Ex Libns 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE ] [BRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ETERNAL HOPE.
 
 PREACHED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 
 NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1877 
 
 REV. FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., 
 
 Canon of Westminster, 
 Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, 
 
 te Rlaiiir cf M ' arlbormigh College, Hulsean Lecturer, and Fellow o/ 
 Trinity College, Cambridge 
 
 " Pleriqua dum plus nos diligunt quam meremur, haec jactant et loquuntur. 
 senuones nostros doctrinanique laudantes, quae conscientia nostra non recipit. 
 Alii vero tractatus nostros calumnumtes ea sentire nos criminantur quae 
 nunquam sensisse nos novimus. " OKIGEN, Homil. xxv. in Luc. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Bonbon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1878 
 
 [T/'i c Kigh! of Translation and Reproduction is
 
 LONDON : 
 
 E. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOK, 
 BHEAD STREET HILL, E.C.
 
 BT 
 
 TO THE 
 
 REV. E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., 
 
 Professor of the / xegesis of the New Testament at King's College, London, 
 Vicar of B:ckley t Prebendary of St. Paul's, &"c., &"c. 
 
 Ijjest Sermons, 
 
 Not as claiming for them the sanction of his high authority, but as a 
 small expression of gratitude for the unvarying help and kindness 
 which from youth upwards I have received from his friendship ; and 
 to record my sense of the high services which he has rendered to 
 Biblical Literature by his constant labours, his keen insight, and his 
 large-hearted charity.
 
 " Oh remember how short my time is : 
 
 Wherefore hast thou made all men for nought ? " 
 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 48. 
 
 " rojoCSe n6x6ov Ttpfia fiij n irpoffSoKa, 
 irplv <iv 6f<av ris SidSo^os rwi> ffuv itoviav 
 Qavfi, 0\r)'(TTj T' eis dvavyrjrov fj.o\eiv 
 "AiSrji/ KVKpcud T' a.n<f>\ Taprdpov ftddrj. 
 irpbs raCra Bou\fu'." 
 
 l. Prom. v. 1026. 
 
 oj 6 Kiifj.LKoi ToiaOra TIVO. iriol TT)S >(j'.<i(u>s SiaAe^erai, 
 ol yelp naff" AiSriv Svo roiBovs vou.i^oju.ti' 
 niav SiKaliav xdffpay dfff@<ai> dtiov 
 * * * 
 
 d Se rovrots j rpayaiSia, . 
 
 tirciv 5" ap' (K\iiry r~t> irav 
 <ppov$oi fj.tv fffrat Kv^dTcav iiiras 8u06s . 
 Kiirtira ffwfftt iravQ' & irpoffff a.irta\fa tv." 
 
 CLEM. ALEX. Strom, v. 14, 123.
 
 Vlll 
 
 " Facta resurrectione mortuorum non dcerunt quibus postpoenas, 
 quas patiuntur spiritus mortuorum, impertiatur misericordia, ut in 
 ignem non mittantur aeternum." AUG. De Civ. Dei, xxi. 24. 
 
 " Deus non exigit ab u!lo peccatore plus quam debet, sed quoniam 
 nullus potest reddere quantum debet, solus Christus reddidit pro 
 omnibus plus quam debetur." ST. ANSELM. 
 
 " Esto cavernoso, quia sic pro labe necesse est 
 Corporea, tristis me sorbeat ignis averno, 
 Saltern mirificos incendia lenta vapores 
 Exhalent, sestuque calor languente tepescat. 
 Lux immensa alios et tempora vincta coronis 
 Lsetificent, me poena levis clementer adurat.' 1 
 
 PRUDENT, ffamartigeaaa, ad Jin. 
 
 " E vederai color, che son content! 
 Nel fuoco, perche speran di venire 
 Quando che sia, alle beate genti." 
 
 DANTE, Infcrns, i. I iS. 
 
 " Through sins of sense, perversities of will, 
 
 Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame, and ill 
 Thy pitying Eye is on Thy creature still. 
 
 " Wilt Thou not make, eternal Source and Goal ! 
 In Thy long years life's broken circle whole, 
 And change to praise the cry of a lost soul ? " 
 
 " Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods ? 
 D;aw near them then in being merciful ! "
 
 IX 
 
 " Let no one take offence at the opening of this mystery as though 
 it brought anything new into religion ; for it has nothing new in it ; 
 it alters no point of gospel doctrine, but only sets each article of the 
 old Christian faith upon its true ground." W. LAW, Way to Divine 
 Knowledge, p. 255. 
 
 " Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy 
 of Holies [as High Priest] to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel 
 [the Divine Crown] Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high 
 and lifted up, who said unto me, ' Ishmael, my son, bless me.' 
 I answered, ' May it please Thee to make Thy compassion prevail over 
 Thine anger ; may it be revealed above Thy other attributes ; mayest 
 Thou deal with Thy children according to it, and not according to the 
 strict measure of judgment.' It seemed to me that He bowed His 
 head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing." 7o/w^(Bera- 
 choth, i. f. 6. b.) 
 
 " St. John uses a very broad expression. 'Jesus Christ,' he says, 
 ' is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also 
 for the sins of the -whole world.' 1 ' The whole world.' ' Ah ! ' some 
 would say, 'that is dangerous language.' It is God's language 
 John speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. It throws 
 a zone of mercy around the world. Perish the hand that would 
 narrow it by a hairsbreadth." REV. DR. GUTHRIE, Life, p. 511. 
 
 " My belief is that in the end there will be a vastly larger number 
 saved than we have any conception of. What sort of earthly govern- 
 ment would that be where more than half the subjects were in 
 prison ? I cannot believe that the government of God will be like 
 that."-/,/, p. 773.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE complaint of Origen as to the misrepresentation 
 of his real views alike by friends and opponents, which 
 stands on the title-page of this volume, will exactly 
 express my reason for publishing it. Most unexpectedly, 
 most reluctantly, I find myself entangled in a contro- 
 versy into which I should not have voluntarily entered 
 without buckling on armour of stronger temper and 
 securer rivets than I can, at this sudden call, find 
 ready to hand. These sermons were never intended 
 for publication. They were preached in the ordinary 
 course of my duties, and I refused multitudes of 
 requests to give them a wider publicity, until it 
 became necessary to do so in simple self-defence against 
 the many perversions of my real views, which were 
 prevalent among those who had not heard the sermons,
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 or those who reported them imperfectly and errone 
 ously. The notes and appendices were not prepared 
 beforehand, but written in the very brief and in- 
 cessantly occupied space of time which intervened 
 between my decision to publish them and their actual 
 appearance. 1 Of the truths here propounded I have 
 never since my early youth had the slightest doubt ; but 
 had I intended any controversial defence of them, it 
 would have been far fuller and more impregnable than I 
 now can make it. If, in mere collateral matters, I have 
 made any slips, the candid reader (and to such only I 
 
 1 In drawing them up I have received some assistance from books 
 which have since been kindly sent me, mostly by their authors, 
 but not one of which I had previously read. Of the arguments of 
 these writers I have made little or no use, but I have borrowed 
 some of their quotations. Among these I may mention especially 
 Mr. Jukes's Restitution of All Things, a singularly calm, devout, 
 and thoughtful treatise ; Dr. Dewes's Plea for a Rational Trans- 
 lation ; the Rev. H. N. Oxenham's Catholic Eschatology ; and 
 the Rev. C. Clemance's Future Punishment. The Rev. S. Minton 
 kindly sent me his Glory of Christ, and other publications ; the Rev. 
 E. White his Life in Christ ; and I have also had lent to me 
 The Perishing Soul, by Mr. Dennistoun ; the Rev. Prebendary 
 Constable's Duration of Future Punishment ; and numerous 
 pamphlets, for wfyich my best thanks are due to the authors.
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 appeal) will make every allowance for one who, amid 
 many occupations, has been unexpectedly called upon 
 to defend opinions which have been incessantly assailed, 
 but which, in the only form in which he holds them, he 
 believes to be not only tenable and permissible (this 
 they are beyond all question) but to be also Scriptural, 
 necessary, and true. In a very high sense also he believes 
 them to be Catholic. An ' opinion ' indeed, can never be 
 ' Catholic ' in the same sense as a matter of faith ; but 
 my views on the subject are in agreement with Catholic 
 theology both before and after the Reformation to 
 an extent of which I believe that few are aware. And 
 this will I hope appear when I have endeavoured to 
 state with all possible clearness what my opinions 
 really are. 
 
 Among innumerable varieties of detail into which 
 it is impossible to enter, it may be said that four 
 main views of Eschatology are now prevalent, namely 
 
 1. Universalism, or, as it is now sometimes termed 
 Restorationism : the opinion that all men will be 
 ultimately saved. 
 
 2. Annihilationism, or, as its supporters prefer to
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 call it, " conditional immortality : " the opinion that 
 after a retributive punishment the wicked will be 
 destroyed. 
 
 3. Purgatory, the view that besides Heaven, the 
 final state of the blessed, and Hell, the final doom 
 of the accursed, there is a state wherein those souls 
 are detained and punished which are capable of being 
 purified, an intermediate purification between death 
 and judgment. 
 
 4. The Common view, which, to the utter detriment 
 of all noble thoughts of God, and to all joy and 
 peace in believing, except in the case of many who 
 shut their eyes hard to what it really implies 
 declares (i.) that at death there is passed upon every 
 impenitent sinner an irreversible doom to endless tor- 
 tures, either material or mental, of the most awful 
 and unspeakable intensity ; and (ii.) that this doom 
 awaits the vast majority of mankind. If this be not 
 the ordinary view, it were well that it should be 
 explicitly disclaimed. It most certainly is the view 
 which has been crudely inculcated from multitudes of 
 pulpits, even in the last few months.
 
 PREFACE. xv 
 
 Let me speak very briefly on each of these views 
 in order. 
 
 i. The strength of Universalism lies in two arguments ; 
 those, namely, which are derived (i) from our belief 
 in the infinite love of God, in that divine mercy 
 which is from everlasting to everlasting; and (2) 
 Irom the very numerous passages of Scripture which 
 speak repeatedly, and without any limitation, of the 
 Restoration of all things and the Universality of 
 Christian Redemption. 
 
 Every man must long with all his heart that this 
 belief were true ; and thousands have repeated with 
 intense yearning the famous lines of the poet of 
 In Memoriam 
 
 " Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
 Shall be the final end of ill, 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 Or cast as rubbish in the void, 
 
 Wlien God hath made the pile complete.
 
 xvi PREFACE. 
 
 But however deep may be our desire that this should 
 be the will of God ; however beautifully it may seem 
 to accord both with His mercy and His justice, that 
 sin, after bringing its own punishment, should be turned 
 to holiness, and so forgiven ; however much we may 
 cling to the hope that some such meaning may under- 
 lie the broad and boundless promises of a future 
 Restitution, I dare not lay down any dogma of 
 Universalism ; partly because it is not clearly revealed 
 to us, and partly because it is impossible for us to 
 estimate the hardening effect of obstinate persistence 
 in evil, and the power of the human will to resist the 
 law and reject the love of God. 
 
 2. Nor can I at all accept the theory of Conditional 
 Immortality. Ably and earnestly as good men have 
 argued in its favour, it seems to me to rest too 
 entirely on the supposed invariable meaning of a 
 few words, and to press that meaning too far ; it 
 rejects that instinctive belief in Immortality which 
 has been found in almost every age and every race 
 of man ; and while it relieves the soul from the 
 crushing horror involved in the conception of endless
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 torment, it still if I understand it right leaves us 
 with the ghastly conclusion that God will raise the 
 wicked from the dead only that they may be tormented 
 and at last destroyed. 1 
 
 3. Nor again can I accept the Roman doctrine of 
 Purgatory. If indeed that doctrine consisted in nothing 
 else but these words from the catechism of the Council 
 of Trent, that "there is a purgatorial fire where the 
 souls of the righteous are purified by punishment of 
 some fixed period, that entrance may be given them 
 into their eternal home, where nothing that is defiled 
 can have a place," and if the term "fire" may be 
 interpreted immaterially, as the Eastern Church and 
 Western theologians of all ages have decided that it 
 
 1 For Mr. E. White, Mr. Minton, Prebendary Constable, and the 
 other members of this school of thought, I feel a sincere respect ; but 
 with them, as with others, it seems to me that " the letter killeth." 
 Rigid literalism is absolutely fatal to any true knowledge of 
 Scripture. The highest service these truly devout, earnest, and able 
 writers have done is to point out the utter untenability of the popular 
 view. Their view is far more scriptural, as well as incomparably 
 less shocking, than the utterances of those who defend the traditional 
 fancies, whether "the latter be hard and illiterate, or learned and 
 refined.
 
 xviii PREFACE. 
 
 may, 1 then there would be nothing in the doctrine of 
 Purgatory which seems to me in any way inconsistent 
 with Scripture, while it certainly is consistent with a 
 very ancient belief of the Church, and with the all 
 but universal usage of prayers for the dead. 2 Had 
 this been the whole Roman doctrine of Purgatory, I 
 do not believe that the Reformers would ever have 
 stigmatised it as "resfutilis" But they rejected it in 
 the rough, not only because the conception had been 
 made too compact, too specific, too much limited to 
 the poena temporalis, in short, too systematic, to be 
 capable of exact Scriptural proof; but also because it 
 was connected in their minds with the deplorable but 
 parasitic abuses of indulgences, pardons, works of 
 supererogation, purchasable masses for the dead, and 
 all the sixteenth century devices of Tetzel and Leo X. 
 
 " Poenam ignis, sive iste ignis accipiatur proprie sive meta- 
 phorice," Bellarmine, Purg. ii. 10. "Why should the 'fire of 
 hell ' be more material than the ' water of life ' ? Why should 
 the ' furnace ' and ' lake ' of Gehenna possess more of physical 
 reality than ' the sea of glass ' or the ' pearly gates '? " 
 
 2 The Catacombs furnish decisive proof ot the antiquity of this 
 practice.
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 But as I have intimated elsewhere (see pp. 169 174), 
 it was a deep misfortune to the Church that, while 
 rejecting Purgatory, the Reformers did not distinguish 
 it from the widespread ancient, reasonable, and, I had 
 almost said, necessary, belief in some condition in which 
 by what means we know not, whether by the poena 
 sensus or only the poena damni imperfect souls who 
 die in a state unfit for heaven may yet have perfected 
 in them until the day of Christ, that good work of 
 God which has been in this world begun. 1 There are 
 few great theologians, whether of pre-Reformation or of 
 modern times, who have not used language which, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, favours such a view as this. 
 I do not then by any means hold the " Romish 
 doctrine of Purgatory " in the dogmatic and corrupted 
 form in which it is distinctly and rightly condemned by 
 the Twenty-second Article. But this " Roman doctrine," 
 thus stated, is not to be confused with the opinion of 
 many of the Fathers that there is some intermediate 
 
 1 Phil. i. 6. See Oxenham's Catholic Eschatology, and a thought- 
 ful article on " The Annihilation of the Wicked " in the Church 
 Quarterly, of July 1877. 
 
 b 2
 
 xx PREFACE. 
 
 state wherein souls which, at the time of death, are 
 still imperfect and unworthy, and not yet in a state 
 of grace and of such are the vast majority of us all 
 may still be reached by God's mercy beyond the 
 grave. The learned and thoughtful Lutheran Bishop 
 Martensen, after arguing in favour of " a realm of pro- 
 gressive development in which souls are prepared and 
 matured for the final judgment," adds that though the 
 Romish doctrine " must be repudiated because it is 
 mixed up with so many crude and false positions, it 
 nevertheless contains the truth that the intermediate 
 state must, in a purely spiritual sense, be a Purgatory 
 destined for the purifying of the soul." l I so far differ 
 from him that I think the term "Purgatory" had 
 better be rejected, not because we are averse to the 
 acceptance of such truths as the word involves, from 
 whatever quarter they may come to us, but because it 
 is inextricably mixed up with a number of views in 
 which we cannot at all believe. 2 
 
 Christian Dogmatics, p. 457, E. Tr. 
 
 2 On this unfortunate negativauss in the teaching of the Reformers 
 upon this subject, see the Sketch of Eschatological Opinions, p. 181.
 
 PREFACE. xxi 
 
 4. And now I come to the common, the popular 
 view in our own Church. 
 
 It is of course absolutely false that in any one of 
 the following sermons as some declare that we say, 
 and as we be slanderously reported I have ever 
 dreamt of denying the great, awful, but neither unjust 
 nor unmerciful doctrine of future retribution. The 
 statements which have been so freely circulated in 
 England and in America that I " denied the exist- 
 ence of hell," or " denounced the doctrine of eternal 
 punishment," are merely ignorant perversions of what 
 I tried to teach. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Clemance, in whose little book I find much with which I 
 can agree, argues that future punishment may end, but that the 
 ending is unrevealed. While, therefore, he would not teach that 
 it must end, neither can he teach that it will not. " All that 
 God is in Himself, all that He is known to be to me through 
 this revelation of Himself in Christ Jesus, give us an infinite satis- 
 faction in leaving the matter with Him. If we affirm annihilation 
 we distort Scripture ; if we affirm universalism we oppose Scripture ; 
 if we affirm the ending of punishment we fall short of Scripture ; iftee 
 affirm its endlessness, we go beyond Scripture" P. 80. I would go 
 a little further than Mr. Clemance in expressing a distinct hofx, and 
 I do not think that he gives due weight to the doctrine of the
 
 xxii PREFACE. 
 
 Between me and the great majority of our most 
 learned clergy and theologians, between my view and 
 that of many of our wisest and most respected bishops, 
 the differences are very small ; and only lie within 
 that range of opinions in which such differences are 
 absolutely permissible. Neither the Catholic Church 
 in general, nor the English branch of it in particular, 
 has ever condemned the view which I here have 
 preached. 1 That it is not, and never has been the 
 opinion of the numerical majority I am well aware, but 
 that it is, openly, or more often tacitly, accepted by 
 an ever-increasing number of our most thoughtful and 
 educated living divines I have the best reason to believe ; 
 and that it will be the professed and deeply-treasured 
 belief of another generation of the English clergy, I am 
 most unalterably convinced. 
 
 That there is a terrible retribution upon impenitent 
 sin both here and hereafter; that without holiness no 
 
 1 I say " has ever condemned," for though I think that the 
 English Church showed the highest wisdom in rejecting the Forty- 
 second Article, yet it contains nothing in which (if I understand 
 it rightly) I should refuse to concur.
 
 PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 man can ever see the Lord ; that sin cannot be forgiven 
 till it is forsaken and repented of ; that the doom, 
 which falls on sin is both merciful and just we are 
 all agreed : and these views will be found enforced in 
 the following pages. If this be all that is generally 
 intended by the doctrine of Hell, as it is most assuredly 
 all that the Catholic Church, guided by Scripture, 
 requires her children to believe then this doctrine 
 of Hell I receive and believe. But there are four 
 elements in the current opinion which I consider to 
 be as unsupported by Scripture as they are repugnant 
 to reason ; which are matters of opinion only and 
 not of faith; which the Church of God has never 
 dogmatically sanctioned; which have furnished to the 
 atheist his most indisputable argument, and caused to 
 the Christian if he be a thoughtful Christian his most 
 intolerable pang. It is these accretions of the true 
 doctrine, and these only, which. I have shown reasons 
 to repudiate and condemn. These four elements 
 which make the popular view far darker than that 
 held in the Roman Church, and far darker even than 
 that of St. Augustine are i, the physical torments,
 
 xxiv PREFACE. 
 
 the material agonies, the "sapiens ignis" of Eternal 
 Punishment ; l 2, the supposition of its necessarily 
 endless duration for all who incur it ; 3, the opinion 
 that it is thus incurred by the vast mass of mankind ; 
 and 4, that it is a doom passed irreversibly at the 
 moment of death on all who die in a state of sin. 
 How frightful are the facts which they must face 
 who hold these common opinions if indeed they 
 in any way realise the meaning of their own words 
 is obvious to all, and I have given some proofs 
 of it in their own words. How any man with a heart 
 of pity in him any man who has the faculty of 
 imagination in even the lowest degree developed can 
 contemplate the present condition of countless mul- 
 titudes of the dead and of the living viewed in the 
 light of such opinions ; how he can at all reconcile 
 them either with all that he learns of God and of 
 Christ in Scripture and by inward experience, how 
 
 1 Minuc. Felix, Oct. 35. " Illic sapiens ignis membra urit et 
 reficit, carpit et nutrit. " "In bodily awful, intolerable torture we 
 believe no longer. At the idea of a bodily hell we have learnt to 
 smile." F. W. Robertson. (I cannot endorse this expression.)
 
 PREFACE. xxv 
 
 as he walks the streets and witnesses the life of 
 our great cities he can enjoy in this world one 
 moment of happiness however deeply he may be 
 convinced of his own individual salvation is more 
 than I can ever understand. And it is really painful 
 to think that in this matter the Roman Catholic Church, 
 so rigidly tenacious of what she conceives to be 
 purity of doctrine, so intensely opposed to anything 
 remotely resembling the spirit of scepticism, so in- 
 flexibly resolute in opposition to heresies, so rich 
 in her motherhood of saintly souls, has held a doctrine 
 more merciful, less void of pity, than the current 
 belief of modern Protestants. That doctrine the 
 Romanists have held though they have overlaid it with 
 many untenable inferences because they inherited 
 it from the early Church. Those who uphold the 
 popular view in all its tetanic rigidity accuse others of 
 looking lightly at sin. Will the most fanatical bigot 
 say that the Roman Church takes a light view of sin? 
 yet that Church has introduced an almost indefinite 
 alleviation into the belief in an endless hell ! 
 
 Restore the ancient belief in an intermediate state ;
 
 xxvi PREFACE. 
 
 correct the glaring and most unhappy mistrans- 
 lations of our English version ; judge the words of 
 our Blessed Lord by the most ordinary rules of honest 
 and unprejudiced interpretation; abstain from press- 
 ing the literal acceptance of passages most obviously 
 metaphorical ; l give due weight to the countless 
 passages of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, 
 which speak of a love, and a mercy, and a triumph 
 of long-sufferring over offended justice, which are to 
 us irreconcilable with the belief that the unhappy race 
 of God's children in this great family of man are all 
 but universally doomed to endless torturings, at the 
 very thought of which the heart faints and is sick 
 with horror ; give to the Reason and the Conscience, 2 
 of man some voice in judging of a scheme which 
 seems to outrage all that is noblest and holiest within 
 them; separate from the notions of "Hell" (if the 
 word be restored to its ancient sense) the arbitrary 
 
 1 Es ist offenbar class viele Ausdriicke des Neuen Testaments, 
 welche dieser ausserlichen Zustand Z. B. als ein ewig brennendes 
 Feuer bezeichnen (Matt. xxv. 41) nur bildlich zu nehmen sind." 
 Martens Ersch. u. Griiber, s. v. 2 2 Cor, iv. 3.
 
 PREFACE. xxvii 
 
 fancies of human ignorance and human passion ; 
 accept the merciful opinions which the Church has 
 always permitted though she has not formally adopted 
 them that the fire of Gehenna is metaphorical, that 
 there is a possibility of future purification that most 
 men will at last be saved ; l hold that, as the very 
 word " damnation " once implied, the poena damra, 
 i.e. the loss, it may be for ever, of the beatific vision 
 is, far more than any poena sensiis, or physical torture, 
 the essence of the sufferings of the lost ; do this, and 
 you have removed the greatest of all stumbling-blocks 
 from the path of faith, and added incomparably to our 
 love of God and to the peace, the hope, the dignity, 
 the happiness of human life. 
 
 1 On these points as permissible in the Roman Chuich, see 
 I'errone, Prael. Theol. i. 484. The latter was held by F. W. Faber 
 ( Creator and Creature, iii. 332 : " In the use of the Scripture argument 
 the triumph is completely and most remarkably on the milder side"), 
 and the eloquent Lacordaire. II. N. Oxenham, Eschatology, p. 59. 
 He calls some of the vulgar opinions " parasitical accretions .... 
 as startling and repulsive as they are destitute of any reasonable or 
 authoritative basis," and "matters of speculation on which in all 
 ages different opinions have been maintained by theologians of 
 unimpeached orthodoxy."
 
 xxviii PREFACE. 
 
 Now ray objection to the renderings of Teewa, Kpiirtc, 
 and a'iwvioe, by "hell," "damnation," and "everlasting" 
 an objection in accordance with the instinctive feel- 
 ing of thousands, as is obvious from the universal practice 
 of avoiding those words arises from these grounds : 
 that as English words they have utterly lost their 
 original significance ; that by nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine out of every thousand they are understood in 
 a sense which I see to be demonstrably unscrip- 
 tural and untrue ; and that they attribute to the 
 sacred writers, and to our Blessed Lord Himself, 
 meanings such as they never sanctioned, language 
 such as they never used. Not one of them can be 
 retained by our revisers without necessitating here- 
 after yet another revision. ] would say this very 
 humbly, but I cannot state it too strongly. It is a 
 matter not of opinion but of fact. Whether men 
 hold the doctrine of an irreversible doom to endless 
 torments passed at death on all who die unforgiven 
 or not, is not a question which can in any way affect 
 the demonstrable meaning of Greek words, the un- 
 deniable duty of giving to those words such renderings
 
 PREFACE. xxix 
 
 only as do not stereotype foregone conclusions in 
 matters of immemorial controversy. 
 
 I know that inveterate prejudice, passing into second 
 habit by centuries of tyrannous tradition, is invincible in 
 all but the noblest souls. The roots of the mandrake 
 were believed to strike very deeply into the soil, and 
 when it was torn up it shrieked. Yet let every candid 
 reader perpend these simple, undeniable, and indisputable 
 facts. 
 
 i. The verb "to damn" and its cognates does not 
 once occur in the Old Testament. 
 
 No word conveying any such meaning occurs in the 
 Greek of the New Testament. 
 
 The words so rendered mean "to judge," "judgment," 
 and " condemnation" ; and if the word " damnation" 
 has come to mean more than these words do as, to 
 all but the most educated readers, is notoriously the 
 case then the word is a grievous mistranslation, all 
 the more serious because it entirely and terribly perverts 
 and obscures the real meaning of our Lord's utterances ; 
 and all the more inexcusable, at any rate for us with 
 our present knowledge, because if the word " damnation"
 
 xxx PREFACE. 
 
 were used as the rendering of the very same words in 
 multitudes of other passages (where our translators have 
 rightly translated them), it would make those passages 
 at once impossible and grotesque. 1 
 
 2. The word " Hell," in the Old Testament represents 
 the single word Sheol (?iNIp), which means neither more 
 nor less than "the unseen world," or " the world be- 
 yond the grave," and is in thirty-three places rendered 
 " the grave." 2 
 
 In the New Testament it is used to render three 
 words, neither of which conveys, or could have been 
 originally intended to convey, the notion which all but 
 the few now attach to " hell." Now if a word conveys 
 meanings which are not necessarily involved in the 
 original, it is an inadequate translation ; if it conveys 
 to the vast majority meanings which have nothing 
 
 1 The gratuitous introduction of "damnation" for "judgment" 
 into I Cor. xi. 29, and so into our Communion Service, has been a 
 sad cause of spiritual loss to thousands of timid souls. 
 
 2 The word has in fact changed its meanings. It once meant (as 
 is shown alike by our own and by Luther's version) merely " the 
 underworld " ; it has now come to mean a place of endless torment. 
 See Ersch and Griiber, s. v., Holle and Excursus II. p. 195.
 
 PREFACE. xxxi 
 
 corresponding to them in the original, it is a mistrans- 
 lation ; if it be deliberately retained after it has acquired 
 a shade of meaning far darker than the original, and 
 far darker than formerly belonged to it, is it too much 
 to say that it will be a mistranslation which a multitude 
 of readers will find it very hard to condone ? 
 
 a. One of the three words rendered " hell " occurs but 
 once, in 2 Pet. ii. 4. It is the Greek Tartarus, and 
 ought to be so rendered. It cannot be rendered " hell," 
 for it refers to an intermediate state previous to 
 judgment. 
 
 /3. Another is Hades, which is the exact equivalent 
 ol the Hebrew Shcol, and means "the unseen world," as 
 a place both for the bad and the good (Acts ii. 27, 36). 
 It tells directly against the received notion of " hell," 
 because (like Tartarus in 2 Pet. ii. 4), it means an 
 intermediate state of the soul previous to judgment. 1 
 
 1 This is the word used in Luke xvi. 23 of Dives. " In Hades he 
 lift up his eyes being in torments." So far therefore from furnishing 
 any argument in favour of the popular view, this parable tells dis- 
 tinctly against it, since it points to an intermediate condition as 
 Stier admits (Words of the Lord Jesus, iv. 223, E. Tr.) ; and it 
 shows how rapidly in that condition a moral renovation has been
 
 xxxit PREFACE. 
 
 y. A third is Gehenna. It is most essential that 
 this word should be rightly understood, because (with 
 the exception of James iii. 6 a mere incidental allusion 
 in no wise bearing on the history of the word) it is 
 used by our Lord alone. 
 
 In the Old Testament it is merely the pleasant Valley 
 of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated 
 by idolatry, and specially by Moloch worship, and denied 
 by Josiah on this account. 1 Used, according to Jewish 
 tradition, as the common sewer of the city, the corpses 
 of the worse criminals were flung into it unburied, and 
 fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. It then 
 became a word which secondarily implied (i) the 
 severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass 
 
 wrought in a sinful and selfish soul (see some excellent remarks in 
 Mr. Cox's Salvator Mundi, p. 65). Neander goes perhaps too far 
 in saying that it is foreign to the scope of the parable to give us any 
 clue to the future life; but the expression " Abraham's bosom" 
 shows how utterly figurative it is, and Slier holds that the fraaavoi 
 were meant to work repentance. Even Luther, Von Gerlach, &c., 
 teach that " the whole conversation passed in the conscience." And 
 Dives is rtKvov still. 
 
 1 See I Kings xi. 7 ; 2 Kings xxiii. IO (Jer. vii. 31, xix. 10 14 ; 
 Is. xxx. 33, lophet)
 
 PREFACE. xxxiii 
 
 upon a criminal the casting forth of his unburied 
 corpse amid the fires and worms of this polluted 
 valley ; and (ii.) a punishment which to the Jews, 
 as a body never meant an endless punishment beyond 
 the grave. 1 
 
 Whatever may be the meaning of the entire passages 
 in which this word occurs, " hell " must be a complete 
 mistranslation, since it attributes to the term used by 
 Christ a sense entirely different from that in which it 
 was understood by our Lord's hearers, and therefore 
 entirely different from the sense in which He could 
 have used it. I must not shrink from recording 
 my most emphatic opinion that if the Revision 
 
 1 Schlcusner (Lex N. T. s. v.}, though holding the traditional view 
 without any suspicion of its utter groundlessness, yet renders Matt. 
 v. 22, evoxos f<rrcu els rrjv yifvvav TOU irvpds by "dignus qui con- 
 tumeliosa morte ajficiatur." If any one will give one moment's 
 unbiassed thought to this verse, so obviously figurative since in its 
 literal sense it was of course not the case that angry thoughts, or 
 common expletives came under the cognizance of the Jewish courts, 
 and since it is utterly shocking to the moral sense to suppose that 
 an angry word will doom men to endless torment he will see how 
 utterly the sense is travestied by the introduction of hell-fire for 
 "the Gehenna of fire," into the English version.
 
 xxxiv PREFACE. 
 
 Committee retain the word "hell" as a correct version 
 of Gehenna they will be incurring a very grave 
 and awful responsibility, by perpetuating a connotation 
 for which, long after they are in the grave, they 
 will be condemned by the next generation far more 
 unsparingly than by our own. 
 
 3. I now come to uiuvios, translated rightly and 
 frequently by " eternal," and wrongly and unnecessarily 
 by "everlasting." 
 
 I say wrongly on grounds which cannot be im- 
 peached. If in numbers of passages this word con- 
 fessedly does not and cannot mean " endless," 1 a fact 
 which none but the grossest and most hopeless 
 
 1 See for aldii'tos Is. Iviii. 12; Jer. li. 39; Gen. ix. 12, xvii. 8, 
 xlviii. 2, xlix. 26; Num. xxv. 13 ; Lev. iii. 17, xvi. 34; Ifal>. iii. 
 6 ; and for altev Deut. xiii. 16, xv. 17 ; Eccl. xii. 5 ; MX. xxxii. 
 13; 2 Kings v. 27, xxi. 7; I Chron. xxviii. 4 ; Rom. xvi. 25; 
 2 Tim. i. 9 ; Tit. i. 2 ; &c. &c. It is remarkable further that the 
 expressions of the duration of good are far stronger than any that 
 are applied to evil (Is. li. 6 8; Ps. cxlv. 13; Eph. iii. 21) ; also 
 that the expression " eternal death " occurs nowhere in Scripture. 
 He who said Aitaviov vvp used the word, a few hours after, in a sense 
 that had nothing whatever to do with time. J. xvii. 3 (see Dr. 
 Plumptre in Bp. Ellicott's Commentary, ad loc,).
 
 PREFACE. xxxv 
 
 ignorance can dispute, it cannot be right to read that 
 meaning into the word, because of any a priori bias, 
 in other passages. All scholars alike admit that in 
 many places cuwV can only mean "age" and ato/Vtos 
 only age-long, or (in the classic. sense of the word) 
 secular, which is often equivalent to " indefinite." l 
 Many scholars who have a good right to be heard 
 deny that it ever necessarily means " endless," though 
 it is predicted of endless things. It therefore becomes 
 a clear duty to keep the rendering " eternal," which is 
 a neutral word, and does not mislead the ignorant into 
 supposing that a doctrine has been revealed, which, 
 if revealed at all which we show good grounds for 
 denying is most certainly not revealed by the use 
 of that single disputed adjective, or any of its cognate 
 expressions. 2 
 
 1 I have further examined these words in a subsequent Excursus. 
 i i . 
 
 " Dpy and D7117 seem to be much more used for an indefinite than 
 for an infinite time." Parkhurst. Prof. Bartlett, arguing for the so- 
 called "orthodox" view, uses more than once the phrase "infinite, 
 or at least indefinite " but what very different words ! Seventy 
 times out of ninety the word cannot mean endless. 
 
 2 All this and my Excursus on the word were written before 
 
 C 2
 
 xxxvi PREFACE. 
 
 I will only add that avfitorov irvp, " unquenchable 
 fire," an expression which no one dreams of taking 
 with slavish literalness when found in other con- 
 nections, is mistranslated " fire which never shall be 
 quenched ; " and that even if this translation were 
 tenable it would not necessarily imply that all who 
 suffer from it should remain for ever in it. But 
 how untenable the translation is cannot be more 
 
 Mr. Clemance sent me his little book on Future Punishment, and he 
 exactly expresses the facts when he says that tuwv and altavios are 
 " words which shine only by a reflected light," i.e. that their mean- 
 ing depends entirely on the words with which they are joined, 
 so that it is quite false to say that alwvios joined with a>?f must mean 
 the same as altaviot joined with tcSXams. The word means endless 
 in neither clause (see Excursus, p. 199), but, just as in Rom. xvi. 25, 
 26, there is no reason why it might not mean endless in one, yet 
 have no such meaning in the other. " If good ever should come to 
 an end, that would come to an end which Christ died to bring in ; 
 but if evil comes to an end that comes to an end which Pie died to 
 destroy. So that the two stand by no means on the same footing," 
 p. 65. " An izon may have an end. ^ons of seons may have an 
 end. Only that which lasts though all the seons is without an end ; 
 and Scripture affirms this only of the kingdom of God, and of the 
 glory of God in the Church. The absolute eternity of evil is no- 
 where affirmed," p. 86. Very much indeed the reverse is affirmed 
 in the many passages which speak of the Final Restitution.
 
 PREFACE xxxvii 
 
 simply and decisively proved than by the fact that 
 in these passages our Lord is quoting, and in a milder 
 form, the oriental and poetic hyperbole of Isaiah, 1 who, 
 though he uses a stronger form of expression, is 
 speaking of a purely earthly and entirely transient 
 flame. 
 
 And, I would ask, if the literal meaning of one or 
 two passages in our Lord's parables is to be pressed 
 to conclusions which even the literal meaning 01 
 figurative expressions will not bear, why is no account 
 to be made of the fact that even the unmerciful debtor 
 is only handed over to the tormentors until the debt 
 shall have been paid? I will only add for in the 
 , brief space and time at my disposal it is impossible 
 for me to enter exhaustively into the discussion, 
 though otherwise I would gladly show text by text 
 that there is no real Scriptural authority for the 
 popular view, and a vast mass of Scriptural evidence 
 against it that there are three passages of our Lord's 
 teaching which, though they may be perhaps urged against 
 Universalism, tell most strongly in favour of the views 
 1 Is. Ixvi. 24.
 
 xxxviii PREFACE. 
 
 here maintained. One of these is the judgment pro- 
 nounced on Judas (Matt. xxvi. 24), " It had been good 
 U-a\oV) for that man if he had not been born ; " another 
 is the warning to fear him who can destroy both soul 
 and body in Gehenna (Matt. x. 28) ; a third is the sin 
 which (according to our version) " shall not be forgiven 
 either in this world or that which is to come." (Matt, 
 xii. 32). 
 
 i. Now it seems to me that these passages strongly 
 support the ancient against the common view. Judas 
 committed the most awful of human crimes : whatever 
 happened to him hereafter it might well be said it 
 would have been good (Ka\6v is untranslatable) for him 
 if he had never been born. 1 Yet how infinitely milder 
 is this form of speech than any which we could have 
 expected, had the common view be true ! How abso- 
 lutely silent is it about torments or their endlessness ! 
 
 1 Plato speaks in the voice of simple human reason when he 
 describes some sins as !a<n/x<{, and speaks of some men as (humanly) 
 dvla-roi (Gorg. p. 525). Yet Olympiodorus, commenting on the 
 passage, strikingly observes that, though they have lost the oCro- 
 Klt>T}Tov, still ws (TtpoKivrjroi ffdj^ovrai (see Prof. Mayor, Contemp. 
 Rev., May, 1876.)
 
 PREFACE. xxxix 
 
 How strongly does it suggest the conclusion that, for all 
 except those who have been guilty of the most enormous 
 crimes, even "aeonian punishment" maybe more blessed 
 than never to have been ! .How utterly do they dis- 
 countenance the common view that it would have 
 been better for most of our race to have been un- 
 born ! It is most erroneously supposed that those who 
 believe in the possible restoration of many of the lost 
 imply that they will ultimately be admitted into per- 
 fect bliss. They hold no such view. The poena 
 damni the loss and partial loss of all that "might 
 have been " may continue long after the pocna 
 sensus has ended. A man's sin may be ultimately for- 
 given him; he may even attain to a certain degree 
 of peace; and yet, while the memory of his sin remains, 
 he may be the first to acquiesce in the sorrowful decision 
 that it had been well for him if he had not been 
 born. A cessation of agonising remorse is not the 
 same thing as perfect peace, nor are the alleviations 
 of deserved punishment identical with the beatific vision. 
 All the trite rhetoric which from Tertullian downwards 
 has talked of the impossibility of supposing that
 
 xl PREFACE. 
 
 ultimately there will be no difference between a John 
 and a Judas, a Jezebel and a Virgin Mary, may be 
 dismissed as entirely futile and beside the mark. 
 
 2. The second passage merely attributes to God a 
 power which we know the Omnipotent must possess. 
 He can destroy the soul, but it says not that He 
 will. If any think that this is implied, it seems to 
 me that no logical choice is open to them but to 
 embrace the theory of Conditional Immortality. 
 
 3. The third passage has only a disputed bearing on 
 the subject at all. If aiuv be rightly rendered, as in 
 nearly every passage where it occurs it may be rightly 
 rendered by "age," our Lord only says that there 
 is one particular sin and what sin this is, no one has 
 ever known which is so heinous as not to be pardonable 
 either in this (the Jewish) or the coming (the Christian) 
 dispensation. Nothing therefore is of necessity implied 
 respecting the world beyond the grave. But if it be, 
 how overwhelming is the argument with which I am 
 supplied ! Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven, 
 our Lord says, without further limitation and with no 
 shadow of a hint that He refers to this life only a gloss
 
 PREFACE. xli 
 
 which indeed His words directly exclude ; every sin and 
 blasphemy shall be forgiven here or hereafter except 
 one ! " If one sin only is excluded from forgiveness 
 in that coming age, other sins cannot stand on the same 
 level, and the dimness behind the veil is lit up with at 
 least a gleam of hope." 
 
 Further than this, consider how large a sanction is 
 added to all that I have urged by our Lord's saying that 
 some will be punished with few and some with many 
 stripes. Is any conceivable explanation of those words 
 consistent with various degrees of endlessness in torture ? 
 Consider lastly the whole tenor of His life and teaching, 
 and the statement that, even after death, He " went and 
 preached to the spirits in prison." To the word and to 
 the testimony : if they speak not according to the whole 
 revelation of God'o nature and His dealings with man, 
 are we to follow the whole tenor of the revelation, or 
 a few isolated and disputable texts ? 
 
 And here let those who think that the voice of 
 Scripture is decisive for "endless torments," simply 
 because they confuse the voice of Scripture with the 
 necessarily imperfect interpretations of many passages
 
 xlii PREFACE 
 
 of it which from age to age are being gradually removed, 
 let them meditate on this fact. Their view, if they will 
 scarchingly examine the grounds of it, depends mainly on 
 two or three scattered texts in the Synoptic Gospels; 
 texts chiefly aimed, not at the ordinary sinners of 
 the world, but at Pharisees and their disciples; texts 
 of which in several instances the true reading is highly 
 dubious ; texts of which the English translation has been 
 proved to be erroneous ; texts of which the current exegesis 
 is in the highest degree uncertain ; texts which learned 
 and competent critics understand on critical and his- 
 torical grounds in a sense almost opposite to that in 
 which they are usually taken; texts so little decisive 
 that the Church has never built any dogma upon them ; 
 texts which did not prevent the most eloquent, the most 
 learned, and the most orthodox of Fathers from holding 
 a view which is falsely asserted to contradict them ; texts 
 which depend for their supposed meaning on a rigid 
 literalism, the possibility of which is utterly overthrown by 
 the circumstance that they are absolutely contradicted by 
 other texts far more numerous, if these latter be inter- 
 preted on the same principles; texts of which the
 
 PREFACE. xliii 
 
 other clause is, in almost every instance, confessedly 
 metaphorical; texts finally, which, if thus understood, 
 rob the Gospel of its most precious elements and 
 run counter to the repeated expressions of Scripture 
 respecting Christ's plenteous redemption and God's 
 fatherly tenderness and everlasting mercy ; texts 
 therefore which we could not but hesitate to interpret in 
 accordance with the popular view, even if we had 
 not the plainest proofs that even if these passages 
 were not limited by others the popular view of them is 
 historically and logically inadmissible. 
 
 Now turn from the first three Gospels to the fourth, 
 and what do we find ? Passages not a few which bear 
 on the Gospel of Hope : not one so far as I can see 
 which gives any sanction whatever to the notion of 
 endless torments. 
 
 Now turn to the Epistles of the three greatest Apostles. 
 Uo we find the popular doctrine in them ? We find mul- 
 titudes of passages especially in St. Paul's later epistles 
 which speak without limit of a final restoration ; but 
 " that the doctrinal writings of these three chief teachers 
 of the Gospel are wholly destitute of any assertions of
 
 xliv PREFACE. 
 
 the endless misery of sinners in the literal sense of the 
 word, can be verified by every reader." l Had the doc- 
 trine been true, would it have been left to a very few 
 expressions, opposed in their literal meaning to so 
 many others, and in themselves so metaphorical, so 
 shadowy, so uncertain, so more than disputable? 
 
 Turning now from the subject of revealed to natural 
 religion, those who uphold the possibility, for many at 
 any rate, of a gradual amelioration beyond the grave, 
 are constantly confronted with the name, the authority, 
 the arguments of Bishop Butler, and with those 
 passages especially in which he warns us that we must 
 not construct after our own fashion an ideal universe, 
 or judge of the arm of God by the finger of man. I 
 have known the writings of Butler for many years, and 
 I entirely accept the cogency of his reasoning. Against 
 the doctrine of those, if such there be, who deny the 
 
 1 Rev. E. White, Life in Christ, p. 348. "The Bible," says this 
 devout and deeply reverent writer, "has fallen much into the hands 
 of those who imagine that a few favourite ' texts ' will suffice to 
 prove that Omniscience is on the side of even the most extravagant 
 theologies." (See Excursus I. p. 185.)
 
 PREFACE. xiv 
 
 existence of punishment beyond the grave, possibly 
 even against Universalism as an a priori doctrine 
 they are irresistible. But beyond this they do not and 
 cannot go. Into the question of " endless torments " 
 Butler does not enter at all; nor does he use one 
 single argument which in any way tells (for instance), 
 against the doctrine of Purgatory. 1 Further than this, 
 I may mention the curious fact that it was a sentence 
 in Bishop Butler's Analogy which first set me seriously 
 thinking on this question while I was still a boy, and 
 which seemed to me to have an unanswerable weight 
 in favour of the view which is here advocated. That 
 sentence is as follows : " Our whole nature leads us to 
 ascribe moral perfection to God, and to deny all 
 imperfection of Him. And this will for ever be a 
 practical proof of His moral character, to such as will 
 
 1 " All which can be positively asserted to be matter of mere 
 revelation with regard to this doctrine, seems to be that the great 
 distinction between the righteous and the wicked shall be made at 
 the end of this world ; that each shall then receive according to his 
 deserts." Analogy, i. 2, note. There is not a word about end- 
 lessness here. " As regards duration," says Mr. Clemance, "revela- 
 tion is relative not absolute." (See Excursus I. p. 185.)
 
 xlvi PREFACE. 
 
 consider what a. practical proof is ; because it is the 
 voice of God speaking in us. And from hence we 
 conclude that virtue must be the happiness, and vice 
 the misery of every creature ; and that regularity, and 
 order, and right cannot but prevail finally in a universe 
 under His government." Opposite to the word " finally " 
 I see written in my edition, the words "and in- 
 variably ? " and although I was well aware that Bishop 
 Butler might have explained the final prevalence of 
 right in a manner different from the general cessation 
 of evil, yet it was the consideration involved in the 
 only complete acceptance of the words which he there 
 actually uses, which ultimately deepened in my mind the 
 impression which I drew from conscience, from reason, 
 and from God's Holy Word. 
 
 What remains to say is merely personal. Knowing 
 how wide is the range, and how infinite the importance 
 of those beliefs respecting which all Christians are 
 agreed, I have always desired to avoid controversy. It 
 is with no fondness for controversy that I publish these 
 sermons, or that I originally preached them. Wishing. 
 in such humble manner as I could, to make the
 
 PREFACE. xlvii 
 
 sermons at the Abbey bear on those thoughts, which, 
 since they are so prominent in literature, must also 
 be prominent in the minds of many of those miscel- 
 laneous hundreds who there compose our ordinary 
 congregations, I first preached on the subject of 
 Heaven, because the Christian conception of Heaven 
 had been so roughly, and as I thought, mistakenly 
 assailed. Between that day and the next on which 
 it became my turn to preach, circumstances had 
 strongly turned my thoughts towards the future life, and 
 my attention was naturally attracted by the question 
 discussed in one of our reviews, "Is life worth living?" 
 Having answered that question in what seemed to me 
 to be the Christian sense, I was of course immediately 
 faced by the question, " How can life be regarded 
 as worth living by the majority of mankind, if, as is 
 taught by the current religious teaching, they are doomed 
 to everlasting damnation?" 
 
 Now as to the common opinions respecting " Hell," 
 it was impossible to be mistaken, and I had myself 
 been trained in them. In these days, indeed, they 
 are seldom stated in all their breadth and all their
 
 xlviii PREFACE. 
 
 horror. Most religious teachers profess to hold them, 
 but content themselves with a few vague and stray 
 allusions ; and if pressed on the subject manage in a 
 thousand ways to get rid of them. They envelop them 
 in a cloud of modifications and exceptions, and thus 
 evacuate them of all real significance ; or they so inde- 
 finitely extend the conception of repentance, and admit 
 the validity of a repentance so purely hasty and super- 
 ficial, as to leave their doctrine in the condition of a 
 mere dangerous formula without any real bearing on 
 the ordinary lives of men. There are hundreds of 
 volumes of modern sermons by clergymen of all schools 
 in which you either do not find the word " Hell " at 
 all, or only in the form of some dim, verbal, and half 
 apologetic phrase. Now this common doctrine should 
 either be held or not held. If it be indeed a tenet of 
 our faith, it is one so appalling that it cannot be ob- 
 truded too incessantly, or too vividly pourtrayed. But 
 if, as I believe, the current opinions about Hell are not 
 tenets of our faith, they cannot be too honestly or too 
 distinctly repudiated. 
 
 Clergymen of all denominations bewail their utter
 
 PREFACE. xlix 
 
 inability to prevent the spread of materialism and 
 infidelity. I, for my part, cannot be surprised at this 
 when I feel within me the revolt of an indignant con- 
 science against much which is taught as an essential 
 part of a Gospel of salvation. It \vas the doctrine of 
 endless torments which made an infidel of the elder 
 Mill. 1 Does the reader suppose that in this respect 
 he stood alone ? Those who work among our London 
 artisans know well the effect that the doctrine has on 
 them. Nevti was there a wilder and more monstrous 
 delusion than that it is efficacious in deterring them from 
 sin ! " I am but thirty-two : I am a coke-burner, which 
 has injured my lungs. I have worked seven days 
 and seven nights, on and off. You see I havn't had 
 my chance," said a poor man to Mrs. Marie Hilton. 
 "Do you really think, master, that God Almighty will 
 put me in fire for ever and ever, after putting me in 
 this here mud all my lifetime ? " asked a rough navvy 
 
 1 Mill's Autobiography, p. 41. TJiree Essays, p. 114. "Com- 
 pared with this, every other objection to Christianity sinks into 
 insignificance." It was this, too, that chiefly made Theodore 
 Parker a Unitarian. See p. 204. 
 
 d
 
 1 PREFACE. 
 
 of a city missionary not long ago. 1 People who sit in 
 their armchairs may show that his theology was very 
 wicked ; but are such minds likely to be restrained by 
 preaching endless torments? That has been done 
 very amply in all ages; with what effect? Sixteen 
 centuries intervened between the time when the first 
 and second of the following passages were penned : 
 
 " Quse tune spectaculi latitudo ! quid admirer ? quid 
 rideam? ubi gaudeam, ubi exsultem, spectans tot et 
 tantos reges .... in imis tenebris congemiscentes ? 
 item presides, persecutores dominici nominis sagvio- 
 ribus flammis quam ipsi ssevierunt insultantibus contra 
 Christianos, liquescentes ? prasterea sapientes illos phi- 
 losophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus eru- 
 bescentes . . . ? etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanthi nee 
 ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes ? 
 . . . tune histriones cognoscendi solutiores multo per 
 ignem; tune spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus 
 rubens ; tune xystici non in gymnasiis sed in igne 
 jaculati." De Spectac, 30. 
 
 So wrote Tertullian centuries ago, and I quote the 
 1 "White, Life in Christ, p. 490 (third ed.).
 
 PREFACE. li 
 
 passage not for its hard savagery though there certainly 
 are natures in which such savagery is heightened by 
 this belief but for its ghastly ingenuity. It was in a 
 far more pitying and Christian spirit, but with equal 
 vividness in the imagination of the horrible, that Mr. 
 Spurgeon has written thus : 
 
 "Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God 
 and it shall be written, ' For ever ! ' When the damned 
 jingle the burning irons of their torment they shall say, 
 ' For ever ! ' When they howl, echo cries, ' For ever.' " 
 
 " 'For ever' is written on their racks, 
 
 ' For ever' on their chains ; 
 ' For ever ' burneth in the fire, 
 ' For ever,' ever reigns." 
 
 Can those who dwell on such ghastly imaginations 
 try to realise the significance of these expressions ? 
 Such oratory has been heard for many centuries ; 
 and although those who have used it may often 
 have done a very blessed work by virtue of their 
 other doctrines, there is overwhelming evidence to 
 show that the outcome of such delineations taken 
 
 alone were they not rejected as they are by the 
 
 d 2
 
 lii PREFACE. 
 
 instinctive faith of man could only be hysteria, 
 terror, and religious madness in the weak; indignant 
 infidelity or incredulous abhorrence in the strong. 
 " From the fear of hell," says the Rev. Robert 
 Suffield, after twenty years' experience as confessor to 
 thousands while working as "Apostolic Missionary" in 
 most of the large towns of England, in many por- 
 tions of Ireland, in part of Scotland, and also in 
 France " we never expected virtue or high motives or 
 a noble life ; but we practically found it useless as 
 a deterrent. It always influenced the wrong people 
 and in a wrong way. It caused infidelity to some, 
 temptation to others, and misery without virtue to 
 most. It appealed to the lowest motives and the lowest 
 characters; not however to deter from vice, but to 
 make them the willing subjects of sad and often 
 puerile superstitions." 1 
 
 But if we believe not the doctrine of future retribu- 
 tion, but the popular teaching about Hell, with all its 
 parasitic accretions, to be utterly false to be an utterly 
 untenable forcing of the metaphoric language of 
 1 Rev. E. White's Life in Christ, p. viii. (third ed.).
 
 PREFACE. liii 
 
 a misinterpreted parable into frightful literalism and 
 intolerable doctrine can it be wondered if I strive 
 to set it aside with an energy which has been called 
 violence? I have seen a pamphlet of extracts from 
 Pinamonti and Father Furniss (permtssu superiorum) 
 containing passages so unutterably revolting, illustrated 
 by woodcuts of such abhorrent atrocity, that even to 
 look at them seemed to involve guilt which called for 
 the performance of a lustration. In reading such pas- 
 sages involving as they do our entire conception of the 
 character of our Father in Heaven must not the 
 heart burn with a natural and surely excusable indig- 
 nation, not against the speakers, but against the things 
 they have said ? 
 
 For, I would ask the reader kindly to bear in mind 
 that the following sermons were not condones ad clerum, 
 or elaborate theological essays, but as it were sparks 
 from the anvil of a busy life. Under different 
 circumstances I might have given more measured and 
 elaborate utterance to the same convictions ; but the 
 necessarily frequent sermons of one who is not blessed 
 with quiet, or leisure, or time to study, can never
 
 liv PREFACE. 
 
 resemble the rarer sermons of those to whom it is 
 " given to contemplate the bright countenance of truth 
 in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies." They 
 can only be written roughly and hastily, currente calamo, 
 amid occupations, interruptions, and anxieties of every 
 kind. 1 Precisely the same doctrines have been preached, 
 even during the few past months, by learned and 
 most honoured divines who have, from whatever cause, 
 escaped the antagonism which I have encountered. Eut 
 I shall not for one moment regret that opposition if I 
 may once more turn the serious thoughts of earnest 
 and holy men to truths which have been displaced by 
 groundless opinions, and which are necessary for the 
 purity, almost for the very existence, of that faith which 
 is the one sole hope of the suffering world, but which 
 
 1 I may perhaps be allowed to mention one single fact. From 
 the day on which I came to London in September, 1876, till the 
 day on which I left it for a brief summer holiday, I was not able 
 to add one word or line to a work on which I have long been 
 engaged. I mention this not on any personal grounds, but because 
 I would humbly suggest that the original meaning and object of 
 canonries is destroyed when they are tied by Act of Parliament 
 to London livings.
 
 PREFACE. li- 
 
 ia many thousands of hearts and minds has been utterly 
 shipwrecked upon the reef of this merely human 
 opinion about "endless torments for the vast majority, 
 as a doom passed irreversibly at death." 
 
 And now, in all humility, I submit to the judgment 
 of all wise and good men in the Church of God the 
 views which I have thus suddenly been called upon 
 to advocate. I sincerely ask pardon if any of my ex- 
 pressions cause an unintended irritation ; I beg a 
 kindly consideration for any error which may be due to 
 the haste in which I have been forced to prepare this 
 volume ; I pray God that whether by the confirmation, 
 or by the refutation, of what I have urged, this truth 
 may be elicited ; I assure all good people who may be 
 unable to accept these views that they are due at the 
 worst to an error in intellectu, not to any contumada in 
 voluntate ; and I feel assured of this at any rate, that 
 no true Christian even if he be unable to adept my 
 conclusions will cherish any anger or hatred against a 
 doctrine which alone can stem the spread of infidelity; 
 which is maintained in a spirit of perfect loyalty to 
 the Church, and of reverence for her most holy faith ;
 
 Ivi PREFACE. 
 
 which is supported on strong Scriptural authority; 
 which is sincerely believed to be a truer explanation 
 of the words of our Lord and Master than that by 
 which it has too often been superseded ; and which 
 seems to those who hold it to be impregnably built 
 upon the rock of an entire belief in Christ's infinite 
 Redemption and of the mercy " from everlasting to 
 everlasting " of Him whose name is Love. 
 
 "Behold, we know not anything; 
 
 I can but trust that good shall fall 
 At last far off at last, to all, 
 And every winter change to spring. 
 
 " So runs my dream : but what am I ? 
 
 An infant crying in the night : 
 
 An infant crying for the light : 
 
 And with no language but a cry.'* 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE, 1877.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WHAT HEAVEN IS I 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 26 
 
 SERMON III. 
 "HELL" WHAT IT is NOT 49 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 
 
 90 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 EARTHLY AND FUTURE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN IlS
 
 Iviii CONTENTS. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE CHURCH 155 
 
 EXCURSUS I. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF BISHOP BUTLER ON THE FUTURE 
 
 LIFE 185 
 
 EXCURSUS II. 
 ON THE TRANSLATIONS OF Kpiveiv AND "AtSijs, &C. . 193 
 
 EXCURSUS III. 
 ON THE WORD alavios 197 
 
 EXCURSUS IV. 
 
 HOW THE OPINION OF ENDLESS TORMENT FOR ALL 
 WHO DIE UNCONVERTED IS REGARDED BY SOME 
 OF THE BEST OF THOSE WHO HAVE ACCEPTED IT . 203 
 
 EXCURSUS V. 
 
 THE VOICE OF SCRIPTURE RESPECTING ETERNAL HOPE 205 
 
 TEXTS 219
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 " The wish, that of the living whole 
 No life may fail beyond the grave, 
 Derives it not from what we have 
 The likest God within the soul ? " 
 
 TENNYSON, In Memoriam,
 
 SERMONS. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Pa ge 57. last line, DELETE " See Excursus I.," &c. 
 ,, 59, line three of poetry, for "pearly," read " penal." 
 62, first line, for " Platonist," read " Preacher." 
 ,, 62, third line of note, add " ( " between " who " and " as. " 
 ,, 71, last two lines read " Excursus II., not that of those 
 
 referred to in the text and in previous notes." 
 78, note, for " V." read " II. and III." 
 ,, 79, note i, for "VI." read "III." 
 ,, 85, note i, read " See Brief Sketch," &c., and add 
 
 "PP- '55 Se 9?-" [Delete Excursus III.]. 
 
 would, twenty years ago, have been received with 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, Oct. 14, 1877. 
 8 The Nineteenth Century. 
 
 S B
 
 SERMONS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 WHAT HEAVEN IS. 1 
 
 HEB. iv it. 
 " Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest." 
 
 IN one of our ablest Reviews, 2 a discussion has 
 been going on for some time on the soul and 
 future life ; and it is a sign of the large toleration 
 of the times that some of the writers not only 
 glory in expressing a belief that, apart from his 
 body, man has no soul, and no life beyond the 
 grave an opinion, the open expression of which 
 would, twenty years ago, have been received with 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, Oct. 14, 1877. 
 * The Nineteenth Century. 
 
 ft B
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 outbursts of indignation ; but have even arrived at 
 the point of treating with compassionate disdain 
 those who still cling to the traditional belief. Now 
 I do not think it needful, brethren, in this nine- 
 teenth century after Christ, to argue with you that 
 you have souls, and that your life is not as the 
 life of the beasts that perish. To the end of 
 time the human race will believe this, though from 
 the dawn of History there have been a few 
 philosophers who disputed it. Securus jiidicat 
 orbis terrarum. These .speculations have never 
 shaken, will never shake, the fixed convictions of 
 mankind. Those convictions might have been 
 expressed from very early ages in the simple 
 verse of the poet 
 
 " Life is real, life is earnest, 
 
 And the grave is not its goal ; 
 
 "Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul." 
 
 We may freely concede that, of the separate 
 existence of the immaterial soul, and our survival
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 3 
 
 beyond "the intolerable indignities of dust to 
 dust," we have no mathematical demonstration to 
 offer. But this fact does not in the slightest 
 degree trouble us, because neither is there any 
 such proof of the existence of a God. It is 
 perfectly easy for a man to say, if he will, ' I 
 do not believe in a God.' I do not care to offer 
 up any worship, even of the silent sort, even at 
 the altar of " the unknown and the unknowable." 
 I do not even think it worth while to pray that 
 wild prayer once uttered by a criminal upon the 
 scaffold, " O God, if there be a God, save my 
 soul, if I have a soul." A man may say all this, 
 and plume himself on this melancholy abnegation 
 of man's fairest hopes ; on this deliberate suicide 
 of the spiritual faculty ; and if he considers such 
 opinions to be a sign of intellectual emancipation, 
 we can offer to him no proof that will necessarily 
 convince him. When Vanini l lay in prison on 
 a charge of atheism, he touched with his foot 
 
 1 The story is also told of Galileo. 
 
 B 2
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 a straw which lay on his dungeon-floor, and 
 said, "that from that straw he could prove 
 the existence of God." We can pluck the 
 meanest flower of the hedgerow, and point 
 to the exquisite perfection of its structure, the 
 tender delicacy of its loveliness ; we may pick up 
 the tiniest shell out of myriads upon the shore, so 
 delicate that a touch would crush it, and yet a 
 miracle of rose and pearl, of lustrous iridescence 
 and fairy arabesque, and ask the atheist if he feels 
 seriously certain that these things are but the 
 accidental outcome of self-evolving laws. We can 
 take him under the canopy of night, and show him 
 the stars of heaven, and ask him whether he really 
 holds them to be nothing more than " shining illu- 
 sions of the night, eternal images of deception in 
 an imaginary heaven, golden lies in dark-blue 
 nothingness." 1 Or we may bid him watch with 
 us the flow of the vast stream of history, and see 
 how the great laws of it are as mighty currents 
 
 1 Heine, Confessions (Stigand's Life of Heine, \. 50).
 
 WHAT HEAVEN IS. 
 
 " that make for righteousness." Or we may appeal 
 to the inner voices of his being, and ask whether 
 they have indeed no message to tell him. But if 
 he deny or reject such arguments as these ; if he 
 treat with arrogant scorn that evidence of the 
 things unseen which has been enough in all ages 
 for the millions of humanity which was enough 
 in past times for Dante and Shakespeare, and 
 Milton, and Newton which was enough till yester- 
 day for Brewster, and Whewell, and Herschel, and 
 Faraday : if he demand a kind of proof which is 
 impossible, and which God has withheld, seeing that 
 it is a law that spiritual things can only be spiri- 
 tually discerned, and that we walk by faith and 
 not by sight, if, in short, a man will not see 
 God because clouds and darkness are round about 
 Him, although righteousness and judgment are the 
 habitation of His seat : then we can do no more. 
 He must believe or not believe he must bear or 
 must forbear, as seems him best We cannot 
 argue about colour to the blind. We cannot prove
 
 6 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the glory of music to the deaf. If a man shuts 
 his eyes hard, we cannot make him see the sun. 
 " That the blush of morning- is fair, that the 
 quietude of grief is sacred, that the heroism of 
 conscience is noble, who will undertake to prove 
 to one who does not see it ? So wisdom, beauty, 
 holiness, are immeasurable things, appreciable by 
 pure perception, but which no rule can gauge, no 
 argument demonstrate." l My brethren, if you 
 know God, or rather are known of Him, you will 
 need no proof that He is, and that He is the 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek Him ; and 
 you will not be much troubled by the scepticism 
 of philosophers. Oh, let us get near to God by 
 faith and prayer, and we shall break with one of 
 our fingers through the brain-spun meshes of these 
 impotent negations. Prove to us that by the word 
 " God" we ought only to mean " vortices of atoms," 
 or " streams of tendency," and at the end of such 
 triumphant demonstrations, we shall but kneel 
 1 Martineau, Hours of Thought.
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 
 
 down before Him who made us, and not we our- 
 selves, and with bowed head, and sad yet kindling 
 heart, shall pray, if possible, with yet deeper con- 
 viction, " Our Father which art in Heaven." And 
 when we thus believe in Him whom we have not 
 seen, all else follows. We believe that He did not 
 befool with irresistible longings, that He did not 
 deceive with imaginary hopes, the man whom 
 He had made. We believe that the breath of life 
 which came from Him shall not pass away. We 
 believe that He sent His Son to die for us and to 
 save us. We believe that because He lives we 
 shall live also. We believe; we are content; we 
 do not even ask for further proof. In this belief, 
 which we believe that He inspireth, we shall con- 
 sole ourselves amid all the emptiness and sorrow 
 of life ; we shall advance, calm and happy, to the 
 very grave and gate of death. 
 
 2. I speak to Christians ; to Christians who 
 hope not only to live, but to live in heaven 
 hereafter ; and I want this morning to fix your
 
 8 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 contemplation upon that heaven, and to ask 
 what are our thoughts of it, and why. And I do 
 this partly because one of the ablest and most 
 eloquent of the writers to whom I have alluded 
 has spoken with passionate scorn of what he 
 supposes to be our anticipations of heaven, and 
 of what he is pleased to represent as the necessary 
 result of such anticipations. He says that we 
 are looking for a " vacuous eternity ; " "a future 
 of ceaseless psalmody," "an eternity of the 
 tabor," "so gross, so sensual, so indolent, so 
 selfish," that the belief in it " paralyses practical 
 life, and throws it into discord." "A life of 
 vanity in a vale of tears, followed by an infinity 
 of celestial rapture," is, he says, " necessarily a 
 life of infinitesimal importance," making men 
 "dull to the moral responsibility which, in its 
 awfulness, begins only at the grave," and " little 
 influenced by the futurity which will judge 
 them." " And why," he asks, " should this great 
 end, staring at all of us along the vista of each
 
 i.l WHAT HEAVEN IS. 9 
 
 human life, be for ever a matter of dithyrambic 
 hypotheses and evasive tropes ? " l 
 
 Now I shall offer you no " dithyrambic hy- 
 potheses," or "evasive tropes," but, eloquent as 
 all this is, I am sure that the most thoughtful 
 of you must have listened to it with amused 
 bewilderment. It must have been just a little in- 
 congruous and unreal to you to hear the Christian's 
 hope of heaven described as though it were some 
 Mohammedan paradise, as being not only gross, 
 selfish, and sensual, but also as paralysing and 
 immoral, when you know what lives it has in- 
 fluenced, what deeds it has inspired. Were the 
 hopes of St. Stephen, think you, dull and im- 
 moral, when, with face radiant as the face of 
 an angel, he gazed into the opening heavens ? 
 Was it a dull selfishness which inspired the 
 martyrs as they bathed their hands in the 
 torturing flame, or which nerved the Christian 
 maiden as she knelt awaiting with a smile the 
 
 1 Mr. Frederic Harrison, Nineteenth Century, i. 834, &c.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 tiger's spring ? Was it a paralysing superstition 
 which fills with "tempestuous glory" the suffer- 
 ings of the good ; which breathed through the 
 calm last words of Richard Hooker ; which made 
 Addison tell the young Earl of Warwick to see 
 how a Christian could die ; which inspired 
 the eager " Lord, open to me, open to me," of 
 the dying Lacordaire; or which has enabled 
 so many thousands of Christians, in every age 
 and every country, to become lovelier in spirit 
 during each hour of life's waning lustre, showing 
 ever "a sublimer faith, a brighter hope, a kinder 
 sympathy, a gentler resignation ? " Ah no ! my 
 brethren, " the rattling tongue of saucy and 
 audacious eloquence " will never persuade you 
 of this ; and you will only listen with a smile 
 when you are assured that the hopes which up- 
 lifted such lives, and glorified such ends, were 
 but the confusing fumes of a puerile illusion. 
 We know not indeed ; but we believe. We walk 
 by faith, though we cannot walk by sight But
 
 WHAT HEAVEN IS. 1 1 
 
 were the arguments of these philosophers ten 
 thousand times more cogent than they are, 
 
 " What can we do, o'er whom the unbeholden 
 
 Hangs in a night wherewith we dare not cope ? 
 What but look sunward, and with faces golden 
 Speak to each other softly of hope ? " 
 
 It will take many a ream of agonistic and 
 nihilistic literature to rob us of the conviction 
 with which we say, " I believe in God the Father, 
 and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; I 
 believe in the Communion of Saints, in the for- 
 giveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, 
 and the Life Everlasting. Amen." 
 
 3. Well then, my brethren, we believe in Heaven : 
 but what is Heaven ? Our friends die men die 
 by myriads ; at every ticking of the clock some 
 fifty souls have passed away ; yet not a breath 
 of sound shakes the curtain of impenetrable dark- 
 ness which hangs between us and the unseen 
 world. A fair child sighs away his innocent soul, 
 and in a moment, perhaps,
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SIP. 
 
 "lie hath learnt the secret hid 
 Under either pyramid ; " 
 
 but to his parents, in their agony, comes no faintest 
 whisper from the intervital gloom. Not to one of 
 all the unnumbered generations whose dust is 
 blown upon the desert winds has it been per- 
 mitted to breathe one syllable or letter of the 
 dim and awful secret beyond the grave. And yet 
 the faith of man has not been shaken, nor, for all 
 this deep, unbroken silence, has he ever ceased to 
 believe that He who called us into being will bless, 
 will save, will cherish the souls which He hath 
 made. We feel sure He did not mean us merely 
 "to be born weeping, to live complaining, and to 
 die disappointed," and so cease to be, but that 
 He has a new home for us in other worlds. It 
 is the fact which we believe ; the details are not 
 revealed to us. And hence each race has fancied 
 its own ideal of heaven. 
 
 "Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
 Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind,
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 13 
 
 His soul proud science never taught to stray 
 Far as the solar walk and milky way, 
 Yet simple nature to his hope has given 
 Behind the cloud-capt hills a humbler heaven. 
 * * * * 
 
 To be content 's his natural desire, 
 He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire, 
 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
 His faithful dog shall bear him company." 
 
 The Greek had his Elysian plains, where the 
 Eiddla the shadowy images of the dead 
 moved in a world of shadows ; and his Islands 
 of the Blest, where Achilles and Tydides unlaced 
 the helmets from their flowing hair. 1 The Scan- 
 dinavian dreamed of his green Paradise hereafter 
 amid the waste. Few indeed have been the na- 
 tions who have not imagined that there remains 
 for holy souls beyond the grave some 
 
 "Island valley of Avilion, 
 Where falls not hail or rain, or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly." 
 
 1 V(KIJUIV dfifvr\va Kaprjj'o, Od, x. 521 J iv. 53- ?5aiAa Kap.6vTov, 
 Od. xi. 476. nuKapuv VT)<TOI, lies. Op. 169 ; Find. 01. ii. 129.
 
 i.j. ETERNAL HOPE. [SKR. 
 
 And all Christians, that they may be enabled to 
 give some form to that which cannot be uttered, 1 
 have dwelt with rapture on the glowing symbols 
 of the poet of the Apocalypse the New Jeru- 
 salem descending out of heaven from God, having 
 the glory of God, and her light like unto a stone 
 most precious, even unto a jasper stone ; and the 
 gates of pearl, and the foundations of precious 
 stones, and the pure river of the water of life, 
 clear as crystal, and the Tree of Life, with its 
 leaves for the healing of the nations. 2 Symbols 
 only, yet exquisite symbols of the poet's vision, 
 which dull philosophies may scorn, but in which 
 a Dante and a Milton delighted ; symbols which 
 come back to us with the freshness and the sweet- 
 ness of childhood, as we sing the hymns, so dear 
 to Christian worship, of "Jerusalem the golden," 
 or " There is a land of pure delight." Yet even 
 these symbolic passages do not thrill the heart 
 
 1 2 Cor. xii. 4, 5, S.pbi]ra. fanara. 
 8 Rev. xxi. xxii. xiv.
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 15 
 
 so keenly as others, which speak with scarce a 
 symbol, and simply tell of a life without life's 
 agonies, and the vision of God undarkened by 
 mists of sin. " They shall hunger no more, neither 
 thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on 
 them, nor any heat. For the Lamb that is in 
 the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall 
 lead them unto living fountains of waters ; and God 
 shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 1 "And 
 there shall be no more curse, but the throne of 
 God and of the Lamb shall be in it ; and His 
 servants shall serve Him ; and they shall see His 
 face, and His name shall be in their foreheads." 2 
 And if we need any symbols to help us, they are 
 symbols of transparent meaning ; green meadows, 
 where men may breathe God's fresh air, and see 
 His golden light ; glorified cities, with none of the 
 filth and repulsiveness of these, but where no foul 
 step intrudes ; white robes, pure emblem of stain- 
 less innocence ; the crown, and the palm-branch, 
 
 1 Rev. vii. 16, 17. z Rev. xxii. 3, 4.
 
 16 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 and the throne of serene self-mastery over our 
 spiritual enemies ; and the golden harp, and the 
 endless song, which do but speak of abound- 
 ing happiness, in that form of it which is, of all 
 others, the most innocent, the most thrilling, 
 the most intense. 
 
 4. To say that there is anything "dull, gross, 
 selfish, sensual " here, is surely an abuse of words. 
 But if you cannot rest in these emblems, there is 
 yet a more excellent way. If you still sigh, 
 
 " O for a nearer insight into heaven, 
 More knowledge of the glory and the joy 
 Which there unto the happy souls is given, 
 Their intercourse, their worship, their employ ; 
 For it is past belief that Christ hath died 
 Only that we unending psalms may sing ; 
 That all the gain Death's awful curtains hide 
 In this eternity of antheming " a 
 
 if you say this, do not fear ; there are other 
 conceptions of heaven which do not deal in imagery 
 at all. What may be the physical conditions of 
 
 1 Poems by T. Lynch.
 
 i ] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 17 
 
 Heaven we cannot tell, and perhaps the very 
 phrase may be meaningless of that place where 
 they neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
 but are as the angels of God. 1 But so far as 
 Heaven is a place at all, its fundamental conception 
 is that it is a place where sin is not. " Without are 
 dogs." 2 No guilty step may pass the gates of 
 pearl, no polluting presence fling shadows on the 
 golden streets. They who live there are the angels, 
 and just men made perfect, and the spirits of the 
 saints in light. And if we ever get there, we shall 
 be as they ; for to be there is to see the face of 
 God, and to see the face of God is to be changed 
 into the same image from glory to glory. 3 There 
 life's stains shall have been purged away ; and the 
 gold shall be mixed .with dross no longer ; nor the 
 fine gold dim. There is no slander there ; no 
 envy, no hatred ; no malice ; no lies. There is no 
 murder there, nor wounds, nor war. The filth of 
 drunkenness is not in that city of God. No 
 
 1 Matt. xxii. 30. 8 Rev. xxii. 15. 3 2 Cor. iii iS. 
 
 C
 
 iS ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 bleared and blighted crowds, degraded out of the 
 semblance of humanity, crawl like singed moths, 
 round the flaring houses of multiplied temptations. 
 There are no hearts depraved, corrupted, eaten out 
 by lust ; no victims of man's brutal selfishness, no 
 witnesses of his utter shame. Ah, my brethren, 
 which of us all looking back does not sigh, ' I am 
 not all that I might have been ; I might have been 
 noble, and I have not been noble ; I might have been 
 kind, and I have not been kind ; I might have been 
 pure, and I have not been pure ' ? Would you not 
 think it almost a Heaven if, without giving you 
 anything fresh at all, God would but give you back 
 what once He gave ? If He would but restore to you 
 the sweet innocent childhood He once bestowed, 
 that having learnt now that sin is anguish, and that 
 good is best, you might not ravage the fair vineyard 
 of your life, or lay waste its inner sanctities ? Ah 
 no ! perhaps not, for you feel that you might only 
 fall again ; only be a prodigal again ; only be weak 
 and base and vile again, only despair again of what
 
 i-J WHAT HEAVEN IS. 19 
 
 you feel to be sweetest, and barter for the degraded 
 present the future immortality. But oh, to have been 
 disenchanted utterly, for ever, from the low aims 
 of the world ! oh, to have been set free for ever from 
 the yoke of habit and the power of temptation ! 
 oh, to desire only, and to do only what is good, 
 without evil being ever present to us ! oh, to do 
 perfectly, what here we have but imperfectly 
 attempted ! oh, to be, what here we have only 
 seemed to be or wished to be ! oh, to be honest, true, 
 noble, sincere, genuine, pure, holy to the heart's 
 inmost core ! Is not that Heaven ? is it dull, gross, 
 sensual, selfish, to sigh for that? Is it not a state 
 rather than a place ? is it not a temper rather than 
 a habitation ? is it not to be something rather than 
 to go somewhere ? Yes, this, .this is Heaven. What 
 more we know not. In other stars, amid His 
 countless worlds, for all we know God may have 
 work for us to do. Who knows what radiant 
 ministrations ; what infinite activities ; what never- 
 ending progress; what immeasurable happiness; 
 
 C 2
 
 20 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 what living ecstasies of unimaginable rapture, 
 where all things are lovely, honourable, pure ; where 
 there is no moral ugliness ; where repulsive squalor, 
 and degraded art, and insane desire, and loathly 
 vice, and pinching selfishness, shall be no more ; 
 where boyhood shall not so live as to make its own 
 manhood miserable ; where manhood shall not so 
 live as to make old age dishonourable ; where old 
 age shall not so live as to make death ghastly. 
 This, this is heaven ! And why should we not 
 believe that the God who is so good to us hath 
 such good things in store for all who love Him ? 
 All the good and true, all the pure and noble, shall 
 be there : 
 
 " To Milton's tramp 
 The high groves of the renovated earth 
 Unbosom their glad echoes ; inly hushed, 
 Adoring Newton, his serener eye 
 Raises to heaven." 
 
 And all on earth who have ever been high and sweet 
 and worthy, out of every tribe, and kindred, and 
 nation, and language, ten thousand times ten
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 21 
 
 thousand, and thousands of thousands ! Oh, if this 
 be a dull, gross, selfish, sensual conception, give us 
 a greater and better that we may live on it; for 
 we can conceive none lovelier than this, and to us 
 this is Heaven. 
 
 5. Let us labour, therefore, to enter into that 
 rest. For, my brethren, if, as we Christians 
 believe, Christ hath died to give us entrance 
 into such a Heaven as this, we must believe 
 the same Gospel which tells us, not obscurely, 
 that it is not a reward but a continuity, not a 
 change but a development. To go there you 
 must be thus. It is shocking to hear men and 
 women talk glibly of "going to Heaven," whose 
 whole lives, and well-nigh every action of their 
 lives, whose daily words, whose daily deeds, 
 whose very professions, are disgracing and embit- 
 tering earth. If we desire Heaven we must seek 
 it here if we love Heaven we must love it now. 
 And thou oh, mean, greedy, avaricious, money- 
 loving soul, whose gaze, even in Heaven, would
 
 22 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 be on the trodden gold of its pavement ; and 
 thou, base usurer and defrauder, who, hasting to 
 be rich, carest not how little thou art innocent, and 
 whose path in life is wet with orphans' tears ; 
 what hast thou to do with Heaven ? there are no 
 cheatings, or swindlings, or hoardings there. And 
 thou, slanderous whisperer, whose soul is venomous 
 with hate and envy ; and thou, drunkard, who 
 livest only to drown thy senses in wallowing 
 degradation ; and thou, slave of thy lowest lusts, 
 whose uncleanness adds unspeakably to the shames 
 and miseries of earth ; and thou, selfish seducer, 
 not afraid 
 
 "To pluck the rose 
 
 From the fair forehead of a maiden shame, 
 And set a blister there ; " 
 
 and thou who hatest thy brother with all but 
 murderous detestation ; and thou, bad youth, 
 whose soul is full of fatal ignorance and sensual 
 conceit, and who art drawing iniquity with cords 
 of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart-rope ; and
 
 I.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 23 
 
 all ye, children of wickedness, not slaves only, 
 but willing slaves of Satan, who go as the ox to 
 the slaughter, and as the fool to the correction 
 of the stocks; if ye talk of Heaven, what have ye 
 to do with Heaven ? Think you that greed, and 
 malice, and intoxication, and debauchery find 
 entrance there ? Is there not a lie in your right 
 hands ? Think ye to enter Heaven thus in all your 
 vileness, meanness, falsity ? Think ye that the 
 apples of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah 
 can grow in the same soil with the Tree of Life ? 
 Oh, while you know what you are, and are what 
 you are, and yet will not be other than what you 
 are, you would not be happy if God placed you 
 there to-morrow. Every pure look of it would be 
 a burning reproach to you ; every rapture of it 
 a burden, every nobleness a shame. If you went 
 there with heart yet unchanged, you would carry 
 hell with you to Heaven, and would make Heaven 
 itself a hell. It could only be Heaven at all by 
 your absence so long as oh, mark this so long
 
 24 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 as you are what now you are. But oh, you can be 
 different ; you can be converted ; you can repent. 
 Burdens to yourselves, curses to the world, you 
 can yet become true sons of God ; you, even you, 
 may enter the gates of pearl, and cast no shadow 
 on the golden streets. For does not God love 
 you, even you ? Did not He die for you, even 
 you ? Your souls are worthless to all but His 
 infinite love, but He in His divine pity, did not 
 think them worthless ; for their life He died. Oh ! 
 repent ere it be too late, and be what now you 
 are not, and be all that God meant you to be. 
 " Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil 
 of your doings from before God's eyes ; cease to 
 do evil ; learn to do well." Repent ; and then look 
 towards Heaven. Put away the love of money, 
 and ask God to give you His true riches. Put 
 away selfishness, and ask God to give you the 
 Spirit of His holy love. Put away lying, and be 
 sincere. Put away conceit, and in the ashes of 
 your self-abasement, tie round you with knots the
 
 [.] WHAT HEAVEN IS. 25 
 
 sackcloth of humility. 1 Put away impurity, and 
 ask God to give you a clean heart and put a 
 right spirit within you. Ay, so shall you begin 
 to know what Heaven is ! so shall you begin 
 to have a foretaste of its happiness, even amid 
 the sorrows of earth. So shall there be in your 
 own hearts, amid all darknesses, a circle of radiant 
 peace. Oh, you shall need the aid of no symbols, 
 for you will think of Heaven not as of some 
 meadow of asphodel beside the crystal waters, or 
 golden city in the far-off blue, but as an extension, 
 as a development, as an undisturbed continuance 
 of righteousness, and peace, and joy in believing ; 
 you shall know that, whatever else it be or 
 mean, Heaven means holiness ; " Heaven means 
 principle ; " 2 Heaven means to be one with God. 
 
 1 I Pet. V. 5- Tfy Ta.iretvo<ppotTvfrjv tytco/j.pwo'aa'Oe (<$/*$(>?, vincu- 
 him nodosum). " Induite, ut amictus humilitatis nulla vi vobis 
 detrahi possit." BENGEL. 
 
 2 This is one of the finest sayings of Confucius.
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? l 
 
 Ps. Ixxix. 14. 
 
 " So we that are Thy people, and sheep of Thy pasture, will give 
 Thee thanks for ever ; and will always be shewing forth Thy 
 praise, from generation to generation." 
 
 As the first day of this month was the grand 
 festival of All Saints, so in past centuries the second 
 of November was set apart in honour of "All 
 Souls." The motives which led to its abolition 
 were doubtless adequate at the time, but yet we 
 may be allowed to regret its abandonment. Un- 
 doubtedly there was a certain grandeur, a certain 
 catholicity, a certain triumphant faith, a certain 
 1 Preached at Westminster Abbey, Nov. 4, 1877.
 
 SER. n.J IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 27 
 
 indomitable hope in that ancient commemoration 
 of the departed. 1 It was the feast of All Souls. 
 It is true that it was originally intended only for 
 the faithful departed ; for the souls in purgatory. 
 But in the title of the day at any rate there was no 
 exception made. On that day men might think, if 
 they would, of all the souls, of all the innocent little 
 ones that have passed away like a breath of vernal 
 air since time began ; of all the souls which the great, 
 and the wise, and the aged, have sighed forth in 
 pain and weariness after long and noble lives ; of 
 all the souls of the wild races of hunters and 
 fishermen in the boundless prairies or the icy floes ; 
 of all the souls that have passed, worn and heavy- 
 laden, from the roaring city-streets ; of all the 
 souls of those whose life has ebbed away in the red 
 tide of unnumbered battles, or whose bodies have 
 been dropped into the troubled waves unknelled, 
 uncoffined, and, save to their God, unknown ; of all 
 
 1 It is said to have been founded in the ninth century by Odilon, 
 abbot of Cluny.
 
 2 8 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the souls even of the guilty, and of the foolish, and 
 of the miserable, and of those who have rushed by 
 wild self-murder into their Maker's presence. All 
 Souls' Day was a day of supplication for, of com- 
 memoration of, all these. For these too are souls 
 that He created ; into these too He breathed the 
 breath of life ; and all these lie in the hollow of His 
 hand as the snows of the countless water lilies 
 whether white and immaculate, or torn and stained 
 lie all on the silver bosom of the lake. Yes, there 
 is a grandeur and sublimity in the thought of all 
 human souls, as one by one they have passed away 
 and been taken to the mercy of the Merciful ; 
 and a day might well have been set apart to 
 commemorate, in all humble reverence, their av:ful 
 immortality. Our finite imaginations may grow 
 dizzy at the thought of these infinite multitudes, 
 these who at each ticking of the clock pass from 
 the one thousand millions of the living ; the tribes, 
 the generations, the centuries, the millenniums, the 
 aeons of the dead ; all of which are but the leaves
 
 II.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 29 
 
 green or fallen of the mighty Tree of Existence ; 
 the wave after wave of its illimitable tide. As we 
 think of all these souls, we recall the imagination 
 of the great poet of the Inferno, and seem to be 
 gazing on a white, rushing, indistinguishable whirl 
 of life, sweeping on and on and on, from horizon 
 to horizon, in ever-lengthening cycles and infinite 
 processions, endless, multitudinous, innumerable, 
 as the motes that people the sun's beam. 1 To us, 
 inevitably, in this infinitude, all individuality is lost ; 
 human numeration reels at it. But it is not so with 
 Him to whom is known the number of the stars 
 of heaven, and the sands of the sea, and by whom 
 
 " Every leaf in every nook, 
 Every wave in every brook," 
 
 1 " E dietro la venia si lunga tratta 
 
 Di gente, ch' io non avrei mai creduto 
 Che morte tanta n' avesse disfatta." 
 
 DANTE, Inferno, iii. 55. 
 
 ' ' La bufera infernal, che mai non resta, 
 Mena gli spirti con la sua rapina." I!>iJ, v. 31.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 are heard as they sing forth their unending 
 Paean all day long. And knowing this, we are 
 not appalled at the thought of these vast multi- 
 tudes, whose bodies are now the dust of the solid 
 earth, even though so many millions of them have 
 passed away in sin and sorrow, because we can say 
 with the Holy Psalmist of Israel, " O let the sorrow- 
 ful sighing of the prisoners come before Thee, 
 according to the greatness of Thy power, save Thou 
 those that are appointed to die : so we, that are 
 Thy people and sheep of Thy pasture, shall give 
 Thee thanks for ever, and shall alway be shewing 
 forth Thy praise from generation to generation." 
 2. But if we cannot say this at all, if we 
 have lost all faith in God, how does life appear 
 to us then ? There are, alas ! many who have 
 lost their faith in God. My brethren, it is not 
 for us to judge them or to blame them; nay, 
 we most heartily pity them ; not believe me, with 
 any supercilious sense of superiority ; not with any 
 Pharisaic taint of pride, but for their own sakes,
 
 TI.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 31 
 
 and in sincere and humble brotherhood of sym- 
 pathy, even if they reject or despise such sympathy. 
 Knowing how terrible, how irreparable, would be 
 the loss of such faith to us, we regret their loss ; 
 and we pray that they, no less than we, may be 
 folded at last in the arms of God's infinite mercy, 
 and led into the radiance of His Eternal Light. 
 But seeing that the faith of their childhood and of 
 their fathers has suffered shipwreck ; seeing that 
 they think, or think that they think, that there is 
 no God, and that we die as the beasts of the field, 
 we cannot wonder that they ask themselves 
 whether life be at all worth the living. Nay, we 
 are glad that they should discuss such questions ; 
 because the deeper their bark sinks, the more sure 
 we are that they must at last reach that bed on 
 which the ocean rests, that God, whose offspring 
 we all are, and in whom, whether we deny Him or 
 have faith in Him, we all live and move, and have 
 our being. 
 
 3. But since this question is now being deli-
 
 32 ETERNAL HOPE. [SKR. 
 
 berately discussed, " Is life worth living ? " ought we 
 not, as Christians, to face it, quite fearlessly and 
 quite faithfully ? It is not desirable surely that we 
 should separate the pulpit from the thoughts of 
 the week-day world, or avoid the questions which 
 those who reject and those who scorn religion 
 discuss among themselves. I do not believe, my 
 brethren, in the faith which can ' only be sheltered 
 by an effeminate clericalism, or a professional con- 
 ventionality. For myself, I desire that the creed 
 of a Christian clergyman should be a manly 
 creed, not afraid to be assaulted not anxious to 
 be spoken of with bated breath. I wish that it 
 should be no mere exotic, which must be kept 
 under glass lest any wind of heaven should visit 
 it too roughly ; but that it should be rather like 
 the green blade of the corn, which every rain- 
 storm may drench, and on which the snow may 
 lie, and over which the scorching heat may burn 
 and the chill wind blow, but which, because God's 
 sunlight falls on it, and it has a principle of life
 
 II.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 33 
 
 within, in spite of, nay because of, every freezing 
 or blighting influence, grows up from the tender 
 blade to the green ear, and from the green ear 
 to the rich and ripened corn. 
 
 4. Is then life worth living ? Life, I mean, 
 regarded by itself; life on this earth; life apart 
 from God ; your life, my life, human life in 
 general, considered under its purely earthly aspects 
 and relationships ? Let us glance at this ques- 
 tion, it must be inadequately; it may be mis- 
 takenly ; it may be quite superficially, but yet 
 (which God grant us!) with the one merit of a 
 humble endeavour after perfect honesty. 
 
 5. And, in answering the question, let us, my 
 brethren, in no wise exaggerate. Let no personal 
 circumstances, let no melancholy temperament, 
 let no pressure of immediate, 1 and it may be 
 passing, trials bias our verdict. Let us, so far 
 as may be, look at life steadily and whole. It 
 
 1 Frater unicus aljiit ad plurcs. Prii. NJH. Nov. Pater oplimus. 
 F/. A'al. JuL MDCCCI.XXVII. 
 
 D
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 is not all darkness ; it has its crimson dawns, 
 its rosy sunsets. It is not all clouds ; it has its 
 silver embroideries, its radiant glimpses of heaven's 
 blue. It is not all winter; it has its summer 
 days on which "it is a luxury to breathe the 
 breath of life." 
 
 " Life hath its May, and all is joyous then ; 
 The woods are vocal, and the winds breathe music, 
 The very breeze has mirth in it" 
 
 Ask the happy little child with its round cheeks, 
 and bright eyes, and flaxen curls, and pure sweet 
 face, and the tender, tender love and care that 
 enfold, and encircle, and treasure it, and smooth 
 its path the whole day long ; ask the happy boy, 
 tingling with life to the finger-tips, making the 
 fields ring with his glad voice on summer holidays, 
 happy in unselfish friendships, in generous im- 
 pulses, in strong health, in the freedom from all 
 care, in the confidence of all hopes, when "the 
 boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of 
 youth are long ; " ask happy lovers, when they
 
 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 
 
 know the joy of being all in all to each other, 
 and to their glad gaze 
 
 " A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, 
 A deeper sapphire melts into the sea ! " 
 
 Ask soldiers in the hour of victory; ask great 
 thinkers when some immortal truth bursts upon 
 them ; ask the happy band who gather in the yet 
 unbroken circle round the Christmas hearth : or, 
 take less thrilling moments, and ask fathers and 
 mothers when cares do not press, and the little ones 
 are gone to bed, and they sit together by the fireside 
 through the quiet winter eve : at such times, per- 
 haps, all these will be inclined to tell you that 
 life is worth the living. And though such hours 
 come not to all, and come not alike to the good 
 and evil, to the wise and foolish, yet we all do 
 have peaceful periods of our lives ; quiet intervals 
 at least between storm and storm ; interspaces of 
 sunlight between the breadths of gloom ; until 
 over every one of us the night at last sweeps down. 
 
 D 2
 
 3 6 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 5. Yes, my brethren, let us acknowledge let 
 us cherish, let us be grateful for, let us, as far 
 as we may without selfishness, multiply these 
 natural pleasures, these simple, or innocent, or holy 
 joys. Let us admit, too, that God is very, very 
 good to us, and that the worst evils of our lives 
 are often in anticipation only, and of our own 
 making, not of God's. The Christian is no pessi- 
 mist to encourage in himself a view of life 
 needlessly discouraging; he is no ascetic, thinking 
 that God cares for pain or sorrow for pain and 
 sorrow's sake ; he is no cynic, who walks of choice 
 in avenues of cypress. And yet if I ask you 
 honestly whether these golden threads of happi- 
 ness are many enough, or strong enough, to weave 
 either the warp or woof of life, I think I know 
 what your answer must be. Let us grant that 
 childhood at least keen as are its little trials is 
 yet rarely otherwise than happy, and that its tears 
 are dried as swiftly as the dew upon the rose. 
 Let us grant, too, that boyhood, though St.
 
 II.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 37 
 
 Augustine truly says that the boy's sufferings are as 
 great while they last as those of a man, is generally 
 happy ; happier since the day when Arnold raised 
 the whole tone of our public schools, happier since 
 the day when Shelley abhorred the petty tyrannies 
 of Eton, and the life of a shrinking, sensitive boy 
 whose name was William Cowper was darkened 
 here at Westminster. And yet not always happy, 
 I think ; and sometimes the source, through life, 
 of the saddest memories and consequences ; and 
 forgetful, too often, of the "inevitable congruity 
 between seed and fruit." But when swiftly, imper- 
 ceptibly, boyhood and youth are over, and man- 
 hood with all its cares is upon us ; when the golden 
 gates close for ever behind us, and we step forth 
 into the thorny wilderness ; when the splendid 
 vision fades into the light of common day ; when 
 the brilliant ideals and innocent enthusiasms of 
 early years have been smirched, and vulgarised, 
 and dimmed ; when not one single ray of illusion 
 or of enchantment rests, were it but for one
 
 3 3 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 instant, over the bleak hills and barren wilder- 
 ness of life ; worn men and weary women ye 
 who must work, and ye who must weep how 
 is it with us then ? 
 
 6. My brethren, I will not take any one of the 
 great crimes of life, such as every now and then 
 they are revealed to us, when the lurid gaze of pub- 
 licity is cast upon the interior of some suburban 
 villa or small farm. Clergymen and physicians 
 know well that these are more common than are 
 ever made known. I cannot doubt that among these 
 hundreds gathered here in this Abbey there must 
 be one or other on whose conscience there lies 
 the burden of some deadly undiscovered sin. On 
 all of us sin strives to creep with serpent rustlings, 
 silent, gradual, stealthy ; or to bound from am- 
 bush, sudden, irresistible, with tiger springs; 
 and there must be some here who have been 
 stricken with that poison or crushed beneath that 
 wild beast's force. But I will take no such cases 
 as that of the clever, handsome youth sinking
 
 ii.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 39 
 
 step by step into dissipation, into forgery, into 
 shame unspeakable, and the felon's end ; or as 
 that of one who had lived his life honourably 
 before men, tempted by fatal money into crooked 
 ways, and pleading, with tremulous voice, against 
 a sentence which to him has the agony of death. 
 I will not even take the too common case of the 
 man who wakes suddenly to the horrible truth that 
 he is a drunkard, or under the fatal spell of some 
 craving appetite. Who shall say ' I am safe ' even 
 from such falls ? Yet I will not take these 
 great crimes of life ; nor yet will I take its great 
 tragedies. Who has not known cases in which 
 some man has been suddenly beaten down to 
 earth, bruised, bleeding, under the shock of some 
 wholly unexpected, some quite intolerable, cata- 
 strophe ? Who has not seen families, bright and 
 prosperous, the whole happiness of whose hearth 
 has been shattered, in one moment, as by the 
 crash of doom ? Who shall say ' I and mine are 
 safe from these ' ? Yet I will not take these cases.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 No, but I will take the common, common every- 
 day cases of life ; life's daily fever ; life's necessary 
 trials. My brethren, our sorrows are quite 
 different sorrows; but which of all of us be he 
 rich or poor, be he noble or insignificant, be he 
 senator or shop-boy, is exempt from them ? 
 Take pain : is there one of us who "has not 
 known the throbbing head, the aching nerve, the 
 sleepless night? Take health: are there none 
 here who rarely know what perfect health is ? 
 Take reputation : have we not been in anguish 
 when cruel and false things or in yet deeper 
 anguish when cruel things and true things have 
 been said of us ? Take home : is there no 
 household whose graves have been scattered 
 far and wide ? No father who has seen the dust 
 sprinkled over the golden head of his dear little 
 child ? No mother whose heart has not ceased 
 to ache since Death plucked her " wee white 
 rose " ? No husband from whom the light of his 
 eyes has been taken at a stroke ? No lonely
 
 IT/] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 41 
 
 man, whose circle has ever narrowed and narrowed, 
 and whose path in life has been marked by the 
 gravestones of his early friends ? And, short of 
 death, are there no parents whose sons have wrung 
 their hearts by folly and ingratitude ; who have, 
 in some far land, a prodigal who will come back 
 no more ? And, of all the hundreds who are 
 listening to the voice of a weak fellow-sinner 
 like themselves, are there not some perhaps 
 many whose hopes do but seem to dwindle and 
 dwindle as life goes on ; on whom morning never 
 dawns, but it dawns upon heavy cares, as they 
 think with a sigh of the dreary routine before 
 them ; of the insufficient means which hamper 
 them ; of the debts that hang like a millstone 
 about their necks ; of the chill discouragement of 
 helpless and burdened poverty ? And are there 
 not some who look forward, almost with agony 
 to their day of death, and think how, mayhap, 
 they must leave their dear ones loved wife, and 
 little sons, and little daughters unprotected and
 
 42 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 unprovided for, to the cold pity and grudging 
 charity of a frosty world ? How many might 
 almost sing with the poet as he sat in deep dejec- 
 tion on the shore, 
 
 " Alas ! I have nor hope, nor health, 
 
 Nor peace within, nor calm around ; 
 Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 
 The sage in contemplation found ; 
 ***** 
 Others there are whom these surround, 
 Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; 
 To me that cup hath been dealt in far other measure." 1 
 
 For, alas, my brethren, I have not yet told any- 
 thing like the worst ! A man may bear up against 
 sorrow. He may think it no great matter whether 
 he be happy or unhappy. If life be not sweet 
 to him, but bitter, he may yet think it to be borne. 
 If he be a true Christian he may say, " I have re- 
 ceived the cross, I have received it at Thy hands ; 
 I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast 
 laid it upon me." 2 But when to all this sin is 
 
 1 Shelley, " Lines Written in Deep Dejection on the Shore at 
 Naples." 2 Imitatio Christi.
 
 II.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 43 
 
 added ; when " calamity meets an accusing con- 
 science " ; when a man has the sense of wasted 
 opportunities, the shame of forsaken ideals, the 
 sting of evil memories, and the plague of polluted 
 and polluting thoughts ; when, even at the best, 
 he feels that, in this or that act or phase of his life 
 he was unloving, ignoble, uncandid, not what he 
 ought to have been, not what God would have had 
 him be, ah ! to the noble heart is there not sorrow, 
 is there not anguish here ? Apart from deeper and 
 darker errors, is there not the sense we all must have 
 of duties unfulfilled ; of holy things neglected ; " of 
 days wasted for ever ; of affections in ourselves or 
 others trifled with ; of light within turned to dark- 
 ness " ? Ah ! when, with our souls, the treacherous 
 dealers have dealt treacherously, yea, the treacherous 
 dealers have dealt very treacherously, and we have 
 been the worst treacherous dealers to ourselves, does 
 life seem worth having then ? Should we not say, 
 
 " Alas for man if this were all, 
 And nought beyond, oh earth "?
 
 44 
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SKR. 
 
 7. So that, when I look at life I say, " Lead, lead 
 me on, my hopes ! " 
 
 But if you ask me whether life without God in the 
 world, and with no hope beyond, is worth having, 
 I answer, No ! nor is it I only who say it, but all 
 the best, and greatest, and wisest of mankind. 
 Ask the kings and queens, ask the poets and 
 scholars, ask the warriors and statesmen, whose 
 dust lies buried here ! Was Elizabeth happy ? was 
 Chatham happy ? was Spenser happy ? was even 
 Newton happy ? Ah no ! Over the volumes of 
 human history is written, " Vanity of vanities ! " and 
 the volumes of Biography are full of lamentation 
 and moaning and woe. Scripture itself is a record 
 of human sorrow. I am well aware that they who 
 would rob us of all our hopes ; who would take 
 away our Lord out of the sepulchre, so that we 
 know not where they have laid Him ; who would 
 change our God into a struggle of careless forces 
 or a complexity of impersonal laws ; who would 
 turn all creation for us into a mask with no living
 
 II.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 45 
 
 face behind it, or a hollow eyesocket in which no 
 eye of love or mercy ever shone I know that they 
 tell us that all this makes no difference, and offer 
 us, for God, I know not what goddess of humanity ; 
 and I know not what " posthumous activity," for a 
 life beyond the grave. My brethren, if they want 
 to take our fine gold from us, we want no dross or 
 tinfoil in its place ; nor for the diamonds of heaven 
 will we take glass and paste. Some of us at least 
 will cling to duty, though duty be robbed of all 
 her sanctions, and to virtue, though virtue lose 
 every shadow of her reward. We do no need these 
 sham gods and mock eternities ; and as for the world, 
 if religion fail to save it from wickedness, God only 
 knows what atheism will do. It will not be 
 content with lacquer religions and pinchbeck faiths. 
 It will go its way, picking and stealing, chambering 
 and wantoning, lying and slandering, till the pit 
 swallow it ; and the sole logical result of scepticism 
 is that which is openly proclaimed by the cory- 
 phaeus of materialism, the deification of suicide,
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SF.R. 
 
 the end of evil and futile misery by the extinction 
 and annihilation of the human race. 1 
 
 8. But oh, my brethren, if you will listen to 
 me for a moment more, how, when it is touched 
 by one ray out of God's eternity, does this blank 
 materialism, this grotto of icicles in the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death, melt into mud and 
 nothingness ! How does this glaring metal 
 colossus, with its golden head of intellectualism, 
 tumble into impotency when the rock of faith 
 smites it on its feet of miry clay ! If there be 
 no hope, and no God, and no things unseen, if 
 there be no atonement for the intolerable wrong, if 
 praying nations uplift their hands in vain, if only 
 a hollow echo followed Christ's prayer of agony 
 upon the Cross, then, as far as I can see, life 
 is a revolting nullity and a hideous dream 
 which no poetic make-believes can redeem from 
 its intolerable weariness. But let but one whisper 
 of God's voice thrill the deafened sense ; let but 
 
 1 Schopenhauer.
 
 ii.] IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 47 
 
 one gleam of His countenance flash on the blinded 
 eyes ; let His hand hold forth to us but one green 
 leaf from the Tree of Life ; and how is all 
 changed! Ah, how can we then thank God for 
 our creation, preservation, and all the blessings 
 of this life ! How can we cry then with bursts 
 of exultation, " Thou, O God, art our Father, our 
 Saviour, our merciful God ; and we that are Thy 
 people and the sheep of Thy pasture will give 
 Thee thanks for ever." If our thoughts have 
 come to us this afternoon " clothed in a cloud," 
 let them depart " encircled with a rainbow." That 
 rainbow may seem at times to be but a watery 
 image, yet it arches the spray of the cataract, 
 it shines upon the menace of the storm. Sorrows ? 
 Yes, but to us they are but mercies in disguise. 
 Sins ? Ah, yes ! But they are forgiven and cast 
 away. Is life worth living ? Ask the atheist, 
 and if he tells you his real thought it must be 
 that of the Greek poet " That it were best never 
 to have been born, and next best to depart as
 
 48 ETERNAL HOPE. [aliK. II. 
 
 soon as possible ; " l or that of the English 
 poet : 
 
 " Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free ; 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better not to be." 
 
 J}ut ask the Christian, " Is life worth living ? " 
 and he will answer, ay, indeed, life is infinitely 
 worth living, and death is even infinitely more 
 worth dying ; for to live is Christ, and to die is 
 gain : to live is to have faith in God, and to die 
 is to be with Him for evermore. 
 
 " Death is the veil which they who live call life ; 
 We sleep, and it is lifted." 
 
 1 Soph. Oed, Col, 1224 : 
 
 fj.rl (pvvai rbi Hiravra vi- 
 
 Kq \6yov ' rb 5' eirel tpafrj 
 
 firjvat KetQev oOeviffp ij- 
 
 Kft iro\u Sfvrpov, us Ta^'fTa. 
 
 "Nonnasci homini longe optumum esse, proxumum autem quam 
 primum mori." Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 48, 114; cf. Alexis, Com. 3, 
 p. 447. This was indeed one of the commonest sentiments of the 
 Greeks and Romans, whose life it is the fashion to represent as so 
 natural and so happy. It was in fact the grand revelation of the im- 
 prisoned Silenus. See Ildt. viii. 138 ; Aristot. ap. Pint. Consol. 27 ; 
 Tlieogn. 543, ap. Welcker, p. 31 ; Creuzcr, Studien. i. 224, &c.
 
 SERMON III. 
 "HELL" WHAT IT is NOT. 1 
 
 I PET. iv. 6. 
 
 " For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are 
 dead." 
 
 WHEN I spoke from this place last Sunday on the 
 question, " Is life worth living ? " when I preached 
 three Sundays ago on Heaven, some of you may 
 possibly have thought, This is all very well for 
 true Christians ; all very well if in this world there 
 were only saints ; but the saints are few in number, 
 and this world is full of sinners. See what a spec- 
 tacle it presents ! Look at the coarseness and 
 foulness exhibited at every turn in the streets 
 around us. Walk at night in squalid purlieus, not 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. n. 
 
 E
 
 S o ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 a stone's throw from this Abbey, where glaring 
 gin-palaces are busy, and amid the reek of alcohol 
 you may hear snatches of foul oaths and odious 
 songs ; where women sit shuddering in wretched 
 garrets, to think of the brutal hands which will 
 strike, at the brutal feet that will kick them, when 
 the drunkard staggers home ; where the young 
 lads of the schools over which we spend so many 
 millions of money are being daily ruined and 
 depraved by being allured into low haunts of 
 gambling and degradation. Or walk in the 
 thronged haunts of commerce, where myriads are 
 utterly and recklessly absorbed in that hasting to be 
 rich which shall not be innocent ; or judge from the 
 vile phases of the stage and the opera, that vice in 
 higher places is none the less dangerous from being 
 gilded and perfumed ; note all these facts you 
 may say and then tell us, not in an ideal world, 
 but in this world, which looks too often as though 
 it were a world without souls in this world where 
 there is so much of cruel selfishness, of degraded
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 51 
 
 purpose, of serpentine malice, of insane desire ; tell 
 us, in such a world as this, how does all that you 
 have said apply ? Alas ! the vast majority of men 
 and women whom we see are not saints but sinners, 
 and contented with their sins, and living in their 
 sins ; and covetousness, and drunkenness, and lust, 
 and lying, and dishonesty, and hatred, claim each 
 their multitude of votaries and of victims. Have 
 you then any right to paint the world in rose- 
 colour ? Is it not mere insincerity, mere clericalism 
 to shut your eyes to patent facts ? We, who, by 
 our very presence here, show that we do not belong 
 to classes openly and flagrantly irreligious, are yet, 
 many of us, great sinners. Even when there is no 
 dread crime upon our consciences, many of us are 
 far from God ; our hearts are stained through and 
 through by evil passions ; we are tied and bound 
 with the chain of our sins. You bid us repent ; but 
 how many do repent ? You the clergy, who stand 
 often by the bedsides of the dying ; you who know 
 how men live, and know that in nine cases 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ETERNAL HOPE. [SKR. 
 
 out of ten they die as they have lived if your 
 theory of life is to be complete, if it is not to be a 
 mere hollow professional sham what do you think 
 about the future ? Tell us about the lost ! 
 
 2. My brethren, you have the fullest right to ask 
 these questions, and it is our bounden duty to 
 answer them : and I for one in all deep humility 
 yet, now and always asking God for fearless 
 courage and perfect honesty will try to give you 
 such answer as I can. If it be but the fragment 
 of an answer, it is because I believe it to be God's 
 will that no other should be possible ; but at least I 
 shall strive to speak such truth as is given me to 
 see, and to answer no man according to his idols. 
 Those who take loose conjectures for established 
 certainties ; those who care more for authority than 
 for reason and conscience ; those who pretend to 
 dignify with the name of Scriptural argument the 
 " ever-widening spirals " of dim and attenuated 
 inference out of " the narrow aperture of single 
 texts " ; those who talk with the self-complacency
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 53 
 
 of an ignorance that takes itself for knowledge, as 
 though they alone had been admitted into what 
 with unconscious heresy and unintentional irrever- 
 ence they call " the council-chambers of the 
 Trinity," they may be ready with glaring and ab- 
 horrent pictures of fire and brimstone ; and those 
 of them who are not tender, and not true, may feel 
 the consolatory glow of personal security, as they 
 dilate upon the awfulness and the finality of the 
 sufferings of the damned. But those whose faith 
 must have a broader basis than the halting recon- 
 ciliation of ambiguous and opposing texts ; they 
 v.ho grieve at the dark shadows flung by human 
 theologians athwart God's light ; they who believe 
 that reason, and conscience, and experience, as 
 well as Scripture, are books of God, which must 
 have a direct voice in these great decisions ; l they 
 will not be so ready to snatch God's thunder into 
 
 1 Luke xii. 57, " Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not 
 what is right?" Prov. xx. 27, "The spirit of man is the candle of 
 the Lord." Rom. ii. 14, 15. "Reason is the only faculty whereby 
 we have to judge of anything, even revelation itself." Br. BUTLER.
 
 54 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 their own wretched and feeble hands ; they will lay 
 their mouths in the dust, rather than make sad the 
 hearts which God hath not made sad ; they will 
 take into account the grand principles which domi- 
 nate through Scripture no less than its isolated 
 expressions ; and undeterred by the base and 
 feeble notion that virtue would be impossible 
 without the horrors of an endless hell, they will 
 declare their hope and trust if it be not per- 
 mitted us to go so far in this matter as belief 
 and confidence that, even after death, through 
 the infinite mercy of the loving Father, many of 
 the dead shall be alive again and the lost be 
 found. 
 
 3. I cannot pretend, my brethren, to exhaust in 
 one sermon a question on which whole volumes 
 have been written. There are some of the young 
 in this congregation ; many of you, I regret to 
 see, are standing I am reluctant ever to trespass 
 too long on your attention, and cannot therefore 
 profess to-day to meet and to silence all objections.
 
 in.] HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 55 
 
 But one thing I can do which is to tell you 
 plainly what, after years of thought on this 
 subject, I believe ; and what I know to be the 
 belief of multitudes, and of yearly increasing 
 multitudes, of the wisest and most learned both 
 of the laity and of the clergy in our English 
 Church. 
 
 4. What the popular notion of hell is, you, my 
 brethren, are all aware. Many of us were scared 
 with it, horrified with it, perhaps almost maddened 
 by it in our childhood. It is that, the moment 
 a human being dies at whatever age, under 
 whatever disadvantages his fate is sealed hope- 
 lessly and for ever ; and that if he die in unre- 
 pented sin, that fate is a never-ending agony, 
 amid physical tortures the most frightful that 
 can be imagined ; so that, when we think of the 
 future of the human race, we must conceive of 
 " a vast and burning prison, in which the lost 
 souls of millions and millions writhe and shriek 
 for ever, tormented in a flame that never will be
 
 56 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 quenched." l You have only to read the manuals, 
 you have only to study the pictures published, 
 though but rarely, by members of our own Church, 
 and more frequently by some Roman Catholics 
 on the one hand, and some sections of Noncon- 
 formists on the other, 2 to see that such has been 
 
 1 Rev. S. Cox, Salvator Mundi, p. 41. Without entirely agreeing 
 with Mr. Cox, I can strongly recommend this lucid and forcible argu- 
 ment to all earnest inquirers. It comes with all the greater force 
 from the author of the Expositors Note-Book and other valuable 
 works which have thrown, a flood of light on the difficulties of 
 Scripture. 
 
 2 It is quite true that many of the ablest and most thoughtful 
 Nonconformists and especially among the vigorous and eloquent 
 Independent ministers have rejected the dogma of endless agony 
 for all who die in sin. Nevertheless it is true, I think though I do 
 not allude to it in any unkind spirit that since, as a body, the rank 
 and file of Roman Catholic priests and Nonconformist ministers are 
 less highly educated than the Anglican clergy, horrible inventions 
 about hell pardonable to the unenlightened mediaeval theology, but 
 not so pardonable now are to be found with far greater frequency in 
 the religious literature which originates outside the Anglican Church 
 than in that which proceeds from within its pale. It is, however, 
 only just to add that, for Roman Catholics, the pressing and imme- 
 diate horror of hell is very greatly mitigated, and even to some 
 degree dispelled, by the doctrine of purgatory. But, alas ! pic- 
 tures of hell which curdle the blood with horror, and thrill the 
 soul with indignation, are not peculiar to any age, and passages of
 
 III.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 57 
 
 and is the common belief of Christendom. 1 You 
 know how Dante, in his vision, comes to a dark 
 wall of rock, and sees blacker in the blackness 
 
 Tertullian (De Pocnit. c. 12) and Minucius Felix (Octav. 35), or the 
 Eliicidarium usually printed with the works of St. Anselm, are as 
 frightfully blasphemous against the God of love as those in the Con- 
 templation of the State of Man erroneously ascribed to Jeremy 
 Taylor, or in the tracts of the Rev. J. Furniss or of Mr. Moody. 
 With these, in charity, I will not stain my page ; but specimens of 
 them may be seen in Mr. Lecky's II Ltory of Rationalism (i. 235- 
 241), where he refers also to Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, 
 Delapierre's L ' Enfer dccrit par ceux qui font vu, and Alger's His- 
 tory of the Doctrine of a Future Life. Whose heart would not burn 
 within him with a feeling very opposite to that of love or holiness 
 after reading such passages ? Nor must it be supposed that in modern 
 days at least such descriptions have been confined to the sermons of 
 uneducated people. To avoid giving needless offence in proving 
 this, I will confine myself to one extract from Jonathan Edwards : 
 "The world will probably (!) be converted into a great lake or 
 liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, 
 which shall always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed tc 
 and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves or billows of fire 
 continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall ever be full 
 of a quick sense, within and without ; their heads, their eyes, their 
 tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins and their vitals shall for 
 ever be full of a glowing, melting fire, enough to melt the very rocks 
 and elements. Also they shall be full of the most quick and lively 
 sense to feel the torments, not for ten millions of ages, but for ever 
 and ever, without any end at all," &c., &c. 
 1 See Excursus I., Popular Views of Hell.
 
 58 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the chasm of hell's colossal portal, and, over 
 it, in characters of gloom, the awful line : 
 " All hope abandon ye who enter here ; " 
 
 and how, passing through it they reach a place, 
 where, in the mere vestibule, and even before they 
 reach the region of more frightful agonies, sighs 
 and wailings trembled through the starless void, 
 and the sound of voices deep and hoarse, and 
 hands smitten wildly together, whirling always 
 through that stained and murky air. 1 But it is 
 
 1 ' ' Per me si va nella citta dolente ; 
 
 Per me si va nell' eterno dolore : 
 
 Per me si va tra la perduta gente. 
 
 * * * * 
 Dinanzi a me non fur cose create, 
 
 Se non eterne ed io eterno duro ; 
 
 Lasciate ogni speranza voi M entrate. 
 
 * * * * 
 Quivi sospiri, pianti, e ad alti guai 
 
 Risonavan per 1" aer senza stelle. . . . 
 
 * * * * 
 Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, 
 
 Parole di .dolore, accent! d' ira 
 Voci alti e fioche, e suon di man con elle 
 Facevano un tumulto, il qual s' aggira 
 
 Sempre in quell' aria senza tempo tinta, 
 Come la rena quando il turbo spira." 
 
 DANTE, Infa-n.
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 59 
 
 even more awful to find such things in our own 
 great writers, who had no belief, like Dante, in that 
 "willing agony" of purgatory, into which poor 
 souls might gladly plunge, assured that at last, 
 redeemed and purified, they too should pass into 
 their paradisal rest. 1 Read how the great Milton, 
 
 1 Few can estimate the diminution of the horror of contemplat- 
 ing the future which Roman Catholics derive from the doctrine of 
 purgatory. The souls in purgatory are, as Dante says, " Content 'i 
 nel fuoco" and the description in Newman's Dream of Gerontiui 
 is that of an agony akin to bliss 
 
 " Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul, 
 
 In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, 
 And o'er the pearly waters as they roll 
 
 I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee ; 
 And carefully I dip thee in the lake, 
 
 And thou, without a sob or a resistance, 
 Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, 
 
 Sinking deep, deeper into the dim distance." 
 
 The antiquity and wide spread of the doctrine of purgatory is 
 due, in some measure, to the relief which it offered to the conscience 
 from the dogma against which it revolts. I do not hold it a. hope 
 for the future of many of the lost being something very different, 
 and indeed not necessarily more than the well-known doctrine of 
 "Mitigatio," and " refrigeria," admitted even by St. Augustine 
 and St. Jerome. But the English Church, while in rejecting pur- 
 gatory it intended to reject any definite belief about a penal state 
 between death _and judgment, in which souls are purified by pains
 
 60 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 after telling us of " the supereminence of beatific 
 vision," plunges at once into the frightful sentence 
 that they who have been wicked in high places, 
 "after a shamefull end in this life (which God 
 grant them), shall be thrown downe eternally 
 into the deepest and darkest gulfe of hell, where 
 under the despightfull controule, the trample and 
 spurn of all the other damned, that, in the anguish 
 of their torture, shall have no other ease than to 
 exercise a raving and bestiall tryanny over them 
 as their slaves and negroes, they shall remaine in 
 that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost, 
 the most dejected, most underfoot and downe- 
 trodden vassals of perdition." l Or read Bishop 
 Jeremy Taylor's sermon on Christ's Advent to 
 Judgment, and see how his imagination revels in 
 the " Tartarean drench " which he pours over his 
 lurid page, when he tells us how " God's heavy 
 hand shall press the sanies and the intolerableness, 
 
 which may be abbreviated by prayer and masses, did not close the 
 door of hope, and most deliberately refrained from doing so. 
 1 Milton, Of Reformation in England, ii. ad. fin.
 
 in.] ** HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 61 
 
 the obliquity, and the unreasonableness, the amaze- 
 ment and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, 
 the guilt and the punishment, out from all our 
 sins, and pour them Into one chalice, and mingle 
 them with an infinite wrath, and make the wicked 
 drink off all the vengeance, and force it down 
 their unwilling throats, with the violence of devils 
 and accursed spirits." l Or, once more, read in 
 
 1 Jeremy Taylor, Works, viii. 24 (Eden's edition). Here is 
 another specimen: " For though in hell the accursed souls shall 
 have no worse than they have deserved, and there are not these over- 
 running measures as there are in heaven, and therefore that the joys 
 of heaven are infinitely greater joys than the pains of hell are great 
 pains, yet even these are a full measure to a full iniquity, pain above 
 patience, sorrow without ease, amazement without consideration, 
 despair without the intervals of a little hope, indignation without 
 the possession of any good ; there dwells envy and confusion, dis- 
 order and sad remembrances, perpetual woes and continual shriek- 
 ings, uneasiness, and all the evils of the soul. " Id. p. 39. 
 
 What a world, we may well exclaim, for the loving and merciful 
 eye of God to contemplate ! How frightful a result, in spite of how 
 infinite a sacrifice ! And we are taught that one instant makes all 
 the difference between a poor, frail, sinful soul, over which its 
 Saviour yearns, for which the Spirit pleads, which God, its Father 
 and Creator, loves with an infinite tenderness, and a lost, accursed, 
 shrieking, blaspheming, ever-never-dying son of endless and irre- 
 trievable perdition ! This is what the popular, the common view
 
 52 ETERNAL HOPE [SER. 
 
 Henry Smith the silver-tongued Platonist of 
 Cambridge how, when Iniquity hath played her 
 part, " all the Furies of Hell leap upon the man's 
 heart, like a stage. Thought calleth to Fear; 
 Fear whistleth to Horror ; Horror beckoneth to 
 Despair, and saith, ' Come and help me torment 
 this sinner.' . . Irons are laid upon his body, like 
 a prisoner. All his lights are put out at once." 2 
 Can we wonder that, receiving and believing such 
 doctrines, the poet Habington writes : 
 
 " Fix me on some bleake precipice, 
 
 Where I ten thousand years may stand, 
 
 has a thousand times asserted, and still professes to assert ! . . And 
 is this the Gospel? Are these the "glad tidings of great joy?" 
 
 Yet Jeremy Taylor, who as I have pointed out in Masters of 
 Englifh Theology, p. 195), not unfrequently uses wavering language, 
 seems to have held the theory of conditional immortality, at any 
 rate, as Coleridge observes, in alditis fidei. For, after observing 
 in this same sermon ( Works, viii. p. 43), that this was the belief of 
 Justin Martyr, and of Irenreus, and noticing different fancies of the 
 Fathers on this'subject, he refers to the argument that "though the 
 fire is everlasting, not all that enters into ,it is everlasting," and 
 that the word "everlasting" "signifies only to the end of its proper 
 period." 
 
 1 Sermon on the Betraying of Christ.
 
 in] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 63 
 
 Made now a statua of ice, 
 
 Then by the summer scorch'd and tann'd ! 
 Place me alone in some fraile boate 
 
 'Mid th' horrours of an angry sea ; 
 Where I, while time shall move, may floate, 
 
 Despairing either land or day : 
 Or, under earth my youth confine 
 
 To th' night and silence of a cell, 
 Where scorpions may my limbs entwine, 
 
 O God ! so Thou forgive me hell ! " 1 
 
 or that Shakspeare, after lines of marvellous power, 
 should exclaim 
 
 " 'Tis too horrible ; 
 
 The weariest and most loathed earthly life 
 Which age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death ! " * 
 
 5. Well, my brethren, happily the thoughts and 
 hearts of men are often far gentler and nobler 
 than the formulae of their creeds ; and custom and 
 tradition prevent even the greatest from facing 
 the full meaning and consequences of the words 
 they use. 
 
 When Milton talks thus of Hell he is but giving 
 
 1 Habington's Castara. 2 Measure for Measure, 'in. i.
 
 6.| ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 form and colour to his burning hatred of irre- 
 sistible tyranny and triumphant wrong ; when 
 Jeremy Taylor and other great divines and poets 
 wrote thus of it, they gave us but the ebullient 
 flashes from the glowing caldron of a kindled 
 imagination. 1 What they say is but, as it were, 
 the poetry of indignation. It is only when these 
 topics fall into vulgar handling, it is only when 
 they reek like acrid fumes from the poisoned 
 crucible of mean and loveless conceptions, that 
 we see them in all their intolerable ghastliness. 
 Many true and loving Christians have, I know, 
 held these views, and have mourned with aching 
 hearts over what seemed to them the fatal neces- 
 sity for believing them. 2 But others, less good 
 and less pure, have exulted in them, and I know 
 nothing more calculated to make the whole soul 
 revolt with loathing from every doctrine of religion 
 
 1 See Coleridge, Apologetic Preface to Fire, Famine, and 
 Slaughter, 
 
 a Excursus II., 'Agony of Christians in Contemplating the 
 Doctrine of Endless Torments.'
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 6; 
 
 than the evil complacency with which some cheer- 
 fully accept the belief that they are living and 
 moving in the midst of millions doomed irrever- 
 sibly to everlasting perdition. St. Augustine 
 dared to say that infants dying unbaptised would 
 certainly be damned, though only with a lemssima 
 damnation Even St. Thomas of Aquinum lent his 
 
 1 " Potest recte dici parvulos sine baptismo de corpora exeuntes 
 in damnatione omnium mitissimo futures." August. De peccat. 
 meritis et remiss, i. 16 ; Enchirid. 93. He condemned the 
 Pelagian doctrine of a limbus infantum. "Non est ullus ulli 
 medius locus, ut possit esse nisi cum diabolo, qui non est cum 
 Christo." De peccat. merit, i. 28. See Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc- 
 trines, i. 390 (English translation). 
 
 Owing mainly to the authority of St. Augustine, which was in 
 many respects so disastrous, the entire Mediaeval Church held the 
 doctrine of the damnation of infants dying unbaptised. Dante, in 
 the first circle of the Inferno, sees the 
 
 " Duol senza martin, 
 
 Ch' avean le turbe, ch' eran molte e grandi 
 E d'infanti e di femmine e di viri," 
 
 of which the Master, himself a sufferer in that limbo, says 
 
 " Per tai difetti, e non per altrio rio 
 Semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi 
 Che senza speme vivemo i disio," 
 
 i,e. " without hope, we live in desire " of seeing God. Inf. iv. 
 2843. Comp. Paradise Lost, x. 995. 
 
 F
 
 66 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 saintly name to what I can only call the abomin- 
 able fancy that the bliss of the saved may be 
 all the more keen because they are permitted to 
 gaze on the punishment of the wicked. 1 Boston, 
 in his Fourfold State, talks of God holding up the 
 
 1 "Unumquodque ex comparatione contrarii magis cognoscitur 
 . . . et ideo ut beatitude sanctorum eis magis complaceat, et de ea 
 uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte 
 videant !" St. Thorn. Aquin. Summa Theol. iii. Suppl. Qu. 94. 
 art. I. 
 
 Compare the language of Peter Lombard : "Egredientur ergo 
 electi ad vivendum impiorum cruciatus, quos videntes non dolore 
 afficientur, sed laetitia satiabuntur, visa impiorum ineffabili calami- 
 tate." Sentent. iv. dist. 5, 9. 
 
 Strange influence of system and dogma ! Can any one with a 
 heart, any man worthy of the name of Christian, any man worthy 
 of the name of man, fully realise the meaning of such words with 
 a soul unblinded by prejudice and unsteeled by custom, without 
 calling it inhuman language, and wondering that any could have 
 uttered it who thought that they were preaching a gospel of infinite 
 love? 
 
 Yet even this has survived to us from the Middle Ages. 
 
 "The damned," wrote Jonathan Edwards, "shall be tormented 
 in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, 
 so will they be tormented also in the presence of the glorified saints. 
 Hereby the saints will be made more sensible how great their salva- 
 tion is. The view of the misery of the damned will double the anlour 
 of the Ijt'e and gratitude of the taints in
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 67 
 
 wicked in hell-fire with the one hand, and tor- 
 menting them with the other. Now even a saint 
 of God sins when he speaks thus, and is setting up 
 in the place of God the Idol of the Tribe or of 
 the Den, and no language can be stern enough 
 to reprobate the manner in which some, who are 
 not saints of God at all, who are not even the 
 elder brothers of the Prodigal, whose religion has re- 
 solved itself into a mere feeble heresy-hunting, have 
 turned God's gospel of plenteous redemption into 
 an anathema of all but universal perdition. Which 
 of us has not heard sermons, or read books to the 
 effect that if every leaf of the forest trees, and every 
 grain of the ocean sands stood for billions of 
 years, and all these billions were exhausted, you 
 would still be no nearer even to the beginning of 
 eternity than at the first ; l and that (pardon me for 
 
 1 One specimen neither more nor less futile than hundreds of 
 others will suffice. " Give us a millstone," say the damned, "as 
 large as the whole earth, and so wide in circumference as to touch 
 the sky all round, and let a little bird come once in a hundred thou- 
 sand 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 
 
 F 2
 
 68 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 reproducing what I abhor) if you could conceive 
 an everlasting toothache, or an endless cautery, 
 or the incessant scream of a sufferer beneath the 
 knife, that would give you but a faint conception 
 of the agony of hell ; and yet in the same breath 
 that the majority of mankind are doomed to hell 
 by an absolute predestination ? Which of us has 
 not heard teaching which implied, or did not even 
 shrink from stating this ? And dare any one of 
 you regard such teaching as other than blasphemy 
 
 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 ! " Suso 
 (died 1365). 
 
 " O caecas hominum mentes I " 
 
 But are we really bidden to believe that after a life sad and 
 troubled as most of our lives are, man with his judgment so weak, 
 his passions so strong, his temptations so intense, shall after a few 
 years be tortured by a merciful, long-suffering God, "not only 
 millions of years of pain for each thought, or word, or act of sin 
 . . . not only millions of ages only for every such act, but a punish- 
 ment which when millions of ages of judgment have been inflicted for 
 every moment man has lived on earth is no nearer its end than when 
 it first commenced ? " See Mr. Jukes's excellent book, The Restitu- 
 tion of All Things, p. 115.
 
 in.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 69 
 
 against the merciful God ? If you are not un- 
 affected when "the destitute perish of hunger, or 
 the dying agonise in pain," is there any human 
 being, worthy the dignity of a human being, whose 
 soul does not revolt and sicken at the notion of 
 " a world all worm and flame " ? One who is not 
 of us wrote yesterday to the Times, how, stand- 
 ing in that Parisian prison where the Girondists 
 held their last supper ; whence Danton passed to 
 his scaffold ; where Robespierre, the night before 
 his execution, lay weltering in his blood ; where 
 Marie Antoinette poured out her soul in the last 
 hour of her life ; he saw an exquisite crucifix of 
 ivory in the cell where it had been left since that 
 queen, and wife, and mother had turned to it all 
 night in her last agony ; and he adds that, in such 
 a scene as that, all logic, doctrine, politics, severity 
 of judgment are hushed, and " Human nature 
 asserts its preeminence, and claims the whole field 
 of thought for pity. In presence of that agonising 
 figure on the cross, the whole soul revolts against
 
 70 ETERNAL HOPE. [SEK. 
 
 judicial terrorism in whatsoever name, by what- 
 soever tyrant committed." He is speaking, of 
 course, of earthly tyrants ; but, my brethren, 
 " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
 and shall the image of the crucified Redeemer 
 inspire, in one who rejects His divinity, the noble 
 pity which seems as if it were alien to many of 
 His sons ? I can sympathise with the living poet 
 when he cries, 
 
 " Were it not thus, O King of my salvation, 
 
 Many would curse to Thee, and I for one, 
 Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy damnation, 
 
 Scorn and abhor the shining of the sun ; 
 King with a reckless shivering of laughter, 
 
 Wroth at the woe which Thou hast seen so Ion j, 
 Question if any recompense hereafter 
 
 Wails to atone the intolerable wrong." 
 
 If St. Paul, again and again, flings from him 
 with a " God forbid ! " the conclusions of an ap- 
 parently irresistible logic, 1 we surely, who have 
 very little logic of any kind against us in this 
 
 1 See an admirable sermon on the subject preached at Oxford by 
 my friend Prof. Plumptre.
 
 tn] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 71 
 
 matter, but only questionable exegesis, supported 
 in too many instances by spiritual selfishness and 
 impenetrable prejudice, do in the high name of 
 the outraged conscience of humanity, nay, in 
 the far higher names of the God who loves, of 
 the Saviour who died for, of the Spirit who 
 enlightens us, hurl from us representations so 
 cruel, of a doctrine so horrible, with every nerve 
 and fibre of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual 
 life. 1 Ignorance may make a fetish of such a 
 doctrine if it will ; Pharisaism may inscribe it 
 upon its phylacteries ; hatred may write it, 
 
 1 My language in this, and in the preceding and subsequent para- 
 graphs, has been either intentionally perverted or unintentionally 
 misunderstood. I apply these terms (strong, if you will, but not, it 
 seems to me, in the slightest degree too strong), not of course to the 
 general belief in endless punishment, but to the awful variations 
 upon it, and inventions about it, to which I have referred. Many, 
 I know, who are blessed and holy souls, believe, or imagine them- 
 selves to believe, in an endless hell for most of the human race ; but 
 when they in any .way face the significance of their own -words the 
 language which they use is that of the authors adducpd in Excursus 
 II., not that of those referred to in Excursus III. " On the Popular 
 Views of Hell."
 
 72 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 instead of " Holiness to the Lord," on the 
 sacerdotal petalon in which it degrades and simu- 
 lates the name of love : but here, in this vast 
 mausoleum of the glorious dead, here amid the 
 silent memorials of the sons of fame and the 
 fathers who begat us, of whom many, though 
 not saints, were yet noble, though erring men ; 
 and of whom (though they, and we alike, shall 
 suffer, both here and hereafter, the penalty of 
 unrepentant sin) we yet cannot and will not 
 think as damned to unutterable tortures by irre- 
 versible decrees, I repudiate these crude and 
 glaring travesties of the awful and holy will of 
 God ; I arraign them as ignorantly merciless ; I 
 impeach them as a falsehood against Christ's 
 universal and absolute redemption ; I denounce 
 them as a blasphemy against God's exceeding 
 and eternal love ! And more acceptable, I am 
 very sure, than the rigidest and most uncompro- 
 mising self-styled orthodoxy of all the Pharisees 
 who have ever judged their brethren since time
 
 ITT] HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 73 
 
 began more acceptable by far to Him, the friend 
 of publicans and sinners, who, on His cross, prayed 
 for His murderers, and who died that we might 
 live more acceptable, I say, by far, than the 
 delight which amid a deluge of ruin hugs itself 
 upon the plank which it has seized would be 
 the noble and trembling pity so fearfully unlike 
 the language of divines and schoolmen, which 
 made St. Paul ready to be anathema from 
 Christ for the sake of his brethren ; l which 
 made Moses cry to His God at Sinai, " Oh, this 
 people have sinned : and now, if Thou wilt forgive 
 their sin ; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of 
 Thy book which Thou hast written." 2 
 
 6. But I would ask you to believe, my brethren, 
 that I speak now no longer with natural passion, 
 but with most accurate theological precision, when 
 I say that, though texts may be quoted which give 
 prim& facie plausibility to such modes of teaching, 
 yet, to say nothing of the fact that the light and 
 
 1 Rom. ix. 3. * Ex. xxxii. 32.
 
 74 ETERNAL HOPE, [SER. 
 
 love which God Himself has kindled in us recoil 
 from them, those texts are, in the first place, alien 
 to the broad unifying principles of Scripture ; that 
 they are founded on interpretations which have 
 appeared to many wise men to be demonstrably 
 groundless ; and that for every one so quoted, 
 two can be adduced whose prima facie and literal 
 interpretation tells on the other side. 1 There is 
 an old, sensible, admitted rule, " Theologia sym- 
 bolica non est demonstrativa " in other words, 
 that phrases which belong to metaphor, to 
 imagery, to poetry, to emotion, are not to be for- 
 mulated into necessary dogma, or crystallised into 
 rigid creed. Tested by this rule, nine-tenths of 
 the phrases on which these views are built fall 
 utterly to the ground. But even were this other- 
 wise, yet, once more, in the name of Christian 
 light and Christian liberty ; once more in the 
 name of Christ's promised Spirit ; once more in 
 
 1 See P^xcursus IV. Texts bearing on the doctrine of Eternal 
 Hope.
 
 ill.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 75 
 
 the name of the broadened dawn, and the daystar 
 which has arisen in our hearts ; I protest at once 
 and finally against this ignorant tyranny of isolated 
 texts which has ever been the curse of Christian 
 truth, the glory of narrow intellects, and the cause 
 of the worst errors of the worst days of the cor- 
 rupted Church. Tyranny has engraved texts 
 upon her sword ; Oppression has carved texts 
 upon her fetters; Cruelty has tied texts around 
 her faggots ; Ignorance has set knowledge at de- 
 fiance with texts woven on her flag. Gin-drinking 
 has been defended out of Timothy, and slavery 
 has made a stronghold out of Philemon. The 
 devil, as we all know, can quote texts for his 
 purpose. They were quoted by the Pharisees* 
 not once or twice only, against our Lord Himself, 
 and when St. Paul fought the great battle of 
 Christian freedom against the curse of Law, he was 
 anathematised with a whole Pentateuch of oppos- 
 ing texts. But we, my brethren, are in the dis- 
 pensation of the Holy Spirit. Our guide is the
 
 76 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 Scriptures of God in their broad outlines ; the 
 Revelation of God in its glorious unity; the 
 Books of God in their eternal simplicity, read by 
 the illumination of that Spirit of Christ which 
 dwelleth in us, except we be reprobates. 1 Our 
 guide is not, and never shall be, what the Scrip- 
 tures call " the letter that killeth ; " 2 the tyran- 
 nous realism of ambiguous metaphors, the asserted 
 infallibility of isolated words. But if this must 
 be made simply and solely a matter of texts ; 
 if, except as a dead anachronism, we mean nothing 
 when we say, "I believe in the Holy Ghost !"- 
 if we prefer our sleepy shibboleths and dead 
 traditions to the living promise, "I will dwell in 
 them and walk in them ; " then by all means let 
 this question be decided by texts alone. I am 
 quite content that texts should decide it. Only, 
 first, you must go to the inspired original, not to the 
 erroneous translation ; and secondly, you must take 
 
 1 2 Cor. xiii. 5. 
 
 2 2 Cor. iii. 6 ; Rom. ii. 29 ; vii. 6 : John vi. 63.
 
 ITI.1 " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 77 
 
 words, and interpret words in their proper and his- 
 torical significance, not in that sense which makes 
 them connote to you a thousand notions which did 
 not originally belong to them ; and thirdly, you 
 must not explain away, or read between the lines 
 of the texts which make against the traditional 
 view, while you refuse all limitation of those on 
 the misinterpretation or undue extension of which 
 that view is founded. Now I ask you, my brethren, 
 where would be these popular teachings about hell 
 the kind of teachings which I have quoted to you 
 and described if we calmly and deliberately, by 
 substituting the true translations, erased from our 
 English Bibles, as being inadequate or erroneous or 
 disputed renderings, the three words, " damnation," 
 "hell," and "everlasting" ? Yet I say, unhesitatingly, 
 I say, claiming the fullest right to speak on this 
 point, I say, with the calmest and most unflinch- 
 ing sense of responsibility, I say, standing here 
 in the sight of God, and of my Saviour, and it 
 may be of the angels and spirits of the dead
 
 78 ETERNAL HOPE. [SFR. 
 
 that not one of those three expressions ought to 
 stand any longer in our English Bibles, and that, 
 being in our present acceptation of them in the 
 notion (that is) which all uneducated persons 
 attach to them simply mistranslations, they most 
 unquestionably will not stand unexplained in the 
 revised version of the Bible if the revisers have 
 understood their duty. 1 The verb " to damn " in 
 the Greek Testament is neither more nor less 
 than the verb " to condemn," and the words trans- 
 lated " damnation " are simply the words which, 
 in the vast majority of instances the same trans- 
 lators have translated, and rightly translated, by 
 "judgment" and "condemnation." The word 
 alwvtos, sometimes translated "everlasting," is 
 simply the word which, in its first sense, means 
 agelong or aonian; and which is in the Bible 
 itself applied to things which have utterly and 
 long since passed away ; and is in its second sense 
 
 1 See Excursus V. On the translation of Kpiveiv, aluvios, and
 
 Hi.] " HELL "WHAT IT IS NOT. 79 
 
 something " spiritual " something above and 
 beyond time, as when the knowledge of God 
 is said to be eternal life. 1 So that when, with 
 your futile billions, you foist into this word 
 aitavtos the fiction of endless time, you do but 
 give the lie to the mighty oath of that great 
 angel, who set one foot upon the sea, and one 
 upon the land, and with hand uplifted to heaven 
 sware by Him who liveth for ever and ever that 
 "Time should be no more." 2 And finally in the 
 
 1 See Excursus VI. On the word aliivios. 
 
 3 Rev. x. 7. on xp6vos ovKfTi ta-rat. This has been interpreted 
 to mean " That no further delay should intervene." It may possibly 
 be so, but the meaning attached to it by Bede, " Mutabilis saecula- 
 rium temporum varietas in novissima tuba cessabit" which is also 
 the rendering of the E. V. furnishes a very true and noble sense, 
 the possibility of which is by no means disproved. 
 
 " For spirits and men by different standards mete 
 The less and greater in the flow of time. 
 * * * * 
 
 Not so with us in the immaterial world ; 
 But intervals in their succession 
 Are measured by the living thought alone, 
 And grow or wane with its intensity. 
 And time is not a common property, 
 Hut what is long is short, and swift is slow, 
 And near is distant, as received and grasped 
 By this mind or by that, and every one 
 If, standard of tus own chronolocy." 
 
 NEWMAN, Dream of Gerontius.
 
 80 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 Gospels and Epistles the word rendered Hell 
 is in one place the Greek "Tartarus," borrowed 
 as a name for the prison of evil spirits, not 
 after, but until, the resurrection ; in five places 
 "Hades," which simply means the world beyond 
 the grave ; and in twelve places " Gehenna," 
 which means primarily the Valley of Hinnom 
 outside Jerusalem, in which, after it had been 
 polluted by Moloch-worship, corpses were flung 
 and fires were lit ; and is used, secondarily, as a 
 metaphor, not of fruitless and hopeless, but for 
 all at any rate but a small and desperate minority 
 of that purifying and corrective punishment 
 which, as all of us alike believe, does await im- 
 penitents in both here and beyond the grave. 
 
 But, be it solemnly observed, the Jews to whom 
 and in whose metaphorical sense, the word was 
 used by our Blessed Lord, never did, either then, 
 or at any period, normally attach to the word 
 Gehenna that meaning of endless torment which 
 we attach to "Hell." To them, and in their style of
 
 ill.] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 81 
 
 speech, and therefore on the lips of our blessed 
 Saviour who addressed it to them, and spake in 
 terms which they would understand it meant not 
 a material and everlasting fire, but an interme- 
 diate, a remedial, a metaphorical, a terminable 
 retribution. 1 
 
 1 I call earnest attention to the im mense importance of this argu- 
 ment. It surely cannot be denied that our Blessed Lord, speaking as 
 ' ' Judaeus, ad jhtdaeos, apud Judaeos, " must have used the words of 
 His day in the sense wherein those words would have been under- 
 stood by His hearers. If so it is demonstrable that the Jews did' not 
 hold, and as a Church they never have held, the two doctrines 
 which I am here declaring to be unproven, viz., 
 
 1. The finality of the doom passed, at death. The universal and 
 very ancient use by the Jews of the Kaddish, or prayer for the dead, 
 is a sufficient proof of this. 
 
 2. The doctrine of torment, endless if once incurred. 
 
 Neither etymologically nor historically, nor in its ordinary usage, 
 does the word convey that meaning. Gehenna is spoken of some 
 five times, I believe, in the Mishna, and in no one of them does 
 it connote what "Hell" connotes to the common ear. For the 
 original significance of " Gehenna " I may refer to my article on 
 "Hell" in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. For the meaning 
 attached to it by Jews themselves I may quote the testimony of 
 some very learned Talmudic scholars. 
 
 "There is no everlasting damnation according to fhe Talmud. 
 There is only a temporary punishment, even for the worst sinners. 
 ' Generations upon generations ' shall last the punishment of 
 
 G
 
 82 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 7. Thus then, finding nothing in Scripture or any- 
 where to prove that the fate of every man is, at 
 
 idolaters, apostates, and traitors. But ' there is a space of only 
 two fingers' breadth between hell and heaven : ' the sinner has 
 but to repent sincerely and the gates to everlasting bliss will spring 
 open." Deutsch, Remains, p. 53. 
 
 After, verifying and examining every passage in the Talmud 
 quoted by Lightfoot, Schottgen, Buxtorf, Castell, Schindler, Glass, 
 Bartoloccius, Ugolino, and York, Dr. Dewes declares as the result 
 of his examination "that there are but two passages which even a 
 superficial reader could consider to be corroborative of the assertion 
 that the Jews understood Gehenna to be a place of everlasting 
 punishment.' 1 Plea for a New Translation, p. 23. 
 
 We find such passages as these : " Gehenna is nothing but a day 
 in which the impious shall be burned." Abhoda Zara, i. 
 
 " The judgment of the ungodly is for twelve months." Adyolh, 
 ::. 10. 
 
 BabhaMetzia, 58 ; Jebhamdth, 102 ; Nedarim, 40, &c. 
 The editor of the Jewish Chronicle generally believed to be a 
 learned Talmudist emphatically declares in recent numbers that 
 endless torment has never been taught by the Rabbis as a doctrine 
 of the Jewish Church. 
 
 "Die Strafen in Gehenna. In diesem Punkt erklaren sich die 
 falmudlehrer entschieden gegen die Annahme der Ewigkeit der 
 H'dllenstrafen." Hamburger Talmudisches Worterbuch : s.v. Hb'lle. 
 For further testimonies ancient and modern on these very im- 
 portant facts, see pp. 207 214. They are more than sufficient to 
 prove that the language of the Targums (Jonathan on Is. xxxiii. 
 14, Ixv. 5, Onkelos on Deut. xxxiii. 6, Gfrorer, Jahrb. des Hell's, ii. 
 289, 311) has no bearing on the controversy, since "fire" and
 
 in.] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 83 
 
 death, irrevocably determined, I shake off the 
 hideous incubus of atrocious conceptions I mean 
 
 "for ever," mean in them just what they do in Scripture, and no 
 more. See Exc. p. 197. The most distinct utterance in the 
 Talmud is Rosh Hashand, i. (f. 16, 2, 17, i), where it is said that 
 the just shall rise to bliss ; ordinary sinners shall be ultimately 
 redeemed ; the hopelessly bad shall be punished for a year, and 
 then annihilated. (See Buxtorf, Syndg. Judaica, p. 23 ; Eisenmenger, 
 Entdecktes Judenth. 323 369. Any one may here see that a year 
 was the ordinary period fixed by the rabbis to their purgatory.) 
 
 We have therefore this result. If our revisers retain the word 
 " Hell " for Gehenna they will be perpetuating in the English 
 word its latest, darkest, and (as I believe) least Scriptural conno- 
 tations ; and will be stereotyping a series of untenable inferences, 
 by substituting for the technical expression a rendering which 
 involves conceptions deliberately excluded by those who used the 
 original word. 
 
 Surely it is a sacred duty in this matter to follow the example 
 set by Christ and the Apostles themselves. When they spoke of 
 Gehenna they spoke of something to which a definite meaning 
 was attached ; and instead of obscuring that definite meaning by 
 changing it into some inexact Greek expression, they simply trans- 
 ferred the Hebrew term into a Greek transliteration. To thousands 
 of educated men " Hell " and " Gehenna " must mean henceforth 
 different things, and to try to make them equivalent will be a 
 perpetuation of error which must inevitably doom the work of 
 the revisers to yet further revision. In all humility, but with 
 deep earnestness, feeling how much is at stake, I intreat them to 
 allow due weight to these considerations. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 those conceptions of unimaginable horror and 
 physical excruciation endlessly prolonged attached 
 by popular ignorance and false theology to the 
 doctrine of future retribution. But neither can I 
 dogmatise on the other side. I see nothing to prove 
 the distinctive belief attached to the word Purga- 
 tory. I cannot accept the spreading doctrine of 
 Conditional Immortality; I cannot preach the 
 certainty of Universalism. That last doctrine 
 the belief that 
 
 " Good shall fall 
 At last, far off, at last to all," 
 
 does indeed derive much support from many 
 passages of Scripture ; it or a view more or less 
 analogous to it was held by Origen, the greatest 
 and noblest, by Gregory of Nyssa, the most fear- 
 less, by Clemens of Alexandria, the most learned, 
 by Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the most elo- 
 quent, by Justin Martyr, one of. the earliest of 
 the Fathers ; it was spoken of in some places with 
 half approval, or with a rejection which even when
 
 III.] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 85 
 
 absolute was sympathetic and respectful, by theo- 
 logians like St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, 
 St. Ambrose, even St. Augustine himself; 1 in 
 modern times, among many others, it has been 
 held by great and most orthodox theologians like 
 Bengel and Tholuck, and by saints of God like 
 Erskine of Linlathen and Bishop Ewing of Argyll. 
 And further, whatever may have been the motives 
 which influenced them, the Reformers struck out 
 of the Prayer-book the Forty-second Article, which 
 declared that " All men shall not be saved." 2 On 
 
 1 For an examination of this statement, see Excursus III. Sketch 
 of Eschatological opinions. 
 
 3 The excluded Forty-second Article (of 1552) ran as follows : 
 
 " All men shall not bee saved at the length. 
 
 "Thei also are worthie of condemnation' who indeavour at 
 this time to restore the dangerouse opinion that al menne, be thei 
 never so ungodlie, shall at length bee saved, when they have suffered 
 pain for their sinnes a certainetime appointed by God's justice." 
 
 It was omitted in 1562, and almost certainly through the influence 
 of Archbishop Parker. 
 
 Now on this Article I observe that if the omission of the 
 original Forty-first Article left the belief in the millennium open (as 
 most " Evangelicals " admit), the omission of this Article leaves 
 even " Universalism " an open question. But as far as I am
 
 S6 ETERNAL HOPE. [SFR. 
 
 such a question as this I care but little for indi- 
 vidual authority, but this much at least is proved 
 by the many differing theories of wise and holy 
 men that God has given us no clear and decisive 
 revelation on the final condition of those who have 
 died in sin. It is revealed to us that " God is 
 love ; M1 and that " Him to know is life eternal ; " 2 
 and that it is not His will that any should perish ; 3 
 and that " as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive;" 4 but how long, even 
 after death, man may continue to resist His will ; 
 how long he may continue in that spiritual death 
 which is alienation from God ; that is one of the 
 secret things which God hath not revealed. But 
 this much, at any rate that the fate of man is not 
 finally and irreversibly sealed at death, you your- 
 selves unwittingly perhaps, but none the less 
 
 concerned the Article would not have touched my view at all, for 
 I am not a Universalist. 
 
 1 I John iv. 8. a James xvii. 2. 
 
 * 2 Pet. iii. 9. 4 I Cor. xv. 22.
 
 in.] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 87 
 
 certainly admit, and declare, and confess, every 
 time you repeat, in the Apostles' Creed, that Christ 
 descended into hell. For the sole passage which 
 proves that article of the Creed is the passage in 
 St. Peter, which tells us that " He went and preached 
 to the Spirits in prison, 1 which sometime were dis- 
 obedient." St. Peter in my text tells you in so 
 many words that "the Gospel was preached to 
 them that were dead," and if, as the Church in 
 every age has held, the fate of those dead sinners 
 was not irrevocably fixed by death, then it must 
 be clear and obvious to the meanest understanding 
 that neither of necessity is ours. 2 
 
 There then is the sole answer which I can give 
 to your question, " What about the lost ? " My 
 belief is fixed upon " that living God " who we 
 
 1 That the prisoners there may be "prisoners of hope," appears 
 from Matt. v. 26, where the same word, <t>v\a.Krl, is used. Even if the 
 payment of the debt be not possible to man it is possible to 
 God (Matt. xix. 26). 
 
 a See Dr. Plumptre's sermon at St, Paul's, "The Spirits in 
 Prison," of which Bishop Thirl wall spoke in terms of the very 
 warmest approval.
 
 88 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 are told is " the Saviour of all men." My answer 
 is with Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, that " we 
 are lost here as much as there, and that Christ 
 came to seek and save the lost ; " and my hope 
 is that the vast majority, at any rate, of the lost, 
 may at length be found. If any hardened sinner, 
 shamefully loving his sin, and despising the long- 
 suffering of his Saviour, trifle with that doctrine, 
 it is at his own just and awful peril. But if, on 
 the other hand, there be some among you as are 
 there not ? souls sinful indeed, yet not hard in 
 sin; souls that fail indeed, yet even, amid their 
 failing, long, and pray, and love, and agonise, and 
 strive to creep ever nearer to the light ; then I say, 
 Have faith in God. There is hope for you ; hope 
 for you, even if death overtake you before the final 
 victory is won ; hope for the poor in spirit, for 
 theirs is the kingdom of heaven ; hope for the 
 mourners, for they shall be comforted, though you 
 too may have to be purified in that Gehenna of 
 aeonian fire beyond the grave. Yes, my brethren,
 
 III.] "HELL" WHAT IT IS NOT. 89 
 
 " Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with 
 him ; for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. 
 Woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with him ; for 
 the reward of his hands shall be given him : " l 
 but say also, as Christ's own Apostles said, that 
 there shall be " a restitution of all things," 2 that 
 God willeth not that any should perish ; 3 that 
 Christ both died, and rose, and revived that He 
 might be Lord both of the dead and the living; 4 
 that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
 all be made alive ; 5 and that the day shall come 
 when "all* things shall be subdued unto Him, that 
 God may be all in all" irdvra ev iraaiv omnia 
 in omnibus all things in all men. 
 
 1 Is. iii. 10. 2 Acts iiL 21. 
 
 8 2 Pet. iii. 9 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 1 1 ; Ro. ii. 4 ; I Tim. ii. 4. 
 
 4 Rom. xiv. 9. 5 I Cor. xv. 22. 6 I Cor. xv. 28.
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 1 
 
 LUKE xiii. 23, 24. 
 
 "Then said one unto Him, Lord, are there few that be saved? 
 And He said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate." 
 
 THIS passage, my brethren, gives us the very 
 essence of our Lord's teaching respecting the 
 present and the future. Since He had dwelt so 
 often on the difficulty and narrowness of virtue's 
 uphillward path, and on the few who toil in it, 
 whereas many are to be seen rushing along the 
 broad road that leadeth to destruction, some 
 one (who perhaps had more speculative curiosity 
 than moral earnestness) wanted to know the 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 18, 1877.
 
 SER. iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 91 
 
 issues of this fact ; and therefore asked Him the 
 plain, direct question, " Lord, are there few that 
 be saved ? " Now supposing that it were so ; 
 supposing that, as thousands .of theologians have 
 taught for thousands of years, the vast majority 
 are in the next world for ever lost, would not our 
 Lord have said so ? would not His. teaching have 
 gained a terrific awfulness from admitting it ? Had 
 the answer to the question been a plain " Yes !" 
 and had that view been as essential to morality 
 as some assert, surely it would have been worse 
 than dangerous, it would have been unkind to 
 suppress it ! But what is the answer of Divine 
 wisdom ? Is it some glaring agony of fire and 
 brimstone for billions of years ? Is it in that 
 style in which the coarse terrorism of the Puritan 
 is at one with the coarse terrorism of the Inqui- 
 sition ? No ; but it is a refusal to answer. It 
 is a strong warning to the questioner. It is a 
 tacit rebuke of the very question. It is the 
 pointing to a strait gate, and a narrow way,
 
 92 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 whereby alone we can enter into the kingdom 
 of God. In this sad world it is but the few who 
 find that way, and until they find it they cannot 
 see the kingdom of God. But there is not one 
 word here about an irreversible doom to a ma- 
 terial torment ; not one word to tell us that all 
 who walk in that broad road inevitably reach its 
 fatal goal. And are we not ' bound to consider the 
 silences of Scripture no less than its utterances ? ' 
 If we still yearn for any answer about the future 
 we may find it perhaps in the glorious words of 
 Isaiah, " Fear not ; for I am with thee : I will bring 
 thy seed from the East, and gather thee from the 
 West ; I will say to the North, Give up ; and to 
 the South, Keep not back ; bring my sons from 
 far, and my daughters from the ends of the 
 earth j" 1 or in the dazzling vision of the seer of the 
 Apocalypse, " I beheld, and lo ! a great multitude, 
 which no man could number, of all nations, and 
 kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood before 
 1 Is. xll 10.
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 93 
 
 the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with 
 white robes, and palms in their hands ; " l or in 
 the calm promise of our Blessed Lord Himself. 
 " In My Father's House are many mansions." 2 
 But the spirit of the answer of our Blessed Lord 
 was this, " The fate of the souls that He hath 
 made is in the hands of Him that made them, not 
 in thine. Enter thou in at the strait gate." 
 
 2. It was in that spirit, my brethren, that I 
 strove to speak to you last Sunday, believing that 
 much of the popular teaching about the awful 
 subject of future retribution its physical tortures, 
 its endless duration, its irreversible finality at the 
 instant of death, gives us an utterly false picture 
 of the God of Love, which, though it may find 
 warrant in the primd facie aspect of texts wrongly 
 translated or totally misunderstood, finds no 
 warrant either in the general tone of Scripture 
 or in God's no less sacred teachings to our indi- 
 vidual souls. And if some would represent such 
 1 Rev. viL 9. * John xiv. 2.
 
 94 ETERNAL HOPE. FSER. 
 
 a view as dangerous, I reply that my only question 
 is, ' Is it true ? ' It is falsehood which is always 
 dangerous; but truth never. It is not for us to 
 construct after our own fashion the unseen world. 
 You think that men will not love God without 
 the terror of an endless hell ? So thought not 
 David. He said, " There is mercy with Thee : there- 
 fore shalt Thou be feared." And in any case it 
 is useless to dogmatise about things which God 
 has not revealed. " Things are as they are, and 
 will be as they will be ; " and for us to misrepre- 
 sent them by the fallibility of human system, or 
 at the bidding of human expedience, is a blas- 
 phemy against truth and against God. What is 
 dangerous is to drive some into indignant atheism, 
 and to entangle others with an evil superstition, 
 and to crush others under a deep despair, by repre- 
 senting Him whose name is Love as a remorseless 
 Avenger, instead of as a Father, who is gracious 
 and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, 
 neither keepeth He His anger for ever. Evil souls
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 95 
 
 and foolish souls can make any doctrine dangerous. 
 St. Peter tells us that they wrested the writings 
 of St. Paul, as they did also the other Scriptures, 
 to their own destruction ; l would you, therefore, 
 have had the Scriptures unwritten ? or ought St. 
 Paul never to have taken up his pen ? Some of the 
 Fathers, I am afraid, held what I believe to be the 
 truth on this matter, just as hundreds of our ablest 
 clergy do, but feared to preach it ; 2 but the best 
 
 1 2 Pet. iii. 16. 
 
 * Origen (C. Cels. vi. 26) openly proclaims the desirability of this 
 reticence. " All that might be said on this topic," he observes, " is 
 not suitable to explain now or to all For the many need no 
 further teaching than the punishment of sinners. For it is not 
 expedient to go further on account of those who scarcely through 
 the fear of eternal punishment restrain the outpouring into any 
 amount of recklessness." 
 
 The force of the remark is entirely answered in the text. Chris- 
 tianity admits of no esoteric doctrines. All the children of the 
 Church, be they ever so humble, have a right to all that any of her 
 teachers know. It seems to us to far more of us, and to far greater 
 and wiser men than is generally supposed that the common teach- 
 ing on the subject of Hell is not true : and the cause of God can 
 only be served by the utterance of truth. "I have not written 
 unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, 
 and that no lie is of the truth." i John ii. 21. 
 
 The doctrine of "accommodation" (olKovopia, crvyKar^$a(ns) was
 
 96 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 and greatest of tht Fathers did preach it, and 
 many saints at whose feet I gladly sit have 
 preached it in this age. And, if we see a truth, 
 are we to be " liars for God " l by suppressing it, 
 because those think it dangerous who believe in 
 no more potent motive for virtue and the love of 
 God than a ghastly terror ? Are we to go before 
 the very God of truth with a lie in our right hands ? 
 Richard Baxter a saint of God if there ever was 
 one avowed his belief that even a suicide, if 
 hurried by sudden passion into self-slaughter, may 
 be saved, and " If," he nobly added, " if it should be 
 objected that what I maintain may encourage 
 suicide, I answer, I am not to tell a lie to prevent 
 it ! " We English can't do that. But, oh, my 
 brethren, I am not afraid, I never shall be afraid, of 
 doing harm by asking you " to think noble things 
 of God." I am not afraid to bid you plead with Him 
 
 too prevalent with some of the Fathers, and there is good reason to 
 think that it influenced St. Chrysostom on this very question. 
 
 1 Job xiii. 7. "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk 
 deceitfully for ll'imf"
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 97 
 
 in the spirit of righteous Abraham, " That be far 
 from Thee, Lord : shall not the Judge of all the earth 
 do right ? " l I am not afraid to say of Him with 
 holy Paul, " Is there unrighteousness with God ? 
 God forbid ! " 2 I am not afraid to plead with Him, 
 in that syllogism which, as Luther said, sums up 
 all the Psalms of David " the God of pity pities 
 the wretched. We are wretched ; therefore " not 
 surely in this short world only, but for ever " God 
 will pity us." Punish us ? Yes, punish us be- 
 cause He pities. But " God judges that He may 
 teach, He never teaches that He may judge." 
 His aeonian fire is the fire of love ; it is to purify, 
 not to torture ; it is to melt, and not to burn : 
 
 " We would be melted by the heat of love 
 By flames far fiercer than are blown to prove 
 And purge the silver ore adulterate." 
 
 God Himself tells us that " He afflicteth, not will- 
 ingly, but for our profit, that we may be partakers 
 
 1 Gen. xviii. 25. 3 Rom. ix. 14. 
 
 H
 
 98 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 of His holiness ; " but could it be " for our pro- 
 fit" to be tortured for ever in a hopeless hell? 
 And shall He belie His own words ? Our Church, 
 thank God wiser than her wisest, tenderer than 
 her tenderest ministers speaks not in such tones 
 in her burial service ; and I, who believe in a God 
 whose name is Love I, who rely with all my heart 
 on "the mercy of the Merciful," l I who put my 
 whole trust and confidence in that living God who 
 is " the Saviour of all men " I, who think that the 
 key to all the dreadful perplexities of life and 
 death lies in the belief that Christ lived and died 
 I, for one, say, God forbid ! I would rather go 
 to the instinct of the Christian saint than to the 
 system of the dogmatic theologian ; I would 
 rather accept, as reflecting the mind of God, the 
 broad humanitarian charity, the keen and tender 
 sensibility of the Christian poet, than the hard 
 
 1 The Sultan of Zanzibar when in England used the striking 
 expression, " Since my father was taken to the mercy of the 
 Merciful."
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 99 
 
 logic of the inflexible systematist. And our 
 great living poet ends his dread "Vision of Sin" 
 in the very spirit of my text : 
 
 " At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? ' 
 To which an answer pealed from that high land, 
 But in a tongue no man could understand : 
 And, on the glimmering summit far withdrawn, 
 God made himself an awful rose of dawn." 
 
 2. Dismissing then all controversy, which I never 
 wish to introduce into this or into any pulpit, 
 not thinking it well to answer that part of contro- 
 versy which springs from mere ignorance or angry 
 prejudice, but realising, with deep responsibility, 
 the sacredness of this place, and desiring, in deep 
 humility, to lead aright the thoughts of men and 
 women of open minds and loving hearts, I will 
 ask you to glance a little closer with me at God's 
 ways with man. Not in idle speculation, not in the 
 interests of any dogma, but because, a few years 
 hence, death stares every one of us in the face, and 
 because the faith in the future may beneficently 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 influence our work in the present let us, for a 
 few moments, glance at what men are, and at 
 what we may hope in the future for them and 
 for ourselves. 
 
 3. There are, in the main, three classes of men : 
 there are the saints ; there are the reprobates ; 
 there is that vast intermediate class lying between 
 yet shading off by infinite gradations from these 
 two extremes. 1 
 
 I. Of the saints, my brethren, I shall not speak ; 
 their promise is sealed ; their lot is sure. Beautiful, 
 holy souls, into whom, in all ages, entering, the 
 Spirit of God hath made them friends of God and 
 prophets, 2 these are the joy of heaven they are 
 the salt of earth. We, every one of us, are better 
 for them, as the dull clods of the earth are better 
 for the snowy hills whence the rivers flow ; as the 
 stagnant air of earth is better for the pure winds 
 which scatter the pestilence. Oh, what would the 
 
 1 Seethe similar remark in the Talmud, Rosh Hashanah, f. 17, r. 
 1 Wisd. vii. 27.
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 101 
 
 world be what would England be what would 
 this huge oppressive city be without them ? with 
 out the ten righteous, the thirty, the forty, the 
 fifty righteous, for whose sakes the heavens do 
 not burst to drown, with deluging rain, 
 
 " The feeble vassals of lust, and anger, and wine, 
 The little hearts that know not how to forgive ? " 
 
 What would this city be if it were nothing more 
 than one mad greedy coil of jarring slanders, of 
 reckless competition, of selfish luxury, of brutal 
 vice ? Few, we know, are these saints of God, 
 and mostly poor, and often despised ; and yet 
 it is they alone who save the world from cor- 
 ruption by the gangrene of its vices, from dissolu- 
 tion by the centrifugal forces of its hate. Their 
 gentle words break our fierce wranglings with the 
 balm of love ; their calm faces look in upon our 
 troubles with peace and hope : 
 
 " Ever their statues rise before us, 
 
 Our loftier brothers, but one in blood, 
 At bed and table they lord it o'er us, 
 
 With looks of beauty and words of good."
 
 102 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 A millionnaire, a successful man, though the world 
 crawl at his feet, is but as the small dust of the 
 balance ; but, " O God, O God, give us saints ! " 
 About them we have no controversy. We know 
 that they shall be happy ; we know that God 
 shall treasure them in the day when He maketh 
 up His jewels ; we know that " eye hath not seen, 
 nor ear heard, nor heart conceived " what God 
 shall give to them that love Him. 1 
 , II. But if they be unassailably secure, eternally 
 happy, what of the other extreme ? what of the 
 reprobates ? We see sometimes an heroic virtue ; 
 would to God that we never saw also a brutal vice. 
 Not far from here is a vast prison, 2 holding some 
 1,200 criminals. Every time the great clock of 
 Westminster booms out its chimes to the tune 
 
 " Lord, through this hour, 
 
 Be Thou my guide ; 
 So, by Thy power, 
 No foot shall slide ; " 
 
 1 I Cor. ii. 9. * Millbank.
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED ? 103 
 
 those prisoners hear it. Among them are some 
 who have got within the arm of the law, but are 
 hardly criminals at all ; those might be even 
 liberated : others who have fallen into crime only 
 from surrounding temptations, and from natures 
 weak but not depraved ; these might be reclaimed : 
 but some there are whom those who know them 
 describe as filthy, cruel, brutal, irreclaimable, and 
 whom society gives up. 1 It is thus (but I have 
 been obliged altogether to soften down his words) 
 that a great living writer speaks of them : " Miser- 
 able distorted blockheads," he calls them, " with 
 faces as of dogs or oxen ; angry, sullen, degraded, 
 sons of greedy mutinous darkness ; base-natured 
 beings, on whom, in a maleficent, subterranean life 
 of London scoundrelism, the genius of darkness 
 has visibly set his seal. Who," he asks, " could 
 ever command these by love ? " A collar round 
 
 1 Professor Tyndall quotes this remark from the conversation of a 
 governor of a prison ; and it is to be found in almost the same words 
 in a recent narrative of Five Years' Penal Servitude.
 
 104 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the neck, a cartwhip on the back, these, in an 
 impartial and steady human hand, are what should 
 be afforded them, and he proposes, with all the 
 speed possible, to make an end of them at once. 1 
 Well, my brethren, the punishment of crime is 
 just, and society has a right by stern punishment 
 to protect the innocent ; yet I am glad that the 
 Saviour of man spake never in terms like these. 
 I rejoice that He rather said that He came to call 
 sinners to repentance ; 2 to seek and save the lost. 3 
 And if you ask me whether I must not believe in 
 endless torments for these reprobates of earth, my 
 answer is, Ay, for these and for thee, and for me 
 too, unless we learn with all our hearts to love 
 good and not evil ; but whether God for Christ's 
 sake may not enable us to do this even beyond 
 the grave, if we have failed to do so in this life 
 I cannot say. I know that God hates sin, because 
 He loves the soul which it destroys ; I know that 
 
 s Carlyle, Latter Day Pamphlets. 
 
 2 Matt. ix. 13. 3 Matt, xviii. II ; Luke xv. 4, &c
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 105 
 
 u the path of that hatred is as the path of a 
 flaming sword ; which he who hath eyes may see, 
 divinely beautiful and divinely terrible, every- 
 where burning, as with unquenchable fire, the 
 false and death-worthy from the true and life- 
 worthy." x Yet I know also that for these Christ 
 died. The bigot may judge their souls if he 
 likes ; the Pharisee may consign them with con- 
 ventional orthodoxy to endless torment; but so 
 cannot and will not I. " Forbear to judge," said the 
 holy king by the awful death-bed of Cardinal 
 Beaufort, who died and made no sign 
 
 " Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all ! 
 Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close, 
 And let us all to meditation." 2 
 
 Born and bred as these have been, surrounded 
 as they have been from infancy with sights and 
 sounds of degradation, what should we have been, 
 what wouldst thou have been, O comfortable bigot, 
 
 1 Carlyle. 2 Henry VI. t act iii. sc. 3.
 
 106 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 or thou, O prosperous Pharisee hadst thou had but 
 as small a chance as they'? Pointing to a murderer 
 on his way to execution, " there," said a good and 
 holy man, " there, but for the grace of God, goes 
 John Bradford." If, as we look into the abyss of 
 our own hearts, we see infinite potentialities of 
 guilt and vice, so, as I look on these I see in 
 them, in spite of all their shame and stain, the in- 
 finite potentialities of virtue. And is it not almost 
 blasphemous to suppose that He who made a 
 human being with such rich capacities will in one 
 moment " throw it from Him into everlasting dark- 
 ness ? " Not mine at any rate shall it be to close 
 against them " with impetuous recoil and jarring 
 sound," the gates of hell, lest those gates should 
 more justly be clanged on me j 1 but I commend them 
 with 'humblest hope, even after this life of hope- 
 lessness, to Him who did not loathe the whiteness 
 of the leper, and who suffered the woman that 
 
 1 James ii. 13. " He shall have judgment without mercy, that 
 showeth no mercy ; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment."
 
 IV.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 107 
 
 was a sinner to wash his feet with tears. 1 That 
 without holiness none can see God ; that every 
 guilty deed, if unrepented of, must bring its own 
 just and awful retribution; that, for every impure 
 and cruel soul there remaineth, behind the clouds 
 of this world, the dark night of the next ; that 
 I know. But when I remember that even these 
 have been known to burst into tears at a mother's 
 name ; that even these have been known at times 
 to flash out into high deeds of momentary heroism 
 I see that God's Spirit has nowhere taught us that 
 He who gave cannot give back ; that He who once 
 made them innocent children cannot restore their 
 innocence again ; that He who created them, He 
 who will have all men to be saved, 2 cannot re- 
 create them in His own image, cannot uncreate their 
 sins. At any rate no arrogant word, no theologic 
 dogma, no acrid prejudice of mine, shall ever utter 
 to them the language of despair, or stand between 
 these God's lowest and His love. Nay, I believe 
 
 1 Luke xii. 48. 2 I Tim. ii. 4.
 
 io8 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 that the Good Shepherd, for so He Himself has 
 told us, will not cease to search for these His 
 lost sheep, until He find them. 1 Here again the 
 Christian poets teach us a truer charity than the 
 hard theologians : 
 
 " Still for all slips of her, 
 One of Eve's family, 
 Wipe those poor lips of her, 
 
 Oozing so clammily. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Make no deep scrutiny 
 Into her mutiny. . . 
 Cross her hands humbly, 
 As if praying dumbly, 
 
 Over her breast. 
 Owning her -weakness, 
 
 Her evil behaviour, 
 And leaving with meekness 
 
 Her sin to her Saviour ! " 
 
 III. But, my brethren, the vast, vast mass of 
 mankind belong to the third class : they are not 
 utter reprobates any more than they are saints. 
 They may rise to the one, they may sink to the 
 other ; but for the most part they are undecided. 
 
 1 Luke xv. 4.
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 109 
 
 They face both ways ; they halt between two 
 opinions ; they are neither saints nor criminals ; 
 they have not closed heart and soul with good, they 
 have not abandoned themselves utterly to evil. 
 They want to be pardoned, yet they want to 
 retain the offence ; they admire holiness, but they 
 dally with iniquity ; they shudder to be in a state 
 of sin, yet they attain not to a state of grace ; 
 there " is an Adam in them, and there is a Christ ; " l 
 now they sin with reckless abandonment, now they 
 repent in bitterest remorse; "the angel has them 
 by the hand and the serpent by the heart." 2 To 
 how many here do these words apply ? We break 
 no law of man ; to the eye of man it might seem 
 that we broke no law of God. But O what 
 would be thought of us if we were all seen as 
 we are ? if our hearts were naked and open to 
 each other as they are to God ? And it is those 
 who do try to be God's children who most realise 
 
 1 J. Martineau, Endeavours after a Christian Life. 
 
 2 Ruskin.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 their own exceeding sinfulness. This is why (as 
 one has said) the cry of remorse and anguish 
 which springs from the lips of a Fe'ne'lon or a 
 Cowper is far more bitter than any confession 
 which is ever wrung from a Richelieu or a Voltaire. 
 Many, many of these better, and tenderer, and 
 saintly souls have, I believe, been rendered 
 utterly and hopelessly wretched, even to madness, 
 as poor Cowper was, by that false view of God 
 which is given by the pitiless anathemas of man. 
 But to all these comes the cry, " Comfort ye, 
 comfort ye, my people, saith our God." 1 Your 
 own holier instinct tells you so. Son, or brother, 
 or friend, or father dies : we all have lost them ; 
 it may be that they were not holy ; not even 
 religious ; perhaps not even moral men ; and it 
 may be that, after living the common life of man, 
 they died suddenly, and with no space for re- 
 pentence ; and if a state of sin be not a state of 
 grace, then certainly, by all rules of theology, 
 
 * Is. xl. i.
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? in 
 
 they had not repented, they were not saved. 
 And yet, when you stood O father, O brother 
 heavy-hearted by their open grave ; when you 
 drank in the sweet words of calm and hope which 
 our Church utters over their poor remains ; 
 when you laid the white flowers on the coffin ; 
 when you heard the dull rattle of " earth to earth, 
 ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; " you, who, if 
 you knew their sins and their failings, knew also 
 all that was good, and sweet, and amiable, and 
 true within them, dared you, did you even in the 
 inmost sessions of thought, consign them, as you 
 ought logically to do, as you ought if you are 
 sincere in that creed to do, to the unending 
 anguish of that hell which you teach ? Or does 
 your heart, your conscience, your sense of justice, 
 your love of Christ, your faith in God, your belief 
 in Him of whom you sing every Sunday that 
 His mercy is everlasting, rise in revolt against 
 your nominal profession then ? You can bear to 
 think of them, as you can bear to think of your-
 
 ii2 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 self suffering, as they never did on earth, the 
 aching pang of God's revealing light, the willing 
 agony of His remedial fire. We should desire, 
 we should even pray for that the natural conse- 
 quence of our own alienation meant not to 
 torment us, but to perfect But an arbitrary in- 
 fliction a burning torment an endless agony 
 a material hell of worm and flame a doom 
 to everlasting sin ; x and all this with no prospect 
 
 1 Mark iii. 29. "All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, 
 and blasphemies "vuherewithsoever they shall blaspheme : but he that 
 shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but 
 is in danger of eternal sin " (such is the true reading, djuapTT^aror, 
 X.B.L. djuaprfay, C. D. not Kpiffecas). 
 
 1. Now " hath never forgiveness," is OVK ex t &pe(np els rov aloSva, 
 and it is superfluous to tell scholars that ej's rbv aloava no more 
 
 necessarily implies endlessness than "?W does. (SeeExcursusp.197, 
 on altavios.) 
 
 2. Our Lord states with immense plainness, and with no reserva- 
 tion, the possible ultimate remission of every sin and blasphemy 
 except one. 
 
 3. What that one is no human being has ever been able to decide. 
 
 4. Even of that one it is only said (in the parallel passage, Matt. 
 xii. 32) that it shall not be remitted to him "either in this or in 
 the future age or ' dispensation' (aluvi)." 
 
 I make no comments, but merelyask allmentoweigh these passages.
 
 IV.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 113 
 
 of amendment, with no hope of relief the soul's 
 transgressions of a few brief hours of struggling, 
 tempted life followed by billions of millenniums in 
 scorching fire and all this meant, not to correct 
 but to harden ; not to amend, but to torture and 
 degrade : did you believe in that for those whom 
 you have loved ? Again, I say, God forbid : 
 again, I say, I fling from me with abhorrence such 
 a creed as that ! Let every Pharisee, if he will, be 
 angry with me let every dogmatist anathematise 
 but that I cannot, and do not believe. Scripture 
 will not let me ; my conscience, my reason, my faith 
 in Christ, the voice of the Spirit within my soul, will 
 not let me ; God will not let me ! What I do 
 believe is this, that for every wilful sin which we 
 commit, unless it be repented of, we shall, as we 
 do, feel the heavy and merciful wrath of God, 
 until He have purged the vile dross from us, and 
 made us as the fine gold for Himself. But what ? 
 Shall nature fill the hollows of her coarse rough 
 flints with purple amethyst; shall she, out of 
 
 I
 
 114 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the grimy coal, over which the shivering beggar 
 warms himself, form the diamond that trembles 
 on the forehead of a queen ; shall even man take 
 the cast-off slag and worthless rubble of the 
 furnace and educe from it his most glowing and 
 lustrous dyes and shall God not be able to make 
 'anything of His ruined souls? And what? shall 
 we be able to pity and to love those that hate us ; 
 and to bless those who curse us ; and to forgive 
 those who have wronged us ; shall we be willing 
 to pardon our prodigals and to call them home ; 
 and shall God not be willing (and if willing who 
 shall dare to say that He is not able?) beyond 
 the grave? "Shall mortal man be more just 
 than God ? Shall man be more just than his 
 Maker ? " We made them not ; they are not 
 people of our pasture, or sheep of our hands ; 
 yet if we can feel for sinners a yearning love, a 
 trembling pity ; and if that love and pity springs 
 from all that is holiest and most Christlike in our 
 souls; and if it would be wholly impossible for
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 115 
 
 any wretch among us to be so remorseless as to 
 doom his deadliest enemy to an endless vengeance, 
 are we to believe this of God ? to believe that 
 He who planted mercy in us is merciless, and that 
 He will " hold us up with one hand and torment 
 us with the other," who knoweth our frame, and 
 remembereth that we are but dust ? Or shall we 
 not rather believe, as the wise woman of Tekoah 
 said to David three thousand years ago, "We 
 must needs die, and are as water spilt on the 
 ground ; and God does not take away life, but 
 devises devices that the wanderer may not for 
 ever be expelled from Him." 1 Yes, where sin 
 aboundeth grace shall much more abound. 2 If 
 God visits the sins of the fathers upon the 
 children unto the fourth generation of them 
 that hate Him, He showeth mercy, not only 
 unto thousands, as our version has it, but "unto 
 
 1 2 Sam. xiv. 14 (see the commentaries on this passage). 
 9 Rom. v. 20. 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the thousandth and thousandth generation " l of 
 them that love Him, and keep His command- 
 ments ; and so always, in God's promises, though 
 not in man's systems, in God's revelations though 
 not in man's beliefs, there is a vast overbalance 
 of mercy above wrath. Ay, my brethren, fear 
 not ; have faith in God ; think noble things of 
 God ; be sure that trust in the righteous God 
 means the ultimate triumph of good over evil ; 
 be sure that the cross of Christ, Christ's infinite 
 atonement, Christ's plenteous redemption, means, 
 for all who do not utterly extinguish within their 
 own souls the glimmering wick of love to God, 2 the 
 conversion of earth's sinners, far off it may be, 
 but at last, far off, at last, into God's saints. 
 
 1 Such is the true meaning of Ex. xx. 6, as the late Mr. Erskine 
 of Linlathen was so fond of pointing out. The Hebrew is D*S/JO 
 with which must be understood DHl" 5 ?. 
 
 2 In Matt. xxv. 8, the true rendering is, not "our lamps are gone 
 out," but are going out are being quenched (at \a/jLird$es rfrtaij'
 
 iv.] ARE THERE FEW THAT BE SAVED? 117 
 
 " I say to thee, do thou repeat 
 To the first man thou mayest meet 
 In lane, highway, or open street, 
 
 " That he, and we, and all men move 
 Under a canopy of love 
 As broad as the blue sky above. 
 
 " And, ere thou leave him, say thou this, 
 Yet one word more, they only miss 
 The winning of that final bliss, 
 
 " Who will not count it true, that love, 
 Blessing, not cursing, rules above 
 And that in it we live and move. 
 
 " And one thing further make him know, 
 That to believe these things are so, 
 This firm faith never to forego, 
 
 " Despite of all that seems at strife 
 With blessing all with curses rife 
 That this is blessing this is life ! " 
 
 (ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.)
 
 SERMON V. 1 
 
 EARTHLY AND FUTURE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 
 
 ROM. vi. i. 
 
 ' ' What shall we say then ? Shall we continue in sin, that grace 
 may abound ? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, 
 live any longer therein ? " 
 
 WE are, my brethren, poor blind creatures at the 
 best ; so one-sided, so imperfect, so liable to error, 
 so easily led astray by the pride which apes 
 humility so apt to be puffed up by the igno- 
 rance which takes itself for knowledge that we 
 constantly turn into banes what God intended as 
 our richest boons, and store the very manna of 
 His love in such earthen vessels of frailty and 
 presumption, that, in our keeping, it breeds worms 
 
 1 Preached in Westminster Abbey, Nov. 28, 1877.
 
 SER. v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 119 
 
 and grows corrupt. And hence even God's most 
 holy truths become liable to dreadful perversions. 
 It was so in the first ages when there were un- 
 godly men who turned the grace of God into 
 lasciviousness. 1 It was so again when Luther at 
 the Reformation shook down the hollow structure 
 of tradition which men had accepted as their 
 faith. It may be so when we open to the despair 
 of the guilty even in the Valley of Achor a door 
 of hope, and ask men to take nobler and truer 
 views of God than those which run counter to 
 what the Scriptures teach us of His everlasting 
 mercy ; 2 of His purpose in punishment being not 
 to torture but to redeem ; 3 of the day when Christ 
 shall have triumphed for ever, and God shall be 
 all in all. 4 I did not seek the topic, nor shall I 
 pursue it ; but when it came in the ordinary 
 course of our meditations I could not but strive 
 to remove thoughts which, as I know, goad 
 
 1 Jude 4. 2 Ps. c. 5. 3 Heb. xii 10. 
 
 4 vdvra ti> iraffi, "All things in all men." I Cor. xv. 28.
 
 120 ETERNAL HOPE. [SRR. 
 
 some men into wretchlessness and infidelity, and 
 embitter the hearts of others with a narrow, 
 railing, Pharisaic dogmatism, full of cursing bitter- 
 ness against all who presume to differ from itself. 
 But there are deeper reasons than these for 
 preaching what we believe to be the truth on this 
 dim subject The virtue which has no better 
 basis than fear of Hell is no virtue at all. No 
 virtue is in the least degree virtuous which springs 
 only from the hope of profit or the fear of 
 punishment. Although, for instance, honesty is 
 the best policy, yet, as was truly said by Arch- 
 bishop Whately, " The man who is honest be- 
 cause it is the best policy is no better than a 
 rogue." Would you think much of one who only 
 did not commit murder because of the hangman ? 
 or was only not a scoundrel from fear of being 
 found out ? Fear may create the enforced obedi- 
 ence of the slave : love only can win the devotion 
 of the child ; and that is why God hath not sent 
 to us who know the truth and whom the truth
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 121 
 
 has made free l the spirit of fear and of bondage, 
 but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind. 2 
 And this love is the sole eternal basis of holiness. 
 To preach that God willeth all men to be saved 
 that is Gospel truth ; to preach that it is not 
 the love of Christ, but the fear of hell which con- 
 straineth us that is the soul-destroying error. 
 What was the sum of the teaching of our Blessed 
 Lord ? was it " turn or burn " ? or was it " Come 
 unto Me, and I will give you rest " ? Was it hell- 
 fire that He preached to the rejoicing multitudes 
 as He sat among the lilies above the silver lake ? or 
 was it the beatitudes of the meek and the merciful, 
 and about a Father who maketh His sun to rise 
 on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
 the just and on the unjust ? I know that He 
 said with awful solemnity, " If thine eye offend 
 thee, pluck it out ; if thy hand offend thee, cut it 
 off, and cast it from thee : it is better for thee to 
 enter into life blind, or maimed, than, having two 
 
 1 John viii. 32. * 2 Tim. i. 7.
 
 122 ETERNAL HOPE. [SFR. 
 
 eyes or two hands, to go into Gehenna, into the 
 unquenchable fire, where their worm dieth not, 
 and the fire is not quenched." But what childish 
 vanity and arrogance is it to quote such texts 
 without knowing any of the laws of their mean- 
 ing or their interpretation ! It is just as childish 
 as it is to quote the words, "This is My body," 
 and hold them to be decisive in proof of tran- 
 substantiation ; or to quote " them He did pre- 
 destinate" as decisive in proof of Calvinism. I 
 claim to speak with at least as much authority 
 as any one else when I say that there is not a 
 word here about that which neither the Roman 
 nor the Anglican Church requires us to believe 
 viz., an irreversible doom at death, for all sinners, 
 to endless torments. 1 The language of our Blessed 
 Lord and Master is no more literal in the second 
 half of the verse than in the first. We have 
 
 1 The Catech. Trident., 1. 6, qu. 3, uses language which seems to 
 imply endless torments for some ; but I mainly allude to the 
 doctrine of Purgatory.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 123 
 
 no more right to take the first half metaphori- 
 cally and the second literally, than the youthful 
 Origen had to take the first half literally and 
 the second metaphorically. Our Lord speaks, 
 as He did habitually and designedly, in meta- 
 phors and parables; and His metaphors meant 
 this awful truth that the most painful physical 
 agony and the worst physical mutilation is a 
 less anguish and a more trivial loss than that 
 shame and corruption which are the inevitable 
 consequence of sin the flame of remorse which 
 will always burn so long as sin is practised; the 
 worm of conscience, which will always gnaw until 
 it is forgiven. 1 Such a warning has no affinity with 
 that dogmatic and damnatory hatred which says, 
 " Hold this opinion or you will find yourself in a 
 
 1 I have already spoken of the sole sense in which the Jews 
 understood the word Gehenna. The expression, " quenchless fire," 
 for the phrase "that never shall be quenched " is a simple mistrans- 
 lation is taken from Is. Ixvi. 24, and is as purely a figure of speech, 
 as it is there, or as it is in Homer's Iliad, xvi. 123, and many other 
 passages. The Gospel, like the law, speaks, as the Talmudic pro- 
 verb so wisely says, " in the tongue of the sons of men."
 
 124 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 lake of inextinguishable fire." What our Saviour 
 taught what, thank God, we all agree in teaching, 
 is this : ' Resist the evil which is in you, for it is 
 your curse and ruin ; and until you have learnt 
 to forsake and hate it, you cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven. Resist it because God hates 
 it ; because God loves you ; because He desires to 
 save you from it and from its deadly consequences. 
 Resist it because it was to seek the lost that I 
 came, and to redeem them that I died.' That 
 is true, that is divine teaching. 
 
 " So the All-Great is the All-Loving too, 
 So through the thunder comes a human voice, 
 Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here ; 
 Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself; 
 Thou hast no force, nor canst conceive of mine ; 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee.' " 
 
 2. That then, my brethren, is the true motive 
 
 for all holiness Christ's redemption God's love. 
 
 We are dead with Christ unto sin ; we live to God 
 
 unto righteousness. 1 And God created us, not to 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 16.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 125 
 
 destroy, not to torment, not to take vengeance on 
 us, but to save, and to save us to the uttermost, 
 from sin, from corruption, from that true Gehenna 
 which is not a burning prison, but a polluted 
 heart. Alienation from God ; hatred of truth ; 
 hatred of purity ; a hard, bitter, railing, loveless 
 spirit ; mean, base, selfish, sensual desires ; these 
 are the elements of hell : and as long as any 
 man, be he Pharisee or be he publican, is given 
 to these, so long he will be made to feel with 
 the evil spirit, 
 
 ' ' Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell, 
 And in the lowest deep a lower deep, 
 Still gaping to devour me, opens wide, 
 To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." 
 
 Hell is a temper, not a place. So long as we 
 are evil, and impure, and unloving, so long 
 where we are is hell, and where hell is there 
 we must be ; and when all the world dissolves, 
 and every creature is purified, whom God's love 
 can purify, then " all places shall be hell that are
 
 126 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 not heaven." * How long, how far, \ve in our 
 pride and obduracy and corruption may harden 
 ourselves, even beyond the grave, against the con- 
 straining love of God, we know not, and none 
 knows ; but so long as we continue to do this, 
 it is not God who is kindling for us His avenging 
 tortures, but we who by our own impenitence are 
 defeating His infinite purposes and destroying and 
 ruining ourselves. Good men, as I have said, 
 may and do hold this doctrine of endless torture, 
 with pity and fear and trembling, and awful sub- 
 mission; but let those men suspect their own 
 hearts and their own purposes to whom so terrible 
 a dogma terrible even if it be true is so dear, 
 
 1 These lines from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, 
 
 " Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed 
 In one self place ; but where we are is hell, 
 And where hell is there we must ever be. 
 And, to be short, when all this world dissolves, 
 And every creature shall be purified, 
 All places shall be hell which are not heaven," 
 
 bear a curious, though certainly accidental, resemblance to the view s 
 of Scotus Erigena (see p. 170), except that they do not so fully 
 admit the d.iroKa.Tdtna.ai'i ir
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 127 
 
 and precious, and comforting, that they are quite 
 " distressed " at the thought of losing it, and never 
 seem so happy as when they are denouncing it on 
 others. They bid me tremble ; but it is not I who 
 tremble. When I stand before the bar of my 
 Maker, a humble and penitent sinner; when I 
 cry that my sins may be covered with the white 
 robe of my Saviour's merits, as the snow falls 
 upon a miry world ; when I admit before Him, 
 with shame and sorrow, that my very tears 
 want washing, and my repentance needs to be 
 repented of : yet not on this account shall I 
 fear. Man may curse Eliphaz the Temanite, 
 and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naama- 
 thite, and all their company may protest but 
 Thou, O Father, wilt not be angry with Thy child 
 because he thought and tried to bid others think 
 just and noble things of thee : Thou, O Saviour, 
 wilt not frown at him because he trusted in the 
 nfmitude of Thy compassion: and Thou, O Holy 
 Spirit, whose image is the soft stealing of the dew
 
 128 ETERNAL HOPE. [snt. 
 
 and the golden hovering of the dove, wilt know 
 that if he erred it was because he fixed his eyes, 
 not on the glaring and baleful meteors of anathe- 
 matising orthodoxy, but on the star 'of Bethlehem 
 and the clouds that begin to shine about the 
 coming of the Lord ; and that if perchance he 
 erred the light which led astray was light from 
 heaven. 
 
 No ! it is not I who tremble. Let the zeal of 
 a damnatory religion tremble ! Let those 
 tremble who would turn the Gospel of salvation 
 for most men into a threat of doom ! Let those 
 tremble who are indignant at the thoughts which 
 see room for hope beyond the grave ! If indeed 
 they be in the right, still their tenet is one so 
 harrowing that it should be uttered only as the true 
 saints who believed it have uttered it, with tears, 
 and trembling pity, and bated breath. But if there 
 be one thing which He must loathe whose name is 
 Love, it is the hallelujahs of exultant anathema, 
 and the thinly-disguised hate which rages and
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIX. 129 
 
 protests with so fierce an ignorance against a trust 
 in Mercy founded only on these two great doc- 
 trines (which they say they own) the doctrine of 
 Christ's infinite redemption ; the doctrine of God's 
 boundless love. 1 
 
 3. But I have now said all that it seems my 
 duty to say on this subject. I thank God from my 
 heart that what I believe to be His truth, taught 
 us by His own word, confirmed in us by His own 
 Spirit, has proved a source of relief and comfort to 
 thousands of hearts all over England ; and I do 
 not think it necessary to enter on the endless 
 task of either repudiating misrepresentations or 
 deigning to take notice of abuse. My object 
 to-day is a wholly different one. It is to leave all 
 those without excuse who, on the grounds of a 
 
 1 I am alluding, not to humble and holy Christians who hold 
 such opinions, but to men like the preacher described by Dr. 
 Guthrie, who "declared that he had a bad opinion of the con- 
 dition of those who did not rejoice that God's enemies were 
 destroyed without remedy. I thought I saw the man stamping 
 with his foot, and putting out the smoking flax. It was a 
 horrible caricature of the Gospel." Life, p. 511. 
 
 K
 
 I 3 3 ETERNAL HOPE. [SF.R. 
 
 possible hope beyond the grave, try to make light 
 of sin. And therefore, my brethren, and above all, 
 you who are young and ignorant, I earnestly ask 
 your whole attention while I rede you beware 
 how you wrest God's mercy to your own ruin. 
 Have any of you said, ' Because we may never 
 cease to hope, therefore we may go on in 
 sin ' ? Ah, if you have said that, you must 
 indeed be in a gall of bitterness and a bond 
 of iniquity from which it is clear that no 
 horrible dread of an endless hell has saved you ! 
 Dare any one, who professes and calls him- 
 self a Christian, say in his heart, " Let us con- 
 tinue in sin, that grace may abound " ? l Will 
 he can he dare to turn the grace of our God 
 into lasciviousness ? 2 to count the blood of the 
 covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy 
 thing? 3 to say, 'Because God loves me, there- 
 fore I will do that which He hates; because Christ 
 died for me, therefore deliberately, unblushingly 
 1 Rom. vi. I. 2 Jude iv. 8 Heb. x. 29.
 
 CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 131 
 
 I will crucify Him afresh, and put Him to an open 
 shame ? l Because it is His long-suffering which 
 calls me to repentance, 2 therefore He shall wait 
 my time ? ' My brethren, there are two kinds 
 of sin wilful sin and 'willing sin. Wilful sin is 
 that into which, because of the frailty of our 
 nature, because of the strength of passion and 
 temptation, not loving, but loathing it not 
 seeking, but resisting it not acquiescing in, but 
 fighting and struggling against it, we all some- 
 times fall. This is the struggle in which God's 
 Spirit striveth with our spirit, and out of which 
 we humbly believe and hope that God will, 
 at the last, grant unto us victory and for- 
 giveness. But there is another kind of sin, 
 far deadlier, far more heinous, far more incurable, 
 it is willing sin. It is when we are content with 
 sin ; when we have sold ourselves to sin ; when 
 we no longer fight against sin ; when we mean 
 to continue in sin. That is the darkest, lowest, 
 
 1 Ileb. vi. 6. 2 I Pet iii. 20. 
 
 K 2
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 deadliest, most irredeemable abysm of sin ; and it 
 is well that the fooiish or guilty soul should know 
 that on it, if it have sunk to this, has been already 
 executed, self-executed the dread mandate, " In 
 the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely 
 die." l By that curse was not meant a physical, but 
 a spiritual death. The man who is sold under sin is 
 dead, morally dead, spiritually dead ; and such a 
 man is a ghost, far more awful than the soul which 
 was once in a dead body, for he is a body bearing 
 about with him a dead soul. Better, far, far better 
 for him to have cut off the right hand, or plucked 
 out the right eye, than to have been cast as he has 
 been, now in his lifetime and as he will be cast 
 until he repent, even beyond the grave into that 
 Gehenna of aeonian fire ! It shall purify him, God 
 
 1 It is astonishing that this text should be quoted as though it 
 aad the very slightest bearing on this subject. In what sense is 
 any one more puilty of preaching the devil's falsehood " Ye shall not 
 die," by urging that there may be a hope beyond the grave, than 
 we all are by urging that there is a hope on this side the grave ? 
 Neither logic, nor charity, nor common sense have any share in such 
 arguments.
 
 CONSEQUENCES OF SIX. 
 
 grant, in due time; but oh! it shall agonise, because 
 he has made himself, as yet, incapable of any other 
 redemption. So that if any youth have wickedly 
 thought in his heart that God is even such an 
 one as himself that he may break with impunity 
 God's awful commandments, that he may indulge 
 with impunity his own evil lusts, let him recall 
 the sad experience of Solomon, which he heard 
 this morning, " Walk in the ways of thine heart 
 and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, 
 that for all these things God will bring thee into 
 judgment ; " l let him remember the stern warning 
 of Isaiah, "Woe unto them that call evil good 
 and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and 
 light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and 
 sweet for bitter! Therefore as the fire devoureth 
 the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, 
 so their root shall be as rottenness, and their 
 blossom shall go up as dust : because they 
 have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, 
 
 1 Keel. xi. 9.
 
 134 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 and despised the word of the Holy One of 
 Israel." * 
 
 I. For first, my brethren, let us all learn that 
 the consequences of sin are inevitable; in other 
 words, that punishment is but ' the stream of 
 consequence flowing on unchecked.' There is in 
 human nature an element of the gambler, willing 
 to take the chances of things ; willing to run a risk 
 if the issue be uncertain. There is no such element 
 here. The punishment of sin is certain. All 
 Scripture tells us so. " The soul that sinneth, it 
 shall die." 2 " Be sure your sin will find you out." 3 
 " Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not 
 be unpunished." 4 " The way of transgressors is 
 hard." 5 
 
 All the world's proverbs tell us so. " Reckless 
 youth, rueful age." " As he has made his bed, so 
 he must lie in it." " He who will not be ruled 
 by the rudder, must be ruled by the rock." 
 
 1 Is. v. 24. - Ezek. xviii. 4. 3 N um l). xxxii. 23. 
 
 4 Prov. xi. 21. 5 Prov. xiii. 15.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 135 
 
 Even Satan himself would not deny it. In the 
 old legend of Dr. Faustus, when he bids the devil 
 lay aside his devilish propensity to lying, and tell 
 the truth, the devil answers, " The world does me 
 injustice to tax me with lies. Let me ask their 
 conscience if I have ever deceived them into 
 believing that a bad action was a good one." 
 
 Even bad men admit it. They would gladly 
 preach, if they could, that sin is but " a soft in- 
 firmity in the blood, not to be too severely 
 visited ; " but the facts are too fatally against 
 them, and those facts say, with unglosing voice, 
 " If any man defile the temple of God, him 
 shall God destroy." 1 
 
 So that you see, on the testimony alike of the 
 deceived and the deceiver, the punishment of sin 
 is (first) inevitable. 
 
 II. Notice, too, secondly, that the punishment of 
 sin is impartial. There is a form of self-deception 
 common to all of us, and especially in youth, by 
 
 1 I Cor. iii. 17.
 
 136 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 which we admit the general law, but try to shirk 
 its personal, individual application. It is the old, 
 old story of Eden over again, in the case of every 
 one of us ; the serpent, creeping up to us all 
 glitter and fascination, all dulcet flattery and 
 sinuous glide, and whispering, ' See the fruit how 
 fair it is ; how much to be desired ; be as a god 
 knowing good and evil ; thou shalt not surely die ; ' 
 and so the boy and the youth, healthy, and bright, 
 and gay, and even, in his folly, the grown man, 
 believes that it shall not be so with him ; that he 
 will repent in time ; that he is the darling of Provi- 
 dence, he the favourite of Heaven, he the one who 
 may sin and shall not suffer. If others handle 
 pitch they shall be defiled ; if others take fire into 
 their bosom, they shall be burned j 1 but God will 
 indulge him; and the very spirits of evil laugh at 
 each one going as an ox to the slaughter, whom 
 they dupe into the fancy that out of special favour 
 to him "this adamantine chain of moral gravita- 
 
 1 Prov. vi. 27.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 137 
 
 tion, more lasting and binding than that by which 
 the stars are held in their spheres, will be snapped ; 
 that sin for him will change its nature," 1 and at his 
 approach the Gehenna of punishment be trans- 
 formed into a garden of delight. Is it so ? Has 
 there been any human being yet, since time began, 
 however noble, however beautiful, however gifted, 
 however bright with genius or radiant with fasci- 
 nation, who has sinned with impunity? Ah, no ! 
 God is no respecter of persons. Fire burns and 
 water drowns, whether the sufferer be a worthless 
 villain, or a fair and gentle child ; and so the moral 
 law works, whether the sinner be a " David or a 
 Judas, whether he be publican or priest." In the 
 physical world there is no forgiveness of sins. Sin 
 and punishment, as Plato said, walk this world with 
 their heads tied together ; and the rivet that links 
 their iron link is a rivet of adamant. ' A man 
 who cannot swim might as well walk into a river, 
 
 1 Archd. Hare.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 and hope it will not drown, as a man, seeing judg- 
 ment and not mercy denounced on willing sin, 
 hope that it will turn out to be mercy and not 
 judgment, and so defy God's law.' l Will he 
 escape ? O boy, O man, wilt thou escape ? Ah 
 no ! if you choose sin you will meet with retribu- 
 tion ; and experience, in your own person, the lex 
 talionis of offended nature, " eye for eye, tooth 
 for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning, wound 
 for wound, stripe for stripe." 2 
 
 III. You see then that the punishment of sin is 
 inevitable, and is impartial, and now see why it is 
 so. It is so because the punishment of sin is not 
 an arbitrary interference, but a necessary law. I 
 do not mean that God never directly interferes. 
 He does. We see it daily in the history of crime. 
 We see it in strange detections ; in providential 
 accidents ; in the infatuations of penal stupidity 
 shown by able men bent on concealed wickedness. 
 
 1 Irving. * Ex. xxi. 24.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 139 
 
 But leaving out of account these obvious visitations 
 in which 
 
 " God's terrible and fiery ringer 
 Shrivels the falsehood from the souls of men," 
 
 there is generally a frightful resemblance which 
 shows that the penalty is a genuine child of the 
 transgression. We receive the things that we have 
 done. There is a dreadful coercion in our own ini- 
 quities ; an inevitable congruity between the deed 
 and its consequences ; an awful germ of identity in 
 the seed and in the fruit. We recognise the sown 
 wind in the harvest whirlwind. 1 We feel that it is 
 we who have winged the very arrows that eat into 
 our heart like fire. It needs no gathered lightning, 
 no divine intervention, no miraculous message, to 
 avenge in us God's violated laws. They avenge 
 themselves. You may laugh at Bibles, sneer at 
 clergymen, keep away from churches, and yet your 
 sin, coming after you with leaden footstep, and 
 gathering form, and towering over you, smites you 
 
 1 Hos. viii. 7.
 
 140 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 at last with the iron hand of its own revenge. I 
 cannot pretend to work out now the whole vast 
 scheme of this sacred Nemesis, or read for you, on 
 the wall of guilty hearts, this Mene, Mene, Tekel, 
 Peres of reddening doom. It would need a picture 
 such as when 
 
 " Some great painter dips 
 His pencil in the hues of earthquake and eclipse " 
 
 it would need a voice like that which he who saw 
 the Apocalypse heard cry in the heaven aloud 
 " Woe to the inhabiters of earth." But for no 
 one shall say that he went unwarned ; no one 
 shall shield himself under the plea that sin was 
 robbed, for him, of one true element of awfulness, 
 I will tell you of one or two ways in which, if 
 God's love avail not, His terrors may at least 
 leave us in no doubt as to what He hates. Sleep 
 under it you who will, but if your souls be really 
 in earnest in inquiring about this matter I will 
 try for a few moments to accentuate for you some 
 syllables of that Voice behind thee saying, " This
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 141 
 
 is the way, walk ye in it," when ye turn aside to 
 the right hand or to the left. 
 
 IV. Well, then, take disease as one form of the 
 working of this inevitable law. Not always of 
 course the direct result of sin, yet how much of 
 it is directly due to dirt, neglect, folly, ignorance, 
 the infected blood, the inherited instincts of this 
 sad world ? But are there not some diseases, and 
 those of the most terrible which earth knows, 
 which do spring directly, immediately, exclusively, 
 undeniably from violations of God's law ? Is not 
 madness, very often, such a disease ? Is there 
 not, at this moment, many a miserable, degraded 
 lunatic, who never would have been such but for 
 repeated transgressions of God's known will ? 
 
 Is there not again in the very life-blood of mil- 
 lions an hereditary taint, blighting their health 
 poisoning as with a fury's breath the flower 
 of their happiness breaking out afresh in new 
 generations which has its sole source and 
 origin in uncleanness ?
 
 142 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 Is there not, too, an executioner of justice told 
 off to wait upon drunkenness which would cease 
 to exist if drunkenness ceased to exist ; which is 
 God's warning against that fearful intemperance 
 against which senates will not fight, and they who 
 love their fellows fight as yet in vain ? Have 
 you ever seen if not, may you never see ! a 
 young man suffering from delirium tremens ? 
 Have you heard him describe its horrors, horrors 
 such as not even Dante imagined in the most 
 harrowing scenes of his Inferno " the blood-red 
 suffusion before the eyes quenched suddenly in 
 darkness the myriads of burning, whirling rings 
 of concentric fire millions of foul insects seem- 
 ing to weave their damp, soft webs about the 
 face the bloated, hideous, ever-changing faces 
 of their visions the eyes that glare from wall 
 to roof the feeling as if a man were falling, 
 falling, falling, falling, endlessly, into a fathomless 
 abyss." Why is all this ? Because God inflicts it 
 on man ? No, but because man inflicts it on him-
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES CF SIX. 143 
 
 self; and the God who loves us, wishing us to see 
 how drunkenness blasts, and scathes, and debases, 
 and imbrutes, to save men from all this horrible 
 stain, and agony, and shame, has attached this law 
 to the abuse of intoxicating drinks, exactly as, to 
 save us from handling fire, He causes fire to burn. 
 Does God interfere ? No, but He says, O my 
 son whom I have made, this is the signboard of 
 thy tippling-house, this is the goal to which 
 Intemperance leads ; as thou lovest Me, as thou 
 lovest thine own soul, cut off thy right hand, 
 pluck out thy right eye; it is better for thee to 
 enter into life blind or maimed rather than cast 
 thyself into this Gehenna of seonian fire this 
 depth of disgrace and of corruption where the 
 worm of the drunkard dieth not, and his fire is 
 not quenched. 
 
 V. Or take any one, not of the physical, but 
 of the moral workings of this law of punishment. 
 Read with me another syllable of this handwriting 
 upon the wall. Take Fear, for instance. You
 
 144 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 have heard of haunted houses : have you ever 
 heard of haunted men ? Are there any here who 
 are groaning under the burden of undetected sin ? 
 If so will they not recognise themselves as suffer- 
 ing this Nemesis of fear ? As there are some men 
 whose sins are open, going before to judgment 
 marshalling them in undisguised array to the very 
 judgment-seat so there are some men whose sins 
 follow after. There are men everywhere there 
 are probably men here now who ever, as they 
 walk through life, hear footsteps behind them ; 
 for whom "the earth is made of glass," on whom 
 the stars seem to look down as spies ; men whose 
 pulses shake at every sudden ring of the door- 
 bell whose faces blanch if they be suddenly 
 accosted who tremble if a steady gaze be fixed 
 upon them. Have not such men, abject in the 
 dismay and weakness to which sin has reduced 
 them thousands of times betrayed themselves 
 by their own unreasonable fears, and by imagining 
 that their sin was being spoken of, when some-
 
 v.j CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 
 
 thing quite different was being spoken of ? I 
 think it is the ancient writer Plutarch, in his re- 
 markable pamphlet " On the Delayed Vengeance of 
 Deity," who tells how a youth, on being reproached 
 for his cruelty in fiercely wringing the necks of 
 some young birds, betrayed his hideous crime by 
 exclaiming, " It was their own fault : why did they 
 keep twittering at me ' Parricide, Parricide ! ' ' 
 Take the life even of David. After he had sent 
 that fatal letter to Joab about Uriah do you think 
 that he ever had a moment's peace afterwards ? 
 \Vas not his own servant his master now, because 
 he knew his guilty secret ? And if there be one 
 here who has done deeds which he would give 
 worlds to have left undone ; about whose roof 
 is heard 'the flapping of unclean wings'; who 
 never again, in this world, shall sleep the sleep of 
 the innocent ; for whom the " furies have taken 
 their seats upon the midnight pillow," on whose 
 breast, through the dark hours, ill dreams ride 
 heavily in the shape of his deadliest sin ; will such 
 
 L
 
 146 ETERNAL HOPE. [SEK. 
 
 as these tell you that they were lucky not to have 
 been caught ? happy in that they were not found 
 out ? fortunate in that no stroke of detection 
 or punishment arrested them before fruition, and 
 in mid career ? 
 
 Achan concealed his theft ; never spent his 
 wedge of gold ; never wore his Babylonish 
 garment ; yet, when discovery crept nearer and 
 nearer to him, and at last touched him ; when the 
 lot fell and the tribe of Judah was taken ; and the 
 lot fell again, and the family of the Zarhites was 
 taken ; and the lot fell again, and the household of 
 Zabdi was taken ; and the lot fell once more, and 
 Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the 
 son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken, 
 and was stoned, and burned, he, and his family, 
 with the accursed stolen thing, in the valley 
 of Achor, did not Joshua indicate to him that 
 detection might be a blessed thing ? Did not 
 he too, as I have done, open in the valley 
 of Achor a door of hope, when he said to the
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN 147 
 
 exposed criminal, " My son, give, I pray thee, 
 glory to the Lord God of Israel ; and tell me now 
 what thou hast done ; hide it not from me " ? 
 And would not Achan too have cause to say, 
 
 " Minds which verily repent 
 Are burdened with impunity 
 
 And comforted by chastisement ; 
 That punishment's the best to bear 
 
 That follows soonest on the sin, 
 And guilt's a game where losers fare 
 
 Better than those who seem to win." l 
 
 VI. But you will say, " There are many sins 
 whose commission involves no great fear." Yes, 
 truly ; but if the soul have any life left in it, 
 when one ray of God's eternity shines into it, 
 shame and the agonising sense of lost worth and 
 self-loathing comes withal. When our first parents 
 had tasted the fruit, then their eyes were miserably 
 opened. 
 
 " Innocence, that as a veil 
 
 Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone, 
 Just confidence, and native righteousness, 
 And honour from about them, naked, left 
 To guilty shame." 2 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore. 2 Milton, Paradise Lost. 
 
 L 2.
 
 U8 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 Ah, my brethren, have none of you, even very early, 
 felt the working of this law? Have you known but 
 for one hour what it is to be utterly miserably, 
 intolerably ashamed of yourself? If so, you, too, 
 have been in that Gehenna of aeonian fire of which 
 your Saviour speaks. It is the glare of illumina- 
 tion which the conscience flings over the soul after 
 a deed of darkness. It is the revulsion of feeling 
 on which we did not calculate when we have done 
 with the sin, but the sin has not done with us. 
 It is the little grain of conscience, within the 
 very worst of us, which makes forbidden pleasures 
 sour. It is the fact that none of us can be 
 quite wicked enough really to enjoy wickedness. 
 It is the aching crave after the brief intoxi- 
 cation. It is the Dead Sea apple shrivelling 
 into hideousness the moment it has been tasted. 
 It is the horror of the murderer when his 
 passion of revenge is spent, and the cold grey 
 dawn reveals the face of his murdered victim. 
 It is the waking of the famished wretch who
 
 v.l CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 149 
 
 has dreamt of food and water, and he wakes, and 
 lo ! he is sick of hunger and scorched with thirst. 
 It is the cry from ten thousand biographies of 
 those who have sinned and suffered : 
 
 " When I received this volume small 
 
 My years were barely seventeen. 
 
 When it was hoped I should be all 
 
 Which once, alas ! I might have been. 
 
 " And now my years are thirty-five; 
 
 And every mother hopes her lamb, 
 And every happy child alive, 
 
 May never be what I now am 1 " l 
 
 So, my brethren, you see, the very youngest of 
 you, that, if you choose sin you must have sin 
 as your companion; sin in her own hideous 
 presence, and with her the death which ever dogs 
 her footstep, and notches against her his arrow 
 en the string. I am not even pretending to show 
 you all the workings of that inevitable, impartial 
 law which we, in our loneliness and alienation, call 
 
 1 Lines written by Hartley Coleridge in his Bible.
 
 i5o ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. 
 
 the heavy wrath of God. It is but as if I plucked 
 one leaf and showed it you as a specimen of the 
 boundless forest ; it is but as if I showed you one 
 little wave, and told you that a whole ocean was be- 
 hind. But I will only ask you to glance at one more 
 feature of this law. There shall be (let us suppose 
 it) no intervention ; no sickness ; no detection ; no 
 shame even ; no fear ; no outward and visible 
 punishment of any kind. Conscience shall, for a 
 time, be dead ; life shall, for years, be prosperous. 
 Does sin escape then ? Is the sinner happy then ? 
 Ah no ! he is worst off then. " Nulla poena, 
 quanta pcena!" 1 This is God's worst, severest 
 punishment. "Ephraim is joined to idols ! " What 
 then ? Arrest him as with the punishment of a dear 
 and pleasant child ? Make him sick with smiting 
 him into penitence ? Ah, no ! worse than that let 
 him alone ; 2 blind his eyes ; put the scourge in his 
 own hand ; let him strut to his confusion ; let the 
 guilt which he has chosen come into his bowels 
 
 1 Augustine. 2 Hos. iv. 17.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 151 
 
 like water and like oil into his bones ; let sin be the 
 deadliest executioner, the most merciless avenger 
 of sin. Let the acute pang become the chronic 
 malady. Let the thought become the wish, and 
 the wish the act, and the act the habit. Let 
 the solitary become the frequent, the frequent the 
 incessant, the incessant the all-but-necessary, all- 
 but-inevitable transgression. Let crime awake 
 him. Let the serpent's egg become a cockatrice, 
 and its seed a fiery flying serpent. Let hatred 
 become murder ; let ambition become conspiracy ; 
 let greed become theft and swindling : let lust 
 become some deadly impurity. Ah ! when God 
 sends forth a besetting sin a guilty habit to 
 be His executioner, the case is most awful, most 
 hopeless then. God only, by Christ's redemption, 
 can save from the body of that death ! 
 
 My brethren, will you now say that " I will go 
 on in sin, and it does not matter ?" Ah ! but, most 
 terribly and awfully, it does matter ! You may be 
 saved indeed, at last, if God will ; saved, not from
 
 152 ETERNAL HOPE. [SF.R. 
 
 Him and His wrath, but from yourself and your 
 own self-destruction ; but even then there is a 
 sense in which it may be awfully true that our 
 millenniums depend upon our moments; and 
 though God's infinite love may be able to save you, 
 yet, alas ! it may only be as a brand is plucked, 
 half-consumed, out of the burning ; " as a shepherd 
 tears out of the mouth of a lion two legs and the 
 piece of an ear ! " l Do not think that repentance 
 is an easy thing, and be quite sure of this, that the 
 longer it is delayed the less easy does it become, 
 and the more terrible are the consequences both 
 here and hereafter which the delay involves. 
 
 " A spotless child sleeps on the flowering moss ; 
 'Tis well for him ; but if a guilty man, 
 Envying such slumber, should desire to put 
 His guilt away, can he return to rest 
 At once by lying there ? Our sires knew well 
 The fitting course for such : dark cells, dim lamps, 
 A stone floor one may writhe on like a worm, 
 No mossy pillow blue with violets." 3 
 
 1 Amos. iii. 12. " Browning's Paracelsus.
 
 v.] CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 153 
 
 The path of repentance may never be closed to 
 us ; so I believe the Catholic Church of Christ 
 has in most ages taught ; but O how hard may that 
 path of repentance be ! over what bleeding flints ; 
 through what a scorch of fiery swords ; through 
 what deep shame, what dread corruption, what 
 pain of body, what misery of remorse, what agony 
 of soul ! O ! were it not better to cut off the right 
 hand, and pluck out the right eye, than go of our 
 own choice into the Gehenna of aeonian fire, here 
 and hereafter, such as I believe that Christ meant, 
 and such as I have now in part only in shadow 
 and in outline described ? God is the Lord 
 God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and 
 of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgres- 
 sion and sin, and yet by no means clearing the 
 guilty. Why ? Because He loves us not ? Not 
 so, for " God's severity is all love " ; but because 
 sin is the one deadly enemy which He must 
 destroy in us, lest it destroy us, and we, with it.
 
 154 ETERNAL HOPE. [SER. v. 
 
 destroy ourselves; He must destroy it for our 
 sakes, because, as you will hear just now in glorious 
 music, 
 
 " The greatness of His mercy reacheth unto the heavens, 
 And His truth unto the clouds."
 
 BRIEF SKETCH OF ESCHATOLOGICAL 
 OPINIONS IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 THE Scriptures reveal indeed a future state of 
 retribution, but are when competently interpreted 
 in the light of modern criticism absolutely silent 
 as to " endless torture " ; or, if this be not con- 
 ceded, they at least seem to express with the 
 utmost possible plainness a view of Final Restitu- 
 tion which cannot be reconciled with the ultimate 
 and all-but-universal perpetuity of sin. Hence the 
 language of the Fathers, who freely adopted both 
 sets of phrases, is frequently self-contradictory. 
 In the earliest of them Justin Martyr and Ire- 
 naeus are some well-known passages which seem 
 clearly to imply either the ultimate redemption or 
 the total destruction of sinners ; and though
 
 156 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 they also use language which may be inter- 
 preted in accordance with a belief in endless 
 torments, it is by no means clear that the phrases 
 they adopt may not be meant in the same sense in 
 which we believe them also to be used in Scripture. 
 It was in answer to the bitter taunt of Celsus, 
 that the God of the Christians kindled a fire in 
 which all except Christians should be burned, that 
 Origen first argued that the fire should possess 
 a purifying quality (KaOdpaiov} for all those who 
 had in themselves any materials for it to consume ; 
 any wood, hay, stubble in their thoughts and theo- 
 logical systems. All, he said, even Peter and Paul, 
 must pass through this fire (Is. xliii. 2), and ordi- 
 nary sinners must remain in it till purged. It is in 
 fact a baptism of fire, at the second resurrection, 
 for those who had not received effectually the 
 baptism of the Spirit (FTept apx&v, i. 6, C. Cels. vi. 26 ; 
 Horn, in Psalm iii. i; in Jerem. ii. 3; in Ezek. i. 13). 
 It was not a material fire, but self-kindled, like 
 an internal fever. It was in fact remorse for
 
 ORIGEN AND CLEMENS. 157 
 
 remembered sin, a " figurative representation of 
 the moral process by which restoration shall be 
 effected." The English Church, which condemned 
 in Article 22 the "Romish" doctrine of Purgatory, 
 never condemned these merciful opinions, which 
 have always been more or less prevalent in the 
 Greek Church. 
 
 Clemens of Alexandria (Strom, vii. 6) had 
 already spoken of the fire as a sort of spiritual 
 fire (i>vp (frpoi'ipov), which does not burn the flesh, 
 but purifies the soul. And though he does not 
 express himself with perfect distinctness, yet the 
 whole drift of his remarks proves that he could 
 not have held an unmitigated doctrine of endless 
 punishment, but only of a punishment which 
 would necessarily cease when its remedial object 
 was attained (see Baur, Dogmengeschichite, i. 718). 
 And Clemens, like Origen, seems to imply an 
 ultimate amendment of every evil nature (Strom. 
 \. 17, 86; vii. 2; Pcedag. i. 8 10) in something 
 of the same spirit as the modern poet
 
 158 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 " O wad ye taka thocht and men', 
 Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, 
 
 Still hae a stake ; 
 I'm loath to think upon yon den 
 
 E'en for your sake." 1 
 
 Satan, in the opinion of Origen, is " the last 
 enemy ; " but his " destruction " means that he 
 ceases to be an enemy. God, he says, made no 
 being irreclaimable, but all for a good purpose, 
 and creatures thus produced cannot be annihilated. 
 The final reconciliation will be universal. (On this 
 esoteric doctrine of restitution see Orig. De Princip. 
 
 1 It is, I think, demonstrable that this opinion of the salva- 
 bility of devils (a question which I set aside as beyond our range) 
 gave far deeper offence than the peculiar universalism of Origen as 
 regards mankind (see Jer. adv. Pelag. i. 9). For the views of Clemens 
 on the purifying intelligential fire, see Strom, vii. 6, ad fat. ; on the 
 hope beyond the grave (e'irel fn.r]Sfls r&iros dpybs evirortas fov), id. 
 iv. 6, 37 ; vi. f. 638, 639 ; on the intention of punishment as a 
 benefit (irpbs rb xp^i ffL P- v } both collectively and individually to those 
 who are punished, Padag. i. 8, passim, Strom, vii. 13, 14, 16, and 
 a striking passage in the Fragm. in i Joh. (ed. Pott, p. 1009, cf. 
 Theodoret In Ezech. vi. 6) ; on Christ's preaching to the dead, see 
 Strom, vi. 6 (cf. Hermas. iii. 16). The remedial fire of the Alex- 
 andrians, &c. (Trvp <pp6i>ifiov, KaBapffiov, autppovouv) differs from 
 purgatory, because it is (i.) after the resurrection, and (ii.) not instead 
 of Hell (Bishop Harold Browne, Articles, pp. 498 450).
 
 GREGORY OF NYSSA. 159 
 
 iii. 6, 6 ; i. 6. 3 ; ii. 8, 4 8 ; c. Cels. vi. 26 ; 
 Neander, ii. 437 ; Hagenbach, i. 242.) That these 
 particular views have never been condemned by 
 any decree of the Universal Church is certain. 
 Neither the Fifth nor any other CEcumenical 
 Council, nor even the " Home Synod " of A.D. 
 541, ever condemned the tenet of a hope for the 
 lost even beyond the grave. (See Cave, Hist. Liter., 
 p. 548 ; Hefele, Concilien-Geschichte, ii. 759 764; 
 Dean Stanley, Essay on Church and State, pp. 
 137, 318; F. N. Oxenham, Letter on Everlasting 
 Punishment, pp. 17 25.) 
 
 The views of Gregory of Nyssa were (Or. 
 cat. viii. ; and xxxv. and Uepl Vvxfjs, Opp. ii. 12 ; 
 iii. 226 229, &c : ed. Paris, 1630), that the soul, 
 having an affinity to God, must ultimately return 
 to God ; and that the anguish it must suffer is 
 necessarily caused during the separation of good 
 from evil, not from any desire on God's part to 
 torment. Hence all evil will ultimately disappear. 
 Virtue is in this life the purification of the soul, and
 
 KTKRNAL HOPE. 
 
 if during life it has not been cured from vice, it 
 may be purified hereafter by the baptism of fire, 
 and all things will at last serve God. All punish- 
 ment is educational, purgatorial, remedial in its 
 object. 1 The writings of this great Father are 
 most important as proving the permissibility of 
 these views. His authority stood deservedly high 
 as a great and persecuted champion of the Nicene 
 faith, and his orthodoxy was so unimpeachable 
 that he was one of the most prominent figures 
 at the Council of Constantinople, " his advice 
 being chiefly relied upon in the most import- 
 ant cases ; and therefore when it was thought 
 necessary to make an explanatory confession of 
 faith, especially in the Article of the Holy Ghost, 
 the drawing it up was committed to his care, 
 and this is the Constantinopolitan, or, as among 
 us it is called, the Nicene Creed." 
 
 1 Cave, Lives of the Primitive Fathers, ii. ad Jin. See Niceph. 
 Coll, xiii. 13. Even if Gregory did not (as Nicephorus asserts) draw 
 up the changes and additions of the Nicene Creed, yet he occupied a 
 most commanding position at the Council of Constantinople (Mohler
 
 ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA. 161 
 
 The traces of the same doctrine in Diodorus 
 of Tarsus, Didymus of Alexandria, and Gregory 
 of Nazianzus are slight, but (fxavavra a-vveToiaiv. 
 When the latter speaks of one kind of fire as being 
 annihilative, but adds, " unless it be more humane 
 
 in Herzog, Encycl. s. v., quoting Cod. Theod. i. 63, Sozomen H.E. 
 vii. 6, Socrates H.E. v. 8, and Gregory, Opp. Hi. 645). It is true 
 that these additions occur in a work of Epiphanius several years 
 before the First Council of Constantinople (De Broglie, L'giiu et 
 V Empire Romain, v. 45 1 ), but Gregory's authority must have aided 
 their acceptance, and therefore it must have been more than per- 
 missible to accept the clauses about a future life in the sense which 
 he attached to them a sense such as to include " the blessed hope 
 that God's justice and mercy are not controlled by the powers of 
 evil, that sin is not everlasting, and that in the world to come punish- 
 ment will be corrective and not final, and will be ordered by a love 
 and justice, the height and depths of which we cannot here fathom 
 or comprehend" (Dean Stanley, Essays on Church and State, 318, 
 &c.). No scholar will now revive the attempts of Germanus in 
 the eighth century, and of Tillemont {Mem. ix. 561, scqq.) to regard 
 as interpolations such passages as those to which I have referred. 
 Vincenzo in his work quotes other passages of a different apparent 
 tendency, but this is due to the varying character of the Scriptural 
 evidence. Let those, at least, who in sheer ignorance impugn the 
 Gospel of Eternal Hope, remember that it was openly preached by 
 this canonised Saint and Bishop the "Father of Fathers " whcse 
 writings were referred to by the Council of Ephesus as the great 
 bulwark of the Church against heresy ! 
 
 M
 
 i62 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 to perceive even here the action of beneficence, and 
 worthily of Him who punishes " (^>i\.avdpa)7r6Tepov 
 Kal rov A:oXabvTO? eVai'&>?), it is clear that the 
 great Patriarch of Constantinople he who earned 
 the title of " The Theologian " leaves this an open 
 question. (Or. xxxix. 19; xl. 36; xxx. 6, &c.) 
 
 Even teachers who were in other respects 
 opposed to Origen adopted this view, namely, 
 Diodorus of Tarsus in his He pi Ot/covo/iia?, ana 
 Theodore of Mopsuetia in his commentary on 
 the Gospels. They grounded their objections to 
 the popular doctrine upon the disproportionateness 
 of endless punishment to the sins of a brief life ; 
 upon the mercy of God ; and upon the impossi- 
 bility of imagining that the wicked would be 
 purposelessly raised from the dead only to be 
 tormented, without any capacity for amendment. 1 
 
 1 The views of these great teachers may be found, as quoted by 
 a Nestorian bishop, in Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, iii. 323 
 seqq., Photius, Bibl. Cod. 81. On the prevalence of this opinion 
 both in the East and West see Neander, iv. 456, E. Tr. Hagenbach. 
 i. 245 ; Haag, Hist, des Dogmes, ii. 342 ; Gieseler, i. 362, 
 E. Tr.
 
 ST. ATHANASIUS. 
 
 These opinions were indeed rejected by indi- 
 vidual theologians, but (as I have pointed out in 
 Sermon III., p. 85) in a tone which, because it 
 springs from deeper knowledge, is far more sympa- 
 thetic, and far more respectful, than that adopted 
 by the most ignorant of modern controversialists. 
 
 Thus, St. Athanasius who might have been 
 supposed to have as keen an eye for heresy as any 
 one so far from speaking angrily of Origen 
 Origen the adamantine Origen the holy, the self- 
 denying, the pre-eminently learned whom it is the 
 fashion to place below St. Augustine, but who in 
 every respect, except a power of rhetoric, was his 
 superior speaks of him tenderly and admiringly 
 as "the marvellous and indefatigable Origen" 
 (6 Oav/jLaa-Tos Kal ^tXoTrovcoTaro?), 1 and in one 
 passage only alludes with oblique and kindly 
 disapproval to his opinion on the Restitution of 
 all things. 2 
 
 1 De Com. essent. torn. i. p. 236. 
 
 2 Cave, Lives of the Primitive Fathers, i. 23. 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 St. Ambrose, though using the ordinary phra- 
 seology in some places, distinctly states the 
 doctrine of universal restitution (Comment, in Ps. 
 xxxv. 15, cxix. 153; cf. Ambrosiaster in Ep. ad 
 Eph. ii. iii.). 
 
 St. Augustine admits that not only some, but 
 very many (nonnulli immo quam plurimi) held this 
 merciful view ; and although he devotes the 
 twenty-first book of his De Civitate Dei to what 
 he supposes to be a refutation of their opinion 
 a refutation which however turns out, on exami- 
 nation, to be nothing remotely resembling a 
 refutation, and to be indeed little more than an 
 assertion of his own interpretations of various texts 
 calls them " our party of pity " (nostri miseri- 
 cordes), and deals with them in perfect courtesy 
 and toleration (pacific^ disputandum\ Moreover, 
 it is in the De Doctrind Christiand of St. Augus- 
 tine that we find the first distinct outline cf that 
 doctrine of Purgatory which robs the opinion 
 of endless torments of its most pressing horrors.
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. JEROME. 165 
 
 (See De Civ. Dei, xx. 25, &c. ; Cyrill. Catech. 
 T 5> 9! Orig- C. Cels. v. 15, &c.) The tone 
 adopted by St. Augustine proves that he is dealing 
 with a matter not of faith, but of opinion ; and 
 without sanctioning, he yet did not reject the 
 belief that even amid endless punishment God 
 might show His mercy by various alleviations. 
 His view is therefore far less dark and intolerable 
 than that of post-Reformation theologians (De 
 Civ. Dei, xx. ; EncJiir. 29, &c.) ; and it is abso- 
 lutely indisputable that both the opinions of St. 
 Augustine, and those of the Fathers in general, 
 approximate far more nearly to those which I have 
 here advocated than the more modern and popular 
 theory of current teaching. 
 
 St. Jerome, fiercely as he opposed Origenists, 
 yet held Origen's opinions on future Restoration, 
 so far at any rate as Christians are concerned. 
 In his letter to Avitus he treats the question as an 
 open one, and holds " Christianos, si in peccatis 
 praeventi fuerint, salvandos esse post poenas."
 
 166 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 (See Adv. Pelag. i. 9 ; Adv. Rufin. ii. I ; in Jes. ad 
 fin; in Eph. iv. 12; Gal. v. 22, &c.) If it be averred 
 that the opinion w supplicia aliquando finiri et post 
 multa tempera tcrminum habere tormenta" which 
 St. Jerome tells us was common in his day, 
 merely implied the end of pain (poena sensfis) not 
 the end of loss (damnation, poena damni], it is still 
 clear that the views of the early Church were far 
 less ruthless than those of the present day. 
 
 As to Councils, " none of the first four General 
 Councils lay down any doctrine whatever concern- 
 ing the everlasting misery of the wicked, or 
 directly or indirectly give any interpretation of 
 the Scriptural expressions which describe their 
 condition." The question had indeed " been most 
 vehemently disputed and discussed, yet the Church 
 was wisely silent, and allowed various mutually 
 irreconcilable opinions to be held by her sons 
 without rebuke. Neither at Nicea (A.D. 325), nor at 
 Constantinople (A.D. 381), nor at Ephesus (A.D. 
 431), nor at Chalcedon (A.D. 451), was any special
 
 PURGATORY. 167 
 
 doctrine laid down 'respecting the future rewards 
 and punishments, nor were the opinions of Origen 
 and his followers on that subject condemned, or 
 even alluded to." 1 
 
 For many subsequent centuries "the dark 
 shadow of Augustine" was thrown so powerfully 
 over the current -theology that there was little 
 question about the endlessness of torment. They 
 had however the developed doctrine of Purgatory, 
 which alone helped the human conscience to dis- 
 pense with Origen's theory of Restitution. The 
 metaphysical grounds indeed on which the doc- 
 trine of endless torment was based were utterly 
 inadequate and even absurd, as, for instance, that 
 " offence against an Infinite Being must re- 
 quire an infinite penalty, and since a finite creature 
 is not capable of punishment infinite in degree, 
 requiritur lit sit saltern duratione infinita.!' This 
 argument would require endless torment for any 
 sin, even the most venial, and it tells quite as 
 1 Rev. H. B. Wilson, Speech, p. 99.
 
 168 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 strongly against any possibility of forgiveness on 
 this side of the grave. It is therefore nihil ad rent; 
 and the agonizing incidence of such a view was 
 lightened by the belief that all earthly sins could 
 be removed even in articulo mortis by priestly 
 absolution. They held, too, the doctrine of miti- 
 gation. "The punishment," says St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, "will not be absolutely removed, but 
 while it lasts pity will work by diminishing it." Still 
 it is to the Middle Ages and to scholastic theology 
 that we mainly owe the rigidity of the common 
 dogmas as to (i) the endlessness of doom, and 
 (2) its irreversibility after death. The extreme 
 confidence of the schoolmen, and their imaginary 
 knowledge of all the secrets of the other world, 
 might have taken warning from the passages in 
 which St. Gregory the Great (De Vitd aeternd 
 Animarum, iv. 40), after telling us a great deal 
 about purgatory, asks, " How so much was then 
 known about souls, when nothing had been 
 known in earlier days ? " and can furnish no
 
 JOHANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA. 169 
 
 other answer than that the futnrum saecuhun 
 becomes better known as the praesens saeculum 
 draws to its conclusion. 
 
 From Gregory the Great till Anselm "the 
 theology of Western Christendom slept her winter 
 sleep." The sleep was "disturbed rather than broken 
 by the strange apparition in the ninth century 
 of Johannes Scotus Erigena, one of the most 
 original thinkers of his own or any age, as of one 
 born out of due time." x This brilliant and 
 subtle metaphysician made future punishment 
 consist only in the absence of divine bliss. " In 
 igne aeterno nihil aliud esse poenam quam 
 beatae felicitatis absentiam " (De Praedest. c. 16). 
 Evil, being a mere negative conception, so also is 
 punishment, and neither can be eternal. That 
 which Christ has redeemed cannot be punished. 
 The contradiction of this teaching to Scripture 
 is, he says, merely apparent, and due to the 
 finite character of human language. Bliss and pain 
 1 II. N. Oxenham, Catholic Doctrine of Atonement, p. 63.
 
 170 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 will be in the conscience only; fire, brimstone, &c., 
 are but symbols meant to teach the dull imagi- 
 nation of the carnal. All things shall ulti- 
 mately return to God. The distinction of sex 
 shall be abolished (Gal. iii. 28), heaven and earth 
 shall be all Paradise, and the creature shall be one 
 with the Creator. God shall be all in all (Scotus 
 Erig. De Divis. Nat. ii. 6; v. 8). " Erit enim 
 Deus omnia in omnibus quando nihil erit nisi solus 
 Dcus ;" and there shall be a mirabilis atque incffa- 
 bilis rcversio of human nature into God (pp. 
 232 234). He contrived to reconcile this with a 
 nominal acceptance of everlasting punishment by 
 saying that though all malitia will be abolished 
 its phantasiae in the conscience will remain ; but in 
 v. 27, p. 260, he speaks with unmistakable clear- 
 ness of the complete and final a-jro/carda-rao-is. 
 
 The Reformers mostly held to the old Augusti- 
 nian conceptions, except in so far as they rejected 
 Purgatory. In the Augsburg Confession, art. 17, 
 we find " Damnant Anabaptistas, qui scntiunt
 
 THE REFORMERS. 171 
 
 hominibus damnatis et diabolis finem poenarum 
 futurum esse " (Cf. Conf. Helvetic, xi.). In fact 
 (with the one exception already noted) they 
 made but little change in the mediaeval escha- 
 tology, which lay indeed beyond the range of 
 the subjects with which they dealt. And if 
 they intended to condemn the views of Origen, 
 neither they nor the 42nd Article stated those 
 views with any approach to accuracy. Aban- 
 doning the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Church, they took refuge in the infallibility of 
 Scripture, and, as is so often the case, this was ex- 
 tended into the infallibility of "the letter that 
 killeth ; " and this, again, involved the infallibility of 
 an exegesis which was yet in its merest infancy ; and 
 worse still, the infallibility of all sorts of "private 
 interpretations," such as no Scripture tolerates, 1 
 and respecting which no two sects or churches are 
 thoroughly agreed. And yet the voice of reason 
 and conscience, rising in revolt against a doctrine 
 
 1 5r<7o TrpobijTfia, ypcupTJs ISias iiri\v<T(tas ou yi"e7ou, 2 Pet. i. 2O.
 
 r;2 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 which they found irreconcilable with the love of 
 God, still made itself occasionally heard, as in the 
 writings of Eberhard, Basedow, Steinbart, and in 
 Soner's Dcmonstratio Theologica et Philosophica 
 quod aeterna Impiorcm Supplida non arguant Dei 
 Justitiam sed Injustitiam (Altdorf), published 
 posthumously in 1654. 
 
 In the course of years this revolt of the con- 
 science against the tyrannous enforcement of a 
 mere opinion has made itself so distinctly heard 
 that Karl Hase (in his Handbuch der Protest. 
 Polcmik], pointing out that the Reformers did not 
 follow up their negation by an affirmative doctrine, 
 adds that the more scientific spirit of modern 
 Protestantism has long ago observed this, and 
 attached itself to the doctrine of the Alexan- 
 drians, and has acknowledged, in the other world 
 also, the gracious government of God, and the 
 "capability of development in the human spirit." 
 Nothing will more imperil in devout and tender 
 souls the entire system of Reformed theology
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY. 173 
 
 than this omission to state in its fullness the 
 Gospel of Hope ; nothing will be a more potent 
 incentive to those who find the popular view 
 utterly intolerable, to find some alleviation from 
 its horror in the milder eschatology of the Church 
 of Rome for those within her pale. 
 
 It is needless to pursue this sketch any further. 
 The facts which I have adduced may be verified 
 by reference to the volumes of Baur, Hagenbach, 
 Haag, Gieseler, Neander, &c. Among those who 
 in recent days have inclined to some form of the 
 hope for which in these sermons I have been led 
 to plead are many illustrious names, of which none 
 is more illustrious than that of the .great and saintly 
 Bengel. Others who may be mentioned are 
 Richard Clarke, Bishop Edmund Law, Bishop 
 Rust, William Law, Dr. Henry More, Dr. Thomas 
 Burnett, Chaplain to William III. (De Statu 
 Mortuorum, 1723), Henry Dodwell (Epistolary 
 Discourses, 1706), Bishop Newton, Dr. Chauncey 
 (1784), Ro the the eminent Lutheran divine (in his
 
 174 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Thcologische EtJiik\ Neander, Oberlin, Tholuck, 
 and Bishop Martensen of Seeland, the author 
 of Christliche Dogmatik. There is in fact a dis- 
 tinct feeling among some of the ablest Protestant 
 divines of Germany and of England that the bare 
 negation of Purgatory by the Reformers left a void 
 in doctrine which is perilous to all faith. Among 
 recent defenders of this view we may mention 
 Prof. Maurice, Dean Milman, Sir James Stephen, 
 Lord Lyttleton, Canon Kingsley, 1 Thomas Erskine 
 of Linlathen (in the second volume of whose letters 
 may be found many noble and beautiful utterances 
 on this subject), and Dr. Ewing, Bishop of Argyll 
 and the Isles. Among illustrious prelates of our 
 own Church, Archbishop Tillotson saw reason to 
 believe that God might restore the lost by the super- 
 abundance of His mercy, though he considered that 
 
 1 Canon Kingsley's opinions may be found in The Water of Life, 
 p. 76, &c., and are repeatedly referred to in his Biography. It 
 has been asserted that he abandoned these opinions. So far is 
 this from being the case, that, had he lived, he intended to preach 
 them with greater distinctness.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGIANS. 175 
 
 the letter of Scripture pointed the other way. 
 Archbishop Whately, like the learned Edmund 
 Law, Bishop of Carlisle, favoured the view of 
 Conditional Immortality. This opinion, which 
 was also held by Dr. Watts and the late Isaac 
 Taylor, has been earnestly, but I cannot think 
 satisfactorily, maintained by many good men and 
 earnest Christians of our own day. Bishop Thirl- 
 wall accepted with entire and warm approval that 
 hope of an amelioration, after death, of the state of 
 "spirits in prison" which is expressly involved in 
 our creed, and was treated with great force and 
 beauty in a sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral by my 
 friend Prof. Plumptre. To Prof. Maurice, whom 
 all good and wise men honour, even when they 
 cannot agree with him " quern nemo non parum 
 amat etiam qui plus amare non pctest " is due 
 the merit of restoring this precious hope. The 
 present Archbishop of Canterbury, in his book 
 on the Word of God and the Ground of Faith, 
 speaks, if without sanction, yet without reproof,
 
 1 76 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 of "a hope that, after the Day of Judgment, God's 
 mercy may, in the lapse of infinite ages, find some 
 mode of restoring the lost, consistently with the 
 maintenance of His purity and justice." 1 The 
 Archbishop of York, when he affirms (Bampton Lec- 
 tures, p. 56) that " Life to the godless must be the 
 beginning of destruction, since nothing but God 
 and that which pleases Him can permanently 
 exist," seems, intentionally or unintentionally, to 
 favour the opinion of the ultimate annihilation of 
 the wicked. Dr. Church, Dean of St. Paul's, in a 
 sermon at Oxford, expresses views which obviously 
 point in the same direction. " I should be 
 disloyal," he says, " to Him whom I believe in and 
 worship as the Lord of truth if I doubted that 
 honest seeking would at last find Him. Even if 
 it do not find Him here, man's destiny stops not 
 at the grave, and many, we may be sure, will know 
 Him there who did not know Him here." The 
 Dean of Westminster, in his Essays on Church and 
 1 Part ii. p. vi. Preface.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGIANS. 177 
 
 State and other writings, has given still firmer ex- 
 pression to the same hope. It was spoken of not 
 only with respect, but even with a sort of yearning 
 approval, as a view at least permissible, by Canon 
 Cook of Exeter the editor of the Speaker's Com- 
 mentary in a sermon at Lincoln's Inn. Opinions 
 which, though they differ in detail, agree in the 
 utter repudiation of the popular theology, have 
 been openly maintained by the Rev. Prof. Birks 
 a name so justly honoured among the English 
 Evangelicals ; by the Rev. Professor Stokes 
 whose scientific authority stands so high ; by 
 the Rev. J. LI. Davies ; by the Revs. T. J. 
 Rowsell, Prof. Mayor, Canon Duckworth, and a 
 multitude of clergymen whose names are very 
 widely and honourably known. Were I at liberty 
 to mention the names of those high dignitaries 
 and eminent theologians whose view of the 
 subject is identical with my own, the position 
 which I have defended would be indefinitely 
 strengthened, but this I will not do. Among 
 
 N
 
 178 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Nonconformists the same hopes have found elo- 
 quent and able supporters in the Rev. S. Cox, 
 author of The Expositors Notebook and other 
 valuable works ; the Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, 
 President of the Independent Conference ; the 
 Rev. R. Dale ; the Rev. Dr. Parker ; the learned 
 and thoughtful Rev. Andrew Jukes (author of 
 The Restitution of all Tilings] ; and many others. 
 The opinion known as " conditional immortality " 
 has been earnestly and reverently supported by 
 the Rev. S. Minton (author of The Glory of 
 Christ} ; the Rev. J. B. Heard (author cf The 
 Tripartite Nature of Man} ; the Rev. E. White 
 (author of Life in Christ; or, Immortality pecu- 
 liar to the Regenerate} ; and an increasing number 
 of followers. I cannot, as I have said, accept this 
 view, but it seems to me far more in accordance 
 with the letter of Scripture, and far less shocking 
 to the moral sense than the crude dogmatism 
 which we hear so frequently about the endlessness 
 of material torments for the majority of mankind.
 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS. 179 
 
 In the Roman Church an opinion akin to that 
 of Origen is steadily gaining ground ; and it is 
 stated by Dr. Cazenove in a letter to the Guardian 
 (December, 1877) that Pere Ravignan, the most 
 eloquent French preacher of recent days, averred 
 that it is the general doctrine among the Jesuits. 
 This is at any rate a decisive proof that such 
 a view is regarded as tenable in the Roman 
 Church ; which is equivalent to saying that the 
 Catholic Church has never authoritatively decided 
 the question. Even those Roman Catholics who 
 accept the Augustinian view of endless torment 
 fa view first distinctly formulated in the forged 
 and malicious Clementines) yet frankly admit 
 that doctrine of refrigeria and mitigatio even for 
 the damned, which is as common in the Fathers 
 as it was universal among the Rabbis, and 
 which no oecumenical council has condemned. 1 
 Nor must it be forgotten that no member of 
 
 1 See Petavius, De Angelis, quoted by Dr. New man, Grammar 
 of Assent, p. 317. 
 
 N 2
 
 i So ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 the Greek or Roman Church has to face in all 
 their horrors the two doctrines which I impugn 
 of an irreversible doom passed at death, and 
 of torment necessarily endless for every soul 
 that has died in sin. The doctrine of an Inter- 
 mediate State robs those popular conceptions 
 of nine-tenths of their ghastliness, because it 
 enables Christians to contemplate without agony 
 the condition of all who are nearest and dearest to 
 them, and practically of all who die with the last 
 rites of their Church. It is quite true that of the 
 doctrine of Purgatory, in the precise and dogmatic 
 form of it, there is no adequate proof; but the 
 expression of our Article, "a fond thing vainly 
 invented," applies, I imagine, far less to the mere 
 doctrine than to the mass of flagrant abuses with 
 which it had become inevitably identified. l " That 
 dragon's tail, the mass," said Luther, " begot mul- 
 tiplied abominations. First Purgatory," which 
 
 1 " The primitive doctrine is not condemned in the Article (22nd), 
 unless indeed the doctrine be Romish, -which must not be supposed." 
 Dr. Newman, Tract, p. 23.
 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS. 181 
 
 with all pertaining to it, he proceeds to call a mere 
 devil's mask (mera diaboli larva esf), Art. Smal- 
 cald, p. 307. But in point of fact the taunt of the 
 Romish controversialist, Mohler, that ' Protestanism 
 must either admit many into heaven stained with 
 sin, or imagine that a magical change is wrought 
 merely by death,' is unanswerable, unless we reply 
 with Karl Hase that both views are untenable, 
 since most men at death are indeed not wicked 
 enough to deserve an endless hell, yet not holy 
 enough to be admitted into heaven. And Hase 
 proceeds to argue with justice that our Protestant- 
 ism is perfectly reconcilable (not indeed with a 
 dogmatic and definite) but with " a subdued and 
 enlightened view of purgatory," i.e. of progressive 
 amelioration, of a purifying process, after death. 
 
 Lastly, as in no one of the Catholic Creeds of 
 Christendom is endless damnation, with its acces- 
 sories, made an article of faith, though every creed 
 expresses that unlimited faith in " the forgiveness 
 of sins " which is the chief hope of life, and the
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 richest blessing of immortality, so by no single 
 formulary of the Church of England is such a 
 dogma required. In the case of Fendall v. Wilson, 
 1863-4, the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council, with the concurrence of, and without 
 protest from, the late Archbishop of Canterbury 
 and the present Archbishops of Canterbury and 
 York, decided l that " we do not find in the 
 formularies 2 to which this Article " [a charge 
 that Mr. Wilson had denied the endlessness 
 of future punishment] " refers, any such distinct 
 declaration of our Church upon the subject as 
 to require us to condemn as penal the expression 
 of hope by a clergyman that even the ultimate 
 pardon of the wicked, who are condemned in the 
 day of judgment, may be consistent with the will 
 of God." For ten years indeed (1552 1561) a 
 Forty-second Article condemned Universalism ; but 
 
 1 Brooke's Privy Council Judgments, p. 102. 
 
 2 Among which were the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian 
 Creed.
 
 THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 183 
 
 for Universalism I have not pleaded, and, more- 
 over, even that Article was struck out with the 
 consent of the Bishops and Clergy of both Houses 
 and both provinces. To say that it was struck 
 out because the Anabaptists were no longer pro- 
 minent is simply an unsupported conjecture. The 
 conjecture may be true, but even if so I look 
 on the elimination of the Article as distinctly 
 overruled by a watchful Providence ; since it 
 is the province of the Church to decide only in 
 matters of faith, and no Church has a right to 
 legislate in those matters of opinion on which 
 wise and holy men have, in all ages, been content 
 to differ, seeing that we have no indisputable voice 
 of Revelation to guide our conclusions respecting 
 them.
 
 EXCURSUS L, p. xlv. 
 
 THE TEACHING OK BISHOP BUTLER ON THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 I AM permitted to print the following valuable and important letter, 
 which reached me after I had written the remarks in the text. It 
 will be observed that the passage which I have quoted is one more 
 to be added to those so strikingly combined by Professor Plumptre ; 
 and I hope that the great name of Bishop Butler will no longer be 
 abused in support of views which he has nowhere maintained, which 
 he evidently regarded as very dubious, and which had he lived in 
 these days he would almost certainly have repudiated with still 
 greater distinctness. With every word that Bishop Butler has 
 written on the subject I heartily agree : 
 
 BICKLEY VICARAGE, 
 
 Christmas, December, 1877. 
 MY DEAR FARRAR, 
 
 The passage in Butler's Analogy to which I referred as 
 bearing on the great question with which you have been led to deal 
 is in Part i. c. 3. 
 
 " Virtue, to borrow the Christian allusion, is militant here, and 
 various untoward accidents contribute to its being often overborne : 
 but it may combat with greater advantage hereafter, and prevail 
 completely, and enjoy its consequent rewards in some future states. 
 Neglected as it is, perhaps unknown, perhaps despised and op- 
 pressed here, there may be scenes in eternity lasting enough, and in
 
 i86 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 every way adapted to afford it a sufficient sphere of action ; and a 
 sufficient sphere for the natural consequences of it to follow in fact. 
 .... And, one might add, that suppose all this advantageous ten- 
 dency of virtue to become effect amongst one or more orders of 
 vicious creatures in any distant scene or period throughout the universal 
 kingdom of God ; this happy effect of virtue -would have a tendency 
 by way of example, and possibly in other -ways, to amend those of 
 them who are capable of amendment and being recovered to a just 
 sense of virtue. If our notions of the plan of Providence were en- 
 larged in any sense proportionable to what late discoveries have 
 enlarged our views with respect to the material world, representa- 
 tions of this kind would not appear absurd or extravagant." 
 
 It seems to me that these remarkable words throw light on the 
 teaching of the previous chapter, in which Butler dwells very solemnly 
 on the warning thought, suggested by the natural course of things, 
 that the punishment of evil-doers may, if the evil has reached a 
 certain measure, be final and irreversible. He holds very strongly 
 the truth that this life is a state of probation, and that after it each 
 man will receive according to his deeds, and " in exact proportion to 
 the good or evil which he has done." He does not deal directly with 
 the problems presented by cases in which, as with infants, idiots, 
 and, we must add, the vast multitudes who have lived and died in 
 the times of ignorance, there has been no real probation. He enters 
 his protest against those who "forget or explain away, after ac- 
 knowledging it in words," the truth that "every one shall be 
 equitably dealt with." He maintains that " all shadow of injustice, 
 and indeed all harsh appearances, in this various economy of Provi- 
 dence would be lost if we would keep in mind that every merciful 
 allowance shall be made, and no more be required of any one than 
 what might have been equitably expected of him, from the circum- 
 stances in which he was placed." (Part. ii. c. 6.) He expressly protests
 
 BISHOP BUTLER. 187 
 
 (Part. ii. chap, v., noie !") a aiust the dogma that "none can have 
 the benefit of the general redemption, but such as have the advan- 
 tage of being made acquainted with it in the present life." He 
 describes that redemption as "an interposition to prevent the 
 destruction of human kind, whatever that destruction unprevented 
 would have been. " 
 
 It is clear, I think, from these passages (i) That Butler rejected 
 the mediaeval dogmatism, which, following Augustine, limited 
 salvation to the baptised, and (2) the more or less prevalent 
 Protestant dogmatism which limits it to those who know and 
 believe in Christ (3) That he carefully avoids pronouncing on 
 the nature of the future punishments of evil, and never from 
 first to last dwells on the pictures of material horrors in which 
 so many have delighted. (4) That looking to the whole drift of 
 his argument that future rewards and punishments come by 
 general laws, and as the natural consequences of the good or 
 bad deeds to which they are attached (Part i. chap. 3 ; Part ii. 
 chap, i), it is probable, from the Analogy, that he thought of 
 the latter as consisting mainly in the "uneasiness, disturbance, 
 apprehension, shame," which follow on evil now, and will here- 
 after be felt with a new and terrible intensity : just as in Sermon 
 xiv. he dwells with what is, for him, a marvellous eloquence on 
 the blessedness of the saints as consisting in " the perception of 
 God's presence with us in a nearer and stricter way " than is now 
 possible. But the passage with which I began this letter opens, I 
 think, a wider view. There is, from Butler's point of view, a field 
 for "combat" after death as well as now. There are, or may 
 be, "orders of vicious creatures" in God's kingdom who may yet be 
 ' ' capable of amendment, and of being recovered to a just sense )f 
 virtue." And in yet another passage (Part i. chap. 5) we have 
 the same thought developed. " Nothing which we at present see
 
 788 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 would lead us to the thought of a solitary unactive life hereafter." 
 Analogy and Scripture alike teach us that "it will be a community." 
 For aught we know, the life of that community may "give scope 
 for the exercise of veracity, justice, and charity." 
 
 Combine this passage with the other, and is not the inference 
 almost irresistible that Butler was tentatively feeling after, and all 
 but absolutely grasping, the truth that the energies of the saints made 
 perfect will be, as analogy suggests, exerted in the same direction 
 and for the same ends as they are now on earth? And if the highest 
 object of such energies now be to rescue those who are perishing 
 from lack of knowledge, and who yet are capable of recovery, then 
 the whole drift of the argument of the Analogy suggests the con- 
 tinuance of that highest energy in the unknown spheres of action after 
 death. I have ventured to express that thought in some lines in 
 memory of one who occupied a high place in the lot of the saintly 
 sufferers of whom the world knows little, and they are, I think, in 
 harmony with Butler's teaching. 
 
 He, too, is there ; and can we dream 
 
 Their joy is other now than when 
 
 They dwelt among the sons of men, 
 As walking in the Eternal gleam ? 
 
 Are there no souls behind the veil 
 
 That need the help of guiding hand ; 
 
 Weak hearts that cannot understand 
 Why earth's poor dreams of Heaven must fail ? 
 
 Are there no prison-doors to ope, 
 
 No lambs to gather in the fold, 
 
 No treasure-house of new and old, 
 To meet each wish and crown each hope ?
 
 BUTLER AND PALEY. 189 
 
 We know not : but if life be there 
 The outcome and the crown of this, 
 What else can make their perfect bliss 
 
 Than in the Master's work to share ? 
 
 Resting, but not in slumbrous ease, 
 
 Working, but not in wild unrest, 
 
 Still ever blessing, ever blest, 
 They see us, as the Father sees. 
 
 The view thus suggested by the Analogy is, as might be ex- 
 pected, wiser and deeper than Paley's rough and ready way of 
 dealing with this great question ; but his words too are worth 
 quoting as showing how his robust practical sense of justice shrank 
 from the common forms either of mediaeval or Protestant dog- 
 matism on this matter. ' ' It has been said, that it can never be 
 a just economy of Providence to admit one part of mankind into 
 heaven and condemn the other to hell, since there must be very 
 little to choose between the worst man who is received into heaven 
 and the best who is excluded. And how know we, it might be 
 answered, but that there may be as little to choose in their con- 
 ditions? " Moral Philosophy, Book i. Ch. 7. 
 
 You will see that I have confined myself to the task which I had 
 undertaken of clearing the teaching of Butler from prevalent mis- 
 conceptions. I will not enter into any full discussion of the whole 
 question. I have not shrunk from placing before those who care to 
 know, what I hold and teach as to its momentous issues. Now in 
 one form, now in another, I have endeavoured to show that a wider 
 hope than that of mediaeval Catholicism or popular Protestantism ia 
 in harmony with the analogy of Nature, with the teaching of Scrip- 
 ture, with the thoughts of the " masters of those who know " in the
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Christian Church. I have not read your sermons, and do not know 
 how far I should accept your conclusions, or how far you adopt mine. 
 But as this letter is to be printed with them, and as you tell me that 
 you wish to connect my name with the volume an honour which, 
 on personal grounds, as having been once the master of a scholar 
 from whom I have since been glad to learn, I have thankfully 
 accepted I think it may be well to make my own position 
 clear by stating, without discussing, the conclusions to which I have 
 been led. 
 
 On the one hand, I have never been able, in spite of the appa- 
 rent sanction given to it by such passages as Rom. xi. 32, v. 19, 20, 
 Isaiah liii. II, to accept the theory of Universalism ; (2) I have as 
 little been able to accept the theory of Annihilation as the ultimate 
 portion of all but the elect in Christ. It seems to me to have no 
 grounds in Scripture, or reason, or the analogy of Nature, and to be 
 at variance with our fundamental conceptions, as shown in the 
 consensus of mankind, as to the soul's immortality ; (3) I have never 
 been able to attach any great importance to the discussions that have 
 turned upon the meaning of the word cutavios. I cannot, on philo- 
 logical grounds, agree with Mr. Maurice in thinking that our Lord's 
 teaching in John xvii. 3, excludes from it the idea of duration, 
 and the whole history of the word shows that it cannot, as a 
 word, denote endlessness. (4) I do not hesitate, however, to accept 
 the thought of the punishment of evil as being endless. If that 
 punishment comes, as Butler teaches us, as the "natural consequence" 
 of sin, if the enduring pain be 
 
 " Memory of evil seen at last 
 As evil, hateful, loathsome," 
 
 then I cannot see how it can be otherwise than everlasting. Chris- 
 tian theology knows no water of Lethe to steep the soul in forget- 
 fulness of its own past ; and if the sin is not forgotten, then the
 
 PROFESSOR PLUMPTRE. 191 
 
 remembrance of it must throughout the ages .be an element of 
 pain and sorrow. Experience, indeed, teaches that the penitent, 
 in whom that sorrow is keenest, finis it not incompatible with peace 
 and joy even now, and the extension of that experience beyond the 
 veil suggests the thought that there may be a retributive element 
 mingling with the blessedness of the highest saints ; and, by 
 parity of reason, as in the view maintained by Mr. Birks, Mr. 
 E. H. Bickersteth, and substantially by Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, 
 that the acceptance of the punishment, the admission that it 
 is inseparable from the righteousness of God, may bring here- 
 after, as it brings with it now, a mitigation of the anguish. 
 (5) While I reject the Romish, and even the Augustinian view of 
 Purgatory, as not only without any certain warranty of Scripture, 
 but as a "fond thing vainly invented," resting on the radically false 
 conception that a quantitative amount of physical pain has in itself 
 any power to purify the soul from a proportionate quantity of evil 
 deeds or their results, I hold that it is at variance with our belief m the 
 eternal love and righteousness of God to assume that any created will 
 can be fixed in evil by a divine decree, coming at the close of a few 
 months or years of an imperfect probation, and therefore that Scrip- 
 ture, and reason, and analogy alike lead to the belief that we must 
 supplement the idea of probation by that of a discipline and educa- 
 tion which is begun in this life, often with results that seem to us as 
 failure and a hopeless waste, but to which, when we look before and 
 after, we can assign no time-limits. The will, in the exercise of its 
 imperishable gift of freedom, may frustrate that education hereafter, 
 as it frustrates it here ; but if it does so, it is because it " kicks 
 against the pricks " of the long-suffering that is leading it to 
 repentance ; and there, as here, it may accept even an endless 
 punishment, and find peace in the acceptance. Lastly, I will 
 quote words which seem to me to go almost to the root of the whole
 
 192 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 matter, and which need only to be extended beyond the limits that 
 the narrowing system to which the writer has bound himself attaches 
 to them, to be the last words that I need now write on this great 
 
 question. 
 
 " And these two pains so counter and so keen, 
 The longing for Him when thou scest Hun not, 
 The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, 
 Shall be thy keenest, sharpest Purgatory." 
 
 J. H. NEWMAN, Dream of Gerontius. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Ever yours affectionately, 
 
 E. H. PLUMPTRE.
 
 EXCURSUS II. (p. 78). 
 
 ON THE TRANSLATIONS OF Kpivetv AND "AiS^s, &C. 
 
 Nothing that I have said seems to have excited stranger misap- 
 prehension and anger than the statement of this plain, indisputable fact, 
 which no scholar in England will dream of denying, and to which 
 one of our most learned preJates has referred in his last charge. 
 "Such instances as the following," says Dr. Jacobson, Bishop of 
 Chester, in a charge delivered only last month, and which came into 
 my hands after my sermon had been preached, " must be allowed 
 to go some way towards justifying a desire for further revision. 
 
 " The confusion of Hades with Gehenna. 
 
 'The modification which some words undergo by lapse of time, 
 e.g. damnation." P. 30. 
 
 A reviser may indeed choose to consider that Kplvfiv and Kara- 
 Kpivfiv mean the same as "damn," though then, as Mr. Ruskin has 
 pointed out, he should render it by this word throughout, and we 
 should have such verses as " Woman, where are those thine ac- 
 cusers ? hath no man damned thee ? " &c., and he may consider that 
 " Hell " connotes the same thing as ytevva ; and that aliiivio* is 
 identical sometimes with never-ending ; and, therefore, that these 
 notions may be introduced in a few texts, though it is impossible to 
 introduce them into all or most. But, even if he holds such entirely 
 untenable views and it is quite certain that the majority, at any 
 rate, of our own Revisers are far too wise and too learned to do so 
 he would still have no right to obtrude his private opinion when by 
 a confessedly faithful translation, which prejudges no controversy, he 
 can render the Greek words by "judgment " and "condemnation;" 
 by " Hades," " Gehenna" and, in one place, " Tartarus ; " and by 
 " Vernal." And this, if I mistake not, is what will actually be done. 
 
 O
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 I. The facts are these. In the New Testament the words npivea, 
 Kpio-is, and wpiyua occur some 190 times ; the words Karanplvta, Kara.- 
 Kpxrts, KaraKpi.fj.a. occur twenty-four times, and yet there are only 
 fifteen places out of more than 200 in which our translation has 
 deviated from the proper renderings of "judge" and "condemn," 
 into " damn " and its cognates. It is singular that they should have 
 used " damnation " only for the milder words icpi'ais and Kp(/j.a. 
 
 This single fact ought to be decisive to every candid mind ; but it 
 is worth while to point out how disastrous how more than disas- 
 trous, \iowfatal in some passages that divergence has been. 
 
 a. 2. Pet. ii. I. "Damnable heresies" should be " heresies of 
 destruction " (dirca\tias), i.e. destructive heresies. The inaccurate 
 rendering has done much to add fuel to the already too fierce fires 
 of intolerance. The same remark applies to 2 Thess. ii. 12, where 
 "all might be damned" is " may be judged " (icpiOiuo-i). - 
 
 8. Matt, xxiii. 13, Mark xii. 40, Luke xx. 47. "Ye (they) shall 
 receive the greater damnation." Our Lord used no such words. 
 He said irtpuTff6rtpov Kpfaa, "a severer judgment." 
 
 7. Matt, xxiii. 33. " How shall ye escape the damnation of 
 hell?" What Christ said was something utterly different, "the 
 judgment of Gehenna." 
 
 5. Mark iii. 29. " Is in dagger of eternal damnation." What 
 Christ said was " shall be liable to, shall incur the risk of asonian 
 sin " (leg. dfj.a.pr'/i/j.aros'). 
 
 e. Mark xvi. 16. " But he that believeth not shall be damned." 
 What Christ said was " but, disbelieving, he shall be condemned." 
 (Further, the passage is of dubious authenticity.) 
 
 f. John v. 29. " They that have done evil to the resurrection of 
 judgment' 1 '' (Kpicrecas, not even KaraKplnaros). The English version 
 is here just as little justifiable as if in Matt. x. 15, &c., it had spoken, 
 of "the day of damnation." 
 
 TJ. No less disastrous in their consequences are some of these
 
 EXCURSUS II. 19: 
 
 renderings in St. Paul's Epistles. In Rom. iii. 8 render " whose 
 judgment (Kpiais) is just." In Rom. xiii. 2 render "they shall 
 receive to themselves judgment" (Kpiffiv). 
 
 8. In I Cor. xL 29 who would imagine that St. Paul meant that 
 every unworthy communicant eats and drinks "damnation " to 
 himself? How many have been utterly terrified from the blessings 
 of the Holy Communion, and have therefore been robbed of the 
 highest means of spiritual grace by the deplorable reproduction of 
 this mistranslation in our Communicn Service ? All that St. Paul 
 said was that a man who eats and drinks unworthily, by not dis- 
 criminating the Lord's body, eats and drinks judgment to himself 
 (xpfaa). On the shipwreck of sense caused by obliterating the 
 distinctions of Kpfvca, Sia.Kpiv<a, KaraKpiva in this passage, see Light- 
 foot On Revision, p. 85. 
 
 j. i. Tim. v. 12. "Why are English readers left unprotected to 
 the dreadful perversion involved in saying that young widows who 
 marry agn "have damnation, " whereas in vs. 14 he recommends 
 '.hem to do so ? St. Paul merely says " incurring judgment," which 
 is perhaps explicable by I Cor. vii. 28, 40. 
 
 K. Rom. xiv. 23. " He that doubteth is damned \i he eat" i.e. 
 damned for neglecting the mere scruple of a weak conscience ! St. 
 Paul says that if a man does not judge himself (6 ^ Kflvuv eavr6f) 
 in that which he alloweth he is happy ; but if he eats in spitt of a 
 distinct scruple, he has been condemned (KaraKticpnai), obviously 
 by his own conscience. 
 
 II. Of the renderings of Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna, I have 
 already spoken in the preface, 1 and will here only repeat that " hell " 
 has entirely changed its old harmless sense of " the dim under- 
 world," " and that meaning as it now does to myriads of readers, "a 
 
 * S-e too Lightfoot On Revision, p. 79. 
 
 2 " Helan" is "to cover." Archb.shop Usher says that in Ireland " to liell the 
 head " is to civer the head, and a hellier is a slater. In Hudibras the word is 
 used for the place wh=re the tailor throws his shreds. The word must have 
 
 O 2
 
 ETERNAL HOPE 
 
 place of endless torment by material fire into which all impenitent 
 souls pass for ever after death," it conveys meanings which are 
 not to be found in any word of the Old or New Testament for which 
 it is presented as an equivalent. In our Lord's language Capernaum 
 was to be thrust down not " to hell," but to the silence and desolation 
 of the grave (Hades); the promise that "the gates of Hades" 
 should not prevail against the Church is perhaps a distinct implica- 
 tion of her triumph even beyond death in the souls of men for whom 
 He died ; Dives uplifts his eyes, not "in hell," but in 'the inter- 
 mediate Hades, where he rests till the resurrection to a judgment, in 
 which signs are not wanting that his soul may meanwhile have been 
 ennobled and purified. The "damnation of hell" is the very 
 different "judgment of Gehenna ; " and hell-fire is the " Gehenna of 
 fire," an expression which on Jewish lips was never applied in 
 our Lord'e days to endless torment. Our translators are not, of 
 course, responsible for the inferences drawn from words which have, 
 since their day, changed their meaning ; but our Revisers will be 
 certain to bear in mind that " a good translator scrupulously abstains 
 from introducing ideas of which the original contains no trace." 1 
 Of " everlasting " I have spoken in the next Excursus. 
 
 begun ti assume its darkest sense in 1611, or the translat rs would not have 
 altered " O Hell, where is thy victory ? " i Cor. xv. 55. 
 
 1 Origen tells us (c. Celt. vi. 25) that finding the word " Gehenna" in the Gospels 
 for the place of punishment, he made a special search into its meaning and Im- 
 trjry; and af;er mentioning (i) the valley of Hinnom, and (2) a purificatory fire 
 (els TT)P fjifrci fiaffavtav KdOapfftv), he mysteriously adds that he thinks it un- 
 wise to speak without reserve about his discoveries. No one reading the passage 
 can doubt that he means to imply the use of the word " Gehenna " among the 
 Jews to indicate a terminable, and not an endless punishment. And he says in 
 round terms that Celsus and others talked of "Gehenna" in total igjiorance 
 of its real meaning ; in which they have had many followers.
 
 EXCURSUS III. (p. 79). 
 
 ON THE WORD alu/vios. 
 
 The word "aeonian," though sanctioned by Mr. Tennyson in the 
 lines 
 
 " Draw down zeonian hills, and sow 
 The dust of continents to be," 
 
 and though rendered very desirable by the sad confusion of eternity 
 with the mere negative conception of endlessness, can perhaps 
 hardly be naturalised. It is not worth while once more to discuss its 
 meaning when it has been so ably proved by so many writers that 
 there is no authority "whatever for rendering it "everlasting" and 
 when even those who, like Dr. Pusey, are such earnest defenders of 
 the doctrine of an endless hell, yet admit that the word only means 
 "endless within the sphere of its own existence," so that on their own 
 showing the word does not prove their point, and is, for instance, 
 powerless against those who hold the doctrine of Conditional 
 Immortality. 
 
 It may be worth while, however, to point out once more to 
 less educated readers that altiiv, aldvios, and their Hebrew equiva- 
 lents in all combinations are repeatedly used of things which have 
 come and shall come to an end. Even Augustine admits (what, 
 indeed, no one can deny) that in Scripture a.l!lov, altavios must in 
 many instances mean " having an end ; " and St. Gregory of Nysi;a, 
 who at least knew Greek, uses altavios as the epithet of "an 
 interval."
 
 198 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Thus in the Old Testament aluv, alamos, and many such varieties 
 of expression as fis aluva. aluvos, &c., which with the Hebrew ex- 
 pressions like CDiy? or IttJ DTIl?? (eV alwva Kal en, in sazcuhim et 
 ultra, "for ever and beyond ! ") are in our version rendered "for 
 ever," or "for ever and ever " ; but so far from necessarily implying 
 endlessness, they are used of many Jewish ordinances which ceased cen- 
 turies ago, such as the sprinkling of the lintel at the Passover (Ex. xii. 
 24), the Aaronic priesthood and its institutions (xxix. 9 ;xl. 15 ; Lev. 
 iii. 17 ; Numb, xviii. 19) ; the inheritance given to Caleb (Josh. xiv. 
 9) ; Solomon's temple (i. Kings viii. 12, 13) ; the period of a slave's 
 life (Deut. xv. 17, Job xli. 4) ; the burning of the fire upon the altar 
 (" The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go 
 out," Lev. vi. 13, &c.) ; and Ihe leprosy of Gehazi (2 Kings v. 
 27). How purely figurative these phrases are may be seen by such 
 passages as the following : " The land thereof shall become burn- 
 ing pitch. It shall not be quenched night or clay ; the smoke thereof 
 shall go up for ever" (Is. xxxiv. 9, 10). And so fully is this a 
 recognised idiom that in Deut. xxiii. 3, 6, we find "for ever " put 
 side by side with "till the tenth generation;" and though it is 
 added " thou shall not seek their peace and prosperity for ever" yet 
 of the very Moabites and Ammonites of whom this is spoken we 
 find a prophesy of peace and comfort in Jer. xlviii. 47 ; xlix. 6. 
 
 That the adjective altavios is applied to some things which are 
 "endless" does not of course for one moment prove that the word 
 itself meant " endless ; " and to introduce this rendering into many 
 passages would be utterly impossible and absurd. To tranblate it 
 in a few passages by "everlasting," when in the large majority of 
 passages it is rendered "eternal," is a purely wanton and arbitrary 
 variation, which unhappily occurs in one and the same verse (Matt. 
 xxv. 46). 
 
 Our translators have naturally shrunk from such a phrase as "the
 
 EXCURSUS III. 199 
 
 endless God." The utter dearth of metaphysical knowledge renders 
 most people incapable of realising a condition which is independent 
 of time a condition which crashes eternity into an hour, and 
 extends an hour into eternity. But the philosophic Jews and the 
 greatest Christian Fathers were quite familiar with it. " JEon," 
 says Philo, "is the life of God, and is not time, but the archetype 
 of time, and in it there is neither past, nor present, nor future." 1 
 
 In answer to the old argument invented by St. Augustine, 
 ("Dicere autem in hoc uno eodemque sensu, vita aeterna sine fine 
 erit, supplicium aeternum finem habebit, multum absurdum est," 
 De Civ. Dei xxi. 23), and since his day so incessantly repeated, 
 the argument, namely, that if we do not make altavios /cJAotm 
 mean endless punishment, we have no security that aiuvtos cui) 
 means endless life, and that we thus lose our promise of everlasting 
 happiness, I reply 
 
 1. That this is absolutely no argument whatever, and ought 
 never to be heard again, because the very men who most insist 
 upon it contemptuously set it aside if we ask them to apply 
 identically the same argument, analogously, to such texts as " As in 
 Adam 'a//' die, even so in Christ shall 'a//' be made alive." 
 
 2. That our sure and certain hope of everlasting happiness rests 
 on no such miserable foundation as the disputed meaning of a Greek 
 adjective which is used over and over again of things transitory. 
 If we need texts on which to rest it we may find plenty, such as 
 Luke xx. 36, Hos. xiii. 14, Rev. xxi. 4, Is. xxv. 6, i Cor. xv. 
 Passim, &c. 
 
 3. That although we take the word al&vios in both clauses to 
 mean "eternal" by which (in this connection) we mean something 
 
 * Philo. irt drpeitT^v rb 6f"iot>, e d. Mangey, i. 277 ; De Norn. Mnlnt. ad 
 fin (Mangey, i. 619) ; Greg. Naz. Orat. 38, " What to us is time, measured by 
 ihe motion of the sun, is to the Immortals the >Eon." See Ecclus. xviii. 8 n.
 
 200 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 above and beyond time, time being simply a mode of thought neces- 
 sary only to our finite condition (See John v. 39, xvii. 3) yet it is 
 by no means necessarily the case that the word should have iden- 
 tically the same meaning in both clauses, since the meaning of 
 the same adjective might quite conceivably be modified, and even 
 altered, by that of the substantive to which it is attached. Nothing 
 could be more in accordance with the ordinary genius of human 
 speech than that the same adjective might have its fullest meaning in 
 one clause, in which that meaning is entirely consonant with reason 
 and conscience, yet not have it in the other, where it would 
 be shocking and terrible. What makes the argument as abso- 
 lutely inexcusable on philological as it is on all other grounds, is that 
 in Rom. xvi. 25, 26, this very word occurs twice, and in one of the 
 two clauses cannot mean " everlasting," since it is speaking of time 
 which has come to an end ; and is yet translated " everlasting " by 
 our translators in the very next clause ! *' According to the reve- 
 lation of a mystery hidden in silence in the eternal times " 
 (E.V. "before the world began," where the reader will see that 
 " endless" would be a flagrant absurdity), "but now made manifest 
 according to the command of the Eternal God." 
 
 4. That in this instance the substantive Ko\a,(ris is a word which 
 in its sole proper meaning "has .reference to the correction and 
 bettering of him that endures" (see Philo. Leg. ad Cat. i). So 
 that Clement of Alexandria "defines KuAao-eu as (ifpiKal 7rai5e?ai." 
 Archbishop Trench does indeed remark (A T ew Test. Synonyms, 
 p. 30) that " It would be a very serious error to transfer this dis- 
 tinction (of Ko\a<ris and -ri^capia.) to the words as employed in the 
 New Testament." Why should it be a serious error to refrain from 
 reading into a word a sense which it does not possess ? According 
 to Aristotle K&\affis is corrective, rt/ucopfa alone is vindictive ; ic6\a.cris 
 has in view the improvement of the offender, Ti^tepla. the satisfaction
 
 EXCURSUS III. 201 
 
 of the inflictor (rf fj.fi> K6\a(rii TOU TrdcrxovTos eVe/ca fanv' 7) 5e 
 TOU jrotowTos "ivo. dTroirXrjpwBrj, Rhet. i. 10, 17). It is Josephus, not 
 our Lord and His Apostles, who use such phrases as aQa.va.-ros 
 Tinwpia and flpynos dittos ; and though " everlasting death" occurs 
 in our Liturgy, it nowhere occurs in Scripture, frequently as we read 
 of aeonian life. 
 
 5. But surely there are other grounds on which we ought to have 
 heard the last of this dreary argument, to which it is hardly possible 
 to listen without indignation. Good men, from St. Augustine to 
 St. Thomas Aquinas (Szimm. part iii., StifpL Qitaest. 99, iii.), and 
 from St. Thomas to Dr. Pusey, have gone on repeating it ad 
 nauseam, and even the gentle Keble wrote 
 
 " And if the treasures of Thy wrath could waste, 
 Thy lovers must their promised heaven forego." 
 
 We hear the question asked triumphantly in sermons, "If the 
 punishment of the wicked is not to last for ever, what guarantee 
 have we that the felicity of the blessed will last for ever ? " I 
 reply, Is there not in the question when not traditionally repeated, 
 but plainly considered an intense selfishness and a most ignoble 
 thought of God? 
 
 Thank God, my own hopes of seeing God's face for ever hereafter 
 do not rest on ten times refuted attempts to read false meanings into 
 the Greek lexicon, in order to support a system far darker than St. 
 Augustine's, from whose mistaken literalism it took its disastrous 
 origin. But here I declare, and call God to witness, that if the 
 popular doctrine of Hell were true I should be ready to resign all 
 hope, not only of a shortened but of any immortality, if thereby I 
 could save, not millions, but one single human soul from what fear, 
 and superstition, and ignorance, and inveterate hate, and slavish 
 letter-worship, have dreamed and taught of Hell. I call God to
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 witness that so far from regretting the possible loss of some billions 
 of aeons of bliss by attaching to the word altavios a sense in which 
 scores of times it is undeniably found, I would here, and now, and 
 kneeling on my knees, ask Him that I might die as the beasts that 
 perish, and for ever cease to be, rather than that my worst enemy 
 should endure the hell described by Tertullian, or Minucius Felix, or 
 Jonathan Edwards, or Dr. Pusey, or Mr. Furniss, or Mr. Moody, or 
 Mr. Spurgeon, for one single year. Unless my whole nature were 
 utterly changed, I can imagine no immortality which would not be 
 abhorrent to me if it were accompanied with the knowledge that 
 millions and millions and millions of poor suffering wretches some 
 of whom on earth I had known and loved were writhing in an 
 agony without end or hope. 1 
 
 1 It may be worth while to add these further notes about aio.J'. Heyschius 
 says it is sometimes used for " a long time ; " and Origen alludes to the same fact. 
 In Exod. Horn. vL 13 ; irepl apx<Zv, " 3' 5- Leontius Byzantinus, even in 
 arguing against Origenists, admits that both in profane and sacred literature 
 al<at> is used of a definite period (wepl dpHTfLfVov xP^vov \afj.fMyerai). 
 Caesarius (Dial. 3) even observes that the Origenist argument on the terminability 
 of torment was derived from the use of this very word 1 Huetius, Origeniana 
 (Of ft- ed. Pnris, iv. pp. 2-51, 233).
 
 EXCURSUS IV. (p. 64). 
 
 HOW THE OPINION OF ENDLESS TORMENT FOR ALL WHO DIP, 
 UNCONVERTED IS REGARDED BY SOME OF THE BEST OF 
 THOSE WHO HAVE ACCEPTED IT. 
 
 "For my part I fancy I should not grieve if the whole race of 
 mankind died in its fourth year. As far as we can see I do not 
 know that it would be a thing much to be lamented." Henry 
 Rogers (Greyson's Letters, i. 34). 
 
 "In the distress and anguish of my own spirit I confess that I see 
 no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the reason 
 why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewed with the 
 dying and the dead, and why man must suffer to all eternity." 
 Albert Barnes, Practical Sermons, p. 123. 
 
 " Were it possible for man's imagination to conceive the horrors 
 of such a doom as this, all reasoning about it would be at an end, it 
 would scorch and wither all the power of human thought." 
 Archer Butler's Sermons (second series), p. 383. 
 
 "The same gospel which penetrates our soul with warm emotions, 
 dispersive of selfishness, brings in upon the heart a sympathy that 
 tempts us often to wish that itself were not true, or that it had not 
 taught us so to feel." Isaac Taylor, Restoration of Belief, p. 367. 
 
 " As being that had burned 
 Half an eternity, and was to burn 
 For evermore he looked. O sight to DC 
 Forgotten, though too terrible to think ! " 
 
 PolLk, Course of Time.
 
 204 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 "Far be it from us to make light of the demerit of sin. . . . But 
 still what is man?" (After dwelling on his corrupt nature, his 
 weakness, his ignorance, the strength of his passions and appetites, 
 and the short sinful course of his few fleeting years on earth, he 
 adds ) "But endless punishment! 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 
 belief that ' God is love,' that ' His tender mercies are over all His 
 works. ' " John Foster, On Future Punishment. 
 
 " O most tender heart of Jesus, why wilt Thou not end, when wilt 
 Thou end, this ever-growing horror of sin and woe ? When wilt 
 Thou chase away the devil into his own hell, and close the pit's 
 mouth, that Thy chosen may rejoice in Thee, quitting the thoughts 
 of those who perish in their wilfulncss?" J. H. Newman, 
 Discourses. 
 
 " Decretum horribile fateor." Calvin, Instt. 
 
 I have said that the doctrine, as commonly taught, is a fruitful 
 source of scepticism : 
 
 " L'Eglise Romaine s'est porte le dernier coup : elle a consomme 
 son suicide le jour ou elle a fait Dieu implacable et la damnation 
 eternelle." George Sand, Spiridion, p. 302. 
 
 "If this be the logical result of accepting theories, better believe 
 in no God at all." Leslie Stephen, Englhh Thought in Eighteenth 
 Century.
 
 KXCURSUS V. p. 74. 
 
 THE VOICE OF SCRIPTURE RESPECTING ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Before adducing the various passages of Scripture which are 
 here referred to, I may make one or two observations respecting 
 them. 
 
 I. In proportion to the deep and unfeigned reverence which 
 I have ever felt for Holy Scripture, is the sense of sorrow, and 
 almost of indignation, with which I view its constant perversion 
 by the attempt to build up infinite systems out of metaphorical ex- 
 pressions and isolated texts. I have spoken of this terrible abuse 
 in one of my sermons ; and I have said elsewhere that we must 
 be guided, not by texts torn from their context, but by the whole 
 scope and tenor of revelation. Texts have been perverted from the 
 earliest times to the most unworthy purposes. They have to the 
 deadly injury of the divine authority of Scripture been quoted for 
 centuries in the cause of ignorance and sin. They have been 
 abused, by the endless errors of private interpretation, to countenance 
 every absurdity, and check every science, and denounce every moral 
 reformation. They were quoted against Columbus, against Coper- 
 nicus, against Galileo, against the geologists. They were quoted 
 against St. Peter, against St. Paul, nay, even against Christ Him- 
 self. They were quoted against Wycliffe, against Luther, against 
 Wilberforce, against the cause of Education, against the cause of
 
 206 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Temperance. They have been quoted in defence of polygamy, in de- 
 fence of oppression, in defence of persecution, in defence of intoler- 
 ance, in defence of "the right divine of kings to govern wrong." 
 I care but little in any controversy for the stress laid on one or two 
 isolated and dubious texts out of the sacred literature of fifteen 
 hundred years. They may be torn from their context ; they may 
 be distorted ; they may be misinterpreted ; they may be irrelevant ; 
 they may be misunderstood ; they may as the Prophets and the 
 Apostles and our Blessed Lord Himself distinctly intimated 
 they may reflect the ignorance of a dark age or the fragment of 
 an imperfect revelation ; they may be a bare concession to im- 
 perfection, or a low steppingstone to progress. What the Bible 
 teaches as a whole what the Bibles also teach as a whole for 
 History, and Conscience, and Nature, and Experience these too 
 are Sacred Books, that, and that only, is the immutable law of 
 God. 1 
 
 II. Now if the doctrine of endless torment, with all iis Calvinis- 
 tic and popular accretions, be true, it is incredible that there should 
 be no trace of it in the entire Old Testament, 2 except by putting on 
 
 1 Two writers, with neither of whom I a<^-ee, but who are distinguished by the 
 most devout reverence for the Wi>rd of Gr>d in Holy Scripture, have recently 
 expressed similar thoughts. "The Bible," says Mr. White, " has fallen much 
 into the hands of those who imagine that a few favourite ' texts ' will suffice to 
 prove that Omniscience is on the side of even the most extravagant theologies. 
 The world has already suffered too much fr m systems founded on a handful <f 
 wrested quotations, to allow of much reticence in repud.ating thie hermen- 
 eutical methods " (Life in Christ, p. 318). "The Gospel," says Mr. Minf>n, 
 " saves by the revelation which it makes of the heart and mind of God," and when 
 we are faced by such a doctrine as " endless torment," is it unnatural to " inquire 
 whether there may not be s nme mistake in the common interpretation of the four 
 or five passages which are thought to attribute such an intention to the Creator?" 
 
 2 LJan. xii. 2 to say nothing of the fact that it only says " many of them 
 that sleep," and that the word rendered " everlasting " does not mean "everlast-
 
 EXCURSUS V. 207 
 
 the Hebrew phrase "for ever" a sense which it cannot and does 
 not bear. Those who insist on doing this put themselves at once 
 out of court as incompetent and biassed critics. Nor can anything 
 more forcibly illustrate what I have said on the reckless abuse of 
 texts than the ignorant persistence with which such passages as 
 Is. xxiii. 14, or Eccl. xi. 3, are urged in favour of endless torments, 
 with which they have not the very remotest connection. 
 
 III. I have already stated that the Jews, studying the Old Test- 
 ament without any polemical bias about this subject, and with every 
 temptation to interpret every passage of it in the darkest sense 
 which might gratify their passionate, and not unnatural, indignation 
 against a world which has treated them with such unbounded cruelty 
 and scorn, have yet never held or taught the doctrine of endless 
 torment as any part of their religion. I have consulted Rabbi H. 
 N. Adler on this subject, and in his very full and courteous reply 
 he assures me that " the Jews do not possess any authorised dog- 
 matic teaching on the subject of endless punishment ; and that the 
 views of each rabbi depended on his interpretation of the 
 several Scripture texts bearing upon this point and upon the 
 results of his own reflection and investigation." I have referred to 
 the principal passages of the Talmud bearing upon the question. 
 There are two loci classici. 
 
 Rosh Hashana, p. 17. "But unbelievers, &c., go down into 
 Gehenna and are adjudged therein for generation after generation." 
 This phrase does not, I think, imply endless punishment. 
 
 ing " seems to state, when rightly translated and rightly interpreted, that many 
 shall enj >y the first resurrection, while those who do not shall be doomed t> 
 sha-ne and contempt, which (for all that appears in the text) may fall upon them 
 while dead; for the word JIKT;! ^ ere used is applied to " dead corpses " in 
 Is. Ixvi. 24. On this text see Mr. White's Life in Christ, p. 172. The Jews 
 interpreted the passa^o of " death and immobility." WeJl, Le Judaisme, iv, 
 ciogm. xiii. ch. ii>. J i.
 
 208 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Baba Mezia, p. 58. "All who go down into Gehenna rise up 
 again, with the exception of those who go down and do not rise, the 
 adulterer," &C. 1 
 
 Philippson, in his Israelitische JReligionslehre (ii. 255), says, 
 when speaking of immortality, "Die Rabbiner nehmen keine Ewig- 
 keit dcr Hblienstrafen an, auch die grossten Sunder werden nur 
 ' Generationen hindurch ' gestraft. Ailegorisch drucken sie dies auch 
 so aus, dass zwischen der Holle und dem Paradiese nur ein Zwei 
 Finger breiter Zwischenraum sei, so dass esalso dem reinigen Siincler 
 sehr leicht wird aus der ersteren in das letztere zu gelangen." 
 (Midrash, Kohelet.} 
 
 "With respect to the teachings of the present day, I think it 
 would be safe to say that they do not teach endless retributive suffering. 
 They hold that it is not conceivable that a God of Mercy and Justice 
 would ordain infinite punishment for finite wrong-doing." 
 
 So writes the Rev. H. N. Adler. " Of this you may be quite 
 sure," wrote the late Dr. Deutsch, with his usual impassioned energy, 
 to the Rev. S. Cox, "that there is not a word in the Talmud that 
 lends any support to that damnable dogma of endless torment." 
 
 "The upshot is," says Rabbi Marks, "that the Jewish doctors 
 laboured rather to adorn the future of the good, than to adorn the 
 destiny of the wicked. Stronger than their fear of justice is their 
 belief in the Divine mercy. ' He will not contend for ever, neither 
 will He retain His anger to eternity ' (Ps. ciii. 9), which is a powcr- 
 
 1 It appears from other passages of the Talmud that these latter were supposed 
 by some of the Jews to be annihilated ; but even this was the rarer view, though 
 favoured by Maimonides, Jad Hachazaka, Hilchoth Teshuba. viii. i. Rabbi 
 Adler refers me to two Post-Talmudic Rabbis (R. Saadjah and R. Joseph Albn, 
 in his Seplter Ikkarim iv. 36) who appear to teach endless torments for the few. 
 Hartwig Wessely, the friend of Moses Mendelssohn, wrote a valuable little treatise 
 on Jewish opinion respecting this subject, and there are some remarks in Brecher's 
 Unsterblichkcitslehrc.
 
 EXCURSUS V. 209 
 
 ful argument against the modern Christian doctrine of everlasting 
 woe." 
 
 The Chief Rabbi of Avignon, B. Mosse, has written against the 
 doctrine of endless torments in his local journal, La Famille de 
 Jacob. 
 
 The Chief Rabbi Michel A. Weill, in his elaborate work, Le Judi- 
 'isme, ses Dogmes et sa Mission, distinctly decides that the doctrine of 
 endless torment is Scripturally untenable. He treats Gehenna not 
 as a real denomination, but as a figurative expression for chastise- 
 ment. Of the fire and flames he says, " Qui ne reconnait dans ces 
 termes 1'hyperbole prophetique et poetique, qui est comme le genie 
 de la litterature sacree." He refers to other passages, such as 
 Is. xlviii. 22, Ivii. 21, I Sam. xxv. 29, &c., to show the spirituality 
 of punishment, while he explains that " they shall no more see the 
 light," of Ps. xlix. 20, as perhaps identical with the n~O, kareth, 
 or "excision" of the Mosaic code. "Would there not," he asks, 
 " be a flagrant contradiction between endless torments and the good- 
 ness of God so magnificently celebrated in Biblical annals ? Does 
 not Moses announce to us, does he not himself invoke in solemn 
 circumstances ' the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy 
 for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin' (Ex. 
 xxxiv. 6, 7)? Does not the prophet say, in the name of the Lord, 
 ' I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth, for the 
 spirit would fail before me and the souls that I have made' (Is. 
 Ivii. 1 6)? And the Psalmist of Israel, how does he speak on this 
 subject ? ' His wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye, but 
 His favour a lifetime ' (Ps. xxx. 5). Nothing, therefore, seems more 
 incompatible with the true Biblical tradition than an eternity of suffer- 
 ing and chastisement." * 
 
 1 Le Judiilsint , iv. p. 590.
 
 210 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 But while it is interesting to find this unanimity of opinion in a 
 matter of simple exegesis among modern Rabbis, it is to the Mishna 
 that we should look for the nearest approach to the Jewish view of 
 Gehenna in the time of our Lord. Now according to Dr. Dewes, 1 
 Gehenna is alluded to four or five times only in the Mishna, and 
 from these passages we learn that "the judgment of Gehenna is for 
 twelve months," that "it shall fail" though they who go into 
 it shall not fail," and that "Gehenna is nothing but a day in 
 which the impious shall be burnt." Even Bartolocci, after fifty- 
 six quarto pages on Gehenna, is obliged to confess that the Jews 
 "did not believe in a material fire, and thought that such fire as 
 they did believe in would one day be put out." 
 
 Just as in the middle ages we have the most pitiless and the most 
 material picture of hell, so it is in the dark and evil days in which 
 the Pirke R.Eleazar and the Zohar were written that we find the most 
 intimidating pictures of Gehenna. But so incontestable an autho- 
 rity as the great Rabbi Akiba, the second Moses, the second Ezra 
 of the oral law, said, " The duration of the punishment of the -wicked 
 in Gehenna is twelve months" (Adyoth, ii. 10). He quotes Is. 
 Ixvi. 23 in this sense. This indeed was the prevalent conception. 2 
 Some Rabbis said Gehenna only lasted from Passover to Pentecost. 
 Even in Zohar (in Genes, col. 205) it is said that Noah stayed twelve 
 months in the Ark because the judgment of sinners lasts so long, and 
 Rabbis Jose, Jehuda, and Eliezer are quoted in favour of this view 
 (Buxtorf, Lex. Talm, s. v. E3H3). The figurative nature of our 
 Lord's language finds striking illustration in such passages as 
 " Better put thyself in a fiery oven than make thy neighbour blush 
 in public" (Berachoth,/ 43, 2). 
 
 1 Plea for Rational Translation, p. 23. 
 
 2 See Eisenmenger, Enid. Judenth. p. 354. Rabbi argued " It is absurd to 
 say that the (morally) dead will live, seeing that even in life they are dead.' 1
 
 EXCURSUS V. 211 
 
 Even the few Rabbis who held another opinion were far more 
 merciful in their interpretation than modern Christians. They held 
 that the least repentance, even the sl-ghtest velleity of repentance, 
 was an impenetrable shield against retribution, even at the moment 
 of death ; 1 and the due performance of even a single precept of the 
 law entitled a man to the future world (plam ha-ba)? They inter- 
 preted Job xxxiii. 23 in the sense that 999 hostile testimonies before 
 God were outweighed by one favourable testimony. 3 They thus 
 hold the salvation of the vast majority of men, and reduce almost 
 to zero the number of those whose doom they regard as final those 
 only who have not done one meritorious act, or had one desire to 
 repent. " So that, even taken literally" says Chief Rabbi Weill, 
 ' ' endless torment loses its terror, since it does not involve concep- 
 tions which militate against a merciful God, whose loving-kindness 
 is over all His works." 
 
 R. Saadja, in his Sepher ha-cmunah, does, indeed, hold the doc- 
 trine of endless torment, but holds that even without repentance the 
 majority of mankind are admitted into grace if they have not com- 
 mitted capital crimes. If their good deeds preponderate over their 
 evil, the sorrows of earth are sufficient to present them pure to 
 heaven. In fact, Saadja extends so widely the range of penitence, 
 and diminishes so greatly the numbers of the doomed, that he 
 brightens his own horizon after making it seem dark. 
 
 If any Rabbi may be regarded as specially entitled to explain the 
 views of the Jews, it is surely Moses Maimonides, "the eagle of the 
 doctors," of whom the Jews say " that from Moses to Moses there 
 was no one like Moses." * In his Yad Ilachazaka he makes the 
 
 1 See the singular tenderness and leniency of the views of Maimonides, Yad 
 Hacliazakah, I. vii. 
 
 2 Sanhedrin, p. in; Maccjth, ad Jin. ; Ikkarim, iv. 29. 
 
 3 Shabbath, p. 32- n&>D3 Dp & r)C? TIN 
 
 P 2
 
 212 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 future life immaterial, and says that the worst of all punishments is 
 Kareth, " excision," which he explains as annihilation (Num. xv. 
 31), and says that it is allegorically described by the prophets as 
 Abaddon, Tojthet, and "the horseleach, expressions of destruction 
 and corruption, in consequence of there being that destruction after 
 which there is no existence, and that ruin which admits of no repa- 
 ration." 1 He makes Gehenna a name or metaphor, explained by 
 some of the sun, by others of an inward fire (of remorse). 2 
 
 Maimonides' opinion as to the annihilation of the wicked is doubt- 
 less derived from the famous passage of the Talmud (Rosh Hash- 
 anak, 17), which says that after twelve months of expiation the 
 bodies of the wicked cease to exist, their soul is burned, and a 
 wind scatters their cinders under the feet of the just." 
 
 Rabbi Bar Nachman regards this passage as so metaphorical 
 that he interprets it as a quie ude after Gehenna, a relative beati- 
 tude inferior to that of the just. It is only for a few r.theists and 
 renegades that he reserves a more terrible kareth. But even in 
 these cases he finds it impossible to get over the distinct state- 
 ment of the Talmud, ''''After the last judgment Gehenna exists no 
 longer."* "The future world," he says, "the olam haba, will 
 have its Gehenna, but the last times (Leadoth labo) will have it 
 no more." 
 
 R. Albo 4 is another of the few Rabbis who admit endless tor- 
 ment if indeed these few really do mean endlessness by the 
 expressions which they use. He ranks future relribulion under 
 
 1 Yad Plachazakah Hikhoth Teshuba, via. i. See Surenhusius Mishna, 
 vi. 265. 
 
 Mai. iv. i, 2; Abhoda Zara ; Is. xxx. n ; Bcreshith Rabba, 6; Weill, 
 iv. 606. 
 
 3 Nedarin, 8 ; Midrash Rabba, i, 30 : Aboda Zara. 3 (Resh Lakish). 
 
 4 Jkkaritn, iv. 3040.
 
 EXCURSUS V 
 
 three grades : (l) Gehenna for a year, and then blessedness; 
 (2) Gehenna for a year, and then annihilation; (3) "Eternal" 
 chastisement for a few renegades, &c. Yet he dwells on the bound- 
 less mercy of God, and founds the remission of eternal punishment, 
 for all except the worst, on Ps. Ixii. 14, Micah vii. 18 20, &c. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that even the few exceptional Rabbis 
 who diverged into this view held it in a form unspeakably less 
 repellent than modern writers ; and that their Gehenna was far more 
 like Purgatory than Hell. And in arriving at this conclusion they 
 can barely reconcile it with the more ancient authority of the Mishna 
 and Gemara. 
 
 Further, the Rabbis, like all Romanist theologians, held that 
 "nothing can resist repentance." In the Midrash on Koheleth the 
 answer to the question, "Why did God create Paradise and 
 Gehenna," we read, "In order that the one may save from the 
 other." But what is the distance between them ? According to 
 Johanam, a wall ; according to Acha, a palm ; according to other 
 Rabbis, only a finger (see Eisenmenger, pp. 314, 315). And the 
 inference drawn is that even from Gehenna the guilty can be 
 redeemed by a return to duty. 
 
 Generally, it may be stated with confidence that the Rabbinic 
 opinion was that of Abarbanel, 1 that the soul would only be punished 
 in Gehenna for a time proportionate to the extent of its faults ; and it 
 is in accordance with this belief, and that in annihilation as being 
 "the second death," that we must interpret the passages which are 
 sometimes adduced from the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos 
 and from various parts of the Book of Enoch. 2 I have not referred 
 to the vague testimony of Josephus, 3 because I regard him as an 
 
 1 MifJialoth Elohim, viii. 6. 
 
 3 See GfrSrer, Jahrb. ties Hcils, ii. 289, 311. 
 
 3 Ant. xviii. 3, B. J. ii. 8. See Ewald, Gesch. v. 366 (E. Tr.)
 
 214 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 utterly untrustworthy witness, and because what he says is contra- 
 dicted on this as on a multitude of other subjects by overwhelming 
 and untainted testimony. 
 
 4. Now will honest, serious, and competent readers weigh the 
 plain literal meaning of the texts which follow the number of 
 which might easily be trebled, and in weighing them with an earnest 
 and prayerful desire to get rid of traditional bias and attain to 
 truth, will they also do as follows? 
 
 i. Examine their own reason and conscience as to all that they 
 know, and all that the Bible teaches, respecting the love of God, and 
 redemption through Jesus Christ. 
 
 ii. See how very little, which is in the least degree decisive, they 
 can produce on the other side ; and how for' every word of that 
 very little an explanation is offered, demonstrably tenable, and far 
 more in accordance with history than that which they adopt. 
 
 iii. Consider the tremendous weight of evidence which must be 
 thrown against their private interpretation from the fact that neither 
 the Jewish nor the Christian Church has ever been able dogmatically 
 to sanction it. 
 
 iv. Remember that in the extreme form in which they hold it, 
 which excludes anything resembling Purgatory, it is directly opposed 
 to a large body of primitive teaching, and to the views of the entire 
 Roman Church. 
 
 v. Give clue weight to the fact that many who have devoted years 
 of earnest labour to the inquiry ripe scholars and good men, ortho- 
 dox Fathers, eminent theologians, profound thinkers, holy and 
 reverent inquirers have come to the deliberate conclusion that there 
 is not a single text in all Scripture which necessitates a belief in 
 endless torment. 
 
 vi. Bear specially in mind that it rests, almost if not quite exclusively, 
 on the meanings which they attach to two words, "Gehenna" and
 
 EXCURSUS V. 
 
 " yEonian " : of which the first, interpreted by the only possible 
 means of interpretation open to us, cannot bear the sense which 
 they attribute to it ; and the other is over and over again applied 
 in Scripture to indefinite but limited time, or to that which trans- 
 cends all conception of time. 1 
 
 vii. Be shamed into a little humility a little doubt as to their 
 own absolute infallibility on all religious subjects a little sense 
 of their possible ignorance or invincible prejudice a little absti- 
 nence from cheap anathemas and contemptible calumnies a little 
 avoidance of such base weapons of controversy as the assertion 
 that those who hold such views as I here have advocated are 
 repeating the devil's whisper, " Thou shalt not surely die" a - by not 
 losing sight of the fact that (i) these views have been held in sub- 
 stance, not only (as I have said) by great teachers and holy saints, but 
 also by whole Churches ; and (2) that they are theoretically involved 
 in practices so universal and so primitive as prayers for the dead. 
 The Kaddish, or prayer for the dead, in the Jewish liturgies is pro- 
 bably as old as the time of our Lord, and if so was by Him un- 
 reproved, though it was believed to be efficacious for the relief of 
 souls in Gehenna. Eminent commentators, comparing 2 Tim. i. 16 
 and 19, and iv. 19 have believed that St. Paul's prayer for Onesi- 
 phorus is a prayer for one who was dead ; and he does not reprove the 
 principle of even so superstitious a practice as baptism for the dead. 3 
 
 i I will add one more testimony to the many already adduced. " In Hebrew 
 and Greek the words rendered ' everlasting ' have not this sense. They signify 
 ' a long duration of time,' ' a period,' whence the phrase ' during these 
 eternities and beyond " ' (De Lammenais). 
 
 The same crude charge might be brought with ten thousandfold more force 
 against the doctrine of repentance. It is one of the many signs that in all 
 generations religious bigotry and ignorance repeat themselves, that the very same 
 taunt was aimed at the merciful hopes of Archbishop Tillotson. 
 
 3 i Cor. xv. 2Q.
 
 216 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 The ancientness of belief in the validity of prayers for the dead 
 " antiquissima omnium Ecclesiarum traditione stabilitum" is 
 beyond possibility of dispute. 1 Of the practice itself I give 
 no opinion ; but it proves most absolutely that the Early Church held 
 as a certain belief the main point for which I have here contended 
 which is, in brief, a possible hope beyond the grave. When Aerius 
 taught the modern popular doctrine, "assuming one broad line 
 of demarcation in the unseen world," he was treated as opposing 
 the practice of the Church from the beginning 2 (Epiphan. Htzres. 
 75) ; and St. Augustine whose views (as I have pointed out) were 
 so far less frightful in many respects than those now prevalent 
 distinctly declares that we may pray for the dead, "ut sit plena 
 remissio, aut certe ut fiat tolerabilior damnatio." 3 
 
 viii. Let them weigh the fact that what Christ did once namely 
 preach to the lost, and open for them the prison doors He may do 
 again and ever. The text on which I preached "throws blessed 
 light on one of the darkest enigmas of Divine Justice the cases in 
 which the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse 
 that has incurred it." This was the interpretation of the early 
 Fathers. " May not these inspired words of Peter," says Canon 
 Spence, "hint to us that our Lord's redemptive work is far more 
 extensive than men usually conceive?" (Col. i. 20, Eph. i. io). 4 
 
 If any candid truth-seeker will thus inquire, I have very little 
 doubt as to the conclusion at which he will arrive. He will see 
 that while we most heartily agree with him in admitting the immense 
 importance attributed by all Scripture to life as a period of probation, 
 and the certainty that future retribution will be proportionate to the 
 
 1 It is needless to point in proof of this to the evidence of the Catacombs as 
 well as the early Fathers. 
 * Diet, of Christ. Biog.. Art. "Death." 
 3 Enchir. no. * Bibl. Educator, i. 118.
 
 EXCURSUS V. 217 
 
 willingness and heinousness of our earthly sins, neither Scripture ( 
 nor the Church, nor anything that we learn from any source within 
 or without us respecting God, in any way sanctions the popular 
 dogma of an irreversible doom at the moment of death, for all who die 
 impenitent, to endless physical or mental torment. Of the opposite 
 view, the restitution in its most literal sense of all things, the 
 brightest and ablest of the Scotch prelates, Bishop Ewing of 
 Argyll and the Isles, said in language which goes farther than I can 
 go, " Unless this be held as a matter of faith and not as a specu- 
 lative dogma, it is practically valueless. With me this final victory 
 is not a matter of speculation at all, but of positive faith ; and to 
 disbelieve it would be for me to cease altogether either to trust or to 
 worship God" 
 
 Lastly, I do not for a moment mean to offer the following catena 
 of texts as even approximately complete. To adduce all the passages 
 which deepen in my mind the trust in Eternal Hope would be to 
 transcribe one half of the Scriptures. Rarely do I read the daily 
 Psalms or the daily lessons without meeting with expressions which 
 seem to run directly counter to the common doctrine. It is also a 
 most important consideration that we must judge from the silence 
 of Scripture as well as from its utterances. Were there any truth 
 in the numberless accretions which have gathered round this simple 
 nucleus that there is a retribution for sin beyond the grave, surely 
 they are of such momentous importance that they would not have been 
 left in an obscurity so deep that the Church has never been able to 
 sanction them, though she was well aware that some of her truest 
 sons have openly rejected them. The silence of St. Paul as to any 
 such doctrines in such passages as Rom. ii. 8, 9 ; v. 21, vi. 23 ; Gal. 
 v. 21, vi. 8; Phil. iii. 18, 19 ; the reticence of St. John in such 
 passages as I John iii. 14, 15, v. 16 in all which places the 
 nature of the subjects handled would have led the Apostles to make
 
 2i8 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 explicit mention of endless torment, had they embraced any such belief 
 cannot by any possibility be the result of accident. 1 "That the 
 doctrinal writings of these three chief teachers of the Gospel St. 
 Paul, St. Peter, and St. John are wholly destitute of any assertion 
 of the endles's misery of sinners as the literal sense," says Mr. 
 White, " can be verified by every reader." " Even Luther, like 
 almost every great and true-hearted teacher on this subject, while 
 constantly maintaining the doctrine of endless torment in nearly 
 its present form, yet slides unconsciously into more hopeful ex- 
 pressions ; "God forbid," he says, " that 2 should limit the time for 
 acquiring faith to the present life! In the depths of the diiiiu- 
 mercy there may be opportunity to win it in the future state" 3 
 
 1 See essays on Eternal Death by Mr. Barlow, Fellow of Trin. Coll. Dublin. 
 "There is not one place of Scripture which occurs to me," said Dr. Isaac Watts, 
 " where the word death . . . necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality 
 of the soul." 
 
 2 Life in Christ, p. 347. 
 
 3 Letter to Hansen von Rechenberg, 1522. (Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, 
 p. /2i. To the Rabbinic passages already quoted may be added the following : 
 Zijoni, f. 69, 3, "only a thread's thickness between Paradise and Gehenna;" 
 AsaratJi Maamciroth,f. 85, i, " there will hereafter be no Gehenna ; " Jalkutk 
 Shimoni,f. 46, i, "Gabriel and Michael will open the 8,000 gates of Gehenna 
 and let out Israelites and righteous Gentiles ;" Jalkuth Chadash,f. 57, i, " the 
 righteous bring out of Gehenna imperfect souls;" yalknth Rul>oii,f. 167, 4, 
 "Sabbaths and refrigeria of the doomed ;" ZoJiar in Exod. Tr. Gibborim,f. 70. 
 i ; Nishmath Chajim,f. 83, i ; Jalkuth Shimoni, f. 88, 3, and many other pas- 
 sages speak of twelve mouths as the period of punishment in Gehenna. In a 
 magnificent passage of Othoth (attributed to R. Akiba) it is said that God has a. 
 key of Gehenna, and that He will preach to all the righteous ; that Zerubbabel 
 shall say the Kaddish and an Amen ! shall sound forth from Gehenna, and that 
 Gabriel and Michael will open the 40,000 gates of Gehenna and set free the 
 damned. Akiba founds this on Is. xxvi. 2, reading Shotner Amenim, "ob- 
 serving the Amen," for Shomer Emunim, " keeping the truth." Lastly, in 
 Etnek Hammelech,f. 138, 4, " the wicked stay in Gehenna till the resurrection, 
 and then the Messiah, passing through it, redeems them." These and other 
 passages are collected in Stephelin's Rabbinical Literature (1748), ii. 31-71.
 
 TEXTS. 
 
 These then are some of the texts to be considered. The com- 
 ments which, I have quoted must he understood with such limita- 
 tions as I have previously indicated. 
 
 Gen. iii. 15. "And I will put enmity between thee and the 
 woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy 
 head, and thou shall bruise his heel." 1 
 
 Gen. xii. 3. " And in thy seed shall all families of the earth be 
 blessed." See also Gen. xxii. 18, Gal. iii. 8, Acts. iii. 25. 2 
 
 Ps. ciii. 9. " He will not alway be chiding : neither keepeth He 
 His anger for ever." See the Psalms passim, and Mic. vii. 18. 
 "He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighted in 
 mercy." 
 
 Ps. cxxxix. 8. " If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art 
 there." 3 
 
 1 " How could this be so, if Satan triumphed by gaining millions to be his 
 slaves? In this case could it be said, as in Is. Lit. 13, 'He shall see of the 
 travail of his soul and be satisfied, for he shall bear their iniquities ' ? " Dr. 
 Chauncey, The Mystery hid from all ages, or the Salvation of all Men. 
 1784. 
 
 2 Yet Du Moulin (Reflections on the Number of the Elect, 1622) affirms that 
 not one in a million from Adam downwards shall be saved. 
 
 3 " What hell maybe 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-walled hell with Him, 
 Than golden-gated Paradise without."
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Isaiah Ivii. 16. " For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be 
 always wroth : for the spirit should fail before Me, and the souls 
 which I have made." 
 
 Isaiah xlix. 9. " That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go 
 forth ; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. " x 
 
 IIos. vi. i. "Come, and let us return unto the Lord : for He 
 hath torn, and He will heal us ; He hath smitten, and He will bind 
 us up." 
 
 Hos. xiv. 4. "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them 
 freely ; for mine anger is turned away from him." 
 
 John i. 29. " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
 sin of the world." 
 
 John iii. 17. "God sent not His Son into the world to con- 
 demn the world ; but that the world through Him might be 
 saved." 2 
 
 John iii. 35. " The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all 
 things into His hand." (c. 42, and I John iv. 14, "The Saviour of 
 the Universe.") 3 
 
 John xii. 32. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
 draw all men (but leg. irdyra) unto me." See also Luke ix. 56, 
 
 1 Is. xxxiii. 14, and other passages sometimes quoted to prove endless torment, 
 have not the very remotest connection with the subject. And the fact that in 
 Mark ix. 50, our Lord is borrowing the purely temporal language of Is. Ixvi. 24, 
 is, even alone, an argument of overwhelming force against the meaning which has 
 been attached to His expressions. 
 
 2 What affinity is there between these utterances and such a sentence as this 
 from Calvin ? " Unde factum est, ut tot gentes unti cum liberis eorum inf anti- 
 bits aeternA morte involvcret lapsus Adae abseque remedio, nisi quia Deo ita 
 visum est? Decrctum horribilefateor" (fnstit. iii. 23, 7). 
 
 3 " The happiness of the blest rests, not on a word or syllable, but on their 
 perfect union with God ; we have no data, whatever on which to ground the 
 assertion that the eternity of evil is equally unlimited, absolute, and infinite." 
 Rev. Archer Gurney.
 
 TEXTS. 221 
 
 " For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to 
 save them." 
 
 John xv. 22. "He that knew not his Lord's will and did 
 commit things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes.'" 
 
 i John ii. 2. "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for 
 ours only, but also irepl oKovrov K6fffj.ov." 
 
 Acts. iii. 21. "Whom the heaven must receive until the times 
 of restitution of all things (a7ro/caTa<ra<reu>s Ttdvrtav), which God hath 
 spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world 
 began. " 
 
 Eph. i. 10. "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times 
 He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are 
 in heaven, and which are on earth." 1 
 
 Phil. ii. 10, ii. " That at the name of Jesus every knee should 
 bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the 
 earth." 2 
 
 Col. i. 19, 20. " For it hath pleased the Father that in him 
 ihould all fulness dwell ; and, having made peace through the 
 blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself 
 (diroKa.Ta\\da.i TC) iravra. fls avTbv eipi)voirorfi(ra.s, K. r. A. ) ; by Him, 
 I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." See 
 also Rom. viii. 19, 24. " For the earnest expectation of the 
 creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For 
 
 1 " Will any one contend that the Pauline conception would be satisfied by the 
 endless existence of the majority of the human race in misery and sin ? Has 
 Christ subdued those who gnash their teeth at Him because He makes them 
 suffer ? Is this the working whereby He is able to subdue even all things unto 
 Himself ? Will God be all in all when vast multitudes of His creatures are in 
 impotent but absolute rebellion against Him ? " Rev. J. LI. Davies, Manifesta- 
 tion of tlie Sons of God, p. 358. 
 
 3 " Every number of destroyed sinners .... must through the all-working, 
 all-redeeming love of God, which never ceaseth, come at last, to know that they 
 had lost, and have found again such a God of Love as this." William Law.
 
 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 the creature was made subject unto vanity, not wLlingly, but by 
 reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the 
 creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corrup- 
 tion into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we are 
 saved by hope." 
 
 Rom. v. 15. "For if through the offence of one many (ol 
 iro\\oi) be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by 
 grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto 
 many (-robs iroAAous) " ; and verse 17 and verse 18. " Therefore as 
 by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemna- 
 tion ; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon 
 all men unto justification of life ;" and verses 20, 21. " But where 
 sin abounded, grace did much more abound : that as sin hath 
 reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteous- 
 ness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 Rom. xi. 32. "For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, 
 that He might have mercy upon all." 
 
 Rom. xiv. 9. " For to this end Christ both died, and rose, 
 and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." 
 
 I Cor. xv. 22. " For as in Adam all die, even so in Chri>t 
 shall all be made alive ; " and verses 24 28. " Then cometh the 
 end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even 
 the Father ; when He shall have put down all rule and all 
 authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all 
 enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed 
 is death. For He hath put all things under His feet. 1 But when 
 He saith all things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is 
 excepted, which did put all things under Him. And when all 
 
 ' " If all things without exception shall be subjected to Christ, then death, the 
 second death as well as the first death, will be finally swallowed up in victory." 
 Dr. Chauncey.
 
 TEXTS. 223 
 
 things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself 
 be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may 
 be all in all (T& ircivra tv -nS.aiv)." l 
 
 2 Cor. v. 19. "To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling 
 the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them ; 
 and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." 2 
 
 I Tim. ii. 4.* "'Who willeth (0&\.ei) all men to be saved and to 
 come to the knowledge of the truth " (Cf. v. 6). 
 
 I Tim. iv. 10. "For therefore we both labour and suffer 
 reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of 
 all men, specially of those that believe ; " and ii. 1-6, esp. 6, 
 " Who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time 
 (& Sobs tavrbv avriXwrpov inrtp irdfTtay' rb fj.apTvpi.ov Kaipo"is iSiots)." 
 
 Tit. ii. ii, 12. Not as in English version, but, " For the grace of 
 God hath appeared, which is saving to all men (7) awr-npios -iraa-u- 
 
 1 " Uf sit Deus omnia. in. omnibus. Significatur hie novura quiddam sed 
 idem summum et perenne, omnia (adfoqne omnes), sine ulla interpellatione, 
 nulla creatura obstante, nullo hoste obturbante, erunt subordinata Filio, Filius 
 Patri. Hoc reXoj est, hie finis, et apex. Ultra ne Apostolus quidem quo eat 
 habet . . . Ab impiis in mundo habetur Deus pro nihilo, et apud sanctos multa 
 obstant ne sit unus omnia apud ipsos, sed turn erit Omnia, in omnibus." Bengel, 
 Gnomon, p. 760. 
 
 2 " The sacnfice for sin was infinitely more potent for good, than sin for evil.'' 
 Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes. 
 
 > On the vain attempts of St. Augustine and Calvin to do away with the force 
 of this statement, see Gieseler, Eccl. Hist, i, 383 (E. Tr.) 
 
 * "The sacred writers are singularly emphatical in expressing their trnth. 
 They could not have been more full and peremptory) na d they intended to guard 
 against men's straining their words to another meaning. They speak not only of 
 'Christ's dying for us,' 'for our sins,' 'for sinners/ 'for the ungodly,' 'f.jr 
 the unjust," but affirm, in yet more extensive terms, that He died ' for the world,' 
 ' i\,r the whole world,' yes, that they might not be misunderstood they say that 
 ' God laid on Him the iniquity of us all ; ' yes, that ' He tasted death for every 
 man; ' yes, that ' He gave His life a ransom f^r all.' " Dr. Chauncey.
 
 224 ETERNAL HOPE. 
 
 Heb. ii. 14. " Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of 
 flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same ; 
 that through death He might destroy him that had the power of 
 death, that is, the devil;" and verses 8, 9, "Thou hast put all 
 things in subjection under His feet. For in that He put all in subjec- 
 tion under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him. But 
 now we see not yet all things put under Him. But we see Jesus, 
 who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of 
 death, crowned with glory and honour ; that He by the grace of 
 God (or rather x^p'S Oeov) 'for every rational being, or for everything 
 (neut.) except God'} should taste death." 
 
 Rev. v. 13. " And every creature which is in heaven, and on the 
 earth, and under the earth (vvoKaru Trjs yfjs), and such as are in the 
 sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, 
 and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
 unto the Lamb for ever and ever." 
 
 Rev. xxi. 4, 5. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crjing, 
 neither shall there be any more pain : for the former things are 
 passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I 
 make all things new. And He said unto me, Write : for these words 
 are true and faithful." 
 
 Rev. xxii. 3. " And there shall be no more curse ; " and sec, 
 too, Rev. xx. 14. " And death and hell were cast into the lake of 
 fire." 
 
 On all these passages of St. Paul, St. John, and other sacred 
 writers, so strongly and indisputably asserting the doctrine of uni- 
 versal redemption, I will only remark that "all" cannot possibly 
 mean, as St. Augustine vainly tries to make out, "omnes praedesti- 
 nati" (De Corrept. 14), or " homines omnis generis " (Enchir. 103), 
 or indeed anything except what they say, viz., that Christ died for all.
 
 TEXTS. 225 
 
 It is, indeed, true that universal redemption does not necessarily 
 imply universal salvation : but I ask any honest and unbiassed thinker 
 whether the predicted triumph of Christ's cross, and the universality 
 of His future kingdom, are consistent with the popular doctrine that 
 only the few are saved ? Bishop Martensen thought that alike 
 universal restoration and never-ending torments were unequivocally 
 taught in Scripture, and that therefore in Scripture, as in life, there 
 were insoluble antinomies. Bishop Thirlwall seems to have inclined 
 to a similar view. My own view is different. It seems to me that if 
 many passages of Scripture be taken quite literally, universal resto- 
 ration is unequivocally taught, just as, if many passages be taken 
 quite literally, the final annihilation of the wicked is taught ; but that 
 endless torments are nowhere clearly taught the passages which appear 
 to teach that doctrine being either obviously figurative or historically 
 misunderstood. If the decision be made to turn solely on the literal 
 meaning of Scripture, I have no hesitation whatever in declaring my 
 strong conviction that the universalist and annihilist theories have 
 far more evidence of this sort for them than the popular view. It 
 may be asked, Why then am I unable to adopt the universalist 
 opinion ? The answer is simple. It is because one or two passages 
 though far more than their due significance seems to have beeu 
 attributed to them seem to make it unwise to speak dogmatically 
 on a matter which God has not clearly revealed. Comparing Scrip- 
 ture with Scripture, limiting Scripture by Scripture, and judging of 
 Scripture as we are encouraged and taught to do by that spirit of 
 man, which is the candle of the Lord, I see no tenable view but 
 that ancient and noble one which I have here tried alas ! very im- 
 perfectly, but to the best of my power under present circumstances 
 to set forth, and to defend.
 
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