1
 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 A REPLY TO THE REV. J. BALDWIN BROWN'S LECTURES 
 ON CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY. 
 
 REV. EDWARD WHITE, 
 
 MINISTER OF ST. TAUL's CHArEL, IIAWLEV KOAD, KENTISH TOWN'. 
 
 THREE LETTERS ON THE SAME SUBJECT, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. SAMUEL MINTON, M.A., 
 
 LATE MINISTER OF EATON CHAIEL. 
 
 Reprinted from the *' Christian World:' 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1877. 
 
 i
 
 H.-izclI, Watson, and Viney, Printers, Lontlon and Aylesbury.
 
 PREFACF. 
 
 [N the spring of the present year the Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, 
 
 B.A., of Brixton, delivered four lectures at his own Church 
 
 against the doctrine of Conditional Immortality. These were 
 
 reported in the Christian Worlds a weekly periodical which 
 
 claims a circulation of one hundred and thirty thousand 
 
 copies. The following letters, by the courtesy of the Editor, 
 
 appeared in the same serial. And inasmuch as they offer a brief 
 
 explanation of the leading doctrines taught by those who hold 
 
 to the faith that man owes his immortal life not to descent from 
 
 Adam, but to Redemption, and at the same time deal with tke 
 
 principal objections made to that faith by popular preachers, 
 
 it has been thought well to reprint them in a more permanent 
 
 form as a manual for inquirers. 
 
 E. W. 
 
 Brathay House, Tufnp:ll Park, N. 
 Jim:, 1%'Tj.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A GENERAL ARGUMENT ON THE SOLE AUTHORITY OF HOLY 
 SCRIPTURE ON THE QUESTION AT ISSUE, AND A DISCUS- 
 SION ON THE PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRETATION . . 5 
 
 LETTER n. ■ 
 
 ON THE QUESTION, WHETHER THERE ARE MORAL DIFFER- 
 ENCES IN MEN, CORRESPONDING WITH THE DOCTRINE 
 OF AN ETERNAL DISTINCTION IN THEIR DESTINIES . 20 
 
 LETTER in. 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT BY DESTRUC- 
 TION . 34 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 ON THE ALLEGED TENDENCY OF THE DOCTRINE TO EN- 
 COURAGE MATERIALISTIC ATHEISM . . . . 49 
 
 REPRINT OF A CRITICISM ON THE SIXTH CHAPTER OF ST. 
 
 JOHN'S GOSPEL 58 
 
 MR. MINTON'S LETTERS TO THE "CHRISTIAN WORLD" ON 
 MR. BALDWIN BROWN'S FIRST SERIES OF DISCOURSES 
 ON CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY 6;^ 
 
 u,uc
 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 A GENERAL ARGUMENT FOR THE SOLE AUTHORITY OF 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE ON THE QUESTION AT ISSUE, AND 
 A DISCUSSION ON THE PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRE- 
 TATION. 
 
 Sir, — In offering a few comments on Mr. Baldwin Brown's 
 lectures against Conditional Immortality, I must first of all 
 thank him for devoting his energies to a subject avoided by 
 the general public. We, who have for many years set forth 
 the arguments by which that doctrine is sustained, had be-' 
 come so accustomed to our lack of success in breaking the 
 silence of the leading preachers of the Gospel, that it seemed 
 almost wonderful when a man in Mr. Brown's position showed 
 signs of comprehending the breadth and the gravity of the 
 questions raised, and undertook to canvass the quality of our 
 endeavours. Mr. Brown's passionate hostility to this doctrine 
 is so much more rational, manly, and even Christian, than the 
 persistent dumbness and indifference of the generality of 
 preachers, that the public owes a debt of gratitude to one who 
 at least discerns' the issues at stake, and courageously acknow- 
 ledges that there is a case which deserves serious consideration. 
 Such a course is all the more meritorious if, as tlie lecturer
 
 6 Doctrine of the Primitive Church, 
 
 tells us, much of the printed matter put forth by sundry 
 advocates of that doctrine is of ghastly dulness, and has 
 proved a weariness to his flesh. I know of no excuses for 
 the existence of such literature except these two : first, that 
 every considerable movement in theology has in past ages 
 been accompanied by a Hood of pamphlets and articles which 
 would be very painful reading to a modern lecturer ; and, 
 secondly, that Providence seems to avenge the steady refusal 
 of the ablest writers to handle these questions, by permitting 
 the literary activity of less eloquent brethren, who, if not so 
 learned or brilliant, are often much more seriously in earnest 
 than their supeiiors. But genuine love for truth will lead us not 
 to be ashamed even of the most illiterate endeavours to extend 
 its sovereignty m the world. Courageous faith also prompts 
 us to sympathy with all who share it, even if their dialect be 
 Galilean, and their argument now and then a little paradoxical. 
 Yet Mr. Baldwin Brown will not forget, while honouring a few 
 of us beyond our deserts with so distinguished a share of his 
 attention, that on the same side are a multitude of other 
 writers, ancient and modern, Asiatic, European, and American, 
 whose learning and capacity it would be impertinent alike 
 for me to extol or for him to depreciate. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE TAUGHT BY THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
 
 I. This doctrine is taught, as plainly as possible, by writers 
 whose close relation with the apostles gives the utmost weight 
 to their remarkable words. Irenaeus, the scholar of Polycarp, 
 who was the disciple of St. John, teaches that *• Life is not 
 from ourselves, nor from our nature ; but is given or bestowed 
 according to the grace of God ; and, therefore, he who pre- 
 serves this gift of life, and returns thanks to Him who bestows 
 it, shall receive 'length of days for ever and ever.' But he 
 who rejects it, and proves unthankful to his Maker for creating 
 him, deprives himself of the gift of duration to all eternity; 
 ipse se privat in scculum seculi tersci^eraniid'' "For," he adds
 
 Ircnaiis — AiJianashis, 7 
 
 in his third book, *' it was for this end that the Word of God 
 was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the 
 son of man, that man, having been taken into tlie A\^ord, and 
 receiving sonship, might become the son of God. For by 
 no other means could we have attained to incorruptibiHty, 
 unless we had been united to Incorruptibility and Immortality. 
 But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality 
 unless first Incorruptibility and Immortality had become that 
 which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed 
 up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality?" 
 
 In the very same manner Athanasius, even so late as the 
 year a.d. 360, speaks of the object of the Incarnation in his 
 striking treatise on the Incarnation of the Word. " For tlie 
 transgression of the command brought men back to their 
 natural condition : so that, even as when not existing they had 
 been created, so also they should undergo destruction of 
 being in the course of time. And justly ; for if possessing 
 the nature of not being once, by the presence and philan- 
 thropy of the Logos they were called into being, it was right 
 that men, being emptied of the knowledge of God, and turn- 
 ing to the things that are not, (for evil things are things that 
 are not, but good things really are, since they proceed from the 
 really existing God,) should, be emptied also of eternal being, 
 and this is for them, being dissolved, to remain in d^th or 
 extinction. For man is according to nature mortal, as a being 
 who has been made out of things that are not. But on 
 account of his likeness to God he could by piety ward oft 
 his natural mortality, and remain indestructible if he retained 
 the knowledge of God, or lose his incorruptibility if he lost 
 his life in God." A doctrine, then, which has at least the 
 sanction of tlie remotest Christian antiquity — which has a 
 number of times since been revived and set forth against pre- 
 vailing error — until at length it has been illustrated by the 
 genius of Dr. Rothe, by the profound learning of Professor 
 Hudson, of Cambridge, U.S.A., in his work on " Debt and
 
 8 yndicial calmness in Coyiiroversy, 
 
 (iracc," which makes all other writings on the subject seem 
 ahiiost iHiterate, and at last by the vigorous logic and spiritual 
 energy of Mr. Dale, — such a doctrine can scarcely be treated 
 with contumely as a speciality of modern theorists, of puny 
 literalists, or " brutal " materialist?. 
 
 MR. BALDWIN brown's SEVERITY. 
 
 2. And this leads me to acknowledge that a certain difficulty 
 attends the endeavour to present these reflections on the 
 recent lectures to your readers — the difficulty, I mean, which 
 arises from the tone into which Mr. Baldwin Brown has 
 allowed himself to descend in his treatment of the "school " 
 to which he is opposed. Conceding at the outset that he has 
 to do M'ith " a band of most sincere and earnest Christian 
 thinkers," he has afterwards qualified that concession by so 
 many imputations of " bitterness,'^ " hardness," " coldness," 
 " bh"ndness," "Pharisaism," and other bad characteristics 
 which I do not care to repeat, that it is by no means easy to 
 reply with de<:orum to such an adversary. Nevertheless it 
 must be done, and done without retaliation, or mingling of 
 personal vindication with the prosecution of so lofty an 
 argument. One consideration only I will submit to Mr. 
 Brown in this regard. He will on reflection admit that the 
 tone of "judicial calmness" and fairness, which he extols as 
 the proper attribute of a scientific man of the first class — the 
 temper, for example, which Professor Huxley would certainly 
 exhibit in any controversy with Dr. Elam or Mr. Carruthers 
 on the doctrine of Evolution which these physiologists deny — 
 is pre-eminently the tone and the temper which become those 
 who believe their opponents to be "sincere and earnest 
 Christian thinkers"; and tliat the discovery of truth is only 
 liindcred by language which provokes the susceptibilities of 
 the persons whom he seeks to persuade, and is justified neither 
 by the example of good writers in other departments of inquiry, 
 nor by any manifest disparity of intelligence in the two parties
 
 The Docirme of Inkrprctdtion, 9 
 
 to the present discussion. It is a needless demand on time 
 to be required to prove that the maintainers of Conditional 
 Immortality are entitled to respectful treatment. 
 
 The main cause now advocated assuredly does not depend 
 on the specialities or minor advances of any single writer ; 
 we form no " school," for I am only one of many who, with 
 various powers, some far greater than any to which I can 
 lay claim, are studying these problems of life and death 
 eternal. AVe are a scattered company of tentative inquirers 
 into nature and Scripture, ready for all needful changes and 
 amendments as the evidence appears. Strongly united in 
 some leading lines of thought, we differ in detail among our- 
 selves as much as do all bands of explorers in somewhat 
 unknown ground. To throw in our faces our early mistakes 
 seems very hard, especially when this is done by men who, 
 until lately, were confessedly in the dark themselves. We 
 really are willing to learn from friends and foes, and to 
 abandon our errors. But meanwhile give us gentler treatment. 
 Grapple with the facts ^ and help us to understand them. Do 
 not visit us with so much unmerciful castigation. It is only 
 Balaam who smites the willing Ass, refusing. to advance 
 farther, and brought to a stand in the road, by the sight of the 
 Angel with the flaming sword of eternal justice drawn in his 
 hand. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF INTERPRETATION. 
 
 3. I gladly leave this painful topic. There is too much to 
 a.dmire in Mr. Brown to permit of serious grievance. Let us 
 now turn to the real question, in which your readers will be 
 interested far more deeply than in any matters of style debated 
 between theological writers. Underlying the whole structure 
 of Mr. Brown's argument there is a doctrine of interpretation, 
 taking that work in the widest sense, which requires more 
 discussion than Jie has bestowed on it, since on its validity
 
 lO Scripture viust decide, 
 
 depends llie whole tremendous issue of this controversy. I 
 refer to Mr. Brown's nietliod of deaHng witli flicts in nature, 
 and with tlie letter of Scripture, in conformity with what he 
 supposes to be the dictate of some inward inspiration in the 
 soul of man. 
 
 SCRIPTURE MUST DECIDE. 
 
 Our doctrine is founded upon the assumption that the 
 sacred Scripture, taken as a whole, and taken in the most 
 natural and obvious sense of its main current of expressions, 
 must determine, as of Divine Authority, our faith on these 
 questions relating to man's nature and destiny. It is not tliat 
 we rest on the supposed meaning of one or two words only, 
 such as death and destructiony but that on the twofold issues 
 of human life hereafter the writers of the whole Bible — a 
 succession of prophets extending through 1,500 years — are 
 habitually silent on subjects on which, if natural immortality 
 be true, they ought to speak ; and as habitually employ terms, 
 alike in Hebrew and Greek, which exhaust the resources of 
 both languages in their natural and obvious sense to represent 
 the object of redemption to be, to confer immortal life on 
 creatures destitute of immortality, and the result of judgment 
 to be, the utter destruction of the unsaved. They are 
 absolutely siie?it on the inalienable immortality of the soul in 
 the account of man's original creation. They are equally 
 silent as to any endless result of suffering in a future state as 
 involved in the original threat of death to Adam in Paradise, 
 or descending upon his posterity. They are siletit from one 
 end of Scripture to the other as to man's inherent possession 
 of the transcendent attribute of a God-like eternity. This 
 alleged underlying faith or instinctive knowledge never once 
 breaks out into strains similar to those of Mr. Brown's second 
 lecture. All we get even from Isaiah's "hallowed lips," 
 touched with a divine fire, is an exhortation to '' Cease from 
 man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be
 
 Siliiues of Scripture, 1 1 
 
 accounted of?" There is the same noteworthy silence hi the 
 law of Moses, which entered ''that the offence might abound," 
 that '' sin " might be " known " ; the place beyond all others 
 where the penalty of the endless suffering of a condemned 
 immortal ought surely to have appeared. The Scripture 
 ''spake nothing" concerning this doom of the deathless sinner. 
 I invite Mr. Baldwin Brown to maintain a similar silence. 
 If this inward conviction of which he speaks, the result of a 
 Divine inspiration, of our possession by nature, not merely of 
 a spirit which survives in death, but of an immortal soul, be so 
 deeply fixed, and so universal — whence the necessity of all this 
 eloquence to maintain the belief among men? Why not be 
 contented, like all the prophets and apostles, with observing a 
 similar dumbness ? Nature surely will suffice to teach us to-day 
 the true basis of Christian theology, and to repel the perverse- 
 ness of four hundred and eighty millions of Buddhists on the 
 other side of the globe, who know as little of natural immor- 
 tality as Mr. Brown's EngUsh friends the "miserable annihi- 
 lationists." 
 
 THE SILENCE AND THE SPEECH OF SCRIPTURE AGREE TN ONE. 
 
 But this silence sets forth only half the case. For on the 
 positive side there is to be noted that in treating of ^he destinies 
 of mankind there run through the Scriptures two broad lines or 
 currents of language, which taken in their most obvious and 
 natural signification teach us that it is the very object of the 
 Incarnation to "give eternal life" to a race which has lost that 
 prospect through sin ; while the penalty of impenitence and 
 unbelief will be to incur the aggravated execution of the sen- 
 tence of destruction which hung over humanity in consequence 
 of its original transgression. For a full representation of the 
 elaborate precision of these two lines of language on life eternal 
 and on the threatened death of sinners, I must refer to my 
 recent volume, where it will be found tabulated in both Hebrew 
 and Greek, and carefully examined both from within and with-
 
 12 Is every Germ I}}ii}iorlal? 
 
 out. The fullest and most decisive representation ot it is 
 found in the Gospel of John, to the argument on which I 
 invite Mr. Brown's particular attention.* I will only say here 
 that it is an argument which is every day carrying the judgment 
 of some sound scholar, and of numbers of educated common- 
 sense Christians, who read their Bibles with an eye unblinded 
 by traditional metaphysics. And no wonder ; for when Mr. 
 Brown, in these wonderfully vigorous lectures, wishes to hit us 
 the hardest blows he can, he has no uwrds^ in all his wide 
 repertory, wherewith to demolish the doctrine that life eternal, 
 deliverance from destruction, depends on the Incarnation, 
 through Regeneration, except the very words which are used 
 everywhere in the Bible to denote, he says, quite another doc- 
 trine. He speaks of "immortality," but that is only Latin for 
 not dying, in the sense of not ceasing to he. He takes, there- 
 fore, ih's sense of the word, when it suits his theory, but 
 forbids us to take it anywhere else. This is just like Mr. 
 Spurgeon, who says that the words ''the worm dieth not" 
 l)rove that the sinner will *' never die — " forgetting that, in order 
 to make out his case, he takes the word dieth in the sense 
 wliicli he forbids to ourselves in all the rest of the Scripture. 
 Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. Baldwin Brown must settle this matter 
 between themselves, and try to arrange some common voca- 
 bulary to describe the doctrine condemned, in which they shall 
 not use /;/ our sense the words of the Bible on which they are 
 attempting to fasten two different interpretations. 
 
 4. Now, the result of our studies on human nature, assisted 
 by the light of modern science, is such as to lead us to find 
 nothing in humanity that contradicts the action of Omnipotent 
 Justice and Mercy, so plainly asserted in the Bible, in deter- 
 mining its doom. The lecturer's wonderful descriptions of man's 
 glory as an immortal have first been stolen from Christ and 
 Cliristianity, and then placed to the account of man by nature. 
 
 * Sec a criliclsin on Jolm vi. at the close of ihcsc letters.
 
 Word-viongering. 13 
 
 But when we look with our recent biologists into the facts of 
 man's individual origin, as they appear before our senses, there 
 is no room left for this astounding theory of a human life 
 endowed with God's own attribute of endless being. Whether 
 Mr. Brown finds it ''degrading" and " brutalising " or not, 
 the fact is that human beings originate in processes so pre- 
 cisely analogous to those in which all the rest of the earth's 
 living creation originates, that this romance of indefeasible 
 immortality seems absolutely ludicrous in its pretension. As 
 Mr. Minton puts it, with immense force, " To pronounce it a 
 degradation to humanity for any single human germ which 
 reaches some undefined point of development not to live as 
 long as the Creator is surely the ne plus ultra of human self- 
 exaltation." The reader must think out the meaning of these 
 weighty and significant words. Mr. Brown will assist us, as 
 also Professor Huxley and Dr. Maud si ey, by telling us at about 
 what stage of development this natural and Godlike eternity of 
 man's soul, in his judgment, begins. For our parts we dis- 
 cover nothing in the facts of human origin which contradicts or 
 throws doubt on the proposal to take the language of the Bible 
 just as we find it. - 
 
 WORD-MONGERING. » 
 
 5. But Mr. Baldwin Brown treats this proposal of ours to 
 submit our faith to what he calls the "letter" of Scripture 
 with supreme contempt. In these lectures he has exhausted 
 the vocabulary of civiHsed theological vituperation in setting 
 forth the ignominious quality of the minds who consent to be 
 landed in such conclusions from such premisses. " Word- 
 mongering" is the lightest ofi'ence laid to our charge. He 
 insists on our taking as a first principle of interpretation, both 
 in nature and revelation, his magnificent speculation on the 
 inherent immortality of the souk In compliance with this he 
 calls upon us to deny our very senses in contemplating the 
 origin of the individual human being, and all the la as of
 
 14 Word-?no7igcring, 
 
 philology in the interpretation of the Bible. Now this style of 
 handling the subject I protest against as wholly inadmissible. 
 Wrong we still may be, but the argument for Conditional 
 Immortality founded on interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures 
 cannot be flipped aside by unworthy nicknames any longer. 
 According to the unanimous judgment of all scholars worthy 
 of the name who have considered the subject, that argument 
 must now be accepted, or seriously answered. A ** monger" 
 is only a dealer. A word-monger must be a dealer with words. 
 What else should a man deal with, whose business it is to 
 interpret the records of a Divine Revelation, except the 
 ipsissima verba of the sacred Scriptures ? To deal with them 
 is to interpret them, to ''give the sense," like those old word- 
 mongers Ezra and his compeers. Does it deserve to be called 
 " word-mongering " if I spend a portion of my life in trying to 
 ascertain which of the two modes of interpreting the long lines 
 of words above referred to is the right one, that recommended 
 to me by IMr. Browiir's excellent neighbour, Mr. Spurgeon, or 
 that recommended to me by Mr. Baldwin Brown himself — the 
 one holding me up to public reproof, if I do not take his word 
 for it, that " destruction " throughout the Bible signifies " end- 
 less misery " — the other pouring on me more philosophical 
 ignominy, if I do not see that the threat of ''destruction" 
 signifies the end of sin, and the certainty of final salvation ? 
 Is it word-mongering to ask whether in all probability both of 
 our advisers on the Surrey side of the Thames are not mis- 
 taken ; and whether the language of the Bible ought not to be 
 taken here, as elsewhere in relation to the most important 
 topics, in the " plain grammatical sense " of the terms ? Is 
 there any more rational way of spending one's life than in 
 trying to understand the Almighty Spirit, who ''spake by the 
 propliets," — especially when incited to do so by hearing from 
 two honoured friends of mine such contradictory figurative 
 interpretations as these ? Is there any obvious absurdity in 
 tlie proposition to take tlicse two great streams of biblical
 
 A Concession, . 15 
 
 language in their simplest intention \ and thence to infer that 
 the Divine Being designs a deathless life for the righteous 
 alone ? It is intolerable to be answered on such a subject, 
 and under such conditions, by contemptuous phrases, which, 
 if they mean anything, mean that we deserve to be numbered 
 for our pains with the lowest of the materialistic crew. It is 
 time for this affectation of superior sense and insight to be 
 laid aside; and for a " learned looking " criticism to be met 
 by its only proper antidote — not a burst of bold assertion, of 
 Platonic poetry, and of confusing eloquence — but by a criticism 
 which is more learned, more historical, and more consonant 
 with the facts of human existence. To that we will bow, but 
 * to nothing else ; for to yield to aught else seems to us to be 
 tantamount to connivance at "wresting" the Scriptures, — 
 those Holy Scriptures which alone seal to man the promise of 
 the Resurrection to Life Eternal. Mr. Baldwin Brown him- 
 self knows nothing for certain of any future state for man 
 apart from those Scriptures ; and the least we can do is to 
 strive to the utmost to study the meaning of that " Word 
 which shall judge us at the last day." 
 
 A HYPOTHETICAL CONCESSION. 
 
 6. I have dwelt on this matter of interpretation firSt of all, 
 for the knot of the whole debate is here. Apart from the 
 Divine Revelation, Mr. Brown's way of looking at humanity, 
 as possessed of a God-like durability of endless being, is, 
 whether it can be proved or not, undoubtedly the more at- 
 tractive. I felt, in reading his first lecture, thrilled and de- 
 lighted with the description of so sublime a destiny for all 
 human beings, and only lamented that the countless hordes of 
 Buddhists and savages whom the earth has bred have thought 
 so differently on their nature and end. If there be no Reve- 
 lation from God, Mr. Brown is more than welcome to his 
 admirable speculations. Amidst the infinite darkness the 
 best thing that man can then do is to think with Plato, even
 
 1 6 Conditional Iviniortaliiy 
 
 if he must die as Harriet Martineau and the evolutionists 
 suppose he will die. But to us the question of interest is, 
 What does the Bible teach ? The doctrine of an immortality, 
 acquired by redemption only, is tenable exclusively on a re- 
 vealed basis. No man who does not first believe in some- 
 thing divine will believe in this. We have no great hope of 
 converting to the doctrine any except serious thinkers and 
 truth-seekers. Mr. Brown's appeals against us to the general 
 public (including all ungodly men who would be assured of 
 safety) are certain of success — with that public. To 
 " spiritual " persons who believe in Christ, however, the 
 question will recur, What does the Bible intend by eternal 
 life and eternal destruction? We are ''nowhere" in the 
 theological world if we have not a solid basis in Revelation. 
 It is not, as Mr. Brown repeats ad nauseam^ that we weakly 
 suppose we .glorify God's grace by a ruthless dishonouring of 
 humanity. It is that we think we take the measure of 
 humanity from the testimony of its Maker, and read its 
 destiny in the pages of His message to the world. 
 
 We are placed in this difficulty : we have to choose between 
 the lofty speculations of Mr. Brown respecting human nature 
 as such, and the far less exalted statements of the apostles 
 and prophets. It seems to us impossible to reconcile the two. 
 Mr. Brown, like Dr. South, has drawn for us, with a splen- 
 did astronomical background, a striking picture of Adam in 
 Paradise, and of the constitutional place of humanity in the 
 great universe. Man was created unconditionally in the image 
 of God, and this includes God's eternity. This transcendent 
 attribute of endless being has never been lost, can never be 
 lost. Well, such is the realistic turn of my mind that, in 
 reading Mr. Brown's almost enthusiastic eloquence on this 
 head, I wished he could have been permitted to deliver that 
 lecture to Adam and Eve, under the shadow of the forbidden 
 tree in Eden, surrounded by their animal associates ; con- 
 gratulating them on this Godlike eternity of theirs, this im-
 
 Tenable oilly o)i a Revealed Basis, 1 7 
 
 mortality, or deathlessncss, which, in its utmost essence, no 
 sentence of justice should ever dissolve. I fancy that while 
 they would have been sorely puzzled by the glorious flights of 
 their distinguished descendant, there would have been at 
 least one delighted auditor of the discourse — and that is the 
 Old Serpent — who would have chimed in at once, at every 
 climax, with a confirmation of the promise that they "should 
 not surely die," since God knew well that in the day in which 
 they ate of the fruit " their eyes would be opened," and they 
 would become Divine in a double sense, being Godlike already 
 in an eternal nature, and Godlike afterwards in an added power 
 of understanding and contradicting the hollow threats of the 
 tyrannical Divinity. But even after hearing the lecture, it 
 would still have remained for the transgressors to be expelled 
 from "the Tree of Life." "Now lest he put forth his hand 
 and take of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever — so He 
 drove out the man," saying, " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
 thou shalt return." This may be perhaps consistent with all 
 that the lecturer tells us of Adam's constitution, but, at least, 
 on the surface, it is more confirmatory of the belief of those 
 who say that man was not created, either in body or soul, 
 possessed of indefeasible immortality. 
 
 MR. brown's leading MISTAKE. . 
 
 7. But this leads me to observe that Mr. Brown has been 
 throughout singularly inequitable in misrepresenting our 
 opinion as to man's relation to the animals. Because we 
 have insisted much on the reality of that relation on one side — 
 on the obvious organic similarity between man and tlie higher 
 animal races — a fragmentary truth to which great attention is 
 drawn by modern biology — we have been charged with holding 
 the most degrading and " brutalizing " views of man's nature as 
 a whole. Because we have insisted that man's foundation is iu 
 the dust, we are set forth as denying or almost ignoring his 
 relations with the Spiritual, the Infinite, the Internal. ^ Now,
 
 1 8 Man not a '' Bead,'' 
 
 instead of expending a great deal of yuur valuable space in 
 indignant repudiation of these inexcusable imputations, I shall 
 just give one quotation from Life in Christ which will dis- 
 pose at a stroke of this whole fabric of well-intended rhetorical 
 calumny. This shall be taken from the fourth chapter, where 
 I am summing up what may be probably determined by science 
 before consulting revelation ; and the result is as follows : — 
 " Whether therefore we consider man's power of speech, 
 his moral nature, his capacity for religion and worship, or 
 his capacity for indefinite progression, we are led to the 
 same probable conclusion, on purely scientific grounds, 
 that this creature, though often sunk into the deepest depths 
 of barbarism, so as to approximate towards the animals 
 in the methods and ends of life to a degree which almost 
 abolishes the human sense of superiority to them, was a distinct 
 creation of the Infinite Power, and has not grown out of the 
 next order of primates beneath him by a natural evolution. 
 A 'beast's heart' was not given to him at his origin" 
 (p. 38). It is not likely that the pen which wrote thus of 
 human nature, contemplated under the light of nature only, 
 has written anything of the character of a debasing materialism 
 respecting it afterwards, when interpreting a Divine Record 
 which begins by declaring that *'God made man in His own 
 image." 
 
 Mr. Brown may be assured that he has wrought conspicuous 
 injustice by his elaborate attempts to represent us as looking 
 upon man as a beast, because we hold that the lofty, Godlike 
 human nature came under sentence of death for sin. If man 
 had been created an archangel, he might still have incurred 
 death for sin, without losing in his fall the archangelic nature. 
 Just so we hold that man lost the right to the tree of life, with- 
 out losing'the intrinsic Godlikeness of his moral being. When 
 Mr. Brown says that the Incarnation implies the eternity of 
 this Godlike nature, wc reply that this is the very question in 
 dispute. We say (relying on the Scriptures) that the object
 
 Mr. Dale on Human Nature, 19 
 
 of Incarnation was to communicate eternal life to the Godlike 
 nature which had lost it. 
 
 I cannot do better than end this already too extended 
 letter by citing, with perfect assent, the words of Mr. Dale, 
 when dealing lately at my church with this hideous misrepre- 
 sentation of our faith. " The tree of life was no graceful orna- 
 ment of the Paradise of God \ it was there because man needed 
 it ; it is the immortal symbol of the truth that there are wants 
 in human nature which only a Divine life can satisfy, possibili- 
 ties which only a Divine life can fulfil. A beast ! No ! Man 
 is infinitely more than that. It is not a beast who struggles 
 vainly against destiny in the ancient tragedy. It is not a 
 beast that in modern times resents with infinite sorrow and 
 fierce revolt the pain and disorder which have come on this 
 creation. It is not a beast that has sought for gods to worship 
 in the stars of heaven, and in the meanest and most m.ajestic 
 objects on earth, in the clouds, in the winds, and in the heroic 
 founders of national communities. It is not to a beast that 
 the moral law appeals. It is not to a beast that the life of 
 God can be given. It is not a beast that has the power to 
 refuse it." After this, I hope we shall hear no more of Mr. 
 Brown's unbefitting accusations. The greatness of man is 
 implied in the very words of the awful curse on abandoned 
 sinners : " These, as natural, irrational creatures, made for 
 capture and extinction, speak evil of the things which they 
 understand not, and shall utterly perish in their own corrup- 
 tion (2 Peter ii. 12). 
 
 In my next letter I shall treat of Mr. Brown's opinion 
 that there are no moral differences between men correspond 
 ing with. the idea of an eternal distinction in their destinies.
 
 LETTER n. 
 
 ON TIIK QUESTION, WHETHER THERE ARE MORAL DIF- 
 FERENCES IN MEN, CORRESPONDING WITH THE 
 DOCTRINE OF AN ETERNAL DISTINCTION IN THEIR 
 DESTINIES. 
 
 A CONSIDERABLE sectlon of Mr. Baldwin Brown's recent 
 lectures treats of principles in which there is no difference of 
 opinion between us. 
 
 A larger portion of them consists of argument based on 
 representations of the doctrine of Conditional Immortality, for 
 Avhich I do not acknowledge any responsibility. Possibly 
 such representations are justified by the materialistic theories 
 and incautious language of other writers, and I leave them 
 to make their own defence against their formidable assailant, 
 if any defence be available. Other portions of Mr. Bro\vn's 
 lectures proceed on a remarkable and total disregard of the 
 carefully graduated language of assent and conviction variously 
 applied by me to the long succession of propositions com- 
 prised in the volume which he has honoured by so much 
 observation. Conclusions, which are there set forth only 
 as probabilities, liable to much reasonable question, are cited 
 and dealt with by the lecturer as essential and tenaciously- 
 held portions of the main argument. I may instance the 
 argument on judgment by*' fire." Single sentences even are 
 held up to ridicule or reprobation, detached from a long con- 
 text which greatly and purposely qualifies their strength of
 
 Different Measures of Certitude, 
 
 21 
 
 tone. I have no remedy against this ordinary misfortune of 
 theological writers, except time and the gradual increase of 
 patience and information in our opponents. If I have learned 
 nothing else by prolonged study of these controversies, I have 
 at least learned to entertain beliefs, on different branches of 
 the subject, under very different measures of certitude, and to 
 express them with corresponding degrees of confidence as to 
 the weight of the evidence by which such beliefs are sup- 
 ported. Your readers would not be edified by any comments 
 which might be suggested by those sections of Mr. Brown's 
 discourses which have been occasioned by some considerable 
 inattention to these lights and shades of conviction and expres- 
 sion. It will better satisfy the public interest if I forego all 
 minor personal vindication, and restrict thess defensive com- 
 ments to the points on which Mr. Brown has concentrated the 
 chief force of his attack. Our opponents, so much divided 
 in their own solution of the mystery of the past and future, 
 are more powerful in assault on isolated details of the doc 
 trine of Immortality in Christ alone, than on the tout ensemble 
 of the leading argument ; and are far stronger in the siege laid 
 against us, than in the work of constructing a coherent and 
 credible theology which may explode and replace our alleged 
 delusions. 
 
 MR. brown's first OBJECTION. 
 
 The effect of Mr. Brown's lectures depends principally on 
 two chief objections ; if these can be satisfactorily encountered 
 I imagine that even his antagonism might undergo some 
 considerable diminution. It gives me sincere pleasure to 
 acknowledge that the first of these objections could have been 
 felt so deeply only by a noble and sympathetic intelligence, 
 and could have been expressed so eloquently only by one 
 whose words deserve the most careful consideration. I shrink 
 from the risk of damaging the force of Mr. Brown's argument 
 by translating it into my own langurge. But full citation
 
 2 2 Doctrine of Recreneration unto Li/e, 
 
 would involve the reproduction of nearly half these discourses, 
 and therefore I will endeavour tp state fairly, if briefly, the 
 drift of the reasoning. 
 
 It is said, then, that in affirming "our doctrine" of Re- 
 generation unto Life we are asserting nothing less than an in- 
 finite and generic distinction between two classes of mankind, 
 tlie mortal and the immortal, for which no sufficient justifi- 
 cation is discoverable in their nature or character while on 
 earth. We have contended that in the original lapse of man 
 he fell from the enjoyment of God's favour, and the prospect 
 of immortality, back into the condition of an evanescent 
 ephemeron, absolutely doomed to perish utterly ; so that it 
 is through redemption only that any man can now pass into 
 immortality. This transition we have attributed in its direct 
 cause to the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Divine Life 
 in the Son of God ; and, in its immediate effect, to the action 
 of the Holy Spirit descending to dwell in the breast of the 
 regenerate sons of God. The state of a person, so " begotten 
 of God," we have declared to be, according to the Apostles, 
 that of a being who has passed out of the order of the perish- 
 able into the order of the imperishable and Divine. " Being 
 begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, 
 by the Word of God living and remaining : for that all flesh 
 is as grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of the 
 grass. The grass withered, and the flower fell away ; but the 
 Word of the Lord endnrcth for ever. And this is the Word, 
 which, by the Gospel, is preachod unto you " (i Peter i. 22-5. 
 Corrected text). 
 
 Mr. Brown, in passages ot memorable splendour and beauty, 
 has assisted the maintainers of this faith to realize the stupen- 
 dous nature of the change which they suppose to have passed 
 upon those who shall in this sense "find life eternal." For 
 my own part I must confess that I do not envy the constitu- 
 tion of the mind wliich could read unmoved the thrilling lines
 
 Relations of Faith and Scepticism, 23 
 
 in which the transcendent greatness of the change supposed is 
 urged on our reflection and appreciation. If Mr. Brown 
 had written nothing else for which Christendom might thank 
 him, those thanks would be surely due for this attempt to 
 rouse us to apprehend afresh the infinities amidst which we 
 are moving in these disputed questions. Hard, and cold, and 
 callous, as he seems to think us, I can only say that in my 
 own case his lectures have revived, in their most overpowering 
 influences, all the awful hours of long-past thought on human 
 destiny, with which for so many years, by night and day, I 
 have been visited, until faith, as it seemed to grow more solid, 
 only threw a darker shade around me ; for, indeed, the first 
 effect of deeper believing is to create a profounder scepticism, 
 arising from the very infinitude which opens before the eye 
 that gazes firmly on eternity. Too vivid conceptions of 
 eternal things are not desirable in the spiritual life of mankind. 
 Yes, it may well be said to us ; Do you indeed believe that 
 regenerate man passes into endless being, or that true faith 
 carries with it a destiny so difl"erent from that of common 
 men, as you would assign to it ? Who, that reflects on 
 the community of the human race in all its conditions of 
 temporal existence, on its common origin, on its physical, 
 intellectual, and moral unity, on the historical, and aftcestral, 
 and social causes which determine so much that we call charac- 
 ter, on the many excellencies of the bad, and on the manifold 
 imperfections of the good — can fail to stumble at first at a doc- 
 trine which places the seal of indestructibility on the foreheads 
 of some, and relegates the rest of mankind, with all their 
 virtues, struggles and woes, to the realms of the perishable, and 
 the doom of irremediable destruction ? 
 
 OUR SOLE AUTHORITY. 
 
 I know of no authority but One sufiiciently commanding 
 to compel me to this conclusion, and even that one leaves me
 
 24 Our Sole AiitJio)'ity. 
 
 still staggering under the weight which it lays upon me ; leaves 
 me still applying myself to maintain its revelations against 
 contradiction with a mind " astonied," like Daniel's, when he 
 looked upon the glories and terrors of the invisible realms. 
 Who, indeed, is sufhcient for these things? "For we are 
 unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that are saved, 
 and in them tliat perish ; to the one we are the savour of 
 death unto death ; and to the other tlie savour of life unto 
 life." These, however, I say to myself, were the words of one 
 who "wept" and "trembled" as he taught, and staggered 
 sometimes as we do, yet believed in the teaching of the Spirit, 
 and persisted in his faith that nothing less than death and 
 MJe everlasting depended on the issues of man's probation here. 
 But they were also the words of one who had not thrown off 
 the burden of faith by a desperate rush into theories, which, 
 if they help a man to imagine himself " sufficient " to grapple 
 with the facts of life and of destiny, relieve only for a moment, 
 by an artificial light not kindled at " the fountain itself of 
 heavenly radiance," and that soon dies out, leaving the 
 darkness deeper than before. 
 
 After a renewed and patient study of the objection proposed 
 in all its strength by Mr. Brown, I am compelled to conclude 
 that the authoritative record of Christ does distinctly affirm, 
 in every form, the infinitely differing characters and dooms of 
 good and evil men, and that the lecturer is shrinking from a 
 burden of thought which is laid upon him by Almighty God 
 Himself. For, in the first place, the spiritual classification of 
 mankind found in the Bible, without one exception, is simply 
 and invariably dualistic. The prophets and apostles speak 
 of the Righteous and the Wicked, as of creatures differing 
 in the root-principle of their being. I find not even a trace 
 of the modern mode of regarding humanity, in which men 
 discern only moral shades, and deny the existence of dis- 
 tinct colours ip chnrncter. This lenient estimate of the
 
 Scripture Distinctions. 25 
 
 evil, and lowering estimate of the good, which makes them all 
 of one blood, united by a moral consanguinity, and in itself 
 so demoralising, is resolutely rejected in the teaching of Christ, 
 appointed to " judge the world in righteousness." In the Old 
 Testament we find everywhere the " righteous and the wicked " 
 only, as a classification exhausting the population of the world. 
 In the New Testament this distinction is re-affirmed and 
 accounted for. Christ Himself asserts a supernatural cause 
 for the distinction, which He treats as generic, and as un- 
 affected by the better qualities of " sinners " or the worse 
 qualities of the good. He declares to Nicodemus that some 
 are " begotten of the flesh " only, others are " begotten of the 
 Spirit." He declares that the latter alone are the " sons of 
 God," and the sole inheritors of the heavenly kingdom. 
 " Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God." ** That which is born of the flesh is flesh." '' Verily I 
 say unto you, ye must be born again " (John iii.). His apostles 
 persist in this classification. With St. Peter, some " are born 
 again," others not; some are "the people of God," others 
 not; some are the "righteous," others the ''ungodly and 
 sinners " (i Peter i. 23 ; ii. 10 ; iv. 18). With St. John there 
 is the man who is " born of God," and the man who is not ; 
 the man who "abides in death," and the man who has .passed 
 from death unto life " ; the man who ''walks in the light," and 
 the man who '* walks in darkness " ; the man in whom 
 "eternal life abides," and the man in whom it does not. 
 There is the "world that knows not God," and there are the 
 " sons of God who know Him " (i John ii. 5). With St. Paul 
 there is the " soulical," or animal man {psuc/ncos) and the 
 " spiritual man " t Cor. ii.) ; the "old" man and the " new" ; 
 the old creature and the "new;" the "earthy man" and 
 the "heavenly" (i Cor. xv.) ; the man who "sows to the 
 flesh," and the man who "sows to the Spirit" (Gal. vi.) ; the 
 man who "has the spirit of Christ," and the man who "has 
 not;" and therefore is "none of" His" (Rom. viii.), The
 
 26 Disti7iction between Good afid EviL 
 
 favourite Pharisaic threefold partition of mankind into the 
 good, the moderately righteous, and sinners is unsanctioned 
 by the apostles of Christ, much more the quite modern classi- 
 fication, which regards humanity as a unit, with principles of 
 good and evil acting in every man. The Bible maintains 
 throughout the ancient and awful generic distinction between 
 the good and the evil ; and the Old Testament ends by 
 declaring that whatever difficulty there may be at present in 
 distinguishing the two, in the end the essential difference will 
 appear. " Then shall ye come back, and discern between the 
 righteous and the wicked, between him who serves the Eternal, 
 and him who serves Him not. And the wicked shall be 
 ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that 1 do this, 
 saith the Lord " (Mai. iii. i8 ; iv. 3). 
 
 MR. brown's difference IS WITH THE BIBLE. 
 
 The objection thus set forth with so much confidence by 
 Mr. Brown, against the idea of an eternal distinction in destiny, 
 depending on the faint differences in temper and character, is, 
 as Mr. Dale has briefly aftirmed, and I have now shown in 
 detail, really an objection against the plainest declarations of 
 revelation. The believers in conditional immortality are 
 under no special obligation to meet this objection. It may be 
 made equally against the catholic theology of Europe. The 
 objection depends on denying the immutable distinctions of 
 good and evil, in the concrete form of character, and savours 
 of the demoralised morale of the atheistic philosophy of our 
 time. Righteousness and wickedness are distinctions of 
 infinite import in the choice of souls. He who unites himself 
 to God belongs to a wholly different genus of beings from him 
 who refuses God. He becomes "a partaker of the Divine 
 nature," and w^ill "escape the mortality which is in the world 
 through lust " (2 Peter i. 4).
 
 Denial of the Sofiship of the Wicked. 27 
 
 DIVINE SONSHIP OF UNGODLY MEN DENIED BY CHRIST. 
 
 There is, further, a noteworthy peculiarity in the doctrine of 
 Christ and His inspired apostles respecting the " sonship " of 
 ungodly men. An argument insisted on by Universalists of all 
 shades, with the utmost assurance, is, that the fatherhood of 
 God renders it positively incredible that He will either destroy 
 or eternally banish any of the human race who are His sons. 
 An earthly father, it is said, who is wise and good, cannot even 
 be imagined as putting to death one of his own children. 
 Much more, therefore, ought such an act to be disbelieved in 
 relation to the '' Father of Spirits." I desire to point it out 
 as an appalling peculiarity of Christ's teaching, that He 
 represents, in the strongest manner, the refusal of God to ac- 
 knowledge the "sonship" of ** sinners," or to allow of the 
 claim that He is their " Father " until they repent. The 
 relation of Father, in the bare sense of Creator, cannot, as a 
 matter of fact, be abolished — ''we are all His offspring" — 
 but in every other and higher sense, involving moral relation- 
 ship and eternal love, it is declared to be non-existent in refer- 
 ence to impenitent men. " If God were your Father, ye would 
 love Me. Ye are of your father, the devil," said Christ^to the 
 Pharisees. Through sin men have been disinherited \ they are 
 "slaves" of sin and death, not ''sons of God." The " adoption 
 of sons" comes only with the "new birth " unto righteousness. 
 God does not acknowledge spiritual fatherhood to those who 
 work evil. " He that made them will have no mercy on 
 them." "They shall have judgment without mercy." We 
 are no more worthy to be called His sons. The Divine 
 Word denominates us " sons of God " only when we have 
 passed from death unto life. The popular argument, there- 
 fore, against the destruction of unregenerate men, derived 
 from the fatherhood of God, is drawn from a relationship 
 which, in the case of the rebellious, Christ distinctly disowns.
 
 28 The Nature of Germs. 
 
 ** The chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire." I 
 entreat Mr. Brown to cease his unjust accusations against us, 
 as hard and unfeeling, in bringing these alarming truths to 
 public notice, and to discontinue his dangerous encourage- 
 ment given to impenitence by such fallaciously hopeful repre- 
 sentations. The real hardness and cruelty lie with those who 
 conceal the threatenings of God, and thereby '^ strengthen the 
 hands of evil doers " to their own ruin, by promising them 
 " life and peace," and that in the awful name of a Being who 
 has ''sworn" that if they do not repent "to-day" they 
 shall " not enter into Plis rest." " Except ye repent, ye shall 
 all likewise perish." " Now is the day of salvation." 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF GERMS. 
 
 2. It remains to discuss the second part of this objection, 
 and to ask whether our incapacity to distinguish or " discern " 
 in all cases "between the righteous and the wicked " is valid 
 reason for following Mr. Brown in denying the sufficiency of 
 the distinction, as a basis for infinite differences in destiny. 
 Here we are thrown back upon some considerations on the 
 phenomena of germ-life in general, whence it will appear that 
 the admitted impossibility of pronouncing upon the generic 
 distinctions in spiritual characters or states, in many of their 
 earlier forms, forms no argument against the reality of such 
 distinctions or their infinite consequences. Mr. Brown has 
 himself supplied the warning against precipitate judgment on 
 germs, which is applicable in the case before us. When argu- 
 ing against a supposed fatal error of ours, in which by mis- 
 take he attributed to us the belief that mankind is not simply 
 allied on one side to the animal races, but is distinguishable 
 from them only by shades of development, he very justly 
 points out that this undistinguishableness of the germs cannot 
 be pleaded in support of the identification of the two, since 
 the obscure germ soon demonstrates its hidden forces, and 
 asserts in humanity its generic superiority to thfit of the briite.
 
 Dr, ilaitdsley oil Gervis, 29 
 
 " The germs, we are assured, of Newton and of his dog 
 Diamond, are, in their incipient stages, absolutely identical. 
 Yes, to Science. But there is something there which it needs 
 a yet Diviner art, in which the philosopher is the priest, to 
 discern, which makes the one germ inevitably into Newton 
 and the other into a dog." 
 
 It needs only to transfer this admirably-stated principle to 
 the realms of spiritual life to meet the objection on which Mr. 
 Brown relies in combating the idea of spiritual distinctions 
 wide enough to warrant eternal differences in their fate. The 
 beginnings of all life are mysterious and invisible ; the earlier 
 stages of the development are imperfect and obscure. This is 
 true of the body. It is equally true of the '* new creature in 
 Christ." There is nothing which can be said against the un- 
 distinguishableness of generic difference in character which 
 might not be said in relation to the early stages of physical 
 development. The Newton and the Diamond are soon re- 
 vealed ; but it might puzzle any power less than Omniscience 
 to discriminate the two until development has occurred. The 
 great lesson of biology is the enlargement of our faith as to the 
 hidden life of elementary organisms. Hear how Dr. Maudsley 
 speaks in his latest work on the " Physiology of Mind." 
 " Those who may be disposed to think it impossible tha* such 
 important constitutional differences should exist in so small a 
 compass might reflect with advantage on the various undetect- 
 able conditions which may confessedly exist in the minutest 
 organic matter — as, for example, in the delicate microscopic 
 spermatozoon, or in the intangible virus of a fever. And yet 
 it is from the conjunction of one minute spermatozoon with 
 another that are produced the muscles, vessels, nerves, and 
 brain — of a Socrates or a Cnesar. . . . The single cell united 
 with the single germ, each integrating the qualities of ancestors, 
 gives birth to a new organic product, which, minute as it is, 
 contains in latent forms all the potentialities, and displays 
 actually in evolution many of the qualities, of generations of
 
 30 Moral Germs, 
 
 ancestors, male and female, and furthermore evinces new 
 qualities as a result of the organic combination. There is 
 nothing extravagant in the supposition that a single nerve cell 
 has many potentialities. The exquisite minuteness and con- 
 summate delicacy of the operations going on around us in the 
 most intimate recesses of nature are even more striking and 
 wonderful than the vastness and grandeur with which the 
 astronomer is concerned" (p. 120). 
 
 When, therefore, Mr. Baldwin Brown undertakes to affirm 
 that differences in spiritual character sufficient to account for 
 diverse everlasting destinies are not discernible, we submit to 
 him, first, that sometimes such failure to discern the infinite 
 difference in character between good and evil men arises not 
 from the obscurity of the phenomena, but from the vast extent 
 of a superficial and deceptive profession of religion, or from 
 the spiritual blindness of the observer ; and, secondly, that all 
 physical analogy supports the declaration that in two characters, 
 seemingly alike, there may, nevertheless, be such an essential 
 difference that, as in the cases of Christ's two associates, Judas 
 Iscariot and Peter, both much alike to a careless eye, " one of 
 them is a devil," for whom it would be " better if he had never 
 been born"; one of them is a ''natural man," an "earthy 
 man," a man "abiding in death," who has developed only 
 evil qualities, or qualities good simply on the human level ; 
 while the other, though as yet much undeveloped, contains a 
 germ of Divine Life, which before long will develope into a 
 form of character "equal to the angels," and "worthy of an 
 endless life." " We know not 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." 
 
 PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF THE DOCTRINE. 
 
 I am not careful to answer the allegations made as to the 
 ill effect on character of the reception by spiritual persons of 
 the doctrine of life eternal in Christ only; or on the " degrad'
 
 Practical Effect of this Doctrine, 3 1 
 
 ing " and " brutalising " inHuence of this doctrine on general 
 society. Those who have lived for many years among Chris- 
 tians who have heartily and devoutly received this doctrine 
 as Divine are in a better position to form a sound judgment 
 on its effects than those who, by their intolerance, have driven 
 away from their sphere of activity all who maintain it. For 
 myself, I can only testify that, knowing well the quality of 
 the spiritual life produced by the teaching of the orthodox 
 theology, I can trace no evil effect as the result of the 
 teaching of Hfe in Christ, in respect of faith, or hope, or 
 love. Those who receive it are seldom merely speculative 
 thinkers, but serious and earnest Christians — persons to whom, 
 in a practical sense, "to live is Christ"; and the result is 
 certainly not to diminish their love to Him, to whom they 
 think they owe their immortality. I can further assure Mr. 
 Baldwin Brown, and thereby relieve his expressed appre- 
 hensions, that I have observed no "brutalising" influences, 
 such as he fears, at work among the people who have been 
 subjected to such teaching in this quarter of London now for a 
 quarter of a century. The average of " suicides " in Camden 
 and Kentish Towns will compare favourably, I think, with the 
 average in Brixton. Those who are foremost in zealous belief 
 in this theological speciality are among the least brutal |>ersons 
 within my rather wide acquaintance. Professor Barrett, more- 
 over, very truly declared a few weeks ago in your columns that 
 not a few men of scientific culture have been saved from 
 gross materialism and atheism as the result of hearing Christ 
 preached as the Messenger of Eternal Life. 
 
 Indeed, with truth I should sum up the general conclusion, 
 from my own long experience of the spiritual effect of this way 
 of thinking, by saying that it considerably strengthens popu- 
 lar faith in the Bible as a whole ; leads to the wholesome 
 conjoint study of both Nature and Scripture, which are hereby 
 shown to be univocal ; explains the necessity and results of the
 
 32 Practical Effect of 
 
 Incarnation of the ^Vord, of Regeneration, of Union with 
 Christ; and while it exalts and reveals the love of God, en- 
 ables and incites men to preach ** judgment to come " fl"^ // 
 ihcy believed it, and with the most salutary effects on ungodly 
 men's understandings and consciences. Instead of lowering 
 the tone of spiritual life, the tendency of this doctrine is to 
 exalt it, by showing that it is the direct effect of the Personal 
 Indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and that the union of a good 
 man with an Eternal and Intelligible God is no figure of 
 speech, but the deepest of all ascertained facts. In a word, I 
 have not found one of the evil practical consequences augured 
 by Mr. Brown, and I have discerned several excellent results 
 Avhich he never even hints at. Among others, the temptation 
 is taken away from the people of running into the desperate 
 theory of univcrsalism, which, with Mr. Dale, I think to be 
 the most baseless, and one of the most pernicious, of all 
 theological errors. For it is a mode of thought which destroys 
 the real and infinite distinction between good and evil, by 
 representing their natures as mixed, and their ultimate destinies 
 as homogeneous ; and which takes away holy love to God, by 
 first of all extinguishing religious fear. Christ is no longer a 
 Saviour from the wrath to come, but only the late-sent guide 
 of a race already Godlike and immortal, and already, on the 
 whole, good and harmless enough, after a comparatively brief 
 purgatory, to inherit Paradise. This is the result of teaching 
 " the solidarity of the race," in Mr. Brown's sense — a phrase 
 as French as the thought which it fitly conveys (there being no 
 Scriptural term for the idea), and removed, as far as the east is 
 from the west, from the doctrine of the New Testament, which 
 teaches that true Christians alone are "of God," while ** the 
 whole world lieth in the wicked one." " And the world [i.e, 
 the ungodly world] passeth away, and its lust, but he that 
 doeth the will of God rcmainetJi for ever''' (i John ii. 17). 
 On Mr. Brown's objection to this Scriptural doctrine, of the 
 ''passing away of the world and its lust "—in the retribution
 
 the Doctrine of Life in Christ. 33 
 
 of the second death— I will ofier some remarks in my next 
 letter; after which lliere will remain only to consider the 
 alleged tendency to speculative atheism and materialism 
 charged upon this doctrine.
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT BY 
 DESTRUCTION. 
 
 In this letter I am to consider Mr. Baldwin Brown's principal 
 objection to that awful doctrine on Future Punishment, which 
 is held by us partly in subjection to positive revelation, and 
 partly as a necessary inference from the truth that immortality 
 is the destiny of those alone who are made regenerate in 
 Christ. 
 
 The doctrine of the second Death, which declares that un- 
 less men are born twice they will die twice, is represented in 
 the Divine Revelation amidst " blackness, and darkness, and 
 tempest," like that which covered Mount Sinai at the giving 
 of the Law ; and, therefore, none can break through to gaze 
 into the tremendous abyss of Divine wrath, whence bursts the 
 fire that burns into the midst of heaven. To venture into that 
 thick darkness with a design of exploring, or pretending to 
 expound, the secrets of those doleful shades, on which even 
 the flashes of Divine vengeance throw no light, but rather 
 render darkness visible, be far from us. A certain part of the 
 moral effect of the prospect of judgment to come depends on 
 its mystery. This only we know — that God, by all the voices 
 of His prophets, has declared that amidst that darkness the 
 wicked, under "few" or **many" stripes, shall "utterly 
 perish," and that the ungodly world shall *'pass away" (2 
 Peter ii. 9; i John ii. 17).
 
 A Kg uslin iail i\s jji . 3 5 
 
 This doctrine on future retribution is but a segment of the 
 wider doctrine on Life in Christ only, (though often mistaken 
 for the whole of it), and it is necessary to repeat that that 
 wider doctrine is supported by several lines of evidence wholly 
 distinct from the Scripture teaching on punishment. That 
 this teaching agrees with the otherwise established truth of 
 Conditional Immortality is, however, naturally regarded by us 
 as a decisive argument in confirmation of it; and it is no 
 small indication of its validity that it delivers us at once from 
 the incredible horrors of the Augustinian theology, and from 
 the ruinous mental and moral entanglements of Universalism. 
 
 AUGUSTINIANISM. 
 
 That every unregenerate human being, who, having been 
 born in sin, has died in sin, is destined to an endless existence in 
 some degree of misery of body or mind, or both — an existence, 
 the duration of which would be on/y conunencing when it had 
 liistcd through a number of millenniums denoted by lines of 
 figures as numerous as the vibrating beams of light which extend 
 from all the suns and stars of the firmament into the infinite 
 darkness — even if these innumerable lines of figures should be 
 multiplied into each other, — this is a proposition which re- 
 quires for its support something more solid than a few dis- 
 puted " texts " out of the English version of Matthew's and 
 Mark's gospels, and which nothing short of absolute demon- 
 stration ought to persuade any man to embrace as from God. 
 The more one knows of revelation as a whole, of the actual 
 history of the human race, and of the character of God, as 
 made known in the world that now is, and in the Bible, the 
 greater is the difficulty in believing in this Augustinian doctrine 
 of hell as Scriptural, and the deeper the conviction that the 
 Deity of Augustine was, after all, only a fusion of the two 
 eternal powers of good and evil of his earlier^ Manichean 
 heresy.
 
 36 Oft ihe Waste 0/ Souls, 
 
 UNIVERSALISM. 
 
 On tlie other hand it seems equally difficult to follow the 
 Universalists to the opposite extreme, and to determine that 
 the real meaning of a long series of revelations made by 
 Almighty God through the prophets and apostles, (in which 
 every term in Hebrew and Greek which can be used to denote 
 utter destruction has been employed to convey the threaten- 
 ing of God's judgments hereafter on wicked men), is that all 
 these wicked men are to be made heirs eventually of eternal 
 life. But the doctrine of conditional immortality causes no 
 Such shock either to our moral sense or to our common sense. 
 It conforms not only to the laws of philology, but to the 
 general laws of the physical and organic world, in which is 
 found everywhere enormous " waste " of germs, disease leading 
 to dissolution, and the survival only of the fittest ; and it 
 agrees witli the double representation made of the Divine 
 Nature, in Creation and Revelation, — that while the Infinite 
 Power is a Being of immense compassion and goodness 
 towards those who observe His will, towards audacious law 
 breakers, as science well knows. He acts with a severity 
 which sets at defiance all modern sentimentalism on Father- 
 hood, and ceases not but with their utter destruction. 
 
 MR. brow^n's objections. 
 
 But Mr. Baldwin Brown contemplates this representation of 
 the Divine Judgment as monstrous and incredible, and in this 
 opinion we see that he is joined by Mr. J. G. Rogers. " The 
 waste which it involves is too tremendous." " Under this new 
 version of the Gospel men are to be raised up and restored to 
 life simply that they may endure anguish, so that God's wrath 
 may find satisfaction in their torment." "A new horror' is 
 added to a doctrine which more than any single thing is respon- 
 sible for the bitterness of the infidel hatred to the Gospel,"
 
 Contradictory Attacks. 37 
 
 ** Were it the only Gospel that man could listen to, it would, in 
 time, make infidels of the human race." '' It perpetuates in a 
 new, and what professes to be a permanent, form, the incredi- 
 ble horrors of the mediaeval bejief, with apparent mitigations, 
 which really exaggerate them, while it adds a new and darker 
 doctrine of its own." " Life given for a time," adds Mr. 
 Rogers, ''solely for the infliction of suffering ! A succession 
 of miracles is to be wrought for the simple purpose of punish- 
 ing men for their sins. A miracle is first to be wrought to 
 raise from the dead the soul, not naturally immortal, and then 
 another miracle to give it a body fitted for the suffering of 
 fire." 
 
 The maintainers of this doctrine of future retribution are 
 subjected to two strangely contradictory attacks. Here we 
 have men of the highest capacity objecting to it on account 
 of its incredible terribleness ; and perhaps the next able 
 objector will dismiss it, without further examination, because 
 it " takes away all fear of future punishment from before the 
 minds of mankind." The garbled indictment varies. Some- 
 times the doctrine is to be set aside because it is too terrible to 
 be true that God should " annihilate " a sinner after *' untold 
 ages of torment ; " and sometimes it is a removal of ail the 
 sanctions of moral government, because no one will be afraid 
 of being raised from the dead " only just to be reduced to 
 nothingness again." 
 
 It is impossible to follow in these letters all the windings of 
 an opposition which seems to think almost any weapon sanc- 
 tified by the use to which it is turned, in assailing a doctrine so 
 heartily disliked all round, and which indeed proved critical to 
 many in causing the rejection of Christ when on earth. It 
 was when He had taught distinctly in the great synagogue at 
 Capernaum that men had not " life in themselves," that salva- 
 vation meant "living for ever," and that living for ever means 
 *' not dying " in the plainest sense of the terms, and that this
 
 38 Declaration of Faith ^ Art. XIX, 
 
 living for ever depended on the closest spiritual union with 
 Him — that ** many went back and walked no more with Him " 
 (John vi. 26—66). 
 
 I shall now proceed to make some reflections on Mr. 
 Brown's principal objection. 
 
 I. On the expressions of strong condemnation above cited 
 from Mr. Baldwin Brown and Mr. Rogers, I have first of all 
 to observe that the objection raised by them against the resur- 
 rection of the wicked in order to the judgment of destruction 
 lies not against us in any special manner, but against Catholic 
 Christendom. AH except convicted heretics have in every age 
 believed in the resurrection of the just and of the unjust (Acts 
 xxiv. 15). Select what theory you think best as to the nature 
 of that corporeity, but if you profess to abide by the doctrine of 
 the Catholic Church you must allow that Christ's awful words 
 are authoritative, that " they that have done evil shall come 
 forth to the resurrection of damnation " (John v. 29). The 
 established belief of Christendom has been that the wicked so 
 raised from the dead shall be cast " into everlasting fire," there 
 to suffer throughout eternity. Why has not Mr. Brown found 
 time to deliver four lectures against that form of the doctrine of 
 the resurrection of the ungodly ? Why are all his eloquence, 
 scorn, indignation, argument directed against those who are 
 teaching exactly what Christendom maintains — the resurrection 
 to judgment — minus the element of infinity in the infliction, 
 which has already nearly ''made infidels of the human race "? 
 
 Who would believe that the words above quoted are those 
 of two ecclesiastics who, until quite recently, have consented, 
 by silence, to the " Declaration of Faith" of the Congregational 
 Union (Article XIX.) — that, " The bodies of the dead will be 
 raised again, and the Supreme Judge will divide the righteous 
 from the wicked, will receive the righteous into life everlasting, 
 but send away the wicked to everlasting punishment." Surely 
 it is not for Mr, l^rown and Mr. Rogers, who liavc maintained
 
 What Saith the Scripture ? 39 
 
 for so many years a consenting silence to the sense put by 
 orthodox churches on these words, to break forth into exclama- 
 tions of horror against those who are teaching something much 
 less incredible. Quousquc tandem ! 
 
 If, moreover, we are to take Mr. Brown's words '' literally," 
 the objection which he so vehemently expresses against us lies 
 in a large measure also against his own view of future punish- 
 ment. He distinctly says: "I look on and sec through the 
 vista of the future pain like a searching fire^ eating into the heart 
 of the ulcer of man's nature." '' There are visions of agony 
 before the sinner when the reality of the unseen world bursts 
 upon him." Surely these purgatorial "pains " and *' agonies" 
 are of a ** miraculous " nature, and if they are '' like a searching 
 Jre^' they give a view of the Divine benevolence which differs 
 little from our view of the Divine severity. 
 
 WHAT SAITH THE SCRIPTURE? 
 
 2. But these questions are too solemn to permit of much 
 use of the argument ad hoinineni in the controversy. Let me, 
 therefore, say next, that what has been taught by us on this 
 subject has been so taught simply and altogether in tbcffear of 
 God, as the result of what we think to be honest interpretation 
 of the records of Revelation. Not one word have I to say on 
 the ground of reason, natural philosophy, or natural religion as 
 to the results of human probation in a future state, before con- 
 sulting Scripture. " Surely," (in the striking words of Mr. 
 Thomas Walker, late editor of the Daily Nems, in a letter 
 with which he recently favoured me,) *'when the destiny of 
 mankind is concerned, we cannot rest in the conclusions of 
 speculative philosophy — too often the dictates of human pride 
 — nor trust to the fancied results of psychological or historical 
 analysis. We must have the assurances of our Father in 
 heaven, which as n^en of faith we will accept. Far from us the
 
 40 SJiort and Easy MctJiod of Endmg 
 
 disposition to prescribe to the Divine Teacher, or to distinguish 
 Avhat he will find us ready to believe, and that which 7ve have 
 resolved beforehand to reject. Surely it must be the highest 
 wisdom, humbly, thankfully, and unhesitatingly, to believe in 
 the Son of God, who died to save us, when He speaks of the 
 awful problems of human destiny." 
 
 Not one word, then, have we to say in defence of the doctrine 
 of the resurrection of the wicked, and their destruction in the 
 fire of God's wrath, unless these awful prospects are matters of 
 Divine revelation which lie open to every eye. Why will the 
 opponents persist in representing us as having invented this 
 doctrine, and why do they persist in heaping contumely upon 
 us as hard, bitter, and callous men, when there is so much 
 more ready a way of ending the debate ? Let it be shown and 
 proved, not simply asserted, that the whole Bible ought to be 
 read in the light of the assumed natural eternity of the soul of 
 man. Let s-ome rational explanation be given of the silence on 
 this presupposed immortality of man, which characterises the 
 entire record of Revelation. Let it be shown how it was that 
 when the son of God appeared, He who was "the Word made 
 flesh " always spoke in language whose natural obvious sense 
 conveys the idea that He is the Giver of eternal life to man- 
 kind, if, in fact, man had this eternal life already in his own 
 nature. And lastly, let it be shown why, in speaking of judg- 
 ment to come on sinners, with one consent, all God's m.es- 
 sengers, through all ages, have been directed habitually, scores 
 of times, to use terms which signify in their obvious sense one 
 thing only — namely, that all unrcgenerate men shall die, perish^ 
 and be destroyed ; shall be burned nplike chaff, like tares ; shall 
 be dashed to pieces, ground to powder ; shall /^^^ away, with the 
 Kosmos ; shall '■'■not see life ;^' shall be ^^ punished with everlast- 
 ing destruction ; " shall " not inherit the kingdom of God; " when 
 the truth was that after some beneficent chastisement they 
 should ** reign in life by Jesus Christ." 
 
 This process of putting an end, to controversy ought not \0
 
 this Controversy. 41 
 
 be a long one. If it is not a safe thing for men to read their 
 New Testament until they have been well drilled in what the 
 Rev. Mr. Rogers calls '' natural religion," please to tell us what 
 are its articles, and prove them. If it is not safe to read 
 apostolic Greek in its natural sense, in the sense which its 
 leading words bore in all other Greek literature, (in which to die 
 means to die, to perish means to perish, X.o pass away means to 
 pass away, to be destroyed body and soul signifies to be destroyed 
 both body and soul), please to give us, by way of an Introduction 
 to the apostles, for popular use, a sketch of the language as 
 specially modified for the purpose of " Revelation." 
 
 Meantime, we are convinced that the statements which Mr. 
 Baldwin Brown and Mr. Guinness Rogers denounce as so mon- 
 strous and incredible, are precisely those which Christ, the Son 
 of God, has affirmed, which His apostles, Matthew, John, Peter, 
 and Paul have repeated in every possible combination of terms 
 — iiamely, that the wicked shall be " raised from the dead," 
 shall "stand before God," shall be '* judged according to their 
 works," shall be " cast into everlasting fire," and in that fire shall 
 *' pay the penalty of everlasting destruction." (2 Thess. i.) Set 
 aside those words of the messengers of God, and we have no 
 further argument to offer to revolted Christendom. But so 
 long as these stand imblotted from the New Testament, they 
 who rest their faith on them will not cease to warn men to 
 close their ears against the siren song of hypothetical Univer- 
 salism, which must be luring men to their eternal ruin. 
 
 3. The truth, however, is, that for many ages the New Testa- 
 ment writings have been subjected by powerful parties to pro- 
 cesses gravely called processes of interpretation, in which 
 various human prepossessions and church interests have over- 
 powered and perverted the testimony of God. Partly 
 psychology, and partly what is called natural theology, and 
 partly church tradition and superstition, have imposed their 
 own senses upon the sacred writings, until the conmiancj-
 
 42 Effect of Prcconceptio7i 
 
 ment of Ood is made of no effect. If men approach the 
 Bible, already firmly convinced that " natural religion " 
 teaches us the absurdity of any doctrine of a tripcj"sonal God- 
 head, or of the incarnation of the Divinity, or of an atonement 
 for tlie sins of the world, or of the renewal of men by God's 
 Spirit, of what avail is the united testimony of all the apostles 
 in support of those revelations ? The modern critical rack is 
 equal to extracting any signification from those tortured wit- 
 nesses. If, again, the Roman Church has resolved, for reasons 
 of its own, on the primacy of Peter, and on the figment of the 
 succession and supremacy of the Roman Bishops, why, by a 
 due drilling in catechism and anathema for a thousand years, 
 all Europe can be taught to *' see " that interpretation of Revel- 
 ation and Providence most clearly in the Scripture ; and, 
 indeed, in Papal countries it requires unusual grace and insight 
 to see through the delusion. And so, if mistaking what I 
 believe to be the God-inspired fear of "judgment to come," 
 which is nearly universal in some form (even in the strange 
 doctrine of the Kormo among the Buddhists, who utterly deny 
 an eternal personality) — if, mistaking this fear of judgment for 
 a proof of the soul's natural and absolute immortality, men 
 approach the Bible deeply persuaded of the eternity of their 
 own nature, the entire structure of Revelation, both in its 
 silence and speech, fails to make known Him who is the Life 
 of the world. 
 
 4. Yet since Mr. Brown and Mr. Rogers are sound Protest- 
 ants, I put it to them. How would they endure it, supposing 
 the question were on the personal Deity of Christ, and the 
 atonement by His death, if when tl>ey had professed to ground 
 their faith in these facts and doctrines on Divine revelation, 
 and appealed, as they well might do, to the clear, explicit, 
 repeated affirmations of Christ and all His apostles in attesta- 
 tion of them — how would they endure it if I, passing over the 
 matter of direct and distinct Scripture teaching, persisted in
 
 on Interpretation, 43 
 
 repeating some vague rationalistic objections to the Incarnation 
 and to the Atonement, to the effect that such notions were a 
 monstrous caknnny on God's character, and a ready method of 
 instilHng atheism into the multitude ? Would they not stead- 
 fastly resist such a mode of attack as unfair and irrelevant, and 
 persist in demanding a concentration of our attention on the 
 questions : Are not the New Testament writings a record of a 
 Divine revelation ? and Do tliey not teach these doctrines 
 against which you revolts Now that is precisely our position. 
 You will never overthow this teaching by sneers at *' word- 
 mongering." You must show that the threatening of '* ever- 
 lasting destruction " to a wicked man is consistent with his 
 salvation. 
 
 The methods by which this is attempted by the advocates of 
 Universalism are, I think, such as to assist, without designing 
 it, the overthrow of faith in all revealed religion. No words 
 ever can be depended on to signify anything, if the words in 
 question here may signify universal restitution. You place the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the Holy 
 Spirit, in direst jeopardy. The violence offered by the Uni- 
 tarians to the terms which teach these truths is not exceeded by 
 yours. The Godhead of Christ and the Gospel of salvation 
 must go down before such exegetical subversiveness. ff Christ 
 was the " Word made flesh," " His words are spirit, and they 
 are life." 
 
 A CORRECTION. 
 
 5. I do not propose to discuss here the questions of detail 
 which are always set in the front by those who incline to sub- 
 stitute emotion for reasoning. Both Mr. Brown and Mr. 
 Rogers speak of " torment for untold ages " as part of the 
 doctrine of the "second death." It has not so been set forth 
 by any one of the recent writers on this side within my ac- 
 quaintance. For myself, in speaking of this awful mystery, 
 I have endeavoured lo kcc]-) stiictly within Scripture limits,
 
 44 Doctrine of Scripture on the Body. 
 
 and have affirmed nothing further than that there will be a 
 distinction between the doom of lesser and greater offenders, 
 **few " or " many stripes ; " — and that " Sodom and Gomorrha 
 are set forth as an example " of the judgment by " eternal fire.'* 
 The true and apostolic doctrine on future punishment is cer- 
 tainly one before which a man like Felix will " tremble," when 
 it is preached, as it ouglu to be preached, with reality, awe, 
 and tenderness. At the Universalist doctrine no man will 
 tremble, but every P^elix will rejoice with exceeding joy. On 
 none of these points, however, shall I now dwell, because the 
 remainder of this letter must be devoted" to some forgotten 
 principles which underlie the discussion. 
 
 THE BODY. 
 
 6. Mr. Baldwin Brown, in his zeal on behalf of the soul of 
 man, takes much less notice than the Bible does of man's body. 
 In Dr. Perowne's Hulsean Lectures it is shown, after the 
 Scripture and the ante-Nicene fathers, who were very strong on 
 this subject, how important a place the body fills in man's 
 constitution. Man is an integer, consisting of body and soul. 
 Neither of these elements alone is the man. This unity is the 
 direct subject of God's dealings both in mercy and judgment. 
 When God judged man at first, the humanity died. When He 
 would save man, the Word was " made flesh," and by the 
 suffering of death " abolished death." The Son of God " rose 
 from the dead," and all His servants are to rise after Him. 
 It is, then, only in accordance with God's dealings, if men 
 " receive in the body according to that they have done, whether 
 good or evil.'' The real question is. Will God enter into 
 judgment with wicked men? If He will, their appearance 
 before Him in corporal humanity is in accordance with the 
 nature of things. The body is the instrument for the educa- 
 tion of the mind and will, for the manifestation of the mind 
 and will, for the reward and punishment of the mind and will. 
 The infliction of Divine judgment on the liody is in itself no
 
 Spirihiai Source of Universalis^n, 45 
 
 more incredible than its infliction on the spirit, and both are 
 involved in retribution on the man. Suffering in a future world, 
 which has been deserved, is at least as credible, under the 
 government of God, as suffering in the present world which 
 has not been deserved ; and there has been not a little of that 
 through the wickedness of mankind. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL SOURCE OE UNIVERSALISM. 
 
 7. In reply to many fallacious consolations offered to im- 
 penitence, I must profess my persuasion that much of the 
 religious teaching of the last few years has proceeded from a 
 gradually-declining sense of sin in its evil, and in its deserts ; 
 as that again has proceeded from a declining sense of the 
 justice of God. This is but to repeat the lesson of all history, 
 that ages of great external civilisation, and of physical luxury 
 and comfort, have ever been ages of epicurean theologising. 
 Amidst plenty of corn and wine, amidst the illusions of art 
 and beauty, men lose the sense of " the sinfulness of sin," of 
 the righteousness and severity of God, and of the terribleness 
 of the world of doom beyond. So is it to-day. *' Men heap 
 to themselves teachers, having itching ears." They will "not 
 endure sound doctrine." Hell itself must become a school of 
 glory ; heaven the final refuge of a world of unfortunates, who 
 really had almost every excuse for their villanies and crimes. 
 Between the fall of Adam— and the force of circumstances — 
 and the cheapness of vicious indulgences, — and the bias o 
 heredity — and the difficulty of knowing whom to believe— 
 Jesus or Mohamme'd, Paul or Rousseau, John or Voltaire— a 
 hopeful case must be made out for every man ; and if God 
 Himself should "judge the world in righteousness," He must 
 unsay all the ancient threats of exclusion from future blessed- 
 ness ; and, after some fatherly chastisement of '* dogs, and 
 sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, 
 and lovers and makers of lies," must receive them with open 
 arms to paradise. This is certainly the tone of much of the
 
 46 Sodom d)ui G onto y Villi ». 
 
 most fashionable preaching of our time, both in and out of the 
 National Church. 
 
 If I stood alone in this generation (instead of re-echoing the 
 judgment of myriads of the wisest and holiest men) I must 
 till death continue to raise an outcry of alarm to my fellow- 
 sinners against this sure sign of an approaching deluge. 
 Never has this tone taken possession of the Church, but some 
 dread era of judgment has vindicated the reality of the govern- 
 ment of Him '' whose feet are like fine brass burning in a 
 furnace." Oh, for the awful voice of some Savonarola to 
 thunder over the heads of the ungodly millions of Europe, and 
 awaken them to the realities of judgment to come; to turn 
 their attention away from the " prophets who prophesy smooth 
 things" to the true sayings of God. "The judge standeth 
 before the door," and here are the very signs of His approach 
 — men saying. Peace and safety ! — all right, and all for the 
 best, in both worlds — when "sudden destruction is coming, 
 and there shall be no remedy.'' 
 
 I wonder what the recent preachers of this Gospel of "love " 
 would have said if they had stood on high with Abraham, and 
 seen through the gloom 'the blue rain of burning sulphur 
 descending on Sodom and Gomorrah, inflicting a remediless 
 destruction on those unclean sinners against their own souls? 
 Would they have ventured on these bold philippics against the 
 Power that herein " confessed the failure of His earthly 
 providence," so that He "could do nothing else than kill off" 
 all that lived in the cities of the plain ? Yet Christ declares 
 that even these Sodomites are to suffer again in the "resurrec- 
 tion of judgment," though not so grievously as the men at 
 Capernaum and Chorazin, who beheld and rejected the Light 
 of the World. I wonder what they would have said of the 
 uniformly fatherly and purgatorial action of Divine judgment, 
 if they had been present in Pharaoh's Court, when, in the 
 name of the Almighty Lord of Nature, insulted and denied by 
 ages of Egyptian idolatry and philosophy falsely so called,
 
 Aloscs in Egypt, 4 7 
 
 Moses, with uplifted rod, stood forth and said, from the mouth 
 of God : — " Now will I stretch out My hand that I may smite 
 tliee, and thy people, with pestilence, and thou shalt be cut off 
 from the earth. And in very deed for this cause have I made 
 thee stand, for to show in thee My power, and that My name 
 may be declared throughout all the earth" (Exod. ix. i6). 
 Should we have been invited to listen then to some lectures at 
 Memphis on the ''cruelty, and hardness, and bitterness" of 
 those who taught that this God of Love was a God of awful 
 Justice too, and, come what might, would not be "mocked" 
 by His creatures, nor spare a stiff-necked infidel who set his 
 mouth against the heavens ? 1 think that if even Jannes or 
 Jambres had essayed such comments, they would soon have 
 shrunk from the conflict, and their " folly would have been 
 made manifest to all men." There are circumstances in which 
 it is good for the world that God's messengers should be armed 
 with a forehead of adamant, like Jeremiah, when the object is 
 to warn men as with the blast of the trump of God against 
 approaching doom ; when the sense of God's moral government 
 has well-nigh died out under the soporifics and enchantments 
 of so evil a time ; and when men and women will say and do 
 the utmost wickedness, in assurance of being fortified at last 
 in death "by all the rites of the Catholic Church" or, by all 
 the deadlier consolations of a Protestant scepticism. " Awake 
 to righteousness and sin not, for some have not the knowledge 
 of God!" 
 
 We read in the Gospels of some unhappy spirits — the 
 demons who spake through the possessed — who anticipate, at 
 a " time " yet future, " torment," and "destruction," and who 
 prayed Christ not to send them down " to the abyss." Let 
 any one reflect on that indication of the unseen world of 
 judgment, and surely they will think twice before they encourage 
 men by a single word to regard the invisible realms as a region 
 into which rebels and fools may safely rush in hope of salva^ 
 tion. The very grace of the Gospel presupposes a " wrath to
 
 48 Final Aivi q/ tJiis CcmtentioiL 
 
 come," and that indignation is spoken of also for those who 
 reject the Gospel, as " the wrath of the Lamb." 
 
 It is the burden of the Lord, and I feel my own unfitness to 
 use the language of exhortation to Mr. Baldwin Brown ; but 
 my heart is so filled with tlie conviction of tlie truth and 
 urgency of this argument that he must " suffer " it even from 
 me, and not set down to malice what springs, 1 think, from 
 conscience towards God and Humanity. If it was a good 
 work to delve for seven days through the darkness and to cleave 
 the rocks, to save those imprisoned miners from death in time, 
 it seems to us as if it were for infinitely a nobler end to struggle 
 through the long years of this fearful contention, in the endea- 
 vour to reach mankind sitting in death-shade, with the pure 
 light of Life Eternal ; for •' he that hath the Son hath the life, 
 and he that hath not the Son hath not the life." 
 
 In my concluding letter, I will consider the general bearings 
 of this doctrine on popular faith, and especially on its alleged 
 tendency to encourage speculative atheism and materialism.
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 ON THE ALLEGED TENDENCY OF THE DOCTRINE TO 
 ENCOURAGE MATERIALLSTIC ATHEISM. 
 
 The substance of a large portion of the argument against 
 attributing Immortality to Redemption, and not to the con- 
 stitution of man's nature, is briefly this — that however harm- 
 less may be the influence of this doctrine on those who are 
 already Christian believers, its external effect on the world at 
 large will be immensely disastrous. It will degrade the whole 
 conception of human life, by reducing human nature to the 
 level of the animal races as to mortality, and will sweep away 
 the two chief articles of natural religion, the stepping-stones 
 of thought for faith in Revelation, namely, man's belief in his 
 own spiritual being and relationship with a spiritual and eternal 
 world, and therefore his belief in a spiritual and eternal 
 God. It will aid all the existing materialism which speculates 
 at present on the dependence of mind on brain, and thence 
 will lead logically to a denial of the being of mind where brain 
 does not exist ; even in Deity. In the thick darkness of the 
 Atheism which this doctrine will shed over the earth all 
 murderous and suicidal passions will hold sway, and the glory 
 of man will be lost in a hell-smoke of infidelity. 
 
 On these charges I beg to observe, first, that it is an ex- 
 ceedingly mischievous and delusive methotl of procedure, in 
 determining the meaning of the records of Revelation — a
 
 50 Our Advantage against Materialism, 
 
 method condemned by all past experience — to permit of 
 speculation on the supposed influence of facts and doctrines, 
 before deciding on their existence in the Bible. To permit 
 such a method would be fatal to faith in Revelation altogether. 
 Nearly all the prepossessions of mankind derived from an 
 uninspired philosophy are hostile to the actual declarations o 
 Christianity. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," says St. 
 Paul, " the things which God hath prepared for them that love 
 Him. But God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit." 
 " The world by wisdom knew " neither God nor Human Nature. 
 Our first business, then, is interpretation and induction, not 
 prophecy. The first question is, Are the prophets and apostles 
 of Christ clear and unanimous on these topics ? We judge 
 that they are ; but we think that we can show you that none 
 of the threatened evil consequences of teaching this truth, 
 which you anticipate, will occur. 
 
 OUR ADVANTAGE AGAINST MATERIALISM. 
 
 For first of all, the doctrine of immortality by recreation 
 and resurrection meets, on its own ground^ all the many-sided 
 materialism existing in the world, and enables it to believe in 
 God and a Gospel of Salvation. Mr. Brown evidently feels 
 that, with his Gospel, he can do nothing for materialists. He 
 must have a metaphysical battle with them first, and compel 
 them to change their ideas on human nature, before he can 
 persuade them to believe in Christ. Now that was not 
 Apostolic Christianity; nor is it ours. The apostles evidently 
 went forth with a Message which could save without delay 
 Epicurean Materialists and Sadducees, without insisting first 
 on a psychological conversion to faith in man's natural immor- 
 tality and possession of a " never-dying soul." 
 
 This is precisely our position. We who hold this doctrine 
 are not necessarily materialists. T myself am not one, but am 
 strenuously opposed to that form Qt opinion. But the " Gospel 
 which we preach " is adapted to meet, on their own groundfi
 
 Types of Alaterialism, • 51 
 
 — "just as they are " — materialists of every grade and type, 
 with a moral certainty of a glorious result as to multitudes of 
 them. Materialism is a creed which comprises many different 
 ranks of capacity and respectability. There arc the bad kinds 
 of materialists, who have resolved that they are only a superior 
 sort of organized animal matter, in order to give an air of 
 philosophy to their much worse than brutal excesses. But 
 there are also many far better types of materialism. You have 
 the scientific materialists who are not atheists ; such as some 
 of our noblest men of research and discovery ; and these hold 
 ideas of Matter, as the effect of Energy, so exalted as to 
 include within its possible combinations any degree of created 
 intelligence, without resorting to the hypothesis of a second 
 substance, such as Mind or Soul. With these thinkers Matter 
 seems only another name for something like Spirit, so pure 
 and so transcendent are their conceptions of its nature. Some 
 of the most distinguished philosophers of past and present 
 ages have adhered to this line of thought, without surrendering 
 their faith in God as the Supreme and Everlasting Energy and 
 Life of this universe. Of this opinion was Milton himself, 
 as is proved both by the explicit argument of his book on the 
 " Christian Doctrine," and by the following lines from the fifth 
 book of the " Paradise Lost " : — 
 
 *' To whom the winged hierarch replied : 
 Oh, Adam, one Alniighty is, from whom 
 All things proceed, and up to Ilim return, 
 If not depraved from good, created all 
 Such to perfection ; one first matter all 
 Endued ivith various for ins, various degrees 
 Of substance, and in things that live, of life. 
 But more refined, more spirituous and pure, 
 As nearer to Him placed, or nearer tending, 
 Each in their several active spheres assigned, 
 nil body up to spirit work, in bounds 
 Proportioned to its kind. — Bk. v. 
 
 Of the same opinion still are not a few of the ablest thinkers
 
 52 Salvatio)i of Sadducccs, 
 
 in all parts of the world to-day, — thcists they are, notwith- 
 standing. Then next, there are the materialistic scientific and 
 literary men, who are really Atheists also, but rather preferring 
 to be called Agnostics than Atheists ; and some of them of a 
 character so noble, so pure, so lovely, so sorrowfully sinking 
 into the last and deepest abysses of doubt, that Religious 
 Faith, instead of anathematising, must stretch forth a most 
 loving hand to help their sinking souls before they die. 
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL REACHES THE SADDUCEES. 
 
 Now the doctrine of life in Christ is a form of Christianity 
 which is specially adapted to take hold of men who are thus 
 convinced of the materiality of mind. It would be a poor 
 thing if the Gospel had no word for those who were Sadducees, 
 as well as for the Pharisees, if it could do naught to save men 
 who are philosophical .materialists; especially when we consider 
 how tough and dif.icult an argument is required even from 
 such men as Doctors Balfour Stewart, Tait, and Martineau, to 
 beat out of their delusions a Mill, a Spencer, and a Tyndal. 
 But we find it to be a matter of simple experience, that men 
 of all intellectual grades, who, for one reason or another, have 
 become theoretical materialists, and who, if abandoned to the 
 influence of that philosophy alone, would be compelled to 
 surrender all expectation of a future state for man, are drawn to 
 faith in a future state, and faiih in God as the Saviour in Christ, 
 and faith in immortality by Resurrection ; so that numbers of 
 these are being trained for the kingdom of heaven in a life 
 truly spiritual. Christ, who is the "Word made flesh, exerts 
 a power which lifts them up to God, with a hope full of 
 immortality. 
 
 Among these certainly must be reckoned the multitudes of 
 Christian believers who have received the Gospel of Christ on 
 our theological representation of it, but on a philosophical 
 basis of materialism. Apart from Christianity, they would be 
 materialists without a future. But see the effect of the teach-
 
 Salvaiioii not dtpoidclU on Alciaphysics. 53 
 
 ing of Life by Christ and by Resurrection. These men, in 
 masses, have become Christians. These Christian brethren 
 have no faith in man's possession of a "soul " or " spirit," in 
 the popular sense of the words. But tliey love life in its 
 highest form, in God's likeness, and long for life eternal, ami 
 they have believed in Christ to salvation. Him they regard 
 as the resurrection, and embrace Him with all their hearts. 
 There are not a few prominent examples of such believers, led 
 by the Spirit of God to Christ as the Life-Giver. 
 
 It has simply saved these men, as it is saving similar mater- 
 ialistic thinkers every day, who find this form of Christianity 
 precisely adapted to meet their needs. And when I consider 
 the difficulty and the complexity of the argument for a survival 
 of the spirit, I am the less desirous of resting all the hopes of 
 the world on such an obscure foundation ; and tenaciously 
 hold with Mr. Constable that the main object of faith is 
 Resurrection by the power of Christ, reconstruction of the 
 whole humanity by the Omnipotence of God. This is a basis 
 of hope common to men of all opinions as to the nature of 
 the thinking substance, and which invites alike the trust of 
 spiritualists and materialists. Neither does it require much 
 experience to show that not a few of these "materialistic" 
 believers in Christ are among the most " spiritual " persons 
 living on the earth — men of the purest lives, of the firmest 
 faith in things unseen and eternal, of dauntless purpose, of 
 heroic self-sacrifice, of devoted love to their Saviour, and of 
 the tenderest sympathy to mankind. They live with Christ 
 now, they think that in death their whole being will dissolve, 
 but that Christ, whose members they are, is coming quickly 
 "to create them anew^ to immortalise and glorify them," and 
 that they will have no sense of the interval between death and 
 resurrection. I ask Mr. Brown if this can be called a brutal- 
 ising result of the Doctrine of Conditional Immortality. 
 Neither he nor I can prevent the wide diffusion in this day of 
 scientific and semi-scientific materialism ; there are millions
 
 54 Spiiiliial antido!c io Ulaiirialis/Ji. 
 
 who, led on by Spencer and Maudsley, will not listen to the 
 old story of tlie Immortality of the Soul, and the more you 
 preach it to them the more fiercely they revolt, and point to the 
 piienomena of cerebral formation and cerebral decay ; but to 
 us it matters not, so mudi as to our opponents, how widely 
 these ideas extend. We can preach a credible Christianity, 
 and a present salvation to all materialists, high and low, by 
 preaching to them Jesus and the Resurrection. To this they 
 will listen. Their faith becomes an antidote to their philo- 
 sophy, and they will, perliaps, some day learn to think 
 differently on the one question which still divides us. 
 
 THE BEST ANTIDOTE TO MATERIALISM. 
 
 2. But we have a second answer to the charge of materialistic 
 tendences, which goes deeper into the real causes of mater- 
 ialism. A perfectly logical materialism which, denying a 
 spiritual basis of mind in man, denies it also in the universe, 
 and enforces the result in a speculative positivism and atheism, 
 may under certain circimistances become a real danger to 
 society. It may corrupt the tone of popular feeling as to the 
 moral dignity of man, and of popular faith as to his relations 
 with an Unseen Deity. It is not we who have produced it. 
 
 But how may it best be encountered and overcome? My 
 answer is, not by any simply metaphysical or philosophical 
 process, — not by a psychology which may be riddled by the 
 objections of Mr. Herbert Spencer, or made to look doubtful 
 even b}' Mr. Ilolyoake. It cannot be checked even by lec- 
 tures on the immortality of the soul, nor even by the additional 
 bribe to faith of a promise of universal discipline and salvation. 
 No ; the true remedy for a debasing materialism (for I will not 
 admit that Milton's materialism was debasing) is to be found 
 in the moral rather than in the intellectual realms of thought. 
 It will be found, not in a contrary theory as to the substratum 
 of mind, or as to the eternity of the thinking power, but in
 
 Spiritualisuig effect of Godly Fear, 5 5 
 
 the preaching of a credible judgment to conic, and of the 
 grace of God in the salvation purchased by Christ. 
 
 THE SPIRITUALISING EFFECT OF GODLY FEAR. 
 
 If you wish to overcome the evil types of atheistic mate- 
 rialism, you must awaken conscience, rather than entangle the 
 intellect in doubtful disputations. Canon Mozley's discourse 
 on TJie Unspoken judgment of Mankind^ in his " University 
 Sermons," will do more to alarm atheistic materialists into 
 repentance than the combined endeavours of my two friends 
 at Brixton and Clapham to establish human hope on the basis 
 of a metaphysical doctrine on the soul. 
 
 Men's philosophies spring from a great depth within them, 
 from their spiritual states. Bid them, then, listen to the awful 
 voice within, the utterance of a Will above the will, which 
 persists in denouncing wrong and sin, and inspires an expec- 
 tation of judgment. The liar, the thief, the fornicator, the 
 adulterer, the murderer, knows in himself, when once awakened 
 to solemn thought, that it is not incredible that there are con- 
 sequences beyond — and consequences of the most tremendous 
 character. These may be by survival or by the resurrection 
 of damnation. Whatever makes these consequences appear 
 credible, near, and certain, tends to awaken such reifections. 
 Whatever removes the fear which an evil conscience inspires, 
 whether it be an infinity of threatening, which generates un- 
 belief, or the bold assurance of a general delivery from perdition 
 at last, is so much gain for materialism. Whatever confirms 
 the voice of the inward witness, and points to the " great white 
 throne " of judgment, as the needle to the pole-star, is so 
 much gain for a spiritual view of life and its belongings. 
 
 THE SPIRITUALISING INFLUENCES OF REDEEMING LOVE. 
 
 But this is not the complete answer. Christ is in every 
 sense the Light of the world. His special message is not that
 
 56 Spu itiiaiibing elf at 0/ Rcdee7}iing Love. 
 
 of Terror, but of Mercy. Proclaim that mercy. Preach the 
 Gospel to every creature. Bring near, with a heart that feels 
 it, the love of God to sinners. Set before them Christ "openly 
 crucified for them," "bearing their offences, carrying their 
 sorrows ; " declare to the penitent the remission of their sins — 
 and you will wield against the bad sorts of materialism the 
 most powerful weapon in the world. 
 
 The true antidote to materialism is not found in a bold 
 ignoring of facts as to the generation of human nature, or as 
 to its structure and functions ; much less in setting up a 
 metaphysic which confounds survival with eternal duration, 
 and even maintains survival of the soul by arguments which 
 revolt the judgment of many of the foremost philosophers of 
 the age. The true remedy is to overthrow materialism by 
 "saving" materialists, and this is precisely what the doctrine of 
 Redemption to Immortality by Resurrection especially enables 
 us to do. It presents Christianity to man's conscience, judg- 
 ment, and affection, disentangled from theories which dissipate 
 its force by awakening scepticism rather than faith in the 
 hearers. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Here, then, I shall make an end 01 answering Mr. Baldwin 
 Brown's criticisms on the doctrine to the promulgation of 
 which — not as a mere negation on retribution, not as a jejune 
 doctrine on " annihilation," — not even as a positive doctrine on 
 the gift of eternal being (as Canon Liddon strangely misrepre- 
 sented it at St. Paul's Cathedral), — but as the gift of eternal 
 life^ i?i God's holy image — I have devoted so many years of my 
 ministry. I am deeply sensible of the dangers which attend 
 controversy on things Divine ; the danger of permitting the 
 idea contended for as God's truth to acquire a disproportionate 
 place in the sphere of daily thought ; the danger of allowing 
 it to become separated from its organic and vital relationships 
 with all other truths ; the danger of being blinded to those
 
 Dlsiiaivur of Scclarlan Aivis, 57 
 
 important aspects of the same suDjects which present them- 
 selves oftentimes in fullest force to opponents of the special 
 truth, which you may think that they have neglected, and you 
 are helping to rescue from oblivion ; the danger, finally, of 
 permitting the dogmatic to swallow up the practical, and the 
 theological to poison the spiritual. If, in any of these respects, 
 we who have handled these awful themes of the life to come 
 have in past time offended, for such offence it becomes us to 
 ask forgiveness of God and of man. The last thing at which 
 we aim is to found a school, a party, a sect, or to lead away 
 disciples after us, or to set ourselves up as generals in an all- 
 reforming crusade. No humiliating recantation of error is 
 sought for on the part of Public Teachers. All we ask of 
 them is that they, and the teachers of the young, will cease to 
 speak in unbiblical phrase of " man's immortal soul," and then 
 the ideas that are in the air, and the words of Scripture, will 
 gradually eftect the needed reform. With all my strength I 
 protest against every minister doing what some of us have 
 been compelled to do — making a public controversy on these 
 questions. The fewer controversies the better. What is 
 needed is not less practical fear of God's judgment, but more ; 
 not a dispute on Heaven or Hell, but an embracing of Christ 
 as the Life of the world ; and those arc the best friends of 
 truth and of humanity who will make men feel most deeply 
 " the powers of the world to come." 
 
 I must again express, Mr. Editor, my thanks for the large 
 and liberal opportunity given for addressing these arguments 
 to English readers. If by any less guarded expressions in 
 these letters, I have given needless pain or offence to any, 
 I will not stand upon a word ; and certainly towards Mr. 
 Baldwin Brown and Mr. Rogers, though so earnestly contend- 
 ing against their supposed deviation from the right line in this 
 department of theology, I can entertain no feeling except of 
 respect and good will. — I am, Sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 E W.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 In a former page I have invited attention to the doctrine 
 of the gospel of John, and in order to assist the reader's judg- 
 ment I subjoin a reprint of a criticism on the sixth chapter, 
 which has been thought specially deserving of notice by 
 competent judges. The reprint is taken from pp. 238-241 
 of my work on Life in Christy second edition. 
 
 E. W. 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER XVII. OF "LIFE IN 
 
 CHRIST." 
 
 It will be convenient to bring together in one view the indica- 
 tions afforded by this chapter of what we term the literal sense of 
 Life and Death in our Lord's discourses, in opposition to the pre- 
 vailing notion that life stands only for everlasting happiness, and 
 death for endless misery. In examining the sixth chapter of S. 
 John closely the reader is requested to bear in mind what the pre- 
 vailing theory is — namely, that man's soul is immortal by nature, — 
 so that all that comes to it from the hand of God, by the additions 
 of judgment or mercy, is the misery or the happiness of a nature 
 that is already eternal. The words of Christ on the donation of life, 
 or the infliction of death, on this theory must therefore strictly signify 
 the gift of happiness or the infliction of misery^ and nothing beyond. 
 
 We propose to show that our Lord's statements in this chapter 
 indicate that He meant much more than happiness or misery ; He 
 intended by life and death also, and primarily, immortality and 
 destruction. 
 
 The discussion recorded took place in the great synagogue of
 
 Critic is VI on S. yolui, CJi. VI. 59 
 
 Capernaum, of which some interesting ruins yet remain at Tel 
 Hum; for even the ruins are interesting of an edifice which was the 
 scene of this notable revelation of Divine truth and grace.' The 
 discourse was occasioned by the exclamation of Jesus, on seeing 
 the people crowding around Him at Capernaum, after the miracle 
 of Bethesda (ver. 26) : " Ye seek me because ye did cat of the loaves 
 and were filled ! Work not for the food which perisheth (t^i' 
 aTToWvjxemfjv), but for that food which endureth (ixivovaav) unto 
 Everlasting Life, ivhich the Son of man shall iriyc unto you.^^ The 
 people, supposing that He offered to supply food which would 
 confer perpetual life, ask, " What shall we do that we may work at 
 t?he works of God ? " Jesus answered, " This is the luork which God 
 requires, that you should believe on Him whom he hath sent" — a 
 work of the mind which would set all outward works right. " They 
 said therefore, What sign showest Thou that we jnay see and 
 believe Thee.'' What dost Thou work? Our fathers ate manna in 
 the desert, as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat." 
 (Your gift of bread has been on the level of the earth, and only for 
 a single meal ; can you not do something more like the miracle of 
 Moses, who gave the whole nation iood fro ?n heaven daily for forty 
 years ? Unless you at least equal Moses, we cannot forsake him to 
 believe in you.) " Then Jesus said to them. Verily, verily I say to 
 you. It was not Moses who gave to you even that bread from 
 heaven (it was God), but my Father now gives you the true bread 
 from heaven. For the bread of God is He which comes down 
 from heaven and gives life to the world. Then said they, Lofd, 
 always give to us this bread. And Jesus said, I am the bread of 
 life. He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that be- 
 lieveth on Me shall never thirst." 
 
 Now in this succession of sentences our Lord places together the 
 idea of bread, as the support of life, and of Himself as the giver of 
 eternal life. Bread is the aliment of life in the literal sense of the 
 term. Bread is not the symbol of happiness^ but of preservation of 
 life, aliment for continued being. 
 
 ' Canon Tristram mentions that on one of its remaining blocks of 
 masoniy, forming the keystone of the entrance arch inside, and therefore 
 visible to the congregation, is sculptured the pot of Manna, the symbol of 
 the God-given immortality.
 
 6o S'. yolui^ CliapUr VI. 
 
 This idea of bread as iJie support of life He then pursues to the 
 end of the chapter ; and just as people who have no food must die 
 so He teaches that preservation from death, and enjoyment of end- 
 less life, depend on receivinj^ this heaven-sent aliment of being. 
 
 Ver, 41. "This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one 
 which seeth the Son and bclievclh on Him may have c^'crlasting 
 life : " and in order to show that this life is not the happiness of a 
 soul already immortal, but the literal life of a mortal being who 
 consists of body and soul, He adds — "And / will raise him up at 
 the last day." The Jews then murmured at His saying that He 
 came down from heaven. He replied that their murmurings were 
 vain, since none could come to Him unless attracted by the Father 
 — and He then repeats it, " / ivill raise Him up at the last day ' 
 (ver. 44). 
 
 At verse 47 He returns to His first statement, and emphasises it 
 again and again. "Verily, verily I say to you, He that believeth in 
 me hath endless life. I am the bread of life'." But now, in order to 
 make still more clear His meaning as to to the sense of life, He 
 brings into view the converse, death; " Your fathers did eat manna 
 in the desert, and died; this is the bread that descended from heaven 
 that any one might eat of it, a7id not die." Here, then, Christ sets 
 aside, once for all, every " figurative " sense of life and death, and 
 shows by the contrast of the literal deaths died by the manna-eating 
 fathers, what was the signification of the life which comes with the 
 bread of heaven. It consists in ''^ not dyingP There is no nearer 
 approach to a formal definition of terms in our Divine Saviour^s 
 teaching. It is inconceivable that such language as this would be 
 used to denote the idea of a life which was only happiness or 
 spi?it2ial character gwew to a nature already immortal. 
 
 Inverse 51 our Lord solemnly reiterates His doctrine. "I am 
 the bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this 
 bread he shall live for ever, and the bread which I will give is my 
 flesh which I will give for the life of the world " iyirlp Trj<s rov Kocrfjiov 
 ^ojy]s:). Here is a steadfast adhesion to the idea of supporting the 
 world's life, by food which is heaven-descended. 
 
 Verse 52. A natural exclamation follows : " How can this man 
 give us His flesh to eat ? — Then Jesus said. Except ye eat the flesh 
 of the Son of man and drin^^ His blood ye have no life (not hv vfxiv, 
 but €v lavToh) in yourselves. Whoso catcth my flesh and drinketh
 
 vS. yoJin^ Chapter VI, 6 1 
 
 my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day 
 For my flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink. He that 
 eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in 
 him." The demonstration of our Lord's meaning still unfolds. 
 Bread was the symbol of life ; but how much more was blood. 
 The blood is the life thereof," not merely the happiness of a living 
 being, but its life ; and here Christ declares that life eternal depends 
 on drinking His blood, which was His life. Under this metaphor 
 the main idea is clearly seen, and the metaphor is brought in to en- 
 force that idea. Man's literal life in eternity depends on receiving 
 Christ, and being united to Him. Apart from such union he will 
 " die." 
 
 At verse 57 a still loftier illustration is given of the intention of 
 the discourse. Our Lord defines the life spoken of by reference to 
 the hfe of God. "As the Living Father hath sent me — (not surely 
 the blessed Father or the holy Father, but the ever-living self-ex- 
 isting, eternal Father), and I live by the Father''^ (I derive my life — 
 my eternal being, in the way of dependence on the Original 
 Majesty), — " so he that eateth me, he also shall live by vie j " — shall 
 derive not merely happiness, but being from me, as I derive mine 
 as the only begotten Son of God, by generation from the Supreme 
 God. 
 
 Our Lord then enforces His idea of life by recurring, after this 
 lofty reference, to His former statement : " This is the bread that 
 descended from heaven ; not as your fathers ate manna and died; 
 he that eateth of this bread shall live to eternity^' (ei? tov aiwva).* 
 
 The reader will judge, after thus examining this wonderful chapter, 
 whether it was possible for words to convey more distinctly to the 
 mind the statements, — 
 
 1. That man has no principle of eternally enduring life in him- 
 self ; 
 
 2. That God has given us eternal life in His Son ; 
 
 3. That man's actual enjoyment of eternal life depends on the 
 closest union with the Incarnate Life of God in Christ ; 
 
 4. That the eternal life bestowed on us includes and requires the 
 immortality of the whole humanity, and therefore carries with it the 
 resurrection of the dead . 
 
 The result of this discourse upon our Lord's hearers was to bring 
 to -1 ryWy'i tlin in\ynr;l revolt of many. ^^ From that time niauy of
 
 62 5. John, Chapter VL 
 
 His disciples went away backward, and walked no more with Him* 
 The doctrine of immortality through the Incarnation, and of death 
 eternal coming upon all men out of Christ, is .the chief stumbling- 
 block of the gospel. It was the last truth for the Church to learn 
 and the fust for her to lose— as it will be the last that she will con- 
 sent to receive again by unlearning the notion which makes man's 
 immortality independent of redemption. 
 
 The metaphorical part of this discourse, specially the difficulty 
 occasioned by His assertions of a descent from heaven, of the ne- 
 cessity of eating His flesh in order to eternal life, Christ at the close, 
 according to custom, explained to His faithful disciples. "Are you 
 scandalised, said He — at my saying I came down from heaven? 
 What, then, if ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was 
 before?" — a spectacle granted to them at Bethany. And as to 
 " eating His flesh," that. He added, was a metaphor for receiving the 
 doctrine founded on the sacrifice of His flesh for the world's hfe. 
 " The flesh itself profiteth nothing ;" I do not intend the literal eating 
 of my body. It is the truth respecting me which will give you 
 life. " The wo7'ds that I speak to you, they are Spirit, and they are 
 Life." Whence we learn that by life our Lord intends precisely 
 what He says, " For it is the Spirit that giveth life " (2 Cor. iii.).
 
 LETTERS TO THE "CHRISTIAN WORLD" 
 BY THE REV. S. MINTON, M.A,
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Mr. White, having expressed a wish that the fuUowing 
 letters, which appeared in the Christian World after the pub- 
 lication of Mr. Baldwin's Brown's Lectures, in the year 1875, 
 should be reprinted in conjunction with his own reply to 
 more recent criticisms from the same quarter, I am very glad 
 to append them. The lines traversed by the two answers, 
 though leading to the same point, are so different that they 
 may perhaps influence different classes of mind. 
 
 Not a word that I have heard or read since writing these 
 letters has in the slightest degree, or for a single moment, 
 shaken my fullest conviction, the strength of which I am wholly 
 unable adequately to express, that they maintain, in sub- 
 stance the very truth of God's revelation. And I daily wonder, 
 with ever increasing amazement, how any one — to use the words 
 of a very leading man in the Irish Episcopal Church — "with 
 two idecis in his head and a Bible in his hand, can doubt what its 
 teaching is on this subject," — when once the clue has been 
 given him. It is an intellectual mystery, that utterly baffles my 
 power of comprehension. Will any one try to find some single 
 doctrine that is more plainly, positively, and constantly asserted, 
 insisted upon, and illustrated, in every shape and form, from 
 the beginning to the end of the Bible^, tlian is the doctrine of 
 Conditional Immortality? "This is the record, that God 
 hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his son." 
 
 S. MiNTON.
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Sir, — Every one must honour Mr. Baldwin Brown for the 
 manHness with which he has spoken out his views, especially 
 as it appears to have cost him a considerable effort. But, be- 
 sides this, he has done the whole Church an immense service. 
 I could have wished for a more courteous title to his sermons, 
 and for the omission of a few expressions in the course of 
 them : but which of us can see clearly enough to pull out these 
 motes from our brother's eye? He is a man of like passions 
 with ourselves, and I lor one should be very unwilling, even 
 if he were not a personal friend of my own, to make him an 
 offender for a word. 
 
 My chief complaint against him is that he did not state dis- 
 tinctly at first what just drops out very incidentally in the last 
 sermon — that his severest strictures are directed, not against 
 the belief in conditional immortahty (which is commonly 
 understood by "annihilation"), but against certain views 
 which are held by some of its advocates, and as strenuously 
 opposed by others. Some years ago, when replying to an 
 article in the Contejnp07'ary, I protested against the very same 
 confusion of ideas ; and, more recently, you did me the favour 
 to publish two letters in which the protest was repeated 
 against the prevailing habit of "miscellaneous hitting" on 
 this subject. Now, my dear friend must excuse me for saying 
 
 5
 
 66 ''A Highly Developed Brute, ' ' 
 
 that he has been striking out very wildly indeed. He candidly 
 admits that what he contends against is not the living doctrine 
 of immortality in Christ, but only its " skeleton," after he has 
 cut away all the flesh from it, under the name of " padding"; 
 a process which would give to Apollo himself a not very attrac- 
 tive appearance. But even into his skeleton he puts some 
 abnormal bones, which are no more part of the system than 
 Papal Infallibility is part of Christianity — held though it may 
 be by a majority of Christians. And it is against those very 
 excrescences that his fiercest indignation is launched. 
 
 For instance, he regards it as "blankly incredible" that the 
 Son of God should have become incarnate in the form of "a 
 highly developed brute," whom '' a brickbat could put an end 
 to." And he seems to think this an argument against con- 
 ditional immortality. But some of us have long been con- 
 tending, publicly and privately, as earnestly as Mr. Brown can 
 do, against such views of man's nature. We consider the first 
 part of our Lord's saying in Matthew x. 28 ( " Fear not them 
 which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul " ) to be 
 as decisive against those who hold the death of a human being 
 to involve ''utter loss of existence," as the latter part ("but 
 rather fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in 
 hell " ) is decisive against Mr. Brown. A brickbat cannot put 
 an end to a man, but God can ; and, by telling us to "fear 
 Him " on that account, Christ distinctly implies that in certain 
 contingencies He will do so. 
 
 Again, a large part of Mr. Brown's denunciations (the word 
 is used in no offensive sense) are grounded on the supposition 
 that to believe in conditional immortality is to believe that 
 every human being who is not brought to the knowledge of 
 Christ in this life will be "swept into extinction." After say- 
 ing, " The Church was once more pitiful," because " the bright 
 gleam of hope suggested by the preaching to the spirits in 
 prison was caught and cherished," he adds, " But these anni- 
 hilationists are pitiless." The word " these " is manifestly col-
 
 The Bible Silent on Natural hnmortdlity , 67 
 
 lective, and not distinctive. Neither the title of the sermons, 
 nor a single word that occurs till near the close of the last, 
 gives the slightest indication of any distinction whatever exist- 
 ing in his mind. And yet, not to speak of my own letters ad- 
 dressed to yourself, the very first article in the current number 
 of Our Hope, one of our organs which was strongly recom- 
 mended not long since by the Christian Worlds is entirely 
 occupied with enforcing the very suggestion which Mr. Brown 
 says we are " pitiless " for refusing to " cherish" ; and scarcely 
 a number of the magazine ever appears without the same 
 view being urged by some *' annihilationist " or other. Two or 
 three years ago a few of us spent a whole evening in examining 
 that statement of St. Peter, and we were 'all agreed, with some 
 minor shades of difference, that it was impossible fairly to put 
 any other interpretation upon it. 
 
 This makes a very large hole indeed in Mr. Brown's indict- 
 ment against the doctrine of immortality in Christ alone. Yet 
 I am far from regretting that he has thus spoken ; for I hope 
 that it may enlarge the views of some of our friends, and point 
 out the directions in which, if our doctrine does not require to 
 be modified, our language may require to be more guarded. 
 
 A far greater benefit than that, however, will, I trust, result 
 from the earnest appeal, with which he begins and ends, for 
 perfect freedom of investigation. To that I say Amen wjfh all 
 my heart. 
 
 His cannonade of the popular belief in eternal evil can- 
 not but do immense good. From the title given to his 
 sermons, it might be thought that he feels less repugnance to 
 the idea of a hopelessly depraved life being perpetuated for 
 ever than to that of its being put an end to. But the explana- 
 tion probably is that he sees the one to be falling and the other 
 to be rising 3 and, as practically standing in the way of his own 
 view, he dreads the younger antagonist more than the older. 
 However that may be, he does proclaim war against eternal 
 evil, and in that we heartily thank him for his aid.
 
 68 TVar aoamst Eternal Evil. 
 
 ti 
 
 So far I think that neither Mr. Brown nor, what is a great 
 deal more, his most ardent admirers, will feel inclined to com- 
 plain of the tone of my reply. If you will allow me in another 
 letter to point out where I join issue with him, and how, in my 
 judgment, he has failed to invalidate our reasoning, I hope we 
 shall part as good friends as ever, though unable to see eye to 
 eye.
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Sir, — In addition to other things for which we have to thank 
 Mr. Baldwin Brown, is that of letting us know all that can be 
 said against our belief from his side of the question. We have 
 long known what could be urged from the other side ; and now 
 we may feel perfectly certain that we have received the most 
 tremendous volley which Universalism will ever be able to 
 discharge against us. For a Universalist he undoubtedly is, 
 in spite of the very fine distinction on the ground of which he 
 repudiates the name. He begins by professing that he has no 
 theory of restoration to offer, and ends by offering a very 
 distinct one indeed — namely, that every human being* will 
 probably yield sooner or later to the power of the Cross and 
 become reconciled to God. Why repudiate the name which 
 simply and forcibly expresses this theory ? It seems to me 
 that Euclid might as well have protested that he was no 
 mathematician, and had no definite proposition of his own 
 to make. Universalism will never find a more eloquent or 
 powerful advocate. 
 
 Well, I have read every word of his sermons — some of them 
 more than once ; and I have no hesitation in saying that our 
 fundamental position is absolutely untouched by them. He 
 has scarcely even attempted to grapple with our main argu- 
 ments. Indeed, any one could see, by the way in which from
 
 70 ^^ All live unto Hwi'^ 
 
 the very outset he entered a caveat against the question being 
 decided by the direct testimony of Scripture, that he felt 
 himself unable to meet them. He said we should *' hear little 
 of particular texts," and he spoke slightingly of " criticism " as 
 applied to the subject. But the whole Bible is made up of 
 particular texts, and criticism is only a scholastic word for 
 searching the Scriptures. Mr. Brown is compelled to resort to 
 criticism himself pretty freely ; he has to instruct his hearers on 
 " the balanced methods of Hebrew expression " ; and he rests 
 his proof of man's necessary immortality almost entirely on one 
 particular text, which every one admits to be exceedingly diffi- 
 cult, and the meaning of which has always been hotly disputed. 
 None of the plain people, who are said to be quite competent 
 to understand this matter for themselves without the aid of 
 learned criticism, would ever imagine that our Lord's comment 
 on Jehovah declaring Himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob — " for (they) all live unto Him " — proves the neces- 
 sary immortality of every human being ; but having, by a pro- 
 cess of reasoning which deprives the original saying of all 
 significance, satisfied himself that it does so, he pronounces 
 this one doubtful text to be '* utterly fatal to the theory of an- 
 nihilation." How many texts, as plain and positive as human 
 language could make them, would be considered sufficient to 
 be " utterly fatal " to his own theory ? He does indeed assert 
 that " in entire harmony with this demonstration of our Lord 
 is the wliole witness of Scripture : the immortality of the human 
 soul is not formally taught as a dogma ; it is eveiywhere after 
 the manner of Scripture assumed as unquestionable." How it 
 can assume as unquestionable that which it positively contradicts 
 on almost every page, is somewhat hard to understand. He 
 might just as well have said that Scripture assumes the non- 
 existence of God as unquestionable. If there are two things 
 which it formally teaches as dogmas, they are — that there is a 
 God, and that He " only hath immortality '' ; consequently, 
 that no creature can be immortal, except in the sense that God
 
 Silence of the Bible on Imrnortality , 71 
 
 will actually preserve him alive for ever. More than sixteen 
 hund7'ed times is the human soul or spirit spoJzen of in Scripture^ 
 and never once is it called imfnortal, deathless, never dyings or 
 anything of the kind. Is it credible, on Mr. Brown's hypo- 
 thesis, that not one of the sacred writers should ever have 
 dropped a single word to show that he regarded the human 
 soul as unquestionably immortal ? Is there a preacher in the 
 whole world who believes that doctrine, and yet has never let 
 any such expression fall from his lips, even by accident ? Mr. 
 Brown appeals to the "larger teaching of Scripture." But 
 where will he find anything larger than that ? And can such a 
 fact be put out of court merely by saying that we are "very 
 fond of countinsj texts " ? 
 
 The simple question is, whether, according to the teaching 
 of Scripture, every human being will necessarily live for ever, 
 or not. And the longer I think of it, the more amazed I feel 
 that any doubt could ever have arisen on the subject. To 
 justify this expression of opinion at all adequately would re- 
 quire something like a quarter of the space that you have so 
 profitably allotted to Mr. Brown's sermons ; and though you 
 have always been most generous to me, I fear that you would 
 "be inclined lo kick against the infliction. If your constituency 
 would only be kind enough to '' read my book," or any of the 
 pamphlets on this subject, that I have spent a small fortune in 
 printing and advertising, I should be content to say nothing 
 more ; but, knowing the difficulty of inducing people to lay out 
 sixpence on anything written in opposition to their own views, 
 perhaps you will allow me just to reply as briefly as possible to 
 the remarks made by Mr. Brown on two of the crucial words 
 in this discussion — life and destruction. 
 
 Life is interpreted, in the usual orthodox way, to mean happi- 
 ness — all that makes life worth possessing. But will any one 
 tell us, in the name of common sense, and the laws of human 
 language, why the word life, with eternal or everlasting prefixed 
 lo it, should mean something totally different from what is
 
 72 Life more than Existence, 
 
 meant by it with any other epithet prefixed ? A short life, a 
 long Hfe, a happy life, a wretched life, a useful life, and so on 
 through the whole dictionary : no one has the slightest double 
 as to the meaning of the word life in all these cases. Why 
 should there be any doubt as to its meaning when an eternal 
 or everlasting life is spoken of? If you say that a certain life 
 will last only for a year, and another person says. No, it will 
 last for ever, you are both speaking of the same thing. And 
 what is the difference between saying that any given person's 
 life will last for ever, and saying that he will have everlasting 
 life ? Mr. Brown tries to escape from it by charging us with 
 making life to mean merely " existence " ; and Mr. Spurgeon 
 calls it "a colourless existence." We do no such thing. A 
 marble statue has existence ; and if it were preserved un- 
 injured for ever it would have eternal existence ; but it would 
 not have eternal life. Some men are now leading a life of sin 
 iind misery \ if their lives were perpetuated for ever in that con- 
 •clition, they would lead an eternal life of sin and misery ; but 
 ihey would have a great deal more than existence. What we- 
 maintain is, that life means life — whether it lasts only for a 
 time or lasts for ever. And the reason why the promise of 
 everlasting life necessarily carries blessing with it is that God 
 has declared His purpose to reconcile all things to Himself by 
 Christ ; so that those who live for ever must share in that 
 general reconciliation. If God be true, an everlasting life of 
 sin and misery is impossible. I will only add, that in Matt^ 
 x. 39 our Lord describes the life to be saved or lost hereafter by 
 a word which no one pretends can possibly mean holiness or 
 happiness : " He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that 
 loseth his life for My sake shall find it." Both the argument 
 and the word employed demonstrate that He is speaking of 
 physical life. If we save our lives here by unfaithfulness to- 
 Christ, we shall lose them hereafter ; if we are willing to sacri- 
 fice them here for His sake, we shall preserve them hereafter ; 
 ■*.or, in Ezekiel's words, we shall "save our souls alive." The
 
 Meaning of Destruction, 73. 
 
 only difference is that, while here we can only save or lose our 
 bodily life, we shall hereafter save or lose the life of our whole 
 being, body and soul. 
 
 Then as to destruction, which is so constantly threatened 
 to the finally impenitent. Orthodoxy interprets it to- mean the 
 destruction of their happiness, Mr. Brown the destruction of 
 their sinfulness. So that to destroy a man is according to one 
 view to make him perfectly miserable, according to the other 
 to make him perfectly holy. And this in the teeth of our Lord's 
 precise definition of what it is that will be destroyed, — neither 
 his happiness nor his sinfulness, but the component parts of his 
 being, his body and his soul, the man himself. On the orthodox 
 theory, the words should run, " Fear not them which have 
 power to make the body miserable, but have no power to make 
 the soul miserable ; but rather fear Him who has power to make 
 them both miserable in hell." On the Universalist theory 
 they should be, '' Fear not them which can make the body 
 holy, but cannot make the soul holy ; but rather fear them who 
 can make them both holy in hell." This argument may possibly 
 admit of some reply ; but it is surely not so " vapid " a one as 
 to need no reply. 
 
 Or again, unless the various figures employed to represent 
 the future destruction of the impenitent be utterly deceptive 
 and misleading, there can be no room for question as td their 
 verdict. Are our Lord's parables to be utterly ignored ? And 
 if not, can any one believe that the tares are burnt up to turn 
 them into wheat, or the bad fish thrown away in order to make 
 them good fish ? When the Baptist said that the wheat would 
 be gathered into the Lord's garner, but the chaff would be burnt 
 up with unquenchable fire, could any one imagine that the chaff 
 would ultimately reappear in the form of wheat and find its way 
 into the garner ? 
 
 It would be easy to pursue this to any length. But I must 
 forbear; only asking permission for one more letter, on the 
 moral aspects of the question.
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Sir, — I think Mr. Baldwin Brown would scarcely deny that 
 A is on the moral aspect of the question he mainly rests his 
 case. 
 
 **The larger teaching of Scripture" simply means the teach- 
 ing of those particular texts which appear to support his own 
 view. The natural meaning of a vastly larger number of texts 
 cannot be their real meaning, because it would teach some- 
 thing ** degrading to man and dishonouring to God." This is 
 just the most difficult part of the subject to deal with concisely, 
 because of its intimate connection with the great moral mystery 
 — the permission of evil. The moment we attempt to grapple 
 with any aspect of that portentous fact, we get enveloped in 
 such a cloud of smoke that it is difficult to know where we are. 
 But still I will endeavour, with the verj^ limited space at my 
 command, to show that the moral difficulties which our brother 
 has raised are very far from sufficient to overthrow the plain 
 xmd positive declarations of Holy Writ. 
 
 It certainly cannot be degrading to any creature, however 
 exalted, to say that it must necessarily be for ever dependent 
 upon the Creator for the continuance of its life, and that the 
 same power which created can at any time destroy it. Does 
 any one feel that man is being degraded when we sing ot 
 Jehovah, "He can create and He destroy"? Nay, can we
 
 A ** Caste of Lnviortals.^'* 75 
 
 conceive of the Creator bringing any being into existence that 
 He could not put out of existence? I cannot; I beHeve 
 such a thing would be utterly impossible. 
 
 The only question, then^ is, whether man would be degraded 
 by any single member of his race being actually put out of 
 existence. Surely Mr. Brown will admit that an affirmative 
 answer to this question would be about as tremendous a stretch 
 of human pride as could well be conceived. Immortality is 
 such a marvellous gift to be bestowed upon any creature that 
 it is hard enough to believe in it at all. But for a whole race of 
 beings to say they will feel degraded if any one of their number 
 is not. allowed to live as long as the Creator Himself, must 
 surely be the ne plus tdtra of self-exaltation. Mr. Brown 
 cannot mean this. But, then, what does he mean ? 
 
 He is so undiscriminating in his allegations against " these 
 annihilationists," that he may perhaps refer to some views 
 which he supposes us to hold as to man's nature being re- 
 duced to the level of the brutes by his fall, and only restored 
 to its original condition in regeneration ; so that the regenerate 
 are a "caste of immortals" moving about amongst beings of 
 another order. If any one holds such a view, let him defend 
 it. For myself, I believe that every man's physical con- 
 stitution remains to the day of his death exactly Ijie same 
 in kind as it was created in Adam, though probably with a 
 considerable loss of its original power and beauty. The only 
 difference between one man and another is of a moral kind ; 
 and on that difference, whether it become unalterably fixed in 
 this life or the next, depend the issues of life and death. 
 What is there " degrading " in this ? Mr. Brown may be 
 right or wrong in his severity to " saints " and tenderness to 
 ^' sinners," but he will not deny that there are such distinctions, 
 or that our Lord and His apostles make them to be of tremen- 
 dous importance. The difference between wheat and tares, 
 between " the children of God and the children of the devil," 
 is not one of *' caste " ; neither does it make the one to be
 
 76 Truth does not ** D is honour God^^ 
 
 " mortals," and the other " immortals." They are both alike 
 mortal ; but those who have " counted themselves unworthy 
 of eternal life" will ''perish," while those who have believed 
 in God's only begotten Son, and sought for immortality by 
 patient continuance in well doing, will "not be hurt of the 
 second death," for " if any man eat of this bread he shall live 
 for ever." 
 
 Well, then, if there is nothing in this " degrading to man,"" 
 is there anything in it "dishonouring to God"? How? 1 
 confess I am at a loss to conceive, except on the assumption 
 that the Creator must never withdraw from a creature any gift 
 that He has once bestowed upon it. But that would require 
 every animal to be immortal, or, at the very least, to be com- 
 pensated hereafter for its sufterings here. Mr. Brown speaks 
 of their life being a pleasure to them. To some of them it 
 is. But what are we to make of those animals whose lives few 
 of us would be willing to endure, even to obtain an eternity of 
 blessedness? If the intelligent, confiding, faithful, affectionate 
 dogs, whom fiends in human form have subjected to the 
 frigbiful agonies of vivisection, were gifted with our friend's 
 ebquence, they might declaim against the " pitilessness " of 
 'ehose who would deny them immortality in as burning words 
 as any that he has used of those who, while overwhelmed with 
 gratitude for the marvellous gift of eternal life, which they 
 believe has been bestowed upon them in Christ, and deeply 
 sympathising with the groans of creation, can feel no confidence 
 that all their sufi"ering brethren will sooner or later partake of 
 the same stupendous blessing. 
 
 But has not man a vastly higher nature than the brute ?" 
 Assuredly. And that tells tremendously against his prospect 
 of immortality, if he violate it. For, difficult as it is to conceive 
 of the Creator bestowing such a gift upon a creature that could 
 never know or love the Giver, it is infinitely more difficult to 
 conceive of His bestowing it on one who might, but would not, 
 love Him for it. Our friend hopes that this will never occur;
 
 A ** Savour of Death tuito Death!''' 77 
 
 he trusts to the power of the Cross to bring every human being 
 into loving harmony with the Creator. But he admits that 
 the absolute *' freedom of the human will" must render it 
 uncertain. And that alone would require some limitation 
 to be put upon the scope of those "particular texts," on 
 •which he mainly depends, and which, if taken alone, would 
 •undoubtedly lend him strong support. We go further, and 
 maintain that other declarations of Holy Scripture, too 
 •numerous to be overlooked, as well as too plain and posi- 
 tive to be evaded, absolutely forbid us to understand this 
 ^'larger teaching" in the extreme sense for which Univer- 
 salists contend. They assert in every shape and form 
 that some men never will yield to the power of the Cross; 
 that they will ** receive this grace of God in vain" ; that the 
 Gospel which proclaims it will prove to them " a savour of 
 death unto death " ; that it will become "impossible to renew 
 them again unto repentance "; and that for them "there re- 
 maineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking 
 for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the 
 adversaries." To pronounce it "dishonouring to God " that 
 such should perish, is to say, eidier that God dishonoured 
 Himself by creating free agents liable to evil, or that, having 
 created them, He is bound in honour to keep them alive for 
 ever at any costs to Himself, to the universe, and to them. So 
 far from their destruction being inconsistent with perfect love, 
 it is only one manifestation of that love. To borrow the 
 language of the Rev. Samuel Cox from his article in Good 
 WordSf " For those who wtVt be evil, what greater mercy can be 
 shown than that they should be destroyed out of their misery 
 by the love from which they will not accept any higher 
 boon?" 
 
 The amount and kind of mental or bodily suffering which will 
 precede or accompany that destruction we may contentedly 
 leave with the Judge of quick and dead. That it will be some- 
 thing very terrible, much more terrible in some cases than in
 
 78 The End of Evil, 
 
 others, neither reason nor the language of Scripture can permit 
 us to doubt. But whatever may be the actual process by which 
 the consuming fire of Divine wrath will devour the adversaries 
 — and of that we can form not the slightest conception — we 
 may be perfectly sure that there will be nothing in it to shock 
 the deepest instincts of righteousness or love, but that the con- 
 science of the whole universe will be satisfied, and all creation 
 will say, Amen. 
 
 So likewise may we confidently trust God to wipe away the 
 tears that may start to our eyes at the thought of those whom 
 we loved, as long as there remained anything in them to love ; 
 but it will not be the " doomsman's stroke" that causes our 
 regret; it will be that, through "judging themselves unworthy 
 of eternal life," they sank to a depth of moral corruption which 
 rendered that stroke inevitable. The reconciliation in Christ 
 of all things that were created by Christ — " and without Him 
 was not anything made that was made " — will be none the less 
 *'real" because countless forms of life have passed away for 
 ever, some without immortality being placed within their reach, 
 and some through refusing to accept it. All things will be none 
 the less " very good " because many things once became so 
 hopelessly bad as to necessitate their removal. The dark cloud 
 of evil that had once been allowed to settle on creation will 
 have been rolled away. And as eternity unfolds the ever- 
 extending glory and happiness which have been evolved out of 
 it, and which, unless the Creator loves evil for its own sake, 
 could not possibly have been obtained in any other way, we 
 shall be less and less inclined to ask, which now sometimes we 
 can scarcely help doing, whether any conceivable result can be 
 worth such a cost. Our lips will never falter as we exclaim, "Oh 
 the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God ! " nor shall we have to add from the bottom of a trem- 
 bling heart, and in the perplexity of a bewildered intellect, 
 "How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past 
 finding out."
 
 Practical Results, 79 
 
 What is there *' miserable" in this? Nothing, that I can 
 see ; nor, I beUeve, that my honoured friend can see. It is 
 not the doctrine of conditional immortality that excites his 
 " intense repugnance," but certain other doctrines, which he 
 supposes to be connected with it, and which certainly are some- 
 times conjoined with it in a more or less definite form. Tran- 
 substantiation has been engrafted on the incarnation ; but it 
 would hardly be fair to make it a prominent feature, if not the 
 main foundation, of an attack on " the miserable doctrine of 
 incarnation." We hold that ** mortal man " is offered immor- 
 tality in Christ ; and that this is the plain natural and intended 
 meaning of " the record which God has given of His Son." 
 We hold that " the crown of life " is a prize freely offered to 
 us in Christ, to be sought for *' by patient continuance in well 
 doing," and if won to be cast at the feet of Him who purchased 
 it for us with His own blood. A variety of answers may be 
 given to the multitude of questions that naturally arise as to 
 the practical consequences of this doctrine, each of which 
 answers should be discussed on its own merits. But the doc- 
 trine itself should not be made responsible for any consequences 
 except such as necessarily result from it. For myself, I am 
 unable to see one that creates any moral difficulty in accepting 
 what, after having for years considered everything that can be 
 said on all sides of the question, still appears to me the un- 
 doubted consistent and most emphatic testimony of Holy 
 Scripture. 
 
 We are no more the " discoverers " of this truth than Luther 
 was the discoverer of justification by faith. On the contrary, 
 we have always declared that it was the prevalent, if not uni- 
 versal faith of the Church for the first two centuries ; that it is 
 taught in the writings of later ''Fathers " ; and that although, 
 like many other truths, it was almost buried out of sight during 
 the dark ages, it has never been without witnesses since the 
 Bible itself was disentombed at the Reformation. Luther 
 wrote : ''I permit the Pope to make articles of faith for him.-
 
 So To the Law and to iJie Tistimony. 
 
 self and his faithful — such as, that the soul is the substantial form 
 of the human body, that the soul is immortal, with all those 
 monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman Decretals." In 
 the Book of Common Prayer we ask, ** that we may rise to 
 the. life immortal," " that we may so pass though things 
 temporal as finally to lose not the things eternal;" and for 
 our Queen, that God may "crown her with immortality 
 in the world to come." Locke maintained that only " he who 
 -doeth the will of God abideth for ever; " Milton expressed it 
 in the "Paradise Lost"; Olshausen, no mean scholar or 
 divine, so far from holding that the necessary immortality of 
 every human soul is *' always assumed in Holy Scripture as un- 
 questionable," declared that " the doctrine and the name are 
 alike unknown to the entire Bible ; " Archbishop Whately 
 argued in his own pointed way that life means life, and death 
 means death, in the Bible as well as in any other book ; Arch- 
 bishop Thompson says, in his *' Bampton Lectures," "Life to 
 the godless must be the beginning of destruction, since nothing 
 but God, and that which pleases Him, can permanently exist." 
 But time would fail to tell of Watson, of Foster, of Alford, with 
 a host of other divines, great and small, living and dead, in our 
 own and other lands, who, though neither individually nor 
 collectively infallible, have cast into the scale a weight of autho- 
 rity which can scarcely be neutralised by the remark that "very 
 clever men " can make Scripture say anything. Some of those 
 who are weak in this world may of late have been chosen to 
 popularise this doctrine in a way that, for more reasons than 
 one, would have been hardly possible to the great and the 
 learned. But in either case the only question is, whether the 
 ^doctrine be of God or not. " To the law and to the testimony ; 
 if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is 
 210 light in them."
 
 1