The Destiny of the Soul Part 59

22 Lord, Christ in Hades.

blasphemy any further go? How much more reasonable, more moral and Christ like, to say, with one of the best authors of our time,

"What h.e.l.l may be I know not: this I know: I cannot lose the presence of the Lord: One arm humility takes hold upon His dear Humanity; the other love Clasps his Divinity: so, where I go He goes; and better fire wall'd h.e.l.l with him Than golden gated Paradise without."

The irreconcilableness of the common doctrine of endless misery with any worthy idea of G.o.d is made clear by a process of reasoning whose premises are as undeniable as its logic is irrefragable and its conclusion consolatory. G.o.d is infinite justice and goodness. His purpose in the creation, therefore, must be the diffusion and triumph of holiness and blessedness. G.o.d is infinite wisdom and power. His design, therefore, must be fulfilled. Nothing can avail to thwart the ultimate realization of all his intentions. The rule of his omnipotent love pervades infinitude and eternity as a shining leash of law whereby he holds every child of his creation in ultimate connection with his throne, and will sooner or later bring even the worst soul to a returning curve from the career of its wildest orbit. In the realm and under the reign of a paternal and omnipotent G.o.d every being must be salvable. Remorse itself is a recoil which may fling the penitent into the lap of forgiving love. Any different thought appears narrow, cruel, heathen. The blackest fiend that glooms the midnight air of h.e.l.l, bleached through the merciful purgation of sorrow and loyalty, may become a white angel and be drawn into heaven.

Lavater writes of himself, and the same is true of many a good man, "I embraced in my heart all that is called man, past, present, and future times and nations, the dead, the d.a.m.ned, even Satan. I presented them all to G.o.d with the warmest wishes that he would have mercy upon all." This is the true spirit of a good man.

And is man better than his Maker? We will answer that question, and leave this head of the discussion, by presenting an Oriental apologue.

G.o.d once sat on his inconceivable throne, and far around him, rank after rank, angels and archangels, seraphim and cherubim, resting on their silver wings and lifting their dazzling brows, rose and swelled, with the splendors of an illimitable sea of immortal beings, gleaming and fluctuating to the remotest borders of the universe. The anthem of their praise shook the pillars of the creation, and filled the vault of heaven with a pulsing flood of harmony. When, as they closed their hymn, stole up, faint heard, as from some most distant region of all s.p.a.ce, in dim accents humbly rising, a responsive "Amen." G.o.d asked Gabriel, "Whence comes that Amen?" The hierarchic peer replied, "It rises from the d.a.m.ned in h.e.l.l." G.o.d took, from where it hung above his seat, the key that unlocks the forty thousand doors of h.e.l.l, and, giving it to Gabriel, bade him go release them. On wings of light sped the enraptured messenger, rescued the millions of the lost, and, just as they were, covered all over with the traces of their sin, filth, and woe, brought them straight up into the midst of heaven.

Instantly they were transformed, clothed in robes of glory, and placed next to the throne; and henceforth, for evermore, the dearest strain to G.o.d's ear, of all the celestial music, was that borne by the choir his grace had ransomed from h.e.l.l. And, because there is no envy or other selfishness in heaven, this promotion sent but new thrills of delight and grat.i.tude through the heights and depths of angelic life.

We come now to the last cla.s.s of reasons for disbelieving the dogma of eternal d.a.m.nation, namely, those furnished by the principles of human nature and the truths of human experience. The doctrine, as we think can be clearly shown, is literally incredible to the human mind and literally intolerable to the human heart. In the first place, it is, viewed in the abstract, absolutely incredible because it is inconceivable: no man can possibly grasp and appreciate the idea. The nearest approximation to it ever made perhaps is in De Quincey's gorgeous elaboration of the famous Hindu myth of an enormous rock finally worn away by the brushing of a gauze veil; and that is really no approximation at all, since an incommensurable chasm always separates the finite and the infinite. John Foster says, "It is infinitely beyond the highest archangel's faculty to apprehend a thousandth part of the horror of the doom to eternal d.a.m.nation." The Buddhists, who believe that the severest sentence pa.s.sed on the worst sinner will be brought to an end and his redemption be attained, use the following ill.u.s.tration of the staggering periods that will first elapse. A small yoke is thrown into the ocean and borne about in every direction by the various winds. Once in a hundred thousand years a blind tortoise rises to the surface of the water. Will the time ever come when that tortoise shall so rise up that its neck shall enter the hole of the yoke? It may, but the time required cannot be told; and it is equally difficult for the unwise man, who has entered one of the great h.e.l.ls, to obtain deliverance.

There is a remarkable specimen of the attempt to set forth the idea of endless misery, by Suso, a mystic preacher who flourished several centuries ago. It runs thus. "O eternity, what art thou?

Oh, end without end! O father, and mother, and all whom we love!

May G.o.d be merciful unto you for evermore! for we shall see you no more to love you; we must be separated forever! O separation, everlasting separation, how painful art thou! Oh, the wringing of hands! Oh, sighing, weeping, and sobbing, unceasing howling and lamenting, and yet never to be pardoned! Give us a millstone, says the d.a.m.ned, as large as the whole earth, and so wide in circ.u.mference as to touch the sky all around, and let a little bird come in a hundred thousand years, and pick off a small particle of the stone, not larger than the tenth part of a grain of millet, and after another hundred thousand years let him come again, so that in ten hundred thousand years he would pick off as much as a grain of millet, we wretched sinners would desire nothing but that thus the stone might have an end, and thus our pains also; yet even that cannot be."23 But, after all the struggles of reason and all the ill.u.s.trations of laboring imagination, the meaning of the phrase "eternal suffering in h.e.l.l"

remains remote, dim, unrealized, an abstraction in words. If we could adequately apprehend it, if its full significance should burst upon us, as sometimes in fearful dreams the s.p.a.celess, timeless, phantasmal, reeling sense of

23 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 210.

the infinite seems to be threatening to break into the brain, an annihilating shudder would seize and destroy the soul.

We say, therefore, that the doctrine of the eternity of future punishment is not believed as an intellectually conceived truth, because that is a metaphysical impossibility. But more: we affirm, in spite of the general belief in it publicly professed, that it is actually held by hardly any one as a practical vivid belief even within the limits wherein, as an intellectual conception, it is possible. When intellect and imagination do not fail, heart and conscience do, with sickened faintness and convulsive protest. In his direful poem on the Last Day, Young makes one of the condemned vainly beg of G.o.d to grant "This one, this slender, almost no, request: When I have wept a thousand lives away, When torment is grown weary of its prey, When I have raved of anguish'd years in fire Ten thousand thousands, let me then expire."

Such a thought, when confronted with any generous holy sentiment or with any worthy conception of the Divine character, is practically incredible. The men all around us in whose Church creed such a doctrine is written down do not truly believe it.

"They delude themselves," as Martineau well says, "with the mere fancy and image of a belief. The death of a friend who departs from life in heresy affects them in the same way as the loss of another whose creed was unimpeachable: while the theoretic difference is infinite, the practical is virtually nothing." Who that had a child, parent, wife, brother, or other precious friend, condemned to be roasted to death by a slow fire, would not be frantic with agony? But there are in the world literally millions on millions, some of whose nearest and dearest ones have died under circ.u.mstances which, by their professed creeds, can leave no doubt that they must roast in the fires of h.e.l.l in an anguish unutterably fiercer, and for eternity, and yet they go about as smilingly, engage in the battle for money, in the race for fame, in all the vain shows and frivolous pleasures of life, as eagerly and as gayly as others. How often do we see the literal truth of this exemplified! It is clear they do not believe in the dogma to whose technical terms they formally subscribe.

A small proportion of its professors do undeniably believe the doctrine so far as it can be sanely believed; and accordingly the world is to them robed in a sable shroud, and life is an awful mockery, under a flashing surface of sports concealing a bottomless pit of horror. Every observing person has probably known some few in his life who, in a degree, really believed the common notions concerning h.e.l.l, and out of whom, consequently, all geniality, all bounding impulses, all magnanimous generosities, were crushed, and their countenances wore the perpetual livery of mourning, despair, and misanthropy. We will quote the confessions of two persons who may stand as representatives of the cla.s.s of sincere believers in the doctrine. The first is a celebrated French preacher of a century and a half ago, the other a very eminent American divine of the present day. Saurin says, in his great sermon on h.e.l.l, "I sink under the weight of this subject, and I find in the thought a mortal poison which diffuseth itself into every period of my life, rendering society tiresome, nourishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, and life itself a cruel bitter." Albert Barnes writes, "In the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess I see not one ray to disclose to me the reason why man should suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind. It is all dark dark dark to my soul; and I cannot disguise it."

Such a state of mind is the legitimate result of an endeavor sincerely to grasp and hold the popularly professed belief. So often as that endeavor reaches a certain degree of success, and the idea of an eternal h.e.l.l is reduced from its vagueness to an embraced conception, the over fraught heart gives way, the brain, stretched on too high a tension, reels, madness sets in, and one more case is added to that list of maniacs from religious causes which, according to the yearly reports of insane asylums, forms so large a cla.s.s. Imagine what a vast and sudden change would come over the spirit and conduct of society if nineteen twentieths of Christendom believed that at the end of a week a horrible influx of demons, from some insurgent region, would rush into our world and put a great majority of our race to death in excruciating tortures! But the doctrine of future punishment professed by nineteen twentieths of Christendom is, if true, an evil incomparably worse than that, though every element of its dreadfulness were multiplied by millions beyond the power of numeration; and yet all goes on as quietly, the most of these fancied believers live as chirpingly, as if heaven were sure for everybody! Of course in their hearts they do not believe the terrific formula which drops so glibly from their tongues.

Again: it is a fatal objection to the doctrine in question that if it be true it must destroy the happiness of the saved and fill all heaven with sympathetic woe. Jesus teaches that "there is joy in heaven over every sinner that repenteth." By a moral necessity, then, there is sorrow in heaven over the wretched, lost soul. That sorrow, indeed, may be alleviated, if not wholly quenched, by the knowledge that every retributive pang is remedial, and that G.o.d's glorious design will one day be fully crowned in the redemption of the last prodigal. But what shall solace or end it if they know that h.e.l.l's borders are to be enlarged and to rage with avenging misery forever? The good cannot be happy in heaven if they are to see the ascending smoke and hear the resounding shrieks of a h.e.l.l full of their brethren, the children of a common humanity, among whom are many of their own nearest relatives and dearest friends.

True, a long list of Christian writers may be cited as maintaining that this is to be a princ.i.p.al element in the felicity of the redeemed, gloating over the tortures of the d.a.m.ned, singing the song of praise with redoubled emphasis as they see their parents, their children, their former bosom companions, writhing and howling in the fell extremities of torture. Thomas Aquinas says, "That the saints may enjoy their beat.i.tude and the grace of G.o.d more richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the d.a.m.ned is granted to them."24 Especially did the Puritans seem to revel in this idea, that "the joys of the blessed were to be deepened and sharpened by constant contrast with the sufferings of the d.a.m.ned."

One of them thus expresses the delectable thought: "The sight of h.e.l.l torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever, as a sense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any pleasure."

24 Summa, pars iii., Suppl. Qu. 93, art. i.

But perhaps Hopkins caps the climax of the diabolical pyramid of these representations, saying of the wicked, "The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear gla.s.s always before their eyes, to give them a bright and most affecting view. This display of the Divine character will be most entertaining to all who love G.o.d, will give them the highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eternal punishment cease, it would in a great measure obscure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed."25 That is to say, in plain terms, the saints, on entering their final state of bliss in heaven, are converted into a set of unmitigated fiends, out sataning Satan, finding their chief delight in forever comparing their own enjoyments with the pangs of the d.a.m.ned, extracting morsels of surpa.s.sing relish from every convulsion or shriek of anguish they see or hear. It is all an exquisite piece of gratuitous horror arbitrarily devised to meet a logical exigency of the theory its contrivers held. When charged that the knowledge of the infinite woe of their friends in h.e.l.l must greatly affect the saints, the stern old theologians, unwilling to recede an inch from their dogmas, had the amazing hardihood to declare that, so far from it, on the contrary their wills would so blend with G.o.d's that the contemplation of this suffering would be a source of ecstasy to them. It is doubly a blank a.s.sumption of the most daring character, first a.s.suming, by an unparalleled blasphemy, that G.o.d himself will take delight in the pangs of his creatures, and secondly a.s.suming, by a violation of the laws of human nature and of every principle of morals, that the elect will do so too.

In this world a man actuated by such a spirit would be styled a devil. On entering heaven, what magic shall work such a demoniacal change in him? There is not a word, direct or indirect, in the Scriptures to warrant the dreadful notion; nor is there any reasonable explanation or moral justification of it given by any of its advocates, or indeed conceivable. The monstrous hypothesis cannot be true. Under the omnipotent, benignant government of a paternal G.o.d, each change of character in his chosen children, as they advance, must be for the better, not for the worse.

We once heard a father say, running his fingers the while among the golden curls of his child's hair, "If I were in heaven, and saw my little daughter in h.e.l.l, should not I be rushing down there after her?" There spoke the voice of human nature; and that love cannot be turned to hatred in heaven, but must grow purer and intenser there. The doctrine which makes the saints pleased with contemplating the woes of the d.a.m.ned, and even draw much of their happiness from the contrast, is the deification of the absolute selfishness of a demon. Human nature, even when left to its uncultured instincts, is bound to far other and n.o.bler things.

Radbod, one of the old Scandinavian kings, after long resistance, finally consented to be baptized. After he had put one foot into the water, he asked the priest if he should meet his forefathers in heaven. Learning that they, being unbaptized pagans, were victims of endless misery, he drew his foot back, and refused the rite, choosing to be with his brave ancestors in h.e.l.l rather than to be in heaven with the Christian priests. And, speaking from the stand point of the highest refinement of feeling and virtue, who that has a heart in his

25 Park, Memoir of Hopkins, pp. 201, 202.

bosom would not say, "Heaven can be no heaven to me, if I am to look down on the quenchless agonies of all I have loved here!" Is it not strictly true that the thought that even one should have endless woe "Would cast a shadow on the throne of G.o.d And darken heaven"?

If a monarch, possessing unlimited power over all the earth, had condemned one man to be stretched on a rack and be freshly plied with incessant tortures for a period of fifty years, and if everybody on earth could hear his terrible shrieks by day and night, though they were themselves all, with this sole exception, blessed with perfect happiness, would not the whole human race, from Spitzbergen to j.a.pan, from Rio Janeiro to Liberia, rise in a body and go to implore the king's clemency for the solitary victim? So, if h.e.l.l had but one tenant doomed to eternal anguish, a pet.i.tion reaching from Sirius to Alcyone, signed by the universe of moral beings, borne by a convoy of angels representing every star in s.p.a.ce, would be laid and unrolled at the foot of G.o.d's throne, and He would read thereon this prayer: "FORGIVE HIM, AND RELEASE HIM, WE BESEECH THEE, O G.o.d." And can it be that every soul in the universe is better than the Maker and Father of the universe?

The popular doctrine of eternal torment threatening nearly all our race is refuted likewise by the impossibility of any general observance of the obligations morally and logically consequent from it. In the first place, as the world is const.i.tuted, and as life goes on, the great majority of men are upon the whole happy, evidently were meant to be happy. But every believer of the doctrine in debate is bound to be unutterably wretched. If he has any gleam of generous sentiment or touch of philanthropy in his bosom, if he is not a frozen petrifaction of selfishness or an incarnate devil, how can he look on his family, friends, neighbors, fellow citizens, fellow beings, in the light of his faith seeing them quivering over the dizzy verge of a blind probation and momentarily dropping into the lake of fire and brimstone that burns forever, how can he do this without being ceaselessly stung with wretchedness and crushed with horror by the perception? For a man who appreciatingly believes that h.e.l.l is directly under our meadows, streets, and homes, and that nine tenths of the dead are in it, and that nine tenths of the living soon will be, for such a man to be happy and jocose is as horrible as it would be for a man, occupying the second story of a house, to light it up brilliantly with gas, and make merry with his friends, eating tidbits, sipping wine, and tripping it on the light fantastic toe to the strains of gay music, while, immediately under him, men, women, and children, including his own parents and his own children, were stretched on racks, torn with pincers, lacerated with surgical instruments, cauterized, lashed with whips of fire, their half suppressed shrieks and groans audibly rising through the floor!

Secondly, if the doctrine be true, then all unnecessary worldly enterprises, labors, and studies should at once cease. One moment on earth, and then, accordingly as we spend that moment, an eternity in heaven or in h.e.l.l: in heaven, if we succeed in placating G.o.d by a sound belief and ritual proprieties; in h.e.l.l, if we are led astray by philosophy, nature, and the attractions of life! On these suppositions, what time have we for any thing but reciting our creed, meditating on the atonement, and seeking to secure an interest for ourselves with G.o.d by flouting at our carnal reason, praying in church, and groaning, "Lord, Lord, have mercy on us miserable sinners"? What folly, what mockery, to be searching into the motions of the stars, and the occult forces of matter, and the other beautiful mysteries of science! There will be no astronomy in h.e.l.l, save vain speculations as to the distance between the nadir of the d.a.m.ned and the zenith of the saved; no chemistry in h.e.l.l, save the experiments of infinite wrath in distilling new torture poisons in the alembics of memory and depositing fresh despair sediments in the crucibles of hope. If Calvin's doctrine be true, let no book be printed, save the "Westminster Catechism;" no calculation be ciphered, save how to "solve the problem of d.a.m.nation;" no picture be painted, save "pictures of h.e.l.l;" no school be supported, save "schools of theology;" no business be pursued, save "the business of salvation." What have men who are in imminent peril, who are in truth almost infallibly sure, of being eternally d.a.m.ned the next instant, what have they to do with science, literature, art, social ambition, or commerce? Away with them all! Lures of the devil to snare souls are they! The world reflecting from every corner the lurid glare of h.e.l.l, who can do any thing else but shudder and pray? "Who could spare any attention for the vicissitudes of cotton and the price of shares, for the merits of the last opera and the bets upon the next election, if the actors in these things were really swinging in his eye over such a verge as he affects to see?"

Thirdly, those who believe the popular theory on this subject are bound to live in cheap huts, on bread and water, that they may devote to the sending of missionaries among the heathen every cent of money they can get beyond that required for the bare necessities of life. If our neighbor were perishing of hunger at our door, it would be our duty to share with him even to the last crust we had. How much more, then, seeing millions of our poor helpless brethren sinking ignorantly into the eternal fires of h.e.l.l, are we bound to spare no possible effort until the conditions of salvation are brought within the reach of every one!

An American missionary to China said, in a public address after his return, "Fifty thousand a day go down to the fire that is not quenched. Six hundred millions more are going the same road.

Should you not think at least once a day of the fifty thousand who that day sink to the doom of the lost?" The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions say, "To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of great exigency. Within the last thirty years a whole generation of five hundred millions have gone down to eternal death." Again: the same Board say, in their tract ent.i.tled "The Grand Motive to Missionary Effort," "The heathen are involved in the ruins of the apostasy, and are expressly doomed to perdition. Six hundred millions of deathless souls on the brink of h.e.l.l! What a spectacle!" How a man who thinks the heathen are thus sinking to h.e.l.l by wholesale through ignorance of the gospel can live in a costly house, crowded with luxuries and splendors, spending every week more money on his miserable body than he gives in his whole life to save the priceless souls for which he says Christ died, is a problem admitting but two solutions. Either his professed faith is an unreality to him, or else he is as selfish as a demon and as hard hearted as the nether millstone. If he really believed the doctrine, and had a human heart, he must feel it to be his duty to deny himself every indulgence and give his whole fortune and earnings to the missionary fund. And when he had given all else, he ought to give himself, and go to pagan lands, proclaiming the means of grace until his last breath. If he does not that, he is inexcusable.

Should he attempt to clear himself of this obligation by adopting the theory of predestination, which a.s.serts that all men were unconditionally elected from eternity, some to heaven, others to h.e.l.l, so that no effort can change their fate, logical consistency reduces him to an alternative more intolerable in the eyes of conscience and common sense than the other was. For by this theory the gates of freedom and duty are hoisted, and the dark flood of antinomian consequences rushes in. All things are fated. Let men yield to every impulse and wish. The result is fixed. We have nothing to do. Good or evil, virtue or crime, alter nothing.

Fourthly, if the common doctrine of eternal d.a.m.nation be true, then surely no more children should be brought into the world: it is a duty to let the race die out and cease. He who begets a child, forcing him to run the fearful risk of human existence, with every probability of being doomed to h.e.l.l at the close of earth, commits a crime before whose endless consequences of horror the guilt of fifty thousand deliberate murders would be as nothing. For, be it remembered, an eternity in h.e.l.l is an infinite evil; and therefore the crime of thrusting such a fate on a single child, with the unasked gift of being, is a crime admitting of no just comparison. Rather than populate an everlasting h.e.l.l with human vipers and worms, a h.e.l.l whose fires, alive and wriggling with ghastly shapes of iniquity and anguish, shall swell with a vast accession of fresh recruits from every generation, rather than this, let the sacred lights on the marriage altar go out, no more bounding forms of childhood be seen in cottage or hall, the race grow old, thin out, and utterly perish, all happy villages be overgrown, all regal cities crumble down, and this world roll among the silent stars henceforth a globe of blasted deserts and rank wildernesses, resonant only with the shrieks of the wind, the yells of wild beasts, and the thunder's crash.

Fifthly, there is one more conclusion of moral duty deducible from the prevalent theory of infinite torment. It is this. G.o.d ought not to have permitted Adam to have any children. Let us not seem presumptuous and irreverent in speaking thus. We are merely reasoning on the popular theory of the theologians, not on any supposition of our own or on any truth; and by showing the absurdity and blasphemy of the moral consequences and duties flowing from that theory, the absurdity, blasphemy, and incredibility of the theory itself appear. We are not responsible for the irreverence, but they are responsible for it who charge G.o.d with the iniquity which we repel from his name. If the sin of Adam must entail total depravity and an infinite penalty of suffering on all his posterity, who were then certainly innocent because not in existence, then, we ask, why did not G.o.d cause the race to stop with Adam, and so save all the needless and cruel woe that would otherwise surely be visited on the lengthening line of generations? Or, to go still further back, why did he not, foreseeing Adam's fall, refrain from creating even him? There was no necessity laid on G.o.d of creating Adam. No positive evil would have been done by omitting to create him. An infinite evil, multiplied by the total number of the lost, was done by creating him. Why, then, was he not left in peaceful nonent.i.ty? On the Augustinian theory we see no way of escaping this awful dilemma.

Who can answer the question which rises to heaven from the abyss of the d.a.m.ned? "Father of mercies, why from silent earth Didst thou awake and curse me into birth, Push into being a reverse of thee, And animate a clod with misery?"

Satan is a sort of sublime Guy Fawkes, lurking in the infernal cellar, preparing the train of that stupendous Gunpowder Plot by which he hopes, on the day of judgment, to blow up the world parliament of unbelievers with a general petard of d.a.m.nation. Will the King connive at this nefarious prowler and permit him to carry out his design?

The doctrine of eternal d.a.m.nation, as it has prevailed in the Christian Church, appears to the natural man so unreasonable, immoral, and harrowingly frightful, when earnestly contemplated, that there have always been some who have shrunk from its representations and sought to escape its conclusions. Many of its strongest advocates in every age have avowed it to be a fearful mystery, resting on the inscrutable sovereignty of G.o.d, and beyond the power of man's faculties to explain and justify. The dogma has been eluded in two ways. Some have believed in the annihilation of the wicked after they should have undergone just punishment proportioned to their sins. This supposition has had a considerable number of advocates. It was maintained, among others, by Arn.o.bius, at the close of the third century, by the Socini, by Dr. Hammond, and by some of the New England divines.26 All that need be said in opposition to it is that it is an arbitrary device to avoid the intolerable horror of the doctrine of endless misery, unsupported by proof, extremely unsatisfactory in many of its bearings, and really not needed to achieve the consummation desired.

Others have more wisely maintained that all will finally be saved: however severely and long they may justly suffer, they will at last all be mercifully redeemed by G.o.d and admitted to the common heaven. Defenders of the doctrine of ultimate universal salvation have appeared from the beginning of Christian history.27 During the last century and a half their numbers have rapidly increased.28 A dignified and influential cla.s.s of theologians, represented by such names as Tillotson. Bahrdt, and Less, say that the threats of eternal punishment, in the Scriptures, are exaggerations to deter men from sin, and that G.o.d will not really execute them, but will mercifully abate and limit them.29 Another cla.s.s of theologians, much more free, consistent, and numerous, base their reception of the doctrine of final restoration on figurative explanations of the scriptural language seemingly opposed to it, and on arguments drawn from the character of G.o.d, from reason, and from morals. This view of the subject is spreading fast. All independent, genial, and cultivated thought naturally leads to it. The central principles of the gospel necessitate it. The spirit of the age cries for it. Before it the old antagonistic dogma must fall and perish from respect. Dr.

Spring says, in reference to the hopeless condemnation of the wicked to h.e.l.l, "It puts in requisition all our confidence

26 This theory bas been resuscitated and advocated within a few years by quite a number of writers, among whom may be specified the Rev. C. F. Hudson, author of "Debt and Grace," a learned, earnest, and able work, pervaded by an admirable spirit.

27 Ballou, Ancient History of Universalism.

28 Whittemore, Modern History of Universalism.

29 Knapp, Christian Theology, Woods's translation, sect. 158.

in G.o.d to justify this procedure of his government."30

A few devout and powerful minds have sought to avoid the gross horrors and unreasonableness of the usual view of this subject, by changing the mechanical and arithmetical values of the terms for spiritual and religious values. They give the word "eternity" a qualitative instead of a quant.i.tative meaning. The everlasting woe of the d.a.m.ned consists not in mechanical inflictions of torture and numerical increments of duration, but in spiritual discord, alienation from G.o.d, a wretched state of being, with which times and s.p.a.ces have nothing to do.31

How much better were it for the advocates of the popular theory, instead of forcing their moral nature to bear up against the awful perplexities and misgivings as to the justice and goodness of G.o.d necessarily raised in them whenever they really face the dark problems of their system of faith,32 resolutely to ask whether there are any such problems in the actual government of G.o.d, or anywhere else, except in their own "Bodies of Divinity"! It is an extremely unfortunate and discreditable evasion of responsibility when any man, especially when a teacher, takes for granted the received formularies handed down to him, and, instead of honestly a.n.a.lyzing their genuine significance and probing their foundations to see if they be good and true, spends his genius in contriving excuses and supports for them.

It is the very worst policy at this day to strive to fasten the dogma of eternal misery to the New Testament. If both must be taken or rejected together, an alternative which we emphatically deny, what sincere and earnest thinker now, whose will is unterrifiedly consecrated to truth, can be expected to hesitate long? The doctrine is sustained in repute at present princ.i.p.ally for two reasons. First, because it has been transmitted to us from the Church of the past as the established and authoritative doctrine. It is yet technically current and popular because it has been so: that is, it retains its place simply by right of possession. The question ought to be sincerely and universally raised whether it is true or false. Then it will swiftly lose its prestige and disappear. Secondly, it is upheld and patronized by many as a useful instrument for frightening the people and through their fears deterring them from sin. We have ourselves heard clergymen of high reputation say that it would never do to admit, before the people, that there is any chance whatever of penitence and salvation beyond the grave, because they would be sure to abuse the hope as a sort of permission to indulge and continue in sin. Thus to ignore the only solemn and worthy standard of judging an abstract doctrine, namely, Is it a truth or a falsehood? and put it solely on grounds of working expediency, is disgraceful, contemptible, criminal. Watts exposes with well merited rebuke a gross instance of pious frail in Burnet, who advised preachers to teach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it or not.33 It is by such a course that error and superst.i.tion reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical atheism, debauchery of conscience, and genuine spiritual

30 Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 268.

31 Lange, Positive Dogmatik, sect. 131: Die Aeonen der Verdammten.

Maurice, Theological Essays: Future Punishment.