation. "
The whole life of the gods," he says, " is blessed and of men in the
measure in which there is a likeness of this energy " of contemplation. "
But such a life as this would be better than the life of man. For it would not
be living as a man, but as there is something divine in him." This
happiness of the intelligence is not in this life only, for Aristotle holds the
voig or reason of man to be immortal. Apart from revelation, no one has
approached so near to the immortality of the soul and to the Beatific Vision.
Aristotle says also that of all living beings, man alone is capable of
happiness, because he alone is capable of the higher life; and from this higher
life he excludes those who live in vicious or the lower enjoyment of human
pleasures or passions.
7. The intellectual tradition of the Greek
world passed into the ruder and more material Roman mind; and we may find it
fully represented in the first book of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations on
"The Contempt of Death," which he rests upon the belief of
immortality. After reciting the opinions or philosophies of the Greeks, he
says: " Many contend against this, and inflict death on the mind, as if it
were under capital sentence; and for no other reason is the eternity of the
mind incredible, but because they cannot understand or comprehend in thought of
what kind the mind is out of the body." But he adds, " To me, when I
contemplate often the nature of the mind, it is much more difficult and more
obscure to conceive what the mind is in the body as in a strange house, than
what it is when it shall have gone out, and come into the free heaven as if
into its own home. For unless we are unable to understand what anything is
which we have never seen, we are certainly able to comprehend in thought both
God himself and the divine mind liberated from the body." He goes on to
say, " We are not our bodies, nor in saying this am I speaking to your
body, but to you." Cicero then quotes the argument of Socrates in the
Pitamlo of Plato: " That which is always in motion is eternal; but that
which gives motion to another, being itself moved from some other source, when
the motion comes to an end, necessarily comes to the end of life. That only
which moves itself never ceases to be moved, for it is never deserted by
itself. . . . Forasmuch as it is evident that whatsoever moves itself is
eternal, who can deny that this nature is imparted to the mind? " "
Homer," he says, " transferred human nature to the gods. I had rather
transfer divine things to us. What are these divine things? To live, to know,
to discover, to remember. Therefore the mind (which, as I say, is divine) is,
as Euripides dares to say, God. And, indeed, if God or the soul (anima) is
fire, such also is the mind of man: for as that heavenly nature is free from
earth and moisture, so the mind of man is free from both of these. But if there
be a fifth nature (element), which Aristotle first introduced, this is the
nature both of gods and of minds." Cicero then sums up his own opinion in
a passage from his work, De Republica, as follows: "No origin of the mind
can be found on earth; for in the mind there is nothing mixed or concrete, or
which seems to be born or fashioned of the earth; there is nothing of moisture,
or air, or fire. For in these natures there is nothing that has the power of
memory, or intelligence, or thought, capable of retaining the past, of
foreseeing the future, or of embracing the present; which powers are divine
alone: nor will any source be ever found whence they can come to man except
from God. The nature and power of the mind is, therefore, singular, apart from
all usual and known natures; so that whatsoever it be that feels, and knows,
and lives, and acts, is heavenly and divine, and for that reason it is by
necessity eternal. Nor can God himself, who is understood by us, be understood
in any other way except as an intelligence independent and free, separate from
all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things, having in itself
eternal motion."
These
passages are given in full in order to show that a belief in the existence of
the soul pervaded the ancient world not as a superstition of gross minds, but
as a result from the most searching analysis of the nature of man. It pervaded
the unanalysed consciousness of mankind, as the witness of personal identity of
which no man could doubt, and it was confirmed by the introspection and severe
ratiocination of the highest intellects of the old world. These two witnesses
from the Greek and Roman races are not isolated testimonies. They sum up and
lay bare the most advanced thoughts of the human intellect external to the
light of revelation. They so profoundly realized the existence, and it may be
said the necessary existence, of a nature higher and nobler than matter, that
they conceived the world to have a soul, and that soul divine. The modern
materialism and the pollarded Catholicism of Comte have no root in the old
world. They are the last word of the philosophy of sense, and are at variance
with the history of the human mind. Such works as Cudworth's Intellectual
System ought to have rendered impossible such deviations from the tradition of
the intelligence of mankind.
Our argument hitherto amounts to this: that
the lights of nature make known to us the existence of the soul as distinct
from the body; that there is no reason to show that the death of the body
involves the death of the soul; and, lastly, that the lights of nature affirm
the survival of the soul. Further, that belief in the existence of the soul and
its survival after the death of the body has pervaded the human race, and that
these truths were perceived and unfolded in the measure in which -the
intellectual culture of men advanced, and culminated in the chief intellects of
the Greek and Roman worlds.
It is, therefore, contrary to the history of
mankind to suppose that the existence of the soul and of a future state are
made known to us only by revelation. They are truths of the natural order-doctrines
of natural religion, known from the beginning, and believed by all mankind. If
any sceptics or unbelievers in these truths were to be found, they were as the
handful of the blind among all men who see. The evidences of natural religion
are so manifest and abundant, that those who do not believe the power and
divinity of God are inexcusable.* They are in contradiction with the lights of
nature.
1. We may now go on to the witness and
teaching of the Catholic Church. The preambles of faith include the large and
luminous religion or theology of nature, the existence and perfections of God,
the existence, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, the power and freedom
of the will, the eternal distinction of right and wrong, the moral law based
upon it, the responsibility of man to the Lawgiver, the rewards and penalties
attached to the law, the awards of retribution after death. All these are known
by the light of nature, and by the law written upon the heart of mankind.
2. This religion of nature is carefully
guarded by the Church, forasmuch as it is a primeval revelation of God "by
the works which he has made." It is taken up and fulfilled in the
revelation of faith. Again and again, even in our clay, the supreme authority
of the Church has vindicated and affirmed the certainty of the religion of
nature.
In 1848, the Holy See authoritatively declared
that "the use of reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of
God. Faith is a heavenly gift which comes after by revelation, and therefore
cannot fittingly be alleged against atheists in proof of the existence of
God." Again, in 1855, the same authority declared that "the use of
reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God, the spirituality
of the soul, the liberty of man. Faith follows by revelation, and therefore
cannot be fittingly alleged against atheists to prove the existence of God, nor
against materialism and fatalism to prove the spirituality and liberty of the
rational soul."
And in 1870, the Vatican Council, having
before it not any new heresy or mutilation of Christianity, but the
materialism, naturalism, and rejection of the lights and laws of nature, which
for three hundred years have been spreading like the stifling sand of the
desert over the face of Christendom, began its work by summing up and
republishing the religion of nature. It teaches as follows: " That there
is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty,
eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in
all perfections, who, as being one sole absolutely simple and immutable
spiritual substance, is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from
the world, supreme in beatitude in and from himself, and ineffably exalted
above all things which exist, or are conceivable, except himself.
This one only true God, of his own goodness
and almighty power, not for the increase or acquirement of his own happiness,
but to manifest his perfection by the blessings which he bestows on creatures,
and with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing from the beginning
of time both the spiritual and corporeal creature, that is, the angelical and
the mundane, and afterwards the human creature as partaking of both, that is,
of spirit and of body.* In this declaration of faith is contained the solution
of all the questions of Greek and Roman speculations, religious and
philosophical. The revelation of Jesus Christ " has brought to light life
and in-corruption by the gospel." It has cast a light upon the life of
man, which was obscurely comprehended before, and upon in-corruption, which was
dimly seen in the simplicity and eternity of the mind. Revelation, or the
illumination of supernatural truths, does not only bring things which lie
beyond the horizon of nature within the intelligence of man, but it fills the
whole world with a light in which the primeval truths of the natural order
become self-evident and complete.
3. It would be waste of time and of words. to
prove what even unbelievers admit: namely, that both the Jewish and the
Christian world have believed that God and the soul, and the responsibility of
the soul to God, both in this life and after death, are and have ever been the
faith and consciousness of men.
We have seen that Aristotle held that form is
of a higher nature than matter: that form gives actuality or actual existence
to matter; and is, therefore, the cause why anything has its special and proper
existence. He says that mind, or vows, is the form which constitutes human
nature, and that it is a likeness of the divine, or, indeed, something divine
in us. In like manner the Church teaches that the soul is the form of the body;
that the body is concrete and corruptible; that the soul being spiritual is
incorruptible; that the body will be dissolved; that the soul cannot be dissolved;
that we shall survive the death of the body, and give account of all things
done in the body, " whether it be good or evil."
4. We have travelled a long way and over a
heavy soil to reach this point: namely, what is the state after death. But it
has seemed better to review the whole subject in outline, and to show that
while reasoning cannot disprove the survival of the soul after death, the
consciousness and the reasoning of the old world and of the new-that is, of the
whole human race-has borne steadfast witness to a day of reckoning to come, and
that the state of the soul after death will be determined by its state and acts
in this life.
5. We must now define what we mean by a future
state. Does the term state signify a locality and its circumstances, or a
subjective condition of those who are in it? Or does it signify both? In its
primary and proper sense a state is a stable and permanent condition of
anything, whether of a person or of his surroundings. There can be no state of
anything which has ceased to exist, unless we are pleased to say that the body
returns to the state of dust. But in speaking of the soul it signifies
existence or incorruption, the indissoluble unity of the soul in its life and
simplicity.
6. But it signifies or involves something more
than this. It has a moral sense. The soul in this life passes from what is
potential into what is actual. Its powers, capacities, faculties, affections,
and passions, for good or for evil, for rectitude or for distortion, for
conformity or, as Aristotle says, for likeness to a divine life, or for
deformity and degradation, are unfolded in this life. The soul or the man
becomes good or evil, pure or impure, true or false, just or unjust, and the
ultimate shape, or attitude, or colour of the soul at the death of the body, so
far as we know by nature, is thenceforward fixed, stable, and permanent. As we
live, so we die: as we die, so we shall be. There is nothing in the lights of
nature to suggest or even to hint that those who die in the actual form of evil
can pass after death into the actual form of good. If reason cannot affirm even
the extinction of the soul with the body, it certainly cannot make any
predicates whatsoever as to the state of the soul after the death of the body.
The only answer I know is, " I do not believe in souls," or " I
do not know that the soul exists after death." This is a cheap answer. But
it has against it the belief of the whole world, old and new; and want of
knowledge disproves nothing; and disbelief is an act not of the pure reason
only, but also of the will. The reason may be averted or perverted by a will
that is bribed or biased.
7. We may lay down, then, that there is a
state of the soul after death, and that, for good or for evil, it is fixed at
death and eternal.
8. That this twofold state is one either of
happiness or of misery is undeniably manifest by the analogy of nature and by
the facts of our moral life in this world. The just, pure, upright, and
merciful, in spite of all sorrow and suffering from without, have a mental
happiness of their own, internal and immutable. If that state were fixed,
raised to a perfect fullness, shielded from the outward evils and sorrows of
this life, and made perpetual after death, it would be a state of bliss. For
heaven is essentially not only a place, but a character; a conformity to the
perfections of God, and a capacity to enjoy them by a kindred nature. Even
Aristotle could see this [" a certain likeness of this energy," i.e.,
of contemplation]. We may say of him, in the words of Tertullian, O anima
naturaliter Christiana! [O soul, Christian by nature!] So also that the unjust,
impure, false, and cruel, with all their wilful indulgence of low enjoyments of
passion, and, all the more, in the measure of their unlimited indulgence of
sense, are in this world unsatisfied, craving, insatiable, disappointed,
baffled, jealous, resentful, and full of sorrows; and not of sorrows only, but
of pains, which are penal consequences of their lawless and wilful enjoyment of
devouring lusts: all this is as certain and as visible as the laws which govern
the tides. But the moral world is a counterpart of the natural world. " Be
not deceived, God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap. He that soweth in his flesh of the flesh also shall reap corruption: but
he that soweth in the spirit of the spirit shall reap life everlasting." *
These are, indeed, the words of revelation; but what do they affirm beyond the
affirmations of Aristotle, who, in ascribing a blessed life to those who have
in them a likeness to the divine life, expressly excludes those who by living
in lower and evil enjoyments have no such likeness to the divine? What is this
but the vision of peace, and the pcena damni, the pain of loss, the privation
which is wilfully earned by a corrupt life? " The wages of sin is
death." The wages are earned and will be paid. The labourer is worthy of
his hire, and his master is not God.
9. There are, and. there can be, only two
states in this life or after death. " He that is not with me is against
me." If our will is not conformed to God's will it is at variance with it.
There is no neutrality: neutrality is treason. Even Seneca could say that
" the soul is God dwelling in us "; and the soul is our life, and
united with God is eternal life. So the soul at variance with God is separated
from Him, and separation from God is eternal death.
10. We are now among the lights of the
supernatural order, and we might confirm our reasoning by a multitude of
citations from the Divine Tradition of the Faith. But I refrain from all
details. They are well known to those who believe: those who cavil would cavil
still. It is enough to give the outlines which are derived from the light of
reason and from the illumination of faith. There is a state of happiness after
death for all who die in union with God. It is inchoate in the realm of
purification; it is made perfect in the Vision of Bliss. So also there is a
state of pain after death for all who die culpably separated from God: that is,
the loss or privation of God in the outer darkness, " where the worm dies
not ": in other words, an eternal remorse for wilful self-murder. There is
also a pain " where the fire is not quenched." So the Redeemer and
Judge of men has declared. It is not for us to contradict or to explain away
his words. They are for our warning. The obedient will need no interpretations.
I have said culpably, because as no one will be saved except by the grace of
God, so none will be lost except by his own will. Every soul that loses the
Vision of God dies by its own hand. No one will be lost because he dies
geographically out of the Church, but culpably out of it by wilful resistance
to the known truth. We are taught by the Divine Teacher that there is
forgiveness for all who know not what they do. Responsibility is measured by
knowledge. No man can be ignorant of the truths which are taught by the light
of nature. Of these truths no ignorance is invincible. The works of God preach
them in all the world.
11. No man is responsible for not knowing the
One Name by which we are saved, the one baptism for the remission of sin, the
one fold of the one Shepherd, to whom these truths have never been made known.
The ignorance, therefore, of the heathen world, until the Divine Witness speaks
to them, is, both physically and morally, invincible. God has not revealed to
us how he will deal with those who have never heard the name of Jesus; but he
has revealed to us that his mercies are over all his .works; that he so loved
the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that all who believe in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life; that Jesus has tasted death for
every man; that he is the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world; that he
" would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the
truth "; that " the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole
earth." Resting upon these divine foundations, the Head of the Church has
condemned those who said: " Pagans, Jews, and heretics, and others of this
kind, receive no influx (of grace) from Jesus Christ; and from this fact the
inference is right that in them the will is naked and unarmed, being altogether
without sufficient grace." This is contrary to the faith. Catholic
theology teaches that " to all men of age of responsibility, even
infidels, grace is given, either proximately or remotely, sufficient for
salvation." As in Adam all die, so all in Christ shall be made alive.
St. Thomas affirms that, " If any man
reared up in the forests, and among the brute animals, should follow the
guidance of reason in the desire for good and the avoidance of evil, it is most
certainly to be held that either God by internal inspiration will reveal to him
what it is necessary to believe, or will send to him a preacher of the faith,
as he sent Peter to Cornelius." Orosius, the disciple of St. Augustine,
writes: "My firm and undoubted conviction always is that God gives his
grace not only in his body, which is the Church, to which, for the faith of
those who believe, he bestows special gifts of his grace; but also to all
nations in the world he bestows it, through his long-suffering and eternal
mercy clay by day, by times and seasons and moments, and to all and to every
man." They who know the only revealed way through the vision of faith to
the vision of God in eternity are bound by the law, "Extra Ecclesiam nulla
salus" [out of the Church is no salvation], to obey the Spirit of truth.
They who might know the truth if they had the will are bound to search until
they know it. They who neither physically nor morally can know it' are in the
hands that were pierced for them on the cross, and the Eternal Love has many
mysteries of his unrevealed grace which are not written in our theology.
No divine revelation, rightly interpreted,
affords any evidence of the continuance of sin and its retribution in the
resurrection state.
By Rev. A. A. MINER, MD., LL.D., Pastor of
Columbus Avenue Universalist Church, Boston, Mass.
THE problem of retribution after death
challenges consideration under three aspects: (1) Is there solid ground on
which retribution after death can be affirmed? (2) If so, will such retribution
be inflicted for sins committed after death? Or (3) will it be inflicted for
sins committed in this life? It will be economy of time and space to discuss
the main features of the problem from this last point of view.
Punishment after death has been defended on
various grounds, both anciently and in modern times. The Scriptures, the
inequalities of the present life, and the science of psychology have all been
supposed to teach or to require retribution hereafter. In the recent centuries,
however, the sects known as evangelical have held it as a part of the doctrine
of probation-itself a relatively recent doctrine, and one that Calvinism
necessarily excludes. It teaches that this life is simply one of trial; and
that the next life is the field of retribution; that the government of God is
at present under suspense; that his moral laws are not operative in this world;
that whatever relation may have originally existed between virtue and peace,
and sin and woe, the bonds of union have been deliberately sundered, so far as
this world is concerned, but will be re-established in all their original vigour
in the world to come.
So pivotal was this doctrine supposed to be,
that no less a light than Rev. Albert Barnes, D.D., in his essay introductory
to Butler's Analogy, uses the following extraordinary language: " It is a
matter of clear revelation-indeed it is the entire basis and structure of the
scheme (of Christianity)-that the affairs of justice and of law are under
suspense, that crime is for the present dissociated from woe, and that there
will come a day when the native indissoluble connection between sin and
suffering shall be restored, and that they shall then travel on, hand in hand,
forever. This is the essence of Christianity." It is a sufficient abuse of
language to speak of the " restoration " of an "indissoluble
connection "; but to pronounce such a scheme the very " essence of
Christianity " is to proffer to us a glimpse of the wildest theological
vagaries.
Formerly it was not doubted that this
wonderful plan of government was supported by the whole trend of Scripture,
though specific passages to this purport were hard to find. Now, however, the
burden of such a doctrine has come to bear heavily on many a Christian
conscience. Its rejection by the Universalist Church, more than a hundred years
ago, has been made the basis of no end of scorn and contempt. To-day, not the
Universalist Church alone, but the Unitarian also, the larger part of the
Episcopalian, and many prominent members of the Congregational, with the
Andover Seminary at their head, to say nothing of scattered lights in all the
other churches, have either repudiated the doctrine, or are treating it in a
manner that is equivalent to repudiation. It is believed, therefore, that
certain facts bearing upon this subject will be honoured with a wider and more
candid attention than they have hitherto received.
Wherever the Bible utters its voice, its
testimony is conclusive; but Bible testimony, intelligently interpreted, is one
thing, and scraps of biblical rhetoric, distorted by tradition and prejudice,
are quite another thing. Whatever may be thought of the general problem of
punishment after death, a problem we waive for the present, it is safe to
assume that punishment after death for the sins of this life is not taught in
the Word of God. This fact is all-controlling. It is not credible that such
punishment should be involved in the scheme of the divine government, and the
sacred Scriptures be utterly silent regarding it. Ordinary fairness, as
compared even with the dealing of human governments towards their subjects,
would have imperatively forbidden such silence. Not a few of the older divines
a generation ago, Dr. Lyman Beecher among them, maintained that eternal
punishment in the life to come would be justified by the eternal sinning in
that life. Whether or not these divines were right in supposing that both sin
and punishment would mar that incorruptible state, where the children of God
will be "equal unto the angels,, . . . being children of the
resurrection," I will not here stop to inquire.
Happily there are great principles pertaining
to the divine government which show that it is a current government; that it is
operative to-day; "that justice and law are not under suspense; "
that sin and woe, " indissolubly connected," have not been
dissociated, and are not therefore waiting to be "restored," and that
the rectitude of the divine government here and now stands unimpeached.
The laws of God are living forces. The
physical universe, and man in his relations to it, are governed by uniform
principles, effective through all the ages; making life itself a great school,
whose instruction is reliable, whose discipline is unavoidable, whose teacher
is never away from home; a school without vacation, intermission, or recess;
which keeps night and. day, summer and winter, rain or shine; a school, unique
in all the world's history, in which the idler, not less than the studious, is
compelled to learn the lesson-the one through the pathways of disobedience and
woe, the other through the pathways of obedience and joy.
What is true of the outer world is equally
true of the inner. The moral constitution of the universe involves moral laws.
Made in harmony with righteousness, the very nature of man demands
righteousness as the necessary condition of his well-being.
Such moral laws in man are forces as really as
are the physical laws of the universe. The prophet Isaiah says, " The
wicked are like the troubled sea; when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up
mire and dirt " (Is., 57: 20). Paul's testimony is to the same effect:
" Indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man
that doeth evil, . . . but glory; honour, and peace, to every man that worketh
good " (Rom., 2: 8-10). The great Webster, speaking of the irresistible
power of conscience, lashing the sinner for some great crime, says, "
There is no escape from it but in confession or suicide, and suicide is
confession." In like manner, Shakespeare makes the ghost of Hamlet's
father charge his son to contrive nothing against his incestuous mother, but .
. . "leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge To
prick and sting her."
To the same purport is all the literature of
the ages. Nowhere, outside the domain of sectarian controversy, is this truth
questioned. Even Dr. Barnes himself, forgetting that "justice and law are
under suspense," says, " Crime here meets its punishment, . . . it
follows us in remorse of conscience, or in the judgments of the storm, or the
siroc, or the ocean." More emphatically, he says, " Guilty man
carries the elements of his own perdition in him, and it matters little whether
he be in society or in solitude, in this world or the next, the inward fires
will burn, and the sea and the dry land, and the burning climes of hell, will
send forth their curses to greet the wretched being who has dared to violate
the laws of the unseen God, and to 'hail' him as the new possessor' of the
'profoundest hell.' " Why the " burning climes of bell" should
greet the sinner, in whose bosom the inward fires have long burned, as the
" new possessor " of the "profoundest hell," does not
clearly appear; but it does very clearly appear that justice and law have both
been operative. The moral law is no more " under suspense " than is
the physical. Neither can be violated with impunity. Each vindicates itself in
its own way.
Thus the moral law in the constitution of man
is retributive. It enforces its authority in its own domain, as does physical
law in its domain. The end of the law, however, is not retribution, but
obedience. "Now no chastening for the present seemed to be joyous, but
grievous; nevertheless afterward it yielded the peaceable. fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby " (Heb., 12: 11).
"Before I was afflicted," says the psalmist, " I went astray;
but now have I kept thy word " (Ps., 119: 67). Justice requires that the
law shall be kept. Whoever comes short of loving God with all his heart and his
neighbour as himself-thus violating the two great commandments on which hang
all the law and the prophets -is guilty of injustice toward God and toward man.
Against such injustice, in all its forms, the government of God is perpetually
arrayed. "Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne."
Demanding obedience and love, justice cannot turn a somersault and accept their
opposites, disobedience and hate, however they may be coupled with woe; nor can
justice inflict a penalty upon sin which, because endless, will bar its own
claim forever. The law must reach its end, viz., obedience. Through
retribution, in part, God demands a recognition of and return to the claims of
justice. His eternal attributes of righteousness cannot but continue to demand
it until justice becomes universal; and universal justice is universal
obedience; and universal obedience is universal salvation.
Such facts touching the present operation of
God's moral law render it to the last degree improbable that God reserves for
the world to come the retribution clue to the sins of this life.
Nor is this improbability in any degree
weakened by the present inequalities in human condition. Much in our condition
stands in no wise related to our merit or demerit; and, strictly speaking, what
is so related, comes of the violation of, or conformity to, physical and
economic laws, in connection with moral. Our thoughts have been so long turned
away from these vital truths, that the very basis of judgment within us, on
this subject, is corrupted. We see the wicked, " their eyes sometimes
standing out with fatness," robust in health, rich, and every way well
appointed; while the righteous are often afflicted, poor in this world's goods,
and not unfrequently in mortal straits. The superficial worldling at once
arraigns the di-vine government. Accustomed to live in his senses, passions,
and appetites, and to judge everything by its relations to these and to the
market place, he concludes that the bad man is blessed and the good man cursed,
so far as this world is concerned. He does not even raise the question whether
the bad man's health, wealth, and general good condition come of his badness, or
of some other causes, notwithstanding his badness; nor whether the good man's
poverty, sickness, and varied tribulations come of his goodness, or of some
other causes, notwithstanding his goodness.
The truth is, his view is necessarily
superficial. The peace of mind which attends right moral conditions is
precisely the fact we cannot observe in the experience of our neighbours, and
which the Christian training of the ages has led us to overlook in our own
experience. In the same way, the moral deadness and spiritual desolation of the
bad man lie beyond our observation. We are largely incompetent, therefore, save
on general principles, to judge these elements of the divine government.
Besides, if the objection were well taken, it
could hardly be readjusted in kind in a purely spiritual world. We cannot
suppose the bad man will be afflicted with sickness and the miseries of
poverty, nor the good man crowned with physical health and a plenty of this
world's goods, in the purely spiritual life to which we go. Whatever of
spiritual reward is merited by the goodness of the one and the wickedness of
the other, is already possessed; and any increase in the measure of either
beyond merit and demerit would neither be compatible with justice, nor operate
as a snore adequate compensation.
Our old-time poet well answers the objection
we are considering:- But sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed; What then;
is the reward of virtue bread? That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil; The
knave deserves it when he tills the soil; The knave deserves it when he tempts
the main, Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain. The good man may be
weak, be indolent, Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
It appears from this hasty survey that
punishment after death for the sins of this life is unsupported by either
Scripture or reason. Woe depends not so much upon the criminal act as upon the
criminal state of mind whence the act springs. " Whosoever hated his
brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding
in him " (1 John, 3:15). Both by observation and experience, we know the
bitterness of all the malignant passions. This bitterness comes of God's
retributive energy in the moral nature of man. It is not a penal infliction, as
are the sanctions of human laws, from which, having once endured them, we are
delivered forever; but rather like the discords in music which are involved in
the un-tuned condition of the instrument. Retribution is fruitage rather than
penalty. That fruitage will cease when the conditions producing it are removed.
This view is confirmed by the correlative
experience of the good. However common may be the motive of future reward for
present duty, so widely urged by the Church, it is clear that any seeming
virtue secured by a foreign motive is no virtue. It lacks the very soul of
virtue. It is mere expediency. Like a bouquet of artificial flowers, fraudulent
in texture and altogether odorless, a purchased witness for the truth, however
fair to look upon, is false in texture, altogether wanting in the odour of
sanctity, and may be sold again any day to a higher bidder. The Saviour himself
emphasizes these distinctions in all that he says about " false prophets
" and " ravening wolves "; about the " good tree bringing
forth good fruit," and the " corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit
"; about gathering " grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles."
Nor does he employ motives drawn from the
immortal world, when, speaking to those who are reviled, and persecuted, and
falsely charged with evil, he says, " great is your reward in
heaven." He means the same when he says of those " persecuted for
righteousness' sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven," a present
possession. " The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness,
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost " (Rom., 14: 17). Persecuted for
righteousness' sake, they are already in possession of that kingdom. All the
beatitudes, though stated in various terms, are to the same effect.
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." "
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall
be filled " (evidently with righteousness). Hence he could say to his
disciples, " the kingdom of God is within you." The promise of mercy
to the merciful, of a vision of God to the pure in heart, of being called the
children of God to the peace-makers, are not promises of various forms of good,
but promises of the same good under various forms of phraseology. In each and
all, it is the assurance of blessedness involved in righteousness. When,
therefore, we go from this world, it is not as litigants, appealing from God's
providential dealings with us here to a higher court; nor as petitioners for a
rehearing in the same court for the adjustment of the unsettled claims of this
world. As our fortunes, all experiences considered, are here meted out to us
according to what we are, so our fortunes in the world to which we go will be
meted out to us according to what we shall then be. Neither our good nor our
ill, if ill there shall be, will be arbitrary, or drawn from any foreign source
or cause.
Our inquiry would naturally rest here, had not
our inherited appetite for a theology pregnant with horrors in the invisible
world tortured our philosophies into the yielding thereto of seeming support.
Long has the Church affirmed that " there is no change after death."
Mr. Joseph Cook, though resting the doctrines of future and endless punishment,
not upon the sins of this life, but upon the sinfulness of the life to come, through
the tendency of evil habit to fixedness, supposes, strangely enough, that the
moment of that fixedness is reached at or before death, never a moment after
death. And the great American Board, antagonizing the Andover professors,
repudiates the possibility of an open door of mercy beyond the article of
death.
If this be so, one of two things must be true.
This fixedness of moral condition must arise either from an inexorable
providence of God, or from the power of death itself over the soul. Let us
consider the first.
It was long assumed that such a providence was
exercised over the sinner at death, by God rising up and shutting the door of
mercy against him. Whatever regrets might possess his soul, whatever penitence
might thereafter seize him, his fixedness in sin and woe was final. God would
never relent. Scriptures without number were tortured into proofs of this
diabolical doctrine. " Depart from me, ye cursed; " " Rising up
and shutting to the door; " " Casting into outer darkness; "
" Leaving him that is filthy to be filthy still; " " Casting
into a lake of fire; " and many more of similar availability were wrested
from their contexts, perverted in their meaning, and made to teach that the
fiat of God would stereotype evil.
At length it came to be seen that such a
providence would involve, not the sinfulness of the sinner alone, but the
responsibility of God himself as well, in all the enormities the sinner might
thereafter commit. Yea, more; the sinner's responsibility would cease; for what
he cannot but do, he is in no wise responsible for doing. To be able to sin, he
must be free to obey.
Having come to perceive the bearing of this
fearful doctrine, the 702 Christian world is openly changing front. Many now
distinctly deny that God will do anything to make it impossible for the sinner
to leave sinning after death; that God, indeed, hereafter as here, will
continue to do everything that infinite love can do to recover the sinner from
the pathways of transgression; but that he will be forever baffled and will
eternally fail. So omnipotent will have become the power of habit, when the
body is laid in the grave, that the energy of God himself can make no headway
against it; and so the ruin of the sinner will be final.
On this make-shift, I submit two or three
remarks. To conform thereto, the interpretation of all those Scriptures just
referred to, supposed to teach that God forever destroys, or permanently
establishes the status of, the wicked at death, must be reversed, compelling a
recast of the whole evangelical scheme of Christianity, and rendering useless
ninety-nine in a hundred of all the biblical commentaries ever written.
My second remark is, this scheme would in no
wise relieve the divine responsibility. However gracious the divine aspect may
appear, as we contemplate his loving but futile efforts to overcome the
domination of habit, this graciousness disappears when we remember that back of
and underneath all this inexorableness lies the divine ordination by which habit
can attain this inexorable domination.
I remark, in the third place, that this
absolute domination of habit, however confidently asserted, is not founded in
fact. Habit is not power compelling repetition, with or without consent of the
will; but simply tendency thereto, and facility in what we choose to do. The
young lady who is an accomplished pianist continually delights her friends,
whiles away her own hours of solitude, and conies at length to think at her
very fingers' ends. Habit has become second nature. Not only does she astonish
us by her acquired facility, but she lives in a world of harmony and is
possessed by the transcendent music of the ages. That young woman marries, and
when her first babe is laid in her bosom, she enters a new world. Her deepest
love now centres in the angel God has given her. To talk now of the power of
habit, of its absolute domination, of its driving that young mother from the
nursery to the musical instrument, is to outrage the holiest prerogatives of
the human soul.
Or turn to the exceptionally profane, to the
man whose every breath is polluted with an oath, and does habit compel his
blasphemy? By no means. Bring him into the presence of any one whom he
profoundly respects, and his profanity is hushed; the assumed inexorable
domination of habit is exploded before your very eyes. Tendencies to repetition
and facility therein, acquired by habit, both as respects external acts and
internal states, are facts of great importance; but the assumption of their
absolute control over man is an exaggeration of a beneficent law of our being.
In order, therefore, to maintain the
hypothesis of " no change after death," it is necessary to assume
most fundamental changes in death-the destruction of that moral freedom and
responsiveness to truth which are essential characteristics of moral beings.
Unless the very nature of man shall be changed, he will be open to the same
moral influences that distinguish the kingdom of God in this world, in which
case fixedness of character, in opposition to the truth, can in no wise be
maintained.
In the light of such principles, how
profoundly in error is Dr. Barnes in remarking that " it belongs to the
Universalist to prove that the affairs of the universe cone to a solemn pause
at death "; while, in the same connection, he says that "the bolts
which vibrate in God's hand now, and point their thunders at the head of the
guilty, shall fall with tremendous weight there, and close in eternal life and
death the scenes begun on earth." If these bolts, which only "
vibrate now in the Almighty hand," are to " fall at death in
tremendous thunders on the guilty head, closing in eternal death the scenes
begun on earth," it is for Dr. Barnes, rather than the Universalist, to
prove that " the affairs of the universe come to a solemn pause at
death."
We turn now to one of the most remarkable
somersaults that the history of dogmatics presents. After endeavouring for
centuries to maintain that there can be no moral change after death, involving
as we have seen the hypothesis that there must be most fundamental changes in
death, the opposite ground is now taken. Death, it is said, is nothing; it is
but laying aside an old and worn-out garment; but a passing from one room into
another.; and can have no power whatever over the soul.
Here is both truth and error. Though death
cannot modify our moral constitution, nor become our saviour, it does not
follow that it has no power whatever. Any great event in human experience may
exert a moral influence. Bankruptcy often humbles pride; severe sickness, the
loss of friends, the near prospect of death, a narrow escape from sudden death,
as in a great railway catastrophe-these may operate to quicken the moral
faculties, by arousing attention to moral considerations long familiar. No
event in human experience can touch us more vitally than the event of death. If
it can move us when in prospect only, why may it not more deeply move us when
under its full power?
Besides, it must be conceded that death
revolutionizes our environment. Here we dwell in a carnal body, beset with
appetites and passions, and in a world abounding with temporal advantages which
minister to pride, ostentation, and envy, breaking down many a noble purpose
and undermining many a good resolution. Death changes all this. Appetite and
passion will no longer beset us; the world's adornments no longer minister to
pride and ostentation. In this there must be an indescribable gain. It is
difficult to imagine that any temptation will longer be possible. It is not
enough to show that certain sins, envy for example, arise wholly within the
mind. Even such do not spring up without occasion. What occasion is conceivable?
Imagine a mind, envious in its earthly experience, placed among the saints
above. By the hypothesis, every companion will seek to do him good, meekly,
sweetly, lovingly, unremittingly. So much is involved in their very
saintliness. By virtue of their righteousness, they not only will, but must,
bend all their energies to win him to righteousness. They come to him, not with
the patronizing air of the Pharisee, but with the tender pleading love of
Christ; ready, as Christ was, to give themselves for him. What open door is
there here for envy? What good have they from which he is debarred? The obvious
fact is their transparent goodness, manifested in the most intense desire to
bring highest good to him. He cannot envy them that good; it is his for the
taking. We envy men the possessions we desire but cannot have. But to desire
this good, is to have it; and the very conditions of envy are gone.
Temptation removed, will truth shine clear?
Will the Sun of righteousness be less obscured than at present? The Scriptures
give us little of detail in regard to the spiritual world; probably because
little could we understand if it were given. But they definitely shut out
despair. " We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ; "
that is, we must all be brought under the dominion of his truth (2 Cor., 5:10).
" And I, if I be lifted up from the earth," saith the Master,
"will draw all men unto me " (John, 12: 32). God, by the mouth of the
prophet, sends forth the command: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the
ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by
myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not
return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely,
shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength " (Is., 45:
22-24). By the mouth of the same prophet, God declares: "It [my word]
shall not return unto me void; but it shall accomplish that which I please, and
prosper in the thing whereto I sent it " (Is., 55:11).
The Revelator saw the accomplishment of this:
"And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the
earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying,
Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sits upon the
'throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever " (Rev., 5: 13).
Such divine assurances justify Paul's
statement that all things shall at length be subject unto the Father, that
" God may be all in all " (1 Cor., 15: 28).
Such Scriptures forbid the assumption of
endless alienation, sin, and woe. The time is undeniably coining when the end,
" toward which the whole creation moves," will be reached. God made
man for himself. No power is able to pluck us from our Father's hand. Sin and
woe are " indissolubly connected "; but man and sin are not
indissolubly connected. When sin is abandoned, woe will cease.
But may not both sin and woe continue, if not
endlessly, at least indefinitely? Many, agreeing with what is presented thus
far, appear to think so. Woe will continue as long as sin shall continue. But
is it probable that sin will continue indefinitely? The verdict must be, "
Not proven." Such probability not shown. Let us consider.
We have already seen that the Scriptures
neither of the Old nor of the New Testament give any hint of retribution after
death for the sins of this life. So much is practically conceded. Do they give
any hint of punishment after death on any other grounds? In the Old Testament
we have a history of God's dealings with mankind for four thousand years.
Detailed accounts are proffered us of the sins, the transgressions, and the
criminalities of men under all the circumstances of human life. These were
arraigned, condemned, and punished by God himself. The forms of punishment were
various, often severe, sometimes resulting in utter and entire overthrow, as in
the case of the antediluvians, of Pharaoh and his hosts, of the cities of the
plain, and in many other instances. In no case, whether of individuals, cities,
or peoples, is there any hint that either their sinfulness or their punishment
would continue after death. George Campbell, D.D., F.R.S., principal of
Marischal College, Aberdeen, a century ago, said, " It is plain that, in
the Old Testament, the most profound silence is observed, in regard to the
state of the deceased, their joys or sorrows, happiness or misery "
(Preliminary Dissertation, VI.). Standing on this truth, the authors of our
recent Bible revision, including scholars of all the so-called evangelical
sects, have swept from the Old Testament the word " hell," as a
proper translation of the Hebrew Sheol. By the same authority, its Greek
equivalent, hades, in the New Testament, is shorn of its supposed prerogative
as the name of a place of woe; and in consequence the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus is taken from the category of supposed proof-texts of punishment
after death.
If, then, punishment after death, on any
ground, is among the providences of God, is it credible that, during four
thousand years of the divine administration, no hint of it should appear? Is it
probable, either, that such a doctrine would be given to the world in the
dispensation of " good news "? And were it so given, would it be made
to rest on the Saviour's use, in a half dozen instances, all ambiguous, of the
word Gehenna; in not one of which does he apply it to the future state; once
using it in a way incompatible with such an application (Matt., 23:15); in
which he is followed by James (3: 6); in every case addressing himself to
people who were familiar with the term as the literal name of a valley directly
south of Jerusalem, associated with all physical and moral pollution and woe,
and fitly descriptive, therefore, of their sin and its punishment, under the
metaphors which the term suggests, the " undying worm " and "
unquenchable fire "-metaphors, with which, in their visible application,
they had long been familiar, and the temporal and limited duration of which
they very well knew? Whatever may be the value of this word, John does not
think it worth his while to employ it in his gospel, nor in his epistles, nor
in the book of Revelation. It is not in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in any of
the epistles of Paul, or of Peter, or Jude. If it is the specific name of a
place of endless woe, can it be that no apostle but James would use it, and he
only in quite another sense? But my limits will not allow me to pursue this
part of my subject. The progress of biblical exegesis, in the increasing light
of our time, finds scarcely more supposed evidence of future retribution in the
New Testament than is contained in the Old.
The inquiry remains, What shall conquer evil
habits with which men confessedly leave this world? What shall purify the
affections and win the heart from sin? What shall bring to man the highest
things and stay his soul on God? In death is no miracle. It may indeed remove
temptation, and rend away the veil that obscures truth and hides the glory of
our God. But righteousness is within, not without, a man.
Yes; but truth is without; God is without.
When they are known and felt, they enter in, and the soul is born into the
kingdom of our God. The experiences of this world are full of illustrations of
influences from without, coming to us with a quickening power and begetting
life within. Salvation by Christ is salvation by the truth of Christ. That
truth was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, in all worlds. Christ
came to bear witness to it. Mr. Barnes says, " We do not deem the doctrine
that man may be changed suddenly, and by an influence originating from some
other source than his own mind, at variance with the analogy of nature."
Paul's experience is a case in point. On his way to Damascus, he surely was not
"struggling" to discover the truth; but was " breathing out
threatening and slaughter," and " was exceedingly mad" against
the Christians. An influence from without came to him, and led to a great
change within. Who will say that the light which will burst upon the sinner as
he passes beyond the veil is not as bright and as potent as the light that
shone near Damascus? We say nothing of the instantaneousness, as by an electric
touch, of the sinner's conversion in general, any more than of Paul's case in
particular. The Bible tells us of another world. It does not tell us of sin and
woe in that world. Why should the children of God seek to be wise above what is
written?
Paul's own suggestions may here be of value.
Having set forth the transcendent importance of charity or love, and having
emphasized the transient character of prophecy, of the gift of tongues, and
even of knowledge itself, by reason of their limitations, he adds: " For
we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is
come, then that which is in part shall be done away. . . For now we see through
a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known" (1 Cor., 13: 9-12). In this connection,
notice also what John says: " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it
cloth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear,
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is " (1 John, 3: 2).
Entering a state where the spirit becomes the
embodiment of all sense, breathing the very atmosphere of truth and goodness,
free from temptation, and beholding God himself "face to face," is it
not as philosophical as it is biblical, that "we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is "? There is in all this no exclusion of the idea of
progress, nor of all forms of discipline; for discipline does not necessarily
involve punishment, though punishment, whenever and wherever involved, is
always disciplinary.
Harmonious with what is here presented, stands
Paul's treatment of the resurrection. " For we know that if our earthly
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens " (2 Cor., 5:1). " It is
sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it
is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a
natural body; it is raised a spiritual body " (1 Cor., 15: 42-44). Where,
in incorruption and glory, will there be room for corruption and dishonour?
Nor does the apostle look upon this
consummation as one that is to be long delayed. When the earthly tabernacle is
dissolved, we have the heavenly. He was a confident believer that, while "
to live is Christ, to die is gain " (Phil., 1: 21). He says, " I am
in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and be with Christ; which
is far better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you
" (Phil., 1: 23, 24). The gain in immediate departure consists in being
with Christ, thus seeing him as he is, and becoming altogether like him.
These considerations are submit humbly
prayerfully, with a full conviction that neither divine revelation, rightly
interpreted, nor any scheme of philosophy that shall do justice to human
experience and the nature of man, affords any evidence of the continuance of
sin and its retribution in the resurrection state.
A righteous retribution in the world to come,
but no literal eternity of torment for any created being.
By Rev. A. P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., Professor
in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
IT is greatly to be regretted that punishment
in the future life has become of late the subject of the same sort of
discussion that prevails on topics of less sacred interest. It demands, indeed,
serious inquiry from religious students and thinkers; while it is by no means
an edifying theme, even from the pulpit, for very much the same reason for
which lectures on the penal code of municipal law would be of no use to
law-abiding citizens, and would hardly exert a beneficial influence on those
inclined to evil. In recent discussions on this subject I have been disgusted
and repelled, on the one hand, by the levity of those who have written about it
as if it were a great boon to have the weight of moral responsibility lifted
from their shoulders, and as if it were lifted by the denial of a dogma which
the better part of Christendom has virtually outgrown, and, on the other hand,
by the uncompromising and gloomy bigotry with which the vanguard of orthodoxy
have clung to that dogma, attaching the same vital importance to the wrath of
the Almighty which St. John attaches to his love,-whereas the very word wrath,
though employed in our translation of the Scriptures, has since that
translation was made taken on a meaning of malignant and vindictive passion,
which by no means represents the righteous indignation, not incompatible with
love, ascribed to the Supreme Being by the sacred writers, and justly felt by
the best of men for willing and stubborn depravity. In point of fact, the
denial of the eternity of penal suffering has, in numerous instances in the
Christian Church, sprung from intensely solemn views of the divine retribution.
This was the case with Origen, among the Christian fathers, with John Foster,
by far the greatest name among the English Baptists, with McLeod and Erskine,
of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, as also with Stanley and Farrar, of the
English Church, and with not a few of their eminent coevals in our own country.
It is one thing to suppose that a merciful God dooms myriads of his creatures
to everlasting torment, and quite another to regard moral evil in the human
soul as anything else than a calamity, dire and, it may be, enduring, beyond
human imagination.
Let us consider the subject, first, in the
light of consciousness and experience, and then in that presented by our
Saviour and by those most intimately conversant with his teachings and spirit.
At the outset, I would dismiss the idea of
punishment in the sense of arbitrary infliction. I cannot conceive of this
under the divine government. Its necessity in human governments results solely
from the necessity of social self-defence; and the humane sentiment of our age
spurns vindictiveness in punishment, and at least professes to inflict only
such restraint, privation, and suffering as may be required either to arrest
the criminal's vicious career or to deter others from following in his steps.
Under the government of a Supreme Father punishment can be nothing else than
the natural and necessary consequence of sin. Now what is the inevitable
consequence of moral evil? In the sinner's own soul it is suffering, and
nothing but suffering. No man ever has a clear consciousness of guilt without
regret, self-loathing, inward pain,-if the guilt be great, without intense and
prolonged agony. This, indeed, may be kept at bay by virtual alienation from oneself,
by seeking refuge from self-communion in secular pursuits or sensual pleasures,
by turning the key on one's own consciousness and on the higher realm of the
selfhood which enshrines it, and living wholly on a lower plane, as one might
live if he had no moral nature. Yet in such a career self-recollection is
sometimes forced upon one by a break in the outward life, by illness or
calamity, or by the decay of the powers of activity and enjoyment; and at such
intervals we have reason to suppose that unrepented guilt is a source of
unspeakable torment. Remorse and despair are almost mutually convertible terms.
Now death is a permanent break in the outward
life. For him who wakes immortal from the death-slumber there can be no
intervening obstacle to full and entire self-consciousness. The soul must be
its own inseparable companion. What then must it be to carry into the life to
come passions that can no longer seek their low gratification, dispositions
alien from God and heaven, a moral constitution which is in itself mean and
vile, and which no longer has the covert of the body into which one may retreat
from self-converse, and thus forget that lie deserves to be loathed and scorned?
Need we the array of oriental imagery to make that condition ineffably
appalling? Nay, is not the strongest material imagery inadequate to represent
the dire spiritual reality?
That this is no mere fancy I think that we can
all feel, when we are reminded how comparatively slight wrongs and sins will
rankle in the memory, and re-appear after months and years, connecting
themselves with threads of association which we cannot break, and prophesying
the time when our whole past shall hear the resurrection call, the entire
record of memory shall be opened, and we shall be constrained to judge
ourselves according to the things written in that book.
But-it may be asked-must not the hour of
awakening from death and of unobstructed self-consciousness be, of necessity,
an epoch of repentance and spiritual renovation? This question we may answer,
perhaps, from earthly experience. Here remorse is not penitence. The
profoundest sense of guilt does not wash it away. Nor yet do the severest
chastisements always or often avail for the cleansing of the deeply guilty
soul. Sin has within itself a law of continuity. " Whosoever committed
sin," says Jesus, " is the slave of sin," forfeits his freedom,
loses his power of self-help, and for very weakness continues to be what he
loathes to be. Who can dare to affirm that this law of spiritual being ceases
at death? If identity be retained, I cannot conceive that mere remorse can be
of greater avail in renovating and reforming the soul on its entrance into the
life beyond death than it has been in this world. How many obdurate sinners
have had every conceivable motive to repentance urged upon them, every mode of
spiritual influence exerted upon them, in vain! The resources of the divine
mercy are inexhaustibly rich, and we cannot but hope that they will ultimately
prevail over every stubborn and every inert will. But is there anything in earthly
experience to authorize the belief that this conquest will be prompt and easy?
Does not what we know here point for the obdurately impenitent to a discipline,
merciful indeed, yet rendered by the necessity of their own guilt, in the
strongest sense of the term, severely merciful?
Indeed, I cannot but think of punishment in
consequence of sin as mercy,-as the expression of God's love. If there is
intrinsic excellence, beauty, loveliness, in virtue, I know not how it is to be
labelled for man as possessing these characteristics, except by his full
experience of the loathsomeness and deformity of its opposite.
It is for the eternal happiness and well-being
of the sinner that, so long as he is guilty in temper and in character, he
should feel the full consequences of his guilt. These consequences are the only
mirror in which he can see himself as he is, and can thus know what he ought to
be. Let the eternal Providence cut off from sin its dire effects on the
sinner's well-being, so much would be taken from the paramount beauty of
holiness. Let the Infinite Being overlook the distinctions of character, and
place the saint and the sinner on the same plane beyond the veil of death, the
divine displeasure would no longer rest visibly on human guilt; and, in the
same degree, the supreme approval of God would be withdrawn from virtue, and
goodness would lose for the whole universe its highest sanction. We cannot,
then, regard with complacency, as consistent with just views of the divine
perfectness or with the order of the moral universe, any theory which ignores a
righteous retribution in the world to come, or makes the way of transgressors,
while hard in this world, easy in the passage through the shadow of death.
We are confirmed in this view by the uniform teaching
of Jesus Christ. Leaving aside for the moment the divine authority of his
words, which yet I cannot doubt, no being certainly ever felt so strongly or
proclaimed so confidently as he did the fatherly love of God for all his
children; yet none ever uttered so clearly and emphatically the fearful doom of
the ungodly and impenitent. I believe that he spoke of what he knew, testified
of what he had seen,-that his words are the words of God to man; and no one can
derive from his words other than the most solemn and. awful view of future
retribution. The only question that can be raised concerning his teaching is
whether it implies the literal eternity of the consequences of sin to the
individual sinner. I cannot believe that it does, and my chief reason for
believing that it does not is his revelation of the infinite love of God. With
this the dogma of eternal torment for any created being is utterly at variance.
All souls are God's children by their native capacities and endowments, and I
cannot but believe that they all will ultimately be his through the might of
his fatherly discipline and the wealth of his redeeming love.
But Jesus does not say so, and I should not
expect him to say so. Let us take a case as closely analogous as we can
suppose. Here is a young man at the period of life where the two ways part. He
is going from the shelter of a virtuous home to a condition of fearful moral
exposure and peril. His father says to him: " My son, two courses are open
to you. Be temperate, chaste, honest,-forget not the presence of your God,-remember
that right and wrong change not, that the same heavens are over you wherever
you go; and you are sure to be respected, honoured, happy,-your way through
life, your way into eternity, will be a way of light, peace, and joy. But if
you yield to the temptations which will surely beset you, if you suffer
yourself to be drawn into pleasurable vice, if you once part with your
integrity, your purity, your reverence for the law and will of God, you will
inevitably go to ruin, body and soul." The father does not add, though in
a certain sense it be true, " But, my son, if you see fit to pursue a
vicious course, there are stopping-places and turning-places in the way,-you
can change your life, retrace your steps, repair to a certain degree the damage
to your character and well-being, and resume a virtuous course." Jesus
occupies with regard to mankind precisely the position of that father to his
son. To his conception the consequences of sin are unspeakably terrible. He
knew, as we cannot imagine, the fearful destiny which impenitent sin creates
for itself. He sets before his hearers the two courses,-virtue, piety, and
immeasurable happiness,-sin, vice, and untold wretchedness and agony. Was it
for him to relieve the fearful picture,-to say to the guilty, " Take the
downward course if you will, there will be a time when you can forsake it, and
join those' on the heavenly way"? Was it not fitting that the blackness of
darkness should be suffered to rest on the way of transgressors? Could he have
uttered hopeful words, that would not have been seized. upon as an
encouragement to continue in sin? Or can we, with his example before us,
attempt to light up that blackness of darkness, except so far as there may rest
upon it a gleam from the sunlight of the divine love?
But it is asked, Do not his words imply a
literal eternity? I answer that in themselves they neither exclude nor imply
it. They are, as I believe that he meant that they should be, indefinite. The
word commonly rendered eternal or everlasting literally means age-long; it
sometimes signifies spiritual; and the corresponding terms in the Hebrew
sometimes mean as long as the case admits or requires. Thus in the Old
Testament we have, "He shall be thy servant forever," that is, as
long as he can be, as long as he lives. The word in question and similar terms,
as applied to the punishment of sin, I am strongly inclined to believe, have
this latter sense, " as long as sin lasts," thus making the
connection of sin and its consequent misery inseparable and eternal.
This sense corresponds with earthly and human
experience of suffering. What we see in this world cannot be interpreted on the
theory that what is commonly called happiness is the purpose of God's
administration of his human family. The same power and wisdom which we cannot
but recognize in the course of nature and in the ordering of human affairs
might have made an unsuffering world, had there been no higher purpose. But the
amount of human misery and suffering, though not a counterpoise, is an immense
and formidable offset to the enjoyment of sentient beings. Now, if we assume
the establishment of moral distinctions and the ultimate supremacy of virtue to
be the purpose of the Creator, then we can interpret the mystery of physical
evil; for we can trace most of it, and undoubtedly with more penetrating vision
we could trace all of it, more or less directly to human guilt. But if a good
God permits such a vast burden of pain and sorrow to be borne by his children
here, and if we see that this burden must rest upon humanity till the heavier
burden of sin shall be lifted off, and there shall be " new heavens and a
new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," we cannot but feel that in the
life beyond death the same law bears sway, and that there will be suffering
there until guilt shall be purged away and ransomed man shall find his eternal
happiness in the love and service of his God.
There remains, indeed, for the individual soul
the possibility of a will irresistibly opposed to the divine will, and
inaccessible to the reformatory discipline of the world to come; and if there
be such souls, I cannot doubt that the mercy which fails to overcome their
obduracy suffers them to fall out of being. Yet as regards the finite spirit,
it is hardly conceivable that there should be less than omnipotence in infinite
and everlasting love, in conflict with the determinedly stubborn will.
Gehenna: the conception of future retributions
ac-cording to the Mohammedan theology.
STANLEY LANE-POOLE, 'Member of the Asiatic
Society, Author of Picturesque Egypt, History of the Moors in Spain, and other
works.
OF all religions in the world Islam is the
most uncompromising in its conception of hell. Once having announced the
doctrine of eternal punishment for unbelief, Mohammed allowed his Arab
imagination to run riot in devising the torments of the damned. He had no
merciful Purgatory for the infidel: he preached a death-in-life of perpetual
torture, and he set before the unbeliever a scene of misery as appalling as he
could conceive. The conception is crude and barbarous enough; the torments are
brutal, and bear no relation whatever to the sinner's faults; they are just
such pains as the Prophet's hearsay acquaintance with Jewish and Magian
traditions added to his native Arabian ideas of wretchedness, would suggest.
The whole picture is horribly, coarsely realistic, and wanting in all the
delicacy of ingenious torture; and if the Mohammedan Paradise is a blot upon
the moral teaching of Islam, its Hell can no less be regarded as an
intellectual failure. Mohammed's fancy could not reach beyond the common bodily
burning, for sage and fool alike, which many a martyr has been able to support
with a smile; the torment of the mind finds no place in his Gehenna, nor that
most exquisite of punishments inferred in the words, " He that is impure,
let him be impure still." Tantalus and Sisyphus were forced to endure the
agony of deceived expectancy, and almost, never quite, achieved endeavour: the
victim of Gehenna has merely to bear physical pain, as terrible as may be, but
not the intolerable anguish of a disappointed, self-contemning soul. Milton's
Satan suffered worse agony than any devised by Mohammed.
The grotesque side of any superstition is to
be found chiefly in the Under- and Over- world: where the limited human mind
tries to conceive the inconceivable and to portray what " eye bath not
seen." In the case of Islam, the grotesque element becomes so
overwhelming, the moment the soul leaves the body, that it is difficult to
realize the fact that two hundred millions of sane people solemnly accept the
absurd legends as articles of faith. We shall trace the soul's progress as
recorded in the orthodox authorities.
Instead of coming forth from the body easily
and sweetly, like pure water from a goatskin, and with a musky scent, as does
the believer's spirit, the soul of the wicked is dragged forth by the Angel of
Death, fizzing and sputtering, "as a hot spit is drawn out of wet
wool." Hideous demons wrap him in sackcloth, despite his evil smell, and
carry him to the gate of the lowest heaven. But the door-keepers say, " No
welcome to thee, vile soul; go back, accursed: the doors are not open for
thee." Then God says, "Write his history in Sijjin," which is
the registry of Hell; and the demons cast him violently back to earth, and he
joins his body in the grave; or, perchance arriving earlier, while it is being
washed, sits down beside the bed till his tenement is ready for him.* Then
begins the Azab el-Kabr, "the torture of the grave," which every one,
Muslim or infidel, must infallibly suffer. To the pious, however, it is but a
brief ordeal. The grave is arched, and the bandages of the dead are untied by
his kindred, so that he may be able to sit up during the inevitable trial. To
him enter Munkar and Nekir, a pair of terrible black angels, with flashing blue
eyes (an uncanny colour to the Arab), who proceed to examine him in his
articles of faith. If he be a true believer, they will finally say, "
Sleep like the bridegroom, till God raise thee up on the Last Day ": but
of the infidel they ask, " Who is thy Lord?" and he answers,
"Alas, alas! I know not." " What is thy religion? " "
Alas, alas! I know not." " What of the apostle who was sent to
thee?" "Alas, alas! I know not." Then a voice is heard
descending from heaven: "He lieth: therefore spread him a bed of fire, and
open the door toward Hell." And a hole is made Hell wards, and he hears
the gnashing of its teeth, and the hot blasts blow in upon him, and contract
the grave, so that his ribs are staved in. And a devil with a hideous face
looks in at him, and says, " I am thy foul actions," till the
terrified wretch cries out, " O Lord, delay the resurrection!" All
the long ages to the Judgment Day are the wicked tortured in their graves,
drubbed with iron clubs, devoured by great crawling serpents, till their cries
startle the animals grazing among the tombs. As happened to the camel of
Mohammed himself, when he rode one day near the graves in an orchard, and the
beast jibbed so as almost to throw the Prophet, who said, " It is certain
enough that infidels are punished in their graves, and, if I were not afraid
that you would leave off burying, verily I would call on God to give you the
power of hearing what I now hear. Call on God to defend you from the fire, and
the punishments of the grave, and all other calamities." Common men cannot
hear these sounds; but camels and asses may.
When the Signs of the Last Day have been
accomplished, and Israfil has blown the first blast of the trumpet,-the
"Blast of Consternation,"--. all the universe is immediately
shattered: " the Heaven is rent asunder; the stars are scattered; the
mountains are like carded wool," and all mankind "like scattered
moths"; the tombs are "turned upside down," and with one
piercing revelation of itself " the soul shall know what it hath done and
left undone."
When the sun shall be wrapped up, And when the
stars shall fall down, And when the mountains shall be removed, And when the
ten-month-gone camels shall be neglected, And when the seas shall boil over,
And when souls shall be joined to their bodies, And when the child that was
buried alive shall be asked For what crime she was slain; And when the books
shall be laid open, And when the sky shall be peeled off, And when Hell shall
be set ablaze, And when Paradise shall be brought near,- The soul shall know what
it hath wrought. But first all creation must die, even the Angel of Death.
himself; and then, when all is silence, and God alone lives, and fructifying
rain begins and continues for the space of forty years, till the moist earth is
ready for the cropping, and the remains of the dead, sprouting like young corn
in the .invigorated soil, are fit to shoot up into bodies like as they were
before in the world, then from the rock of the Temple of Jerusalem sounds the
Last Trump, and every creature, beast and bird, awakes and arises, and all the
men and women that ever were stand naked before God.
Thus they stand for many years! for God is not
hasty to judge. They gaze up to Heaven, blinded and maddened with the heat of
the sun, which is now but a bodkin distant; the skulls of the wicked boil like
a pot upon the fire, their faces are blackened, they are bathed in sweat, a-hungered
and athirst, breathless and suffocated in the press of the multitude. And there
before them lies Hell, like some huge sulky beast, that has been dragged near,
upon its four sturdy legs, by millions of angels tugging at thousands of
chains: it is braying horrible discord, and looking like to burst with rage.*
And over its gaping jaws stretches the fearful bridge Sirat, finer than a hair,
and sharp as the edge of a sword, over which all men must pass, the good to
Paradise, while the wicked fall off into Hell. Before the bridge stands
Gabriel, the Archangel, holding the mighty scales wherewith to weigh the good
and evil deeds of all men:-
Then
as for him whose scales are heavy, his shall be a life well-pleasing; And as
for him whose scales are light,-his abode shall be the Bottomless Pit. And what
shall teach thee what that is? A Raging Fire
It All
is now prepared. and the Judgment begins, and once begun it is quickly ended;
it is "no longer than the space between the two milking of a
she-camel." The Recording Angels bring the books in which they have noted
every good and evil action done by every man in the world, and the books must
now be weighed in Gabriel's scales. The infidel's evil book outweighs his good
book, and his doom is sealed. He knows it when he is forced to take his book in
his left hand, while the true believers receive theirs in their right. He cries
out, " O that my book had never been given me, and that I had not known my
reckoning!" The command issues:- Take him and chain him, Then, into Hell
thrust him to be burned. The keepers chain him with a chain of seventy cubits.
They thrust him, they drag him on the face, they seize him by the forelock and
feet, and force him upon the fatal Bridge, over which the righteous are running
so lightly and easily; and down he falls into the Fire, while they pour
scalding water over his skull. One after the other the wicked tumble into Hell,
till the angels cry out to it, " Art thou full? " and Hell answers,
" Are there more Then begin the torments that never cease; the burning
that ever brands but consumes not; the everlasting eating of the thorny bitter
fruit of the Zakkiim, the tree of Hell, whose apples are like devils' skulls;
the drinking of gore and horrible corruption,* like " dregs of oil surging
up " within.
Then shall he neither die therein nor live.
In the torment of Hell shall the wicked dwell
for ever: there shall be no mitigation for them; despair shall hold them mute4
With Us are strong fetters and a flaming fire, And food that choked, and a sore
torment, On the day when the earth and the mountains shall tremble. And what
shall teach thee what Hell Fire is?
It leaves naught and spared naught, Scorching
man's flesh. § He shall be cast into Blasting Hell.
And what shall teach thee what Blasting Hell
is?
The Fire of God kindled, Reaching over the
hearts, Closing over them Like a well pitched tent. II Verily Hell lieth in
wait, The goal for rebels, To abide therein for ages; They shall taste neither
coolness nor drink, But scalding water and running sores, A meet reward! The
people of the left hand: what people of ill omen Amid burning wind and scalding
water And a shade of pitchy smoke Not cool or grateful. . . .
Ye shall surely eat of the Zakkum And fill
your bellies with it, And drink upon it scalding water- Drink like thirsty
camels.** Travailing and worn, Burnt at the scorching fire, Made to drink at a
fountain fiercely boiling, No food but dari' Which neither fattens nor fills.
Such is the Hell of the Koran as interpreted
by the light of tradition. The Muslim Bible nowhere specifies the seven
divisions which the commentators have invented. It says merely that Hell
"has seven portals, and at every door is a separate party "; which is
sufficiently vague. The usual name in the Koran is " The Fire," but
it is called Gehenna about thirty times, and very rarely
Laza,"Blazer," RI-Hutama, "Blaster," Sa'ir,
"Flamer," Sakar, "Scorcher," El-Jakim, " Mager,"
and Hdwiya, " the Bottomless Pit." On this slight foundation the
Doctors of Islam have constructed the seven Hells, for the Mohammedans, Christians,
Jews, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, and hypocrites, respectively. The only other
topographical indication in the Koran concerns the Partition Wall between
Paradise and Hell, upon which, say some doctors, are perched those whose evil
deeds exactly balance their good deeds in Gabriel's scales, and who
consequently belong neither to Heaven nor to Hell, though eventually they will
be pardoned by God and admitted to the joys of Paradise.
The Koran does not contemplate the possibility
of any Muslim going to Hell. The mere fact of his creed outweighs all possible
sins. The words, " There is not one of you who will not come to her "
(Hell), have indeed been interpreted by some as inferring a purgatorial trial
for wicked Mohammedans; but it probably means no more than that believers as
well as infidels will be near Hell on the Judgment Day. All misbelievers
without exception. will be burned in Hell for ever and ever. All Muslims will
go to Paradise.
The Koran is not the only source of
information 'on Mohammed's teaching. It contains his official pronunciamenti,
his public orations, his judgments from the bench. If we would know his private
talk, his daily acts and sayings, which form the rules and precedents for every
Muslim's conduct,-insomuch that -a pious jurist refused to eat water-melons,
because though it was recorded that the Prophet ate them it was not recorded
whether he cut or crushed them,-we must turn to those collections of Traditions
which may be called the Table-talk of Mohammed. They are simple and natural
statements, by spectators and listeners, of the sayings and doings of the
Prophet in his daily relations; and they were handed down orally from narrator
to narrator, till they were collected, sifted, and annotated, in the third
century of the Hijra. Unfortunately, the interval between the first teller and
the final collector is a long one, and. the critical methods of the period were
not perfect. There are undoubtedly a large number of forgeries and a larger
number of misquotations among the Surma or Traditions: but this does not
prevent their being generally accepted, and possessing an authority second only
to the Koran. Indeed, the Traditions are responsible for most of the ritual and
ceremonies of Islam, which they expand far beyond the curt and indefinite
notices in the Koran. In regard to future punishment, they supply many filthy
details about the torments of the damned; but the only really important
additions are the theory of a temporary purgatory for Muslims and the doctrine
of degrees in punishment: "Some of the internals will be taken by the fire
up to the ankles, and some up to the knees, and some up to the waist, and some
up to the neck." There is no modification of the main dogma: that Hell is
the portion of all who do not accept Islam, and that its torments are eternal.
In the Koran and Traditions we have,
respectively, the undoubted and the probable teaching of the Prophet Mohammed,
each equally binding upon all his followers. But the Muslim has something more
than these to guide him, and this last is what Western students of Islam are
apt to underestimate. Christians would call it "the general consent of the
Fathers," and possibly reject it: .Mohammedans call it Ijma', and
implicitly obey it. Ijma' is the recorded consensus of opinion among the early
companions and followers of the Prophet, as collected and formulated by the
leading jurists of Islam. What these jurists have decided, that do the orthodox
believe. Commentator after commentator has recapitulated these decisions, and
deduced analogical conclusions from them, and the orthodox Muslim is guided by
these conclusions.
If one inquire what the commentators say about
the punishments of the future state, let El-Barkawi answer: It is necessary,
he says, to acknowledge that the
torments of the tomb are real and certain, and that Munkar and Nekir will come
and examine the dead; that all living things will die, and the mountains will
fly in the air like birds, etc.; that there is a balance in which good and bad
actions will be weighed; that Muslims who enter the fire will, after having
purged their sins, enter Paradise; that the bridge Sirat, sharper than a sword,
is raised above the fire, and all must pass over it; that the unbelievers and
devils will remain forever in Hell in torment by serpents and scorpions and
fire and scalding water; their bodies will burn into coal, and God will revive
them so that they may suffer fresh torments. This will last forever.
Again, another commentator says: * It is
agreed amongst all orthodox Muslims that all unbelievers, without exception,
will be consigned to the fire forever, and that they will never be free from
torment. Besides these, all Muslims who have committed great sins will go to
Hell; but they will not remain there always, for it has been said in the Koran,
" He who does an atom of good shall see its reward." t It may
reasonably be urged that, while the more ignorant or bigoted commentators may
have enforced a belief in the ridiculous and revolting details of the judgment
and perdition, as described in the Koran and Traditions, the higher type of
intellect among the Mohammedans must surely have rejected them as childish and
even essentially impious; but this is not so. In the early centuries of Islam,
when the ignorant Arabs came into collision with philosophical Greeks and
Persians, a number of heresies sprang up, and a rational treatment of the Koran
and Surma, seemed to be imminent. But about the year 1100, the Seraphic Doctor
of Islam, Mohammed El-Ghazilli, surnamed " Proof of the Faith," after
undergoing a period of scepticism, emerged orthodox (not without certain
particular views of his own), and employed the formidable dialectic which he
had acquired in the schools of the heretics, to destroy the positions of the
philosophers. El-Ghaziili won the victory for orthodoxy, and crystallized the
dogmas of Islam. This reaction against the freethinking tendency of his time
has remained the permanent position of all orthodox Muslims ever since, and in
his writings we find the expression of the same beliefs and superstitions as
are now held by all ordinary Mohammedans.* El-Ghazali was a highly trained
philosopher; but his treatise on eschatology, Ed-Durra El-Faltira, teems with
ideas and details even more childish and absurd than those which we have quoted
from the Koran. His notions of the scenes succeeding death, the arrangements of
the judgment day, and the like, are even more preposterous and silly than those
we have related, and his additions to the ordinary story only make it more ridiculous.
If the learned Ghazali accepted and elaborated
such fables, it is easy to imagine how the writer of text-books and the popular
preacher -or their correspondents in Mohammedan society-harped upon the same
harmonious string. As an instance, we may cite the anonymous modern treatise
which Dr. Wolff has edited in Arabic and translated into German, under the
title of Mithammedanische Es.chatologie. In this work, which accurately
represents the orthodox popular opinion, the description of the future residence
and punishment of the wicked is ample and detailed. The bridge Sirat is
represented as consisting of seven arches, each long enough to take three
thousand years to cross-one thousand ascending, one thousand at the top, and
one thousand going down: on each arch the passenger will be interrogated on
some specialduty, such as prayer or fasting, and upon his reply depends his
further progress or immediate downfall into Hell. The fire of Hell is black:
for it burned one thousand years till it was red-hot, and another thousand till
it reached a white heat, and after a third thousand it became black-hot, which
is the worst of all. So hot is this, that when Adam asked the archangel Gabriel
for a small piece of Hell, to boil his kettle with, the fiery atom shrivelled
up the mountain on which it was placed and burned its way back to the infernal
regions below. Hell appears, when dragged up on the Judgment Day, to be a beast
with four huge feet and thirty thousand heads, each head with thirty thousand
mouths, and each mouth with thirty thousand teeth, and every tooth as big as
Mount Ohud. Fastened to the lips are iron chains of seventy million links
apiece; several angels lay hold of each link, and so drag it up to the left
hand of the Throne. The dwellers in Hell are black of face and dim of eye.
Their seventy skins are divided by layers of fire; fiery serpents devour their
entrails: you may hear them roaring within like wild beasts, and braying like
jackasses. If the sinner asks Malik, the keeper, for a drink, he gives him
scalding water; no sooner is the cup seized than the fingers fall off; as the
boiling liquid approaches the face, eyes and cheeks fall out,-arid, once
swallowed, every inward is consumed. So with the fruit of Zakkam,-fire comes
from its eater's mouth, his whole interior is burned out: . . etc. Is it worth
while to pursue the puerilities of " Mohammedan eschatology " any
further?
It may be argued that, in the present state of
intercourse between Muslims and Europeans, some intellectual and moral advance
must have been made, which would forbid the acceptance of the orthodox doctrine
concerning the future state. Such is certainly the case, and there are a few
Indians, Egyptians, and Turks, who repudiate the literal interpretation of the
Koranic Judgment scenes, and treat them as mere allegories. But such are very
rare, and they are not really Muslims at all: no respectable member of the
Ulama, or religious jurists, would tolerate them. They may be Islamitical
theists,-just as there is a theism formed upon Christianity,-but they are not
Muslims. To the true Mohammedan, authority is everything; and his authority-the
Koran, Surma, and Ijma'-tells him that all these things are literally what they
purport to be, and that the Hell of the Koran is absolutely accurate in every
detail. In talking to Europeans, the more cultivated and enlightened Muslims
adopt a rational and conciliatory tone and confine their dogmas to generalities
deprived of all offensive or preposterous details. Thus we find the Sheykh
el-Islam, or chief judge of Constantinople, and officially the highest
theological authority in the whole Mohammedan world, writing this year to a
German convert in general terms which are calculated to attract rather than to
repel him. But even this remarkable document does not venture to set aside the
doctrine of eternal punishment. "It is necessary to believe," writes
the Sheykh el-Islam, " that the dead will rise again, that they will
appear before the tribunal of God to render their accounts, and that the elect
will be sent to Paradise, and those condemned, to Hell. All the actions of
every one [except martyrs] in this world will be examined on that day, one by
one." This is simple enough; and if the German convert privately asked the
Sheikh el-Islam what he thought of the houris and wonders of Paradise and the
torments of Hell, his Holiness might perhaps hint at some allegorical
interpretation, in deference to the German's prejudices; but he would not make
the hint public or offer it to a native Muslim; nor would he believe it in the
least himself.
An English Arabic scholar once asked his sheikh,
a singularly liberal minded, tolerant man, though strictly religious, what his
real opinion was on this subject, and was surprised to hear the scholar
emphatically declare his belief in the literal truth of the whole of the
Koranic picture,-the trees and gardens and rivers, and tents of pearls, and the
houris, of Paradise,-and only a delicacy of feeling prevented his carrying the
catalogue on to those portions which, in his belief, would unpleasantly affect
the future existence of his pupil. The sheikh was an Egyptian, but the same may
be said of all orthodox Mohammedans, that is, of the enormous majority of the
Prophet's followers. Belief in eternal perdition for all infidels, accompanied
by singularly revolting torments, is a cardinal article of faith in Islam,
" which except a man believe, without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly."
All the wicked who die finally impenitent will
come forth to the resurrection of condemnation.
By C. W. PRICHARD, Minister in Friends'
Church, and Editor of the Christian Worker, Chicago, Ili.
As a life-long member of the Friends' Church,
I shall set forth in this article what I believe to be the doctrine held by
this body of Christians, as tested both by its authorized writings and. the
general tone of its preaching. For what is herein written, however, I hold
myself alone responsible.
While attempting an argument from Scripture on
the subject of punishment after death, no pretence to superior learning is
made; but, taking the common English Bible, both the authorized and the revised
versions, I have sought to discover the plain, obvious meaning of the text,
such meaning as an intelligent reader, seeking the truth, would naturally
gather from a careful perusal. To the Scriptures alone do I look for the truth
concerning a future state. I have no confidence in any opinion based upon
anything else.
To begin with, let us take the lesson of the
rich man and Lazarus, given by the Saviour in Luke 16: 19-31. I mark the
following points which seem to me plainly deducible therefrom:-
1. Two
men spent this life within knowledge of each other. Death, man's common lot,
came to each. Lazarus had lived with a view to future existence, and was
prepared for death; the rich man, satisfied with his "good things "
in this life, gave no heed to the invitations and warnings of the Lord's
prophets, did not repent of his sins, and was, therefore, not prepared for
death.
2. After death, Lazarus was taken to the abode
of righteous Abraham; the rich man found himself in hell or hacks. The one was
"comforted," the other tormented." The happiness of one was
complete, his fruition perfect; as a faithful Israelite he could ask no more
than the companionship of Father Abraham, in his heavenly home; the despair of
the other is described in his sad lament. "I am tormented in this
flame," and in the piteous cry for but a drop of water to cool his tongue.
3. Heaven is a place, and hades is a place.
Nothing here sustains that mystical, super-spiritual view which would make hell
a state. and its inhabitants characterized by evil passions and dispositions.
The voice of Abraham and the voice of the doomed man came from living beings,
with the same individuality as upon earth, each in his respective place,
permanently separated from the other. We hear of the eyes, the tongue, the finger.
The rich man pleads that Lazarus may be sent to warn his brethren against
coming to " this place of torment."
4. The future destiny of the rich man was Inalterably
fixed. Is there anywhere a hint of the possibility of his future redemption?
Not the slightest. If the doctrine of restoration beyond the grave be true, how
could Abraham have said, " Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed:
so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass
to us that would come from thence"? All passing from hades to heaven is
cut off, though there may be those who " would come from thence."
Equally significant is the declaration, " they which would pass from hence
to you cannot." If probation be not ended, why should heavenly messengers
he excluded from this region of hope, seeing their pleading might yet avail to
save? If righteous persons are needed in this probation, why not in the next?
If preaching and prayer and pleading are effective here, why not there? Why
this impassable gulf between these candidates for redemption and those who
would offer them help? Between the righteous dead and the impenitent living on
earth there is a gulf, but no such gulf as this. Abraham did not say that
Lazarus could not return with a message to the live brethren, but that he need
not; many a time such messengers have returned to earth. This, then, seems
clear, that when this life ends the mingling of the righteous and the wicked
will end. The power and influence of a living church are not known in hades.
Again, if there was hope for the rich man, why was there not the least
expression of it in this conversation? In a most eloquent and pathetic mariner
does the rich man invite such expression, but no word of hope is spoken. Does
he not seem repentant, even? See his anxiety for his brethren. If repentance
may yet bring salvation, are there not the most favourable indications that the
rich man is about to turn unto God? Then why does he not receive some word of
comfort? If in this life one show a like evidence of sorrow for himself and
interest for the salvation of others, the messengers of the cross shower upon
him the promises of the gospel. Why this silence of Father Abraham towards this
suffering, anxious man? Why no word of hope? Answer, " The harvest is
past, the summer is ended."
5. The rich man after death was in a state of
consciousness. To him death was not a sleep; it seemed rather the beginning of
a life of torment, in which he was keenly alive to all about him. Upon what
principle of Scripture exegesis can the doctrine of soul-sleeping find any
support from this portion of revelation? Is not the text equally fatal to the
doctrine of annihilation? Here are both punishment and a place for the unsaved,
with no intimation that there will ever be a change. Lazarus is not alone;
others are awake; Abraham's words are in the plural, "you," and the
five brethren were in danger of joining them. What reason have we to suppose
that all the impenitent dead are not, like Lazarus, awake? When will their
sleep begin? Will they sleep amid the anguish of hades? The concern of the rich
man was not that his brethren should escape annihilation, but a living torment.
If this anguish is to end in non-existence, or if there is to be an unconscious
sleep, strange that this lesson should have gone into the sacred record with
teaching so directly opposed thereto, the natural conclusions drawn therefrom
being erroneous and not one word written to correct them.
6. The general if not the specific truth,
taught by this Scripture, was enforced by Moses and the prophets. The request
of the rich man that Lazarus be sent to " testify unto " his five
brethren, " lest they also come unto this place of torment," was
answered- by the words, " They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear
them." The teaching of these messengers of God had been so plain that
Abraham withheld not the strong expression, " If they bear not Moses and
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the
dead." Hear not Moses and the prophets concerning what? Manifestly
concerning hell and bow to escape it, and heaven and how it may be won. It is
not claimed that the Old Testament teaches as definitely as the New all the
points we have drawn from the lesson of Lazarus and the rich man. It was not
necessary that it should do so, in an age when, in common with people of all
nations, the Jews believed in the final separation of the righteous and the
wicked after death, and were little given to disputing about the character and
duration of the punishment. Yet there are several plain affirmative
declarations in the Old Testament concerning the eternal doom of the wicked,
and the general tenor of its teaching in this direction need not be
misunderstood. Moses and the prophets, clearly and in many forms of expression,
described man as lost, dead, blind, impure, unfit for the society of righteous
and holy beings in another state of existence; they held up before them the way
of salvation, and pleaded with them to accept it and walk therein, warning them
of their danger, and assuring them of God's love and mercy. " Now is the
accepted time, now is the day of salvation," " Turn ye, turn ye, why
will ye die?" are but examples of their fervour and zeal in exhortation.
An argument, when followed to its legitimate
end, sometimes leads to a conclusion which is the very opposite of that which
was intended by its author. I may refer to an example of this in my own
experience. When a young man, I listened to a highly intellectual and eloquent
discourse in favour of universal salvation. The following argument impressed me
and I remembered it: The speaker stated that Moses, in giving the law, nowhere
made punishment after death a penalty for disobedience. This, he reasoned, was
strong presumptive evidence that there is no such punishment. If the Hebrews
were to suffer only famine, pestilence, the sword, and like earthly evils, as
the result of their sins, such is the lot of all men; the penalty for
transgression is paid in this life, and there is no punishment in the
hereafter. My spiritual condition was such as to make this doctrine very
acceptable. It would have been a great relief to me to know that there is no
hell. For a time this discourse strengthened my temptation to unbelief.
Presently I in-quired, Is there a promise of heaven as a reward for keeping the
law? I examined the Pentateuch and did not find that there was. Then I saw that
if the omission in one case proves there is no hell, in the other it proves
there is no heaven. I was now more perplexed than ever. This seemed a clear
defect in the Scriptures. At last, when I had come to know Christ, and had made
some advancement in divine life, the mystery was solved; the glorious truth
took possession of me, that salvation is a free gift, bestowed only upon him
who believeth in Jesus. Heaven is not won by keeping the law, man is not saved
by works. Conversely, the wicked are not turned into hell for disobedience, but
for refusing or neglecting to accept God's free gift, for not believing in
Jesus Christ. From the beginning, this foundation truth was guarded by Jehovah.
The doctrine so fully revealed in. the New Testament, namely, "This is
life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom thou bast sent (John, 17: 3), and, " He that believeth not is
condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only
begotten Son of God " (John, 3:18), was understood by Moses and the
prophets, as they looked to the Saviour through promise; and this formed the
basis of their writings, and gave the grounds for their great anxiety for the
salvation of souls. Hence, that which under superficial knowledge seemed to
teach that there is no punishment after death, with better instruction, became
a necessary link in the chain which supports the very opposite doctrine.
Finally, the Scripture taken as the basis of
this article gives plain affirmative teaching on eternal punishment for the
wicked after death, and connects its lessons with the revelation which reaches
back to the fall of man. But what is here taught by Luke is confirmed by the
other evangelists. The scene of the judgment as given by Matthew closes with
these awfully solemn words, "And these shall go away into eternal
punishment: but the righteous into eternal life." In the Revised Version
precisely the same word is used to describe the duration of punishment, as of
life, and the words are the same in the original. When read in the light of
these texts all other passages in the New Testament are easily understood; they
need no elaborate explanations. Notice a few of them: "It is profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body
should be cast into hell." " It shall be more tolerable for the land
of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee." "I will profess unto
them I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." " Fear
him which is able to destroy both soul and body in bell." " The Son
of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom
all things that offend, and them that do iniquity; and shall cast them into a
furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." All these
texts are taken from Matthew; many expressions of like import and equally
strong occur in other portions of the New Testament. In the closing chapter of
the book of Revelation we read these words, if possible, even more fearfully
solemn, in their import: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and
he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." " Without are the dogs,
and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters,
and every one that loveth and makes a lie " (R. V.).
In a document issued by Ohio Yearly Meeting of
Friends, in 1883, on the "common heresy called Restoration," the
following paragraph appears: " But as the doctrines of Scripture are
continually wrested to prove the heresy, we do well to apply the added test of
its practical effects. It is true of doctrines as of men, that 'by their fruits
ye shall know them.' It has been well said that a doctrine that does not work
well is not true,' and it is the united testimony of church history and present
observation, that belief in a second probation paralyses the zeal of the
ministry, and lulls sinners into a fatal apathy about their souls' salvation,
while, on the other hand, pungent conviction for sin leading to genuine
repentance and conversion attends the faithful preaching of the orthodox view
of future punishment." The same document contains the following: "The
influence of this baneful error is on the side of rationalism, with which it
has ever been associated, and its maintenance very generally leads to a
departure from evangelical faith in the atonement and offices of Jesus
Christ."
The history of the Friends' Church affords a
painful illustration of the correctness of these statements. George Fox and his
co-laborers were free from rationalism, were orthodox and evangelical,
preaching the certainty of God's judgments in a future state. They had,
therefore, in a remarkable degree, a missionary and evangelistic spirit; the
church grew rapidly, and, at the close of the seventeenth century, it was as
large as it has ever been since. Because, perhaps, of some expressions used by
the founders of our sect in their contest against the outward formalism of that
day, some of their followers exercised undue liberty in spiritualizing
Scripture; which practice grew until in time many believed in only a spiritual
Christ, spiritual blood, a spiritual resurrection, judgment, Satan, hell, and
heaven; thus came a harvest of infidelity, followed by a division in the church
just prior to 1830. The seceders, led by Elias Hicks, were Unitarians, and,
with more or less definiteness in expression, denied the doctrine of eternal
punishment for the wicked. The orthodox Friends set about examining and
repairing their foundations, and for thirty years the preaching, led by such
men as J. J. Gurney, Stephen Grellet, Benjamin Seebohm, and Lindley M. Hoag,
ministers of great power, was confined almost exclusively to the fundamentals
of Christian faith, namely, the deity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious atonement,
the supreme authority of the Scriptures, the resurrection of the body, the
judgment, and the eternal punishment of the wicked. Thirty years later, we find
the church well established in a sound theology, and its missionary and
evangelistic power beginning to return. Since 1860 its growth has been very
rapid; many gifted evangelists have appeared and done a noble work; missions
have been established in Madagascar, Syria, Turkey, India, China, Japan,
Alaska, Mexico, Jamaica, and among several Indian tribes. -Without an
exception, so far as I know, all the missionaries and evangelists believe in
but one probation, and preach the eternal punishment of the finally impenitent.
All the leaven of Unitarianism was not, however, removed from the church by the
secession. While the army of reform has steadily advanced, some have marched in
the rear, others have fallen out of the ranks. Of these, a portion have dwelt
in the border land of unbelief, looking back into Egypt. It is amongst these
and their sympathizers that a few are found who hold unorthodox views as to a
future state.
In the autumn of 1887, a Conference was held
at Richmond, Indiana, composed of about one hundred delegates, chosen from all
the yearly meetings of Friends in the world. A Declaration of Faith was
adopted, which may be taken as the best expression of doctrine and the most
authoritative statement of the views of Friends ever published, indeed the only
one coming from a body speaking for our whole church. I close with an extract
from the article on, "The Resurrection and Final Judgment," as
follows:-- We believe, according to the Scriptures, that there shall be a
resurrection from the dead, both of the just and of the unjust, and that God
hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by
Jesus Christ whom he bath ordained. For, as saith the apostle, We must all
appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the
things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or
bad.'
We sincerely believe, not only a resurrection
in Christ from the fallen and sinful state here, but a rising and ascending
into glory with him hereafter; that when he at last appears we may appear with
him in glory. But that all the wicked, who live in rebellion against the light
of grace, and die finally impenitent, shall come forth to the resurrection of
condemnation. And that the soul of every man and woman shall be reserved, in
its own distinct and proper being, and shall have its proper body as God is pleased
to give it. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body; that
being first which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual. And
though it is said, this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal
shall put on immortality,' the change shall be such as will accord with the
declaration, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does
corruption inherit incorruption.' We shall be raised out of all corruption and
corruptibility, out of all mortality, and shall be the kingdom of God, being
the children of resurrection.
'Our citizenship is in heaven ' (R. V.), from
whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jests Christ, who shall change
our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according
to the working whereby lie is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
We believe that the punishment of the wicked
and the blessedness of the righteous shall be everlasting according to the
declaration of our compassionate Redeemer, to whom the judgment is committed,
These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life ' " (R. V.).
Buddhist beliefs as to retribution after
death.
Prof. T. W. RHYS-DAVIS, Ph.D., LL.D., of
University College, London, Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society.
THE ideas as to retribution after death, held
among all the varying sects of Christians and Mohammedans, are dependent upon
one set of axioms regarding the problems of life, and have grown out of the
evolution of belief along one single spiral line. The ideas on the same
subject, held among the equally varying sects of the Buddhists, depend on views
of life essentially different, and have grown out of an evolution of belief
running along a spiral line quite distinct from the other. That is why the
Buddhist ideas on the subject are, on the one hand, of the first importance to
a student of the question, and, on the other hand, require some little care and
attention to be rightly grasped by us, in the West, who are so soaked in the
opposite views of life.
But the very differences of opinion among
Christians show how great and abiding is the ambiguity of the words used in the
authorities by which they all alike think themselves guided. It is admitted.,
on all sides, that Gautama, the Buddha, was one of the greatest ethical
thinkers of his time, and indeed of any age or country. He uses similar words.
And though Christians will never accept his conclusions, it must be not only
interesting, but even also suggestive, for them to know in what senses he used
them. Are not Christians of most parties too Western sometimes in their
interpretation of Oriental phraseology? Are they not apt to deal in too
matter-of-fact, too literal, too material, a way, with expressions charged with
the deepest and most spiritual Eastern thought? In any case, neither
philosophical nor historical inquirers can afford to ignore the opinions which
have influenced, through so many centuries, and still influence, so large a
majority of the human race.
Now, it would of course be impossible-and
inexpedient even if possible-to set forth, within the limits of this short
article, any detailed account of the slight differences which divide Buddhists
one from another, on this question. It must be my endeavour simply to describe,
as clearly as possible, the fundamental ideas in which they all share, and to
make some general remarks on the principal lines along which the divergences of
opinion among them may be ranged.
In the first place, it is an essential
doctrine, constantly insisted upon in the original Buddhism, and still held, so
far as I have been able to ascertain, by all Buddhists, that there is nothing,
either divine or human, either animal, vegetable, or material, which is
permanent. There is no being,-there is only a becoming; and this is true of the
mightiest god of gods, as much as of the tiniest material atom. The state of an
individual, of a thing or person, distinct from its surroundings, bounded off
from them, is unstable, temporary, sure to pass away. It may last, as for
instance in the case of the gods, for hundreds of thousands of years, or, as in
the case of some insects, for some hours only, or, as in the case of some
material things (as we should say, some chemical compounds), for a few seconds
only. But, in every case, as soon as there is a beginning, there begins also,
that moment, to be an ending.
In the lowest class, we have form of one sort
or another, and various material qualities; in the higher classes, we find also
mental qualities. The union of these
constitutes the individual. Every person or thing or god is, therefore, a
putting together, a component individuality, a compound, a Confection (to coin
an equivalent for the Buddhist technical term), and as the relation of its
component parts one to another is ever changing, so it is never the same for
two consecutive moments; and no sooner has separateness, individuality, begun,
than dissolution, disintegration, also begins. There can be no individuality
without a putting together. There can be no putting together, no Confection,
without a becoming, a becoming different, and there can be no becoming without,
sooner or later, a passing away.* Such thoughts are really quite familiar to
us. We acknowledge them as true of all inorganic substances, and of all living
organisms, including our own. Geology has taught how the mightiest mountain
chains, the " eternal hills," and the deepest ocean depths grow into
being and pass gradually away, as surely, and, compared with eternity, as quickly,
as the gorgeous butterfly. Astronomy has taught us how the broad earth itself
had once no individuality, and how, as soon as it began to be, it entered also
on a process of becoming, of continual change, which will never end till it has
ceased to be. But the peoples of the West have inherited a belief in spirits
inside their bodies, and in other spirits, good and evil, outside themselves,
and to these spirits they attribute an individuality without change, a being
without becoming, a beginning without an end. The Buddhists, like them,
inherited from the Animism (the spirit theories) of the savage, the belief in
the existence of these external spirits. But the belief (which is not
necessarily false because it is derived from the Animism of the savage) has not
constituted in their minds any exception to the great Law of Impermanence-f-the
most important of the conceptions which underlie the Buddhist idea as to
retribution after death.
In the second place, not only is individuality
impermanent, it is necessarily and always accompanied with sorrow. For what are
the conditions of sorrow? " Birth," said the Indian teacher-in his
first discourse, in which he summed up the essential points of his system, and
in which the Buddhist writings of all creeds and countries represent him as
"setting in motion the royal chariot wheel of the Kingdom of
Righteousness, that wheel which can never be turned back,"-" birth is
attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful.
Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant;
and any craving that is unsatisfied, that too is painful. In brief, the five
aggregates which spring from attachment are painful."* But birth, disease,
decay, and death are (as we have seen in discussing the Law of Impermanence)
precisely the conditions of individuality. Wherever, then, is individuality,
there must be limitation: where there is limitation, there must be ignorance:
where there is ignorance, there must be error: where there is error, there must
sorrow come.
Of these statements, it is the last three
which are especially true of conscious beings, and the outside world plays upon
all such beings through the open doors of their six senses. Sensations are
stirred up in them, giving rise .to ideas of attachment or of repugnance, and
hence to a craving to satisfy the feeling's so excited. Sometimes, more often
indeed than not, it is impossible for the being thus affected to satisfy those
cravings. It cannot gain what it wants, it cannot avoid what it dislikes. It
cannot escape from change, decay, and death-those results inseparable from the
struggle necessary to maintain and to carry on its separateness, its
individuality. This is the Buddhist explanation-drawn from the necessary
conditions of life as individual-of the origin of that sorrow, that pain, which
is one of the great problems of existence. Sorrow therefore and pain are
involved in the essential characteristics of individuality. To have a conscious
existence as an individual is to be condemned to the experience of grief. This
is a larger generalization which includes as only one of its corollaries that
" man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." It is the second
law-underlying the Buddhist ideas as to retribution after death-the great Law
of Sorrow.* Buddhism therefore does not deny the fact of individuality, either
here or hereafter. Its quarrel is with the delusions as to individuality. It
affirms that men are dazed with delusions as to the possible permanence of it,
and as to the possibility of its being free from sorrow. And not only so: they
are in error, also, as to the degree of individuality which they do now
actually possess. This error arises naturally, and almost inevitably, in two
directions. All men, except only those who are converted, are blinded by
delusion as to their separateness from the external world; firstly, in the
present time, and, secondly, as regards both the past and the future.
In the present time, they overlook the fact
that they are really no more " separate " than a bubble in the foam
of an ocean wave is separate from the ocean, or than a cell in a living
organism is separate from the organism of which it forms a part. It is
ignorance that thus leads them to think " this is I," or " this
is mine,"-just as a bubble or a cell might think itself an altogether
independent existence. Men are conscious of their power of motion over the
earth, and forget that they are bound to it by an attraction as real, and as
constant, and as inexplicable, as that which we call chemical combination. They
do not realize that they are quite as much a part of the earth, in spite of
their merely temporary and partial separateness, as is a river or a tree.
Instead of pervading the four quarters of the world with thoughts of love
unbroken by any sense of separateness, of opposition, they are filled with
notions of egoism, and harbor all kinds of fancies about a soul within them.
And so, also, with regard to the past and the
future. Wrapped up in the present, and full of delusions about that, they fail
to see that they are the mere temporary and passing result of causes that have
been at work during immeasurable ages in the past, and that will continue to act
for ages yet to come. They are mere links in a long chain of cause and effect,
a chain in which no link is independent of the rest, can get away from the
rest, or could start off and be, by itself, without the rest: Each link is the
result of all that have gone before, and is part of the cause of all that
follow. And just as no man can ever escape from his present surroundings, so
can he never really dissociate himself (though he often takes for granted that
he can) either from the past which has produced him, or from the future which
he is helping to make. But the identity is not to be supposed to lie in a
conscious soul. The real identity is that of cause and effect. Man thinks he
began to be a few years-twenty, thirty, forty years-ago. That is true in a sense.
But in a much larger, deeper, truer sense, he has " been " (in the
causes of which he is the result) for countless ages in the past. and those
same causes (of which he is the temporary effect) will continue, in other
temporary forms, through immeasurable periods yet to come. In that sense, each
one of us is five hundred thousands of years old, and more: and each of us has,
after death, a continuing existence.
The Buddhist technical term for this series of
cause and effect is Karma, and the identity between any two individuals, any
two links in the chain, is the identity of Karma, literally " doing,
action." " Every individual is the last inheritor and the last result
of the Karma of a long series of past individuals-a series so long that its
beginning is beyond the reach of calculation, and its end will be coincident
with the destruction of the world." This theory of Karma is the doctrine
which takes the place, in the Buddhist theory, of the very ancient theory of
" souls " which the Christians have inherited and carried on. And it
is the Buddhist explanation of the mystery of Fate, of the weight of the
universe pressing upon each of us, which Christians would explain by the
doctrine of predestination.
The fact underlying all these theories is
acknowledged to be a very real one. The history of the individual does not
begin with his birth. He has been endless generations in the making and he
cannot sever himself from his surroundings; no, not for an hour. The tiny
snowdrop droops its fairy head just so much, and no more, 'because it is
balanced by the universe. It is a snowdrop, not an oak, and just that kind of
snowdrop, because it is the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of past
existences; and because it did not begin to be when the flower opened, or when
the mother plant first peeped above the ground, or first met the embraces of
the sun, or when the bulb began to shoot beneath the soil, or at any time which
you or I can fix. A great American writer says:-
It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain
of Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, which led the Hindus
to say: " Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of
existence." I find the coincidence of the extremes of Eastern and Western
speculation in the daring statement of the German philosopher, Schelling:
" There is in every man a certain feeling that he has been what he is from
all eternity." ' We may put a new and deeper meaning into the words of the
poet:- . . . ' Our deeds follow us from afar, And what we have been makes us
what we are.' * It was necessary to explain these three fundamental ideas, or
what follows would not have been understood; for, though much in them is
undeniably true, and quite familiar to Western thought, yet the union of the
three implies a view of life quite contradictory to the animistic notions
accepted in the West. For, if the very conditions of individuality prevent its
being permanent, and render inevitable its subjection to sorrow, then most of
the Western ideas on the subject would require modification; and though the
Buddhists do believe, in a sense of their own, in a future life, in a
hereafter, yet that sense so different from the one in which Christians use the
terms, that Christian theologians would rightly class the Buddhists among those
who do not believe in it at all.
For two essential conditions of a future life,
as held in the West, and indeed wherever the " soul " theory is in
vogue, are the continuation of memory, and the consciousness of identity. The
"soul," in flying away from the body, is supposed, by these
hypotheses, to carry with it the memory of those things at least which it
recollected when in the body (and even, in some writers, of things which it had
then forgotten), and to retain quite distinctly the sense of personal identity.
The " soul " then enters upon a new life, either of weal or of woe,
and though there has, of late years, been much discussion whether the life of
woe is permanent or not, there is no question, either as to the permanence or
the happiness of the life of those who are supposed to have entered the state
of bliss. All this would be denied by the Buddhists. There is no passage of a
"soul," or of an I, in any sense, from the one life to the other.
Their whole view of the matter is independent of the time-honoured soul
theories, held in common by the followers of every other creed. The only link
they acknowledge between the two beings (in the one existence and in the next)
who belong to the same series of Karma, is the Karma itself; the new existence
is never either absolutely permanent or absolutely free from sorrow, and it is
not a future life of the same being, but a new life of (what we should call)
another being. For there is neither memory nor conscious identity to make the
two lives one.
It would then be a pretty piece of casuistry
to say that the Buddhists believe in a future life in our sense. But they are
none the less earnest in their belief in it in their own. In that, it has been
a deep reality to them, all through the long history of their faith, and in
whatever age or clime their religion has been adopted. This is at least
suggestive, in showing that one may pour a very different meaning into the
terms " future " and "life," and yet they may still retain
their influence over the hearts of men. There have been writers who have
supposed that, without the Western ideas of future life, there would be an end
of morality; that, without them, men would regard themselves as free from any
bonds of restraint, and give themselves up to riotousness of life. The facts of
history are against any such notion. The ethics of Buddhism are acknowledged to
be high and noble (though the followers of any other faith would ,naturally
regard them as less high and less noble than their own), but they are based on
ideas independent of any theory of a soul, and directly contradictory of the
almost universal Christian belief in the possibility of permanent
individuality, and permanent individual happiness; and they are held by people
who are quite satisfied with a future life to be carried on, not by themselves,
but by others,-others, that is, in the Christian sense.
Would it then be accurate to say that the
Buddhists do not believe ill retribution after death? I think not. The other
life, the new existence, may not be the same as the present one; according to
Western ideas, there may be no passage of a " soul " from one to the
other. But yet to the Buddhist they are really the same, because they are the result
of the same Karma; and so the Buddhists talk of being reborn, of a man having a
"future life," of a good man going to heaven, of a bad man going to
Niraya (which we often find translated " hell," though it is not a
permanent state), and so on, quite in the Western way.
Thus, in the Book of the Great Decease,* the
Buddhist account of the last clays of Gautama’s life, the Buddha himself is
represented as saying to the householders of Patali Gama Fivefold, O
householders, is the loss of the wrong-doer through his want of rectitude. In
the first place, the wrong-doer, devoid of rectitude, falls into great poverty,
through sloth. In the next place, his evil repute gets noised abroad. Thirdly,
whatsoever society he enters-whether of Brahmans, nobles, heads of houses, or
Samanas- he enters shyly and. confused. Fourthly, he is full of anxiety when he
dies. And lastly, .on the dissolution of the body, after death, he is reborn
into some unhappy state of suffering or woe. This, O householders, is the
fivefold loss of the evil-doer.
And fivefold, O householders, is the gain of
the well-doer, through his practice of rectitude. In the' first place, the
well-doer, strong in rectitude, acquires great wealth, through his industry. In
the next place, good reports of him are spread abroad. Thirdly, whatsoever
society he enters-whether of Brahmans, nobles, heads of houses, or Samanas-he
enters confident and self-possessed. Fourthly, he dies without anxiety. And
lastly, on the dissolution of the body, after death, he is reborn into some
happy state in heaven. This, O householders, is the fivefold gain of the
well-doer.
This passage occurs not only in the orthodox
collection of the " Three Baskets " (corresponding to the Bible among
Christians), but also in the altered versions of the book current among the
Chinese:* and though it has not yet been found in Japanese or Tibetan Buddhist
books, there is no doubt as to its being quite in accord with the Buddhism held
in those countries; and a true representation of Buddhist faith throughout the
world. And it does not stand, by any means, isolated: for we might quote
numerous passages of the same tendency. In other words, it is quite clear that
the Buddhists regard the connection between the one life and the other, the
connection of Karma, as constituting a real identity, although it would not be
held among us to do so.
But I must add, that it would not be quite
good Buddhism to talk of a "retribution" after death. The temporary
life of the new being, in a state of happiness or woe, is not so much a
retribution as a result, a fruit, of the action (the Karma), of the deceased.
" Retribution " surely implies a Lawgiver, some Power able to
apportion rewards and punishments. The Buddhists have no such idea. They believe
in Karma as a natural law, which acts by itself a law of succession, of growth,
of cause and effect. And the technical expression used by the Buddhists in this
connection is, not " retribution," but either " result " or
" fruit." * More than this, inasmuch as it is only temporary, even
the blissful state is not held out as an object worthy of desire. The life of
an individual in heaven is as subject as any other individuality to decay and
death, and therefore to sorrow. It is only to the unconverted, like those householders,
that the new life of bliss is held out, not as an object of rational desire,
but as an incentive to well-doing, and that only as addressed to those who have
not the insight of Arahat-ship.
For, as will have been already made plain, the
Buddhist ideal is not life in any kind of heaven. That would be necessarily
only temporary. It would, by the very conditions of life as an individual, come
sooner or later to an end; .and the struggle would have to begin over again.
The final goal must have finality; and that the Buddhists find in the
attainment of the Nirvana of Arahatship, a change of mind to be reached and
enjoyed in this world only.
In other words, the Buddhists acknowledge two
degrees, two sorts, of morality-that of the converted and that of the
unconverted man. We are familiar with such a distinction, which is constantly
drawn also by Christian writers. The morality of the worldly man is, according
to the Buddhists, of little or no value, however great his goodness may be. To
the unconverted man, they hold out the promise of a future life in a temporary
heaven, as the fruit, the result, of the lower morality, of which alone he is
capable-just as one might promise sweetmeats to children, as a reward of
self-denial. But the man of insight, the Arahat who has realized the
insignificance of his own individuality, and has conquered the littleness of
egoism, will not only know that an eternity for himself is impossible, but will
have quite conquered the wish to possess it. The craving for life is an animal
instinct, inherited by us, and very useful in its place. But it has nothing to
do with religion, and is indeed an obstacle to the higher life.
So in the Buddhist Scriptures the Buddha
himself says:- Whatsoever brother, O mendicants, may have left the world to
enter our Order, in the aspiration of belonging to one or other of the angel
hosts, thinking to himself: By this morality, by the observance of this
austerity, or by this earnestness of life, may I become a chief among the
angels, or one of the angels! '-his mind inclined not to zeal, exertion,
perseverance, or struggle. But whosesoever mind inclined not to zeal, exertion,
perseverance, or struggle-he hath not broken through this fifth kind of
spiritual bondage. . .
And
whosoever hath not become quite free from the five kinds of spiritual
barrenness, hath not broken through the five kinds of spiritual. bondage-that
such a one should reach up to the full advantage of, should attain to full
growth in, this doctrine and discipline, that can in no wise be! * And so the
higher morality of the Arahat must be " untarnished " by any
dependence upon the supposed efficacy of rites, or ceremonies, or outward observances,
and also by any hankering after any kind of future life. And out of the ten
bonds he has to break two are the desire for future life in the worlds of form,
and in the formless worlds. lie is to look forward to no reward, no happiness,
which he himself is to be conscious of hereafter. The nourishing of any selfish
hope for a future life is worse than unfounded. It is declared to be an actual
impediment in the way of the only object that the wise should seek after-that
is, the attainment now, in this world, of the state of ethical and mental
self-control and self-culture, summed up in the words Nirvana and Arahatship.
This is the doctrine of orthodox Buddhism, as
held by the early church in India, and by the Buddhists now in Burma, Siam, and
Ceylon, and wherever the ideal of Nirvana is believed in. It is not known in
Europe, whether this ideal has, or has not, died out among the Buddhists in
China and Japan, Tibet and Mongolia. I am inclined not only to think that it
has, but that it has also less influence over the Buddhists now living in the
south of Asia, than it had over the first members of the Order founded by Gautama
in India. This would account, from his point of view, for the little progress
they have made in the higher life as compared with the early Buddhists.
But Buddhism, of every age and sect, sees no
distinction of any fundamental character, no difference, except an accidental
or phenomenal difference, between gods, men, plants, animals, and things. All
are the product of causes that have acted during the immeasurable ages of the
past and all will be dissolved. All Buddhists, without exception, believe
to-day in the impermanence of all individuals; in the sorrow wrapped up in the
inevitable conditions of all individuality; in the temporary character of life,
not only on earth and in hell, but also in heaven; and in the law of Karma. To
many, such a belief will seem destructive of all morality. There, the facts of
history are against them. To others, it will seem devoid of hope. The Buddhist
would answer that it is only devoid of an ignorant hope, bred of delusion as to
the possibilities of individuality, and as to its necessary conditions. Is it
not enough to hope that our self-denials and our struggles will add to the
happiness of others? Are we to continue to cherish a hope that will not be
realized, that is selfish, ignorant, harmful to the higher life that we can
attain to? Do we not inherit the result of the Karma of the countless
multitudes who have lived and died, who have suffered and struggled through the
long ages of the past? Shall we not let our hearts bathe themselves in the
bliss of a gratitude that is real, because it rests upon fact, and revel in the
hope-stronger, deeper, purer than any selfishness can give-that our sufferings
and struggles, in their turn, will do some little towards ennobling and
beautifying the lives of those who are to follow after us?
There is a beauty and a poetry in these
thoughts, that may open our eyes a little to things we have never dreamed of,
and invite us to look into the meanings
of our current phraseology a little further. Is the permanence of the
individual rightly considered to be a Christian doctrine? And, if so, on what
authority? Is even salvation in the next life the ideal which a Christian
should strive after? Or should the kingdom of God be within us now? Does not he
who would seek his own life lose it, and by the very fact of his thus holding a
selfish aim before his eyes? Can there be life, individuality, without change?
Is there no truth in the law of Karma? Such questions, and many similar ones,
are suggested by the statement of a system of belief so old that it was built
up almost at the birth of thought-being born, so to speak, five hundred years
before the birth of Christ-and yet so new that it is difficult even to
understand, so strange that it uses common words in senses quite different from
those we have attached to them. It is for this reason that I ventured to think,
in the opening sentences of this short paper, that an exposition of the
Buddhist view of retribution after death would be of especial importance and
interest to those who are capable of profiting from the suggestiveness of views
that are not only new (to us modern inheritors of Western words), but full of
deep thought and charged with religious earnestness.
God's written word teaches the resurrection of
all the dead, at the last day, the wicked to perish eternally, with Satan and
his angels.
By Rev. J. W. RICIIARD, D.D., Professor of
Sacred Philology, in the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Springfield, Ohio.
THE prime object of this paper is to present a
condensed but comprehensive statement of the doctrine of the EVANGELICAL
LUTHERAN CHURCH in reference to all those who do not in this life embrace
Christ as their personal Saviour. But as such statement cannot be made,
conveniently, except in connection with the doctrine of the Final Judgment, and
of the Eternal Salvation of those who in this life truly embrace Christ by
faith, the subject is treated under the title given above. Among the reasons
which have determined the writer to present the doctrine of his Church, rather
than his own private views, on this momentous subject, are the following: (a)
The superior weight which such a presentation must carry; (b) the conviction
that the doctrine of the Lutheran Church on this subject, as indeed on many
others, is but little known to the great mass of American Christians, owing to
the fact that nearly all the theological literature of the Lutheran Church is,
locked up in the Latin and German languages; (a) be-cause the views of Luther,
and the teaching of the Lutheran Church, on the subject of the future condition
of all those who die out of Christ, have been frequently misstated in recent
eschatological discussions; (d) because the historical faith of the Lutheran
Church is to all intents and purposes the faith of the Lutheran Church in the
United States to-day.
In the year 1522, Hansen Von Rechenberg, an
officer and privy councillor of King Sigismund I., brought the subject of the
future condition of unbelievers formally to the attention of Luther, in the
question: "Whether God can or will save those also who die without faith?"
It will be observed that this question involves, first, the power of God;
secondly, the will of God. Luther's answer is framed with reference to the
twofold nature of the question. He begins the discussion by referring to Origen
and his school, and others, who think it is cruel and incongruous with the
divine mercy, for God to cast away human beings and punish them for ever, and
cite in defence of their opinion, Psalm, 77: 8, 9: "Is his mercy clean
gone for ever? Doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be
gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his mercies?" Also Psalm, 85: 6; and
St. Paul, 1 Tim., 2: 4: " God wills that all men should be saved, and come
to the knowledge of the truth." Luther says: "From this they proceed
further, and maintain that even the devils will eventually be redeemed and will
not remain eternally in damnation. But we must distinguish broadly between the
speculations of men and the truth of God, and must ever stand fast in this,
that we will not give God the lie, but rather admit that all men, angels, and
devils shall be lost, than that God will not be faithful in his word. Such
inquiry comes from that inborn curiosity of human nature which is not easily
satisfied, because it does not know the reason and ground of such severe and
stern judgment of God, and. is ever prone, if it were not the judgment of God,
falsely to conclude that it were wickedness, violence, and injustice." He
then earnestly counsels against the tricks by which Satan seeks to turn our
eyes away from faith in the word of God, and declares that faith alone must
remain against the proud suggestions of our reason; "otherwise, the matter
will not end without heinous and perilous offense." He further proceeds:
"Coming now to the answer, we have very strong passages which teach that
without faith no man will or can be saved, as Mark, 16: 16, 'He that believeth
not shall be lost'; Hebrews, 11: 6, Without faith it is impossible to please
God '; John, 3: 5, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God '; also, 3: 18, He that believeth not is
condemned already.' Now, if God saves any one without faith, he does it against
his own word, and makes himself a liar; yea, he denies himself, which is
impossible. For, as St. Paul says, 2 Tim., 2: 13, God cannot deny himself.'
Therefore, in so far as it is impossible for divine Truth to lie, in so far is
it impossible for God to save without faith. This is clear and plain, and
easily understood, however much the old bottles [of reason] are unwilling, yea,
are unable, to contain this new wine.
This indeed were a. different question,
'Whether God is able to grant faith to any one in the hour of death, or
thereafter, and thus to save them through faith?' Who would doubt that he is
able to do this? ' But that he does it, no one can show. For, indeed, we read
that in times past he raised the dead to life, and then gave them faith.
Whatsoever he doeth in this matter, he may do. He may grant faith or not;
nevertheless, it is impossible for any one to be saved without faith; else all
preaching, gospel, and faith were vain, false, and deceptive, especially since
the entire gospel makes faith necessary.
But
what they quote from (the Psalm, as already mentioned, God will not keep his
anger for ever,' does not conclude the argument, for the entire Psalm speaks of
the manifold sufferings of the saints on earth, as the preceding and subsequent
words and all the circumstances do show; for those who suffer ever think that
God has forgotten them, and will keep his anger for ever; and the saying of
Paul, 2 Tim., 2: 4, God willed that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of
the truth,' goes no further, as said above, than that God desires that we
should pray for all human conditions, that we should teach and preach the truth
to all, and that we should lend -a helping hand to every man in bodily and
spiritual things. Nov, because he commits such things to our charge, and wishes
us to do them, St. Paul cloth well say, 'It is the will of God that every man
should be saved '; for without his will it would not come to pass. But it does
not follow from this that God saves all men; and even though more passages
should be brought up, they must all be understood in the same manner; otherwise
God's eternal providence and election, upon which St. Paul lays so much stress,
were vain."
Finally, he urges the councillor to place his
faith in Christ, who is the way to the Father, and warns against
"ascending to heaven with our own reason in order to attempt to measure
the judgment of God."* An analysis of this letter, which replies to the
simple question, " Whether God can or will save those also who die without
faith?" shows (a) that Luther does not deny the power of God to give faith
in the hour of death, or thereafter; but that he does deny that anyone can be
saved without faith, and declares that no one can prove that faith will be
given after this life; (b) that he utterly discards reason as a judge in so
great a question, and relies wholly upon the written word, as the expression of
God's final decision in the premises, otherwise God is a liar, and all
preaching and gospel are vain and deceptive; (c) that he writes not one word in
belief or hope of probation after this life, or of any possible future restoration
to the favour of God, but teaches by the whole tone of his letter that faith
and the offer of salvation are connected with the preaching of the gospel, and
are confined to this life; and so clear does he make this that the Erlangen
editor, after stating the question to which the letter is the reply, says:
"Luther denies this, and affirms that he who dies without faith cannot
expect salvation." Vol. 22: 32.
This, the faith of the historical Holy
Catholic Church (see Athanasian Creed, 39), so distinctly confessed by Luther
in the beginning of his evangelical career, is maintained with equal firmness
and with even sharper emphasis later in life. In his " Greater
Confession," (1528) he acknowledges from "article to article the
faith in which he expects to persevere till death; and to depart from the world
in it, and to meet the Lord Jesus." Of this article he writes:- Finally, I
believe in the resurrection of all the dead, on the last day, both of the pious
and of the wicked, so that each one may receive in his body a retribution
according to his deeds; and thus the righteous shall live forever with Christ,
but the wicked shall perish eternally with Satan and his angels. For I do not
agree with those who teach that the devils will finally be restored to
happiness. This is my creed, for thus all true Christians believe, and thus the
Holy Scriptures teach us.
In Luther's theology, the
"righteous" are those who in this life accept Jesus Christ by faith,
and are justified; the " wicked " are those who in this life reject
Christ, and so remain under condemnation. According to this self-determined
relation to Christ will men be judged and have their portions assigned them unchangeably
and eternally in the world to come. And as Luther, with all his Christian
contemporaries, believed in the natural immortality and the ceaseless activity
of the soul, so he believed that the perishing of the wicked, Satan included,
will be a condition of conscious pain. He was in no sense an annihilationist,
or a believer in the eternal " sleep of the soul." This is abundantly
shown by his description of the "true hell," as "that wherein
are the damned, who suffer eternal pain and torment " (Erlangen Ed., 62;
17); by his exposition of Luke 16, wherein he describes the lost soul as having
no rest, and the hell of the rich man as a "bad conscience which is
without faith and the word of God, in which the soul is entombed and kept until
the last day, when the man, soul and body, shall be cast into the true
hell." "For as Abraham's bosom is the word of God, wherein believers
through faith rest, sleep, and are kept until the last day, so, on the
contrary, hell must be where God's word is not, wherein unbelievers, on account
of unbelief, are shut up until the last day. It can be nothing else than a
vain, unbelieving, sinful, evil conscience" (Erlangen Ed., 13: 13); and by
his comment on Genesis 4: 9: "The dead Abel lives, and by God himself is
canonized in another life, a better and truer canonization than ever they
received whom the pope canonized. His death was indeed horrible, hut it was a
truly salutary death, since he now lives a better life than before."
Luther's views on eschatology are still more
fully set forth in his sermon on the Descensus ad Infernos, preached in the
year 1533. After stating numerous erroneous conceptions of the Descensus, he
declares that Christ descended into hell in order to shatter it and to bind the
devil, " so that neither hell nor the devil can capture or harm me or any
who believe on Christ, although hell itself remains hell, and holds captive the
unbelieving (so also death, sin, and all misfortune) that they must remain
therein and perish." The benefits of the Descensus do in no way appertain
to the wicked, and it is no part of Christ's mission to hell to preach the
gospel either to those who did not hear it or to those who did not believe it
here on earth. It is for Christians only, that is, for those who here on earth
believe on Christ, " that hell has been torn to pieces and the devil's
kingdom and power destroyed."
In the year 1544, Luther's attention was again
formally called to the subject of the salvation of the unbelievers, especially
of the heathen, by Zwingli's posthumous book entitled Expositio Christianoe
Eidei, in which it is confidently taught that such heathen as Hercules,
Theseus, Socrates, Aristides, Antigonus, Numa, Camillus, the Catos, et al.,
died in the same Christian faith with Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Peter,
Paul, et al. (Works, vol. iv., p. 42). Luther replies as follows:- Say, now;
who will care to be a Christian? What need is there of Baptism, of the
Sacrament, of the Gospel, or of the prophets and Scriptures when such godless
heathen as Socrates, Alcibiades, yea, and the abominable Numa (who established
idolatry at Rome by the instigation of the devil, as St. Augustine wrote), and
Scipio and Epicurus, are saved along with the fathers, the prophets, and the
apostles in heaven, although they knew nothing about God, the Scriptures, the
Gospel, Christ, Baptism, the Sacrament, or Christian faith? What else can such
a writer, preacher, and teacher believe in regard to Christian faith than that
it is like every other belief, and that every one can be saved in his own
faith, even an idolater and an Epicurean like Numa and Scipio?
The quotations here furnished run through a
period of twenty-two years (1522-1544), and show that Luther had carefully
reflected on the condition of those who die out of Christ. He never wavers in
the belief, founded on the express didactic import of the divine Word that all
such are without part or lot in the salvation provided by Christ, because they
do not know God, have either not heard of or have rejected Christ, and have not
made use of the means of grace. As sinners they are subject to the judgment and
wrath of God; and, according to his view of sin, original and actual sin is
each an efficient cause of death; and according to his view of the plan of
salvation no one can be redeemed from either kind of sin, except by the
application of the blood of Christ and by faith, and he knows no time for this
except during the present life.* The view of Melanchthon, who, as he himself
testifies (C. R., iii., 825), first learned the gospel from Luther, is quite as
decided as that of his master. He says:- There is no church where there is no
knowledge of the promise of Christ and no ministry of the gospel. Therefore,
Alcibiades, Cicero, and those like them, are not members of the church,
although they had excellent civil virtues. The church is the congregation which
has the ministry of the gospel. Outside of this congregation, where the gospel
is heard, there is no worship of Christ, and no heirs of eternal life.
Socrates, Plato, and those like them have no faith, because they have no
knowledge of God. (Loci, De Ecclesia.)
In his Examen Orclinandorum, which for a long
time had symbolical authority, he asks:- Is it necessary that persons should be
members of the church, in order to be saved? It is absolutely necessary that
each one, in order to be saved, should join the church by faith, confession,
worship, and by willingness to give heed to the church or to join it. (Corpus
Doctrince, p. 787.) Melanchthon knew no church except the " assembly of
the called," " the assembly of those who embrace the gospel of Christ
and rightly use the sacraments"; "nor must we imagine that there are
any elect outside of this visible assembly, in which God is efficacious through
the ministry of the gospel, and regenerates many unto eternal life" (Loci
of 1535 and. 1543).
Or as he has put it in the Corpus Doctrine, p.
262:- The true church is that assembly which, as the Holy Catholic Church,
embraces the Ecumenical Creeds, and receives the Scriptures. The heirs of
salvation are found only in the assembly of the called, which in the general
sense is the church.
Melanchthon readily admits, and often laments,
that there are many hypocrites and ungodly persons in the "visible
church," as he has described it above; yet, as both his dogmatical and.
his symbolical writings everywhere witness, he knows of no salvation outside of
the visible congregation which has the gospel and the sacraments. The heathen
are denied salvation expressly, because they do not know God; and unbelievers,
because they have rejected the gospel.
And now, when it is remembered that for a long
time the Corpus Doctrine was confessional in the Lutheran Church, and that, for
more than half a century, the Loci was the only encheiridion of theology in
schools and seminaries of learning, it can easily be concluded what was
generally taught and believed. in the Lutheran Church during that "Pentecostal
period" when her faith was forming and crystallizing.
The Augsburg Confession (anno 1530) is
universally accepted by the Lutheran Church. All Lutheran congregations,
synods, and conferences receive this creed as their fundamental doctrinal
basis; it is embraced in the oath of every Lutheran theological professor in
America; all candidates for the Lutheran ministry are required at their
ordination to subscribe this venerable document, as in its statements of
doctrine throughout in harmony with the inspired teaching of the divine Word.
This symbol, incidentally, but in a most
fundamental and important way, touches the question of eschatology in Art. II.-OF
ORIGINAL SIN-which declares " that this disease or original fault is truly
sin, condemning and bringing ETERNAL DEATH now also upon all that are not born
again by baptism and the Holy Spirit."
Here we have, according to the Lutheran
theology, the root of the whole matter, the cause of eternal condemnation, -
SIN, the generic definition of which, as given by Melanchthon and adopted
either literally; or in substance, by all standard Lutheran Theologians, is:
" Sin is a defect, inclination or action, which conflicts with the law of
God, is offensive to him, condemned by him, and causing those in whom it is
found, unless forgiven, to become subjects of eternal wrath and
punishment." This sin, or sinful condition, belongs to all men who are
naturally engendered, that is, are begotten of a human father. As original sin,
it is primarily and principally (see Apology, Art. II.) a defect or want
(carentia) of original righteousness; that is, original sin is the loss of that
moral light and knowledge and purity which God planted in the human soul at
creation. This alone is an efficient cause of condemnation, because, (a) God
cannot take delight in a creature so defective; (b) a creature so defective
does not conform to the will of God, and has neither strength nor ability to
begin and to practice conformity to the will of God. But, in addition to the
want of original righteousness, and the " deep corruption of all the
powers of nature in man," there is concupiscence, which, as an abiding
propensity or inclination to evil, is also sin. This begets actual sins, which consist
in overt violations of God's holy law. These are a sufficient and an adequate
cause of condemnation, and, together with original sin, from which they are
never dissociated, do now also bring condemnation upon all men who are not born
again by baptism and the Holy Spirit. Or, as both Luther and Melanchthon
emphasize, all men are by nature under condemnation; even little children who
have clone no actual transgression are under condemnation, because they are
destitute of original righteousness. The adult heathen, as Melanchthon says,
" have turned themselves away from the true Church of God, from the
knowledge of the true God, and from the promise of the Redeemer" (Corp. Doc.,
p. 243). Hence, having sin, both original and actual, they cannot be saved, except
they be brought to the knowledge of Christ by the gospel, and be born again of
baptism and of the Holy Spirit, in which divine operation (regeneration),
according to all the orthodox interpretations of Art. II., and according to the
entire historic Lutheran conception of the new birth, baptism and the Word are
the divinely appointed means, and the Holy Spirit the indispensable agent. But
here comes in a distinction. With adults the Word is the indispensable means.
For "how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? " and
" without faith it is impossible to please God." Hence, as all have
sin, which is the cause of condemnation, the Lutheran theology makes no
practical difference, except in degrees of guilt and punishment, between those
adults in Christian lands who have rejected Christ, and those adults in heathen
lands, who having in their ancestors lost the gospel first promulgated in the
Garden of Eden, and having in themselves sinned consciously against the law in
their own hearts, never heard the name of Christ. Quenstedt, (anno 1685) in
discussing the state, condition, and solvability of the heathen, claims Luther,
Melanchthon, Hutter, Gerhard, Calovius, et. al., in favour of the following
opinion: " The Scripture, without exception, adjudges eternal condemnation
to all who do not believe in Christ. * * * For obtaining salvation a knowledge
of Christ and true faith in him are necessary. To deny the Son, not to believe
on the Son, not to have faith, are common both to unbelievers in the visible
church who reject the benefits of Christ, and to the heathen who live without
the church." (Systema, Pars Prima, Cap. 6, sec. 2.)
In the case of infants, baptism is the
ordinary means of regeneration. But inasmuch as from the very beginning of his
evangelical career, Luther adopted the Augustinian principle that not the
deprivation of baptism, but the contempt of it, condemns, it follows that
neither Art. II., nor Art. IX., of the Augsburg Confession, cuts off unbaptized
infants from salvation. This is the unanimous judgment of all the special
commentators on the Confession. Carp-zov, the greatest of these, declares
(1657) in his Isagoge, pp. 153, 332, that the Confession speaks only of the
ordinary necessity of baptism, which binds us to use God's appointed means, but
does not hinder God from regenerating infants in an extraordinary way; and
Hoffmann (1727) Com. on Confession, p. 36, says of the clause in Art. II.,
"Who are not born again by baptism and the Holy Spirit ": " From
this it does not follow that the children of unbelievers, born out of the
church, are, condemned. Much less ought this to be affirmed of the non-baptized
infants of Christians. For although regeneration ordinarily takes place in
infants by baptism, yet in an extraordinary way it may take place by the
immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. This the Augsburg Confession does not
deny by these words. It means to affirm only the absolute necessity of the new
birth and of regeneration, and the ordinary need of baptism."
It can be shown that all the Lutheran
theologians affirm the regeneration and salvation of all the infants of
believers; that they withhold a positive opinion about the infants of
unbelievers and of the heathen, but incline to the milder view and express the
hope* that all infants will be saved. That this is the position of those who
prepared the Augsburg Confession, and of its expounders and defenders, is
abundantly evident. In Corn. in Gen. 17: 4, Luther says: "Although
children have original sin, 'yet it is a great thing that they have not sinned
against law. Therefore, since God is by nature merciful, he does not permit
them to be in a worse condition because in the Old Testament they could not
have circumcision, nor baptism in the New." In Com. in Gen. 25: 10, he
utterly repudiates the Romish doctrine of the Limbus Infantum, which denies
consciousness and the vision of God to unbaptized infants. He commends them to
the goodness of God. In his Bedenken (De Wette's Luther's Briefe, vi., 339), he
writes: " Who will doubt that the children of Israel who died
uncircumcised before the eighth day were saved through the prayers of their
parents and the promise that God would be their God? God has not confined his
power to the sacrament, but by his WORD he enters into covenant with us."
He declares that this has always been his opinion. And both he and Bugenhagen
join (Leipzig ed. of Works, xxii., p. 418) in condemning those who refuse to
unbaptized infants the rites of Christian burial: "We bury them as
Christians, confessing thereby that we believe the strong assurances of Christ.
The bodies of these unbaptized infants have part in the joyous resurrection of
life." And Scherzer, 1680, (Systema, vii., 169) sums up the universal
Lutheran faith on this subject as follows:- We do not assert that the infants
of the heathen are indiscriminately condemned. This we are prohibited from
doing, by the infinite mercy of God, by his universal will to save men unless
they interpose an obstacle, by the universal merit of Christ, by the hand of
the Lord, which is not short that it cannot save in an extraordinary way, by
the prayers of the Church in accordance with the command of the Apostle, 1
Tim., 2: 1.
Yet
they are not saved by some absolute decree; nor out of Christ; nor without
faith. For without faith in Christ no one can please God; nor is the hand of
the Lord short that it cannot kindle faith in them in an extraordinary way.
The two things which the standard Lutheran
theologians, without a solitary exception, from Luther clown to the present
clay, affirm as ABSOLUTELY necessary to all men (infants included) for
salvation, are: (a) Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, (b) Faith in Christ. That
is, the conditions of salvation for adults and infants are absolutely
identical; in the sense that the corrupt sinful nature of both classes must be
changed by the Holy Spirit; and in the sense that the merit of Christ must be
applied personally to each and every human being who is to become an heir of
eternal life, and these conditions MUST obtain in the present life. In the case
of adults these conditions are wrought by the Holy Spirit through the appointed
means of grace. In the case of infants these conditions are wrought ordinarily
through baptism, but may be wrought extraordinarily without any means whatever.
It may truly be said that the entire Augsburg
Confession is constructed on this basis. In Art. III., Christ is set forth as a
" sacrifice not only for original, but for all actual, sins of men ";
who (Art. IV.) must be appropriated by faith; which (Art. V.) is "given
through the gospel and the sacraments, through which, as means, the Holy Spirit
is imparted "; and these means (Arts. VII., VIII.) are associated with the
historic church, which preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments, and
is itself the congregation of all believers and saints, although in this life
there are many hypocrites and false Christians; and as (Arts. XI., XII.) the
Confession connects absolution with the visible church, so it limits repentance
to this life and to faith in the gospel as it is now preached; while in Art.
XVIII. it is expressly declared that " without the grace, assistance, and
operation of the Holy Spirit, he (man) is unable to become pleasing to God, or
to fear God in heart, or to believe in him, or to cast out of his heart innate
evil; and that these things are effected by the Holy Spirit, who is given
through the Word of God; " and in Art. IX. it is taught that by baptism
" infants become acceptable to God," which, as interpreted by the
well-known views of those who composed the Confession, does not mean that
unbaptized infants cannot be saved.
In Art. XVII., the subject of eschatology is
treated under the title, OF CHRIST'S RETURN TO JUDGMENT: "It is also
taught that, on the last day, our Lord Jesus Christ will come to raise and
judge all the dead, to give unto the believing and elect eternal life and
endless joy; and that he will come to condemn impious men and devils to hell
and everlasting punishment. They condemn the Anabaptists, who think that to
condemned men and the devils shall be an end of torments."
The Roman Catholic Confutation (Aug. 3, 1530)
accepts the entire article: "The confession of the seventeenth article is
received, since from the Apostles' Creed and the Holy Scriptures the entire
Catholic Church knows that Christ will come at the last day to judge the quick
and the dead. 2. Therefore they justly condemn here the Anabaptists, who think
there will be an end of punishment to condemned men and devils."
That the Confutation properly interprets the
article is evident from Melanchthon's testimony in the Apology: " The
seventeenth the adversaries receive without exception, in which we confess
that, in the consummation of the world, Christ shall appear and shall raise up
all the dead, and shall give to the godly eternal life and eternal joys, but
shall condemn the ungodly to be punished with the devil without end."
From this explanation of Melanchthon it is
evident that the Confession was intended to teach, and does teach, that the
judgment of all men will take place at the last day; that both the just and the
unjust will have their respective portions assigned them at that time; and that
the punishment of the ungodly will be without end.
The Smalcald Articles, written by Luther in
1537, and subscribed by him and by forty-four other ministers and professors,
briefly rehearse the doctrine of the seventeenth article of the Confession, and
state that on this subject there is no difference between the confessors and their
adversaries, since both sides confess the " Creed of the Apostles, as well
as that of St. Athanasius, and the Catechism in common use for children."
What the ecumenical standards, including the Nicene Creed, teach on subjects of
eschatology, is too well known to need repetition here. But the ecumenical
creeds, together with the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Smalcald
Articles, and the Catechisms of Luther, were again and again re-asserted and
reconfessed in synods, conferences, and diets, before the appearance of the
Form of Concord in 1580, which has for its prime object the explanation of
these confessional writings in those articles on which disputes had arisen
among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession, and which declares its
intention "not to depart even a finger's breadth from the things
themselves, nor from the phraseology concerning them " (see Preface); and
which, while it contains no article on the judgment and the punishment of the
wicked, endorses and gives confessional authority to Luther's sermon on the
Deseensus; thus indirectly testifying that the entire Lutheran Church was
unanimous in regard to the everlasting punishment of the wicked, which had been
so distinctly taught in the primary confession and in the ecumenical creeds.
Or, if doubt should be suggested as to the views of the framers of the Formula,
it is at once met by the following from Chemnitz, who is universally regarded
as the best representative of the "pure doctrine," in the second
generation of the Lutheran Reformers. He writes (Encheiridion, p. 215): "
What is the end of faith and of unbelief? The end of faith is the salvation of
the soul, 1 Pet., 1, and eternal life, John, 3; the end of unbelief is eternal
damnation, Mark, 16, and eternal destruction, 1 Thess., 1. In this life we are
indeed saved, but in hope, Rom., 8; 2 Cor., 5. But the end both of faith and of
unbelief will be fully revealed at the last day, when Christ shall come from
heaven to the judgment, 1 Pet., 1; 2 Thess., 1. Then the righteous will go away
into everlasting life, and the ungodly into everlasting pain; Matt., 25; John,
5."
The dogmatical period of the Lutheran Church
began with the publication of the Book of Concord, in 1580. Its chief
representatives, who cover the latter part of the sixteenth and nearly all of
the seventeenth century, are Hutter (1616), Gerhard (1637), and Quenstedt
(1688), who devoted themselves ardently, and with unsurpassed learning, to the defence
of the Book of Concord, and are to-day the most influential teachers of
theology in the Lutheran theological seminaries of America, since their
writings in one form or in another, together with the Symbolical Books, are
employed as text-books in all the Lutheran theological seminaries of the
country. Hence it can confidently be affirmed that, on the subject treated in
this paper, no other doctrine is taught to the Lutheran theological students of
America than that contained in the Symbolical Books and in the writings of
these three men, their greatest expounders; and hence the inference, since as
the very least every Lutheran minister in America subscribes the Augsburg Confession,
that the doctrine of the future everlasting punishment of all who die without
faith in Christ, is taught to one million of Lutheran Christians in this
country.
In the Compend, which for a hundred years was
a text-book in Germany, and is now a text-book in America, Hutter answers the
question, " Will there be a judgment? " by quoting Art. XVII. of the
Confession and Art. VIII. of the Apology. " Who will have to appear at
this judgment? " "All men, believers and unbelievers, as many of them
as have ever lived, do now live, and ever shall live." He declares that
the rule of judgment will be the acceptance or rejection of the Gospel, that
the sentence will be final, that the torments of hell will last for ever, but
that there will "be degrees of torment or punishment in hell according to
the degree of the sins themselves, so that the more wickedly a man has lived,
the more severe the torments he will have to suffer." He also utterly
repudiates the doctrine of purgatory and declares that "there are also but
two classes of men: the one the pious and believing; the other the wicked and
unbelieving " (pp. 233-239, Eng. Trans.).
Gerhard was the pupil of Rutter, but greater
than his master. He treats the subject of condemnation with great fullness and
particularity: " By eternal wrath is meant that ineffable misery, that
horrible punishment, that most wretched condition, into which the souls of the
wicked go IMMEDIATELY after death, and where, after the resurrection of the
body, both soul and body are eternally punished." Loci, (Cotta) XX., p.
175.
While the dogmaticians differ as to the
whereabouts of hell, they all agree that it is entirely distinct from heaven,
and. is separated therefrom by an impassable barrier.
Gerhard says:- Hell is a definite locality, as
all finite beings must be confined to a place, as the wicked are not in heaven,
and as hell and heaven constitute the only two places. They cannot be
everywhere, because they are not infinite. Ubiety belongs necessarily to finite
beings. Therefore the condemned must be in a place. Ibid., p. 176.
But for the intercession and ransom of Christ,
Adam's sin would have precipitated him into unending punishment. The same comes
now upon all who are not in Christ Jesus, and who, on account of Christ, have
not obtained remission of sins and become reconciled to God; because God as a
just judge must punish sin not only with temporal but also with eternal
punishments; since as an offense against God, who is the infinite Good, sin is
an infinite offense which merits and consequently receives a penalty which is
infinite in duration. Ibid., 183.
The wicked will always be subject to the wrath
of God, which is that efficacious and omnipotent will of God by which he
inflicts eternal punishment upon the damned. This eternal punishment is based
on unbelief and final impenitence. Ibid., 192.
Quenstedt, called " the book-keeper of
the Wittenberg orthodoxy," makes the " rule " of the final
judgment, the word of God; its real object, faith and unbelief; its sentence
eternal. He says:- The rule in the last judgment will be one and the same,
viz., the entire doctrine revealed from heaven. The word which men have heard,
which they knew was true, will judge them, but not in the same sense, for to
believers will be adjudged eternal joy, according to the gracious rule of the
gospel, Gal., 3: 9; but to unbelievers will be adjudged eternal shame,
according to the law of Moses, Gal., 3: 10. Unbelievers will be judged by the
law not alone and in itself considered, but as illumined by the gospel, for
they will be condemned because they have not apprehended Christ and his merit
by faith.
The objects of the final judgment are personal
and real. The personal objects are angels and men; the real (reale) are the
faith and unbelief of each one, for in accordance with these immediately will
men be judged.
The unbelieving and. finally impenitent, both
without and within the church, have been judged already in eternal reprobation,
but at the last day they will be judged by the publication of the sentence of
condemnation and by the execution of reprobation.
The wicked are said to be condemned to the
torments of hell at the last judgment, although their souls are even now
tormented in hell. But if the souls of the wicked are now suffering the
torments of hell, who will doubt but that the wicked angels are suffering the
same? * * * If the punishments of wicked men are increased and brought to the
highest degree when their souls, reunited with their bodies, are cast into
hell; so the devils will receive the complement and the fullness of their
torments when in the last day they shall be so delivered over to hell as never
more to come out. Systema, Pars Quart., Cap. 19, pp. 611, 627, 629.
It will thus be seen that the dogmaticians are
in strictest accord with Luther and Melanchthon and with the Confessions.
Together, they teach that no person can be saved without personal faith. in the
historic Christ; that the time for acquiring and exercising this faith is the
present life; hence that the post mortem condition of every person is decided
here on earth; that the condition of those who die without faith in Christ is a
condition of conscious pain absolutely without end, although there will be
degrees of suffering, according to the degrees of personal guilt, which in the
case of some heathen, it is conceded, may be very small, yet, as they are
without faith in Christ, sufficient, so far as we can learn and infer from the
divine Word, to exclude them from the favour of God. Such conclusions the
Lutheran Church of this country believes to be in harmony with the didactic
statements and the plain inferences of the divine Word, beyond which she is not
willing to carry this grave subject, choosing rather to rest with full
satisfaction in her ancient confessional and historic faith, which, as touching
the subject now in hand, the writer hereof is assured both by his own
observation, and by the express written testimony of the learned presidents and
professors of the leading Lutheran theological seminaries, is maintained in the
church to-clay, taught in all its theological schools, and preached in its
pulpits, to the full exclusion of the doctrine of post mortem probation, and
likewise to the full exclusion of the doctrine of the merely temporary punishment
of the wicked.
The punishment of the wicked will be
everlasting exclusion from god's presence, together with utter misery and
wretchedness.
Rev. AUGESTUS SCHULTZE, President of the Moravian
Theological Seminary, 13etbleliein, Pa.
THE Church known as the Unitas Fratrum '(Unity
of the Brethren), or the Moravian Episcopal Church, is the child and heir of
the ancient evangelical Church of Bohemia and Moravia, which was founded one
hundred years before the Reformation of the sixteenth century and which sealed
its faith in the blood of martyrdom. When the " renewed Church " was
quickened into life by a gracious outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it recognized
its chief mission to be that of " preaching Christ and him crucified,"
as a bond of union among Christians of all denominations, and of carrying the
gospel of saving grace to the heathen. Hence it did not 45 788 consider it
necessary or expedient to formulate a denominational creed in the sense of a
complete system of theology covering every point of Christian doctrine. Its
confession of faith, although very explicit and emphatic with regard to certain
cardinal truths of religion, the acceptance of which is considered necessary to
salvation, is exceedingly brief, not to say incomplete, with regard to other
points which are held to be of minor importance, or which are regarded as
" mysteries of Scripture," not sufficiently revealed to be formulated
by the Church.
This principle applies particularly to
questions of eschatology, and accounts for the fact that not until the last
General Synod convened at Herrnhut, Saxony, in the year 1879, was the following
article added to the "facts and truths clearly attested by the Holy
Scriptures," viz.: " The doctrine of the Second Coming of the Lord in
glory; and of the resurrection of the dead, unto life or unto
condemnation." In addition to this short, positive declaration, the
Results of the General Synod, in an appendix containing " points not of
general importance," has the following negative injunction: "In the
Brethren's Unity it is forbidden to teach either the doctrine of the final
salvation of all men, or of the annihilation of the wicked, and it is hereby
pointed out that no brother is justified in seeking to gain over other souls to
a belief in these doctrines, which are, at all events, not clearly taught in
Scripture, and the latter of which contradicts our Church manuals of
doctrine."
The " Easter Morning Litany," to
which the Results of the General Synod point as to the ". confession of
faith which has been annually declared by the whole Church for more than a
hundred years," briefly refers to the question of future punishment in
these words: " (Christ) went also by the Spirit and preached unto the
spirits in prison," and " the Lord will descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, to judge both
the quick and the dead," but it does not speak of the fate of those who do
not inherit eternal life.
Not that the Moravian Church has ignored this
question altogether. The Confession of Faith, which the ancient Unitas Fratrum
presented to the emperor of Austria, in 1535 (article xx., De Tern-pore
Gratin?), contains the following declaration: And the Renewed Church of the
Brethren expressly avows its substantial adherence to the doctrines taught by
the orthodox evangelical churches, and especially to the " Augsburg
Confession, with its twenty-one doctrinal articles, as being the first and most
general Protestant Confession," adding, however, the proviso: " Yet
we do not desire thereby to infringe upon the liberty of conscience of our
members."
In the " Synodical Writing " which
prefaces Count Zinzendorf's twenty-one discourses upon the Augsburg Confession
(translated by F. Okeley, London, 1753) we find this passage:- That our Lord
Jesus Christ will at the last day come to judgment, and will raise up all the
Dead, to the .Elect and to Believers will give eternal Life and everlasting
Joy, but will condemn wicked Men and Devils to Hell and eternal Punishment, is
also true. To teach that Devils and damned Men shall not have eternal Pain and
Anguish is so much as directly to contradict our Saviour's Saying, 'The Wicked
shall go away into everlasting Punishment'; which is still the more carefully
to be avoided, in that our Saviour has heightened the Punishment of eternal
Fire with another farther Idea, namely, that it shall be an un-intermitting
Torment. In the mean while, this Subject has not been treated upon among us for
several Years; nor do we know one Brother in all our Congregations, to whom the
Consideration, how much Pain Sin bath cost his Saviour, and that it grieves the
Holy Spirit, is not Argument sufficient to make him beware of it:"
Zinzendorf himself, in his usual vigorous and
genial manner, expresses his views in the tenth discourse in this way:- It is a
Truth quite incontestable, that our Saviour himself seemed, more than any
Apostle, to desire to have the Eternity of Hell-Torments inculcated and
impressed upon Men's Minds. . . . The entire Notion of their Release is a
Philosophical Whimsey; . . . they find (it seems) an insufficient Proof of the
Love of God in the Death of our Saviour, and in the only begotten Son of God
being offered up, and imagine therefore that they ought to ransack for more
Arguments, in order to afford a stronger Proof of Love and Mercy. And here now,
among other Things, this steps in to their Relief, they will have all Creatures
finally saved. . . . That which I have to object in general against this
Doctrine, is this: The People, who are for spreading this Doctrine, are mostly
Persons as dead as Stones, who are only concerned how it will turn out in the
Upshot with the Wicked and the Devils; about which, in my Opinion, nobody at
all ought to concern himself, and the Children of God least of any: For these
ought by all Means to put Body and Soul upon their full Stretch, in labouring,
that no one might, if possible, go at all to the Devil; but that all People
might get acquainted with the Lamb of God and his Wounds, and then there would
be no Fear, about either temporary or eternal Damnation.
Bishop Spangenberg, whose Idea Fidei Fratruni,
or "Exposition of Christian Doctrine, as taught in the Protestant Church
of the United Brethren," is still regarded as a standard of Moravian
theology, treats of the subject "of everlasting life and damnation,"
at some length, but with great cautiousness, confining his statements to the
plain testimony of Scripture. Dr. Herman Plitt, the most prominent theologian
of the Moravian Church, in recent times, in his Evangelische Glaubenslehre, and
in his Gnade und Wahrheit, follows in the footsteps of Spangenberg, although,
in conformity with the demands of the age, he devotes much more attention to
eschatological questions.
None of the works referred to, however, are
recognized by the Church as authoritative, or " binding the
conscience." As the Results of the General Synod declare: " The
(Moravian) Church esteems it neither necessary nor profitable to construct a
creed formulated with regard to all individual points of doctrine, thus binding
consciences and quenching the Spirit. . . . Yet just as little can the Church
suffer any one within its borders to teach and preach anything opposed to Holy
Writ, and particularly to those statements which we, according to our
understanding, consider to embody the leading doctrines of Holy
Scripture."
Thus, the boundary lines within which Moravian
teaching and preaching are confined, are very wide, but plain enough to allow
of a practical unanimity of belief. Once or twice have the authorities of the
Church found it necessary to remove a ministerial brother from his office and
place him on the retired list, for teaching and preaching either the final
salvation of all, or the annihilation of the wicked; but, considering the fact
that the Moravian denomination is so widely scattered over the whole face of
the globe, there is a remarkable agreement with regard to the question of
future punishment, as well as with regard to all other points of Christian
doctrine. Hence the views presented in the following dissertation, though
merely an individual expression of opinion, may be considered as substantially
embodying the teachings of the 1VIoravian Church upon this subject.
We believe then, in the first place, that
there is a future punishment reserved for the sinner, and that physical death
does not end conscious existence. Philosophical arguments for the immortality
of the soul are not conclusive. Still our sense of justice tells us that God's
moral administration will be fully vindicated in a life to come, because in
this present life retribution is not proportioned to the guilt incurred by
transgression. The conscience of the sinner also convinces him that there is a
hereafter. This conviction is rendered certain by the declarations of
Scripture. It is true, the Bible does not pledge eternal life to the wicked.
God " only bath immortality " dwelling in himself, and the Creator,
surely, has power to annihilate the existence of the creature which he created.
The believer is assured of eternal life by the resurrection of Christ from the
dead and by the Spirit of Christ dwelling in his heart. "He that believeth
in me," says Christ, "though he were dead, yet shall he live: and
whosoever lives and believeth in me shall never die" (John, 11: 25, 26).
" If Christ be not raised, . . . then they also which are fallen asleep in
Christ are perished " (1 Cor., 15: 17, 18).
Nevertheless, a conscious existence after
death for the unbeliever is taught in the Old Testament, in Daniel 12: 2,
" Some (shall awake) to everlasting life, and some to shame and
everlasting contempt." It is implied in the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus, and is distinctly avowed in many doctrinal statements of the New
Testament, which assert a future resurrection " both of the just and
unjust."
The Moravians speak of the death of the
believer as of a " going home to the Saviour." " We are
confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be
present with the Lord" (2 Cor., 5: 8). At the same time, we know that the
happiness of the blessed will not be complete until the resurrection of the
body, which is appointed for the end of the present world. Again we read:
" It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this (cometh)
judgment." Here, too, we know that the final judgment will not be held
until after the resurrection. We conclude, therefore, that there is an
intermediate state between the death of the body and the resurrection day.
To the believer, this intermediate state
cannot be a state of un- . consciousness, although it is sometimes termed a
sleep (1 Thess., 4:13). Otherwise, St. Paul could not have written, "
Having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better"
(Phil., 1: 23). Those who here, on earth, have enjoyed the privilege of a
daily, personal communion with their Saviour, cannot after death be deprived of
that greatest of blessings, without experiencing a serious loss. Nor is it
conceivable that, with the Spirit of God dwelling in them, they should be
practically dead, from the day of their departure until the resurrection day.
Doubtless, when compared with the state of conflicts and trials from within and
without, through which they passed in their bodily life, the intermediate state
will bring to them a sweet repose; for " they rest from their labours
" (Rev., 14: 13). But, when the voices of worldly din and commotion grow
silent, when the imperfections and inconsistencies which originate in the
weakness of the flesh cease, the souls of believers will enjoy an undisturbed
communion with Christ, as never before. Indeed, the predominant feature of that
life absent from the body would seem to be a quiet, intuitive beholding of him,
who is "the author and finisher of faith," " the captain of
their salvation." Thus will the intermediate state be to them a joyful
anticipation of heaven, while all the divine germs which are implanted into
their souls ripen unto the day of perfection.
If such be the state of the believer, after
death, it seems reasonable to suppose that its opposite will be found in the
state of the unbeliever. Death is the birth into .another world, the world of
realities over against a world of appearances. Hence, to him who has lived a
life of .sin, the entrance into the spirit world must bring a painful sense of
want, a feeling of misery and anguish, as illustrated by the outcry of the rich
man in the parable, " I am tormented in this flame." Death alters the
surroundings, but it is not likely to change the character that has formed
during the earthly life; 794 and if the ungodly take their evil conscience,
their hatred and envy, their impurity and self-conceit, all their ungratified
passions, with them, into the spirit world, their condition cannot be otherwise
than most wretched. As the believer, through the gate of death, enters a
paradise of bliss, where he enjoys a foretaste of heaven, so the unbeliever,
through the same gate, passes into a dungeon which will give him a foretaste of
the misery of hell. Scripture certainly speaks of " spirits in prison "
(1 Pet., 3:19), kept " under punishment unto the day of judgment" (2
Pet., 2: 9, Rev. Vers.).
The Moravian Church does not believe in a
"purgatory," as a place or state, in which the sinner may atone for
his sins and, being purged from guilt, may be saved " yet so as by
fire." Neither do the Scriptures hold out any hope of conversion after
death, for those who have wilfully rejected the grace of God in Christ, and
have thus committed the sin against the Holy Ghost which cannot "be
forgiven, neither in this world, neither in the world to come " (Matt.,
12: 32). How is the accepted time and the day of grace, and not on the other
side of the grave. The ministers of Christ offer life and death in a decisive
sense to all who hear the gospel. There is no " second probation "
for those who have "trodden under foot the Son of God," and have
" done despite unto the Spirit of grace " (Heb., 10: 29). "For
if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth,
there remained no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of
judgment" (Heb., 10: 26, 27).
This wilful rejection of the offer of
salvation and this committing of the unpardonable sin may not have been
manifested, during the earthly life of the impenitent, by gross outbursts of
wickedness, by open infidelity and blasphemy, or by revolting crimes. The
sinner may have covered his evil tendency with the cloak of morality, or,
having become a slave of vice, may have, continually, deceived others as well
as himself with vain hopes of reformation. Such deception must cease after
death, but the ruling tendency of the heart remains the same. Suffering, unless
accompanied by new and special manifestations of divine grace, only embitters
the soul, and we have no Scripture evidence that such new influences are
exerted, after death, upon the impenitent. Hence their sinfulness can only
become more deep-rooted, more absolute and devilish; they are ripening for the
judgment day, and "the gulf " which is fixed between them and the
children of God is ever widening.
But many depart this life who have not
committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and yet have never made a personal
experience of saving grace, for the simple reason that the gospel of salvation
was never brought near to them. Is there no salvation after death for them?
What has become of the spirits of all the millions who died before the birth of
the Saviour of mankind? What is the condition, in the intermediate state, of
the millions of heathen and Mohammedans who die without the knowledge of the
gospel, not to mention all those who, though living in a Christian country, never,
in their earthly lives, have had an opportunity to hear the truth, as it is in
Christ Jesus? Surely, God " will have all men to be saved, and to come
unto the knowledge of the truth " (1 Tim., 2: 4), and Christ is the
propitiation "for the sins of the whole world " (1 John, 2: 2). There
are in every nation those who are not far from the kingdom of God, who "
fear God and work righteousness "; yet "except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, be cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Man cannot be
saved without knowing Christ and the power of his salvation; " for there
is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved."
We have the promise of Christ, that the gospel
shall first " be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations;
and then shall the end come " (Matt., 24: 14). Shall it not be preached to
the dead also? Can Christ be the judge of the whole world on the judgment day,
who "will judge the world in righteousness," unless the whole world
has beforehand learned to know of him? We grant that the passages of Scripture
which may be quoted as direct proof-texts for this opinion are few and of
uncertain application. But, whatever their correct rendering may be, they
contain enough to encourage our hope that, before the judgment day comes, the
grace of God in Christ Jesus shall have been offered to all as a " savour
of life unto life " or " of death unto death." Says Christ,
" Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad "
(John, 10:56); and Peter, "For this cause was the gospel preached also to
them that are dead " (1 Pet., 4: 6).
The Moravian Church, in its " Easter
Morning Litany," still declares in the words of Peter, that Christ "
by the Spirit went and preached unto the spirits in prison " (1 Pet.,
3:19); and the inference that may be drawn from this confession with regard to
an extension of a similar privilege to the heathen of later ages has never
lessened the missionary zeal and activity of this Church, a zeal which, even to
this day, is not surpassed by that of any other evangelical denomination.
We believe " that there shall be a
resurrection both of the just and unjust." Those in whom the Spirit of God
dwells have the resurrection of Christ given to them as a pledge of the
restoration or regeneration of their bodies, that they "may be conformed
to the body of his glory." To the ungodly no such pledge is given, and it
may be questioned, whether the resurrection unto damnation necessarily implies
a restoration of the body corresponding to the corrupt state of their soul, or
whether they shall merely be called up from the spirit world to receive their
final sentence. Passages such as Matt. 10: 28: " Fear him which is able to
destroy both soul and body in hell," would seem to indicate that those who
are to share the fate of the Devil and of his angels shall do so in the
possession of some kind of outward form. However this may be, it is certain
that all men must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
This judgment is an outward event, occurring
at a definite time; its object is to make a public proclamation and proof of
what has virtually been decided before. As the harvest day reveals the fruit,
so will the judgment day reveal the character of all men, in such a manner as
to leave not the least doubt with regard to the justice of the sentence which
is to be pronounced. Christ " will make manifest the counsels of the
heart" (1 Cor., 4: 5). This explains why, according to Scripture, on that
day "words and works" are emphasized, as an outward evidence of the
inner condition of the soul; but it does not annul the statement, that "he
that believeth . . . shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned
" (Mark, 16: 16); and "he that believeth on Him is not condemned, but
he that believeth not is condemned . . . , because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God " (John, 3:18). There cannot, in the
last instance, be a double standard of judgment, some to be judged "by the
gospel and some by the law of nature." Whatever has been said or done,
will be considered in its relation to Christ, the only "mediator between
God and men." The " righteous " will be accepted, because, what they
have done was done unto Christ, and those who will hear the terrible sentence,
" Depart from me, ye cursed," will be condemned, because they have
"not done it" unto Christ.
And what will be the punishment reserved for
the wicked? " He that believeth not the Son [of God] shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abides on him " (John, 3: 36). To be excluded from
the presence and favour of God, to be absolutely cut off from the source of all
joy and comfort, and from the happiness in which the faithful through Christ
have a share, this alone must be a source of utter misery and wretchedness. As
the love of God in Christ and the holy fellowship of the saints constitute the
essence of the felicity of the blessed, so the absolute selfishness and hatred,
the unrestrained dominion of sinful passions over the condemned, must be a hell
in itself, the more terrible, if combined with the compulsory confinement of
many like souls in a common place of punishment. As the kingdom of God, when
perfected, will be an organic unity of harmonious life, so the chaotic mass of
the wicked is compared, in Scripture, to a decaying carcass with the
ever-gnawing worm of despair in all its parts I Whether this be all that is
meant by the "fire prepared for the Devil and his angels " (Matt.,
25: 41), and " the lake which burned with fire and brimstone " (Rev.,
21: 8), or whether these declarations imply an additional infliction of outward
punishment, of a spiritual or bodily nature, we do not know. While the language
of Scripture describing the torments of hell is evidently more or less
metaphorical, the figures used being borrowed principally from the valley of
Ben Hinnom, the sewer of the city of Jerusalem, we have no reason to doubt that
the reality will be, at least, equal in terror to the symbol.
And is this decision final, or may we
entertain hopes for the conversion of the condemned and a final restoration of
all men unto salvation?
It has been said that, as the evil did not
exist from the beginning, it cannot last forever. But the good likewise, so far
as the creature is concerned, was not without a beginning; and if the holy God
could permit the evil to exist hitherto, it is not inconsistent that he should
permit its continuing forever, providing it is made absolutely powerless. It
has, furthermore, been said that man, who was created in the image of God, must
of necessity, at last, give up his sinful resistance, repent of his sin, and
plead for mercy. But a compulsory conversion would destroy the principle of moral
freedom which is fully recognized in the plan of salvation and which
constitutes the essence of holiness. The soul that has resisted Christ until
the judgment day may resist him forever; nay, the apostle declares: " It
is impossible for those who were once enlightened and hate tasted of the
heavenly gift, . . . if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto
repentance " (Heb., 6: 4, 6). Again it is urged that it would be
inconsistent with the justice and love of God, to inflict infinite penalty upon
finite transgression. But, if the sin which condemns is a continued and wilful
rejection of the grace of God, divine justice requires that the punishment
shall continue as long as the transgression lasts. Neither can there be any
appeal to God's holy love, which, while it saves whatever can be saved, is an
absolute hatred of sin and, in the last instance, of the sinner himself, after
he has become absolutely identified with sin. For we infer that those who are
condemned to everlasting punishment belong to one and the same class with the
Devil and his angels, in that their sin is the absolute sin which is without
repentance. All the divine love cannot avail for the saving of a soul that has
committed spiritual suicide and in consequence thereof prefers hell to heaven.
Finally, it is asserted that the sufferings of the condemned must disturb the
happiness of the blessed. But, if this point were well taken, it would prove
that God himself is not perfectly happy now, because of the continued existence
of sin and misery. 'When once the holy love of the saints is perfected in its
godlike character, when all earthly relations have passed away and the voice of
flesh and blood is heard no more, there can be no longer any feeling of
sympathy for those who are utterly sinful, and no compassion for the enemies of
God.
But does not Holy Writ offer some
encouragement to hope for a final salvation of all men, by such passages as the
following: " God has concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have
mercy upon all " (Rom., 11: 32); " As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive " (1 Cor., 15: 22); "And every
creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth heard I
saying, Blessing and honour . . . unto the Lamb forever " (Rev., 5: 13)?
(Compare also Phil., 2: 10, 11.)
If Scripture did not contain any statements to
the contrary, these passages would, indeed, justify the hope that, at last, all
creatures will not only " confess that Jesus Christ is Lord," but
will adore him as their Saviour. The apparent foundation of hope, however, is
destroyed by the plainest declarations to the effect that, after the judgment
clay, there is to be no further offer of salvation. And here we must notice
that some of the most solemn warnings fell from the lips of the merciful
Saviour himself. Not only did he say of Judas, " the son of
perdition," that " it had been good for that man, if he had. not been
born " (Matt., 26: 24), but he also repeatedly spoke of " eternal
punishment" and of a "fire that never shall be quenched, where their
worm dies not and the fire is not quenched " (Mark, 9: 45, 46). If any one
contends, that the Greek word which is rendered "eternal," or
"everlasting," strictly speaking, signifies "age-long," or
"a world-period," he must remember that the same word is used to
express the endless duration of the happiness of the children of God; and there
can be no more emphatic language than that of Rev. 14: 11: " The smoke of
their torment ascended up for ever and ever! "
But, if the Word of God forbids our expressing
any hope with regard to an ultimate restoration of the wicked, may we not, at
least, look forward to a time when all that is evil will forever be destroyed
by the annihilation of the wicked?
It has been argued, that an endless existence
of those who are cut off from the only source of life, the living God, is
impossible; or, again, that, as eternal life is an ever-increasing
manifestation of the power of life, so eternal death must, at last, end in the
extinction of being. Furthermore, the arguments which are urged in favour of a
final salvation of all are repeated, with apparently greater force, in favour
of the annihilation of the wicked, viz., (1) that, after an adequate retribution
has been meted out to the sinner, his existence may come to an end, and, (2)
that certain Scripture passages point in that direction, such as " The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," and " that God may be
all in all " (1 Cor., 15: 26, 28).
But here, again, all the arguments that have
been produced are not sufficient to permit of our setting aside the emphatic
declarations of Scripture to the contrary. Whatever our wishes and theories may
be, we dare not deny the solemn and fearful fact, that the Holy Scriptures
teach an everlasting punishment of the wicked.
Moravian ministers, with but few exceptions,
consider it their duty to make the doctrine of eternal retribution a part of
their message, because they are bound to preach the whole. truth of God. They
are convinced, also, that the solemn warnings of Scripture against the danger
of hell fire, though not the strongest and truest motive to conversion and
sanctification, are yet an important auxiliary to the offer of salvation in
Christ, calculated to awaken the sinner from his sleep of indifference and sin,
and to cause him to turn to the Saviour. They remember our Lord's words: "
I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him which, after he hath killed,
bath power to cast into hell" (Luke, 12: 5), and the injunction of Jude:
" Others save by fear, pulling them out of the fire " (Jude, 5: 23).
The experience of the Moravian Church in the
work of saving souls, in Christian as well as in heathen lands, goes to prove
that true repentance is wrought not by the fear of future punishment, but by
the power of Christ's great love to poor sinners. How often has it been
verified that the simple story of the crucified Saviour alone melts the heart,
when it has first been crushed by the hammer of the law I Hence, Moravian
ministers do not make it a point to dwell upon the terrors of hell, because
they know the cross of Christ to be a more powerful incentive, both to
conversion and holiness, than the fear of damnation; yet they cannot overlook
the solemn charge given to the prophet in Ezekiel 3: 18, 19, " When I say
unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die: and thou gives him no warning . . . his
blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked and he turn not
from his wickedness, he shall die in his iniquity: but thou hast delivered thy
soul."
It is needful, even for the children of God,
to always bear in mind 802 the fearful consequences of impenitence and
unfaithfulness, in order " to make their calling and election sure,"
and to work out their " own salvation with fear and trembling."
Therefore do we always pray, in the words of Count Zinzendorf:- Judge me now,
my God and Saviour,
Even
before the judgment day; or in the words of our Church Litany:- Lord, for thy
coming us prepare:
May we
to meet thee without fear
At all times ready be.
On the day of judgment, the wicked, both soul
and body, will be banished from the presence of the Lord, into everlasting destruction.
By Rev. JOSEPH T. SMITH, D.D., Late Moderator
of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Baltimore, Md.
THE sole object of this paper is to set forth
the doctrine of the Presbyterian Church, with its Scriptural basis, as
understood by the writer, on the subject of a second probation. What that
doctrine is may be ascertained with sufficient distinctness from several
distinct sources. We can gather it from living expounders in Presbyterian
pulpits, church courts, papers, and periodicals. We can learn it still more
clearly from a long line of illustrious authors in the past. But for an
exhaustive and authoritative statement we must go to its accepted symbols-the
Westminster Confession and Catechisms.
Turning to the eschatology of the Westminster
standards, We find first of all an assertion of the natural immortality of man.
Man, every man, because the son and heir of God, inherits immortality as his
inalienable birthright. All souls are by nature immortal. The Westminster
standards know nothing of a conditional immortality for the righteous or an
annihilation for the wicked. " God made man, male and female, with
reasonable and immortal souls," and, again, souls at death " having
an immortal subsistence immediately return to God who gave them "
(Confession, ch. 32).
The bodies, too, which souls inhabit here, are
immortal. Death is not destruction. The separation it effects between the soul
and the body does not touch the integrity of either. Each exists apart, during
the whole period of the intermediate state, to be reunited in the resurrection
of the great day. " The souls of believers are, at their death, made
perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies, being
still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection "
(S. C., ques..37). "At the last day such as are found alive shall not die,
but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up, with the self-same bodies
and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again
to their souls forever. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ,
be raised to dishonour; the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honour, and
be made conformable unto his own glorious body" (Confession, ch. 32).
Amidst all these transformations, and
throughout the whole period of his existence, the identity of the man is
preserved, and his personality unimpaired. There is no transmigration of souls;
no absorption into an infinite Essence; no loss or confusion of personality.
Each exists apart in his own individuality, and so is held personally
responsible " for the deeds done in the body." He exists, too, during
the intermediate state in a condition of full consciousness and activity. Immortal,
retaining their identity and consciousness, all souls at death enter upon a
fixed and unchanging state of eternal happiness or eternal misery. There is
growth, 807 indeed, but no transmutation of character. There is change of place
and of state, indeed, but the character always makes its own environment.
"The mind is its own place. Which way I fly is bell: myself am hell."
" The bodies of men after death return to dust and see corruption, but
their souls (which neither die nor sleep.), having an immortal subsistence,
immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then
made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they
behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of
their bodies: and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain
in torments and utter darkness reserved to the judgment of the great day "
(Con., ch. 32). On the day of judgment " the wicked, who know not God. and
who obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments,
and be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and
the glory of his power " (Con., ch. 33). " At the day of judgment the
wicked shall be set on Christ's left hand, and upon clear evidence and full
conviction of their own consciences shall have the fearful but just sentence of
condemnation pronounced against them, and thereupon shall be cast out from the favourable
presence of God, and the glorious fellowship with Christ, the saints, and all
his holy angels, into hell to be punished with unspeakable torments both of
body and soul with the Devil and his angels forever" (L. C., ques. 89).
Fearful, as this doom of the wicked is
confessed to be, it is scrupulously expressed in the spirit and in the very
phraseology of the Bible. Every line and syllable is fortified by express
citations of Scripture, such as these: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels" (Matt., 25: 41).
"Into hell-into the fire that never shall be quenched-where their worm dies
not, and the fire is not quenched " (Mark, 9: 43, 44). "In flaming
fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ " (2 Thess., 1: 8). -" Who shall be punished
with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory
of his power " (2 Thess., 1: 9).
After this general statement as to the
condition of men after the judgment, the Confession makes special mention of
two exceptional classes-infants and other elect persons. "Elect infants,
dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who
worketh when, and where, and how he pleased; so also are all other elect
persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the
Word" (Con., ch. 10).
All whom God hath predestined unto life are
effectually called by his Word and Spirit, " drawing them to Jesus Christ,
yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace." With
reference to infants, who are incapable of such outward call, there is positive
evidence that those of believers will be saved; there is presumptive evidence
that others were embraced with them in the election of life. Keeping within the
letter of the Word, the Confession affirms positively the salvation of all
elect infants. But the confident hope is cherished by Presbyterians that all
infants are of the elect. They find nothing in the Word to forbid such hope.
They find analogies and implications which afford a strong presumption in its favour;
and hence, the salvation of all infants is cherished as a confident hope by all
Presbyterians. So, too, with reference to all who, from imbecility, are
incapable of being outwardly called. The Spirit of God is free, and works
" when, and where, and how he pleased." The grace of God is not tied
to word or ordinances, but may operate, and does operate, apart from them.
Imbeciles who cannot receive the outward call may be saved without it. So, too,
of the heathen, and all who have never heard of Christ. The Spirit may
regenerate, make meet for heaven, and save without the ordinary means of
salvation. But his whole work in behalf of infants, imbeciles, and heathen is performed
in this life. There is no word which extends his office into the life to come.
" Redemption is certainly applied, and effectually communicated, to all
those for whom Christ bath provided it, who are in time by the Holy Ghost
enabled to believe in Christ according to the gospel " (L. C., ques. 59).
The fact that salvation is possible only in
this life is found not in these specific statements alone. It is inwoven with
the whole fabric of the Westminster standards. Everywhere, Christ is represented
as a present Saviour; salvation as a present concern; redemption " as
certainly applied and effectually communicated in time by the Holy Ghost."
Take this fundamental assumption away and the whole complexion of the
Confession would be changed.
That death ends probation is held, not by
Presbyterians alone; it is the faith of the universal Church, Primitive, Medieval,
Modern, Eastern, Western, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed. The Presbyterian
Confession, the last and most elaborate of all the great Protestant
Confessions, embodies the common faith of all. No one article in the creed of
the Church universal answers more fully to the test of catholicity,
"Always, everywhere, and by all."
Occasional aberrations from the common faith,
indeed, there have always been; and among us the old heresy (as we account it)
of a second probation has been revived. At first, it was uttered with bated
breath, as the suggestion of a possibility, the whispering of a hope, the
statement of a hypothesis; but its advocates, growing bolder, the possibility
has now become a fact, the hypothesis an affirmation, and the hope an assured
reality. The dogma that death does not end probation stands alone. It has so
few affinities with the admitted. verities of the Christian faith and so many
seeming antagonisms with the acknowledged teachings of Scripture that its advocates
have never been able to embody it in any system of truth which would secure
common consent among themselves. When they pass beyond the bald negation, all
is chaos-a very babel of discordant voices. There is no agreement among
themselves as to the subjects of the second probation. Some would confine it to
infants and imbeciles; some would embrace with them the heathen and the
unevangelized of Christian lands; some would extend it to all who have not
committed the sin against the Holy Ghost; some would extend it to all the lost,
on the theory of a continued probation. So as to its period: some would confine
it to the intermediate state; some would extend it, indefinitely, beyond the
judgment; and some hold to an eternal probation. So as to means and agencies:
some hold that salvation is wrought out by the innate forces and recuperative
powers of the soul itself; some superadd a higher education and more effective
discipline than those enjoyed here; still others declare that the means of
grace and the agency of the Holy Spirit are prolonged into the life to come.
Beyond the blank negation that death does not end probation, there is no unity
among the disciples of the "Progressive Orthodoxy." That negation we
now propose to bring to the test of Scripture, the only arbiter whose decision
is accepted by all as final and authoritative.
We Would approach the Bible in the spirit with
which the scientist tells us the student must always approach nature. He must
empty his mind of all prejudices, prepossessions, sentiments, and theories
which would hinder his search after facts. The true scientist does not search
for a nature which is made after his patterns. He does not try to compel the
facts he discovers to fit themselves into his theories. He schools himself to
the single task of patient search. He resolutely accepts every unwelcome fact
discovered, though it may shiver into atoms his most cherished theories. The
crystalline spheres, cycles, and epicycles, with which he has so gorgeously
filled the heavens, he is content to see vanish away before the fall of an
apple. With the hardihood of the true scientific spirit we must approach the
Bible, seeking only to find and' honestly report what it contains, " the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Taking up the Old Testament, beginning our
search at its Genesis beginnings, and turning over its first pages, we see
everywhere one great, central figure. It is a present God, walking on earth,
mingling with men, a busy actor in human affairs. The chief character in which
he everywhere appears is that of a Judge. The Old Testament, and pre-eminently
the Pentateuch, is a book of Judgments. Take your Concordance and look over the
names, titles, attributes, and offices of the Most High, and God the Judge
appears more frequently than God the Creator, or God the Redeemer. In the very
first hour after man's fall he erects his judgment seat in Eden, sits upon it
in personal presence, arraigns the culprits before his bar, tries, and
pronounces sentence of condemnation upon each apart-the serpent, the woman, and
the man, and curses the wide earth for their sake. After man's expulsion from
Eden, and while the exiled family is still lingering close by its closed gate,
God the Judge arrests and arraigns the first murderer, tries, condemns, and
passes sentence of outlawry upon him. Because of its enormous wickedness, he
condemns the antediluvian world to the overwhelming judgment of the flood. He
burns with fire from heaven the guilty cities of the plain, and buries them
deep beneath the putrid waters of the Dead Sea. Proud Pharaoh, his chariots and
his horsemen, he makes to sink like lead in the waters. The guilty inhabitants
of Canaan he dooms to utter extermination. Judgment follows judgment, in
terrible succession. Salvation is wrought out for his people by the destruction
of their enemies. Upon the banks of every Red Sea of deliverance 'there stands
a Miriam choir, with harp and song, celebrating his judgment in jubilant
strains. "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not
fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thy judgments are manifest."
A present God, a present judgment, present pains and penalties visited upon evil-doers,
to burn into the minds of men the great fundamental ideas of moral government,
accountability, and retribution! Throughout the Pentateuch, there is scarce a
glimpse of the hereafter, scarce an intimation of a judgment to come. The
thoughts are fixed intensely upon a present God, a present judgment, a present
retribution. As we pass on through the later historical books, the prophets,
and the Psalms, corners of the separating veil are from time to time lifted up.
Glimpses of the coming judgment and the great hereafter are given us. But all
is dim and indistinct, far-cast shadows of the present God and present
judgment. The Sheol, hades, or grave of the Hebrews is a land of mists and
mysteries. Job has exhausted all the resources of language and imagery in the
attempt to body forth and " give shape to that which shape had none."
" A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death,
without any order, and where the light is as darkness" (Job, 10: 22). It
is a gloomy underworld, shut out from the air, and sunlight, and gladness of
the upper world. It is a land where nothing is heard and nothing seen, the
place of darkness and of silence. Its boundaries fade away on every side into
gloom. Its inhabitants are ghosts, we know not "whether in the body or out
of the body," flitting fitfully through the shades. In the earlier books
all are confusedly mingled together, the bad and the good. In the later books
there appears a shadowy kind of partition between-a phantom paradise and a
phantom hell. Not from the world to come, but from the world that now is the
chief sanctions of duty are drawn. The present judgment is placed in the
foreground, while the judgment to come fades away into the dim and distant
background. Solomon has summed up the teachings of the Old Testament Scriptures
in a single verse, " Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy
'might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the
grave, whither thou goes " (Eccles., 9: 10). Search through the Old
Testament, book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and you cannot
find salvation in its grave.
Turn now to the New Testament, and sit at the
feet of him who holds the keys of death and of hades, the Lord of the unseen
world, who came " to abolish death, and bring life and immortality to
light." It was the grand object of his mission "to destroy death, and
him that had the power of death," and to pour the light of life and
immortality into the darkness and corruption of the grave. " He is the
resurrection and the life; " and from him alone can we learn the mysteries
of the life to come. He has clearly defined the boundaries and mapped out the
whole territory of the unseen world. Sheol has vanished away, with many another
shadow, and instead of the shadow we have the substance. It is separated into
two great divisions. The first is bounded by death on the one side and by the
general judgment on the other. This is the intermediate state, the state of
souls and bodies while separated between death and the resurrection. The second
division extends from the general judgment on through eternity, and is the
final and unchanging state.
As to the first, or intermediate, state our
Lord has very little to say. Incomplete, preparatory, and of short continuance,
he leaves it largely in shadow, and fixes his regard chiefly upon the final
state beyond. In the Sermon on the Mount, his matchless parables, and all his
earlier teachings, he seeks to unfold the true nature of the kingdom of heaven
in its relations to God and men as established on earth. Only in his later
teachings do We find the sublime visions of the kingdom of heaven above.
One matchless parable he spoke about bodes,
which sheds more light upon the darkness of the intermediate state, than all
the volumes ever penned-the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke, 16: 19-31). The
scene of the parable is laid in hales, or the separate state. Two personages
are there introduced, Lazarus, the representative of all the -righteous dead,
and Dives, the representative of the wicked. They are in distinct apartments,
Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom, paradise, the heaven of the separated soul:
Dives is in hell, the hell of the separated soul. The one is blessed; the other
is tormented. Both exist with full consciousness of the present, and distinct
memories of the past. "Between us and you," says Abraham from
paradise, " there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass
from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would come from
thence." Language could not more clearly convey the thought that there is
no possibility of the salvation of the lost in hales. A great, bridgeless, and
impassable gulf yawns between paradise and hell.
To go over the teachings of our Lord in detail
as to the final judgment and following retribution would far transcend our
limits. Let us single out that marvellous word-picture of the final judgment in
the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. Let us fix our special attention upon the
sentence pronounced upon the wicked at its close, and the recorded fulfillment
which follows, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared
for the Devil and his angels." "And these shall go away into
everlasting punishment." We select this vision of the final judgment
because it seems to be the closing scene in this great drama of time. Here the
act seems to close, the curtain drops, and all is ended. The sentence at its
close is that of a judge presiding at the most solemn assize ever held, and
determining the most momentous issues ever tried. Here, if ever, words would be
carefully weighed. The wicked, on the left hand of the Judge, are sentenced to
the punishment of "everlasting fire." The place, or, if you please,
the state, is clearly defined and carefully distinguished. It is not the pit,
the abyss, or the Tartarus, in which the souls of the wicked exist while
separate from their bodies. This we are expressly told is destroyed at the
judgment. "Death and Lades are cast into the lake of fire" (Rev., 20:
14). The inmates of hales, now that their bodies are reunited to their souls in
the resurrection, are cast into the lake of fire. "This is the second
death," distinguished from, and following upon, the first death of hales.
This lake of fire, the destruction of the Old Testament, is the final place or
state of the lost after the judgment of the great day. Its distinctive New
Testament name is Gehenna, more frequently the Gehenna of fire. The word Gehenna
is used twelve times. Once, figuratively, by the apostle James, when he speaks
of the tongue set on fire of Gehenna. Eleven times it is used by our Lord,-once
figuratively, when he uses it with reference to the proselytes of the
Pharisees. Ten times it is applied directly to the place of punishment of the
wicked after the judgment. After the resurrection and judgment, we are told,
soul and body are together cast into the Gehenna of fire,-" into hell,
into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dies not and their
fire is not quenched."
Such is the punishment of fire to which the
wicked are condemned. But what is the meaning of the word. "
everlasting," " everlasting fire "? Does it denote punishment
without end? In Greek there is but one word, eon, with its numerous
modifications, employed to denote duration. As infinite space is denoted by a
multiplication of the unit of measurement (whatever that be) by itself forever,
so infinite time is denoted by the endless multiplication of its only unit of
measurement, the Eon added to eon forever is eternity. Duration is
distinguished into three parts, the past, the present, and the future. The
world (that is the time-world or age) is present time; before the world is past
time; after the world is future time. These three, added together, make
eternity,-the " for ever and ever," time without end. It is the word
always employed to denote eternity. Thirty times it is applied to the eternal
God, his being, his attributes, his dominion, his glory. Seventeen times it is
used in doxologies of praise to God, praises forever, world without end. Sixty
times it is applied to the felicity of the righteous. In the final sentence it
is applied both to the duration of the blessedness of the righteous and the
punishment of the wicked. By what rule of interpretation, then, shall we limit
its meaning here? Language cannot express the idea of punishment without end
more clearly than it is expressed in the terms of the final sentence.
The apostles, with one voice, reiterate the
teachings of the Master. " The vengeance of eternal fire " (Jude, 7),
" punished with everlasting destruction " (2 Thess., 1: 9), "
for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" (Jude, 13),-declarations
like these are constantly recurring. John, who has expanded the germinal
teachings of the Master into a glowing Apocalypse, leads us to the very brink
of the Gehenna of fire, and bids us look upon the smoke of its torment
ascending for ever and ever. " They shall be tormented day and night for
ever and ever " (Rev., 20: 10). If that phrase "for ever and
ever" does not express the idea of punishment without end, human language
cannot express it.
Confessedly, the language of the Bible seems
everywhere to teach the doctrine of eternal punishment; confessedly, the great
mass of devout readers have always so understood it; confessedly, it is the
doctrine of the universal Church. But, in the language of our Confession, it is
a " fearful " truth, and the benevolent heart shrinks from its
contemplation. Christianity has so glorified the goodness of God, and so
exalted his Fatherhood, and so humanized us and quickened our sympathies with
human suffering, that we are appalled at the thought of a human being lost
forever. We all know how we are accustomed to treat painful and unwelcome
truths, how our prejudices, our sympathies, and our sentiments often overbear
the clearest evidence. The difficulty here is, not in the proofs which are
addressed to our reason, but in the sensibilities and sentiments which direct the
reason. We sympathize with Foster and Farrar in their stern condemnation of
those who seem to delight in gazing upon the agonies of the lost, and in
lingering around the hells of Milton and Dante. We go with them through the
Bible, from book to book, searching among its symbols and its figures,
lingering about every text which seems to afford the faintest hope of escape. I
wish there was no sin in the world. I wish there were no suffering, no pain, no
anguish, no tears, no bleeding hearts; no death. I wish the tribes of sensitive
existences, which people air, and land, and sea, instead of preying upon and
devouring each other, filling the earth with their shrieks of alarm and groans
of anguish, would dwell together in peace, "the lion and the lamb lying down
together." I wish all anger, and strife, and tumult, and war, and woe were
banished from among men. I wish earth were a paradise of innocence and bliss. I
wonder why God, with his infinite goodness and infinite power and resources,
did not make it so. This mystery of evil confounds and appals me. But it is
idle for me to wonder or to wish. God has not made the world after my ideals.
His ways are not my ways; nor his thoughts, my thoughts. With the heroism of
the true searcher after truth I must bid. away these alluring visions, and
school myself to the task of learning simply what is.
817 The advocates of a second probation
concern themselves chiefly with sentiments, suggestions, analogies, and
deductions from partial truths. They have little patience with exact
statements, or individual texts, or the letter of the Word. Delivered from the
bondage of the letter, they rejoice in the freedom of spirit. They have passed
through the wilderness, and ascended a Pisgah, whence their eyes sweep the
whole horizon of truth.
From the mount of vision on which they stand,
nothing of God is seen but his goodness. Justice, truth, holiness, all the
divine attributes, are blended and lost in the white light of goodness. The
rainbow round about his throne, with its prismatic colours distinct, has
vanished away. The Lawgiver and the Judge are absorbed and lost in the Father.
God is good, and his goodness is his glory. We cannot exaggerate in our
estimate, for his goodness is as boundless as his nature. " God so loved
the world, as to give his only begotten Son," and such love as that has
neither measure nor limit. But what is goodness? In the language of Butler, "goodness
is not a disposition to make all men happy, but to make the good happy."
" Behold the goodness and the severity of God." In nature, in
providence, and in the Bible, there they stand side by side, goodness for the
good, severity for the wicked. Eden, in its bloom and beauty, for the innocent;
Eden withered, earth cursed, for the guilty The distinction between what God is
in himself and what he manifests of himself in his works is fundamental. God is
infinite in power, yet he has not manifested all his power, nor exhausted all
the resources of his omnipotence, in the worlds he has made. God is infinite in
goodness, yet he has not manifested all his goodness in the works of his hands.
Must God, because infinitely good, secure the highest happiness of all his
creatures? That is a question of fact to be determined by actual observation.
He could have made more and more glorious worlds; he could have peopled them
with inhabitants of far greater capacities of happiness; he could have made the
wide universe a heaven and peopled it with archangels.
In point of fact, the worlds he has made are
filled with all manner of physical disorders. They are rocked by earthquakes,
torn by volcanoes, swept by tempests, deformed by deserts, frozen by arctic
colds, and parched by equatorial heats. He has made crawling worms, and
loathsome insects, and poisonous serpents, and cruel beasts of prey. Meagre as
the capacities of happiness often are, few enjoy even up to the measure of
their capacity. Surely infinite goodness does not compel God to make all his
creatures capable of the highest degree of happiness; nor yet to make all happy
up to the full measure of their capacity. Finite nature cannot display the
infinite goodness of God. To display that, he must create an infinite being,
another God.
And then justice may impose a limitation on
the manifestation of the divine goodness. Goodness is voluntary, but justice is
imperative. God must be just, for justice and judgment are the very habitation
of his throne. No gift of his goodness can set aside the behests of his
justice. There may be that in the justice of God, which, in the language of our
Confession., requires him to condemn some to everlasting punishment "to
the praise of his glorious justice." This we know assuredly, from
every-day observation, that God's goodness does not require him to make all his
creatures happy, nor prevent him from visiting them with the sternest
punishment.
A second plea for the second probation is
drawn from the nature of the gospel and the universality of the gospel offer.
The Son of man came to bring salvation to the ends of the earth. He commanded
his gospel to be preached to all the world. " Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature " (Mark, 16:15). He makes the rejection
of the proffered salvation the ground of condemnation. "He that believeth,
and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned
" (Mark, 16: 16). This is the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light " (John, 3:19). If the
gospel be designed for all men, and if men are condemned for its rejection,
must not the gospel be offered to every creature, if not in this world, then in
the next? It is the purpose of God that the gospel should be published to all
the world, and that purpose will be fulfilled speedily, according to the
measure of him with whom a thousand years are as a day. Those who hear and
reject the gospel shall suffer an aggravated doom. There is .a gradation in
punishment. He who knew his Lord's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with
many stripes. " For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much
required " (Luke, 12: 48). It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for those who reject the offered
salvation.
But is the rejection of Christ the only, or
the primal, ground of condemnation? No. Sin, every sin, " deserves God's
wrath and curse both in this life and in that which is to come." The
apostle argues this question at length in the Epistle to the Romans. He
declares that the rejection of Christ is not the only ground of condemnation.
Those who have not the written law are a law unto themselves. God has written
it on their hearts. They have within themselves a judge interpreting and administering
the law. "Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the
mean while accusing, or else excusing, one another " (Rom., 2: 15). The
heathen are not judged by a law which they know not, nor condemned for the
rejection of a Saviour who has never been offered to them. They are judged and
condemned by the law written on their hearts. " These having not the law,
are a law unto themselves " (Rom., 2:14).
The goodness of God, we are told, requires
that the offer of salvation should be made at some time to every man. We are
not competent to pronounce upon the question what the goodness of God requires
of him, for we see that he deals very unequally with men. He does not afford
them all equal advantages. He does not make all happy. Everywhere he seems to
prefer holiness to happiness, and sacrifices the happiness of his creatures to
promote their holiness. Sin, not suffering, is, in his account, the
transcendent evil. That the goodness of God does not save men from suffering
here we see. That it forbids everlasting suffering we can know only when we can
measure the evil of sin, know all the demands of justice, and comprehend all
the interests of God's great empire. The lost, be it remembered, are not
punished for the sins committed in this life alone. They carry with them a
nature prone to evil, a character formed, and habits fixed; and so sin forever.
Hence, we read of their " eternal sin," and eternal sin deserves
eternal punishment.
The scientific and moral arguments concerning
a future life supplemented by the teachings of revelation.
By GEORGE GABRIEL STOKES, President of the
Royal Society, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and M.
P. for the University.
IN order to enter profitably on the
consideration of what awaits man in that " undiscovered country "
towards which, according to the belief of most men, we are traveling in our
journey through life, whether the condition will be one of happiness or misery,
what will be its duration in either case, whether any change will be possible
from the one condition to the other, and so forth, it is important that we
should inquire, in the first instance, what reason we have for supposing that
there will be any such state at all. For if this be made to rest on some
assumption taken as an axiom, and all our reasoning be based upon it, it is
clear that, if the fundamental axiom should be erroneous, not only is the
superstructure liable to be erroneous too, but the error is of a kind very
likely to lie undiscovered. What, then, in the present state of our knowledge,
scientific as well as other, is the ground of our expectation that death will
not be the termination of man's conscious existence? The evidence derivable from
biological investigation is notoriously in the negative direction.
Consciousness, as we know it, is intimately bound up with the state of our
material organism. Even in a. faint, when the supply of blood to the brain is
deficient, though after as well as before the faint the man may feel perfectly
well, yet consciousness is for the time in abeyance, and, on recovery, the
thoughts tit on to those that passed through the mind before seizure, just as
if nothing had happened. If the mere deficiency of blood is capable of
producing such an effect, how can we expect that any consciousness should
survive when the whole bodily organism goes to corruption?
The scientific objection is undoubtedly
powerful, if it be assumed that man's immortality, or even his survival of
death in some way, is inherent in his nature; belongs, that is, to the
condition in which he was created. But all it can lead to is the following
alternative: either there is evidence of considerable weight against survival,
or the conditions of survival, and consequently the evidence for it, depend on
what is essentially beyond the ken of science.
The consciousness of right and wrong, winch
appears to be innate in man, though its actual development depends greatly upon
cultivation, points to a higher Power to whom man is responsible. Our belief in
the justice of tins Power, combined with the observation that well-doing and
evil-doing by no means universally meet in this life with the requital which we
feel to be their due, leads to the expectation, or at any rate to a suspicion,
that there may be some condition after death in which these anomalies may be
rectified. But it is obvious that considerations such as these can give us
little or no information as to the conditions of any such survival.
In default of information derivable from our
natural powers of observation, or innate feelings, let us turn to what appears
to be the teaching of revelation. Now, it is to be noticed, in the first
instance, that, in the Scriptural account of creation, the origin of man is
spoken of in a manner quite different from that of the animal kingdom in
general. He is said to have been made "in the image of God."
Doubtless, a very free interpretation must be given to the account of the
creation as described in Genesis: and if we hold that the object of revelation
was, not to teach man science, which his natural powers give him the means of
investigating, but to instruct him ill that which relates to his moral nature,
we need not expect to find detailed information as to the mere physical origin
of animated nature, but we may expect to find some information as to the origin
of man, especially as regards his moral nature. But the language used of man
implies that in him, alone of all animals, there is something in which his
nature resembles that of his Creator; something which, for the sake of a name,
we may call his spiritual nature. But the spiritual nature leaves the animal
nature intact; it does not supersede it, but is superadded to it; just as (to
use a physical illustration) the phenomena of life, say in a tree, are
superadded to the laws of motion, of gravitation, etc., to which the tree is
subject in common with dead matter. If man be not destined to pass away
forever, at death, it is in connection with that superadded something which
differentiates him from the lower animals, that we are to look for evidence
that death is not the end of him.
In the Scriptural account of the creation of
man, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that. he is by creation an immortal
being. Quite the contrary. His attainment of immortality is represented as
contingent upon the use of something outside of him. Whatever the " Tree
of Life " may mean or symbolize, it is clearly indicated that it was upon
his use of it that his possession of immortality de-pended; and that when, by
disobedience, he fell from his primeval state of innocence, access to it was
denied him. Scripture, therefore, leads us to the same conclusion as that to
which we should have been led by all outward appearances-that so far as depends
on anything in man's original nature, at death there is an end of him.
It is true that man is endowed with capacities
for continued progress, and feels aspirations after a continuance of existence,
which ill accord with the fate which, to all outward appearance, awaits him.
Moreover, the sense of right and wrong, and the feeling that what is right
deserves approval, and what is wrong retribution, appear to be innate in him;
and yet, so far at least as can be judged by appearances, prosperity and
adversity by no means uniformly follow well and ill doing respectively. These
two anomalies, which for the sake of a name we may designate the teleological
and the moral, present. enigmas which reason alone is unable to solve. Unaided
by revelation, man can only offer conjectures as to a conceivable solution. It
may be that, in spite of the tremendous appearances to the contrary, death does
not make an end of him; that there is some state beyond, in which his conscious
existence may be continued, and in which reward or punishment may follow well
or ill doing, in strict accordance with desert. And confining ourselves to
nations. that have had no revelation to guide them, all or nearly all have had
some idea of a life of some kind beyond death. But no assurance could be
obtained, even by the most enlightened, and with many there was nothing more
than a suspicion of the vaguest kind.
But if we frankly accept the Scriptural
account of the fall of man, we at once obtain a solution of the teleological
enigma. We learn that, unlike the lower animals, man is not in the condition in
which he was created. If they have instincts suited to their mode of life,
while he has aspirations which have no natural fulfillment so far as can be
seen, it is that he alone is in an unnatural state,-in a state, that is,
different from that for which he was originally fitted.
By the fall, our first parents lost their
primal condition of innocence, a loss which, so far as natural means are
concerned, was irretrievable. Not only so, but their progeny, having, by
natural descent, inherited a nature which was fallen from that primal
condition, were rendered unfit for immortality, and the whole race passed under
the law of death. But restitution to a condition of sinless-ness by natural
means being impossible, God in his mercy provided supernatural means, by which
restoration to a state of innocence became possible, and the recovery of the
forfeited immortality permissible, for those for whom the provided means shall
take effect. By the incarnation, the human nature was taken into the divine;
and, though sinless himself, the Son of God suffered death, the appointed
penalty of transgression, in order that through his blood we might have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins. But the human and. the divine natures
being united in him, it was not possible that he should be held down by death,
and he rose from the dead, the first fruits of them that slept: rose, however,
not to the natural human life in which he was crucified, but to a mysterious,
supernatural, higher life, of which the redeemed are in due time to be
partakers.
How it is that the death of Christ is
effectual to the forgiveness of sins and restoration of men to a condition of
perfect innocence, is a great mystery which will probably never be understood
till, in a future life, it is experienced; and perhaps attempts to explain it
have done more harm than good. It is enough for us to trust that so it will be
for those who come under the conditions of it.
And now, in connection with the scheme of
redemption, we have a solution of the moral enigma which has already been
referred to. While it is only the redeemed to whom immortality is promised,
all, we are told, are to be raised from the dead, and all are to be judged. For
all, the present life is the time of probation, and on the issue of that
depends their final destiny. But how the great division will be made, seeing
that in this life there seems to be a gradation of character, we do not know.
It may be that the revelation of all that is involved in the death of Christ
will form the touchstone by which some will be so drawn that their characters
will be finally established for righteousness, and they will be endowed with
immortality, while others will be repelled even by so great a love, and their
characters will thereby be utterly hardened; and being fit only for
destruction, they will be condemned to the second death, from which there is no
resurrection. If, in this life, the preaching of the gospel message may be
either a savour of life unto life or of death unto death, surely it is not
unnatural to suppose that the full revelation of the last clay may have a
tremendous discriminating power, separating the tares from the wheat, which now
so grow together that oftentimes they cannot be distinguished. In the final
award there is ample room for gradations of happiness among those who all alike
enter into the joy of their Lord, and of tribulation and anguish among those
who alike are ultimately consigned to the second death; ample opportunity,
therefore, for rectifying the apparent moral anomaly of the present life, that
happiness and misery are not meted out in strict accordance with men's deserts.
While the sacrifice of the death of Christ is
represented as the very foundation of man's salvation, there is no need to
confine, as some have done, the benefit of his death to those who in this life
have been brought under Christian influences. While few, few Christians at any
rate, would question the enormous advantage of Christian education and
Christian influences, and while it is true that it is only under the Christian
covenant that salvation is promised, there is nothing in this opposed to the
hope-a hope which appears to be supported by pretty plain intimations in
Scripture-that salvation will be more widely extended. Surely, if even of the
best Christians it must be said, "In many things we offend all," and
true also that in the Church of the redeemed there will be "neither spot
nor wrinkle nor any such thing," a great change must take place even in
such; a change, however, which is not inconsistent with personal identity, or
independent of the way in which the man passed through his state of probation,
or one which demands that such a state should be continued. And if so great a
change must pass even over the Christian, it is not unreasonable to suppose
that the means whereby that change is brought about may be effective in other
cases also,-supposably, in the case of a heathen who had striven, in some
measure at least, to act according to the light he had.
Hitherto mention has been made only of man's
present life, and of the condition which ensues after resurrection. The further
question may be asked, can we ascertain anything, or, in default of a definite
conclusion, can we indicate that which seems most probable, as to his condition
in the intervening time?
The advocates of the theory of the natural
immortality of the soul seem to be nearly unanimous in the belief that, at
death, man passes into some different state of conscious existence, which
undergoes a further change at the resurrection. And many who do not hold the
theory just mentioned agree, in this respect, with those who do. Moreover, it
seems to be towards some such condition that the thoughts of uninstructed nations
turn, when they think of a future state at all.
No argument for the natural immortality of the
soul, that the writer has seen, appears to him to be of any value; and, as to a
prevalent belief among uninstructed nations, if it be true that man was created
in a condition in which, if he had continued, he would have been fit for
immortality, and was endowed with aspirations after immortality, it was natural
that, after the forfeiture of immortality through transgression, man should
seek to satisfy his craving for immortality by imagining that he had something
immortal in his nature. It is, then, to revelation that we must look, if we are
to find out something about man's condition in the intermediate state.
Now, as it was through the gospel that life
and immortality were brought to light, it is chiefly to the New Testament that
we should look for information on the subject now before us. We find, however,
that it is to the state after resurrection that our thoughts are there, mainly,
at least, directed, when a future life is dwelt on. It has been well said that
Scripture bases our hopes of a future life, not upon the immortality of the
soul, but upon the resurrection of the body. There are comparatively few passages
in which the intermediate state even appears to be referred to at all. Of
these, two or three are so dark that their real interpretation is quite
uncertain. There are two or three in which, at first sight, the intermediate
state seems to be referred to as one of consciousness, but which, on further
examination, are seen to be, as the writer thinks, perfectly and naturally
explicable on the opposite supposition. It is not in accordance with the plan
of this collection that the writers should enter into argument, but it is
wished_ that they should state their own opinions; and, in accordance with this
desire, the writer of the present article ventures to say that his own mind
leans strongly to the view that the 830 intermediate state is one in which, as
in a faint, thought is in abeyance*; one which, accordingly, involves a virtual
annihilation of intervening time for each individual in particular.
But be that as it may, this much appears to be
certain: that in the popular theology and popular hymns the intermediate state
receives an expansion utterly unlike what we Enid in Scripture; an expansion
which goes far towards banishing from view the resurrection state and the day
of judgment, though, as to the latter, so prominent a place did it occupy in the
minds of apostles and. those to whom they wrote, that they frequently speak of
it simply as " the day," or " that day."
The wicked, after judgment, may utterly
perish, and sin be thus brought to an end.
By Rev. N. SUMMERBELL, D.D., of tile
"Christian" Church.
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom., 6:28).
He that is born but once dies twice; but he
that is born twice dies but once. See Luke 20: 36, and Rev. 20: 6.
THE Christians, the people whom I represent,
have generally the common opinions of the Protestant Church, modified by their
devotion to the Scripture statements. The Protestant opinion is that there are
two kingdoms, representing the antitheses of good and evil; both eternal and
endless, the one the acme of devotion to God, all happiness, purity, peace, and
holiness; the other (that of the lost) "a vast ocean of fire," in
which the damned are "tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night; vast
waves, or billows, of fire continually rolling over their heads; all of quick
sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, their vitals,
forever full of glowing, melting fire, enough to melt the very rocks and
elements; without any end at all, and never, never to be delivered "
(Jonathan Edwards).
While some contend that the lost can never die
out of this agony, others think it possible. That few realize the infinite
difference between limited and endless agony is evident by their manifest
horror at the thought that the lost can ever die, contrasted with the
complacency with which they contemplate their endless agony. The eloquent
Nehemiah Adams exclaims, "Each of us " (that is, lost or saved)
"may say with his Maker, I live forever. If God says, Of my years there is
no end, each of us may respond, Of my years there is no end." Most nations
of antiquity gloried in the torment of the dead. The readers of Homer remember
with what easy grace souls are dashed down to Hades by the sword of the
warrior, or the sharper poet's pen. So little care the living for the lost! We
will consider the question in the light of reason and revelation, and develop
our opinion in the unfolding of the problem.
GOD'S LOVE.-God, speaking of his children,
says, " I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth; for
the spirit should fail before me and the souls which I have made " (Is.,
57: 16). Who is able to assert that sinners reaping corruption will be more
invulnerable to death than God's children?
CREATION.-Man was created a favourite with
God. His home was in Eden, the garden of God. He bore his Maker's image, and
was endowed with superior reason. All things were made subject to his will; an honour
not conferred upon angels.
THE FALL.-Two trees in the garden were symbols
of life and death. Of the tree of evil the Creator said, " Thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the clay that thou eats of it thou shalt surely die." An
enemy said, " Thou shalt not surely die." Man's creation in Paradise,
in holiness and happiness, proves such his normal state. The tree of life, at
his disposal while innocent, "freely to eat" and " live
forever," while the tree of death was prohibited, proves him designed for
a happy immortality. Removing the tree of life from the first pair, immediately after they had
"become as gods, knowing good and evil, lest they should partake and live
forever," proves that the all-loving Creator prefers death for his
children to a miserable immortality in sin. For sinners, as gods (" one of
us"), knowing good and evil, would be immortal monsters, of whom Satan and
earthly oppressors and destroyers are but microscopic miniatures. Man must
surely die. But the loving Father gave him a new hope of a new life in another
world.
THE WAYS.-Two ways started from the garden,-Death
and Life. And all along, in sight of the path of life, Sin strewed her dead.
After thousands of years the two roads met at Horeb, and the great Creator
fixed their names in the law, Life and Death. But the enemy whispered, "
Ye shall not surely die! " The roads passed on through the prophets, still
" Life " and " Death." " The soul that sinned, it
shall die." But something seemed to say, " Ye shall not surely
die." They appeared in the Gospels, and the great Son of God said, "
Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many
there be which go in thereat: strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." But a whisper in the
heart still said, " Ye shall not surely die." . Down even through the
revelation to the scenes of the second death the serpent said, " Ye shall
not surely die "; but here the roads parted forever, one rising to glory,
the other sinking to the second death.
THE DEAD.-I looked over the face of the earth,
east, west, north, and south, and it was all dotted with graves. Every home had
its burying ground, every city its cemetery; and I saw that the dead were more
than the living. I stood upon the ocean shore and the billows told of the
entombed in its deep bosom, and every wave wafted a funeral dirge. The earth's
bosom was filled with the dead and all the living were dying. I stopped at
Reber, the Hebrews' grave, but the stillness and decay answered, "Not
here." I came to Mnemeion, the grave of the Greek, but the Word of the
Lord was fulfilled, " Dust to dust."
PLACES.-Sheol (hales) is the unseen beyond,
between. the grave and the resurrection, where it ends (Rev., 20: 14). There
the patriarchs were gathered to their fathers, and Jacob expected to meet
Joseph. There were Lazarus and Dives, separated by a gulf impassable; one
comforted with good things, the other praying in vain. For as "the drouth
and heat consume the snow waters, so doth Sheol those that have sinned "
(Job, 24:19). David said, " Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol "
(Ps., 16: 10).
Gehenna (Tophet) was the terrible valley where
children were burned to Moloch. The Jews afterwards, to render such worship
odious, made it a valley of slaughter, a place for the execution of criminals
and their burial or burning. There worms were perpetually seen banqueting on
the dead, and fires of " much wood " (Is., 30: 33) consumed the
carcasses (Is., 66: 23, 24, see Mark, 9: 43-48); and Gehenna became the synonym
of all that was fearful and horrible in punishment, present and future. Jesus
employs the term on six occasions, recorded in four chapters: Matt., 5, 18, 23,
and 10. Matt. 5: 22 relates to secular courts; as, " Whosoever shall say
Thou fool, shall be in danger of Gehenna fire." The kind warnings of Matt.
5: 29, 30 and 18: 9 relate to the government of the members; as, "If thy
right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is
profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy
whole body should be cast into Gehenna. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut
it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy
members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
Gehenna." The lesson in chapter 18: 8, 9 is substantially the same as in
5: 29, 30, and may all refer to bodily punishment by earthly courts. But Matt.
10: 28, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in
Gehenna," further developed in Luke 12: 4, 5, " I say unto you, my friends,
Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they
can do; but fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into
Gehenna," refers to punishment after death of the body; and the lesson
continues with views of heaven and our greeting there (Luke, 12: 6-10). Matt.
23:15, 33 contains sharp rebukes to zealots who compass sea and land to make
one proselyte and when he is made make him twofold more the child of hell
(Gehenna) than themselves; concluding with the terrible denouncement, "Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Gehenna?
" This concludes all that Jesus says concerning Gehenna. The word is used
once by James (3: 6) in a metaphorical sense, respecting the tongue's being set
on fire of Gehenna, and setting on fire the whole course of nature; referring
to Gehenna as a source of moral evil. Mark and Luke repeat the word Gehenna,
recording the lessons in Matthew. The other apostles, John, Paul, Peter, and
Jude omit the word; but speak of punishment under the names of destruction,
death, and perishing. No text intimates endless life in hell.
Tartarus was a pagan name used by Peter to
designate the abode or state of the fallen angels, reserved unto the judgment.
No Christians adopt the Tartarus theory of torment. The nearest approach to it
is the Catholic purgatory, where the imperfect faithful are represented by the
priests as "enveloped in flames, writhing in agony, and stretching out
their shrivelled hands in supplication for relief, devils tormenting them, and
stokers standing by with long poles, stirring the fires." Abbe Martinet
says, "The prayers, sacrifices, and the good works of the living may
propitiate God in favour of the victims of purgatory and abridge their
sufferings " (p. 146).
THE FOUR FOUNDATIONS.-Four Scriptures form the
foundation for faith in the endless life of the lost:- (1.) The worm that dies
not; (2.) The fire not quenched; (3.) Tormented for ever and ever; (4.)
Everlasting punishment; None of which explicitly states the doctrine.
(1.) The worm is not a soul, but a (skolex)
maggot, living perpetually upon the dead. . . . (2.) The fires perpetually
burning to consume the carcasses. Barnes says, " This figure is clearly
taken from Is. 66: 24." See Barnes on Mark 9: 43, 48. . . . (3.) "
Torment day and night for ever and ever " is rendered, in the Revised
Version, " day and night for ages of ages " (margin); reducing the
four proofs to one.
EVERLASTING, the fourth, is " everlasting
punishment." This only (Matt., 25: 46) is relied upon as formidable. In
this all must admit that the word life is not stated, but inferred, for the
lost. The word "punishment," in the Greek, is Icolasis, cutting off
implying death; and the word "everlasting " is used in other texts,
relating to things of limited duration. The Spirit, however, does not leave us
in doubt as to the meaning of " everlasting " as applied to evil; but
cites the " angels in everlasting chains " unto the judgment, and
Sodom suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, as examples of the everlasting
punishment of the lost: stating that the everlasting chains were until the
judgment (destruction, Mark, 1: 24). And facts attest that the cities suffering
the vengeance of eternal fire are now ashes; and the death so deep that the
place is now covered by the Dead Sea; the death so absolute, that nothing lives
in the waters. Ashes, Dead Sea, and death, alone telling of cities once bold to
defy God! Such are the Bible examples, cited by the Spirit, to illustrate the
end of the wicked.
THE PROBLEM-Does then the word
"everlasting," in the gospel, independent of its surroundings,
certainly signify the absolutely endless? Who will venture to say, Yes? Then
may the "everlasting gospel " (Rev., 14: 6) be endlessly active in
bringing back the lost ones to the Lord; and the "eternal judgment"
(Heb., 6: 2) be endlessly revising its decisions as new penitents appear within
the new hope: for if the everlasting punishment be, because "
everlasting," never ending in its endurance and activity, the everlasting
gospel and eternal judgment may, because of the same "everlasting,"
be never ending in their work; the argument thus defeating itself, begetting an
endless hope where designed to prove endless despair.
THE WORDS, aei, the Greek, and ad, the Hebrew,
signifying "ever," "always," "duration," "
eternity," are not the original words used for " everlasting "
in the Scriptures under consideration, but the words aion, or, in the Hebrew,
alam, olam, properly signifying age-lasting, space, period of time. And
aionios, the adjective of aion, has of necessity like limitations; as, "
the whole age, period, or duration of what is spoken of ": if God is
spoken of, his eternal being; if the saved, their eternal life; if the lost,
their eternal state, or all their existence; if a servant, "forever"
(aionios) signifies all his time of service (Phil., 1: 15) or life-time. Our
translators understood this and rendered the original of Eph. 3: 21 (pasas tas
geneas tou aionos ton aionon) not " all the generations of the eternity of
eternities," but, " throughout all the ages, world without end."
The Revised Version renders it " all generations, for ever and ever,"
and puts in the margin, " all the generations of the ages of the
ages." See also Titus 1: 2; Col. 1: 26. In Rom. 16: 25 and 2 Tim. 1: 9 the
same word, translated "everlasting " in Matt. 25: 46, is rendered
(with the noun) " world," reading, " since the world
began," and "before the world began." Thus we read of everlasting
possessions, everlasting priesthood, everlasting statutes, all past and gone.
See Gen. 17: 8; Lev. 16: 34; Ex. 40: 15: Understanding this scholars -are
frequently forced to avoid translating the original word rendered everlasting,
Matt., 25: 46, uniformly; proving that everlasting does violence to its true
meaning, which is age-lasting.
It is also to be remembered that, even if
aionios were endless, no wicked person, or demon, is ever called aionios, or
endless; but of evil, only the destructive elements: as, eternal fire,
judgment, punishment (kolasis), damnation, destruction; while on the other hand
we have everlasting gospel, etc. It is impossible to make sin king and Satan
conqueror.
LIFE.-In the announcement of the gospel, there
is no promise of such frequent recurrence as life; not natural (bios) life, but
(zoe) life from God. The word occurs nearly two hundred times, all as the
antithesis of death, the penalty of sin. This Bible doctrine does not require
to be deduced 'from the Scriptures, with no text explicitly stating it, but is
abundantly set forth from Genesis to Revelation with the exactness of verbal
accuracy, in hundreds of texts more expressive of the truth than any statements
that human genius can suggest; see John 3: 16; Rom. 6: 23. While other theories
correct the Scriptures, endeavouring to prove that death does not mean death,
" end of sin " does not mean " end of sin "; " no more
curse," " no more pain," " no more sorrow," "no
more death " do not mean no more of these; " destroy " does not
mean " destroy "; "perish " does not mean "perish
"; " surely die " does not mean "surely (lie "; "
utterly perish" does not mean " utterly perish "; but that
sinners have a "never dying soul to save " which "shall forever
die," and "never die "; the Scripture truth remains, that "
The end of these things is death."
The glorious gospel of Christ has these
leading thoughts: salvation from sin and death; into righteousness and life
eternal. The life seed for a new civilization is from heaven. The first Adam
was a living soul, but the second Adam is a quickening spirit. To quicken the
soul into a higher life was the mission of Jesus. He came that we might have
life, and have it more abundantly.
All sin means death. All supposed places of
punishment after the second death are graves of the soul. The old Hebrew names
for these unseen worlds were poetic.
ST. PAUL.-St. Paul had no faith in the
doctrine of the innate (self) immortality of man, or he could not have written,
"If Christ be not risen then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ
are perished," or " What advantage it me, if the dead rise not? Let
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die " (1 Cor., 15: 18, 32).
THE HOLY SPIRIT.--God deals tenderly with his
children, lest the spirit fail; but vain man supposes the wicked can endure
fire, the most formidable and all-consuming agent. Such imperishable power of
the lost, notwithstanding the consuming power of fire, remains unaccounted for.
Total depravity sufficiently explains how it could be conceived; but a harder
task is to show how the great " I AM " could plan his universe for
such a result, or permit such an eternity of sorrow and sin to exist in his
presence. Who is able to say, but that the attributing such an offensive
character to God, the God of mercy, may not be the culmination of the sin
against the Holy Ghost, which hath not forgiveness (Matt., 12: 28-32), and
which, having never forgiveness, may be the cause of the irreparable loss of
the " gifts of the Spirit," so effectual in the first Church and so
needed now for comfort, power, union, and for the conversion of the world? Who
is able to say that, with the natural suffering for sin here, and with the rich
man in torment, and the sufferings following the judgment continued as God
wills, and loss of heaven; considering God's goodness, and that he is very
pitiful; even justice may be better satisfied to say of the suffering soul,
" She hath received double for all her sins," and let it die out of
its misery? The Bible says that "sin when it is finished bringeth forth
death; the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord." But if you "reduce one side of this equation
you must the other." If the death is a "never-dying death,". the
life must be a " never-living life." Who can say but that the wicked
after judgment, being corruptible, will " utterly perish "; surviving
generations only remembering them as enemies of God and all goodness, who,
reaping. corruption, died out of their mischief and misery, leaving the
universe richer and happier without them; and that with their death evil will
cease, and Jesus make an end of sin, just as the Scriptures read? (Dan., 9: 27;
1 Con, 15: 24-28.)
ETERNAL LIFE.-The source of life is plainly
revealed. Prior to Christ, the world was a valley and shadow of death; but with
Christ a new life came from God, who is the blessed and only potentate, the
King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only /Lath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see (1
Tim., (3:15). This immortality is " now made manifest in Jesus Christ, who
bath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the
gospel" (2 Tim., 1:10), and is to be sought as a treasure, and to be 48
842 won as a prize, as it is written, " To them who by- patient
continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal
life " (Rom., 2: 7). The record is, " As the Father bath life in
himself, so bath he given to the Son to have life in himself"; and "
hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son. He that bath the
Son hath life: and he that hath not the Son of God bath not life " (John,
5: 26 and 1 John, 5: 11, 12).
Can we, in accordance with the benign
character of God, teach that he will render sinners incapable of dying, and
subject them to all the tortures of death in fire every moment, to all eternity?
Have mercy on God, let me pray you; though you feel no mercy for man. Think of
the masses lost of comparatively good and bad alike, according to the current
faith. The true gospel saves the good and casts the bad away; but three hundred
millions of the Roman faith, together with the Greek Church, constituting the
majority of all Christians, cast off all Protestants, Jews, Mohammedans,
Pagans, and all unbaptized infants. The Protestants cast off all Jews, Pagans,
and so-called unevangelical Christians. True " Christians " can
accept the fiery ordeal, but not the illiberal consignment to the lost state.
With us the circle of the saved includes all saints, all innocents, all
penitent believers, all seekers after God, all who strive, all coining within
the heavenly circle of Christ charity, of all lands, sects, and ages.
NUMBER SAVED.-Concerning the number saved
Jesus' answer was, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I
say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." We know that
the Judge of all the earth will do right, and that many will come from the
east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and sit down
in the kingdom of God; even the uncircumcised Pagans who " having not the
law are a law unto themselves," and " shew the work of the law
written in their hearts "; and all those loving good works, the sheep
(Matt., 25': 37), though they knew not that they were ministering to Christ,
are gathered to him, as even servants have bread and to spare (Luke, 15: 17).
Even for many of Sodom it shall be " more tolerable in the day of judgment
than " for some who hear the gospel. And even all the antediluvians were
not lost: for besides the eight souls in the ark some who were sometime
disobedient are saved, being reserved in the intermediate state (1 Pet., 3: 20
and 4: 6). The highest heaven was not yet open even to saints. Jesus said,
" No man bath ascended into heaven." Peter said, " David bath
not yet ascended to heaven." St. Paul says, " The way into the
holiest of all, that is, heaven, was not made manifest, while the first tabernacle
was yet standing." But since Christ has entered " into heaven itself
now to appear in the presence of God for us," "we have boldness to
enter into the holiest heaven by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way
which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his
flesh." So that, as the veil of the temple was rent at his crucifixion,
heaven is now open to the divine saint. Yet perhaps many rest in Paradise,
where Jesus met the dying penitent, and where they listened to the story of the
cross (1 Pet., 4: .5). But none beyond the gulf can cross. We read of none
converted there. Death is the point of destiny (Rev., 20: 13-15).
JESUS' DEATH.-Jesus came " that through
death he might destroy him that had power over death, that is, the devil, and
deliver them, who through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to
bondage." Let this be believed, and the shackles of superstition would be
broken, and the Church evolve in heavenly life, and with this gospel of life
she, like the apostolic church, would meet with such success as the first
church met among the Gentiles. But too many like Dr. Watts, the blessed
evangelist of Christian poetry, while shuddering with horror at endless torment
which they cannot believe, yet fear that not less will restrain the wicked
millions; forgetting that where crime most abounds they are firm believers in
the dogma that the lost live forever in torment: for unreasonable cruelty
destroys all just thoughts of equity. Good seed pro-duces a good harvest; bad seed
a bad harvest; like begets like. " God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the
world; but that the world through him might be saved." "I am the
resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live:" and. whosoever is made to live by Jesus Christ shall never
die the second death; for " blessed and holy is he that bath part in the
first resurrection: on such the second death bath no power." " For
this corruptible must put on in-corruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying
that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?" We acquire the heavenly life by a new and
heavenly birth from good seed. We are " born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which lives and abides
forever." " Whosoever is born of God cloth not commit sin; for his
seed remained in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God."
" He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man." " The good
seed are the children of the kingdom." This seed from God in our hearts
produces a new and heavenly life. Cruel doctrine produces cruel men. Bad fruit
comes from bad seed and is not made good by growth. But good fruit comes from
good seed. When the good seed falls into an honest and good heart it brings
"fruit to eternal life"; " then shall the righteous shine forth
as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." But as " the tares are
gathered and burned in the fire; so (Jesus says) shall it be in the end of this
world."
THE END.-This is St. Paul's description of the
end: "Then cometh the end when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to
God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority
and power; for he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The
last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death. And when all things shall be
subdued under him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put
all things under him, that God may be all in all." "For of him, and
through him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory forever" (1
Cor., 15:24, and Rom., 11: 26).
John's description, approaching the end ages
upon ages, must be expressed in few words. We know not how long. When the
prophecies are fulfilled; when all families of the earth have been blessed with
the gospel, when the "fullness of the Gentiles be come in," and
" all Israel is saved," Satan will know that he has " but a
short time "; for God " will finish the work, and cut it short in
righteousness; because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth." As
the end approaches, Christianity becomes triumphant. Satan is bound a thousand
years. The first resurrection of those on whom the second death has no power
takes place, and the millennium appears. Religion is everywhere triumphant.
Next Satan comes forth, loosed from his prison, and gathers his armies. Then
the final resurrection swells the alien army, and it surrounds the camp of the
saints. This is the last triumph of evil; and Satan proposes that everything
contrary to sin must go clown. The Church, the Bible, the Sabbath, the
Sabbath-school, prayer-meetings, and missions,-the hosts of sin are wearied of
them. The battle begins; the sky becomes black; the sun, moon, and stars
disappear; darkness covers the earth; and saints cry, "How long, O Lord,
how long? " A blaze of light reveals the coming Lord. The heavens are full
of his glory. Saints rise to meet him. Fire comes down from heaven upon the
alien armies. The elements melt (2 Peter, 3: 10). The earth is on fire. The
lake appears; the beast, and false prophet. Satan, death, and hell (hades) and
all not written in the book of life, sink into the lake. The second death is
accomplished. There is an " end of sin." Sorrow ceases, and the
chorus is sung; "Every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and
under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I
saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sits upon
the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."
There is no more sorrow and pain. Old things
are passed away, and all things are new. The " last enemy is
destroyed," and " God is all in all." Man is in the new
Paradise, restored to the tree of life by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
There exists no revealed doctrine about the
nature of future punishment, as to its quality, degree, or duration, and no
revealed doctrine as to who will be called upon to endure it.
By Rev. DAVID SWING, Pastor of the Independent
Church, Chicago, Ill.
ORIGEN, one of the greatest logicians of the
early Church, stood where the new ideas which had sprung up around the form of
Jesus Christ came pouring along over the boundary of the second century. Christ
died in perhaps the thirty-fifth year and St. John in the ninety-ninth year of
the first century. Thus nearly all of the first hundred years were consumed in
the inculcation of those ideas which like a swollen stream poured over the
second and rushed onward into the third. There Origen is seen attempting with
his deep and critical mind to note the truths of most import thus sent suddenly
into his age. By many he has been estimated as the Church's earliest
philosopher, so near in time was he to the Saviour and the apostles, and so
scientific was he in his genius. A few years before this distinguished student
and thinker came to his great task, the infidel Celsus, the Thomas Paine of
that era, had passed by and had left behind him all those objections to
Christianity which have been made familiar by the repetitions of later enemies.
Origen did not therefore think and write from the standpoint of enthusiasm and
credulity, but in the presence of men who had presented "the other
side." His writings were compelled to be philosophic in the sense of being
"reasoned thought." He was a theologian made the more careful by an
acute antagonist. The Old Testament and much of the New passed under his broad
and free mind, while the air of Greek and Latin liberty was still surrounding
each student and his books.
Origen reached the doctrine of a final
restoration to happiness of all souls that live and die upon earth. Punishment
would be the lot of those who should die in their sins; but under this
punishment the soul would rise and at last would return to the lost image and
lost favour of its Creator.
The inference from this page in old biography
when read along with many other pages taken from the lives of such subsequent
students as Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and Edwards, cannot but be that revelation
does not make known the manner or the duration of the punishment after death.
The fact of an inspired volume being conceded, light must come at last not from
the inspiration but from the interpretation of the words. If the prophecy of
Daniel was miraculously placed in his consciousness, that fact, conceded, would
not tell the most ardent Christian the meaning of the vision of the beasts,
hoofs, horns, and thrones. Light comes to humanity not by revelation alone, but
by means of the interpretation which must come afterward. If in the vision of
St. John the Babylon which was foreseen as falling into a great ruin might be papal
Rome or the whole Roman church, or might be a sinful world of which the special
Babylon stood as a type, then revelation as a source of a special doctrine is
injured by the two possible Babylons; if there are three Babylons possible, the
injury is much deeper. ' In these circumstances revelation can teach only this
truth: that great sins will be overtaken by great punishments. If, when the
book of Genesis comes with a statement that the wife of Lot looked back toward
her trifling life and was made a pillar of salt, two meanings at once become
easy and logical, the one that the literal event took place, the other, that
Lot's wife is only a model, foolish woman and stands for any heart that would
rather look back toward sin than forward toward virtue and usefulness, then
revelation has been ruined as a history and becomes simply the teacher of the
great doctrine that any one who shrinks from daily duty ought to become a
pillar of dead rock by the wayside. If therefore the divine words regarding the
condition after death of the righteous and the wicked are such as to warrant
many different interpretations; if from those teachings are deduced the
conclusions of Origen and Tertullian, of Dante and Hosea Ballou, of Jonathan
Edwards and the new Andover School, if after eighteen hundred years the
meanings of those texts increase rather than diminish, the conclusion is
unavoidable that a special, definite heaven or hell is not revealed, and that
revelation exhausts itself upon the simple fact of rewards and punishments
beyond the grave.
A revelation cannot contain any more light
than what is contained in the human rendering of its language. When the old
oracle told the ambitious king that should he make war upon a certain rival he
would overthrow a great kingdom, the willing warrior hastened to conclude that
the nation to be overthrown was that of his rival. Had he raised the inquiry
whether he would destroy his rival's empire or his own, he would soon have
concluded that the oracle had revealed nothing, one import being neutralized by
the fact of another. Thus when the Church comes away from her more divine
oracles and finds in her hands two or three sets of responses, she must confess
the total absence of revelation so far as these differences extend, and the presence
of revelation at that point where differences may be lost in harmony. The
number of willing warriors has teen so great in all the theological past that
there was little waiting for any calm study of the Sibylline verses placed in
the band. The heart read one sentence and then drew the sword.
The Bible has never made any attempt to utter
ambiguous voices. Enigmas formed the wise policy of the ancient oracles; but
the hidden things of the Bible all lie honourably concealed under those figures
which belong to all literature, under those imports which were local and
relative, and under all those changes of meaning which come from sacred writers
who are separated widely by both locality and time. Trouble may well be
expected when a Mr. Froude, of England, becomes the interpreter of Job, or a
Mr. Grote stands as interpreter of Plato, but this trouble comes not from any
effort of Job and Plato to send enigmas down to the nineteenth century, but
from changes in words, in texts, in minds, and in the possible thoughts which
have come into being in the three thousand years.
Few are the details which can be determined
from the Old and New Testaments. Whatever theory of inspiration the student may
hold, the inferences are compelled to be general. The text which permits the
Romanist to say, " This is my body," " This is my blood,"
permits the Protestant to say, "This stands for my body, and blood,"
thus making a specific dogma impossible as to a real or a figurative presence.
The teaching therefore exhausts itself upon the general lesson that the Church
should celebrate forever a feast in memory of its Mediator.
Many years ago when Dr. Hodge, of Princeton,
and Dr. Park, of Andover, fought their theological duel over the doctrine of
innate depravity, the Princeton champion based his claim upon the literal
interpretation of texts, to all which Dr. Park gave a figurative meaning.
Inasmuch as inspiration had not specified which import was to be attached to
the language about original sin, the disputants made no progress, and could
have made none, had they continued the argument for a half century. They
withdrew from the conflict; and what the Church now deduces from the Scripture
is the general doctrine that even childhood itself is prone to violate the
moral law. Thus under any possible definition of inspiration it fails to be
specific.
The Holy Scriptures, so general as to origin
of man, as to the modus of world-making, as to the origin of sin, as to the
subject of baptism and the mode of baptism, as to the nature of the communion,
as to the atonement by blood, as to the reign of Christ upon earth for a
thousand years, as to inherent immortality or conditional immortality, as to a
personal Satan, as to the oneness of Christ and the Creator, do not suddenly
depart from their method and make an exact statement regarding the punishment
after death. To the student in this field of thought back comes all that
Biblical fondness for generality which reveals itself at so many points of
exegetical inquiry. What he encounters when he studies the atonement meets him
when he studies the fate of the sinful. Taught in the Old Testament to
think-that a literal blood-shedding is essential to salvation, and that without
the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins, he finds that when a
Hebrew was too poor to offer blood a wheaten cake would answer; he finds that
the "Lord delighted not in sacrifices " but only in a contrite heart;
and then he passes into the New Testament to find that Christ did not die as a
sacrifice upon an altar and not by the " shedding of blood," but by
the bloodless death on the cross. Sitting down to study the eternal world the
student passes from this obscure cloud around the atonement to enter a similar
cloud-a cloud that envelops the souls which have crossed the boundary of this
world.
Reason therefore must accept of the
responsible office of truth-seeker and truth-finder for mankind. It must
collate texts, must gather data from outside store-houses and from its own
independent resources, and, if possible, find some expression into which can be
fitted alike the words which are held as inspired and the words which stand
commended by what may be called the light of man's highest reason and
sentiments. The Christian must therefore bring his problem of future punishment
to that tribunal composed by Scripture and Reason seated side by side upon one
bench-the one an inflamed zealot, an impassioned prophet or rhapsodist, the
other as a calm interpreter between rhapsody and the reality.
Not long does this associate judge sit upon
that seat, held for so many centuries by Scripture alone, before it is seen
that great errors have been made by decisions which came from the emotions of
worshipers and not from the intellectual processes of seekers after truth. Love
could worship the book but it could not interpret it. When a military Christian
in the past read the words: "Ask of me and I will give thee the heathen
for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy
possession," he was generally not slow to send up the request at the
church and the family altar, and then to order out troops for extending the
borders of his tribe or state or empire. Had this faithful and praying
Christian waited for reason to make a general collation of Scriptural orders he
would have found great cause for delay in such words as "Put up thy sword
"; " My kingdom is not of this world; " " Our weapons are
not carnal."
Among the errors which sprang up out of an
excess of emotion and a dearth of the reasoning processes, no one seems greater
than that notion of perdition which, originating perhaps after the first
century, grew alike in popularity and terror while a long age was coming and
passing. This sad and astonishing cloud reached from the ascetic days of
Tertullian onward to our own generation, and reminds one of those prehistoric
rain-storms which geologists feel certain must have continued sometimes for a
hundred years with incessant flash of lightning and roll of thunder. In more
real history Pliny the Elder looked on a certain day and saw an awful smoke and
fire spreading out from a mountain summit and then rolling clown upon the
populous vales. It soon created its own night amid which the screams of
thousands of women and children and brave men mingled with the deep rumbling of
the earth. The heavy chariot wheels of those attempting to flee passed over
many who on foot were groping in the awful darkness. Faint emblem this, of that
gloom and uproar of hell which spread outward from the early Church and soon
embraced all the Christian homes and cities in its appalling blackness.
This error, as to the nature of perdition, was
no greater than the error as to the kind of mortals who were to find that abode
after death; and then to this error was added one more, the torments were to be
unmitigated by even millions of years. Assemble these three opinions: that hell
was a place of excruciating pain; that all upright moralists and all heathen
were doomed to that punishment; and that the pain was to be endless, and a
group of teachings is seen which ought to have died in a whisper on the lips
which first uttered them. But, instead of thus dying, these sombre ideas
pleased that wild religious fancy which once declared it would exult over the
torments of the unbelieving. The Roman world was still fresh in its memory of assassinations,
of martyrdoms, of gladiatorial shows where men were "butchered to make a
Roman holiday," fresh in its memory of wars of extermination after which a
"solitude was called peace," of infants exposed on the mountains,
fresh in its memory of slaves that were estimated as common brutes whose life
the owner might take at pleasure. That a church rising up in such an empire
should delight to picture a future pain which. should surpass any form of
suffering it had seen upon earth was natural since the eternal world demanded
scenes greater than the spectacles of time. Dante and similar picture-makers
tell us how widely ruled the scepter of torment and how well their pictures
pleased the human heart.
This love of physical torments when seen as
the fate of the unredeemed was still strong in the Church all through the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In our own New England it sung over again
its songs of horror-songs which differed from Dante's only in being most
reckless poetry. Even to infants one of these theological writers could assign
only a modified anguish; for, putting himself in the place of the acting Judge,
these words are spoken:- You sinners are; and such a share
As
sinners, may expect,
Such
you shall have, for I do save
Only
mine own elect.
Yet to
compare your sin with their
Who
lived a longer time,
I do
confess yours is much less
'Though
every sin's a crime.
A
crime it is; therefore in bliss
You
may not hope to dwell,
But
unto you I shall allow
The
easiest room in hell. (About 1685.)
Such words put into the mouth of the Christ
who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," betray a theology
as wretched as the poetry which attempted. to formulate the current belief.
This cruel estimate of God and Jesus Christ
came to our age as an inheritance and not as a production of our times. The
forerunners in those old theological paths which wound around, to and fro, in
the wilderness that reached from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, brought
these dreadful thoughts and planted them in modern times, just as the Crusaders
brought back from Palestine in the twelfth century little branches of cedar
which are now great trees in the England of the nineteenth. Our theological
crusaders brought back, by' some mistake, trees of wormwood, bitter and
poisonous, but at whose roots at last the axe is laid.
The Bible having left to the Christian reader
no specific account of the punishment which is located in man's second life;
the accounts as to the mode of the punishments, as to their duration, and as to
the persons upon whom they will fall being so vague as to warrant many minds in
thinking many ways, the inference is inevitable that the virtue of the
revelation or inspiration exhausts itself upon the simple fact of an
accountability of each man at last to his God. All more definite teachings fail
at some point. The idea of a literal pain is injured by the moving about of the
causes of such pain; from fire to worm; from brimstone to falling rocks; from
these to chains and prison under Satanic keepers; injured by the asserted
spirituality of that future which shall know nothing of this form of flesh and
blood; injured by the literary style which always supplied a well-known pain
where the real one was unknown, a style which set an eternal vulture gnawing at
the liver of Prometheus because the real torment of that hero was beyond the
public reach. The old literary style never found any joy in the mere statement
that a Prometheus was punished for disobeying Zeus; its happiness came from
picturing the pain the offender was called upon to undergo. But style is always
human. It is never inspired. When therefore a good man, Job, is the victim of
calamities-tornado, hail, fire, Sabean and a Chaldean raid, and from each
destruction only one man escapes, and he for the purpose of telling the new
trouble to his master, this general truth,- that good men often suffer, is seen
breaking up into five forms of loss and grief. Thus in the literary hands of
Paul and Matthew and John the inspired teaching that all must appear before the
judgment seat of Christ spreads out into a hundred details until there is not a
form of torment whose help is not asked for in the specifications which will
follow that solemn judgment.
Even the notion of everlasting punishment stands
affected by these excesses of the human, literary style. The same inspired
volume which places side by side " everlasting life " and
"everlasting shame and contempt " states in calmer speech that much
will be required only of those to whom much was given, and that Sodom would
have repented in ashes had it enjoyed the privileges which afterward came to
Jerusalem-thus intimating that the one condition of shame so visible to the
poetic writers would be liable to undergo great modification under the faultless
equity of the Heavenly Father. Modified as to the degree of its shame, no more
violence is done Scripture by assuming that the torment might be modified also
as to its duration. Nor would such reasoning expose to similar modification the
" eternal life " of those saved, because, as Charles Sumner
eloquently said of slavery, that it was not national but sectional, that
freedom was the national condition, thus, eternal pain stands as the only
quantity liable to be touched by human logic, While eternal life is a child of
the whole universe and does not ask for any special revelation.
In the absence of any special revelation the
Christian heart, eager by nature for some form of opinion regarding a matter so
momentous, must resort to what may be called a Christian rationalism. Such a
reverential rationalism will not fail to affirm that "hell " is not a
region owned by a Satan and his cruel angels; that it is a part of the empire
of the Groat King, just as our earth is a part of the God-made universe; that transgressors
who may pass from this life to another remain in the same old Kingdom of the
One, all wise, all just, all merciful; that more mercy will conic to those whom
a Christ could forgive upon earth with the words, " They know not what
they do," than will come to the enlightened and wilful wrong doers of
Christian or pagan lands; that faith in Christ will not be required of persons who
never heard of him; that faith in his oneness with God will not be required of
those who have been reared in gospel lands; that faith is a sentiment, not a
form of information; that future punishment will be spiritual not external,-a
lower place, an unhappy position, in that new march of humanity which shall
spring up when the earthly footsteps have all been taken.
It is in perfect harmony with the vividly
revealed character of Jesus Christ to assume that the redoubled evidence of a
second life will make ardent worshipers of many who have lived and died here
under an intellectual cloud, hut life's virtues. The pagan mother of Son is
described by an Eastern writer as being a woman who has lived for her children
and her gods. " There is no pilgrimage of piety she has not made no
vigorous fast she has not kept, no vow she has not taken and fulfilled. She is
now sixty years old, but she wears on her benign face the serenity and sunshine
of conscious purity and the light of divine grace." This picture, which
recalls a continuous line of noble minds strung along like pearls between
Marcus Aurelius and many modern unbelievers, asks the Christian to doubt not
that millions so fall in 'death, in both Christian and pagan lands, that under
the assumed light of a second world they will fill heaven with their song of
joy over a God and a Saviour not found here. Where such minds exist punishments
cannot come; hell turns into paradise at the touch of such footsteps.
It must not be supposed for a moment that God
possesses any prison-world, any place built for the punishment of offenders,
any region where a Sisyphus rolls a stone up a steep hill, where Ixion is
fastened to a flaming wheel, or where immortal vultures torment a chained
humanity. The universe, so far as seen, reveals a nature acting naturally. All
joy and all sorrow come by the paths of law. To attach a Prometheus to a rock and
join a vulture to his body asks for a foreign force. Some foreign force must
lash Ixion to the wheel. But these scenes all contradict nature so far as the
universe is known. It must be assumed therefore that in the realms called
" heaven " and " hell " the occupants all live under the
law of " nature acting naturally," and under new surroundings resume
mental and emotional activity along certain paths to us unknown. Those who,
while in this sphere, followed Jesus Christ will find themselves far in advance
of those who never saw nor loved such a light in this world. The Saul who
stoned Stephen would, as the Evangelical creeds admit, have been saved by the
Mosaic faith, as were Joshua and David; but in meeting Jesus Christ Paul passed
above the Mosaic form of salvation and died worthy of a more immediate and.
more divine blessedness. Christ took Saul's religious, zealous but ill-shaped,
unloving soul and changed it from glory to glory, until sown in weakness it
arose in power.
It would seem that a large portion of the
human family, Christian and non-Christian, will, in the second life, emerge
from ignorance and a low form of moral sensibility and rise steadily while
those uncounted years are passing. The fact of two worlds implies the
superiority of the second. There would be absence of motive for transferring
the human race to a world less favourable to morals and happiness than this.
Reason stands inflexible in this view and asks the poet to sing her essential
deductions:-
Down
below, a sad mysterious music
Wailing
throughout the woods and on the shore,
Burdened
with a grand, majestic secret
That
keeps sweeping from us evermore.
Up above, a music that entwined
With
the unbroken threads and joyous sound
The
great poem of this strange existence,
All
whose wondrous meaning bath been found.
Down below, the Church to whose poor window
Glory
by the autumnal trees is lent,
And a
knot of worshipers in mourning
For
missing some one at the Sacrament.
Up
above, a crowned and happy spirit,
Like a
mere infant in the eternal years,
Who
shall grow in light and love forever,
Ordered
in his place among his peers."
Over this visible career of the human family
men of thought can stand amazed at the brevity of life, at that greatness of
mind which cometh forth like a flower and is cut clown, at a holy love which
fades as a leaf; amazed further by the fact of widespread temptation and sin,
and at the toil and sorrow of even the most virtuous, and can turn with tears
from the scene to elaborate a philosophy of pessimism or sore doubt. Christian
rationalism must conclude that the second world will rise up more justified by
all its countless millions of transferred spirits. So changed the scene that
the question of the worth of life will never rise up again. The optimism which
struggles to live here, as an Alpine flower often pushes up its blossom through
the snow, cannot but wrap the second world in its magnificent drapery of wisdom
and joy, and exult in the fulfillment of its old dream about the goodness of
God and Christ and regarding the onward movement of that being who was made in
the image of the Creator.
It is as impossible to tell what are the
rewards and punishments of eternity as it would have been impossible for a mind
like that of man to conceive before the earth was created what the nature and
pursuits of man would be. The mode of the future life is unknown. It is
necessary to assume only this, that there as here nature will act naturally
because God is one, the same in all time however boundless, and happiness and
suffering will come from new causes and by paths not now to be traced. As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so the Supreme Hand is lifting the earth
upward. If Christ came to weep in the olive gardens of this planet, to be
touched with the human situation, the inference may well be that he was a
forerunner of that love and power which can and will make weeping less common
in the second empire of the King.
The equity of this tremendous case is made
more difficult of measurement because of our ignorance of the moral status of
man at the time of his creation. If he was made in a high state of perfection
and willingly fell, his claim in equity would not ask for that mercy which
should be granted a race which was fashioned in a moral and mental infancy. If
barbarism was the result of sin, it merits less favour than it would seem to
ask if it came by the act of creation. The story in Genesis confirms profane
history in the lesson that Adam, or the first man, did not inherit a moral
fortune. Adam and Eve fell easily. They listened to the first temptation. Cain
easily became a murderer. Thus sacred and profane records present man as a
creature that had to build up character as the twig passes into a tree. Upon
all the unwilling wrongs Pagan lands have committed God must look down with
much of forgiveness.
In order for the human race to progress into
light, it was necessary for it to begin without many mental or moral
advantages. Progress implies imperfection. Those times of ignorance the
Heavenly Father overlooks and calls men everywhere to repentance only after the
light of Christ or of unaided reason has made a visible path. Over the realms
called pagan a great mercy cloud spreads because the sorrow of being born in
darkness is so great as to ask for divine pity rather than divine wrath. The
end of life need not be followed by judgment inasmuch as the morning of it was
sufficiently painful. The deepest import of the term punishment must be reserved
for those who come to great light and clearly see it and then prefer darkness.
A depravity does indeed take possession of some hearts. Vice becomes more
attractive than righteousness; and so free is the human will that these fallen
souls may prefer to remain enemies of God forever. Here and everywhere the mind
is the builder of its own fortune. To announce the ultimate blessedness of
every soul would be to assume that he who gave man his free volition will at
some time resort to force and will compel the depraved nature to repent and.
love holiness. Logic cannot per-form such an act of saltation. What seems
almost certain is that comparatively speaking the human myriads, passing from
this existence into the richer evidence of a God and a Saviour which the very
fact of a second life will pour upon the soul, will climb rapidly above that
low moral valley in which they dwelt here and will draw nearer and nearer to
the Deity whom here they dimly worshiped. The Italian poet saw the sky beyond
death grow resplendent, grow red beyond the deep tints of an earthly sunset
because the chariot of the Lord was passing nearer than it had ever passed by
the homes of this sojourn:- As in the calm full moon when Trivia smiles In
peerless beauty 'mid the eternal stars That paint through all its gulfs the
blue profound; In bright pre-eminence so saw I there O'er million lamps a Sun,
from whom all drew Their radiance, as from ours, the starry train; And through
the living light so lustrous glowed The substance, that my ken endured it not,
Thus under that new sky which shall spread over the resurrected spirit
countless exiles from earth will joyfully begin a worship which they could not
taste here. Upright minds, though non-believing in these scenes, will become
worshipers; and that voice which said upon Calvary, " Father, forgive
them, they know not what they do," will not lose any of its divine love
and eloquence by the transfer of the Saviour from the rude cross of earth to
the rich crown of heaven.
I decline to think that the majority of the
human race will be finally discomfited.
By Rev. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. LL.D., Pastor
of the Brooklyn, N. Y., Tabernacle, Presbyterian.
THE Bible is the most forceful and pungent of
books. While it has the sweetness of a mother's hush for human trouble, it has
all the keenness of a cimeter, and the 'crushing power of a lightning-bolt. It
portrays with more than a painter's power, at one stroke picturing a heavenly
throne and a judgment conflagration. The strings of this great harp are
fingered by all the splendours of the future, now sounding with the crackle of
consuming worlds, now thrilling with the joy of the everlasting emancipated. It
tells how one forbidden tree in the Garden blasted the earth with sickness and
death; and how another tree, though leafless and bare, yet, planted on Calvary,
shall yield a Fruit which shall more than antidote the poison of the other. It
tells how the red-ripe clusters of God's wrath were brought to the wine-press,
and Jesus trod them out; and how, at last, all the golden chalices of heaven
shall glow with the wine of that awful vintage. It dazzles the eye with an
Ezekiel's vision of wheel, and wing, and fire, and whirlwind; and stoops clown
so low that it can put its lips to the ear of a dying child, and say, "
Come up higher."
Much of this book I am able to understand.
More of it is beyond my capacity. But it gives me no difficulty. I treat it as
I treat the Atlantic ocean in summer time. I wade in until I find I am getting
beyond my depth, and then I wade out. I wade in until the wave comes to my
heart, but I do not wade in until it is over my head. For instance, there are
many things on the subject of future punishment that I cannot understand or
explain. Having made up my mind that the Bible is the only guide, I take that.
There is to me no half-way house between old-fashioned Christianity and
agnosticism. Agnosticism is thoroughly consistent with itself. It rejects the
Bible, and then says we know nothing about the future. It is right in saying
so, for having rejected the Bible we can know nothing of the next world. But I
am one of the deluded creatures who believes the whole Bible, either as
doctrine or history. Bancroft does not approve of the Indian massacres which he
describes, nor does Carlyle, in his Frederic the Great, approve of all he
mentions, nor do God and the prophets and apostles approve of much that the
Bible records. So I take the Bible as true either for doctrine or history.
It makes but very little difference what De
Witt Talmage thinks about this subject of future punishment, for it is only a
little while ago he began to breathe, and in a little while he will stop
breathing. It makes but little difference what Dean Stanley or Mr. Frothingham
thinks about this, for they have never been into the eternal world, and can
give no personal experience. The Roman Catholic Church, in all its synods and
through all its popedoms, has declared its belief in a place of future
retribution, but that does not necessarily settle it for me. The Methodist,
Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian churches have adopted this theory in their
creeds, but that does not authoritatively settle it for me.
I appeal, not to human authority or human
opinion, but to that one Being who only can tell me whether there is a hell.
That Being is God. I reject every opinion except that on which is written,
" Thus saith the Lord." I put one "Thus saith the Lord "
against all the sermons, all the disquisitions, all the books, of all the ages.
" Thus saith the Lord."
You see I start on the assumption that the
Bible is true. If you deny it is true, I will not argue that matter here. As common
sense readers, you know that in making any argument on any secular or religious
subject, there must be some common data, some common ground, where we shall
start together. It would be as silly for me to try to prove to you who reject
the truth of the Bible, that there is a place of future punishment, as it would
be for me to discuss fraud and crime and their penalties with a man who denies
Blackstone and the statutes of the state of New York. Our common sense tells us
that there must be some common ground where we can start.
Now, in passing, I have to ask those who
reject the Bible some questions. " Is there a God? " "
Yes," you say. "Is he good? " " Yes," you say. Now, I
ask you, is it not reasonable that a good God should give us a revelation of
some kind? Is it not reasonable to suppose that such a Being, starting our race
in this world, would give them some guide, some directory, some written help?
" Of course," you say, " that's so." Well, then, which is
it? The Vedas, the Talmud, the writings of Confucius, the Koran of the Mohammedans,
or the Bible? Which one of these is God's revelation to man?
If you will show me a book which seems to be a
more reasonable and a better revelation from God than the Bible, I am willing
to accept it. I like anything new and unique. By the constitution of my nature
I prefer the new to the old. If you can hand me a book that seems to be a
better revelation from God than the Bible, I will take it and I will preach
from it. Is there a man who denies everything? It is easy to deny.
You tell me that the Franco-German war is
over. I may deny there has ever been such a war. Moreover, I may deny, for the
sake of argument a moment, that there are any such places as France and.
Germany.
But, say you, " you will admit that there
are such places as Moscow and Constantinople?" No; I never saw them. "
But," you say, " you must have seen the submarine telegrams at
different times coming from there?" Yes, but those telegrams were not
sworn to, and I do not know but that all those newspapers and all those
telegraphers may have made a conspiracy to deceive me. In other words, I may
deny everything.
Well, you say, " that is foolish." I
admit it; but you are doing in regard to the Bible just what I am now doing in
regard to geography. You deny the geography of the eternal world, and I for the
minute deny the geography of Europe.
Good-bye, my brother. I have no time to talk
to you who reject the Bible. Some other time I will see you. I must turn now to
those who believe the Bible to be true. Eternal Spirit of Almighty God, fall
upon us now, while with fingers of dust we turn the sacred leaves, and with
lips of ashes recite the most stupendous truths that ever shook the human soul.
Now, if we are honest men, we will come to
this subject as we would in the midst of a great freshet, if at midnight we
were on the Erie express train and were to say to the conductor, "
Conductor, do you think any of the bridges are down to-night?"-with
something of the feeling I had after our last lifeboat had been crushed to pieces
in the midst of the ocean cyclone, when I said to the officer, "Officer,
do you think we will ever get to New York?" He shook his head, as much as
to say, "Don't ask me."
I have no sympathy with the flippant
discussion of this truth, nor with that manner on the part of a preacher which
seems to say, " You impenitent people will be lost, and you deserve it!"
I feel that I am a sinner, and because of the million transgressions of my
heart and life I must perish, unless someone can show me a way out from under
the condemnation. The pulpit from which I ordinarily preach may be two or three
feet higher than the pew in which my hearers sit; but I realize that I am not
raised the thousandth part of an inch above the level on which we must all
stand in judgment before God.
I do not know how people can joke about this
subject, and yet it is the subject of more puns, more caricatures, more jokes,
in stores and offices and shops, than any other subject. Why do they not joke
about the broken bridge at Ashtabula? or the Atlantic steamer going down off
Mars Head with five hundred passengers? or about the Indian famine? or about
the earthquake that crushed Lisbon? There is more fun in all those subjects
than in this. Let us come to this subject not as critics, not as cavillers, not
in a polemic spirit. Let us come to it as a question of personal safety.
Let us empty ourselves of all previous
impressions, and, without any disposition to twist things, or explain them
away, find out what is the announcement of the only authority on this subject
that is worth so much as a pin.
1. In the first place, I group together all
those passages which represent the suffering of the lost by fire. In Matthew
13, 41-43, it is said, " The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they
shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do
iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing
and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
kingdom of their Father." Can you not explain it away? Oh, yes. I could
make these angels fairies; I could represent this fire as only something
looking like fire; I could represent this furnace as a casket with a crimson
lining; but what is the use of explaining away a furnace of fire, when God says
there is one? What is the use of an imprisoned criminal trying to explain away
the existence of such a place as a prison? But you say, "Isn't there some
mistake about it?" If there is, then the Almighty Christ made the mistake,
for the passage I quoted is part of his sermon. I appeal to Paul on this
subject. He was no coward. Instead of his trembling before governments,
governments trembled before him. A small invalid, but the most magnificent man
of the ages. What does he say? He says to the Thessalonians, " The Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall be revealed from heaven with mighty angels in flaming
fire, taking vengeance on those who know not God." I appeal to St. John
the inspired. In one place, he says of the lost, " They shall be tormented
with fire and brimstone." In another place, he says, " The
adulterers, the sorcerers, and all liars shall have their place in the lake
that burned with fire and brimstone." And in another place, he says,
" They shall both be cast alive into the lake of fire."
The last book of the Bible closes with a dark
scroll on the sky. What is it? Smoke. Where there is no fire there is no smoke.
" The smoke of their torment ascended for ever and ever."
"But," you say, " were not they men who wrote this?" Yes,
but they were inspired men. If you do not want to take even inspired men, then
I go back to Christ again, and, as my first quotation on this subject was from
Christ, so my last quotation under this head shall be from Christ, as he says,
" Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." "But,"
you say, " isn't this figurative?" I am not opposed to saying it may
be figurative; but I know very well that if it is not fire it is something as
severe as fire. Christ and his apostles were not lacking in illustrative power,
and when they say a thing is morning, I know it is as bright as it can be; and
when they say anything is a prison, I know it is a galling thraldom; and when
they say anything is fire, I know it is torment unmitigated. I often hear
people explain these fiery representations of Scripture as metaphor, and as
soon as they make metaphor out of them, they seem to think they have soothed
the whole subject.
No; if there be a mental state as sharp and
severe as fire, it might as well be fire. Christ and his apostles use the
figure of fire, and I know from that there is nothing more painful or more
agonizing. But if you want some other figure, take it. Say it is a
penitentiary, iron-bolted, iron-barred, iron-locked, the doors opening in and
not out. I will not dispute with you. If you will, say it is a maelstrom which
dashes and breaks to pieces and swallows down all those that come within the
sweep of its foaming circles. I will not dispute with you. If you prefer those
human similes, take them. I prefer God's comparison, because I know God is
right and human comparisons may be wrong. God says it is fire, and a furnace of
fire.
Besides that, I do not know that it is
figurative. It may be literal. The Bible sixteen times says it is fire. You
say, " I don't believe it, and I won't believe it." Then be
consistent, and pitch your Bible into the stove, or throw it into the East
river. Thomas Paine was consistent in denying the doctrine of eternal
punishment, for he rejected the whole Bible, although in his last moments he
howled with so much terror that his nurse fled from the room. He was
consistent, nevertheless. Voltaire was consistent in rejecting the doctrines of
future punishment, because he rejected the whole Bible, although he did not
seem to be so very well persuaded of the non-existence of perdition, for, when
his friend wrote to him, " I have found out for sure that there is no
hell," Voltaire replied, " I congratulate you; I am not so fortunate
as you are." But still he was tolerably consistent, for as well as he
could he rejected the whole Bible.
But you have a Bible in your hand, you have a
Bible in your bedroom, you have a Bible in your nursery, you have a Bible in
your parlour. Your children have Bibles, and all these Bibles say that there is
a world of fire for those who do not escape on a certain condition which I will
mention. Now, overboard with your Bible, or overboard with your unbelief.
Keeping both your Bible and your unbelief, you stultify yourself beyond all
other possibility of stultification.
2. The next thing I have to do is to group all
those passages which show the indignation of God against sin and the sinner,
and hence the possibility of such a
place as I have spoken of. Out of a hundred of our sermons, ninety-eight of
them are on the love of God, the mercy of God, the kindness of God; and if we
preach two sermons, out of the one hundred, in regard to the indignation of
God, we are styled " sulphuric." Our American preaching needs to be
reconstructed as to this doctrine of God's indignation. So recreant are we, the
American clergy, on this subject, that the vast majority of people do not know
that the Bible speaks of the wrath of God as truly as of the love of God. Not
because God has more wrath than mercy, but because he knew the world would be
slow to believe it.
We have not enough backbone of moral courage
to preach the whole Bible. So we go on preaching a one-sided God, with a character
which we would despise in ourselves. Do you ever get angry? Suppose a ruffian
should knock your little girl into the gutter-would you smile about it? would
you reward him for it? Suppose, passing down the street, you saw three or four
masons, with hods of brick on their shoulders, going up a long ladder, and some
one should come to the foot of the ladder and hurl it away, and the three or
four masons should clash down and lose their lives-would you smile about it?
would you reward him for it? No. There are a hundred things in your life that
excite your indignation, and if you are never aroused in that way it is because
you are imbecile. Yet, what do men say of God? Why, that the whole race can go
on defying him, breaking his laws, murdering his only-begotten Son, striking in
the face the Lord. Almighty, and he will smile on them through all eternity.
Bible-holders, I want you to recognize the fact that God in the Bible more
often speaks of his indignation than lie does of his mercy. Twenty-eight times
does the Bible speak of the love of God. Sixty-one times does it speak of his
wrath and his indignation. Here is Cruden's Concordance. Count the passages for
yourselves.
Now, can we preach the whole Bible without
preaching the indignation of God as well as the love of God? I will give you
some of the passages which show the
Lord's indignation, and hence the possibility of such a place as I ani speaking
of. In Thessalonians:
Taking vengeance on them that know not
God." In Revelation: " They shall drink of the wine of the wrath of
Almighty God, poured without mixture into the cup of his indignation." The
figure, you see, is a pitcher and a bowl. Into the pitcher are compressed the
clusters that have grown under the hot sun of indignation; and then the wine,
seething, bubbling, is poured out from the pitcher into the bowl, and the lost
soul, putting trembling bands to that bowl, presses it to the lips and drinks
the draught until all the contents are drained (Rev., 14).
You do not like the figure? It is not mine.
"Thus saith. the Lord. They shall drink of the wine of the wrath of
Almighty God, poured without mixture into the cup of his indignation."
In another place, the Bible says, " The
children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness." In other
words, the darkness of the Mamartine dungeon,. the darkness of Egypt. All the darkness
of the earth are not thick enough to symbolize it, and so the Bible seeks for
something beyond all these darkness. " The children of the kingdom shall
be cast out into outer darkness," and over that abyss we are all
suspended, unless we escape on one condition, to be mentioned at a later point.
It is too early to mention it.
What does a man want to know of a life-raft
when he is. sure of no shipwreck? Not persuaded yet? Revelation: " The
winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Not yet persuaded
that there is a wrath-side as well as a love-side to the Almighty? and this
passage perhaps you have never heard quoted: " And the people shall be as
burnings of lime; as thorns cut up shall they be burned up in the fire. Hear,
ye that are afar off, what I have done, and ye that are near acknowledge my
might." Not yet persuaded? I quote once more Isaiah, sixty-third chapter:
" I will tread them in my wrath and trample them in my fury, and their
blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my
raiment."
Does that quotation irritate you with me? I
did not say it. " Thus saith the Lord." Not persuaded with. what
Samuel says, and Micah says, and Daniel says, and Jeremiah says, and Ezekiel
says, and Paul says, and. Christ says, and Jehovah says? Not persuaded? Then I
shall have to leave you to be persuaded by your own experience, when the truth
of God's burnished throne shall flame on you. The fact is that if you are a
Bible believer, by this time, through the influence of the Holy Spirit, you are
persuaded that there is a hell.
I have nothing much to do with objections in
this treatise. I will simply state that God, fifty-six times in the plainest,
most unmistakable, stupendous, and overwhelming way, declares that there is a
hell. It is burning now. It has been burning a long while. Yea, I will go
further, and say there is a possibility that some reader of these words may
spend eternity in the lost world. Nothing but the hand of an outraged, defied,
insulted, long-suffering, indignant, omnipotent God keeps any of us this moment
from sliding into it.
I received a letter on this subject. The
writer of it evidently believes there is no future place of punishment. He says
in his letter: "I don't believe that which you preach, but I am certain
you believe it. I prefer to hear you expound the Bible, because you do not
ignore hell; for if the foundation of your faith is true, hell is just as
certain as paradise, and has just as much of a locality." Now I understand
it. Men want us to be frank in the declaration of our beliefs. All the world
knows that the leading de-nominations in this day believe that there is a hell
as certainly as that there is a heaven. Why, then, slur over the fact, or try
to hide it, or declare it only with slight emphasis? I am an old fogy in my
interpretation of the Bible. I have not so much intellect as those men who know
how to make an eternity of their own, spinning it out of their own brain. Not
having intellect enough to fashion an eternity of my own, I must take the
theory of the Bible. I believe there is a hell. If I had not been afraid of
hell, I do not 877 think I should have started for heaven. You say, " I
will not be scared in that way. I will not be affrighted by any future
punishment." You are quite mistaken. I can frighten you half to death in
five minutes. As you are walking along the streets, let me pull clown the
house-scaffolding, weighing two or three tons, about your head, and you will
look as white as a sheet, while your heart will thump like a trip-hammer. Now,
if it is not ignoble to be affrighted about a falling scaffold, is it ignoble
to be affrighted by a threat from the Omnipotent God, who with one stroke of
his right hand could crush the universe? You ask how God, being a father, could
let us suffer in the future world? I answer your question by asking how God,
being a father, can let suffering be in this world? Tell me why he allowed that
woman to whom I administered the holy sacrament this afternoon to have a
cancer; tell me why children suffer such pains in teething, the lancet striking
such torture in the swollen gums. You fail to explain to me suffering in the
present time; be not surprised if I fail to explain to you suffering in the
future.
3. Has not the time come for me to say that,
though there is a hell, there is no need that any one should go there? I am
going to announce to you that five or ten may escape-yea, a hundred-yea, a
thousand-yea, ALL. You say, " Tell me, just now." Oh, my sceptical
reader, I do not want to break on you the glad tidings too suddenly. I want to
tell you that there is no more need that you go to that world than that you
should leap into the geysers of California, or the crater of Cotopaxi. If any
one goes there he is a suicide of his immortal soul.
I turn to the same old book, and I find out
that the Son of Mary, who was the Son of God, the darling of heaven, the
champion of the ages, by some called Lord, by some called Jesus, by others
called Christ, but by me here called by the three blessed titles, Lord Jesus
Christ, by one magnificent stroke made it possible for us all to be saved. He
not only told us that there was a hell, but he went into it. He walked down the
fiery steeps. He stepped off the bottom rung of the long ladder of despair. He
descended into hell. He put his foot on the coal of the furnace. He explored
the darkest den of eternal midnight, and then he came forth, lacerated, and
scarified, and bleeding, and mauled by the hands of infernal excruciation, to
cry out to all the ages, " I have paid the price for all those who would
make me their substitute. By my piled-up groans, by my omnipotent agony, I
demand the rescue of all those who will give up sin, and trust in me."
Mercy! mercy! mercy! But how am I to get it? Cheap. It will not cost you as
much as a loaf of bread: Only a penny? No, no. Escape from hell, and all the
harps and mansions and thrones and sunlit fields of heaven besides in the
bargain, " without money and without price."
Now, I ask every common-sense man and
common-sense woman, if one has a choice between heaven and hell, and he may
escape the one, and he may win the other, and he refuses to do so-I ask you, if
he does not deserve to be lost? He does. You know he does. Do not, my friend,
make it a controversy between you and me; it is a controversy between you and
God.
But I decline to think that the majority of
the human race will be finally discomfited. We are in the early morning of
Christian achievement. Soon the tides will turn, and nations will be born in a
day; the path of life will be thronged, and the road of sin and death become
positively lonesome,-and after a while utterly forsaken; not one traveler will
be found there, and it will become a matter of amazement to the following
centuries that any man could turn his back on God and happiness, when all the
reasonable inducements were heavenward. The finally lost as compared with the
finally saved will be as the people now in prisons when compared to the
uncounted multitudes outside of them.
Eternal judgment and eternal punishment. There
are but two places and states in the invisible world, namely, heaven for
believers, and hell for unbelievers.
By Rev. WILLIAM J. R. TAYLOR, D.D., Pastor of
Clinton Avenue Reformed Church, Newark, N. J.
It is not to be denied that our age enters
with an earnestness and intensity, such as no earlier one has done, into the
eschatological examination, and presses forward in the complete development of
this doctrine-one sign amongst many that we are hastening towards the great
decision.-Dr. Christian Frederick Kling.
THESE words of an eminent German scholar of
our own generation indicate the present significance of the subject of this
discussion. Its prominence is not due merely to the controversial habit, nor to
the denials of opposers and the liberalism of the times; but, on the contrary,
it has been forced to the front by the spirit of the age, and by its relation
to personal conduct, public morals, social order, and the physical and moral
government of God among the nations. The enormous wrongs, the ruin of
character, the insurrectionary and destructive tendencies and outbreaks of
lawless men, the atheism and anarchism of the period, compel modern thought
towards questions of eternal judgment and eternal rewards and punishments.
" Things not seen and eternal " break in upon " things seen and
temporal," in proportion to the basting on of the world's closing scenes.
In compliance with the request for the present
contribution, and with the specific purposes of this book, it is the design of
the writer to state clearly and briefly the teachings of the theological
standards of the Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, as to " retribution
after death," and to illustrate these ancient deliverances as applied to
present phases of the doctrine.
The reformers of the sixteenth century gave
slight attention to this subject, because they regarded it as a settled belief;
and it is as inseparable as the warp and the woof in the texture of their
theology. Accordingly, as Dr. Schaff has briefly stated it, "The Reformed
(as well as all other Protestant) symbols recognize but two places and states
in the invisible world-heaven for believers, and hell for unbelievers, with
different degrees of bliss and misery, according to the degrees of holiness and
wickedness. They unanimously reject the medieval fiction of an intervening
purgatory for imperfect believers, with its gross superstitions and abuses. The
doctrine of the middle state of all departed spirits between death and
resurrection, which is distinct from the question of purgatory, was left
unsettled, and is to this day a matter of theological speculation rather than
positive doctrine. It is characteristic that the Scriptural distinction between
Sheol or hades, and Gehenna or hell, is obliterated in the Lutheran, the
English, and other Protestant versions " (Harmony of the Reformed
Confessions, pp. 30, 31).
The theological symbols of the Reformed Church
in America leave no doubt of its position in relation to the reality, the nature,
and the duration of the future punishment of the wicked. It is taught as one of
the fundamental doctrines of the entire system of 883 redemption, and in
perfect harmony with every other doctrine held by this branch of the family of
the Reformed churches. We quote a few characteristic declarations.
1. The Heidelbergh Catechism (A. D. 1562)
under the first head, "Of the Misery of Man," says:- Question 10.
Will God then suffer such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished? A. By no
means; but is terribly displeased with our original as well as actual sins: and
will punish them in his just judgment, temporally and eternally, as he path
declared: ' Cursed is every one that continues not in all things written in the
book of the law to do them.'
Question
11. Is not God then also merciful? A. God is indeed merciful; but also just:
therefore his justice requires that sin, which is committed against the most
high majesty of God, be also punished with extreme, that is everlasting,
punishment, both of body and soul."
Under the second head, "Of Man's
Deliverance," this basal fact and doctrine underlies all that is said of
his salvation through the mediation of Jesus Christ, e. g.:- Question 14. Can
there be found anywhere one who is a mere creature able to satisfy for us? A.
None: for, first, God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man
bath committed; and, further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God's
eternal wrath against sin, so as to deliver others from it.
The same line of testimony runs through all
the teachings of this venerable Christian Instructor, in relation to the
Mediator and his qualifications; and the nature and object of his sufferings,
" that he might redeem us from everlasting damnation, and obtain for us
the favour of God, righteousness, and eternal life " (Ques. 37).
So of the last judgment, and this is quoted as
showing both sides of the question of the great assizes:- Question 52. What
comfort is it to thee that ' Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the
dead'? A. That in all my sorrows and persecutions, with uplifted head., I look
for the very same person who offered himself for my sake to the tribunal of
God, and bath removed all curse from me, to come as judge from heaven: who
shall cast all his and my enemies into everlasting condemnation but shall
translate me with all his chosen ones to himself, into heavenly joys and glory.
3. The Confession of Faith (commonly called
The Belgic, A. D. 1561) in several articles, upon various subjects, such as
" The Creation," " The Fall of Man," " The
Manifestation of God's Justice and Mercy in Christ," " The
Satisfaction of Christ, our only High Priest for us," and " The Last
Judgment,' bears the same explicit and positive testimony for the Scriptural
doctrine, as held by all the Reformed churches, respecting the certain, future,
and eternal punishment of Satan, the fallen angels, and the impenitent wicked
ones of the human race (Articles xii., xiv., xx., xxi., xxxviii.)
11. The great National Synod of Dort in the
years 1618, 1619, revised and adopted the Belgic Confession as its own; and its
famous " Canons " are completely and unmistakably based upon the
Biblical doctrines of the utter corruption of human nature, of man's subjection
to everlasting punishment, under the law of God; and of his salvation only
through the riches of sovereign grace by Jesus Christ. A single quotation from
the second head of Doctrine, will give the key-note of all its deliverances on
this part of the scheme of redemption.
Art. 1. God is not only supremely merciful,
but also supremely just. And his justice requires (as he bath revealed himself
in his Word) that our sins committed against his infinite majesty should be
punished, not only with temporal, but with eternal punishments, both in body
and soul, which we cannot escape, unless satisfaction be made to the justice of
God.
12. The Liturgy of this branch of the Reformed
Church, which also dates from the Reformation period, clearly sets forth the
same solemn teachings of the Bible and of the Reformed churches of Europe and
America upon future punishment. It is prominent in the offices for the
administration of the holy sacraments.
Of "Holy Baptism," the office says,
that it sets forth,- First, that we, with our children, are conceived and born
in sin, and therefore are children of wrath, insomuch that we cannot enter into
the kingdom of God, except we are born again. This ,the dipping in or
sprinkling with water teaches us, whereby the impurity of our souls is
signified, and we are admonished to loathe and humble ourselves before God, and
seek for our purification without ourselves.
But the office for the administration of the
Lord's Supper brings out this belief in the eternal punishment of sin in
constant contrast with redemption by Jesus Christ. It is most emphatic in that
magnificent antithetic passage which celebrates the results of our Lord's
passion, and teaches how we are to " remember him " in this holy
ordinance. "First, that we are confidently persuaded in our hearts that
our Lord Jesus Christ . . . bore for us the wrath of God (under which we should
have perished everlastingly from the beginning of his incarnation to the end of
his life upon earth; that he fulfilled for us all obedience to the divine law
and righteousness, especially, when the weight of our sins and the wrath of God
pressed out of him the bloody sweat in the garden, where he was bound that we
might be freed from our sins . . . that he also took upon himself the curse due
to us that he might fill us with his blessings; and humbled himself unto the
deepest reproach and pains of hell, both in body and soul, on the tree of the
cross, when he cried out with a loud Voice, My God, my God, why bast thou
forsaken me? ' that we might be accepted of God, and never be forsaken of
him," etc.
Again-" By his death he hath taken away
the cause of our eternal death and misery, namely, sill; and obtained for us
the quickening Spirit," etc.
These sacramental offices are required to be
read by every minister of the Reformed Church in America at every
administration of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Hence their significance, in
this connection as teaching, with the visible signs and seals of the
sacraments, the essential truths and facts of "the faith, once delivered
to the saints."
7. Not less decisive is the testimony of the
Psalmody and Hymnology of this Church, which is much more catholic and
ecumenical than her theological symbols. So thoroughly is the service of song
permeated with the doctrines of salvation from the future and eternal
punishment of sin, and so urgent are its solemn warnings, invitations,
expostulations, and declarations of the endless woes from which Christ came to
deliver us, that we need only call attention to this characteristic fidelity to
the Word of God.
22. It remains only, in this connection, to
say that the Reformed Church represented in this paper has borne an unshaken,
historic testimony to this fundamental doctrine from her beginnings until now.
It is in her catechisms for the young and the old, it is in her creeds, her
sacraments, her liturgy, her song, her pulpits, her schools, and her very life.
But it is never separated from her doctrines of grace which centre in- the
person and work, the cross and the glory of " Christ, who is our
life," and of the Holy Spirit, the Quickened and Comforter.
Were these testimonies merely ecclesiastical
fulminations or traditions of former times, they might have been buried out of
sight, as dead issues, like other vagaries of theological controversy in bygone
centuries. But all the symbols of doctrine above referred to are expressly
grounded upon " the sufficiency of the Scriptures as the only rule of
faith." " Therefore we reject, with all our hearts, whatsoever cloth
not agree with this infallible rule, which the apostles have taught us, saying,
" Try the spirits whether they are of God"; likewise, "If there
come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house
" (Confession of Faith, Art. vii.).
This whole system of doctrine is purely a
matter of divine revelation: and there its credibility must rest with all
believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and the New
Testament.
The modern Church has accepted the traditional
faith upon this subject. In proportion as the inspiration and infallibility of
revelation have been conceded, the doctrine of an absolute and therefore
endless punishment of sin has maintained itself-it being impossible to
eliminate the tenet from the Christian Scriptures, except by a mutilation of
the canon or a violently capricious exegesis. The denial of the eternity of
future punishments, in modern times, has consequently been a characteristic of
those parties and individuals who have rejected, either partially or entirely,
the dogma of infallible inspiration (History of Christian Doctrine, by W. G. T.
Shedd, D.D., pp. 418, 419).
Agreeably to these principles and declaration
the rising ministry of this Church have always been carefully trained in her
theological seminaries; and her entire ministry, one-half of whom for many
years past have come from other communions, are strictly pledged, by their
ordination vows, their pastoral calls, their constitutional subscription, to
the articles of faith contained in the standards of doctrine. I have yet to
learn of a single instance of ministerial defection from the faith of the
Reformed Church on this subject, from her beginnings in the old Dutch fort in
the Battery on Manhattan Island unto this day.
Without attempting any formal vindication of
these beliefs, or review of the Biblical arguments for them, it will be
sufficient for the object of this paper to indicate a few points suggested by
the testimonies already given:- (1.) They all agree upon the reality of future
punishment. In that amazing and awful panorama of the last judgment, portrayed
by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, " as he sat on the Mount of
Olives," in reply to the request of his disciples for "the sign of
his coining and of the end of the world " (Matt., 25: 31-46), the
realistic scenery and the prophetic revelations of actual facts in the closing
scene of the world's last " age " are far more impressive than the
simple drapery of language in which they appear. Were it a parable, as some
say, or a poetic description of " his coming and S88 of the end of the
world," still there are the stern facts, the indisputable end, the actual
winding up of human history. Nor is it merely a judgment of nations, but of
individuals of all nations; one by one-each and all-on the basis of personal
accountability for things done in the body. The sentences immediately follow
the reckonings; and " the great gulf " separates the righteous from
the wicked forever. Both the quantity and the quality of the " everlasting
punishment " of the wicked are involved. They are the " cursed,"
they must " depart," like Judas, to their " own place,"
away from the righteous, from heaven, from God, into "everlasting
punishment prepared for the Devil and his angels." And with Satan and his
angels they are to suffer what they suffer and as they suffer, and as long as
they suffer, under this sentence of "the Son of man," " the
Judge of all."
(2.) These testimonies also declare the
eternal retribution of the wicked in hell. There is no room in them, nor in the
church that believes them, for the heresy of the annihilation of the wicked.
Modern science teaches that nothing in the material world can be annihilated.
The forces of nature are so conserved and correlated that nothing of them is
lost in the changes they may undergo. The old theology recognizes the same law
in the spiritual universe, especially in its application to the immortality of
the human soul and to the moral government of God. The death of the soul, in
Holy Scripture, is its state of alienation from God; and separation from God by
sin and punishment is its misery and its spiritual and eternal death. As little
does the old theology of the Reformed churches countenance the idea of the
restoration of the wicker! from hell. It holds that the object of punishment
even in this world is not generally or chiefly reformatory. Its primary
purposes Ore protective and retributive. It is essential to the stability of
government, to the welfare of society, for the righting of wrongs, for the
shelter of the weak and helpless, for the maintenance of law and order, for the
restraint of evil-doers, for the punishment of law-breakers. The history of the
world is full of righteous, terrible, overwhelming, exterminating divine
judgments, not one of which was for the reformation of the human monsters whom
they swept away from the earth. Follow them into eternity. Will the gates of Gehenna
open into the New Jerusalem? Would a merciful God send sinners to the Devil and
his angels, to reform them for heaven?
As futile is the objection that it is contrary
to the justice and goodness of God to inflict everlasting punishment upon the
wicked. This is simply an argument from human ignorance, and is contrary to the
plainest revelations of God's Word. " The Judge of all the earth will do
right," and it is both vain and venturesome thus to attempt to Snatch from
his hand the balance and the rod, Rejudge his justice, be the god of God.
But the Reformed theology goes further and
deeper and higher in its deliverances of this creed respecting "the last
things." They form an essential part of its entire scheme of salvation
through " the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," as we have already
proved in the extracts from the standards. So unscriptural is the dogma of
restorationism, that the American Unitarian Association, at a meeting in 1854,
formulated its own views of the subject, in a manner that signally confirms the
orthodox teachings, and its testimony is so candid and convincing that I have
no hesitation in quoting it in this connection. This is the verdict: " It
is our firm conviction that the final restoration of all men is not revealed in
the Scriptures, but that the ultimate fate of the impenitent wicked is left shrouded
in impenetrable mystery so far as the total declaration of the sacred writers
is concerned. Those of us who believe (as the large majority of us do) in the
final recovery of all souls, therefore, cannot emphasize it as a sure hope of
Christianity; but only elevate it in the background of their system as a
glorious hope which seems to them a warranted inference from the cardinal
principles of Christianity, as well as from the great verities of moral
science."
This gives up the whole scheme, so far as the Christian
Scriptures are concerned, and where these are silent what other oracles avail?
It must be admitted, says a recent writer, who
has tried to prove that " eternal punishment is not endless,"
"that on the most hopeful view that can be ventured, the darkness resting
on the Eon future of him who goes out of this world of grace an unbelieving
gospel-hearer, an impenitent sinner, alienated from God, is sufficiently dense
and appalling to rouse the living to work out their salvation with fear and
trembling,' fearing,' as Christ has bidden, him who is able to destroy both
body and soul in hell.' " These honest admissions of learned opposers of
the doctrine of eternal punishment and of the theology of the Reformed churches
should have full weight in this part of the argument between them.
7. The most impressive of the inspired
revelations of the future state of the wicked as well as of the righteous is
its finality. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the
righteous into life eternal." There the faith of the Reformed churches
rests, as it has rested for ages, in its solemn and unchanged doctrinal symbols
and in its pulpit teachings, its literature and its religious instructions, in
its schools and homes.
It matters not in what form these word-pictures
of the proceedings of the last day are given, whether in words and phrases that
describe the " ages of ages," or parables like those of the tares and
the ten virgins, or prophetic visions like those of Christ and the Apocalypse,
this one tremendous fact appears in all-it is the closing act of the world's
tragic history. The curtain falls-who shall lift it? Who shall break the awful
silence? What voices of God, angels, prophets, apostles, shall reveal some new
monic period when the tares shall become wheat, when Satan and his angels shall
rank again with "ministering spirits" among the hierarchies of the
heavens, and the wailings of the pit shall be changed into the new song of the
redeemed? If Judas Iscariot should yet be saved, would it not still be good
that ever he was born? (Matt., 26: 24.)
If the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost can be
forgiven either in this world or in the world to come, was Jesus Christ a true
prophet? Or can such blasphemers be saved without forgiveness? (Matt., 12:31,
32.)
There is no new revelation. The "great
gulf" is "fixed,"-impassable, an everlasting separation between
Dives, Abraham, and Lazarus. The awards of the last judgment are final,
irreversible, FOREVER AND FOREVER.
In conclusion, with the utmost Christian
charity for those who differ, and candidly considering their systems upon their
own merits, we are constrained to say, that they do not and cannot
satisfactorily account for the intense and overwhelming anxiety of the apostles
and evangelists for the salvation of lost sinners. They do not account for the
alarms and terrors, the tears and contrition, the distresses and the joys of
the converts of the day of Pentecost, nor for the experiences of the Philippian
jailer, of Saul of Tarsus, and of Felix before Paul " as he reasoned of
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." They do not account for
those convictions of sin, terrors of the law, troublesome consciences, and
spiritual straits of souls that are passing out of darkness into light. They do
not account for the self-reproaches and penitent confessions of moralists and
self-righteous people, who have at last fled from their false refuges and from
" the wrath to come." They do not account for the hopeless despair
and fearful outcries of multitudes of dying sinners who have rejected Christ
and his salvation. They do not account for the awful language of Christ and the
sacred writers respecting the " everlasting punishment " of the
finally impenitent. But this doctrine of the endless retributions of eternity
does account clearly, positively, and satisfactorily for all the teachings of
the Bible on the subject, and for all the facts of human consciousness and
experience in relation to it. Were it not so clearly revealed in the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, no believer in God would accept
it. I agree with a living preacher, 892 whose heart is as tender as his faith
is strong, in his saying, " Nothing but the fear of God, nothing but the
hand of God upon me, could ever drive me to preach the doctrine of endless
hell-fire. Hell is balanced by heaven. That speaks whole volumes. We have
nothing to do with hell but to escape it. Our business is to seek and reach
heaven."
When Canon Farrar was in this country he said
that "the great need of America was a new enthusiasm." In the spirit
of this suggestion, a preacher of our Reformed Church, in a great city, has set
forth this very subject as "A New Enthusiasm for the Church," in
words with which I quote for illustration of the spirit in which it is preached
among us.
Can it be very wide of the truth to say that a
new enthusiasm for the Church might be found in a deeper realization, on her
part, of spiritual death as an actual and awful fact; in the stiffening of her
belief that through the damning power of sin, unrepented of, unforsaken, and
unforgiven, souls may be and actually are lost?
Is it
a mistake to say that out of a deeper conviction and stronger appreciation of
the reality and awfulness of spiritual death there would be born in the Church
a new enthusiasm? New, of course, relatively, not absolutely; for it would be
the old original enthusiasm that first moved the heart of God, that brought
Christ to the earth and the cross, and that 'has fired the souls of his most
valiant soldiers-the enthusiasm of rescue. There is no enthusiasm more powerful
and more contagious than this. A burning building, a choked mine, a shipwreck,
a pestilence-anything that seriously endangers human life-never fails to evoke
enthusiasm of the most heroic sort, and to enlist a host of rescuers. All that
the Church needs to-day for the stirring of a new and mighty enthusiasm is a
profoundly quickened perception of the fact that perdition is as real as
salvation; that men and women are lost as well as saved; that over against the
life everlasting lies the death eternal; that on every hand are those whose
lamps are going out in that blackness of darkness in which no light shall ever
be struck.
Let the Church rid herself of crude
conceptions of future punishment; let the all too numerous phenomena of
spiritual degeneration and death be intelligently observed; let the astonishing
agreement between Scripture and the latest generalizations of moral science,
assisted by natural science, on this subject be noted, and the results given to
the people. And there would soon be less dead orthodoxy; less show-work for
ecclesiastical statistics; fewer churches run as social clubs; less frequent
retreats from down-town districts; and once again we should see the whole of
the Lord's host, leaders and ranks, aflame with the divine fire of rescuing
love.
In the foregoing statements of the belief and
teachings of the Reformed Church in America, on these last things, the writer
has limited himself strictly to the subject assigned him. Nothing is said of
the many anxious questions that are involved, such as the final and eternal
salvation of all children who die in infancy, and of those defective classes
who are not morally responsible for their belief and. conduct; and. of those
" outside saints," who may be included in the apostle Peter's
declaration that " God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he
that feared him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him " (Acts,
10: 34, 35). God will certainly save all that he can save consistently with his
own justice and mercy, and within the widest possible reach of " the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus." "The Judge of all the earth will
do right." " He is able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto
God by him." The Messiah " shall see of the travail of his soul and
shall be satisfied." If he shall be satisfied who then shall complain of
the decisions of the last clay, and of the final and completed results of his
atoning death and mediatorial reign? The glimpses of human destiny that we get
from the Bible reveal the perfect consummation of all the purposes of the cross
and of the divine government of " the world that now is and of the world
to come." No discords will spoil the music of the harps of gold and of the
new song of the redeemed in heaven. No saint nor angel will ever stop and
tremble in the streets of the New Jerusalem, lest the great white throne totter
at the least injustice of him who sits upon it.
The doctrine of endless punishment is not
taught in the scriptures, nor in the early creeds, but is a heresy.
By Rev. H. W. THOMAS, D.D., Pastor of the
People's Church, Chicago, Ill.
WORDS are the signs of ideas. Ideas are the
mental visions or pictures of things, real or imaginary. Truth is that which
is; error is that which appears to be. Hence words are true when they express
ideas; and ideas are true when they represent things as they are in the world
of fact.
The mind of man may project many ideal or
imaginary creations; but it has not the power to create truth; and hence must
be content to move along upon the humble plane of discovering or perceiving
that which is. In the study of any great and serious question, the effort
should be to have words clearly express ideas; and to be sure that ideas are
the accurate pictures of things as they are in the realm of the real. And hence
we should discriminate between the 51 808 real and the imaginary; or between
that which is true in the world of things, and that which has been thought to
be true, but has had no real existence except as a mental creation, or as an
imaginary picture. And it may be confessed that the latter, or what men have
thought to be true, has formed much the larger part of the theories that have
been held and the books that have been written upon the general subject of
eschatology, or the doctrine of the last things. And it must be confessed,
also, that many of these theories have not only obscured the real truths, but
have in not a few cases been positively hurtful to the human mind and. dishonouring
to the great name of God. And yet, underlying each of these misconceptions
there has all the time been a real truth. Sometimes this truth has been
understated, sometimes overstated, and sometimes almost wholly lost sight of;
and hence the task of the new or progressive theology, or the broader
orthodoxy, of our eclectic age, should be not only to discriminate between the
real and the imaginary, but to reject that which is wholly false; to correct
that which is partly erroneous, and to bring out in the clearest possible light
the truth as it is in the world of the real; and in this, because it is in the
deeper world of the nature of things.
Such, as I understand it, is the noble object
of this volume, to which many different thinkers, representing different
schools of thought, are asked to contribute articles; and all with the view of
bringing out as far as possible the real beliefs of the different churches upon
a subject that, of all others, perhaps, has been the greatest burden upon
faith. Such an object is certainly most worthy and commendable; and could it
succeed in calling forth a full and candid statement of the present faith of
all these writers and of the churches they represent, it would certainly be a
valuable contribution to this form of current theological literature; and, as a
general consensus of belief, might, at least, lighten the burdens, almost
insupportable, that have been fastened upon the Christian Church by the dogmas
of the darker ages of the past.
Such a book, it is safe to say in advance,
will indicate the tendencies of thought in our age of transition and the
general unsettling of many old beliefs; and it is safe to say, also, that this
tendency will be in the direction of the better and more hopeful view of the
future destiny of mankind. And such a result will, in so far, be helpful to
Christian faith; and possibly that is about all that, in the continuity of
history, and the evolution of thought, could be expected. For, in the nature of
the case, most of these writers, as representatives of different denominations,
are committed to certain statements of belief; they are, in a sense, the
retained attorneys of these denominations, and hence are under a legal or contract
obligation, if not a moral one, to defend certain views. They are hardly in a
position to publicly ask and answer the great question as. to what is true,
upon this momentous subject; but are rather bound to put in the best and
possibly a modified light, what has been thought to be true, and what they have
accepted as true, and hence have pledged themselves to support. Apologists,
rather than broad, free advocates, is the necessary position of many religious
teachers, un-less they are willing to pay the price in suffering and suspicion,
and possibly of trial and expulsion, for a larger personal liberty.
And yet, there is a general growth of thought
and a progress in knowledge that are slowly lifting the world to a higher
plane; and in this way certain old beliefs are at first modified, and then by a
emu-non consent they cease to be any longer held as a part of the living faith
of the more intelligent minds, though they may still hold a place and be
carried along in the written creeds of churches. It will hardly be denied by
any that such is the case in reference to the old beliefs concerning the
punishment of souls after death.
President Edwards, in describing these
punishments, says: "Imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, or a
great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by
accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater. Imagine that your
body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour full of fire, and all the time
full of quick sense. What horror would you feel at the entrance of such a
furnace; how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you?" And then he
lengthens the time of such material torments in a burning furnace to an hour,
and to twenty-four hours, and to a week and a month and a year, and on to
hundreds and thousands of years, and to eternity. As an illustration of
material hell-fire, John Wesley uses the blaze of a burning candle, into which
the finger is thrust for a moment; and then goes on in thought to a fire into
which the hand and the arm, and at last the whole body, is to be cast forever.
Thus Wesley teaches the end-less punishment of souls in a hell of material
fire; and Wesley is a "standard authority " in the Methodist church.
And the Presbyterian Confession of Faith teaches that the punishment of sin
shall be separation from God, " and most grievous torments in soul and
body, without intermission, in hell-fire forever." And Spurgeon, the great
Baptist preacher of London, says: "In fire, exactly like that we have on
earth, thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever un-consumed; all thy veins,
roads for the feet of pain to travel on; every nerve a string on which the
Devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of Hell's Unutterable Lament!
"
Spurgeon is viewed by the orthodox to be one
of the greatest living divines; and it is a fact that the Presbyterian church
still professes to hold to its Confession of Faith; and that Wesley is a
revered " authority " in the Methodist church.
It would be easy to enlarge these horrible
pictures of a material hell, though hardly possible to exaggerate them, from
Baxter and Alleyn, and Jeremy Taylor, and from many Roman Catholic and
Protestant authors; and yet it would be sad, indeed, to have to think that
these churches still actually believe in these terrible caricatures of the idea
of punishment after death, and in such blasphemous imputations upon the
character of a just God.
That is to say, that even the orthodox
churches are beginning to feel, and, if no more, by silence to say, that such
conceptions of after-death punishment in a hell of material fire were creations
of the imagination; that they never were true in the world of fact. They are beginning
to say that the expressions, fire and brimstone, are figurative, and some are
even saying that the sufferings of the lost are hardly so severe as the full
strength of the figure might justify; a few are venturing still further, and
saying that whatever may be the sufferings of the lost, they will not be so
terrible as nonexistence; that existence in hell will not be an unmitigated
curse, but rather a poor kind of blessing-an endurable misery.
There is thus an admission that the teachings
of the past on this subject were not wholly true; and that, in some respects at
least, they have to be modified, or abandoned. But these admissions relate only
to the character, or the kind and intensity, of the punishment that will be
inflicted upon lost souls; and not at all to the length of that punishment.
Upon this point, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, or,
in a word, all the so-called orthodox churches, are a unit in contending that,
as to duration, it is literally and absolutely endless. They insist that the
term or length of the penalty to be inflicted and endured is the same for all
souls, for all classes and degrees of sinners; for the youth of sixteen or
twenty years, but dying unconverted, it is forever; and for the most hardened criminal
of eighty years it can, of course, be no longer. And it is of course denied by
the orthodox also, that punishment in the world to come is or can be in any
sense corrective, or reformatory; for, to admit this, would be to admit the
possibility of punishment coming to an end, as it would not only be useless,
but manifestly unjust, to continue the punishment after the ends of that
punishment had been accomplished. And hence these churches draw the deep dark
line of destiny at the moment of death.
The gross and material conceptions of the
punishment of the souls and bodies of the lost in a material hell of fire and
brimstone having been doubted, if not yet abandoned, and the intensity of that
punishment somewhat modified, the ground, or reason, and the duration of that
punishment are the points where the stress of the debate is now felt.
As to the ground upon which the
everlastingness of punishment is based, there can hardly be said to be any
perfect, or even very general, agreement among the churches called orthodox.
The older view is, that such punishment is for the sins committed in this life;
and, to the seeming disproportion between the brevity of man's life in this
world and the number of sins committed, and the infinite duration of the punishment,
the reply has been, that these finite sins, or sins of a finite being, are
infinite in character and demerit, because committed against an infinite Being.
These thinkers, however, are not willing to apply the same kind of reasoning to
the other side of the question, and say, that any good deeds done in the
service of this infinite Being thereby become worthy of and merit an infinite
reward. Rather do they disclaim any and all merit on the part of man as a
ground of his salvation, and base it wholly upon the merits of Christ.
But not to argue this point, not a few
believers in endless punishment have felt the weakness of the old ground upon
which it has been justified, and, feeling this, they argue that endless
punishment can be justified only upon the ground of endless sinning. Of course
this position makes the endless sinning a condition to the endless punishing;
for if at any point a soul should stop sinning, then there would come a time,
however distant, when the punishment would end. And to make sure the doctrine
of endless punishment from this standpoint, these thinkers have to deny the
possibility of reformation after death; and to do this, they have to affirm
that the soul's volition, or the power of choosing the right, is limited to
this life. But that is to say that there can be sin where there is no power not
to sin; or that the soul is punished forever for what it must forever keep on
doing, for it has no power to do otherwise. If it be said that this is
justifiable on the ground that the soul is to be held forever responsible for,
and punished for, a voluntary yielding up or loss of its power to do right in
time, that is to give up the very position for which the theory is contending;
for it is the same as to say that a soul may be punished forever in the eternal
world for what it did in time; for in time it lost its power to do right, and
hence necessitated the endless doing of the wrong for which it is to be
endlessly punished.
The difficulty with both these theories is in
finding some reasonably just ground upon which to inflict the awful penalty of
endless punishment under the government of a just God, or, in other words, how
to hold on to God, and not give up their dogma of an endless hell. The simple
fact is, that with the old views, any rational theodicy, or vindication of the
divine justice, has so far proved an impossible task in the hands of thinkers,
and it will become more and more difficult before the increasing and finer
moral judgment of our age.
Another and an increasing school of thinkers
seeks relief from the difficulty of endless sin and suffering in the universe
of a good and all-powerful God, in the doctrine of the annihilation of the
wicked. This is practically the doctrine of " the survival of the
strongest" carried over into the realm of spirit. It teaches, not that man
is at centre and in essence a spirit, but that he is potentially so; or that he
may become a spirit by regeneration, and, failing to thus become immortal, at
death he ceases to be at all-or is redistributed among the mineral elements out
of which he was taken. This doctrine is a relief from the dreadful thought of
any soul lingering forever in conscious agony, and hence becomes a refuge for
many minds; but it is regarded as heretical by the so-called orthodox churches,
notwithstanding the fact that they can offer no rational explanation why a
merciful God should forever hold souls in being and conscious suffering, when
they admit that it can do no possible good to those who thus suffer, and
perhaps not many would now care to argue that the sight of such sufferings
would acid to the joy of the redeemed in heaven. But the real objection to this
doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked is this, viz., it assumes that man
is not germinally or at centre a spirit-he is not a child of God, not in the
image of God, but simply a higher animal, with the possibility of becoming a
spirit; and that that possibility is limited to his present bodily existence.
Such a position, philosophically, strikes at the essential nature or being of
man, as such, and hence weakens the argument for the continuity of life. And
whilst the "survival of the strongest" may be true in the struggle
for material existence, it is too great a step to carry it over into the finer
realms of being, or spirit, and especially should Christians hesitate to argue
thus, when the very heart of the gospel is not in helping the strong, but in
helping the weak. " They that are whole need not a physician, but they
that are sick; " "The Son of man came to save the lost."
How, then, will this long debate be settled?
It is safe to say that the question will not be dropped out of the public mind,
for it is too great and serious and personal to be lost sight of. It is equally
safe to say, that the more enlightened and humane thought and sentiment of our
age will not go back to the already weakening, if not deserted, beliefs of the
past, in reference to a hell of material fire. Nor will the awakened and
enlightened reason and conscience of the present settle down to a belief in
endless punishment of any kind,-that is, to the conscious endless punishment of
any one or the same soul. But, regarding sin as an incident in the evolution of
the good, or in the development of free beings, there is nothing in the thought
of our time, nor, necessarily, in any high form of reason, against the
continuance, and even the necessary endlessness, of the law of punishment, or
of moral sequence, in the universe; and if new creations or generations
continue to arise, there may never come a time when souls may not be passing
through this form of correction, but not the same souls.
Like everything else in our age, the great
doctrines of religion are being placed in broader and clearer lights, and
especially is this the case with this tremendous question of the destiny of the
race. When the Reformers turned from the authority of the Church to the
authority of the Bible, each sect sought to prove its positions by one or more
texts, and for a long time this form of textual proof was satisfactory to each
party; though they succeeded in making the one Bible prove many different and
often contradictory doctrines.
But, in our time, less reliance is placed upon
this easy method of arriving at the truth; and hence we are paying more
attention to the general scope and analogy and consensus of the teachings of
the Bible upon this and other subjects.
Then, again, the Reformers of the sixteenth
century did not so much as question the fundamental theology of the Roman
Catholic church upon the doctrines of the fall of man, and original sin, and
the depravity of the race, and an atonement built upon these supposed facts,
and a time-probation resting upon this atonement. They accepted these
doctrines, and their great work-and possibly it was all that they could do at
the time-was to reform, not the doctrines, but the abuses that had grown up out
of these doctrines. The Catholic church taught that all the world was under the
curse of original sin; that the sacraments were the only channels through which
could be received the supernatural grace to remove this curse and to reinstate
man in the divine favour; and that the Church had the sole control of these
sacraments so that all had to go to it for salvation. Luther taught the great
truth of the priesthood of the race; that souls could go to God and, by faith,
have the infinite credit purchased by the death of Christ and placed over
against the infinite debt of Adam's sin, set to their account. But the
Reformers never sO much as questioned the underlying dogmas of original sin, a
penal or substitutional atonement, and endless punishment, out of which the
abuses which they sought to correct, had grown.
That is the work of the present; it is the new
reformation; not of forms and abuses, but of thought, of theology; and hence it
is, in the light of this broader study, that the question of after-death
punishment for sin must now find its latest answer; for it does not, nor can
it, stand alone, but in relation to these other doctrines. Indeed, historically
considered, the dogma of endless punishment first finds a formal place in
theology along with and as a part of the doctrines of original sin,
substitutional atonement, and a time-probation. And these, it should be
remembered, formed no part of the earlier 906 and more spiritual and intuitive
Greek thought of Clement and Origen of the second and third centuries, but were
the later accretions of the more objective and material Latin mind. The
doctrines of original sin, and depravity, and atonement, as first and formally
taught by Augustine in the fifth century, were not known to the early Greek
fathers. Clement and Origen regarded man as germinally and at centre a spirit;
as in the image of God; they believed in the divinity of man as man; that God
was immanent in the reason and justice and love and conscience of the race; not
that man had fallen from some higher state, but that he was unfolding or rising
from a lower state to a higher; and that Christ was the manifestation of the
fullness of the divine in man; that life was an education and Christ a divine
Teacher and Saviour leading the race on through all the discipline of
experience, of suffering, of joy and sorrow, to the realization of this higher
ideal. And hence, the doctrine of endless punishment found no place in their
thought; nor did they hesitate to teach that the office and work of Christ; in
the development and perfection of the race, would go on into the world to come,
and more effectually there than here.
The doctrine of sin, of atonement, of penalty,
as taught by the Roman Catholic and the orthodox Protestant churches, is a
cold, material, external Latin accretion, and, as such, it has ruled the
Christian world since the clays of Augustine in the fifth century. . It all
rests upon the doctrine of the fall of man, of original sin, or the guilt and
depravity of the race because of the supposed sin of Adam. But upon what does
this rest? Outside of the second chapter of Genesis, there is no mention of nor
the slightest allusion even to such a fact, in the Old Testament; and whatever
may be the meaning of that strange allegory-written by some other than the
author of the first chapter, but when or by whom we know not-it is certainly a
great strain upon credulity to say that it is to be taken as a literal history
of events that actually occurred. And what foundation has the doctrine in the
New Testament, except a parenthetical statement by Paul in the fifth chapter of
Romans? and, even there, the reference seems to be to the Adam or "
earth-man " as opposed to the spirit nature in man that is related to the
Christ.
But, as Dr. McCausland, of England, taught
thirty years ago, the Adam of our Bible was not and could not have been the
first to appear of our human family, but that the Negro and the Mongolian races
preceded the Caucasian; hence the whole race could not have fallen in Adam,
even if we admit the account given in the second chapter of Genesis to be
historical. And it is, now generally conceded that to make Adam the first man
is to render utterly worthless the chronology of the Bible, for the time since
man's first appearance upon the earth cannot be brought into any such narrow
limits as some six thousand years. And now come the later teachings of
evolution to tell us that man never fell at all, but, instead, has been rising
from the lower to the higher.
And thus, the very foundations upon which the
Latin theology has rested for more than twelve centuries are slipping away; and
with the foundations must sooner or later go this whole superstructure of the
Latin or orthodox theology that has been built upon it. We are, religiously,
upon the eve of the greatest reformation, and revolution even, of thought that
the world has ever known; it means nothing less than a complete change of base-
a going back at one great step and a leaving behind of the cold, forensic,
material conceptions of the Latin mind, and a glad return to the living and
loving conceptions of the Greek Fathers, and of the apostles and Christ, of the
fatherhood of God and the divinity and brotherhood of man.
But what has all this to do with "punishment
after death "? Much in every way, for it changes our root conceptions of
God, of man, of Christ, of sin, of atonement, and hence of the nature and
extent and results of the penalties, or the consequences, of sin. And it may be
some comfort to those who fear for the results of so great a change, and who
would still cling to the ancient creeds, to say, that the doctrines that we
have characterized as Latin accretions find no place in the Apostles' Creed,
nor in the Athanasian Creed. There is not in either of these creeds a word
about original sin, nor a substitutional atonement, nor endless punishment. But
they do affirm the fatherhood of God, and the divinity of Christ, and
everlasting life.
These early creeds were protests against the
dualism of the Gnostics, and the polytheism of the Romans and the Greeks; they
meant to affirm, as opposed to these, the doctrine of the living God, as
revealed in Jesus the Christ, and the divinity, and hence the immortality, of
man. And judged by these early creeds-and they are the ancient standards of
orthodoxy-the doctrine of endless punishment is not orthodox, but heterodox. It
is true that the doctrine is taught in the later Athanasian Creed and by the
Catholic and the orthodox Protestant churches, but it was not the generally
accepted doctrine of the early Christian church. The Apostles' and Nicene
Creeds affirm the doctrine of the resurrection and of everlasting life, but say
not one word about everlasting punishment; and not only was the Council of
Nice, A. D. 326, silent upon this subject, but so was that of Constantinople in
A. D. 381. And this is the more remarkable when we recall the fact that the
doctrine of universal restoration was at that time so generally taught and
believed. It is confessed, on all hands, that the great Origen was a
Universalist -even to the salvation of the fallen angels; and yet neither the
first Council of Nice, nor that of Constantinople, nor that of Ephesus, A. D.
431, nor that of Chalcedon, A. D. 451, ever uttered a word of condemnation
concerning his views, or against universal restoration; and this, too, in the
face of the fact that, as Dr. Beecher tells us, four of the great schools of
theology in those early centuries taught this larger hope, and only one school,
that having the Roman law and the Latin Testament, taught the doctrine of
endless punishment.
But it will be asked, What does the Bible
teach? It would require more space than is at our disposal to open up this
field, but it may be assumed that, if so dreadful a doctrine as that of endless
punishment were true, it would certainly be taught with great fullness and
plainness; and yet, what are the facts? It is questioned, by many, whether any
such doctrine is even referred to in the Old Testament, and there are only some
four texts that are quoted in its support, three of these being irrelevant. And
what of the New Testament? We. must suppose that the inspired apostles
understood the teaching of Christ, and it is reasonable also to suppose that,
if they believed that he taught such a terrible doctrine, they would have
emphasized such an awful horror and danger in every possible way. But what are
the facts? Canon Farrar tells us that Paul, who says that he " declared
the whole counsel of God," in all his fourteen epistles uses the word
hades but once, and never speaks of Gehenna; in only one instance does he use
language that can be construed to mean endless punishment; and yet he
frequently speaks of the resurrection and the judgment, and heaven, in such
connections as would seem to have suggested and even called for at least some
avowal of the fact, had he believed that doctrine to be true. But, on the other
hand, Paul does so speak of the destruction of death, and the final triumph and
reign of Christ, as to lead millions to believe that he teaches the doctrine of
universal restoration.
If, then, the doctrine of endless punishment
is taught in the Bible at all, it must be in the words of Christ, and, if in
these, it is in Matt. 25: 46. And yet so able a Greek scholar as Prof. Tayler
Lewis translates this verse thus: " These shall go away into the
punishment (the restraint, imprisonment) of the world to come; " this, he
says, is " all that we can etymologically or exegetically make of the word
in this passage." That Jesus taught future punishment, or punishment in
the world to come, there can be no doubt; but to say that he taught endless
punishment is to strain the meaning of his words, for the Hebrew word olam, and
its Greek equivalent aion, do not necessarily, nor even generally, as used in
the Scriptures, mean everlasting; but rather an age, or an indefinite time. In
more than half the instances in the Old Testament, where the word clam is used,
and is translated everlasting or eternal, it is applied to things of a terminable
existence, many of which have ceased to be. The adjective aionios cannot be
stronger than the noun aion, or age, from which it is derived, and hence the
meaning in any case must be determined by the nature of the noun to which the
adjective is applied; but is there anything in the nature of the noun kolasis,
or punishment, that compels us to give the adjective aionios its longest
possible duration, as when applied to God? Certainly not; but, on the other
hand, the very idea of punishment, of restraint, of pruning, is that of
correction; and hence of a something that may be of longer or shorter duration.
Aside, too, from the nature of the case, we are almost forced to such a
conclusion from the stand-point of thought that looks upon the government of
God as paternal.
If it be said that the same word is used to
describe the zoe, or life of the righteous, and that if the punishment of the
one may come to an end, so may the life of the other, that may be so, if the
continuance of the life rests upon no deeper foundation than the terminable
duration implied by a word of variable meaning. But the word is also one of
quality, as well as duration, and hence "eternal life" means a quality
or kind of life that the soul may now possess; and thus our hope of everlasting
life rests upon the divine or God-like quality of that life, and not upon the
uncertain time-meaning of a word. Had Jesus meant to teach endless punishment,
there were plenty of Greek words, that, so far as words can go, would have
placed the subject beyond doubt; but he did not use these words.
And thus we come to the conclusion that the
doctrine of endless punishment is itself a heresy, when judged by the most
ancient creeds; that it forms a part of that whole system of Latin accretions
that have no foundation in fact, and never were a part of the earlier and more
spiritual conceptions of the Greek fathers, and that it is not taught in the
Scriptures. But the Bible does teach future punishment for sin, or that sin
brings upon the soul its own consequences in moral loss and misery, and that
the life of the present world is carried over into the life of the world to
come. Nor can we believe less, when we look at the world of things from the
standpoint of moral sequence. But we must believe that the government of God is
paternal; that God is the Father of all, and will deal with all souls with a
tender justice whose very foundations are in everlasting love; and hence we
must believe that, whatever sufferings may come upon sinful souls in this or
any world, are meant for good, and are in their nature and effect reformatory.
Man is free to try to do whatever he pleases, but the constitution of things is
such that he cannot succeed in any but the right way. The prodigal son was glad
to get away from his father's house, but was gladder to get back; and so we may
hope that, through the long and often hard ways of experience and the
discipline of suffering, all the wandering children of earth will somewhere and
sometime return; and whether it be in this or any other world, the God and
Father of all will not turn them away, for " the mercy of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting," and "Jesus Christ is the same,
yesterday, to-day, and forever." So must we hope and believe, therefore,
that existence will in the end prove a blessing, and not a curse, to all souls.
Logically and philosophically, a belief in God
can, when realized, lead to nothing short of the final supremacy of the good;
for, to believe in God at all, is to believe in the best; for anything less
than the best is in so far less than God, and hence is not God. But to believe
in the best God, is to leave no place for the old Manichean, and Gnostic, and
Latin conception of evil; of a personal Devil, or in evil as an entity wholly
apart from the good, and capable of existing forever as a kingdom of evil in a
universe where only the good can be supreme. Rather, must we think of evil, not
as wholly such, but as a lesser form of the good; as an incident in the
evolution of the good, as scientists speak of matter as on its way to life, and
of the lower forms of life as on the way to the higher. And in such a time as
the present, when the darker theories of the past have led so many minds and
hearts into a cold materialism that borders upon atheism, and to a gloomy and.
almost despairing pessimism, the Christian world should hasten to free itself
from such burdens, and to gladly affirm and emphasize the great and blessed
faith of .an optimism that, leaving no place for despair, journeys ever and
only to some future good; and from the good, and the better, to the best. Too
long have theologians kept before the human mind and heart their dark,
discouraging, and exaggerated conceptions of sin and death and the awful doom
of the countless millions of earth in the long forever. The world needs the
light and cheer and joy and hope that come from a larger and better faith in
God and in the destiny of the race.
.
Seven principal theories of retribution.
By Rev. CHARLES F. THWING, D.D., Pastor of
Plymouth Church, Congregational, Minneapolis, and Editor The Chicago Advance.
THE many theories as to retribution may be so
classified as to be included in seven. The first deserves to be called a theory
only because of the absence of theory. It is the affirmation of ignorance
respecting the future,-Agnosticism. The second is, Death marks the cessation of
all existence, - Materialism. The third is, All men at death are saved,-absolute
Universalism. The fourth is, At death the righteous are saved, the sinners
suffer for a time, but are ultimately saved,-Restorationism. The fifth is, At
death the righteous are saved, but the wicked perish either immediately or
enter upon a condition of which the end is destruction,-Annihilation. The sixth
is, The period for the acceptance of Christ is continued to the judgment for
those who have not known of Christ in this life,-Second Probation. The seventh
is, At death the righteous are saved, the wicked condemned to eternal
punishment,-the ordinary view of heaven and of hell.
The first theory, of agnosticism, demands in
this place no attention. The second theory, that death marks the end of
existence, is opposed to the instincts of man and intuitions of the soul, the
convictions of reason, and the teachings of the Bible. Even if man has come up
from the animal, he has reached a stage above the animal, and is not to perish
as the animal. This theory is held only by the crass materialists. The third
theory, of absolute universalism, is less commonly held than formerly. Opposed
to the moral intuitions, it tends to eliminate free-will from man, implying
that man shall be saved whatever his volition may be; it elevates happiness
above holiness; it is directly contrary to those passages which imply that
there are sins against the Holy Ghost which are never forgiven. The fourth
theory, of restorationism, likewise elevates happiness above holiness, tends to
impinge on man's volitional freedom, and is opposed by such passages of the
Bible as indicate that punishment is eternal. The fifth theory, of
annihilation, known as " conditional immortality," "life in
Christ," receives support from many Biblical passages which suggest the
destruction at death of the wicked. It is, however, contrary to the desires and
instincts of the life of man. Although variety of penalty seems to be a
characteristic of punishment and of the moral government of God, the
destruction of man implies that it is not possible for men to receive those varying
deserts which the just government of a just God would give. The sixth theory,
of second probation, finds some evidence in a couple of passages in Second
Peter, but it is set -aside by the second chapter of Romans, and by the
warning, appeal, and argument of the whole Bible. It is certainly singular, if
such a theory be true, that Christ did not give to heavy-laden, anxious
humanity some suggestion of it. The absence of any such suggestion is the
strongest negative evidence. If there be a second probation, it is clear, if
any fact in God's word be clear, that God did not propose to reveal the truth.
Therefore for man to foist such a theory into the articles of faith is a type
of treason to the Bible and to Biblical theology. The seventh theory, the view
more ordinarily received among orthodox Christians, represents that the
righteous are saved at death, and that the wicked are at death lost; that not
till the resurrection and the judgment do the one enter upon the fullness of
joy belonging to the heavenly state, nor the other enter upon that fullness of
despair and remorse belonging to their condition.
I should be far from denying that each one of
the first six theories has arguments in its favour; I should be unwilling to
affirm that no arguments can be found against the more orthodox view. My own
humble contribution to this discussion can be made, I think, the more worthy of
the reader's forbearance, not by representing the stock and capital arguments,
but by naming certain general considerations. These considerations are simply
suggestions which may tend to relieve the ordinary view of future retribution
of some-of the difficulties and objections with which, in the minds of many, it
is encumbered.
It is, I think, important to bear in mind what
the sinner is not punished for. He is not punished for the exterior evil
conditions of his life; he is not punished for another's sin; he is not
punished for false, or inadequate, or obscure mental opinions as such; he is
not punished for evil physical appetite which he did not originate, and which
he could not avoid; he is not punished for any innate evil tendencies: he is
punished for what he is, for the sin which is his own, for the preferences of
the less good before the greater. He is punished as an individual for acts,
states, moods, which he himself caused, and which he himself could have
avoided. God does not visit the sins of the fathers upon children to the third
and fourth generations in the form of punishment. He does so visit them in
accordance with the natural law of heredity in the form of evil; but evil and
punishment may be as remote as are guilt and misfortune. We are in no sense of
the word punished for Adam's 918 sin, nor for the sin of anyone except
ourselves, although we do suffer by reason of others' sins.
It also seems to me that a very common and
serious objection to the doctrine of eternal punishment is removed in the
proposition that the punishment of the sinner is adjusted to his guilt.
Individuality survives the grave. Augmented individuality, we may believe, is
one of the results of the resurrection. We carry ourselves into the future
world. Heaven is not to be supposed to be a communistic state in which the lot
of each is the same as the lot of everyone. With all reverence it may be said
that in such a case the social joys of heaven would be dreadfully stupid and
monotonous. We carry into heaven our individuality, temper, constitution,
capacities. We cannot but believe God will respect these differences in the
upper as he certainly does in the lower paradise. But we may also believe that
the same varieties of conditions exist in the state of retribution. Why not? It
has been a singular misfortune that some preachers, and some poets, have
combined their eloquence and rhythm to represent that in one common state of
punishment all the lost are involved. The implication, if not the statement, of
several of Edwards's sermons, sermons as true in most of their teachings as
they are marvels of eloquent logic, is that the same fire consumes the
impenitent of whatever guilt. In later times the greatest preacher of the
century, as Edwards was the greatest thinker of the present century in America,
has implied the same truth in drawing such a picture as this: "Only
conceive the poor wretch in the flames who is saying, O for one drop of water
to cool my parched tongue! See how his tongue hangs from his blistering lips,
how it excoriates and burns the lips of his mouth as it were a firebrand!
Behold him crying for a drop of water! "
Of the poets, however, Dante is more true.
Dante combining the notions of medieval Christianity and medieval paganism mapped
out hell into circles, assigning to each circle some one class of the
impenitent, and attributing to each class its fitting punishment. From the
first circle of the unbaptized the degrees of guilt, of wantonness, violence,
fraud, theft, treason, treachery, to the last circle of extremes guilt, deepen.
That the great poet represents in his figures the sentiment of human kind is
evident. Natural justice demands that punishment be proportionate to guilt.
Divine mercy, so far as made known to us, has no element which forbids such
adjusting. If to heaven some are admitted with an abundant entrance, others are
scarcely saved. Likewise are souls, which by their own weight of evil naturally
sink to the lower abysses, and others whose fate is, if no less certain, even
perhaps less terrible, because they are less weighted with evil. If it is said
that all deserve the severest punishment possible, and therefore God does
punish all alike, it may be answered that such a condition is opposed to the
analogies of God's dealings with men in this life.
In one sense we deserve nothing of God; in
another sense, since God is our Creator, we deserve with at least the
"merit of congruity" that we have fitting conditions for carrying out
the great purposes of our being. Indeed, all have sinned, and all deserve
punishment; yet it does not seem congruous, fitting to the divine character,
and consonant with the divine dealing, that the more guilty and the less guilty
should share the same woe. But upon this condition we are glad to say
revelation sheds light. The divine Master and his chief apostle have expressly
given their approbation to the intuitions of the soul as to varieties of
condition in the retributive state. The inhabitants of some cities of
Palestine, as Chorazin, Bethsaida, are to enter upon a condition less tolerable
than the fate of Tyre and Sidon (Matt., 11: 21). The punishment of stripes is
determined by the varying guilt of the sin for which the punishment is
administered (Luke, 12: 47, 48). Paul expressly declares (Romans, 2: 6), that
God renders to every man according to his deeds, and this rendering is not
necessarily limited to two species or sorts of rewards, but may be made to
include rewards of every kind.
He
further says (verse 12) that there is a judgment without, and a judgment with,
law; and the safe inference from the remark is that the resulting penalty
manifests a variety. The writer of the Hebrews sets forth the same doctrine
with strength and clearness. He affirms that there is variety in the guilt of
sin, and the more. guilty sin receives the severer punishment (Hebrews, 10:
26-29). " For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge
of the truth, there remained no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain. fearful
looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the
adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three
witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought
worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and bath counted the blood
of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing and Lath clone
despite unto the Spirit of grace?"
We are inclined to emphasize the severity of
punishment. The emphasis is fitting enough. But in any theodicy it also becomes
evident that if punishment is adjusted to guilt, and if some punishment is
severe, some also in comparison is slight. Reason lends its hand to the truth
of the Bible that the punishment of guilt runs all the way from suffering
slight to suffering terrible. The great gulf is still fixed. It is great in
that it is fixed, unalterable; great in that it is eternal; great in that it
divides absolutely two classes of beings. Punishment has other elements than
ceaselessness. It is endless, but it is varied in respect to the categories of
quality and quantity. Men rebel, and rebel rightly, against the conception that
all are to suffer the same punishment for different sins. This conception is
the origin of much of the current disbelief or unbelief as to future
retribution. The belief that punishment is to be adjusted to the guilt of the
offender removes this objection.
That punishment is thus varied becomes still
more evident from the probability that the punishment of the sinner consists of
his remorse; and remorse, we must believe, differs according to the heinousness
of sin. The idea that punishment is wholly arbitrary and inflicted by some
power without is fast disappearing. It is not to be denied that punishment may
be arbitrary, and may be inflicted from without, neither is this to be
affirmed; but it is to be affirmed that the probability is strong that the
distinctive punishment is remorse. In this life the divine chastisements seem
less to be afflictions sent by a personal will than the fruit of the sinner's
own sowing. If reasoning by analogy on this theme is of any value, as we have a
right to believe it has value, it is evident that remorse and emotions related
to remorse represent the chief punishment of sin.
As to the effect of punishment on the soul a
word should be said. By some it is believed that punishment will cause the
sinner to hate his sin, and that he will therefore be saved from his sin. By
others it is said that punishment will result in the destruction of the sinner.
The Bible offers no foundation for the assurance that punishment causes the
sinner to hate or to abandon his sin. Experience, too, furnishes no basis for
such an assurance. We may believe that the will of the sinner suffering
punishment in hell is still free; he has the power of ceasing from sin; but it
is to be said that the will of the one who sins is more or less enslaved. Habit
opposes freedom of choice, or impels choices to run in one pathway. The
confirmed drunkard and opium eater are examples of the freedom of the will,
which without being absolutely in subjection is still certain to make one and
the same evil choice. As there is a moral certainty that the angels will do
right, though having the natural capacity of doing wrong, so there is a moral
certainty of a sinner in hell doing wrong, though he has a natural capacity of
doing right. He can, but he will not. Punishment may justly last so long as the
sinner sins, and to sin he will not cease. The evidence is strong that sin
results in the destruction of the sinner; but the evidence is stronger that sin
results not in the destruction but in the diminution of the life of the sinner.
So far as we have knowledge of the effect of sin it tends to deaden every
faculty concerned in the commission of the sin: it hardens conscience; it dulls
the intellect; it increases the destructive forces of appetite; it gives loose
reign to desire; it clouds the affections; it binds the will in the iron
shackles of base habit. But we have no evidence that this deadening process
ever results in extinction. Philosophers speak of a becoming which never
reaches absolute being. So on the other side we may speak of a deadening which
never eventuates in death. Against the supposition that sin results in
annihilation of the sinner are two main arguments. First, the variety of
punishment: annihilation, if immediate, allows no opportunity for variety of
punishment. Second, annihilation, if gradual, is opposed by all the
considerations for the immortality of the soul. These considerations it is not
necessary here to recite; but they have value, and their value is entirely set
aside by the theories of annihilation. The continuance in sin therefore tends
to debase and to degrade the sinner. With.: out ever ceasing to be he progresses
toward this ceasing. In figurative language remorse gnaws the conscience
without devouring the conscience. The fire of punishment ever burns the
offending soul without consuming the soul. Somewhere in the Koran is a story of
the inhabitants of the Dead Sea, to whom Moses was sent. They contemned Moses,
and. he left them. He came appealing to their highest natures; they refused to
hear his appeal, and the result was that these highest natures they lost.
Carlyle who quotes the story, says: "By not using their souls they lost
them; and now their only employment is to sit there and look out in the
smokiest, dreariest, most undecipherable sort of universe. Only once in several
days they do remember that they once bad souls." In the other world, as in
this, sin means the ruin of the soul, without meaning its destruction.
The ordinary conception of retribution is
abhorrent to many devout minds on the ground that it necessitates the belief
that the number of those lost far exceeds the number of those saved. If my idea
of retribution involved such a conclusion, I should in my moral integrity infer
that my idea was either false or wrong. It is my belief that the saved will
outnumber the lost somewhat as those outside the walls of hospitals and prisons
outnumber those within.
The reasons are patent. One-fifth of the human
race dies in infancy; they are saved. One-third of the human race dies before
the age of twelve, of which no small share is presumptively free from moral
evil; and they are saved. It is further to be remembered that God is a God of
grace, and that grace is his chief attribute. He is quite as willing, even more
willing, to save men than they are to be saved. We may believe that many men in
the last days of life make their first supreme choice of holiness. Many also
there are who are disciples in secret. In the millennium all are to be
followers of the King in his glory. The remark of Christ that those following
him are few, and those walking in the broad way many, is to be interpreted with
reference to his own time. Of his own time it was true. Of some other times it
is not true. It is not true of the age in which we live. It will not be true of
the millennial age. We should not permit our thoughts to commit souls to
eternal punishment except as the evidence necessitates such a conclusion. We
should remember that God's arm is not shortened that it cannot save, neither
his ear heavy that it cannot hear. It is only when the sinner refuses to grasp
the divine and pierced hand thus outstretched to save that he is lost; only
when in his own dumbness he refuses to ask for salvation that he passes into a
state of punishment from which God would have kept him, and into which he has
flung himself despite the intercession of divine compassion. " The divine love,"
says Muller, in the last paragraph of the last chapter of his great work on
sin, " draws all to itself who do not resist its holy drawing; but those
who obstinately and pertinaciously chain themselves to that which absolutely
ought not to be, moral evil, become separated with it as clear dross from the
purifying and sublimating process of the world."
Underlying much of the looser thinking as to
eschatology in our time is the presumption that suffering is the worst evil,
and happiness the greatest good, in the moral universe. That suffering is an
evil, and that happiness is a good, is of course to be granted; but that one is
the summum malum, or that the other is the summum bonum, is to be promptly
denied. Sin is an evil greater than the suffering of punishment. Holiness,
righteousness in character, is a good that is superior to happiness. Suffering
is individual, immediately limited to him who suffers; but sin has relations
which may be universal. Sin is the imposition of the will of the sinner upon the
will of God; it is rebellion against God; it is the sovereignty of the will of
man proving itself superior to the sovereignty of the divine will. So far
therefore as sin succeeds, it is the overthrow of the divine government. Sin,
socially considered, is the disintegration of the body politic. Therefore sin
is an evil far worse than suffering. Happiness like sin is personal, limited to
him who is happy. Holiness in character is likewise personal. But the
individual has a consciousness that the moral value of holiness is Of higher
worth than the moral value of happiness. Holiness further has relations to God;
it is attained only through communion with him and by the doing of his will.
Men shrink from the thought of a human being suffering forever. No wonder they
shrink; they should shrink; they would be inhuman if they did not shrink. But
it is a catastrophe far more awful for a human being forever to be a rebel
against God. Men exult in the contemplation of happiness; and well may they
exult; not thus to exult would indeed be inhuman. Rut a heaven of holiness is
far better fitted to the soul's capacities, and is of a worth greater than one
of happiness.
In closing I make four remarks:- 23. Any
doctrine of future retribution is beset by difficulties. The doctrine belongs
to a department of theology in which the data are slight. Therefore any
doctrine is to be formulated with special care, with unwillingness on the one
hand to be overwise, and with a willingness on the other to accept at its full
worth all the teachings of revelation and of reason, despite the sad
conclusions which they necessitate.
24. The doctrine of future retribution is to
be viewed in its relations to other doctrines. The warnings and denunciations
of the 925 Bible against sin suggest the awfulness of the penalties of sin. The
incarnation and the death of Christ intimate that it is only the most
lamentable fate which would have demanded such a sacrifice on the part of God.
Historically, too, it may be added, that a weak theory of eschatology means a
weak theory as to the authority of the Bible, and as to the atonement; and a
strong theory of eschatology means a strong theory as to the authority of the
Bible, and as to the atonement.
6. The doctrine of future retribution being
true should be preached; but it should be preached with tears in the voice as
well as tears in the eyes of the preacher. The doctrine should be saturated
with sorrowing sympathy; far too often it has been proclaimed as if the
preacher felt that eternal damnation were a fate only too good for those who
refuse to heed the metallic persuasiveness of his voice. Such preaching is
simply devilish. If a preacher can preach on this theme without weeping, he had
better not preach on it at all. It is significant that a chapter of Luke (13),
which contains severe maledictions against sinners, closes with a passage
descriptive of what is commonly known as "Christ's weeping over
Jerusalem."
25. The doctrine of future retribution
suggests the proper relation of revelation and of reason. Revelation is not
unrational. Revelation comes from a God who has reason, conscience, free-will.
Revelation came through men, who also were thus endowed. Revelation came to men
who also have reason, conscience, and freewill. Revelation is not for the same
reasons anti-rational. It cannot be opposed to reason. Revelation is
super-rational; it is above the human reason. Yet in certain relations the
human reason can judge revelation; if, thus judging, reason finds revelation
credible, it is a safe inference that in these other and super-rational
relations also revelation is likewise worthy of credit. The doctrine of future
retribution is founded upon both reason and revelation. Reason accepts the statements
of revelation, ascertains their evidential value, and from them induces its
doctrines as to retribution.
It finds that the doctrine thus formulated
receives support from the nature of the human constitution, and from the nature
of sin. It believes the doctrine upon evidence that contains a greater or less
degree of faith. The doctrine therefore is to be held as proved until stronger
evidence in contradiction is presented.
The doctrine of a Conditional immortality and
of the eternal destruction of the wicked.
By the Rev. EDWARD WHITE Professor of
Homiletics in New College, London, lately of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales.
IF there be a God in Nature, and if this God
has spoken to man in the Hebrew Revelation, then he is morally one and the same
God, in Nature, Judaism, and Christianity; terrible to law-breakers, but good
to the willing and obedient.
The eternal destiny of mankind will be
determined not on arithmetical but on spiritual principles. "When the
wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish,
it is that they shall he destroyed for ever; " words in which the psalmist
speaks the language of universal conscience (Ps., 92: 7). The divine judgment
will give to every man "according to his works." Nevertheless, the
question of human destiny acquires an appalling interest from the prodigious
number of the earth's population, and from the indifferent character of so many
of them. The lowest modern estimate gives thirteen hundred millions, of whom
nearly a thousand millions are non-Christians; Buddhists, Brahminists,
Mohammedans, Jews, Parsees, and miscellaneous heathen idolaters of Asia and
Africa. If the present inhabitants of India and Burma, alone, could pass in
single file before a person able to fix a gaze of one minute's duration on each
(not too much time to expend in thinking of an eternal doom), then, if the
stream should roll on night and day, it would require over five hundred years
to bestow this momentary notice on all the two hundred million people, young
and old, now living in England's eastern empire. If arranged in lines of thirty
abreast, and a yard apart, the column would extend from the borders of
Afghanistan, throughout the whole Turkish empire, and across the continent of
Europe, to the Atlantic shore, a distance of five thousand three hundred miles.
By the aid of this integer the mind may train itself to imagine the masses of
mankind in all lands, and in all the ages; each individual of them, according
to St. Paul, destined to give an account of himself unto God (Rom., 14:12). The
question is, Has Almighty God revealed the destiny of the unsaved portion of
these dense multitudes of mankind? The answer, given for many centuries past by
the Church, is that, after deductions for those dying in infancy and childhood,
or in invincible ignorance, for whom hopeful views are entertained by many, the
residue of the “wicked," being by nature immortal, will suffer in hell in
different degrees throughout infinite duration. This doctrine underlies the
modern missionary enterprise, and has been recently re-affirmed, after much
disputing, by one of the foremost of the American missionary societies.
Holding this belief of the modern churches to
be an error of appalling magnitude and disastrous influence; to be based on (1)
a psychology false in itself, and contrary to Holy Scripture; (2) on a Biblical
exegesis which sets at defiance those first principles of orthodox
interpretation, which are obeyed in every other department of sacred truth; and
(3) on a tradition which is contrary to the main testimony of Judaism and of
Ante-Nicene Christendom; I have been invited to represent the opinion of those
who maintain on Biblical grounds the exclusive immortality of regenerate men,
and the literal destruction of the unsaved in the " second death."
This doctrine, however, of the destruction of
the wicked cannot be thoroughly explained apart from some reference to the
circle of truths of which it forms a part, and not the most important part. Of
that circle of truths, the central idea is the incarnation of the Divine Life,
the union of the finite and the infinite in Christ, regarded as the only source
of human immortality, by the redemption of man from sin and death; while the
circumference of the circle consists in the revealed history of man's original
state as created, of his subsequent apostasy from God, of the methods of his
recovery and salvation; through the atonement of the Son of God, through the
regeneration of human nature by the indwelling Spirit of life; and through
resurrection from the dead, in glory " equal to the angels,"-leaving
for the remaining segment of the circle the revealed doctrine on the "
everlasting destruction " of those who persist in rebellion against the
King of Eternity.
This connected statement, as a whole, is known
by the name of the doctrine of Life in Christ,* because its chief aspects
regard the salvation by grace of the natural man (of St. Paul, 1 Cor., 2:14;
15:44) from impending extinction of life, through union with the divine eternal
man, Christ Jesus; so that it is as rational to denominate it the doctrine of
" annihilation" as it would be to speak of medicine and surgery as
doctrines of annihilation, because they deal with dying life. The leading truths
concerned cannot be expressed with greater clearness and brevity than in the
language of the Lord himself in his discourse in the Capernaum synagogue.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of
man, and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves" (R. V:). "I
am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will
give for the life of the world." "As the living Father hath sent me,
and I live by the Father; so he that eats me, even he shall live by me. Your
fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and died: this is the bread that came
clown from heaven that a man should eat thereof and not die " (John, 6:
49-58). Thus men must be born twice, or die twice. We must be " born
again," or die " the second death " (John, 3: 1-5. Apoc., 2: 11;
20: 6, 14; 21: 8). St. Peter's words are parallel. " Being born again, not
of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides.
For all flesh is as grass; the grass withered, the flower faded, but the word
of the Lord endured forever. And this is the word which in the gospel is
preached unto you " (1 Pet., 1: 23-25). So also 1 John, 2:17, " For
the world passes away and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abides
for ever."
The doctrine of Life in Christ then is
directly opposed to the notion-widely held. in European and American
Christendom, but almost unknown in heathen Asia-of the naturally and absolutely
immortal individuality of all human souls; and the removal of this notion leads
at once to the full development of the Scripture doctrine of personal
immortality through the divine incarnation alone.
It must, however, be noted, at the outset,
that the denial of the absolute immortality of souls is not the same thing with
the denial of their survival in the first death. The butterfly rises from the
chrysalis, but it does not live forever. Nature is half filled with examples of
the survival of portions of organisms, which are nevertheless perishable. All
seeds of plants are survivals which are not possessed of eternal life. Thus
also the souls or spirits of all men may survive for different ends, according
to the Scripture; some for punishment (" The Lord knows how to reserve the
ungodly unto the day of judgment under punishment;" 2 Peter, 2: 9); some
for education, as the souls of children some for further visitations of mercy,
as those "spirits in prison " whom the Spirit of Christ visited in
the interval between his death and resurrection (1 Pet., 3: 19; 4: 5, 6); some
to rest with the Lord until the time of his glorious advent (Phil., 1: 23),
when they will "receive according to their works." But those alone
will "live forever" who have become "one spirit" with the
incarnate Word, by the second birth unto righteousness. For all others there is
reserved the " destruction of body and soul in Gehenna " (Matt., 10:
20). " These, as natural brute beasts, born for capture and extinction*;
speaking evil of the things which they understand not; shall utterly perish in
their own corruption, or mortality " (2 Pet., 2: 12).
The general argument, therefore, for the
Scriptural authority of the doctrine of Life in Christ, or immortality on the
condition of regeneration, may be summed up under the following heads:-
25.
Neither the light of reason, nor ancient tradition, nor revelation, teaches the
eternity of the soul, by nature.
26. Holy Scripture denies it, not only by a
consistent silence on the subject, from the days of Moses to St. John, but by
the most express and steadfast assertion of the destruction of the wicked.
27. The doctrine of Holy Scripture on the
redemption of the world by the incarnation of the LIFE, that is, of the eternal
Word of God; and the whole structure of the language used in setting forth the
doctrine of redemption, assert in the strongest manner that the very object of
that redemption is to confer absolute immortality, or eternal life, on
regenerate men, and not simply to confer pardon, holiness, and bliss on beings
already immortal or incapable of death.
28. That the experienced results of thus
representing the divine revelation, both at home and in the mission field, are
such as to confirm the persuasion that the doctrine of life and death eternal,
as thus understood, sheds fresh lustre on the moral attributes of God, adds a
new force to faith and love, while offering an effectual reply to the chief
objections of atheism and infidelity.
Neither the light of reason, nor patriarchal
tradition, nor revelation, teaches the eternity of the soul by nature.
Not many months ago, brief statements of
belief concerning the future life were obtained from a large number of the
Christian ministers of Boston, which were printed, with the names of the
writers, in one of the daily newspapers, and have since been gathered in a
volume. With one consent these writers laid down, as the foundation of hope,
the nature of the soul, as deathless by its own constitution. They did not
rely, like Dr. Dallinger, on the deathlessness of the animating principle of
all living beings, for that would have asserted an eternal future for oysters
and earth-worms. Nor did they build the hopes of their heaven simply on the
possession of intelligence and affection, for that would have opened the
everlasting doors to nearly the whole animal creation. But they founded their argument
on the spirituality of man's nature as a moral being; on his relations with the
moral government of God; on the suggestions of conscience, and the instinctive
fear in bad men of judgment to come; on the soul's capacity for boundless
progression and advancement; on some cultivated men's aspiration after an endless
life; and on the yearning of spirits, severed here by death, for an everlasting
reunion in some paradise beyond. And the revelations of Christianity were set
forth as confirmations of that truth on the soul's immortality which nature
thus suggests, it is said, to reflective spirits.
The Holy Scriptures doubtless confirm the
instinctive conviction of a future state of reward and punishment, set forth by
the preachers in the discourses referred to. But they do not confirm the
psychological conclusion which these instinctive anticipations were held to
prove-the natural and absolute eternity of all human souls. Not one of these
preachers referred to the striking fact, that there does not exist in the
old-world collection of Biblical writings, from Genesis to the revelation of
St. John, a single example of the use of the now common phrase, of the "
soul's immortality," or of any equivalent phrase which naturally conveys
the idea that the eternal future of man is the result of the constitution of
his nature. The natural and eternal immortality of the soul is nowhere in the
Bible. The French Grand Rabbi Stein acknowledges this with the utmost frankness
and regret,-so far as the Old Testament is concerned. He says: " What
causes most surprise in perusing the Pentateuch is the silence it seems to keep
respecting the most fundamental and consoling truths. The doctrines of the
immortality of the soul and of retribution beyond the tomb are able powerfully
to fortify man against the violence of passions, the seductive attraction of
vice, and to strengthen his steps in the rugged paths of virtue. But man
searches in vain for these truths which he desires so ardently; he in vain
devours with anxiety each page of Holy Writ; he does not find them explicitly
announced."
The Chief Rabbi Adler of London, however, in
the Symposium on Immortality of 1885, in the Homiletic Magazine, demonstrates
victoriously that, notwithstanding the absence from Holy Scripture of the
psychology of the Boston preachers, both Moses and the prophets held as sure a
belief in the immortal life of the servants of God, as good men possess to-day.
Indeed, how could it be that the saints of a nation who had lived for several
centuries in Egypt, where the world to come was almost as vividly conceived of
as the present world; where vivid pictures of the judgment of the soul after
death, in Hades or Amenti, were painted on every mummy case, and depicted in
every copy of the Book of the Dead; where the expectation of bodily
resurrection of the just to the life immortal, by the grace of Osiris, was
proclaimed by inscriptions in every pyramid tomb,-how could it be that the
servants of the living God should have come out of Egypt without any faith of a
life immortal, even if they had inherited no such tradition from their own
ancestors?
But this Hebrew hope of eternal life nowhere
rests, in the Old Testament; on the alleged nature of the soul, nor is it
accompanied by the doctrine of the eternal misery of the wicked. The solution
of 930 this difficulty is supplied in the great German Commentary,
superintended by Dr. Lange, of Bonn. In commenting on our Lord's argument with
the Sadducees, in Luke 20, this commentary thus admirably solves the enigma
which has led astray, in opposite directions, the Grand Rabbis of both France
and England, and places the hope of Israel on its true basis, the grace of God
inwardly made known to his spiritual worshipers; in conformity with the
primitive patriarchal doctrine, maintained under a more heathenish form by the
theology of the Egyptians themselves, which restricted immortal life to the
righteous. Let us listen to Dr. Lange's Commentary.
The unique manner in which our Lord here
supports the doctrine of the resurrection particularly deserves our attention.
Far from occupying the standing-point usually occupied by philosophers, who are
wont to take their notions of immortality from the nature of the human soul,
and, consequently, to prove what. is doubtful by what is unknown, he finds the
firmest ground for the hope of everlasting life in the personal communion of
man with God. He thus, however, gives us to understand that we cannot attain
full possession of our own immortality till we have the assurance and
consciousness of individual communion with God. The hidden reason of their scepticism
was thus pointed out to the Sadducees, as being none other than the alienation
of their inner life floes Him; while the true foundation of hope for the
future, and the only way to perfect certainty, was, at the same time, shown
them. Religious apologists of ancient and modern times would certainly have
lost nothing if they had more closely imitated this example, bad not attempted
to demonstrate the immortality of the soul to those who did not even believe in
the living God, and had not the slightest notion of communion with him. The
deepest experience of our own heart teaches us that without these premises a
belief in immortality is partly uncertain and partly uninfluential; and that as
long as we have not found God we have really lost even ourselves. Believers
under the Old and even under the New Testament have all walked in this way; and
not till after they were assured of the favour of God have they felt sure of
eternal life. The immortality of the soul was no such dogma of the Old
Testament as was the unity of the Godhead: But if anyone were conscious that
God was his God, he knew, also, that he would always remain so; and if any knew
by experience what it was to hold communion with God, he might fall asleep in
the steadfast hope of one day beholding His face in righteousness." The,
rationalistic doctrine of immortality is no better than a doctrine of Hades.
Everything depended on oar attaining a conception of eternal spiritual life in
God after death, which was not a mere existence in Hades, and this hone was
granted only to his saints."
It must occur to all thoughtful readers of the
sacred Scriptures that the total absence of the doctrine of the soul's natural
immortality from the writings of the historians, prophets, psalmists, and
apostles of the" Bible, during the long space of one thousand four hundred
years, is a striking indication of the absence of this belief from their minds;
specially when we observe the steady and tenacious hold which this belief has
taken upon the thinking and language of Platonised Christendom, and its
incorporation into the Church's teaching,. psalmody, and common discourse; so
that the "immortal soul," the " never-dying spirit,"
occupies a place almost beside the divine Being himself, in religious speech,
among " things eternal." How then can we avoid the conclusion that
ancient inspired thought differed toto coelo from modern opinion on this
subject? Few religious addresses are now presented to mankind without a
reminder that they possess immortal souls, as the basis of the whole
theological superstructure. Such a mode of address to men never occurs once in
either Old or New Testament. There the uniform language is, that sin has
brought destruction, and that in order to " live forever " men must
obtain pardon and " eternal life " from God their Maker as the
gratuitous gift of his mercy.
Holy Scripture denies the soul's natural
immortality, not only by a consistent silence on the subject, but by the most
express and steadfast assertion of the destruction of the wicked.
In
works tabulating the language of the Old and New Testaments on the doom of
ungodly men it has been shown repeatedly, during the past fifty years, that the
main current of penal threatening, which runs like a fiery stream through the
length of divine revelation, is delivered in terms of which the English words
death, destruction, perishing, are the correct translation both. of the Hebrew
and the Greek originals, just as the main line of promise to the righteous is
summed up in the assurance of everlasting life. A glance at any concordance to
the Bible will bring these facts immediately into view.
Now we hold it to be the most improbable thing
in the world, that in a prolonged and complicated revelation of God to men, in
two languages, Hebrew and Greek (a revelation ultimately designed for
translation into all the languages of the world, simple or refined), the main
truth should have been delivered throughout, as is asserted, in figurative
language, and not in the plain sense of the simplest words, both of the
original and of all other tongues. We hold it to be the most improbable thing
in the world that in a revelation, designed for men of every nation, and every
succeeding age, two long lines of figurative terminology should have been
employed, to denote the principal realities of blessing and cursing incident to
its reception or rejection, without one single break down into literality, in
the meanings to be attached to life everlasting, or to death, perishing, and
destruction. Yet this is what is asserted by the self-called " orthodox
" party,-that all these terms, throughout Holy Scripture, do not signify
what they seem to signify in their proper sense; but stand for the gift of a
life everlasting which is not life, but the happiness and holiness of a nature
already immortal; while death, perishing, destruction, signify not the
"destruction of soul and body in Gehenna" (Matt., 10: 20) in the
proper sense of the words, but everlasting misery, because it is a sentence
passed on a soul already immortal by its original constitution.
Thus it results, as has been shown elsewhere
in detail, that all the Greek words which Plato, in his dialogue on the Soul's Immortality,
naturally employs to denote the- extinction of the soul's life, are
nevertheless according to this theory the same employed in the Greek Testament
to express the everlasting existence of the soul in misery. So that the
Christian revelation on destiny is delivered in a Greek dialect altogether
unknown to the Greeks themselves; as Professor Cremer, the great New Testament
lexicographer, expressly asserts to be the " orthodox " position.
" They are," he says, "in this sense unknown in classical Greek
writers."
Further, when " figures " are
employed to set forth the nature of the death of the wicked they are uniformly
descriptive of literal destruction. "Into smoke shall they consume
away" (Ps., 37: 30). " The wicked shall perish for ever like his own
doing " (Job, 20: 7). " He shall burn up the chaff with unquenchable
fire" (Matt., 3: 12). " If thine hand offend, cut it off and cast it
from thee, for it is profit-able that one of thy members should perish, and not
that thy whole body be cast into Gehenna" (Mark, 9: 43). The effect of
this last is that the whole body would "perish"; but we see what that
word really signifies by the alternative, " cut it off." " Fear
not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but fear him
that is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna " (Matt., 10: 20).
Here the killing of the soul is represented as the result of being cast into
Gehenna. When "death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire "
(Rev., 20:14), it is to destroy them, so that there shall be "no more
death" (Rev., 21: 3). "Whosoever shall wish to save his life shall
lose it, and he that hated his life in this world shall keep it unto life
eternal " (John, 12: 25). " The thief cometh not but for to steal,
and to kill .and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly " (John, 10: 10). " Man that is in honour
and understands not, is like the beasts that perish " (Psalm, 49: 20).
Even the passage which is thought to be the
strongest in support of endless suffering speaks the same language (Mark, 9:
48). "Shall be cast into hell, where their worm dies not, and the fire is
not quenched." Here the worm's death, in the absence of a negative, would
be plainly its ceasing to live, or exist. So that apparently there are two significations
of this word in Gehenna, one for the worm, and another for the sinner! For the worm
it stands for ceasing to live, for the sinner death signifies eternal existence
in misery. But who can seriously think that revelation is delivered to men
under such impossible philological conditions?
For these reasons then we conclude that the
punishment eternal of Matt. 25: 46 is the " punishment of everlasting
destruction" spoken of in 2 Thess. 1: 9; and that it will come to pass
that " every one who will not hear Christ, the prophet " of God, will
be " destroyed from among the people." the strongest word in Greek to
denote extermination (Acts, 3: 23). In some cases-as in that of the chief
agents of Satan-this end will be reached through " ages of ages " of
suffering. See Rev., 20: 10, a phrase often used in Holy Scripture for a long
but limited duration.* Psalm, 148: 6; Jer., 7: 7, and 25: 5.
The doctrine of Holy Scripture on the
redemption of the world by the incarnation of the divine Life, and the whole
structure of the language employed in setting forth the doctrine of redemption,
is in agreement with the idea of the gift of absolute immortality by
regeneration, and with no other.
1. The divine nature of Christ as the Son of
God accords with it. Man, as a sinner, deserves death, by all the laws of the
universe. We can be saved from death, and endowed with eternal life, only by
the union of human nature with the divine Life, which is above the universe
with its laws. Therefore "the Word was made flesh." " In him was
LIFE, and the LIFE is the light of men." Read Christ's long discourse in
the Capernaum synagogue at length (John, 6), and see whether it is possible for
human language to assert more clearly and positively that the divine nature was
incarnate in order that man "might not die," but " live
forever." So that salvation is salvation from final extinction.
2. The nature of justification as an act of
God's free grace is made clearer by these ideas. A mortal sinner can work
himself up into immortality no more than a dog can by evolution work himself up
into an archangel. " Justification of life " is therefore the free
gift of God to believing men, and to all equally. But on this basis of a
gratuitous salvation from sin and death, each saved man will be rewarded
according to his subsequent " works." Hence the twofold language of
Scripture; one series of passages representing salvation as an absolutely free
gift of life, the other representing our place in that eternal life as
depending on our conduct in stewardship.
3. The place occupied, in the teaching of our
Lord, by the doctrine of regeneration, and of vital union with himself, comes
into clearer view. The Lord proclaimed to Nicodemus not the need for change of
opinions or outward conduct, but for change of nature, in order to " see
the kingdom of God." The " natural man " or man of mere soul can
become the "spiritual man," only by being begotten of the Spirit of
God to a new, a God-inspired, and an immortal life. The evidences of this
life-giving change are " faith, hope, and love "; and in the absence
of these no baptismal regeneration can save any man. United by the Holy Spirit
to the Son of God, we become one with him in life and character for eternity.
" If ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit,
do put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live " (Romans, 8: 13).
4. Next, the prominence assigned in Scripture
to the resurrection is explained. Man is compounded of matter and spirit. The
soul alone is not a man. Abraham's relation to God involved his resurrection
(Luke, 20). But the " resurrection of judgment " is not a
"resurrection to eternal life." The saved alone are immortal.
"Neither can they die any more," but are " equal to the angels
" (Luke, 20). The "second death" awaits those who are not born
of God. They will never leave this planet. The " tares " will be
" burned" on the field. where they grew. The everlasting doors of the
universe are closed against those who, in the beginning of their being,
decisively reject the Inhabitant of Eternity.
The
experienced results of thus representing the revelation of God on life and
death, both at home, and abroad in the mission field, confirm the persuasion
that this doctrine sheds fresh lustre on the moral attributes of God, adds new
force to faith and love, offers a satisfying reply to the chief objections of
atheism and infidelity, and will arouse to repentance all salvable men.
In the brief space of this paper it is
possible only to affirm, as the result of a large acquaintance with the writers
and workers engaged in the diffusion of these views in many lands, that there
is no form of Christian belief which has made more general progress than this
in the Church during the last thirty years. In the English and Scottish
universities some of the most distinguished scholars, theologians, and
professors have held and taught it. The same is true of the French, German, and
Swiss theological colleges. It is accepted as a " tolerated " belief
by the Congregational churches in England, and by the London Missionary
Society. I can affirm on my own knowledge that a large number of missionaries
of several societies hold. and teach it, and find none but good results from
its diffusion among the heathen.
There are few mission stations in India, in
China, in Africa, in the South seas, where there are not convinced and earnest
teachers of the doctrine of life and death as here delineated, who unanimously
report in a favourable sense as to the spiritual results, both on the side of
fear and of hope. The awful prospect of a real, a near, and an eternal
judgment, in the "hell-fire " of which Christ spoke in such
persistent and awful tones, operates more powerfully on men's fears than the
threatening of eternal suffering, because it can be more heartily believed.
Penal threatening are operative in proportion to their justice and apparent
certainty of fulfillment. But it is by hope, not by fear, that men are chiefly
won to God. Terror, under any circumstances, is an animal emotion, and
therefore transitory in its action. The permanent and more powerful influences
of the gospel appeal to our moral nature, to our reason, to our passion for
happiness, and to our affections; and all of these appeals are strengthened
immensely by the removal of that greatest incentive to scepticism which is
found in the doctrine of a torment that shall never end. Not hell, but heaven,
is the principal subject of the Bible. The end of teaching is- not to "
fit men to die," but to fit them to live, here, or in any world.
If, as many now suppose, man was developed
gradually from pre-existing animal and mortal races, he can have inherited from
them no immortality of either soul or body. Or, if we accept as historic truth
the account of his creation in the book of Genesis, there is no mention there
of his soul's immortality. His life depended on the tree of life, and from that
man was excluded by his sin. The survival of the fittest is then the doctrine
equally of nature and revelation. And both alike point us to Christ, the
Incarnate Life, as the way to God and immortality.
If to this we acid, that the reform of human
criminal law has proved that nearness, and certainty, and credibility, are more
effectual in giving a deterring force to threatened penalties, than unlimited
terribleness in the threatened punishments, we may safely conclude that the
desired modification in the doctrine of future punishment derived from Holy
Scripture will induce* the far more desirable reform of real belief in a
"judgment to come," in a world which has of late " cast, off
fear," very much as the consequence of the exaggerations produced by a
baseless psychology, and an extravagant exegesis.