I i , I Illi *f;> & . 384 ; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. xv. ; Whitmobe, Doctrine of Immortality, p. 21 ; Denniston, Perishing Soul, Letter xiii. t Eph. ii. 12 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13 ; Justin Martyb, 1st Apology, c. Ivii. ; Tertullian, On the Resurrection, c. i. ; Calvin, on 1st Thess. iv. 13 ; Chambees, Information for the People, ii. 437 , Plato, Phoedo, par. 29. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 15 sleep;* there were "high spirits of old" that strained then eyes to see beyond the clouds of time the dawning of immortality. Unable, as we are able, to connect it with God as its source, and with his promise as then assurance, they framed the idea of an immor- , tality self-existing: in the human soul. Egypt, the prolific mother of rehgious error, appears, from the best authorities in our hands, to have been the source of this idea.f But it was extracted from the tombs and the hieroglyphics of Egyptian priests by the brilliant and restless curiosity of Greece. Socrates, and his great pupil, Plato, presented it to the human mind whereever the Grecian intellect penetrated, and the tongue of Greece was known. Cicero recom mended the theory of the Academy to his contem poraries in his " Tusculan Questions." They did not indeed teach it at all- consistently, nor do they appear themselves to have relied with any firmness on its reality. :£ It was with them a great hope fitfully entertained, rather than a sober conviction. " I have perused Plato," Cicero sadly complains, "with the greatest diligence and exactness, over and over again; but know not how it is, whilst I read him I am con vinced; when I lay the book aside and begin to consider by myself of the soul's immortality, all the conviction instantly ceases." It is indeed doubtful whether any of the great minds of antiquity in their esoteric or inner faith held more than the tenet of * Athenagoeas, Plea for Christians, c. xii. ; Tatian, Address to the Greeks, c. xxv ; Teetullian, De. Anima, c. iii. ; Ibid., De. Spectaculis, s. 30 ; Ciceeo, Tusc. Disp., i. 31 ; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. xv. 11 ; Landis, Immortality, c. iii. s. 25. t Perowne, J. J. S., Immortality, p. 37 ; Herodotus, b. ii., s. 123 ; Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, iv. 639 ; Whitmoee, Immortality, c. i. J Perowne, J. J. S., Immortality, preface vii., p. 45. 16 THE DURATION AND Buddhism, which teaches that the soul, originally derived from Deity, is at length to be re-absorbed and lost in Deity again : " That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall, Remerging in the general Soul." — Tenntson. 5. However this may be, those of whom we speak pvesented to the common mind an idea not so vague as this. The conception of it kindled then- imagination, and the discussion of it afforded a theme for then- logical powers. According to it, the soul was possessed of an inherent immortality. It had no beginning and could have no end. What was true of one soul was equally true of all souls, good or bad. They must hve somewhere, be it in Tartarus, or Cocytus, in Pyriphlegethon, or the happy abodes of the purified. This idea, sublime for a heathen, passed readily and early into the theology of the Christian Church. Philosophers, converted to Christanity, brought with them into their new service too much of their ancient learning. Heedless of Paul's warning voice against philosophy in general, * they considered that a considerable portion at least of Plato's phil osophy must be exempted from the apostolic condem nation. We find accordingly the Platonic philosophy of the soul's immortality running through and blending with the theological reasoning of Athenagoras and Tertullian, of Origen and Augustine, f Teachers who should have consulted only the oracles of God, * Col. ii. 8 ; 1 Cor. i. 22 ; iii. 19 ; 1 Tim. vi. 28. t Athenagoras, p. 31, A, 53 D., Edition Paris, 1615 ; Tertullian, De Anima ; Origen, vol. i. 486 B ; vol. ii. 108, C. E. Rothomagi, 1668 ; Augustine, De Civ. Dei. xxi. 3. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 17 leaving behind them their heathen lore as Moses left behind him the learning of Egypt, supplemented those living oracles with theories drawn from a brilliant Greek philosophy, which was in its turn suggested by the priest-craft taught in Egyptian temples. Their theory was that the life of the wicked must be as eternal as the life of those here redeemed and brought to Christ, because eveiy soul of man was immortal. 6. A moment's reflection will show us that a dogma of this land could not remain idle. It must influence irresistibly in one direction or another this whole question of future punishment.* It must mould the entire doctrine of the Church upon the subject. According as men connected it with one truth of Scripture or another, it must give rise to two opposite schools of thought. Connect the immortality of the soul with the scriptural doctrine of the eternity of punishment, and you mevitably create the dogma of eternal life in misery, i.e. of Augustine's hell. Connect it with another great truth of Scripture', the final extinction of evil and restitution of all things, and. you as inevitably create Origen 's Universal Restoration. For each of these opposing theories there is exactly the same amount of proof, viz : — Plato's dogma and a dogma of the Bible ; and if Plato's dogma could be proved to be a scriptural doctrine, then, by every law of logic, Scripture would be found supporting two contradictory theories, or, in other words, would itself destroy all its claims to authority. 7. Accordingly, this philosophical idea of Plato is- found influencing most powerfully and most unfairly- the interpretation of Scripture from the second centuryr * Hookee, Eccl. Pol., V. 2. f2] 18 THE DURATION AND down to our own time. An example of this will probably ishow this more forcibly than any words of ours. Tertullian is commenting upon our Lord's teaching in Luke xix. 10 : "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." (Vulgate, quod perierat). No one knewbetter than Tertullian the primary and proper meaning of the Latin vevbpereo, and that it meant "to ¦vanish," " to die," " to perish," " to be annihilated." Why would he not attach this meaning to it when he was commenting upon the text of the Latin version "? Here is his own account : * " We, however, so. under stand the soul's immortality as to believe it lost, not in the sense of destruction, but of punishment,- that is, in hell. And if this is the case, then it is not the soul which salvation will affect, since it is ' safe ' already in ¦its own nature by reason of its immortality ; but rather the flesh, which, as all readily allow, is subject to destruction."* Such was the influence upon the inteipretation of Scripture which his theory of the soul forced upon Tertullian. It led him to deny to the terms of God's word what he knew to be their primary and proper meaning, and to affirm that the salvation of our Lord had no relation to the human soul, but only to the bodies of men ! A similar influence this the ory has had upon theologians down to the present day. 8. It is true, indeed, that while the Fathers as a general rule considered the question of future punish ment under the impression that every soul of man was immortal, they did not attach to the soul the idea of an essential immortality and an existence from all eternity as Plato did. Their juster notions of the Deity pre vented their going to this length ; and they generally acknowledged the soul as the creation of God, having * Tertullian, On the Resurrection, c. xxxiv. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 19 a beginning in time, and allowed that He who had given it existence, could take that existence away. But in supposing that God gave to the soul an inalienable existence, i.e., an immortality not affected by any conduct upon man's part, of which no creature could deprive it, and of which God would not deprive it, they in effect laid down a dogma which had the very same influence upon their views of future pun ishment as if they had adopted the dogma of Plato to its fullest extent. An immortality that never would be taken from the soul, and an immortality that never could be taken from it, would have precisely the same bearing upon the future of man. In either case he must live on for ever, whether in misery or in happi ness. In a subsequent chapter we will show tho actual influence of this dogma upon the doctrine of the Church, leading first to Augustine's fearful theory of everlasting misery, and then, in the revulsion of human thought from this, to Origen's theory of universal restoration. 9. Now the immortality of the soul, whether as held by Plato, or by the Fathers in general, was a mere fancy of the human mind. As to any essential immortality which belonged to it of its own proper nature there is no Christian writer or thinker of any weight who now dares to maintain it. It was, as Pliny justly called it, a figment ; and even Socrates, with all his noble language, evidently feared that his favourite notion was no sounder than the figment which the Epicurean Pliny contemptuously called it. * Scripture denies it altogether. An essential immortality it docs not allow to bo the attribute of * Pi.iny, Natural History, b. vii. c. 56 ; Apology of Soceates, c. 32 and 33 ; Calvin, on 2 Cor., v. 1. 20 THE DURATION AND any creature, however exalted. To one Being only — to God — does it allow to have "life in Himself ; " of one Being only — God — does it allow such an immortality to be an attribute.* Here, as in every thing else, Scripture is the- book of the highest reason. That which has had a beginning may have an end. That on which God has^ bestowed hfe He may and can inflict death. The highest intelligences as much as the lowest must depend on Him for the continuance of their hfe. Let Him withdraw his sustaining power and the mighty archangel becomes a thing of nought, as completely as the insect which dances in the sunbeams for an hour and then passes away for ever. " Immortality," says Calvin, "does not belong in the propriety of speech to the nature either of souls or of angels ; but is derived from another source, the secret inbreathing- of God." t 10. The idea that God has bestowed upon men, or upon any part of human nature, an inalienable immortality finds just as httle, sanction in the Scrip tures. The expression " immortality of the soul," se common in theology, is not once found in the Bible from beginning to end. J In vain do men, bent on sustaining a human figment, ransack Scripture for some expressions which may be tortured into giving- it an apparent support. The phrase, " living soul," apphed to man at his creation, § has been by many Christian writers, utterly ignorant of Hebrew, sup posed to imply such an immortality. The very same * John v. 26 ; 1 Tim. vi. 16. f Calvin, on 1 Tim. vi. 16. Maude's pa 's Popular Id § Gen. ii. 7. J Mr. Maude's paper on Immortality, Rainbow, March, 1869 ; Rev. W. Keb's Popular Ideas on Immortality, p. 31. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 21 phrase, however, in the oiiginal language of Scripture, had been applied to the lower creation before it was applied to man.* The threefold description of man, as having body, soul, and spirit, has been by others supposed significant of his inalienable immortality. Whateverbe meant by this distinction, it cannot in any measure support the inference based upon it ; as the lower creatures are allowed in Scripture to be possessed not merely of body and soul but of spirit likewise, f 11. But an inalienable immortality is expressly asserted in Scripture not to have been bestowed upon man at his creation. J We do not deny that man was made in God's image ; and that a very impor 4ant part of this resemblance consisted in man's not being subject to death as the lower creatures were. Immortality was given to man at his creation. § This priceless gift was one of the gifts which a bountiful Creator bestowed upon a favoured creature. But it was alienable. It might be parted with; it might be thrown away; it might be lost. So He, the Lawgiver, said, when, in giving immortality, He also added the warning, " In the day thou eatest, thou ¦shalt die." What is more : this immortality was alienated : this priceless gift was throivn away and lost. Man sinned, and lost his immortality. As Irenajus expresses it, "Man, disobedient to God, was cast off from immortality." || And so God said Himself, when to fallen Adam He declared: "Dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return."** Sinful man is not by * Gen. i. 20, 21. , f Gen. vii. 15-22 ; Ps. civ. 29 ; Eccl. iii. 19-21. % Gen. ii. 17. § Wisdom ii. 27; Denniston, Perishing Soul, pp. 127-131; Plato, Phaedo, par. 55. || Irenjeus against Heresies, b. iii., s. ii. ; Lakdis, Immortality of Ihe Soul, p. i., c. iii., ». 26. ** Gen. iii. 19. 22 THE DURiYTION AND nature immortal but mortal. He has lowered himself to the level of the beasts that perish. If immortality is to be his again, it must be as a gift restored, and not inherited. It must become his by virtue of some new provision of grace which reinstates him in the place he lost. This teas the Gospel of Christ. It was to give back the eternal life which man had forfeited, that he came into the world : " God Avas manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life. " * " If then, as annihilated by sin, the soul was ever forfeit, " Godhead paid the mighty price, the pledge halh been redeemed ; " He, from the waters of oblivion, raised the drowning race, "Lifting them even to Himself, the baseless Rock of Ages."f Subseqiient examination will, however, show us that Christ has not, as some suppose,} bestowed this price less gift on all ; but on some only of the fallen race. It is the believer only who can say with David, " He redeemeth my hfe from destruction." § 12. Before we proceed to establish our view of future punishment by the direct testimony of Scrip ture, it will be necessary to remove an objection very commonly made to it, and which has great force with. very many minds. The objection is this — that what is no longer felt to be punishment by the party icho is punished, is no punishment at all : that it ceases to be a punish ment the moment it ceases to be sensibly felt. This was one of Tertullian's chief reasons for his view of eternal misery. || He reasoned precisely as those heathen reasoned, who, in trying to reconcile man to * Ignatius to the Ephesians, c. xix. ; Landis, Immortality, p. i., c 3. s. 21. f Tupper, Proverbial Philosophy. J Denniston, Perishing Soul, p. 131. § Ps. c. 3, 4 ; eii. 28 ; John v. 20, 40. J| On the Resurrection, c. xxxv. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 23: his inevitable fate, tried to reason him into the belief that death was no evil* Yet, when even such men looked on into the hmitless future, into that endless life which man can conceive of and longs to make his own, because in truth it was his birthright once, they cor rected their idle reasoning, and without the Christian's- promise of eternal life in Christ, called endless death an endless injury. f Such it is even to him who has ceased to feel the loss of life, and, since the life restored te man through Christ is an eternal life, it follows that its loss, inflicted as a pumshment, is a punishment of an everlasting nature. 13. And here the first death affords a perfect analogy to the second. From the earhest records of our race capital punishment has been reckoned as not only the greatest but also the most lasting of all punishments; and it is only reckoned the greatest because it is the most lasting. A flogging, inflicted on a petty thief, inflicts more actual pain than decapi tation or hanging inflicts upon a murderer. Why- then is it greater and more lasting ? Because it has deprived the sufferer of every horn- of that life which but for it he would have had. Its duration is supposed co-existent with the period of Jiis natural life. "The laws," says Augustine, " do not estimate the punish ment of a criminal by the brief period during which he is being put to death ; but by their removing him for ever from the company of living men." J 14. The conclusion drawn from this is sometimes sought to be got rid of by representing the real * Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 36, 37 ; Lucretius, b. iii. t Ciceeo, Tusc. Disp., i. 47. t City of God, xxi. 2 ; Abp. Tillotson, Eternity of Hell Torments, p. 412. 24 THE DURATION AND punishment of death to consist in its exposing the party put to death to those sufferings which are ¦supposed by many to follow during the intermediate state from death to resurrection.* Whatever may be believed of the reality of such sufferings, it is, however, certain that human governments in their apportionment of punishments never took anything of this kind into then thoughts at all. Death, as a legal punishment, is reckoned the very same punish ment, whatever be the character of the person thus punished, whether he has been an upright or a wicked man, one likely to suffer punishment or reward. The idea of death as the most lasting of all has not been confined to Christian nations; or to believers in a future life of rewards and punishments ; but was accepted before the time of the Gospel, and by individuals and nations who did not believe in a future hfe at all. The Sadducee, the Epicurean, and the Atheist, held it just as well as the Platonic philoso pher, the Christian father, or the Egyptian priest. Justin Martyr expresses the idea well, when, speaking of heathen persecutors who, as he expressly states, "believed that there was nothing after death," says: "They kill us with no intention of delivering us ; but cut us off that we may be deprived of life and pleasure." t 15. Now all this is readily applied to the future life and to future punishment. The loss of every year of the hfe which the sinner might have had is a punishment, and because the life is eternal the pun ishment is eternal also. There is here no straining of argument to make out a case. The argument is one which man's judgment has in every age approved as * Bartlett, Life and Death, 289. f First Apology, c. lvii. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 25 just, whether it agreed or not with his view of future retribution. "Good things," says the Christian father, Irenssus, who held our view, " good things are eternal, and without end with God, and, therefore, the loss of these is also eternal and never-ending." " May it not," says the great Dutch divine, Hermann Witsius, who himself held the Augustinian view of punishment, " may it not, in its measure, be reckoned an infinite punishment, should God please to doom man, who is by nature a candidate for immortality, to total annihilation, from whence he should never be suffered to return to life % " And President Edwards, of America, who also held the Augustinian view, yet distinctly agrees with us. " Endless anni hilation, " he says, " is an endless or an infinite punish ment. It is an endless loss of, not only all the good a man at present enjoys, but of all that good which lie would have enjoyed throughout eternity in the state of bhss to which he would have been admitted, if he had never sinned. This, in an endless duration, "would have amounted to an infinite quantity of good. Annihilation, therefore, is an infinite punishment, both as it is endless, and as the quantity of good lost is infinite. . . . Final annihilation then is an infinite evil, as it is inflicted in disapprobation of sin." * 16. In arguing thus we have argued at the greatest disadvantage to ourselves, for we have confined our attention to the parties actually punished, while we 'have left out of sight the grand object of all- wise punishment, viz., the lesson taught by it to those who have not offended. Viewed in this hght, eternal * IeenxEus against Heresies, iv., v. 27 ; xi. 4 ; Witsius, Covenants, i., v., xiii. ; Blain, Death not Life, 12th ed., p. 80 ; Denniston, Perish ing Soul, p. 80; Pensees De Pascal, S. P., art. 11; Wesley's Sermons, " Of Hell," sermon Ixxviii. 2G THE DURATION AND death inflicted on sinners is eternally felt, and has an eternal influence on the parties whom it was intended piincipally to affect. The actual sinner suffered as he deserved — if not less, certainly not more. His death then intervenes to afford its eternal lesson to all future times, Those who rejoice in immortality are for ever warned by the aspect of its loss. Milton draws the fallen angels as shuddering at the thought of the loss even of their life — lowered, shattered, with no aim or object but evil : — " To be no more : sad cure ; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, These thoughts that wander through eternity ? " And the genius of Pascal rebukes the thought that makes light of the loss of existence :— " Is it a thing to speak of flippantly % Is it not a thing, on the con trary, to speak sadly of, as of all sad things the saddest ?"* 17. A vast amount of misconception, and con sequently of needless controversy, has arisen from the mistaken idea that eternal death is not properly eternal punishment. One class of reasoners, holding eternal punishment, think it necessary to argue against eternal death as not being its equivalent; while another class, holding more or less the doctrine of eternal death, feel bound to argue against the eternity of future punishment, from not perceiving that the eternal death which they hold is in truth its full equivalent. One class, again, imagines that in proving eternal punishment they prove eternal life in torment ; and the other that, in overthrowing the * Pensees De Pascal, second part, art. 11 ; Young, Night Thoughts. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 27 notion of the latter, they have overthrown the former also.* 18. We will here merely add that the terms " ever lasting destruction," " eternal death," etc., taken by us as properly descriptive of our theory of the future non-existence of the wicked, are the veiy terms used by the best writers of the periods before and after the bh-th of Christ, when they would describe the eternal loss of life and existence by beings who had once possessed life. The Grecian writer calls such a condition " a death that never dies;" the Roman Cicero calls it "everlasting death ; " Lucretius calls it " immortal death," " eternal death" ; even Tertullian, though his theory constantly compelled him to confound hfe with death, when he would describe a state from which there was no resurrection to existence, can find no stronger, truer description of it than " eternal death," " everlasting destruction." t * Eternity of Future Punishment, G. Salmon, D.D. ; Eternal Punishment, J. W. Baelow, M.A. ; Religious Tendencies of the Times, J. Geant, i. 268. t 8i.vS.Tos iSdmros Amphis Gynaecocr, i. ; mors, simpiternum malum ; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., i. 42 ; mors immortalis, mors sterna ; Luceetius, Lib. Tert ; mors aeterna xffiternus Interitus ; Tertullian, On the Resurrection, c. ix. 38 THE DURATION AND CHAPTER IH. TESTIMONY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. flAVING in our last chapter removed all obstacles arising from an erroneous notion of the nature of the souL we proceed to .consider the direct proofs of our view. We will first advert to the testimony of the Old Testament. This is indeed by no means so clear either as to the future of the redeemed or the lost as the New Testament; but there are undoubtedly in it many places, not only in its later but in its earlier portions, which speak of both.* 2. Deathwas the penalty which God originally pronounced against human sin. All that God purposed to inflict upon Adam and his posterity in case of transgression is included in that word " death," " In the day that thou eatest, thou shalt die."t It is of the utmost con sequence then that we should understand what God meant by death; nor is there the smallest difficulty in doing so if we Avill only attend to what reason and justice require, and what Scripture expressly declares. * Acts iii. 22-25. t Gen. ii. 17. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 29J Its meaning, then, we contend to be, when it is thus attached to sin as its penalty, the loss of life or existence. 3. One of the first principles of justice requires that parties threatened with a penalty for transgression should have the fullest opportunity of understanding" lohat the penalty is. God, accordingly, speaks to- Adam of death as a thing whose nature Adam knew.- Now Adam knew veiy well what death was in one sense, and in one sense only. He knew it to be the law of the lower creatures, and to consist in the loss of their being and existence. Heknew nothing of any other senses of death, such as " death in sin " or "death to sin ; " for, in his innocence, he did not know what sin was at all. Still less did he understand by death an eternal existence in agony. He had one clear, well-understood sense for death — the loss of life and being. When God, therefore, threatened death to Adam as the penalty of disobedience, Adam could only know that penalty to mean that he would become like the beasts that perish ; and therefore, in agreement" with a fundamental principle of justice, such an end was that which God threatened to inflict for sin. 4. So fully persuaded indeed are the advocates of the Augustinian theory, that Adam could not possibly have understood death in their fearful sense, that they are compelled to deny a fundamental principle of law — that parties living under it should have the means of knowing to what they expose them selves if they violate it. " It is not essential," writes Professor Bartlett, the ablest advocate of the Augus tinian theory that either this country or America has produced, " it is not essential to enquire whether the first pair understood all that was involved in the 30 THE DURATION AND penalty,-' Ye shalt surely die ! ' " And he then goes on to lay down the astounding proposition that "neither the judicial dealings of God nor man" require that "the extent" of penalty should be " unfolded" before the minds of those who may expose themselves to it if they offend ! * If this Professor of Theology had consulted a Professor of human Jurisprudence, he would have beeninformedthat when a man is incapable of knowing the nature of a penalty, he cannot be subjected to it. He must at least have a fair opportunity of knowing it, or human law will not make him liable. If the Professor had consulted that divine law which he has undertaken to teach, he should have known that justice is one of the qualities that the divine Lawgiver claims as the foundation of his throne. The old morality of the land of Uz was bigher than that breathed in the Theological Seminary of Chicago : it spurned the idea that a mortal man could be more just than God. t 5. The only meaning which Adam could attach to death as the threatened penalty for transgression is that which God himself expressly attached to it. As soon as Adam transgressed, God came to him and repeated to him in other words the penalty he had just incurred. It Avas, " Dust thou art ; and unto dust shalt thou return." J God's definition of the death in flicted for the first transgression is frequently repeated in the later Scriptures. Paul tells us that it is the death Avhich all men actually undergo, whether they are among the saved or the lost ; and therefore an eternal existence in pain can be no part of its meaning.§ * Baetlett, Life and Death, Boston U. S., p. 48. t Job. iv. 17. J Gen. iii. 19. § Rom. v. 12, 14, 17 ; 1 Cor. xv. 22. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 31 Such too was the death which Christ endured for human sin — the very same penalty to its full extent to which man was exposed; and therefore spiritual death, or an eternal life in misery, can form no part whatso ever of its meaning.* We have thus, if Ave are satisfied to accept God's teaching, the clearly-expressed sense of death. It was not spiritual death : that was the sinner's guilty act, but not the penalty for his sin. It was not an eternal existence in pain. It was simply the withdrawal of a life whose true aim and object had been lost. God said nothing in the first instance of transgression as to whether this death would be temporal or eternal; but what the death was He fully explained both by Avord and by example. He gave life to the race of man, and He Avould with draw that hfe if man sinned. Such Avas the simple scriptural meaning of that word " death," about which Christian theologians have written whole libraries of confused jargon and hopeless nonsense, ever since the introduction of the Platonic dogma of the inaliena ble immortality of man compelled them to hold that all men must live for ever. If our readers would A\nsh to judge for themselves of the effect which the dogma has had upon scriptural exegesis, let them compare the lucid comments of the Christian father Ireneeus, who was unacquainted with it, Avith the flounderings of Moses Stuart, when both are discussing the same grand subject — death, the penalty of sin.* 6. This old sense, first stamped on it by God Himself, in the opening period of human history, has also been the universal idea formed of it Avhereever man has lived and died. It is always the primary, and in the * Phil. ii. 8 ; Acts ii. 24 ; Rom. v. 7, 8. f IeenxEus, Heresies, v. xxiii ; M. Stuart, on Rom. v. 12. 32 THE DURATION AND case of the great maj ority of mankind the only meaning- of the word, in every language and every tribe of the earth. "The world," says Athenagoras, "regard death as a deep sleep and forgetfulness."* So strongly im pressed indeed was this primary sense of the word upon the human mind, from the perpetual recurrence of the thing itself among all the creatures, that while numberless words in the progress of time have assumed senses wholly ahen or contrary to their original mean ing, this word "death," has remained true to its original in its various apphcations. Thus we have in Scripture the expressions " dead to sin," " dead to the law ; " in our Catechism we have the phrase, "ad ;ath unto sin ; " in ordinary life we speak of persons buing "dead " te certain passions or affections. All such expressions- are derived from physical death, and are trae to its original sense. They imply the departure, and con sequent non-existence, of relations and feelings which were once living and strong — their death. Sin has ceased to be dear to the renewed mind: the old relation of the law has ceased to be for the believer : the former friend no longer loves. In every case, something has disappeared from existence. To the sense thus imposed on death in all times and by all nations, in its primary and its secondary significations, there is one exception — that given to it in the theology oj a portion of Christendom. Compelled by a false dogma and a terrific creed of punishment arising from it, death is made to mean its direct opposite, life — some " condition of being or existence." f 7. But this late meaning attached by many Chris- * Athengoeas, Plea, c. xii. t Rainbow, for 1869, p. 254 ; Geant, J., Religious Tendencies, ii, 141. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 33 tians to the term death, in one of its applications, namely, to future punishment, has not the smallest force as regards its use in the Old Testament. There the word must be taken in the sense God has stamped upon it, and left unchanged. It is there over and over again described as the end, in the future age, of obstinate transgressors. For such God declares He has "provided the instruments of death:" of such as hate divine Wisdom that Wisdom says, "they that hate me love death : " to the wicked God saith, "thou shalt surely die," "the soul that sinneth it shall die." * While, as plainly as words can express, it dis tinguishes between the sinful acts and state of the sinner, i.e. his moral death, and that death which God will at a future period inflict upon him as its punish ment.! Two things, perpetually confounded by the Augustinian theorist, are as perpetually kept distinct in the Scriptures, viz : man's moral degradation, and God's penalty. 8. No one, we suppose, will apply the death pro nounced in the above passages upon unrepented and unpardoned sin to that death which all men alike, whether saved or lost, undergo as the children of Adam. They can only apply it to future punishment. Death, then, is, according to the Old Testament, to be after judgment the result of sin, as life is the result of righteousness. Can we suppose a God of truth, of justice, and of mercy, to mean by this well-understood phrase something unknown to his hearers, of a charac ter the very opposite to what they had from his own teaching conceived, and conveying a doom unutter ably greater? The very idea is an insult to God. * Ps. vii. 13 ; Prov. viii. 36 ; xi. 4 ; Ezek. iii. 18 ; xviii. 4 ; xxxiii. 8. t Ezek. xviii. 11, 16. [3] 34 THE DURATION AND But hence it follows, as a matter of course, that loss of life is the doom pronounced against sinners in the Old Testament. 9. But the loss of life is not merely implied, it is distinctly stated to be the punishment for sin.* We have only to enquire what is meant in the Old Testament by "life." Life in common language means " existence." A man is said to be yet alive, though his moral condition may be of the most degraded character, though his happiness is utterly gone. This sense however would not suit the Augustinian. He has recourse to some secondary sense ; and, because life is frequently associated with its proper action and with happiness, he assumes these to be its sense when spoken of in Scripture. "Life," says Professor Bartlett, "signifies true functional action, welfare, prosperity, happiness, and the like." t Now while we are perfectly satisfied that life, as given by God and unaltered from the state in which he gave it, is always associated with true functional action and happiness, and so in such a state mayfrom invariable association come tobesynonymous with them, we yet see that they are really two dis tinct and different things, from the fact that they may be and are frequently disassociated. If life were identical with true functional action and happiness, then, where these had ceased to exist, there life too would cease to exist. But this is not in conformity with the language of the Old Testament. There the utterly Avicked are said to be possessed of life, which they value, and would fain perpetuate for ever ; and * Ezek. iii. 18 ; xiii. 22. t Bartlett, Life and Death, p. 41 ; Grant, Religious Tendencies, ii. 141. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 35 "the wretched to be possessed of life so unutterably wretched that they long for its departure. * Life, then, and life's happiness, are distinct things. Wlnle the • creature keeps the condition in which he was created " they are, from the Creator's loving nature, inseparable ; when he abandons it, they are seen to be distinct. The life which the wicked man has, and which false teachers promise him that he will continue to have in the future age, that life God tells him he will be deprived of in that solemn time when He will " bring -every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." f 10. But it is not only through the terms "life" •and " death," that the Old Testament describes the 'punishment of the ungodly. By every expression in the Hebrew language significant of loss of hfe, loss of ¦existence, the resolution of organized substance into its original parts, its reduction to that condition in which it is as though it had never been called into being — by every such expression does the Old Testament describe the end of the ungodly. " The •destruction of the transgressors and of sinners shall be "together ; " " prepare them for the day of slaughter ; " '" the slain of the Lord shall be many ; " " they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have sinned ; " " God shall destroy them ; " " they ishall be consumed;" "they thall be cut off;" "they ;shall be rooted out of the land of the living ; " " blotted •out of the Book of Life;" "they are not."% The Hebrew scholar will see from the above passages that •there is no phrase of the Hebrew language significant * Ezek. iii. 18 ; xiii. 22 ; Job iii. 20. t Fed. xii. 14 J Is. i. 28; lxvi. 16, 24; Jer. xii. 3; Ps. xxviii. 5; xxxvii. 20; Ixxiii. 27 ; xxxviii. 38 ; Iii. 5 ; Ixix 28 ; Job xxvii. 19. .16 THE DURATION AND of all destruction, short of that philosophical annihila tion of elements which we never teach, that is not used to denote the end of the ungodly. The English reader need only turn to his English dictionary to- see that the primary sense of all the above terms is- significant of the loss of existence. At a subsequent page we will show that the primary sense of words is the only sense that is alloAvable where a lawgiver is laying down for the guidance of men his penalty for transgression. 11. For the sake of greater plainness Ave will present instances of the meaning of some of these phrases in things that relate to this present hfe. We are thus enabled to see clearly their exact force. There are several Hebrew words applied to future punishment translated by the word " perish." Abad [",3 is one °f the most common of these. When Heshbon was utterly cut off by the sword of Israel : when a sentence of extermination was pronounced against the house of Ahab : when the memoiy of the Avicked has departed from the earth: when Esther- apprehends her death at the hands of Ahasuerus : it is this word which is used : they have, or will, or may perish.* Haras [D*in], is another term infrequent use for future punishment. What is its meaning in common hfe ? When the altar of Baal was thrown down, stone after stone : when the strongholds of Zion were levelled to the ground : Avhen a wall is broken down so that its foundations are discovered : this is the term used, f Again : God will " destroy " the ungodly. One Hebrew Avord for this is Tsamath [J1Q¥]. I* ^s used in the sense of utterly cutting * Num. xxi. 30 ; 2 Kings ix. 8 ; Job xviii. 17; Esth. iv. 16. f Judg. vi. 25 ; Lam. ii. 2 ; Ezek. xii. 14. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 37 <\ff and destroying from a place. * Another Hebrew word is Shamad [*TDt£J]. It is significant of utter extinction. When the women of the tribe of Benja min had been slain : when the nations of Canaan disappeared before the sword of Israel : when Moab ceased to be a nation : this is the word used for their destruction.f Again: the wicked will be "cutoff." The Hebrew is Karath [m.D], in Nifal. What is its use in common life? When truth has become extinct from a sin-loving people : when Aveapons of war are broken in pieces : when life at the period of the flood perished from off the earth : when the life of an offender against the law of Moses was taken : this is the word used: " they are cut off."% By another word, Nathats [^J13], God threatens future de struction. In matters of this life, it indicates destruc tion of an utter kind. When the infected house of •the leper was cast down and dismantled : when the images of Baal were broken in pieces: when the stones of the altar of the Sun were ground into ;powder: this is the word used for the process of ¦destruction.^ 12. We need go no farther at present in order to ^ascertain the clear, distinct, oft-repeated testimony of the Old Testament. By every unambiguous term, it has pointed out the punishment of the wicked as consisting, not in hfe, but in the loss of life ; not in their continuance in that organized form which consti tutes man, but in its dissolution; its resolution into its •original parts, its becoming as though it had never * Ps. Ixix. 4 ; ci. 5, 8. t Judg. xxi. 16 ; Deut. xii. 30 ; Jer. xlviii. 42. J Jer. vii. 28 ; Zech. ix. 10 ; Gen. ix. 11 ; Ex. xxx. 33. ••§ Lev. xiv. 45 ; 2 Kings xi. 18 ; xxxiii 12. 38 THE DURATION AND been called into existence. While the redeemed are to knoAv a life which knows no end, the lost are to be reduced to a death which knows of no aAvaking for ever and ever. Such is the testimony of God in the Old Testament. If Christian divines refuse to accept it because Plato, and before him Egyptian priests, taught a doctrine of the soul's essential immortality, let them see to it. We prefer the Avord of God to the logic of Plato and of Egypt. 13. Our readers may perhaps have remarked that Ave have avoided hitherto the use of a very well- knoAvnterm in this question, viz., "annihilation;" and have, in our only reference to it, disclaimed it in one of its senses. If they have any acquaintance with the controversy as conducted by our opponents, both < of the schools of Origen and Augustine, they will also have known that this is the term by which our theory is almost invariably described by them. They are never tired of repeating this long Latin word. It is never out of their mouths. If we may judge by their pertinacious use of it, it seems absolutely essential to their cause ; and, indeed, their ablest men haAre confessed that its use by them is absolutely essential. * K they were to cease for a moment calling our theory one of " annihilation," and describing us as " annilnlationists," they seem to feel that it would be all over with them and with their cause. The terms are long ones; Latin ones, and therefore not so grateful to the Saxon ear ; somewhat obscure, and therefore distasteful to those Avho would prefer clear ness of expression ; but still, use them they must, and use them they do, until at any rate the sound of the terms, if not their sense, is very Avell knoAvn. We * Bartlett, Life and Death, Preface. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 39 must then say a few words about this term " annihi lation," ere we hand it back to our opponents, and return to the good old words of our Saxon version of the Bible. 14. We have not the smallest objection to the word " annihilate," if it is used in one of its senses. The great est authority in the English language, Webster, tells us in his Dictionary that, " to annihilate " means " to destroy," and "to destroy" means "to annihilate." Our theory is therefore one of " annihilation," because it is one of destruction. But the word has also a philosophical sense, and in this sense means reducing those parts of which organized bodies are composed to nothing. In this sense philosophy concurs with the saying of Bacon — " It is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated." And now we may see why and wherefore our opponents persist in calling our theory one of " annihilation ; " and why we prefer calling it by the scriptural phrase of " destruc tion." Paraded before the unenquiring mind as a theory of " annihilation," while that mind is at the same time carefully ta.ught that all philosophy denies that there can possibly be such a thing as " annihila tion," we are represented as maintaining a system at variance with the maxims of human knowledge. Whether such a mode of conducting a great con troversy is ingenuous, or .candid, or commonly honest, we must leave our readers to decide. For our part, we do not think it is. For we do not hold, any more than our opponents, that annihilation of parts which philosophy denies. We challenge them to produce one word of ours, or of any advocate on our side, which affirms it. We now take our leave of this matter with one parting remark. When our oppo- 40 THE DURATION AND nents charge us with holding a theory of annihilation in that sense of the word which philosophy denies, they bring against us a false accusation. When they charge us with holding a theory of annihilation in its well-established sense of destruction, they only charge us with holding a theory which Scripture from beginning to end maintains. For the destruction of the wicked is the testimony of the Word of God. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 41 CHAPTER IV. TESTIMONY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. |E now turn to the New Testament. We shall find in it perfect agreement with the Old. Before, however, bringing forward its statements, we will make a few observations on a new feature here introduced, viz., the change of language adopted in the pubhcation of the Gospel revelation. 2. We remark, then, that the writers of the New Testament must not only be supposed to follow the sense already fixed on the terms expressive of future punishment in the Hebrew Scriptures, but they also give us another guarantee as to their meaning by their usage of the Greek tongue. The Gospel, revealed and recorded chiefly by Jews, is recorded, not in a provincial dialect, but in the language of the Roman world. We have here a guarantee as to their meanmg ; whose overpowering force upon the present question we will show a httle farther on. Paul and Luke, and John and Peter, used a language 42 THE DURATION AND which they had no hand in forming or moulding, but which was already provided for them to be the vehicle of their thoughts. They made no claim to alter the world's tongue, but to alter the faith of the world through the medium of that tongue which the world used and understood when they were children, learning the meaning of its words from their elders. * The ordinary Greek lexicon — not lexicons of the New Testament, frequently coloured and tainted by theological opinion — is the true guide to the Greek of the New Testament. It is only where an opinion new to the human mind is brought before it that we have a right to look for a new or modified phrase, whose -sense is to be stamped upon it by the teachers of the novel truth. Neither a future life, however, nor judgment and punishment to come, were ideas novel to man. Heathen poetry and prose perpetually discussed them before the preaching of the Gospel. Nor have we throughout the whole of the New Testament Scriptures, addressed as the several portions of these were to men of different races and religions over the broad surface of the Roman world, the smallest hint or indication that the language used differed in any way or degree from that in established use. Had we but one text from John or Paul, affirming that they wrote in a Grecian tongue different from that of Hesiod and Homer, of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, we should then no longer possess in the New Testament an intelligible language, but an unknown, an unintelligible, and a useless tongue. We should have to lay it aside as of no service until God should again raise up within the Church the spiritual gift of inteipretation of tongues. * Discussions on the Gospels, Rev. A. Robeets, M. A., pp. 35-42. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 43i 3. We will first draw attention to the fact that the punishment of the wicked is as frequently described as, their death in the New Testament as in the Old, with^ out the smallest effort to show that its terms " death " or " to die " have any new sense placed on them. * These words, as all other words on this subject, are used without any explanation, as words whose sense was long estabhshed and generally known. Thus. our Lord, speaking of Himself, says, " This is the bread which came down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." And again He says, " Whoso-. ever liveth and beheveth in Me shall never die." f In these passages he implies that they who do not beheve in Him shall die. What our Lord implies of the ungodly Paul affirms of them: "If ye hve after the flesh, ye shall die."% Very frequent are the passages in which the expression " death " is used for future punishment. Thus om- Lord says, " If a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death." Paul affirms of wicked works that their end is death — * " that the wages of sin is death : " of those who perish, he says, that to such " we are the savour of death onto death." James declares that " sin, when finished, bringeth forth death," and that " he which converteth the sinner frpm the error of his way shall save a soul from death." John declares that the ungodly shall 3uffer " the second death." § We have thus, in repeated places, death described as the lot of the wicked in the coming age, nor is there in a single passage the least attempt made to show that death. * tfaVoTos, thanatos ; atroBr/jo-Koi, apothnesko. t John vi. 50 ; xi. 26. % Rom. viii. 13. § John viii. 51 ; Rom. vi. 21-23 : 2 Cor. ii. 16 ; James i. 15 ; v. 20 j Rev. xx. 14. 44 THE DURATION AND had any other than its usual sense, viz., the loss of existence. 4. We now proceed to examine another very- frequent description of future punishment, viz., as consisting in the loss of life. * The uniform testimony of the New Testament is that " eternal life " hereafter will be the exclusive possession of the just, and that the wicked will certainly not obtain it : " He that beheveth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life." f We are here tolerably agreed as to the sense of " ever lasting:" our simple enquiry is, what is the proper and natural sense of that Greek word, Zoe, here and elsewhere translated "hfe." 5. If we were only to ask what was its primary sense, we should have no difficulty. All allow existence to be its primary signification. We will hereafter show that the primary sense of this term is the only one admissible ; but here we will not further insist on it. We will here only ask if there was one universal sense attached to this term ; so that while there might be to a greater or lesser extent a variety of senses attached to it in one place or other, still, as accepted by all mankind speaking the Grecian tongue, it had one sense which was every where accepted as a time sense, and by some accepted as the only sense. Here too we are able to come to a certain conclusion. That isense of" existence" which is undoubtedly the primary sense is as undoubtedly a sense accepted by every Grecian speaker as a true sense, and by veiy many Grecian speakers accepted as its only sense. Our opponents themselves cannot and do not attempt to deny this. " The unenlightened heatlien" says Mattison, * Z»rf, Zoe. f John iii. 36. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 45 " understood the terms life and death as implying simple existence or non-existence." * 6. A fact of this kind would seem sufficient to decide the question as to the meaning of " hfe " in the New Testament. " The unenlightened heathen" may appear to some minds a very unimportant portion of mankind; but they, in effect, formed the vastly-preponderating number of persons to whom the Gospel was preached. If Christ's own words were almost exclusively addressed to the Jewish ears, they were recorded for a world-wide circle of readers. If the Founder of Christianity spoke mainly to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, his apostles addressed and wrote to the heathen as well, and these heathen hearers, outside of Palestine, outnumbered their Jewish hearers as a thousand to one. No one will pretend that " hfe " as spoken by Paul to a heathen meant something different from "life" as spoken by Christ to a Jew. The word throughout must have the same sense, and as that word Avas addressed to hearers, the majority of whom only understood it in its sense of "existence," then we can but suppose that it was really intended to have this sense throughout the New Testament. If " hfe," spoken of to the heathen, had a sense different from what the heathen addressed put upon it, then it would have required to have been explained to them. We know how our opponents, both of the schools of Origen and Augustine, labour hard to explain the term in this sense. Page after page, chapter after chapter, are devoted by them to persuade their readers that "life" means "well being," " true functional action," " prosperity," " harmonious moral development, and fulfilment of the great moral * The Immortality of the Soul, Philadelphia, 3rd edition, p. 127. 46 THE DURATION AND aims of human existence," "the happiness or the glory of heaven," and so on.* But there is not throughout the New Testament one attempt at ex plaining the word in such a sense. For unenhghtened heathen, or converts lately rescued from heathenism, there Avould have been an absolute necessity for such explanation of the word were it used in this sense bo new to them. But of such explanation we do not find a trace. Where we do find an inspired writer defining the meaning of " life," he defines it exactly jis a heathen would do : " What is your hfe ? " saith the apostle James : " It is even," he replies, " a vapour, that appeareth for a httle time, and then Vanisheth away." f Life, with St. James, himself a JeAv, meant but what it meant with a heathen, •existence. 7. But we have abundant proof from the New Testament that it does not use this important term " life," in that figurative sense which the Augustinian theorists put upon it. This we will now proceed to ehow. The importance of the point will be our full justification for dwelling upon it. The life which Christ bestews upon his redeemed is, according to our opponents, a trae functional action, imparted to the believer by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit upon his heart and mind; and may be said to com prehend that great work of grace, commencing with repentance and faith, which issues more and more in the restoration of the human mind in its love for God and holiness, to a hfe of obedience ; all this producing that peace of mind, that well-being and happiness, which may be attained even in this present state. * Baetlett, Life and Death, c. iii. ; Geant, Religious Tendencies, *• m. t James iv. 14. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT 47 Such is a fair explanation of what they suppose to be meant by the eternal life which Christ bestows upon His people. It is identical with their repentance, their faith, their sanctification, then present peace and joy in believing. 8. Now we will find that what is thus supposed to Tie identical with " hfe eternal," is in the New Testa ment distinguished from it. Paul has done so, plainly •and explicitly. " Eternal life," with him, is not the present obedience, or the present faith, or holiness of the believer ; it is not the new hopes, desires, aspira tions, joys, planted within him by divine grace : it is that which is hereafter to crown and to reward, through the goodness of our Father, such a work as He has Himself here effected in the hearts and lives of his people : " to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality," he tells us, " God will render eternal life." * That eternal life which so many confound with God's present work of grace upon the heart, is by the apostle distin guished from it, and taught to be its result, its con sequence, its reward, its crown, in the coming age "ushered in by the resurrection of life. The same distinction is observable in other Scriptures, t Life is •ever the end to be obtained, not the way that leads thereto. Man is first prepared by a divine work of grace, wrought now, for the trae enjoyment and use •of life, and then the eternal life is bestowed upon him in which to glorify God and to be blessed. 9. In exact conformity with this, Scripture repre sents eternal hfe as a gift, not yet enjoy edhj the children of God. If it were identical, as many suppose, with * Rom. ii. 6, 7. t Acts, xi. 19 ; Rom. vi. 22 ; viii. 13 ; Matt. vii. 13. 48 THE DURATION AND that "true functional action," produced in man by God's work, in that case eternal life would be here begun. In this present world, before death came to take him from it, before resurrection restored him to existence, the believer in Christ would already have had his eternal hfe, as truly, though it may be not as fully, as at the resurrection. But this is not the case. While there are no doubt many Scriptures, * which describe the believer as now having everlasting life, we are expressly told elsewhere that this consists in his having God's pledge and promise of that everlasting life; but not its actual possession and enjoyment. It is common in Scripture to speak of that which God intends to do as already done. It is significant of God as invariable in his purposes : " As I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have pur posed, so shall it stand." t This is accordingly the way hi which eternal life is spoken of. It is some times spoken of as already given, because it is pledged and promised ; but it is far more frequently spoken of as a future thing, because it is not yet actuaUy bestoAved and enjoyed. Thus St. Paul, in a passage already referred to, tells us that " eternal hfe " is a thing which God will hereafter render to his people at the same time that he will render to the wicked then tribulation and wrath. Our Lord tells us that it is at this same coming time that the righteous will go into life eternal. Hence, Peter describes believers as "heirs of the grace of life ; " Paul describes them as living " in hope of eternal life, which God hath promised ; " while the Epistle to the Hebrews describes then exact position and standing here, namely, as "called to * John iii. 36; v. 24 f Isa. xiv. 24-27. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 49 receive the promise of eternal inheritance." * Eternal life, then, is a great gift promised by God, but not yet bestoAved : the possession of his people in His un alterable purpose, but not yet placed within their Tiands. It is not yet theirs to use and to enjoy. It will not become theirs in the intermediate state when the spirit has left the body. God's heirs of hfe will enter upon its enjoyment when their Redeemer comes again to call them to the resurrection of everlasting life. 10. Having thus estabhshed the scriptural force of 'the word " life," as signifying " existence," we will see at once its bearing upon our present question. As the wicked are not to have an eternal life hereafter, it means that they are not to have an eternal exis tence then. Their existence, then, after their resurrec tion to judgment will but resemble their existence •now ; it will be temporary, and will pass away. 11. There is another Greek word constantly trans lated " hfe," in the New Testament, t With respect to this word, one thing is certain, viz., that it never *bears in classical dictionaries, nor even in dictionaries of the New Testament, so far as we know, that sense , J Aphanizo, ) To make unseen, To hide from sight. To suppress. To do away with, To make away with, To drink off, To keep out of public. , Ftheiro, To corrupt, To spoil, To ruin, To waste, To destroy, ^detpopai, Filieiromai, To go to ruin To perish, To be deranged, (Spoken of men.) To put to death, (Spoken of men.) To be slain. (pdopd, Fthora. Corruption, Decay, Destruction, Loss, Ruin, &£o\odpevb>, Exohthreuo. To destroy utterly. oXedpos, Olethros, Ruin, Destruction, Death, Plague, Loss, Zonj, Zoe, A li ring or property, Life as opposed to death. Zd(o, Zoo, To live (spoken of animal life,) To be in full life and strength. Psyche, Breath, Life, Spirit, The soul or immortal part of man, The seat of the will, 12. We will thank our readers to look carefully at the foregoing table. It contains the words by which the New Testament describes future punishment, either in the way of infliction or deprivation, as that the wicked will suffer death (TJianatos), and will be NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 85 AND THEIR MEANINGS. i To lose utterly. To banish. To kill and bury secretly To drive away, To destroy utterly, To obliterate To steal. To tarnish good repute. • To put t© death, To kill, To debauch, To mix together colours. Perdition, Death, Debauching, Mixing of colours. (To others.) A plague, (To others.) A curse, (To others.) A ruin, j Reason, Animamundi, A moth, Psyche. deprived of life (Zoe). It contains all the meanings which the speakers of the Grecian language apphed to the above tenns. We here take these terms simply and by themselves as they are used in the New Testament on this question, as in the text " the 86 THE DURATION AND wages of sin is death," or, " if ye hve after the flesh •ye shall die" Let each theory of future punishment give a plain definition of what it means. Let this, definition be apphed to the above table. It is quite plain that in order to be the theory revealed in the New Testament it must suit one or other of the mean ings of every one of the above words. It will not be enough that it occurs among the meanings of some, or of many, of these terms : it must be found in every one of them. Now tried by this plain test we must reject the theories of Augustine and Origen, and can only accept that here maintained. 13. A single glance will show that what we und'er<- stand as the terrible punishment of the wicked, viz., their " loss of existence," is found under every one of the above terms. But when we come to the defini tions given by the Augustinian and Universalist we find that neither meets the requirements of the case. Thus the Augustinian means by future punishment " an existence in misery and moral pollution." He thinks, and perhaps justly, that this view of punish ment agrees with' some of the senses of some of the above terms ; as, for example, that it may very well agree Avith a sense of Apollumai " to be undone;" or of phthora and olethros as significant ot " loss." We need not dispute this with him; but this concession leaves him still at a far distance from his object. He must show that his view of punishment consorts with a meaning of every one of the terms. One of the meanings of phthora is "mixing of colours;" but we never suppose that this sense describes the punishment of the wicked. Why ? Because though it is a meanmg of one of the terms it is not any meaning of the rest. And so Ave say of the Augustinian view. It is not NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 87 enough for him to say that his view suits several, or most of the above terms. This is what he is always doing. He selects some of them and keeps his hearers occupied solely with these. But Scripture has used a great many terms — a great many more in the Greek than we find in the corresponding terms in Enghsh, in order that on this vital point there may be no ambiguity. Now if the Augustinian could show that his view agreed with every one of the above terms with but a single exception, that single exception would exclude his view as effectually as if his view were not found under one of them. But our readers will see that the Augus tinian view is not among the senses of several of the above words, as, for example, of Thanatos, Apothnesko, Aphanizo, Exolothreuo. 14. It is yet more hopeless when we come to the Universalist. When we come to ask him what he means by that " death " and that " destruction" which God says that He will inflict upon sinners hereafter, he tells us that in his opinion these terms mean " the extinction of sin," the " destruction or obliteration of pride and self-will" in sinners, through which their restoration is to be effected. But when we come to compare his definition with the terms in question, we do not find it the sense of a single one of them. He will not find in the Greek language that Tlianatos, taken by itself, ever means " the extinction of sin," or that Apoleia, taken by itself, ever means "the oblitera tion of any evil quality." These words occur simply and by themselves in the New Testament, and we will allow no man to subjoin other words to them. 15. Tried then by this simple test the theories of our opponents fall to the ground. It is not simply that the meaning which they put upon the terms of 88 THE DURATION AND Scripture is not then- primary meaning, but that in very many instances it is not their meaning at all. If they want to show that their sense of the words is their true sense in the New Testament, they must first undertake the task of showing that the Greek of the New Testament is a language in itself, different from the Greek spoken and written by ordinary men in the apostolic days ; a sacred language, peculiar to the writings of the evangelists and apostles; quite distinct from the Greek of Josephus and Philo, of Demosthenes and Plato. When they shall have succeeded in establishing the evidence of this sacred language they will have also succeeded in establishing an unintelligible hieroglyphic, i.e., that the words about which we are speaking cannot be shown to have any sense at all. We however take our stand upon the intelligible principle that the Greek of the New Testament is part and parcel of the grand tongue of Greece, from which it cannot be dissevered, from which it would be its death to sever it ; and, standing on this ground, we call upon our opponents to abandon theories, which, opposed to the established usage of the Grecian language, are contrary to God's holy Word. 16. Before we bring this chapter to a close we will show our readers how truly and really the terms of Scripture are opposed to the theories of Augustine and Origen, by showing them that their advocates, in explaining fully and completely the theories which they maintain, are compelled in doing so to contradict in plainest contradiction every one of the strongest declarations of Scripture relative to future punishment. Neither of these theories can be explained without contradicting Scripture. K the simple language of NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 89 the New Testament is exclusively adhered to, it will not set forth, but will contradict their views. If they only speak of " death," and " destraction," and " loss of life," as the lot of the wicked, they know perfectly well that the ordinary sense of these terms is ruinous to their systems : if they say that the wicked will be " consumed," " burnt up," reduced to " ashes," they are but too keenly aware that these terms express the opposite to what they teach. When they want, then, to be plain, when they want, beyond any ambiguity of phrase, to set forth their horrible or delusive theories, they are compeUed by dire necessity to introduce a language not merely not used by Scripture but flatly contradictory to what it does use. In order to show this we will draw out tables of some of the chief of those terms in which the Scripture speaks of future punishment. We will give these terms in the Greek, Latin, and English lan guages. Those who are unacquainted with the former can pass them over. THE TABLE. Augustinian Scripture. Theory of Theory. Destruction. "The fact of the "He that be " The wicked will never-ending life of lieveth not not live for ever." Satan and lost sin the Son shall Rev. S. Minton. ners." — James notseelife."- Gkant, Religious John iii. 36. "The loss of life is ^* Tendencies. the essence of future punish p " Disbelief affirms ment." — Rev. H. what it denies. It Constable. unawares asserts immortal life." — Young's Night Thoughts. 90 THE DURATION AND Augustinian Scripture. Theory op — Theory. Destruction. " The wicked live on " Lest he eat, " Only they who eat for ever."-TAHAN and live for of the bread Christ ever."— Gen. gives will live for " How wilt thou en iii. 22. ever."-S. Minton. dure to live on for ever."-R. Baxter, "If any man "If you defile your Saint's Rest. eat of this flesh, you will not bread he shall live." — Hermas. " The sinner shall live forever." (4 live on through John vi. 51. > eternity." — James MHi Grant. "The wicked shall live for ever." — J. Angus, D.D., Future Punishment. "In hell they must live."— Rev. J. C. FURNISS. " Death cannot hap "The wages of "Envy leads to pen to the soul." — sin is death." death." — Clemens Athenagoras. —Rom. v. 23 Romanus. "The souls of the "This is the " The ungodly are wicked will not be sec o n d condemned to put to death." — d e a t h." — death." — Barna Book of Enoch. Rev. xx. 11. bas. "No death will de "They are debtors >T* liver them from to d e a t h." — punishment." IrENxEUS. «i HlPPOLYTUS. H " The doom of the A " How will they call wicked is death." and cry : 0 death, — S. Minton. whither art thou now gone ?" — R. " Death is the essence Baxter. of future punish ment."— H. Con " Does death come ? stable. No ; he flies away from him." — Rev. J. C. Fubniss. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 91 Augustinian Theory. Scripture. Theory op ' Destruction. "The soul of the " If ye live " The wicked will 1 wicked cannot die." after the hereafter die." — j — Augustine. flesh ye shall die." — Rom. H. Constable j " It does not die in viii. 13. hell." — Clemen tina. "The wicked shall never die." — Jas. Grant. a " And tried and wished to die ; but could not die." — o Pollok. " I cannot, must not die." — Bunyan. "0, that I might once at last die." — Reus. Baxter. " They shall burn eternally without dying." — Jeremy Taylor. "The soul of the " Broad is the "The heathen con wicked is lost, but way that sidered death to be not in the sense of leadeth to final destruc destruction."- destruction." tion." — Calvin. . Tertullian. -Matt. vii. 13 O " The language of " The eternal de "Who shall be Scripture points, H struction of human punish ed not to ' endless & life, at or after with ever misery, but to de « death, is among lasting de struction." — S. H the theological struction." — Minton. « errors of the day." 2 Thess. i. 9. ft — James Grant. "The end of the wicked is destruc " The soul cannot tion." — H. Con suffer destruction." stable. — Tertullian. 92 THE DURATION AND Augustinian Theory. Scripture. Theory op Destruction. O M COA " God meant, not to destroy, but root them (devils) out of heaven." — Mil ton. "The evil one will never be d e- stroyed." — James Grant. "God will not de stroy one single soul or body which He has created." — James Grant. " Pained, yet coming out undestroyed." — C. H. Spurgeon " Rebuilt in union indestructible." — Pollok. " Art thou come to de stroy us ? " —Mark i. 21 " God is able to destroy both body and soul in hell."— Mat. x. 28. "All the wicked will God destroy." -Ps. cxlv. 20. "God destroys both the serpent, and those angels and men who are like him." — Justin Martyr. " He who chooses other (evil) things shall be destroyed." Barnabas. " God will destroy the wicked in hell." — H. Con stable. CO 1—1«oH " God has not made us that we should perish." — Athen agoras. " From such an idea my very soul turns away with abhor rence." — James Grant. " The soul's im perishable nature." — James Grant. " Them that perish." — 2 Cor. ii. 15. " They shall utterly perish." — 2 Pet. ii. 12. "To perish rather, swallowed up and lost." — Milton. "According to Epicurus, the en tire man perishes." HiPPOLYTUS. " The heathen think that whatever is taken away from the world has perished." — Cal vin. " The wicked must in due time perish." — S. Minton. "To perish is truly descriptive of future punish ment." — H. Con stable. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 93 Augustinian Scripture. Theory of Theory. Destruction. "The bodies of the " The wicked " The wicked will wicked shall burn, shall con consume away." — and never be con sume : into H. Constable. sumed." — Jona smoke shall than Edwards. they con sume away." " Burning continu — Ps. xxxvii. ally, yet uncon- 20. sumed." — Pollok "God is a con "The Are of hell does suming fire-" not consume." — — Heb. xii. 3 Bunyan. 29. " The wicked shall CO'AO never be con sumed." — Rchd. o Baxter. i o i H "Their bodies will never be con sumed." — John Wesley. "They shall always suffer without con suming." — Nelson's Festivals. "A destruction not consuming." — R. Baxter. Ii " If our substance be "The wicked " The end of sinners indeed divine, and shall not be." is the blotting out cannot cease to — Ps. xxxvii. of being." — Con PI be." — Milton. 10. stable. O " The being who has "Let the H l sinned cannot cease wicked be no C3 to be." — Robert more." — Ps. Baxter. civ. 35. •A PI " The eternity of "He is not." being in man." — — Job. xxvii. Ditto. 19. 94 THE DURATION AND Augustinian Scripture. Theory op Theory. Destruction. " The soulis superior "He that " God shall raise all to corruption." — sowethto the from the dead, and Athenagoras. flesh shall of appoint some in the flesh reap corruptible." — " The corruptible corruption . " Justin Martyr. body of the wicked —Gal. vi. 8. puts on incorrup " Corruption repre tion." — Ditto. sents death or de struction." — S. "The bodies of the Minton. wicked shall be o rendered incor " Corruption is the ruptible." — Thos. end of the un Scott. godly." — H. Con stable. t> "The evil changed, P3P3 O corruptible to in- corrupt.'-PoLLOK "The bodies of the wicked shall be changed to fit them for eternal torment without corrup tion." — Jonathan Edwards. " Their bodies are incorruptible." — John Wesley. 17. We are not at present able to present to our readers a table of Universalist terms such as that just given of the opposite school. We have just put down as below a few of such terms which occur to us at present. They will show, so far as they go, the same tendency to contradict the language of Scripture. Should our work extend to another edition, we pro pose to enlarge this table ; and would feel obhged if any of our readers would furnish us with examples which they may meet with in their studies. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 95 Universalis! Theory. Scripture. q5 3 " Not one life shall be de stroyed." — Tennyson. "No life may fail beyond the grave." — Ditto. " He that believeth not the Son shall not see Ufe." — John iii. 36. oa ft "Not one life shall be de stroyed." — Tennyson. "The wicked shall not be destroyed." — One of the Laity. "All the wicked will God destroy." — Ps. cxlv. 20. OSa; Pi " The soul is exempt from perishing." — Origen. "Them that perish." — 2 Cor. ii. 15. 18. In order to show the extreme danger of such a principle of interpretation as that we have contro verted in this chapter, we will show how readily it may be apphed to overturn the cardinal doctrine of Chiistianity, viz., the resurrection of Christ, and our resurrection as a result of His. It is simply effected by attributing to the terms descriptive of it their secondary or figurative sense instead of their primary and hteral one. And for such an interpretation there is fully as much, in our opinion much more, ground, than for adopting it in the case of future punish ment. 19. The noun "resurrection," and the verbs "to rise again," have in common use a primary and a secondary sense. According to those with whom we reason, the secondary figurative sense is in Scripture the most important, the highest, and the most com mon sense.* As being such, in then judgment, they * S. C. Bartlett, Life and Death Eternal, c. ii. 96 THE DURATION AND have interpreted all the terms relative to future punishment in conformity with it. " Death " is, with them, " moral disorganization:" " life " is, with them, "well-being:" "destruction" is, with them, "the overthrow of happiness:" and so on through all the terms. Now upon what principle can they refuse to the terms " resurrection " and " rise again from the dead," a similar figurative sense. They are certainly so used in Scripture. * Why should not this be their use whenever there used 1 We ask our opponents for a single reason why these should not be thus used. In the application of such terms to bodily resurrection the New Testament introduced a use aU but unknown to the Gentile mind, which was not at all the case with regard to the terms of punishment. Why then should they deny to the terms relating to resurrection some such figurative sense as they know so weU how to apply to the terms of punishment ? Why should not resurrection be " an awakening out of the sleep of ignorance and sin," a " resumption of vigour," or some such "high" sense, and not the "low" " material " sense of awaking dull matter from the dust .- On some such principle the early heretics would appear to have gone, who denied the bodily resurrection of Christ, and denied that there would be any bodily resurrection for man. * They too could descant upon the superiority of the figurative sense. What could our Augustinian theorists reply to such men? Nothing that could not be overturned from their own practiceia other cases. What couldthey reply to a modern sect who have in England assumed the name of " Shilohites," and who reject the ordinary doctrine of our Lord's resurrection and that of his * Luke ii 34 ; Col. iii. 1 ; Eph. v. 14 ; Col. ii. 12. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 97 people on the very identical ground on which they reject the final destruction or annihilation of the wicked, viz., their rejection of the literal sense of the terms of Scripture? When such airy reasoners say, " We believe that all mankind will be redeemed by the Spirit and power of God from all evil, and put into the possession and enjoyment of all good, so that pain and sorrow shall be no more : and we believe that this is the resurrection spoken of in the Scriptures," * what can our Augustinians reply % Nothing. How can they rebuke them? They cannot rebuke them. They have been teaching for centuries the principle of interpretation on which the Shilohites act in a particular case. They cannot deny that it is just as applicable to the doctrine of the resurrection as it is to that of future punishment. And, indeed, by their common view of the believer's death as, according to them, introducing him at once into the glory and bhss of heaven, they remove the grand reason and object of the believer's resur rection. 1 Cor. xv. 13 ; 2 Tim. ii. 18. [7] 9S THE DURATION AND CHAPTER Vn. THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE. HAT the wicked will come to an end and cease to exist in hell, we have seen to be the direct teaching of Scripture in what we have called its legal terms. We have submitted those terms to every possible test, and seen that they can fairly bear no other interpretation than that which we have put upon them. But these terms by no means exhaust our argument. We will find our con clusion supported in many other ways. We now proceed to support it by drawing our reader's atten tion for a short time to the illustrations of Scripture. 2. The illustrations of Scripture on the subject of future punishment are very numerous, are presented in every variety of aspect, and are every one of them harmonious with the rest. We will compare them with the illustrations selected by men who hold every variety of opinion as to the future of man — from the Augustinian, who gives to the wicked an endless life of anguish, to the Epicurean, who holds that there is no future life for any man at all. We have no hesitation NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 99 in saying that the illustrations of Scripture, so varied, so numerous, so harmonious, are by themselves sufficient to decide this great question in our favour. They overthrow ahke the theory of eternal misery and of universal restoration. It may be remarked that the advocates of these opposite errors are wonderfully chary in their reference to this leading feature of Scripture. We do not wonder that, holding their views, they almost pass it by in total silence. We will not however permit them to do so. 3. We find in the Old Testament the following illustrations of future punishment : — The wicked shall be dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel ; they shall be like the beasts that perish ; hke the untimely fruit of a woman ; hke a whirlwind that passes away ; hke a waterless garden scorched by an Eastern sun ; hke garments consumed by the moth : they shall be silent in darkness ; hke a lamp put out ; like a dream which flies away. The wicked shall consume like the fat of lambs in the fire; consume like smoke; melt hke wax; burn hke tow ; consume hke thorns ; vanish away like exhausted waters. 4. The illustrations of the New Testament are of the same unmistakeable character. The end of the wicked is there compared to fish cast away to corrup tion ; to a house thrown down to its foundations ; to the destruction of the old world by water, and that of the Sodomites by fire ; to the death and destruction of natural brute beasts. They shall be hke wood cast into unquenchable flames ; like chaff burnt up . like tares consumed ; hke a dry branch reduced tc 5. Such are the illustrations of Scripture. Thes< are the images which God has selected from tin 100 THE DURATION AND world that is open to our inspection, in order to let us know what shall happen to the ungodly hereafter. We have no hesitation in saying that they are, one and all, irreconcilable with both Augustine's and Origen's theories of hell. If it was true, as both these theories insist, that the wicked never cease to exist, these illustrations would be every one of them, not merely un suitable, but positively false. The wicked will not be, according to either theory, hke the beasts that perish, or a whirlwind that passes away, or garments con sumed by the moth. They will not, according to them, consume like the fat of lambs in the fire, - or consume into smoke, or melt hke wax. They will not be like wood cast into quenchless flames, or like chaff burnt up, or hke tares consumed, or like a dry branch reduced to ashes. All these lose their form, substance, and organization, and become as though they had never been, which the wicked never do ac cording to the theory of their eternal misery or their ultimate restoration. The illustrations of Scripture are therefore fatal to both views alike. Every one of its images points, not to the preservation of being in any state, whether good or evil, but to the utter blotting out of existence and being and identity. 6. Let us now compare these illustrations of Scrip ture, with those of ordinary writers, and see if the comparison does not fully bear out our view. We will first examine the images which writers who hold the theory of eternal misery select as suitable to illustrate their theory. We will take our examples from the writings of the Christian fathers Augustine and Tertullian, both of them men of great power of mind and force of language. Is it not most significant that these men, perfectly familiar with the illustrations NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 101 of Scripture, turn away from them as unsuitable to their puipose, and select with much pains, from a survey of nature as it was understood by them, a series of illustrations not only absent from Scripture but of a nature diametrically opposed to those of Scripture. According to Tertullian, the wicked will be like mountains which burn but are not consumed; like a body struck by lightning whose organization is uninjured and itself not reduced to ashes. According to Augustine, the wicked will be like worms that exist in hot springs ; like salamanders which are not destroyed in the fire; like diamonds which are indestructible in scorching heat ; hke Vesuvius and Etna which burn but do not consume. These are not theillustrations of Scripture. They con tradict those of Scripture. According to Scripture the wicked will not be like the salamanders, or boiling-water worms, or burning mountains, of Ter tullian and Augustine. They will, on the contrary, be destroyed, consume away, be reduced to ashes, as the fat of lambs, or the dry wood and thorns. 7. There is one illustration in Scripture which we have sometimes wondered has not been laid hold of by the Augustinian theorists as an illustration of their view. It is an exact and complete illustration of it. It represents substance as burning in fire but remain ing perfectly unconsumed. We refer to the burning bush seen by Moses in the Wilderness of Horeb. * It exactly illustrates the Augustinian theory — that the wicked will burn in the fire of hell, but not be con sumed by it. 8. Apposite as this illustration is, familiar as it is, we do not know that it has ever been used by any Augustinian writer. They have doubtless often thought of it with this view, and examined it very 102 THE DURATION AND carefully; but, somehow, one and all of them pass it by. Why ? It must be unsuitable after all or surely they would all have used it over and over again. But this illustration, so familiar to us all, which we have admired since first we heard in childhood the grand story of Moses, the man of God, is an illustration in its way subversive of Augustine's fearful hell. The burning bush was a miraculous sign. It tells us, there fore, that without the miraculous interposition of God no substance could bum with fire without being con sumed. And it also by its significant language, "-burnt but was not consumed," points to the opposite language in which Scripture speaks of the end of the wicked in that fire which does consume and reduce them to ashes. The burning bush was emblematic of the children of God who passed through a fire which did not consume them : it is not emblematic of the lost who enter into a fire which kindles upon them and consnmes them, because God does not put forth his almighty power to save them from its de vouring flame. 9. We have seen what kind of illustrations the advocates of eternal life in pain select as suitable to their theory. We will now draw attention to the fact that the advocates of this view, when not suffi ciently careful, and when desirous to express beyond any doubt their sentiments, by showing what the wicked are not like, constantly contradict the very illustra tions which Scripture has selected to show what they are like. " God has not made us," says the Christian father, Athengoras, " like beasts that perish ; " and Mr. James Grant repeats the old father's renunciation of a scriptural illustration in still more emphatic terms, by telling us that, from the idea that the wicked NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 103 should become like beasts that perish, his " very soul turns away with abhorrence." * The celebrated author of " The Night Thoughts," one of the great masters of the Enghsh tongue, rejects disdainfully another of the illustrations of Scripture : — " To toil, and eat, " Then make our bed in darkness," in his description for that state of non-existence of the wicked against which he directs a considerable amount of poetry but no logic. It is by one of the illustrations of Scripture that the greatest of French thinkers, Pascal, has expressed that idea of annihila tion against which he strenuously reasons, asking whether it is cause of joy to be told that "our soul is nothing but a, puff of wind or smoke." We have thus the Augustinian theorists insisting that the illustra tions which Scripture uses of the end of the ungodly are exactly and unmistakably illustrative of their de struction or annihilation. 10. Having seen how the advocates of eternal evil unconsciously contradict the illustrations of Scripture, we will now show how men who held the Epicurean notion of the utter extinction of being at death, or who, though not holding it themselves, wished to describe this Epicurean idea, have used the very same illustrations which the Scripture uses for the destruction of the wicked after judgment. Thus an illustration of Scripture referred to in the last para graph is that the wicked " shall consume like smoke." This we are told by Plato was the usual illustration used by Epicurean theorists to express their idea that after death the entire being and existence of man * Religious Tendencies, i. 132. 104 THE DURATION AND came to an end. It vanished, according to them, " like a breath of wind or smoke." Accordingly we find the Epicurean poet, Lucretius, using this very illustration : — " As the smoke disperses into the air, So believe that the soul also is dissolved." The ending of the wicked " in darkness " or " night " is another illustration in common use in Scripture. It is the illustration which Titus uses in his address to the Eoman soldiers when he speaks of " souls that wear away in and with their distempered bodies, on which comes a subterranean night to dissolve them to nothing." It is also the very illustration which the Epicurean poet, Catullus, uses when he exhorts his mistress to catch at each pleasure of life because there was no bright hope of any after existence : — " Let us live, and love, my Lesbia, Suns can set and come again : For us, once our brief day has sunk, Is only the sleep of an endless night." This is also the very image which that consummate master of language, our own Tennyson, uses to express the same idea: — " T'were best at once to sink to peace Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness, and to cease." And another of our great Enghsh writers, Thomson, uses the same illustration when he makes his heroine to prefer death to Roman bondage, even though per suaded that " It were a long dark night without a morning." The comparison of the destruction of the wicked to NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 105 a dream or vision that flies away is also an illustration of Scripture. We find the very same illustration used by Homer in one of those moods of his when he abandoned the Platonic idea of the immortahty of the soul for the Epicurean idea of its dissolu tion : — " Like fleeting vision passed the soul away." Once more we find in one of the Apocryphal books that the most usual illustrations of Scripture to describe the end of the wicked were the very ones used by Epicurean theorists : " We are born of nothing," they said, "and after this we shall be as if we had not been ; for the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and speech a spark to move our hearts, which, being put out, our body shall be as ashes, and our spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist, which is driven away by the beams of the sun. For our time is as the passing of a shadow." * We thus see that when Epicurean theorists would describe their theory of annihilation they can find no better or stronger illustrations to describe it by than those which the Bible uses for the final destruction of the wicked; and that when the great masters of our Enghsh tongue wish in the most appropriate and most striking language to describe the Epicurean theory, they are forced to borrow the very illustrations which Scripture from first to last uses when it speaks of the end of the wicked in hell. 11. A httle industry could multiply examples of this kind a hundred-fold. They show us unquestion- * Plato, Phsedo, par. xiv. ; Josephus, Jewish War, vi., i., v. ; Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxiv. ; J. Thomson's Works, Sophonisba ; Wisdom ii., 2-5. 106 THE DURATION AND ably, that the illustrations of Scripture are by them selves sufficient to overthrow the false systems both of Augustine and Origen. They all teach, as the universal law of language proves, that the end of the wicked, after they have been raised to judgment, and to stripes few or many according to desert, is to vanish into that nothingness which the Epicurean falsely taught would be the end of aU men upon death. Every one of them point, not to the preserva tion of life in any condition, whether miserable or happy, but to the loss of aU life; the utter blotting cut of existence. Scripture does not use the illustra tions of Epicurus to describe the theory of Plato. This our opponents of the Augustinian and Universalist schools say that it does. This monstrous satire upon Scripture they do not scruple to assert in favour of theories begot by human error mingled with divine truth. 12. How are our opponents to get over these illustrations of the Word of God which is to judge them at the last day 1 What can the Augustinian theorist say of them. He finds it said that the wicked shall be hke the beasts that perish ; that they shaU consume like thorns; that they shall be burnt up like chaff; that they shall be reduced to ashes hke a dry branch ! What is his comment on these vivid emblems % He tells ns that they are strong poetic figures ! We see nothing to object to this, and merely ask him of what are they strong poetic figures? After an im mensity of talk, we find him replying that they are poetical figures representative of the very opposite to tliat which they teach. The wicked perishing like beasts, means that they are never to perish, and are exceed ingly unlike beasts: the wicked, consuming hke NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 107 thorns, means that they never will consume at all, and will never bear the remotest resemblance to thorns which have been consumed: the wicked being burnt up like chaff, means that they are never to be burnt up, and that they will never be like chaff that has been burnt up : and their being reduced to ashes hke a diy branch, means that they cannot by any possibility be reduced to ashes, or bear the faintest likeness to a dry branch which has been thoroughly consumed ! Whether such a handling of God's Word as this is deceitful or not, let om- readers and our opponents judge. 13. And how do Universalists avoid the force of these illustrations % In a manner no way more creditable or more ingenuous than the Augustinian reasoners. They apply those illustrations which Scripture directs against the persons of the wicked to their sin. They do not deny that " perishing " and " being destroyed " indicate certainly that something will cease to exist. That something is, however, not the sinner himself, but his sin. It is thus that one of the latest of the advocates of this view, the author of " Future Retribu tive Punishment," puts his case : " As the result of. awful chastisement, the second death, all the myriads of the ungodly, their former defiant aspirations to be as gods, unaccountable, independent, being utterly ' destroyed ; ' their expectations indulged in this life 'perished,' ' broken to shivers,' ' burnt up as chaff,' shall themselves be brought to bow and submit to Christ." * 14. Our readers will not fail to mark here the striking and wholly unwarranted departure from the language of Scripture. The Scripture says that it is * The Rainbow, 1871, p. 91. 108 THE DURATION AND the ungodly themselves who shall be destroyed and perish like chaff burnt up in the fire: the Universalist says it is the " aspirations and expectations " of the ungodly which shall thus perish, while they themselves are preserved. We deny him the right thus flagrantly to tamper with Scripture. If man may be allowed thus to alter it, he may make it speak anything he pleases. We characterise such a treatment assimply a barefaced and impudent alteration of the Word of God by man. 14. If anything further were required to expose this view it would be found in the language of Scripture as it addresses itself to those who are here brought to God through Jesus Christ. The chastening and the trials of this life are to them precisely what, according to the Universalist, the sorer chastisement of the second death will be to the ungodly. These are the " fires " and the " waters " through which they pass in their subjugation of the " expectations " and " aspirations " which possessed them likewise. But is such a process ever described in Scripture as their "destruction," or their "perishing," or their being "burnt hke chaff?" Never. We ask the Universalist to produce one such comparison. We read of their becoming " dead to sin," of " the body oj sin being destroyed" of their " crucifying the old man," and similar phrases indicative of the destruction of evil within them while they themselves were undestroyed, but we never once read of such terms apphed to them as are invariably apphed to the punishment of the ungodly hereafter. Nay, the very contrary language is applied to them : " We went through fire and through water," the people of God say, but they add " Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place ; " for He whom they serve has pledged His word to eveiy one of DURATION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 109 them, " When thou passeth through the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee ; when thou walkest through the fire thou shaU not be burned ; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." * There is no speech about their being destroyed or consumed like chaff in that " fiery trial " which purifies them for the kingdom of their Father. The " bush which burned with fire and was not con sumed" is the emblem of God's people in their chastisement : the " withered branch " which is con sumed and burned up is the emblem of the ungodly in their future punishment. Surely these opposing emblems do not illustrate processes identical in then- nature. Surely they point to results as different as light from darkness, or as life from death. * Ps. Ixvi. 12 : Isaiah xliii. 2. 110 THE DURATION AND CHAPTER VIH. THE RESURRECTION OF THE WICKED. E now proceed to a very important question in connection with our subject, the resur rection of the wicked. As yet this point has not been very much discussed. It is however one of prime consequence, and must be thoroughly sifted. We will endeavour to lay it before our readers as we find it revealed in God's Avord. We are aware of its difficulty; but that must not deter us from its examination. We invite close and candid scrutiny into what we say, and are ready to make any alterations that criticism; whether hostile or friendly, shall show us to be called for. We fully believe that this question of resurrection, fairly and honestly discussed, will form one link in that vast accumulative line pf evidence which binds us irresisti bly to the belief in the final destruction of the wicked as the doctrine of God's word. 2. With Paul, we believe that there shall be " a esurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the mjust."* We believe that all men shall rise in * Acts xxiv. 15. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. Ill their bodies to give an account of their deeds. While we know that the passages in Scripture which speak of a resurrection of the wicked are few in comparison of those which speak of the resurrection of the just; while we know that in passage after passage of Scripture which speaks of resurrection, that of the wicked is not spoken of, alluded to, or included ; we also know that there are passages which teach their resurrection in the body with the same clearness and distinctness that that of the just is else where spoken of. We have no sympathy with those who deny the resurrection of the wicked. We know that there are writers who hold our view of the destruction of the ungodly, who also, from a variety of alleged reasons, hold that they will never rise to judgment. We know that such writers are numerous in America, though we are scarcely aware of their existence in England. But now, once for all, we disavow any connection or sympathy with them on this point. We think their view false, and mischiev ous in the extreme. We hold it calculated to throw discredit upon our grand cause ; and therefore to be one of the devices of Satan to hinder the progress of our truth. For ourselves, we have no doubt that the resurrection of the wicked is taught as plainly as that of the just, and that if we give up the one we may just as well give up the other. 3. But while this is our faith, we also just as firmly hold a fundamental and essential difference between the resurrection of the wicked and that of the just. We hold it to be not only that the one is raised to shame and to pain, and the other to glory and to joy; but that the one is raised to die a second time, and the other never to die any more. In other words, we 112 THE DURATION AND believe that the bodies of the just are changed at then- resurrection, then putting on incorruption and immor tahty, and thus becoming " spiritual bodies ; " while those of the wicked are raised unchanged, not putting on at resurrection either incorruption or immortahty, but still natural bodies as they were sown, resuming with their old life their old mortahty, as such subject to pain, and as such sure to yield to that of which aU pain is the symptom and precursor, physical death *nd dissolution. 4. It wiU be seen that we rest our conclusion of the resurrection of the wicked to mortality mainly on the supposition that no change passes on them at their ¦resurrection. If no change passes on them then, if they are raised to punishment in the same mortal corruptible bodies which here they had, it cannot but be aUowed that those bodies will and must die in hell a second time. The presence of pain is not only a token of mortahty, but a producer of death. Such we know from experience. Pain, by God's ordinance, produces death here. The frame may battle long and sorely against death — the longer and the sorer in exact proportion to its physical vigour ; but sooner or later pain brings the iron frame of the strongest to the release of death. So it would be, so it must be, in the scene of future woe, if the bodies of the wicked were raised unclvanged. If no change passes upon them they must needs yield to the bitter pains which accompany the second death. 5. It is not merely we, or reasoners on our side, who say this. The thing is so plain to reason that our opponents insist upon it as much as we do our selves. They are not silly enough to suppose that a "mortal body" could live for ever under any circumstances, NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 113 far less under those awful circumstances of pain and anguish and remorse which belong to the lost in hell. All that is mortal must yield to death even though there be no pain, as we see from the example of the lower creation : but pain, whether of body or mind, and especially when both are united, is a wonderful hastener of the solemn issue. It is so in the merci ful deahng of God. 6. Accordingly our opponents insist upon a change. passing upon the bodies of the lost at their resurrec tion. They acknowledge it freely and unreservedly as essential to their system. As the wicked are, accordmg to them, to endure pain for ever in the body, they are just as much compelled to insist upon their having an immortal body as on their having an immortal soul. Then Christian faith has superadded to their system a difficulty which Plato did not meet. The great ardent mind of Socrates failed him when he regarded the subtle train of reasoning on which his grand theme of the soul's immortality rested: but surely he would have thought of it with blank dismay, and utterly have refused to face it, had he been compelled to assert for the human body that immortality which he asserted for the soul. 7. This, however, is the very thing which our Augustinian opponents have to do. They have to prove the immortality of the body as much as of the soul. Scripture teaches the resurrection of the wicked : it teaches us that their future punishment, of whatever nature it be, is endured in the body : if then its punishment be, as no doubt it is, eternal, and if it consists in an eternal life- of pain, then their bodies, thus eternally suffering, must be endowed with an immortahty of being. For this purpose they 114 THE DURATION AND must be changed at the resurrection ; for in this life they are but poor frail mortal bodies, unable to resist the ceaseless sappings of time, far less able to resist the gnawing inroads of perpetual pain. 8. Accordingly, on a change of an essential kind the Augustinian theorists insist. We find them 'ir resistibly compeUed to it from the moment they began to broach their doctrine, and we find them compelled to uphold it down to our own tiine. " This corruptible must put on incorruption," says one of the earhest upholders of everlasting miseiy, Athen agoras, quoting Paul's grand words in 1 Cor. xv., " in order that those who were dead, having been made alive by the resurrection, each one may, in accordance with justice, receive what he has done by the body, whether it be good or bad." * Augustine too, though he feels sadly perplexed by what fit term to describe it, insists that a change of some kind is absolutely essential to fit the body for the endurance of endless pain. He solves his difficulty by the desperate sub terfuge that there are two kinds of " incorruption," one an incorruption which is incapable of pain, that of the just, and another an incorruption which may endure the corruption of pain, that °f the unjust ! He too uses the language of Paul of the " corruptible putting on incorruption," though he felt compelled to explain the very extraordinary sense in which he used " in corruption" as apphed to the ungodly. But the change to "incorruption" which he insisted on, while he held it to be a blessed change for the righteous, kehelditto be "a change for the worse" for the wicked. What we thus see in the earlier advocates of a mon strous caricature of Divine justice we find also in its * Athenagoras, Resurrection, c. xvi., xviii NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 115 modern upholders. " The bodies of the wicked shall be so changed," says Jonathan Edwards, "as to fit them for eternal torment without corruption'' Thomas Scott says: "The bodies of the wicked will be rendered incorruptible." Pollok says: " The good and evil, in a moment, all Were changed, corruptible to incorrupt, And mortal to immortal Her loud, uncircumcised, tempestuous crew, How ill-prepared to meet their God ! were changed." 9. We thus see that not only does the reason of the tiling necessitate, but the advocates of the Augustinian theory admit and insist upon the necessity of a change passing upon the bodies of the lost at resurrection, in order to enable them to endure eternal torment. And not only do they insist upon a change ; but they also, one and all, describe the particular change required for their horrid purpose. It is the change which St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. describes as passing upon the bodies of the redeemed at their resurrection ! If our readers will turn to this grand chapter they will find the apostle giving in different parts of it descriptions of the same resurrection varying some what in language. The first is contained in verses 42-44 : " So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruption : it is sown in dishonour ; it is raised in glory : it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in power : it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." The second description is given us in verse 53 : " This corruptible must put on incorruption ; and this mortal must put on immortahty." 10. Any candid mind, unbliirlod by a cherished theory which must be maintained at all hazards, 116 THE DURATION AND would see that these two descriptions, varying in language, are identical in sense. There is, however, one expression in the description which no Augustinian theorist, so far as we know, has ever dared to apply to the resurrection of the wicked, viz., that which describes the body as being " raised in glory." They remember Daniel's description of the wicked being raised " to shame and to contempt," and therefore dare •nst appropriate this description to the resurrection of the wicked. They do, however, what is just as bad and impudent. The description in verse 53 is most certainly only a more condensed form of the descrip tion in verses 42-44 : in some of its most important expressions it is identical. While then they dare not because of one phrase in the former — " raised in glory " — attribute it to the resurrection of the wicked, they do dare to apply to that resurrection a description which the apostle Paul has given us as identical: they affirm of the wicked, as of the just, that their "corruptible must put on incorruption; and their mortal must put on immortality." This is the cliange required to fit them to endure eternal agony. 11. We have no doubt that they use this language -unwillingly. We have no doubt that they wince and shrink as they apply the language of 1 Cor. xv. to the resurrection of the wicked. They would not do so if they could help it. But it is a sad necessity of their position. They have adopted a theory which demands it. They cannot uphold their theory in any other way. With inexorable claim it calls upon them to do so. To uphold a theory which perpetuates evil and pain in the world of a merciful, powerful, and just God, they must needs describe the resurrec tion of the wicked in the very same language in NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 117 which Paul describes the resurrection of the just ! We will take the liberty to examine by what right and upon what grounds they do so. 12. And, first, they all tell us that a change will pass upon the wicked at their resurrection ! We ask for proof. They cannot say that there cannot be a resurrection without a change ; for, unfortunately for them, there have been resurrections where no change has taken place. All the resurrections before that of Christ were such. He was the " first fruits from the dead," because in the case of others raised before him no change from mortality took place. They cannot say that there cannot be a resurrection followed by death ; for, again, the cases of Jairus' daughter, and the widow's son, and Lazarus, would confront and confound them ; for all these, after they were raised, died again. We ask them for proof that the bodies of the wicked will undergo any change at then resur rection. We ask for proof in vain. 13. There is but one passage in Scripture which directly states that a change will take place in the body at the resurrection. * It is where Paul says " the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised in corruptible, and we shall be changed." Do our op ponents say that Paul here includes the wicked ? They must do so if they would bring forward from Scripture any direct assertion that they will be changed. Which of them will come forward and maintain that Paul speaks in this chapter of any resurrection but that of the just ? We challenge proot. A few words we will here say why we hold that in this chapter Paul speaks only of the resurrection of the just, and does not include or hint in the remotest degree at that of the wicked. * 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. 118 THE DURATION AND 14. That Paul might speak of the resurrection without including in his mention of it any idea what ever of the wicked is quite plain from the fact that such mention is very usual in Scripture. Our Lord Himself has given the example. * In fact, as we have already stated, when resurrection is spoken of in Scripture, it is only the resurrection' of the just that is spoken of, except in such places as expressly mention that of the wicked. It we had not such exceptional passages, we would never suppose from the Bible that there would be any resurrection of the wicked, and it is on this fact that the deniers of the resurrection of the unjust must mainly depend for their erroneous opinion. But most certainly the passages of Scrip ture, which, speaking of resurrection, include that of the wicked, are the exception, not the rule. We believe it will be found that whereever the resurrection is simply spoken of, and invariably where, when thus spoken of, the Greek article is prefixed, it will be found that the resurrection of the just is the only idea present to the mind of the inspired writers. 15. A sufficient reason for this is found in what we have no doubt to be the truth of Scripture, viz., that the only resurrection which is a fruit of redemption is the resurrection of the just. This is a most important question in the present controversy and we will there fore attend to it for a short time. 16. To raise the dead to life is not in itself any more the fruit of Christ's redemption than any other miracle. This we know from the fact that the resur rection of our Lord Himself was the " first fruits " from the dead, produced by His redeeming work, f Such resurrections therefore as that of Lazarus, or * Luke xiv. 14 ; xx. 33, 34. f 1 Cor. xv. 20, 23. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 119 Jairus' daughter, were no more the fruits of redemp tion than was the dividing of the Red Sea by Moses, the raising of the Shunamite's child by Ehjah, ortha cure of the paralytic by Christ Himself. ' They were works of power attending' a messenger from God, if you will, figuring redemption, but certainly not a fruit of redemption. If they were, it would not be true that Christ's resurrection was the first fruits of them that slept. If then there was resurrection before Christ rose which was not a fruit of His re demption, it is quite plain that there may be resurrection after He has risen which will not be any more than the former the fruit of His redemp tion. 1 7. But we have from our Lord's own hps the- positive declaration of the connection' between Him self as Redeemer and the work of resurrection. * Martha expresses her behef in the resurrection of all ahke, good and bad, at the last day. Such was the opinion of most of her people, derived from the prophecy of Daniel and other parts of the Old Testament ; and such behef she probably gave expression to here. Christ had just told her that her brother would rise again. In her reply she evidently takes it as a mere matter of course that it would take place at the last day. When all would alike rise, of course her brother would rise with the rest. She does not seem to have thought that Christ, as Redeemer, had any thing in especial to do with resurrection. But Christ proceeds to teach her the close relation in which He, as Redeemer, stood to resurrection : He was its cause, its- source, its veiy self: without Him, there would not be resurrection : in Him, by Him, through Him, from * John xi. 24-26. 120 THE DURATION AND Him, and Him alone, the resurrection was to spring — " I am the resurrection." 18. He tells Martha to look upon Him, the Redeemer, the Christ, as the fount of resurrection. Such a thing as she spoke of was not to be hoped for away from Him. Put Him away : suppose Him not come : imagine His work unaccomplished: and the dark shadow of death would never be lifted from the face of the sleeping dead. But of what resurrection did He thus proclaim Himself the source ? The resurrec tion of life. 19. " / am the resurrection and the life" Here is that of which, as Redeemer, He is source. The resur rection procured by Him is to life, and not to death. Resurrection, as a fruit of redemption, is one with, identical with, inseparable from, life. Christ does not here connect Himself as Redeemer (for it is in His capacity of Redeemer He is # speaking,) with any resurrection except a resurrection of life, and that life an eternal one. (26 v.) In fact, if we connect the resurrection of the wicked with redemption as its source, we will find it extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to deny Origen's theory of universal restoration, or at least that modified view which Mr. Birks has presented in his " History of Divine Goodness." * But the Saviour, who has con nected the resurrection to life with Himself as His work of redemption, has elsewhere expressly guarded us against such an idea by telling us that it is only some, and not all, who shah partake of the " resurrec tion of life." f 20. What our Lord in, the place just referred to teaches, viz., that it is not the resurrection of all men, * Victory of Divine Goodness, pp. 183-188. f J°»u T- 29- NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 121 but only the resurrection of His people, which is a fruit of redemption, is also apparent from other Scriptures. There can be no doubt that " the resur rection of the dead," or rather "from among the dead," spoken of by Paul to the Philippian church, * was that resurrection of which Christ as Redeemer was the source. If Christ as our Redeemer procured the resurrection of all men alike, whether they were good or evil, there could be no doubt but that Paul, like all others, would obtain it. There could be no question as to his obtaining it. Whether it were desired or dreaded, it would as a matter of course be bestowed. But this is not at all the hght in which Paul regarded it, or teaches us to regard it. He tells us it is a thing which may, or may not, be obtained : which man must strive for if he would obtain. The resurrection, then, procured by Christ as Redeemer, is not the resurrection of all -men, it is only that of His people. 21. We are taught the same truth elsewhere. " The quickening of the mortal body," spoken of by Paul to the Romans, t was the resurrection procured by Christ's work of redemption. According to aU our opponents, whether of the Augustinian or the Universalist schools, every mortal body, whether it be the body of a good man or a wicked man, will be quickened by God. But it is a remarkable fact that, throughout the New Testament, the word "quicken" t is never apphed to the wicked in any way : it is exclusively confined to the just. And in the passage immediately before us Paul expressly thus confines it to them. He says: "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that * Phil. iii. 2. f Rom. viii. 11. J Zaoiroieoi, zoopoieo. 122 THE DURATION AND raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." Here we see that the quickening of the mortal body, which is the fruit of redemption, is not bestowed upon all : it is only bestowed upon those who are renewed in the spirit of their minds. In other words, the resurrection of the wicked is not in any way, form, or degree, a fruit of the redemption of Christ. 22. The same inference is clearly drawn from Luke's description of apostolic teaching.* We will take the hberty to translate the description referred to more literally than it is done in our authorised version. The original Greek exactly carries out that essential distinction between the resurrection of the wicked and the just which is insisted on all through Scripture, and also teaches us how much of resurrec tion is to be ascribed to redemption. We read then that the Sadducees were " grieved that they (the apostles) taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection ; tliat, namely, from among the dead.^ Here Luke tells us that the apostles made a marked distinction in their description of resurrection : that they spoke of two different resurrections, those of the just and of the unjust: that they de scribed the resurrection of the just as a resurrection from among the dead; while they would describe the resurrection of the wicked by these expressions which we find used in Scripture, as a resurrection to "shame," " damnation," etc. Our point here, however, is that "the resurrection from the dead," of which Luke speaks, is the resurrection ' of the just. The way in which it is spoken of in the passage itself plainly distinguishes it from another resurrection, which cau * Acts iv. 2. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 123 be only that of the unjust ; while its correspondence in character with the other descriptions given in Scripture of the resurrection of the just identifies it with them. The " resurrection from among the dead " is plainly the same as the " resurrection of life," the resurrection o f those who " can die no more," the resurrection of those whose " mortal bodies are quick ened," etc. * All these descriptions are plainly descriptions of one and the same resurrection, viz,, that of the just. 23. And now for our further step. What resurrec tion, according to the teaching of the apostles, is " through Jesus," i.e. through His work of redemption ? The resurrection of the just : this is the apostles' teach ing. The resurrection of the just is the fruit of redemp tion: the resurrection of the unjust has nothing to say to it. And is not this alone worthy of the work of Christ? It supposes Him to bestow blessing, and only blessing, through His resurrection. He came to give no fatal gift which should force everlasting- existence upon myriads who asked not for it, and would shun it with aU their heart. He did not come to give what he called a blessing but which millions would find a curse. True it would be, in the case of those at least who had heard His Gospel, solely and entirely their own fault. But how does this mend the matter? Still we should have myriads actually receiving a fruit of redemption, and find it an unmiti gated curse. Surely such a view as this is most derogatory to Christ. Surely the only worthy view of His work, from first to last, in each particular and in all its parts, is that it is a blessing : that he who receives any part of it receives only blessing ! To * John v. 29 ; Luke xx. 36 ; Rom. viii 11. 124 THE DURATION AND call the resurrection of the wicked a work of judgment and damnation, which it is, and at the same time to call it a fruit of redemption, seems to us more absurd than to say that black is white or sweet is bitter. 24. No : the lost do not partake of redemption in ¦whole or in part. Ii they were to partake of any iota of it, it would indeed be difficult, to our mind impossible, to reject the dream of Origen that all would follow in the ages to come. But they do not partake oi redemption. They do not partake of any part or parcel of it. They do not lose one part of it, and gain, even to their utter loss, another. It is all gained, or all lost. It is hke the garment of Christ, a work without seam. It is a grand whole which cannot be broken into parts. We have it all in the realms of life and of bliss. We have no shivered fractured part in the realms of the lost. It may not be that in the gloomy prison house of hell is a some thing which the lost can in bitter derision and utter despair call the fruit of redemption procured by Christ for them. But from all this it foUows, that the resurrection of the wicked, being a resurrection to shame, being a work of judgment, and being felt tc be a curse and a curse only, is no part of, no fruit of, redemption. 25. Having seen that the resurrection of the damned is no part of redemption, but is • simply an act of power and of judgment, we can readily see why Paul not merely may not speak of resurrection without including that of the wicked, but that he could not in 1 Cor. xv., 'include it at all. For he is speaking to the Corinthian Christians on the idea that they would really obtain that salvation which Christ came NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 125 to give. "Brethren," he says, "I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you ; which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand ; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I have preached unto you." He is here therefore speaking to them on the supposition that they were and would continue to be genuine and true professors of the Gospel of the Redeemer. On this idea he proceeds to unfold to them the blessing which would result to them as behevers, and in especial to give to them a view of resurrection. If, as we have seen, the resurrection of the wicked is no part or result of redemption, it is quite plain that the apostle could not include it in his description. Speaking only of the blessed fruit of redemption he could not introduce a thing which was not a fruit of redemption. He must leave out the resurrection of the wicked as an idea foreign to his present subject. He might as well include the despair of the fallen angels, the weeping and wailing of the wicked, as the resurrection of the latter. If it was no fruit of redemption it could not be included in a chapter which professed to describe only what was the fruit of redemption. " Scripture," says Bengel, " everywhere concerns itself with the faithful, and treats especially of their resurrection : with regard to the resurrection of the wicked it only treats of it in a casual incidental way." * 26. But it is said, and very frequently said, that Paul here tells us that he speaks of the resurrection of all men, whether they be just or unjust. The passage invariably, and we believe almost exclusively, claimed for this purpose, is verse 22 : " As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." The " all" * Bengel, on 1 Cor. xv. 22. 126 THE DURATION AND in the second clause is supposed to be identical with the "ah" in the first clause, and as the "all" in the first clause undoubtedly includes every one sprung from Adam, whether just or unjust, it is argued that the second " all " comprehends the same parties, and therefore must include the resurrection of the un just. 27. Now we do not deny that there is considerable plausibihty in this argument. We do not deny that if this text stood alone, it would bear this interpreta tion fully as well as any other. We do not deny that the second "all" must be in some true and proper way equally comprehensive with the first. Both terms are plainly universals, and must be interpreted as such. We only hold that while both are equally universal, they are not the same universals. As to the term " all," it has every variety of comprehension, and no stress can be laid on it. "All men" may mean the in habitants of a province, of an empire, or of the earth. The only force of the argument is that " all " being in two clauses of the same verse contrasted cannot in that verse apply except exactly to the same parties. There is here much apparent, but no real force. We are faulted as though we would paraphrase the verse thus : " As in Adam all mankind die, whether just or unjust; so in Christ shall some of these be made alive, viz., the just who believe in Christ." 28. We freely admit that so represented we appear to trifle with the text. We seem to handle it in a disingenuous way, and not with that simphcity of interpretation that alone is becoming learners from God's word. But we do not think it fair to represent us thus, and will proceed to give our view which, we maintain, will be found consistent with sound honest NATURE OP FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 127 inteipretation, while it will have the incalculable and decisive advantage of being in harmony with the general reasoning of the apostle, and with his own express words elsewhere. Of two interpretations of a particular text, both equaUy probable as regarded the text itself, or even where one was less obvious than the other, that one must be selected which is in harmony with other Scriptures, and especially with other sayings of the same writer. 29. "All," then, in both clauses, is a universal term, and in both equally comprehensive, and. yet the terms are apphed in the two clauses to different parties. Universals are meant in both, but different universals. We thus paraphrase the passage: "As in Adam all related to him, as their head, die ; so in Christ ah who are related to him, the second Adam, as their head, shall be made alive." Here we see at once that we make "all" to be in both clauses a universal term, and an equally universal one. In both clauses it embraces every individual referred to. And is not this a natural interpretation of the passage. Why does the first " all " include all manlcind, and exclude all except mankind ? Because it refers to those, and to those alone, who owe their physical existence to their connection with the first man. Interpreted in strict analogy with this, the second "all" refers to aU those, and those alone, who owe then spiritual existence to their connection with Christ the second man. Both terms are equally universal in their proper and evident apphcation. The first " all " includes all men, and excludes all who are not men, because it applies to natural generation and descent. The second "all" includes all who are believers, and excludes all who are not behevers, because it apphes to spiritual genera- 128 THE DURATION AND tion and descent, and has nothing whatever to say to anything else. If you are "in Adam," you are in cluded in the first " all ; " if you are "in Christ," you are included in the second " all." Both are equaUy universal terms, and both are equally comprehensive of the all to whom they refer. Nothing beyond this is required by the text, though we fully admit that the text would fairly admit of another interpretation if it was considered solely by itself. When we know that such a critic as Bengel adopted this view we may well admit that it can fairly bear it ; for, of aU theorists, they chng to the other interpretation, who hold, as Bengel did, the Universalist tlieory. We may well imagine an Augustinian theorist to pause ere he accepts the interpretation that the words, " so in Christ shall all be made alive," refers at all to the resurrection of the wicked. We may well imagine him to tremble as he does so, knowing weU, if he has any clearness of vision, the use that will be made of such an admission by a school to which he is almost as much opposed as he is to ours. But the Universalist on this interpretation finds indeed a powerful argu ment for his theory. He connects the wicked with Christ in one blessed fruit of redemption : he knows the force of the word "quicken " in the other writings of the apostle Paul: it will indeed be difficult to prevent him from following out this to universal restoration as its inevitable result. When Bengel. then, a Universalist, admits that this text bears the interpretation which we have put upon it, we may conclude that such an interpretation is no forced or unnatural one. 30. This once conceded, there remains no difficulty. Our interpretation is in harmony with the entire NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 129 argument of this chapter, which, as we have seen. addresses itself only to genuine behevers in Christ. Besides this we must allow Paul to be his own inter preter. He here tells us that "in Christ all shall be made alive." Our opponents say that he here teaches that the wicked will be " made alive : " we say that he does not say that the wicked will be "made alive," and that he here speaks only of the just. Let us hear Paul on his own language. The words "made alive " is the Greek Z, zoopoieo. Does Paul allow or forbid the idea that he thinks this term applicable to the resurrection of the wicked? He forbids it. He elsewhere expressly confines it to the ¦resurrection of the just. With him it only refers to what his Master called the "resurrection of life," and what Daniel called the resurrection " to everlasting life." Here are his words : " If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies." * It is the same Greek word which is translated " quicken " in Rom. vih. 2, and " made alive " in 1 Cor. xv. 22. Paul, in the former, tells us that he does not allow the. word to be properly apphcable to any resurrection except that of those in whom the Spirit of God dwells. We may not then accept that interpretation of 1 Cor. xv. 22, which attributes to Paul a use of language which he has expressly disclaimed. 31. And we may readily see a good and sufficient reason why Paul, with his knowledge of the hfe which man had at creation and would regain through re demption, would refuse to describe the resurrection of the unjust as their being " quickened " or " made * Rom. viii. 11. [9] 130 THE DURATION AND alive." IAfe for man is eternal life. Man's condition, as he came from his Maker's hands, and as he is restored by his Redeemer's work, is a condition of immortality. A brief fading hfe is not man's true life. Such a life was given to the brutes : such a hfe became man's as fallen, and by his fall. But it is not man's life, either as created or as redeemed. Man's condition as fallen is called a state of death. In the midst of the life we inherit from our fallen parent, we are in death. Our whole existence is a progress and an advance to death. Paul spoke of himself as " dying daily." In the heydey of our youth and vigour, as in the late evening of existence, we have " the sentence of death in ourselves." * From the day that we are born, we die ; even as Adam, cut off in the day he sinned from the tree of life, died on that day. And here then is the reason why Paul will not apply the terms " quicken." "make alive," to the resurrection of the lost. It is not a resurrection of man's true hfe, which is everlasting life, and he will not call it life at all. And in denying it this title he agrees with all Scrip ture which confines the " resurrection of life " solely to the resurrection of the just." 32. But besides aU this, there are parts of this chapter (1 Cor., xv.) which utterly forbid the idea that it includes in its idea the resurrection of the unjust. If we will accept its description of the persons whose resurrection it speaks of, they are only " Christ the first fruits, afterwards them that are Christ's, at his coming." (v. 23). We cannot include the unjust here unless we suppose that Christ being the "first fruits," they, equally with the just, are the wheat, which in the time of ingathering, the time of * 1 Cor. xv. 31 ; 2 Cor. i. 9. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 131 the second coming of Christ, are to be gathered into the barn. But even the Universalist does not claim this. He allows long periods of suffering to elapse subsequent to the second coming ere the unjust are restored. Christ Himself utterly rejects the idea. * The Augustinian, just as much as we, refuses to allow that the unjust are described here as " them that are Christ's." In fact, if the resurrection of the unjust is spoken of, we are forced to comprehend under the term " them that are Christ's," not merely all profess ing Christians, but all mankind, heathen, Jew, infidel, Atheist, as well as Christians ; for all such shall rise with their bodies to give account of their deeds. Farther on in the chapter are descriptions given which forbid the idea that the resurrection of the unjust is so much as hinted at. The resurrection of the dead, of which Paul speaks, is only a resurrection of glory. A 11 the dead of whom he speaks receive such a resurrection. The body of whose quickening he speaks "is sown in corruption, is raised in incorruption : is sown in dishonour, is raised in glory : is sown in weak ness, is raised in power : is sown a natural body, is raised a spiritual body." (vs. 42-44). This is " the resurrection of the dead" of which Paul speaks. Our opponents, both Augustinians and Universalists, would and do apply much of his description to the resurrection of the unjust. They claim for them a resurrection to " incorruption" and to " power;" but they can not, dare not, claim a resurrection to "glory;" because Daniel has, unfortunately for them, described the resurrection of the unjust as a resurrection to " shame and contempt." 33. We have established then that 1 Cor. xv. does * Exod. xxiii. 16 ; Matt. xiii. 30. 132 THE DURATION AND not describe the resurrection of the unjust. With this established we again ask the Augustinian for proof of that cliange which he asserts to be essential to enable their risen bodies to endure an eternity of pain. We answer for him that he has no proof that the Scripture says they will be "changed." This term is only used once in Scripture, viz., in 1 Cor. xv. And we have just seen that this chapter speaks only of the resurrection of the just. 34. But while the expression "changed" is only once used, we freely admit that the nature of the change is frequently spoken of in Scripture. It is minutely described in this chapter, and is mentioned in many other places. We have already seen the nature of the change which the Augustinian requires in order that the risen wicked should be able to sus tain an eternity of anguish. They are, in the words of one whom we may fairly call the poet of our popular Protestant hell — " Changed, corruptible to incorrupt, And mortal to immortal." — Pollok. Now we ask for proof that the resurrection of the wicked ira ever thus described in Scripture. It connot be proved from 1 Cor. xv. ; for that chapter does not speak of the ressurection of the unjust at all. If it is to be proved, proof must be sought elsewhere. We give you the range of Scripture. Look at every passage in it which speaks of resurrection, with a microscopic vision. Remember, the credit of your terrible' hell rests upon the success of your search. Yet we have no fear, not a flutter of apprehension. We deny that the resurrection of the unjust is ever described as a change from corruption to incorrup- NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 133 tion and from mortahty to immortality, save in the poetry of Pollok and the prose of a false theology, whether it be that of the fathers, or of the schoolmen, Protestant, or Romish. 34. Where then is the proof of such a change? Was it Job's faith when he said : " The wicked is re served to the day of destruction: they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath? " Does "destruc tion" signify "incorruption" and "immortahty?" In your change discernible in Daniel's description of the wicked as rising to shame and everlasting con tempt? What dictionary gives "immortahty" as a sense for " shame ? " or " incorruption " for " con tempt ? " Will you find it in the faith of the " seven brethren " who endured death, sustained by the hope of the resurrection of the just, but who warned the persecuting Antiochus — " As to thee, thou shalt have no resurrection unto life?" Will you find it in the words of the Lord of Life, who describes the resurrec tion of the wicked as "the resurrection of damna tion," while he describes that of his people as the resurrection of those who "can die no more? " * We know of no text of Scripture which speaks in any other way of the resurrection of the unjust. If our opponents do, let them bring it forth. The above texts do not describe a change from corruption to incorruption, or of mortahty to immortahty. To us they speak the opposite language. To us they de scribe a resurrection of persons raised in the natural body of corruption, dishonour, and weakness. If there are other texts let them be produced. If there are no other texts let our opponents set to work at * Joh xxi. 30 ; Dan. xii. 2 ; 2 Mace, vii 14 ; John v. 29 ; Luke xii. 36. 134 THE DURATION AND these, and show that the words " destruction," "shame," and "contempt," mean "incorruption" and "immortality." Their theory has over and over involved them in verbal quibbles not one whit more candid. 35. Deprived of all support from Scripture, whither will they resort? Will they say " the change to incorrup tion is essential to our theory and tlierefore it is true"1. " We would rather allow the premise but draw the oppo site conclusion. We would say, "This change is essential to your theoiy ; but, since ther e are no grounds for holding this change, your theory which requires it falls to the ground." Or perhaps they will urge that this change, which is essential to their theory, though it is not revealed in the Bible is yet there assumed ! They are at home in argument of this kind. They have used it pretty generally on the kindred subject of the "immortality of the soul." They are very docile disciples of good old Archbishop Tillotson, who lays down the pleasing Augustinian axiom (or fiction) that " The im mortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed, in tJie Bible." Pleasant easy way, no doubt, to end disputes ! It is, however, troublesome to be assuming so many disputed points, and we would venture to point out a simpler, if not more effectual way, to our Augustinian friends.. Let tkemassumetheir own infallibility ; all their other require ments will follow as matters of course. They need not be startled at the suggestion. They need not give us credit for an imagination equal to that of the celebrated Baron Munchausen. The idea is •quite beyond our moderate powers of fancy to origin ate. It was they who produced it in our minds. For surely they may assume their own infaUibihty NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 135 with just as much reason as they assume the im mortahty of the soul ! 36. As we cannot, however, without proof, admit of the infalhbihty of our opponents, and are there fore also unable to admit without proof their assumption either of the immortality of the soul or the incorruptibihty of the body of the unjust at resurrection, we are compelled to reject the latter as unceremoniously as we have done the former. The unjust are not raised in incorruption : they are not raised in immortahty. And therefore their resurrection is another of the accumulating proofs that our theory of destruction is the theory of Scripture, and that the theories of our opponents, whether of the Augustinian or Universalist schools, are unscriptural and false. For, the bodies of the unjust are raised only in their old mortality. They are thus raised for punishment. Raised in their old mortality, the pains of hell will again, must again, reduce them to a second death, from which there is no promise of resurrection. 37. The objections usually urged against our view of the resurrection from the time of Tertullian to the present day, will be considered in a subsequent chapter. 136 THE DURATION AND CHAPTER IX. THE DIVINE JUSTICE. E now approach a very solemn question — the question of Divine Justioe. We approach it with the deep reverence that becomes a creature when he scans and judges the conduct of his Maker; but also with the confidence which becomes one who is invited by his Maker to this inquiry. It is indeed said that we are not able to judge of God's- ways; and this, no doubt, is often true. It is true. however, only of those dealings of His with which we are imperfectly acquainted; or which, from their nature, are above our comprehension. The present subject belongs to neither of these categories. Future- punishment is a matter fully placed before us. No- question occupies a more distinct position than it does in divine revelation. We are clearly told its cause and its nature : we are told to ponder on and study it. We are not treated as children incapable of forming- an opinion of what is just or unjust in God. If we were thus incapable, a large portion of Scripture would be useless and meaningless. Called upon in God's- Word to love, respect, and confide in Him, and liaviny NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 137 His entire conduct towards men, whether just or unjust, brought to our view, in order to produce these feelings in us, we are thus viewed by God Himself as capable of judging of His character, of His love, His mercy, His wisdom, His justice, and His judgment. He does not thus merely regard us as capable, but He has directly appealed to us to judge His conduct towards us, admitted His creature's scrutiny as the exercise of a right, and this not merely in the case of His faithful people but even of those who were alienated from Him. Abraham was not rebuked when he judged a certain supposed hne of conduct unworthy of the God in whom his trust was placed. Rebellious Israel, misjudging God's dealings from ignorance and pre judice, are invited to look fairly at it and see if indeed God's " ways are not equal." Christ allows to the generation of His day the power of judging- rightly, and only on such a supposition could they he under their deep guilt. * " The law of justice in our hearts," it has been well observed, " is only a reflec tion of God's perfect justice." t In the human breast there is a true sense of what is just, and God not only allows it, but insists upon its exercise towards Himself. He has told us His character. He challenges us to bring any line of conduct attributed to Him to the test. In the question of future punishment we have the highest case on which any tribunal shall have ever sat ; and we may be sure that the Judge of all the Earth will do right, not merely in His own eyes, but in those of all His intelligent creation ; of the angels who stand round His throne ; of the re- * Gen. xviii. 23-25 ; Ezek. xviii. 29; Luke xii. 57. * R. B. Giedlestone, Dies. Ira?., 170. 138 THE DURATION AND deemed who rejoice in then- acceptance ; of the very damned who listen to then sentence. 2. But we are often told that, while no doubt God's conduct towards sinners will one day appear to the redeemed and even to the lost to have been just, yet that we must be content to wait until it shall so appear. This life is to pass away, the hour of resur rection must come, the throne of judgment must be set, the guilt of the lost be displayed, the everlasting sentence be passed, and then, the redeemed and the lost alike will see that God's ways were just. Not- so, we reply. God appeals to us now to judge. He places before us His character now, in order that we may judge. It is now that our conduct is to be affected, our fears aroused, our respect gained, our love won, for the God' and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is now that misapprehension of Him will tell with power : it is now that a correct judg ment is to save the soul. When the judgment is set, and the sentence passed, it is too late. 3. But they who tell us to wait in faith wholly miscalculate the real position of the question before us. They suppose faith in God is to sustain the mind against the appearance of injustice in God's dealings with men. They reverse the mode of God's own proceeding. They suppose faith first to exist, and this faith is to withstand and subdue all that may appear unjust. The exact opposite to this is the way in which God deals with man. He has come to an unbelieving and alienated worldandput his cliaracter before them to win their fear, their repentance their love. We judge from our httle stand point, taught from infancy to believe in God, to believe that He can do no wrong, to attribute any appearance of wrong on His part to our ignorance, NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 139 to put down all injurious judgment of Him as unbehef and sin. With all our training at our mother's knee, from our teacher's hps, from that pulpit where man claims to speak in the name of God, we yet know how the Christian heart and judgment mourn, stumble, are perplexed, stand aghast, at the justice which is proposed to them as the justice of God. But it was not thus that the question was first presented, or that the human mind was won to submission. It was to a world of unbelievers that God was proposed as a God of justice, as well as of pity and of love. To this world, which had no faith, God was proposed for acceptance. God's character and conduct were placed before it to win its faith and its love. So it is even now. So it is to a great extent even in so- called Christian lands: it is so wholly in heathen lands. God's character and conduct are to win faith ; not to be sustained by faith against appearances. The missionary tells the unbeliever what kind of God the God of the Christian is, to convert the unbeliever to the faith. Can we wonder that the answer of the heathen to our messages should be, " We cannot, and will not, believe in a God of whom you affirm such outrageous wrong." 4. We arrange the matter as God has arranged it. God's conduct, whether past or future, is to win man's respect, faith, and love, and not to be hardly and with difficulty palliated, excused, defended, tolerated, through man's faith. We are to come not merely to the truthful child at our knee, to the modest youth in our school, to the admiring disciple listening to our words ; but we are, and may, and ought, to come to the incredulous sceptic, the profligate sinner, the hard stern man, to the poor heathen outside our pale, 140 THE DURATION AND the outcast Pariah, the cultivated Brahmin, the followers of Confucius, and say to one and all, " Here is our God, the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Chiist : give Him your love : give Him your faith, give Him your obedience and your fear : His character demands it at your hands." It is thus we will propose the grand question of the Divine justice in the treatment of sinners. We will not wait for the day of judgment to propose it. We propose it, when it ought to be proposed, in the day of salvation. We ask the human heart for its verdict. We say that judged by human judgment, and that the judgment of behevers and unbelievers ahke, the punishment which the theory of Augustine supposes that God will inflict is infinitely too great, and we are therefore to reject it as untrue, because wholly unworthy, not merely of a Merciful Father, but a just God. 5. Before we put our question of just or unjust, we must first refer plainly to the punishment itself. We will not attempt to describe it in our own words. We will merely give a few passages descriptive of it from writers who hold the view. 6. Here is an extract from a little book entitled " The Child's Path to Glory," pubhshedat Birmingham, and which has passed through at least seven editions: " There is nothing but misery in hell. You would never more have one moment's ease; for there is nothing but pain and torment there. Put together all you can think of that is miserable, and painful, and terrible, and it is ah nothing to what is prepared for those who go there ; and that not for an hour, or a day, or a year, but for an eternity. The lost souls who hve in that horrible pit wish to die, but they are not able; for God says, 'Their worm dieth not.' NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 141 The frightful and cruel devil may torment them as much as he pleases — they are made strong to bear it." Here is the description of hell by the Christian Father Hippolytus : " The fire which is unquenchable and without end awaits the unrighteous, and a certain fiery worm which dieth not, and which does not waste the body, but continues bursting forth from the body with unending pain. No sleep will give them rest : no night will soothe them : no death will dehver them from punishment." Here is the celebrated Bishop Jeremy Taylor's account: "We are amazed to think of the brutality of Phalaris, who roasted men ahve in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of that fire of hell. What compari son will there be between burning for a hundred years' space and to be burning without interruption as long as God is God ! " Here is the account given by the famous Jonathan Edwards of America : " The woes of sinners in hell will not be a cause of grief to the saints in heaven but of rejoicing. Though they hear you groan, and sigh, and gnash your teeth, these things will not move them at all to pity you. After your godly parents have seen you lie millions of years, or ages, in torment, day and night, they will not begin to pity you then. They will praise God that His justice appears in the eternity of your misery. The torments in hell will be immeasurably greater than being in a glowing oven, a brick kiln, or fiery furnace." Here is the way in which the Roman Church describes Hell. It is taken from a book written by the Rev. J. Furniss, and published with the approval of the authorities of his Church : " The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven. The httle •child is in the red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to 142 THE DURATION AND come out; see how it turns and twists itself in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its httle feet on the floor. God was very good to this httle child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished more severely in hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the world in early childhood." Here is the description of Hell by the celebrated preacher Mr. Spurgeon : " Only conceive that poor wretch in the flames, who is say ing, ' Oh, for one drop of water to cool my parched tongue ! ' See how his tongue hangs from between his bhstered lips ! How it excoriates and burns the roof of his mouth, as if it were a firebrand ! Behold him crying for a drop of water ! I will not picture the scene ! Suffice it for me' to close up by saying that the hell of hells will be to thee, poor sinner, the thought that it is to be for ever ! Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God, and it shah be written 'For Ever ! ' When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torment they shall say ' For Ever 1 ' When they howl, echo cries ' For Ever ! ' " ' For Ever ' is written on their racks, ' For Ever ' on their chains ; ' For Ever ' burnetii in the fire, ' For Ever, ' ever reigns." We will close our series of " horrible extracts " with a quotation from Pollok. He thus pictures one of the damned : — "Like A cinder that had life and feeling seemed His face, with inward pining to be what He could not be. As being that had burned Half an eternity, and was to burn For evermore, he looked. Oh ! sight to be Forgotten, thought too terrible to think." NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 143 The poet's picture of the damned would not be complete if we did not add his picture of God throughout all eternity looking on it as one who " Hears unmoved the endless groan Of those wasting within, and sees unmoved The endless tear of vain repentance fall." 7. These are very horrifying descriptions. We turn with unmitigated loathing from the idea that a scene such as is depicted above by Hippolytus, and Jeremy Taylor, and Father Furniss, is to go on to eternity. But others, who do not agree with us in our view of future punishment, are almost, if not altogether, as much disgusted with them as we are. The ablest and purest minds, that still cling desper ately to the Augustinian theory, cannot endure such descriptions, and will not allow that they represent the heU in which they beheve. They gravely reprobate the horrors which were so dear and familiar to the middle ages, and which are still urged in all their minute and terrible detail by preachers and writers. Protestant and Romanist. They do not think them true descriptions of hell. They think that they exaggerate its terrors. Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College, Dublin, a man widely known, and respected whereever he is known, rejects with indignation the idea " that all who hold the eternal existence of the wicked, must beheve in the demonology of Dante, and in a hell such as is described by Father Pinamonti. He thinks such descriptions too harrowing, and in fact only suitable to an age characterised by "general callousness to human suffering." * He takes refuge in the idea that the descriptions of Scripture which such men as Bishop Taylor and . Father Furniss and * Eternity of Future Punishment, G. Salmon, D.D., vii. 22. 144 THE DURATION AND Pinamonti have taken as the groundwork of their more minute and circumstantial accounts, are prob ably not hteral, but figurative. He evidently does not beheve in a literal fire, or literal worm in hell.. 8. While we honour the feeling of such men as Dr. Salmon we do so at the expense of their reasoning ability. We do not ourselves enter into the ques tion whether the descriptions of future punislrment in ;Scripture are literal or figurative, because we do not think the solution of the question to be really of any consequence. Scripture tells us there will be a worm, a fire, darkness, &c; but it does not seem to take any trouble to explain whether it speaks literally or figuratively. But, whichever view be taken of its language, it must commend itself to reason that the punishment signified is in either case equally terrible though different in character. If there be a hteral fire •consuming, and a hteral worm gnawing, we know the exact pain produced: if the fire and the worm be figurative, they are figurative of a pain and suffering such in intensity as would be produced by the hteral agents. Nothing then is really gained by rejecting the literal view of Dante and Pinamonti, ¦or by changing the bodily pains of which they chiefly speak into suffering and anguish of the mind. If the descriptions of Scripture are figures they are at the .same time true figures : if they are not to be under- .stood literally they must yet be understood as giving us the truest and best ideas possible of the real anguish and misery of hell. On no hypothesis can we under stand hell as other than a scene where pain and anguish, mental or bodily, or both, of the most intense and terrible nature, are endured by .all who have any existence there. Hell cannot NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 145 by any artful handhng of words, by any skilful manipulation of phrases, be toned down into a place other , than of the most fearful kind. If Dr. Salmon and others object to literal pains of the body for ever, they can only substitute for them pains of the mind that are just as bad. They gain nothing by the excliange. While, by removing from the mind the picture of hell and its pains which Scripture undoubtedly presents, they remove, so far as in them lies, a very leading motive which God has Himself placed before the mind of man. We doubt not that Fathers Furniss and Pinamonti are more scriptural than the men of feeling who are trying to whitewash hell to render it more endurable to the mind. De scriptions such as Christ has given are not to be by us withdrawn as too terrible. He has spoken of " unquenchable fire " and the undying " worm," and we may not, and ought not, to withhold these terri ble images from the mind. The real question is, not whether they are hteral or figurative, but whether the pains they point to and pourtray are pains to be endured for ever ; or are pains which sooner or later produce a destruction of the sentient being, from which there is no recovery. We take the mental conflicts of such minds as those of Dr. Salmon, of Albert Barnes, and others, to be unconscious rejections on their part of the Augustinian hell as a punishment which could not be inflicted by a merciful and just God. We hail these attempts at explaining away the awful terrors of biblical description as harbingers of the day when no man will dare to stand up and say that anyman or fallen angel however guilty is to endure pain and agony throughout that eternity in which the unfallen and the redeemed enjoy their endless life. f 10 l 146 THE DURATION AND 9. Literal or figurative then, the descriptions which we have above quoted from various Augustinian ¦v liters are substantially true, if the Augustinian theory ^ true. Father Furniss did not invent his " red-hot >ven," he only took it ready to hand from Malachi: .ippolytus did not originate his gnawing worm, or ! eremy Taylor his fire of hell, they only copied from lie words of Christ. * Between them and us there is i wide difference indeed ; for we hold that these are consuming and destroying agents, reducing the hving to l^ath, and removing even the appearance of that vhich has become dead and loathsome. But between '.hose who hold the descriptions of Scripture as hteral, -and those who hold them to be figurative, there isno lifference of any material lrind. Both believe in anguish of the most terrible nature as continuing throughout eternity : nor can we well see how they can refuse the additional idea that this anguish must ;ro on increasing throughout eternity as the despair of any end grows blacker and blacker. 10. Such then, according to the Augustinian theory, is to be the eternal future of myriads of creatures framed and fashioned by God. Such descriptions, be hey hteral or be they figurative, are, according to their caching, true of every being placed in hell. They icture the eternity not only of fallen angels and men .•ho rejected the Gospel, but of the multitudes who never heard the name of the Father and the Son. If i he " second death," and " everlasting destruction," and " perishing," of the wicked, be what the theory ¦ >f Augustine teaches, the ignorant heathen endure it as well as the rejector of the Gospel; for they who have sinned without law shall perish " as they who * Mal. iv. 1 ; Isa. Ixvi. 24 ; Mark ix. 44. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 147 sinned in the law ; and the men of Tyre and Sidon and Nineveh must appear in the judgment as well as the generation which listened to the words of Christ. * Eternal agonies are the "few stripes" which xlugustine's theoiy has provided for the most ignorant offender. Are eternal agonies a just punishment for any, be they servants who knew or were ignorant of their Master's will ? We will take the latter case first. 11. We will take the case of some poor islander of a remote Pacific isle. Steeped in densest ignorance was his mind from the day he was cast a helpless infant upon this dark world, to the time he sunk back still more helpless in death. No lesson of virtue, of moderation, of purity, had ever cast its hght on him. What should he know of justice who only saw the strong oppressing those who were weaker than they? What should he know of purity who in the women of his tribe or nation had never seen one who had even a faint idea of woman's highest grace ? How was religion in his case to give him some higher, holier, lovelier notions than he could learn from his fellow man? Religion ! The gods whom he wor shipped — if indeed he worshipped any — were gods to whom rites of cruelty and impurity were a pleasing incense ! 12. We do not say of such a man that he has no guilt. We do not beheve that any one gifted with reason has ever lived a life free from guilt. Even where no revelation of true religion kept fully before the human mind the sense of right and wrong as in the sight of God — even where no distorted ray of tradition still kept up some rude sense of the essential difference of some from other actions — even in the * Rom. ii. 12 ; Matt. xii. 41 ; xi. 22. 148 THE DURATION AND darkest age and the remotest corner where a degraded humanity sees only a society as degraded as itself, even there the pain and suffering which evil inflicts through one man upon another keeps alive in the lowest type of the human mind the sense of a right and of a wrong. 13. The savage has indeed never heard such divine lessons as the Gospel teaches in its every page — of a God who loves His enemies, and so urges upon His children, to be "tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." The savage has never, in his experience or in the dim tradition of his tribe, conceived of such a man as Jesus of Nazareth, who, in all his aims, had none for self, but all for His Father and His brethren. But, in his smoking homestead, his slaughtered children, his wife carried captive to another's lust — in scenes such as these, and by acts such as these, some sense of right and wrong, produced by the sense of injury and loss, is kept alive, and where there is the sense of right and wrong there is the capacity of offending and the claim for punishment from God. 14. But how is such a man's guilt to be estimated, to be weighed in the scales of justice, to be adjudged its fitting recompense ? We have the Divine words for saying that this man's guilt is small. The judg ment of reason is confirmed by that of God. A favourite proposition of our Augustinian opponents, through by no means so favourably regarded now as it used to be, is that " All sin is of an infinite nature, and requires endless conscious suffering as its only suitable punishment." But what says God, and God's Son, of the sins of heathen men ? Do we find Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven to tell us His NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 149 Father's mind, talking the scholastic jargon which our modern preachers have learned from the ingenious brain-twisting of the middle ages? We do not. What does He say of sins such as we have spoken of ? Speaking even of Jews, who had so much fuller hght than heathen men possess, He yet declared that if He had not "come and spoken unto them they would not have had sin." While of the dark heathen sinner He said, " He that knew not his Lord's will, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." * And thus we find from the highest authority that the sins of the heathen are light, and tha't the punishment which they shaU feel shall be also hght — a few stripes. They are the words of Christ. And is hell, according to Augustine's theory, a place of few stripes to any placed therein ? Is a life of endless agony, of despair growing more despairing as eternity rolls on and still brings no rehef, no prospect of a close — is this a just punishment for the offences of heathen ? Is this the Christian man's explanation of the "few stripes" of Christ his Master ? A few stripes! Why if Methu selah had been multiplying the figures of arithmetic from the time he could calculate till he reached his 969th year he could not have arrived at any appreci able part of the sum of the stripes which the Augus tinian theory would inflict on the sinners of the heathen. 15. Away then with this diabolical doctrine which shocks all our sense of justice and casts bitter con tempt upon the merciful words of Christ. Is a life of endless agony, ever increasing, what Jesus meant by a "few stripesV God forbid that we should dare * John xv. 22 ; Luke xi. 48. 150 THE DURATION AND thus to tamper with his words. The heathen offender will know of no such hell as Mr. Spurgeon, and Father Furniss, and President Edwards, and Bishop Jeremy Taylor have depicted. When the Red Indian of the American forest, or the dusky child of the remote Pacific isle, wakes up at the solemn resurrection and hears judgment pronounced against him for wilful offence against such dim hght as he possessed, it will not be condemnation to a place where he is to suffer agony while the redeemed of Christ enjoy their endless life. The Lord has told us so, and we beheve Him. 16. A word, before we pass on, upon the impor tant bearing of this on the real nature of future punishment. An eternal life of misery we reject for heathen offenders not merely from our sense of justice but also from the express words of Christ. But from hence it follows that the terms descriptive of future punishment in Scripture have no such meaning. Heathen offenders are said to "perish" in the coming judgment.* It does not mean here to endure endless misery. It can only then mean its usual meaning when apphed to men treated as criminals, viz., to have existence taken. from them. We have thus determined the scriptural use of this word — one of the most important and most frequently used in reference to future punish ment. What " perishing " means for one lost sinner it means for all. The process indeed may, nay certainly will, widely differ ; so as to bring true the words of Christ, "for some many stripes, for some few," but the end is the same for all ; it is the loss of the eternal life which Christ came to give back to man. 17. But we will not stop at the case of the sinners * Rom. ii. 12, KroKKuju, apollumi. NATURE OF FUTURE- PUNISHMENT. lb of the heathen. We will take the case that make most strongly for our opponents' theory. We wi ask if pain inflicted through eternity, endured with out any hope of an end, no nearer to its close whe numberless cycles have passed than- when the firsi groan was uttered, is such a just punishment for any conceivable amount of sin* committed by the wovsl of men? Man did not ask for life; it was given him without his knowledge or consent. Can any abuse of this unasked-for gift justify the recompense of an existence spent in everlasting agony ? 18. We must put this question on its proper grounds. The ablest modern' defenders of everlasting misery have put it on a false issue. They have done so in two main respects, urged on by their conscious inability to justify their theory in its naked light. The first of these we will give in the words of William Archer Butler, whose view is adopted by Dr. Salmon, Professor Mansel,, Dr. Angus, and many others. * " The punishments of hell," says Butler, " are but the perpetual vengeance that accompanies the sins of hell. An eternity of wickedness brings with it an eternity of woe. The sinner is; to suffer for ever lasting; but it is because the sin itself is as everlasting as the suffering." 19. We must fairly and fully look at this astounding proposition. Our readers will first remark how it is an attempt to change the ground on which the justice everlasting misery is sought to be defended. The plea used to be that " Sin being committed against an infinite * W. A. Butler, Sermons, 2nd series, on Everlasting Punishment ; Dr. Salmon's Sermons, p. 10; Mansel, Bampton Lectures, pp. 22, 23; Dwight's Theology, serm. clxvii; Pollok, Course of Time, b. x. ; Dr. Angub, Future Punishment, p. 47 ; Jonathan Edwabds, quoted by Blain, Life and Death, p. 115 ; R. W.Landis, Immortality of Soul, 395. 152 THE DURATION AND Being was itself on this account infinite, and therefore deserved to be punished with pain and misery as long as the infinite Being Himself existed." This plea now justly does not satisfy Augustinian theorists. * Some of them, indeed, seem to consider it what it truly is, an argument worthy of the malignity of a devil linked with the ingenuity of a schoolman. On this ground, a single sin against God must be met by the punishment of agony as long as God lived. So the ground must be changed. Our opponents are now busy executing a flank march to take up their new ground. Instead of the old cry, " Sin is infinite, and deserves unending suffering," we now hear, " The sinner will commit an infinite number of sins, and so will deserve suffering as infinite and endless." 20. We will first remark that this is a complete, if not conscious confession, that the sins of the present life, however aggravated and numerous, do not deserve to be punished by everlasting misery. This is exactly what we contend for. This is now conceded by every man who adopts the view just mentioned. Dr. Salmon, Dr. Angus, Professor Mansel, and their sympathisers, confess, that to punish the sins of this life with endless misery would be the grossest injustice.* " Continued punishment" says Dr. Angus, " means con tinued sin." " If the wicked suffer," says Dr. Salmon, "it is because they are still rebels against God." Both of these gentlemen agree with us that to go on inflicting suffering through eternity for the sins long past of this present hfe, no matter what their character, would be to be guilty of inconceivable injustice: " Charge not a God with such outrageous wrong." * De. Salmon, Ser., p. 9; Abp. Tillotson, Eternity of Hell Torments. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 153 For endless suffering there must be, in this judgment, a course of sin just as endless. 21. But, good God, what a prospect do these men hold out to our view ! " In that mysterious condition of the depraved will," says Professor Mansel, " com pelled and yet free — the slave of sinful habit, yet responsible for every act of sin, and gathering deeper condemnation as the power of amendment grows less and less ; may we not see some possible foreshadowing of the yet deeper guilt and the yet more hopeless misery of the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched ? " This is one of Dr. Angus' alle viations of hell I This is one of those lights which are to relieve the terrible blackness of the place of doom ! Sins throughout eternity increasing in number, in magnitude, and in guilt ! Condemnation and punish ment throughout eternity gathering force and falling more terribly upon the wretched sufferers ! Talk of Fathers Furniss and Pinamonti giving descriptions too horrible to be heard! Talk of Jeremy Taylor's or Mr. Spurgeon's accounts as too harrowing to the mind! They are almost merciful in the face of a theoiy which describes eternity as entering down an endless course of increasing sin calling for endlessly increasing punishment. 22. And do not these fearful reasoners see that their theory obliterates that marked distinction which Christ has drawn between the sin and the punish ment of heathen men and wilful offenders? No distinction of knowledge can continue between one man and another after the judgment day. And then they place the sinners of a once greater or lesser knowledge side by side, and suppose that both will go on through eternity adding to the number of wilful 154 THE DURATION AND sins. Any difference that existed in this hfe from ignorance or knowledge would soon be imperceptible in that ever-increasing catalogue of fresh wilful sins which both alike would and must add to their account. The comparative ignorance on which Christ rests so much, the comparative guilt which He so strongly marks, the wide difference of punishment which He speaks of, would aU vanish in that awful vista of an eternity in which all the lost alike were over adding to the number and magnitude of known and wilful sins. Thank God, we have a Word which sweeps away this vision of terror from our sight. 23. It may very fairly be questioned whether, ac cording to any principles of divine or human law, the lost in hell are capable of sinning. We deny that that they are. "Sin is the transgression of the law," St. John tells us; and Paul lays down this great principle of equity, " Where no law is, there is no transgression." * We deny that those who are denied all the benefits of law, and subjected to its greatest and final penalty, are ever considered as under the law, or capable of incurring any fresh guilt from its infraction. We call upon our opponents to produce any authority for their terrible theory : to produce from any code of human law any justification of it. Scripture, from first to last, says not one word of the sins of hell. Let them listen to the just words of a man who agrees with them in their view of future punishment but denounces their idea of the possibility of sinners adding to their sin in hell. " ' Sin is the transgression of the law,' says Mr. Girdlestone, " but what law will be laid down for the guidance of those who are bound hand and foot, and cast into * 1 John iii. 4 ; Rom. iv. 15. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 155 outward darkness in Gehenna? 'To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin' (James iv. 17); but what knowledge of good will there be among those who will have had all their talents taken from them? In a word, as the saved will be raised above the possibility of sinning ; so the lost will be sunk below it." Elsewhere he says, " Is there any thing in the nature of eternal punishment which makes an eternity of sin certain, probable, or even possible? We think not. What does the Scripture say on this subject? Turning to the various texts which set forth the future and eternal punishment of the wicked, do we find anything to justify us in accepting the conclusion here suggested? Are there any intimations in God's Word that men will go on sinning for ever in the world to come? Does not the whole spirit and tenor of the Scripture go the other way ? Can any single Verse be pointed out which show that the lost will continue in sin here after ? No ; we see neither the authority of the Scripture, nor the voice of reason, in favour of this idea, which appears to be absolutely without founda tion." * 24. But, altogether independent of the question as to whether the outlaws of hell are capable of transgress ing law, it is sufficient to say of the view that the punishment of the future is entirely, chiefly, or in the smallest degree, inflicted for the sins of the future, that it contradicts the teaching of Scripture, and is therefore to be rejected as a lie. Not once or twice, but over and over again, it tells us that the punish ment of the future is for the sins of the present life, f * R. B. Giedlestone, M.A., Dies. Irae., 165-67. Matt. xxv. 41, 42 ; Rom. ii. 6 ; 2 Cor. v. 10 ; 2 Thess. i. 6-9. 156/ THE DURATION AND The ablest defenders of the theory of everlasting misery are forced to confess this. " The justice of God," says Archbishop Tillotson, " doth only punish the sins which men have committed in this life." ¦" The evil done by man in this life," says Mr. Paley, commenting on Paul's description of the grounds of future punishment in Romans ii. 9, "is what is spoken of, no other evil was in the apostle's thoughts." And Mr. Landis, referring especially to the texts above re ferred to, says, " In all these, and in multitudes of other passages, there is a clear retrospective reference to sin perpetrated here as the sole ground of the judicial decision and succeeding punishment." * If we think this punishment too great, we are not at liberty to throw in the sins of the future, real or imaginary, to justify the punishment of the future. If we cannot defend man's future treatment as a just award for his present conduct, we cannot justify it at all. Do we not put ourselves into the exact position of the false prophets of Israel to whom God sternly says, "Have ye not seen a vain vision ; and have ye not spoken a lying divination : whereas ye say, the Lord saith it ; albeit I have not spoken ? " f It is indeed a piece of impious effrontery for us to present as a reason for God's conduct what God has not Himself presented when explaining to man His judicial action. Just fancy an earthly judge sentencing a criminal to a punishment too severe for the offence committed, and then gravely justifying his sentence by the observa tion that the criminal would be sure to deserve it all by his conduct in gaol ! Yet such is the judicature, un- * Tillotson's Sermons, Eternity of Hell Torments ; Arcnd. Paley's Sermons on Matt. xvi. ; R. W, Landis, Immortauty of the Soul, 395. t Ezek. xiii. 7. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. _157 worthy of a Jeffreys, which <£rofe#ors of theology and doctors of divinity take upon them to ascribe, without any authority from Him, to the Judge of the whole earth ! ,- 25. Another very favourite refuge for the Augus tinian theorist, in defending his fearful view of future punishment from the charge of cruelty and injustice, is that it only follows that natural law which inex tricably links together sin and misery. They repre sent God as though he did not directly interpose in the matter, but left things to take their natural course. As this course would, from the very nature of moral evil, lead certainly and irresistibly to misery, they imagine that such a view of hell shields their theory from its apparent harshness and injustice. They suppose that God just banishes the wicked to a place where' they are kept from doing further injury : that in this place they of course go on in dulging in all evil passions : and that the indulgence in their evil passions involves misery, and is in fact the terrible hell of the future. They would thus shield God from the awful aspect of directly inflicting pain upon His creatures throughout all eternity. Future punishment is thus, with them, allowing things to take their natural course. The only part God takes in it is that He allows this course, originally ordained by Himaelf, to go on, and does not interfere with it. 26. We do not say that Bishop Butler originated this view of future punishment ; but certainly more modern thinkers have eagerly followed his lead, and have gladly sheltered themselves under the authority of England's greatest theological reasoner. We apprehend that the present controversy on the eternity 158 THE DURATION AND of evil will reveal the weak points in the armour of the great Bishop of Durham, and that chapters i. and ii. of part I of the famous " Analogy" will be seen to be those parts which showthat evenButler's marvellous reason had its imperfection and its flaw. In chapter ii. he defends future punishment on the ground that it may be the natural effect and consequence of sin. * 27. Later thinkers, who will scarcely deem it an injustice to be ranked as inferior in intellectual power to the Bishop of Durham, have followed out the idea of Butler. " May we not," says Professor Mansel, " trace something not wholly unlike the irrevocable sentence of the future, in that dark and fearful, yet too certain law of our nature, by which sin and misery ever tend to peipetuate themselves ; by which evil habits gather strength with every fresh indul gence, till it is no longer, humanly-speaking, in the power of the sinner to shake off the burden which his own deeds have laid upon him ? In that mysterious condition of the depraved will, compelled and yet free — the state of sinful habit, yet responsible for every act of sin, and gathering deeper condemnation as the power of amendment grows less and less ; may we not see some possible forshadowing of the yet deeper guilt, and the yet more hopeless misery of the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched?" Dr. Salmon shows a very evident in clination to give the same view, through he carefully and very prudently guards himself from being sup posed to assert that there is no other punishment to be apprehended than such as follows in the way of natural consequence, f * Bp. Btjtler, Analogy, p. 1, c. ii. t Pkofessok Mansel, Bampton Lectures, vii. ; G. Salmon, D.D., Eternity of Future Punishment, p. 9. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 159 28. But the writer of our day, who has put forward this view with a minuteness and circumstantiality that equals in its tremendous power the descriptions of Romish and Protestant preachers in their details of the material torments of hell, is Dr. Pusey. " Gather in your mind," he says, " an assembly of all those men and women, from whom, whether in history or in fiction, your memory most shrinks (no fiction can reach the reality of human sin), gather in mind all which is most loathsome, most revolting, the most treacherous, malicious, coarse, brutal, invective, fiendish cruelty, unsbftened by any remains of human feeling, such as thou couldest not endure for a single hour ; conceive the fierce, fiery eyes of hate, spite, frenzied rage, ever fixed on thee, looking through and through and through with hate ; sleepless in their horrible gaze ; felt, if not seen ; never turning from thee, never to be turned from, except to quail under the like piercing sight of hate. Hear those yeUs of blas phemy and concentrated hate, as they echo along the lurid vaults of hell ; every one hating eveiy one, and venting that hate unceasingly, with every inconceiv able expression of malignity ; conceive all this, multi plied, intensified, reflected on all around, on every side; and amid it, the especial hatred of any one whose sins thou sharest, whom thou didst thought lessly encourage in sin, or teach some sin unknown be fore, — a deathlessness of hate were in itself everlasting" misery. Yet a fixedness in that state, in which the hardened, malignant sinner dies, involves, without any further retribution from God, this endless misery."* Such is tho idea of future punishment which many of ^.ev. Dr. Pusey; Henry W. Beecheb. Sermons on Future Punishment, Plymouth Pulpit, 1870, p. 100. 160 THE DURATION AND our modem Augustinians would substitute for the material torments of Messrs. Spurgeon and Furniss ; and which, in attributing the misery of the lost to the operation of what they call a natural law, seems to them to shield God from all imputation of cruelty or injustice. Between the amount of misery of Dr. Pusey 's hell and that of Mr. Spurgeon, it seems difficult to decide. Mental agony is known to equal, if not sometimes to exceed, the keenest agony of our bodily frame. 29. We object however to this theory on two grounds. In the first place we deny that future punishment is the mere result of a natural law now in operation : in the second place we say that even if it could be incontrovertibly proved to be so it would not in the smallest degree serve the purpose for which it is brought forward. 30. We do not think that any unprejudiced person could read the general scriptural accounts of future punishment and suppose that they mean nothing more than leaving the wicked to the operation of those natural laws which are now actually in full force. The connection of sin and misery is an esta blished connection. It has always been at work. Men see it and know it. The drunkard knows to what his excess will and is leading him: the profligate man knows the same. The natural results of hatred are obvious to us all. What effect this knowledge has in restraining from sin, let every one judge. " Virtue is its own reward and vice its own punish ment " is an adage perhaps more famihar to heathen than to Christian ears. We wanted no revelation to be made of such punishment as this. The sinner, with the full knowledge of it, is found from ox- NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 161 perience to prefer vice with its natural punishment to virtue with its natural reward. To be told that hell is merely the continuation of the state of things which he has here dehberately chosen is scarcely to him a warning. But certainly no specious philosophy about natural laws will ever lead us to suppose the hell which is now only in preparation, * to be identical with the punishment which has, from the operation of a great natural law, been in execution from the en trance of sin. Neither do the fallen spirits who have been, for we do not know how many thousands years, under the operation of this natural law, binding together sin and suffering, consider this punishment to be in the smallest measure identical with the punishment to which they know themselves doomed. They have had full time to judge of the connection between sin and misery : their sin, being of the most aggravated kind, must have produced all the natural punishment which it is capable of producing: yet still they cling fondly and desperately to even such a life as they now possess. The fearful cry of the devils, " What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of of God ? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time V ought surely to dissipate the picture which is drawn by human theorists of the punishment of hell as being simply the result of a natural law. f 30. But there is one grand fact in connection with the future punishment of wicked men which removes it altogether from the sphere of mere natural law. Whatever might be said of the fallen angels as being removed from the power of doing further injury by their being confined in hell, and of then being left there to the punishment produced by a law which * Matt. xxv. 41. f Matt. viii. 29. [H J 162 THE DURATION xVND must operate in their case as well as in that of man, the resurrection of the wicked is a full proof that God directly interferes with future punishment, and does not merely leave it to the operation of natural law. To carry out this theory of natural punishment our oppo nents must be , consistent. If God were to leave things to their natural course, there would be no resurrection of the wicked, for surely the resurrection of the wicked is not the operation of a natural law. If our theorists were consistent they must teach that God would leave the wicked for ever in their graves. But this is not at all the case. Without here entering at all into the enquiry as to whether the human soul, separate from the body, is properly capable of pain or pleasure, or of hfe at all, it is undeniably the case that God does directly and immediately interfere for the purpose of future punishment. It is His voice and direct act, not the operation of a natural lawr which calls the wicked to resurrection. They would else have slumbered on for ever. And he thus interferes directly for the purpose of punishment. "We must all appear," St. Paul tells us, "before the judgment seat of Christ ; that every one may receive tlie things done in his body, according to tliat he hath done, whether it be good or bad."* The idea of future punishment then, as being merely the result of natural laws, is overthrown by Scripture. God does not leave things just to follow their natural course. He puts forth what we call miraculous power to bring about the punishment of the wicked. We cannot deny this without denying the resurrection of the unjust. 31. But we also reject this view of future punish- * 2 Cor. v. 10. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 163 ment on the ground that it violates every known principle of law and its sanctions. The very notion of a punish ment announced for the violation of a law imphes some infliction different from that unpleasantness or wretched ness which the infraction of the law itself produces. To tell a child that if he does wrong his conscience will upbraid him and he will be unhappy is quite a different thing from telling him that if he does wrong you will punish him. To make the sanctions of anylaw, divine or human, to consist in the amount of dissatisfaction and miseiy which its; infraction naturally produces is really to render the sanction nugatory and useless. A creature yet un- fahen, as Adam was before trangression, could not possibly know in the remotest degree to what he was about to subject himself. He could see the supposed advantage of transgression : he could not possibly judge its pain. Experience alone could teach him this. The theory of natural punishment fails in the first grand primary object of punishment, viz., the pre vention of transgression. Nor, after- transgression, could it have much more effect. Universal experience testifies that sin is pleasant at the outset. "Stolen waters " are not bitter the moment they are drunk : the sinner will tell you they are " sweet." " Bread eaten in secret " does not at first grate upon the teeth : the sinner will tell you it is " pleasant." How are all the advice, and warnings, and testimonies of ex perience accepted by youth and inexperience bent upon the pursuits of unhallowed pleasure ? They are treated as the passing wind. The beautiful figure of pleasure smiles and beckons on to follow in her train. The road is strewn with roses : the air filled with perfume. After her eagerly follow the crowd, and 164 THE DURATION AND think the few who hold aloof are fools to lose the substance of hfe. Not till they have followed long does the scene change. The road is rough and weary: the perfume is gone: the flowers are withered: the fair soft cheek is yeUow and withered. And then ! And then it is too late. In the long wild pursuit, the memory of good has been forgotten. The figure of grace, of virtue, is austere, hateful, to the debased follower of harlot vice. He confesses to himself no doubt that a fair appearance deceived, but the adage " virtue is its own reward" seems to him more supremely ridiculous than when he set out in the train of her rival. Evil has become his only good. To tell him that the punishment of sin is only the result of natural laws producing wretchedness, is only to tell him all he knows already, and has made up his mind to accept and hold by. We must then in the Divine, as weU as in all law, have a punishment distinct from the natural effects of transgression, if we would have a punishment effectual either to prevent transgression or to induce to amendment after sin has been entered upon. 32. Dr. Salmon, in one place, seems to think very favourably of that view of future punishment which makes it consist in the lost being miserable because they are wicked. * When however he comes to reason with an opponent who carries out this view to its full and natural conclusion, who does not toy with it as Dr. Salmon does, but holds it, and manfully uses it without apprehension, then Dr. Salmon under takes its refutation, and refutes it, we must say, in a very pleasant and logical way. " There can be no greater misery than to be a sinner " is what Dr. Salmon * The Eternity of Punishment, p. 9. * NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 165 gives us as " the substance " of Mr. Maurice's view. We should have supposed this would fall veiy much into Dr. Salmon's own idea; but it is not so. Dr. Salmon remembers the pleasant Roman satirist who tells us that there is no objection in the world to our stating truth in a pleasant or even a jocular way, and so proceeds to direct against Mr. Maurice some veiy pleasant and telling banter. "Imagine," he says, " Mr. Maurice's house attacked by burglars, and think of the effect of this remonstrance : ' Consider, my good friends, how your consciences will sting you for this by and by.' And if you find a sinner, trembhng under the denunciation of judgment to come, you will give him immediate relief if you tell him that the sting of conscience will be the only punishment he need dread. He will say, ' Is that all ? I think I can bear that.' " * 33. But we reject this view of future punishment, on the ground that it gives a view of the highest law, of that which is the model and pattern of all law, viz., the Divine Law, which is inconsistent with and contrary to the nature of all law. We should not fear to oppose to the authority of Bishop Butler the authority of John Locke. On a question of this kind, indeed, we should prefer the authority of the latter. Besides, Bishop Butler, in his chapter on " The Government of God by Punishment," while he with the most perfect correctness insists that in evil actions leading as their natural result to miseiy we have God actually punishing such actions in the ordinary course of nature, nowhere denies that there may be, either in this life or in the next, other pun ishment of a direct and immediate kind inflicted by * Eternity of Punishment, p. 59. 166 THE DURATION AND 4 " God for sin. The nature of Bishop Butler's argument ¦ did not lead him at all to enquiries of this kind. They were wholly foreign, to his purpose. When he speaks therefore of the natural results of ill conduct here as pointing to the probabihty of similar natural results hereafter; and as in both cases being truly and properly a Divine punishment for transgression ; he does not in the "smallest degree contradict the idea that there may be other punishment, of a kind different from that which is the natural result of ill - doing, in store for unpardoned sin. They who would ¦ quote Bishop Butler as teaching that the natural evil results of ill doing are its only punishment do not understand the fundamental idea of his " Analogy." We liave then the authority of Locke, wholly undiminished hy any contrary authority of Butler. 34. What is the testimony of Locke on this ques tion of law and punishment ? " Since it would be utterly vain," he tells us, "to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil, to determine his will, we must, whereever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment annexed to that law. It would be in vain for one intelhgent being to set a rule to the actions of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the compliance with, and punish the deviation from, his rule, by some good and evil, tliat is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself: for that being a natural convenience or inconvenience, would operate of itself, without a law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, properly so called." * 35. But even if it could be established, which it * T.nnrc e. Human Understanding, b. 2, c. xxviii. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 167 cannot, that future punishment was solely and entirely the result of that natural law which binds sin and suffering together, this would not, in the remotest degree, remove this charge of injustice from God, if the punishment thus naturally following were too great for the offence. A natural law must be as just as a special law. In fact, if possible, it should be more so ; since it has a wider and more permanent operation. To account for the injustice of an inflic tion by saying : " Oh, it is the effect of a natural law," is the highest slander against God. Let us call the law which produces any effect by what name we please, natural, or miraculous, or special, it makes no difference. The law must in each case be just in its operation, in order to be justifiable. The laws of nature, as any other law enacted or executed by Him, are the laws of God. For all their consequences, after they have worked then uniform work for ages, He is just as responsible as when He first ordained them, or as when He departs from them by an altera tion of law or a rniraculous interference. If the laws of nature were to bring on the sinner a punishment greater than his sin deserved, it is God Himself who would be doing so. They who quote Bishop Butler for future punishment being the result of a natural law must also take the remainder of the great reasoner's view on the subject. " We are at present," he says, "actually under God's government, in the strictest and most proper sense — in such a sense as that He rewards and punishes us for our actions. Whether the pleasure or pain which follows upon our behaviour be owing to the Author of natures acting upon us every moment which we feel it, or to His having at once con trived and executed His own part in the plan of the 168 THE DURATION AND world, makes no alteration as to the matter before us. * 36. But God, by one special act of His, takes in the great day of reckoning on Himself the whole responsibility of future punishment, be it of what character it may. God raises the wicked for the veiy purpose of this punishment. It matters not then what is its source. If it be a special punishment then specially inflicted ; and, different from the mere result of the natural law now in operation, we have God immediately and specially inflicting it. If it be wholly and entirely the result of natural law, pro ducing the fearful hell which Dr. Pusey has pictured with such tremendous power, and which would seem to equal any natural suffering, we have God directly and specially interfering, in the resurrection of the wicked, in order to subject them to this punishment. God assumes the entire responsibihty of their punish ment, just as much in one case as in the other. We cannot separate the God of nature from the God of revelation. They are one and the same. 37. The simple question then is, "Could man by any conduct here deserve to suffer through eternity pain and torment to which only the worst pain we suffer here can afford a true parallel ? Would the agonies to which the martyr was subjected for an hour be only sufficient for the sinner if drawn out through the eternal age ? Would it be just in God to inflict this on any single creature of His hand, on any being who would never have had life at all if the Maker had not called him from his clay ? " The verdict of the human heart, in its fierce denial, in its secret recoil, answers "No." " Eternal pain," says Augustine, * Analogy, part 1, c. ii. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 169 " seems harsh and unjust to human sense." " With the majority of men of the world," says Archer Butler, " this doctrine seems, when they think at all about it, monstrous, disproportioned, impossible." It seems so, in the same writer's mind, to others besides men of the world, to men who do not fear the doom for themselves : — " Were it possible," he says, " for human imagination to conceive the horror of such a doom as this, all reasoning about it were at an end ; it would scorch and wither all the powers of human thought. Human hfe were at a stand, could these things be felt as they deserve. Even for him who can humbly trust himself comparatively secure in faith and obedience, were the thin veil of this poor shadowy life suddenly withdrawn, and these immortal agonies, that never-dying death, made known in the way of direct perception : and those, it may be, that such a one, with the keen sympathies so charac teristic of the Christian, loves and values, seen to be at last among the victims of that irreparable doom — can we doubt that he would come forth with intellect blanched and idealess ¦ from a sight too terrible for any whose faculties are not on the scale of eternity itself? It is God's mercy that we can believe what adequately to conceive were death'' * Thus does a writer, who himself believed this doctrine, describe it. He attributes the possibility of believing it to a special act of grace. If God were now to ask man whether his conduct on this hypothesis were just, man with one voice would reply that, according to all His conceiv able ideas of justice and judgment, conduct such as this would be most unjust. * Augustine, City of God, xxi. 12; W. A. Butler, Sermons, 376, 383. 170 THE DURATION AND 38. The history of human rehgious thought shows man's ineradicable sense of the burning wrong of this fearful theory. If Plato, deriving his inspiration from Egypt, taught a Tartarus with its fiery streams, whence none could come forth, he taught it for an infinitessimally small portion of men. For most, even for the homicide, the parricide, and the matri cide, he had his Acherusian lake, whence, after a purgative process, they issued forth again to the upper air. If Augustine adopted his great master's abode of unending pain, he adopted also his purga tory, whence there was a way to heaven. If the Church of Rome has sanctioned, the theory of Augustine, she practically holds out its terrors only to those without her pale of safety : for her own millions she has the fires of a finite period. The assertion of Augustine's hell by Tertullian and his contemporaries did but drive the gentler mind of Origen to the notion of a far vaster purgatory than Rome's or Augustine's, where even devils should be prepared to resume their place in heaven. The Churches of the Reformation have generaUy followed Augustine in his hell, and denied his purgatory ; but, at all times, within their bosom has been a struggle against the dominant doctrine, and even from those who maintained it it has only commanded a sullen, uncheerful assent. Such men as Bumet, Whitby, Hammond, Law, Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton, Locke, Bengel, Foster, Birks, have rejected it with abhor rence. Such men as Tillotson, Hermann Witsius, Robert Hall, Dr. Watts, Isaac Taylor, William Butler, Albert Barnes, Bishop Ellicott, while they accepted the theoiy, loved it not. "I should be very glad," says Dr. Salmon, "to see it proved that I was NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 171 wrong." " Who would not ? " groans out Mr. Grant, labouring under the terrific weight of a theory he yet felt himself bound to maintain. Let these men reason as they would, the black look of injustice lurked about the ugly thing. Let them allow their minds to dwell upon the reality of what eternal evil and eternal misery meant, and their hearts would grieve that man had been made at all ; that the feelings of pity were implanted in the human breast* and cherished by the Gospel of Christ. Darkness and anguish settled down and brooded over their spirit ; yea, the veiy hght of reason would almost abandon them for madness, when they conceived even in the far-off future the horrible hell of Augustine. We constantly find them, even when they are struggling hard to defend the monstrous thought before a reluctant world, candidly confessing that with all their hearts they could wish that it was a monstrous he. * The modem mind, shaken in rehgious conviction, denies the inspiration of a book which is supposed to teach this creed of cruelty. With those who will not throw away their faith in man's future, the theory of Origen, with all its consequences, bids fair, if only confronted with the fearful nightmare of Augustine, to take the place which the authority of the latter father has so long imposed upon the Church. The ablest modem defenders of the theory are shrinking back from putting forward a vindication of it in its plain and hideous aspect. One after another of the * Abp. Tillotson, Sermons, Eternity of Hell Torments ; Db. "Watts, The World to Come ; Isaac Taylor, Restoration of Belief, 367 ; W. A. Butler, Sermons ; Albert Barnes, Practical Sermons, 123; Professor Rogers, Greyson's Letters; Dr. Ellicott, The Church and the Age ; Dr. Salmon's Sermons, Preface ; J. Grant, Religious Tendencies, i. 219. 172 THE DURATION A.VD arguments on which it has heretofore been defended they are abandoning as unworthy of their reason or abhorrent to their sense of justice, while those they are striving to substitute are to the full as unreason able and unjust. * 39. Listen to the low, sad wail of Foster, as he passes in review the great subject of future punish ment. His powerful mind beheved in the Platonic view of the immortahty of the soul, and therefore he knew not what to beheve of the future of the wicked. He would turn to Origen's conception of a universal restoration, until driven from it by passages of Scrip ture too plain to be mistaken : he would turn to the theory of everlasting destruction, until repelled by his behef in the immortahty of the soul which forbid him to imagine that it could be destroyed. But one thing he would not and could not admit into his faith the notion of the eternity of woe. He set God"s character, everywhere revealed in its justice and its love, against what appeared to him the apparent mean ing of some of God"s words, and the character of God led him to the true and logical conclusion that the theory of eternal misery was a slander against his Maker. " Think of man," he says, " his nature, his situation, the circumstances of his brief sojourn and trial on earth. Far be it from us to make hght of the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a severe chastisement, of whatever moral nature we may suppose the infliction to be. But still, what is man ? He comes into the * Abp. Tillotson's Eternity of Hell Torments ; Magee, Dis courses on the Atonement, note 13 ; Dr. Salmon's Sermons, pp. 9, 47; W. Sherlock, Future Punishment, introduction; Edward- Beecher, Conflict of Ages, b. v., c. i. ; Professor Mansel, Bampton Lectures, pp. 22, 225, 226 ; Dwight's Theology, Sermon clxvii. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 173 world with a nature fatally corrupt, and powerfully tending to actual evil. He comes among a crowd of temptations adapted to his innate evil propensities. He grows up (incomparably the greater proportion of the race) in great ignorance, his judgment weak, and under numberless beguilements into error ; while his passions and appetites are strong, his conscience unequally matched against their power — in the majority of men but feebly and rudely constituted. The influence of whatever good instruction he may receive is counteracted by a combination of opposite influences almost constantly acting on him. He is essentially and inevitably unapt to be powerfully acted on by what is invisible and future. In addition to all which, there is the intervention and activity of the great tempter and destroyer. . . . Now this creature, thus constituted and circumstanced, passes a few fleeting years on the earth, a short, sin ful course, in which he does often what, notwith standing his ignorance and ill-disciplined judgment and conscience, he knows to be wrong, and neglects what he knows to be his duty ; and consequently, for a greater or less measure of guilt, widely different in different offenders, deserves punishment. But endless punishment I Hopeless misery, through a duration to ¦which the terms above imagined will be absolutely nothing! I acknowledge my inability (I would say reverently) to admit this belief together with a belief in the divine goodness — the behef that ' God is love,' that his tender mercies are over all his works." * 40. The struggles of two such minds as those of John Foster and WiUiam Archer Butler may well weigh strongly on this question. Both were men of * Letter of the Rev. John Foster, On Future Punishment. 174 THE DURATION AND powerful mind, sincere piety, deep trust in the truth of Scripture, educated ahke from childhood to beheve in the eternal miseiy of the lost. They both accepted as an indisputable axiom the inalienable immor tality of man. But they will give their mind to understand as much as they may what this doctrine of endless woe and evil in which they have been educated means. It is too important, too prominent, to be overlooked. They cannot accept it and then lay it by : they cannot be satisfied with an occasional mention of it when professional decency compeUed them, and then to hide it as unsuitable to ears pohte. If it is true, they truly felt it should be proclaimed in aU its terrors, as with the blast of a trumpet. They look at it, and stand aghast ! They see a little part of its woe, and horror seizes on their minds. Wild questionings of God, strange thoughts of Him which are blasphemy almost to conceive, suspicions which it is anguish even to entertain, bitter wafls over the creature caUed into a life that was to have such an end, rush into then thoughts and cannot be shut out. Foster looks at it and rejects it, though he knew not where else to turn : Butler looks at it with half- closed eyes and accepts it, and his faith aU but sets him mad. 41. Our view needs no vindication, does not com pel us to keep it discreetly in the background, reduces us to no subterfuge to escape its conse quences. It does not force us to advance arguments which we feel to be unworthy of a child, or faintly to defend the justice of a procedure which our heart whispers to us is only worthy of a devil's conception. By it, the next life's dealings with the sinner wiU but foUow the analogy of this. He who scans the course NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 175 of nature may from it anticipate that future course which revelation opens to our view. According to it GooVs ways with the sinner are equal. They are severe ; but they are just. They are fuU of awe; but they can be contemplated with calmness. They show the award of a justice in whose consequences we can rejoice. Its issue is eternal death. If it brings the sigh of sadness over a lost soul, it brings also the deep full breathing of infinite relief. "The wicked," says Locke, "had no right to demand their existence, and so no right to demand its continuance." We require neither the "purgatory" of Augustine, nor the " universal restoration " of Origen — man's desperate refuges from the heU he has himself conceived. Looking on the calmed face of death, we wiU say, " It is weU." The woes, the agony, the despair, of life, are passed away from its features with the sin that produced them. 176 THE DURATION AND CHAPTER X. THE EXTINCTION OF EVIL. I N the predicted extinction of evil we have another conclusive proof of the truth of our theory as opposed to that of Augustine. Evil is not to be eternal. We are told in God's Word that it had a beginning, and will have an end. Neither the Manichasism of Manes, asserting for evil an eternal past and future, nor the Semi-ManichsBism of Augustine, asserting for it an eternal future, is true, God has pledged His Word and His power that it shaU be abolished and destroyed. He has promised a "restitution of all things" by the mouth of aU His holy prophets since the world began. A time shaU come when aU things will be once more very good; when iniquity shaU have an end; when^the pure eyes of God shaU no more be offended by its sight. A time shall come when they who would not glorify God shaU be silent in darkness ; and when everything that has breath shall praise the Lord. * 2. So plainly is the end of evil insisted on in * Acts iii. 21 ; Matt. iii. 12 ; Ps. v. 4, 5 ; xxxvii. 10 ; cl. 6 ; 1 Sam. ii. 9 ; Hab. i. 13. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 177 Scripture that men of the most opposite opinions on the question of future punishment are forced to maintain that according to their system evfi is truly and reaUy brought to an end. It is one of the funda mental bases of the theoiy of universal restoration- It also forms one of the grand supports for our theory of destruction. "The day is at hand," says the Epistle of Barnabas, "when all things shall perish with the evil one ; " when " he who chooseth other things [than the judgments of the Lord] shaU be destroyed with his works." " At the end of time," says Irenasus, " Christ shall come to do away with all evil, and to reconcUe all things, in order that there may be an end of all infirmities." Even the main- tainers of eternal evil are fain to teach that their system brings evil to an end. Thus Tertullian reasons against Hermogenes, that for God " to bear with evil instead of extirpating it " would " prove Him to be the promoter thereof; criminally, if through his own will; disgracefuUy, if through necessity :" and he lays it down as beyond a question that " there is to be an end of evil." * 3. But the system of Augustine, let its defenders argue or assert as they may, is here at direct issue with Scripture. The theory of eternal hfe in hell contradicts the whole tenor of the Bible upon this point. It denies the restitution of all things; it asserts that evil shall be eternal in God's world; and that iniquity shall never have an end. It tells us that God's eyes shall throughout eternity be offended with the sight of evil, and His ears pained with the sounds of blasphemy. It denies that the wicked wiU * Apostolical Fathers, Epistle of Barnabas, e. xxi. ; Iren;eus, Fragments, No. xxxix ; Tertullian, Against Hermogenes, c. x., xi. f 12 J 178 THE DURATION AND ever be silent in darkness, and that everything that has breath shaU praise the Lord. It sets apart a por tion of God's muverse, not for the destruction of evil, Dut for its everlasting preservation. According- to many of its advocates, evil will go on increasing throughout eternity in the continued sin and blas phemy of fallen angels and men ; and according to others these will receive constant accession to then- numbers from the ranks of other races ; so that it may become doubtful whether good or evil predominates in a world over which an omnipotent and holy God is aUowed by these men to reign.* 4. For the theory of Augustine does not in any true or intelligible sense put an end to evil. It merely removes it from one part of God's world to another, and, as a direct consequence of this removal, intensifies it in its new habitation. " There is to be an end of evil," says Tertullian, " when the chief there of, the devil, shall go away into the fire which God hath prepared for him and his angels." Strange end of evil! As if evil was terminated by its change of locahty, or as if evil was no evil when it was in hell! This is no restitution of all things. It is not true that aU things are once more very good while any portion of God's creatures are in rebellion against His will. HeU, whereever it be, is as much a part of God's world as earth or heaven ; and all would not be very good in God's worid, if there were in any part of it, however remote, such a hell as Augustine has pictured — afearfulplace filled with its teeming myriads of fallen spirits and men throughout eternity blaspheming the God of the whole universe. * Dr. Salmon's Sermons, p. 10 ; Mansel, Bampton Lectures, pp. 22, 23 ; Letter of C. H. Waller, The Rock, December 29, 1868. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 179 5. Our theory fuUy answers the requirements of Scripture. It teaches a restitution of all things, and an extinction of evil. To us it seems to do even more than this. It appears to afford a reason for what, after aU, is the grand mystery in connection with evil, viz., its permission for any period in GocVs world. The origin of evil is accounted for by the freedom of wiU which belongs to aU creatures of loftier nature and nobler destiny than the brutes; for whereever there is freedom of wiU there must be the possibility of a fall. On this point, the best thinkers have agreed. Again, tlie obliteration of evil is provided for in the restoration of some in their day of grace and the eternal death of aU who have not thus been restored to God. The permission of evil for the period of time from the angehc faU to the final consummation of aU things, is therefore the great problem to be solved in the history of evil. Faith in such a God as we have tells us that the permission of evil must have some wise gracious end in view: "Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill." We will now endeavour to show that such is the goal of iU, though our theory leads us to a different con clusion from that which Tennyson would fain arrive at in his exquisite " In Memoriam. " 6. We must ever keep in mind the great object of punishment. With a just ruler, this object is never pain inflicted in a spirit of hatred, or pain greater than the offence deserves. With a just ruler retribu tion, no doubt, is an end ; but it is the least end of pun ishment. His great end is prevention. In the punish ment of offenders, he always has more regard to the 180 THE DURATION AND law keepers than to the law breakers. Protection to the former in their lawful callings ; warning to them against the imitation of crime ; these are the great ends aimed at by wise and just rulers in the punish ment of actual crime. Regard to these will be the great ruling motive in the regulation of punishment. Regard to these will operate most powerfully on the treatment of the criminal. At one time it will demand a sternness in punishment aU but productive of actual injustice to the individual punished. Regard for society may, in another aspect, mitigate to a most serious extent the punishment justly due to his crime. But regard to society, in aU its branches and aU its interests, is the grand aim in aU wise human legisla tion on crime; and that legislator has shown the highest wisdom who, while never transgressing the limits of justice, has so arranged his penal code that it has had the greatest possible effect in protecting the law — respecting community in their minutest rights, and providing that they shaU never degenerate into the condition of the law-breaking classes. AU severity, short of injustice, is not only wise, but is most merci ful, that has this effect. 7. Now it is in this hght that we are to view future punishment, together with that long permission of evil, with aU its attendant circumstances — its glitter, its pleasures, its supposed advantages, its delusive ness, its pains, which we have seen in the history of our own race ; and which will doubtless in aU their real bearing remain an eternal record in the annals ot God's great world. To say that what we caU the fall of angels was the first appearance of moral evil is to say what cannot with certainty be affirmed. AU we can say with certainty is, that it was the NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 181 beginning of that outburst of moral evil with which we are connected, and in which, as regards us, the redemption of Christ has interposed. Our opinion is that the outburst of evil which began with the angehc fall, and spread on to the faU of man, is positively the first appearance of moral evU in the universe of God. But we cannot here dogmatise. What we are much more strongly persuaded of is that, if not the first, it will be the last. We know from Scripture that this outburst of evil wiU be obliterated and become extinct. We think we see, with almost equal certainty, that evil wiU break out no more. 8. But God, in dealing with the higher order of His creatures, is not dealing with lifeless matter, not with living things walking by a law of necessity, but with living creatures walking under the high and elevating, but also most perilous condition of a free ¦will. No doubt there are difficulties connected with this question of free will ; but men of the most oppo site views elsewhere concur in admitting that it is the ordinance of God in His creation of the higher creatures, and that through it there is among them a possibility of the entrance of moral evil. * Free to choose the good, and to rise on the wings of good ness to God its source, and to enjoy the immortality of God. As free, to choose the evil, and to sink beneath its weight to depths of utter darkness. Nor is this an imaginary evil, a theoretical possibility, to be discussed as a school problem, but never to be met with in reality. Angels, we know not how many, * Irenxeus, b. iv., c. xxxvii. ; Tertullian, Against Marcion, b. ii. «c. v. vi. ; Stillingixeet, Or. Sac. iii., iii., xiv. ; R. Baxter, God's Purpose in Judgment, 64 ; R. W. Landis, Immortality of the Soul, 446. 182 THE DURATION AND but we know that they are many, who once walked in holiness, used their free wiU to range themselves in opposition to God. Man, a weaker and a lower creature, yet inexperienced and unsuspecting, also uses his freewiU to depart frofn God. And so, in these various ways, in these various shades of original guilt, sin entered into God's universe, and produced evil effects, of which we know something from what we daily hear and see, but whose full consequences are only known to God. 9. But this is not aU. There is the very same possibility and danger of further faU that there ever was. It may be that the angelic world of a past creation are so fortified and strengthened by what they have already seen of the evil of sin that with them there is no moral possibility of further fall. But we have no reason for supposing that among the spheres are no creatures such as we. Nor have we the smallest reason for supposing that God has come to the hmit of His creative energy and will. He is not the iniative God of an Epicurean philosophy, re posing in dreary self-satisfied contemplation. He is a God who delights to be at work ; and the spirit He breathes into all is a love of work. * Look at the earth : it affords innumerable evidences of His busy hand and brain. Look at the stars : doubtless they show the same ceaseless energy of God. But we know that He is not content with the creation only of the lower organization. He dehghts to form creatures that know with a conscious love their Maker, and in this knowledge rise higher and higher, nearer and yet more near to their Source. Who can say, with any faint shadow of probabihty, that God wnl close His * John v. 17. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 18& creation with man? Even while we write, or while we read, there may be reproducing in some distant planet, whose geological changes have come to then- required perfection, the fac-simile of the scene in Eden six thousand years ago. Nor can we say that it may not be ours as the ages of our blessed future roll on — our own days of marrying and giving in marriage existing only in the memory — to see what angels once saw here, a figure of noble front and faultless form rising from the earth in the majesty of perfect manhood, and God placing in his thrilling grasp the hand of woman, as lovely in face as she is innocent in mind, and saying in words that should cover with shame all who derogate from God's holy ordinance of marriage, " Increase, and multiply, and replenish the world I have given you." 10. But these races are made under free wiU. It may be that some of them in then beginning are no higher than we were in ours. Eve does not seem to have been before the faU much wiser than she was after it. A woman without guile, without suspicion, loving, curious, credulous. Do you reject the picture? It is not ours: it is what we see on the canvas of Scripture. Adam was apparently in much resembling many of his sons. Irenasus calls him in the horn- of his creation " as yet an infant." Ardent, hasty, im petuous, at a beautiful woman's solicitation, he threw away, with open eyes, duty and loyalty: without her he wiU not hve ; with her he will die. And what were the consequences ? We read them — outside Eden, in the Deluge, at Sodom, in Potiphar's house, in the wars of Canaan, on the hiU of Calvary, at the siege of Jerusalem, in the shouts of the Goths and Vandals, in the Crusader's wars, in the massacre of Barthol- 184 THE DURATION AND omew, in the snows of Russia, in the glittering scenes of heartless vanity, in the morbid passions and stunted affections of conventual imprisonment, in the gambling tables of Baden, in the lust markets of Paris and of London. We read them in our world's history of crime, and sin, and sorrow, and death. 11. Now the divine code of punishment — from the expulsion from Eden and the growth of the thistle down to the closing punishment of heU — has regard to the various, comphcated, and universal interests of the higher creation, whereever it may now or will here after exist. It is not solely, we say it is not chiefly, for those to whom it wiU be said, "Depart into ever lasting fire." We are by no means prepared to say that if fallen man, aye ! and even faUen angels, had alone been in question, their treatment by God might not have been widely different. Had they alone been in question, we dare not confine the efforts for their recovery to those which have actuaUy been made. Christ might in that case have taken hold of angels, instead' of putting forth redemption only for the sons of Abraham. Man's day of grace might not in that case have been confined to his life here from the cradle to the grave, but grace might have foUowed him on from age to age, and world to world, ere it ceased to strive to win back those who had once offered to God the pure incense of a creature's praise, who had once felt the ennobling emotion of the heart's love and worship of God. 12. So it has not been. Angels feU. No saving hand was stretched from the throne to raise them up; no Son of God went forth to war for them. Man feU. The Son rose up from the place of honour, and said to His Father, "Here am I, send Me;" and NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 185 He laid aside His majesty, and He emptied Himself, and He became a man, and for man He bore shame, and rejection, and the death upon the cross. "Not in vain" sounds forth the voice of grateful love, which has been growing and swelling from the small voice outside the gates of Eden, to the voice of many waters within the gates of the New Jerusalem. But, how many left behind! How many voices silent! How many pulsations of life stilled for evermore ! 13. Our thoughts revert to WeUington as he saw the army of Spain crossing the Bidassoa after the re treating armies of France. By him went the flowing plumes, by him rolled the heavy guns, by him march ed with dauntless breast the matchless infantry of Britain; in nobler array, in denser bands than had marched under their leader's eye at the great soldier's opening victory at Vimiera. But, few of those first are soldiers crossing into France under Wellington's eye. At various intervals they are left behind. On the first battle-field of the Peninsula, on the heights of Busaco, in the bloody struggle of Fuentes de Onoro, by the towers of Salamanca, on the breach of St. Sebas tian, at Vittoria, beneath the shadow of the Pyrenees, along the whole line of the victorious march, lie the bones of those who never gazed on French ground from the slopes of the mountains, or saw the spray of the waves as they broke in foam on the bar of the Bidassoa. So it will be in the great muster-roU of heaven. Many are caUed, few are chosen to eternal life. 14. Now, what we say is this. Doubtless with a merciful view to others — to others, perhaps, as far exceeding the number of the lost as the sands of aU old ocean's shores exceed those of its smaUest strand — 186 THE DURATION AND has the punishment of those consigned at the judg ment to heU been decreed. In that of angels wiU be seen the danger of one irrevocable step, where no hand was put forth to save ; where, perhaps, no wish was ever felt to return. As regards men, some in aU ages, even the darkest, were saved from the effects of a step which, in their case, was not irrevocable; but how various the degrees of guilt and opportunity among others, aU of whom yet endured one irrevoca ble sentence! To some, Christ was preached with all the circumstances that could win back the heart, with all the earnestness that could secure the love. No response came from that wilful heart; it closed up aU the avenues that could lead to repentance, and went on resolutely to perdition. "But," it might be be suggested, "at least there will be such an effort made ; we shaU not, if we faU, find ourselves ushered into a doom of which we know httle beyond what some faint indistinct fears and misgivings may darkly insinuate." Yet even such, God's dealings with our race show us, may be the case. For ages, He left the generations of the world to themselves. A ghmmering tradition, a darkened conscience — nature's indications of a Great Being in whom love, and justice, and judgment, and power, had each a place — these were all myriads had to guide them to the brink of that last step which each one must take, for himself and by himself, into the dark world beyond. We do not affirm or believe of the heathen that all are lost ; but we do know from Scripture that as a rule then future is without hope. Light sufficient to condemn where it did not save ; hght so httle as to reduce their guilt to its minimum, but not to make them guiltless ; and yet, with this small amount of light and of guilt, NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 187 they endure the second and endless death. And who dare say, with Christ's words in his ears, that none of these lost ones would have heard and hailed to hfe eternal the words of Christ's Gospel if they had been addressed to them by Him who spake on the shores of Gennesaret and in the synagogues of Galilee? From Sodom and Gomorrha, from Tyre and Sidon, He teUs us, souls would have sprung forth to the living call which was heard and unheeded by the caUous hearts of Chorazin and Capernaum.* But no such caU was heard amid the vice of Sodom : no such call mingled with the din of the marmers of Tyre, or with the beating of its waves. They sinned without law, and they perish without law: for them it will be more tolerable than for others when they rise up to judgment ; but they wiU not for all that escape its endless sentence. 15. We acknowledge that there is severity in this. Augustine's sentence against such is one of the blackest tyranny and injustice. Even in the scrip tural sentence of death, there is severity. God tells us that He sometimes acts with severity, f If He had not told us so in His Word we should have known it from His other great Book of Nature, whose pages have been open to aU eyes, and in which lessons of severity are read as it enters each age's records on its tablet of stone. Severity in the future world, if it be not unjust, is no argument against any rehgious theory. If any one wiU say it is, he must take his stand on atheistic ground. And poor, after aU, is the assurance which Atheism can afford! Impotent to promise good, it is equally impotent to avert evil. To teU us that we are the children of bhnd, unreasoning, * Matt. xi. 21. t Rom- xi- 22- 188 THE DURATION AND unfeeling, unhealing chance, is no Gospel. The blind power that flung us, without consent from us, on the bleak shores of this world's ocean, may fling us on bleaker shores in more inhospitable chmes. If we live here without a God we may hve elsewhere without one. Atheism cannot guard us from life, from misery, from evU. If here on earth are, as no doubt there are, places which may almost vie with any pictures of a future heU in their guilt, their miseiy, and their despair, will the Atheist teU us that such may not exist in the hereafter as well ? Even for him, it is better to come back to a behef in God. But with the Theist we wiU allow of no argument against a theory which has in it the element of severity. Let him first eliminate severity from his Book of God, his inspired record, his infaUible inter preter of Divine secrets — the roll of Nature through her mighty annals — before we wiU hear one word of complaint from him, that in the Christian man's book of God there is the record of severity past or to come. 1 6. And may we not even here see mercy beaming forth? In aU judgment, we beheve that God remem bers mercy ; and that mercy is kept fuU in mind in the judgment of faUen angels and reprobate men of every shade of guilt. God's higher orders of creation have all to walk along the perilous course of free wiU in order to attain each the end of their being. There are rocks, shoals, quicksands, in their way. Each rock has witnessed the wreck of some gaUant ship ; each shoal is strewn with fragments ; each quicksand has swallowed up brave beating hearts. But straightway has risen up the beacon on the headland, the lighthouse on the reef, the deep-toned NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 189 bell floating over the sands and sending its solemn warning across the treacherous waves ; and fleets traverse in safety where now one and now another noble vessel had been dashed in pieces and gone down. We feel satisfied that we are not drawing on imagination for what we say. We know that in tho path which race after race has to tread there is danger of falling. We know that called to go up higher, even to the top of God's mount, they may fall headlong. We are satisfied that in the Divine juris prudence the welfare of the greatest number is its paramount consideration. We see the important bearing of future punishment, as it is revealed in Scripture, on this widely stretching interest of un bounded space, of eternal duration. We see how every shade of severity tells on some vast destiny of the future, from the severity which punishes where the hands had been vainly stretched out all the day long, and the pleading voice had been mocked at, to the severity which punishes where no clear voice had ever spoken, and where, if such a voice had spoken, it would have been heard. To none, no, not the least guilty, is wrong done, when God withdraws from the dim child of savage nature, or the as dim child of the dark circles which lies within the surrounding of our most vaunted civihzation, the life He withdraws from the angel above Him, as from the beast scarce below Him. But to numbers without number may this act, to us bordering upon injustice, but never entering one hair's breadth within its domain, be an act of supremest mercy, love, and wisdom; for, surely, that conduct of God is most wise, most loving, most merciful, which, through a severity which the lost have ceased to feeL has made to 190 THE DURATION AND countless others the ennobhng path of free will to be as safe as to the lower creatures is their ignoble path of necessity. 17. Milton, in his " Paradise Lost," relates what he supposes may have passed in conversation between angels and om- first parents before the faU. The mind of our great poet was traversing here the very line of thought which we have been endeavouring to pursue. He contemplated man, without experience, yet of necessity placed in the post of danger. Eden had its joys, its peace, its progress : it must have its ¦peril. Among the trees yielding fruit, whose seed was in " themselves," which the earth brought forth, there were two trees of a peculiar kind. They grew together, side by side, in the midst of the garden. By the "tree of life," the emblem and pledge of safety, grew the "tree of knowledge of good and evil," the sign of a possible ruin. We know that this must be so ; since man was made higher than the brutes, only a httle lower than the angels. That tree of life, conferring God's immortality, could not be hung with its precious fruit unless the deadly fruit of its neighbour tree hung close by. It is only saying that Eden was to man the land of free wiU, and therefore of a possible immortality and of as possible a death. Under such circumstances, Milton brings before us Raphael relating to Adam the angelic faU. * It was the angelic architect building up before the sailor's eye the beacon on the rock. It was the minis tering sphit telhng one child of free will of the pitfall into which another and yet .brighter child had fallen. It was without avail. As one race feU, so feU another : and down from that day to this, and * Paradise Lost, b. v- NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 191 from this day to the closing scene of earth's history, it has been seen, and wiU be seen, that the pathway of the higher creation is beset with danger. In life restored through Christ ; in death incurred without Christ ; this history of evil, in which the angelic and the human race are so blended and mixed up together, is concluded. 18. It may be part of our office in the coming age to point the moral of the marveUous parable to ears that wiU hear it with more benefit than Adam listened to the tale brought from heaven by Raphael. We can then foUow out to its close what the angel could only begin. We can then intertwine with the history of the higher race the fortunes of the lower, and carry on both to their common termination. We can tell of a race that in its faU had no redemption. We can teU of a redemp tion that visited another fallen race, of its miracles of grace and its final victory ; but also of its utter failure to save in unnumbered instances. We can teU them that not only obstinate guilt has its danger, but negligence also, inexperience, ignorance, des cending as an inheritance from generation to genera tion, and all this is told to races rejoicing in the first flush of that life which beats tumultuously in the new- created. If the sinner's ruin is their safety, and his destruction their safeguard against loss, then even the sinner's ruin was not in vain : even his devious footsteps have not been aimless : and we can find a great and precious truth in a Scripture at which we are some times inclined to stumble, that " The Lord hath made all things for Himself ; yea, even the wicked, for the day of evil." The great stumbling-block, the exist ence of evil, will be a stumbhng-block no more. Evil is seen to exist, not with .Augustine to be per- 192 THE DURATION AND petuated for ever; but to be, under the providence of the Great Sovereign and loving Father, its own eternal destruction. 19. And this conclusion of the matter will exhibit to us the limits of that free-will into whose bounds we have ventured with hesitating step to enter. We do not think we have done so without a guide more trust worthy than led VirgU through the realms of the shades or guided Dante through the regions of the lost and the saved. The free creature can defeat divine goodness for itself, but no further. His own good he may refuse, his own evil he may choose ; and yet there may be designs in the great scheme of Divine Providence which in so doing he has unconsciously or unwiUingly worked out. Such we know to be the case here. God maketh the "wrath of man," his sin, its end, "to praise Him." The sinner has, no doubt, defeated God's goodness for himself- — thrust back the proffered hand that was full of blessing — like the sullen chUd retired into the darkness from the cheerful room where the fire blazed brightly, and brothers and sisters played and laughed ; but he saw not a good glorious end which God brought about by this very conduct. Other worlds hear of us. Earth's drama — its gladness and its sadness, its sin and its holiness, its life and its death, its redemption embraced and rejected — is not an unconnected episode of a great poem, but is a mighty transaction of time, in which all worlds and all beings take a share — God, and angels, and men; and which is to bear with a mighty bearing upon the ages of the future. So it is repre sented in Scripture. The puny sceptic, blear-eyed and short-sighted, may sneer at the thought of the trouble which our world is said to have occasioned in NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 193 the councils of heaven. Not so they who stand near the throne. Angels desire to look into these things: the conversion of a sinner is joy throughout their ranks. Here, in this remotest sphere, things are doing and will be done which will tell on intelligences whose names and abodes will never reach our know ledge here. That fall of angels and men which free will made possible — that death among angels and men which the power of choice effected — may, work ing only by moral means, make in the gloiious realms of freedom another fall and another death morally impossible. The loss of life to some, possible from their place in creation, just in the dealings of God's jurisprudence, may be pure xuimitigated mercy to the greater number. The permission of evil — of evil leading to one sad result in death — may issue in another result, the eternal and undisturbed establishment of good. [18] 194 THE DURATION AND CHAPTER XI. EXAMINATION OF PARTICULAR TEXTS. I N our survey of Scripture heretofore, we were unable to give to some individua texts that attention which from their prom inent place in this controversy they deserve. We now proceed to do so. The texts we refer "to are texts which are most commonly and most boldly advanced by Augustinian theorists in proof of their view. We think a fair and candid examination of them will show that instead of supporting they condemn their view. 2. We wfll first consider Mark ix. 44. Speaking here of hell, and of those who wiU be consigned to hell, our Lord most solemnly, and with threefold repetition, pronounces their doom — "Then- worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." It is on this text that Augustine, in his " City of God," mainly relies for his view, * and this is perhaps the text of aU others which is most boldly put forward as establish ing it. Instead of supporting, however, it contradicts it plainly. This solemn declaration of Christ is not * City of God, xxi. 9. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 195 an original saying of His, but is quoted word for word from Isaiah lxvi. 24. We will give it with its context. Speaking of the redeemed of the earth, Isaiah says, " They shaU go forth, and look upon the carcases of of the men that have transgressed against Me ; for their worm shall not die, neither shaU their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto aU flesh." A moment's glance shows us that both the worrn and the fire are alike external to and distinct from the subject on which they prey ; and also that what both prey upon are not the living but the dead. ¦"The allusion," says Bengel, "is to dead bodies which are the food of the worm and the funeral pile." Isaiah frequently uses the image of " the worm ; " but it is always in connection with death. What he means in h. 8 : " The moth shaU eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them hke wool," is what he means when he speaks in lxvi. 24, of the fire and the worm consuming the carcases. This fearful image conveys the idea, not of life, but of its opposite, death, and of hell, as the cleanser of God's world by the utter and eternal destruction of the wicked. These most solemn words of the prophet, so solemnly en dorsed by Christ, assert a state of eternal death and destruction, not one of eternal life in heU, as the destiny of transgressors in the world to come. They are fatal alike to the theories of Augustine and Origen. 3. Isaiah xxxih. 14 : " Who amongusshaU dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shaU dweU,with everlasting burnings? " is very often brought forward in proof of the eternity of future misery. Many have doubted whether this refers to future punishment at aU. For our part we are satisfied to suppose that it does. If 196 THE DURATION AND it does, it affords very valuable proof that the eternity which it affirms of future punishment does not refer to any eternity of hfe in misery ; but to the eternal extinction of Ufe, the irrevocable loss which the wicked will bring upon themselves. This is seen from the- context of the passage. They who are spoken of in the 14th verse are the people of the 12th verse, who "shall be as the burning of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire." The " everlasting- burnings," then, are burnings whose effects are endured throughout eternitg. They have cut off a life which shall never be restored again. They are God's solemn warn ings, repeated throughout Scripture, that Origen's; theory of a restoration at some future period fromi hell is a false and delusive dream. 4. Poole's comment on this passage ought to be a very instructive one. It shows us, on the testimony of an opponent, that the interpretation we put on such phrases as " everlasting burnings," " unquench able fire," etc., viz., as signifying a destruction and death from which there is no recovery, is readily ac cepted by Augustinian theorists as a proper and natural interpretation. Poole thus paraphrases this verse: " How shaU we be able to abide the presence, and endure, or avoid the wrath of that God who is a con suming fire ; who is now about to destroy us utterly by the Assyrians, and will afterwards burn us with un quenchable fire." Here Poole supposes the "everlasting- burnings" of the verse to mean both the destruc tion inflicted by the Assyrians in this life, and that which God will inflict on sinners hereafter; or, in other words, he tells us that " everlasting burnings" need not suppose everlasting life in miseiy ; but that they find a suitable sense in the utter cutting off NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 197 from hfe which man inflicts upon his fellow man here. We are not, therefore, even in the judgment of own opponents, putting any forced or unnatural meaning upon Scripture, when we put this very sense upon such phrases whereever we find them : Poole puts upon them two senses, one of which is as different from the •other as it is possible to be. 5. We now come to the famous passages in the book of Revelation. Driven hopelessly from the plainer parts of Scripture, the advocates of eternal hfe and misery in hell think that they have in this mysterious and highly-wrought figurative book at least two passages which authorise them to change numberless passages in the rest of Scripture, and some even in the book of Revelation itself, from their plain and obvious meaning to one that is forced, unnatural, and often false to all the laws of the inteipretation of language. We would suppose that the natural way would be to interpret by the already-gathered sense of the great body of the earlier Scriptures one or two difficult and figurative passages in this, probably, the last-written of the books of Scripture. But this is not the way with our opponents. They take a text •or two in the very end of the Bible, and by them interpret a thousand passages written long before. No matter what may be the apparent meaning of these earlier and far more numerous passages, they must aU be made to square with the text from Revelation ! The first written, the more numerous, and the plainer Scriptures, must be interpreted by one or two last-written and figurative passages! Unless this extraordinary canon of interpretation is rigidly enforced, the Augustinian heU must be aban doned as a myth. 198 THE DURATION AND 6. The passages in question are these. Of the worshippers of the beast, we are told in the former of them, that " They shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever : and they have no rest day nor night : " in the latter passage we are told that " The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever'' 7. We wiU not dweU upon the fact that it is a veiy disputed question even among Augustinian theorists, whether the former of these passages refers at all to future punishment. Elliott has no hesitation in refer ring Rev. xiv. 10, 11, together with the kindred passage in Rev. xix. 3, to a temporal judgment, viz., the swallowing up by volcanic fire of the territory of Rome in Italy. * We only refer to this to show our readers how readily Augustinian theorists admit that our interpretation of such passages is a natural and proper one. We are not insisting that Elliott is correct, or otherwise, in his application. We will here take the passages in their usual application, as in dicating God's judgments hereafter upon fallen spirits and wicked men. For our part we are persuaded of the perfect propriety of applying the very same terms to judgments inflicted in this world and the next, because those judgments are essentially the same in their character. All through the sacred wiitings judgments here and hereafter are described by the same expressions, t It is for those who sup- * Horse. Apoc, iv. 212 ; iii. 443 ; iv. 5. t Luke xiii. 3 ; 1 Cor. x. 9-11. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 199 pose these judgments to be essentially different in character to explain how they are properly repre sented by identity of phrase. 8. The sense we would put upon the passages in Revelation is, that they convey in highly-wrought figures suitable to the character of the entire book, only the old idea which we have already gathered from the rest of Scripture, viz., that the punishment of aU consigned to hell wiU be of an eternal nature, and that its fearful effect — the plunging of its sub jects into death and destruction — will ever remain visible to the redeemed and angelic worlds. We wUl not try to estabhsh this sense by examining the force of each word. We deny that language so highly- figurative is capable of any such dialectical analysis, or that sueh is the manner in which we ordinarily inter pret language of the kind. We will rather turn to similar language elsewhere and show that the interpre tation put upon it even by our opponents both justifies and demands the interpretation we put on the passage from Revelation. 9. We will first turn to a passage in Isaiah from which there can be httle doubt that the imageiy of Revelation is borrowed. Dean Afford calls it its " fountain head." * Isaiah is describing the judgments brought by God upon the land of Idumea. He says : " The land thereof shall become burning pitch : it shall not be quenched day nor night ; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever'' Here, as in Revelation, we have the smoke of God's judgments described as going up for ever. But wiU the advocates of Augustine's hell tell us that if we went to Idumea we should see people who had been suffering pain from some period sub- Alford, on Rev. xiv. 11. 200 THE DURATION AND sequent to Isaiah's prophecy to the present time? The poetical figure of a perpetual furnace of burning pitch and ever-ascending smoke conveys the idea of perpetual desolations, but not at all of endless life in pain. The present condition of Edom is the explana tion of the poetic figure : its cities have fallen into ruin: the whole land is a desert. * Here is Poole's comment on the text : " It sJiall be irrecoverably ruined, and shall remain as a spectacle of God's vengeance to all succeeding ages." The "burning pitch," the "un quenchable fire," the " smoke ascending for ever," is reduced to this sober hue in the language of prose. As Poole, the Augustinian, interprets Isaiah, so do we interpret those passages in Revelation which are bor rowed from Isaiah. We interpret Scripture by its own analogy. 10. We next turn to Jude, 7v: "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Here is another passage of Scripture, of equaUy strong language and very similar terms to those found in Revelation. In what does the suffering of the Sodomites here spoken of consist ? It certainly does not in the first place refer to any thing they suffer, or may be supposed to suffer, in Hades ; for the condition of the Sodomites in Hades is never alluded to in Scripture, and is therefore no warning example set before man to learn from. It does not, in the second place, refer to any suffering of theirs in hell; for hell is to them, as to all sinners, a future thing; whereas what the text speaks of is something which they were suffering when Jude * Smith's Dictionary, art. Edom. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 201 wrote, and had suffered before he wrote, and which had long been a plain and palpable warning to the ungodly of this earth. Not referring to these, it is very evident what it does refer to. It means that punishment, open to human sight, which began when the fire from heaven descended on the guilty cities, and which has remained in force through all the succeeding generations down to our own time, and wiU continue while the earth remains. It is their over throw in the days of Lot, and their abiding condition ever since, which are here placed before the ungodly as an example of what hereafter awaits them if they imitate Sodom. This view is not first presented by Jude. It is frequently met with in the older Scrip tures, and we are therefore guided by Scripture itself in putting this interpretation upon it. * Many indeed of the ablest of our opponents, led by the natural force of the passage, and apparently unaware of the force of their own admission, put on it the same interpretation that we • do. They say that the fire which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah was an eternal one, " because it was eternal in its effects'' Neither of the two cities ever was, nor ever will be, built, t We could only wish that they who give so just an inteipretation of the " eternal fire " of Sodom would give the same explanation of the eternal fire of hell. Let both be eternal, as being " eternal in their effects." 11. What then, has been and is the state of Sodom ? In the days of Abraham, four rich and populous cities Nourished in the plain of Jordan. On a sudden, fire descended from heaven, and, after a period of terror, * Isaiah i. 9 ; xiii. 19 ; Jer. xlix. 18 ; 1. 40 ; 2 Pet. ii. 6. t J. Grant, Religious Tendencies, i. 270. 202 THE DURATION AND regrets, and pain, the inhabitants were deprived of life. They and their works were burnt up ; and this ruined, lifeless, hopeless condition has remained to the present time. " The smell of the fire is stiU over the land," says Tertulhan. The whole transaction conveys the idea of conscious pain for a time, followed by ruin and death for ever. This is, according to Scripture, to "suffer the vengeance of eternal fire." 12. We have then as our first use of the passage of Jude a scriptural guide to the inteipretation of all simUar language, and in especial of those passages in Revelation which we have been considering. " The smoke of torment ascending up for ever," and the being " tormented for ever," applied to the subjects of future punishment, are phrases not more indicative of endless life and pain in heU than is the phrase " suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," applied to the punishment of the Sodomites, indicative of then- having lived in pain from Abraham's day to ours. Even that word " to torment," fiao-avl£(o, on which so much stress is laid, does not cany out the require ments of our opponents. It is as applicable to things without life as to living things. It is the same Greek verb which describes the " tossing " of the boat in Matt. xiv. 24 ; and the " torment " of the lost in Revelation. It is used, according to Schleusner, not only for actual pain inflicted, but for death produced by such pain. In this sense it is peculiarly applicable to future punishment, and carries out the idea, com mon to the kindred passages we have considered, of pain severe and terrible for a time followed by the destruction of life. 13. But this passage from Jude serves another NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 203 puipose of equal value in this controversy. It lays- down the great principle that the judgments of Gocl upon individuals or nations, in destroying them here for sin, is the pattern and example of that destruction which He ivill inflict on them hereafter for sin. If Ave had indeed but this one passage, we might perhaps hesitate to draw so important a conclusion from it ; but it is the teaching of many other Scriptures. It is our Lord's teaching where, speaking- of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, and of the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, he adds the warning : " Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," i.e. perish in the same way. And St. Paul enters largely into the history of the sins of and judgments upon Israel in the wilderness, in order to teU us that those very things which happened to them are examples of what will happen to us hereafter if we imitate them in trans gression. * And this accounts for a large portion of Scripture which would otherwise be unintelligible, but which on this principle is intelligible and plain ; namely, the inextricable blending together of judg ments, some of which appear to refer to this hfe and some to the next, wlnle all are spoken of in similar language. On our theory, this is quite natural and exphcable. The slaying of the Gahleans by Pilate essentially resembles the death of the wicked in heU. So does the falling of the three and twenty thousand in the wilderness, and the destruction of others by the bite of the seipent, resemble the destruction of the sinner hereafter. The circumstances of the future doom wiU of course vary from those "examples," .just as they vary from one another ; but- * Luke xiii. 1-5 ; 1 Cor. x. 8-11. ¦204 THE DURATION AND in aU its issues it will be identical, viz., the destruc tion of life. How these are " examples " of the doom of sinners on the Augustinian hypothesis we leave it -to Augustinian advocates to settle. How the loss of existence resembles endless existence, and falling resembles never falling, and being destroyed resem bles never being destroyed, is for our opponents to justify on some peculiar theoiy of Augustinian inter pretation wliich would enable us to put on every -word of Scripture the exactly opposite sense to that which it bore in ordinary language. 14. Before concluding this chapter, it will be weU ¦to say a few words on the term " unquenchable fire," so often apphed to the fire of heU. It is a most signi ficant phrase, and deserves attention ; but it does not signify what the Augustinian theorist imposes upon it as its meaning. It signifies the veiy reverse. It is a word in common use now, and was a word in common use both hi Scripture and profane writings. If the reader will look into a dictionary he will find that an unquenchable fire is a fire which cannot be extinguished until it has consumed all on which it preyed and it then goes out of itself for want of fuel. The classical scholar wfll remember the famous pas sage of Homer where the Trojans hurl " unquenchable fire " upon the Grecian ships. Eusebius calls the fire which had been kindled around a martyr's body and burned on tiU it consumed him to ashes an " un quenchable fire." Unquenchable fires constantly break out among us; but none of them go on burning for ever. Their simple meaning is that they do not go out and cannot be put out till they have -thoroughly done their work of destruction. It is in -this very way that the term is constantly used in NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 205- Scripture itself. When God in one place declares that His anger would be poured out upon man and upon beast, and upon the fruit of the ground, and "shall burn, and shal not be quenched," and in another that He will "kindle a fire in the gates of Jeru salem, and it shall not be quenched," He means that His wrath was to continue till man and beast were destroyed, and the fire was to continue till the gates of Jerusalem were consumed. * Then wrath ceased, because it had fuUy spent its force; and the fire went out, because it had eaten up all on which it could prey. So we are to understand that " unquenchable fire" which is the terrible fate of the lost. Their fire is never quenched. It preys upon them with ruth less force. No cries on the part of the damned arrest it : no prayers ascend from the redeemed for the sin which they know to be unto eternal death. No feel ings of pity on God's part interfere to check its course. It bums on, consuming, preying, reducing,. until it has consumed and burnt aU. When it has spent its force, it dies out for want of food, leaving- behind it the endless sign of the destruction which it- has brought on fallen archangel, and angel, and man. This is the second death. But we can bear to look upon it because it is death. We are not looking upon a picture which would overturn reason and banish. peace from aU who beheld it. Life has left the realms- of the lost. The reprobate felt, but do not continue to feel, the consuming flames. These prey upon the dead until dust and ashes cover the floor of the furnace of heU. § * Homer, Iliad, xvi. 123, 194 ; i. 599 ; Eusebius, Eccles. History, vi. 41 ; Scripture Revelotions of a Future State, 7th ed., 234 ; Jer. vii. 20 ; xvii. 27 ; Ezek. xx. 47, 48 ; Eccleus xxviii. 23. t Mal. iv. 3. 506 THE DURATION AND 15. In Origen's view of the future, a view far more widely spread than many suspect, we see the real ¦cause of the emphatic, repeated, awful declarations ¦of the eternity of future punishment. That view, so pleasing to human nature, so cherished in the sinful heart, was the view against which the Spirit of God laid down in Scripture the warnings of an everlasting destruction and an unquenchable fire. Even in the face of these Scriptures, men are found who dare to -teach that there wiU be a restoration from heU. Far more than Augustine's theory does the view here advocated root out this false delusive hope. So long as men beheve that hfe is not extinguished in heU, so long they will nourish hope. Milton pictures such a hope as visiting in hell the hearts even of the faUen angels — " Suppose God should relent, And publish grace to all! " Impossible indeed it is to shut out such thoughts from the mind on the theory of the immortahty of the lost. Men wiU cherish the idea that somewhere down through the ages, when the groans of hell have been beating sadly, ceaselessly, at the gates of heaven, the message of mercy and deliverance may be sent down, even as He used to send it of old to Israel, groaning beneath the bondage of Egypt, Phihstia, and Canaan. -" We are the clay, and Thou our potter ; and we are all the work of Thy hand," would — men will think when they think what God is — rise up from hell to the throne a plea of power some time in that eternal age during all of which life must last. Death extir pates aU such hopes. " Corruption has a hope of a kind of removal, but death has everlasting ruin." * * Apostolical Fathers, Pastor of Hermas, Tim. vi., c. ii. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 207 CHAPTER XII. DISTINCTIONS IN FUTURE PUNISHMENT. |HILE we see one universal result, death, to arise from future punishment, we are also told in Scripture of varying circum stances attendant on it, which are necessary to be considered, in order to enable us to form an adequate conception of its nature and variety. 2. HeU is not to aU a sudden cessation of existence. There is life in that fearful prison, though it continues not for ever. This is shown by those numerous texts which speak of weeping and wailing, of regrets and anguish, on the part of the damned. As here hfe goes before death, and as here regrets and pains precede and produce death; so we find it to be, on the part of many, at least, in the scene of future doom. The children of the kingdom, cast into its outer darkness, gnash their teeth when they think of- those who have come from east and west, and enjoy what they have lost. The unworthy guest at the marriage feast of Christ is in despair that he is not suffered to continue there. The despisers of the offers of redemption, be they Jews or Gentiles, behold their astounding foUy, 208 THE DURATION AND and marvel at its greatness. The unfaithful servant has time to bewail his want of fidelity, and the hypocrite to see that the part he has chosen is a bitter and a hard one, ere all— sooner or later — sink into that state where wonder and remorse and pain and shame are luUed in the unconscious sleep of the second death.* 3. And here we must remark that all the warnings of " weeping and gnashing of teeth " are addressed to the rejecters of proffered grace. Not one of them is addressed to such'as the men of Sodom and Gomorrha, Nineveh and Babylon were in old times; to such as the men of Cabul and Bokhara, Teheran and Timbuctoo are at the present day. The same holds good, we beheve, of every especial warning- found in Scripture. 4. Now it is doubtless in these circumstances that we find room for that great distinction in guilt and consequent punishment which Scripture repeatedly insists on. Its cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida ; its children of the kingdom ; its refusers of an apostle's message ; its hypocrites trading on a false profession ; its men aware of their Master's wiU ; are held up as exceeding in guilt the ignorant offender, the undesign- ing sinner, the rejecter of an unauthenticated mes senger, the uncovenanted transgressor, the men of Tyre and Sidon. f For the former are the many stripes: for the latter the few. Our theoiy affords ample room for that great distinction in punishment winch God will hereafter make. 5. The circumstances of the first death show us plainly how this can be. This world is a world of * Matt. viii. 12 ; xxii. 13 ; xxiv. 51 ; Luke xiii. 48 ; Acts xiii. 41. t Matt xi. 22 ; viii. 12 ; x. 15 ; Luke xx. 47 ; xii. 48 ; John ix. 41. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 209 death. AU here are doomed to die, and all suffer death. In this there is no distinction. But in the circumstances of dying there is infinite variety. One man fives close upon a thousand years ere he yields to death : to another the first breath he breathes in the world is his last. Between Methusaleh and the infant of a moment's life hes every variety of duration. Again, one dies as though he were going to rest in sleep ; another is racked with pains, year after year, by day and by night, wliich make him curse the weary life that is so hardly parted from. Between these deaths hes every variety of comparative un consciousness, uneasiness, weariness and anguish. A like distinction we are positively told wiU exist in the second death, and our theory affords for it perfect scope. To some, this death may be an instantaneous. process, a momentary transition from one state to- another, hke the infant who opens his eyes on this. world and then closes them for ever. Here may be the amount of conscious pain for the myriads upon myriads of young and old, who, in heathen and even in Christian countries, from the inevitable moral dark ness with which their circumstances had surrounded them, scarce knew wrong from right. To others, the process of the second death may be more or less lengthened, until we arrive at the case of the greatest human offenders, or that more aggravated one of the angels who feU from heaven and drew weaker men along with them in their faU. Without presuming to say that such must be, or wiU be, the manner of God's dealing, we yet see how by our theory such a result may be arrived at : how, while stripes many and sore fall on some, on others they may fall so few and so hght as scarcely to be felt at all. [14] 210 THE DURATION AND 6. It has doubtless been remarked from several expressions of ours that we hold that the ultimate fate of devils will be the same as that of the repro bate. We have no doubt that such is the case, and all Scripture tends to that end. They share in that judgment which awaits the ungodly. The everlasting fire which consumes the wicked is that which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. They themselves look forward to their being destroyed in hell. The pains which they dread are those which the ungodly will endure, and which result in death. The final extinction of evil to which God has pledged Himself in His Word compels us to hold then destruc tion. * Nor can one single reason be advanced why God should not do this. And we have thus in Scripture a far more satisfactory and reasonable view of the state of final retribution than is afforded us by popular theology or poetic imagination. Devils are not the tyrants of heU. Devils do not exercise there an endless power over the victims of their fraud. This were poor retributive justice on God's part. They are only punished in hell with a severity proportioned to their guilt! With fearful reason they look forward to it, not as a scene of fearful triumph, but of unmitigated woe. They see, in all probability, the world whom they had seduced from God — the greater part of it speedily, all of it at one time or other — reduced to the original unfeeling elements of their being, whfle their stronger nature retains that vigorous life which makes it but the more susceptible of pain. The last being that retains the misery of existence may be that arch-fiend, Satan, the leader in heaven's rebellion, the prime mover in earth's falling * 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude, 6 ; Matt. xxv. 41 ; Mark i. 24 ; Luke iv. 34. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 211 away. When the last race of man has long ceased to feel; when his fellow angels have, one by one, been reduced to the state of death ; he may still survive, longing for the time when he too shall lay aside a life which is only one of pain. 7. The view here advocated derives powerful confirmation from its being in complete analogy with nature, i.e. with God's ordinary working. While those who seek God find Him, and in finding Him find hfe, and through His gracious plan of redemption are advanced in place and glory, we also find, with regard to others, hves innumerable lost, and in the case of angels an entire race blotted out of life. God and nature are not here at strife. * We find in nature that death and destruction are God's usual agents in removing from their place things animate and inanimate as soon as they cease to discharge the part for which they were intended. Throughout the wide domain of nature the law of death is in cease less operation. Of fifty seeds but one may bear fruit. Of the lower animals, death after life is the universal law. Whole races of living things have long ceased to exist. " From scarped cliff and quarried stone, She cries, a thousand lives are gone." In our view, God does but apply to higher races for their sin that which He has applied to lower races who knew no sin, The grand distinction between them and us is, that we may see and know God who is life and the source of aU human life. If we turn from Him, we turn from life. We deny and renounce our real distinction, and are treated as that wliich we have made ourselves to become. Mere life is not * Tennyson, In Memoriam, liv. 212 THE DURATION AND precious in God's sight. If He scatters it with a prodigal hand, He withdraws it with a hand that is- just as free. In the myriads of human beings reduced in hell to death, in the extinction of the faUen angels, we do but find a particular apphcation of a great natural law. Lower creatures know not God, and fade away out of life. Higher intelligences knew Him, turned from Him, made themselves like beasts, and like beasts are treated. HeU wiU add its- fossU remains to those of the quarries of the earth. NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 213 CHAPTER XIII. THEORIES OF PUNISHMENT AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. j HE question of future punishment cannot be considered at aU adequately without giving marked attention to its influence on the •question of missions to the heathen — the duty and the privilege of the Christian Church. The religious world is much indebted for having its attention drawn to this feature of the question by the Rev. Edward White, in a very able paper on "Missionary Theology." * We will endeavour to follow out the line of reflection which he has initiated. 2. It strikes us almost immediately that the natural influence of the general acceptance of the theory of Origen would be to put a total stop to missionary effort as needless and positively injurious to those whom it was meant to benefit. The guilt of the heathen for sins here committed we are taught in Scripture to be smaU, and their punishment to be proportionably light. There appears therefore to be httle occasion to send the Gospel to them for the purpose of saving them from suffering hereafter. * Tlie Rainbow, July, 1869. 2J.4 THE DURATION AND That, at the worst, will be hght; while their rejection of the Gospel offers would expose them to many stripes. 3. Nor can it be said by the Universalist that the future and eternal bliss of a single one of the heathen depends hi the remotest degree on his here hearing and accepting the Gospel of Chiist. His immortahty is, with the Universalist as with the Augustinian, already secure. He is one of a deathless race. His soul is immortal : his body will be raised incorruptible at the resurrection. If he has not in this life heard the Gospel of Christ he will hear it in the intermediate state. He will hear it then, apparently, under far more favourable circumstances than he could possibly hear it here. It will not be preached to him by men themselves stained by sin and full of imperfection, but by men' from whom all the stains of sm shaU have been purged away. There wiU not then be the thousand difficulties of one kind or other which here so effectually hinder the progress and the force of truth. In that coming age, of which the Universalist dreams, it is difficult to see how a single being could hesitate for a moment to embrace that Gospel of Christ which is to bring him from the realms of pain to the realms of joy. We see not any imaginable motive with the Universalist to send Christ's Gospel to the heathen, save only his Master's command, which to him comes enforced by no apparent reasons which make it urgent and pressing. We enquire whether Universalism has ever afforded a zealous missionary ta heathen lands. If it has, we think he must be a man of different passions from those of other men. If Universalism had been the creed of Christ and His- apostles, we do not beheve that the command " Go, NATURE. OF FUTURE PJTNJSHMENT. 215 teach all nations," would either Tiave been uttered or obeyed. The deadening, dispiriting influence of this theory on Christian missions is in itself enough to overthrow it. 4. The objection wliich hes in this respect against the theory of Origen, does not, we fuUy concede, lie against that of Augustine. The advocates of the latter have, no doubt, a great, powerful, overwhelming, motive to obey their Master's command and send the Gespel to the heathen. But their theory contains within itself an element fatal to its success. They offer the Gospel of salvation mixed up with a theory that necessitates and almost justifies its rejection. They present the God of justice, love, and mercy, in a hght which makes Him appear devoid of every one of these qualities. And they themselves by their line of argument upon this question virtually confess that they do so. 5. For it will be remarked by those conversant with this controversy that whenever Augustinian advocates come forward with the smaUest show of argument in defence of the justice of their theory of eternal agony, they sedulously confine their argument to the case of those who have sinned against light and grace. One would imagine from their writings that there were no men in the world who had not had the offers of mercy made to them over and over again, and pressed upon them with all the earnestness of love, as Chiist Him self, with His heart of love and His words of earnest ness, pressed it upon the men of his generation. 6. Bunyan, in his " Visions of Hell, pictures the lamentations of a lost soul : " I know I cannot, must not die; but live a dying life, worse than ten thousand deaths; and yet I might once have helped aU this, 216 THE DURATION AND and would not. 0, that is the gnawing worm that never dies! I might have once been happy; salvation once was offered me, and I refused it : had it been but once, yet to refuse it had been a foUy not to be forgiven ; but it was offered me a thousand times, and yet (wretch that I was) I still as oft refused it." And such is the general tone of Augustinian theorists. They speak, as the cause of endless misery, of sinners, amid God's wondrous long suffering and pleading with them, still persisting obstinately in rebellion. * 7. These men ignore the vast majority of mankind. They forget that in the times before Christ revelation was confined to a petty race in a corner of Syria. They forget that in the times since Christ salvation has not been offered to or heard of by one in one hundred of mankind. Now there can be no doubt that the end of the ungodly, be they heathen, Jew, or Christian, is the very same. It is death, destruction, perishing. In the circumstances attendant on this there wiU be a marked distinction, but the end of all wiU be the same. If death then be, as many teU us, eternal miseiy, they represent eternal miseiy as in flicted upon countless myriads who never heard the Gospel of Christ, who never heard the very name of that God against whom they ignorantly sinned. With such a creed, how are they to present the God and Father of Jesus Christ to the heathen mind? 8. A Christian missionary proceeds to India to preach there the Gospel of Chiist. It is the old story of Paul at Athens, disputing with Jews and devout persons and all comers, be they philosophers or illiterate men. At Lucknow, or Delhi, or Benares, * Bunyan, Visions of Hell; Robert Baxter, God's Purpose in Judgment, 4. , NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 217 •our modem missionary meets the Brahmin. He addresses him as Paul addressed the Epicureans and Stoics of Athens: "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." Brahmin : " What is your message to us ? " Missionary : " Life from the dead to aU who believe in and obey Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father." B. : "That sounds well. What is this life you offer in Christ ? what is this death from which you promise deUverance ? " M. : " The life I offer you in my Master's name is spiritual life — a new heart, loving God, and aU that is good, and consequent happiness for ever. The death from which Christ will deliver you is spiritual death, i.e. moral poUution, its consequent misery, and the eternal anguish and suffering which God wiU inflict on aU who beheve not the Gospel of His Son Jesus -Christ." B. : " When and where wiU your God inflict this death upon unbelievers? " M. : " It is already begun through the sinner's own sin ; but God has prepared a place where He wiU •complete what is here only begun. That fearful place is heU, where all unbelievers shall suffer throughout an eternal existence pain inflicted for their 'sin and unbehef." B. : " You say, 'for their unbelief Then this hell of yours can be only for those who reject the Gospel •of Christ." M. : " No. Hell is for aU your fathers of the past times ; at least for aU of them who sinned against