l>4~ LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL: A REFUTATION OF THE THEORY OF ANNIHILATION. BY SAMUEL C. BARTLETT, D.D., PROFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 28 CORNHILL, BOSTON. & 3 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by The American Tract Society, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Boston : Geo. C. Rand & Avery, Stereotypers and Printers. ^-o Ik, PREFACE. This volume was prepared at the earnest solicitation of many persons who found no full and satisfactory reply to the spe- cious arguments of annihilationists, and who were greatly trou- bled at their industrious efforts to diffuse the system. It was nearly completed more than two years since, and only lacked a final revision preparatory to publication. But a sudden and long-continued pressure of other duties has prevented that re- vision until the present time. Meanwhile, no considerable change has taken place in the aspect of the case, and no new treatise of any account has appeared. But the heresy has been laboriously disseminating itself. Its ablest advocate in this country travels about, selling his own books, and boasting of a larger number of adherents among educated men than we suppose the facts will warrant. But we do receive information from various quarters, that many simple-minded persons are led astray by the sophistry. Among our Baptist brethren, we hear of some very considerable movements, as in Gratiot County, Mich., where the sect has gained strength enough to attempt the building of a church. And, in the denomination to which the writer belongs, we have not forgotten the development at a recent council held in Port- land, Me. The spread of this error differs somewhat from that of Uni- versalism. The latter has never, in this country, made any con- siderable progress among devout persons. Individual cases may perhaps be mentioned of seemingly pious and spiritual men who have accepted the belief of universal salvation. But the great mass of its advocates have been those who have manifested ill -84639 IV PREFACE. no religious life whatever. It is otherwise with the present sys- tem. We are told that it has, in many instances, ensnared men of unquestioned piety. The chief plausibility of the argument for annihilation lies upon the surface ; and its greatest force is felt by those who have never analyzed language so much as to reflect upon the idioms that constantly flow from their own lips, and that run through the woid of God. To this class of men there is pre- sented a set of phrases, carefully detached from all other sub* jects and all other similar uses, and they are startled, as it were, into an entire misapprehension of the forms of speech familiar from their childhood ; just as a man, who for the first time looks through a powerful microscope, is confounded by the appearance of the insect that has been buzzing round him all day long. To this class of men, most of the arguments for annihilation are ad- dressed ; and from them largely, we believe, are its adherents drawn. There are others, however, of more reading and men- tal culture ; and arguments have been written for them also, — arguments presented with much parade of learning, yet making no scruple to deny some of the plainest facts in the history of opinion, and to accumulate the most heterogeneous monstrosities and incompatible fallacies in interpreting the word of God. It has been found necessary, in the present discussion, to at- tempt the somewhat difficult task of meeting the wants of two quite different classes, — to frame an argument intelligible to " plain people," and satisfactory to the more scholarly and crit- ical. It is hoped that each class will be indulgent to the other. The writer would have preferred to retain the work still longer in his hands, for improvement in various respects. But the friends who have called for it are impatient of delay, and the want is thought to be pressing. His own labors are meanwhile imperatively demanded in other directions. He is willing, there- fore, to issue the work as it is, for the purpose of doing good, rather than to retain it for the sake of higher elaboration. Should any portions of the discussion seem to require further confirma- tion, modification, expansion, or abridgment, it may be done hereafter as experience shall dictate. PREFACE. v In the general correctness of h : s statements, and the entire soundness of his main positions, the writer has absolute confi- dence. In the multiplicity of topics considered, however, he can not hope to have escaped some minor oversights not affecting the validity of the argument. Any such blemishes will be cheerfully corrected on being pointed out. This volume is not written in reply to any one writer. As matter of fact, more allusions will be found to the writings of Mr. 0. F. Hudson than of any other author ; for the reason that Mr. Hudson, having devoted the labor of years to the subject, has presented by far the most respectable work in advocacy of the doctrine of annihilation. His chief treatise, " Debt and Grace," unquestionably combines a great amount of labor, and a very high degree of dexterity in the presentation. It has been cus- tomary for some evangelical writers to praise the fairness and candor of his discussion ; commendations which we can account for only on the supposition that the writers have never followed him, as we have done, through any considerable number of his quotations and interpretations. We have made no attempt at a review and criticism of his procedures, except in a few instances where it lay very directly in our way. To do so would require a larger volume than his own, and would change the character of the discussion. We have commonly employed the term " annihilation " to designate the cessation of existence which these writers advocate. We are aware that many of them object to the term as not be- ing fully expressive of their mode of stating and arguing the case. We would only say that we can not be debarred the use of a convenient, indeed an indispensable, term, out of deference to their preferences. We state their views and arguments fairly and fully; and it will be found, we trust, that the validity of our reasoning does not at all hinge upon the name by which we characterize the system. It will be observed that we do not devote any of our discus- sion to the natural evidence of immortality. The argument seemed to us sufficient without it. We have shown that the Scriptures actually and historically involve the doctrine. We v i PREFACE. might, like others, have taken the ground that the Scriptures could assume it as the belief of the race. For, as matter of fact, the race have believed it. We certainly have testimony showing that the expectation of another life existed throughout the tribes of the Western Continent, from Greenland to Patagonia. African tribes, New-Zealanders, Feejees, Sandwich-Islanders, Kamtschadales, Philippine-Islanders, Papuans, Borneans, Chi- nese, have held the belief in all parts of the world. It was tht doctrine of the ancieat Vedas and of the Egyptian monuments ; it lies embedded in the Greek and Roman mythologies ; it was held by Persian, Etruscan, Celt, Gaul, and Scandinavian. In modified forms, it is received by five hundred million Brahmin- ists and Buddhists to-day. The exceptions are apparently limited to two classes : First, perhaps, certain tribes too de- graded to have developed the full functions of humanity ; sec- ondly, certain individuals and sects in very advanced states of society, who have deliberately trained themselves as doubters, as the Epicureans of Greece and Rome, the Sadducees of Judea, the Revolutionists of France, and the Annihilationists of Eng- land and America. How the human race have so universally attained this belief, thus shown to be natural, it is not important here to indicate We believe it to be not so much the result of speculative rea- sonings as of a pressure on the moral nature. Just as God's own existence is revealed practically to every man in that inner authority, that irrepressible law of right which saith, " Thou shalt, and thou shalt not ; " so he intimates a future state practically, by the irresistible apprehensions of a guilty conscience, by the yearnings for immortality which are restrained only by those fears, and which throb again in the holy, and by the natural sense of the necessity of another state to rectify the inequalities of this. These intuitive impressions, no doubt, are subse- quently re-enforced by arguments drawn from various sources. But the conviction is older than the arguments. Chicago, June, 1866. CONTENTS. ■ ♦ * ♦■ PART I. REPUTATION OP THE ARGUMENTS ADVANCED IN SUPPORT OP THE ANNHTILATION OP THE WICKED. CHAPTER I. THE DOCTRINE OP ANNIHILATION STATED. The doctrine of eternal punishment generally admitted to be in the Bible. A few deniers, who are in threefold conflict with each other, — Universal- ists, Restorationists, Annihilationists. The latter differ. The whole ques- tion one of fact and testimony. God the only witness, and the Scriptures his testimony. Annihilation appeals only subordinately to Scripture, and with a narrow range. It depends on a few perverted phrases 15 CHAPTER II. THE FUNDAMENTAL, VICE OP THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT FOR ANNIHILATION. The Bible speaks in the idioms of the common people : figurative on all subjects. On one subject, annihilationism materializes. Jacob Blain. The process of human speech : first, outward and physical. Spiritual phenomena symbolized by material. Examples from common life. Ma- terial interpretation contradicts the real meaning. Examples of Scripture phraseology ; never misunderstood by common readers ; fully recognized on all other subjects ; wrenched out of all analogy on this. The same pro- cess would find a material God, and did find an earthly Messianic kingdom in the Bible 23 CHAPTER III. IHE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT FOR ANNIHILATION EXAMINED. — DEATH AND LIFE. The words M death " and " life " comprehensively describe the two destinies; therefore are frequently, but not exclusively employed. Every such in* vii Viii CONTENTS. stance is quoted by annihilationists to prove extinction of the sinner. 1. But they do not even literally, and in the lower sense, signify the contin- uance or cessation of existence. 2. They also have in all languages a higher or pregnant sense. Instances from common life, classical usage, and the Scriptures. All involve a common element of meaning; only the Scriptures propose a higher aim of livincj. 3. In the Scriptures, the terms denote spiritual conditions, with their adjuncts and issues. The terms singularly appropriate and natural. Philo Judaeus. The origin of the usage found in Gen. iii. The passage interprets itself. This mode of ut- terance runs through the Bible ; life, eternal life, death, the second death. Indisputable instances considered : Luke xv. 24, 32 ; 1 Tim. v. 6 ; Matt, viii. 22; Rev. iii, 1; Eph. ii. 1-6; Col. ii. 13 (modified use of Eph. iii. 3; Rom. vi. 1, 11); John v. 24: 1 John iii. 14, 15 ; John vi. 47; Gal. ii. 19, 20; John xi. 25, 26; viii. 51; 1 Tim. vi. 19; John iii. 36. Life begins at regeneration (Rom. vi. 4, 14; Eph. v. 14). Consists in the true knowledge of God (John xvii. 3). Scholarly commentators of all classes accept this interpretation. Life may be viewed in its beginning or its consummation, therefore under variant aspects. The whole usage sustained by the phrase " kingdom of heaven," in all respects. Analagous representations of a present sonship — a union to Christ or separation from him — health and disease — liberty and slavery. This usage of life and death abundant In the Bible. The states are very often viewed in their consummation, as states of pre-eminent blessedness or woe. No objection that the words are used also in the lower sense of physical life and death. Sarcasms of Blain and Hudson superfluous. Their evasive assumptions, that " life " is made merely synonymous with happiness, and " death " merely the punishment of sin by sin. Chief method of evasion, prolepsis. Alleged instances examined, and the argument refuted. Hudson involves him- self in contradictions, and virtually yields the point. The case summed up 36 CHAPTER IV. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. — "DESTRUCTION" AND OTHER TERMS. Annihilationists attempt to press several other words and phrases to their support. The attempt refuted in the following instances: destroy and de- struction; perish and perdition ; lose and lost; consume and devour; tear in pieces, break in pieces; grind to powder; cut off; blot out; not be; be as nothing ; be nought ; end ; burn ; burn up ; put under his feet. The futility of the annihilationist argument shown by numerous quotations from the mouth of Job, who, while uttering them, should have been ex- tinct more than twenty times over 92 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER V. TUB SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. — THE RESURRECTION AND THE SECOND DEATH. Promises of a blessed resurrection perverted into promises of a " resurrec- tion state " ( John vi. 39,40; Luke xx. 35; Phil. iii. 11). The fallacy refuted, and the tables turned. The fact of any resurrection for the wicked an ominous difficulty to annihilationists. Confession of Mr. Hud- son. Confusion among the advocates : some deny the fact. Hudson re- duces it to a minimum. An unsuccessful attempt to rise. The second death. Alleged literal sense. Hudson resorts to the Rabbins of later date, with no clear usage nor definite result. The New Testament capable of explaining itself. The phrase occurs four times, in one of which ( Rev. xxi. 8), it is explained as " having their part " in the lake of fire; else- where described as a place of perpetual torment. This view sustained by Rev. xx. 14, 15. The latter passage discussed 117 CHAPTER VI. THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. The chief reliance of the system. Quotations from Hudson and Hastings. Arguments from the nature of evil, and the nature of God. Evil alleged to be (1) not necessary in God's universe, (2) frail in its own nature. Fallaciousness of the positions. The argument from God's attributes answered negatively from our incompetency to decide for him; and posi- tively from existing facts : sin is and has been here from the creation. Its eternal continuance involves no diiferent principle. Common misap- prehension refuted by Dr. Whately, — not the amount of evil, but its ex- istence, constitutes the difficulty. Its continuance for a time proves its continuance for eternity to be compatible with God's perfections, if suffi- cient reasons exist. Will the reasons cease V What are they V The pres- ent aspect of the case an overwhelming refutation. The triumph over sin. John Foster quoted, and refuted by himself. 129 PART II. POSITIVE DISPROOF OF THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION. CHAPTER I. BELIEF OF A FUTURE EXISTENCE AMONG THE EARLIER JEWS. The inquiry mportant. Belief of another state of existence familiar to the Jews from ancient times. 1. Their residence in Egypt must have made them conversant with it. It existed in Egypt. Proof not alon« X CONTENTS. from historic testimony, but from the surviving records, — papyrus-rolls, mummy-cases, tombs. Wilkinson, Bunsen, Lepsius, Both. 2. The He- brew doctrine of the soul lays a foundation for it. The animating spirit everywhere distinguished from the earthly body. Quotations. 3. An- other sphere of existence early indicated in the translation of Enoch ; the testimony repeated in the case of Elijah. 4. The patriarchs are gath- ered to their fathers. The meaning of the statement proved by incontro- vertible cases. Admitted by scholars of all schools. Baumgarten, Gerlach, Knobel, Delitzsch. 5. The present life was reckoned a pilgrimage. 6. The practice of. invoking the dead required to be forbidden by law. A monarch violates the law of his kingdom. 7. Distinct references are made to the other world as a scene of retribution. Clear instances. — Ps. xvi., xvii., lxviii., xlix. ; Eccl. xii. 13, 14; Dan. xii. 2, 3, and others. 143 CHAPTER II. BELIEF OF A FUTURE EXISTENCE AMONG THE JEWS AT CHRIST'S COMING. The fact susceptible of clear proof by secular and sacred writers. Josephus on the Pharisees, Essenes, and Sadducees. His own remonstrance with his comrades, and other passages. The attempt to impeach the testimony of Josephus refuted at large. The testimony of Tacitus imperfectly given by Hudson. The testimony of Philo, very full and explicit. Paul's al- lusion to the Jewish doctrine (Acts xxiv. 15). Other implications in the New Testament of the general admission of a future existence for all (Luke xx. 27-33; Acts xxiii. 5-8; Matt. xxii. 23; John xi. 24). John the Baptist " risen " (Matt. xiv. 2) 168 CHAPTER III. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — IMMORTALITY. — IMMEDIATE DESTINY. The Saviour and his apostles, finding the doctrine of twofold retribution, were not called upon to announce the fact as a new teaching. Naturally dwelt on the characters to which these retributions should be assigned. Had no occasion to dilate on an abstract immortality, but only on a con- crete retribution. " The immortal soul : n cavil of Hastings and Hudson answered. The Scripture view and mode of speech; deals with the ac- tual fate of men hereafter. The Scriptures affirm the conscious existence of both classes after death, and prior to the resurrection. 1. The righteous (1) might enjoy celestial glories without the body (2 Cor. xii. 3); (2) would enjoy them if separated from the body (Phil. i. 21-24; 2 Cor. v. 1-9); (3) and do enter on them at once after death (Luke xxiii. 42, 43). Perversions refuted (Acts vii. 55-60); (4) spirits of departed believers are with God (Heb. xii. 23; vi. 12; Bev. xiv. 13; vi. 9-11). 2. The wicked CONTENTS. x i pass immediately to their doom. Analogy from the fate of fallen angels. Specific indications (Acts i. 25; 1 Pet. iii. 18-20; Luke xvi. 19-31). Ob- jections and evasions. Hudson, Hastings, Blain, Burnham, Storrs, Whately. 2 Pet. ii. 9 4 189 CHAPTER IV. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — A RESURRECTION AND A JUDGMENT FOR THE WICKED. Dsath leaves both classes of men in a state of existence and of conscious- ness. The Scriptures follow them further, to the judgment and the final retribution. The doctrine of a general judgment. Hinted at in the Old Testament; revealed in the New. The last day universal ; the wicked will be present. The judgment preceded by the resurrection of the wicked as well as the good. Proofs. Cavils. The momentous signifi- cance of the resurrection. Embarrasses the annihilationists. Hastings admits the difficulty. Others deny the fact. Some evade. Hudson's res- urrection 231 CHAPTER V. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — SHARING THE DOOM OF SATAN. Companions in the doom of the wicked; the fallen angels. Scriptures de- cisive. The doom of fallen angels is suffering, incessant and endless. Proof-texts. Replies of Dobney, Blain, Ellis and Read, Hudson. Mar- velous interpretations, — " dramatic " annihilation. Satan's doom. Bruis- ing the serpent's head. The utterances of the Apocalypse sustained by the gospels. The abyss; deep; bottomless-pit; lake of fire. Result. 249 CHAPTER VI. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — DIRECT DECLARATIONS. — FUTURE PUNISHMENT CONSISTS IN SUFFERING. The question is not left to inference. The Scriptures un r old in detail the meaning of their own threats. Degrees of punishment involve the fact of conscious suffering. The difficulty felt. Reply of Dobney, Hastings, and others. Its insufficiency and inconsistency. The sufferings of the wicked vary like the joys of the righteous. The direct statements of the New Testament lay the whole emphasis of the punishment on the suffer- ing involved. Instances. Whatever the figure, the suffering is the main feature. " Outer darkness " attended with " gnashing of teeth." The " furnace of fire ; " the " portion with hypocrites; " exclusion from the kingdom; all coupled with the same description. " Torment " in the lake of fire. Evasions. The unquenchable fire. Various evasions considered. Everlasting punishment. The words vacated of their proper meaning by annihilationists. Their devices examined. Other passages 264 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — SUFFERINGS PROTRACTED AND ENDLESS. The Scriptures teach not only suffering in the future, but that suffering protracted and endless. In various modes, 1. Passages which involve the representation without using the words " everlasting," etc. (Matt. v. 25; xviii. 34, 35; xii. 31, 32). 2. Passages which employ the terms 14 eternal," etc. (Matt. iii. 12; Mark ix. 43-48; Matt. xxv. 41, 46; xviii. 8; Jude 7; 2 Thes. i. 9; Jude6; Mark iii. 29; Heb. vi. 1,2; Jude 13; 2 Pet. ii. 17; Rev. xiv. 11; xix. 3; xx. 10). The terms discussed, and evasions refuted at length. Limited duration, eternity of effect, or finality, alleged instances of "finality" (Heb. v. 9; vi. 2; ix. 12; xiii. 20; Philem. 15; Rev. xiv. 6). 3. The suffering of the wicked coeval and co-eternal with the happiness of the righteous. Simultaneous with it (Luke xiii. 24-30; Matt. viii. 11, 12; Rev. xxii. 14, 15; and other passages). Co-eternal (Matt. xxv. 34-41, 46; 2 Thess. i. 7-11) 298 CHAPTER VIII. TENDENCIES AND AFFINITIES OF THF SYSTEM OF ANNIHILATION. Theories show their character in their influences and affinities. Time is requisite, and freedom from outer restraint. This system too young to have a history. But its tendencies already betray themselves. 1. Ration- alism: a disposition to disparage and over-ride God's Word. Quotations from Hudson, Ellis and Read, Blain, Hastings, Burnham. 2. Sympathy with the Universalist and infidel, and concessions to them. Employing their modes of argument. Conceding the validity of their positions as against orthodoxy. Quotations. 3. Materialism: the denial of the spirit's existence. Storrs, Blain, Ellis and Read, openly renounce the belief of any soul distinct from the body and its functions. Quotations. The fact deprecated by Hudson. 4. Gross sensualism. Conclusion 364 APPENDIX. Note A. Extracts on Life and Death 359 Note B. The meaning of Phil. i. 21-24 361 Note C. Hades 364 Note D. Misinterpretation of Dan. xii. 2 366 Note E. Perversion of Rev. xx. 10 368 Note F. Unquenchable Fire 374 Note G. The meaning of KoTiaatg 377 Note H. Gehenna 381 Note I. The Book of Enoch on future punishment 385 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. I VJT^lVEHSlT s* s4 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. CHAPTER I. THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION STATED. THE great mass of believers in the divine inspira- tion and authority of the Bible, in all ages, have understood that book plainly to assert the endless misery of the wicked. Open rejecters of the divine authority of the volume, men of scholarship and abil- ity, priding themselves upon accepting no man's state- ment at second hand, have also declared that doctrine to be among the things that " Jesus taught." * , By the general admission of friend and foe, that doctrine is in the Scriptures. It is there, not as the central doctrine of the scheme of grace, nor as the vital truth on which depends the soul's regeneration and sanctification, but as the dark back-ground of that scheme of grace, — a solemn feature of God's govern- ment, and a fact of momentous import to the human * "I believe that Jesus Christ taught eternal torment: ... I do not accept it on his authority." — Theodore Parker's " Two Sermons," p. 14. _84639 16 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. race. Its aspect is confessedly terrific. The thought of it is appalling, and sometimes confounding, even to those who are safe from its power ; while those who claim no such protection can not fail to look upon it with dread and aversion. If the fact could be set aside from God's government by the vote of his sin- ning subjects, it would at once be stricken out by an overwhelming majority. It is not surprising that the doctrine should be resisted ; that some should reject the volume that contains it; and that others, con- strained to receive the book, should labor hard to clear it of the doctrine. Accordingly, in the midst of this general agreement, there have arisen from time to time individuals and bodies of men who have denied that the doctrine of endless misery is in the word of God. But here appears a singular phenomenon : the op- posers can not agree among themselves. They are at irreconcilable odds. They say, " The Bible does not teach that the destiny of the wicked is endless suffer- ing." We ask them, " What, then, does it declare to be their future destiny ? " And the first and largest body of them answer, " Suffering, we know not how pro- tracted and severe, but final restoration to holiness and happiness." Another portion boldly say, " No pun* ishment at all hereafter ; but all men at death enter on a state of happiness." And here comes a third section, who, with equal boldness and positiveness, aver that God's word teaches neither the future suffering and recovery, nor the immediate blessedness, of the wicked, but their complete extinction. Antagonism could not be more total than it is between the advocates of final THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION STATED. 17 Restoration, of extreme Univerealism, and of Annihi- lation. The fact is significant: the great body of interpreters, friend and foe, agreeing as to the clear teaching of the Bible on this subject ; a minority denying, but propounding instead three separate doc- trines, as contradictory to each other as to that which they deny ! The present discussion concerns only the third of these three errors, — the theory which teaches the anni- hilation of the impenitent wicked. The fundamental doctrine common to the advocates of the theory is this: The death with which God threatened sin, and which actually became the doom of the sinful race, was ab- solute extinction of being. Only believers in Christ are delivered from this doom ; and immortality is the "eternal life" which was promised to his fol- lowers. In the subordinate doctrines, the advocates of anni- hilation are not agreed. Most of their writers hold that this extinction of being takes place when the body dies ; the soul or spirit being nothing more than the life of the man. Thus says Jacob Blain, " The Bible plainly tells us that men and beasts are made of the same material, ' dust ; ' and that both have the ' same breath ; ' and that they both die alike, — but, mark, a resurrection is not told for both.'' Again : u The existence of a soul or spirit as an entity within us is only inferred from a few uncertain texts, which can be explained another way ; while numerous plain texts and the sense of the Bible are against it."* Thomas Read lays down as one of his main positions, * Death, not Life, pp. 39, 42. 18 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. " The corporeal being and mortality of the soul, and the nature of the spirit of man ; which spirit, not being a living entity, is neither mortal nor immortal;" and affirms, that " no conscious spirit or soul survives the death of man." * George Storrs, in discussing the question, "Does the Bible teach that the creature, man which the Lord God formed of the dust of the ground, has a superadded entity called the soul ? " says, " We take the negative; " f and again : " I regard the phrase ' immaterial,' as one which properly belongs to the things which are not ; a sound without sense or meaning ; a mere cloak to hide the nakedness of the theory of an immortal soul in man." J Zenas Camp- bell declares that " no Scripture or philosophy has ever yet been shown to prove the mind any thing more than an attribute of the living, organized dust ; and if so, it must cease with the life of the body." § Thus the whole being becomes extinct at death. At the resurrection, God re-organizes the body, and endows it with its former active and thinking powers : the right- eous then live on for ever ; and the wicked are again blotted out of existence, — which is the second death. Some of the writers speak doubtfully about the resur- rection of the wicked, or even deny it. H. L. Hastings not only holds to the resurrection of the wicked, but intimates that their complete extinc- tion may occupy a protracted and unknown period thereafter. | * Bible vs. Tradition, pp. 13, 121. (■ Discussion between Prof. H. Mattison and George Storrs, p. 4. J Six Sermons, by George Storrs, p. 29. § The Age of Gospel Light. U Retribution, or The Doom of the Ungodly, pp. 77, 153. V • „. 1 1 — THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION STATED 19 C. F. Hudson teaches that the sentence is executed in two installments, — the dissolution of the body first, then the extinction of the soul at the time of resur- rection. Rejecting the extreme materialism of his coadjutors, he holds that the soul may require the body as the necessary means of its activity. An inter- mediate state or " detention " receives all souls on parting from the body, — a state of inaction, which, at its close, may seem to have been but momentary, and to which, in the case of the righteous, he applies the phrase "fallen asleep" in Christ; from which, at the resurrection, the just are called forth to be clothed with a glorified body, and to enter on immortal activ- ity ; and from which, like a damaged seed that ex- hausts its vitality and perishes in the act of germina- tion, the unjust start up at the voice of God to become extinct in the very act.* The whole question thus at issue is a question of fact. The only valid testimony concerning it must be the declaration of Him who holds the destiny of the soul in his hands. For as no being on earth can pre- tend to have witnessed events that lie still in the fu- ture, so none can testify what they shall be, except Him on whose sole decision they depend. Nor can any man, from his general estimate of God's character, affirm what definite thing God will do. It would require a knowledge of God's whole being, resources, views, intentions, of his entire plan of government, with all its necessities and peculiarities, more thor- oughly exhaustive than one man ever yet possessed concerning a fellow-man, his equal. To declare cou- * Debt and Grace, pp. 263-4. 20 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. fidently what God will do with the finally impenitent, aside from his own declaration, is to put ourselves in the place of God. In the absence of all communi- cations from him, the judgments of our reason and the anticipations of our moral nature would be enti- tled to some respect, more or less. Reason has ex- pressed her apprehensions of a coming retribution. But to give positive testimony as to the facts or meth- ods of the case is beyond her province ; much more, to speak in opposition to God's testimony. We repeat it, God is the only competent witness on this subject. If therefore we accept the Scriptures as the word of God, and if the Scriptures have spoken on this subject, it is in the highest degree reprehensible to draw our decisive views on this subject from any other source, or to override their fair testimony by any other considerations. Against sound testimony mere speculations are never of any account : against the testimony of God they are preposterous. Our appeal, then, is to the Scriptures. The advo- cates of annihilation profess to make this appeal, but often in such a way as to show that the decisive con- sideration lies elsewhere. Thus Mr. Hudson, who has written far the most elaborate treatise in defense of the doctrine, in a volume of four hundred and seventy pages devotes but sixty-seven to the scriptural argu- ment, which lies embedded in a great mass of other matter, and seems to form but a limited part of his reliance. Stimulated, however, by the remark of a re- viewer who called attention to this circumstance, the same writer subsequently published a separate volume of Scripture arguments " to meet the convenience of THE DOCTRINE OF ANNIHILATION STATED. 21 those who rely, for their views of future life, upon their reading and interpretation of the Scriptures ." In the preface, from which we quote, he also adds, that lie " doubts if an exclusively scriptural argument will prove satisfactory to very many, however clearly it may appear to be made out."* This is a confession indeed. The treatises of Blain and others, though in form more scriptural, are sprinkled with remarks which indicate that certain rational considerations are allowed great weight in determining the question. These considerations will receive some attention in the course of this discussion. But the first business is to examine the testimony of the Scriptures. Now, all the plausibility there is in the scriptural ar- gument for annihilation consists of two main features: first, the constant restriction of the phrase " eternal life," with its opposite, " death," to denote simply con- tinued existence and cessation of existence respectively, in violation alike of the common use and the clear Scripture use of the words ; and, secondly, the attempt to confine certain other expressions, setting forth the punitive anger of God in vivid and terrific material imagery, down to the lowest sensual aspect of those figurative expressions. Among these phrases are the following : to be destroyed or lost, to perish, to be devoured, to be consumed, slain, cut off, torn in pieces, broken to pieces, dashed in pieces, crushed, ground to powder, burned, or burned up, cut in sunder, to be as nothing, to be as ashes, to be put away as dross ; per- dition, end, corruption. All these diverse, and, if lit- erally taken, conflicting modes of representation are * Christ our Life, preface, p. 3. 22 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. cited as conveying the one meaning of annihilation. These several modes of expression will be examined in due time. Meanwhile it becomes necessary to say something concerning the genuine methods of repre- sentation employed in the Scriptures, and concerning the radical fallacy with which those representations are treated by the advocates of annihilation. CHAPTER II. THE FUNDAMENTAL VICE OP THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT FOR ANNIHILATION. THE Scriptures everywhere speak in the language of the people. They never employ metaphysical terms , but constantly set forth the most thoroughly spiritual facts by means of such sense images as the common people always use and understand. It is a book not for the metaphysicians, but for the millions. Its language and idioms throughout are conformed to those of the multitude. As it is the universal custom to speak of men as elevated, cast down, sunk, overthrown, wounded, stung, cut to the heart, broken, broken down, broken up, devoured, consumed, eaten up, shat- tered, crushed, and the like, to denote purely spiritual phenomena, which leave the entire being of the man unimpaired ; precisely so the Scriptures speak in the language of men. Abundant expressions of this gen- eral nature are found extending through the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, it is mostly by such figura- tive expressions, — and that too, as will presently be shown, from the necessity of the case, — that all the leading truths concerning God's dealings and man's destiny are communicated. They are employed, not alone Tespecting the destiny of the wicked, but con- cerning the enjoyments of the righteous, and all the other themes of the word of God. 23 24 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Now, the grand mistake of the system under dis- cussion is, that its advocates single out one topic from the whole mass of themes, and violate here the whole usage of the Bible to maintain their tenet. Men who see in a moment the folly of understanding literally the statement that David's soul "thirsteth," "panteth," " melteth," and is " poured out," or that the righteous are to attend a great wedding-feast, where they shall eat and drink, and recline in Abraham's bosom, lay aside all the settled laws of speech when they reach this one subject, — the future destiny of the wicked. Terms that are plainly metaphorical, or terms that are used in a secondary or pregnant sense, they insist on forcing down to a narrow and sensuous meaning, which is inconsistent alike with the general tenor of Scrip- ture phraseology, and with the use of these very phrases in other passages. On this one subject, the future des- tiny of the wicked, they persistently degrade all phrase- ology to a gross, material meaning. If a term has both a lower and a higher signification, in this connection the/ insist upon the lower. If a term significant of spiritual facts had a sensuous origin, — as nearly all such terms have had, — they maintain that the sensuous meaning must still cling to it. If a figure of speech vividly presenting the vehemence of God's vengeance, and the intensity of its impression, be drawn — as from the nature of the case it must be — from objects "and scenes in which intensity of action produces disorgani- zation, the system seizes on that mere material and in- cidental feature, the disorganization, and refuses to see all the deeper significance of the description. It takes nothing but the husk. No language, much less FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF THE ARGUMENT. 25 an oriental tongue, will bear such treatment. It is simply a materializing of human speech ; rather it takes away the life, and leaves but the carcass. A notable, though somewhat extreme illustration of this process appears in the argument of Mr. Blain in regard to the nature of the spirit, or soul. He finds that the Hebrew and Greek words meaning spirit (one of which he invariably misspells) have an original meaning of " breath," that the Greek word " soul," sometimes means life ; and on this basis, in defiance of the insuperable evidence to the contrary, and with a heavy rebuke of our " careless translators," and the " folly of our popular expositions," he boldly maintains that the Bible declares the spirit to be but the breath, and the soul but the life, of the body.* The argument, of course, is precisely the same as if one should maintain, that, because the English words " spirit " and " soul " are derived from words signifying to breathe and to blow, therefore the whole body of English theologians believe the soul, or spirit, to be but the breath ; and that, when the heart is spoken of as the fountain of sin and the seat of holiness, we mean to refer those qualities to that physical organ in the human body which carries on the circulation of the blood. It may be well to glance at the process of human speech in all such subjects. The primary reference of all, or nearly all, language seems to have been outward and physical. Outward observation is the earliest and most universal exercise of the human faculties. Ma- terial things require first to be named, and material acts to be described. Accordingly, the basis of all * Death, not Life, pp. 27-42. 26 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. speech is sensuous, and its primary meaning external and concrete. Intellectual and spiritual existences, facts, and transactions, more slowly attract the atten- tion, and are with more difficulty apprehended and de- scribed. In thinking of them, men are accustomed to aid their thoughts by viewing them under the anal- ogies of the material things so much more familiar to them. Under such analogies, they represent them to others. Thus it has come to pass that the terms which now undeniably designate spiritual phenomena, are words originally of physical origin and use, transferred to a secondary and higher meaning. Sometimes they have entirely lost their primary reference ; sometimes they retain it in connection with the other and higher meanings. So, also, the longer forms of statement, whereby mental states, emotions, acts, and results are set forth, are almost of necessity analogical. It is pe- culiarly so in the more concrete and simple languages, and in addresses of a popular cast. Indeed it would puzzle a metaphysician to describe a state of high men- tal emotion in any other way. His statements, when analyzed, would prove to be a series of physical meta- phors, while yet he is speaking of mental phenomena. Thus, to perceive, was, by origin, to take through ; to conceive, to take together ; to imagine, to have an image ; to apprehend, to lay hold of; to reflect, to turn back ; to excite, to summon forth ; to provoke, to call forth. So with a multitude of words of Latin origin. In the Saxon usage, a man of hot blood is a passionate man ; a man of good blood is of good descent, or an- cestry ; a man of nerve is a firm man. Heart stands continually for affection or feeling, and brain for intel- FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF THE ARGUMENT. 27 lect. Stiff-necked is obstinate. To be keen, sharp, dull, heavy, to have a long head, a thick skin, a heavy hand, a sharp tongue, a foul mouth, are desig- nations of intellectual and moral traits, though the form of speech has a purely physical aspect. A man is broken down with sorrow, crushed with calamity, lacerated with grief, rent with anguish, melted with emotion, when every faculty of mind and body is sound and whole. He is prostrated with fear, is irretrievably fallen, is ruined, not in body but in soul, when yet the substance and all the powers of his soul remain untouched. He is eaten up by avarice, racked with anxiety, devoured by ambition, consumed with lust, sunk in vice, drowned in sorrow, burned up with fierce and evil passions, — and that, too, when his being and all its essential functions are so far from extinct, that they are in a state of the most intense activity. These last-mentioned phrases illustrate, to one who has through all his life heard and used such common idi- oms of speech without ever having carefully examined them, several important principles : First, that the use of strongly sensuous expressions concerning immaterial facts and phenomena is in no danger of misleading the common mind, but is the necessary mode of setting forth those subjects in their intensity. Second, that ai: assertion couched in figurative language is just as real and substantial as one made in more literal terms, only more significant. Third, that a low and material construction of such phrases gives a result in direct contradiction to their real and well-understood mean- ing. Fourth, that, from the very nature of material objects, no vivid comparison or illustration can be 28 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. drawn from them to spiritual things, without involving some incidental element that could be pressed into direct opposition to the true intent of the comparison as a whole. Now, it would be idle to explain to any man, that, in the phrases above cited, the words " crushed," " ruined," " consumed," " devoured," " eaten up," " drowned," do not imply extinction. It would be ridiculous to argue that they do ; and yet this is precisely the kind of reasoning with which anni- hilationism encounters the Bible. The words do not even imply suspension of functions, but the greatest activity. The gross fallacy of dealing thus with the language of the Scriptures becomes still more apparent when we look more closely at their peculiar style of speech. The language of the Old Testament, both in its indi- vidual terms and more extended forms of expression, is remarkably concrete and sensuous. Intellectual and moral qualities, acts, and results are constantly repre- sented in physical modes. From a vast multitude of instances consider the following, many of them lost in the translation. The common word for anger prima- rily means nostrils ; fierce anger was a burning ; fer- vent prayer, a heat ; pains, wri things ; possession (sometimes), a measuring-line ; honor, weight ; afflic- tions, straits ; prosperity, a large place ; a man's con- duct, his way or path ; his presence, his face ; right conduct, straight paths ; innocency, clean hands ; pride, a high look. The word signifying to transgress means primarily to miss the mark ; to bless or pray, to kneel; to worship, to prostrate one's self; to mourn, to smite [the breast] ; to exult, to move in a circle or dance ; FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF THE ARGUMENT. 29 to swear, to seven one's self, or use the sacred number ; to begin, to perforate or open ; to favor or delight in, to curve towards ; to listen, to make sharp [the ears] ; to natter, to make smooth [the tongue] ; to slander (in one instance at least), to walk with or upon the tongue. To spy out a land was to travel over it, or to dig through it. To exact usury was to bite, then to vex. Ardent desire was a thirsting or panting of the soul ; vehement affection, a yearning of the bowels. Oppression of the poor (Isa. iii. 15) is literally to grind, or still more literally to beat small, their faces or persons. When David prays (Ps. li. 2), " Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity," he uses a word which is understood to have originally signified to trample with the feet in washing. A strictly literal translation of the phrase (Dan. vi. 24), " those men which had accused Daniel," would be, " who ate the pieces of Daniel." When men were utterly dismayed and dispirited (Josh. vii. 5 ; ii. 11), their " hearts melt- ed, and became as water." If the children of Israel are exhorted to be pure and obedient, they are (Deut. x. 16) to " circumcise the foreskin of their heart, and be no* more stiff-necked." It was prophesied (Num. xxiv. 8) that Israel should " eat up the nations his enemies, and break [literally, craunch] their bones." David cel- ebrates the completeness of his triumph, when he was delivered " out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul" (2 Sam. xxii. 1), by the strong "figure (ver. 43), " Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth ; I did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad." When the wicked persecute the righteous (Ps. xiv. 4), they *0 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. 'eat up my people as they eat bread." In Mic. iii. 2, >, the oppression of evil rulers is described with star- tling minuteness of imagery : "Who pluck off their skin irom off them, and their flesh from off their bones ; who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from jff them ; and they break their bones, and chop them ,1>. pieces as for the pot, and as flesh within the cal- ^wn." To be terrified or dismayed is commonly ex- )oi ossed (Job vii. 14 ; Josh. i. 9, &c.) by a word which *h orally means and is elsewhere translated (Isa. ix. 4 ; yh v. li. 56} to be broken, or, more fully, to be broken \i pieces. The dealings of God are described in a similar way. O tfamities are his plagues, literally blows ; he swal- lows up the wall of Jerusalem (Lam. ii. 8) ; he makes Ivs arrows drunk with blood, and his sword devours flesh (Deut. xxxii. 42) ; and Jeremiah says of him, ' He hath broken my bones," " He hath pulled me in pieces," " Thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied " (Lam. iii. 4, 11, 43). The meaning of these and a great multitude of sim- ilar expressions is perfectly clear. To adhere to the drimary meaning of the words and phrases is not ilone utterly to miss the real meaning of the writer, but, in some instances, to convert the whole into an ab- surdity. Thus, Daniel was alive and well after his enemies had eaten his pieces. The Israelites certainly were not cannibals. The inhabitants of Canaan had not received the slightest physical hurt, only a terrible aiarm, when their hearts melted, and there did not re- main any more spirit [so the original, Josh. ii. 11] in any man. Jeremiah and his fellows were still alive to FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF TEE ARGUMENT. 31 make their complaint, though part of their lamenta- tion was, that they were pulled in pieces and slain, and even (Lam. iii. 53) that " they have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me." God's mak- ing his arrows drunk with blood, and devouring flesh with his sword, and his swallowing up the wall of Je- rusalem, no man presses further than to express a fear- ful vengeance such as those acts vividly set forth. Nor do such expressions indicate a single and transient ac- tion, but often a prolonged course of punishment. Here comes to view, then, the principle underlying the Scripture representations even of transactions the most spiritual, including alike men's innermost experi- ences, and God's relations and proceedings towards men. They are all set forth by such material phe- nomena as are well known and powerfully impressive ; but only certain aspects of those phenomena are had in view, to the entire exclusion of certain others which may be, in fact, connected with them. As the most vivid image of firmness, stability, and shelter, God is called " a rock ; " although a perverse ingenuity might torture out of the same image the meaning of indiffer- ence and insensibility. His vigilance, and power to protect his friends and defeat his foes, are strongly set forth, when it is said, " The Lord is a man of war ; " but all other, even the more common qualities of an actual human warrior of those days, are excluded from the thought. He bestows upon his friends a fearless strength when he " exalts their horn like the horn of an unicorn : " with that one trait all resemblance ends. Sometimes God is compared to the " fierce lion " (Job iv. 10; Isa. xxxi. 4), and is described as tearing in 32 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. pieces (Lam. iii. 10, 11), breaking the bones (Isa. xxxviii. 13), devouring his prey, and rending the caul of their heart (Hos. xiii. 7, 8) ; but here, assur- edly, the irresistibleness and terribleness of his punish- ments are the qualities in view, while, of course, the bloodthirstiness and cruelty of the actual beast of prey, and its bodily laceration of its victim, are wholly out of the question. Sometimes the terror of his anger is denoted by the tempest, the lightning, and the fire (Ps. xviii. 7-17). Its awfully overwhelming power is represented by the wind driving the chaff before it (Ps. i. 4), or the flame sweeping through the stubble (Mai. iv. 1). The completeness of his victory is sym- bolized in various ways : he is the warrior, setting his foot on the neck of his enemies (Ps. ex. 1), or ruling with a rod of iron (Ps. ii. 9). He is the vintager, treading down the people in the wine-press of wrath, and trampling them in his fury, the blood staining all his raiment (Isa. lxiii.); yea, the " blood came out of the wine-press even unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs'' (Rev. xiv.' 20). He is the stone grinding them to powder (Matt, xxi. 44). "He shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them" (Ps. xxi. 9), — two incompatible processes combined in one image of ter- ror. His enemies are brought to naught ; they are nothing; they are put away as dross; they consume into smoke; they are trodden down, and are as ashes under his feet ; the remembrance of them is cat off from the earth ; their "place shall not be." Now, any one who casts his eye over these collected representations should see, even without any detailed FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF THE ARGUMENT. 33 exposition, that the one common element in them all is the simple idea of a terrific overthrow and punish- ment, overwhelming, resistless. That one fact stands out perfectly distinct through all these varied symbols ; and that alone. Press the imagery down to any lower point, and you make the representations incompatible vrilh each other ; some of them absurd, and some of them intolerable. What shall we say of the stream of blood bridle-deep, and two hundred miles long ? Dare we assign it any more definite idea than that of a ter- rible vengeance ? but that one thought it fearfully sets forth. What shall we say of swallowing, pulling in pieces, and rending the caul of the heart ? Dare we press it further than to mean an overthrow and punishment as helpless and complete as when a torn victim is undergoing this dismemberment by some re- sistless beast of prey ? Putting them away as dross, treading them down, driving them as chaff, even cut- ting off the remembrance of them, cutting off their place, are no images of annihilation ; but these and all the others are obvious and striking representations of helpless, hopeless overthrow. The principle thus brought to view is the selection of the most striking facts of the outward world to rep- resent spiritual transactions, and the fixing of the mind upon some one prominent aspect of the material image to the exclusion of all its other bearings ; and that, too, while the material image rigidly pressed in all its possible bearings, and especially its lower ones, would contradict the real meaning of the writer. And let it be noted, that, from the nature of the case, it is impossible to select any material symbol in which such 34 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. intense action as is here represented shall not be inci- dentally attended with disorganization. No compari- son can hold except in certain respects ; much less can any perfect analogy be found between things sen- sual and things spiritual. The sacred writers could not select any material symbols of God's anger and its effects, which should be free from the incidental fea- ture of transientness and perishableness. Now, here the annihilationist steps in, and insists, in every instance, on passing by the clear and striking point of the representation to fix only on this inciden- tal and unavoidable defect growing out of the nature of the case, and cuts down all these varied and im- pressive representations to a mere dissolution, or rather annihilation. He does it in defiance of the whole usage of Scripture, which employs these and kindred terms, as we have seen and shall see further, concerning per- sons and bodies of men still extant, with every faculty of body and soul in full vigor. In precisely the same manner in whicli the annihila- tion argument is conducted, and with equal strength, an ingenious disputant might show that God is en- dowed with eyes, ears, arms, hands, feet, a nose, mouth, tongue, heart ; is armed with weapons, — sword, bow, spear, shield; rides in a chariot; tiavels from place to place ; possesses all the passions and modes of think- ing and acting of an exalted man ; has children ; lives in a splendid mansion ; and the like. On the same principle, the Pharisees looked for a warrior-Christ, coming with a splendid earthly retinue and pomp to crush out all human oppressors and exalt the Jewish nation to the hight of earthly power. It FUNDAMENTAL VICE OF THE ARGUMENT. 35 was the same spirit of gross and sensual interpretation, abandoning the spirit for the letter, the kernel for the husk. This principle of interpretation is a false one, — specious, perhaps, to those who look only on the sur- face of speech and only at this one theme in the Scriptures, but refuted by the commonest usage of language, by the entire method of Scripture expression, and by the plain and frequent meaning of these very forms of speech. Having looked at the fallacy of the fundamental principle, we shall now proceed to consider the details. CHAPTER III. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED: DEATH AND LIFE. IF it can be shown that the doctrine of a future ex- istence was the received doctrine of the Israelitish nation, it would be proper to insist that all the phrase- ology quoted by annihilationists must be understood as modified or controlled by that supposition. But we are perfectly willing, for the present, to waive that important consideration, and to examine those phrases on the simple ground of Scripture usage. The chief stronghold of the system under exami- nation is founded upon the use of the words " death " and " life " in the Scriptures. Mr. Hudson correctly remarks, that these are the terms most commonly used to represent the respective destinies of men. And for a good reason : they are brief, striking, and singularly comprehensive. Still they are not, by any means, the only modes of representation : but the destiny of the wicked is frequently described in very varied forms of speech, expressive of the deepest positive suffering; and the future condition of the righteous is represented as one of comfort and joy. Now, every instance in which death is threatened to the sinner is quoted as proof of his annihilation. It is, says Mr. Blain, " extinction of being, soul, and body." Says Mr. Dobney, death is " a return to that 36 THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 31 state of blank nothingness from which the Almighty fiat had so recently called " our first parents ; while the promised life is " existence only," or, as he waver- ingly adds in parenthesis, " at all events, chiefly." Mr. Hudson has much to say of the necessity of hold- ing to the literal sense of these terms, although he noticeably refrains from saying, in so many words, that life is mere existence ; while yet, as we shall see, the meaning that his argument requires is not the literal sense of the terms. Meanwhile every passage in which death or dying is threatened to the sinner is quoted as proof of annihilation. Mr. Blain accumulates upwards of fifty texts from the Scriptures : Mr. Hudson pushes the matter further still, and adduces all the passages he finds among the early Christian fathers, containing these phrases, to prove that they held the doctrine of annihilation. And yet he is obliged to admit that " these terms are sometimes used in a tropical sense ;" * and Mr. Dobney will not " deny that ' life ' may sometimes be used in the sense alleged," that is, in a higher or pregnant sense. f But the attempt to prove the doctrine of annihilation from the threats of death to the sinner, and promises of eternal life to the believer, can not sustain an exami- nation. 1. Death does not literally mean, nor does it include, extinction of being, cessation of existence, or even dissolution ; nor is life, in its lower sense, simply synon- ymous with existence. The distinction between the animate and inanimate is not between the existent and * Debt and Grace, p. 172. t The Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment, p. 168. 38 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the non-existent. Here are two trees : one is dead, and the other is alive, but they both are in existence, and both are trees. Death does not itself signify even decay or dissolution ; for the dead tree is still entire. A dead body is still a body, though dead. It is still in existence : it exists as a body, sometimes for two or three thousand years, — not a living body, still a body. It is therefore an egregious oversight to say or imply that the common or literal meaning of the word " death" is cessation of being. It does not of itself include, but is distinct from, the dissolution which usually follows physical death : and that dissolution, again, is not extinction, only a change of form ; for no matter is annihilated. Accordingly, none of the definitions of the word "death," as found in Webster's Dictionary, include annihilation ; while the primary meaning of the word, as there given, turns, not on the extinction of being, but on the cessation of certain functions. How thoroughly this harmonizes with and forms the basis of the scriptural use of the word " death," as de- scribing the effect of sin, will presently appear. Mean- while, let it be settled that " death " does not literally and in its lowest use signify extinction of being, nor " life " simply its continuance. The Scripture itself shall be our witness on this point, even when speaking of subjects not endowed with immortality. " Thou fool ! that which thou sow- est is not quickened, except it die" (1 Cor. xv. 36). " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit " (John xii. 24). Is a grain of wheat annihilated in order to germinate ? or is there merely a change THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. -jQ of condition and mode of action, while its existence and properties remain ? 2. But, secondly, there is found, running through all languages, a higher, and what some lexicographers have called a pregnant, sense of these words, " life " and " death," whereby they denote not only the per- formance or cessation of certain functions, but also the healthful, harmonious, and happy performance of them, or the contrary. They respect the normal and com- plete discharge of those functions, especially in the higher faculties of animated beings. Life is then a state of healthful activity, and thus also of prosperity or true welfare. Indeed, we speak even of the life of something not properly animate to designate its force, spirit, or what- ever makes it sound, valuable, or adequate to its proper end. Dead capital is that which lies useless or un- productive. A lifeless poem is simply one which lacks the higher qualities of poetry. A speech falls dead when it fails to make the appropriate impression : or, on the other hand, the speaker's manner is full of ani- mation ; and his speech, of life. We speak of a live enterprise, or of lifeless yeast or wine. Still more common is the use of the words " live " and " life," to express a condition of welfare, prosper- ity, or enjoyment. Sometimes in the Old Testament these terms describe simple bodily health and activity. Thus in Josh. v. 8 : " When they had done circumcising all the people, they abode in their places in the camp till they were whole ; " in the Hebrew, " till they lived " or were alive. A vigorous woman was, in the Hebrew, 40 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. a "living" woman (Exod.i. 19), and a valiant man wan one who was " alive" (2 Sam. xxiii. 20). Decay of the generative power in the human system, as one of its most important functions, is described (in Rom. iv. 19) as hi the deadness of Sarah's womb," and Abra- ham's " body now dead." Ahaziah and Hezekiah both inquire, " Shall I recover" — literally, " shall I live " — from this disease ? (2 Kings i. 2 ; viii. 8.) The Hebrew used the same terms to express a more general welfare, whether of body, mind, or condition. Samson's refreshment after extreme thirst (Judg. xv. 19), and Jacob's rallying from deep grief, are described by the same Hebrew word, as their " living," or com- ing to life, or, as the translators give it, "reviving; " on the other hand, the extreme terror and mental dis- tress of Nabal (1 Sam. xxv. 37) is described by the words, " His heart died within him, and he became as a stone." The form of shouting wishes of joy and prosper- ity to the Hebrew monarchs (1 Sam. x. 24 ; 2 Sam. xvi. 16) was, "Let the king live! " like the modern French cry, " Vive le roi ! " * When David repaired Jerusa- lem after its capture from the Jebusites (1 Chron. xi. 8), he " made it alive." When the Psalmist prays that God would restore their former prosperity and happi- ness to his people, he prays (Ps. lxxxv. 6), " Wilt thou not make us alive again, that thy people may rejoice in thee ? " Says Solomon, " Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ; but, when desire cometh, it is a tree of life," i.e. clearly, of joy and happiness. Similar is the passage, " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance * We need not continually repeat that we follow the original in these instances from the Old Testament. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 41 of the things which he possesseth" (Luke xii. 15). A very striking instance occurs in 1 Thess. iii. 8 : " For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord," — we are happy, blessed. The same radical conception of life as denoting, not simple existence, but true functional activity, alone can explain such opposite phrases as " dead faith " (Jas. ii. 17, 20, 26) and " dead works " (Heb. vi. 1; ix. 14). The faith was dead because it put forth none of the true activities of gospel faith ; the works, because they contained within no such vital force. Neither of them had ever been alive : they had not died, though they were " dead." The words here designate condition rather than transaction. The land of Egypt is spoken of as "dying" (Gen. xlvii. 19), when, as explained in the same verse, it was " desolate ; " and Pharaoh names the terrible ruin which the locusts brought upon Egypt, as " this death " (Exod. x. 17). The Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, furnish numerous other cases in which " life," clearly, and by the agreement of the best lexicographers and interpreters, signifies true functional action, welfare, prosperity, happiness, and the like ; and " death," its opposite. The above examples are sufficient. A similar usage occurs in our own habits of speech on serious subjects. We speak of men as being alive to every good enterprise and to every high considera- tion, or as dead to all better feelings and higher pur- poses, to all good, to their friends or family, to society or their country ; of a living death ; of a life worthy of the name ; of the difference being living and exist* ing : — " That man may last, but never lives, Who much receives, yet nothing gives." 42 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. But, should any one object that this is a theological phraseology, we send him to the Greek and Latin classics to find the same usage there. He may turn to Freund's, Andrews', or Leverett's Lexicon, and find that vivo, to live, also means " to live well, live at ease, enjoy life," with references to Cicero, Horace, Lucilius, Catullus, and Sallust. " Since you urge me to labor and ambition," says Cicero, u I will comply ; but when shall we live ? " Says Horace, u Master of himself, and joyously does that man pass his time, who can daily say, I have lived." Says the well-known inscription, " Dum vivimus, vivamus " — " While we live, let us live." Cicero, in his " Old Age," speaks of a " vita vita- lise It were as easy as it is unnecessary to accumulate instances of this kind. It hardly seems a metaphorical meaning of the words : * the lexicons well designate it as a "pregnant" meaning, — one which the words involve whenever they are applied, not to a mere or- ganism, but specifically to an intellectual and sentient being.f The same usage occurs in the Greek : C«w, " to live," has also the meaning " to be active, efficient," and the still higher meaning " to live prosperously and truly." J » ■ — ■ ■ - -• --- -■■ — ■ f ■- — - — -- ■ - ■ - — -....■■■, ..,■■■ — , „ , — _^^____ * Mr. Hudson in his later work is constrained to make the important ad- mission that words sometimes " break beyond the limits of the letter. But when this lively sense becomes the ordinary sense, that is only a new literal or proper sense" (Christ our Life, p. 66). He insists, however, that, in all cases, the primary sense has prima facie evidence in its favor. But even this will depend wholly on the nature of the subject, and the conditions of the speech. Is there are any prima facie evidence that " perceive " desig- nates, in any given case, recognition with the eye ? t A lower grade of meaning is common enough in the Latin writers in such phrases as " living dew," " living water," " living rock," " dead laws," " dead applause," etc. X See Passow's Lexicon, under the word. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 43 Thus Socrates (Xenophon's Mem., iii. 3, 11) speaks of " whatever noblest things we have learned convention- ally, whereby we know how to live," i.e. to live as we ought ; and still more distinctly Dio Cassius (69, 19) uses the expression, " having been alive so many years, but having lived (Sw) seven years." In truth, the word " life," instead of denoting simple existence, has for its very point and specialty to ex- press something more, — something superadded. What that additional idea is, will depend upon the speaker's view, permanent or passing, of the real office, end, and use of life. According to the elevation of his views, the word becomes more and more " pregnant." Such a process is an absolute necessity of human thought. Its lower planes of meaning are of freshness and pres- ervation, of the power of vegetable development ; then of sentient and conscious existence, activity, efficiency, and the like ; then of prosperity and enjoy- ment ; and, higher yet, of harmonious moral develop- ment, and fulfillment of the great moral aims of human existence. All this will depend on the point of view. It was therefore natural for the Egyptian midwives to describe the vigorous Hebrew women as " alive ; " for the populace to say, " Let the king live," when they wished him a prosperous reign ; for Cicero, over- whelmed with labor and care, to look forward to a happy leisure as " life ; " and for Socrates (Plato's Re- pub, vi. 495, c.) to describe those who renounced phi- losophical studies as leading no " true life." In all these instances, the word was used to denQte something more than existence ; and that something varied with 44 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the notion entertained of the proper condition and work of the human being. Equally natural was it for those taking a still highei view of the functions of a human being to designate the fulfillment of those higher functions as life. 8. Here we are brought naturally and directly to the common Scripture use of the terms "life" and "death." For the word of God contemplates and addresses man chiefly in a far higher light than that of Cicero or Socrates ; not simply as a being made to act, think, or receive pleasure, but as a moral, accountable being, made to " fear God and keep his commandments," and thus to live in holy and intimate union with his Maker. Now, that spiritual state in which man is living' in in- timate union with God, performing the true work of life, and reaping' the blessed fruits, in which all the func- tions of his being are harmoniously and happily ac- complished, the Scriptures abundantly and constantly name life ; and its opposite condition they term death. The words describe the spiritual condition of the man in this world, and still more emphatically its completed results in another world. Sometimes the present, sometimes the future aspect of the case, is more prom- inently in view; sometimes the total state is gathered up without special discrimination of its aspects. This use of the terms is a fact which no sophistry can evade. And let it be observed, also, that no single terms could be found, so appropriate in themselves, or so conformed to the whole scriptural conception of the THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 45 chief end of man's being. The thought is complex : vital connection with the living God, spontaneous growth and action of an inner principle, harmonious development of the soul after the true law of its being, holiness, and resulting blessedness. All this can be summed up in no one term so fit as "life;" and its opposite, " death." They tell the tale of the high- est, truest use, and of the utmost perversion and abuse, — each in one word. Accordingly, it is noticeable that the New Testament never announces the whole condition and destiny of the good by such terms as happiness, blessedness, or felicity. Even Mr. Hudson calls attention to this fact : " It was enough for Christ and the apostles to talk about life" — for the obvious reason that no term of less breadth and fullness could adequately set forth the complex good that Christ works in the soul.* The New-Testament view is well exhibited in Rom. ii. 7, where " glory, honor, immor- tality" [incorruption], are all given as the synonyms * Mr. Hudson does not seem to be aware that this admission is fatal to his theory that eternal life is, in Scripture, eternal existence, solely or chief- ly. For he holds that, in fact, that future state will be one of holy blessed- ness. But do the sacred writers, when they speak of that state, constantly ignore its grand characteristic and glory ? Or is not the very constancy with which they employ the term u life," conclusive evidence that they com- prise therein the whole multiform well-being of the saint? A constant fallacy runs through Mr. Hudson's representation of the com- mon view; Thus: " He who was the 4 Resurrection and the Life ' was dan- gerously literal in his style of speech, if he simply meant that he came to give happiness to immortal beings." Yet no sound evangelical writer teaches that Christ came simply to give happiness to immortal beings. This constant false assumption is one of the chief points of plausibility in Mr. Hudson's argument. The issue he makes is this, Doe's " life" eternal mean happiness, or existence? We answer, in the Savior's use it involves both, and more also. No system but a low style of Uuiversalism lays the chief stress of eternal life on the happiness alone. 46 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. of eternal life. Nothing but " life " in its most preg- nant meaning can express the divine idea of the work that goes on for ever in the regenerate heart. " Death," on the other hand, is that state of separa- tion from God, and from the beatific fruition of God, in which all the higher faculties of human nature are working falsely and discordantly ; in which the true end of living is discarded, and its true enjoyment lost ; and in which there is at last the complete extinction, not of the soul's being, but of its well-being. It sums up the whole penalty of sin ; the complex woe, begin- ning here, matured and perfected hereafter. Indeed, the very thought and phrase which annihi- lationists have pronounced absurd* — " a death that never ends" — is found expressed and expanded by a Jewish writer cotemporary with Paul. Says Philo Judseus of the first murderer's punishment, " What was it ? That he should live continually dying, and that he should in a manner endure undying and never- ending death. . . . Consider how it is that death can be said to be never ending in this man's case. Since there are four different affections to which the soul is liable, two of them being conversant with evil, either present or expected, namely, sorrow and fear, it cuts up by the roots the pair of them which are conversant with good, in order that the man may never receive pleasure from any accident of fortune, nor ever feel a desire for any thing pleasant ; and it leaves him only those affections conversant about evil, — sorrow without any mixture of cheerfulness, and unmixed fear ; for the Scripture says that God laid a curse upon the fra- * Sec Storrs' Six Sermons, p. 120, et seq. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 47 tricide, so that he should be continually groaning and trembling. Moreover, he put a mark upon him, that he might never be pitied by any one ; so that he might not die at once, but might, as I have said, pass all his time in dying, amid griefs and pains and incessant calamities." * The origin of this mode of speech is not difficult to decide upon. While physical death as the most terri- ble of natural events would be a ready symbol for the most fearful woes to the spirit,! we believe the actual connection to be historic, originating in the record of the fall and the curse : " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." That this included physical death, the Scriptures leave no room to doubt ; nor may we reasonably doubt that at once there passed upon the frame the mysterious change which was to bring it surely to the dust. But that this was not all the curse, nor its most immediate and perceptible effect, nor the chief stress of its terror, lies on the face of the record, and is found in God's own unfolding of the sentence. What was the immediate result of the transgression ? The sense of guilt and shame, — "They saw that they were naked;" severance from God, terror, and recoil- ing from his presence, with total loss of the joys of intercourse with him, — " I heard thy voice in the gar- den, and I was afraid, because I was naked ; and I hid myself." Then comes a further unfolding, in the sen- tence which announced to the woman pain and sorrow * Philo Judseus, Rewards and Punishments, xii. t So light and darkness are naturally and almost inseparably associated with the idea of spiritual illumination and its opposite. 48 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. and subjection, and to the man sorrow and wearisome discouraging toil, " till thou return unto the ground." The simple returning to dust, then, by the record's own showing, was not the whole penalty involved in the threat " Thou shalt surely die : " it was only an outward token and seal of a comprehensive woe, — the broad and fearful consequences of sin. Such being the case, it is not essential to inquire whether the first pair understood all that was involved in the penalty, " Ye shall surely die." What further explanation God may or may not have made of a fact that never could be fully comprehended till experi- enced, we do not know. It will not answer to assert, as some have done, that it would not be just to inflict a penalty of which the full extent was not previously unfolded. In criminal cases, neither the judicial deal- ings of God nor man sustain the position. The question is never raised. Whatever may be the views of the murderer as to the nature of the penalty, he will, if convicted, suffer that penalty. The assertion of some that to " die," in the threat involved merely physical decease, is met by the insur- mountable fact, that the actual consequences, as set forth in the record, and subsequently announced by God himself, include a great deal more. The simple facts of that momentous transaction at the beginning of human history are these : First the command, with the annexed penalty in one word, " Thou shalt surely die;" next the transgression; then the consequence, not alone an ultimate return to dust, but also an im- mediate severance from God and his fellowship, shame, remorse, dread, and terror before God, sorrow, painful THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 49 labor, and a curse on the very conditions of toil. Now, what more natural and almost unavoidable than that, thenceforth, the state into which man fell, with all its complex and on-reaching woe, should be described by that one term " death " ? Indeed, so thoroughly does this higher and pregnant meaning of the term often predominate, that, in repeated instances, the physical decease is overlooked as not properly deserving the name. Thus the Saviour says (John viii. 51), "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." Men are accordingly represented as being even now in a spiritual condition called " death," to be followed by the full and final consummation which is " the sec- ond death," or often simply " death." And as the believer shall never see death, but " hath everlasting life ;" even so it is said of the unbeliever, that he " shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him " (John iii. 36). And in the act of believing men have passed in this world " from death unto life " (John iii. 36; 1 John iii. 14). Each term in the Scriptures designates respectively a spiritual state, with all its adjuncts and issues. Each state begins here and is consummated hereafter ; the future consummation in the one case being often, though not always, distin- guished as eternal life ; in the other case less frequent- ly as the second death. Let us look at some indisputable instances in which these words designate a moral or spiritual condition of the soul, with certain qualities and issues, and in which the one can not signify either extinction or nat- ural decease, nor the other merely the opposite of this idea. 4 50 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Both terms are applied to the successive states of the repenting prodigal, Luke xv. 24, 32. " This my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found." The words clearly describe his state of deep moral degradation and wretchedness, and his recovery from it. They can be tortured into nothing else. It is vain for Mr. Hudson to allege " either supposed death, or relative loss, — ' dead to me.' " There is no hint of any supposed decease, while the explanatory phrase, " was lost," refutes the assertion. The ser- vants and the elder brother speak of him simply as M having come ; " while the elder brother at once di- lates upon the history of the profligate as a known fact, — " hath devoured thy living with harlots." The other alternative — "dead to me" — concedes the whole principle of interpretation which the theory denies. For if a corrupt and profligate man is intelligibly described by the word " dead," dead to his father, the case is perfectly parallel to one's being dead to God and holiness. It designates a moral wreck. " But she that liveth in pleasure [wantonly] is dead while she liveth" (ITim. v. 6). The lewd woman, while outwardly living, is dead, — literally " has died." But she is neither extinct nor deceased : she is in a condition of spiritual death, alienation from God, perversion of being, and rejection of the true end and blessedness of life. When one of the disciples said, " Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father," Jesus replied, " Fol- low thou me, and let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. viii. 22). While it is obvious that the second word "dead" refers to the deceased person, it is equally THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 5] obvious that the first word can not have a similar mean- ing. The Savior does not utter such unmeaning things as, " Let deceased persons bury deceased per- sons," much less, " let the non-existent bury the non* existent." The simple apposite meaning recognized by the great mass of skillful interpreters is, " let the spiritually dead, unbelievers, bury the deceased ; but do thou, my disciple, come with me to the work that is waiting." * But Mr. Hudson says they are called dead by anticipation, — prolepsis : " Christ regards the lovers of this world as heirs of death." Yet even this shift concedes the point, viz. that the word " dead " describes the present state of certain living men, their present character, condition, and prospects, — " lovers of this world or heirs of death." It describes men in a certain moral condition to which certain fearful ten- dencies and consequences attach. " I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead " (Rev. iiL 1). The common reader can not miss the meaning. The accompanying explanation renders mistake impossible : " Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, * One writer alleges that the Greek word rendered dead (venpovc) "al- ways denotes literal death, and commonly signifies corpses." The statement is erroneous. Thongh the word frequently designates a corpse, it very often designates simply the dead in opposition to the living; and in Homer, when used in the plural, denotes the dwellers of the under-world. — See Passow and Liddell and Scott. Rev. iii. 1 is a perfectly clear case, in which it neither designates a corpse nor a deceased person. 52 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis, which have not denied their garments ; and they shall walk with me in white ; for they are worthy." Here, again, the word "dead" describes the spiritual condition of a church in which the religion was, to a great degree, spurious. As De Wette remarks, it was, on the one hand, destitute of spiritual power and activity, and a fruit-bearing faith (" I have not found thy works per- fect," literally fulfilled), and, on the other, even fallen into a sinful life (v. 4). But as the Church, being a collective body, contained a few individuals not in this condition, they, " a few names," are specially excepted as the things that remain or are left, not dead, but " are ready to die," endangered by the surrounding spiritual death. Here, again, Mr. Hudson talks faint- ly of a prolepsis, — " devoted to eternal death," but says he " shall not insist ; " although he adds that " the phrase in verse second, ' strengthen the things that are ready to die,' certainly supports the view." But (1) that phrase refutes him ; for it discriminates what was left not dead, though endangered, the " few worthy names," from what was dead, " defiled," and needing repentance. (2) The sacred writer clearly distinguishes the two things which Mr. Hudson con- founds : the present state of the Church, — " Thou art dead," — from its threatened doom, — " I will come as a thief," etc. (3) The sacred writer, by the connec- tion, makes it impossible to understand the word " dead " otherwise than as describing the present spir- itual condition of that fallen church : " Thou hast a THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 53 name that thou livest, and art dead." No utterance could be more distinct. A clear instance is found in Eph. ii. 1-6 : " And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins ; wherein, in time past, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience; among whom, also, we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind ; and were by nature the children of wrath even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love where- with he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Here are persons described as having been " dead in sins," yet all the while in a state of prodigious activity in all manner of lust and service of Satan, but now 4 quick- ened " or made alive with Christ ; being " saved by grace." Mr. Hudson regards this as prolepsis ; and among several authorities produces one respectable recent name (Meyer) in favor of it.* Against it are such names as Alford, Olshausen, De Wette, Eadie, Ellicott. And the careful reader can judge for him- self, by glancing over the passage and the verses fol- lowing, as far as verse thirteenth, whether the apostle is speaking merely of two diverse retributions, one of which would have come, but the other actually will, in * Meyer, however, is not to be understood as siding with Mr. Hudson in viewing this as physical death: in his third edition (1859), he emphatically describes them as sentenced to " eternal death." 54 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the other world ; or is speaking of two actual states in this world, in one of which the Ephesians had long lived " in time past," but had now, by the grace of God, been transferred into the other, which is indeed to be made complete hereafter. Look at the tense of the statement, " were dead," " hath quickened " (rather " quickened ") ; at the specifications of character ac- companying, " had our conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind," but now " his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works ; " at the producing cause of the difference, namely, conversion ; and at the description of the two states as coeval with the periods before and after conversion, — "At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens," &c, " but now ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." It can not be claimed that the phrase, "hath quickened us together with Christ," looks wholly to the future ; for our spiritual quickening here grows out of our union to Christ, while it finds in his resur- rection its symbol, its basis, and the pledge of its final completion. Still more unanswerably clear is the meaning of these terms in Col. ii. 13 : " And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quick- ened together with him, having forgiven you all tres- passes." The preceding verses read thus : " And ye are complete in him which is the head of all princi- pality and power. In whom also ye are [were] circum- cised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the cir- cumcision of Christ ; buried with him in baptism, TIIE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 55 wherein ye arc [were] risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from the dead." Here the circumcision made without hands, and being made alive with Christ and in Christ, are repre- sented as cotemporary past events ; and prior to them was the death from which these Christians had been made alive. Accordingly, the statements before and after are of present state and privileges. And, to com- plete the proof that the quickening and upraising are already experienced, the apostle proceeds in the be- ginning of the next chapter, "If ye then be risen [raised] with Christ, seek those things which are above." Spiritual affections are enjoined, on the ground of a supposed transition from death to life already wrought. Mr. Hudson, as usual, talks of prolepsis. In this connection, it may be well to advert to a slightly varied use of the same method of speech. The apostle, in urging the Ephesians to set their affections on things above, and not on things on the earth, adds, " For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. iii. 3). And elsewhere (Rom. vi. 1-11), he speaks of being " dead to sin," and " alive unto God." What is the propriety or consistency of still applying the term " dead " to those who are no longer dead in sin, but alive unto God ? — no longer dead fit, but dead to, sin ? How simple the explanation ; and how it proceeds from and confirms the fundamental notion of life already exhibited as the possession of certain functional activities. Among other powers of life is sensibility \ while bodily death is a state of bodily in- sensibility. This aspect is the one seized upon by the apostle's thought to make a representation paradoxi- 56 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. cal only in appearance. The higher the Christian's religious life and fulfillment of his true functions, the more completely insensible is he to the work and at- tractions of sin. His highest life to God, or greatest remove from death in sin, is thus the fullest death to sin. This incidental allusion, superficially inconsistent, really in perfect harmony, is thus one of the best proofs of the correctness of this view of life and death. Another clear text is found John v. 24 : "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not [doth not] come into condemnation, but is [has] passed from death unto life." The change has taken place, and everlasting life is already commenced as the present portion of the believer. This twofold statement in the past and present tense, mutually explanatory, requires a prodi- gious hardihood of reckless interpretation to pronounce it a reference wholly to the future. Accordingly, the best modern scholars, Alford, Liicke, Tholuck, Olshau- sen, Do Wette, Meyer, Winer, are perfectly agreed in their concurrence in the received view. " Where the faith is, there the possession of life is. . . . The ' passage over ' from death unto life has already taken place," says Alford. Winer remarks, " The perfect is not used for the future (John v. 24) : the passage con- tains no reference to a future event, but to something which has really commenced." * Mr. Hudson, how- ever, talks of prolepsis. Entirely coincident with this passage, and, if possible, * Winer's New-Testament Grammar, Masson's Translation, p. 289. Mr. Hudson gives a different quotation, which we do not find in Winer's last and matured edition. We have not the older editions at hand. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 57 more explicit, is 1 John iii. 14, 15 : " We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer ; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abid- ing in him." In verse 17, the phrase is varied by asking, " How dwelleth the love of God in him ? " as an equivalent for the same spiritual state. It re- quires no comment. One who loves God and his brother is a man who has passed from death unto life ; one who does not, now abides in death, and does not have eternal life abiding in him. Mr. Hudson vir- tually admits here that eternal life denotes a process already commenced in the soul, and continuing for ever. " We think the phrase ' eternal life abiding in him ' is best explained of the divine life-giving, working now as a regulative principle, and as a germ of the future life." The case is very fully stated in John vi. 47, et seq. : " Verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." And, after some intervening remarks, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him," etc. Here is the whole case. They that are not united to Christ " have no life in them ; " they that are " have eternal life : " it is produced by, and begins with, their spiritual feeding on Christ, and is \ 58 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. consummated at the resurrection. " I will raise him up at the last day." Perfectly explicit on the point that the life unto God commences in this world is also Gal. ii. 19, 20 : " For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." . The immediate effect wrought by that change as the beginning of an endless life is well set forth in our Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria (John iv.), where he speaks of the " living water," and adds, " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." And, in his conversation with Martha (John xi.), the Saviour speaks of this life, begun in the believer here, as flowing on uninterrupted for ever ; natural decease being disregarded as unworthy to be mentioned. "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoso- ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" United to him, the dead lives, and the living never dies. With the same disregard of natural death as unworthy of mention, and as not interrupting the con- tinuity of the true life begun here, Christ says (John viii. 51), " Verily I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." In one instance, the life which the Christian gains is THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 59 termed the true or "real life" (t?jg ovzmg £o%), — 1 Tim. vi. 19.* As the believer shall never see that which is truly death, so the unbeliever never experiences true life. " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life ; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him " (John iii. 36). The one has everlasting life now ; the other shall not see life at all, being now in a state on which the wrath of God abides. Regeneration is elsewhere marked as the point of transition, being a resurrection to " newness of life." " Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life " (Rom. vi. 4). And to leave no doubt that the apostle speaks of a work already commenced, he says in verse 13, " Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." Holy obedience is proof that they are alive from the dead. Yet Mr. Hudson talks of " prolepsis." " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. v. 14). Sinners are summoned to repentance under the form of a call * The received text here reads, "eternal life" (auoviov) ; against the united voice of the oldest manuscripts, A, &, D,E, F, G, and many other authorities, the decision of critical editions (Lachmann, Teschendorf), and the clear opinion of such commentators as Alford, Ellicott, Olshausen, De Wette, Meyer. 60 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. to arise from the dead. In this instance, Mr. Hudson admits that " the metaphor," as he terms it, " is too manifest for doubt." In addition to all the other forms of statement, we have (John xvii. 3) the assertion that this state called eternal life consists in the true knowledge of God in Christ. " And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." An attempt is made to evade the force of this passage by saying that the expression " will, on the face of it, as easily mean that the knowledge of God, &c, are the way or means of life." But this device is not only a departure from the direct and simple form of the statement ; it is in positive contradiction to the usage in connection with this peculiar mode of expres- sion (avtrj da Igxiv t\ alcoviog £mj, hex. yivojaxcooi, k. r. X. this is eternal life, that they might know, which brought with it false work- ing, further sinning and suffering, internal and exter- nal, ripening for ever. If this be not punishment, thor- ough-going and terrible, what is punishment ? One disconnected act of sin may not be the penalty of an- other, or of itself; but when the first involves the sin- ner in sucli entanglements and necessities, or begets in him such uncontrollable passion or folly, as to lead into the second and all its disastrous consequences, is not that a true and awful punishment ? Is it not one of the daily and most fearful penalties of crime that it leaves no way of retreat, but both induces and often drives the criminal to plunge ever deeper ? Does ha- bitual intoxication carry any form of punishment so dreadful as the insane passion which urges the victim again and again hopelessly to the cup, and thereby to all its bitter dregs? "Spiritual death," then, if that be the mode by which it shall be designated, does not consist in isolated acts of sinning, but in a perma- nent disease or distortion of the moral nature, a proue- ness to sin, a hopeless entanglement with it and all its woes. Nor does it avail to refer to passages from the Bible, in which death (as well as its opposite, — life) has the lower meaning. The lower does not preclude other instances of the higher. To set aside the force of the Scriptures, which af- firm a death already commenced, and therefore not a cessation of existence, various methods are adopted. But the chief resort is to the figure prolepsis, antici- THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 83 pation : men are called dead because soon to die. Mr. Hudson naively remarks of this word prolepsis, " We shall find it a convenient name." He certainly does so. That there is such a figure as prolepsis, and that there are instances of it in the Bible, there is no occa- sion to deny. The failure of this appeal, however, as an attempt to cut down the meaning of the word " death," appears in several ways. 1. The very few cases cited as proleptical assertions of death are, in several instances, more than doubtful. They are as follows, in Mr. Hudson's words (when speaking of the threat " Thou shalt surely die ") : " Just so said the affrighted Egyptians when God had smitten their first-born, * We be all dead men ; ' and the trembling Israelites, when the troop of Korah was destroyed, * Behold, we die ; we perish, we perish.' And God himself employs sim- ilar language in addressing the presumptuous Abime- lech, ' Behold, thou art but a dead man for the woman which thou hast taken.' A phrase similar to that in our text occurs (Exod. x. 28) : ' Get thee from me ; take heed to thyself; see my face no more : for, in that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die.' Yet Pharaoh would not have falsified his words if Moses, incurring his wrath, had lived many days under sen- tence of death. Still more in point is the passage in 1 Kings ii. 36, 37, where Solomon gives charge to Shimei respecting the tenure of his once forfeited life : 4 It shall be, that on the day thou goest out and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die.' The last phrase is the same as in Gen. ii. 17, ' Dying thou shalt die ; ' and 84 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the expression, * Thou shalt know for certain,' makes no difference, since Shimei knew his danger on the fatal day no more certainly than before : the circumlo- cution is simply emphatic." Add to these Matt. ix. 24, " The maid is not dead, but sleepeth," which he interprets " is called not dead, because she will soon be alive ; " and Rom. viii. 10 : " And, if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin ; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. " But in the last passage, the real meaning of which has been much controverted, a sound interpretation is that of Alford : " The body still remains dead, under the power of death physical," in which he substantially agrees with De Wette. Death is going on in the body, doing its work. A more legitimate exposition of Matt. ix. 24 is that of Alexander : " She really was dead, but only for a time, and therefore not dead in the ordinary accepta- tion of the term." Physical death includes not only the departure, but the returnless departure, of the spirit : in this sense she was not dead. Not only does this exposition retain strictly the ordinary lower mean- ing of the word ; it is confirmed by the additional words " but sleepeth" showing the point of the re- mark to lie in the return of the spirit ; and still fur- ther sustained by Christ's words in reference to Laza- rus, where he begins by saying, " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that i" may awake him out of sleep; " and, when the disciples failed to comprehend, he plainly tells them "Lazarus is dead," though immediately hinting at the miracle which made his departure a sleep rather than a common death. The threat of THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 85 Pharaoh affords no ground for asserting a prolepsis : he threatens, in a certain contingency, immediate death, — death in that very day. There is no cause for saying he meant any thing else. The threat of Sol- omon to Shimei was also doubtless intended to intimate the most summary vengeance. And we find, that, to all appearance, the execution was as speedy as the pos- sibility of the case admitted. The exclamation " We die, we perish," meant, in the mouths of Israelites and Egyptians, death is close upon us, just before us, stares us in the face. This may be called a prolepsis ; but it is cutting very close to do so. Just so, when Jacob and Joseph respectively were about to die, they began by saying, " I die " (Gen. xlviii. 21 ; 1. 24) ; though Jacob certainly lived long enough to utter a whole chapter of predictions after- wards. If any one chooses to call this a prolepsis, it certainly shows how small a matter a prolepsis may be, and how close an argument may come to a quibble. In the two remaining passages, " We be all dead men," "Thou art but a dead man," the appearance of pro- lepsis is more distinct from the use of the word "dead" in the translation ; whereas the expression in the origi- nal is precisely the same as that of Joseph and Jacob, translated " I die," and is so translated in these pas- sages in the Septuagint, — " Behold thou diestj" " We all die." * But if we waive this point, and admit, ac- cording to the English version, a prolepsis, that pro- * The Hebrew f)ft may be either a participle used for the finite verb, or an adjective used as a substantive. Fiirst gives it either way in these passages. Perhaps the latter usage is the more common. 86 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. lepsis is not only obvious, it does not admit the possi bility of misapprehension. 2. So far as any of these can be considered cases of anticipation, it is of a death immediately at hand. " We die," " We be all dead men," " Thou art a dead man," indicate that the parties are at death's door. 3. The exclamation of " trembling Israelites " and " frightened Egyptians," as Mr. Hudson calls them, and the threats of Pharaoh or even of Solomon, if the latter bore upon the case, are but a slender basis on which to modify the solemn legislation of God, the calm words of Christ, or the doctrinal utterances of Paul and John. 4. It is vain to cite even clear cases of prolepsis against certain other passages which are just as clearly not proleptical. We have adduced many passages that can not be so understood without violence both to text and context, but which yield perfectly easy meanings, ' consistent with each other and with the radical idea of death, and with scores of other passages in which the same thought occurs. 5. The attempt, in this mode, to evade the Scripture teaching concerning a continuity of condition from this world to the next, called death, is also frustrated by equally numerous representations concerning the con- tinuance of one and the same life, extending unbroken from this world into the next. 6. The resort to prolepsis is still further frustrated by the fact, that the same view of continuous conditions, life and death, is also presented under entirely differ- ent forms of speech. TEE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 87 7. The assertion of an habitual prolepsis (for habit- ual it is made) on the subject of the sinner's death, is itself the assertion of an habitual use of the term " death " concerning the sinner's condition, with an application quite different from the literal or lower use of the word. In the incautious language of Mr. Hudson (Christ our Life, p. 54), those numerous passages "seem to describe a coming death as if its proper work were already done." Precisely so. If any thing were wanting to show the entire futility of the attempt to force " death " into meaning " extinc- tion " throughout the Bible, it is found in the complete breaking-down of that attempt, even in the collateral uses of the word. There are numerous instances in which the word " dead " does not describe bodily de- cease, nor the moral disease or future doom of the soul. In these cases, the meaning will be found a legitimate outgrowth of the radical signification which we advo- cate, and entirely incompatible with the fundamental meaning insisted on by the annihilationists. Of this class are such expressions as these : " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God" (Rom. vi. 11). " For I, through the law, am dead to the law " (Gal. ii. 19 ; Rom. vii. 4). " Faith without works is dead " (Jas. ii. 20). " Dead works " (Heb. vi. 1 ; ix. 14). "The law being dead" (Rom. vii. 6). " Sin was dead " (Rom. vii. 8). Now, let us look at Mr. Hudson's exposition of the phrase " dead to sin," to which we invite the reader's careful attention. After a faint suggestion (which he does not venture to maintain) to translate " dead by 88 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. or in sin," he proceeds thus : * " But if we translate the phrase vexQovg Trj atActQtict, ' dead to sin,' the sense of the term 'dead' will not be figurative, but quite literal. Christians have no life in the direction of sin. Their love for it has died out [the Italics are ours], and their capacity for it is dying out. They have too much of the life that quickens to retain much of the life that kills." Now, let the reader look at this poor juggle. What is "literal" death? It is extinction, says Mr. Hudson, — extinction of the man himself; first the body, then the soul : and here is quite " lite- ral " death, — " Reckon yourselves to be dead." What is it ? extinction of the man ? No : the man still lives, and is to live on for ever : only his " love for sin " has died out. But even this, if you look closely, is but a figure ; for not a faculty has perished, — only he has learned to turn his faculties in a different " direc- tion." He who loved sin loves God. And so this " UteraV death, this annihilation of a man, turns out to be a transfer of his affections from one object to another ! Can it be that a man should not see that he lias surrendered his whole argument, and admitted that death sometimes denotes a spiritual state ? Still, he could not well do better. It is true that the term is applied in a different moral relation from the cus- tomary one, — sufficiently explained by its adjuncts; yet it exemplifies the same fundamental meaning for which we contend. Equally ineffectual is his method of dealing with those other phrases, " dead faith," " dead works," " the law being dead," " sin was dead." " Here, however," * Christ our Life, p. 49. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 89 he says, " death is predicated, not of persons, but of things ; which certainly can not be spiritually dead, or 4 dead in trespasses,' as that phrase is commonly under- stood." Well, and who ever supposed that they could ? But they can be dead in a sense fully kindred to that meaning, — they can have ceased or failed to perform their proper function, can be destitute of all true effi- cacy, power. And this is precisely what is meant. Accordingly, in the next sentence, the author admits it against himself. " And the metaphor, if it be such [he seems to agree with us now, that it is hardly a metaphor], grows out of the conception of things that have force and power, as 'vital,' 'living,' and, again, as ' dead,' when they have lost their power." This is very well said, but not strengthening to his own cause. And now he proceeds, endeavoring to give the matter a different direction : " A law that is invalid is a ' dead letter;' and the parchment that contains it is waste paper [quite figuratively ; for the parchment is still carefully preserved]. All things that grow out of date, or obsolete, may be very properly said to lose all the life they ever had ; [how much is that in the case of ' dead works,' for example ?] and the forms in which they were embodied in due time crumble away and vanish, or remain only as monuments [some diversity in the two suppositions] or ruins of that which is no more. Nothing could be more like literal death." But the reader will be pleased to observe through all this haze of statement that the " law " itself has not ceased to exist, nor perhaps been repealed, only lost its proper functions ; that sin has not ceased to exist or even to act mightily, but simply to do its peculiar work 90 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL, on this individual ; that the works were dead, not be- cause non-existent, nor because they had lost any thing whatsoever, but because they never had any vitalizing, functional energy Or true significance in them; the faitli was dead, not as having perished, but because it failed to exhibit those activities which are the marks and issues of a living power performing its true work. Thus on each and all these collateral uses of the phra- seology, as well as on the chief instances, the narrow sensual interpretation breaks down, and is inconsistent with itself; while the plain fundamental meaning which we have found not only fits the main drift of the Bible and its particular assertions, but adapts itself to all the incidental uses of the word, even the opposites of a dead faith and dead works, — of the law being dead, and of being dead to the law ; of being dead in sin, and being dead unto sin. We have, then, on the one hand, the legitimate and ordinary meaning of the words " life," " death," as de- noting the presence or the absence of certain functions and activities tending to certain results in existent beings, traced in their higher and pregnant application from a material to an intellectual and spiritual use even in common life, and especially through the Word of God ; we find that fundamental conception consist- ently applying in cases outwardly diverse ; and espe- cially we find that conception to be the one which will meet, and which alone will fully and easily meet, all the exigencies of that phraseology in its comprehensive power as applied to the state and prospects of the hu- man soul, — a meaning too, not dependent on a word, but impregnably sustained by various other represen- THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 91 tations running through the warp and woof of Scrip- ture, and read there unmistakably by the great mass of Christian men. We have, on the other hand, a meaning assigned to the words "life" and "death" as the literal meaning (a meaning ascribed as unwarrantably as it is ostenta- tiously and pertinaciously) ; then we follow the writers who set out with this literal meaning of " death " as "extinction," nol only to find the meaning breaking down in a large number of passages, and unsuitable in a great number more ; not only refuted by other modes of representation, and, as we are presently to see, contradicted by positive statements to the contrary, but we track them in their devious paths casting away this " literal " meaning piecemeal ; making it now a cause of death, now a " supposed death " (when there was no such supposition) ; now a " relative loss," now a " loss of force and power ; " now the state of " the lovers of pleasure regarded as heirs of death," now a doomed condition, or a certainty of death — and that certainty spoken of as already existing in the past — while yet some of the ver/ parties have now the cer- tainty of not dying (Eph. ii.) ; and finally this " lite- ral " death or extinction completely vanishing into a transfer of a living man's affections. The truth is, that no man, however ingenious, can carry consistently through the Bible an endeavor to palm off this spurious meaning of " extinction " upon the word " death." The main argument is a total failure.* * See Appendix, note A. CHAPTER IY. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED: "DESTRUCTION," AND OTHER TERMS. HAYING examined the terms " death " and "life," which constitute the most plausible portion of the argument for annihilation, the other phraseology, which is treated in the same arbitrary and material mode, may be more briefly dispatched. The same persevering attempt is made to ingraft the meaning of annihilation upon various other terms. But the refu- tation is easy. 1. Destroy, Destruction. " The Lord preserveth all them that love him ; but all the wicked will he destroy " (Ps. cxlv. 20). " Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. x. 28). "Art thou come to destroy us" before our time? (Mark i. 24.) " The wicked is reserved to the day of destruction " (Job xxi. 30). "Broad is the way that leadeth to de- struction" (Matt. vii. 13). "Yessels of wrath fitted to destruction" (Rom. ix. 22). Mr. Blain quotes and refers to some forty-two such texts, and informs us that such terms are used five hundred times in the Bible. But as the same Greek word (a7t6lXv(u and drto&ua) is also translated by the words " perish," " perdition," " lose," and " lost," it will be convenient to add those words also before replying. §2 THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 93 2. To perish, perdition. u Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his anger is kindled but a little " (Ps. ii. 12). " As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law " (Rom. ii. 12). " None of them is lost but the son of perdition" (John xvii. 12). "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition " (Heb. x. 39). Some thirty-five other passages containing these terms are cited by Mr. Blain. 3. Lose, lost. " He that findeth his life shall lose it " (Matt. x. 39). " But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost" (2 Cor. iv. 3). Some six other texts more or less resemble these. The words here quoted, in a very large number of passages of the Bible, refer simply to physical ruin or death ; as where Joshua " destroyed " the cities of Canaan and their inhabitants, and Rahab " perished not." But there is another use, perfectly clear and unde- niable, in which these terms do not refer even to the loss of physical life, much less of existence, but corre- spond almost precisely to our comprehensive phrase ruin, and being ruined or undone. The ruin may be of the most various description, — a destruction of the well-being in whatsoever form, but, when applied to the prospects of the sinner, of his whole highest wel- fare here and hereafter. The Greek word translated lost, perished, destroyed, has this for one of its most familiar meanings. AjtolcoXa — I am lost, destroyed, or perished — was a common Attic phrase, mean- ing, according to Passow, " I am in the last degree miserable or unfortunate." So in the Scriptures. 94 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. The prodigal son was " lost," though neither dead nor annihilated, but in a most forlorn and wretched state. Christ was sent unto the " lost " sheep of the house of " Israel," to " seek and to save that which was lost," — ruined, though still existing and bitterly active. And if we wish for Christ's own exposition of what the " lost " sheep of the house of Israel were, read in Luke xv. 4-7 : " What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it ? ... I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance." A sinner alienated from God is al- ready lost, in a state of ruin begun : his repentance is the recovery. Precisely so said God to Israel, " Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help" (Hos. xiii. 9). Yet Israel was not extinct either nationally or individually, but reduced to a most calamitous and desperate condition. " My people are destroyed [cut off] for lack of knowledge " (Hos. iv. 6). But the people were existing still. Indeed, the " destroying " ranges through almost every form of calamity that can befall a nation or individual, up to the eternal penalty of sin. " Egypt was corrupted [destroyed, margin] by reason of the swarms of flies " (Exod. viii. 24). Said Pharaoh's servants, "Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ?" (Exod. x. 7.) Said Job of -his great afflictions, " He hath destroyed me on every side " (Job xix. 10). And God says con- cerning him to Satan, " Thou movedst me to destroy him [swallow him up] without cause " (Job ii. 3). THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 95 The king of Babylon, who by his wars had exhausted the resources of his kingdom, is told, " Thou hast de- stroyed thy land, and slain thy people " (Isa. xiv. 20). We are told of Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 16), " When he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruc- tion ; " upon his profane attempt to burn incense, he was smitten with leprosy, and obliged to abandon his palace and his government, dwelling by himself to the day of his death. " The rich man's wealth is his strong city ; the destruction of the poor is their poverty " (Prov. x. 15). Clearly the meaning is, not the annihilation of the poor, or even the cause of their death, but the source of exposure to many forms of grievous suffering, trial, and danger. " In the multitude of people is the king's honor ; but in the want of people is the destruc- tion of the prince " (Prov. xiv. 28), — a cause of his weak and inglorious condition, liable to defeat and overthrow. " Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Prov. xvi. 18). "But when his disciples saw it, they said, To what purpose is this waste ? " — a7tc6leia, destruction, i.e. simply misapplication or perversion (Matt. xxvi. 8). The ravaging of plain and valley is thus predicted (Jer. xlviii. 8) : " The valley shall perish and the plain shall be destroyed." The utter overthrow of hope and courage is described as a perishing of heart (Jer. iv. 9) : " And it shall come to pass at that day, saith the Lord, that the heart of the king shall perish, and the h-eart of the princes ; and the priests shall wonder. Without citing numerous other similar instances which abound, especially in the Old Testament, we remark in brief, that any reader of ordinary intelli- 06 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. gence who shall run over, with a concordance, the pas- sages of the Bible containing these words, will see that the attempt to force these passages to the aid of anni- hilation is destitute of all true foundation. He will see that the simple and generic idea of the words is not extinction, but ruin, — ruin of very various kinds, — very often indeed designating the demolition of a city with its buildings, and the taking of physical life ; but also applied, with equal freedom, to the impoverish- ment, exhaustion, or devastation of a land, the miser- able condition and dispersion of its inhabitants, the humiliation of a living monarch, the calamitous state of a surviving man, the downfall of a haughty sinner, the entire misapplication of a precious ointment. He will thus see that the word does not carry with it, by its proper force, the idea of extinction ; and therefore, though applied to designate the awful ruin which shall overtake the sinner in another world, the attempt to sustain by its use the doctrine of annihilation, how- ever vaunting and persevering, is simply preposterous. 4. Consume, devour. Some six or eight passages in which these words occur are materialized into extinc- tion : " They that forsake the Lord shall be consumed " (Isa. ii. 28). " They shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away " (Ps. xxxvii. 20). " A fearful look- ing-for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries " (Heb. x. 27). Can not a living man be, in Scripture imagery, de- voured or consumed, without the destruction or impair- ment of his conscious being ? Read a few passages and see. Says Jacob, in describing his physical en- durances, " In the day, the drought consumed me ; and THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 97 the frost by night" (Gen. xxxi. 40). The Psalmist de- scribes the deep grief which roused his faculties to a constant wakefulness : " Mine eye is consumed because )f grief" (Ps. vi. 7). "Mine eye is consumed with grief, . . . my bones are consumed " (Ps. xxxi. 9, 10). Of the effect of God's heavy chastisements, he says, " I am consumed by the blow of thine hand " (Ps. xxxix. 10). He says of the wicked, "They are utterly consumed with terrors " (Ps. lxxiii. 19). Of the active zeal that filled all his being with life, he says, " The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up " [consumed me] (Ps. lxix. 9). In like manner the word "devour," though very often including the taking of human life, has a wide range of special meaning under the general idea of inflicting grievous evils. We read of strangers " devouring the land " (Isa. i. 7) ; of" shame devour- ing the labor of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters" (Jer. iii. 24); of " secretly devouring the poor" (Hab. iii. 14) ; of Christians warned not " to bite and devour one another" (Gal. v. 15) ; of men who "devour widows' houses" (Mark xii. 40); of a " deceitful tongue " that " loveth all devouring words " (Ps. Iii. 4) ; and other similar utterances, which clearly show the futility of the endeavor to materialize these words into meaning annihilation. 5. Tear in pieces, break in pieces, grind to powder. " On whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to pow- der" (Matt. xxi. 44). " Now, consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver " (Ps. 1. 22). " The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces " (1 Sam. ii. 10). 7 98 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. One would suppose that such texts as these were sufficient to open the eyes of any one to the absurdity of the kind of interpretation with which we arc con- tending. As though the Almighty would, like some hungry beast of prey, literally " tear in pieces," or, like a falling stone, crush into a shapeless mass ! One is almost ashamed to refute such a gross conception by citing the numerous passages which show it to be only a vivid representation of deep contrition, oftener of heavy affliction, and especially of an irresistible and crushing overthrow and vengeance. " A broken and contrite heart " (Ps. li. 17) is literally a heart " broken in pieces and shivered." Job asks his friends (chap. xix. 2), " How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words ? " " They [the wicked] break in pieces thy people, Lord, and afflict thine heritage " (Ps. xciv. 5). " The fourth beast" (Dan. vii. 23) was to " devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and break it in pieces ; " yet the fifth kingdom (Dan. ii. 44) was to " break in pieces and consume all these [previous] kingdoms." Said the Lord to Jeremiah, "Arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound [break to pieces, margin] thee before them." He addresses the enemies of Judah (Isa. viii. 9), " Associate your- selves, ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces ; and give ear all ye of far countries : gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces ; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught." In David's song com- memorative of his deliverance " out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul," he says, THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 99 " Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth, I did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad " (2 Sam. xxii. 43) : in other words, they were completely routed and overthrown by him. " To break all one's bones " is a frequent ex- pression for heavy affliction. Job speaks thus of his grievous sufferings coupled with the triumph of others over him : " He teareth me in his wrath who hateth me ; he gnasheth upon me with his teeth ; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. . . . God hath deliv- ered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but lie hath broken me asunder : he hath also taken me by the neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark;" and more in the same strain (Job xvi. 9-14). Yet all this time Job was in a state of the highest mental activity. It is also true that these terms are often applied to defeats and overthrows in which life is taken ; but, even then, how completely the meaning rises above the mere form of the imagery is well illus- trated in the song of Moses, where, after distinctly stat- ing in repeated forms that the enemy were " drowned in the Red Sea," he continues, "Thy right hand, Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy " (Exod. xv. 6). A man is crushed and prostrated, not annihilated, whether by deep contrition, severe affliction, or entire defeat. 6. Out off. Some five texts containing this phrase are cited in proof of annihilation. " For evil-doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth " (Ps. xxxvii. 9). " The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the re- 100 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. raembrance of them from the earth " (Ps. xxxiv. 16). " For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off" (Ps. xxx vii. 22). See also verse 28. The very form of the above expressions shows the primary reference to temporal blessings and calamities, — ''inherit the earth;" "cut off from the earth." They would leave the question of future existence out of sight. It is therefore hardly needful to show that they do not and can not signify annihilation, by quoting such passages as these concerning the Messiah : " He was cut off out of the land of the living " (Isa. liii. 8). "And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off" (Dan. ix. 26) ; and other passages almost equally decisive. But if it should be said that these passages, first cited under the form of temporal good and evil, involve also future retributions, we reply, If so, they affirm that the one class shall possess, and the other shall be cast out from, all the promised bless- ings of the heavenly land. In Matthew, we read a much stronger expression than simply to be cut off from a land ; the Lord of the evil servant will " cut him asunder," i.e. cut him in two. If applied to phys- ical life, the expression, literally taken, would assert its extinction, of course ; but how different a meaning is here conveyed is made evident at once by the next words, " and shall appoint him his portion with the hypocrites : there shall be weeping- and gnashing' of teeth 1 ' (Matt. xxiv. 51). The phrase " cut off" com- monly refers simply to physical death, but sometimes involves the additional idea of a threatened removal from the blessings of God's people in this life ; while, THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 101 in some instances, it even expresses a release from life's dons : " That he would let loose his hand, and ut me off; then should I yet have comfort" (Job vi. The Psalmist, however (Ps. lxxxviii. 16), ex« lime concerning his pitiable deprivation of earthly >ys, " Thy terrors have cut me off." 7. Blot out. Two texts containing these words are I need to prove annihilation : "Let them be blotted nit of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous 7 ' (Ps. lxix. 28). " I will not blot out his name out of the book of life " (Rev. iii. 5). In the first of these passages, the last part well explains the first part. Let them " not be written with the right- eous" as sharers of their blessings, — perhaps here in the land of the living. u To blot out our transgres- sions," an often-recurring phrase, does not mean to annihilate them, but to pardon them, i.e. overlook their claims to punishment. To " blot out the handwriting of the ordinances which was against us " (Col. ii. 14) is not to annihilate those ordinances, but to set aside their demands and punitive consequences. The fundamental image is that of record-books, some containing certain records of sins as though debts to God, others containing the registry of ancient Israel as heirs of the promised land, and one (in the New Testament) containing the names of the heirs of the kingdom of heaven. To blot out the transgressions or the handwriting of the ordinances was figuratively to erase that record ; that is, to release the claim. To blot out the name from God's book (Exod. xxxii. 82 and Ps. lxix. 28) was to take away all title to the promises, and perhaps to send to a premature death ; not to blot 102 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. out a name from the Lamb's book of life is to leave the man a recognized, recorded heir of all Christ's promised love, entitled to the privileges of enrolled citizens of his kingdom. He, therefore, whose name is blotted out from that book of life, is for ever banished from the kingdom of heaven. 8. Not be, naught, as nothing. A few texts contain- ing these words are also forced into the service of the system ; with what success, the reader shall see. Ps. xxxvii. 10, " For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be : yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be." Mr. Blain triumphantly asks, " Where is hell, then ? " We answer, In the other world ; for this passage speaks clearly of the over- throw and disappearance of the wicked in this world. So the phraseology, " Thou shalt consider his place ; " so the next words, " But the meek shall inherit the earth ; " so similar statements in the same psalm, " I have seen the wicked in great power. . . . Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not : yea, I sought him, but he could not be found ; " that is, on earth. Even Job describes his own desired disappearance in similar terms (Job vii. 21) : " For now shall I sleep in the dust ; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be : " see also Job xx. 8, and other places. The same remark applies to another quoted passage (Job viii. 22), " The dwelling-place of the wicked shall come to naught," or not be ; where the whole argument re- spects God's dealings with men in this world. Another passage : " They shall be as though they had not been " (Obad. 16). But here the prophet is speaking of the entire temporal overthrow and extermination of the THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 103 Edornites : the land shall be as clear of them as though they had never been. The same thought is expressed two verses later : " There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau." Job can hardly be accused of ex- pressing the hope of annihilation, when, having uttered the wish that he had " given up the ghost at birth," he adds. " I should have been as though I had not been ; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave." He clearly means that so transient an appearance, followed by an immediate and final disap- pearance from this life, would have been almost the same as not having lived here at all : he would have escaped the flood of earthly afflictions that came upon him. And let it be observed, in passing, that it is vain to appeal to those passages which spsak of deatli as the land of silence and darkness ; for these passages are quite as often employed in case of the righteous as of the wicked, and they manifestly describe the case merely according to the appearance of things. It is the view from this side, the land of the living. To us it is darkness and silence, where " there is no work nor device." But there are one or two passages like these : " They that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of naught ; and they that strive with thee shall perish" (Isa. xli. 11, 12). "Correct me; but . . . not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing" (Jer. x. 24). But how perfectly manifest the meaning, even to the commonest reader. To be as nothing and as a thing of naught, in warring against God, is but the popular expression for utter insignificance, e.g., " All nations 104 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. before him are as nothing ; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity" (Isa. xl. 17). Is that annihilation ? Just so a multitude of phrases which it is superfluous to quote, all having the same general meaning of insignificance (or sometimes dis- comfiture) : " Mine age is as nothing before thee " (Ps. xxxix. 5). " Circumcision is nothing, and un- circumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the com- mandments of God " (1 Cor. vii. 19). " An idol is nothing in the world " (viii. 4). " Though I be noth- ing " (2 Cor. xii. 11). " If a man thinketh he is something, when he is nothing " (Gal. vi. 3). So* the phrases, " Brought their counsel to naught," " Bring to naught " (Neh. iv. 15 ; Ps. xxxiii. 10 ; Acts v. 86 ; 1 Cor. i. 28), mean to show the insignificance of a thing in its complete overthrow. To " set at naught " (Prov. i. 25 ; Mark ix. 12 ; Rom. xiv. 10) is to treat as insignificant and with contempt. With this plain idiom thus running through the Bible, it is astonishing that any man can even impose upon himself so as to find annihilation in it. Still more astonishing in reference to the other passage, " Lest thou bring me to nothing " (which is cited by Mr. Blain) ; for a man who could not read in his He- brew Lexicon that the word means simply and strictly " to make little or few," might at least read in the mar- gin the translation " diminish " (Jer. x. 24). 9. Some prominence is given to four texts, contain- ing the word " end " : " Whose end is destruction " (Phil. iii. 19). " Whose end is to be burned " (Heb. vi. 8) (where the wicked are spoken of under the im- age of thorns and briers). " Oh ! let the wickedness of THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 105 the wicked come to an end " (Ps. vii. 9). " The end of the wicked shall be cut off" (Ps. xxxvii. 88). The texts are somewhat oddly brought together. Bug look at the first two : the argument is, that " end " here means final cessation of existence. What, then, shall we say of these texts ? — " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let nfty last end be like his " (Num. xxiii. 10). " Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace " (Ps. xxxvii. 37). Do these passages declare the annihilation of the right- eous at death ? No. The word " end," which has a variety of meanings in Scripture, when used in such texts as this, simply denotes in a general way the close of the earthly career or probationary state : " Make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is " (Ps. xxxix. 4) ; or perhaps, more exactly, sometimes the close of this state as the beginning of the final condition. Indeed, that it sometimes denotes a final condition, even in this world, is undeniable : " Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase " (Job viii. 7). " So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning " (Job xlii. 12). " And the end everlasting life n (Rom. vi. 22). All reliance upon this phraseology is suicidal. The two remaining passages are somewhat different : " Let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end." Waiving all other remarks, the reader who shall pe- ruse the whole psalm will see that the one subject in view is the wickedness and its ebullitions in this world, from which the Psalmist prays for deliverance. The other passage is translated by Rosenmiiller, De Wette, 106 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Maurer, and apparently by Olshausen, " The posterity of the wicked shall be cut off." * 10. Burn , and burn up. The materialist interpre- tation lays considerable stress on nine or ten texts in which these terms are used concerning the enemies of God, and argues as though the vengeance of God were strictly similar to a wood fire, and the human soul to a combustible material, and the operation of the one upon the other was in either case much the same. Mr. Blain actually italicizes the word " ashes " in quoting Mai. iv. 3 : The wicked " shall be ashes un- der the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this." The passages cited (in addition to this) are the following : " A fire goeth before him, and burnetii up his enemies round about " (Ps. xcvii. 3.) " And the fire shall devour them " (Ps. xxi. 9). " Whose end is to be burned" (Heb. vi. 8). "Cast them into the fire, and they are burned " (John xv. 6). " He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire " (Matt. hi. 12). " As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world" (Matt. xiii. 40). " For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble : and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch" (Mai. iv. 1). "Our God is a consuming fire " (Heb. xii. 29). M Fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them " (Rev. xx. 9). u A fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery in- * Geseaius translates the word " end " here [^^D^] eventus felix, "happy close; " and Delitzsch, "the future (i.e., the earthly future) which he had imagined." The word itself admits either meaning. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 107 dignation, which shall devour the adversaries M (Heb. x. 27). It requires but a moderate familiarity with this kind of imagery in the Bible, to see the entire fallaciousness of the interpretation. This particular mode of ex- pression runs through the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, so abundantly, as to render the mean- ing unmistakable. God's anger is a fire or a flame ; afflictions and sufferings are its heat and burning ef- fect, sometimes a burning in general ; and when that vengeance is perfectly irresistible, appalling, and over- whelming, it is represented, as could be done in no other way so graphically and so consistently, as a de- vouring and consuming fire, driving over the helpless stubble, or sweeping through the dry thorns and briers, or reducing the tares and chaff to ashes. This is the simple fact of the case, capable of easy proof. Not alone God's anger, but anger generally, is de- scribed as heat. The phrase, " he was angry," is, in Hebrew, " it was hot to him ; " and the primary allu- sion probably to the flush upon the cheek. Heat and anger, associated in all languages, are still more closely interwoven in the Hebrew. Severe anger is *yhn, burn- ing. Ahasuerus " was very wroth, and his anger burned within him " (Est. i. 12). The expression of that anger is a sending forth of flames or of coals, especially when infliction of suf- fering is implied. Even Leviathan is thus described (Job xli. 19-22): "Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth." 108 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Judah said to Joseph, " Let not thine anger burn against thy servant " (Gen. xliv. 18). Of God it is said (Jer. vii. 20), " Behold mine anger and my fury . . . shall burn, and shall not be quenched." " Shall thy jealousy burn like fire ? " (Ps. lxxix. 5 ; lxxxix. 46.) " So a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel " (Ps. lxxviii. 21). Numerous other passages use these phrases and the like to describe in general the exhibition of anger, in whatever mode, but so as to involve the infliction of suffering. In other cases, the suffering inflicted is clearly the prominent thought represented, as the effect of the fire. The calumniator is one in whose lips u there is as a burning fire " (Prov. xvi. 27). See also Ps. cxx. 4, Prov. vi. 27, for similar expressions with similar mean- ing. Jeremiah describes his deep sorrow " with which the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger," by adding in the next words, " From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them " (Lam. i. 13). The Psalmist, in his " prayer of the afflicted " (Ps. cii. 3), complains that his " bones are burned as a hearth." And Job, in his deep troubles, utters the same cry : " My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat" (Job xxx. 30). The deliverance of the Israelites from the terrible oppres- sions of Egypt was God's bringing them " forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron " (1 Kings viii. 51 ; Deut. iv. 20 ; Jer. xi. 4). God's threats of the terrible evils he would bring upon the house of Is- rael for its sins, describe him as about to gather them in Jerusalem like " silver and brass and iron and lead and tin into the midst of the furnace, to blow the firo THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 109 upon it, to melt it ; so will I gather you in mine an* ger and in my fury, and I will leave you there and melt you ; yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you " (Ezek. xxii. 19-22). Here is terrific trial, but of course no annihilation : and the silver is melted as well as the tin ; the fire only separates the two. So we read of a " fiery trial " (1 Pet. iv. 12), of being " tried with fire " (1 Pet. i. 7), and of being "saved so as by fire " (1 Cor. iii. 15). David describes his afflictions by saying, " We went through fire and through water " (Ps. lxvi. 12). "The rust of them [of your gold and silver] shall eat your flesh as it were fire " (Jas. v. 3). The Saviour de- scribes the bitter troubles and persecutions which were to rage around the track of the gospel, " I am come to send fire on the earth ; and what will I, if it be al- ready kindled ? " (Luke xii. 49.) But oftener yet the thought conveyed, while still involving the notion of suffering, at the same time sets forth prominently the resistless, overwhelming discom- fiture which God's anger will inflict upon the wicked. Nothing can so well describe the appalling power of that punitive anger, and the utterly helpless condition of its objects (together with the keenness of their tor- tures), as the surging, devouring conflagration. It is sometimes used even of severe human vengeance ; thus (Judg. ix. 20) : " Let fire come out from Abimelech, and devour the men of Shechem, and the house of 110 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Millo." Num. xxi. 28 : " For there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon : it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Anion." Here is only a threat of thorough over- throw. But more particularly God's irresistible ven- geance, in whatever form, is represented under this figure. Thus (Nah. i. 6) : " His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him ; " which is sufficiently explained by the preliminary ques- tions of the same verse : " Who can stand before his indignation, and abide in the fierceness of his anger?" Jeremiah (in Lam. iv. 11) describes in general the over- throw of the land : " The Lord hath accomplished his fury ; he hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foun- dations thereof." The vengeance which God will exe- cute by the Assyrian is spoken of (Isa. xxxi. 9) as the work of " the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his fur- nace in Jerusalem." Of the devastation already in- flicted by God upon his people, it is said that the vine- yard " is burnt witli fire ; it is cut down " (Ps. lxxx. 16). And the whole comprehensive and appalling chastisement in store for the sinning house of Israel, though often drawn out in detail, is constantly summed up in the sweeping threat of a fire that shall come upon it ; sometimes a fire that can not be quenched : " house of David, thus saith the Lord: Execute judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings " (Jer. xxi. 12 ; see also iv. 4 ; xvii. 27 ; Isa. xxx. 27 ; Ezek. xxi. 32 ; xxxix. 6, etc.). I£ THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. Ill any additional proof were needed that this phraseology simply describes any kind of overwhelming and irre- sistible vengeance, it is found in the reiteration con- tained in the first and second chapters of Amos, where, in the same words, with only a change of names, the punishments of Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Amnion, Moab, and Judah, are all alike described as " sending a fire upon " those cities and nations, which shall " de- vour the palaces thereof" (Amos i.). The same methods of speech — probably from the necessity of the case, and certainly in conformity with the usage which represents the joys of heaven under the forms of this world — are employed to describe the punishments of the wicked hereafter. Indeed, that flame is sometimes apparently represented as a contin- uous fire following them into the other world : " For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell" (Deut. xxxii. 22). Sodom and Go- morrha " are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," — the temporal overthrow passing into an endless woe of which it was the fearful symbol. In the New Testament it is the everlasting fire, the unquenchable fire, the fire that never shall be quenched, the lake which burnetii with fire and brim- stone. In the last of these phrases, the additional features would seem to have been drawn from some such scene as that of Sodom, where the lurid light, the suffocating smoke, and the torturing heat, all combine in one image of horror. To the assertion that such phraseology as " burn " and " burn up," together with the other references to that punishment as a fire, denotes annihilation, we 112 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. offer, then, the following decisive replies (waiving the fact, that, even in earthly fire, the elements remain un- diminished, though changed in form) : 1. The strange inconclusiveness of thus arguing from a figure, that because heat decomposes fuel, therefore God's anger must decompose a spirit. 2. The positive fact that this figure itself is abundantly used to denote extreme suffering and resistless vengeance, when the subject continues to exist, and even to describe himself as burnt and consumed. 3. The epithets often accompanying, which describe, not an extinction, but a long-continued infliction. It is " eternal/' " unquenchable," " that never shall be quenched." To evade this consideration requires the double artifice of maintaining that " eter- nal," not once, but in all cases where it applies to the punishment of the wicked, shall not only be shorn of the meaning of endless duration, but of all duration whatever, and signify only " final " or " irreversible ; " and that the incessant continuance of the flame, which in one solemn passage (Mark ix. 43-48) is twice re- peated, should be a superfluous circumstance.* Yet the Old Testament passages from which this latter rep- resentation is drawn most clearly denote protracted suffering. — See Jer. xvii. 4 ; xxi. 12 ; xvii. 27 ; iv. 4, and the contexts. 4. The additional decisive fact, that the fire of punishment is definitely described in the New Testament as the agent of conscious, continued * The meaning of these phrases will be more fully considered hereafter. We say, twice repeated, but, if we follow the received text, it is Jire times. Teschendorf omits three of them, in verses 44, 45, 46. He is supported by manuscripts B, C, L, A, &, together with the Coptic and Armenian versions; opposed by manuscripts A, D, E, F, G, II, K, M, S,U, V, X, T, and the Latin versions, Vulgate, Gothic, Ethiopic, and both Syriac. The ease is doubtful. THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 113 anguish, and not of extinction. The rich. man, who "in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torments," said, "1 am tormented in this flame." " The devil that de- ceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brim- stone, whore the beast and the false prophet are ; and shall be tormented day and night for ever " (Rev. xx. 10). The worshiper of the beast and his image " shall be tormented ivith fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb ; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ; and they have no rest, day nor night " (Rev. xiv. 10, 11). "The furnace of fire" into which the wicked shall be cast at the end of the world is described as a place where " there shall be wailing, and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. xiii. 42, 50). These passages, so full and explicit, are conclusive that fire symbolizes an irresistible overthrow of perpetual suffering, and not of extinction. 11. " Put under his feet." With the same eager- ness, even this phrase is claimed as teaching annihila- tion. Mr. Blain quotes 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26 : " For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." With characteristic sensuousness of interpre- tation, he adds, " To have eternal groaning and cursing in a ' footstool ' would not seem to be pleasant. This is a Bible expression for utter destruction of enemies : see Mai. iv. 3, and Rom. xvi. 20." Archbishop Whate- ly seems to admit this position.* On this we need only remark, that the Apostle Paul elsewhere uses this very expression to describe the complete subjection of * Blain's Death, not Life, p. 21 ; Whately's Future State, p. 177. 8 114 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the whole .universe to Christ, — of all created things, rational and irrational ; of all intelligences, rebellious or obedient : see Heb. ii. 7, 8 ; Epli. i. 20-23 ; with which compare Phil. ii. 9-11. According to this mode of dealing with Scripture, therefore, the subjection of Christ's empire to his authority would consist in its annihilation ! We have examined the chief passages and phrases on which the advocates of annihilation rest their posi- tion. In every one of them, the attempt utterly fails. Its only speciousness consists in viewing the imagery detached and materialized. To the common reader, the Scripture explains itself as he reads these phrases in their place. The whole tenor of the Bible, trans- fused as it is with such vivid metaphors, guides him aright ; indeed, the case is so clear, that he raises no question : but when a few of the most intense expres- sions are isolated from their surroundings and ingeni- ously combined, and the glowing metaphors converted into literal propositions, he is surprised, perhaps, at the form and strength of the language. It becomes neces- sary to clear up the matter by showing him the same expression in unmistakable connections : therefore the almost superfluous extent at which we have examined these phrases. Perhaps, in concluding this portion of the subject, no more satisfactory exhibition can be made than the forms under which a single living speaker in the Bible describes his own present deep sufferings. The reader will observe that a large portion of all the phrases on which annihilationists rely, and others besides, are THE SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 115 found in Job's description of his state. Let him weigh these several modes of expression : " The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drink- eth up my spirit ; the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me " (vi. 4). "Thine eyes are upon me, and I am not" (vii. 8). "For he breaketli me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause. He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness " (ix. 17, 18). " Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and boldest me for thine enemy ? Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro ? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble ? " " And [I am] he [that] as a rotten thing consumeth, as a garment that is moth- eaten " (xiii. 24, 25, 28). " He teareth me in his wrath who hateth me ; he gnasheth upon me with his teeth : mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. They have gaped upon me with their mouth ; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully ; they have gathered themselves together against me." " I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder : he hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark. His archers compass me round about ; he cleav- elh my reins asunder, and doth not spare ; lie pour eth out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon breach ; he runneth upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death " (xvi. 9, 10, 12-16). " My breath is corrupt ; my days are extinct; the graves are ready for me" (xvii. 1). "He hath fenced up my way that I can not pass, and lie hath set darkness in my paths. He hath destroyed me on every 116 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. side, and / am gone ; and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me" (xix. 8, 10, 11). "They came upon me as a wide breaking-in of waters: in the desolation, they rolled themselves upon me. Terrors are turned upon me : they pursue my soul as the wind." " He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes. Thou liftest me up to the wind ; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance.'''' "I went mourning without the sun ; I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat" (xxx. 14, 15, 19, 22, 28-30). A glance at the various modes of expressing the overpowering afflictions of a living being is sufficient to show the futility of using them, or the like of them, as arguments for annihilation. By the whole showing of Storrs, Blain, Hudson, and their coadjutors, Job was an annihilated man while uttering these words. The language describes indeed a reality, a terrible re- ality ; but that reality is not annihilation. It is the overwhelming anguish of a living, conscious being. Let the man who rests his hopes of annihilation on such phraseology pause, and ponder well its meaning in the Word of God. CHAPTER V. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED : THE RESURRECTION AND THE SECOND DEATH. SOME of these writers attempt to lay stress upon certain passages which speak of the resurrection as an object of promise and desire to the believer. Mr. Dobney quotes specially three passages, — John vi. 39, 40, in which the Saviour says of the believer, that he shall "have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last clay;" Luke xx. 35, "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the res- urrection from the dead," etc.; Phil. iii. 11, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." With these he combines 1 Cor. xv. 12-32, and, after some twenty pages of discussion, sums up as follows : — 1. " There is a resurrection of the dead, generally. 2. The final judgment of each individual, with its award to heaven or hell, is consequent upon the resur- rection. 3. The resurrection state was that which the apostles longed for, earnestly desiring to find them- selves in their house from heaven, or heavenly house ; that is, their second or spirit body. 4. Future con- scious existence is connected with, and dependent upon, or identical with, resurrection ; so that, no resurrection, no future life. 5. The resurrection grows out of the 117 118 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. mediatorship of Christ ; so that, no Mediator, no res- urrection, and therefore no future state.'' * Some of these points we do not care to discuss now, though we dissent from them. We would remark, in passing, that the denial of consciousness immediately after death can not by any fair means be reconciled with Luke xxiii. 43, 2 Cor. v. 6-8, Phil. i. 21-24, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and Christ's ar- gument in Matt. xxii. 31, 32. And how far the fifth proposition is consistent with the writer's own theory will incidentally soon appear. The main point of the writer appears in his third proposition, — that "the resurrection state was that which the apostles longed for ; " from which he would argue that none but the righteous attain the " resur- rection state," or, as he would interpret his own mean- ing, continue in existence after the resurrection. The fallacy is here covered over in the phrase " res- urrection state" a phrase of the writer's own coining. If this phrase means the state of having been raised from the dead, the Bible is perfectly explicit that all men will share that state. " There shall be a resur- rection of the dead, both of the just and unjust " (Acts xxiv. 15). " The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth : they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrec- tion of damnation" (John v. 28, 29). Nor does this writer venture to deny it. It is, then, not simply a liv- ing again from the dead which the apostle desired and Christ promised his disciples ; that must come. What * Future Punishment, p. 1G4. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 119 was it ? Clearly, as the context in Philippians shows, the blessed resurrection, the resurrection in Christ to those joys and glories which he elsewhere describes as " the crown of glory," " the prize of his high calling," and which Peter calls the " incorruptible inheritance," the resurrection to " eternal life." Here is nothing about the resurrection state. It is " the resurrection " par eminence, no doubt ; being " the only resurrection which is the completion of the man in his glorified state." The apostle speaks, therefore, not of the fact of a resurrection, but the mode and circumstances of the blessed resurrection ; just as " life " means true life, — life worthy of the name. Eadie well remarks on Paul's expression, " The reference is to the resurrection of the just — Luke xx. 35 ; that resurrection described also in 1 Thess. iv. 16, etc. The resurrection of the dead was an article of his former creed, which the apostle did not need to change in his conversion ; but it was the resurrection to eternal life secured by Christ that the apostle aspired to reach." This is the simple explanation necessitated by the Scriptures ; for it is a clear scriptural doctrine, that the wicked shall be raised. These passages have no bearing on the ques- tion of their continued existence afterward. But the fact of their resurrection at all is a fact of ominous significance, and of the gravest difficulty to the advocates of annihilation. They feel it. Says Mr. Hudson, " It is hard that they are raised up by a miracle that ends in their destruction, or that accom- plishes nothing but a judgment, which in this view must appear simply vindictive. If they have no im- mortality, why are their slumbers disturbed ? " Surely, 120 ' LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. why ? The Scripture gives clear information why the wicked are raised ; it is to " the resurrection of con- demnation ; " " that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad ; " that God may render to them that obey not the truth " indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil ; " that they may " go away into everlasting punishment." This is simple and consistent. But the deniers of immortality must find here an abortive and meaningless miracle. And here they scatter in various confusion. Some of them, accordingly, by Mr. Hudson's own admission,* opsnly deny that " the res- urrection of the unjust signifies their being made alive." This brings them in direct collision with the Word of God. Others hold, with Mr. Blain, that the man al- ready once destroyed is brought into existence again to be destroyed with a second and final destruction. This, waiving all difficulties on the score of identity, makes the man suffer the penalty of the law twice over, and still leaves the futility of the second process un- solved. Mr. Hudson endeavors to escape the ominous fact by reducing the resurrection itself to aminimum; making it, indeed, no proper resurrection at all. Hear him : " Damaged seeds that are sown often exhaust their vitality, and perish in the germination ; and we have noted the fact, that of insects which pass through the chrysalis state to that of the psyche, or butterfly, many, from injuries suffered in their original form, ut- terly perish in the transition." Then, after suggesting * Debt and Grace, p. 247; Christ our Life, p. 4. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 121 that the effect of the gospel, even upon the wicked, may be somehow to prolong a dim though unconscious existence after the bodily decease, dividing " death it- self " into two installments, he concludes his explana- tion thus : " And for judgment, it is as if the unjust, hearing the voice of God in the last call to life, should I e putting on a glorious incorruption, and should per- ish in the act." * We will not pause to inquire too curiously into the precise correctness of these matters of natural history, nor into the closeness of the parallel attempted. We will ask two questions : 1. What shadow of resem- blance is there between this representation of an ineffect- ual struggle to come to life and u perishing in the act" on the one hand, and, on the other, the Scripture doc- trine that all the dead shall alike " hear the voice of the Son of God, and come forth ; " that they shall all appear before the judgment-seat, give account of the deeds done in the body, receive sentence from the Judge, and the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment ? The Word of God teaches a resurrection as truly of the unjust as of the just, followed by the most solemn transactions. Mr. Hudson teaches an abortive attempt at a resurrection, or rather an abor- tive effort of the wicked to put on incorrupt-ion, — a process which seems itself to require a further elucida- tion. 2. What solution does this scheme offer to his own question, " Why disturb their slumbers at all ? " For let it be remembered the Scriptures represent this resurrection, not as a natural process, but as a grand — ■!■■ -I ■■ -..I. - I ..-. ■!- I ■■! —I. .11 ...I..I-. ■-.-,- — — ., - , , __ ,| I I . . ^f * Debt and Grace, pp. 264, 265. 122 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. miracle of the Son of God. To what end this tram scendent miracle, this vast and inconceivably wonderful and solemn preparation ? The Scriptures answer, that it is the fitting introduction to a still more solemn se- ries of transactions, and a destiny commensurate. Mr. Hudson can not answer. his own question ; he simply evades it by depreciating and substantially denying the fact. The whole Scripture doctrine of the resurrection, therefore, instead of lending any support, furnishes a most momentous objection, to the scheme of annihila- tion. Equally ineffectual is the appeal to the phrase, " the second death." The term might have been considered in connection with other phrases denoting the destiny of the wicked. " The second death is to be taken," says Mr. Hudson, " in the literal sense." By the " literal " sense, he chooses to mean extinction. And it deserves special attention, that, in his quotations on this subject here and throughout his volume, wherever the words "death," "destruction," "exclusion from life," and kin- dred terms occur, we have this perpetual juggle on the " literal " sense of terms, which are often quoted from other writers as though denoting in those writers non- existence, but without foundation. A great mass of quotation throughout these books is irrelevant and worthless, by reason of this pertinacious persuasion. Thus we are told, for example, that the Jews under- stood the phrase " second death " to mean " exclusion from life."* But did they mean by "life" bare * Debt and Grace, p. 178. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 123 existence ? No. In the same way, the commentator Hammond is quoted in the use of the term " destruc- tion," as though he thereby advocated the doctrine of annihilation. The persistency of this mode of reason- ing strikes us as one of the most thoroughly sophisti- cal procedures in the two volumes of Mr. Hudson ; and it extends through them. The phrase " second death " occurs but four times in the Bible ; all these instances being in the Apoca- lypse, in one of which its meaning is explained. The course of Mr. Hudson on this subject is quite peculiar. 1. He resorts to Jewish Rabbins to explain a New-Tes- tament phrase. 2. Of these twelve or thirteen quota- tions from " early Jewish books," five, being from the Jerusalem Targum, date as low as the seventh century; and others, at somewhat uncertain periods. 3. The quotations show no settled usage among the Rab- bins ; in one instance, the phrase being applied to the despair of Rachel at being childless (Gen. xxx. 1), in another, to the punishment threatened in Exod. xix. 12 : " Whosoever toucheth the mountain shall surely be put to death." 4? Not one of the quotations seems clearly to sustain the meaning of annihilation, even in the Rabbins. Some of them are blind, others turn simply on the meaning of these very terms " life " and " death ; " which terms, for aught that appears, are used in the biblical sense.* * The quotations are as follows : " Let Reuben live in eternal life, and not die the second death." "This hath been decreed by the Lord: That this sin shall not be forgiven them until they die the second death." " Every idolater who says that there is another God besides me I will slay with the second death, from which no man can come to life again." " Behold, this is written before me: I will not give them long life, until I have taken 124 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. The appeal to the Rabbins to determine the mean* ing of a New-Testament term, which is explained in the same book in which it occurs, is as unjustifiable as it is ineffectual. The four instances in which the phrase occurs are Rev. ii. 11 ; xx. 6, 14 ; xxi. 8. la the last-mentioned passage, it is explained. After de- claring that " he that overcome th shall inherit all things ; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son," the sacred writer proceeds : " But the fearful and un- believing, and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone : which is the second death." The second death, then, consists in having their por- tion in the lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone. But this is not a process of extinction, but of continu- ous and endless suffering ; for this lake of fire and brim- stone is the same into which, according to the previous chapter, the Devil shall be cast, and u shall be tormented day and night for ever." So, also, in the chapter fol- lowing, this same class of persons are spoken of as be- ing in existence, but excluded from the joys of the New Jerusalem : " Blessed are they that do his com- Vengeance for their sins ; and I will give their glory to the second death." " Every thief, or robber of his neighbor's goods, shall fall by his iniquities, that he may die the second death." " We learn from this place (Num. xiv. 37) that they died the second death." " Because he [Cain] was doubly guilty, he was slain with a twofold death, — the latter far more severe than the former." " Thev shall die the second death, and shall not live in the world to come, saith the Lord." " They shall die the second death, so as not to enter into the world to come." Some of these passages seem very clearly not f;o signify annihilation. Two or three of them may, or they may not. It is as difficult as it is un- important to determine what they do signify. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 125 mandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city ; for without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" (Rev. xxii. 14). The foregoing passage designates most distinctly the nature of the " second death," as no extinction, but endless suffering, being " tormented day and night for ever." One other passage only seems to describe its nature, viz. Rev. xx. 14, 15. No doubt the whole passage in which it occurs is attended with some diffi- culties of interpretation, and is still the subject of con- troversy. On this account, it is less suitable for ascer- taining the meaning of the phrase than the clear passage already cited. Still, as it has been made the ground of objection to the view now taken, it deserves a brief examination. In this chapter and the preced- ing is set forth the victorious progress of him who is called the Word of God, and the overthrow of his ene- mies. First, the beast and the false prophet are over- thrown, and cast into the " lake of fire burning with brimstone." Afterwards, Satan, having been suffered at large for a time, is "cast into the lake of fire and brim- stone where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." Then follows the judgment-scene, the white throne, the books opened, all the dead summoned before God, " death and hell [hades'] delivering up the dead which were in them ; and they were judged, every man ac- cording to their works. And death and hell [hades'] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second 126 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. death, the lake of fire.* And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Here it is objected that the casting of death and hades -into the lake of fire must be, so it is af- firmed, their annihilation ; and consequently the cast- ing of the wicked into the lake must be the annihila- tion of the wicked. To this we reply, 1. Satan (verse 10) is cast into the lake, not to be annihilated, but for ever tormented, — a satisfactory refutation. The same thing is indicated in regard to the beast and the false prophet, when it said they were " cast alive into the lake." With this, also, is connected the statement in chap. xiv. 10, 11, that the worshipers of the beast " shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indig- nation ; shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night." 2. The one point of the representation throughout is the victory of Christ over all his foes, and the over- throw of their power. The beast and false prophet — representatives of living beings — are overcome and punished, and their ascendency overthrown. Satan, a personality, is overcome and punished, and his power broken. All human foes are overcome, and cast into the same place of punishment with Satan. And, to set forth the absolute completeness of the victory, death and hades, which, in the New Testament, are repre- sented as foes of the redeemed and of the Redeemer's * This last clause, omitted in the received text, is found in the three old- est manuscripts, and admitted by the latest scholars and editors. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 127 kingdom, are here personified ; and they too are pun- ished like the rest, and their power overthrown. For this representation of hostility see 1 Cor. xv. 26 : " Tiie last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Verse 55 : " death, where is thy sting ? grave [hades] where is thy victory ? " Matt. xvi. 18 : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates of hell [hades'] shall not prevail against it." * The representation is not of extinction, but of over- throw and punishment. If it be said that the overthrow of death and hades is their extinction, that is an inci- dental fact, if fact it be, and grows out of the circum- stance that they are both personified abstractions, and not living beings. The living beings, or representatives of living beings, as appears from the passage under discussion, continue in existence and in suffering. Mr. Hudson, however, remarks of the phrase, " shall be tormented day and night for ever," " We think the lan- guage describes their utter and irrevocable destruction [annihilation] in a dramatic form." f On which all that need be said is, that a more utter perversion of language, perhaps, can not be found, unless it be in the advocates of this system and of universal salvation. 3. The extinction of death and hades, if we should grant that consequence, has no bearing upon the ques- tion of endless punishment. The " second death " re- mains, from which no deliverance comes. The " death and hades " here spoken of are simply the persouifica- * Even in Matt xi. 23, Luke xvi. 23, Rev. i. 18, xx. 13, if the idea of a direct hostility is not implied, that of opposition or antithesis to heaven and the kingdom of Christ always remain. t Debt and Grace, p. 215. 128 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. tion of physical death. This is overcome, being reck- oned as one of the enemies of Christ's redeemed ; just as, in 1 Cor. xv. 26, we are told, " The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death " (compare verses 5-1-57).* This is the whole aim of the present passage, to sot forth the overthrow of thanatos and hades — physical death — as hostile to Christ and his subjects. All death is not abolished, when the first death and the grave are overthrown, and cast into the lake of fire. There is another death remaining, which consists in being " tormented day and night for ever and ever." " This is the second death, the lake of fire." Into that are cast all the foes of Christ and his subjects, — the beast, the false prophet, the devil, all the wicked, and death itself, the attendant of sin and long the terror of the righteous. Accordingly, in the next chapter (xxi. 4) we read, " There shall be no more death" to the people of God, while (verse 8) the unbelieving shall reap " the second death," having their portion in the lake that burnetii with fire and brimstone. * So Alford, Dtisterdieck, Brdckner. CHAPTER VL THE EATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. A CHIEF reliance of the advocates of annihilation is on the rational argument. By Mr. Hudson and Mr. Hastings, this reliance is made quite prominent. The latter writer declares that " the doctrine of eter- nal anguish and torture of the lost is in itself so ut- terly opposed to our natural conceptions of God as revealed in the Bible, that it staggers the faith of the most devout ; how then can it be received by the un- believing ? In the language of Bishop Newton, ' Im- agine it you may, but you can never seriously believe it.' Hence many minds reject revelation entirely, be- cause it teaches, as they suppose, a doctrine so utterly repugnant to common sense and divine goodness.' ' In the midst of other remarks to the same purport, namely, the entire incredibleness of the doctrine, he proceeds : " We say, first decide from the Bible whether the doc- trine of eternal torment be true, and then, if we find no such thing is there taught, reject and oppose it as the most terrific blasphemy, the most audacious and unmitigated libel ever uttered against a God of love." * The reader can judge how much meaning there is in * Pauline Theology, pp. 76, 78. Except in the last sentence, the Italics are his. 9 129 130 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the faint exhortation to examine the Scriptures, corn- ing from one who so peremptorily declares the impos- sibility of believing the doctrine. With smoother and more temperate phrase indeed, but with a distinctness which the reader is requested to ponder, Mr. Hudson, after a metaphysical discussion of the whole subject, extending through a hundred and fifty-seven pages, advances to the Scripture testimony with the remark, " If our doctrine of evil be true, it gives us a valid theism" * As we are not discussing this subject to convince rejecters of the Bible, but for the satisfaction of those who receive it as the Word of God and as the ultimate authority, it is unnecessary to follow out the subject in its full extent. The question is with us, at present, simply a question of testimony to a matter of fact. If the testimony is distinct and valid, metaphysical or other objections must, as in all other questions of fact, go for nothing. Still, as some of these argum3nts are quite common, and admit of a very ready answer, we will give them a passing notice. They are drawn from the nature of evil, and the nature of God. Evil, it is affirmed, must be temporary, because (1) it is not needful to God's universe in any mode, and (2) because it is in its own nature frail. As to the first point, sin is not indeed necessary, nor is it the necessary means of the greatest good. But no man who believes that God has made the best sys- tem can deny that the power freely to commit sin was * Debt and Grace, p. 158. THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 131 indispensable to the best system of moral agency. And, though not necessary in itself, sin is a fact ; and hav- ing become a fact, and a universal one, some better reason than this must be given to show why, having once entered the system, it may not continue for ever. Though not necessary, it came ; much more, it may remain. As to the frailty of evil, Mr. Hudson has devoted to this point some pages, of which the chief allegations are, that sin is a derangement and disease of man's faculties ; that its pains are marks of decay and her- alds of death ; and finally, that sin " has no substance, is not an entity, is the antithesis of being." The first two of these statements are much the same with certain teachings of the Bible, which, however, the. writer does not choose to find there. But when it is affirmed that its pains are signs of decay and "heralds of death," in the sense of coming non-existence, the statement has no foundation. All high emotions exhaust the bodily powers ; but the pains of sin no more reduce the exist- ence of the soul than do the joys of holiness. Indeed, the vast depths of its being and inextinguishable vital- ity are oftenest exhibited in the anguish of its sins. And for the " nothingness " of evil, its being " no sub- stance," and the like, men may amuse themselves with such phraseology as long as they please. It is nothing at last but word-play. Whether sin be " an entity " or not, it is one of the most universal, ineradicable, and appalling facts in the history of the human race. For six thousand years it has been exhibiting a terrific power. Its " frailty " of nature remains to be proved. But what is there in the nature of God to indicate 132 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. that all evil shall be banished from his universe ? It may be alleged that his power, benevolence, and wis- dom are guaranties of such a result. But the first two considerations are of themselves entirely inadequate. We will grant that he has the perfect power to expel all evil by the extinction either of its perpetrators or of their evil propensities. But the use that he will make of that power depends en- tirely on other attributes. We will concede that his benevolence will seek and secure the highest good of his universe. But how is that end to be accomplished ? The whole question hinges at last on this other : Is the wisdom of God a perfect guaranty to us that he will secure the highest good of his universe by bringing all sin to an end ? And this, again, is but the same as asking, Do we our- selves so certainly know the whole method in which Infinite Wisdom would govern a universe, that we can pronounce with confidence on the mode in which it will deal with sin ? in other words (for it comes to that), Are we ourselves possessed of infinite wisdom, — the wisdom of God ? If not, then we can not affirm that Infinite Wisdom requires the banishment of sin and sinners from his universe. But we are not left to a negative result, though that alone annihilates the objection with which we are dealing. We have positive and unmistakable evi- dence on the question, whether the wisdom or any other of the perfections of God necessarily, or even certainly, excludes sin from this universe of which he is sovereign. It is the evidence of fact. The perfections of God did not prevent sin from entering the world, THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 133 nor have they prevented its remaining age after age during the whole history of the human race thus far, for at least six thousand years. Now, whatever force there might seem to be in the argument that the wisdom of God requires him finally to drive out sin from his universe, it might be urged with tenfold force that he never would suffer it to enter a universe where all was holiness and harmony, and that he never would suffer it to remain in that universe for an hour. Facts show, then, that the argument is abso- lutely worthless. And it is not easy suitably to cha- racterize the hardihood of an argument which boldly affirms God's perfections to be incompatible with the existence of that which he has permitted to continue from the beginning of the world until now. But perhaps it is said, the eternal continuance of evil is a very different thing from its tolerance in this world. How different ? Not in principle, certainly, but only in degree. It is only more of the very same thing. If there is nothing incompatible with God's perfections in its existence to-day and the past six thousand years, how is there to-morrow, or any other day, or six thou- sand years, or through all eternity ? It is only repeat- ing precisely the same process one day at a time ; and the process goes on for ever. The statement of Archbishop Whately on this point is clear and unanswerable : " The existence of any evil at all in the creation is a mystery we can not ex- plain. It is a difficulty which may perhaps be cleared up to us in a future state ; but the Scriptures give us no revelation concerning it. And those who set at de- fiance the plain and obvious sense of Scripture, by 134 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. contending (as some do) for the final admission to eternal happiness of all men, in order (as they them- selves profess) to get over the difficulty by this means, and to reconcile the existence of evil with the benevo- lence of God, do not, in fact, after all, when they have put the most forced interpretation on the words of the sacred writers, advance one single step towards their point. For the main difficulty is not the amount of the evil that exists, but the existence of any at all. Any, even the smallest, portion of evil is quite unac- countable, supposing that the same amount of good could be attained without that evil ; and why it is not so attainable is more than we are able to explain. And if there be some reason we can not understand why a small amount of evil is unavoidable, there may be, for aught we know, the same reason for a greater amount. I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked ; if he will explain why God does not cause all those to die in the cradle, of whom he foresees, that, when they grow up, they will lead a sinful life. The thing can not be explained. . . . All we can say is, that, for some unknown cause, evil is unavoidable. Now, it is a manifest absurdity to at- tempt to explain and limit the operations of an unknown cause. u It would indeed be very consolatory to be able to make out, on sufficient grounds, that the total amount of suffering, past, present, and future, in the universe is far less than we had imagined. But even if we could satisfv ourselves of this, — if we could discover that not a hundredth part of the evil that we believe to ex- THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 135 ist really does exist, still, as I have said, the diminu- tion of the evil itself would not at all diminish the difficulty, I may say the impossibility, of explaining how it comes to pass, that, in the work of a benevolent Creator, there should be any evil at all. " Unthinking people, however, are apt to fancy that a difficulty is itself diminished if the thing is dimin- ished about which the difficulty arises. For instance, it is admitted, as is well known, to be impossible for man to annihilate any portion of material substance. We can destroy its form, as by tearing this book into shreds ; or we can divide it into particles invisible to our eyes, as by burning it, so as to disperse part of it into vapor and smoke, and scatter away the ashes that remain : but we can not annihilate, that is, cause to exist no longer, the material substance. And, as im- possibility does not admit of different degrees, it is equally impossible to annihilate the smallest as the largest quantity of matter. And yet, perhaps, some people, if they were told that some chemist had suc- ceeded in annihilating a few grains of sand, though they might not absolutely believe the report, yet would not be so much startled at the extravagance of it, as if it had been said that he had annihilated some huge mountain. Again : it is thought by most to be im- possible (at least, they would have great difficulty in admitting it) to convert, as some ancient chemists at- tempted to do, the baser metals into gold ; and I sup- pose most persons, if they were told of some one having changed several tons of lead into gold, would at once reject the account as an idle tale ; but if they were told that it was only a few grains, some, I ima- 136 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. gine, would feel less confidence in the falsity of the re port. And yet, if the' difficulty is to conceive how lead can become gold, that difficulty is not at all lessened by lessening the quantity of the metal. "And so it is with some unthinking persons in respect of the present subject. If they can devise some the- ory which will explain away great part of the supposed amount of evil in the universe, they hastily conclude that they have explained away some part, at least, of the difficulty presented by the existence of evil. Our distress and alarm, indeed, would be diminished by a diminution of the evil that exists ; but the difficulty would remain precisely the same. And of this, as I have said, no explanation can be framed by human reason, or is to be found in Scripture." * And so there is no difficulty encountered in the doc- trine of the continuance of sin and suffering in eter- nity, which is not already encountered in the fact of its existence in and through all time. And the argu- ment which breaks down before these present facts is good for nothing as a basis of future predictions. But perhaps it may still be argued, there are spe- cial reasons why evil is admitted and tolerated in this present world, — disciplinary uses to the sinner himself, salutary impressions and influences on the universe, or exhibitions of the character of God, or grounds un- known to us ; but these reasons will cease with the present life. We answer, that, in the first place, this reply concedes the main point, and admits that the permission of sin and misery for sufficient reasons is * Whately's Future State, p. 175. THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 137 perfectly compatible with God's perfections, and there- fore just, so long as valid reasons exist. If those good reasons always exist, then evil may be permitted for ever. The question then changes to this : Can any man prove that God, who has seen good reasons for suf- fering the introduction of sin, and its existence for many thousand years already, with every prospect of its con- tinuance for a still longer period, can have no good reason whatever for suffering its continuance in the world to come ? And this question involves two in- quiries : First, Does any man know the reasons, all the reasons, why God permitted sin to enter and occupy this universe at all ?- Second, Does he know that those reasons will all cease hereafter ? He is a bold man who ventures to answer the first of these questions in the affirmative ; for he claims to have fathomed the whole mind of God. And bolder yet, if possible, is the man who ventures to affirm the second, while he can not affirm the first ; who dares to assert that the meth- ods of God must certainly change, while yet he does not know on what they are founded. It is therefore entirely unnecessary to follow out in detail the argument, in whatsoever form presented, which endeavors, by its theory of God, or its " theodicy," as the phrase is, to prove that sin must come to an end. It has a fatal lack of fact for its basis. And not only so, it is sadly in conflict with all the factb which seem related to the case. The history of the human race, and of the angelic race thus far, has a very unfortunate bearing on it. Had God never suf- fered moral evil to break in on his universe, very likely we should have thought that his perfections constituted 138 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. an incontrovertible argument that he never would suffer it. Had he even on the first irruption of sin instantly hurled it out, by whatsoever method, annihi- lation or restoration, we might still have had some confidence in this argument against its permanence. Had he blotted out the sinning race, and started an- other, pure and spotless ; had he manifested some special haste to bring the sinful race to an end ; did he continue in existence only those fallen beings who were on probation, or those only whose probation would surely bring them to repentance, and cut off at once all those who, he knew, would never repent, — we might still allow some weight to the argument. Or could some man show very clearly and certainly some great end to be accomplished by permitting sin for many thousand years, which must wholly cease at some par- ticular time ; or some valid reason for continuing one finally impenitent sinner for a long term of years, and for repeating the process millions on millions of times, which reason can not possibly exist except in their par- ticular circumstances, — the reasoning would have some force. But, unfortunately, every one of these particu- lars is against the argument. God did not exclude nor banish sin. He did not narrow it down to the least possible time, nor the fewest possible individuals. He has not exterminated the sinning race, but has suffered it to drag on its protracted and sinful career. He has continued in existence for an unknown length of time a race of sinful beings to whom we have no knowledge that any offer of recovery was ever made. He pro- longs on earth the lives of multitudes of sinners who do not repent, and who, he knew beforehand, would THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 139 not repent. Thousands and millions of these sinners he suffers thus to prolong their lives on earth, not only to no purpose so far as their own final welfare is con- cerned, but, as far as we can see, to no purpose as a warning to other sinners ; yea, rather to introduce other sinners into the world, and to be the means of keeping countless thousands away from God. Such are the facts. They prove that the permission of sin and suffering is perfectly consistent with the perfec- tions of God ; that the reasons for their continuance do not necessarily contemplate the recovery, or even the probation, of the sinner ; and that those reasons are wholly beyond our complete apprehension. The aspect of the case, from the facts which lie before us, affords no objection whatever to the eternal continuance of evil. On the other hand, it shows that if God see adequate reasons, he may properly continue this state of things for ever ; and, in our entire inability to fathom the reasons for its present and past existence, holds out, of itself, a very strong presumption that he may deem it wise to suffer the continuance of evil in the future world. No man can allege a ground for the final extinction of all sin, that did not exist still more strongly for its original exclusion. No man can give a reason for the annihilation of the sinner at the end of fourscore years, which did not exist a fortiori for his non-creation, or for his extinction at the first trans- gression. No reason can be given why evil should be exterminated when probation has ceased, which would not bar its permission where no probation was offered, or where probation was known to be fruitless. There is still one other shape in which the opposing 140 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. argument may be advanced. Thus: The protracted existence of sin and suffering is compatible with God's perfections, only because of his coming final and per- fect triumph over it. We answer, First, This fully concedes the main principle at issue, namely, that the permission of sin for a good reason is perfectly defensi- ble, while somewhat presumptuously asserting that there can be but one good reason. Secondly, The rea- son assigned overthrows the position which it endea- vors to sustain ; for if it be, as the argument admits and assumes, more honorable to God, and more truly a triumph, to show his mighty ascendency in the uni- verse, after the protracted admission of sin and suffer- ing, than by its utter exclusion, then, on the same principle, a fortiori, it is a still grander triumph in him to show that ascendency and glory over the eternal op- position of sin. Considered thus in whatsoever light, the argument drawn from the perfections of God against the future existence of evil, is, in view of the plain facts of this universe, entirely fallacious, and hardly even specious. It is quite customary with the advocates of annihila- tion (as well as the teachers of universal salvation) to garnish their argument with extracts from a letter of Rev. John Foster, in which, while admitting that ^ the language of Scripture is formidably strong" in support of the doctrine of eternal punishment, he des- cants dismally but powerfully upon the terrible aspect of the case. The point of the whole is contained in the following paragraph : " Under the light (or the dark- ness) of this doctrine, how inconceivably mysterious and awful is the whole economy of this human world ! The THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT EXAMINED. 141 immensely greater number of the race hitherto, through all ages and regions, passing a short life, un- der no illuminating, transforming influence of their Creator (ninety-nine in a hundred of them, perhaps, having never even received any authenticated message from Heaven), passing off the world in a state unfit for a spiritual, happy, and heavenly kingdom elsewhere, — and all destined to everlasting misery. The thought- ful spirit has a question silently suggested to it of a far more emphatic import than that of him who exclaimed, * Hast thou made all men in vain ? ' " But Mr. Foster best answers himself by another pic- ture, equally lugubrious and direful, which he has drawn of the aspect of things in this world hitherto, and irrespective of any future state. He writes* to Mr. Harris in the following strain : " I hope, indeed may assume, that you are a man of cheerful temperament ; but are you not sometimes invaded by the darkest vis- ions and reflections, while casting your view over the scene of human existence from the beginning to this hour ? To me it appears a most mysterious and awful economy, overspread by a dreadful and lurid shade. I pray for piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and feeling to the wise and righteous Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature, created in purity, ruined at the very origin, etc., the grand remedial vis- itation, Christianity, laboring in a difficult progress ; soon perverted ; at the present hour known and even nominally acknowledged by very greatly the minority of the race ; its progress distanced by the increase of the population ; thousands every day passing out of the world in no state of fitness for a pure and happy 142 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. state elsewhere, — oh, it is a most confounding and ap- palling contemplation ! " Thus the condition and history of things in the pres- ent world are described by Mr. Foster in the same mode in which he paints the retributions of the future world; and, by his own showing, it appears that the same kind of impeachment against God's character may be drawn from the one as from the other. The objec- tion is therefore null. JPJ± RT II. POSITIVE DISPROOF OP THE DOCTRINE OP ANNIHILATION. CHAPTER I. BELIEF OP A FUTURE EXISTENCE AMONG THE EARLIER JEWS. WHEN we would weigh the teachings of Christ and his apostles on the subject of punishment, it is important to know what views prevailed among their immediate hearers. Those inspired teachers knew how their words could not fail to be understood, and spoke accordingly. And it may be well to consi- der, not only what was the then existing view, but what had been the early education, of that people. Now it can be conclusively shown that the belief of another state of existence was familiar to that people from ancient times. 1. It is incredible, not to say impossible, that the Is- raelites should have lived in Egypt for many genera- tions, without being thoroughly conversant with the belief of a future state. The doctrine of the continued existence of the soul after death, and in a state of re 143 144 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. ward or of suffering, was one of the most prominent religious beliefs of the Egyptians. All attempts to cast doubt or confusion on this prime fact of the Egyp- tian religion is idle, if not dishonest.* Herodotus, the oldest Greek historian, indicates the remote antiquity, as well as the prominence, of this doctrine among the Egyptians, when he says that " they were the first to broach the opinion that the soul of man is immortal." f But we do not depend upon the testimony of foreigners. The Egyptians themselves have made their own clear record. Delineations of judgment-scenes in the other world are among the most abundant of the old Egyptian records. They are found on the papyri, in the temples, and especially in the tombs. Here, with some variety of detail, abun- dantly recurs the same fundamental representation. The deceased person, in charge of the god Horus, is brought toward Osiris, the judge of the dead. Near the gates of Amenti, the region of the blessed, stand the scales of Justice ; and the god Anubis, placing in the one scale a vase representing the good actions of the deceased, and in the other the emblem of Truth, ascertains the result. If found wanting, Osiris inclines his scepter in token of condemnation, and remands the soul, in the form of an unclean animal, back to earth ; and all communication with Amenti is hewn away be- hind him. But, if his virtues predominate, Horus, tab- let in hand, leads him forward to dwell in the presence of Osiris and the mansions of the blessed. A full ac- count of these paintings may be found in Wilkinson's * See Hudson's unworthy attempt: Future Life, p. 268. f Herodotus, Book ii. sect. 123. BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 145 Popular Account of the Egyptians.* The same writer, in the notes of Rawlinson's Herodotus, makes the fol- lowing declaration, — the declaration of an eye-witness: " This [doctrine of immortality] was the great doctrine of the Egyptians, and their belief in it is everywhere proclaimed in the paintings of the tombs. But the souls of wicked men alone appear to have suffered the disgrace of entering the body of an animal, when, weighed in the balance before the tribunal of Osiris, they were pronounced unworthy to enter the abode of the blessed. . . . There is every indication in the Egyptian sculptures, of the souls of good men being ad- mitted at once, after a favorable judgment had been passed on them, into the presence of Osiris, whose mys- terious name they were permitted to assume. Men and women were then called Osiris, who was the ab- stract idea of 'goodness;' and there was no distinction of sex or rank when a soul had attained that privi- lege.' 7 f Proofs on this subject are abundant and incontro- vertible. The question is set at rest. Bunsen, in his great work on Egypt, speaks 1 thus : " The Egyptians were the first who taught the doctrine of the immor- tality of the soul, — a fact mentioned by all Greek writ- ers from Herodotus to Aristotle, and one brilliantly confirmed by the monuments." % In addition to the delineations of the monuments, a papyrus has been dis- covered in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, and re- cently translated by Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, * Vol. ii., pp. 375-383. t Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii. pp. 168,169. X Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. iv. pp. 639 et seq. 10 146 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. entitled the Book of the Dead. It describes the acts or adventures of the soul of the deceased, and contains his prayers, invocations, and confessions on his long journey through the celestial gates. Bunsen gives an analysis of the work, with extracts, and pro- ceeds to say, " The main points in the formulas of the Book of the Dead may be summed up as follows : Ac- cording to the creed of the Egyptians, the soul of man was divine, and therefore immortal. It is subject to personal moral responsibility. The consequence of evil actions is banishment from God [in migration through animal bodies]. Faith transfers venial sins to the account of the body, which is, in consequence, doomed to annihilation. Man, when justified, becomes conscious that he is a son of God, and destined to be- hold God at the termination of his wanderings. " * The celebrated Egyptian scholar, Lepsius, adds his testimony. He describes the Book of the Dead as " essentially a history of the soul after death ; " confirms the reference of the doctrine of immortality by Hero- dotus to the Egyptians ; adding, " It is now sufficiently known from the monuments, that the Egyptians pos- * Id. vol. iv. p. 648. Bunsen also remarks, " It is only by considering how very deeply this sense of immortality was ingrafted on the Egyptian mind, that we can comprehend the passion for the monstrous and colossal proportions of the Pyramids, and, at the same time, the glorious emblem- atical and artistic character of those works of the Old Empire. As animal worship is merely the Egyptianized African form of an early Asiatic con- ception, so is also the combination of the care for the preservation of the body, and, if possible, its protection from destruction, connected with the doctrine of immortality. The soul was immortal ; but its happiness, if not the possibility of its continuing to live, depended on the preservation of the body. The destruction of the body consequently involved the destruction of the soul." — Vol. iv. p. 657. The closing remark seems to be offered as conjectural. No proof is cited. BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 147 sessed, from the earliest times, very distinct ideas about the transmigration of souls and of judgment after death." * The records on these monuments date back to a period earlier than the residence of the Israelites in Egypt. Certain side-questions about the exact nature and history of the doctrine of transmigration have been raised ; but the fundamental fact of a belief in immortality is indisputable. " No one," says a learned writer, " has ever disputed the fact that the ancient Egyptians believed in a future state ; and, as appears from the work of Roth (Die Egypt), they had this belief even before Jacob and his sons took up their resi- dence in Egypt." f * Lepsius' Introduction to Egyptian Chronology (Bohn's Antiq. Library), pp. 392, 385. t Rev. S. Tuska in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October, 1860. Prior to the modern discoveries, much confusion hung over this subject; and differences of opinion still exist as to some of the details. But the fun- damental fact is no longer an open question. Mr. Hudson, however, by re- ferring to these differences of detail, apparently endeavors to leave the im- pression that there is a doubt whether the Egyptians believed in the soul's existence after death. — Future Life, p. 268. Mr. Alger, in his History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (A.D. 1864), very properly treats this as a question most perfectly settled by the three sources of knowledge now accessible; viz., the papyrus-rolls, the ornamental cases of the mummies, and the paintings in the tombs. He cites eminent modern authorities for the following results : "Souls at death pass down into Amenti, and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the earth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. If justified, they join the blissful company of the Sun-god, and rise with him through the east to journey along his celestial course. . . . The condemned soul is either scourged back to the earth straightway, to live again in the form of a vile animal, as some of the emblems appear to denote; or plunged into the tortures of a horrid hell of fire and devils below, as numerous engravings set forth; or driven into the atmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tempests, violently whirled in blasts and clouds, till its sins are expiated, and another probation granted through a renewed existence in human form " (p. 103). 148 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. Now, the Israelitish people resided in Egypt many generations in the midst of such views publicly held and conspicuously promulgated. To suppose them ig- norant of a future state at the exodus is preposterous. The unquestionable records of the Egyptian monu- ments now for ever refute the alleged incredibility of finding the knowledge of a future state in the Hebrew documents. They make it incredible that it should not be there, — incredible that the long series of in- spired men, from Moses to Malachi, should have been so far below Egyptian priests and kings as never to have alluded to a great truth which had been pub- lished to the empire long before the days of Moses. 2. The Hebrew view of the nature of the soul was such as to lay a natural foundation for a belief in its continued existence after death. The human being is specially distinguished from the animal world in his creation ; and the soul is specially distinguished from the body, and allied to God, its creator. This view of the human soul, though not drawn out in metaphysical statements and definitions, lies upon the face of the sacred volume from the beginning. The first chapter of Genesis sets forth the distinction between man and the animals, and his special alliance to God. The Creator proposes to " make man in our image, after our likeness ; " and it is solemnly recorded, " So God created man in his own image." The He- brew reader could not understand this as referring to any thing connected with the body ; for he was taught (Exod. xx. 4) that God could not be imaged forth in Mr. Alger, it should be remarked, does not find the doctrine of eternal pun- ishment taught in the New Testament. BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 149 a body. The spirit alone could be made after the like- ness of the spirit God. The thought is confirmed i:i the following chapter, where man's special relation to God in his nature is indicated in the fuller narrative of his creation. God " formed man of the dust of the ground ; " and as a distinct and distinguishing act, we are told, he " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Thus the tenant of the human body was from the special inbreathing of God. " Two elements are united in man, — an earthly and a divine ; which latter no other creature shares with him." * The same high view of human nature is assumed throughout the older Scriptures, sometimes with ap- parent allusion to this account of man's nature and origin. Man w r alked and talked with God (Gen. ii. iii.). He was to be inviolate ; "for in the image of God made he man " (Gen. ix. 6). " Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," or rather (in the original), " Thou hast made him lack little of God " (Ps. viii. 5). Elihu exclaims, "There is a spirit in man : and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding" (Job xxxii. 8). "The Lord, which . . . formeth the spirit of man within him " (Zech. xii. 1). " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth down- ward to the earth ? " (Eccles. iii. 21.) In this high doctrine of man's nature, and especially of the peculiar origin and alliance of his soul as the very inbreathing of the eternal God, was laid the firm basis of the almost inevitable conclusion — the immor- „ i i — . - -■■■ . -■ . i .— ^ * Hengstenberg on Ecclesiastes, p. 121. 150 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. talitj of the soul, and its survival of the body's dis- solution. In one striking passage, the conclusion is stated with the clearest reference to its foundation. The best comment on Gen. ii. 7 is found in Eccles.xii. 7, where the diverse destination of body and soul at death is distinctly stated, and with an allusion to their dif- ferent origin and alliance : " Then shall the dust re- turn to the earth as it was ; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Thus Elijah prayed : " Lord my God, let this child's soul come into him [within, or into the midst of him] again. And the Lord heard the voice of Eli- jah ; and the soul of the child came into [the midst of] him again, and he revived " (1 Kings xvii. 21, 22). . It is not pretended that the Hebrews had nice meta- physical notions, or used precise phraseology to define this nobler part of human nature. It is never so in common life. But it is a fact beyond the reach of cavil, that throughout the Old Testament there runs the underlying and outcropping distinction between the earthly, perishable frame of man, and that higher portion of his being, variously termed his heart, soul, or spirit, which' brought him into alliance and com- munion with God. " Bless the Lord, my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name " (Ps. ciii. 1). " With my spirit within me will I seek thee early " (Isa. xxvi. 9). Sometimes it is even termed the " glory " of his being, and is distinguished from the body, which is joined with it to make the whole man : " Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth ; my flesh •also shall rest in hope " (Ps. xvi. 9). Sometimes the soul and body are together put for the whole being of BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 151 the man : " My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee ; " " My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee " (Ps. lxiii. 1,5). " But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn " (Job xiv. 22). Sometimes over against the frailty of the one portion of his being is set the eternal joy of the other in its union with God : " My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever " (Ps. Ixxiii. 26). Quite often the soul, as the nobler part, is put summarily to designate the man himself : " Many there be which say of my soul [myself], There is no help for him in God " (Ps. iii. 2). " How say ye to my soul [to me], Flee as a bird to your mountain " (Ps. xi. 1). " Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation " (Ps. xxxv. 3).* Through the entire Old Testament runs this distinc- * From this designation of the man by the animating and interior portion of his nature arose a still further extension of the term to designate a human being in the most general terms: " Seventy souls," persons, irrespective of age or sex (Exod. i. 5; xvi. 16; Gen. xlvi. 18, 27, etc.). It is used of ser- vants : " The souls they had gotten in Haran " (Gen. xii. 5); " If a man be found stealing any of his brethren " [a soul of his brethren] (Deut. xxiv. 7). Of captives: " Give the persons," literally souls (Gen. xiv. 21). With the proper adjective, it even designates a dead man, but never a dead animal: " Shall come at no dead body," literally dead soul, i.e. person (Num. vi. 6). The universal application of a law is indicated by the use of the word " soul " for " person : " " If a soul touch any unclean thing " (Lev. v. 2). In view of this last fact, so manifest, one can appreciate the force of the fol- lowing passage from a tract by Thomas B. Newman, with his own capitals: "What dies? The soul that sinneth, it shall die." The Scripture, of course, means simply that the individual, whoever he may be, shall die. It is not denied that the particular Hebrew word "soul" [^53] which primarily denotes the vitalizing principle, and thence an animate being, is frequently applied to all living creatures; e.g., Gen. i. 24; ii. 7, 19, etc. — See the next note. 152 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. tion between the earthly body and the higher princi- ple, the animating spirit which brings the man into communion and union with the ever-living God, from whom it came ; and which clings to him in unshaken hope and deathless love. It forms the natural basis for the almost inevitable doctrine of the continued ex- istence of that exalted portion of our being.* 3. Accordingly, an existence beyond this life is rec- ognized on the very threshold of the Bible, in the translation of Enoch ; and, in the same palpable form, is reiterated in the translation of Elijah. It is recorded that " Enoch walked with God ; and he was not, for God took him " (Gen. v. 24). Now, it did not require the explanation of the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. xi. 5.) to unfold the meaning of this statement. A good man who walked with God while on earth, — and the fact is twice affirmed, — God there- fore takes. Whither ? To annihilation ? To extinc- tion of all conscious joy ? Is that the mode in which * This .position, it will be perceived, does not rest on the nice or unva- ried usage of a particular terra or terms, but upon the accompanying ut- terances, the explanatory phrases, and unmistakable drift of whole pas- sages; not upon a few such utterances, but upon a multitude of them, constituting the entire strain of such outpourings as the Psalms. Mean- while many specific passages like those we have quoted definitely refer this alliance and communion with God to the inner portion of our being, in dis- tinction from the perishable body. It is therefore idle to tell us of certain diverse uses of the words " soul," " spirit," "heart " (iz5p3> TV\*\> 2b), to disprove the Hebrew belief; as idle as to attempt a disproof of the modern belief in a soul or spirit, because ice use these words so variously at times : e.g., the heart of the subject, the heart of the Andes, heartless ; the spirit of a poem or a discussion, the high spirit of a horse, proof-spirit, etc. ; every soul on board perished, a soul- less wretcfi. BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 153 God shows his love for a good man ? The thought is ridiculous. He took him to himself, to heaven ; to he with him on high with whom he walked below. No man could miss the meaning.* And the sacred writer explains (Heb. xi. 5) : " He was translated, that he should not see death." This narrative, occurring al- most at the beginning of the sacred history, is very strik- ing and weighty. It gives a key-note to the whole strain of the Scriptures. Once again, long afterwards, the eyes of the whole nation were directed to that home of the holy by the ascension of the grandest of tne Israelitish prophets to the presence of God. Elijah, in the repeated phrase of Scripture, " was taken up by a whirlwind into heaven," in a chariot of fire (2 Kings ii. 1, 11). It needed not his re-appearance on the Mount of Trans- figuration to intimate, that, though absent from earth, he was present with God. Malachi foretold his return (iv. 5) ; and there is the most ample evidence, both in the Gospels and the Talmud, that the whole nation looked for his coming. 4. The patriarchs, who died by natural deaths, are described as having gone to join the company of their ancestors beyond this life. It will not be forgotten how Christ silenced the Sad- ducees, in their denial of immortality, by that phrase from the Old Testament, " I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob ; " adding, that " God is not a God of the dead, but of the living " (Luke xx. 38). * Such was the interpretation, for example, of Ecclesiasticus. xliv. 14 j xlix. 14; and of Josephus, Antiq. 1, 3, 4. 154 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. The statement, he would say, made by God long after the death of the patriarchs, proved that they were not extinct ; for God does not stand in such relations to extinct beings. Though dead, they live. Other passages very distinctly intimate the continued existence of these patriarchs. We refer to those pas- sages where each of them is said to be " gathered to his people," or " gathered to his fathers." This is the phrase employed concerning Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron (Gen. xxv. 8 ; xxxv. 29 ; xlix. 29 ; Dent, xxxii. 50). To Abraham also there was given the previous assurance, : ' Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace " (Gen. xv. 15). Now, this phrase does not mean simply to die, or to be buried, or to be buried in a family tomb ; for three reasons, the third of which is absolutely decisive. (1) Death and burial are both mentioned in the same con- nections, as facts distinct from this : " Thus Abraham gave up the ghost and died, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people ; and his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him " (Gen. xxv. 8, 9). Here the joining his people is mentioned as though the sequel of death, and as entirely distinct from his bu- rial. Sarah, indeed, was the only occupant of the tomb in which he was buried. Precisely the same statement is made of Isaac (Gen. xxxv. 29). So Jacob "charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto' my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite " (Gen. xlix. 29). Here the being gathered to his people is the event over which he had no control ; but the burial is the subject of direction. Moses was commanded BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 155 (Deut. xxxii. 50) to " die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in Mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people." Here, again, death and the being gathered to his people are distinguished ; while burial in a fami- ly tomb is out of the question, since neither Moses nor Aaron was buried with their ancestors. The phrase in question is almost invariably preceded by the addi- tional statement, " died." (2) The distinction be- tween burial in one common tomb, and " being gathered to one's people," is also made prominent by the sepa- ration of the two events by a considerable interval of time. Jacob " yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people " (Gen. xlix. 33) ; but it was only after embalming and seventy days of mourning, and a journey to Canaan, that we are told his sons " buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah " (Gen. 1. 13). (3) It is a decisive fact, that the phrase is employed concern- ing those who were not deposited in the tombs of their ancestors. Abraham was buried beside his wife only. Moses (and apparently Aaron) was buried in an un- known and solitary place. So also David, Omri, and Manasseh, each "slept with his fathers;" although David was buried in the city of David, Omri in Sama- ria, and Manasseh " in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza " (1 Kings ii. 10 ; xvi. 28 ; 2 Kings xxi. 18). There is, therefore, conclusive reason- for under- standing the phrase " gathered to his fathers " in its unperverted meaning of joining them in the other world. Such is the clear decision of the best modern 156 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. commentators of various schools, — Baumgarten, Ger- lach, Knobel, Delitzsch.* It is with this thought that David comforts himself concerning his dead child (2 Sam. xii. 23) : > 4 1 shall go to him ; but he shall not return to me." The pa- triarch Jacob apparently expressed the expectation of joining his lost son Joseph, at the time when he sup- posed his body to have been irrecoverably devoured by wild beasts : " For I will go down into the grave (skeol) unto my son, mourning" (Gen. xxxvii. 35). To the same purport the record of Elijah's miracle. The prophet prayed, " Lord, my God, I pray thee let this child's soul come into him again ; . . . and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived " (1 Kings, xvii. 21, 22) : an apparent recognition of the separate existence of the departed soul. 5. We may not properly omit to mention that this view is strongly re-enforced by the repeated designation * Says Gerlach, on Gen. xv. 15, " Thou shalt go to thy fathers, or thy people, in peace, is the gracious expression for a life after death." Says Baumgarten, " A continuance after death is assuredly expressed therein." Knobel remarks more at length, on Gen. xxv. 8, " Abraham was gathered to his fathers, i.e. was associated with his ancestors in sheol [the under- world]. The phrases ' to go to his fathers,' ' to be gathered to his fathers,' and the very common one 'to sleep with his fathers,' all have the same meaning. They signify neither to die merely, since 3>13 and ffift are com- monly connected with them ; nor to he buried in a family tomb with one's ancestors, since the interment often is also expressed at the same time by *"OD, and since the terms are applied also to those who were not buried " T with their fathers, but elsewhere, like Moses, David, Omri, Manasseh, as well as of those in whose place of burial not more than one of their fathers lay, e.g. Solomon, Ahab." Delitzsch takes the same ground on Gen. xxv. 8: " That Abraham was buried is first stated further on; the union with his relatives who had gone before thus takes place first, not at his inter- ment, but already in the moment of death. . . . The union with the fathers is not a mere union of corpses, but of persons." BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 157 of the whole present life, however protracted, as a pil- grimage. " The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years, few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (Gen. xlvii. 9) ; "I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were " (Ps. xxxix. 12). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews certainly puts this construction on these utterances ; for he says that the patriarchs " confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth ; for they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country, — a better country ; that is, an hea- venly " (Heb. xi. 13, 14, 16). 6. Another, and a decisive indication, amounting to a positive proof of a belief in the continued existence of the departed, is found in the practice of magical in- vocations of the dead, — a practice which, among other species of witchcraft, Moses was obliged to prohibit by law. In Dent, xviii. 10, 11, he commands, " There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer" literally a con- sulter of the dead. The clear comment on this law, and conclusive proof of the strong hold of the belief and practice upon the nation, is found in the interview of Saul with the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii. 7-20). Saul went with the demand, " Bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee." The woman's reply shows that this 158 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. was a common pretension of the whole class of wizards : " Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land ; wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life to cause me to die? " When Saul had re-assured her, she inquires in the most sweeping way, " Whom shall I bring up unto thee ? " He calls for Samuel. The sequel need not be related. Now, no difference of opinion as to the actual nature of the subsequent transactions can disguise that there was a class of persons in Israel who pretended to sum- mon the dead into communication with the living, and that, while the belief in their power to do it was so ex- tended as to require a special exertion of the mon- arch's authority to banish them from the kingdom, it was also so deep-seated, that even that monarch him- self was the victim of the delusion. And, furthermore, this prevalent belief in the ability to bring up the dead must have rested on an equally prevalent belief that the dead were still in being. 7. But there are found also in the earlier times clear indications of the nature of that future ; allusions to it as a state of retribution. It is the scene of joy and recompense to the righteous, and of vengeance to the wicked. Sometimes these respective future prospects are contrasted with each other, sometimes they are in- dicated separately. How plainly does the writer of the sixteenth Psalm declare his confidence that God, who is his trust, will rescue him from the grave, and receive him to eternal joy in his presence ! The first part of the Psalm (ver. 1-7) expresses his confidence and his delight in God, BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 159 and the intimacy and firmness of his adhesion to him. With God at his right hand (ver. 8), nothing shall dis- turb his tranquillity. Not only shall his spirit be glad (ver. 9), but his " flesh also " — his body or person — " shall rest in hope " of future deliverance. "For thou will not leave my soul in hell [hades, sheol] ; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life [the way to life, to God's presence]. In thy presence is fullness of joy ; at thy right hand, there are pleasures for evermore " (ver. 10, 11). Here is the plainest hope of a life of pleasure for evermore at the right hand of God, after deliverance from the grave. The Messianic bearing of the Psalm makes no difference in regard to the doc- trine of a future life, uttered primarily in the person of David. The seventeenth Psalm contrasts the bright future hopes of the Psalmist with the earthly transient enjoy- ments of the men of this world. The Psalmist, with strong confidence in his integrity of purpose (ver. 1-4), appeals to God for defense from his deadly foes (ver. 5-9). He describes their pride and ferocity (ver. 10- 12), and, in connection with a fresh petition for deliv- erance (ver. 13), he reminds himself of the evanescence of their many sensual joys (ver. 14) : " Men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure : they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes." Immediately (ver. 15) he breaks out exulting : " As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness ; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. " Now, when we consider that to which this hope stands 160 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. contrasted, — the portion of the men of the world in this life, as well as the Psalmist's own sufferings, inflicted by them in their hostility ; and when we look at the phraseology of his hope, — the beholding of God's face in righteousness, the awaking, the satisfaction with God's likeness, — it is not easy to dissent from the statement of Rosenmuller, that " these things can hardly be understood otherwise than concerning the hope which the prophet entertained of a blessed vision of God in the future life, when he should have awaked from the sleep of death." Indeed the brilliant but skeptical scholar, De Wette, even maintained that Da- vid could not be the author of the Psalm, because it clearly expresses the hope of immortality. Tholuck says well : " Wondrously enlightened by the Holy Ghost, he [David] speaks with a clearness which seems possible to Christian minds only, of the glories of heaven, where the struggle with sin shall be changed into perfect righteousness, faith into face-to-face vision, satiation with the divided goods of this life into satia- tion with the one perfect good, which renders every thing besides unnecessary." * Psalm seventy-third describes in full the writer's per- plexity, distress, and danger, as he viewed the grand enigma of Providence in the sufferings of the godly and * Hengstenberg does not receive this exposition; but his objections are singular enough. They are solely that, " according to it, not merely would there be expressed here a knowledge of eternal life, more clear and confi- dent than we could almost expect to find in a psalm of David, but specially that the Psalmist would declare his entire resignation in regard to earthly things, which, in that case, he wholly abandons to the wicked, and directs all his hope to the heavenly." Therefore he can not suffer hin to express so clear a knowledge or so entire a resignation. BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 1G1 the undisturbed prosperity of the heaven-defying wick- ed, and the solution of that enigma in which his soul found peace in the assurance that the relative posi- tion of the parties shall be speedily reversed at death by the mighty and righteous Governor of the world. In the earlier part of the Psalm, he describes the occa- sion of his repining: "The prosperity of the wicked," often up to the very hour of their death (ver. 4.), their exemption from suffering, and their accumulation of riches and pleasures in the fullest degree through their whole life, while they defy both God and man (ver. 6-12). The contrasted sight of his own suffering lot had bred in him deep gloom (ver. 13-16), till he went to the sanctuary, and understood their end (ver. 17), which will be an instantaneous waking from an empty dream to a fearful reality of " destruction," " desolation," and "terrors" (ver. 18-20). After an expression of amazement at his own former stupidity, the writer exults in the consciousness of God's contin- ual support ; breaks out in the joyful assurance, " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after- ward receive me to glory;" declares God to be his su- preme portion in heaven and earth (ver. 25) ; and asserts that, even though or when "flesh and heart fail- eth, God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." In this passage, the obvious meaning of the language is sustained by the whole scope of the Psalm. TJie source of the writer's distress was the unbroken prosperity of the impious wicked up to the very hour of death* (ver. 4-17), as compared with the daily * To avoid this, Ewald and J. Olshausen find it necessary to change the Hebrew text of verse 4, — conjecturally. 11 162 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. chastisements of the righteous. At the "end" only does the difference appear. The destruction, desola- tion, and terror of the wicked must be even subsequent to their dissolution ; for there are " no bands in their death: but their strength is firm." The "dream" is dispelled " in a moment." On the other hand, the Psalmist is consoled under his daily chastisements with the assurance that the God who has hitherto held him by the hand will guide him by his counsel here, and " afterward receive him to glory ; " *! and that He who, of all objects in heaven and earth, is his chief good, will be his strength and portion when heart and flesh fail ; yea, " to eternity." The judicious Alexan- der well remarks, that the reference to a future state in verses 16-19, 24, is " evident, if interpreted in any natural and reasonable manner." The forty-ninth Psalm, though more obscure in meth- od and expression, is a development of the same funda- mental theme. It is intended to vindicate the govern- ment of God, and, in the words of Alexander, " to console the righteous under the trials arising from the prosperity and enmity of wicked men by showing these to be but temporary, and by the prospect of a speedy change in the relative position of the parties." In like manner, Tholuck describes it as " a didactic psalm concerning the uncertain prosperity of the proud and rich, their certain death, the victory of the godly, and their final reception with God." The writer solemnly calls the attention of the whole world to his solution of the great problem (verses 1-5). He points to the * It makes no material difference if we adopt De Wette's translation, — and " afterward with honor receive me." BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 163 iniquity of his pursuers (not "heels") as they com- pass him about, boasting in their riches, and while powerless to redeem themselves from death with all their wealth (verses 7-9), yet regardless of the com- mon lot that awaits*alike the wise man and the fool (verse 11), and dreaming of perpetual prosperity (verse 12). But there comes an hour when " the righteous shall have dominion [shall triumph] over them," and that time is the hour of death. How so ? for the Psalmist had already admitted (verse 10) the transparent fact, that the righteous, too, must die. Wherein, then, is the triumph ? It is that ^ God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave ; for he will receive me " (verse 15) ; while all the good things of the wicked pass away at death : " When he dieth he shall carry nothing away ; his glory shall not descend after him, though while he lived he blessed his soul " (verses 16, 17). It is precisely the case of the rich fool of the New Testament, not so fully carried out. And so manifestly is this obvious interpretation of the language indispensable to even a tolerable fulfillment of the opening promise of the psalm, that a late Ger- man (rationalist) commentator (J. Olshausen), who denies the reference to the future, makes this fatal admission : " Though the poet in the introduction pro- ceeds with no little self-confidence, yet does his solu- tion of the problem which he treats turn out to be very unsatisfactory. Surrounded by the baseness of enemies, insidious and wholly reliant upon their worldly resources, he looks around for consolation, and without difficulty finds it, — sorry enough, however, — chiefly in the thought, that even his luxury can not rescue the 1G4 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. rich man from death, and he must leave it all behind ; while altogether short-lived and even trivial (beilt'iujig) is the defense and deliverance from death which in his conception the righteous may hope from God." Sorry indeed, if that were all \ The naked state- ment of such an exposition is a sufficient refutation. Strange that men should deem it needful to put a re- straint on the obvious meaning of language in order to educe such inanity ; and passing strange that the sweet singer of Israel can not be suffered to make the least allusion to a future world, when even the cat- worshiping Egyptian had recorded his convictions of a judgment to come, a thousand years before ! A very distinct assertion of the future retribution is found in Eccles. xii. 13, 14 : " Let us hear the conclu- sion of the whole matter : Fear God, and keep his com- mandments ; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." That the judgment here spoken of is a future one, as Hengstenberg well remarks, is clear from verse 7 of the same chapter, where the writer ■ speaks of the ap- pearance of the spirit, separated from the body, before God, to receive the recompense for its works. Still more distinct, if possible, is the utterance of Dan. xii. 2, 3 : " And many of them [i.e., the many, the multitude ; see Rom. v. 15, 19] that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 1G5 This passage is from the closing declarations of Dan- iel's prophecy. He who had depicted so fully and repeat- edly the rise and fall of the great earthly monarchies, and the triumph of the kingdom which the God of heaven should set up, and who just before the present passage minutely specifies the conflicts that should rage around the seat of that kingdom, now, in accordance with prophetic custom, flashes one clear glance down to the end and issue of the whole struggle on earth. Then the message is to be sealed up (verse 4) " to the time of the end ; " and the prophet himself is di- rected (verse 13), " Go thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days." The collocation of the passage thus strongly justifies the obvious interpretation ; while the lan- guage itself, in its details, will hardly admit any other. It has indeed been questioned whether the verse next preceding refers to the ultimate " time of trouble " at Christ's coming, or to a nearer series of terrific trials in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. But Professor Stuart, who takes the latter view, is perfectly decided that the passage in question " opens the prospect of the future and final destiny of men, the righteous and the wicked, and shows us the final result of the Messi- anic period." * These are some of the passages in the Old Testament which more specifically refer to the future state of re- wards and punishments. t But it would be doing great * For a fuller vindication of this view, see Stuart's Commentary on Dan- iel on this passage. t Such passages have been selected as were easily apprehensible by or- dinary readers. Passages like Job xix. 25-27 have been intentionally omit- ted, because less available in a popular discussion. 166 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. injustice to the older portion of the sacred volume were we to intimate that these comprise the main por- tion of such allusions. The doctrine here distinctly stated seems to underlie a multitude of promises and threats, as an implication without which they are empty. Such passages as the whole thirty-seventh Psalm; Ps. i. 3-6 ; Prov. x. 28,' 30 ; xi. 7, 19, 21, 23 ; xh. 3, 21, 28 ; xiv. 32 ; xv. 24 ; and the like, — consider what they amount to, except as they involve such a reference. Without it, what does it mean to say, " As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pur- sueth evil pursue th it to his own death ; " " In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof is no death?" Unless these threats and promises reach forth into another world, all these high-sounding words, and others like them, mean only this, — that a wicked man shall have a little earlier decease than a good man ; a threat not always fulfilled. The case seems to us one of remarkable strength. We start with the now settled fact, in itself of great weight, that the nation among whom the Israelites resided four hundred years had for many hundred years previous held and publicly recorded the doctrine of an existence and retribution after death. We find the Hebrew doctrine concerning the origin and char- acter of the soul laying the proper basis for a belief in its continued existence when the body dies. We find the record, in both the antediluvian and the Mosaic ages, of good men, by reason of that goodness, taken directly from this world to dwell with God. We find this whole present life designated as a pilgrimage. We find the successive deaths of patriarchs, prophets, priests, and BELIEF OF THE EARLIER JEWS. 167 kings, even when they were laid in unknown or soli- tary graves, described as being gathered to their fa- thers. We find the practice of conjuring by pretended communication with dead persons, familiar spirits, to have gained such a hold on the general belief, that the law of Moses specially prohibited the offense ; and even the first monarch of the nation, in his time of exigency, resorted to the practice. And, finally, we meet with not a few passages which of set purpose present the doctrine of a judgment and twofold retribution after death, so distinctly, that they can be set aside only by a denial both of the obvious meaning of the language, and the obvious scope of the argument. CHAPTER II. BELIEF OF A FUTURE EXISTENCE AMONG THE JEWS IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. WHEN our Saviour and his apostles began their mission, they addressed themselves first to the Jewish nation. Their teachings were professedly but the fuller development of " the law and the prophets." Moreover, their utterances on the subject of a future destiny, unless specially guarded by them to the con- trary, must, of course, be understood in the light of the known and acknowledged views of the nation. Now, even if there were anv reasonable doubt what were the notions of the earlier Jews upon this subject, no such doubt hangs over the views that prevailed in the time of Christ. It is susceptible of decisive proof that the prevalent belief of the people at that time rec- ognized a future state of rewards and punishments. This proof is found more full and minute in profane writers, as they are called, but briefly and conclusively confirmed in the New Testament. The fullest and most competent secular witness is the celebrated historian Josephus. He was a native Jew, belonged to the order of the priesthood, and not only was a man of learning, but had been specially ini- tiated into the ways of each of the three sects into 168 JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 169 which the Jewish nation was divided. For a long time he governed Galilee, afterwards commanded the Jew- ish army, and, upon the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, went with Titus to Rome, where he wrote the History and Antiquities of his nation. No man could be more competent as a witness. Now, Josephus informs us in many passages that the Jewish people were divided into three sects, the Phar- isees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Of the Pharisees he informs us (Antiq. book xviii. chap. i. sect. 3), " They also believed that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life ; and the latter are to be de- tained in an everlasting prison, but the former shall have power to revive and live again : on account of which doctrines, they are able to persuade the great body of the people." Again (Wars of the Jews, ii. § 14) : " They [the Pharisees] say that all souls are indestructible ; that the souls of good men alone are removed into other bodies ; but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment." * Concerning a second of these Jewish sects, the Es- senes, we are told by Josephus (Antiq., xviii. 5), " They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for." Again (Wars, ii. 8, 11) : " For their doctrine is * It is commonly understood that the removal " into other bodies " (strictly another body), here ascribed to the souls of the righteous, simply designates the new or spiritual body. Any question which may be raised on this point does not in the slightest degree affect the positiveness of Jose- phus's testimony to the doctrine of immortality and future eternal rewards and punishments. 170 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. this : That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent, but that the souls are immortal , and continue for ever ; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as in prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement ; but that, when set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinion of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitation beyond the ocean in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, nor with intense heat ; but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind that is perpetually blow- ing from the ocean : while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing pun- ishments. And, indeed, the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call he- roes and demi-gods ; and to the souls of the wicked the region of the ungodly in hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus and Tantalus and Ixion and Tityus, are punished ; which is built on this first supposition, — that souls are immortal. And thence are those exhortations to virtue and dissuasions from wickedness collected, whereby good men are made better in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death, and whereby the ve- hement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained by the fear and expectation they are in, that, although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer deathless punishment (aftavatov ti{juoqi ) after their dis- solution. These are the divine- doctrines of the Essenes JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 171 about the soul, which offer an irresistible attraction to those who have once had a taste of their philosophy." The reader will observe in this passage how distinctly the writer represents the future punishment to consist in continual suffering. His statements are made still more distinctly signifi- cant by the account which he gives of the remaining sect, the Sadducees : " The doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies" (Antiq., xviii. 1, 4). Again (War, ii. 8, 14): "They take away the belief of immortality, and the punishments and rewards in hades V This testimony is explicit. The Pharisees and Es- senes believe in a state of endless rewards and suffer- ing after death. The Sadducees discard that doctrine. It only remains to ask which of these sects represents the prevailing and received belief. Josephus himself informs us that " the Sadducees are able to per- suade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multi- tude on their side " (Antiq., xiii. 10, 6) ; that the Phar- isees " are able greatly to persuade the body of the peo- ple " (xviii. 1, 3) ; that the doctrine of the Sadducees " is received but by a few," who, when they become magistrates, " addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitudes would not other- wise hear them " (xviii. 1, 4). Fully coincident with this is Josephus's remonstrance with his comrades against suicide (War, iii. 8, 5), in which he urges, that " the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies ; " that " those who depart out of this life, according to the 172 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. law of nature, and pay that debt which was received from God, when he that lent it is pleased to require it back, enjoy eternal fame. Their houses and their pos- terity are sure ; their souls remain pure and propitious to prayer, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies ; while the souls of those who have acted madly against themselves are received by the darkest place in hades." Again (War, i. 33, 2) : the learned Jews Matthias and Judas are represented as rousing a sedition against Herod by the consideration that, " it was a glorious thing to die for the laws of their country ; that for those thus perishing remained an immortality of soul, and an endless fruition of happiness." And when forty of the rebels were brought before Herod, and interrogated " how they could be so joyful when they were to be put to death," they replied, " because they should enjoy greater hap- piness after they were dead." And once more, at the siege of Masada (War, vii. 8, 7), Eleazer the leader of the Sicarii urges his men to dispatch one another rather than fall into the enemy's hands, by a burning appeal to the doctrine of immortality : " The laws of our country and God himself, have, from ancient times, and as soon as we could use our reason, contin- ually taught us, and our forefathers have corroborated the same doctrine by their actions and by their bravery of mind, that it is life which is a calamity to men, and not death ; for this last affords our souls their liberty, and sends them by a removal into their own place of purity, where they are to be insensible to all sorts of misery. For, while souls are tied down to a mortal JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 173 body, they are partakers of its miseries : and really, to speak the truth, they are themselves dead [observe his use of the word " dead "] ; for association with what is mortal befits not that which is divine." And he goes on to a considerable extent, pressing on them the hope of a blessed immortality, presenting even the ex- ample of the Indians " who have such a desire for im- mortality that they cheerfully hasten to their death," and asking, " Are we not therefore ashamed to have lower notions than the Indians ? " Such appeals even to the populace on the ground of reward and punish- ment hereafter, however perverted may have been the application, are the best possible proof of the universal hold of that doctrine on the popular belief.* These reiterated testimonies, uttered by a learned Jew whose life was cotemporary with the epistles of Christ's apostles, present an insurmountable difficulty to those who incline to deny the prevalence of the doc- trine among the Jews of Christ's day ; for, unfortu- nately for them, the statements can not be rejected as spurious, or of questionable genuineness. Their total meaning can not possibly be mistaken, nor can the perfect competency of the witness be called in question. In all these respects, the testimony is impregnable. The only possible resort remaining is to impeach the veracity of Josephus. This, accordingly, is attempted by one leading advocate of annihilation. But how ? By bringing any counter testimony to refute these as- sertions ? By showing any inconsistency in his several * We have chosen for the most part to follow the common, awkward translation of Josephus. In some instances, we have substituted Traill's version as more accurate. 174 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. statements on this subject? By proving that he is not, in the main, a veracious narrator ? By showing that, in this particular subject, he had some special tempta- tion to fabricate a deliberate falsehood, — total, circum- stantial, reiterated, and easy of refutation ? None of these things. Mr. Hudson endeavors to dispatch this troublesome witness by accumulating from various writers a few general criticisms upon him, — some of them wholly irrelevant, some of them unfounded, and all of them falling short of an impeachment of his testimony on this point, — and then summarily " dismissing Josephus as an unreliable witness " (Debt and Grace, p. 336). Mr. Hudson is not ashamed to quote in his argument certain epithets applied by a late female writer (Char- lotte Elizabeth) to Josephus' s personal history, such as " traitor," " apostate," " groveling sycophant," " ful- some flatterer," " sordid, craven tool of the pagan foe," although he admits that the language " is perhaps too expressive of indignant feeling," and fails to inform us what it has to do with the matter in hand, supposing it to be true. Among the cited criticisms upon Josephus, there are, however, two classes of remarks which might seem to have force. First, it is alleged that he is not always trustworthy. " Another writer observes, It must be owned, that, in his account of the Scripture times, he has taken a bold liberty to add, alter, retrench, and even sometimes con- tradict it ; which is a fault for which no other apology* can be made than that he was of the sect of the Phar- isees, and gave too much credit to their trifling tradi- JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 175 tions." The same writer shows that the whole account given by Josephus of the visit of Alexander to Jerusa- lem (Antiq., xi. 8, 5) is unquestionably fabulous, and is " at a loss to determine whether he was himself the author of the story, or was imposed upon in taking it as a narrative or tradition of some other Jewish writer " (Debt and Grace, p. 335). A note on the same page mentions another account of Josephus (War, vi. 9), which " is shown to involve insuperable difficulties." Now, yie reader will observe that even this critic does not charge Josephus with proved intentional false- hood, but admits that his deviations from Scripture history were because " he gave too much credit to " Pharisaic " traditions," and that, in his account of Alexander, he may have been " imposed upon." It should be added that his adhesion to the Scripture nar- rative in his Antiquities, though the book was written for heathen readers, is, for the most part, singularly close ; most of the deviations being by way of expan- sion, while others show inadvertence, and others indi- cate that he probably had before him a different read- ing, as is sometimes the case in matters of number.* But no inadvertence, no difference of text, no imposi- tion, no credulity, could mislead him in the doctrines of his cotemporary sects. We may go further than does his critic, and admit that, in his topography, he is sometimes inaccurate, as in the dimensions of the temple, which he perhaps em- bellished, — writing, as he did, far from the place, with- out exact data, and prone from national vanity to * In some instances, the suggestion of Josephus actually relieves a diffi- culty. 176 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. magnify its glory.* Still, no such motive can be found in the present instance ; and if there could, it would hardly cover the case of a deliberate and circumstan- tial invention of alleged facts concerning his own be- lief and that of the whole nation. Secondly, it is alleged that " his. doctrine" is, so to speak, " un- Jewish " and " the account given by Jose- phus is in a nomenclature to which the Jews had been strangers, which is unknown to the Talmud, but with which the Greeks and Orientals were quite familiar." f This view is backed by several quotations, J — one from Pococke, that, " in giving the views of the sects he names, respecting the other world, he [Josephus] seems to have used words better suited to the fashions and the ears of the Greeks and Romans than such as a scholar of the Jewish law would understand or deem expressive of his meaning ; " one from Matthaei, that " Josephus was pre-eminently inclined to accommodate his accounts to the understanding of the Gentiles;" one from Bretschneider, that " his extant writings would be more valuable if he had separated their views from the modifications which he has seen fit to give them, out of respect to the Grecian readers for whom he wrote." Harmer is quoted, who speaks of his " so- licitude to make his representation of the opinions and practices of that nation, in those writings that were designed for the perusal of the unbelieving Gentiles, as little exceptionable to them as possible ; " and who also says that " some of the learned have remarked that * Robinson's Researches, i. 415. t Debt and Grace, p. 224. \ lb. p. 335 JEWISH HE LIEF IN THE TIME OF CIIRIST. 177 he has even expressed himself in such a manner as might lead his readers to imagine that the Pharisees believed rather a transmigration than a proper resur- rection." These are the statements. On which it may be ob- served, 1. That no one of the writers quoted questions the fundamental veracity of Josephus's statements. They simply aver that, in, stating his views, he has " used vjords suited to the fashions of the Greeks and Romans," and that " he was pre-eminently inclined to accommo- date his accounts to the understanding of the Gentiles : " at most, that he has given " modifications " to his state- ments out of respect to the Gentiles, has made them " as little exceptionable to them as possible," or has in one case used a perhaps intentional ambiguity. 2. Inasmuch as both the treatises from which we have quoted were, in the form in which we have them, expressly written for and to be understood by Gentile readers, it was the most obvious dictate of common sense to adapt his phraseology to their " fashions " and " understandings ; " and, in alluding directly to any supposed resemblance to Gentile views, Josephus was doing only what is common enough even in Christian writers, and, in the very act of making the comparison, he asserts the difference. If in any respect he may be thought to have modified the Jewish notions, that soft- ening-down is a very different thing from an out-and- out fabrication. Even the alleged ambiguity concern- ing the resurrection (if designed) was, at most, a shrink- ing from an outspoken statement of belief. If his words could be interpreted by some of his readers in harmony with the doctrine of transmigration, it is still true that 12 178 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. they can be understood strictly of a proper resurrec- tion, and that, in any case, they positively assert a future retribution ; and it is true that his reiterated doctrine is of a twofold retribution, — eternal happiness and endless suffering. 3. The difficulty of invalidating the testimony of Jo- sephus is well illustrated by the two remaining specifi- cations. " His dissuasion from suicide is quite Platonic : i The bodies of all men are corruptible, and are cre- ated out of corruptible matter ; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies.' " The last clause contains the alleged Pla- tonic phrase. But if that one mode of statement indi- cates connivance with Platonism, then on equally valid grounds does the Apostle Peter's expression (2 Pet. i. 4), " That by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature," indicate a collusion with Brahminism. Such expressions, when occurring singly, are too common, and too readily suggested to any mind, to attract at- tention. But Mr. Hudson endeavors to settle the case by one other quotation from Josephus : " To the pas- sage already cited, in which he speaks of the soul as a 1 portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies,' we may here add the following: ' Those souls,' he says, ' which are severed from their fleshy bodies in battles by the sword, are received by the ether, that purest of elements, and joined to that company which are placed among the stars : they become good demons and propitious he- roes, and show themselves as such to their posterity afterward.' " The reader will appreciate the force of this argument, when he learns that the sentiment ascribed by Mr. Hudson to Josephus is part of a JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 179 speech which Josephus ascribes to the heathen emperor Titus* 4. The declarations of Josephus, as the reader will observe, are not found alone in his formal statement of doctrine, but they stand also naturally interwoven in the details of his narrative, as comprising the motives addressed to his countrymen by himself and other Jews to nerve them up to courage and to fortitude. The ter- rors of hell were urged by himself to dissuade his coun- trymen from suicide. The joys of heaven were pre- sented by Eleazer and Matthias and Judas, to persuade their followers to brave deeds ; and the followers of the two last mentioned sustain themselves in the hour of condemnation with the hopes of blessedness after death. These accounts are not only intrinsically nat- ural and probable, but, as we shall presently see, the presentation of such motives to the Jews for such pur- poses is specially corroborated by the Roman historian Tacitus. 5. The statement of Josephus concerning the gen- eral difference of views between the Pharisees and Sad- ducees closely corresponds to the declarations of the New Testament. Josephus is more full, inasmuch as it was part of his purpose to describe those sects ; whereas the sacred writer alludes to them only inci- dentally, and describes them only so far as necessary * See Josephus's War, vi. 1, 4, quoted in Debt and Grace, page 336. We might have supposed it a blunder, though a very inexcusable one; but when the attention of Mr. Hudson was called to the error, he told the in- formant (a student of Chicago Theological Seminary) that it was corrected in a later edition. On procuring that later edition, we found that the whole argument and passage remained as before, with the slight difference, that, instead of " he says," it now reads, " he makes Titus say," — still holding Josephus responsible for the sentiment. 180 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. for explanation. The accounts are entirely harmoni- ous. 6. It is proper to add, that, in general, the statements of Josephus on this and other kindred subjects are re- ceived by the great mass of historians and antiquari- ans ; and indeed, in connection with the New Testa- ment, they constitute a very large part of the material for the history of Jewish affairs in those times. To mention all the writers whose statements rest more or less extensively on the declarations of Josephus would be simply to cite the names of every writer in every department of literature who has had occasion to treat of that nation or that age. His general trustworthi- ness as a writer, not indeed free from mistakes arising from forgetfulness, inattention, and misinformation, yet, on the whole, well-informed and accurate, especially on topics where, as in the present case, he had the means of personal knowledge, is vindicated by the later investigations. We conclude, then, that the attempt to overthrow the testimony of Josephus on this subject totally breaks down. It lacks the first element of a valid impeach- ment ; and the decision to " dismiss Josephus as an unreliable witness " is a very serio-comic device to get rid of a fatal testimony.* * We would refer to Dr. Traill's introductory essay on the personal char- acter of Josephus for a valid though brief defense of his credibility as a writer, pages 14-25. It will be observed that the weightiest names cited by Mr. Hudson against him are names of the past. Traill well remarks, "A diligent use of the copious means placed at our disposal by those researches in Palestine which English, French, German, and American writers have effected, yields proof, various in its kind, and often very definite, entirely excluding as well the skepticism that had been admitted by some of the learned of the seventeenth century as the less erudite cavils of recent wri- JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 181 We pass to Tacitus the more readily in this connec- tion, because his testimony bears directly on the same use of the doctrine of future rewards to encourage personal bravery and endurance to which Josephus refers. It is given also in connection with the same events; namely, the capture of Jerusalem by Titus. He was co-temporary with that transaction ; and, in writ- ing an account of it, he evidently had taken pains to inform himself concerning the Jewish nation. His honesty of intention is unquestioned, as well as his accuracy in stating such things as he had the means of investigating. From the nature of the case, being a Roman historian, he commits many errors in narrat- ing the past history of the nation, as he did not have access to the Hebrew Scriptures, or other authentic in- formation on that subject ; but, in his delineation of their current habits and traits, his narrative is gener- ally correct, and, in regard to marked and prominent facts, trustworthy.* Tacitus writes thus of the Jews : " Infanticide is in every case a crime (necare quemquam ex adgnatis fla- gitiurti) ; and the souls of those slain in battle or by torture they believe to be eternal. Hence a desire for offspring, and a contempt of death. Dead bodies they bury rather than burn, after the custom of the Egyp- tians: they bestow the same care [as do the Egyptians], ters. Beyond possibility of doubt, as may now be shown, Josephus was ac- curately and familiarly conversant with the things and with the places, a9 well as with the transactions, of which he speaks: quite certain it is that he was observant in his habits, and, in the main, correct in his statements" ,(p. 23, American edition). * Mr. Hudson warmly commends the honesty of Tacitus (Debt and Grace, pp. 336, 337). 182 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. and hold the same belief, concerning the state of the dead [de infernis" the infernal regions, or their occupants. — See Freund's or Andrew's Lexicons]. Hist., v. 5. Here the Roman historian testifies to the same gen- eral facts with Josephus. The desperate valor of the Jews in battle, and their invincible endurance of suffer- ing and torture, were well known to him, and emphat- ically recorded byjiim (v. 14). Equally notorious was the fact, which he and Josephus alike recorded, that this fierce bravery was sustained by the hopes of a fu- ture life, and was stimulated by appeals to those hopes. The coincidence is striking. But Tacitus does not leave the subject here. He proceeds to speak of their funeral customs, — burying, and not burning, wherein they resemble the Egyptians ; and to this he adds, that they bestow the same care as do the Egyptians, and hold the same belief concerning the state of the dead or the infernal regions. What that belief is the reader will find exhibited in a pre- vious chapter of this discussion. Its grand feature, as conclusively proved, was, that after death the soul en- ters on a protracted state of rewards or punishments. Tacitus thus fully confirms the statement of Josephus, that the Jews of that day held the doctrine of a two- fold state of retribution after death ; and corroborates even his special and repeated declaration, that they were sustained in battle and under punishment by ap- peals to that belief. The mode in which Mr. Hudson deals with Tacitus is equally remarkable, perhaps, as his method with Josephus. He entirely omits the latter part of the pas- JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 183 sage comprising the statement of their belief concern- ing the state'of the dead; and, quoting only the previous remark concerning those who die in battle or by torture,* he proceeds to say that ¥ the lan- guage in this passage is peculiar, in that it clearly denotes the immortality of a class. " If the writer had said what his argument requires, " the immortality of only a class," he would have elicited from Tacitus the preposterous statement that only those who die in bat- tle or by torture live hereafter. That is to say, it does not follow, from the historian's mentioning the hopes held out to those who die in battle or torture, that all other persons were to fail of immortality : he evidently means simply that special promises of future blessing were held out to them, — assurances of pre-eminent re- ward, privilege, or exemption ; while the question, how it would be with other parties, is met only in his fuller statement afterwards, which covers the whole ground. Indeed, the phraseology of Tacitus was perhaps pur- posely chosen to indicate the notion of special privi- lege in the other world. He does not employ the word " immortal " (immortalis), nor the term which denotes simply perpetual existence (sempiternus) , but the pe- culiar word " eternal " {ceternus), which (though fre- quently synonymous with immortal) is used to desig- nate the mode of existence belonging to the gods, and had already, at that period of the Roman language, be- gun to be sometimes specially limited to what is divine. f — _ , * His entire quotation is this: that among the Jews "infanticide is a crime, and the souls of those dying in battle or by torture are eternal: hence a love of offspring, and contempt of death." Why does he arrest the passage there ? t See Freund's or even Andrews's Latin Lexicon under the words aster* 184 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. There is therefore good reason to believe that Tacitus, who is remarkably precise in his use of language, by this carefully chosen word intended to designate special, and perhaps even divine prerogatives promised to the hero. At the very least, he testifies to the open fact that the daring of the brave among the Jews was pre- eminently sustained by the hope of future blessings ; * while he testifies with equal distinctness that, besides such special expectations, the Jews held a general the- ory of the future world similar to that of the Egyptians. They believed in a future state of rewards and punish- ments. The Jew Philo was born at Alexandria, in Egypt, a few years before Christ. His own views are admitted to be strongly tinged with Platonism. Still he has left numerous remarks which bear on the subject under discussion. His testimony is to the same effect : — " Perhaps some one will say he [Cain] should have been put to death at once. This is a human mode of reasoning, fit for one who does not consider the great tribunal of all : for men look upon death as the ex- treme limit of all punishments ; but, in view of the di- nitas, cetevnus. Thus Cicero: " Deus beatus et aeternus," Fin. 2, 27; and again (Nat. Deor. 1, 8), "Nihil quod ortum sit, aeternum esse potest." Of course he means in the strictest use of the term; for he himself extends its application. Freund defines the word ceternus to differ from sempilermis (" that which is perpetual, what exists as long as time endures, and keeps even pace with it ") by denoting " that which is raised above all time, and can be measured only by eons." Of ceternitas he says, " In the time of the emperors a title of the emperor, like divinity, majesty" etc. Pliny writes to Trajan, " Rogatus, Domine, a Nicensibus per ceternitatem tuam salutcmque ut," etc., Pliny Ep. 10,87. The reader will remember that the emperors were already flattered with ascriptions of divine qualities. * This term is a near approach to the New-Testament phrase, " eternal life." JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CI1HIST. 185 vine tribunal, it is scarcely the beginning of them." * "The constitution of man [say the Scriptures] was compounded of an earthly substance and a divine spirit ; ... so that, if man is mortal as to his visible part, he is immortal as to the invisible. Wherefore we may truly say that man stands upon the border-line of a mortal and immortal nature, participant of each as was needful, and that he was made at the same time mortal and immortal ; mortal as to his body, immortal as to his mind."f " Death is twofold ; one of the man, the other of the soul. Death of the man is the sepa- ration of the soul from the body ; but death of the soul is the destruction of virtue and the assumption of vice. . . . The one, as it were, conflicts with the other ; for the former is a separation of things conjoined, of body and soul : the latter, a conjunction of both ; the inferior, the body, gaining the mastery over the superior, the soul. J " But, to me and my friends, death with the pious would be more acceptable than life with the impi- ous ; for those so dying immortal life receives, but those so living eternal death awaits." § The true proselyte "receives the most fitting gift of a secure place in heaven, such as one may not describe ; but the repro- bate of noble birth is dragged down to the lowest depths, being cast into tartarus and deep darkness." " Ho that is driven forth by God suffers eternal Qdidiov^ ban- ishment ; for while one who is not yet firmly held by vice, may, upon repentance, return to virtue, the native land from which he roved, lie who is seized and subju- gated by great and incurable disorder must to all eter- * Philo Judoeus, ii. 421. t lb. i. p. 32. J lb. i. p. 65. § lb. i. p. 233. || lb. p. 433. 186 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. nity bear the dire penalties, immortally degraded to the place of the impious, that he may suffer unmixed and continual calamity." * These and many other utterances leave no doubt of the views which Philo represents, — the immortality of all souls, and an end- less retribution of blessedness or suffering. Perfectly coincident with these statements, and there- fore fully corroborating them, are the brief allusions to the prevalent Jewish views found in the New Testa- ment itself. In Paul's defense of himself before Felix, he most distinctly declares the doctrine of a " resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust," to be held by him and his Jewish accusers in common : " And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust" (Acts xxiv. 15). Other passages, though less explicit than this con- cerning the future separate destiny of the wicked, yet involve the general doctrine of a future existence, and abundantly confirm the fuller statements of this pas- sage and of Josephus. Thus, when the Sadducees came to try the Saviour with their puzzle concerning the resurrection, the question evidently assumes that the then common notion of a future life included the in- discriminate resurrection of all. The question takes for granted that the seven brethren and the one wife all alike participate, as matter of course, in the resur- rection (Luke xx. 27-33). So likewise in repeated instances in which the pecu- liar views of the Sadducees on this subject are spoken * lb. i. p. 139. JEWISH BELIEF IN THE TIME OF CHRIST. 187 of in contrast to those of the Pharisees, the difference is never given as a difference only of degree, — the one as holding that a part only of the race will exist hereafter, and the other that none of them will con- tinue, — but as a difference of kind ; the one affirming, the other denying, a whole invisible world, a whole fu- ture existence. In the presence of the Sanhedrim (Acts xxiii. 6-8), " when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee : of the hope and resurrection of the dead [not merely the righteous dead] I am called in question. And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sad- ducees : and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit : but the Pharisees confess both." Here Paul advances the unrestricted proposition of the resurrection of the dead ; and the explanatory remarks of the sacred writer also state the dissent of the Sad- ducees in the same sweeping form. In the same manner, though more briefly, the Sadducees are mentioned by each of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Matt. xxii. 23 ; Mark xii. 18 ; Luke xx. 27), as those " which deny that there is any resurrection." How completely does Martha's reply to the Saviour (John xi. 24) assume the undoubted fact of a future existence : " I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." The undoubting hold which the doctrine of a con- tinuance after death, and of a resurrection, had on the whole mass of the Jewish people, is well exhibited in 188 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. the opinions entertained by the multitude concerning our Saviour. When he asked his disciples, " Whom do men say that I am ? " they inform him of three or four different opinions (Matt. xvi. 14 ; Mark viii. 28 ; Luke ix. 19) ; and every one of those opinions supposed him to be a deceased person re-appearing on earth. Even Herod Antipas, the murderer of John, when he heard the fame of Jesus, " said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist ; he is risen from the dead ; and therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him" (Matt. xiv. 2). It matters not for our present pur- pose that this future existence is mentioned in the form of the resurrection, the completed aspect of the future life. Enough that a belief in the continued existence of man, of all men, after death, appears clearly to have been the general belief of the Jews at the time of Christ. And the testimony as clearly shows that there was to be a resurrection both of the just and of the unjust, — a future existence both of happiness and of misery. Other testimony might be added, as from the first and second books of Maccabees, and from the book of Enoch, the last of which is admitted by such men as Dr. Davidson, and Dillmann, the learned editor and translator of the book, to be singularly clear on the subject.* The Christian bishop Hippolytus, of the sec- ond century, reiterates all the assertions of Josephus so remarkably, though in different phraseology (Liber ix. 28-30), that he has been supposed either to follow Josephus, or the same authority from which he drew ; but to avoid collateral discussions, we content ourselves with the testimony we have cited, which is authentic, clear, and to the point. See Appendix, Note I. CHAPTER III. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. — IMMORTALITY. — IMMEDI- ATE DESTINY. WE have seen the indications that the Jews from ancient times held the belief of a future state of retribution. We have also seen, that, in the time of our Saviour, the prevalent opinion of the nation recognized that state as one of happiness or of suffer- ing. We find no trace of any denial of future suffer- ing, except on the part of those who denied all future existence. The Saviour and his apostles were therefore not called upon to propound the doctrine of suffering here- after with the formalities of a new and before unheard- of announcement. There was no pressing occasion for them to insist with peculiar prominence on the fact or the duration of that two-fold retribution, but rather on its application. It was natural for them, when they spoke of the subject, to dwell chiefly on the characters to which those rewards and punishments should be as- signed. This is, in fact, the more common form in which these instructions are given ; although they do at the same time very clearly state that the duration of that doom is eternal, and that it consists in holy blessedness on the one hand, and sin and misery on the other. 189 190 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. It was not the mission of Christ and his apostles to expatiate upon any abstract or naked doctrine of immortality, — an immortality considered irrespective of all its moral relations and tremendous issues. In- asmuch as no such meaningless immortality exists un- der the government of God, as it would be of no account whatever to man, and as these messengers came on an errand most intensely practical, they, in accordance with the universal custom of God's Word, speak simply and always of the great moral and prac- tical aspects of that immortality. While, therefore, they abundantly assert the doctrine, — an immortality both for the good and for the evil, — it is always in the form of the actual, concrete immortality which those two classes will positively experience, rather than in propositions of some abstract unreal immortality which no one ever will experience, and which, as being shorn of all moral relations, is of no account. On such propositions they waste no breath. Here, then, we readily dispose of an objection on which some have endeavored to place much stress. Mr. Hastings, with great industry, and with a liberal dis- play of italics and capital letters, large and small, sets forth the number of times that the word " soul " oc- curs in the Scriptures, and triumphantly inquires why we never find this particular word (for he ingeniously avoids alluding to other words descriptive of the soul's destiny) coupled with the epithet " immortal," and the like, in such phrases as " immortal soul," " never-dy- ing soul," " undying spirit." * Mr. Hudson employs a similar mode of argument : " But if the soul's immor- • ■ * Pauline Theology, pp. 70, 71. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 191 tality were so marvelously clear a postulate of human reason, it must be a most cherished sentiment, and must give rise to many common expressions, house- hold words of natural theology. In fact, whenever and wherever this doctrine has obtained, it has created va- rious modes of expression that reveal the sentiment. Why, then, are these expressions altogether avoided or ignored in the Bible ? Why should the Holy Spirit, so ready to catch the language of the mortals who were to be taught the way of life, have failed to con- form to their style of thought in this most important item of their own immortal nature ? Why, if God has told men that they must enjoy or suffer for ever, has he never urged his invitation or his warning in the name of the immortality he has given them ? Such a gift, surely, would be pre-eminently worthy of mention to those who think and say so much of their supposed possession of the boon." * The question is, Why does not the Bible deal in such phrases as " the immortality of the soul ? " — phrases of so frequent occurrence in human compositions. The answer is short and simple. It is not alone because the fact was admitted and might be assumed, but also because they were charged with messages of such tre- mendous import concerning the character and condi- tions of that endless existence, as quite threw into V.\q background the abstract proposition of the soul's im- mortality. If they had been mere human teachers, very possibly they might have indulged in sentimental dissertations and romantic speculations on the great- ness and the immortality of the human soul. But , ^ * Debt and Grace, p. 165. 192 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. they came as divine teachers, to teach men concerning their present and eternal relations to the government of God, to proclaim endless holiness and well-being, or everlasting sin and woe, as pending on faith and re- pentance here. To them the naked question of im- mortality, aside from these relations and issues, was of no account at all, — no more than the life of an oyster. They therefore addressed themselves to their divine mission, and told men always of the actual immortali- ty before them. They never tell men so little as the bald fact that they shall exist hereafter: they tell them a great deal more ; they tell them abundantly how they shall exist. The remark is true in regard to the right- eous as well as the wicked. Indeed, the objector is obliged to make this fatal admission in the statement of his objection : " Why, if God has told men that they must enjoy or suffer for ever, has he never urged his invitation or his warning in the name of the immortal- ity he has given them ? " And yet the righteous are admitted to be immortal by special provision, if not by native gift. Such is the Scripture mode of speech on this sub- ject. It does not discourse of the immortal being or existence of either class of persons, nor say that they •shall never cease to be; but it speaks of the everlast- ing life of the one class, the eternal weight of glory ; their glory, honor, incorruptibility (dop&aociav*) ; their incorruptible crown ; their inheritance incorruptible, un- defiled, and that fadeth not away ; their shining as the stars for ever ; their state in which they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more NE W TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 193 pain. Precisely so, on the other hand, if there is no metaphysical statement concerning the " never-dying spirit," or the " eternal existence" of the wicked, there are the most positive and awful assertions of their ev- erlasting punishment, their never-dying worm and un- quenchable fire, their never receiving forgiveness in this world or the world to come, their eternal damna- tion, the smoke of their torment that ascendeth up for ever and ever, their shame and everlasting contempt, their departure into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels, everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, their being destined to the black- ness of darkness for ever, and receiving from God in- dignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, at the day of judgment. It is therefore little more than a quibble to argue that the phrases " immortal," " never- dying," and the like, are not applied to the soul itself, when they are abundantly applied to its destiny and condition. " It matters not that the Bible does not know the phrase ' immortal soul,' when it so mani- festly knows the thing-" And, indeed, so perfectly in keeping with the whole practical method of God's Word is its entire abstinence from all utterance concerning the mere " immortality of the soul," that, had it been otherwise, very likely the present objectors might have been first to question the genuineness of the passages, and to insinuate that they were " evidently of foreign origin, of a philosophic cast, and, so to speak, un- Jew- ish," at least unscriptural. The Scriptures, then, describe the actual fate and condition of both the righteous and the wicked, as they continue in conscious joy or woe for evermore. 13 194 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. The Scriptures affirm the conscious existence of both classes of men during the period after death and prior to the resurrection of the body. It is a somewhat logical portion of the common doc- trine of annihilation to deny the active and conscious existence of the dead prior to the resurrection. Many, if not most, of its advocates hold to an actual extinction of being, from which men are resuscitated only at the resurrection. The tendencies of a system which re- volts from the idea of endless sufferings inflicted on the impenitent, naturally recoil also from admitting the continuance of those sufferings for an unknown time, protracted certainly in some cases many thou- sand years ; while consistency requires, that, in deny- ing the conscious activity of the wicked, that of the righteous should be also denied or questioned. The exclusive stress which the scheme lays upon the resur- rection indicates the same felt necessity. It is freely conceded and maintained by us that the Scriptures contemplate the entire consummation of human destiny as taking place when soul and body are re-united in a future world. The body, which shared the soul's probation, must also share its retribu- tion. Towards that state of re-union most of the ut- terances of God's Word on this subject are directed, just as most of its declarations concerning Christ's king- dom view that kingdom, not in its progress and inter- mediate state, but in its thorough consummation. It lays a very marked stress on the resurrection and its sequel. Intent on the final issue, the retribution of the complete man, it says comparatively little upon the intermediate state of the soul previous to the res- NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 195 urrcction of the body. Still, the Scriptures do speak, in our judgment, distinctly and emphatically upon the immediate doom of both classes of men on passing from this life. Such has been the clear and general understanding of the Christian Church. Out of the immense throng of Christian writers, however, it is easy to cite occasional instances of men who, pressed, as they supposed, by the prominence of the resurrec- tion, and the imagined incompatibility of the public doom then to be pronounced with a previous retribu- tion, have endeavored to explain away these teach- ings. Still the declarations of the Scriptures on this point are perfectly level to the common apprehension. A considerable portion of the teachings already ad- duced from the Old Testament have a bearing on this subject. To those remarks the reader is referred. We proceed to show that the New Testament teaches the conscious activity and retribution of the soul on pass- ing from the body. First, in regard to the righteous. Here we find clear though brief declarations that cover every aspect of the subject, and show that to the believer the alter- native condition is either to be in the body below or with the Lord above. 1. It is taught that the soul without the body might enjoy celestial glories and communications. In 2 Cor. xii. 1-4, Paul says, " I will come to visions and reve- ations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I can not tell, or whether out of the body I can not tell : God know- eth), such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew r such a man (whether in the body or out of the 196 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. body, I can not tell : God knoweth), how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." Here the apos- tle, while informing his readers that he was " caught up to the third heaven," " caught up into paradise," also twice solemnly reiterates the declaration, that, "whether in the body or out of the body," he can not tell. In his view, then, it was possible for such experiences of heaven to take place " out of the body ; " and the very fact that he raises the suggestion, and repeats it so ear- nestly, shows that he judged it to be " out of the body." Alford remarks thus : "If in the bodv,' the idea would be that he was taken up bodily ; if ' out of the body/ to which the alternative manifestly inclines, that his spirit was rapt from the body, and taken up disem- bodied ; " but, whichever might be his decision between the two modes, he clearly affirms the possibility of a man's being taken to the third heaven, to paradise, and hearing unspeakable words there, while out of the body. 2. It is also taught in the New Testament that not only the soul of the Christian might, but that it would, enter and enjoy the presence of Christ at death ; and that the continuance of its life here in the body actu- ally delays its enjoyment of Christ's immediate pres- ence in glory. " For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain; but if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor : yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two [literally " the two "], having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far bet- ter: nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you" (Phil. i. 21-24). NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 197 In the previous context (verses 19, 20), the apostle declares that even the hostile preaching of his oppo- nents "shall turn to my salvation;" "according to my earnest expectation, and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed [or brought to shame], but that with all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death." He knew so well that God would cause even the malice of foes to redound to his salvation, that he hoped to be perfectly undaunted in devoting his body, with all its powers, to the honor of Christ, whether it were to be " by a life " of labor, or " by a death " of martyrdom. " For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain ; " i.e., while I live, I live in Christ, and when I die, I go to live with him, as the thought is more fully evolved in the subsequent verses : " What I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt the two, hav- ing a desire to depart and be with Christ [the one al- ternative] , which is far better : nevertheless, to abide in the flesh [the other alternative] is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith." The passage clearly affirms, not only that his death would be to him a gain, and the better alter- native, but that his continuing to live and labor for the Philippians was a detention from the immediate presence of Christ ; the attractions of that presence being so strong as to put him in a great strait whether he should desire to live and labor, or to die and go home to his reward. The only objection that deserves attention is this : That, though the period from death to the resurrection 198 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. should be one of total insensibility, the apostle might properly speak of passing directly from death to heaven, because, " in respect of his own perceptions, the moment of his breathing his last in this world would be in- stantly succeeded by that. of his waking in the presence of his Lord." * But this explanation wholly fails to meet the point. The apostle was perplexed between his earnest longing to be with Christ and his desire to stay longer here and do good to the churches. But, if death were succeeded by a long unconsciousness, a speedy death would bring him no sooner to Christ, and could hold out no inducement such as to place him in a strait. It was no alternative betwixt two. Let him have botli privileges. They did not interfere in the slightest degree. Let him live Christ a hundred or eighteen hundred years, and then depart ; he will be just as near the joys of Christ's presence then, and no nearer. The alternative that Paul makes between these two strong desires is entirely fatal to the attempted evasion.f * To the same effect is the passage in 2 Cor. v. 1-9 : " For we know that if our earthly house of this taberna- cle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. . . . Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst * Whately's Future State, p. 87. t Ellis and Read make a characteristic and noticeable comment: " He was perplexed between the two, whether to choose life or to choose death ; they were both equally indifferent to him" (p. 139). He must have been thus in the state of a worn-out man of the world, who has nothing to hope either in life or in death, — a sort of ancient Chesterfield. Mr. Hudson's attempts on the passage hardly deserve attention, but may be found in a note in the Appeudix. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 199 we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by sight) : we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." Here are the same alternatives presented in double mode : To be at home in the body is to be absent from the Lord ; and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord ; and the latter was the thing which the apos- tle was " willing " to do. It is difficult to see how any honest interpretation can escape the meaning. Life in the flesh detains the Christian from Christ's immediate presence ; and death introduces him there. 3. It is affirmed that the believer upon the death of the body actually does enter heavenly blessedness at once. The penitent thief on the cross " said unto Je- sus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Yerily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise " (Luke xxiii. 42, 43.) The meaning of this declaration, which has been the common apprehension of the Church, lies plainly on the face of it. To the prayer for a gracious remem- brance at the future unknown coming of Christ in glory, "when thou comest in (tv) thy kingdom," — whenever that may be, — Christ replies with the prom- ise of immediate blessedness, — " to-day with me in paradise." And this interpretation will sustain the most rigid examination, and repel all attempted eva- sions. "Paradise " is mentioned in but two other passages of the New Testament. In 2 Cor. xii. 2, Paul first speaks of having been " caught up to the third heaven 200 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. and, in verse 4, repeats the statement thus : " He was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words," where it is a place of blessed consciousness and communion with God. In Rev. ii. 7 occurs the promise unto the faithful : " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God," — where paradise includes the joys which are elsewhere (Rev. xxii. 2, 14) described as the full fruition of God's immediate presence.* It was to be " with Christ." This confirms and fixes the general meaning of paradise. " To be with Christ," it will be remembered, was the end of Paul's own highest longing (Phil. i. 23). This was to take place, not at some distant vague future, but " to-day." That day, then, the dying penitent was to meet the dying Saviour beyond this world in conscious blessedness in the immediate presence of God. That this passage declares precisely what it appears to signify — the presence of the crucified malefactor with Christ in paradise on that very day — is the united voice of modern critics and commentators. No mod- ern commentator or editor of respectable scholarship is * Such being the actual and indisputable New-Testament usage, the his- tory of the word is of no special account. It is supposed to be foreign to the Hebrew or Greek ; an Eastern Asiatic word employed to describe the parks and pleasure-grounds of oriental monarchs (Neh. ii. 8; Eccles. ii. 5), used also in the Septuagint of the Garden of Eden (Gen. ii. 8, 9, 10, 15, 16; iii. 1, 2, 8, 10, 23). Hence, like Zion and other words, it became elevated, and desig- nated the blissful region filled with the presence of the Monarch of heaven. No questioning whether this was (in the present case) in or out of hades can evade that plain fact of the New Testament. It includes the region to which Paul was taken when caught up, while living, to the third heaven; it comprehends the region of future joy to all the redeemed of the Apoca- lypse at last; it comprises the place where Christ went when he prayed, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 201 known to defend a different view ; ,and most ccmrnen- tators in strong terms denounce the futility of all at- tempts to tamper with the passage, or its plain mean- ing. So Bengel, Olshausen, Kuinoel, De Wette, Meyer. Alford, and numerous others of less commanding emi nence. So such editors as Knapp, Hahn, Lachmann, Teschendorf.* There have, however, been attempts to tamper with the passage, from the days of Marcion the heretic, who adopted the summary method of rejecting the whole verse. This method was much the easiest, as appears from the variety and awkwardness of the subterfuges employed by others. It was only open to one objec- tion, that the verse is found in all manuscripts. Ellis and Read f prepare the way for their exposi- tion, by certain objections to the common interpretation. Among them the most noticeable are these : 1. That * Ellis and Read (p. 161) make this deceptive statement: "In the margin, Griesbach puts the stop after ' to-day.' " The fact is that he did it in the margin because (bold as he was) he did not dare to do it in the text. He was a venturesome man, who never hesitated to introduce changes in the text when he saw what he deemed a good reason. Accordingly, he often un- hesitatingly inserted words and phrases in the body of the text, and struck out others ; he also indicated words that ought, in his opinion, probably, though not certainly, to be inserted or omitted; he specified what readings seemed to him of equal authority with those in the text, or perhaps prefer- able, those which seemed to him requiring to be added, though not with- out some doubt, and those which deserved further consideration. For these various methods of dealing with the text, he had twelve different signs ■ to signify the state of the case. But there were certain other emendations which he sometimes chose to indicate in the margin, but to which he did not venture to commit his scho'arfehip or his judgment by expressing any opinion whatever. The present case is of this last description. Griesbach does not venture to change the punctuation of the text, or even openly to question it. He throws an irresponsible suggestion into the margin. } Pages 159-161. 202 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. paradise is " a location on the new earth ; and how could either Christ or the thief be in paradise that day, when paradise does not yet actually exist ? " To which a sufficient answer is found in Paul's statement in 2 Cor. xii. 4, that he himself had been already caught up into paradise. 2. " How could Christ be in paradise that very day he was crucified, when, on the third day after, he said to Mary, * Touch me not, for I have not yet as- cended to my Father ' ? " Answer : Christ himself makes it perfectly plain, when, in his dying prayer, he said, a Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." His spirit was with God at death ; his re-animated body did not ascend till forty days after its resurrec- tion and re-union with his spirit on earth. 3. The soul of Christ, when he died, was " in a state of death ; " then " how could any part of him, whether soul, body, or spirit, as a living thing, be with the living thief in paradise on that day, while both were dead?" — an inquiry that may have some force with those who be- lieve that the whole spiritual being of the God-man was extinct, annihilated, during the interval between the dissolution and resurrection of his body. 4. The thief, it is said, did not die till the next day or the day after, therefore, " how could the thief, while hanging alive on the cross, and Christ, who was dead during the three remaining hours of that day, be in any other place than x on the cross ? " The assumption made simply on the ground of the alleged practice of not breaking the legs of the crucified till after the lighting of Sabbath candles, and this taking place not till " an hour and a quarter, or, according to some, till twenty- five hours, after the expiration of that day," would, be NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 203 characteristically bold in any case when adduced to settle a question of fact, but becomes 'die in face of the direction (Deut. xxi. 22, 23) to take down the cruci- fied on the same day, the declaration of Josephus (War, iv. 5, 2), that, in his day, it was the custom to take down and bury the crucified before sunset, and the special assertion of John (xix. 32) that the legs of the thieves were broken to insure their being taken away before the coming-on of the [Jewish] Sabbath, i.e. before night of the day of crucifixion. The first evasion (proposed and apparently preferred by the same writer) is this : " The thief prayed, Lord, remember me in the day of thy coining.* And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto you, this day (the day of my coining) shaltthou be with me in my king- dom. " And on the next page he explains, that, by " this day, the day of my coming," is meant the day of " Christ's second coming," " to be remembered when Christ came, not when lie went away," — a period in the then distant future. In other words (if we rightly understand an exposition sufficiently vague in the ex- pression and connection), the real meaning is, " in that day thou shalt be with me in paradise." On this at- tempt only two remarks are called for. 1. The first step is the arbitrary change of the previous verse, des- titute of all valid foundation.! 2. The second step is a still more violent change of meaning in the word " to- * The reader will observe the change of the text, u when thou comest in thy kingdom," to "in the day of thy coming.'''' t Among all the Greek manuscripts, the reading, " in the day of thy com- ing," is not known to have been found in more than one (Codex D), and that one remarkable for the capricious alterations which cause it to rank lowest of the five older manuscripts. 204 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. day " to make it really mean " that day," a distant fu- ture day ; a signification of which the Greek word (atjfjisQov) no more admits than does the plain English word " to-day." A second evasion (also suggested by the same writer), and perhaps the most common, is to connect thus : c; Verily I say unto thee to-day, thou shalt be with me in paradise ; " that is, I say it to-day. The first and obvious suggestion is the absurdity of putting in his mouth the idle statement that he says a thing " to-day," when every thing that is said, is and must be uttered on the speaker's " to-day." To avoid this absurdity, Mr. Hudson endeavors to find a special emphasis for the word, thus : "I say unto thee, even this day, when all seems so unlikely, thou shalt be with me in paradise when I enter my kingdom." To this we reply, — 1. The mode of conception, " when all seems so un- likely," is entirely alien from our Lord's method of view and speech. When did he deem it needful, even in declaring his most stupendous future doings, to lower the Godlike certainty of his assurances by any such deprecatory remark as " strange as it may appear to you," or, " though it may seem so unlikely " ? The Saviour had made much more astounding predictions than the simple promise that a penitent and forgiven sinner should join him in heaven, and deemed it need- less to allude to the seeming difficulty of the case. It may be the method of a common man, struggling hope- fully under difficulties, to say that, incredible as it may now appear, he shall still be able to redeem his prom- ises. It was not the manner of the Saviour. 2. There NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 205 was no call for such an allusion. The penitent thief had no occasion for it. He expressed himself with the full- est confidence in Christ. He did not say, " Help me if thou ever hast the power;" but, " Lord, rememher me when thou comest in thy kingdom." To have replied to him, " Improbable as it may seem, I will," would have been simply to suggest a doubt to a dying man who had no doubt before. It would have been as un- suitable to the state of mind in the one party, as it would have been out of character in the other. 3. This interpretation destroys the chief point and force of Christ's words, as a gracious reply. The petition was, " Remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom," the distant and unknown future. The answer assures him, not alone of a distant future remembrance, but of an immediate blessing, " To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise," as a sure pledge of all that he asks for the future. Our Lord grants even more than he asks, — he shall enter to-day with Christ on a state which is it- self the pledge and the intermediate introduction of the whole grand consummation which was asked. The other explanation, so far as this word is concerned, wholly misses this point or any particular point. All reference to the actual request disappears, and that, too, notwithstanding the elaborate solemnity of a double assurance. 4. But a decisive objection is found in the collocation of the Greek. The representation is some- times made, that, so far as the language is concerned, this is a simple question of punctuation ; whether a comma shall be put before or after " to-day " (atjpeQQv). This is a mistake. It is a question of Greek colloca- tion under emphasis. The Greek language does not in- 206 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. volve the ambiguity which exists in the English in this respect. It is admitted on both sides that the oqfieQo* (to-day) is strongly emphatic. Indeed, this is the only justification which Mr. Hudson can find for his inter- pretation. Very well, then. As a strongly emphatic word, according to the usages of the Greek language, its position conclusively determines that it does not qualify the words, " I say," but the words, " thou shalt be with me ; " the strongly emphatic word in any clause preceding the less emphatic. In the Greek, it occupies precisely the position to be the most emphatic word of the last clause ; but if transferred to the first clause, to be the least emphatic of the whole. And, as both sides admit its highly emphatic character, the case is settled.* On this attempt to join " to-day " with " I say unto thee," Alford strongly remarks, " Considering that it not only violates common sense, but destroys the force of our Lord's promise, it is surely something worse than silly." But Mr. Hudson has, as usual, a second resort: " Or the term ' paradise ' may denote the state of the saints in the under-world." This virtually concedes the point we argue. That " state " was to be at- tained " to-day." Either, then, it was to be a state of conscious well-being, or the promise of the Saviour entirely evaded the petition, and was itself both mean- * The Greek now reads, 'Afj-rjv teyu aot ar][xepov juer' e/xov lay ev r£> napadelacj. Whereas, if the meaning were as Mr. Hudson and others claim,it should read, 'Afiijv arj^iepov aot Tieyu, //er* e/iov ev rib Trapadeiao. The only exception to the principle is when sometimes an emphatic word is reserved to the end of a clause, for the sake of some appended explanation or evolution, which is here not the case. NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 207 ingless and delusive. For, 1. To promise a man that he shall be to-day in a state either of entire extinction or of blank and indefinitely prolonged unconsciousness, was a singular boon to declare with such solemnity. 2. To describe an unconscious state as being " in par- adise," a place which, even in its lowest physical mean- ing, was a garden of delight, and as " being with Christ," a phrase continually used to describe the high- est blessedness of the saints in heaven (John xiv. 3 ; xvii. 24 ; 2 Cor. v. 8 ; 1 Thess. iv. 17 ; Phil. i. 23), would be preposterous. 3. To say, in answer to a pe- tition to be remembered in glory, " I most solemnly declare unto thee I will this very day (or, on this day when it seems all so unlikely, I will) introduce thee into a state of extinction, impaired mental activity, or entire insensibility to last for some thousand years," — this would indeed be asking for bread, and receiving in the gravest form of mockery a stone. If paradise does denote even the state of the saints in the under-world, it is still paradise, and paradise with Christ. Accordingly, such a writer as Archbishop Whately, disdains all thes*3 subterfuges, though inclining to ad- vocate an intermediate state of unconsciousness, and plants himself chiefly on the position that " this case is a very peculiar case, and therefore can hardly be regarded as decisive as to what shall be the lot of other men." He argues that this man's faith was peculiar and pre-eminent, as was also the time of his death, occurring at the time of Christ's death, and attended with many miraculous circumstances. But that there was any thing in either of these facts to warrant the slightest belief, that, for these reasons, God in his single 208 LIFE AND DEATH ETERNAL. instance broke through the grand economy of his deal- ings with the' pious dead, the archbishop does not and can not show.. And the man who asserts this treat- ment to be different from that of other eminent saints is bound to prove his point. Enough for the present that the penitent thief was that day received to blessedness. Let his case take its place with other evidences. Almost equally decisive is the case of Stephen (Acts vii. 55-60). As the mob were about to rush upon him, " he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." The mob immediately hurried him to the fatal spot, and there " they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, re- ceive my spirit." Now, who can doubt what was the expectation of this man, "full of the Holy Ghost," who had just been looking straight into heaven, and seeing " Jesus standing on the right hand of pod," when, im- mediately after, he addresses that same Jesus witli his dying breath, and as his body falls, prays, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit " ? Can there be a reasonable doubt that he expected his spirit at once to join at God's right hand that Saviour on whom he had just been gazing, towards whom his spirit was even then yearning with ineffable love, and to whom he was speaking as one already in his presence ? The reader will not fail to observe that the language of Stephen is substantially the same with that addressed NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS. 209 by the Saviour himself to the Father at the very mo- ment when his divine spirit passed from its crucified jody, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit " (Luke xxiii. 46). Stephen evidently expected to ex- perience the same immediate condition which Christ expected. Whoever is prepared to believe that he who claimed to have shared the glories of the Father before he " became flesh," expected, when he laid down that flesh, to be for a time either extinct or unconscious, upon the utterance of these words, can also believe that such was the expectation of Stephen.* 4. The Scripture furthermore teaches that spirits of believers long since departed are living, and with God. " The spirits of just men made perfect" are enumer- ated in this sense unmistakably in Heb. xii. 23: "But * In connection with this passage (Acts vii. 59), a singular piece of effron- tery deserves mention, as showing the nourishment on which a large portion of the believers in annihilation are fed. It occurs in Ellis and Read's Bible vs. Tradition, sixth edition. The writer begins by saying, " The grammar of the text charges the saying, ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,' upon the wicked Jews, and afterwards records what Stephen did and said." The reader who will examine the Greek text will see at a glance the astounding impudence of the statement; for the Greek can by no possibility be so translated or interpreted. Rut the writer proceeds: "We waive this, being willing to allow that the translators were fallible, and attribute both sayings to Stephen. Dexai [