Chapter XXX: Part VIII: Eschatology, or the Doctrine of Final Things (6)

_John 14:2_—“_In my Father’s house are many mansions_”; _Eph.
1:10_—“_unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up
all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things
upon the earth_”; _Col. 1:20_—“_through him to reconcile all
things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his
cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or
things in the heavens._”

See Dr. A. C. Kendrick, in Bap. Quarterly, Jan. 1870. Dr. Kendrick
thinks we need local associations. Earth may be our home, yet from
this home we may set out on excursions through the universe, after
a time returning again to our earthly abodes. So Chalmers,
interpreting literally _2 Pet. 3_. We certainly are in a prison
here, and look out through the bars, as the Prisoner of Chillon
looked over the lake to the green isle and the singing birds. Why
are we shut out from intercourse with other worlds and other
orders of intelligence? Apparently it is the effect of sin. We are
in an abnormal state of durance and probation. Earth is out of
harmony with God. The great harp of the universe has one of its
strings out of tune, and that one discordant string makes a jar
through the whole. All things in heaven and earth shall be
reconciled when this one jarring string is keyed right and set in
tune by the hand of love and mercy. See Leitch, God’s Glory in the
Heavens, 327‐330.

2. Of the wicked.

The final state of the wicked is described under the figures of eternal fire (Mat. 25:41); the pit of the abyss (Rev. 9:2, 11); outer darkness (Mat. 8:12); torment (Rev. 14:10, 11); eternal punishment (Mat. 25:46); wrath of God (Rom. 2:5); second death (Rev. 21:8); eternal destruction from the face of the Lord (2 Thess. 1:9); eternal sin (Mark 3:29).

_Mat. 25:41_—“_Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire
which is prepared for the devil and his angels_”; _Rev. 9:2,
11_—“_And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a
smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace.... They
have over them as king the angel of the abyss: his name in Hebrew
is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon_”;
_Mat. 8:12_—“_but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into
the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of
teeth_”; _Rev. 14:10, 11_—“_he also shall drink of the wine of the
wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger;
and he 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 goeth up for ever and ever_”; _Mat. 25:46_—“_And
these shall go away into eternal punishment._”

_Rom. 2:5_—“_after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up
for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God_”; _Rev. 21:8_—“_But for the fearful,
and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators,
and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be
in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the
second death_”: _2 Thess. 1:9_—“_who shall suffer punishment, even
eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory
of his might_”—here ἀπό, from, = not separation, but “proceeding
from,” and indicates that the everlasting presence of Christ, once
realized, ensures everlasting destruction; _Mark 3:29_—“_whosoever
shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness,
but is guilty of an eternal sin_”—a text which implies that (1)
some will never cease to sin; (2) this eternal sinning will
involve eternal misery; (3) this eternal misery, as the appointed
vindication of the law, will be eternal punishment. As Uzziah,
when smitten with leprosy, did not need to be thrust out of the
temple, but “_himself hasted also to go out_” (_2 Chron. 26:20_),
so Judas is said to go “_to his own place_” (_Acts 1:25_; _cf._
_4:23_—where Peter and John, “_being let go, they came to their
own company_”). _Cf._ _John 8:35_—“_the bondservant abideth not in
the house forever_” = whatever be his outward connection with God,
it can be only for a time; _15:2_—“_Every branch in me that
beareth not fruit, he taketh it away_”—at death; the history of
Abraham showed that one might have outward connection with God
that was only temporary: Ishmael was cast out; the promise
belonged only to Isaac.

Wrightnour: “Gehenna was the place into which all the offal of the
city of Jerusalem was swept. So hell is the penitentiary of the
moral universe. The profligate is not happy in the prayer meeting,
but in the saloon; the swine is not at home in the parlor, but in
the sty. Hell is the sinner’s own place; he had rather be there
than in heaven; he will not come to the house of God, the nearest
thing to heaven; why should we expect him to enter heaven itself?”

Summing up all, we may say that it is the loss of all good, whether physical or spiritual, and the misery of an evil conscience banished from God and from the society of the holy, and dwelling under God’s positive curse forever. Here we are to remember, as in the case of the final state of the righteous, that the decisive and controlling element is not the outward, but the inward. If hell be a place, it is only that the outward may correspond to the inward. If there be outward torments, it is only because these will be fit, though subordinate, accompaniments of the inward state of the soul.

Every living creature will have an environment suited to its
character—“its own place.” “I know of the future judgment, How
dreadful so e’er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will
be judgment enough for me.” Calvin: “The wicked have the seeds of
hell in their own hearts.” Chrysostom, commenting on the words
“Depart, ye cursed,” says: “Their own works brought the punishment
on them; the fire was not prepared for them, but for Satan; yet,
since they cast themselves into it, ‘Impute it to yourselves,’ he
says, ‘that you are there.’ ” Milton, Par. Lost, 4:75—Satan:
“Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Byron: “There is no
power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of
penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor, greater
than all these, The innate torture of that deep despair Would make
a hell of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the
quick sense Of its own sins.”

Phelps, English Style, 228, speaks of “a law of the divine
government, by which the body symbolizes, in its experience, the
moral condition of its spiritual inhabitant. The drift of sin is
to physical suffering. Moral depravity tends always to a corrupt
and tortured body. Certain diseases are the product of certain
crimes. The whole catalogue of human pains, from a toothache to
the _angina pectoris_, is but a witness to a state of sin
expressed by an experience of suffering. Carry this law into the
experience of eternal sin. The bodies of the wicked live again as
well as those of the righteous. You have therefore a spiritual
body, inhabited and used, and therefore tortured, by a guilty
soul,—a body, perfected in its sensibilities, inclosing and
expressing a soul matured in its depravity.” Augustine,
Confessions, 25—“Each man’s sin is the instrument of his
punishment, and his iniquity is turned into his torment.” Lord
Bacon: “Being, without well‐being, is a curse, and the greater the
being, the greater the curse.”

In our treatment of the subject of eternal punishment we must remember that false doctrine is often a reaction from the unscriptural and repulsive over‐statements of Christian apologists. We freely concede: 1. that future punishment does not necessarily consist of physical torments,—it may be wholly internal and spiritual; 2. that the pain and suffering of the future are not necessarily due to positive inflictions of God,—they may result entirely from the soul’s sense of loss, and from the accusations of conscience; and 3. that eternal punishment does not necessarily involve endless successions of suffering,—as God’s eternity is not mere endlessness, so we may not be forever subject to the law of time.

An over‐literal interpretation of the Scripture symbols has had
much to do with such utterances as that of Savage, Life after
Death, 101—“If the doctrine of eternal punishment was clearly and
unmistakably taught in every leaf of the Bible, and on every leaf
of all the Bibles of all the world, I could not believe a word of
it. I should appeal from these misconceptions of even the seers
and the great men to the infinite and eternal Good, who only is
God, and who only on such terms could be worshiped.”

The figurative language of Scripture is a miniature representation
of what cannot be fully described in words. The symbol is a
symbol; yet it is less, not greater, than the thing symbolized. It
is sometimes fancied that Jonathan Edwards, when, in his sermon on
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he represented the sinner
as a worm shriveling in the eternal fire, supposed that hell
consists mainly of such physical torments. But this is a
misinterpretation of Edwards. As he did not fancy heaven
essentially to consist in streets of gold or pearly gates, but
rather in holiness and communion with Christ, of which these are
the symbols, so he did not regard hell as consisting in fire and
brimstone, but rather in the unholiness and separation from God of
a guilty and accusing conscience, of which the fire and brimstone
are symbols. He used the material imagery, because he thought that
this best answered to the methods of Scripture. He probably went
beyond the simplicity of the Scripture statements, and did not
sufficiently explain the spiritual meaning of the symbols he used;
but we are persuaded that he neither understood them literally
himself, nor meant them to be so understood by others.

Sin is self‐isolating, unsocial, selfish. By virtue of natural
laws the sinner reaps as he has sown, and sooner or later is
repaid by desertion or contempt. Then the selfishness of one
sinner is punished by the selfishness of another, the ambition of
one by the ambition of another, the cruelty of one by the cruelty
of another. The misery of the wicked hereafter will doubtless be
due in part to the spirit of their companions. They dislike the
good, whose presence and example is a continual reproof and
reminder of the height from which they have fallen, and they shut
themselves out of their company. The judgment will bring about a
complete cessation of intercourse between the good and the bad.
Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:239—“Beings whose relations to
God are diametrically opposite, and persistently so, differ so
greatly from each other that other ties of relationship became as
nothing in comparison.”

In order, however, to meet opposing views, and to forestall the common objections, we proceed to state the doctrine of future punishment in greater detail:

A. The future punishment of the wicked is not annihilation.

In our discussion of Physical Death, we have shown that, by virtue of its original creation in the image of God, the human soul is naturally immortal; that neither for the righteous nor the wicked is death a cessation of being; that on the contrary, the wicked enter at death upon a state of conscious suffering which the resurrection and the judgment only augment and render permanent. It is plain, moreover, that if annihilation took place at death, there could be no degrees in future punishment,—a conclusion itself at variance with express statements of Scripture.

The old annihilationism is represented by Hudson, Debt and Grace,
and Christ our Life; also by Dobney, Future Punishment. It
maintains that κόλασις, “_punishment_” (in _Mat. 25:46_—“_eternal
punishment_”), means etymologically an everlasting “cutting‐off.”
But we reply that the word had to a great degree lost its
etymological significance, as is evident from the only other
passage where it occurs in the New Testament, namely, _1 John
4:18_—“_fear hath punishment_” (A. V.: “fear hath torment”). For
full answer to the old statements of the annihilation‐theory, see
under Physical Death, pages 991‐998.

That there are degrees of punishment in God’s administration is
evident from _Luke 12:47, 48_—“_And that servant, who knew his
Lord’s will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will,
shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes_”;
_Rom. 2:5, 6_—“_after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest
up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according
to his works_”; _2 Cor. 5:10_—“_For we must all be made manifest
before the judgment‐seat of Christ; that each one may receive the
things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether
it be good or bad_”; _11:15_—“_whose end shall be according to
their works_”; _2 Tim. 4:14_—“_Alexander the coppersmith did me
much evil: the Lord will render to him according to his works_”;
_Rev. 2:23_—“_I will give unto each one of you according to your
works_”; _18:5, 6_—“_her sins have reached even unto heaven, and
God hath remembered her iniquities. Render unto her even as she
rendered, and double unto her the double according to her works:
in the cup which she mingled, mingle unto her double._”

A French Christian replied to the argument of his deistical
friend: “Probably you are right; probably you are not immortal;
but I am.” This was the doctrine of conditional immortality, the
doctrine that only the good survive. We grant that the measure of
our faith in immortality is the measure of our _fitness_ for its
blessings; but it is not the measure of our _possession_ of
immortality. We are immortal beings, whether we believe it or not.
The acorn is potentially an oak, but it may never come to its full
development. There is a saltless salt, which, though it does not
cease to exist, is cast out and trodden under foot of men. Denney,
Studies in Theology, 256—“Conditional immortality denies that man
can exist after death without being united to Christ by faith. But
the immortality of man cannot be something accidental, something
appended to his nature, after he believes in Christ. It must be
something, at the very lowest, for which his nature is
constituted, even if apart from Christ it can never realize itself
as it ought.”

Broadus, Com. on _Mat. 25:46_ (page 514)—“He who caused to exist
could keep in existence. _Mark 9:49_—‘_Every one shall be salted
with fire_’—has probably this meaning. Fire is usually
destructive; but this unquenchable fire will act like salt,
preserving instead of destroying. So Keble, Christian Year, 5th
Sunday in Lent, says of the Jews in their present condition:
‘Salted with fire, they seem to show How spirits lost in endless
woe May undecaying live. Oh, sickening thought! Yet hold it fast
Long as this glittering world shall last, Or sin at heart
survive.’ ”

There are two forms of the annihilation theory which are more plausible, and which in recent times find a larger number of advocates, namely:

(_a_) That the powers of the wicked are gradually weakened, as the natural result of sin, so that they finally cease to be.—We reply, first, that moral evil does not, in this present life, seem to be incompatible with a constant growth of the intellectual powers, at least in certain directions, and we have no reason to believe the fact to be different in the world to come; secondly, that if this theory were true, the greater the sin, the speedier would be the relief from punishment.

This form of the annihilation theory is suggested by Bushnell, in
his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147, and by Martineau, Study,
2:107‐8. Dorner also, in his Eschatology, seems to favor it as one
of the possible methods of future punishment. He says: “To the
ethical also pertains ontological significance. The ’second death’
may be the dissolving of the soul itself into nothing.
Estrangement from God, the source of life, ends in extinction of
life. The orthodox talk about demented beings, raging in impotent
fury, amounts to the same—annihilation of their human character.
Evil is never the substance of the soul,—this remains
metaphysically good.” It is argued that even for saved sinners
there is a loss. The prodigal regained his father’s favor, but he
could not regain his lost patrimony. We cannot get back the lost
time, nor the lost growth. Much more, then, in the case of the
wicked, will there be perpetual loss. Draper: “At every return to
the sun, comets lose a portion of their size and brightness,
stretching out until the nucleus loses control, the mass breaks
up, and the greater portion navigates the sky, in the shape of
disconnected meteorites.”

To this argument it is often replied that certain minds grow in
their powers, at least in certain directions, in spite of their
sin. Napoleon’s military genius, during all his early years, grew
with experience. Sloane, in his Life of Napoleon, however, seems
to show that the Emperor lost his grip as he went on. Success
unbalanced his judgment; he gave way to physical indulgence; his
body was not equal to the strain he put upon it; at Waterloo he
lost precious moments of opportunity by vacillation and inability
to keep awake. There was physical, mental, and moral
deterioration. But may this not be the result of the soul’s
connection with a body? Satan’s cunning and daring seem to be on
the increase from the first mention of him in Scripture to its
end. See Princeton Review, 1882:673‐694. Will not this very
cunning and daring, however, work its own ruin, and lead Satan to
his final and complete destruction? Does not sin blunt the
intellect, unsettle one’s sober standards of decision, lead one to
prefer a trifling present triumph or pleasure to a permanent good?

Gladden, What is Left? 104, 105—“Evil is benumbing and deadening.
Selfishness weakens a man’s mental grasp, and narrows his range of
vision. The schemer becomes less astute as he grows older; he is
morally sure, before he dies, to make some stupendous blunder
which even a tyro would have avoided.... The devil, who has sinned
longest, must be the greatest fool in the universe, and we need
not be at all afraid of him.” To the view that this weakening of
powers leads to absolute extinction of being, we oppose the
consideration that its award of retribution is glaringly unjust in
making the greatest sinner the least sufferer; since to him
relief, in the way of annihilation, comes the soonest.

(_b_) That there is for the wicked, certainly after death, and possibly between death and the judgment, a positive punishment proportioned to their deeds, but that this punishment issues in, or is followed by, annihilation.—We reply first, that upon this view, as upon any theory of annihilation, future punishment is a matter of grace as well as of justice—a notion for which Scripture affords no warrant; secondly, that Scripture not only gives no hint of the cessation of this punishment, but declares in the strongest terms its endlessness.

The second form of the annihilation theory seems to have been held
by Justin Martyr (Trypho, Edinb. transl.)—“Some, who have appeared
worthy of God, never die; but others are punished so long as God
wills them to exist and be punished.” The soul exists because God
wills, and no longer than he wills. “Whenever it is necessary that
the soul should cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from
it, and there is no more soul, but it goes back to the place from
which it was taken.”

Schaff, Hist. Christ. Church, 2:608, 609—“Justin Martyr teaches
that the wicked or hopelessly impenitent will be raised at the
judgment to receive an eternal punishment. He speaks of it in
twelve passages: ‘We believe that all who live wickedly and do not
repent will be punished in eternal fire.’ Such language is
inconsistent with the annihilation theory for which Justin Martyr
has been claimed. He does indeed reject the idea of the
independent immortality of the soul, and hints at the _possible_
final destruction of the wicked; but he puts that possibility
countless ages beyond the final judgment, so that it loses all
practical significance.”

A modern advocate of this view is White, in his Life in Christ. He
favors a conditional immortality, belonging only to those who are
joined to Christ by faith; but he makes a retributive punishment
and pain fall upon the godless, before their annihilation. The
roots of this view lie in a false conception of holiness as a form
or manifestation of benevolence, and of punishment as deterrent
and preventive instead of vindicative of righteousness. To the
minds of its advocates, extinction of being is a comparative
blessing; and they, for this reason, prefer it to the common view.
See Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless?

A view similar to that which we are opposing is found in Henry
Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Evil is punished by
its own increase. Drummond, however, leaves no room for future
life or for future judgment in the case of the unregenerate. See
reviews of Drummond, in Watts, New Apologetic, 332; and in Murphy,
Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 19‐21, 77‐124. While Drummond is
an annihilationist, Murphy is a restorationist. More rational and
Scriptural than either of these is the saying of Tower: “Sin is
God’s foe. He does not annihilate it, but he makes it the means of
displaying his holiness; as the Romans did not slay their captured
enemies, but made them their servants.” The terms αἰών and
αἰώνιος, which we have still to consider, afford additional
Scripture testimony against annihilation. See also the argument
from the divine justice, pages 1046‐1051; article on the Doctrine
of Extinction, in New Englander, March, 1879:201‐224; Hovey,
Manual of Theology and Ethics, 153‐168; J. S. Barlow, Endless
Being; W. H. Robinson, on Conditional Immortality, in Report of
Baptist Congress for 1886.

Since neither one of these two forms of the annihilation theory is Scriptural or rational, we avail ourselves of the evolutionary hypothesis as throwing light upon the problem. Death is not degeneracy ending in extinction, nor punishment ending in extinction,—it is atavism that returns, or tends to return, to the animal type. As moral development is from the brute to man, so abnormal development is from man to the brute.

Lord Byron: “All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed.” This is
true, not of man’s being, but of his well being. Ribot, Diseases
of the Will, 115—“Dissolution pursues a regressive course from the
more voluntary and more complex to the less voluntary and more
simple, that is to say, toward the automatic. One of the first
signs of mental impairment is incapacity for sustained attention.
Unity, stability, power, have ceased, and the end is extinction of
the will.” We prefer to say, loss of the freedom of the will. On
the principle of evolution, abuse of freedom may result in
reversion to the brute, annihilation not of existence but of
higher manhood, punishment from within rather than from without,
eternal penalty in the shape of eternal loss. _Mat. 24:13_—“_he
that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved_”—has for its
parallel passage _Luke 21:19_—“_In your patience ye shall win your
souls,_” _i. e._, shall by free will get possession of your own
being. Losing one’s soul is just the opposite, namely, losing
one’s free will, by disuse renouncing freedom, becoming a victim
of habit, nature, circumstance, and this is the cutting off and
annihilation of true manhood. “To be in hell is to drift; to be in
heaven is to steer” (Bernard Shaw).

In _John 15:2_ Christ says of all men—the natural branches of the
vine—“_Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it
away_”; _Ps. 49:20_—“_Man that is in honor, and understandeth not,
Is like the beasts that perish_”; _Rev. 22:15_—“_Without are the
dogs._” In heathen fable men were turned into beasts, and even
into trees. The story of Circe is a parable of human fate,—men may
become apes, tigers, or swine. They may lose their higher powers
of consciousness and will. By perpetual degradation they may
suffer eternal punishment. All life that is worthy of the name may
cease, while still existence of a low animal type is prolonged. We
see precisely these results of sin in this world. We have reason
to believe that the same laws of development will operate in the
world to come.

McConnell, Evolution of Immortality, 85‐95, 99, 124,
180—“Immortality, or survival after death, depends upon man’s
freeing himself from the law which sweeps away the many, and
becoming an individual (indivisible) that is fit to survive. The
individual must become stronger than the species. By using will
aright, he lays hold of the infinite Life, and becomes one who,
like Christ, has ‘_life in himself_’ (_John 5:26_). Gravitation
and chemical affinity had their way in the universe until they
were arrested and turned about in the interest of life.
Overproduction, death, and the survival of the fittest, had their
ruthless sway until they were reversed in the interest of
affection. The supremacy of the race at the expense of the
individual we may expect to continue until something in the
individual comes to be of more importance than that law, and no
longer.... Goodness can arrest and turn back for nations the
primal law of growth, vigor, and decline. Is it too much to
believe that it may do the same for an individual man?... Life is
a thing to be achieved. At every step there are a thousand
candidates who fail, for one that attains.... Until moral
sensibility becomes self‐conscious, all question of personal
immortality becomes irrelevant, because there is, accurately
speaking, no personality to be immortal. Up to that point the
individual living creature, whether in human form or not, falls
short of that essential personality for which eternal life can
have any meaning.” But how about children who never come to moral
consciousness? McConnell appeals to heredity. The child of one who
has himself achieved immortality may also prove to be immortal.
But is there no chance for the children of sinners? The doctrine
of McConnell leans toward the true solution, but it is vitiated by
the belief that individuality is a transient gift which only
goodness can make permanent. We hold on the other hand that this
gift of God is “_without repentance_” (_Rom. 11:29_), and that no
human being can lose life, except in the sense of losing all that
makes life desirable.

B. Punishment after death excludes new probation and ultimate restoration of the wicked.

Some have maintained the ultimate restoration of all human beings, by appeal to such passages as the following: Mat. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Eph. 1:9, 10.

_Mat. 19:28_—“_in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit
on the throne of his glory_”; _Acts 3:21_—Jesus, “_whom the heaven
must receive until the times of restoration of all things_”; _1
Cor. 15:26_—“_The last enemy that shall be abolished is death_”;
_Eph. 1:9, 10_—“_according to his good pleasure which he purposed
in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up
all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things
upon the earth_”; _Phil. 2:10, 11_—“_that in the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and
things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father_”; _2 Pet.
3:9, 13_—“_not wishing that any should perish, but that all should
come to repentance ... But, according to his promise, we look for
new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness._”

Robert Browning: “That God, by God’s own ways occult, May—doth, I
will believe—bring back All wanderers to a single track.” B. W.
Lockhart: “I must believe that evil is essentially transient and
mortal, or alter my predicates of God. And I must believe in the
ultimate extinction of that personality whom the power of God
cannot sometime win to goodness. The only alternative is the
termination of a wicked life either through redemption or through
extinction.” Mulford, Republic of God, claims that the soul’s
state cannot be fixed by any event, such as death, outside of
itself. If it could, the soul would exist, not under a moral
government, but under fate, and God himself would be only another
name for fate. The soul carries its fate, under God, in its power
of choice; and who dares to say that this power to choose the good
ceases at death?

For advocacy of a second probation for those who have not
consciously rejected Christ in this life, see Newman Smyth’s
edition of Dorner’s Eschatology. For the theory of restoration,
see Farrar, Eternal Hope; Birks, Victory of Divine Goodness;
Jukes, Restitution of All Things; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie,
469‐476; Robert Browning, Apparent Failure; Tennyson, In Memoriam,
§ liv. _Per contra_, see Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 95‐144. See
also, Griffith‐Jones, Ascent through Christ, 406‐440.

(_a_) These passages, as obscure, are to be interpreted in the light of those plainer ones which we have already cited. Thus interpreted, they foretell only the absolute triumph of the divine kingdom, and the subjection of all evil to God.

The true interpretation of the passages above mentioned is
indicated in Meyer’s note on _Eph. 1:9, 10_—this namely, that “the
allusion is not to the restoration of _fallen individuals_, but to
the restoration of _universal harmony_, implying that the wicked
are to be excluded from the kingdom of God.” That there is no
allusion to a probation after this life, is clear from _Luke
16:19‐31_—the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Here penalty is
inflicted for the sins done “_in thy lifetime_” (_v. 25_); this
penalty is unchangeable—“_there is a great gulf fixed_” (_v. 26_);
the rich man asks favors for his brethren who still live on the
earth, but none for himself (_v. 27, 28_). _John 5:25‐29_—“_The
hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the
Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath
life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in
himself: and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he
is a son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which
all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come
forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done evil, until the resurrection of
judgment_”—here it is declared that, while for those who have done
good there is a resurrection of life, there is for those who have
done ill only a resurrection of judgment. _John 8:21, 24_—“_shall
die in your sin: whither I go, ye cannot come ... except ye
believe that I am he, ye shall die in your sins_”—sayings which
indicate finality in the decisions of this life.

Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 243—“Scripture
invariably represents the judgment as proceeding on the data of
this life, and it concentrates every ray of appeal into the
present.” _John 9:4_—“_We must work the works of him that sent me,
while it is day: the night cometh __ when no man can
work_”—intimates that there is no opportunity to secure salvation
after death. The Christian hymn writer has caught the meaning of
Scripture, when he says of those who have passed through the gate
of death: “Fixed in an eternal state, They have done with all
below; We a little longer wait; But how little, none can know.”

(_b_) A second probation is not needed to vindicate the justice or the love of God, since Christ, the immanent God, is already in this world present with every human soul, quickening the conscience, giving to each man his opportunity, and making every decision between right and wrong a true probation. In choosing evil against their better judgment even the heathen unconsciously reject Christ. Infants and idiots, as they have not consciously sinned, are, as we may believe, saved at death by having Christ revealed to them and by the regenerating influence of his Spirit.

_Rom. 1:18‐28_—there is probation under the light of nature as
well as under the gospel, and under the law of nature as well as
under the gospel men may be given up “_unto a reprobate mind_”;
_2:6‐16_—Gentiles shall be judged, not by the gospel, but by the
law of nature, and shall “_perish without the law ... in the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men._” _2 Cor. 5:10_—“_For we
must all be made manifest before the judgment‐seat of Christ_;
[not that each may have a new opportunity to secure salvation,
but] _that each one may receive the things done in the body,
according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad_”; _Heb.
6:8_—“_whose end is to be burned_”—not to be quickened again;
_9:27_—“_And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and
after this cometh_ [not a second probation, but] _judgment._”
Luckock, Intermediate State, 22—“In _Heb. 9:27_, the word
‘_judgment_’ has no article. The judgment alluded to is not the
final or general judgment, but only that by which the place of the
soul is determined in the Intermediate State.”

Denney, Studies in Theology, 243—“In _Mat. 25_, our Lord gives a
pictorial representation of the judgment of the heathen. All
nations—all the Gentiles—are gathered before the King; and their
destiny is determined, not by their conscious acceptance or
rejection of the historical Savior, but by their unconscious
acceptance or rejection of him in the persons of those who needed
services of love.... This does not square with the idea of a
future probation. It rather tells us plainly that men may do
things of final and decisive import in this life, even if Christ
is unknown to them.... The real argument against future probation
is that it depreciates the present life, and denies the infinite
significance that, under all conditions, essentially and
inevitably belongs to the actions of a self‐conscious moral being.
A type of will may be in process of formation, even in a heathen
man, on which eternal issues depend.... Second probation lowers
the moral tone of the spirit. The present life acquires a relative
unimportance. I dare not say that if I forfeit the opportunity the
present life gives me I shall ever have another, and therefore I
dare not say so to another man.”

For an able review of the Scripture testimony against a second
probation, see G. F. Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, iv.
Emerson, the most recent advocate of restorationism, in his
Doctrine of Probation Examined, 42, is able to evade these latter
passages only by assuming that they are to be spiritually
interpreted, and that there is to be no literal outward day of
judgment—an error which we have previously discussed and
refuted,—see pages 1024, 1025.

(_c_) The advocates of universal restoration are commonly the most strenuous defenders of the inalienable freedom of the human will to make choices contrary to its past character and to all the motives which are or can be brought to bear upon it. As a matter of fact, we find in this world that men choose sin in spite of infinite motives to the contrary. Upon the theory of human freedom just mentioned, no motives which God can use will certainly accomplish the salvation of all moral creatures. The soul which resists Christ here may resist him forever.

Emerson, in the book just referred to, says: “The truth that sin
is in its permanent essence a free choice, however for a time it
may be held in mechanical combination with the notion of moral
opportunity arbitrarily closed, can never mingle with it, and must
in the logical outcome permanently cast it off. Scripture presumes
and teaches the constant capability of souls to obey as well as to
be disobedient.” Emerson is correct. If the doctrine of the
unlimited ability of the human will be a true one, then
restoration in the future world is possible. Clement and Origen
founded on this theory of will their denial of future punishment.
If will be essentially the power of contrary choice, and if will
may act independently of all character and motive, there can be no
objective certainty that the lost will remain sinful. In short,
there can be no finality, even to God’s allotments, nor is any
_last_ judgment possible. Upon this view, regeneration and
conversion are as possible at any time in the future as they are
to‐day.

But those who hold to this defective philosophy of the will should
remember that unlimited freedom is unlimited freedom to sin, as
well as unlimited freedom to turn to God. If restoration is
possible, endless persistence in evil is possible also; and this
last the Scripture predicts. Whittier: “What if thine eye refuse
to see, Thine ear of heaven’s free welcome fail, And thou a
willing captive be, Thyself thine own dark jail?” Swedenborg says
that the man who obstinately refuses the inheritance of the sons
of God is allowed the pleasures of the beast, and enjoys in his
own low way the hell to which he has confined himself. Every
occupant of hell prefers it to heaven. Dante, Hell, iv—“All here
together come from every clime, And to o’erpass the river are not
loth, For so heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turned
into desire. Hence never passed good spirit.” The lost are
_Heautoutimoroumenoi_, or self‐tormentors, to adopt the title of
Terence’s play. See Whedon, in Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884;
Robbins, in Bib. Sac., 1881:460‐507.

Denney, Studies in Theology, 255—“The very conception of human
freedom involves the possibility of its permanent misuse, or of
what our Lord himself calls ‘_eternal sin_’ (_Mark 3:29_).” Shedd,
Dogm. Theology, 2:699—“Origen’s restorationism grew naturally out
of his view of human liberty”—the liberty of indifference—“endless
alternations of falls and recoveries, of hells and heavens; so
that practically he taught nothing but a hell.” J. C. Adams, The
Leisure of God: “It is lame logic to maintain the inviolable
freedom of the will, and at the same time insist that God can,
through his ample power, through protracted punishment, bring the
soul into a disposition which it does not wish to feel. There is
no compulsory holiness possible. In our Civil War there was some
talk of ‘compelling men to volunteer,’ but the idea was soon seen
to involve a self‐contradiction.”

(_d_) Upon the more correct view of the will which we have advocated, the case is more hopeless still. Upon this view, the sinful soul, in its very sinning, gives to itself a sinful bent of intellect, affection, and will; in other words, makes for itself a character, which, though it does not render necessary, yet does render certain, apart from divine grace, the continuance of sinful action. In itself it finds a self‐formed motive to evil strong enough to prevail over all inducements to holiness which God sees it wise to bring to bear. It is in the next world, indeed, subjected to suffering. But suffering has in itself no reforming power. Unless accompanied by special renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, it only hardens and embitters the soul. We have no Scripture evidence that such influences of the Spirit are exerted, after death, upon the still impenitent; but abundant evidence, on the contrary, that the moral condition in which death finds men is their condition forever.

See Bushnell’s “One Trial Better than Many,” in Sermons on Living
Subjects; also see his Forgiveness and Law, 146, 147. Bushnell
argues that God would give us fifty trials, if that would do us
good. But there is no possibility of such result. The first
decision adverse to God renders it more difficult to make a right
decision upon the next opportunity. Character tends to fixity, and
each new opportunity may only harden the heart and increase its
guilt and condemnation. We should have no better chance of
salvation if our lives were lengthened to the term of the sinners
before the flood. Mere suffering does not convert the soul; see
Martineau, Study, 2:100. A life of pain did not make Blanco White
a believer; see Mozley, Hist. and Theol. Essays, vol. 2, essay 1.

Edward A. Lawrence, Does Everlasting Punishment Last Forever?—“If
the deeds of the law do not justify here, how can the penalties of
the law hereafter? The pain from a broken limb does nothing to
mend the break, and the suffering from disease does nothing to
cure it. Penalty pays no debts,—it only shows the outstanding and
unsettled accounts.” If the will does not act without motive, then
it is certain that without motives men will never repent. To an
impenitent and rebellious sinner the motive must come, not from
within, but from without. Such motives God presents by his Spirit
in this life; but when this life ends and God’s Spirit is
withdrawn, no motives to repentance will be presented. The soul’s
dislike for God will issue only in complaint and resistance.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:4—“Try what repentance can? what can it
not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?” Marlowe, Faustus:
“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for
where we are is hell, And where hell is, there we must ever be.”

The pressure of the atmosphere without is counteracted by the
resistance of the atmosphere within the body. So God’s life within
is the only thing that can enable us to bear God’s afflictive
dispensations without. Without God’s Spirit to inspire repentance
the wicked man in this world never feels sorrow for his deeds,
except as he realizes their evil consequences. Physical anguish
and punishment inspire hatred, not of sin, but of the effects of
sin. The remorse of Judas induced confession, but not true
repentance. So in the next world punishment will secure
recognition of God and of his justice, on the part of the
transgressor, but it will not regenerate or save. The penalties of
the future life will be no more effectual to reform the sinner
than were the invitations of Christ and the strivings of the Holy
Spirit in the present life. The transientness of good resolves
which are forced out of us by suffering is illustrated by the old
couplet: “The devil was sick,—the devil a monk would be; The devil
got well,—the devil a monk was he.”

Charles G. Sewall: “Paul Lester Ford, the novelist, was murdered
by his brother Malcolm, because the father of the two brothers had
disinherited the one who committed the crime. Has God the right to
disinherit any one of his children? We answer that God disinherits
no one. Each man decides for himself whether he will accept the
inheritance. It is a matter of character. A father cannot give his
son an education. The son may play truant and throw away his
opportunity. The prodigal son disinherited himself. Heaven is not
a place,—it is a way of living, a condition of being. If you have
a musical ear, I will admit you to a lovely concert. If you have
not a musical ear, I may give you a reserved seat and you will
hear no melody. Some men fail of salvation because they have no
taste for it and will not have it.”

The laws of God’s universe are closing in upon the impenitent
sinner, as the iron walls of the mediæval prison closed in night
by night upon the victim,—each morning there was one window less,
and the dungeon came to be a coffin. In Jean Ingelow’s poem
“Divided,” two friends, parted by a little rivulet across which
they could clasp hands, walk on in the direction in which the
stream is flowing, till the rivulet becomes a brook, and the brook
a river, and the river an arm of the sea across which no voice can
be heard and there is no passing. By constant neglect to use our
opportunity, we lose the power to cross from sin to righteousness,
until between the soul and God “_there is a great gulf fixed_”
(_Luke 16:26_).

John G. Whittier wrote within a twelvemonth of his death: “I do
believe that we take with us into the next world the same freedom
of will we have here, and that _there_, as _here_, he that turns
to the Lord will find mercy; that God never ceases to follow his
creatures with love, and is always ready to hear the prayer of the
penitent. But I also believe that _now_ is the accepted time, and
that he who dallies with sin may find the chains of evil habit too
strong to break in this world or the other.” And the following is
the Quaker poet’s verse: “Though God be good and free be heaven,
Not force divine can love compel; And though the song of sins
forgiven Might sound through lowest hell, The sweet persuasion of
his voice Respects the sanctity of will. He giveth day; thou hast
thy choice To walk in darkness still.”

Longfellow, Masque of Pandora: “Never by lapse of time The soul
defaced by crime Into its former self returns again; For every
guilty deed Holds in itself the seed Of retribution and undying
pain. Never shall be the loss Restored, till Helios Hath purified
them with his heavenly fires; Then what was lost is won, And the
new life begun, Kindled with nobler passions and desires.” Seth,
Freedom as Ethical Postulate, 42—“Faust’s selling his soul to
Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with his life’s blood, is
no single transaction, done deliberately, on one occasion; rather,
that is the lurid meaning of a life which consists of innumerable
individual acts,—the life of evil means that.” See John Caird,
Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2:88; Crane, Religion of To‐
morrow, 315.

(_e_) The declaration as to Judas, in Mat. 26:24, could not be true upon the hypothesis of a final restoration. If at any time, even after the lapse of ages, Judas be redeemed, his subsequent infinite duration of blessedness must outweigh all the finite suffering through which he has passed. The Scripture statement that “good were it for that man if he had not been born” must be regarded as a refutation of the theory of universal restoration.

_Mat. 26:24_—“_The Son of man goeth, even as it is written of him:
but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed!
good were it for that man if he had not been born._” G. F. Wright,
Relation of Death to Probation: “As Christ of old healed only
those who came or were brought to him, so now he waits for the
coöperation of human agency. God has limited himself to an orderly
method in human salvation. The consuming missionary zeal of the
apostles and the early church shows that they believed the
decisions of this life to be final decisions. The early church not
only thought the heathen world would perish without the gospel,
but they found a conscience in the heathen answering to this
belief. The solicitude drawn out by this responsibility for our
fellows may be one means of securing the moral stability of the
future. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; else why not
pray for the wicked dead?” It is certainly a remarkable fact, if
this theory be true, that we have in Scripture not a single
instance of prayer for the dead.

The apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:39 _sq._ gives an instance of Jewish
prayer for the dead. Certain who were slain had concealed under
their coats things consecrated to idols. Judas and his host
therefore prayed that this sin might be forgiven to the slain, and
they contributed 2,000 drachmas of silver to send a sin offering
for them to Jerusalem. So modern Jews pray for the dead; see
Luckock, After Death, 54‐66—an argument for such prayer. John
Wesley, Works, 9:55, maintains the legality of prayer for the
dead. Still it is true that we have no instance of such prayer in
canonical Scriptures. _Ps. 132:1_—“_Jehovah, remember for David
All his affliction_”—is not a prayer for the dead, but signifies:
“_Remember for David_”, so as to fulfil thy promise to him, “_all
his anxious cares_”—with regard to the building of the temple; the
psalm having been composed, in all probability, for the temple
dedication. Paul prays that God will “_grant mercy to the house of
Onesiphorus_” (_2 Tim. 1:16_), from which it has been
unwarrantably inferred that Onesiphorus was dead at the time of
the apostle’s writing; but Paul’s further prayer in _verse
18_—“_the Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord in that
day_”—seems rather to point to the death of Onesiphorus as yet in
the future.

Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:715 note—“Many of the arguments
constructed against the doctrine of endless punishment proceed
upon the supposition that original sin, or man’s evil inclination,
is the work of God: that because man is _born_ in sin (_Ps.
51:5_), he was _created_ in sin. All the strength and plausibility
of John Foster’s celebrated letter lies in the assumption that the
moral corruption and impotence of the sinner, whereby it is
impossible to save himself from eternal death, is not self‐
originated and self‐determined, but infused by his Maker. ‘If,’
says he, ‘the very nature of man, as _created_ by the Sovereign
Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility
of conversion or salvation except in instances where that Power
interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we
conceive that the main portion of the race, thus morally impotent
(that is, really and absolutely impotent), will be eternally
punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence?’ If
this assumption of concreated depravity and impotence is correct,
Foster’s objection to eternal retribution is conclusive and
fatal.... Endless punishment supposes the freedom of the human
will, and is impossible without it. Self‐determination runs
parallel with hell.”

The theory of a second probation, as recently advocated, is not
only a logical result of that defective view of the will already
mentioned, but it is also in part a consequence of denying the old
orthodox and Pauline doctrine of the organic unity of the race in
Adam’s first transgression. New School Theology has been inclined
to deride the notion of a fair probation of humanity in our first
father, and of a common sin and guilt of mankind in him. It cannot
find what it regards as a fair probation for each individual since
that first sin; and the conclusion is easy that there must be such
a fair probation for each individual in the world to come. But we
may advise those who take this view to return to the old theology.
Grant a fair probation for the whole race already passed, and the
condition of mankind is no longer that of mere unfortunates
unjustly circumstanced, but rather that of beings guilty and
condemned, to whom present opportunity, and even present
existence, is a matter of pure grace,—much more the general
provision of a salvation, and the offer of it to any human soul.
This world is already a place of second probation; and since the
second probation is due wholly to God’s mercy, no probation after
death is needed to vindicate either the justice or the goodness of
God. See Kellogg, in Presb. Rev., April, 1885:226‐256; Cremer,
Beyond the Grave, preface by A. A. Hodge, xxxvi _sq._; E. D.
Morris, Is There Salvation After Death? A. H. Strong, on The New
Theology, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1888,—reprinted in Philosophy
and Religion, 164‐179.

C. Scripture declares this future punishment of the wicked to be eternal.

It does this by its use of the terms αἰών, αἰώνιος.—Some, however, maintain that these terms do not necessarily imply eternal duration. We reply:

(_a_) It must be conceded that these words do not _etymologically_ necessitate the idea of eternity; and that, as expressing the idea of “age‐long,” they are sometimes used in a limited or rhetorical sense.

_2 Tim. 1:9_—“_his own purpose and grace, which was given us in
Christ Jesus before times eternal_”—but the past duration of the
world is limited; _Heb. 9:26_—“_now once at the end of the ages
hath he been manifested_”—here the αἰῶνες have an end; _Tit.
1:2_—“_eternal life ... promised before times eternal_”; but here
there may be a reference to the eternal covenant of the Father
with the Son; _Jer. 31:3_—“_I have loved thee with an everlasting
love_” = a love which antedated time; _Rom. 16:25, 26_—“_the
mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal ...
according to the commandment of the eternal God_”—here “_eternal_”
is used in the same verse in two senses. It is argued that in
_Mat. 25:46_—“_these shall go away into eternal punishment_”—the
word “_eternal_” may be used in the narrower sense.