King, T.S.
Doctrine of endless
punishment .
Boston, 1858.

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Bought with the income of the
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19

THE DO'CTKINE

ENDLESS PUNISHMENT

FOE THE SIHS OP THIS LIPS,

UNCHRISTIAN AND UNREASONABLE.

TWO DISCOURSES,

DELIVERED IN HOLLIS STREET CHURCH.

BY EEV. THOMAS STAKE KING.

PUBLISHED BT REQUEST.

BOSTON :
CROSBY, NICHOLS AND COMPANY,
117 WASHINGTON S11III.
1858.

Geo. C. Rand St Avery, Printers, 3 Cornhill, Boston.

DISCOURSE I.

Matt. xxv. 46 : " Akd these shall go aitay ihto eveklasting punishment ; but
the eighteoub ihto lipe etebhal."
I shall ask your attention, in this discourse, to some of
the language of Jesus concerning Eternal Punishment.
A few words are requisite, however, by way of explanation
and preface. I must beg you to believe that I do not
approach the subject with any desire to lighten in your minds
the sense of the evil of sin; or to intimate that the four
Gospels, by any possible interpretation, patronize or justify
any theory that seems lenient towards an unconsecrated life.
There can be no religion worthy of the name, which does not
imply and assume that the distance between right and wrong
is immeasurable. The difference in worthiness and health,
in quality and tendency, between a man who lives in the
choice of evil, and a man who lives in loyalty, charity, and
aspiration, cannot be fully expressed by any imagery drawn
from space. Such persons are in opposite conditions. The
one is in harmony with G-od — with all His justice and all
His love. The other is at discord with the truth of things,
and with the nature, will and mercy of the Infinite Father.
It is no part of a religious teacher's office to make such
things as lying and stealing, lust and avarice, pride and
slander, drunkenness and slavery, wrong voting and indiffer
ence of any kind to the rights and welfare of humanity, look

otherwise than heinous and hateful. It is his office, as it is a
prominent office of the New Testament, to interpret the
dreadfulness of a selfish will, and an impure and callous heart.
Living in such vices, we ought to see that we live in alienation
from God, and, in greater or less degree, in the state which
the Scripture calls "death." The mission of the pulpit and
of the New Testament is discharged by leading us to see
what bondage, and misery, and deepening spiritual peril,
attend depraved affections and evil habits as God regards
them from His perfect freedom and purity ; and by supplying
the motives and forces that will restore us to inward har
mony and reconciliation with God.
It is not, therefore, our primary duty, as Christians, to
calculate the duration of the punishment of sin. We are
rather to appreciate the wrong it does to ourselves, the mis
chief it works in the world, the offence it offers to the holy
love of the Infinite, and the distance it creates between us
and Him. This, I believe, was the custom and tone of the
thought of Jesus Christ. To rise into fellowship with his
feeling about evil, we must banish conceptions of the dura
tion of its penalty, or even of the pain that may attend it.
"We must learn to measure its wretchedness by the state to
which it tends to sink the spirit, in which, — and just so lono*
as the state endures, — all the laws and the very beneficence
of the universe are hostile to it. If Christianity had not been
perverted from the directions in which the language of Jesus
pointed, we should not be involved in such sad discussions
as we are now often forced into, concerning the duration of
punishment. Ordinary Orthodoxy tells men that, unless they live
according to a certain scheme of thought and service in this
life, a doom of misery will be executed upon them in the life
to come, from which God will not allow them any escape or
return. This is the doctrine with which we take issue.

The ordinary Universalist conception is, that Christ has
revealed with definiteness and fulness, as one of the central
and textual doctrines of his religion, that the punishment of
the wicked is to cease at a certain time, and that all will be
restored to purity and joy.
The Orthodox doctrine is, to my mind, dreadful and mon
strous. Nothing, it seems to me, has wrought, or can work,
so much damage to Christianity, as the belief that, by the
decree of God, this life is the final probation of all souls for
an eternal destiny. Such a limitation of mercy, such a doc
trine of doom, such a theory of mechanical separations, and
of judicial, never relaxing retribution in the world to come,
forbids any pure conception or powerful preaching of the
essential evil of sin and vice, and turns attention to external
and arbitrary penalties and perils. It corrupts our philos
ophy of the divine government. It breeds distrust, and
gloom, and slavish fear, and skepticism. It sets Christianity
at war with our constitutional instincts of justice and
charity. And yet I freely say that I do not find the doctrine of the
ultimate salvation of all souls clearly stated in any text, or
in any discourse, that has been reported from the lips of
Christ. I do not think we can fairly maintain that the final
restoration of all men is a prominent and explicit doctrine
of the four Gospels. We needlessly narrow the grounds of
opposition to Sacrificial Orthodoxy, by attacking it from such
a position. This we can say with assurance and emphasis :
The doctrine of Eternal Punishment, as a judicial penalty,
i3 utterly opposed to the principles of the religion of Jesus.
We need nothing more than the conception he has given us
of God, to make us sure that no spirit will ever be. debarred
from returning to allegiance whenever it desires ; — that there
can be no period in eternity when the Infinite arms will not
be wide open for any prodigal, penitent and poor, that longs

to escape from his miserable husks. There is no doom that
will ever prevent this. And if we know that the love of God
will never be withdrawn from any soul he has made ; if we
feel sure that the tremendous justice He has organized in the
spiritual universe is secretly related to the health of the
vilest man, our hearts can be at rest as to the problem of
divine order.
The religion of Jesus does inspire this confidence in God.
When we read it rightly, it forbids us to limit his mercy
within this short life. There is nothing final in the divine
government of souls. Into whatever district of the universe
we move, we are in the embrace of perfect justice and
perfect love. Seeing this truth clearly, Jesus did not attempt
to write for us a calendar, or cipher the arithmetic of retri
bution. He endeavored rather to make men feel that an evil
state is the worst thing in the universe, and that so long as
they remain in it, they are aliens from the Infinite love who
always desires their repentance and return.
The mission of Christ was to publish principles and pour
regenerative life into the race — leaving it to our reason to
balance truths, dispose them into system, and draw out all
their logical contents. He taught men the infinite goodness
of God and how to interpret his goodness. He unfolded
the majestic and constant laws of the blessed life, and of
the life to which a wrong choice tends. He disclosed
the inmost evil of sin, and in what the deepest sin con
sists, and the path out of it into liberty and peace. He
lived to illustrate the possibilities of our nature and the
excellence of God ; in order thus to leave in the world the
germ of a sacred future for humanity, and of a church that
should triumph over all social iniquity. There is no argu
ment for the final triumph of goodness recorded in the four
Gospels, nor any dogmatic textual assertion of that doctrine ;
but all the principles glow there, vivid as the sunlight, that

are required to give us the most consoling trust in God
through eternity, and the most cheering hope for man.
With this introduction, we approach the particular question
to be treated now. Is there not a doctrine of doom revealed
to us in the language of Jesus ? Did he not teach that there
is an irrevocable and everlasting penalty to be executed upon
sinners, at some future day, by the Infinite Judge ? The dis
cussion of this point has very important bearings upon the
ology, apart from the great question of the retributions of
the future world.
In the first place, as we have already implied, our concep
tion of the character of God and of his government, is
involved in it. It is utterly impossible for a man to believe
in an infinitely perfect ruler of the universe, if he believes
that a never-ending penalty of pain has been deliberately
established by that ruler, for all those who pass out of this
life unreconciled to his will. A man who believes this may
say that he believes there is an infinite excellence enthrone d
over the world. But he cannot interpret that excellence SO
as to make it harmonize with our conceptions of perfect
equity, wisdom, and love. We have the deepest interest,
therefore, in examining the language of the New Testament
that seems to teach that doctrine. For if the four Gos
pels are committed to it, then they do not present to us an
infinitely perfect being for our worship and trust. And if
the God to whom they point us is not infinitely perfect, the
religious character they will educate will, of course, be false
and low.
In the second place, a right understanding of this lan
guage of Jesus which speaks of eternal punishment is inti
mately connected with an understanding of the mind and
office of Jesus, as a religious Teacher. How are we to inter
pret his language ? How are we to come into fellowship with

his thought ? In what mood are we to listen to his reported
words ? Shall we regard him as an inspired poet, or as a
scientific teacher, — a judge who accurately weighs his words,
and gives them to the world to fix the proportions and the
whole outline of theological truth for all time ?
I have taken for treatment the strongest passage upon
which the believers in unending misery rely : " These shall
go away into everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into
life eternal." Our Orthodox friends say that we are to take
this language in its literal sense — that we must interpret
it as we would a book of science, or a calm, elaborate decis
ion from a Supreme Court.
All essential theological truth is to be drawn, we are told,
from the New Testament. We are not to speculate beyond
its plain declarations. And if we must not interpret its lan
guage according to the natural meaning of words in daily in
tercourse, we might as well have no revelation, — since every
body will be at liberty to stretch or compress the language
of Jesus, to suit his own desires or fancy. The only rever
ence towards God, and the only safety, they say, lies in adher
ing to the literal meaning of the words of the New Testament,
which God has given to us as our theological chart. And,
they continue, if these words "everlasting," "eternal," do not
mean strictly everlasting in our usage of the terms, we might
as well have no revelation as to human destiny. For the
phraseology which the Book deals with is not governed by
the sense which we give to the words, and therefore the pre
tended instruction from Heaven is practically useless.
Of course the main interest in this question centres in the
meaning which belongs to the original Greek word here ren
dered " everlasting." We shall take that up shortly. But
we ought to say, as a comprehensive answer to the Orthodox
methods of dealing with Scripture, that the New Testament
is not given as a full and accurate theological chart for hu-

man thought. Its relations to the intellect are entirely dif
ferent from those which Orthodoxy assumes ; and it can only
be misunderstood, if we persist in treating it as though God
had put there a symmetrical theology, which can be re-pro
duced by a cunning arrangement of texts into mosaic work.
See how fragmentary the New Testament is ! How little
is preserved to us of the instruction of Jesus ! Not a thou
sandth part of what he uttered ; and very rarely any consec
utive talk, or conversation, that would have occupied five min
utes in utterance ! Parables are saved without the subjects
which they illustrate : so that we must sometimes construct
the subject from the illustration. Condensed reports or
briefs of long addresses are given ; snatches from controver
sies ; sentences that cut to the heart of a proud man's self-
sufficiency, or a Pharisee's formalism ; strains of melody from
large movements and phrases of sacred music that died on the
air of Palestine. In some chapters, miracles, and in other
chapters parables, and in others unconnected paragraphs of
the most searching wisdom, are crowded together, without re
gard to the time or the occasion of their utterance ; because
the recorder had forgotten the time and the precise connec
tions, but was not willing to lose a single act or tone, which
his memoranda furnished, of that holy mind. You know what
the closing words of the Gospel of John are : " And there are
also many other things which Jesus did ; the which, if they
should be written, every one, the world itself could not con
tain the books that should be written."
I have sometimes thought, that the very best help to a right
reading of the four Gospels would be afforded by an edition,
printed separate from the rest of the New Testament, and
without a word of comment, that should break up our absurd
division into verses and chapters, and show, by large margins
and blank spaces between the paragraphs, how little, compar
atively, is saved from the instruction of Jesus, and how frag-
2

10

mentary that little is. According to one estimate, the public
ministry of our Saviour lasted sixteen months ; according to
another theory, it occupied three years and a half. And yet
all the words of Jesus that have been saved can be put into
the compass of half a dozen ordinary sermons, and could be
published as a pamphlet. This, too, must be distributed into
something like a hundred portions.
Suppose now that we should open a volume, in which a
score of pages should be devoted to the birth and childhood
of the Saviour, and in these pages we should find two very
brief narratives, which commentators have found it very
difficult to harmonize. Turn over several leaves appropriated
to his youth, and find nothing but a few verses, concerning
the visit to Jerusalem, when twelve years old, and an unre
corded conversation with the Doctors in the Temple. On
the ensuing leaves, set apart for the whole period between
twelve and thirty, not a word of biography, not a sentence of
tradition ! Next, a short account of the Baptism, but no
announcement from Jesus himself of the outline and character
of his mission. The forty days in the wilderness, and the
temptation, appear in a dozen verses. If we adopt the
longer chronology of his preaching, which most of the
Orthodox critics in this country accept, we must pass over
six months of his ministry, and fiud them dotted simply with
the narrative of the marriage feast, and the few sentences in
which some of the apostles were called. Then turn to a
whole year of that ministry, in the course of which Jesus
travelled over the length of Palestine. We should not find
so much instruction saved from it as would make the half of
an ordinary sermon. And this would consist chiefly of the
sketch of the interview with Nicodemus, and the dialogue
with the woman of Samaria. Another year would be indi
cated by fragments, amounting in all to less than fifty 16mo
pages of open printing, which must be distributed over more

11

than thirty occasions, and a considerable portion of which
will be parables of " The Good Samaritan," " The Lost
Sheep," " The Prodigal Son," « The Unjust Steward," " The
Rich Man and Lazarus," " The Importunate Widow," " The
Pharisee and the Publican," and " The Laborers in the
Vineyard." Would not the four Gospels thus printed, so that the eye
could not help reading them as fragments and in relation
to a chronology, be studied in a very different spirit, and
so, possibly, yield very different results from those which
theologians have drawn from them ? Would not the aster
isks of such an edition be more effective than any commentary
in teaching us how to approach them and interpret them ?
Do preachers and critics deal fairly with records of this
character — thrown with such disorder into literature that
an undisputed chronology of the Saviour's life cannot be
deduced from them, and so detached that scarcely a chapter is
ever devoted to a single subject, — mere crumbs and driblets
from a great career and soul, — do they deal fairly with them
when they treat them as if they wei?e one cool, consecutive,
systematic discourse or treatise from a divinely appointed
professor of theology for all time ?
If we had time for it, we should see that the same principle
is applicable to the Epistles. These are generally rhetorical
and passionate in their purpose and tone. They are not
judicial papers, or theological essays. They are hot argu
ments and exhortations to meet instant emergencies ; and
their language is shaped and colored by controversies and
modes of thought that have utterly died. Nothing can be
more certain than that the Epistles were written without any
suspicion by the apostles that they were to be used in after
centuries, amid new conditions of Christian society and life,
to determine the intellectual boundaries of Christian truth, by
such cold-blooded textual squeezings as theologians employ.

12

We say that no one can appreciate this fractional character
of the New Testament records, and especially of the records
of Jesus' instruction, without coming to this conclusion: —
Providence intended to give us through these pages, hints of
truth, and not a scheme of truth ; seed thoughts, not develop
ments or systems ; a few principles kindled into vividness to
be unfolded and applied by the growing mind of the church,
and not rigid conclusions to which its intellect in all ages was
to be tethered. The character of God; the true consecra
tion ; the acceptable worship ; the laws of the soul's peace ;
the constant presence of the spirit: these, and the life
of Christ, whose perfectness and proportions are hinted
through the dotted outline and the exquisite tinges of celes
tial beauty, that are saved for us in the pages of the biog
raphers, — these were given by infinite grace to the church, as
the literary and historic centre of Christianity. They were
given to quicken its thought, to hallow and stimulate its imag
ination, and to leaven its life.
The method, therefore, which so many pulpit teachers
pursue, of bringing texts together and pressing words to the
utmost limit of meaning which dictionaries will allow, is a
most dangerous method of handling the scripture, an almost
hopeless mode of reaching truth, a puerile style of discussion,
and the last way of paying reverence to the- New Testament.
But, still further ; Jesus was a poet. Not only do we have
his truth in fragments, but we have it almost always in
fragments of poetry. The Oriental mind uses language and
interprets language, especially in regard to the religious sen
timent, in a way very different from our customs. And it is
mere commonplace to say, that a poetic mind, in its highest
moods of feeling and vision, wields expression as the logical
man never does, and must be approached with other measures
of sense.

13

It was very rarely that Jesus uttered any spiritual truth in
cool and abstract phraseology, in sentences that are literally
true. He loved indefinite language, vast expressions, para
doxes, gorgeous imagery, vivid parables. Hardly the simplest
idea passed from his mind into speech, without the ample
robe and lustrous turban of eastern imagination. "Except
ye eat my flesh and drink my blood ye have no life in you."
" If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother,
and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his
own life also, he cannot be my disciple." " It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven." " I am not come to send
peace but a sword." "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder
place, and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible to
you." " All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believ
ing, ye shall receive." " I saw Satan like lightning fall from
heaven." Such is the atmosphere of thought through which
the Saviour's mind moved. Such is the temperature and
coloring of the passages that Providence has suffered to be
wafted down to us from his ministry in Palestine- Does it
not seem as though the problem was to leave in the world the
smallest quanity of record, vitalized with the utmost intensity
of spirit ?
Our Orthodox friends never weary in telling us, that we
must not go beyond the Bible ; that we must take the plain,
literal meaning of the New Testament for our guide on the
highest themes. But do you not see that if God has chosen
to instruct the church through a few fragmentary flashes of
poetry, he forbids us to use cold, scientific methods in draw
ing out their sense ? An intelligent and sincere Calvinist
told me, not long since, that he wanted to read the New
Testament just as he would read a leader in his morning
newspaper. He wanted to open it with entire confidence
that the writer was instructing him by means of language

14

used in its ordinary, every-day acceptation. Otherwise, he
said, he could not feel that he had a revelation. But,
brethren, the question is not what we want, but what Prov
idence has chosen to supply. And if he has given us
poetry instead of logic, and isolated, dishevelled passages
from an inspired poet's soul, to hint his deepest truth,
does he not forbid us to use grammatical microscopes and
metaphysical dissecting knives, to learn what he would com
municate through the four Gospels? Does he not tell us
to rise, if possible, into sympathy with the state of spiritual
exaltation in which such a poetic nature as Jesus dwelt, and
read his language from that elevation, — receiving its meaning
by general impression, by the aroma that floats from it and
penetrates the soul like fragrance from flushed rose-leaves,
rather than by analysis of words ? " How wretched a specta
cle," says Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, " is a garden into which
cloven-footed beasts have entered ! That which yesterday
was fragrant, and shone all over with crowded beauty, is
to-day rooted, despoiled, trampled, and utterly devoured, and
all over the ground you shall find but the cuds of flowers,
and leaves, and forms that have been champed for their juices,
and then rejected. Such to me is the Bible when the prag
matic prophecy-monger, and the swinish utilitarian have
toothed its fruits and craunched its blossoms."
You will think that this is a long introduction to the theme
which the -text opens. But it is only from the level of the
principles which we have thus attained, that we can properly
approach the language of Jesus about future punishment.
Ah yes, some Orthodox literalist may say, you are laboring
very hard to get rid of the tremendous import of that word
"everlasting:1 All this talk about the poetic structure of the
mind of Jesus, will not alter the force of that word to a
reader of the New Testament who desires to receive the sol
emn truth of heaven.

15

We will therefore pause here in our consideration of the
method in which Jesus used language, to deal with the Greek
word, which, in the text, is applied to punishment, and trans
lated " everlasting." The Greek word is aionios. The noun
from which it is derived is aion. The liberal Christian Church
have a clear right to complain of the manner in which the
Orthodox clergy usually deal with these words, in the discus
sions about future punishment from the pulpit. They usually
speak with as much decision on the subject, as though the
noun always signifies eternity, and the adjective always means
everlasting, in the biblical use and in the Greek classics.
The impression is given that Unitarians and Universalists
trifle with the settled meaning of language, and tamper with
the most important human interests, in refusing to consider
the controversy settled by these words. If the facts of the
case were fairly stated, people would know that these words
have a large range of meaning. The best scholars of the
world have disputed over them. Men as eminent for learning
and piety as any the Christian Church has reared: men,
orthodox, too, on most other doctrines, have believed and
defended universal restoration, being satisfied that the word
which our translators render "everlasting," is too indefinite
to decide the question.
The noun from which the word translated " everlasting " in
our text is derived, is used about a hundred times in the New
Testament; and yet some thirty times our own translators
have rendered it " world" Thus : " The care of this world
and the deceitfulness of riches ; " " the children of this
world ; " " since the 'world began ; " " from the beginning of
the world; " "be not conformed to this world."
The adjective formed from this Greek noun has the same
indefiniteness of meaning. It is very often applied in the
Old Testament to objects and events that could not be ever
lasting, — to customs and laws that pass away; to land-

16

marks; to the time in which a person might be held as a
slave ; to the doors of the Temple. It frequently signifies
ancient, established, long-enduring, without any regard to
precise chronology. There are passages in which aion and
aionios refer to the present life ; passages in which they refer
to past limited duration; passages in which they refer to
future limited duration ; as well as passages in which they
mean strictly everlasting.
I hazard nothing in saying, that the more broad and deli
cate a person's Greek scholarship is, and the more clearly he
appreciates the poetic quality of the mind of Christ, the more
ready he will be to say that the application of the word
translated everlasting to the punishment of the wicked, does
not forbid belief in universal restoration. He would say that
the word, in its nature, is capable of such a variety of mean
ings, that it does not determine and clinch a conclusion.
We have a right to complain that Trinitarian and Cal-
vinistic preachers so often speak as though it is only now
and then, in some rare instances of startling heresy, or by in
competent scholars, that this ground is taken with regard to
aionios and kindred words. I could fill a page with the names
of theologians in Germany, men of vast erudition, and ortho
dox men besides, who have seen that this word does not
settle the question in favor of the eternity of punishment ;
and who have cherished and published faith in the doctrine
that the opportunity of repentance and deliverance from evil
would be open to every soul forever. It is but a few days
since a Trinitarian gentleman of this city told me of a long
conversation which he held, not many months ago, with the
celebrated Orthodox professor and theologian, Dr. Tholuck,
who maintained that the Scripture phrases concerning punish
ment do not shut out mercy from the future world. And the
late learned Professor Stuart, of Andover, in an article pub
lished in 1840, in which he speaks of the distress which the

17

doctrine of eternal punishment inflicts upon " the great mass
of thinking Christians," uses this language : " It would seem
to be from such considerations -that a belief in & future repent
ance and recovery of sinners has become so wide-spread in
Germany, pervading even the ranks of those who are regarded
as serious and evangelical men in respect to most or all of
what is called orthodox doctrine, saving the point before us."
Within a few years a paper has been printed upon the
Greek word aionios, by Mr. De Quincey, one of the nicest
scholars in Greek literature in England, maintaining that the
sense of the word must be determined by the nature of the
thing it is applied to, and not by any fixed quality of meaning
it carries within itself. It is often said that, as the same
word is applied to the punishment of the wicked and to the
life of the righteous, the argument that damages the force of
the term " everlasting," when used of the first, imperils also
the last. Mr. De Quincey does not scruple to say that " all
this speculation, first and last, is pure nonsense." "That
man who allows himself to infer the eternity of evil from
the counter eternity of good, builds upon the mistake of as- .
signing a stationary and mechanic value to the idea of an
aeon; whereas the very purpose of Scripture in using this
word was to evade such a value." [Theological Essays, Bos
ton edition of De Quincey's works, vol. I. page 145.] Mr.
Isaac Taylor, also, whose learning and orthodoxy will not be
questioned, says of this word that Scripture usage has given
it a very great latitude of meaning, which therefore must, in
every pla»e receive its specific value from the subject in
hand. > d, referring to the idea of never-ending existence,
as implied in the words, " The gift of God is eternal life,"
he says : " Our persuasion of this fact must not be made to
hinge on the native or independent force of the adjective
there employed, but upon the evident intention of the writer,
3

18

as illustrated and confirmed by other means." [Saturday
Evening, page 3 11. J
More important than this testimony of modern learning, is
that which comes to us from the early age of Christendom.
The most learned and accomplished theologian and scholar
of the early generations of the church, was Origen, born in
the year 185. Greek was his native tongue. He was the
first accurate philological scholar whom the church reared
after the time of the apostles. This great man, who knew
the scriptures by heart in their original tongue, was passion
ately devoted to the doctrine of the final restoration of the
wicked, — even of the devil and his angels, in whose existence
he believed. Yet he used this term " everlasting" with regard
to the punishment of the wicked, which he contended would
have an end. A work also in circulation thirty years before
Origen was born, " The Sibylline Oracles," speaks in the
same way of the everlasting punishment of sinners, and yet
affirms that they will all be saved. Still more striking, a
learned and excellent Greek Christian, in the century after
Origen flourished, Gregory of Nyssa, who believed in the
restoration of all the wicked, declares that sinners are to be
restored by means of " everlasting punishment." It was only
about the year 400 that the belief in ultimate restoration was
arraigned in the church as heresy ; and it was not till about
the year 550, when the eclipse was settling upon civilization,
that it was decisively condemned.
We have support from such furnished scholars, and from
such facts in church history, when we affirm that the word
rendered " everlasting" in our text cannot be considered final,
in regard to the duration of punishment. Furthermore, the
doctrine of eternity of punishment was either denied or
doubted by such English divines as Archbishop Tillotson, and
William Law, and Dr. Thomas Burnett, and Dr. Henry More.
Isaac Newton questioned it. Dr. Doddridge was uncertain

19

about it. Even Dr. Watts, who has written the most awful
hymns about hell, came to believe that a penitent soul might
be saved hereafter from its terrors. Dr. Paley was sus
picious of the doctrine. Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld entirely
rejected it. Dr. David Hartley argued for universal restora
tion. The great Dr. Johnson, whose reverence for scripture
was most solemn, confessed that the passages that speak of
eternal punishment admit of a mitigated interpretation. Dr.
Abraham Tucker, not a Unitarian, opposed the dogma of
unending suffering, and maintained that the Greek words by
which it is chiefly defended are strained beyond what they
will bear in such a service. Dr. Macknight, the celebrated
Orthodox commentator on the epistles, remarks : — "I must
be so candid as to acknowledge that the use of the terms
eternity, everlasting, forever, in other passages of scripture,
shows that they who understand these words in a limited
sense when applied to punishment, put no forced interpreta
tion on them."
You know that John Foster of England, the profoundest
intellect of this century among the Baptists, threw off belief
in the perpetuity of misery. Mr. Maurice of the English
Episcopal Ohurch, and certainly one of the most earnest and
accomplished 'of her present clergy, denies that our text shuts
out all hope for the wicked, and has been engaged in a strenuous
controversy in justification of the denial. He says, "I know
that there is something which must be infinite. I am obliged
to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of
death. I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death,
eternal death, if I do. I must feel that this love is compass
ing the universe." Mr. Kingsley, also, has most severely
attacked, by implication, in his published writings, the doc
trine of eternal doom. Mr. Carlyle, according to a recently
published report of a conversation with him, said, " I am satis
fied that no intelligent clergyman among us embraces it;" and

20
he declared further, "it is certain that the Greek word
aionios, which is sometimes applied to punishment in the
gospel, does not prove its eternity."
Now when we think of these names which are given only
as samples, without reference to the long list of accurate
scholars among the modern English Unitarians, who have
denied and thoroughly discussed the eternity of punishment,
on grounds of scripture and reason — must we not smile rather
than be angry or be ruffled, when Orthodox clergymen assume
that the plain sense of scripture is against us? — when they
declare that we trifle with its authority, in denying that Jesus
taught an unremitting vengeance against all who go out of
this life sinners ? The fact is, that the more free the church
thought has been, and the more extensive and original its
learning, the more numerous and able have been the impeach
ments of this doctrine, as a settled tenet. The position of
the Orthodox Church in this country upon that question, and
the discussion of it, as also upon the question of inspiration,
is provincial. Consider, I pray you, that all which it is necessary for us
to show, in criticising the Greek word translated " everlast
ing," is, that it is indecisive. For this there is abundant
evidence. If the four Gospels were one calm and consecu
tive treatise by a cool-blooded writer, and this word with its
associates should be found in it, there is uncertainty enough
about them to make it doubtful if the doctrine of unchange
able, hopeless misery, could be considered as set beyond
question. And now what shall we say when we find these waverino-
words used by an inspired poetic teacher, appearing in gor
geous paragraphs, not written coolly by him, but caught blazing
from his lips by a reporter, or remembered in after years,
and penned when the whole connections had faded from the
mind of the scribe ? Shall we build a theology, shall we

21

demonstrate the most dreadful doctrine which the human
brain can conceive, by words, irresolute even when used
by careful writers, that appear in the poetic speech of a
teacher who rarely uses any words in their accurate sense, —
who talks of temporal things in large, vague, metaphorical
diction ? When God gives us revelation in torn and brilliant
leaves from a prophetic soul, whom we are to understand by
rising into sympathy with his insight, shall we insist on apply
ing mathematical measures to his imagery, which might be
inapplicable to the same words even if they were used in
logical address ?
Moreover, there is hardly any other phrase, or passage, in
the four Gospel s, that is quoted to sustain the doctrine of
remediless condemnation in the life to come, about which a
serious scholarly dispute has not arisen ; so that learned and
prominent Orthodox commentators can generally be quoted
who concede the propriety of liberal Christian interpreta
tions. The expressions, aside from the word rendered "ever
lasting," which are usually considered most difficult, and indeed
decisive, are these: "in danger of hell-fire;" "to be cast into
hell;" "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched." Every person who has read any commentary on
the New Testament knows that the word which, in such
instances, is translated "hell" is the compound word "ge-
henna," meaning originally, the Hinnom valley just without
the walls of Jerusalem, near Kedron. In this valley the
Jews once offered sacrifices, even their own children, to an
image of Moloch, which had the face of a calf and the hands
of a man. (See I. Kings, xi. 7 : U. Kings, xvi. 3, 4 : and xxiii.
10. Jeremiah vii. 31.) It was afterwards, on account of this
pollution, accursed ; and the filth of the city and sometimes
corpses were burned there. Thus the expressions "unquench
able fire," and "the worm that dieth not," were naturally
suggested by its horrors.

22

Afterwards, the word passed up into a general and poetic
signification, so that a Gehenna punishment, or judgment,
meant a terrible overthrow, a condign and awful retribution ;
just as we use the phrase "a Waterloo defeat," to express a
thorough and total rout. Still later the word dropped its
broad and imaginative meaning, and became the technical
expression among the Jewish writers for the fiery abyss of
hell, where the worst sinners were supposed to be tormented
in flame. Now the simple question to be determined in rela
tion to our subject is, when did the term ge-henna drop its
loose, poetic meaning, and assume its fixed and technical
value as the name of the pit of torture ? Was it before the
time of Christ, or afterwards ? Did the Jews of Palestine,
during the Saviour's ministry, understand, whenever the word
ge-henna was used, that allusion was distinctly made to a
fiery gulf in the lower world ; or were they at liberty to inter
pret it as a wide, vague word, suggesting severe, revolting,
but indeterminate retribution ?
Now in the Old Testament there is no instance of the
employment of the word ge-henna to represent future misery.
There is no allusion in the Old Testament to punishment at
all in the unseen world. So long as the Jews were under the
exclusive influence of the Old Testament literature and
inspiration, they held no doctrine of future punishment. Down
to the time of Malachi, it had not appeared among them.
That doctrine came into their mind from heathen sources,
chiefly from Alexandria in Egypt, and their connection with
Greek mythology and speculation. It is only in the later
books of the Apocrypha, approaching the time of Christ,
that the dogma is detected in their literature. But in no
instance in the Apocrypha is the word ge-henna used to repre
sent it. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century,
who describes the faith of his countrymen, does not employ
the term ge-henna in allusion to the future world. The first

23

usage of ge-henna as a technical expression for hell in the
Orthodox sense, occurs in undated Jewish writings, which the
weight of scholarly judgment ascribes to a period some two
hundred years after the ministry of Jesus.
There is no doubt that the Pharisees of the New Testa
ment times believed in eternal damnation. Let the doctrine
receive all the strength and respectability which such an
endorsement may confer. But there is no proof that they
had so fastened the word ge-henna to that belief as to con
tract it from an unsettled, ambiguous and poetic word, con
nected with and colored by the corruption and the curse of
the literal Hinnom valley, to the technical title of a flaming
crater in Hades.*
Indeed one cannot easily see how the word, having such an
origin, could pass completely over from an uncertain to a
technical sense, so long as the Jewish state remained, aud the
polluted valley was there, shedding its historic and moral
associations into the mind of the people of Palestine. After
the destruction of Jerusalem, and the uprooting of the Jewish
polity, the word could become unfixed from all geographical
restraints and imaginative capabilities, and wither up into a
dry Rabbinic designation of a place of torment in the future
world. Bear in mind, then, that the idea of everlasting torment
does not have any root in the Old Testament. It was not
born of the literature of revelation. It edged its way, or
oozed, into the Jewish mind, at first, from Alexandria and
* We are persuaded that Biblical scholars have not given the close and careful
attention to the details of this suhject which its great importance deserves. We have
not room, even if we were competent, to treat the question with anything like fulness
in a discourse. But we desire to make reference to the patient, comprehensive, and
masterly discussion of the subject in the early volumes of the " Universalist Exposi
tor," hy Eev. Dr. Ballou, now President of Tufts College, and one of the most
thoroughly grounded Biblical scholars of New England. We are indebted, also, for
some statements on page 18, to the impartial and exhaustive " Ancient History of
Universalism," by the same author, now we believe out of print.

24

heathenism. There is no clear, unambiguous, decisive state
ment of the doctrine from Jesus. If modern Orthodoxy be
the true Christianity, would its most potent working principle
be left thus to sidle into the theology of redemption from a
foreign mythology? Would the evidence for it be left so
doubtful that a historic and classical scholar, searching into
its grounds and origin, gets involved in doubts ? The supposi
tion is absurd. We maintain that the word ge-henna was
precisely in the state, at the time of Jesus' ministry, to offer
the dim, vast, symbolic suggestions of a spiritual law, which
an inspired seer and poet would find best suited to the
breadth of his thought and the religious purposes of impres
sion. In Matthew v. 23, nobody can imagine that Jesus
meant to affirm, that a man who was causelessly angry with
his brother, was in danger of outward penalties from a
Hebrew court; nor that for saying "thou fool," he was in
danger of everlasting flame. Every other portion of the
verse is symbolic ; and the ge-henna fire into which the bodies
of condemned criminals were cast, and which possibly may
have begun then to be used also as a type of future punishment,
was plainly employed by Jesus as a physical suggestion of
the moral degradation and impurity into which contempt of
humanity plunged the soul. Whoever appreciates the
methods of instruction which Jesus loved, will be saved from
attributing a mathematical significance to this word, wher
ever he uses it, that fetters the mercy of God through
eternity. Such a treatment of the phrase is precisely on the
level of the Gorgon logic, that turns into the corner stone of
the Roman despotism the text, "thou art Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church."
< Those words about punishment, and the undying worm, and
the ge-henna fire, are not for dogma but for the imagination.
It is only once in a while that we are in the state to read
them. They are not for the cold understanding. They are not

25

for creeds. They are not for the pelting of sinneis and
heretics. They are the deeply dyed glasses held up in the
hand of the great prophet of humanity, through which we are
to look into the domain of spiritual laws, that play independ
ent of space and time, and learn what a solemn light invests
our base passions, when we deliver our hearts to their suprem
acy. Suppose that the method of interpretation which is applied
to Christ's poetry were applied to some of Shakspere's thrill
ing passages ! Suppose that most of Shakspere's dramas were
lost, and that a few fragments of Lear, Macbeth and Othello
were preserved. And imagine a logical critic finding the
passage in Macbeth, where, after the murder, the poet makes
him say, — " Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
Now imagine this critic to contend that Shakspere meant
to affirm that Macbeth's hand would really turn the sea red, —
to maintain that the poet was a trifler with language, a
deceiver of mankind, if he did not mean this literally ; if he
only intended to state a great moral truth, — to show the tre
mendous working of the conscience in that picture and excla
mation of the blood-steeped thane ! Imagine him enforcing
his argument thus : " Surely Shakspere, if he was an honest
man, would write for plain people just as the editor of a
newspaper would write. Aud moreover, another fragment
from that drama is preserved, which serves to show that the
murder which Macbeth committed did have a miraculous effect
upon the hand. For we read that Lady Macbeth, his wife,
who was concerned with him in the crime, and looked on the
dead body of Duncan, also exclaimed, — ' What, will these
hands ne'er be clean ? ' ' Here's the smell of the blood still :
4

26
all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.' "
If such a method of interpretation would be torture applied
to Shakspere, is it any less so when applied to divine poetry ;
to imaginative and lyric utterances of the laws of spiritual life ;
to picture-paragraphs which God has hung up in literature to
suggest and vivify, but not to define and chronicle the prin
ciples of celestial justice ?
But it is very likely that this objection will be raised by
some : Jesus might use indeterminate language and poetic
speech upon most subjects ; yet would he do so concerning the
final judgment and the destinies of the world to come ? The
text you have taken, they may say, is drawn from a passage
which begins thus : " When the Son of Man shall come in his
glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon
the throne of his glory : and before him shall be gathered all
nations." This reads coolly, they say. It is a calm state
ment of the opening of the final judgment. Would Jesus use
extravagant language abont a scene like that ? No ; on other
subjects you may talk of loose, flaming, poetic utterance ; but
on this subject he will be definite ; he will weigh his phrases :
and when we read such passages as those which speak of the
devil and his angels, and prepared fire, and everlasting pun
ishment, we are sure that he meant to be understood literally,
and that we cannot understand him otherwise without trifling
with revelation.
Now, brethren, it is precisely on the question of his coming,
after his death, to judge the earth, that the language of Jesus
is the most mystical and figurative. On this theme, more than
on any other, we have evidence that compels us to interpret
his language as poetry the most gorgeous possible, — or else
to say that he was himself grossly deceived. I have not the
least faith that the passage from which the text is taken points
at all to the future world. And precisely because this imagery

27

of coming with the angels to judge the world is frequently
used by Jesus to denote a great crisis in the affairs of humanity,
to take place during the generation in which he lived.
Read Matt. xvi. 27, 28 : " For the Son of Man shall come
in the glory of his Father with his angels : and then he shall
reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto
you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of
death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
Read Matt. x. 23 : " When they persecute you in this city,
flee ye into another ; for verily I say unto you, ye shall not
have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be
come." Read Mark viii. 38, and ix. 1 : also the same passage in
Luke ix. 26 and 27 : " Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed
of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful genera
tion; of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he
cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And
he said unto them, verily I say unto you, that there be some
of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till
they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." Is
this poetry, or did Jesus mean it literally ? Will our Ortho
dox brethren tell us when Jesus came during that generation
with all the angels, and how he rendered to every man accord
ing to his works ?
But turn now to a more marvellous passage still, — a pass
age with imagery more tremendous and terrific than any with
which our text is connected. Read Matt. xxiv. " As the
lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the
west ; so shall the coming of the Son of man be 
The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her
light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of
the heavens shall be shaken. . . . And then shall all the
tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,

30

say, Christianity was inaugurated in civilization as a world-
redeeming force.
The picture of the King in judgment, whenever it may have
been spoken, completes this prophecy by showing, as through
a blazing transparency, what was to be the central idea of the
great moral code which his religion should enthrone in
society, over human souls. It was to be the spirit of human
ity, — the desire to lessen the sway of evil, by relieving human
misery, and diffusing the spirit of sacrifice and the power of
charity. He meant to say, that the power of his religion
would move wherever and however the forces should spread
that would make man more sacred, relieve wretchedness,
defeat selfishness, and organize the race into the beauty and
joy of one humanity. He used the fierce diction of the Phari
saic mythology to say to the Jews : It is not by national aris
tocracy of blood, nor by niceties of legal etiquette and ritual
worship, nor by any ecclesiastical distinctions, that character
is to be estimated in the sight of Heaven. Selfishness, indif
ference to the wrongs and sorrows of your race, lack of love,
these sink you away from God; these carry you to the lowest
depth of the spiritual universe ; these constitute the devil-
spirit; but the possession of charity,, — though it be con
nected with no clearness, or soundness, or profession of dis
tinctively religious faith, — carries you up to the blessed life
and the peace of God. This is the faith which is one day to
take the empire of the world's thought and heart, and be
administered in my name among all nations.
The element of time was not, we are sure, in the thought
of Jesus. The passage is a gorgeous emblazonry of the same
truth that is sketched in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
It is the law "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"
formulated in fire before the imagination of the race. It is
Paul's doctrine of charity clothed in the most vivid hiero
glyphics, to be interpreted by the poetic faculty of men.

29

discourse, passes from the description of a national to the final
judgment. The results are very inharmonious ; and none of
the attempts, it seems to me, can command the respect of an
unprejudiced student. But there is no evidence that the
twenty-fifth chapter was spoken in connection with the twen
ty-fourth. The whole chapter is made up of two parables, —
The Virgins, and The Talents, followed by the passage des
cribing the judgment. When we see that, in the gospel of
Matthew, passages are often brought together by the law
of association of subject, and not by chronological arrange
ment, it is not difficult to suppose that the three portions
of the twenty-fifth chapter were unconnected passages of
which the special subjects and occasions were lost, and which
were brought together here, because the topic of the great
discourse in the twenty-fourth chapter made it natural to
associate them with it. If this conjecture be justifiable, the
twenty-fifth chapter gives us three vivid illustrations of sub
jects, the nature of which we must divine from the character
of the illustrations themselves.
Christ saw that, before that generation passed away, some
mighty convulsion, some startling catastrophe, some earth
quake throe of social forces, shifting the strata of history,
would occur, that should begin visibly to lift his religion from
a provincial heresy to a world-presiding faith, and install his
spirit in the highest realm of ideas as Lord of the future. This
mighty change in the fortunes of his truth and name, he fore
told in blazing prophetic symbols, as his second coming, — not
as a despised Galilean peasant, but as the viceroy of eternal
truth, descending from heaVen with a cloudy halo of angels,
and filling the air with the electric energies of his author
ity. Many see the fulfilment of this gorgeous vision in the
terrible overthrow of Jerusalem and the Hebrew State, and
the preaching of Christ's truth in every civilized land, by mis
sionary apostles, before that generation passed. Thus, they

30

say, Christianity was inaugurated in civilization as a world-
redeeming force.
The picture of the King in judgment, whenever it may have
been spoken, completes this prophecy by showing, as through
a blazing transparency, what was to be the central idea of the
great moral code which his religion should enthrone in
society, over human souls. It was to be the spirit of human
ity, — the desire to lessen the sway of evil, by relieving human
misery, and diffusing the spirit of sacrifice and the power of
charity. He meant to say, that the power of his religion
would move wherever and however the forces should spread
that would make man more sacred, relieve wretchedness,
defeat selfishness, and organize the race into the beauty and
joy of one humanity. He used the fierce diction of the Phari
saic mythology to say to the Jews : It is not by national aris
tocracy of blood, nor by niceties of legal etiquette and ritual
worship, nor by any ecclesiastical distinctions, that character
is to be estimated in the sight of Heaven. Selfishness, indif
ference to the wrongs and sorrows of your race, lack of love,
these sink you away from God ; these carry you to the lowest
depth of the spiritual universe ; these constitute the devil-
spirit; but the possession of charity,, — though it be con
nected with no clearness, or soundness, or profession of dis
tinctively religious faith, — carries you up to the blessed life
aud the peace of God. This is the faith which is one day to
take the empire of the world's thought and heart, and be
administered in my name among all nations.
The element of time was not, we are sure, in the thought
of Jesus. The passage is a gorgeous emblazonry of the same
truth that is sketched in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
It is the law "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"
formulated in fire before the imagination of the race. It is
Paul's doctrine of charity clothed in the most vivid hiero
glyphics, to be interpreted by the poetic faculty of men.

31

The all-important point, therefore, is to appreciate the
oriental imagination of Jesus, and to set this language about
his coming to judgment in the light of other passages, whose
imagery is more colossal and stupendous than this, which
plainly refer to historic changes that were to be seen within
his own generation.
Do you say, how shall we know what Christianity is, — how
shall we get the instruction and comfort of revelation, from
documents that are so fragmentary, and that use language
with such poetic license ? I answer, that God never intended
to save us from the duties and responsibilities of individual
thought. Providjace, I believe, has made those fiery records
so fragmentary, tliat we might be forced to disentangle prin
ciples from imag'-ry, and unfold those principles by our own
thought, and in harmony with all other truth we can gain, into
the full proportions of Christian theology. Never reason from
the imagery of Jesus mechanically, but from the principles of
Jesus. Those principles plainly are, that God is an Infinite
Spirit ; that he is infinitely good ; that the best qualities of
humanity are but hints of his excellence ; that all souls are
his children; that evil is our most dreadful foe; that God
desires our rescue from it ; and that Christ is the expression
of that desire, and of his holy and unchanging love.
If you want to know whether eternal punishment is to be
inflicted as a penalty for the sins of this life ; if you want to
know whether God will ever cease to desire, or refuse to
receive, the repentance and allegiance of any spirit born from
him, — ask yourself if such a thought is in harmony with these
principles, which are the vital points of Christ's teaching.
We cannot conceive too seriously the ingratitude of evil ; the
wrong which sin does to our own nature ; the offence it offers
to the purity of God ; the peril which habits of evil, wrought
into the constitution of our nature, induce, by sinking us away
from the region of true life and blessedness. We may be

32

sure, that, hereafter, as well as here, the spiritual laws will be
utterly hostile to every thing but goodness in us; and that
we shall suffer according to our denial of God, and our chosen
distance from him. But so long as the principles of Christ's
religion are to be trusted, God will) be our best friend, and
will desire nothing so much, throughout eternity, as the peni
tence, return, consecration and joy, of the most abandoned
nature. Christ has given us cardinal truths of a great religion, to be
worked out by ourselves into intellectual results. Whatever
results those principles lead to, are just as much parts of
Christianity as if he had covered pages of sacred parchment in
writing them for us. And until tbe doctrine of everlasting
vengeance for the sins of this life, to be executed at a day of
judgment, can be made to flow from the idea of God, the
unspeakable excellence and the infinite father, — yes, even from
the idea of God the omnipotent justice, we may be sure that
it is a foul excrescence on the gospel, a malignant cancer in
the fair organism of its truth. We may be sure of this, even
though the fact that the seeming statements of it by Christ
are vivid imagery, were but a tithe as clear.
And now, brethren, one word more. Are any Christians
so deeply interested in seeing that this passage in the
twenty-fifth of Matthew is not literal statement, but poetic
symbol, as the strict Evangelical believers are ? If that
passage is an accurate prophecy of the test at a final judg
ment, what becomes of the sacrificial theology ? Of course
the literalists will not shun here the consequences of
their own principle. Of course they will not say that, if
Jesus was calmly describing the scene and the tests of the
final day, he omitted to allude to the real ground of justifica
tion, pardon, and acceptance. Yet those who are accepted,
according to the passage in Matthew, are approved on
grounds of character, of charity, of humble faithfulness in the

33

discharge of simple humanities. No such tests are required
for entrance into heaven as are necessary for membership in
any Trinitarian Church. Is this the Orthodox judgment-day ?
Where is the doctrine of depravity ; of inexpiable guilt before
the law ; of the necessity of the cross of Christ; of the
worthlessness of human works as the ground of acceptance ;
of faith in an atoning blood as the sole condition of pardon
and the hope of heaven ? Did Jesus forget to allude to any
feature of "the scheme of redemption," in his delineation of
the scene, where it comes to its solemn climax ? If that pas
sage be literally true, there need be no more controversy
about the sacrilicial faith; for the whole system of Ortho
doxy is riven to splinters by its awful lightning. And
liberal Christianity, with the doctrine of eternal punishment
added to enforce the preaching of works and character, as
the condition of entering heaven, is enthroned as the gospel
truth. But when we appreciate the indefinite sense of the word
rendered " everlasting; " when we see the fragmentary char
acter of the records preserved to us from Christ's instruction ;
when we estimate aright the poetic constitution of his spirit,
and find how much of his truth is stated in symbol; when
we see especially how, in regard to his coming to judgment,
Jesus used language, often more intense, which in every other
instance must be understood as poetry, if we would save him
from the charge of delusion or fraud, — we learn how to read
this language so as to be not terrified but inspired. We
learn, as a fundamental truth, that God gives us revelation by
methods of art, and not by methods of science. He suggests ;
he does not tell. He inspires; he does not inform. The
prophet is a painter in symbol, never a mathematician or pro
fessor. And we look on this parabolic passage of the King
in judgment as a picture drawn by the great master of spirit
ual truth, to shed through the imagination of the race upon
5

34

its heart the lesson, that indifference to humanity is aliena
tion from God ; to color the truth that " God is love, and he
who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him ; " and
to enforce by the laws which rule eternity as well as time,
the new commandment, " that he who loveth God, love his
brother also."

DISCOURSE II.

DISCOURSE II

"Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding : far be it from God that He
should do wickedness; and from the Almighty that He should commit iniquity. For the
work of a man shall He render unto him, and cause every man to find according to his
ways. Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judg
ment  For He will not lay upon man more than right; that He
should enter into judgment with God."— Job xxxiv. 10, 11, 12, 23.
In the former discourse we considered the language of
Jesus which has been supposed to endorse the doctrine of
Eternal Punishment. Let us examine now the question
whether everlasting punishment looks reasonable. It seems
to me that we can select no passage more appropriate to
introduce, and as it were intone, our meditation upon such a
momentous theme, than the words just read from a religious
poem three thousand years old, — perhaps the oldest religious
poem of the world, — " far be it from God that he should do
wicketlness, and from the Almighty that he should commit
iniquity." Let us keep clearly in mind the real question before us for
examination. It is not a question of the evil of sin. It is
not a question of God's total hostility to it and abhorrence
of it. It is not a question concerning the dreadful retribu
tions which flow from a nature deliberately committed to
evil by organic choice, or the rebound upon such a nature
from the constitution and order of the universe. Upon these
subjects liberal Christianity can address our spiritual nature
more seriously, and, I believe, with far more thrilling power

38

and emphasis, than the popular Orthodoxy can honestly com
mand. Neither is it a question whether or not the sin of this
life will be visited with bitter consequences in the life to come ;
nor even whether souls may not harden themselves against
the justice and grace of the Infinite forever, and prefer for
ever, through the natural gravitation of evil loves, to live
away from God, and from the bliss that attends the continual
reception of his life.
But this is the simple point before us. Has God ordained
that the whole future of souls shall be determined by the
state of heart, or by the attitude towards a theological sys
tem of redemption, in which human beings are found at the
time of their death? Has He established an irreversible
penalty to be executed upon human beings in the world to
come, for their conduct in this world ; and is that penalty un
ending and indescribable suffering? If so, is it reasonable
that such a relation between this life and the next, should be
enacted and upheld by the Infinite Ruler ? — the grave the ful
crum point of a lever whose short arm is a responsible career
of twenty or thirty years, and the long arm interminable
ages of misery ! Can we discover any proportion that is rea
sonable in the arrangement ? Is it possible for any advocate
of the system to present it to us so as to win an endorsement
for it from our instincts, or bring it into "harmony with our
most intelligent conceptions of what is right ?
The advocate of the system must state his case without
flinching or equivocation. Let him take it out of abstract
and general language and state it thus. I believe that men
have been brought into being by the Creator for an immortal
existence. I believe that he has placed them on this planet
to undergo a probationary career. I believe that every one
of the human race is born here with a nature so corrupt, or so
weak, that the first responsible act will certainly be sinful.
I believe that for that act of sin, or for any act of sin the

39

Almighty has decreed the doom of eternal punishment. I
believe that the chequered and mysterious probation under
which human beings, so depraved, are placed in this world, is
the last opportunity that God will allow to them. If they do
not obtain an interest in Christ during their stay on this
planet, I believe that God will decree for them a wretched
ness that will never end. If every atom of matter in this
earth, in the sun, in the whole solar system, should repre
sent a year or a century, or a hundred centuries, I believe
that when all these shall have been wasted, the doom of God
upon the sin-born creatures that refuse to serve him here
will not have abated. The sun may die, the heavens may
wear out, pass away and be forgotten, but the judgment
of God upon those who pass from this planet unreconciled to
his will, unregenerated by his Spirit, will never be relaxed.
And I believe this is reasonable 1
Such is the position to which the sacrificial church in this
country is committed. Let us examine now the reasonable
ness of their position in the light of pure justice ; of analogy ;
and of the privileges of revelation which are said to be
offered to men, and deliberately rejected by them.
First, iu the light of justice. Consider that the Infinite
Ruler does not inherit this universe, as a foreign legacy. He
is not elected or appointed over all worlds to administer a
constitution and execute laws ordained independently of him
self. He establishes the universe. He decrees the system by
which the moral world shall be governed. Can we believe it
in accordance with perfect justice that He should decree and
create such a system ?
There are some things which God does not decree, or
create by will. He does not arbitrarily appoint the differ
ence between right and wrong. That exists in the nature of
things, in accordance with which the Infinite must work, if He
creates at all. Or, if he desires to rear a race of free intelli-

40

gences that shall serve him from deliberate consecration and
love, he must continually respect their liberty, and not ply
them with influences that overwhelm their choice. But is there
anything in the nature of things, or in the principles of morals,
that makes this life & final state of probation for all eternity ?
— that compels the Almighty Ruler, if he creates a moral sys
tem at all, to govern it by such a method ? Is it not just as
easy to conceive a plan by which a different proportion could
have been observed between the opportunity and the doom ?
And if God arbitrarily ordained such a constitution for all
souls to whom he grants life on this planet, — if he deliber
ately established such a relation between our deeds here and
the unending future, can we defend it or explain it on any
other ground than sovereign power ? Is there a word to be
said of its reasonableness ? Should not the only language
which the believer in such an administration presumes to use
concerning it, be this. God has chosen to institute such a
method of government, and has pushed us into life under
such terrible conditions ; and we cannot help ourselves : our
only business is, not to discuss the equity of the arrangement,
but to escape the doom. A prominent and able defender of
Calvinism has fairly taken this ground. This is his language :
" There is no such thing in God as justice, properly so called,
in respect to his creatures ; that is, by which he is bound to
them. But that which is called the justice of God in respect
to creatures, is only his fidelity, which supposes a promise.
 I acknowledge no other justice in .God than that by
which he wisely orders all things to effect his own purposes."
It is not likely that many Trinitarian writers among us would
use this language; but it seems to be the only position
that can be taken in speculating upon an everlasting penalty
for finite transgression.
The argument that comes the nearest to a defence of eter
nal punishment for the sins of this life, on the grounds of

41

original justice and the nature of things, is this. Sin is an
infinite evil, because committed against an infinite being As
I heard it said in a pulpit, not long ago, " life is long enough
to allow a man deliberately to insult his Maker." Now if
this argument means anything, it means that every sin,
whether the thought of God be in the mind of man or not, is
an infinite offence, because it opposes the interests and purity
of Heaven. That is, an act does not draw its quality from
the agent, but from the majesty of the Infinite that created
the agent, and from the whole scheme of government, present
only to the Creative Mind, of which the act forms part. If
this is so, must not every good act which a man does, even
though the thought of the Creator is not present, have an
infinite quality of merit, because it is committed in harmony
with the interests which God guards ? Who denies that un-
regenerate men do a great many separate good acts, which
are in harmony with moral order and God's purposes ? If a
man lies, shall it be called worthy of eternal damnation
because it is rebellion against the infinite truth, and then if
he gives a dollar to relieve a destitute woman, or a sick suf
ferer, shall not that act be called worthy of eternal bliss,
because it is in harmony with the infinite love ? Must not
this equation be established by such a law ? And then, does
not the desert of infinite reward, balance the desert of infi
nite punishment? But perhaps our sacrificial friends will
say, that a man does not perform so many good acts as he
does bad ones, and that therefore the balance of the infinites
is against him until he is converted. .If they do take this
ground, do they not then virtually adopt the theory of salva
tion by works, which, in their view is an abomination ?
Let it be, however, that every sin is an infinite offence be
cause committed against God who is infinite and holy. Does
it follow that an everlasting penalty must be executed upon it
after death? The penalty is within God's choice. Is he
6

42

compelled to say to the sinner : Nothing but your everlasting
misery can satisfy my honor ; you shall not have the opportu
nity to repent for what you have committed; if you ever come
to see how great a wrong you have done to my purity and
holiness by your rebellion and depravity, I will not let your
contrition avail you ; I will hearken to no prayers ; nothing
but your ever-enduring wretchedness is enough to appease my
insulted personality. Has the Infinite no liberty in affixing
penalties to personal indignities ? If he has, and if He has
appointed this penalty, is such a law of retaliation proper for
our copying that we may be perfect as the Creator is perfect ?
.1 trust you will believe that the terms of such an argu
ment as this are distasteful to me. I feel that there is a
subtle irreverence in using such language even upon an hypo
thesis. What then must the principle be that compels such
treatment? that demands hypothetical impiety in order to
show its real and comprehensive blasphemy against the
divine character ?
But we have still more to say about the reasonableness of
eternal punishment, when considered in relation to the nature
of things, and the foundation-principles of justice.
Suppose it could be proved to us that our sins demand un
ending suffering, while our good acts do not demand immortal
bliss. Suppose it could be made to look equitable that a
system should be ordained which involves perpetual misery
as a doom upon a few years of sin. Ought we not to be con
sulted, before we take our place in such a system, whether
we will accept its terms ? What a momentous contract is
this life, viewed in such a light 1 Is it right for God to force
a race into an existence hemmed by such horrible conditions,
without taking their suffrage ? Can we honestly call life a
boon on such terms as these ? Can we say that it is a great
blessing — will any tender-hearted Calvinist say that is a
blessing — to be called from nonentity into the average

43

chances of the human race, to-day, on this globe, if the perils
with which sacrificial Orthodoxy makes eternity so lurid, are
real? Who of us would not seriously say here, that, for
three-quarters of our fellows, the shadows of non-existence
would be an unspeakable mercy in contrast with this life, if,
failing here, they are lost forever ? It has been recently
affirmed by an able Orthodox writer of our city, that " to be
born is an everlasting calamity unless we are born again."
The writer believes that one cannot be born again in the
world to come, just as firmly as he believes that it will be an
unspeakable woe not be thus renewed. And yet it would be
a very generous estimate if we suppose that one in fifty of the
inhabitants of the globe experience the new birth according
to his interpretation of it. Would any man say that it would
be just in God to create spirits by myriads, and pour them
directly into an abyss of eternal wretchedness and gloom?
And is the system to be called reasonable that makes us con
ceive him as showering souls into an earthly probation here,
which, for untold myriads, offers no more obstacle to their
dropping into the abyss than a sieve to water ?
Dr. Edward Young, nominally a believer in the system of
Orthodoxy, wrote a poem entitled " The Last Day," in which
he supposes a lost sinner to exclaim : —
" Father of mercies ! why from silent earth
Didst thou awake and curse me into birth ?
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night?
And make aHhankless present of thy light ?
Push into being a reverse of thee,
And animate a clod with misery? "
Could that question be answered in harmony with true cove
nant-principles, with contract-justice recognized among men,
so long as that sinner, whatever his opportunities in life may
have been, was not permitted, at first, by the Almighty, to say
whether or not he would accept existence on the terms of
never-ceasing woe to offset a short life of hazard ?

44

The force of this objection has been impaired, it is thought,
by some writers in this way. God confers great honor upon
man by bringing him under his moral rule. And the hard
ship of such a tremendous penalty as eternal punishment is
balanced by the counter prospect and temptation of eternal
bliss. The choice of two infinities is offered to him, accom
panied by the greatest of all conceivable motives to pursue
the one and fly from the other. The infinite goodness of
God, therefore, will be clear, though some should be miserable
forever on account of their wrong choice deliberately made.
A living and able Orthodox writer of Great Britain has said :
" It is in the light of this truth that the infinite love of God
may be seen beaming from the eye of hell, as well as from the
bright regions of eternal blessedness."*
The divine equity may well be illustrated in a system that
offers opposite states of blessedness and wretchedness to
human choice, if the problem is not perplexed by the element
of time ; and if divine forces, that express God's interest in the
sinner's welfare, as well as His justice, are never withdrawn
from the created spirit. But to limit the season of choice to
this brief and uncertain life, and make the two infinities di
verge by arbitrary decree from so short a moral career ! this
is the principle whose equity must be made transparent,
before the infinite love of God will be seen beaming from the
pit. Why are we brought into a system where the power of
choice, which continues up to the death-bed, is annulled or
paralyzed by the Almighty, at the very moment when it passes
into the sphere where the two infinities are for the first time
clearly seen ? It is not the power of choice that is to be
accounted for, but the confinement of the power within such
straitened limits by the deliberate ordinance of the Creator,
* See The Doctrine of a Future Life, by C. P. Hudson, page 102, published by
Jewett & Co., Boston ; a very valuable work, in which the various Orthodox Theodi-
cies are stated and criticised. The author's own view is that the penalty of evil is
annihilation, literally, " eternal death."

45

and the forcing of a race into an existence oppressed with
such peril. Milton, in the tenth book of " Paradise Lost,"
makes Adam, after the transgression, pour out this lament: —
" 0, fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes !
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay,
To mould me man ? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden ? As my will
Concurr'd not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust,
Desirous to resign, and render back
All I received, unable to perform
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? Inexplicable
Thy justice seems."
It is true that the poet makes Adam say that he absolves
his maker ; but no one can read the whole passage without
.feeling that the strength of the argument is with the fallen
man, and without believing that Milton thought so too, and
intended thus to question the theology which had been asso
ciated with the sin in Eden. Certainly if the doctrine of
eternal doom is to be justified on grounds of an offered
choice between two infinite allotments, we should be allowed
to come into the world unprejudiced by nature — with no
innate proclivity to the choice of death. What then shall be
said to the continuation of our progenitor's lament, when the
poet makes him exclaim, as he looks forward into the conse
quences of his wrong act, — " Fair patrimony
That I must leave ye, sons; 0 were I able
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none !
So disinherited, how would ye bless
Me, now your curse ! Ah ! why should all mankind
For one man's fault thus guiltless be condemn'd,
If guiltless ? But from me what can proceed,
But all corrupt, both mind and will deprav'd,
Not to do only, but to will the same
t With me ? how can they then acquitted stand
In sight of God?"

46

It is not in the light of a free choice between momentous pos
sibilities that we are to regard the problem of life, as con
tained in the sacrificial scheme ; but in the light of a forced
choice, during an uncertain temporary probation, between
infinite possibilities, and, still further, of a predisposition to a
fatal choice which compels us to regard all the increase of
the earth's inhabitants as a deplorable disaster.
And now, how reasonable must the system be which forbids
us to call our birth into this glorious universe a boon ? which
makes us regard this life as a dreadful game, played for such
a stake as immortal bliss or agony, when millions have no
conception of what the issue is ? — yes, when the game is
played against them with loaded dice ? For by the terms of
the theory, they come into the world with the whole drift
of their nature towards perdition, — impotent for goodness,
— constitutional heirs of Hell. If this is the system of the
divine government, ought the word "reasonable" ever to be .
brought into connection with it ? Is there an unconverted
man among us that would ordain it for this universe, if it
could depend on his word ? And a*s a man grows more Chris
tian, more sensitive to sin, more abhorrent of injustice, more
devout in his regard of equity, closer in sympathy with God,
would he be more likely, or less likely, to call such a system
into existence, if it should hang upon his decision ?
Orthodox men themselves have seen all this, and have
stated it more powerfully than I can do. It has embittered
the life of thousands. It has wrung confessions of unrest and
torture from the ablest preachers of the system, — men who
would have suffered eternal torment themselves, before they
would have installed over the earth such a polity as they have
supported. Rev. Albert Barnes has said, with regard to the
attempted solution of this subject, " I have read to some ex
tent what wise and good men have written. I have looked
at their theories and explanations. I have endeavored to

47
weigh their arguments ; for my whole soul pants for light and
relief on these questions. But I get neither ; and in the dis
tress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I find no
light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the rea
son why I am come into the world ; why the earth is strewed
with the dying and the dead ; and why man must suffer to
all eternity. I never have seen a particle of light thrown on
these subjects that has given a moment's ease to my tortured
mind ; nor have I an explanation to offer, or a thought to
suggest, which would be of relief to you. I trust that other
men, as they profess to do, understand this better than I
do, and that they have not the anguish of spirit that I have.
But I confess, thut when I look on a world of sinners and
sufferers ; upon death beds and grave yards ; upon the world
of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever; when I see my
friends, my parents, my family, my people, my fellow citizens, —
when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and
danger, and when I see the great mass of them wholly uncon
cerned ; and when I feel that God only can save them, and
yet he does not do it, — I am struck dumb. It is all dark,
dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it."
It has driven others to the most fanciful and absurd
assumptions and speculations, in order to adjust it to the
innate moral instincts of humanity. Dr. Edward Beecher,
who published in this city, a few years ago, his theory of a
pre-existent fall, used this language with regard to all the
accepted systems of Orthodoxy : " Every one of these theo
ries involves God, and his whole administration, and his eter
nal kingdom, in the deepest dishonor that the mind of man
or angel can conceive, by the violation of the highest and
the most sacred principles of honor and right, and that on the
scale of infinity and eternity." He maintains that the dread-
fulness of Orthodox theology can be accounted for, only on
the supposition that Satan has corrupted the minds of its

48

chief thinkers by his arts, and poisoned Protestant divinity,
in order to alienate men from the gospel. He says that
unless we believe, as he does, that we all had a fair chance
for salvation in a former life, and deliberately fell then, we
cannot, on the grounds of Orthodoxy, hold to the equity of
God. Regard this earth as a penal colony, a sort of Botany
Bay in immensity, stocked with the souls of fallen angels, who
have one more chance here to escape perdition and reach
heaven, — and the sacrificial system, he thinks, can be bent into
harmony with God's justice and our reason. We could be
lieve with him, that the ethics of the sacrificial theology are
applicable to a penitentiary globe, if men were only told,
when they alight here, that they are on their second and last
probation, to escape torture forever, in the great Bastile of
the abyss.
But it is said that we have no right to reason from human
qualities as to what infinite equity may do. Then, we
answer, why attempt to show the reasonableness of eternal
punishment at all ? It is only by finding some common ground
between the infinite nature and ours, that the reasonableness
of the penalty can be discussed. You may say that a blind
man can know nothing of art. Surely, then, you will not
attempt to argue with him about the propriety of Raffaelle's
use of colors. If God is simply infinite power, and acts from
sovereign pleasure, — or if infinite justice is something different
in its nature from partial justice, as bitter is different from
sweet, then it is impossible for us to argue from one to the
other. But if God does not act from sovereign caprice, and
if infinite justice is unspeakably purer in quality than finite
justice, then the only way to conceive it or reason about it at
all, is by ascending to it, and testing it by means of the best
traits and principles that are known and established among
men. The Bible only uses the words justice, purity, and love,
in regard to our Maker. It gives us no external revelation

49

of the things. These we are to conceive and measure pre
cisely by our knowledge of what such sacred qualities are in
men. To smother the light of our own nature, in order to re
ceive all our principles from revelation, is, therefore, as some
one has said, to put out our eyes that we may study the stars.
Moreover, we are sure that God made our reason and our
hearts. We cannot be so sure that he is the author of the
Bible. So that if we find insoluble discord between the two,
there can be little question which must and ought to yield.
It has been said by a recent defender of the reasonable
ness of eternal punishment, that the important question by
which to settle the matter is this : was the transgressor duly
notified ? He is in a foreign land, and. is made fully ac
quainted with the law and its penalty. He is told that there
will be no mercy for him after death. What now is it rea
sonable to expect. But surely the point is not, what is it
reasonable for men to expect under a certain system ? but is
the system itself reasonable? Suppose it to be true that
men are duly notified ; that it is sounded in men's ears by
nature and direct instruction, that no, mercy is to be shown
beyond the grave ; that " day unto day uttereth speech, and
night unto night showeth knowledge " of the dreadful doom,
 can the system that demands the notification be reconciled
with equity ? This must be done before the reasonableness
of future endless punishment can be established. Are we
told that it is never objected " to eternal salvation that it is
too long to be the consequence and reward of this brief life."
If by " eternal salvation " is meant eternal happiness, I cer
tainly do not believe that it is to be the consequence of this
brief life. I believe it is to be the incident of eternal good
ness and fidelity, — the constant manna exuded into every
soul that is open forever to the Infinite Love.
I find, also, this argument, partly stated and partly implied,
in a recent discourse in favor of the doctrine we are consider-
7

50

ing. Sin is so terrible and disastrous an evil in the universe,
— it tends so directly to break up all order, and practically
to dethrone God, that he must deal with it by the most vigor
ous methods without any doting fondness, or leniency. But
is this an argument in favor of forbidding men any opportu
nity of repentance beyond this life? Because sin is the
greatest evil in the universe, therefore, shall God put men
where they cannot help sinning against him, hating him, blas
pheming him forever? One would think that if we follow
principles of reason, and if sin is so dreadful a scourge and
curse in the sight of Heaven, one of these two conclusions
must be accepted : Either God will destroy the wicked, or
leave the way open for contrition and return hereafter, that
the amount of sin and damage might be lessened. Is God
opposed to evil any less beyond the tomb, than here ? Is
sin, organized and instituted in an infernal society, less offen
sive and dreadful to God, than sin scattered, alleviated, half-
dominant in souls, this side the grave ? What does the infinite
purity do, according to this argument, but ordain, in his oppo
sition to evil, the only system that concentrates, and intrenches,
and intensifies it forever in his realm ? The argument is not
that men choose, by a freedom that is constant, and that
always has two paths open, to live away from God forever ;
and therefore ought steadily to be left to the natural misery
which attends their choice : but that God, out of repugnance
to sin, forces them into one compacted and ulcerous Hell,
which can do nothing forever but poison one district of
eternity with infamy and horror. Is this the opposition of a
holy mind to evil, or is it vengeance ?
We ought, however, to pay a little more particular atten
tion to one of the phases of the argument just noticed. Is it
unreasonable, we are asked, that God should give men the
desire of their own hearts, — that he should suffer them to
sin against him forever, if they will, and to reap the contin-

51
ual consequence of their rebellion and depravity? God
surely, we are told, will not hinder us from having our chosen
way. This, you will see, changes the basis of the argument
for eternal punishment. It makes wretchedness the natural
outflow of character, and not a judicial infliction. It is no
longer an everlasting penalty for the sins of this life, but the
steady issue of evil that is perpetually nourished in heart.
It is impossible to maintain this ground consistently, without
affirming also the perpetual freedom of the will, and so the
constant possibility of restoration. For the moment you
say that God forces the soul to remain in sin, or plunges it
into circumstances hereafter that compel it to sin, and offer
no possibility of rescue, you deny the ground from which the
argument started, viz : that eternal misery is justified because
men are suffered to have their own way.
This argument of eternal and deliberate sinfulness as the
cause of eternal punishment, cannot be consciously held in
harmony with the strict Orthodox system. It denies the
infinite nature of sin; it supposes the probability of the
repentance and restoration of myriads in the life to come ; it
implies that the divine love is no more withdrawn from
degraded souls iu the next life than it is here ; it assumes
that the order of the universe is maintained by spiritual laws
which bind this life and the next in essential unity. We
never find, therefore, an Orthodox writer who will be faith
ful to this principle after he announces it. He will not
develop it through many sentences without striking into the
old and savage doctrine of mechanical separations, inflicted
misery, and an enforced and hopeless sinfulness. This is the
way, for instance, in which a recent writer unfolds the prin
ciple that eternal wretchedness will consist in sinners being
suffered to have their own way : — " God may say, this I will
do. I will place all of you who sin in a world by yourselves,
from which I and my friends will forever withdraw. . . .

52

He would take away, we must suppose, all their domestic
relations, friendships, social pleasures, books, every pursuit of
knowledge, music, travels, quiet sleep, morning and evening
salutations of loved ones, and change the whole face of
nature."* All this forever ! All this in a world devised
by the infinite intellect with exquisite relation to purposes
of torture ! All this in a world from which the opportunity
of available repentance is shut out ! And all this justified on -
the ground that it is simply letting the sinner have his own
way! I find also the following description of eternal punishment
in a sermon by a prominent clergyman, which appears in a
volume just issued, entitled " The New York Pulpit in the
Revival of 1858." The sermon does not seem to have
been written with any blasphemous purpose. It would be
uncharitable to say that the writer of it is an insidious
enemy of religion, who designed to represent the ruler of
the world, whom Christians worship, as a hideous Moloch of
infinite proportions. Apparently, the discourse was written
to show that God is not devoid of interest in the welfare of
men. Yet the following is a small portion of the picture
with which the writer dares to pollute innocent paper, con
cerning the "everlasting curse," which God reserves for those
who pass into the next life without having made their peace
with him : — "In reflecting upon the pangs of a guilty con
science, or the painful feelings of remorse, we may picture to
ourselves something of the sufferings which a condemned
soul will experience ; but all this must result in a very feeble
apprehension of the wrath to come. I have often endeavored
to discover the reason why the term death was employed in
this connection ; why punishment, or torment, or everlasting
burning, or some other term, not associated in our minds
with so common an event as death, was not employed ; and
* Kev. Dr. Adams' Sermon on The Reasonableness of Endless Punishment, p. 22.

53

the only reason which I could frame was this : that the future
suffering of the wicked is to be a mixture of living and dying
agony 1 He is not dead ; for he is suffering, and conscious of
suffering. He is not living, in our sense of the word ; but his
fate is sealed — his work is done. Death was the word; for
he was to experience something like the death struggle, and
that of the severest kind : and that protracted for ever and
ever! " ' He is to be banished for his life,
And yet forbid to die, —
To linger in eternal pain,
Yet death for ever fly.'
. . . Quietly, then, as the dead are laid in the grave, with
out one protest ; passive as they remain, while becoming the
food of worms — so helpless will the impenitent sinner fall
into the fiery bed of the second death, and experience all his
agonies. His soul will be passive when thrust into the inner
prison, and no resistance will be made, while he is bound
with chains that will never rust and never be broken; passive
as the dead man now is, when you dress him in his winding
sheet, and prepare him for the grave. The sinner can no
more resist, when committed to the flames of everlasting fire
prepared for the devil and his angels, than the dead man
now resists when committed by living men to the tomb."
Let the hearer try to interpret to himself what eternity
means ; let him project this horror into it, and remember
that, by the theory, it is the doom of the immense majority
of the spirits that stream from this planet into the eternal
world, as the ocean exhales vapor ; let him bear in mind that
the characteristic revelation of Christianity is the Infinite
Love ; and then let him try to conceive a more virulent blas
phemy against the Holy Ghost, than the system which com
pels a man, whose heart doubtless is personally tender and
sweet, to connect his name in Christian literature with such
paragraphs.

54

But it is said, still further, that the everlasting punishment
of the wicked of this earth is necessary to uphold the loyalty
of angels in higher spheres. If God should suffer restoration
in the next life angels might say, the punishment of evil will
at some time end ; come now let us sin. I could not have
believed that this argument would be used, if I had not heard
it and read it in print. Are we to believe, then, that sin is so
pleasant to the imagination of the Heavenly hierarchy, that
nothing but the certainty, yes the sight, of never-ending
pain supports their virtue, and prevents a rush of cherubs
and seraphs into the pleasures of iniquity. Have they no
such sense of the moral stain and the spiritual dreadfulness
of corrupt passions, and of sinking from God, that their vir
tue is secure ? And is it by casting a shrewd eye at the
torments of the pit, that new zeal is inspired for their service
and hallelujahs ? Does it not show the moral taint in the
blood of the sacrificial system, when we see that the perfect
sweetness and blessedness of good to the angelic nature and
vision must be impeached, in order to make the unceasing
flame of the pit harmonize with the landscape of eternity ?
I cannot believe that the angels of God, in whose presence
there is "joy over one sinner that repenteth," are grateful
for such an argument in support of the system that repent
ance is to be impossible to sinners in the world to come.
The reasonableness of eternal punishment as the penalty
for the sins of a short life, has been defended, also, on the
grounds of analogy. See, it is said, how much people suffer,
under human government, for the neglect, or the sin, of a very
short time. " A passenger by the steamer does not expect
that, if notice of the hour of departure is communicated to
him, the bell will toll the whole day, or even an hour for his
dilatoriness ! He may, by losing the voyage, change the pros
pect of life, and one half minute can decide whether it shall
be so ! " Again, " A day is not too short in which to commit a

55

crime which will be punished by imprisonment for life." Still
further, " If a note has matured, bankruptcy is not arrested
because the promisor received only one notice."*
Can a man believe that there is any real analogy here?
In the first place, the best arrangements of human society are
mechanical and clumsy, compared with the vital order we ex
pect to find from the laws of God, that are not applied from
without, but are inwrought with the organism of society.
Suppose that the steamers were leaving a city, in which as the
owners, and they only, were well aware, all the inhabitants
that did not purchase tickets, were to be slowly starved to
death, or consumed in the unspeakable torments of a slow
fire. Should we not expect then that the notice would be
very general, would be intense, would be unmistakable ?
Should we expect, in such a case, that the owners, if they had
any humanity, would insist that the bell should not toll be
yond the moment announced in the cool advertisement of de
parture ? Yet how feebly does such a picture of steam pack
ets about to leave a city, thus doomed, symbolize the rela
tions between an interest in Christ here, and the eternal
starving, the immortal pain, of all who go into the next world
unprepared, and from whom God conceals, too, the knowl
edge of when their solemn death bell is to toll ?
It is contended, however, that there are analogies to be
drawn from the divine government in this world that help us
to conceive the reasonableness of eternal misery as a penalty
of God's law. It is no proof we are told that God will not
execute such a doom because he is good, and because he is a
Father. He kills men by tornadoes, and by pestilence, and
by volcanic convulsions. His judgments are a great deep.
" Men," it is said, " never discipline their children by drown
ing them, and burning them, and tearing them in pieces." "If
we should see four hundred of God's children in such a scene
* Kev. Dr. Adams' Sermon, pp. 14, 15.

56

of indescribable agony and destruction as was recently wit
nessed on board the ' Central America,' we should say, the
analogy between human and divine parentage surely is imper
fect."* And thus we are to be made to feel that eternal
punishment may not be out of harmony with God's methods
of government and with his Fatherhood.
Now this argument, if it has any force, means this : God
drowns men now, therefore he will do something infinitely
worse than drown them forever. He allows them, some
times, to be torn in pieces here ; therefore it is not improba
ble that he has built a boundless* inquisition, as the substruc
ture of nature, where the rack will be forever plied, and which
walls out every ray of light and hope. He kills men, per
haps in thousands, by an earthquake when the terror and the
pains may last five minutes ; therefore, it is reasonable to
expect that he will shake the whole foundations of this
world's order under them, and drop them by myriads into
perpetual flame.
Take notice, brethren, with what unerring instinct the
sacrificial theology runs to the anomalies and exceptions in
God's government here, to bolster and enforce its theory of
providence. Liberal Christianity reasons from the general
laws and broad beneficence of the universe to the character
of God, — from the wide beauty; the solid foundations for
general good; the sun that shines on the evil and the
righteous ; the rain that falls upon the unjust and the just.
But wherever there is an apparent irregularity, and a seem
ing inconsistency with the stable and generous bounty and
order, — an eclipse, a pestilence, an accident, a catastrophe, a
mystery, you will find the evangelical logic fastening on it,
and attempting, not to harmonize it with the general light,
but to centralize it as a principle. James Martineau has
vigorously said of this argument: "Disorders are selected
*Kev. Dr. Adamg' Sermon, p. 18.

57

and spread out to view as specimens of the divine government
of nature ; the mysteries and horrors which offend us in the
popular theology, are extended by their side ; the comparison
is made, point by point, till the similitude is undeniably made
out ; and when the argument is closed, it amounts to this :
Do you doubt whether God could break men's limbs ? You
mistake his strength of character ; only see how he puts out
their eyes ! " Of course, the only effect of such logic, where
it is thoroughly received, is to make men doubt whether there
is a perfect providence over the universe.
As to these exceptional cases of sinking steam-ships, and
wrathful volcanoes, and destructive earthquakes, and inno
cence involved in misery with the guilty, or by the guilty, —
this is what liberal Christianity says : We do not pretend to
show the results of perfect order here. We only claim to
show the laws of a perfect order, and the tendency to it here.
Orthodoxy shows neither a perfect order, nor the laws of it,
nor any tendency to it : but anarchy in this world as the pre
lude to systematic, organized anarchy forever.
Consider this also, brethren. There is no more mystery
in the death of four hundred on board the Central America,
than in all death. The problem of ten thousand dying at once
and together by an earthquake, is not essentially more perplex
ing than the problem of ten thousand dying at the same mo
ment, apart from each other in an empire, by fever. We must
remember that God does not estimate physical life as we do ;
because, in his view, there is no such thing as death. " If
our bark sink, 'tis to another sea." God is educating us here
in the knowledge of truth ; to a mastery of the planet ; and
in the laws by which a perfect society and civilization may
one day be established here. The human intellect is ap
pointed to ride and rein the globe, — to bit it and break it
into service like a passionate young horse. The condition is,
that we shall sometimes be thrown and bruised. We are as
8

58

yet studying how to keep our seat, and what is the best gear,
and what are the vices of the steed. And God does not let
human life stand in the way of a thorough mastery of the
ocean, or of the laws of health, or of the truth that society is
one body. But he teaches us, through the wastes of wreck,
and fire, and disease, and destitution, how serious are his
laws ; how majestic a thing is truth ; how wide, how carefully,
and how deep we must lay the foundations of a complete
control of this planet, and of a wholesome social order.
The victims of these accidents, and disasters, and social mis-
arrangements, are wafted into the next life by surge, or
fire, or pestilence, to the atmosphere of a perfect discipline,
just as those are who go by ordinary processes of death. If
sacrificial Orthodoxy be true, the whole economy of death, so
irregular in its coming, often so sudden, cutting off so un
equally in society the unspeakable privilege of existence in
this final sphere of opportunity, is not only a mystery but a
horror. Hardly could the devil have devised a scheme of
more complicated inequality and more adroit malignity. But
the principles of liberal Christianity do something towards
bringing the exceptions and the general system of death
into a providential plan, that is spotted all over with more
light than gloom.
We must now come to another class of arguments by
which men have supposed that the reasonableness of an ever
lasting doom can be supported.- It is said, substantially, that
revelation implies this doom and offers rescue. Is it unrea
sonable, we are sometimes asked, that men should suffer the
eternal penalty God has affixed to his law, when he has so
clearly warned them of the nature of retribution, and has pro
vided, during this life, a method of rescue? Is this fair
argument ? Does telling us about a thing, or providing
some means of rescue from a system, make the thing, the

59

system itself, reasonable? The fact that revelation im
plied the doctrine of eternal punishment, might show that
those sinners who read and believe the Bible, should reason
ably expect eternal punishment. But it does not establish
the reasonableness of eternal punishment itself. In fact,
such a doom may seem so repugnant to justice, that, if reve
lation is implicated with it, it will pull the Bible down, and
make that too look unreasonable to an unperverted soul. As
Sir James Stephen has said, " from this doctrine the hearts
of most men turn aside, not only with an instinctive horror,
but with an invincible incredulity ; and of those who believe
that it really proceeded from the lips of Christ himself,
many are sorely tempted by it either to doubt the divine
authority of his words, or to destroy their meaning by con
jectural evasions of their force."
The defenders of this system often talk as though the
whole Bible is built upon the doctrine that the broken law of
God must be visited with everlasting misery ; that the doom
was denounced upon Adam ; that the race lies hopeless under
its shadow; and that all the provisions of redemption recog
nize and seek to remove it.
Now the old Testament is considered peculiarly the liter
ature of the law. Yet you may search it and sift it, and you
will find no text or paragraph, from the mouth or pen of his
torian, poet, legislator, prophet or priest, stating that the
penalty of God's law is everlasting pain. The doctrine is a
fiction, an invention, pure and simple, so far as the Old Testa
ment is concerned. It was not told in Eden. Sinai did not
blaze with it. David did not put it into any psalm. Isaiah
did not hint it. There are not any disclosures about the
details or destinies of a future life in any book written
between the time of Adam and Malachi. The idea of eter
nal punishment came in to the Jewish mind and literature
from heathen sources.

60

We considered, in the former discourse, the language of
Jesus upon this theme, and showed how indecisive the orig
inal phrases are ; how fragmentary the instruction is, that is
saved to us from his talk ; and how gorgeous and poetic was
his ordinary speech. Now is the reasonableness of unending
penalty for every sin, or for a life of sin, to be made out on
the ground of a clear and full declaration of it, when there is
no statement of it in the whole code of the Old Testament ;
when Jesus cannot be committed to it, if we interpret his
language on that point as we are forced to on other points ;
and when the scheme with which the doctrine is connected,
has to be disentangled from an obscure parenthesis of the
Apostle Paul, in the 5th Romans, written twenty years after
the crucifixion ? The question is not now whether any of
the Epistles teach that doctrine ; but whether it is reasonable
to inflict the penalty on the ground of a full revelation of it,
when the Bible, through seven-eighths of its volume, does not
threaten or state it.
It is said, still further, that the doctrine of unending suffer
ing is inseparably intertwined with the Supreme Deity of
Christ. If that doctrine is true, the other follows, we are
told, as a matter of course. Would the Cross, we are asked,
have been erected on this insignificant globe — would God
have clothed himself in our nature and have died on Calvary,
if the penalty denounced against sin were anything less than
everlasting ?
Brethren, I do not believe in the Supreme Deity of Christ,
or that it is taught in any portion of the New Testament. I
know that most of the noblest Christians of the world to-day,
do believe it, and that thousands have connected it with an
inspiring conception of life. But I should be very sorry to
be convinced that many Trinitarian thinkers are ready to
endorse the argument just stated, — that, unless eternal retri-

61

bution lies in wait for humanity, there could have been no
motive for God to clothe himself in our nature, and reveal
himself in Christ. It seems to me that the argument strikes
at the root of the glory of the gospel.
In the first place, what necessary connection can be detect
ed between the Incarnation and the infliction of never-ceas
ing punishment for the sins of this life ? Why must the possi
bility of pardon stop at the grave ? Why, if a soul can be
saved from just wrath here, through faith in the atonement,
cannot a like faith avail if a sinner offers it who has suffered
for centuries in the abyss ? Granting that the Incarnation
shows the infinite evil of sin, how does it show that sin can
not be pardoned, through faith in the Incarnation, beyond the
tomb? Then, |»o, martyrs have died to save their friends and their
country from oppression and dishonor ; to resist the sway of
a bad principle ; to show their sense of the sanctity of truth.
Could there have been no motive for Christ's Incarnation of
' thirty years, and his death on the cross if sin was not under
a statute-penalty chronologically infinite ? Is there no other
measure of the intensity of evil, but the length of the misery
noted against it in God's code ?
Suppose that a rich philanthropist were asked to go out
from his warm parlor and pleasant company, to some room
in a dreary alley, on a cold night of winter, — being assured
that his visit and influence would, doubtless, save a man,
tempted and destitute, from committing burglary. He takes
down the statute-book and sees that the penalty of the offence
is imprisonment for ten years. No, he says : I can't under
go any suffering for that ; if the imprisonment was to be for
life, I would go. Suppose that a dreadful disease affecting
the eyes, and inducing blindness, has broken out in a city, and
a physician lives on a beautiful estate, beyond its walls, who
has the power, by personal visitation and prescription, of

62

alleviating and arresting the malady. But by calculation he
comes to the conclusion that the epidemic will spend its
force in some twenty years, and that the children of those af
flicted with it will be only partially blind. And so he deter
mines with himself — I will not yield my comfort and risk
my health, for there is not to be suffering enough to demand
my intervention and the sacrifice of so much dignity.
Does not the Trinitarian logic provoke the criticism of such
illustrations ? Christ, then, was not willing to taste the cup
of human suffering, which thousands of mortals have drunk to
the dregs, — was not willing to live here thirty years and die
in pain, merely to save civilization ; to reveal God as infinite
love to all races ; to break the corporate power of evil ; to
inaugurate a system of redemption that should pour its bless
ed healing over history, through centuries, into theqpharacter
of indefinite millions, and so on, by glorious spiritual se
quence, into eternity ! There could be no motive for the
word to become flesh, if the doom over every sin was any
thing less than eternal agony ! Yet, this is what has been
recently said and published : " If men can atone for sin by
ages of suffering, and then reach heaven, it is unreasonable,
we say, to believe that this stupendous sacrifice would have
been made."*
Ah ! Brethren of the sacrificial church, should you not be
ware how you thus imperil the glory of God ; how you deny
that charity is the law and the life of the Heavens ; how you
blacken thus with impure logic, the truth that self-sacrifice
and living for others is the highest divineness, even with
in the holiest of holies in the universe ? The doctrine of
eternal punishment, which starts with implicating the charac
ter of God, ends by spoiling the glory of Christ's love. For
it demands that we should consider his dignity as superior
to his compassion ; and to affirm that he would not have been
*Rev. Dr. Adams' Sermon, p. 33.

63
willing to suffer as much as thousands of finite natures have
suffered, to lift from the world anything less than everlast
ing woe.
We contend, indeed, that if the doctrine of no repentance,
no possibility of spiritual improvement among the degraded
hereafter, be true, Christ was not the incarnation, or the man
ifestation here of God's eternal love. The Infinite is the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever. If He can forgive your sin
to-day, He can forgive it ten thousand years from now. Your
danger is in yourself, — the soiling of your soul, the tighten
ing of your habits, the lowering of your desires, the weaken
ing of your will, the antipathies you are forming and strength
ening to the fellowship of the Infinite. If God in himself is
to be less cordial and gracious to his children in the next life
than he is here, or than Jesus was here, then we say that there
has been no Incarnation of eternal love. Christ is not the
expression of what God is, but is merely the mask of mercy
which God wears towards our race during this brief life ; and
which he tears from his face when we pass beyond the tomb.
The horror of this thought ! Let us not deal any longer
with it. This doctrine of eternal punishment for the sins of
this life desecrates all sanctities, and sucks 'us down into an
atmosphere thick with inspirations of sacrilege. It is a
hideous dream. It was born in heathenism. It is a pagan
nightmare, oppressing the slumber of our cowardly Christian
thought. As a wise and eloquent writer has said, " it may
be a sort of theory to be speculated about, to be coldly be
lieved in, but it is not truth that can be taken home to the
heart. Coldly believed in — did we say? No; so believed,
it is not believed in at all. It is not believed, unless it is
believed in horror and anguish ; unless it sends its votary to
his nightly pillow in tears, and wakes him every morning to
sorrow, and carries him through every day burthened as with
a world's calamity, and hurries him, worn out with apprehen
sion and pity, to a premature grave ! He who should grow

64

sleek and fat, and look fair and bright, in a prison, from
which his companions were taken one by one, day by day, to
the scaffold and the gibbet, could make a far better plea for
himself, than a good man living and thriving in this dungeon
world, and believing that thousands and thousands of his fel
low prisoners are dropping daily into everlasting burnings.
This system cannot be proved to be true, till nature, and life,
and consciousness are all proved to be false ; till the ties of
affection are proved to be all snares, and its sympathies all
sorrows ; till the tenor of life is proved to be a tissue of
lies, and the beneficence of nature all mockery, and the dic
tates of humanity all dreams and delusions." *
Let us leave its murky air before we close, and rise into
the light of nature, and of the principles of the religion of
Jesus. You will find no comfort in this healthier atmosphere
for your sin, and any deliberate impiety of habit and heart.
Everywhere God levels the bayonets of law around your evil.
Everywhere he preaches to you that sin is your only foe,
and that your sweetest life, your only stable peace, is in rec
onciliation with him, and openness to his holy spirit and love.
But no attribute of his can be your enemy. You may be
alien from him, and may resist him, and deny him, and cur
tain yourself from him by the thick blankets of your passions.
But He cannot hate you. Your inward distress and torment
are his medicine ; the distrust of him which your guilt breeds ""
is one of his thrilling revelations. Do not believe that his
justice can ever be your foe.
Much of the confusion in the reasoning and scheme that we
have been speaking of, results from wrong conceptions of
what the penalties of divine law and justice are. They are
not troubles to come externally upon the soul, — terrors and
forfeits from which we must be relieved by a foreign expiation.
They are internal, vital, and affect the quality of the soul
* Eev. Dr. Dewey.

65
itself. They are analogous to the retributions of ignorance
upon the mind, and the penalties of carelessness and excess
upon the body. No one dreams that the sin of an unexer
cised intellect, of gross ignorance, can be pardoned only
through faith in the sacrifice of some incarnation of the
Perfect Reason. No one expects to be told that the violation
of the bodily laws can be forgiven by the Infinite Creator
only on the ground that some perfect physician honors them
by obedience and death. It is by opening the mind persist
ently to God's published truth, and by conformity to the
discovered physiological order, or the reception of the adopted
remedy, that the mind and the frame experience new life.
And our souls are redeemed, not by or through any expiation,
on account of which penalties are lifted, but by reception of
divinely given spiritual truth and consecration of will that
push away penalties by wholesome life.
The first penalty of the violation of God's law is the
shadow cast before the soul when we turn our back upon it.
The next is the change in the quality of the spirit itself, —
a change which alters the universe to us — if we live steadily
in its shadow. Turn towards the law again, face its splen
dors, and the shadow falls behind you. God's justice is your
help and light then. Although you cannot escape, for a long
time, the inward penalties of your former violation, it helps
you to eradicate them ; and you are at peace with the infinite,
personal source of law.
Brethren, we need a religion that shall have no fear of the
justice of God forever, but boundless confidence in it rather.
It is heathen to ask for an interest in Christ, in order to be
shielded from God's law. If you are a sinner, seek deliver
ance from yourself, but not from God's law or from God. Face
His law. Ask for its searchings and scourge. Even if you
are about to die, be not afraid of infinite justice. To slip away
from it would be your only danger. It is inseparably mixed
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66

with God's love, as the gravitation of the sun with its light
and heat.
Pray that you may come into harmony with it, for it is the
basis and the strength of all order, here and forever. The
law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. Sweeter are
his judgments than honey or the honeycomb. By them are
his servants warned, and in keeping of them there is great
reward.