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LIFE IN CHRIST: 
 
 A STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE 
 
 ON 
 
 THE NATURE OF MAN, 
 
 THE OBJECT OF THE DIVINE 
 INCARNATION, 
 
 AND THE CONDITIONS OF HUMAN 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 BY EDWARD WHITE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE 'MYSTERY OF GROWTH,' ETC. 
 
 ' But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and 
 said, Go stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this Life. And when 
 they heard that they entered into the temple early in the -morning and taught.' 
 
 THIRD JZgyyM'flMWfiKP' AND'MNLARGED. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1878. 
 
YES, EVEN THE LIFELESS STONE IS DEAR, 
 FOR THOUGHTS OF HIM WHO LATE LAY HERE ; 
 AND THE BASE WORLD, NOW CHRIST HATH DIED, 
 ENNOBLED IS AND GLORIFIED. 
 
 NO MORE A CHARNEL HOUSE TO FENCE 
 
 THE RELICS OF LOST INNOCENCE, 
 
 A VAULT OF RUIN AND DECAY; 
 
 THE IMPRISONING STONE IS ROLLED AWAY ! 
 
 'TIS NOW A CELL WHERE ANGELS USE 
 TO COME AND GO WITH HEAVENLY NEWS, 
 AND IN THE EARS OF MOURNERS SAY, 
 ' COME SEE THE PLACE WHERE JESUS LAY.' 
 
 KEBLE. 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, Printers, London and Aylesbury. 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 THE present edition of this work is not a mere reprint of the 
 last, but has been revised with the utmost care, and represents 
 the effect of the friendly and adverse criticisms to which the two 
 former editions have been subjected. Of the adverse notices the 
 foremost place belongs to the thoughtful article in the Church 
 Quarterly Review. Since, however, the able and generous writer 
 distinctly ' eschews textual criticism and detailed argument,' and 
 prefers to discuss the doctrine set forth only in its ' general bear- 
 ings,' and under what he terms ' comprehensive views,' I have 
 been able to derive little advantage from his labour. This book 
 rests the question of Immortality wholly on interpretation o 
 Scripture ; and with those who decline that line of thought, the 
 author also must decline to enter into controversy. The British 
 Quarterly and London Quarterly Reviewers have each advanced 
 objections to previous statements, which I have here attempted to 
 show are either founded on misconception, or else are suggestive 
 of amended modes of representation. Archdeacon Garbett has 
 published some papers in the Christian Observer for 1877, which 
 I am compelled to say, after respectful and repeated perusals, 
 seem to me to consist chiefly of authoritative assertions, or appeals 
 to authority, on the immortality of the soul, and which wholly 
 avoid the discussion of weighty objections even to that tenet. A 
 very able and generally candid anonymous writer in the Methodist 
 
 101829 
 
ivr PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Magazine of the present year, has made the most of the case on 
 the side of traditional opinion ; but. while suggesting some valuable 
 improvements in the argument, he has avoided the discussion of 
 the most important exegetical and theological questions. From 
 each of these writers, however, I have learned something ; and I 
 wish to explain in this place that in order to avoid encumbering a 
 book, intended now for popular use, with numberless foot-notes 
 and references, I have without further comment either modified 
 or withdrawn statements in matters of detail which seem to 
 me to have been reasonably censured. Each of my critics who 
 cares to examine closely this edition will discover in such modi- 
 fication the effect of his observations, and is at liberty to conclude 
 that, in whole or in part, I have been convinced by his criticism. 
 While desirous of rendering justice to all opponents, I have to 
 regret that the main argument, scriptural and complex, for the 
 doctrine here defended has been scarcely adverted to. Reviewers 
 have nibbled at phrases and special criticisms, but have avoided 
 the principal questions both of interpretation and of a harmonious 
 theology. When they do theologise, as in the remarks of the 
 Church Quarterly and London Quarterly Reviewers, on the ques- 
 tion whether the existing human race owes its being to law or to 
 grace, their mutual contradictions, as I have pointed out in the 
 proper place, might suggest to each a less confident tone of exclu- 
 sive 'orthodoxy.' 
 
 In this edition will be found a new note On Jewish and 
 Rabbinical Opinion, affixed to chapter xvii. ; and the substance 
 of my recent replies to the Rev. J. Baldwin Brown's Lectures on 
 Conditional Immortality is incorporated with the text. 
 
 In again offering to the public a work of which the wider 
 circulation must needs be fraught with consequences of incal- 
 culable moment for spiritual good or evil, I can but repeat the 
 conviction that although, as in other revolutions of religious 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. v 
 
 opinion, some evil attends change, the ultimate result will be 
 wholly for good. It was originally written, and has now again 
 been revised, under a deep sense of responsibility to the Most 
 Righteous Judge Eternal \ and the persuasion of truth borne in 
 upon my own mind by the study of the Holy Scripture has now 
 been sanctioned, not only by the confirmatory faith of many of 
 the most learned and able critics in our generation, but by the 
 assenting voice of a great multitude of thoughtful and devout 
 Christian people in Europe, Asia, and America. 
 
 If the reader who cares little for scientific opinion finds the 
 opening sections not to his taste, he can commence the perusal 
 of this book at the fifth chapter, without serious hindrance to the 
 understanding of the general argument. The English reader will 
 find the occasional occurrence of Hebrew and Greek type no 
 obstacle to his ready comprehension of the discussion. 
 
 I shall conclude this preface with four notable citations. The 
 First is from an incisive reply to Canon Liddon's sermon On 
 Conditional Immortality, in S. Paul's Cathedral, by my friend 
 and fellow-labourer, the Rev. Samuel Minton, M.A., who, by 
 his works on The Glory of Christ in the reconciliation of all 
 things. The Way Everlasting, and The Harmony of Scripture, and 
 not less by his singular ability, judgment, temper, and self- 
 sacrifice, has made the idea that immortal life is in Christ alone a 
 subject of general interest throughout the English-speaking world, 
 Mr. Minton thus expresses the drift of our joint contention : 
 
 'Scripture is silent on man's necessary immortality. It is 
 trumpet-tongued on the other side. From beginning to end it 
 positively labours to impress upon man that he is not an im~ 
 mortal, indestructible, but a dying, perishing creature ; who, if 
 he desires to inherit eternal life, must accept it as the free gift 
 of God in Christ, and seek for it by patient continuance in 
 
vi PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 well-doing. The alternatives of life and death, immortality and 
 destruction, are incessantly put before us in every shape and 
 form. Dogmatic assertions, warnings, promises, arguments, illus- 
 trations, and necessary inferences, are massed together in such a 
 way that it might have been thought impossible for any human 
 being to misunderstand them. The very object of Christ's death 
 is again and again declared to be, " that whosoever believeth in 
 Him should not perish but have everlasting life :" yet Scripture 5 
 we are told, pre-supposes that man is absolutely imperishable, and 
 must spend an everlasting life of some kind, whether he believes 
 or not. It teaches that " whosoever doeth the will of God abideth 
 for ever ; " but pre-supposes that every one must abide for ever 
 "either in weal or woe." It teaches that " if any man eat of this 
 bread he shall live for ever ; " but pre-supposes that every man 
 must live for ever, whether he eat of it or not, pre-supposes the 
 " unutterably solemn fact that each one of us in this cathedral 
 must live on for ever and ever." It teaches that " the wages of 
 sin is death;" but pre-supposes that man's spirit is essentially 
 deathless, and that his body having been raised from its first 
 temporary death, can incur no second death, but must "live 
 eternally on in weal or in woe." It teaches that the "end" of 
 impenitent sinners "is destruction," even "everlasting destruc- 
 tion;" that "like natural brute beasts, made to be taken and 
 destroyed," they " will utterly perish in their own corruption ; " 
 ihat they will be " cast forth as a branch and withered .... cast 
 into the fire and burned," burnt up like " chaff " with unquench- 
 able fire ; that " a fiery indignation " will " devour " them ; that 
 they " shall be cut off," and " shall not be ; " that " into smoke 
 they shall consume away ;" that they shall "lose their own souls," 
 "lose themselves;" all of which pre-suppose what? why, 
 something that would render it absolutely impossible for any 
 one of these things ever to occur. In fact Scripture is tortured 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. vii 
 
 by this human philosophy into meaning the very reverse of what 
 it says.' 
 
 The Second Citation is from a letter with which I have been 
 favoured by Mr. Stokes, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at 
 Cambridge, and Secretary of the Royal Society; in which he 
 deals with the objection often made that, according to us, ' the 
 wicked are raised from the dead only to suffer,' and that this 
 throws a dark shadow upon the attributes of God, Professor 
 Stokes says : ' I never could share 'in the difficulty which some 
 seem to feel heavily, regarding the doctrine of life in Christ, on 
 the ground that, on that supposition, the raising again of the 
 wicked, which Scripture unequivocally teaches, would be an act 
 of cruelty on the part of God. The difficulty seems to me to be 
 based on the assumption that the sole object of their resurrection 
 was that they might be punished. Even if it were so, I think it 
 could be shown to be consistent with, or even conceivably re- 
 quired by, a scheme in which mercy and justice are blended 
 together ; but it appears to me that Scripture represents judgment 
 (jcpto-ts), the display to the whole rational creation of the justice 
 of the ways of God, rather than punishment as such (K/oi'/xa), as 
 the primary object, so to speak, of the resurrection of the unjust 
 as well as of the just. (See for instance, 2 Cor. v. 9, ' For we 
 must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, in 
 order that each man may receive the things done in the body, 
 according to the things that he did, whether it were good or bad.' 
 See also John v. 29; Rom. xiv. u.) And though to the wicked 
 judgment will issue in condemnation, and they will receive their 
 final doom, it is surely as easy to regard this, and whatever 
 suffering may either accompany (see Matt. xi. 22) or follow the 
 judgment, as a necessary result of the manifestation, as it is to 
 regard it as a consequence of a supposed immortality of the soul.' 
 
viii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 The Third Citation is on the practical working of the tradi- 
 tional dogma on future retribution, from a speech by the Rev. R. 
 Suffield. At a meeting held in 1873 in Sion College, an interest- 
 ing paper was read by the late Lord Lyttelton, which subsequently 
 appeared in the April number of the Contemporary Review. 
 In the course of the debate which followed, a remarkable state- 
 ment was made by the Rev. Rudolph Suffield, formerly a Roman 
 Catholic priest. He observed that no one knew so well as a 
 priest what was passing in other men's minds on religious sub- 
 jects ; and that his own opportunities of ascertaining the effect of 
 the popular doctrine upon the minds of those who really believed 
 it had been very considerable. At the request of one who was 
 present, he afterwards wrote out the following abstract of the 
 testimony which he then gave from his own experience : 
 
 ' I am bound by honour now to observe faithfully the regula- 
 tions to which I was pledged when a Roman Catholic priest. I 
 am permitted by those to be guided by the knowledge of charac- 
 ter and results obtained from the confessional, but so as never to 
 point things to individuals. My extensive experience for twenty 
 years as confessor to thousands, whilst Apostolic Missionary in 
 most of the large towns of England, in many portions of Ireland, 
 in part of Scotland, and also in France, is, that excepting instances 
 I could count on my fingers, the dogma of hell, though firmly 
 believed in by English and Irish Roman Catholics, did no moral 
 or spiritual good, but rather the reverse. It never affected the 
 right persons ; it frightened, nay tortured, innocent young women, 
 and virtuous boys; it drove men and women into superstitious 
 practices which all here would lament. It appealed to the lowest 
 motives and the lowest characters; not however to deter from 
 vice, but to make them the willing subjects of sad and often 
 puerile superstitions. It never (excepting in the rarest case) deterred 
 from the commission of sin. It caused unceasing mental and moral 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. ix 
 
 difficulties, lowered the idea of God, and drove devout persons 
 from the God of hell to Mary. When a Roman Catholic, I on 
 different occasions conferred on this subject with thoughtful 
 friends among the clergy ; who agreed with me in noticing and 
 deploring the same sad results. From the fear of hell we never 
 expected virtue, or high motives, or a noble life ; but we practi- 
 cally found it useless as a deterrent. It always influenced the 
 wrong people, and in a wrong way. It caused "infidelity" to 
 some, " temptations " to others, and misery without virtue to most. 
 The Roman Catholics are very sincere and " real ; " and we found 
 it difficult to avoid violating the conscience, when we told them 
 to love and revere a God compromised to the creation of a hell 
 of eternal wretchedness, a God perpetrating what would be scorned 
 as horrible by the most cruel, revengeful, unjust tyrant on earth.' 
 
 The Fourth Citation is from the contribution of Mr. W. R. 
 Greg (author of the Enigmas of Life) to the ' Symposium ' on 
 The Future Life, in the Nineteenth Century for October, 1877. 
 His words are surely among the most pathetic and mournful ever 
 written in modern literature, and prove the necessity for some 
 further discussion of that doctrine of Christianity which enables 
 its believers to say, ' We know that if this earthly house of our 
 tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens ' : 
 
 ' I have of course read most of the pleadings in favour of the 
 ordinary doctrine of the Future State ; naturally also, in common 
 with all graver natures, I have meditated yet more ; but these 
 pleadings, for the most part, sound to anxious ears little else than 
 the passionate outcries of souls that cannot endure to part with 
 hopes on which they have been nurtured and which are inter- 
 twined with their tenderest affections. Logical reasons to compel 
 conviction, I have met with none even from the interlocutors in 
 
x PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 this actual Symposium. Yet few can have sought for such more 
 yearningly. I may say I share in the anticipations of believers ; 
 but I share them as aspirations, sometimes approaching almost 
 to a faith, occasionally and for a few moments perhaps rising 
 into something like a trust, but never able to settle into the con- 
 sistency of a definite and enduring creed. I do not know how 
 far even this incomplete state of mind may not be merely the 
 residuum of early upbringing and habitual associations. But I 
 must be true to my darkness as courageously as to my light. I 
 cannot rest in comfort on arguments that to my spirit have no 
 cogency, nor can I pretend to respect or be content with reasons 
 which carry no penetrating conviction along with them. I will 
 not make buttresses do the work or assume the posture of 
 foundations. I will not cry "Peace, peace, when there is no 
 peace." I have said elsewhere and at various epochs of life why 
 the ordinary " proofs " confidently put forward and gorgeously 
 arrayed " have no help in them ; " while, nevertheless, the pictures 
 which imagination depicts are so inexpressibly alluring. The 
 more I think and question the more do doubts and difficulties 
 crowd around my horizon and cloud over my sky. Thus it is 
 that I am unable to bring aid or sustainment to minds as 
 troubled as my own, and perhaps less willing to admit that the 
 great enigma is, and must remain, insoluble.' 
 
 It remains only to add that in preparing the present edition I 
 have been again much indebted to the revising accuracy of my 
 friend Dr. Emmanuel Pe'tavel of Geneva, the leading advocate of 
 the same views on the continent of Europe ; and also for some 
 valuable suggestions to the Rev. Charles Byse, of Bex, Canton de 
 Vaud, who has kindly undertaken a French translation of these 
 pages, which will be published at Geneva in 1878. 
 
 E. W. 
 
 December, 1877. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 THIRTY years ago, in 1846, 1 ventured to publish a volume setting 
 forth the doctrine of Immortality through the Incarnation, which 
 at that time had few other public advocates in this country. If 
 the idea had been original it would have been self-condemned. 
 It was but a revival of the oft-repeated and unsuccessful protest 
 of better men. For example, Dr. Isaac Watts himself, the flower 
 of Nonconformist orthodoxy, had maintained, one hundred and 
 fifty years before, all the essential principles of that work in his 
 book on The Ruin and Recovery of Mankind. Speaking of the 
 sentence of Death passed upon Adam he says (Question xi.), 
 ' Who can say whether the word death might not be fairly con- 
 strued to extend to the utter destruction of the life of the soul as 
 well as of the body ? For man by sin had forfeited all that God 
 had given him, that is the life and existence of his soul as well as of 
 his body ; and why might not the threatening declare the right 
 that even a God of goodness had to resume all back again, and 
 utterly destroy and annihilate His creatures for ever ? There is 
 not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word 
 death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, neces- 
 sarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either 
 to Adam, the actual sinner, or to his posterity.' And again, 
 building on that foundation, he maintains the total destruction 
 of their spirits, in the death of the children of wicked men, all 
 over the world (a detail in which I do not agree with Dr. Watts) ; 
 denying the natural immortality of their souls. 'It does not 
 follow that the Great God will punish the mere imputed guilt of 
 Adam's infant posterity in so severe a manner [as to consign 
 them to eternal misery], or that He will continue their souls in 
 being, whose whole life and being is forfeited by Adam's sin.' 
 (Question xvi.) These premisses carry with them logically all 
 the critical and theological conclusions which have been deduced 
 from them by us, in relation to the Christian economy ; yet the 
 whole church of Christ has continued to honour Dr. Watts as one 
 
xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 of the chief singers of the orthodox faith. The modern repro- 
 duction of the same ideas was nevertheless assailed on all sides 
 as heresy, and the inevitable penalty for that offence in England 
 has ensued in ecclesiastical experiences none the less painful 
 because cheerfully endured in humble trust of the Highest 
 Approval. 
 
 The volume with which, after so many years of additional 
 thought and experience, I no\v appear before the public, except- 
 ing a few pages revised from its earlier predecessor and later 
 pamphlets, is entirely new ; though for convenience in future 
 reference bearing the old title. After the labours of so many 
 learned writers the question may fairly be asked whether there 
 was room for another discussion ; above all, whether there was 
 room for so large a volume treating on a wide range of topics in 
 which, partly through want of space, and partly through lack of 
 ability, few of the subjects could be exhaustively handled. The 
 defence is simple, and I hope sufficient ; firstly, that my early 
 ideas have somewhat cleared up in certain directions in the course 
 of subsequent reflection ; and next, that the object of this book 
 is to exhibit the bearings of the central doctrine of Immortality 
 on the present state of Anthropology, and on the acknowledged 
 truths of Revelation, rather than to elaborate any one branch of 
 the argument. No one hitherto has treated the question precisely 
 in this coherent method : and yet conviction often comes when 
 men can be persuaded to look round a large circle of ideas, while 
 doubt remains so long as they consider only a few of its degrees. 
 The reader, therefore, will not anticipate a treatise exclusively or 
 chiefly on Future Punishment, but rather a discussion of the 
 Source and Conditions of human Immortality ; and no one will 
 even comprehend the scope of this book who regards it merely 
 as an argument for ' Annihilation.' 
 
 In contemplating the reception which may be given to my 
 labour, I know that no one who questions an ancient and 
 established belief, supported by a large majority of learned Chris- 
 tians, has either right or reason to expect contemporary praise. 
 For his mistakes he does not deserve it, and his demerits therein 
 will be plentifully rewarded. For the truth which perchance he 
 may also maintain society is scarcely prepared. Such an enter- 
 prise, therefore, should be taken in hand by those alone who, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. xiif 
 
 feeling what Roger Williams called * the rocky strength of their 
 grounds,' are satisfied, for the present, with an appeal to the 
 Master of Truth in Heaven, to the judgment of some few careful 
 and thorough readers on earth, and to the better opinion of 
 posterity. This is indeed an appeal which is made by every 
 futile dreamer, but it has been also made by all who have laboured 
 and suffered effectually for forgotten truths in times gone by. 
 The system of ideas here presented has yet scarcely passed 
 through the stage of obstinate British misrepresentation. When 
 our notice-writers and preachers have ended their declamations 
 against the ' miserable doctrine of Annihilation,' the public will 
 begin to see that 'the more part' have mistaken the general 
 question altogether; and then religious students will probably 
 gather courage to proclaim what must first be held somewhat 
 in reserve. Perhaps all lasting and beneficial changes of belief 
 are brought about with less danger to the fabric of faith when 
 thus allowed slowly to percolate through society, rather than 
 when forced indiscriminately or before their time on the attention 
 of the multitude. 
 
 It is inevitable, then, I regret to acknowledge, that even in a 
 tolerant age, this work, if regarded at all, should incur at present 
 in many quarters severe reprehension. Its basis, a thorough 
 belief in the Divine Authority of Christ and His Apostles, in- 
 cluding faith in their Doctrine of Evil Spirits, as an essential part 
 of Christianity, will deeply displease some, as old-fashioned and 
 uncritical. It will also incur the reproof of the easy-going 
 thinkers in all churches, by whom definite persuasion, founded on 
 painstaking interpretation of Scripture, is declared to be the 
 certain mark of a narrow and shallow capacity : as though it 
 were quite certain that the subject which is most obscure and 
 beyond our reach, in a Divine Revelation, would be the very 
 scope of Redemption ; or, if not obscure, then unimportant; as 
 though anything whatever is important, if not to know the re- 
 vealed character of God, the true end of the Incarnation, and the 
 real nature and destiny of Man. The issue of this argument, the 
 supposed establishment of the Evangelical Theology on a firmer 
 foundation, will displease perhaps still more, since this form of 
 faith is just now much out of fashion. The organs of opinion 
 appointed to defend systems of belief already established, rather 
 
xiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 than to inquire into their truth, cannot be expected, however 
 generous the spirit of their writers, to regard favourably a book 
 which combines ideas gathered from so many schools and 
 churches. Its abandonment of the doctrine of endless misery 
 will be denounced as dangerous by men whose disapproval cannot 
 but occasion regret ; while its earnest inculcation of a ' wrath to 
 come,' of the nature of positive and even physical infliction from 
 the hand of Heaven, will be regarded as intolerable by nearly all 
 parties alike. A long experience has made known the price 
 which must be paid for so much individuality of faith, and so 
 much freedom of confession. 
 
 Nevertheless, although this book, having so hard and unequal 
 a battle to fight, may be found too sceptical by the orthodox, and 
 by far too orthodox for the sceptical, I believe that its main 
 argument (to be carefully distinguished from those secondary 
 opinions which accompany it) will gradually win the adhesion of 
 a large and growing class, who, knowing the outlines of present 
 scientific doctrine, and likewise the history of theology, have 
 found the truth to lie partly in what is termed scepticism, and 
 partly in the ancient creeds of Christendom. My chief desire is 
 that these pages may assist the Christian belief of some whose 
 faith is a half doubt, and also of some whose doubts have expelled 
 faith altogether. For there are many scientific men who have 
 concluded too hastily, that because biology reveals no future state, 
 there is therefore neither ' Judgment to come ' nor ' Life everlast- 
 ing.' I meet such reasoners here, on their own ground, with 
 'glad tidings,' and proclaim to them ' JESUS AND THE RESURREC- 
 TION.' Unless there were a loftier object in view than a negative 
 reform of the doctrine of retribution, my life should not have 
 been devoted to the promulgation of these principles. It is the 
 positive truth on Christ's Salvation, now more than ever en- 
 dangered in Europe, which has been throughout the main con- 
 cern ; and it is with such aims that I now respectfully submit 
 these endeavours to the judgment, not however exclusively, of 
 the theological public. 
 
 E. W. 
 BRATHAY HOUSE, 
 
 TUFNELL PARK, LONDON, 
 
 September, 1875. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF MAN AS CONSIDERED UNDER THE LIGHT OF 
 SCIENCE ONLY; WITH OTHER PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. The Alternatives of Human Destiny Extinction or Immor- 
 tality ......... 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. The Mind of Animals as Real as the Mind of Man . . 14 
 
 CHAPTER III. On the Mortality of Animals . . . . .22 
 
 CHAPTER IV. A Brief Review of the Relation of Man to the Animal Races, 
 
 as considered under the light of Science only . . . .27 
 
 CHAPTER V. On the Numbers and Intellectual Condition of Mankind . 40 
 CHAPTER VI. The Orthodox Doctrine on the Nature and Destiny of Man- 
 kind . . . . . . . . . -49 
 
 CHAPTER VII. On the possibility that Christendom has erred on the 
 
 Doctrine of Human Destiny . . . . . .65 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. On the Immortality of the Soul . . . .71 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE ON LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. On the Account given in Scripture of the Original Constitu- 
 tion of Man ........ 85 
 
 CHAPTER X. On the Nature of the Death threatened to the Ancestors of 
 
 Mankind in Paradise as the Penalty of Sin . . . .99 
 
 CHAPTER XL On the Results of the Trial of Adam in Paradise, and the 
 
 Entrance of Redeeming Mercy . . . . . . 113 
 
 CHAPTER XII. The Serpent in Genesis : an Excursus on the Scripture 
 Doctrine of an Evil Superhuman Agency concerned in the Destruction 
 of Mankind ........ 123 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. The Patriarchal Doctrine of a Future State: Animal Sacri- 
 ficeIndications of Patriarchal Faith in a Future Life by Resurrection 145 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. On the Death-Penalty of the Mosaic Law . . . 155 
 
 CHAPTER XV. The Doctrine of Future Rewards and Punishments in the 
 
 Poetic and Prophetic Books of the Old Testament . . . 162 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. On the Opposed Doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees 
 
 in relation to a Future Life ; and on Christ's Rejection of both . 180 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE ON THE OBJECT OF THE DIVINE 
 INCARNATION, AND THE METHOD OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XVII.- The Incarnation of the Life ; or, the Logos made Flesh 
 
 that Man may live eternally .... . . 193 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER XVII. i. Note on Christ's Discourse on Life 
 
 at Capernaum . . . . . . . . 216 
 
 2. Note on the question, whether the words of Christ on Future Life 
 are to be interpreted according to the sense of the Pharisees ; with 
 a view of subsequent Rabbinical opinion .... 220 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. Justification of Life ..... 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. The New Covenant of Life in the Blood of Christ ; or, the 
 Nature of the Death of Christ, and its place in the Divine Government 
 as an Atonement for Sin . . . . . . 238 
 
 CHAPTER XX. On Regeneration unto Life, through Union with the Incar- 
 nate Word, by the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life . . 261 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. Hades, or the State of Man between Death and the Resur- 
 rection, under the Economy of Redemption .... 291 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. On the Question, Whether the Holy Scriptures teach that 
 any sinful persons, dying in ignorance of Christ, are evangelised in 
 Hades ......... 313 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. The Resurrection to Life Eternal at the Coming and 
 
 Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ ..... 329 
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. On the Future Punishment of the Second Death . . 345 
 
 Excursus, on the Moral Ideas associated with the Terms 
 Life and Death . . . . ,369 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. Examination of the Principal Scripture Texts supposed to 
 
 leach the Everlasting Duration of Sin and Misery . . . 391 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. On the Support given by some Fathers of the Primitive 
 Church to the Doctrine of Life in Christ ; and on the process by which 
 the prevailing opinion of Man's Immortality became the Creed of 
 Catholic Christendom ....... 416 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. On the Doctrine of the Ultimate Salvation of all Men, 
 
 commonly called Universalism . . . . . 438 
 
 BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 THE BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE IN CHRIST ON THE 
 FAITH AND PRACTICE OF MANKIND. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. On the Influence of this Theodicy on the Christian Life 457 
 CHAPTER XXIX. The Practical Influence of the Doctrine of Life and Death 
 
 Eternal on the Hopes and Fears of Ungodly Men . . . 480 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. Missionary Theology : an Inquiry into the Influence of 
 
 this Theodicy on the Method and Spirit of Missions to the Heathen . 506 
 CHAPTER XXXI. The probable Influence of the Doctrine of Christianity, 
 
 as here presented on prevailing Atheistic and Deistic Scepticisms . 552 
 
BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF MAN, AS CONSIDERED UNDER 
 THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE ONLY; WITH OTHER 
 PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ALTERNATIVES OF HUMAN DESTINY, EXTINCTION OR 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 MAN, who has scaled the heavens by the ladder of his astronomy, 
 and by the study of the rocks divined the history of the globe, 
 finds a more insoluble problem in his own nature and destiny. 
 Though wearing so many crowns, as Earth-subduer, Legislator, 
 Soldier, Poet, Philosopher, and Saint, this Image of the Infinite, 
 nevertheless, scarcely arrives at the maturity of his powers ere 
 death carries him away. He perishes like the moss or lichen 
 beneath his feet. 
 
 Thoughtful men are asking on every side, with ever-deepening 
 intensity of passion, What is this mysterious doom of death which 
 overshadows all, which awaits and engulfs us all ? Is it indeed 
 the end of our individual being? Does man, the 'myriad- 
 minded,' when he expires close his eyes for ever on these star-lit 
 heavens, to which he has gazed upward so steadfastly and so 
 wistfully for a few brief moments in the midst of eternity ? Does 
 the bubble of life then burst, and resolve itself, as half Asia 
 imagines, into the Eternal Substance ; as the water, separated in 
 the floating flask (so Buddhists speak), when the flask is broken, 
 mingles with the ocean? Or does the thinking individuality 
 survive, for a little while, or for endless ages? Is there, as 
 Christendom affirms, a Spirit in every man which defies destruc- 
 tion, and is destined, as of divine original, to soar aloft the 
 immortal companion of the Necessary Being ? 
 
 Apart from a direct communication from that Being, what can 
 we positively learn on these questions? Strange that the judg- 
 ment of millions should be compelled to hover, in uncertainty, 
 even for an hour, between two prospects so different, as approach- 
 
4 EXTINCTION OR IMMORTALITY, 
 
 ing extinction, and the promise of an endless life, drawn by 
 turns to believ.e in each by strong contradictory arguments. It is 
 a difficulty which has been felt in all ages ; for men have ever 
 been divided, as now, into two parties those who have judged 
 that our portion is in this world only, death ending all, and those 
 who with varying degrees of confidence have embraced the hope 
 of immortality. 
 
 Whence this divided judgment of mankind? Plainly it has 
 been caused by our double relations, to the mind which is below 
 and to that which is above us. Beneath us is a world of animals, 
 to a large extent intelligent and sensitive, to which we are allied 
 by manifest and deep-seated similarities of structure. This world 
 of animated natures is for ever dying out of life, affording no 
 indication whatever that in a single known instance the vital 
 principle survives in dissolution. Are man's relationships with 
 these neighbouring organisms so inseparable as to involve a 
 similar destiny ? 
 
 But whence the violent recoil from such a belief? This recoil 
 itself argues some superiority, for we cannot imagine even the 
 highest rank of the animals speculating on the arguments for and 
 against a future life. Whence the grand desire of eternal sur- 
 vival? It springs from man's perception of the Divine; for in 
 addition to one world of mind and will beneath us in the animal 
 races, man, looking around and above himself, perceives on all 
 sides clear indications of a Divine Mind, unseen, but pervading 
 nature, a Mind which evidently exists in independence of material 
 organisation, and endures for ever. Is man the closer kindred of 
 those transitory organisms, or of this Intelligent Power that lives 
 through eternity, from whom he has manifestly sprung ? There 
 is a confounding balance of evidence on either side of these 
 appalling alternatives. 
 
 The very power of apprehending God, the eternal Author of 
 nature, as a physical Agent and moral Governor, of rising in the 
 strength of a spiritual faculty to conceive of the Everlasting Cause, 
 argues surely, it is said, some real and deep relation with the all- 
 creating Spirit. This longing of the purest and loftiest souls for 
 an endless life, this apprehension of judgment to come, suggested 
 by an evil conscience, this instinctive shock at the prospect of 
 speedy extinction in the perfection of our powers, surely indicates 
 
EXTINCTION OR IMMORTALITY. 5 
 
 some relations with the permanent forms of being, even with that 
 original and unchangeable Essence. But is this a relation abso- 
 lute and permanent, or only conditional? Is it common and 
 essential to the human race, or does it depend on individual 
 development ? If a part of man's nature is thus eternal, where- 
 fore death ? What is death ? What faculties survive the stroke ? 
 Why is a future union with God coincident with a destruction 
 of the organism which unites us with the physical universe? 
 If man has a portion in eternal life, why should apparent death 
 be the doorway into perpetual being? 
 
 From age to age we ask these questions with earnestness of the 
 heavenly Power ; who nevertheless regards us with a silence un- 
 broken from century to century, unless what is commonly called 
 Revelation be the answer of the Eternal Being to the aspirations 
 of man. Apart from such revelation nature offers no satisfying 
 solution to our doubts. The thought indeed soars to the heavens 
 during our lifetime, but for all that the brain returns to the dust. 
 
 The relation of man to the Deity as his destined coeval, is, 
 indeed, under natural conditions, rather a sublime speculation 
 than an established fact, I mean this relation which carries with 
 it the certain prospect of abiding for ever in God. For it may be 
 that moral disobedience, or a persistent choice of evil, has in- 
 curred the penalty of a death which closes the gates of eternal 
 life on the offenders. It is not enough to prove our immortality 
 that we can meditate upon it or even desire it. Why, it may still 
 be asked, if we are to live for ever, is the Infinite Creator Himself 
 so regardless when we die ? Whence this dumbness of the Ever- 
 lasting Cause ? Why, if immortality is ours, is Nature so silent 
 as to our destiny, or so threatening? 
 
 For, notwithstanding these loftier thoughts, the progress of 
 exact knowledge in physiology brings out into ever clearer view 
 our intimate relations with that organic world which seems to 
 exist but for a moment. So long as man was studied apart from 
 the system of living creatures around him, it was possible, by a 
 persistent reviling of the animals, and a resolute exaltation of 
 humanity, to hold almost any magnificent opinion respecting our 
 nature and destiny. Theologians and poets had it all their 
 own way. But since the scientific survey has embraced in one 
 panorama the complex system of life upon the globe, it has been 
 
6 M4N A PART OF NATURE. 
 
 impossible to found theories under natural light on the view of a 
 single species ; or to establish hypotheses of man's exclusive im- 
 mortality on physical or metaphysical phenomena which are found 
 to characterise all living things. 
 
 Professor Haeckel, the boldest of the Evolutionists, assumes 
 that the old argument for survival has been completely swept 
 away. The birth and the death of man are now studied in con- 
 nection with the birth and the death of all animated beings, and 
 the result hitherto has not been to confirm the popular opinion 
 respecting the infinity of the prospects of any part of man's con- 
 stitution under the law of its creation. 
 
 Setting aside (says the physical inquirer) any supposed revela- 
 tion from God, and restricting the view only to the world of 
 animals and of man, what do we really know respecting any life 
 beyond death ; know with a clearness of evidence which deserves 
 to be called science ? For we have no reason to be governed by 
 a belief in that life except as it is proved to exist by evidence. 
 What, then, are the conclusions which are reached when we con- 
 scientiously study under one view the organic world of which man 
 forms a part? 
 
 First of all, the animal races are produced by a generative 
 process of which every step is wonderful, but in which there is no 
 ascertainable distinction between the vital and the organic elements 
 of their constitution. In each creature produced under these 
 processes there is a living germ which has power to build up the 
 organisation with all its members, faculties, and mental or sensi- 
 tive capacities. No one can separate in observation the life from 
 the organism in which it coheres. The faculty is the effect of the 
 development. When the organism dissolves the life seems to 
 dissolve with it. 
 
 Mankind, say these biologists (whose judgment we now simply 
 represent, as illustrative of the course of modern thought apart 
 from revelation), is produced by processes not merely analogous 
 but identical. There is absolutely no difference, as an ancient 
 philosopher observed, between the process through which is born 
 the 'wild ass's colt,' and that by which man is brought forth 
 upon the earth. What we call mind in man is created under 
 universal laws of the brain-producing energy of nature. We trace 
 up sensation, perception, instinct, thought, developed in constant 
 
REPRESENTATION OF EVOLUTIONIST DOCTRINE. 7 
 
 connection with nervous and cerebral systems, from the lowest to 
 the highest organisms. There is a steady progress in the organisa- 
 tion, but in all cases alike the generative process is one. With 
 brain and ganglia there is mind, without them none. The laws 
 which govern the hereditary transmission of qualities and powers 
 are the same for all. If a common mode of origination may 
 furnish any indication of destiny, comparative physiology holds 
 out, we are told, no hope of survival for the human intelligence in 
 that death, common to animals and mankind, which seems to 
 swallow up organism and faculty in one abyss of destruction. 
 
 The processes of development, nutrition, and decay, are iden- 
 tical for animals and for mankind. The faculty, whether of body 
 or brain, gradually developed, as gradually wastes away. What 
 ground for the confident assertion of a perishable life in the one 
 case, of a deathless being in the other ? Rather is it not evident 
 that all through the lower world Mind is but one of the manifold 
 energies of life, and that life, whatever its essence, dissolves with 
 the organisation? Science knows nothing, affirms nothing re- 
 specting substance or essence. It affirms nothing respecting 
 metaphysical annihilation of the material out of which organisms 
 are built. It declares simply that Man and the Animals belong 
 to one system of life. They are brought into being under one 
 law. And there is no material or positive evidence of the con- 
 crete survival of any portion of the one series of organisms more 
 than of the other. Any expectation of the survival of the vital 
 force of man in death must then be founded on something that 
 is not science. We know nothing of the post-mortem existence of 
 the thinking willing energy of man. It is known to us only as 
 dependent on the brain and the circulation, developing with the 
 brain, not developing if the brain be not developed (as in idiots), 
 suffering disorder when the brain is injured, lapsing into insanity 
 when the brain is inflamed, decaying when the brain decays, 
 sleeping when the brain sleeps, and seeming to die away when 
 the brain dies. The mind obtains all her knowledge of outward 
 things and all enjoyment of them, as the animals do, through 
 nerves, and ultimately through the brain. In childhood the 
 brain is soft and tender, and the mind is feeble and soon over- 
 done. In health the mind is strong, in sickness it loses its energy 
 and grasp. In old age, when the brain is stiff and dry, the 
 
8 MAN AND THE ANIMALS. 
 
 thinking power loses its pliability. It must go on in the old 
 track. A blow to the brain is a blow to the mind. Mental 
 disease, too, is hereditary, as every other bodily affection. Mental 
 peculiarities are hereditary. Each child is manifestly the com- 
 plex result of many individualities transmitting those peculiarities 
 to posterity. Intellect varies not only with the mass but with the 
 texture of the brain. Narcotics and stimulants directly affect the 
 mind. If the mind were absolutely material, or the result of 
 material combinations, it could not be more completely under the 
 influence of material agencies. Lastly, all the positive evidence 
 is in favour of the transmission of mind or thinking power and 
 will in generation, along with the other elements of the fabric. 
 Where and what is this Soul or Spirit, so independent of the 
 organism as to be created by a separate act of power, so self-sub- 
 sisting as to survive naturally in its integrity when the body dies ? 
 If it be replied, that it is inconceivably appalling that this 
 universe should be a thing of one substance only ; that thinking 
 power should be the last and highest product of its development ; 
 that this intellectual Eye should open for a moment on nature 
 which produced it, and should then be reingulfed by the dead 
 ruthless force which had given it birth ; the answer is ready, that 
 sentiment must vanish before fact ; and that it is wholly impossible 
 from a scientific point of view any longer to contemplate the 
 human species apart from the immense life-system of the globe 
 to which it belongs. The origin of man must be accounted for 
 from the facts of nature, and those facts all point to a probable 
 development of the human race from pre-existent forms of life. 
 The last idea to be admitted by inductive study is the creation of 
 species. Not until every possible change producible by life and 
 force has been exhausted in theory, can biology allow the entrance 
 of the hypothesis of direct creation. 
 
 Such are the arguments of the ever-strengthening school of 
 evolutionists ; and under these views the prospects of mankind in 
 futurity are restricted to the horizon which contains the animal 
 races ; since an immortal life cannot be supposed to have sprung 
 from a perishable source. 
 
 But even if the repeated creation of species be admitted as 
 a hypothesis, it is further argued that the case of man is not 
 
A MILLION TO ONE AGAINST SURVIVAL. 9 
 
 materially improved. Here are nearly a million of species on the 
 earth. Man at the head of them appears, in his barbarous and 
 savage state, superior to them, indeed, but not so superior as to 
 suggest either to himself in that state, or to us, the idea of a 
 wholly different nature. Why should 999,999 species of living 
 creatures be voted mortal and perishable, and the millionth 
 declared to be immortal as to the animating principle, just 
 because he sometimes wishes to maintain a continued existence ? 
 Perhaps the higher animals wish it too. How know we that the 
 thinking principle can survive the breaking up of the organisa 
 tion in the one species, when it is dissipated in the cases of the 
 999,999 ? All that goes on within us, and within the animals, 
 of the nature of sensation, feeling, thought, will, is a product of 
 the organisation of the brain and nervous system, and therefore 
 must be believed to cease wholly when the brain organisation 
 breaks up in death. Since the production of mental and volun- 
 tary power in men and animals is subject to precisely the same 
 laws, why should it be held that the dissolution of the brain 
 is attended by such marvellously different results as these, in 
 the case of all other species to bring the individuality to an end, 
 in the case of man to set free the animating force for a life 
 immortal ? 
 
 Besides, under either theory of the production of Man, whether 
 by development, or by creation of species, humanity must be con- 
 sidered only as the highest manifestation of the life which covers 
 the globe in air, water, and dry land. On earth we see life 
 beginning in the form of a simple cell, passing by stages which 
 are quite imperceptible from irritability into sensation, slowly 
 ascending in an immense succession of grades through the various 
 tribes of vegetables and animals, and finally culminating in Man, 
 who, viewed as a whole, is much more marked by his resem- 
 blance in constitution and character to the animals than by his 
 differentia. Man being thus zoologically a member of the life- 
 system of the globe must not be imagined to exist under a special 
 destiny. All life on earth ends in death, with no sign whatever 
 cognisable by science of the survival of any element of conscious- 
 ness. Doubtless, then, Man's life exists under the same law, 
 and is absorbed and swallowed up by the powers of destruction. 
 
 It may be rejoined, however, to these frightful vaticinations 
 
io DIRECTION OF SCIENTIFIC OPINION. 
 
 that there is one physical consideration which, under certain 
 circumstances, might materially modify this conclusion. It is 
 that Nature itself gives, even in the physical sphere, an emphatic 
 warning against the assumption that all parts of an organisation, 
 which are produced at once, always perish together. We have 
 but to look around to detect the weakness of this assumption. 
 Look, it may be said, at any annual or biennial plant, the mignon- 
 ette or hollyhock. The plant grows up from a seed in sun 
 and rain, and produces its stems, its leaves, its buds, its flowers. 
 In the flower the seed is produced, each seed possessing a life 
 originating in the life of the plant, but capable of an independent 
 survival The autumn comes. The plant dies down. Does it 
 all die, though all orginating in a single organism ? No, the seed 
 survives, separates itself from the ruin, and is ready to spring up a 
 new hollyhock in the following year. Suppose the gardener fails 
 to clear away the ruin of the old plant. Its substance dissolves 
 and melts into the earth. The seed then drops where the plant 
 grew, takes root and shoots, composed in part of the material of 
 its former self, a veritable survival of the soul, and resurrection 
 of the body. 
 
 Throughout nature we discern this law of survival in operation. 
 Portions of organisms survive the dissolution of the structure, 
 with a life of their own. Thus, then, may it not be with the 
 thinking power in men, or in animals, in one or in both ? The 
 ' soul ' may be produced along with the body, and through a 
 physical process ; yet notwithstanding the dissolution of the brain, 
 it is conceivable that it might survive in dissolution. 
 
 It is impossible to prove, bn the ground of purely physical 
 evidence, that there is nothing in this argument. It is obvious 
 that insect transformation even somewhat aids the speculation. 
 Look at the moth, with his wondrous wings. What is his 
 history ? He is the ' soul ' of a caterpillar. Here again life- 
 germs, which are all born together, do not die together. It is 
 at least possible that there may be in animals, or in man, as 
 Dr. Lionel Beale supposes, a life-force, a germ, which, though pro- 
 duced along with the bodily organisation, may perhaps survive it. 
 
 May perhaps survive it. This, however, is not science. Yet 
 this, on the ground of physical knowledge, is all that can be 
 suggested in support of a life beyond. 
 
DIRECTION OF SCIENTIFIC OPINION. 11 
 
 Summing up the evidence in a rough preliminary way, we 
 must conclude with Haeckel, in his History of Creation, that the 
 results of unaided physical inquiry at present are not favourable 
 to faith in immortal life for man, as the outcome of the constitu- 
 tion of his nature. Among contemporary students who ignore 
 moral considerations the direction of scientific opinion is strongly 
 towards this tremendous conclusion that death ends all, a con- 
 clusion so awful in itself, and so disastrous in its spiritual effects 
 among the people, that we turn to examine afresh every link of 
 the argument on which it depends. The more we examine 
 them, the less pleasing is the prospect that opens, so long as we 
 restrict our view to physical phenomena alone. The darkness 
 thickens, and the grand old auguries of a metaphysical theology 
 do not avail to dispel the deepening gloom. The outer and the 
 inner worlds seem to be at war on the loftiest problems. 
 
 Meantime some of our native sceptics are becoming strangely 
 enamoured of the doom which they anticipate. The Fortnightly 
 Review in 1873 gathered courage to encounter the darkness of 
 non-entity in these words : ' To pluck so gracious a flower of hope 
 on the edge of the sombre echoless gulf of nothingness, into 
 which our friend has slid silently down, is a natural impulse of 
 the sensitive soul, numbing remorse, and giving a moment's 
 relief to the hunger and thirst of a tenderness that has been 
 robbed of its object ; yet would not men be more likely to have 
 a deeper love for those about them, and a keener dread of filling 
 a house with aching hearts, if they courageously realised from the 
 beginning of their days that we have none of this perfect com- 
 panionable bliss to promise ourselves in other worlds that the 
 black and horrible grave is indeed the end of our communion 
 and that we know one another no more ? ' 
 
 It is thus that the leading school of Biology reasons on the 
 nature of man, deducing from its studies a conclusion in direct 
 contravention to those large hopes of survival which the mind 
 gathers from her intellectual being, from her communion with 
 nature, from her apprehension of judgment, and from her aspira- 
 tions after God.* 
 
 The prevailing speculations on the animal origin of mankind 
 * See Dr. Alexander Bain on Mind and Bedy, 1874. 
 
12 OBJECT OF DIVINE REVELATION. 
 
 in no degree qualify the blackness of the outlook. If, yielding 
 to the spirit of revolt against the hypothesis of interferences and 
 creations, science presses forward her conjectural principle of 
 Continuity, as she has so much a priori reason to do, into the 
 department of life, the result is certain to be, unless hindered by 
 a positive revelation contradicting the conclusion, to infer that 
 all life is one, and that as species are now varied under differing 
 conditions, so they have been themselves produced by wider 
 differences of condition in the past duration of the world ; until 
 at length Man has appeared as the outcome of the life-evolution. 
 Mr. Darwin's theory is not indeed proved ; it halts on one leg 
 for lack of positive evidence, as Dr. Elam and Professor Carruthers 
 have clearly shown. But apart from Revelation, it must be 
 allowed that it carries, at least on the physical side, a strong 
 appearance of probability. And its whole weight, such as it is, 
 goes into the scale of despair. If humanity be but a fractional 
 link of the general biological series, the foundation of the hope 
 of a special destiny melts away, like an ice-island in the sun- 
 beams, from beneath our feet. The nature which has been 
 evolved by a gradual development from perishable saurians 
 or simians possesses no intrinsic immortality. Body and life 
 with all their functions belong to the * dust ' to that universe 
 of material forms which pass away as we behold them. * 
 
 It is in the midst of such contradictory arguments as these, 
 the reasoning-grounds respectively of two opposing schools in 
 every age, that the Christian Revelation appears, to compose 
 the disputes of Idealists and Materialists ; by showing that there 
 has occurred a catastrophe in the beginning of man's history, that 
 his yearnings after life in the midst of death are the haunting 
 remembrances of a ruined greatness, that he was originally 
 created for an immortality conditional on obedience to God, 
 but came under the law of Death by Sin, and that it is the 
 object of Eternal Love in Redemption to ' create him anew ' in 
 
 * Many readers will recollect the pathetic grace with which Mr. Hawthorne 
 has described, in Transformation, the physical and moral characteristics of the 
 Faun, supposed by the ancients to represent human nature in its earlier rela- 
 tion with the animal world. 
 
OBJECT OF DIVINE REVELATION. 13 
 
 the image of the Everlasting, by regeneration of nature, and by a 
 resurrection from the dead. 
 
 It will be the aim of the following chapters gradually to unfold 
 the argument for the survival of the fittest, on which these con- 
 clusions rest, and to maintain it against immemorial errors. But 
 it is necessary to add some further preliminary studies in order 
 to ascertain more exactly man's place in nature, his actual con- 
 dition, and the relation in which he stands to the million species 
 of organisms of which he is the short-lived lord. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MIND OF ANIMALS AS REAL AS THE MIND OF MAN. 
 
 THE study of comparative psychology, of mind and sensibility 
 in their successive grades of development on earth, has been 
 hindered by that traditional theology which has arrested the 
 steps of science in every direction. The Bible has been held up 
 as the standard of truth on all subjects of knowledge, from the 
 highest to the lowest, and even the most gratuitously perverse 
 misinterpretations of its statements have served with equal 
 authority as effectual obstacles to the examination of nature. 
 For two thousand years after its first discovery the true theory of 
 the Solar System was hindered from attaining its right position 
 in the world by a few vague quotations from the popular and 
 poetic language of psalmists and prophets. The opening of 
 Genesis, understood as a scientific cosmogony, effectually closed 
 ' the infinite book of secrets ' in the geological record up till 
 the present century. The notion of a universal flood and a 
 mistaken view of the tenth chapter of Genesis have exerted, 
 under like treatment, a similarly restrictive influence upon 
 ethnology. The moral nature of the Deity Himself has been 
 concealed behind clouds of sacerdotal metaphysics. What 
 wonder, then, if the natures of Man and of the Animals have 
 been misconceived through the doubly refracting atmosphere 
 of two erroneous but correlated theories respecting their place 
 in the creation ? In this case, however, the excuse of being led 
 astray by the primitive documents of the Old Testament does 
 not exist, for they conform in a remarkable manner to the 
 facts of nature, and directly contradict the more modern 
 pyschology. 
 
 There is no theological doctrine more firmly established 
 than that there is an infinite difference between man and the 
 
HUMAN REASON AND ANIMAL INSTINCT. 15 
 
 animals in the essential quality of their inner being, and in 
 their consequent natural duration. Man, says the Church, has 
 a soul, the animals have no souls. Man has reason, animals 
 possess ' instinct' only. Mind is peculiar to man. The 
 animals have no moral nature j they have no understanding ; 
 the destinies of the two are therefore diverse. The animals 
 perish totally in death. But man's soul is spiritual, is of the 
 nature of God, and therefore will naturally endure for ever. 
 The mind of man is indestructible. Its immortality is of its 
 essence. It must live as long as its Eternal Maker. Being a 
 simple and indivisible substance, the soul is indissoluble by 
 any natural cause acting from without ; and being once in 
 existence, it exists for ever. Even in matter nothing is an- 
 nihilated. No atom perishes. Forms are changed. Organi- 
 sations dissolve, but substance remains. Much more must 
 spiritual substance endure for ever. The canon of the Ever- 
 lasting has affixed an eternal destiny to mind ; and the moral 
 quality of man's mind implies and demands eternal retribution 
 from the Eternal Being whom it pleases or offends. 
 
 Throughout Christendom it is held that the ' inner man ' 
 is a natural heir of immortality, herein being distinguished from 
 the beasts that perish, and this principle is maintained as a 
 postulate of the religious life, co-ordinate with the recognition 
 of the Being and Moral Government of God. It is held that 
 the one idea suggests and implies the other. Belief in God and 
 in the Immortality of the Soul are the two indispensable bases 
 of religion. The soul which can meditate and long for the 
 Eternal must be itself eternal. Moral relations with the Infinite 
 compel an endless destiny. That which good men hope for, 
 great souls aspire to, and bad men profoundly dread, in a world 
 of reward and punishment, is supposed to depend wholly on the 
 establishment of the doctrine of the soul's immortality. It is not 
 enough to rest on the purpose of God ' to give to every man 
 according to his works' a greater or a less punishment or 
 reward. It is held that the only safe foundation for faith in a 
 future state, or for any divine worship^, must be laid in the doc- 
 trine of man's natural eternity of being. 
 
 It has been difficult under such views to render justice to the 
 animal world. Beside beings endowed with the divine attribute 
 
1 6 IMMATERIALITY AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 of eternal duration, these humble creatures have enjoyed but 
 a small chance of consideration, and the sublime ' Immortals ' 
 have exercised but a sorry government over their perishable slaves. 
 
 A more exact study of these enslaved races, however, is 
 gradually opening the eyes of men to their delusions, and lead- 
 ing to that wider observation of organised natures on which alone 
 solid opinion can be established. A few misquoted texts of 
 Scripture can no longer avail to conceal the fact that a science 
 of comparative psychology has sprung up, which shatters the 
 metaphysical arguments on which hitherto theologians have 
 so unwisely rested their hope of life eternal. 
 
 For if man's prospects in the future depend on the posses- 
 sion of mind, then must he either share this immortality with 
 his animal neighbours, or consent to abandon his own expecta- 
 tion on that ground along with theirs. Whatever evidence 
 there is that man possesses intelligence, there is equally clear 
 evidence that it is possessed by them. The animals have real 
 minds, cognisant of real ideas, and acting in various methods 
 upon them. Mind is as varied in its developments as matter, 
 though we know nothing of the nature of either. Whatever 
 evidence there is that consciousness in man resides in an 
 immaterial essence, there is the same evidence that it is im- 
 material in ' the beasts that perish.' If man's immateriality 
 is to be made a basis for the argument of immortality, it must 
 be extended logically over the whole area of life. The immor- 
 tality of the animating principle of amoebae and zoophytes 
 is the legitimate inference from its immaterial quality, if the 
 same inference is insisted on in the case of man. The argu- 
 ment which is good for man is equally available for animalculae 
 and for all intermediate grades. If the reply be made, by 
 some enthusiasts, that the inference is accepted, it will suffice 
 to rejoin that a bold inference, unsupported by a single particle 
 of evidence, such as the known survival of one tiger's, or even 
 of one coral insect's ' soul,' is but a weak foundation on which 
 to build the eternal hopes of mankind. For, here, as else- 
 where, the strength of the popular belief is inversely commensurate 
 with the force of the evidence on which it reposes. 
 
 Abandoning deceptive generalities, let us then observe the 
 
VARIETIES OF ANIMAL MIND. 17 
 
 facts of nature. The general principles on which all material 
 organisms are constructed are the same throughout the world 
 yet there is a boundless diversity in the application of those 
 principles to the forms, sizes, powers, habits, and conditions, in 
 the numerous orders of living creatures. In the same manner 
 sensitive substance, whether in its essence differing from the 
 substances of which chemistry takes account, or identical with 
 them, is found from the lowest to the highest rank of the animals ; 
 but it is as varied in its developments as is the physical 
 organisation to which it is mysteriously united. From zoo- 
 phytic life up to the mammalia there is a vast ascending scale 
 of growing perfection in the body ; but the scale is not less 
 extended in respect of the animating moving principle, from 
 the dull and sluggish sensibility which hovers on the borders 
 of the insensate vegetable kingdom, up to the speechless reason 
 of the elephant or the dog, which almost rivals, if it does not 
 conspicuously surpass, the earlier developments of the childhood 
 of man. 
 
 What this inconceivable diversity of animating souls really 
 is can be apprehended better by those who have somewhat 
 studied the actions, propensities, and powers of the thousands 
 of living species actually described by zoology. To each species 
 there is an appropriate sensibility, either a power of sensation 
 and automatic action, or of observation, or of imitation, or of 
 constructive invention, or of reason ; capacities for varied enjoy- 
 ment, passions wild or gentle, attachments individual or gre- 
 garious, propensities and instincts fitted to the element in which 
 the creature lives, or to the circumstances under which its food 
 is to be obtained. And if the consideration of the series of 
 intellectual ranks among men from the lowest idiot up to a 
 Newton or a Helmholtz fills us with wonder at the Power which 
 from elements so few can elicit a variety so enormous of capa- 
 cities, attainments, and character, that reverent wonder may well 
 be increased when we turn to examine this lower frame of 
 sentient beings in the animal world, alike the work of that 
 One Eternal Mind, whose reflected light dazzles us in the firma- 
 ment and glimmers in the glowworm, blazes like lightning in a 
 Shakespere's countenance, and illuminates the darkling labours 
 of the honey-bee. 
 
1 8 THE BEE. 
 
 Through a million of species, then, there is this widely varied 
 creation of sensibility, consciousness, and power ; but a fuller 
 impression of the fact can be obtained only by remembering the 
 countless myriads of individuals comprised under each denomin- 
 ation. Take one familiar instance, the bee, to which allusion 
 has just been made. A hive may contain on the average about 
 30,000 bees. In this number there is first the Queen, with her 
 appropriate mind, her perceptions, tastes, capacities, in common 
 with her subjects ; and in addition the royal qualities of spirit, 
 whatever they may be, which incite or enable her to take the 
 lead in migrations or swarmings, and the instincts which prompt 
 her patiently to undergo the task of depositing the eggs of the 
 future progeny, one by one, in the cells prepared for their re- 
 ception. Secondly, there are the drones, as remarkably inspired 
 with a love of home and of apparent idleness, as their sisters are 
 endowed with a passion for perpetual labour. And thirdly, there 
 are the true working bees composing the principal population 
 of the hive, each one containing in its tiny form a ganglionic 
 apparatus whose implanted instincts have occupied the labours 
 of a hundred naturalists in imperfectly understanding them. 
 In every working bee there are, i, the senses of sight, hearing, 
 taste, feeling, and smell ; 2, the implanted love of work and love 
 of honey ; 3, the impulse to wander through the fields and 
 flowers ; 4, the skill to discover and carry off the three different 
 materials needed in the hive; 5, the inconceivable power of 
 remembering the way home again; however distant, although 
 the shortest line is certain to be taken in returning, with the in- 
 fallible selection of the native hive if many are together ; 6, the 
 instinct to build the cells, after wax has been elaborated by 
 digestion, or to deposit honey in them if that has been the 
 object of the airy voyage ; 7, the mathematical impulse to build 
 in hexagons, the most economical form in respect of material, 
 space, and labour; 8, the intelligence which can adapt general 
 operations to peculiar circumstances ; 9, the defensive passions 
 which govern the action of the sting ; 10, the loyal and gregarious 
 affections which bind the workers to their maiden or dronish 
 companions, and the whole colony to its parental queen. 
 
 In every working bee there is all this mind, instinct, intel- 
 lectual automatic machinery, call it what we will ; but what 
 
INSTINCT AND REASON. 19 
 
 now is that power which, like the most delicate engraving on 
 a gem, stamps these numerous minute energies upon the tiny 
 brain of every bee of the innumerable swarms which from the 
 birth of time have diffused the murmur of their music over the 
 meadows of the temperate and torrid zone ? We can scarcely 
 be surprised if men in ages of hazier thought resolved such 
 miracles of nature into the direct agency of the world-pervading 
 Almighty Intelligence. 
 
 1 For what if all of animated natures 
 Be but organic harps, diversely framed, 
 That tremble into life as o'er them sweeps, 
 Plastic and vast, one Intellectual Breeze, 
 At once the Soul of each, and God of all.' 
 
 It has been common in former times to sum up the facts of 
 animal intelligence by stating that they possess instinct only, while 
 man possesses reason and a moral nature. Their understanding, 
 therefore, needed not to be considered as of the quality of mind 
 properly so called, and doubtless it was mortal. Man's intelli- 
 gence, on the other hand, was of a wholly different nature, and 
 doubtless immortal. It will assist correct thought on this subject 
 to remember that by instinct is intended an impulse to the blind 
 pursuit of some end which the agent does not understand or per- 
 ceive a definition which will comprehend a large portion doubt- 
 less of the operations of the animal mind. But not the whole, 
 perhaps not half of the phenomena. An implanted instinct governs 
 the action of the bee, the spider, the mole, the beaver, the nest- 
 building and incubating birds ; and the human infant resembles 
 the new-born colt in the instinct by which its life is sustained. 
 But if it be intended to assert that none of the animals are con- 
 scious of aiming at a purpose, or perceiving the adaptation of 
 means to ends, or of intelligently contriving such means under 
 certain limitations, then the theory does not correspond with the 
 facts. To speak of an elephant, a horse, or a dog doing by 
 ' instinct ' such things as it has been taught would be as absurd 
 as to talk ot a child learning to read by Instinct. Docility is 
 evidently characteristic of Reason. Moreover, ' brutes are in 
 many instances,' adds Archbishop Whately, ' capable of learning 
 what they have not been taught by man, They have been found 
 
20 REAL MIND IN ANIMALS. 
 
 able to combine (more or less) the means of accomplishing a 
 certain end from having learned by experience that such and such 
 means so applied would conduce to it. The higher animals show 
 more of reason than the lower.' 
 
 The difference between men and animals does not then consist 
 in this, that animals are destitute of mind. They possess most of 
 the faculties which we call mind in man. They possess sensation, 
 perception, memory governed by fixed law of association, imagina- 
 tion, invention, reasoning power up to a certain degree; they 
 possess the sense of beauty, and greatly enjoy beauty of form, 
 of colour, and of motion ; and they signally excel in the various 
 affections which bind them to each other, or to mankind.* There 
 has been a general philosophical conspiracy to underrate the 
 animals, Descartes even going so far as to declare that they were 
 unconscious automata, in order to exalt the supremacy of man. 
 It has been readily seen that if it is proper to argue the immateri- 
 ality of man's mind from the difficulty of imputing intelligence to 
 matter or to atomic combinations, it would be necessary to impute 
 equally immateriality to the sentient principle in brutes, if that 
 sentient principle were allowed to be a true understanding. But 
 both premiss and conclusion must be conceded. The animals 
 are widely intelligent ; and if that argues immateriality of the 
 mind for man, it argues immateriality for them likewise. If non- 
 materiality in the thinking power compels the inference of immor- 
 tality for mankind, it compels it also for the thinking principle in 
 animals ; or conversely, if there may be a certain degree of mind 
 in animals, and yet it may be neither immaterial nor immortal, it 
 follows by necessity that human expectations of an eternal being, 
 based on the sandy foundation of speculation on the essence of 
 the soul, are as worthless as would be similar expectations indulged 
 
 * The materials for forming a judgment on the limited but real intelligence 
 of animals are easily accessible in a few well-known works of which the follow- 
 ing may be mentioned : Dialogues on Instinct, by Lord Brougham. Instinct, 
 by Archbishop Whately. Instinct, or Curiosities of Animal Life, by S. Garratt. 
 Entomology. Kirby and Spence. Passions of Animals. E. P. Thompson. 
 Chapters on Animals. E. Hamerton. Intelligence of Animals. E. Leroy. 
 Etudes sur les facultes mentales des animaux, comparees a celles de rhommc. 
 Houzeau, De F Instinct. Flourens, Paris, 1864. On Atttomata.l. Huxley. 
 See also on Animal Intelligence, Porphyry de Abstincntia, Book II. Porphyry 
 evidently thinks it is next door to cannibalism to eat such intelligent creatures. 
 
SCRIPTURAL PSYCHOLOGY. 21 
 
 on behalf of the animal races around us. Arnobius, one of the 
 Christian Fathers of the third century, vigorously exposes this 
 fallacy in his second book Adversus gentes. 
 
 In a following page it will be shown that the Hebrew Scriptures 
 with remarkable consent adhere to a representation of animal life, 
 and of the relations between it and human life, equally removed 
 from the errors of antiquity, and of modern times, while agreeing 
 with the best deductions of science. The simple psychology 
 and theology of the Scripture are interwoven with each other, and 
 it is difficult to account for the persistent adhesion of so many 
 primitive writers to one generally unwelcome but important series 
 of statements and silences, except through the presence of some 
 marvellous genius for correct thought in their nation, or some real 
 inspiring guidance. 
 
22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ON THE MORTALITY OF ANIMALS. 
 
 THE animal species already taken account of have each their 
 allotted term of life, and then without exception Death attacks 
 and devours all their hosts. There is no exception to this uni- 
 versal law. Their existence is limited to a few days, hours, or 
 years, and they then 'return to their dust.' The denizens of the 
 land, the air, the water, alike die, and after a space no trace 
 remains of their individual being. The atomic elements which 
 compose their forms are dissolved and dissipated, or are recom- 
 bined by a wondrous chemistry; but the animals as individual 
 beings utterly and wholly cease to be. 
 
 This has been the popular and also the scientific view of animal 
 dissolution. They were formed to endure but for a little while, 
 and when their hour comes their existence ends absolutely. No 
 argument of superiority on the part of higher quadrupeds, no 
 delicacy or refinement of instinct in the insect races, is allowed 
 by nature as a plea against the execution of the law which consigns 
 the entire animal world to extinction. Such is the conclusion of 
 observation and reason respecting the animals. Their animating 
 principle, whatever its nature, was called into being for purposes 
 which are found in the physical structure alone, and which have 
 no intelligible basis apart from the functions of that organism. 
 When, therefore, the organism dies, the forces which ruled and 
 animated it are dissipated also. Each organism is developed 
 from a germ which unfolds both the energies and their instru- 
 ments woven together into an inextricable unity. So long as this 
 unity of life is preserved the ponderable and the imponderable 
 forces work together to maintain the fabric. Everywhere oxidation 
 is going on. oxidation either of the circulating fluid itself, or of 
 
SURVIVAL OF ANIMAL SOULS. 23 
 
 the structures which it bathes, and whose losses it has to make 
 good. Little by little every ,part of the body is continually 
 mouldering away, and as continually being made new by the 
 blood. The blood is the life. When that ceases to flow, it 
 ceases both to nourish and to be nourished. The brain is as 
 dependent for its energies upon the blood, and upon continual 
 combustion and reparation, as any other portion of the frame. 
 Death is the cessation of all functions. It is followed by the 
 speedy dissipation of the combined elements which formed the 
 organism. The ultimate atoms enter into new combinations. 
 The forces are conserved in other forms. But the Integer, the 
 Animal which resulted from the former combination, is no more. 
 Science knows nothing of the continuance after death of any 
 willing or thinking or feeling faculty which the animal may have 
 possessed in life.* 
 
 The desire to find some basis for hope of the soul's survival 
 in death for the human race has led not a few to attempt the 
 establishment of a more general doctrine of survival which may 
 include all higher animated natures ; but this is simply a reaction 
 from the opposite extreme of injustice which once refused to 
 admit the reality of animal intelligence altogether. Once the 
 brutes had no ' souls,' nothing but ' instinct,' and even ' no 
 sensation ' ; now we are taught that they leave behind in death, 
 at least in some cases, a spiritual residuum which is destined to 
 immortality, f 
 
 * ' The animal soul also terminates ; the animal souls of beasts are simply 
 special individualizations of the spirit of nature, and at death are resolved into 
 the general spirit of nature of which they are manifestations.' Delitzsch's 
 Psychol. 
 
 f The Spectator newspaper has distinguished itself of late years very much in 
 its defence of the immortality of domestic animals. This seems a somewhat 
 arbitrary choice of favourites. Dogs, cats, and horses are useful creatures, but 
 why should they be elected to live for ever when so many denizens of land and 
 water, though less familiar with man, appear to possess at least equal personal 
 recommendations ; and nearly all animals, under suitable tuition, might be 
 developed into cattle similarly worthy of immortality? But our Spectator's 
 antipathies are sometimes as groundless as its sympathies even towards its 
 human fellow-creatures. Its unreasoning dislike of the Free Churches, for 
 example, is only less marked than its zealous advocacy of the heavenly destiny 
 of its own dogs and feline associates. 
 
24 NO EVIDENCE OF SURVIVAL 
 
 But this is not science. Science knows nothing of such sur- 
 vival, and all that we do know of the mode of the production of 
 the sentient powers of the animal leads to a strong persuasion 
 that death ends every individuality. It is impossible any longer 
 to indulge in fantasies founded on a partial attachment to domesti- 
 cated animals, or arbitrarily to assert that the higher types of life 
 are distinguished from the lower by immortality. That the system 
 of life on the earth is one, and is either evolved in succession 
 from preceding forms, or, if separately created, is created on a 
 homogeneous and progressive plan, is now demonstrated beyond 
 reasonable contradiction. The phenomena of life, whether of 
 nutrition, growth, movement, sensation, perception, intelligence, 
 volition, enjoyment, are systematically evolved in nature without 
 a break, from the lowest animal cell up to the highest of the 
 mammalia ; and science, notwithstanding the chemical diversity, 
 declares her inability even to place her finger distinctly upon the 
 line where vegetable life passes into the animal* The highest 
 are bound by the conditions of organic existence to the lowest, 
 being part of the same family, as closely as the lowest are bound 
 to the highest. It is contrary to solid knowledge to say that we 
 have any evidence of the survival of the sentient or animating 
 energy, as individual life, in the death of the higher animals. It 
 is equally contrary to all that is known to dream of any mighty 
 distinction between remote links of the series, such as would be 
 found in the survival of some, and the final death of others. 
 Where shall the line be drawn ? The animal ' mind ' is a thing 
 
 * The apprehension of this difficulty is at length compelling some of our 
 popular religious writers to advocate the broader doctrine of the survival of all 
 life, including that of vegetation. In a paper in the Christian World Magazine 
 for Nov., 1874, a pious writer informs his readers that in death 'there is no 
 reason for saying that the organising principle has ceased to exist. This is as 
 true of plants and of animals as of men, and there is no reason for supposing 
 that when they die their principle of life is ended.' One may ask, perhaps, 
 whether each flower-soul enjoys a separate immortality, or is that privilege 
 restricted to the root or stem ? We cannot but agree with these authors that 
 the ' reason ' for believing in the survival of animals is precisely of equal force 
 with that which encourages the belief in the survival of plants, that is, as they 
 put it, 'there is no reason at all for saying 'anything on the subject. A 
 complete absence of evidence for one position, however, is not the same thing 
 with an absolute proof of the contrary. 
 
OF ANIMAL SOULS. 25 
 
 of infinite degrees, and one type of brain or nerve-energy passes 
 by imperceptible shades into a higher or a lower. Why should a 
 dog's soul live for ever, and a jackal's sink into eternal death ; or 
 a leopard live on, while a rat or a toad shall perish ? The longer 
 we look upon the phenomena of life the deeper becomes the con- 
 viction that the law of nature for all living things on earth is, and 
 has been always, death, dissolution, destruction of the individuality, 
 dissipation of the component elements whether of confervae, 
 grasses, trees, sensitive plants, zoophytes, mollusks, or mammalia. 
 Perhaps it is the law of planetary life throughout the universe. It 
 deserves observation that the chemical difference between well- 
 developed plants and animals is clearly fixed in this, that plants 
 deoxidise and accumulate in excess, while animals oxidise and 
 expend in excess ; but, although the life-principle operates in 
 these two opposite methods, and there is considerable difficulty 
 in determining where the one excess is established over the other, 
 there is no radical difference between them. There seems, then, 
 to be as little ground for anticipating its survival in one case as in 
 the other. Professor Michael Foster says that ' in the fungi the 
 double chemical process is found in . equilibria ; and it may be 
 clearly seen that the protoplasm, while continually being oxidised, 
 is yet capable of constructing itself out of inorganic elements, 
 though it flourishes much better when fed with ready-made 
 material.' 
 
 The geological record witnesses historically to the action of the 
 law of death, from the beginning of the earth's inhabited state. 
 The fossil remains of animals form a large part of the substance 
 of the sedimentary rocks of the globe. ' Of old,' says Professor 
 Owen, 'the earth was a scene of conflict and carnage.' Through 
 past ' eternal ages ' death has reigned relentlessly over the 
 organisms of this planet. The earth is an enormous sepulchre of 
 buried forms. Fifty thousand extinct species of animals have 
 been already exhumed and described. The existing species are 
 slowly following their predecessors to the dust. The globe has 
 passed through many transformations, through long-enduring 
 summers, through long and dreary winters ; oceans and conti- 
 nents have exchanged their places. Nature, prodigal of life, has 
 filled the world with her wonders. Multitudes of creatures have 
 been caused to find their very aliment of being in the slaughtered 
 
26 MR. CONSTABLE ON DEATH. 
 
 bodies of others ; but all alike, without one single exception, 
 having fulfilled their brief period of activity, have relapsed into 
 the nothingness whence they sprang. 
 
 Mr. Constable remarks with great force, that 'there is no 
 doubt that before the fall of man the penalty attached to sin, viz. 
 death, could have had but one sense, and that sense the primary.' 
 (Future Punishment, p. 77.) By which no doubt he intends 
 that if before Adam * fell ' the word death had been used in con- 
 versation in such a world as this, the word could have had but 
 one meaning, in view of the cessation of animal life, namely that 
 of extinction. All living things ' died,' vegetable and animal, in 
 the sense of ceasing to be and this was the sense which would 
 therefore be naturally affixed to the term in the threat which 
 warned the human pair to avoid the forbidden tree, if they would 
 continue to eat of the tree of life and live for ever. This is 
 indeed to anticipate the argument of a future chapter ; but the 
 biblical threatening of death to Adam in paradise derives a clear 
 significance from the history of this globe before he trod the 
 earth. Nature was an all-devouring destroyer of the life which 
 she produced. ' In the variety, the beauty, the polish, the sharp- 
 ness, the strength, the barbed perfection of lethal weapons, no 
 armoury can compete with that of the fossil world.' The 
 goodness revealed in the earth was not 'infinite.' Nature's plan 
 of working on, through untold ages, was to shed a ray of light 
 upon a life, then swiftly to swallow it up in eternal darkness. 
 The Creative Energy was equalled by the Destructive Energy. 
 The law of the planet was to ' make alive,' and then to ' kill ' ; 
 and not a single organic form rose out of nothingness for more 
 than a short space of time. Nature was a volcano that threw 
 up from her depths millions of sparks and flashes of life, to be 
 extinguished straightway in the eternal gloom. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE RELATION OF MAN TO THE ANIMAL 
 RACES AS CONSIDERED UNDER THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE 
 ONLY. 
 
 BEFORE we advance to the study of the doctrine of Divine 
 Revelation on the origin and destiny of man, it is necessary to 
 consider more exactly the state of our knowledge on these sub- 
 jects under the light of modern inquiry. The extent and limita- 
 tion of this knowledge are faithfully represented by the speculations 
 of contemporary philosophers. 
 
 Mr. Darwin's arguments on the descent of mankind from 
 common ancestors of the simians form a portion, and but a small 
 portion, of a far wider and more complex hypothesis, of the unity 
 of the entire life-system of the globe, and of the descent or rather 
 ascent of the higher animals from those of lower organization in 
 the course of the past eternity. Apart from absolute proof of 
 the truth of the general hypothesis of evolution respecting the 
 animal races, it is clear that the theory of a semi-simian descent 
 for man has not even a locus standi among probabilities. Not 
 until it has been decisively proved that the mammalia in their 
 present form are the result of a long precedent series of gradual 
 transformations, so that the simians themselves can be traced to 
 their predecessors and ancestral congeners, can it be seriously 
 held as determined that man has ascended from the lower 
 organisms. At present the theory, however strongly supported 
 by the presence of rudimentary but undeveloped organs, halts, 
 as Professor Agazziz in his latest papers frequently points out, 
 rom the striking predominance of hypothesis over evidence. 
 For the variations in species under long tracts of duration, as 
 
28 THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 
 
 in the crocodiles and marsupials, or under domestication, as in 
 the dog and the pigeon, leave us still destitute of a single clear 
 example of this transmutation of species into wholly new fertile 
 types. The present law of nature steadily refuses to allow of the 
 perpetuation even of hybrids, and hybrids are never bred except 
 from congeners. While, therefore, there is an elastic capacity in 
 many species to accommodate themselves to a certain extent to a 
 change of circumstances, and there may thus arise changes of 
 appearance, and even of structure, transmissible to offspring, these 
 mutations, it is said, are governed by constant laws and are con- 
 fined within certain limits. Species in our time have a real 
 existence in nature ; and a transmutation from one to another, 
 so far as our present exact knowledge extends, does not exist. 
 Thus, as Cuvier long ago remarked, all the differences of size, 
 appearance, and habits which we find in dogs, leave the skeletons 
 of this animal and the relations of the bones to each other 
 essentially the same, and with all the varieties of their shape and 
 size there are characters which resist all the influences of external 
 nature, of human interference, and of time.* 
 
 The geological record in its fossil remains fails to supply the 
 missing links of animals under process of transmutation. If the 
 hypothesis be true that in the past eternal ages all existing forms 
 have been evolved from preceding organisms in a direct succes- 
 sion, there ought, since the rocks contain fossil remains which 
 carry us back to the beginning of life, to be found at least some 
 clear examples of species in transitu. No such fossil forms are 
 discovered.! Fact, so far, opposes the theory. 
 
 The result of observation, it may be further alleged, is the same 
 in every land. Nature has preserved no general traces of the 
 action of the supposed transmuting energy. Biology lays as firm 
 
 * See Whewell's Indications oj the Creator^ p. 100. 
 
 t ' As far as I have been able to read the records of the rocks, I confess I 
 have failed to discover any lineal series among the vast assemblage of extinct 
 species which might form a basis and lend reliable biological support to such 
 a theory. Instead of a gradation upwards in certain groups and classes of 
 fossil animals, we find, on the contrary, that their first representatives are not 
 the lowest, but often highly organized types of the class to which they belong.' 
 DR. THOMAS WRIGHT, F.R.S., President of Geological Section of British 
 Association at Bristol. 1875. 
 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 29 
 
 a classifying hand upon tribes and orders of fossil animals as upon 
 those of living genera. She is never lost in a haze of uncertain- 
 ties, but finds her materials for classification in developments 
 which are separated by fixed intervals or special combinations in 
 the organisation, showing that if animals of different families have 
 successively grown out of each other, at least no evidence remains 
 of so wonderful a transformation. 
 
 Since no considerable accession is likely to be made to the world- 
 wide materials of our knowledge on this subject, it can scarcely 
 occur even to sanguine minds to anticipate a physiological or 
 geological proof of the ascent of man from preceding races ; and 
 this the less if the genesis of man is carried back to the quater- 
 nary period. All that can be determined seems to be, that the 
 actual variations of species within their own limits shows that even 
 the transmutation of one species into another is not an idea which 
 ought to be summarily dismissed from the field of speculation. 
 So far as we know, such a transmutation is possible ; and (apart 
 from the antagonistic testimony of fossil geology, which is con- 
 trary to it) might be regarded as probable. So far as the physical 
 structure is concerned, a view of the remarkable similarity of the 
 anatomy of the Simiadcz and Anthropomorpha to the anatomy of 
 man, as may be seen in detail in Professor Huxley's Manual of 
 the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals (pp. 458-498), compels the 
 admission that to whatever extent (no very serious concession) 
 transmutation is probable in the case of animals generally, it is 
 also probable in the case of humanity itself; but even here there 
 is a serious difficulty in man's loss of a furry coat and lengthened 
 tail, and still more in the gain of so vast a brain. 
 
 Embryology, which has been relied on to exhibit the actual 
 passage of each individual of the higher orders, in the prenatal 
 condition, through the forms of the lower ranks in nature, in the 
 process of production while it certainly adds some support to 
 the general hypothesis of the unity of life fails in several im- 
 portant respects to supply decisive evidence ; since in every 
 known instance nature leaps over whole orders in the embryonic 
 development of the mammalia, and proceeds with a firm hand 
 to the evolution of the permanent type, while resisting the per- 
 petuation of hybrids. 
 
 The general result, therefore, of recent investigations into the 
 
3 o EMBRYOLOGY. 
 
 origin of man is this. There are certain presumptions that under 
 different terrestrial conditions the formative power which now 
 produces animal life, and brings about marvellous changes of size, 
 form, colour, and function within the limits of species, may have 
 operated in former ages to the gradual or even saltatory develop- 
 ment of really new species, and even of new genera, in an ascend- 
 ing series. And in the absence of distinct information to the 
 contrary, we might conclude with precisely the same measure of 
 inclination towards the opinion (an opinion which is not science) 
 that mankind sprang from the Animal Races. But it is impossible 
 to affirm that there is decisive evidence of such an origin. The 
 geological record is distinctly in favour of the creation of groups 
 by successive acts of divine power, or at least by successive acts 
 of the plastic force of nature, whatever that may be. And hence 
 the conclusion that man was created, as were the distinct species 
 before him, is still at least as defensible as the opposite hypothesis. 
 The Power which interposed at first to create germs may just 
 as reasonably be believed to have interposed again and again, to 
 create orders, genera, and species. The contest between the 
 probabilities raised on one side by embryology and the observation 
 of specific varieties, and the probabilities raised on the other by 
 the contradictory evidence of the geological record, leave us at last 
 uncertain as to the Whence and Whither of humanity. We require 
 more light, and above all a direct revelation from the Creator.* 
 
 The question of the Antiquity of Man is closely connected with 
 that of his origin, and with that of the history of the globe. Apart 
 from the statement of any supposed revelation, assuredly the last 
 idea which would be suggested by the phenomena of the earth's 
 surface, or the condition of man upon it, would be that Man saw 
 
 * As for Haeckel's theory of the spontaneous generation from material 
 atoms of those original vital germs out of which the living world has grown, 
 this is clearly as distinct a * leap into the supernatural ' as that of which he 
 complains in the Theistic hypothesis, with this difference, that the theory of 
 God will account for the origin and development of life, but the theory of 
 atomic generation will not. See Dr. Elam's important work, Winds of Doctrine ; 
 or, Automatism and Evolution (Smith, Elder, and Co., 1876) ; and Professor 
 Carruthers on Evolution in Plants {Contemporary Review, 1877) ; in both of 
 which a formidable scientific opposition is offered to certain hasty assumptions' 
 of the more advanced Evolutionists. 
 
GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY. 31 
 
 the light for the first time a few thousand years ago. All heathen 
 who have speculated under natural conditions upon human life 
 have assigned a vast if indefinite antiquity to the earth and its 
 living races. And such undoubtedly would be, as Mr. McCaus- 
 land argues, the conclusion derived both from the study of the 
 recent relics of man found in the quaternary gravels, and from 
 the ethnic variations of the human race itself as seen in the dif- 
 ferent countries of the world. 
 
 But here again we are met by opposing and counterbalancing 
 evidence, which perplexes the judgment, and leaves the mind 
 halting between two opinions. Vague at best are the inferences 
 which can be derived from fossil geology as to the date of the 
 production of successive species. It is as easy to speak of 
 millions of years as of thousands, and as unsatisfactory as it is 
 easy. There are clear indications of comparatively recent move- 
 ments of the crust of the earth in certain portions, movements 
 which, in conjunction with secular changes of temperature, may 
 have initiated watershed conditions equal to the destruction of 
 sedimentary strata of large extent in a comparatively small space of 
 time. Nothing is more vaguely known than the age of gravels. 
 That this was earlier and that later, may be safely declared ; but 
 when this river cut its bed through the sand and chalk of the 
 Somme or of Southern Hampshire is more than the skilled 
 geologist can tell. It may have been myriads of years ago, or it 
 may have been in quite recent geological times.* 
 
 The question of the birth of humanity is entangled with these 
 geological uncertainties. 
 
 * Dr. Dawson, of Montreal College, who enjoys a respectable European 
 reputation as a geologist, thus writes of the Somme gravels : 'In 1865 I had 
 an opportunity to examine the gravels of St. Acheul on the Somme, by some 
 supposed to go back to a very ancient period. With the papers of Prestwich 
 and other able observers in my hand, I could conclude merely that the undis- 
 turbed gravels were older than the Roman period ; but how much older only 
 detailed topographical surveys could prove ; and that taking into account the 
 probabilities of a different level of the land, a wooded condition of the country, 
 a greater rainfall, and a glacial filling up of the Somme valley Math clay and 
 stones subsequently cut out by running waters, the gravels could scarcely be 
 older than the Abbeville peat, less than 4000 years. Tylor and Andrews have 
 subsequently shown that my impressions were correct.' Journal of Geological 
 Society, vol. xxv. Silliman's Journal, 1 868. Story of the Earth and Man, 
 p. 294. 1873. 
 
32 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 In recent years a large and cautious induction of phenomena 
 seems to have satisfied many able inquirers of the existence of 
 man upon the earth in an age when not a few now extinct species 
 of animals were living. The revelations of Kent's Hole, near 
 Torquay, where human utensils are found together with long 
 extinct species, under twelve feet of stalagmite, upon which are 
 piled fresh strata of earth and stalagmite, and then fresh relics of 
 more recent races of men, are typical of numerous correlated facts 
 brought to light in all parts of the world. It has seemed to 
 follow that the men who fashioned the implements, found em- 
 bedded in the same gravel or stalagmite or bone earth with the 
 remains of cave-bears, hyaenas, and tigers, lived at the same time 
 when these predacious animals inhabited the north of Europe, a 
 time when elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami wandered 
 through its forests and tenanted its rivers. How many ages ago 
 was it when the diluvium of Abbeville, East Croydon, or Bourne- 
 mouth was laid down, when the implements were deposited, 
 which are not found only in the loam, nor in the brick earth of 
 the surface, nor in the intermediate beds of clay, sand, and small 
 flints, but, beneath all these, in the breccia, among the relics of 
 species belonging to the epoch immediately preceding the cata- 
 clysm by which they were destroyed? After all possible de- 
 ductions made (i) on the hypothesis that the elevating and 
 depressing forces were anciently more active than at present ; 
 that the action of water and subterranean fire was much more 
 violent and efficacious than we see it now to be ; and (2) on the 
 further hypothesis that many of the extinct animals whose bones 
 are found in conjunction with signs of human life may have 
 lingered far into recent historic times as in the example of the 
 wild ox of the Roman period there still remains a large and ac- 
 cumulating mass of seeming evidence, that the antiquity of man, 
 or manlike beings, reaches far beyond the narrow limits of the 
 popular biblical chronology, which begins only with yesterday." 
 
 * For the opposite view, see Dawson's Story of the Earth and Man. 
 Dr. Dawson is not satisfied even with the current geological conclusions re- 
 specting the valley of the Somme and the Acheul flint implements. He thinks 
 there was probably a flood caused by sinking of the European surface then 
 inhabited by men, at the close of the glacial period ; a flood which brought 
 clay and gravel into the Somme valley, afterwards excavated by a powerful 
 
THEORIES OP MANS ORIGIN. 33 
 
 But here, as before, decisive evidence, under purely scientific 
 conditions, of the unity and continuity of the human race, fails 
 us at last. If the descent of man from the animals cannot be 
 really established ; if the descent even of one animal species from 
 another cannot be thoroughly demonstrated ; much less can the 
 descent of modern humanity from the ancient types of the same 
 genus be demonstrated by adequate proof. There may have 
 existed on earth different contemporaneous or successive species 
 of men, as of animals ; whose terms of being may have been 
 closed by a catastrophe, to make way for a new creation. Or 
 there may have been one human race only, of immense antiquity, 
 varied by time and circumstance into the successive families who 
 lived at the close of the glacial epoch, and afterwards multiplied 
 into the many coloured varieties of the whole earth in subsequent 
 ages.* We seem to be gazing into a dim twilight where evidence 
 on both sides of the problem may be gathered by a creative 
 imagination in the gloom. 
 
 If now, from considering the physical structure of men and of 
 animals, we turn to their mental differences, the probable argu- 
 ment for a separate origin and a direct creation of man, strengthens 
 at every step in the inquiry. We find ourselves confronted with 
 evidence which leads to conclusions directly contrary to those 
 which on anatomical grounds favoured the hypothesis of descent 
 from the simians. Mr. Tylor himself has shown in his work on 
 Primitive Culture, that as far back as we can trace human history, 
 and as accurately as we can estimate the working of thought 
 among primitive races and savage men, there is evidence of an 
 intellectual, moral, and religious nature in Man, which, under 
 even the direst debasement, distinguishes him from the brutes by 
 an enormous superiority of endowment. No evidence has ever 
 yet been adduced of the existence of races of men past or present, 
 living in an absolutely brutal or irrational condition. No races 
 are anywhere to be found or heard of in a condition which is less 
 remote from mere animal existence than it is from the highest 
 
 river from the south, within historic times. Nothing seems to rest on flimsier 
 evidence than the doctrine of uniformitarian upheaval and depression. His- 
 tory gives us some assistance towards a definite recent chronology, but geology 
 none whatever. 
 
 * See Professor Ansted, Stray Chapters on Earth and Ocean, p. 251. 
 
 3 
 
34 DIFFERENTIAE OF HUMANITY. 
 
 human development of which we have as yet experience. No 
 evidence has been found of any animal race rising above itself 
 into a wholly different rank of intelligence, and therefore there is 
 the utmost improbability, on psychological grounds, against the 
 opinion of human evolution from the apes. But there seems also 
 to be a difference in kind between the lowest races of men and 
 the highest brutes, pointing to a difference of essential principle 
 and therefore of origin in this ' quaternary mammal.' That 
 difference has been .described by Archbishop Whately in his brief 
 treatise on Instinct in the following terms : ' Almost any animal 
 which is capable of being tamed can, in some degree, use 
 language as an indication of what passes within. But no animal 
 uses language as an instrument of thought. Man makes use of 
 general signs in the application of his power of abstraction, by 
 which he is enabled to reason, and the use of arbitrary general 
 signs, what logicians call " common terms," with a facility of thus 
 using abstraction at pleasure, is a characteristic of man only.' 
 A writer in the Quarterly Review has recently shown further that 
 we may have, (i) animal sounds neither rational nor articulate, 
 (2) sounds both articulate and rational, (3) sounds articulate but 
 not rational, (4) sounds rational but not articulate. Now it is in 
 Man's speech that we find the first proof of a difference in kind. 
 It is not speech which has created man's perfect reason, it is 
 reason which has created speech. The difference between vocal 
 sounds capable of expressing general conceptions and abstract 
 ideas, and vocal utterances which express sensations and emotions 
 only, is a specific distinction. Therefore the most imperfect 
 human languages offer to us an indication of a transition from 
 irrational cries, while they differ from the highest speech only in 
 degree.* 
 
 * The usual difference of opinion, however, attends an inquiry in this depart- 
 ment also. Professor Whitney, in replying to Professor Max MUller's Lectures 
 on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language, finds that animals possess the germ 
 of the generalizing power ; that a dog recognizes a man ' in the abstract ' 
 before he recognizes the particular man ; that there is no ground for doubting 
 that speech and reason have been developed together ; nor for doubting that 
 both alike have been developed in untold ages from the animals who lived 
 before us. See a paper by G. H. Darwin in Contemporary Review ', Nov. 1874. 
 Professor Max Midler rejoins in the number for Jan. 1875. 
 
DIFFERENTIA OF HUMANITY. 35 
 
 A second evidence of man's specific difference from the 
 animals is seen in the existence of his moral nature. When men 
 assert that anything is right they mean to assert something 
 different from its being pleasurable or advantageous. Even men 
 who assert that the principle regulating human action should be 
 the production of the greatest amount of pleasure to all sentient 
 beings, must assert that there is either no obligation at all to 
 accept this principle itself, or that such obligation is a moral one. 
 It is needless to speak of the finer developments of morality in 
 civilised lands. The present point of interest is that no nation or 
 race has been found without some morality founded on a sense of 
 right, and rendering them amenable to law or tribal custom. 
 And this is again a peculiar characteristic of man. 
 
 Religion is a still more marked distinction of humanity. Its 
 fundamental ideas and emotions spring from a development of 
 thought of which animals are apparently incapable. And these 
 ideas and emotions are found, in an elementary stage, even in the 
 lowest types of superstition. 
 
 Lastly, the capacity for a boundless progress individually and 
 socially distinguishes man from all the inferior races. There is 
 surely some specific difference between those organisms which 
 remain for ever at the same level of intelligence and that mind 
 which observes and studies the phenomena of earth and heaven, 
 and subdues the whole world to its designs. 
 
 Whether, therefore, we consider man's power of Speech, his 
 Moral nature, his capacity for Religion and Worship, or his 
 power of indefinite Progression, we are led to the same probable 
 conclusion, on purely scientific grounds, that this creature 
 though often sunk into the darkest depths of barbarism, so as to 
 approximate towards the animals in the methods and ends of life 
 to a degree which almost abolishes the human sense of superiority 
 to them was a distinct creation of the Infinite Power, and has 
 not simply grown out of the next order of primates beneath him 
 by a natural evolution. A ' beast's heart ' was not given to him 
 at his origin. 
 
 It remains only in this chapter to advert to the evidence of the 
 age and origin of human nature supplied by written or unwritten 
 Tradition. 
 
36 EARLY VARIATIONS OF TYPE. 
 
 The distinctions between the variously coloured and figured 
 races of men in Asia, Africa, and Europe were as deeply marked 
 five thousand years ago as they are to-day, as may be seen in the 
 wonderfully preserved monuments and wall-paintings of Egypt. 
 It is natural to argue, with Professor Owen, that no brief interval 
 of time such as that permitted by the biblical post-diluvian 
 chronology would have sufficed to allow of variations so enormous 
 as those which then already separated the black races of Africa 
 from the yellow men of China, or the white-skinned men of 
 northern Europe, or western Asia. In what remote ages began 
 these variations? How many myriads of years sufficed for the 
 establishment of differences in the bony structure of the skeleton 
 itself, in the cerebral capacity, in the external contour of the 
 frame, in the tint and texture of the hair, the aspect of the 
 countenance, the conceptions of the mind, and the general colour 
 and expression of the entire organism ? How many millenniums 
 sufficed to produce the differences in language which are fixed 
 and decisive at the time when we first catch a glimpse of the early 
 men ? Apart from heaven-sent information, science will naturally 
 infer, that if no causes were in operation different in force and in 
 quality from those now acting, the ages required for producing 
 these variations carry us back into an antiquity where darkness 
 covers all things. The wildest dreams of Indian cosmogony on 
 the long eras of past history correspond better with the facts, if 
 the facts have all been gradually produced, than do the trifling 
 allowance of Mosaic millenniums which can be counted on your 
 fingers. 
 
 Yet here once more strangely conflicting evidence awaits us ; 
 for the history of the human race, actually known, in no 
 instance goes backward to a period much more ancient than may 
 be reached by a liberal stretching of the biblical chronology. 
 The authentic histories of China, of India, and of Egypt, the 
 three most ancient and most civilised states of the earlier world, 
 carry us back a few thousand years, and there either leave us to 
 gaze into total darkness, or supplement the lack of reliable narra- 
 tion by a fancy-picture of gods and demons of whose existence 
 there is no evidence whatever. Now if mankind has inhabited 
 this planet during numerous ages, possessed of the properly human 
 faculties of speech and progressive intellect, it seems strange and 
 
DEFECTS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD. 37 
 
 almost incredible that no relics of the human population should 
 be discovered answerable to so great a multitude and so prolonged 
 a duration. The existing monuments of historic nations are 
 certainly not ten thousand years old ; the earliest temples, pyra- 
 mids, sepulchres, literary works, works of engineering art, are 
 certainly of more recent origin. It is truly confounding to the 
 judgment to learn that the only indications of the existence of 
 innumerable men, or manlike beings, on earth in the quaternary 
 ages are comprised in some flint implements for the destruction of 
 wild beasts, and a questionable tooth, or skull, while there arc 
 no remains of dwellings, temples, or tombs of the palaeolithic 
 epoch. It seems wholly unaccountable that a strictly rational 
 order of beings should have lived on the earth through perhaps 
 100,000 years since the glacial age, and have left no signs of their 
 presence or of their works except a few hunting tools ; while their 
 supposed descendants, the races of China, India, and Egypt, 
 when they first appear in history, stand forth in possession of the 
 arts and sciences, at least in a germinant form, and already have 
 established great and mighty monarchies. The facts of history 
 are more consistent with the hypothesis of a recent origin of the 
 present race of mankind ; and the osteological character of the 
 alluvial record offers a signal confirmation to it. For it is un- 
 questionable that even if human races have existed for many 
 thousands of years on the globe, they have at least left no per- 
 manent signs of their habitations or their tombs in those distant 
 ages, and no tradition which throws even the faintest light upon 
 their history. The traditions which have descended to us from 
 the earliest times in all nations in most respects resemble those 
 which have taken a prominent place in the literature of the world 
 in the recent monuments of the Hebrews and Assyrians. All 
 authentic history begins with a flood, while the ethnology of 
 Western Asia and Africa fairly agrees with the narratives of 
 Genesis. The story of the Ark, and of the Deluge, with the very 
 names of the patriarchs of Noah's family and of his reputed 
 descendants (as given in Genesis x.), are found in the ethnic and 
 territorial names of widely separated historic lands, and so far 
 yield confirmation to the Semitic tradition. 
 
 [The earlier illustration of this statement will be found in 
 Bochart's Phaleg, in Bryant and Faber's works, on the Origin 
 
33 MOSAIC ARCHAEOLOGY. 
 
 of Pagan Idolatry, and the Mysteries of the Cabiri ; in all of 
 which some substantial truth was taught with old-fashioned and 
 imperfect learning. But the complete evidence under modern 
 treatment will be found in Smith's and Kitto's great Biblical 
 Dictionaries, under the names of the Patriarchs referred to in 
 Genesis x., and in the Bampton Lectures and Five Great Monarchies 
 of Dr. Rawlinson ; where the broader light of a new learning is 
 thrown upon the first ten chapters of the Pentateuch, and their 
 historical value asserted against the superficial, loose guesses of 
 idle theorists. I have been informed by the eminent linguist and 
 missionary Skrefsriid that the ancient Santal traditions among 
 the aboriginal Turanian mountaineers of Bengal agree in every 
 respect with those of the Assyrians and Hebrews. Dr. Dawson, 
 of Montreal College, a leading American geologist, goes so far as 
 to suppose that the aqueous cataclysm which followed on the 
 glacial period, and destroyed, by sinking of the earth's surface, so 
 many animals whose relics are found in the quaternary gravels and 
 in caverns, occurred as recently as historic times, and was in fact 
 Noah's 'flood.'] 
 
 Here therefore once more we are encountered and discouraged 
 by evidence leading in opposite directions. There is a certain 
 measure of anatomical and biological presumption inclining us to 
 think, under unassisted study, that all life on the earth is one, and 
 that as the animals may have descended from earlier organisms, 
 so man may have descended from the later types. There is, 
 however, stronger geological evidence of a negative character to 
 throw the utmost doubt upon any positive theory of evolution, 
 while the psychological evidence in favour of a distinct creation of 
 man, on a higher level, is such as cannot be fairly overcome by 
 the present resources of biology. Again, there is some seeming 
 evidence of the antiquity of man in relics and implements found 
 in conjunction with extinct animals of the quaternary age. But, 
 on the other hand, there are no remains of the buildings, and, 
 many leading authorities add, no unquestionable remains of the 
 bony fabric of the men themselves, who are thus supposed to 
 have lived through untold centuries in the possession at least of 
 elementary reason and speech. And when we scrutinise the 
 positive historic evidence, we discover that no human history, not 
 even the faintest authentic tradition, carries us back in any part 
 
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT. 39 
 
 of the world beyond the last few thousand years ; while at the 
 dawn of credible literature we find nations and kingdoms which 
 offer to our study in their names and traditions a remarkable 
 similarity to those of Moses and the Bible. 
 
 The sum of this argument is that by the unassisted light of 
 science and history we are able to reach no coherent or satisfac- 
 tory conclusion as to the origin of mankind, its relation to the 
 animal races, or its future destiny. Lower thoughts on each of 
 these topics are at once checked by higher, and higher thoughts 
 and hopes are equally checked by arguments which, if gloomy, 
 spring from evidence that seems secure. We hover in doubt after 
 all our pains between two conclusions, and know not certainly 
 whether our ancestry is from the perishable life of the globe, or 
 directly from the hand of Heaven ; whether our destiny is to 
 return wholly to the dust, or to spend eternity with God. Our 
 nature bears traces of a double alliance, with earth and with 
 heaven ; we ' know not what we shall be,' till we inquire at the 
 oracle of Him that made us. The phenomena are such as well 
 consist with the hypothesis of a nature whose destiny depends on 
 its moral qualities, and, above all, a nature which has suffered 
 under some deflection, which science may dimly divine without 
 being able to elucidate or to remedy. 
 
 In following chapters I shall attempt the task of interpreting 
 the only series of writings which bear marks of a truly divine 
 original. In attaching importance to those writings as the records 
 of a divine revelation the censure must be incurred of many who 
 may have partially assented to the statements of the preceding 
 pages. I shall offer no argument to such readers in support of 
 faith in Revelation, except one, and that is the evidence of its 
 heavenly character which may appear in the course of our com- 
 ments on its facts and doctrines. The books which convey, in 
 concurrence with the tradition of Christendom, so marvellous a 
 revelation of Immortality to man through Union with God, carry 
 with them an all-sufficing proof of their divine original. An 
 effectual apology for the Scripture will be found in its right 
 interpretation. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON THE NUMBERS AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF MANKIND. 
 
 IN a work of which the main object is an inquiry into the destiny 
 of mankind it is proper to attempt at least some vague representa- 
 tion of the numbers of sentient beings who are concerned in the 
 question of death or immortality. And this is the more fitting, 
 since any consideration of their numbers at once draws attention 
 to their condition in respect of barbarism or civilisation ; with the 
 advantages or disadvantages in religious training which have 
 marked their earthly history. So feeble is the popular imagination 
 that almost any device is excusable, however aesthetically unworthy, 
 in the attempt to arouse a feeling of wonder at the stupendous 
 facts of the world's population. 
 
 One of the most recent and carefully prepared estimates of the 
 present population of the globe, published by Major Bell,* gives 
 the following figures as an approximate view of their numbers, 
 arranged under the head of ' Religions ' : 
 
 Buddhists ... ... ... ... 483,000,000 
 
 Christians ... ... ,.. ... 353,000,000 
 
 Brahminists ... ... ... ... 120.000,000 
 
 Mohammedans ... ... ... ... 120.000,000 
 
 Parsees ... ... ... ... 1,000,000 
 
 Jews ... ... ... ... ... 8,000,000 
 
 Miscellaneous barbarians, fetish worshippers, and 
 
 atheists ... ... ... ... 189,000,000 
 
 1,274,000,000 
 
 giving a total of 921,000,000 non Christians, even by profession. 
 
 Out of these throngs let the population of modern India and 
 its contiguous provinces be taken as an example. Under the 
 * Other Countries. Chapman and Hall. 
 
INDIA AND CHINA. 41 
 
 last census the numbers are estimated to be two hundred and 
 eighty millions. Now if this number of men, women, and children, 
 composing the variously-tinted races of Hindostan and Burmah, 
 could pass in single file before the presence of a person able to fix 
 a transient gaze of one minute's duration (and a minute is not much 
 to expend in thinking on an eternal destiny), sufficient to allow of 
 the mind's forming a distinct idea, that in each instance a being 
 having in prospect the alternative of death or an eternal life was 
 present to his view, then if the stream should roll on night and 
 day, and the observer continue his task of looking on each in turn 
 without intermission until all had passed by, it would require five 
 hundred and seventy years to bestow this momentary notice on all 
 the people now living in our Eastern Empire. Or, if they were 
 arranged in lines of thirty abreast, forming a column as broad as 
 that which fills the nave of an ordinary church, with a yard 
 between the ranks, then that column would extend, if marching 
 towards us, from the extreme border of Affghanistan, all through 
 the Turkish empire, and across the continent of Europe, to the 
 Atlantic shore 5,300 miles. And this prodigious total of living 
 beings represents but one fleeting generation of the inhabitants of 
 a single country under heaven. 
 
 Starting with such an integer of thought it may be easier to 
 imagine what is meant when statisticians speak of the present 
 population of China as four hundred millions. We have but to 
 increase by a third the breadth or the length of the supposed 
 Indian column to form an idea of the army of yellow men, Con- 
 fucianists, Buddhists, Laoutzeists, marching westward upon our 
 borders, and then to conceive of the repetition of those enormous 
 masses many times over in the past generations, diminishing the 
 tale according to the due proportion for the remotest ages. 
 
 The mind is overpowered by even this first effort to imagine 
 the multitudinous throngs of ignorant idolaters who, in their 
 various races and nations, have peopled the eastern world. We 
 attain only the image of a tide broad and deep of living waters 
 flowing on' perpetually for ages, whose drops are individual souls, 
 passing away into the depths of oblivion. 
 
 A similar process of thought is required in application to the 
 other habitable portions of the globe, i. Northern Asia. On 
 referring to the map it will be seen that all the great empires of 
 
42 NORTHERN ASIA. 
 
 the earlier world lie below the 4oth parallel of latitude. To the 
 north of that parallel, however, and over the whole breadth of Asia, 
 there are extended two vast chains of mountains, forming by their 
 connecting ramifications a species of gigantic network, or as it 
 were the skeleton on which the surface of the whole country is 
 disposed, and to which it is attached. The first of these and the 
 more northerly extends through the southern part of Siberia, and 
 with many changes of name is styled in general the Altaic range. 
 The other great range commences in Asia Minor as the Taurus ; 
 thence passes through Media, to the north of Hindostan, as the 
 Himalayas ; thence through Thibet, till it loses itself in Central 
 China. The vast interval of territory, across which flow the 
 rivers descending from these mountain ranges, is measured by 
 thousands of miles, and consists of lofty mountain plains, the 
 haunts of numberless eagles and vast battalions of nomadic birds. 
 
 These plains are on an average 10,000 feet above the sea-level, 
 and have from the earliest ages been inhabited by tribes of 
 pastoral and wandering barbarians, who have fed their flocks on 
 the luxuriant herbage. They have been known in different eras 
 and under different circumstances as Scythians, Huns, Tartars, 
 Turcomans, Mongols, Kalmucks, and Mantchoos. These bound- 
 less tracts, exposed to an invigorating climate, have been studded 
 in every age, not with cities and houses, but with the tents and 
 encampments of migratory nations, often surrounded for leagues 
 with their flocks and herds of cattle, horses, and camels, which 
 constitute their wealth and supply nearly all their limited wants. 
 
 To form a conception of the numbers of mankind who have 
 inhabited these upland mountain plains of the Asiatic continent 
 during even the last 6,000 years would be difficult indeed. Pro- 
 fessor Heeren and the Abbe Hue may aid the imagination. The 
 perpetual plagues of Asia, of China, of India, of Persia, in their 
 multitudinous armies they have kept up nearly ceaseless war with 
 the more civilised south. Millions beyond computation have 
 from time to time descended to conquer the fair provinces that 
 lay below them. In vain did China rear her northern wall, in 
 vain the Indian aborigines trust for protection to the Himalayas, 
 in vain the Persian empire make head against their incursions, 
 in vain the Greeks oppose the pitiless unceasing storm that beat 
 upon them from the mountains. The Tartars and Turcomans, 
 
ARABIA, PERSIA, THE PACIFIC. 43 
 
 and their more ancient congeners, have always proved the de- 
 stroyers of Asiatic power, and their various races reign with more 
 or less of independence at this very hour from Pekin to the Bos- 
 phorus. Empire after empire has fallen submerged beneath the 
 deluges of savage force that broke age after age upon the south 
 from these over-streaming fountains of barbaric life; and the 
 population of Nothern Asia is greater to-day than when Zenghis 
 Khan led the swarming clans to battle, or a hundred years later 
 the victorious Tamerlane. 
 
 2. Next, let a moderately instructed reader, assisted by 
 Mr. Layard and Mr. Palgrave, remember the names of Assyria, 
 Persia and Arabia, and try to imagine how many millions of 
 soldiers, similar to those sculptured in endless ranks upon the slabs 
 of Nineveh, have lived, since the beginning, in those various 
 empires. The more closely we fasten the mind upon a single 
 populous territory, the deeper is the sense of incompetence even 
 to imagine as a visual conception the mass of human beings who 
 have tenanted it. What armies of ignorant fanatics have rolled 
 forth age after age from ancient and modern Arabia alone ! What 
 a world of teeming life is suggested by even the merest shadowy 
 outline of her history ! 
 
 3. Turning to the history of the Southern Oceanic hemisphere, 
 a new barbaric scene opens, in the hundred thousand isles and 
 islets of the great Pacific Archipelago. It is but recently that the 
 veil has been lifted from these populous regions. In the vast 
 islands on the equator Sumatra, Borneo, Java, the Celebes, 
 Ceram, New Guinea the population is of a mixed blood. The 
 numerous isles that lie to the south, comprehended under the names 
 of Polynesia and Australia, are peopled by two races of men. 
 The one race is allied to the negro in possessing a Herculean 
 frame, black skin, and crisped but not woolly hair, while the other 
 race has skin of a light copper colour, and hair bright, lank, and 
 glossy, the countenance resemblmg that of the Malay. These 
 islands contain a population, the whole of which, until recent im- 
 provements under Christian civilisation, were in the proper sense 
 of the word barbaric, and such they seem to have been from time 
 immemorial. Everlasting and omnipresent war, carried on by 
 savages who in infancy had been compelled to swallow stones in 
 order to ' give them hearts of stone for battle,' cannibalism, the 
 
44 EARLY EUROPE. 
 
 last brutal revenge against a fallen adversary, infanticide so 
 common that three mothers accidentally present at once con- 
 fessed to the missionaries that between them they had slaughtered 
 twenty-one children by burying them alive in the ground so 
 common that one chief at his conversion to Christianity exclaimed 
 in agony that he had killed nearly twenty of his own the degrada- 
 tion of women carried to an excess from which northern barbarism 
 would have revolted the immolation of wives at the funerals of 
 their husbands, inhuman conduct to the sick and aged at which 
 the hearer stands aghast with indignation a habit of worshipping 
 a set of gods, when they worshipped anything at all, the sight of 
 which in our Museum moves horror, laughter, unspeakable con- 
 tempt by turns customs so filthy that the pen refuses to relate 
 them a taste so foul that a rat was a proverb among them for 
 sweetness an ignorance so profound that all manner of reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic beyond the counting of a few digits, were 
 beyond their comprehension all these features combined to form 
 as hideous a portrait of humanity as the globe could furnish. 
 And it would be impossible to form even an approximate estimate 
 of the number of millions upon millions who thus grew up in the 
 Pacific Archipelago 'without God in the world,' and apparently 
 for the most part fallen from His likeness. 
 
 4. Turning to Europe, we find that every step of progress made 
 in prehistoric ethnology deepens the conviction that the earliest 
 settlement of this continent is lost in the darkness of a remote 
 antiquity; and some account of indefinite yet incalculable 
 numbers must be taken in the general estimate for the clans 
 and tribes and families who wandered or fixed their tents in the 
 primeval forests. Arriving at historic times, there are distinct 
 indications of a European population 2,000 years before Christ. 
 At the Christian era, indeed, Europe still presented a far different 
 scene to the eye of Tacitus from that which it offers in the present 
 day. A gloomy ' black forest ' extended through its centre, pene- 
 trated here and there by rivers, glades, and pathways. Immense 
 tracts were damp and uninhabitable morasses, but free space was 
 still afforded or created for a numerous population. 
 
 Travelling westward from the eastern centres, among the first, 
 though not the earliest pioneers of humanity through these dread 
 solitudes, seem to have been tribes who bore the general name of 
 
EARLY AND MODERN EUROPE. 45 
 
 Cymry, the most powerful branch of whom were the Keltae, or 
 Gauls, the ancestors of the Gaels, the Welsh, the Irish, and of all 
 the European Gallic tribes of France, Spain, and Italy. 
 
 Following them after unknown intervals came the Gothic or 
 Teutonic hosts who settled in northern and midland Europe. 
 
 Lastly came the Sclavonic or Sarmatian inundation, the ancestors 
 of the Russians, Poles, and kindred nations. 
 
 Here, then, is another world of human beings extended over 
 the whole breadth of a continent, and existing for ages and ages 
 in a condition of comparative barbarism. Let any tolerably in- 
 formed reader of the ancient history of Europe meditate on the 
 names of Norway and Sweden, Ireland, Wales, England, France, 
 Spain, Germany, Russia, Poland, and he will quickly perceive that 
 another mass of barbaric life extended itself in many strata over 
 these territories ; and lasted for many centuries, in incalculable 
 numbers, long before history began to take account of the deeds 
 of individual men. 
 
 5. Add, now, to these reminiscences of the dim and remote 
 past those approximate views of the number and condition of the 
 human race in Europe which come with some adequate know- 
 ledge of the history of the ancient and modern civilised world. 
 It will be necessary to repeat the imaginary operations before 
 ventured upon for assisting the mind to bring into conception the 
 facts of the Asiatic population. Let the student pronounce 
 thoughtfully the names of the countries which border on the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and which finally formed the stage of the 
 Roman Empire, and strive at the same time to think of the 
 ancient and modern populations of the shores of Western Asia, 
 in Syria and Palestine ; of Asia Minor in all its provinces and 
 kingdoms; then, in Europe, of Greece in its wildest extension 
 and complex development ; of the countries south of the Danube, 
 and north of the Alps ; of Italy and its adjacent isles ; of Switzer- 
 land, of France, of Spain and Portugal, and modern Germany ; of 
 England, and Denmark, and Sweden, and Russia. What imagina- 
 tion can picture the endless millions who have moved and lived 
 and died over these countries during historic time ? We reach after 
 all efforts of imagination but a vague sense of watching the passage 
 of a dense illimitable throng, that fills the wide area of vision as 
 from a mountain-top, and slowly but steadily passes away, to give 
 
46 AFRICA. 
 
 place to fresh masses of living beings in the endless series onward 
 and onward travelling in their armies into the great darkness. 
 And though we now behold a still mightier stream of European 
 life moving before our eyes, we know that these millions form but 
 a fractional representation of the majority who have preceded 
 them. The mind is lost under an oppressive sense of the multi- 
 tudes who fleet like shadows across the scene. 
 
 6. But the end is not yet. Another world opens before us in 
 Africa, that fruitful mother of barbarians and slaves. 
 
 Africa is 5,000 miles in length, and nearly 4,600 miles in ex- 
 treme breadth. Its present population is estimated at 100,000,000. 
 In order to think correctly of the contributions of Africa to the 
 general sum of the human race, it must be remembered that this 
 continent was settled very early that as far back as even the 
 earliest twilight of authentic history reaches we find the valley of the 
 Nile swarming with that ingenious and industrious nation whose 
 sublime monuments remain amidst the wreck of ages to move 
 the wonder of the latest generations. Consider the millions ot 
 Egypt from the time of its earliest settlement until now, under its 
 ancient rulers and under its modern tyrants. Then extend the 
 view from Nubia and Ethiopia and the eastern coast to that 
 populous northern range of maritime states settled by the ancient 
 Sidonians, thickly peopled at least 2,000 years before Christ. 
 The most ancient sepulchral pictures and records of Egypt repre- 
 sent Africa as densely inhabited by swarming nations, and the 
 interior not less than the sea-coast. As soon as men could paint 
 they painted the negroes of the interior, as distinct in their type 
 and colour as they are to-day : thus leading us to think of ages 
 preceding during which those types were forming. It is mani- 
 festly idle to attempt an estimate in millions of those hosts of the 
 African continent in old times. All that we know for certain is 
 that they exceeded computation. The more recent history of 
 the continent in Roman and in modern times, from the days 
 of Hannibal and Masinissa down to the latest discoveries of 
 Livingstone and Stanley, must be considered in any attempt to 
 imagine the stupendous total of African population in the northern 
 half of its extent. 
 
 There will then still remain to claim some notice the black 
 world of southern barbarism, only in the present century made 
 
AMERICA. 47 
 
 known to Europeans. Descending from the outlaws of the 
 northern kingdoms, or from the slave-dealing nations of the 
 interior, or mingled with immigrants from Insular Asia, the whole 
 south is alive with tribes whose origin is lost in a dim antiquity. 
 Bamanquatos, Bakones, Bakuenas, Baphiris, Bamagala-silas, 
 Banaug-ketsies, Bakous, Kalagares, Barolongs, Matabeles, Zulus, 
 Basutos, Bechuanas, Namaquas, Tambookies, Hottentots, such 
 are some of the strange titles of these now improving nations, 
 whose forefathers divided the wilderness with the elephant, the 
 tiger, the lion, and the rhinoceros, during untold ages. It is 
 only when the mind is directed to the close study of some par- 
 ticular tribe of men that it awakes to a due sense of the numbers 
 of human beings who are designated, from century to century, by 
 a single tribal appellation. And it is when the student descends 
 to a careful examination of the works of travellers and missionaries 
 that he forms an adequate conception of the vile degradation of 
 mankind, or learns how much lower than the animals, in many of 
 the habits of life, humanity has sunk, over a large proportion of 
 the territories of the earth. 
 
 7. It remains now to close this rapid survey, designed to 
 awaken thought rather than to satisfy it, by pointing to the broad 
 expanse of the two Americas. The result of recent research and 
 discovery is to render it certain that these two vast worlds of life 
 have been tenanted from remote times by an enormous popula- 
 tion. The reader will find the evidence of this for South America 
 in the well-known works of Mr. Prescott, and for North America 
 in those of Mr. Bancroft. This population has included mighty 
 civilised nations such as the Mexicans and Peruvians, and tribes 
 of Amazonian clay-eaters, as described by Humboldt, sunk as low 
 in imbecility as man can sink when overpowered by the forces of 
 nature, or his own vices. Over the north have swarmed the 
 innumerable myriads of the Red Men from times now lost in a 
 dim antiquity. At the rediscovery of North America by Europeans 
 eight principal languages covered it, spoken by a wide variety of 
 tribes. The first language was the Algonquin, spoken by about 
 twenty nations, of whom the chief were the Delawares, Illinois, 
 and Chippeways or Ojibbeways. The second was that of the 
 Dahcottas. The third was that of the Hurons and Iroquois, 
 including the Mohawks, Oneidas, and Eries. The fourth was 
 
48 WHENCE? AND WHITHER? 
 
 that of the Catawbas. The fifth was that of the Cherokees. The 
 sixth was that of the Uchees. The seventh was that of the 
 Natchez. The eighth was that of the Chock taws, including the 
 Chiccasaws and the Muskogees. 
 
 Let the reader reflect upon the meaning of this statement, and 
 try to imagine, however vaguely, the swarms of men who in suc- 
 cessive centuries spoke any one of these dialects and even 
 though the enormous woods of America were inhabited but by 
 vagrant tribes, it will be speedily acknowledged that here again 
 was a ' multitude that no man can number.' 
 
 But indeed every branch of historical study awakes a fresh 
 sense of the multitudinousness of men in the ages departed. The 
 simple names and habitats of families and clans who have left 
 some trace behind them would fill volumes, and the longer we 
 look at the past the more overwhelming becomes the view of the 
 throngs who have laboured, and loved, and warred, and sinned, 
 and wrought righteousness upon the various zones of this planet. 
 Language breaks down into idle expressions of wonder at the 
 thought of all the tribes of the earth who are gone ; for even 
 a single specimen of each smaller company, gathered into one 
 contemporaneous crowd, would leave us still astounded at the 
 spectacle of a multitude which defied computation, and exceeded 
 the utmost stretch of individual vision. 
 
 And it is of these unimaginable pagan multitudes of Asia, 
 Africa, Europe, America, and the Oceanic Archipelagoes, that 
 the question is asked, Whence ? and Whither ? 
 
 The established doctrine of European Christianity respecting 
 them we shall attempt to describe in the next chapter. It is true 
 that moral and religious doctrines cannot be decided exclusively 
 by the numbers of the persons affected by them ; yet even Divine 
 Justice itself may in the matter of eternal judgment be presumed 
 to take into account the numerical strength of the population 
 which, like that of Nineveh, ' knows not its right hand from its 
 left.' And it is a very idle affectation of stoicism which would 
 wholly exclude the view of the numbers of the victims of any 
 overwhelming calamity, or the hereditary ignorance or weakness 
 which rendered them so easily its prey. 
 
49 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ORTHODOX DOCTRINE ON THE NATURE AND DESTINY 
 OF MANKIND. 
 
 THE term 'orthodox' is employed in this connection as the 
 most convenient mode of designating the doctrine which has 
 prevailed in Christendom both most widely and most durably; 
 for, although the Roman, Greek, and Protestant Churches have 
 differed exceedingly on other questions of interpretation, there 
 has existed a singular unanimity between them as to the facts and 
 general principles which underlie what is held to be a correct 
 view of the condition and destiny of mankind. 
 
 The Reformation attempted no modification whatever of the 
 basis of theology in respect of the doctrine of the Fall of Man, 
 and its consequences to the human race. The dissident Pro- 
 testant sects during all their earlier history stood fast on the old 
 ways, and reiterated the principles which have prevailed in the 
 Church at least since the age of Augustine. It is in the writings 
 of Augustine that the first full and complete development of this 
 system of ideas respecting God's dealings with men is to be found. 
 There is nothing entirely resembling it either in the New Testa- 
 ment or in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. 
 
 The central thought of this doctrine springs from a belief, in 
 which we sympathise, in the historical truth of the narrative of the 
 trial and sin of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis ; but it 
 branches out into several subordinate doctrines of vast extent and 
 importance, not so plainly contained in that narrative. 
 
 It has been held, with the nearly unanimous consent of the 
 ancient theological authorities, and has been embodied as an 
 article of faith in the judgment of the Church, that Adam the 
 ancestor of mankind was created at first under a complex con- 
 
 4 
 
50 DEATH, TEMPORAL, SPIRITUAL, ETERNAL. 
 
 stitution; endued with a body that could die, which, however, 
 served but as the shrine and tabernacle of a soul that should 
 never die ; this immortality ' of the soul depending ultimately on 
 the will of God. 
 
 It has been held that the death threatened to Adam in case 
 of transgression is to be understood in several distinct senses, 
 according to the part of his complex nature which was affected by 
 the judgment of God, and the relations to time or eternity borne 
 by the different portions of the punishment. With nearly abso- 
 lute unanimity it has been held by all the great historical Churches 
 that when Adam sinned the sentence of death took effect upon 
 his body, by ensuring the physical dissolution of his animal struc- 
 ture. This is technically called temporal death. Next, it is held 
 that as soon as he sinned his soul was separated morally from 
 God, and, since God is the fountain of ' spiritual life,' that apos- 
 tate condition of Adam's soul is described in sacred language as 
 spiritual death a description which is considered to be authorised 
 by the Apostle Paul when he speaks of sinners being ' dead in 
 trespasses and sins' (Eph. ii. i). And, lastly, it is held that when 
 this life ended, and the naturally never-dying soul went forth into 
 the unseen world of judgment, it was doomed to enter upon a 
 prospect of everlasting suffering in hell, which is termed eternal 
 death. 
 
 It has been for ages the fundamental doctrine of Christian 
 theology in Europe that in the original trial of Man in Paradise 
 Adam was thus threatened with temporal, spiritual, and eternal 
 death, this last sense of the term standing for everlasting damna- 
 tion, or conscious punishment throughout the future eternity. 
 Whether Adam as an individual person actually will undergo this 
 triple condemnation is a wholly different question. But, as a 
 representative man, there is a wonderful concurrence of divines 
 that by his sin he incurred this appalling complex doom. 
 
 The Confession of Faith of the Assembly of Divines of West- 
 minster, representing the best thought in theology up to that 
 time, only confirms the general judgment of Roman and Protes- 
 tant Christendom when it declares, in the sixth paragraph of its 
 sixth chapter, under the title of * The Fall of Man, of Sin, and 
 of the Punishment thereof that 'every sin, both original and 
 actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and 
 
HEREDITARY CURSE OF ENDLESS MISERY. 51 
 
 contrary thereto, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the 
 sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse 
 of the law, and so made subject to DEATH, with all miseries, 
 spiritual, temporal, and eternal.' 
 
 This, however, is but the beginning of sorrows. For the next 
 universally received doctrine of the orthodox Church was, and is, 
 that this direful destiny descended by inheritance from Adam 
 upon the whole human race, so that every fallen human being, 
 under the 'covenant of works,' is born, i, liable to temporal 
 death ; 2, under the curse of spiritual death ; and, 3, certain to 
 endure the woe of death eternal, or endless misery. It is held 
 that this is the doom under which every human infant is conceived 
 and born into the world (thrice happy the unborn !) : so that 
 endless misery is its destiny by the law, as the natural result of 
 its descent from Adam, and before it has 'done good or evil.' 
 
 The Protestant Articles of Religion, framed herein on the lines 
 of the ancient Church, expressly repudiate the idea that the curse 
 of ' eternal death ' comes upon men only in consequence of per- 
 sonal active imitation of the sin of Adam. 
 
 It is declared to be a congenital inheritance. Adam by his 
 sin incurred eternal damnation in hell in the sense of endless 
 misery ; and this is the curse which has descended as an heir- 
 loom on his infant posterity. Let us hear the Church of England 
 in her IXth Article, ' Of Original or Birth Sin? 
 
 ' Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the 
 Pelagians do vainly talk) ; but it is the fault and corruption of the 
 Nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring 
 of Adam ; whereby man is very far gone from original righteous- 
 ness (quam longissime), and is of his own nature inclined to evil, 
 so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit ; and there- 
 fore in every person born into this world it deserveth Gods wrath 
 and damnation /' by which the authors of the Article intended 
 endless misery. 
 
 The Westminster Assembly of Divines in the sixth chapter of 
 its Confession is even more explicit. 
 
 ' Our first parents being the root of all mankind, the guilt of 
 their sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted 
 nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by 
 ordinary generation. 
 
52 HEREDITARY CURSE OF ENDLESS MISERY. 
 
 'From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indis- 
 posed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly in- 
 clined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.' 
 
 Then follows the fore-cited sentence. ' Every sin, both original 
 and actual, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner 
 whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and so made sub- 
 ject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal.' 
 
 It thus appears to be unquestionably the orthodox faith of 
 Christendom that, before they have done good or evil, all mankind 
 are born liable to eternal misery through original sin, and that 
 the development of their corrupt nature, whereby they are made 
 ' opposite to all good,' can only aggravate an eternal destiny to 
 suffering already incurred through the transgression of Adam. 
 
 The Augustinian divines of the Church of Rome, no small 
 portion of the whole body, and the Calvinistic divines of the 
 Protestant Churches, add to these terrible conclusions the 
 further doctrine of predestination to damnation. The Assembly 
 of Divines (setting forth the present accredited faith of the 
 Church of Scotland) explicitly teach in their third chapter 
 that ' By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, 
 some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, 
 and others foreordained to everlasting death.' And of the non- 
 elect they say, ' The rest of mankind God was pleased, accord- 
 ing to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He 
 extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of 
 His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain 
 them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His 
 glorious justice.' 
 
 Since, however, these formidable super-additions are held by 
 but a portion of orthodox Christendom, it is better to leave them 
 out of present view. The statements in which the orthodox 
 Churches are agreed suffice for the present purpose. The sum 
 of the whole is, that mankind is born in a state of everlasting 
 damnation, under a curse of Death, which is to be taken in the 
 three senses, of bodily decease, moral apostasy, and everlasting 
 misery. And from this doom there is no escape except by the 
 grace of God in regeneration. ' Except a man be born again, 
 he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' All the unregenerate 
 portion of mankind is destined to suffer in ' everlasting fire.' 
 
TEACHING OF S. FRANCIS XAVIER. 53 
 
 There can be no question that these are the views under which 
 the historical Churches of Christendom have contemplated the 
 condition and destiny of the human race, and under which they 
 have sought to apply the remedy in missionary enterprise and 
 benevolence. In his letters from India, Xavier speaks only the 
 uniform sense of his Church when he describes the destiny of 
 the unbaptised millions around him as involving the prospect 
 of eternal torment, and maintains that the unevangelised millions 
 of previous ages had descended to that irrevocable doom. In a 
 letter of S. Francis Xavier, written in 1552 (edited in 1873 by 
 Rev. E. Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus), he says, ' One of 
 the things that most of all pains and torments these Japanese is 
 that we teach them that the prison of Hell is irrevocably shut 
 so that there is no egress therefrom. For they grieve over the 
 fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives and 
 they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there 
 is any hope any way to free them by prayer from that eternal 
 misery, and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. 
 Their grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully they 
 almost pine away with sorrow. But there is this good thing about 
 their trouble it makes one hope that they will all be the more 
 laborious for their own salvation, lest they, like their forefathers, 
 should be condemned to everlasting punishment.' 'They often 
 ask if God cannot take their fathers out of hell, and why their 
 punishment must never have an end. We gave them a satis- 
 factory answer; but they did not cease to grieve over the mis- 
 fortunes of their relatives, and I can hardly restrain my tears 
 sometimes at seeing men so dear to my heart suffer such intense 
 pain about a thing which is already done with, and can never be 
 undone.' 
 
 Not so logically or consistently have some Protestant divines 
 of recent time sought to mitigate the terribleness of the prospect 
 by tampering arbitrarily with the interpretation of the threatening 
 of Death, on which hangs the system of Augustinian theology. 
 Dr. Payne of Exeter (Congregational Lecturer on Original Sin) 
 speaks indeed the general sense of English theologians of the 
 latter portion of this age when he attempts to discriminate 
 between the various senses of this threatening, and to direct 
 their incidence more mercifully than has been the ancient wont 
 
54 MODERN ATTEMPTS AT ALLEVIATION, 
 
 of the Churches; but in so doing he opens the door to the 
 entrance of a principle of interpretation which will inevitably 
 destroy both his own doctrine and the elder scheme of doctrine 
 which he assails. 
 
 Smitten to the heart by the terrific dogma of the descent of 
 the curse of eternal death, in the sense of endless suffering, upon 
 the infant posterity of Adam, these ' merciful doctors ' have insisted 
 upon a limitation of the signification of this curse as respects 
 the personally guiltless. The old Roman divines had found in 
 S. Paul's argument addressed to their own Church (Rom. v. 12) 
 decisive evidence that the Death which ' entered by one offence,' 
 or ' the offence of one,' 'passed upon all men? without any 
 limitation, ' even,' as S. Paul declares specially, ' upon them 
 that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression,' 
 Whatever reason, therefore, there was for understanding this 
 threat in the triple sense, so as to include eternal misery for 
 Adam himself (a point of belief on which no one seems to have 
 entertained a doubt), there was exactly the same reason for 
 believing that it descended in its direful integrity upon all his 
 posterity. The case of infants might be indeed fearful, but there 
 was no loophole of escape for them from the system which em- 
 braced in its iron grip the whole race of man. To insinuate that 
 for them the ' eternal death ' formed no part of the inherited 
 curse was to break up the foundation of faith in redemption, and 
 in the descent of original sin. Accordingly this position was 
 maintained with the utmost firmness by all the Roman theolo- 
 gians, and not less by the Reformers. Augustine had set the 
 example of such firmness. 'It may, therefore, be rightly said 
 (says he) that little ones dying without baptism will be in the 
 mildest damnation of all (in damnatione mitissima). Yet he 
 greatly deceives and is deceived who preaches that they will not 
 be in damnation; since the apostle says, Judgment was by one 
 to condemnation.' (Multum autem fallit et fallitur, qui eos in 
 damnatione predicat non futures. Opp. vii. p. 142.) 
 
 But that which they dreaded, as fatal to systematic divinity, 
 has been asserted by our English and American divines of 
 recent times. These affirm, apparently without any evidence, 
 except that derived from their own sense of moral fitness, that 
 although the death threatened to Adam himself included the; 
 
MODERN EXPLANATIONS OF DEATH. 55 
 
 threefold curse with eternal misery, the curse as it descended 
 on the posterity dropt its most fearful signification, and came 
 upon the human race in its birth only as a twofold doom, as 
 temporal death, and an inherited corruption of their nature which 
 is termed ' death spiritual.' Thus, it is supposed, all man- 
 kind are born, not under sentence of eternal misery for Adam's 
 sin, but only under a corrupt constitution of nature, by which, 
 when they come to years, they will incur that sentence by their 
 own transgressions.* 
 
 There is no doubt that this mode of treatment of the language 
 of Scripture offers an immense alleviation. We learn no longer 
 to look upon the countenance of a child, with all our orthodox 
 progenitors, as on a wretched being under sentence of eternal 
 misery for the offence of a distant ancestor. Some would even 
 encourage us to regard the new-born child as born under 
 Redemption, and by its birth into a world where Christ has died, 
 entitled thereby to regenerating grace and everlasting glory. But 
 this is an extreme view towards which few incline. 
 
 The chief objection to this brighter representation of the results 
 of the Fall of Man on the prospects of Mankind is that it proceeds 
 on a method of interpretation fatal to the whole fabric of theology 
 which it seeks to uphold. 
 
 If, from regard to our supposed sense of right, we operate upon 
 the term death which describes in apostolic language the curse 
 which has 'passed upon' mankind (Rom. v. 12) if by an 
 ipse dixit the enlightened Protestant expositor may sweep away 
 at one stroke of his pen the whole tremendous prospect of ever- 
 
 * Mr. Peill, an able representative of this opinion, says, ' Thus it is evident 
 from Scripture itself that the second death [or eternal misery] is not included in 
 the penalty threatened against Adam, which began to take effect the day that 
 he sinned. The second death comes only through personal unbelief, and not 
 as the necessary result of the conduct of another. Reason and Scripture are 
 both at variance with the doctrine that eternal death was included in the 
 punishment incurred by Adam's transgression. Reason declares it unjust that 
 one man's eternal destiny should be determined for him by the act of another. 
 Such a view outrages man's moral sense, conflicts with his personal responsi- 
 bility, and is utterly incompatible with the equitable character of his present 
 trial and its issues.' Man's Immortality Proved, p. 38. 
 
 Mr. Peill, therefore, will doubtless offer no objection to the use of our 
 ' reason ' and ' moral sense ' in still further discriminating the meaning of the 
 threatening of death contained in the Scriptural account of the fall of Adam. 
 
56 ROMAN REPLIES TO SUCH EXPLANATIONS. 
 
 lasting misery from before the world of Adam-born children 
 what is to hinder, asks the more consistent Roman theologian 
 the sweeping away of that third sense of death or eternal misery 
 in its supposed application to Adam himself, and all other persons 
 affected by his behaviour? A precedent in interpretation is 
 established which will certainly be acted upon in a larger signifi- 
 cation. The difficulty is already great of teaching that the 
 ' death ' of the body, in the death threatened to Adam, signified 
 its dissolution, while in the ' Second Death ' the same term, 
 even in reference to the body, is taken for endless misery. But 
 how much greater the difficulty of maintaining that the original 
 curse was designed to convey the meaning of eternal suffering, if 
 at the first occurrence of an objection, occasioned only by our 
 tender compassion for infants, it is held that the word must be 
 stripped of its infinite meaning in its application to them. 
 
 The Augustinian system is best defended in its integrity. 
 Take away one of its fundamental definitions, and it falls to the 
 ground. The recent Protestant glosses breathe a compassionate 
 leniency, but they endanger far more than they defend. Augus- 
 tine and Calvin were solid logicians, and may be trusted in their 
 estimate of what is necessary to the coherency of their theological 
 system. 
 
 We return, therefore, to the ancient doctrine, which is that 
 the whole multitudinous human race, either through an here- 
 ditary curse, or through a transmitted corruption of nature which 
 leads to an ungodly life, is, and has always been, in danger of a 
 Hell never-ending ; from which danger it is delivered only by a 
 remedy, so far as the present world is concerned, apparently of 
 most limited application. 
 
 1 Broad is the road that leadeth to Destruction, and many 
 there be that go in thereat.' If the word destruction is rightly 
 taken for the idea of endless misery, the force of Christ's words 
 agrees with the general and ancient sense of Christendom, that 
 the majority of mankind have in all ages gone forward to endure 
 an eternity of woe. 
 
 That such ' woe ' will be proportioned to the deserts of the 
 offenders no believer in Divine Justice, not even S. Augustine, 
 can for one moment have doubted or denied. The extreme 
 
AN ATTEMPT TO REALISE THIS FAITH. 57 
 
 ignorance of multitudes of wicked men may be regarded with 
 comparative lenity. On the other hand, the offences of the 
 most guilty, because the best informed, would with equal 
 justice be followed by far more awful inflictions. Let us, there- 
 fore, now attempt to arouse the reader's mind to consider what 
 it is which Christendom professes in its standards to believe, 
 whether in the case of those most lightly punished, or of those 
 on whom will descend the heavier dooms. The main force of 
 the orthodox doctrine on the effects of the Fall on the condition 
 of mankind lies in the eternity of those effects. Sin brings 
 Death as its wages; and Death signifies eternal misery. It 
 must be, then, a wholesome exercise to strive to realise the 
 prospect. Every divine truth seems to be more true the more 
 we dwell upon it and consider it. Truth unveils itself in its 
 evidence and completeness to those who impartially endeavour 
 to apprehend its bearings. God the Lord also is best known 
 by His works ; and if the issue of human life in its overwhelm- 
 ing numbers will be to fix, whether a majority, as most suppose, 
 or a minority, as some few affirm, in an unchangeable state of tor- 
 ment, or misery, or even of darkness and sorrow, it must serve 
 the interests of truth and righteousness, and of theology itself, 
 to follow in the path of the poets and divines who have taught 
 us how to meditate, first of all on future suffering, and, secondly, 
 upon that everlastingness which is the measure of its duration. 
 
 The writers who have of late years come forward to maintain 
 the orthodox doctrine agree in their general conclusion. Let us 
 seriously endeavour to understand what that conclusion is. 
 
 It is that, notwithstanding denial, there is compelling reason 
 to believe that all who die unforgiven shall suffer for ever and 
 ever in hell. Words easily spoken and written, but which 
 reveal their meaning, or rather a glimmer of their meaning, only 
 to those who set themselves steadily to the task of realising the 
 doctrine. The significance of words is limited also by men's 
 experience, most persons being deficient in the power of 
 vigorously conceiving of either suffering or duration. Those 
 who have endured severe chronic pain for several decades of 
 years, and those who have been visited by the more dreadful 
 forms of mental anguish, are likely to attach a deeper meaning 
 to such a phrase as ' endless misery ' than men whose strong 
 
58 PRESIDENT EDWARDS. 
 
 health, or unchequered history, or unimaginative natures have 
 concealed from them the more woful experiences of life. The 
 generality of teachers who insist upon a literal eternity of pain 
 seem to have little capacity for picturing to themselves what 
 their doctrine portends. On some it seems to exert a hardening 
 influence. They speak with something like contempt of a 
 1 sensational recoil ' from the idea of endless torment as if 
 there were nothing in it that ought to cause any difficulty to a 
 devout, considering man. They evince no need of those alle- 
 viations by which gentler spirits seek to shade their eyes from 
 the blinding prospect* The believers in that prospect, indeed, 
 are not agreed upon the degree or kind of suffering which is 
 revealed as eternal ; and those who anticipate the deepest 
 horrors might seem, as is natural, to stagger at them less than 
 those who believe in lighter inflictions. 
 
 Unwillingly I add a few specimens of the mode of present- 
 ing the supposed threatenings of Revelation from approved 
 divines. That holy man, President Jonathan Edwards, says : 
 
 ' Here all judges have a mixture of mercy, but the wrath of God will be 
 poured out upon the wicked without mixture, and vengeance will have its 
 full weight. We can conceive but little of the matter. We cannot conceive 
 what the sinking of the soul in such a case is. But to help your conception, 
 imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into 
 the midst of a glowing brick-kiln, or of a great furnace, where your pain 
 would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a 
 coal of fire as the heat is greater ; and imagine also that your body were to 
 lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, as full within and without as a 
 bright coal fire, all the while full of quick sense : what horror would you feel 
 at the entrance of such a furnace ! Oh, then, how would your heart sink, if 
 you thought, if you knew, that you must bear it for ever and ever ! that there 
 would be no end ! that after millions and millions of ages your torment 
 would be no nearer to an end than ever it was ! and that you never, never 
 
 * ' Popular conceptions are taken largely from the imagery of Scripture, and 
 from lurid sketches drawn by Dante and the poets. Hence men have come to 
 speak of the lost as in flames. What if much of this teaching is a mistake ? 
 The fire that is never quenched may be the burning eagerness with which they 
 cherish perverse desires, an eagerness that blights and blasts everything 
 generous, as it has long since blasted everything holy. There are no doubt 
 positive punishments as there are positive rewards ; but the descriptions of 
 each are largely figurative " pearly gates," " golden str-eets," " flaming fire," 
 "ascending smoke." Here again there is some relief." DR. ANGUS on 
 Future Punishment, 
 
MR. SPURGEON. 59 
 
 should be delivered J But your torment in hell will be immensely greater than 
 this illustration represents.' Vol. iii., p. 260. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon, whose opinions represent in the most vigorous 
 form, and with striking sincerity, the theology of the middle 
 and lower classes of England, does not hesitate to hold before 
 his hearers a prospect of endless physical agony : 
 
 ' Only conceive that poor wretch in the flames, who is saying, " O for one 
 drop of water to cool my parched tongue ! " See how his tongue hangs from 
 between his blistered lips ! How it excoriates and burns the roof of his mouth 
 as if it were a firebrand ! Behold him crying for a drop of water. I will not 
 picture the scene. Suffice it for me to close up by saying, that the hell of hells 
 will be to thee, poor sinner, the thought that it is to be for ever. Thou wilt 
 look up there on the throne of God, and on it shall be written, " For ever ! " 
 When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torments, they shall say 
 (t For ever ! " When they howl, echo cries, " For ever ! " 
 
 ' " For ever " is written on their racks, 
 
 " For ever " on their chains ; 
 " For ever " burneth in the fire, 
 " For ever" ever reigns.' 
 
 Doleful thought ! "If I could but get out, then I should be happy." "If 
 there were a hope of deliverance, then I might be peaceful ; but here I am 
 for ever ! " Sirs ! if ye would escape eternal torments, if ye would be found 
 amongst the number of the blessed, the road to heaven can only be found by 
 prayer,' etc. Sermon preached in 1855. 
 
 It may be objected that this sermon was preached twenty 
 years ago ; but only three years since Mr. Spurgeon declared 
 his adhesion to the former style of discourse on future punish- 
 ment in these words : 
 
 "We are sometimes accused, my brethren, of using language too harsh, too 
 ghastly, too alarming, with regard to the world to come ; but we shall not 
 soon change ottr note ; for we solemnly believe that if we could speak thunder- 
 bolts, and our every look were a lightning flash, and if our eyes dropped blood 
 instead of tears, no tones, words, gestures, or similitudes of dread, could 
 exaggerate the awful condition of a soul which has refused the gospel and 
 is delivered over to justice.' Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (revised and 
 corrected), p. 186. 
 
 A still more graphic style of representation is common among 
 Roman Catholic preachers. Those who believe in the beneficial 
 effect of pictorial horrors on young and ignorant people might 
 take a lesson from the religious manuals of the Roman priests. 
 Mr. Lecky quotes the following, in his History of European 
 
60 MR. FURNISS ON CHILDREN IN HELL. 
 
 Morals, from a Tract ' for children and young persons,' called 
 The Sight of Hell, by Rev. J. Furniss ; published ' permissu 
 superiorum,' by Duffy (London and Dublin). It is a detailed 
 description of the dungeons of hell : 
 
 1 See on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl : she looks about 
 sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. Listen; she speaks. "I have been 
 standing on this red-hot floor for years ! Look at my burnt and bleeding feet ! 
 Let me go off this burning floor for one moment ! " The fifth dungeon is 
 the red-hot oven. The little child is in the red-hot oven. Hear how it 
 screams to come out ; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It 
 beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. 
 God was very good to this little child. Very likely God saw it would get 
 worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished 
 more severely in hell. So God in His mercy called it out of the world in 
 early childhood.' 
 
 All this, says Mr. Furniss, is to last for ever. 
 
 Such representations would, however, be severely reprehended 
 by the majority of educated orthodox preachers in our own time. 
 To them the eternal hell is of a more spiritual character ; but it 
 is still eternal, its pains are to endure as long as the Nature 
 which is unchangeable and divine. 
 
 For in addition to these inflictions, whether literal or largely 
 figurative, our divines believe in a spiritual misery of lost souls, 
 which is not figurative, but will consist partly in their remorse 
 for the sins of time, and partly in the fact that, being immortal, 
 they are condemned to sin, and to suffer for fresh sins, through- 
 out ETERNITY. But who knows what that means? The dura- 
 tion which is immeasurable ! It signifies that all the arithmetical 
 power in the creation, after labouring for millions of years to 
 invent numerical methods of expressing enormous successions 
 of time, would thereby succeed in reaching in imagination only 
 the beginning the threshold the earlier moments, of that un- 
 searchable futurity which is the lifetime of the SELF-EXISTENT 
 BEING, and, it is said, the lifetime of the condemned. It means 
 that beyond all such imagined epochs, counted out by human 
 or angelic faculty, there will extend an infinite prospect of misery 
 for sinful beings, in graduated but everlasting pain. 
 
 I shall offer some reflections on these beliefs of various types 
 in the language of the late Mr. Foster, author of Essays on 
 
LETTER Y THE LATE MR. FOSTER. 6t 
 
 Decision of Character, contained in a memorable letter to the 
 writer, in the year 1841.* 
 
 'Nevertheless,' says Mr. Foster, 'I acknowledge myself not convinced 
 of the orthodox doctrine. If asked, why not ? I should have little to say in 
 the way of criticism, of implications found or sought in what may be called 
 incidental expressions of Scripture, or of the passages dubiously cited in favour 
 of final, universal restitution. It is the moral argument, as it may be named, 
 that presses irresistibly on my mind that which comes in the stupendous 
 idea of eternity. 
 
 ' It appears to me that the teachers and believers of the orthodox doctrine 
 hardly ever make an earnest, strenuous effort to form a conception of eternity ; 
 or rather a conception somewhat of the nature of a faint incipient approxi- 
 mation. Because it is confessedly beyond the compass of thought, it is 
 suffered to go without an attempt at thinking of it. They utter the term in 
 the easy currency of language ; have a vague and transitory idea of something 
 obscurely vast, and do not labour to place and detain the mind in intense 
 protracted contemplation, seeking all expedients for expanding and aggra- 
 vating the awful import of such a word. Though every mode of illus- 
 tration is feeble and impotent, one would surely think there would be an 
 insuppressible impulse to send forth the thoughts to the utmost possible reach 
 into the immensity when it is an immensity into which our own most 
 essential interests are infinitely extended. Truly it is very strange that even 
 religious minds can keep so quietly aloof from the amazing, the overwhelming 
 contemplation of what they have the destiny and the near prospect of entering 
 upon. 
 
 ' Expedients of illustration of what eternity is not, supply the best attainable 
 means of assisting remotely toward a glimmering apprehension of what it is. 
 All that is within human capacity is to imagine the vastest measures of time, 
 and to look to the termination of these as only touching the mere commence- 
 ment of eternity. 
 
 ' For example : It has been suggested to imagine the number of particles, 
 atoms, contained in this globe, and suppose them one by one annihilated, 
 each in a thousand years, till all were gone ; but just as well say, a million, 
 or a million of millions of years or ages, it is all the same, as against infinite 
 duration. 
 
 * Extend the thought of such a process to our whole mundane system, and 
 finally to the whole material universe : it is still the same. Or, imagine a 
 series of numerical figures, in close order, extended to a line of such a length 
 that it would encircle the globe, like the equator or that would run along 
 with the earth's orbit round the sun or with the outermost planet, Uranus 
 or that would draw a circle of which the radius should be from the earth or 
 sun to Sirius or that should encompass the entire material universe, which, 
 as being material, cannot be infinite. ' The most stupendous of these measures 
 
 * Reprinted at length in the Life and Correspondence of John Foster, vol. i. 
 
62 LETTEk OF MR. FOSTER, 
 
 of time would have an end ; and would, when completed, be still nothing to 
 eternity. 
 
 * Now think of an infliction of misery protracted through such a periods 
 and at the end of it being only commencing, not one smallest step nearer a 
 conclusion : the case just the same if that sum of figures were multiplied by 
 itself. And then think of Man his nature, his situation, the circumstances 
 of his brief sojourn and trial on earth. Far be it from us to make light of 
 the demerit of sin, and to remonstrate with the Supreme Judge against a severe 
 chastisement, of whatever moral nature we may regard the infliction to be. 
 But still, what is man? He comes into the world with a nature fatally 
 corrupt, and powerfully tending to actual evil. He comes among a crowd of 
 temptations adapted to his innate evil propensities. He grows up (incom- 
 parably the greater proportion of the race) in great ignorance ; his judgment 
 weak ; and under numberless beguilements into error ; while his passions and 
 appetites are strong ; his conscience unequally matched against their power ; 
 in the majority of men, but feebly and rudely constituted. The influence of 
 whatever good instructions he may receive is counteracted by a combination 
 of opposite influences almost constantly acting on him. He is essentially and 
 inevitably unapt to be powerfully acted on by what is invisible and future. In 
 addition to all which, there is the intervention and activity of the great 
 tempter and destroyer. 
 
 ' I acknowledge my inability (I would say it reverently) to admit this 
 belief, together with a belief in the Divine Goodness the belief that " God 
 is love," that His tender mercies are over all His works. Goodness, bene- 
 volence, charity, as ascribed in supreme perfection to Him, cannot mean a 
 quality foreign to all human conceptions of goodness ; it must be something 
 analogous in principle to what Himself has defined and required as goodness 
 in His moral creatures, that, in adoring the Divine Goodness, we may not be 
 worshipping an "unknown God." But if so, how would all our ideas be 
 confounded, while contemplating Him bringing, of His own Sovereign will, a 
 race of creatures into existence, in such a condition that they will and must, 
 must, by their nature and circumstances, go wrong and be miserable, unless 
 prevented by especial grace, which is the privilege of only a small propor- 
 tion of them, and, at the same time, affixing on their delinquency a doom, of 
 which it is infinitely beyond the highest archangel's faculty to apprehend a 
 thousandth part of the horror. 
 
 * Can we, I would say with reverence can we realise it as possible that a 
 lost soul, after countless millions of ages, and in prospect of an interminable 
 succession of such enormous periods, can be made to have the conviction, 
 absolute and perfect, that all this is a just, an equitable infliction, and from a 
 power as good as He is just, for a few short sinful years on earth years and 
 sins presumed to be retained most vividly in memory, and everlastingly grow- 
 ing clearer, vaster, and more terrible to retrospective view in their magnitude 
 of infinite evil every stupendous period of duration, by which they have 
 actually been left at a distance, seeming to bring them, in contrariety to all 
 laws of memory, nearer and ever nearer to view, by the continually aggravated 
 experience of their consequences ? 
 
AUTHOR Of 'DECISION Of CHARACTERS 63 
 
 ' Yes, those twenty, forty, seventy years, growing up to infinity of horror, 
 in the review, in proportion to the distance which the condemned spirit 
 recedes from them ; all eternity not sufficing to reveal fully what those years 
 contained ! millions of ages for each single evil thought or word. 
 
 'But it is usually alleged that there will be an endless cotitinuance of 
 sinning, with probably an endless aggravation, and therefore the punishment 
 must be endless. Is not this like an admission of disproportion between the 
 punishment and the original cause of its infliction ? But suppose the case to 
 be so that is to say, that the punishment is not a retribution simply for the 
 guilt of the momentary existence on earth, but a continued punishment of the 
 continued, ever-aggravated guilt in the eternal state ; the allegation is of no 
 avail in vindication of the doctrine ; because the first consignment to the 
 dreadful state necessitates a contimiance of the criminality ; the doctrine teaching 
 that it is of the essence, and is an awful aggravation, of the original consign- 
 ment, that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged 
 for ever. The doom to sin as well as suffer, and, according to the argument, 
 to sin in order to suffer, is afflicted as the punishment of the sin committed in 
 the moral state. Virtually, therefore, the eternal punishment is the punishment 
 of the sins of time. 
 
 ' Under the light (or the darkness) of this doctrine, how inconceivably 
 mysterious and awful is the aspect of the whole economy of this h uman world ! 
 The immensely greater number of the race hitherto, through all ages and 
 regions, passing a short life under 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, heavenly, and happy kingdom elsewhere ; and all 
 destined to everlasting misery. The thoughtful spirit has a question silently 
 suggested to it of far more emphatic import than that of him who exclaimed, 
 " Hast thou made all men in -vain ? " ' 
 
 It was the absorbing meditation on such conclusions as these 
 in early days which created in the writer the life-lasting purpose 
 of at least striving to enforce them on his fellow-beings, if truths 
 they were ; or of shaking their pernicious hold on the public mind 
 if one could solidly learn that they were delusions. It is a ques- 
 tion in which all that is of profoundest import in the definition 
 of the Divine Attributes of Justice and Goodness is concerned, 
 which touches more deeply than any other the springs of faith 
 and unbelief, and which clearly has bearings of the utmost 
 moment on the whole system of human thought respecting both 
 this world and the world to come. 
 
 If these things plainly are indeed as described by theologians, 
 it is as wicked as useless to palter with the evidence, or to conceal 
 it from the world ; and it is nothing better than cruelty to talk of 
 
64 VAST IMPORTANCE OP THE QUEST/CM 
 
 alleviating the prospect. If it be true, let the truth be spoken, 
 and let men recognise the facts of their existence on earth and 
 beyond. Truth needs no alleviations. 
 
 But, at all events, these things ought not to be believed except 
 on decisive evidence, for a mistake either way will exert a pro- 
 digious influence on the religion of mankind. The danger is not 
 all on one side, as most suppose. For there is nothing less than 
 an infinite difference between a BEING who will so act towards 
 His creatures and One who will not; between a God who will 
 inflict eternal suffering, however slight, whether of mind, or body, 
 or both, on creatures born of a degenerate race, and generally 
 educated in ignorance of divine things, even when intellectually 
 cultivated, and One who will not. A different feeling and a 
 different worship will grow up out of the two systems of thought, 
 just in proportion as they are realised by the worshipper. 
 
 And the determination of the question is of equal importance 
 in relation to the Creator's will. If the Eternal Power will act as 
 these writers suppose, it must, as they truly affirm, be highly 
 offensive to Him to deny or dispute it. If true religion consist 
 so largely in the element of fear, as it must on this theory, it is to 
 detract from truth to represent God as less than He really is an 
 object of terror to His creatures. But, on the other hand, if such 
 thoughts never ' entered into His mind,' so the Almighty is 
 represented in the book of Jeremiah as exclaiming, in reference 
 to the momentary passage of children through the fire to Moloch, 
 if the whole doctrine comes, as many learned and pious men 
 think, men as learned and pious as any others, from a violent 
 wresting of the ordinary' language of Scripture ; if it have no surer 
 basis than a determination to maintain the figment of the natural 
 immortality of one part of man's nature, of which the Bible itself 
 never once speaks ; if the doctrine of pain that shall never end be 
 the offspring of the combination of a false psychology with the 
 traditionary interpretations of a superstitious and uncritical anti- 
 quity, it is easy to see that the Deity must abhor the falsehoods 
 taught in His name, in Europe as in Asia, and will highly com- 
 mend the work of those who set themselves to overturn this 
 stumbling-block, and to rend the dogma which at once veils 
 from sinful men His real and awful Justice, and from His children 
 so much of the light of the eternal Love. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON THE POSSIBILITY THAT CHRISTENDOM HAS ERRED ON THE 
 DOCTRINE OF HUMAN DESTINY. 
 
 ' The history of the Christian Church for the greater portion of its existence 
 has been so little in consistent practical accordance with any Idea or Principle 
 that is obviously divine, that the merely being opposed to such a majority as it 
 presents need not be to any spiritual mind a very distressing or a very dangerous 
 position.' FREDERIC MYERS, CatJiolic Thoughts, p. 15. 
 
 IT cannot be denied that the frightful doctrines on the future of 
 humanity, described in the preceding chapter, though supported 
 by the general authority of nearly all Christendom for at least 
 fourteen centuries, are regarded with contemptuous scepticism by 
 the bulk of the existing male population of Europe, who assign 
 these articles of ' the faith ' as the chief reason for their ever- 
 extending and fierce revolt against Christianity. The external 
 evidence of ancient miracle and prophecy, and even the stronger 
 moral evidence of the Gospel, do not suffice to overpower the 
 antagonistic conviction of the masses of educated and uneducated 
 men in civilised Europe, that the ' Catholic Religion ' cannot be 
 of divine original. The people who dwell in the interior of 
 Churches have in general but a slight acquaintance with the 
 ideas of those who are without. If by any remarkable awakening 
 the Christian people could be made to understand the world of 
 modern thought which surrounds them, they would discover from 
 one side of Europe to the other that faith in the supposed divine 
 revelation has almost faded away from the classes who are alienated 
 from traditionary religion. And the chief cause of such decaying 
 faith is found beyond question in the views of the future which 
 have been set forth in the preceding pages. 
 
 Men hold that such conceptions of moral government cannot 
 .possibly be in accord with the thoughts of God, ' whose tender 
 
 5 
 
66 UNWILLING INFIDELS. 
 
 mercies are over all His works.' This disbelief is not, indeed, a 
 sufficient reason for rejecting Catholic Christianity ; but it is a 
 sufficient reason for subjecting it to a resolute re-examination. 
 That which practically works so ill certainly cannot claim to be 
 exempt from fresh scrutiny : especially since the disorder of latent 
 scepticism has eaten like a cancer into the breast of the Church 
 itself. Christians on all sides, exactly in proportion to their 
 knowledge and culture, are tormented in our time with agonising 
 doubts as to the truth of the whole system of Divine Revelation, 
 in consequence of the doctrine imputed to it on the destination 
 of mankind. The positive declarations sometimes made, on the 
 final salvation of all men, as the result of the present or future 
 terms of probation, seem to rest on no solid foundation. They 
 contradict the ordinary language of the Bible. The fact of general 
 ungodliness remains ; and the Scripture record also remains, 
 which consigns all persistently wicked men to death. If death 
 signifies endless misery, there seems no escape from the established 
 dogma ; but this dogma shakes the Christian faith even of its 
 most devoted adherents. Richard Baxter himself describes the 
 inward and dangerous struggle which he often experienced in 
 the effort to submit his mind to these supposed doctrines of 
 1 revelation.' 
 
 There is especially one class whose case deserves attention, that 
 of unwilling infidels. For it is right to add that infidelity is of 
 two kinds, malignant and involuntary ; and that there is a descrip- 
 tion of unbelief widely spread which does not take the form of 
 virulent attack upon the Scriptures, but rather stands aloof in the 
 dim intermediate territory between friendship and hostility. This 
 is the infidelity of persons who, although not denying the apparent 
 existence of some strong evidence for the divine mission of Christ, 
 are yet so much confounded at the character of what they have 
 been led to suppose are His doctrines as to pass their lives in a 
 state of equilibrium or indifference ; never breaking out into open 
 scepticism, but never seeing their way to a clear persuasion and 
 bold avowal of the truth of the gospel revelation. They have 
 been taught that the doctrine of Christ is, that in Adam all fell 
 directly or indirectly under the curse of everlasting misery, and 
 that a certain number are to be saved from this dreadful doom in 
 consequence of a divine decree in their favour from eternity past ; 
 
fS THE ESTABLISHED ALWAYS TRUE? 67 
 
 all the rest departing to endless suffering for the glory of the 
 justice of God. This, which is the common and popular belief, 
 staggers them ; their minds become confused, and finding no 
 relief from the believers in Christianity, who maintain their 
 ' faith ' in such doctrines mostly by a decided habit of not 
 thinking upon them, they vibrate between the twilight of a half 
 unbelief, and the thick darkness of a gloomy atheism. There are 
 hundreds of thousands of minds of the class now described, 
 souls surely as valuable as the souls of the inhabitants of the 
 South Sea Islands, on whose behalf all zeal is accounted praise- 
 worthy. It is conceivable that a fresh examination of our theology 
 under another hypothesis might bring to light for such minds a 
 ' hope full of immortality.' 
 
 One question, however, of discouraging aspect confronts the 
 earliest movements of the mind towards such re-examination of 
 Christianity, in dim hope of discovering a more benignant yet 
 tenable interpretation of its records : Is it possible that God 
 can have permitted a conception of His own character, so false 
 as this must be, if false at all, to prevail during nearly the whole 
 Christian era ? Must we not regard the fact of the general accept- 
 ance of these doctrines, as articles of faith, as a sufficient evidence of 
 their truth ? And, further, can it be for a moment believed that 
 instructed divines, who are to be counted by hundreds of thou- 
 sands, belonging to all Churches, in every successive century of 
 Christianity, can have erred so egregiously, as they must have 
 erred who have mistaken the sense of the Divine Revelation, 
 supposing these doctrines to be not in the Bible, and to have 
 formed no part of original Christianity ? This is a question which 
 suffices at the outset to quell and suppress the rising spirit of 
 inquiry, by an appeal to the conscious insignificance of the in- 
 dividual. And it might well prohibit a single step in advance, 
 were it not that the continuous history of Christendom, both in 
 science and religion, bids us take courage, and compels us, as the 
 first of all duties, to fling aside resolutely theMelusive fear imposed 
 by paralysing appeals to authority. 
 
 For when it is asked whether it be possible or conceivable that 
 Providence can have allowed any doctrine grievously misrepre- 
 senting the Divine Majesty to have taken root on earth, or in 
 Christendom, the answer is obvious and direct, that the Almighty 
 
68 EXAMPLES OF WIDESPREAD ERROR. 
 
 Creator has allowed every imaginable error respecting His attri- 
 butes, physical, intellectual, and moral, to prevail among men, 
 age after age, since the beginning of the world. One-half the 
 world to-day is still idolatrous, or devoted to Buddhistic atheism. 
 And the Apostles departed from life (however wonderful this may 
 be), declaring with one voice that. ' strong delusion ' awaited the 
 subsequent generations of Christendom. 
 
 When further it is naturally asked whether it be possible that 
 so many millions of learned and pious divines and their followers 
 in former ages can have erred in so great a matter as this, the 
 answer must be, assuredly it is possible. The Reformation is 
 expressly founded on the fact that all Europe had erred on the 
 most important doctrine of Christianity for more than a thousand 
 years, during the darkness of the middle age, even on the central 
 doctrine of our justification. There is no Church or Church 
 party in Christendom which does not hold it for certain that it 
 is quite possible for whole sanhedrims of the most respectable 
 divines, notwithstanding their learning, and millions of the 
 common people, to misunderstand important doctrines of revela- 
 tion. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants believe that after 
 the learned rabbins of Judaism have studied the Old Testament 
 for eighteen hundred years, since the fall of Jerusalem, they are 
 still wrong in regarding our Lord Jesus Christ as an impostor. 
 The Protestants believe that all the learned and pious men of 
 Romanism err in religion fundamentally. The Roman Catholics, 
 in turn, believe that all the learned men of Protestant countries, 
 and all their disciples, ' have erred ' on the foundation truths of 
 Christianity. In the same manner all the Calvinistic divines of 
 Europe believe that all the Arminian divines misunderstand two 
 important doctrines of revelation ; and the Arminians think the 
 same of the Calvinists. 
 
 Thus also the popular opinion, maintained by the large majority 
 of Protestant divines, is in favour of the doctrine of Christ's second 
 advent after the millennium. But multitudes of learned Chris- 
 tians in each century have maintained that the right doctrine 
 clearly is that Christ will return from the heavens before that 
 epoch, and they therefore regard the doctrine of the majority as 
 erroneous. In the same manner the majority of Englishmen 
 profess to believe that the Book of Common Prayer ' containeth 
 
GREAT ERRORS STILL POSSIBLE. 69 
 
 nothing which cannot be proved by warrant of holy Scripture ; * 
 and to all is known how many thousands of learned men, oc- 
 cupants of the benefices of the English Church, have upheld that 
 position for nearly three hundred and fifty years. But all the 
 learned Scottish divines, and all the English Nonconformists, 
 many of whom have been the equals of their opponents in litera- 
 ture and ability, while fully sensible of the many excellences of 
 the Prayer Book, maintain that the New Testament manifestly 
 contains no warrant for Prelacy, Ecclesiastical Courts, baptismal 
 regeneration, or the compulsory support of religion. Thus, finally, 
 the opinion of Christendom, generally, is in favour of infant bap- 
 tism, and the doctrine of baptismal regeneration ; yet this does 
 not hinder a minority, scattered through Europe and America 
 but earnest, learned, and able, from maintaining, with Neander, 
 that the practice of the apostles obviously was to baptise only 
 intelligent confessors of Christ, and that infant baptism, notwith- 
 standing its universality and antiquity, is a pernicious error. 
 
 On these grounds, then, we conclude that it is within the limits 
 of parallel experience for Christendom to have erred even on 
 matters so grave as those which now occupy our attention. The 
 history of opinion shows nothing more clearly than the immense 
 influence of ancient traditions on learned criticism, and the gross 
 ignorance or perverseness of many of the expositors who in ancient 
 times pitched the tune which has been diligently followed in after 
 ages. Let any one remember the critical processes by which 
 modern Roman divines of the first distinction operate upon the 
 Scriptures for the support of their ecclesiastical and doctrinal 
 system ; and think also of the armies of great names adduced in 
 support even of the most audacious pretensions of that system ; 
 and he will thenceforth learn to admit that other leading ideas 
 in Christendom may be false' and falsifying ; so that even solid 
 masses of Protestant authority may be found buttressing inter- 
 pretations having a deceptive show of argument, while rotten at 
 their very foundations. And it is not improbable that the errors 
 which have proved more dangerous and pervasive than any others 
 may be found lurking in those psychological assumptions, which, 
 unquestioned in Europe, as in Asia, underlie in both continents 
 the fabric of strictly theological doctrine. In Europe the doctrine 
 of the Immortality of the Soul is the source whence has sprung 
 
70 THE 1 FONS ET ORIGO^ OF HERESY. 
 
 the mighty determining tide of past thought on the destiny of 
 man ; and if that source has been a well-spring of delusion, its 
 influence has extended over both time and eternity. 
 
 The general object of this book is to show that here, in the 
 popular doctrine of the soul's immortality, is the fans et origo of 
 a system of theological error ; that in its denial we return at once 
 to scientific truth and to sacred Scripture; at the same time 
 clearing the way for the right understanding of the object of the 
 Incarnation, of the nature and issue of redemption in the Life 
 Eternal, and of the true doctrine of divine judgment on the 
 unsaved. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 THE not far from universal judgment of modern Christendom 
 regards as one of the two foundation truths of religion the im- 
 mortality of the soul ; the other being the existence and moral 
 character of God. 
 
 It is held by the Christian community, as a first principle of 
 faith, that man possesses a spiritual soul ; and that this soul, 
 either as the result of the simplicity of its substance, indissoluble 
 by any natural cause acting from within or from without, or as a 
 consequence of a general law fixed by the Sovereign Will, that all 
 thinking, free, and accountable agents shall live for ever, or as 
 the effect of a special decree in relation to man, is destined in 
 every case to everlasting duration. 
 
 By some writers the moral relations of the soul with the Eternal 
 Nature of God are held to necessitate a corresponding perpetuity 
 of existence. The soul's relation to God as Moral Governor is 
 held to involve an eternal continuance in being, to imply and 
 compel an infinite destiny.* Such arguments may impose on the 
 imagination of devout metaphysicians, but they do not carry with 
 them any rational evidence. It might be answered, even out of 
 the Scripture, that while to be 'a God ' to Abraham doubtless 
 requires the eternal perpetuation of Abraham's life, the renuncia- 
 
 * ' As it is essentially bound up with a moral system which is undoubtedly 
 everlasting, we have no other conclusion open to us than that the soul so con- 
 stituted and related is destined for an immortal existence.' PEILL'S Immortality 
 Proved, p. 28. 
 
 ' We hold by this principle of a God-consciousness in man, a sense of the 
 Infinite, the Perfect, the Eternal, which stamps him with the awful character 
 of Immortality, for it could have no root, no permanent hold in a being whose 
 nature is merely mortal.' A. THOMPSON, Doctrine, the Old and the New, p. 22. 
 
72 SUPPOSED INDESTRUCTIBLENESS OF SUBSTANCE. 
 
 tion of the relationship of a ' God ' to the disobedient on the 
 part of the Almighty may involve the destruction of individual 
 being. Human destiny does not depend, we may be assured, on 
 any abstract ontological relation of the finite mind to the Infinite, 
 but on the moral relations between the two, as declared by the 
 Deity ; and to be cast off by God may be to perish. 
 
 A second argument much depended on by some writers is 
 derived from the general doctrine of the indestructibleness of 
 substance. All things that exist, it is said, continue in being. 
 Matter changes its form, but never passes out of existence. 
 There is a perpetual conservation of substance and of energy. 
 Nothing perishes. Nature makes known no example of anni- 
 hilation. Combinations alter, but substance endures. This, 
 which is demonstrably true of material things around us, must 
 be true also, it is thought, of things spiritual The whole analogy 
 of nature, so far as known, is opposed to the idea of the destruc- 
 tion of substance ; whence it is argued the soul will last for ever. 
 In the poetic language of John Smith, the Platonist of Cambridge, 
 ' Nothing dies that can discourse, that can reflect in perfect 
 circles.' Why should mind be less durable than matter? Why 
 should intellect vanish out of being when every gaseous atom is 
 naturally eternal ? It is to assail a fundamental law of nature to 
 presume on the destruction of mind. Nothing was made to 
 perish ; all substance was formed at first for an endless use under 
 varying forms. Therefore also mind was formed to live for ever. 
 
 Such reasonings may amuse a theologian's leisure, but it is 
 wonderful that they can satisfy as a basis of hope any serious 
 inquirer. That the soul of man is an uncompounded substance, 
 or indivisible essence, has never been proved, and cannot be 
 proved. All the evidence of comparative physiology rather 
 favours the opinion that it is a complex and therefore dissoluble 
 structure.* Of its essence we really know nothing. Of the de- 
 struction of its substance we know nothing. But as, when the 
 body dies, it dissolves, and is no more a living organism, so, if it 
 shall please God to break up the soul, its substance may or may 
 not remain, but its individual life will perish, and it shall be no 
 more a soul. That the soul of man is in its nature less dissoluble 
 than the ' souls ' of animals, to use the Biblical idiom, has never 
 * See Dr. A. BAIN on Mind and Body. 
 
tORTALITY OF THE EPHEMERA. 73 
 
 been shown nor is likely to be shown on scientific grounds alone 
 All modern observation tends to the belief in the unity and con- 
 tinuity of nature. The sharp distinction between vegetable and 
 animal is passing away. The sharp distinction between matter 
 and spirit is vanishing also. Meantime this argument for im- 
 mortality derived from the perpetuity of substance is equally valid 
 for the eternal duration of all life ; and no decisive anticipation 
 of immortality fof mankind as a substructure for religious faitb 
 can be deduced from a premiss which compels the conclusion of 
 an equal immortality for the life-force of zoophytes and infusoria,* 
 
 A third, and more promising argument has, in all ages, frffit 
 derived from the moral instincts of mankind There is in men 
 a widely developed instinctive expectation of survival in death 
 for judgment The good hope for, great souls desire, and bad 
 men often profoundly dread, a * something after death ; ' and this 
 instinctive expectation of continued life with a view to irtiMwn- 
 tion is thought to prove the soul's indestructible dotation, 
 
 Men in all ages, and in nearly all lands, have looked with note 
 or less of confidence lor a life to come. The tombs of the 
 ancient Egyptians testify to the established belief in a 
 
 * Ifr Frill ifnainn rtir M!rin null 5 nf 
 decided **-**FMy 'The 
 
 sett<xck^ and raponahk the 
 
 of the iBil body, HI ! f nliriMftj, dote Ms pr-'V-^"- 
 vpon the death of tie body/ /w^rtofifr /V/, p. 15, But 
 of the arguments om whidh flat denoat writer depends in proof of 
 
 on behalf of flie aamais to OK **<> 
 John Wedej is fawwu to 
 
 of fer greater weight ftea Me. Peffl, tie 
 ee to allow that their physical 
 
 m nua's death is of equal rahe for 
 
 Jifr^ 1 "* 
 
 of 
 of the whole amnl creation Seep. i6z. Is it 
 
74 SURVIVAL AN ANCIENT EXPECTATION. 
 
 of blessedness or misery. It was not simply a speculation of the 
 priesthood, but a fixed persuasion of the people. In every burial 
 scroll and on every mummy-case there is a picture of the Balance 
 of Justice in which the soul is weighed against the image of truth 
 in the presence of Osiris, the lord of the under-world. The 
 ancient literatures of India and China attest on every page the 
 prevalence of a similar faith in the soul's survival. In Greece 
 Socrates expressed in death the common hope of good men, that 
 they had an inheritance beyond the present life. Before Germany 
 was Christianised the faith in the soul's immortality was widely 
 diffused over barbaric Europe. In modern ages the irrepressible 
 instinct of survival practically triumphs in every country over the 
 opposition of scientific materialism. No stress of physiological 
 evidence on the structure and development of the brain, on the 
 relation of the human brain to that of animals, on the dependence 
 of thought on cerebral machinery, avails completely to silence the 
 ' oracle of God ' within the heart, which tells us that ' it* is 
 appointed unto men once to die, and after this, judgment* 
 
 No valid answer, I think, can be given to these arguments, if 
 they are taken only for what they are worth, as morally probable 
 evidence of survival or of revival ; but if we are to be governed 
 by accurate criticism it will be seen (i) that this probable evidence 
 of survival is far from carrying with it an equal probability of 
 eternal sut vival. The souls of men may survive for a time, and 
 then lapse one by one -into the universum, as four hundred 
 millions of Buddhists still believe ; or some may survive eternally, 
 and some may perish. The light of Nature can give no assurance 
 of everlasting duration for all souls. There may be a survival and 
 a transformation, as in the example of many physical organisms, 
 the last transformation to be followed by death. The butterfly 
 rises from the chrysalis, yet the butterfly is not eternal. And (2) 
 the probable evidence of survival arising from the moral con- 
 sciousness, though it may hold out to men of the better sort, like 
 Socrates, the prospect dimly seen, even of an eternal existence of 
 some kind, whether material or immaterial, throws no light what- 
 ever on the cause or quality of that survival or resurrection. The 
 fact may seem to be probable to the moral judgment, yet the 
 reason of the fact be completely concealed. Thus, in the ever 
 touching dialogue of the Phcedon, it is easy to distinguish between 
 
PHYSICAL ARGUMENTS FOR SURVIVAL. 75 
 
 the comparative solidity of the main hope of some future life, held 
 by the Athenian martyr, and the worthlessness of most of the 
 arguments for pre-existence and immortality by which that hope 
 was supported. 'Contradictories generate each other, therefore 
 death leads to life eternal.' Plato might think it worth while, as 
 a literary man, to spin such gossamer threads as these, but it was 
 not by them that Socrates anchored his soul in his dying hour. 
 No physical argument reaches further than to show that survival 
 of the living energy is barely possible. No argument derived 
 from the progressive nature of intellect offers solid ground until 
 we are assured of the purpose of a benevolent Deity, which is not 
 made very clearly known by the light of Nature. The apparent 
 dependence of intellect on the brain, the black and ugly fact of 
 death, and the ever-strengthening force of the argument for non- 
 survival derived from the side of comparative biology, leave but 
 a faint glimmer of hope to be drawn from some imaginary law of 
 ' everlasting progression.' 
 
 Nature ' red in tooth and claw ' may be thought to yield 
 small signs of any special regard for humanity as one species of 
 the million who consume the fruits of the earth. No, it is the 
 moral argument alone which carries weight, the probability of 
 retribution or salvation by a living God. Good men like Socrates 
 are drawn to believe, feebly or firmly, in an Eternal Justice which 
 will receive their souls beyond. But this shows that the onto- 
 logical arguments for the soul's immortality are practically value- 
 less. The fact of survival may be correctly appreciated; the 
 reason of it may be concealed, or concealed from many who have 
 rightly believed the fact. It may not result from the nature of 
 the soul as essentially immortal, but solely from the pleasure of 
 God, that souls of men, of the character of Socrates, will survive 
 in death, and live for ever. It may not be in any degree from the 
 nature of the soul, but from the purpose of God in judgment 
 (who, adding fresh opportunities of salvation to human life, 
 ' exacts the more,' and inflicts fresh penalties on the whole nature), 
 that wicked men are often led instinctively to apprehend a terrible 
 future. 
 
 Persons who accept the New Testament theology must more- 
 over allow that no man, however 'good,' can deserve an ever- 
 lasting life in happiness. All men by nature are sinful, and by 
 
76 SURVIVAL NOT ALWAYS IMMORTALITY. 
 
 their sins have deserved future punishment, of which conscience 
 warns the wicked in some degree. Therefore nature, if it teach 
 the immortality of the soul, might seem to teach for all sinners, 
 that is for all men, only an immortality in punishment. But 
 indeed nature, which is the voice of Law, teaches nothing of the 
 kind. So far as strict evidence is concerned, we are in the dark 
 under natural conditions as to the future of the soul, except that 
 judgment to come looms in the distance to some men's fears. 
 One philosopher dreams in one manner of its destiny, another in 
 a different manner. (See this shown with great effect in Joseph 
 Hallet's Observations on the Soul and its Immortality ^ an excellent 
 book, published in 1729.) 
 
 An affecting summary of the arguments for immortality under 
 natural light has been given by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his recent 
 work on Religion. They are in part cited here, because by many 
 Mr. Mill will probably be accounted an able expositor of what 
 nature, carefully reasoning, really teaches as to the probability of 
 survival, on most of the grounds on which theologians have 
 rested hitherto ; and it will be seen that his judgment is not on 
 the side of hope : 
 
 'The common arguments (for immortality) are the goodness 
 of God ; the improbability that He would ordain the annihilation 
 of His noblest and richest work, after the greater part of its few 
 years of life had been spent in the acquisition of faculties which 
 time is not allowed him to turn to fruit ; and the special impro- 
 bability that He would have implanted in us an instinctive desire 
 for eternal life and doomed that desire to complete disappoint- 
 ment. These might be arguments in a world the constitution of 
 which made it possible without contradiction to hold it for the 
 work of a Being at once omnipotent and benevolent. But they 
 are not arguments in a world like that in which we live. ... One 
 thing is quite certain in respect to God's government of the 
 world, that He either could not or would not grant to us every- 
 thing we wish. We wish for life, and He has granted some life. 
 That we wish, or some of us wish, for a boundless extent of life, 
 and that it is not granted, is no exception to the ordinary modes 
 of His government. Many a man would like to be a Croesus or 
 an Augustus Caesar, but has his wishes gratified only to the 
 moderate extent of a pound a week or the secretaryship of his 
 
OPINIONS OF WHATELY, PEROWNE, AND MILL. 77 
 
 trade union. There is, therefore, no assurance whatever of a life 
 after death on grounds of natural religion.' 
 
 To the same conclusion came the late Archbishop Whately, 
 who says : ' That the natural immortality of man's soul is dis- 
 coverable by reason may be denied on the ground that it has not 
 in fact been discovered yet. No arguments from reason, inde- 
 pendent of revelation, have been brought forward that amount to 
 a decisive proof that the soul must survive bodily death.' * 
 
 Dr. J. J. S. Perowne, after a careful summary of all the pro- 
 babilities for survival alleged by Dr. M'Cosh, M. Renan, and 
 Jules Simon, thus concludes : ' It cannot be said that such 
 arguments make a future life certain. They make a future life 
 not improbable, but they do not prove it. So far as they are 
 strong, it is because in a degree which we little suspect we bring 
 them in aid of our Christian faith ; but apart from that faith they 
 have no solid ground. Take away this faith, and these arguments 
 lose their force. You are left in a world of shadows. The 
 immortality of the soul is a phantom which eludes your eager 
 grasp. 'f 
 
 It offers too remarkable an analogy between the teaching of 
 Natural and Revealed Religion to allow of its postponement to a 
 future page in this work (as a strict method might demand), that 
 the Scripture, regarded as the multifarious record of divine move- 
 ments for man's salvation, speaks as little as Mr. John Stuart 
 Mill, or any one else who utters the language of reason, of the 
 abstract or essential Immortality of the Soul. Of the survival of 
 souls in a Sheol, or Hades, it seems to speak often ; of the actual 
 eternal survival of the saved it also often speaks; but it never 
 once places the eternal hope of mankind on the abstract dogma 
 of the Immortality of the Soul, or declares that Man will live for 
 ever because he is naturally Immortal. 
 
 That the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul is never once 
 explicitly delivered throughout the whole range of the Jewish and 
 Christian Scriptures is a fact of which every reader may satisfy 
 himself by examination ; and it is a fact which long ago his 
 drawn the attention of thoughtful and exact inquirers. 
 
 If the doctrine be true that the spirit of man is a deathless 
 
 * Archbishop Whately on Future Life, p. 17. 
 f Hulsean Lectures on Immortality, 1868, p. 31. 
 
78 THE IMMORTALITY OF TtiE SOUL NOT TA UGHT 
 
 intelligence, a power destined by its God-imposed nature to 
 endure as long as the NECESSARY BEING, we might surely have 
 expected to find at least some few traces of this fundamental 
 truth in the ages which were illustrated by direct communication 
 with heaven. Neither men nor languages were so differently 
 formed in antiquity as to necessitate a steadfast neglect of every 
 verbal reference to an idea which is alleged to lie at the basis of 
 the system of Redemption ; and one of transcendent importance 
 in every aspect of the case, as the zeal of its modern upholders 
 sufficiently testifies. If Redemption, and the Incarnation of the 
 Deity which gave it its force, were ' wasted ' unless man were an 
 immortal, and the object were to redeem him from endless misery, 
 the idea of Immortality would have occurred at least as often as 
 the idea of Redemption. In every other instance we obtain from 
 the Prophets and Apostles clear and frequent expressions of the 
 doctrines which they were commissioned to deliver ; even of those 
 which unaided reason was able to discover, as the existence of 
 God and the difference between good and evil. But in this 
 instance nearly a hundred writers have by some astonishing 
 fatality omitted, with one consent, all reference to the Immor- 
 tality of the Soul ; no sentence of the Bible containing that brief 
 declaration ' from God,' or even a passing reference, which would 
 have set the controversy for ever at rest. In our own times 
 scarcely a religious work issues from the press addressed to sinful 
 men, scarcely is a public exhortation directed to them, without a 
 distinct exhibition of the doctrine of Immortality, of deathless 
 being in the nature of man, as the basis of the whole theological 
 superstructure. Now, how shall we explain the remarkable fact 
 that neither Apostles nor Prophets have ever once employed this 
 argument in dealing with the wicked ' You have immortal souls, 
 and must live for ever in joy or woe, therefore repent ! ' an 
 argument of almost irresistible force, if it be true ? How, other- 
 wise than by concluding that this was not their philosophy, that 
 this doctrine formed no part of the ' wisdom of God,' and that 
 they were withheld from proposing it to the world by Him who 
 has declared that the eternal life of the righteous is the gift of 
 His grace, and that ' all the wicked He will destroy ' ? We are 
 taught, in certain cases, to argue confidently from the silence of 
 the Scriptures ; and since, as in the case of the priesthood of 
 
IN THE BIBLE AS A GENERAL TRUTH. 79 
 
 Judah (Heb. vii. 14), the Bible has 'spoken nothing' in any of 
 its numerous books, during the fifteen centuries of its composition, 
 concerning man's natural or necessary immortality, one gathers 
 courage to ask for the proofs of so important a doctrine.* 
 
 An eminent writer tells us, indeed, that 'this is an old and 
 futile argument. The word Trinity never occurs once in Scrip- 
 ture, nor Providence. Are both, therefore, to be denied? Was 
 there no death under the old economy, or no everlasting life for 
 the holy, for angels, for the blessed God ? The complete fact is 
 all in favour of the common view : men are said to be mortal, but 
 mortal or mortality is never applied in either Testament to soul 
 or spirit.' But this is to evade the argument. In every modern 
 sermon, prayer, and hymn, you hear of ' immortal souls,' and 
 every modern address to men is founded on a declaration of their 
 immortality ; it is not so in any one of the many books ivhich com- 
 pose the Bible. And not only is the word not used, or any equi- 
 valent in Hebrew or Greek, but no single expression of Scripture 
 can be pointed out in which man's natural immortality is affirmed 
 directly or indirectly. The argument is, that if the doctrine were 
 true and important, it would not be left to divines to teach us 
 that we are by nature immortal, any more than it has been left to 
 them to teach us the doctrine of the plurality of Persons in the 
 Godhead, or of God's Providence ; but it would be found every- 
 where in Scripture in one form of speech or another, that all 
 men shall live for ever. 
 
 It may nevertheless be asked with reason : ' How is it that a 
 doctrine which, according to you, is destitute of solid foundation 
 in ontological fact, and which is not once explicitly acknowledged 
 in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, has nevertheless taken 
 a hold on the mind of the world in ancient and modern times so 
 firm that the denial of it, even by conscientious inquirers, offers a 
 ^erious shock to the religious consciousness of the age ? ' 
 
 The answer to this question leads to the consideration of a 
 remarkable portion of the method of the divine government. The 
 practical work of man's world is carried forward for the most part 
 
 * The silence of Scripture on man's natural Immortality is treated with 
 great ability by the lamented PROFESSOR HUDSON, of Cambridge, U. S. 
 America, in his works on Debt and Grace in relation to a Future Life and 
 Christ our Life. Kellaway and Co., Warwick Lane, London. 
 
So INTERIM BELIEFS. 
 
 under imperfect conceptions of the material system, and the prac- 
 tical work of the moral world has been carried forward under 
 equally unscientific conditions. Until quite recently men laboured 
 and navigated under a false conviction that the earth was a plane, 
 and stationary in the centre, while the sun, moon, and stars were 
 whirled round it by a daily revolution of the sky. It is an advan- 
 tage to know the truth of the Newtonian astronomy ; but much 
 sound work was done by mankind under an unshaken conviction 
 of the truth of the Ptolemaic theory. In the 1 same manner if 
 an erroneous psychology and theology have for ages dominated 
 over the western world, as over the eastern, even under such un- 
 favourable conditions it has been possible to answer the chief 
 ends of being in a life devoted to the service of God. The shock 
 occasioned by hearing that there is no reason to place our hope 
 of eternal life on the basis of the soul's immortality, but on the pro- 
 mise of the grace of God, is, after all, not greater than was the 
 shock of learning, as Europe two hundred years since was com- 
 pelled to learn, that the antipodes existed, that the earth was a 
 rapidly moving globe, and that it revolved once a year round the 
 central sun. In the ages which precede the popular establish- 
 ment of physical, intellectual, and psychological truth there are 
 interim beliefs which serve well enough the purposes of practical 
 life, although attended with many limitations and disadvantages-. 
 There is an elementary revelation of half truth to the senses, and 
 a subsequent revelation of scientific truth to the soul. 
 
 Such an interim belief may have been that on the immor- 
 tality of the spirit. It is, as we hold, when taken in the absolute 
 sense, an error in philosophy and theology ; but since it carried 
 with it the belief of retribution it has served the ends of moral 
 probation, by. extending the views of men to another state of 
 being, and by carrying the hopes of good men forward into 
 eternity. As Mr. Heard strongly puts it in his chapter on the^ 
 'Immortality of the Psyche':* 'The mistake of the Greek 
 thinkers was the most natural one in the world ; so natural that 
 they are to be excused, nay, honoured, for holding it. But for us 
 to repeat the error is to betray wilful prejudice. The one hypo- 
 thesis was as good as the other as a provisional theory to account 
 for the facts of the case. Without these hypotheses or landing- 
 * The Tripartite Nature of Man, p. 230-1. 
 
CHRISTENDOM RELAPSED INTO HEATHENISM, Si 
 
 places, the heights of discovery would never have been scale$ 
 to this day. But when that which is perfect is come, that which 
 is in part is to be done away. So with philosophic theories ojf 
 existence after death. Till life and immortality had been brought 
 to light by the gospel, it would have been reasonable to argue, as 
 the philosophers did, that the soul does not die because it cannot 
 die. As there was no external evidence of existence after death, 
 they were obliged to fall back on internal. The immortality of 
 the soul was the hypothesis which accounted very plausibly for 
 the contradiction between man's inner aspirations and the humili- 
 ating fact of his early and untimely death. But the resurrection 
 of Christ as the first-fruits of the dead is a fact in these moral 
 speculations which is irreconcilable with all previous hypotheses. 
 Either man is non-mortal because he is immortal ; or he is non- 
 mortal because the hour is coming in which " all that are in the 
 graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear 
 shall live." Those who embrace the latter doctrine as the re- 
 vealed truth of God may well abandon the interim hypotheses of 
 a darker time.' 
 
 That Christendom should have fallen back upon heathenish 
 speculations, and returned to the ; beggarly elements ' of Asiatic and 
 Athenian philosophy as the basis of hope, is consonant with other 
 parallel portions of the history of European opinion. Europe 
 sentenced herself to fifteen hundred years of priestcraft and re- 
 stored paganism, through forgetting the lessons of primitive 
 Christianity.* The Reformation has vindicated one half of the 
 original divine revelation against the errors of the middle ages. 
 It may seem incredible to many that a considerable portion should 
 remain still to be rescued from the superincumbent accumulations 
 of pagan and mediaeval thought. Yet wisely does Lord Bacon warn 
 the modern world : ' Another error,' says he, ' is a conceit that of 
 former opinions or sects, after variety and examination, the best 
 hath still prevailed, and suppressed the rest ; so as if a man should 
 undertake the labour of a new search, he were but like to light 
 upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by rejection brought into 
 oblivion ; as if the multitude, or the wisest for the multitude's 
 sake, were not ready to give passage rather to that which is 
 
 * See DRAPER'S History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. 
 
 6 
 
82 LORD BACON ON TIME. 
 
 popular and superficial than to that which is substantial and pro- 
 found. For the truth is, that Time seemeth to be of the nature 
 of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light 
 or blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and 
 solid.'* I must ask an indulgent application of this hypothesis to 
 explain the facts, at least until the reader has considered the 
 arguments of the following pages. 
 
 * BACON'S Advancement of Learning. 
 
BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT DOCTRINE ON LIFE AND 
 DEA TH. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN SCRIPTURE OF THE ORIGINAL 
 CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 
 
 * The notion of the separate existence of the soul has so incorporated itself 
 with Christian theology, that we are apt at this day to regard a belief in it as 
 essential to orthodox doctrine. I cannot, however, help viewing this popular 
 belief as a remnant of scholasticism. I feel assured that the truth of the resur- 
 rection does not rest on such an assumption. What our Lord says, in answer 
 to Martha's declaration, "I know that he shall rise again," when He pro- 
 claims Himself the Resurrection and the Life, is to this point. The "jews then 
 entertained a philosophical belief of a future state. Our Lord tacitly reproves 
 an assurance on such grounds by His strong reference to Himself: "/am the 
 Resurrection and the Life : whosoever believetk in me, shall live, though he 
 die."' BP. HAMPDEN, Bampton Lectures, p. 310. 
 
 WE have now reached that stage in this argument where it is 
 necessary to commence an examination of the teaching of the 
 Bible. This must be undertaken by us apart from any traditional 
 theory on its verbal inspiration, for Holy Scripture loses rather 
 than gains in authority over men's minds by the enforcement of a 
 uniform church-doctrine respecting the mode of the origination of 
 its various books. 
 
 The earlier chapters in Genesis are thought to bear marks of 
 being a compilation from earlier documents, and carry with them 
 admirable evidence of special adaptation to the limited intelligence 
 of an infant nation. The less men know, the less they can be 
 taught. A scientific statement of the genesis of the Earth and 
 Man would have produced more confusion in Hebrew thought 
 than it cleared away. There is a physical revelation made by 
 God to the senses, which is neither infallible nor complete, which 
 requires to be corrected by science, and the vision of the inner 
 eye yet which is useful, and adapted to the ends of common life. 
 Thus nature presents the sun and moon of the same size and 
 
86 THE PENTATEUCH FOR THE WORLD'S INFANCY. 
 
 distance, and alike moving in the sky. Yet we do not herein 
 impute to the Deity unveracity, knowing well that the false im- 
 pression depends on the limitations of sense and the laws of per- 
 spective, while it answers the practical purposes of human existence 
 sufficiently well. An analogous revelation in religion was of old 
 consigned to the patriarchs, including a cosmogony and other 
 monuments, which received their form rather from the limitations 
 of man than from the fulness of God. Moses wrote truth on 
 divinity in a fashion suitable to his times, but his was the un- 
 scientific eye, the unscientific voice. To see ' God's back-parts ' 
 was the vision vouchsafed to him. He was sent to teach the 
 world that which would not do, rather than to propose a per- 
 manent theory either in physics or morals. 'The law made 
 nothing perfect.' 
 
 The books of Moses were designed for the Church in its child- 
 hood. Partly 'because of the hardness (blindness) of their 
 hearts,' Moses was permitted to write many things imperfectly 
 besides the old law of divorce. Astronomy, geology, ethnology, 
 natural history, were written for the times, and no other mode of 
 writing them could have profited the readers. It was sufficient 
 that there should be in every case a certain substratum of fact, 
 and such fact we doubt not underlies even that first chapter 
 which describes the latest act of God in the production of new 
 organisms on earth. At the point where the world's human his- 
 tory joins on to the past, it was inevitable that ' clouds and dark- 
 ness' should rest on the beginning of the story ; and the intellectual 
 condition of the learner dictated in that early age the law which 
 excludes an excess of light from the eye feebly opening on the 
 universe. 
 
 The modern objections to the book of Genesis appear to be for 
 the most part as futile as are many of its more slavish defences. 
 The withholding of truth is not deception ; knowledge is deter- 
 mined by faculty and experience. Eyesight first then science. 
 The father speaks to his little sons in such terms as they can 
 understand, and are likely to profit by. When they become men 
 it will be time to 'put away childish things.' Moses was the 
 instructor of the world's infancy; such teaching as his was the 
 only possible training for the time then present, with a view to the 
 future. To ask for science at his hands, or even for strict con- 
 
THE ADAM OF MOSES A PROBABLE BEING. 87 
 
 formity to all the facts, is to forget that darkness is necessarily the 
 swaddling-band of mind awakening from nothingness. 
 
 From the noble poem of Genesis, embodying the general idea 
 of Creation by an Eternal Mind, and probably the fact of a recent 
 local action in six days, he passes on to the still mysterious ground 
 of primeval history. After carefully studying the mythical theories, 
 there is no valid reason known to the writer why we should not 
 accept the history of Adam and Eve as a true narrative. It is not 
 necessary to deny that there may have been previous human races 
 upon the earth, as there had been previous animal races. As- 
 suredly science determines nothing which forbids the belief that 
 existing mankind is of recent origin, or that its introduction was 
 accompanied by a fresh creation of animal life in some depart- 
 ments of nature. There is nothing in the narrative of man's 
 creation which throws discredit on its truth. If man sprang 
 directly from the hand of the Infinite Being (at least a more in- 
 telligible hypothesis than that he blindly forced his way upward 
 from the brutes, as the brutes originally forced theirs upwards from 
 an abyss of dead atoms), his first stage in life must have been 
 passed in a supernatural scene. Some persons seem to consider 
 that the first chapter of human history ought, in order to be 
 credible, to resemble the last. Such a narrative, however, as that 
 of Genesis is far more credible, on the hypothesis of God's action in 
 creation, than would be an elementary history based on any like- 
 ness in man's earliest experience to a chapter in subsequent 
 savage or highly civilised life. The supernatural lustre that shines 
 over Eden, so far from offering an obstacle to rational belief, is a 
 spiritual attestation to its truth. 
 
 ' Trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
 From God who is our Home ; ' 
 
 and the credit, which the subjective significance of the narrative 
 describing the earliest experience of man as a trial of moral 
 subjection to the Eternal Wisdom wins for it from considerate 
 readers, is supported by all subsequent divine revelations. The 
 belief or disbelief in a God working in nature is a potent element 
 in the determination of scientific opinion. 
 
 It is beyond question that the fabric of Christian theology 
 assumes the truth of this narrative as the foundation of the divine 
 
88 CHRISTIANITY BASED ON GENESIS. 
 
 dealings with men. Christ very distinctly affirms in His teaching 
 the murder of mankind by the Fiend. It is equally evident that 
 the apostles of Christ make this narrative, as in S. Paul's great 
 epistle to the Romans (ch. v. 12-20), the foundation of their 
 system, whether true or false. Redemption has for its object in 
 part to save men from the results of the sin of Adam ; and his 
 fall, or ' death,' is referred to as established by the book of 
 Genesis. Thus the complex evidence of Christianity, miraculous, 
 prophetic, internal, is brought to bear retrospectively upon the 
 credit of this early narrative, and verifies it.* 
 
 We purpose to treat it, then, notwithstanding the modern 
 assumption of its mythical character, as a narrative of truth, which 
 has received the sanction of Christ and His Apostles, and is of 
 equal value with the gospel history, itself so abnormal. It is 
 needless to add that under this old-fashioned view it assumes a 
 momentous aspect, as the starting-point in the method of the 
 divine government of the earth, for it is only as we understand 
 rightly the primary condition of man that we can understand the 
 ruin wrought by the powers of evil, or the redemption wrought by 
 Incarnate Love.f 
 
 We proceed, then, to examine the Mosaic history. 
 
 It introduces Man upon the earth in the character of the king 
 of the world, made immediately by God's hand in God's image. 
 
 * And God said, Let us make man in our imagine, after our likeness ; and 
 let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
 and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing. So God created man in His 
 
 * In the preceding paragraphs I do not pretend to argue the case of the 
 truth of the narrative in Genesis. It is assumed, and these pages are not 
 addressed primarily to those who deny the authenticity and truth of the Penta- 
 teuch. My own conviction rests (i) on a persuasion of the reality of Christ's 
 Divine Character and Miracles, and the consequent truth of His teaching that 
 teaching being based on the reality of the Mosaic narrative ; and (2) on the 
 internal evidence of divine revelation regarded as a coherent whole, which 
 lends confirmation to the earliest portions by showing their organic relations 
 with those that follow. This is, I think, the sufficient answer to Mr. Draper's 
 too superficial assertions on thesubject in his recent book on the Conflict bctiwn 
 Religion and Science ; but men's views of what is ' sufficient ' in argument 
 differ with their spiritual states. 
 
 f See this drawn out in a passage from Athanasius on the Incarnation, cited 
 in Chapter xxvi. 
 
MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF MAN'S CREATION. 89 
 
 own image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He 
 them' (Gen. i. 26, 27). 
 
 The second narrative in Genesis thus resumes ' the wondrous 
 tale/ 
 
 ' And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul. And the 
 Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ; and there He put the man 
 whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow 
 every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food : the Tree of Life also 
 in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ' 
 (Gen. ii. 7-9). 
 
 ' And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to 
 dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of 
 every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the Tree of the Know- 
 ledge of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou 
 eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ' (Gen. ii. 15-17). 
 
 In attempting to fix the ideas designed by this narrative it is 
 obviously just to insist that the main drift of Moses is such as 
 would be apprehended by an Israelitish reader of the book of 
 Genesis when it was first published in the wilderness. 
 
 1. The first observation suggested by the terms of the history is 
 that, according to Moses, man was not formed within the precincts 
 of Paradise, where grew the Tree of Life ; but was created from 
 the dust, of the ground in the territory outside it, where animal 
 life abounded, and where, as we now learn from fossil geology, 
 death had reigned over all organised existence from the beginning 
 of the creation. ' The Lord God took the man whom He had 
 formed, and put him in the garden of Eden ' (ii. 15).* This 
 circumstance seems to point to the conclusion that if the creature 
 so made enjoyed loftier prospects than those of the animals, to 
 whose organisation his own bore so strong a resemblance, this was 
 not from the original constitution of his nature as eternal, but 
 from superadditions of grace bestowed on a perishable being. 
 
 2. The language in which the creation of man is described is 
 such as to fix with certainty the intention of the writer. ' God 
 formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living sour (ii. 7). 
 
 * The rabbins have a remarkable myth to the effect that man was formed in 
 the deep places of the earth, 'made in secret,' and then, at the divine word, 
 was borne into life by the Great Mother. 
 
90 MAN BECAME A LIVING SOUL. 
 
 The notion has prevailed that the design of the sacred writer here 
 is to teach that when the body was formed of the dust, a soul was 
 ' breathed into it ' by the direct inspiration of God, which was of 
 the immortal nature of the Creator Himself, and could never die. 
 There is nothing more certain in criticism than that this is pre- 
 cisely the reverse of the doctrine intended to be conveyed by 
 Moses. 
 
 First of all, the animation of man by the breath of God proves 
 the immortality of his 'soul' no more than a similar asserted 
 animation of brutes proves the immortality of their 'soul.' 
 ' Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created, and Thou re- 
 newest the face of the earth. Thou takest away Thy Spirit, they 
 die, and return to their dust* (Psalm civ.). Neither does the 
 phrase ' man became a living soul ' convey the notion of his 
 receiving an 'ever-living spirit' but this and nothing more 
 that he became a ' living being or animal,' placed, so far as im- 
 mortality was concerned, but not in respect of the image of God, 
 on a level with other living creatures around him. The same 
 phrase, as descriptive of the lives of beasts, is employed by Moses 
 in describing the animals with whom ' God made a covenant ' 
 after the flood, 'fowl, cattle, and beast' (Gen. ix. 10).* The 
 same phrase is found in the Apocalypse (xvi. 3), to denote the 
 fishes that died in the sea.f 
 
 But we have the advantage of a special comment, fixing the 
 meaning of this phrase, from the pen of S. Paul himself. In the 
 fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, he speaks 
 of the burial and resurrection of a Christian in these terms : ' It 
 is sown a natural body, o-w/xa i/ar^i/coV; it is raised a spiritual 
 
 * n;n J$ Heb. nephesh hayah; Eng. V. ' creature that hath life ; ' Gr. 
 
 f ' Some of our readers may be surprised at our having translated nephesh 
 hayah by living animal. There are good interpreters who have maintained 
 that here is intimated the distinctive pre-eminence of man above the inferior 
 animals. But we should be acting unfaithfully if we were to affirm that the 
 doctrine of an immortal spirit is contained in this passage. The two words are 
 frequently conjoined in Hebrew, and the meaning of the compound phrase will 
 be apparent to the English reader when he knows that our version readers it, 
 in Gen. i. 20, creature that hath life, or each living crcattire ; and so in ch. ii. 
 19, ix. 12, 15, 16. This expression sets before us the organic life of the animal 
 frame.' Dr. J. PYE SMITH, in Kitto's Diet. Bible, article ADAM. 
 
S. PAUL ON A 'LIVING SOUL: 91 
 
 body, <ro>/x,a Tn/eu/xa-riKoi/. And so it is written, The first man 
 Adam was made a living soul, i/or^i/ worai/; the last Adam 
 was made a quickening, or life-giving, Spirit, Trvcfyia &OTTOIOVV. 
 .... The first man is of the earth earthy, XOIKOS, a man of 
 dust; the second man is the Lord from heaven' (xv. 44-47). 
 The apostle's argument is lost in the misleading English version. 
 The English reader must understand that the word translated 
 1 natural ' in ver. 46 (psuchicori), is an adjective formed from the 
 noun psuche, translated soul in the phrase * living-soul,' of the 
 Greek version of Genesis. It is as if our word soul stood for 
 animal, and we had such an adjective as soulical formed from it. 
 The comment of the apostle then becomes clear. ' There is 
 soulical or animal body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it 
 is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul or animal 
 (a phrase distinctly applied in the Scripture to the brutes) ; the 
 last Adam was made a life-giving Spirit. The first man was of 
 the earth, a man of dust; the second man is the Lord from 
 heaven.' 
 
 Here, then, we have the authority of S. Paul for deciding that 
 when Moses described the result of the animation of Adam by 
 the Divine Breath, so far from designing to teach that thereby an 
 immortal spirit was communicated to him, the object was to teach 
 exactly the contrary, that he became a ' living creature or animal? 
 neither possessed of eternal life in himself, nor capable of trans- 
 mitting it. And the phrase living soul is chosen, not to distinguish 
 him from the rest of the creation, but to mark his place as a 
 member of that animal world whose intellectual powers partake of 
 the perishableness of their material organisations. 
 
 In the same manner, the statement that God 'breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of life,' so far from being intended to indi- 
 cate the immortal perpetuity of his nature, is specially chosen to 
 mark his dependence on the atmosphere for his continued life. 
 The prophet Isaiah refers to this passage with manifest design of 
 marking man's present evanescence. 'Cease ye from man, 
 whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted 
 ofV (ii. 22.) 
 
 3. When, then, it is said that 'God made man in His own 
 Image,' we far exceed the intention of the book of Genesis, if we 
 affirm that this signifies that God made man absolutely immortal. 
 
92 MEANING OF MORTAL AND IMMORTAL. 
 
 There, is, however, a need to distinguish an absolute from a 
 conditional immortality. Just as the term mortal may be taken 
 to signify either capable of death, or certain to die, so immortal may 
 stand for designed to live for ever, or certain to live for ever. The 
 answer to the question, Was man at first made mortal or im- 
 mortal ? depends on the nieaning attached to the word. If mortal 
 means certain to die, then Adam was not created mortal ; if it 
 means capable of death in body and soul, he was mortal. If 
 immortal signifies designed to live for ever, then Adam was created 
 immortal. If it means certain to live for ever, then he was created 
 mortal. For the meaning of this venerable record plainly is that 
 man at first was placed on trial for continuous life to be secured 
 by obedience. If he obeyed, he should live on for ever. If he 
 transgressed, he should die, according to the law which reigns 
 over all other earthly organisms. 
 
 The ' image of God ' then is to be taken to signify his capacity 
 for understanding God and His works, his capacity for sove- 
 reignty, his moral uprightness, and his designed destiny to an 
 immortal life conditional on obedience. * God made him to be 
 i.e., that he might be the image of his own eternity ' as an 
 Apocryphal writer justly declares. 
 
 But this continuous life depended at present on an external 
 aliment. So long as Adam obeyed, and abstained from the tree 
 of Knowledge, he was permitted to take of the tree of Life, the 
 effect of which is declared in this narrative to be life eternal. 
 ' Now lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of Life, and 
 eat and live for ever, so He drove out the man.' 
 
 The account which is given by Moses of the constitution of 
 man at his creation differs exceedingly from that account of our 
 nature which is given by modern psychology, and hence the in- 
 veterate custom has arisen of compelling these primitive docu- 
 ments to speak a language foreign to their proper meaning. For 
 many ages the European world, in striking contrariety to the habit 
 of the Buddhist world, has maintained the inextinguishable and 
 eternal duration of the animating principle in our nature ; know- 
 ing of no other basis of hope for a future existence, because 
 rejecting the testimony of God that our 'eternal life is in His 
 Son.' Coming to the reading of the Mosaic account of the 
 
MAN MADE IN GOD'S IMAGE. 93 
 
 creation of man under such views, men have compelled the 
 narrative to speak a meaning contrary to its intention. 
 
 But of this belief there is no trace in this record. Had the 
 Mosaic idea of human nature been that of modern psychology, 
 that man consisted of a mortal body and an immortal soul, it is 
 inconceivable that it should not have appeared in an authoritative 
 account of the creation. Clearly Moses desired to say something 
 as to man's dignity, in respect of the nature bestowed on him, for 
 he speaks of the Divine Image ; and if deathlessness be his in- 
 alienable attribute, that was the place in which to declare it. But 
 neither there, nor elsewhere in the Bible, does Scripture confirm 
 this lofty opinion of the nature of man. God ' made man in His 
 own image,' and gave him ' dominion ' over all animals, but 
 the utmost said of him is that he became a ' living creature,' a 
 phrase frequently applied to the animal creation itself. 
 
 The reason of this silence as to deathlessness will become still 
 clearer if we consider the definition of humanity that prevails 
 through the Bible. According to modern conception, the body 
 is an inconsiderable fraction of our nature, mortal and corruptible. 
 It is the spirit which is the true man, the unseen and everlasting 
 personality. The body indeed scarcely deserves the name of 
 humanity ; it endures but for a moment. The soul is the Inhabi- 
 tant of Eternity, the ' great Coeval of God,' the coequal of holy 
 Angels in the possession of immortality. But in the biblical 
 account of man's creation this grandiose style of thought is reversed. 
 There this despised body is spoken of as the Man ; ' God formed 
 man from the dust of the ground ; ' and the whole being takes 
 his name, from the ground whence it sprang. He was called 
 Adam, from Adamah, the Earth or ground. His distinguishing 
 name is taken from that corporeal organisation which is supposed 
 by modern idealists to be little better than a transient appendage 
 of the spiritual humanity. And when he sinned, thereby incurring 
 the curse of death, the words attributed to the Creator are these, 
 ' Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return;' no mention 
 even being made of that immortal intelligence which is supposed 
 to constitute the veritable personality which had committed the 
 offence. 
 
 Now in this simple psychology of the Old Testament it is 
 noticeable that soul, or nephesh, which is attributed to man, is 
 
94 BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 also frequently attributed to the animals. There is indeed no 
 word descriptive of man's inner nature which is not also used to 
 describe that of the animals. If man possesses fc^jJJ a nephesh, 
 soul or life (as in Gen. ix. 5 ; * at the hand of every man's brother 
 will I require eth-nephesh, the life of man '), so do they : ' Ye 
 shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh, for the nepfiesh, the 
 soul or life of the flesh, is in the blood' (Lev. xvii. 14). 'Ye 
 shall not eat the nephesh, the life or soul, with the flesh ' (Deut. 
 xiii. 23). If man possesses a ruach, fl^H or D^H fl^H ' spirit of 
 life' (Gen. vi. 17), so in biblical phraseology do they. 'Who 
 knoweth the spirit of a beast that goeth downward?' 'They 
 have all one ritach" 1 (Eccl. Hi. 19, 21; Psalm civ. 29, 30 (Heb.). 
 If man possesses a neshamah, or spirit, so do they. ' All in 
 whose nostrils was the nishmath-ruach chajim, breath of the spirit 
 of life (which includes the animals, see ver. 21) died'* (Gen. vii. 
 22). The spirit which is in man is of a superior order, as 'the 
 candle of the Lord;' he has 'more wisdom than the beasts of 
 the field;' nevertheless he shares 'spirit' with all animated 
 natures, although they do not bear the ' image of God.' 
 
 The leading feature in the language of the Bible respecting 
 Man is that it agrees in an unexpected manner with the deduc- 
 tions of recent science in treating humanity as an integer. In the 
 language of Mr. Heard, 
 
 ' We have not yet reached to the point where we can say what the con- 
 nection between soul and body is ; but all advance is in the direction of a 
 fusion between physiology and pyschology, when we shall neither speak of the 
 body without the mind, nor of the mind without the body. When two gases 
 uniting in definite proportions combine into a new substance with distinct pro- 
 perties of its own, unlike those of the gases when separate, we call this tertinm 
 
 * Even so great a writer as Dr. Delitzsch seems to have been tempted by 
 the spirit of system, a system which has perhaps but slight foundation in the 
 inconstant terminology of Scripture, to declare that the brutes in the Bible are 
 not said to possess neshamah ; but the above-cited passage proves this statement 
 to be incorrect. Dr. Petavel cites the following passage from The Hebrew 
 National Tor 1867: 
 
 'The Midrash (Bereshith Rabba, chap, xii.) does certainly enumerate five 
 appellations of the human spirit met with in Scripture : but those alike desig- 
 nate the principle of life in man and in beast. For that spiritual essence which 
 exclusively is the portion of man, the Hebrew language affords no term.' i 
 Struggle for Eternal Life, p. 39. 
 
THE BODY ESSENTIAL TO HUMANITY. 95 
 
 quid by a name of its own. For all practical purposes Water is still an element. 
 It is not a fusion or a mixture as of water with wine, much less of one floating 
 on the other as of oil or water, but it is a union in which the very substances 
 themselves of oxygen and hydrogen, and not the phenomenon only, are absorbed 
 into a new substance with new and distinct phenomena of its own which we 
 call water. So in the union of mind and matter in the formation of man. Man 
 is not a mixture of mind and matter, much less an immortal mind in a mortal 
 body, but he is the identity of two distinct substances which lose their identity 
 in giving him his. Man is thus the true monad.' HEARD, Tripartite Nature \ 
 P- !35- 
 
 Throughout the Scripture the sacred writers, as if acting under 
 a superintending wisdom, have persistently spoken of this com- 
 plex humanity, and not of either of its component elements, as 
 the object of the Divine Government. Under this view the body 
 cannot be dispensed with either for judgment, or for reward. It 
 forms an essential element of man's nature ; and apart from its 
 destined union with that organism the animating spirit is not 
 spoken of as the veritable humanity.* 
 
 When God is represented as speaking of man, He always 
 describes him as 'dust and ashes,' or 'flesh and blood.' The 
 blood is said to be 'the life of man,' as of all flesh. When 
 Redemption is accomplished by the Incarnation, the Divine 
 LOGOS is said to have ' become flesh] to have taken on Him the 
 'likeness of sinful flesh,' and to have 'given His flesh for the 
 life of the world.' And when judgment is administered to both 
 good and bad, there is a resurrection, or reconstruction of the 
 body, at least in some of its elements, in order that men may be 
 rewarded according to their works. Although S. Paul explains, 
 by the image of a grain sown, and the ear that springs, that 
 
 * The Ante-Nicene Fathers are full to over-flowing of the assertion of this 
 principle that the soul is not man, and that the body is not man, but that 
 Man is the tertium quid resulting from their union. The whole catena of proof 
 will be found in the anonymous Defence of Dodwell, 1728, in a work called 
 The Holy Spirit the Author of Immortality. By a Presbyter of the Church 
 of England. Dr. Perowne, in his Hulsean lecture on Immortality, vigorously 
 enforces the same truth. Dr. Thorn of Liverpool holds, in his book on Soul 
 and Spirit, that the first man possessed an animal body and soul only, naturally 
 perishing together, and incapable of procreating an immortal progeny. The 
 immortal nature he attributes to the ' Lord from heaven, ' who confers the 
 spirit or irvevfjia., and impresses the likeness of His own eternity on the body 
 and the soul. See in this connection Mr. Dale's tenth Lecture, on the Head- 
 ship of Christ. Lectures on the Atonement, p. 401. 
 
96 BODY AND SOUL ONE MAN. 
 
 there is but a faint atomic relation between the present and 
 future bodies, he nevertheless insists that there is some relation 
 between them, as between the rotting grain and the springing ear. 
 One rises from the other. Thus too Christ says, ' All that are in 
 the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.' And 
 Christ's own resurrection was the revivification even of the body 
 which had died altered in form and attributes doubtless, but 
 still atomically identical. 
 
 Now such a view of human nature seems to leave no room for 
 the pseudo-philosophic doctrine of an Immortal Soul, which is the 
 true human type. The dissolution of the complex nature is the 
 death of the man, irrespectively of the destruction of its component 
 elements. When Christ died, He was, as a man, 'destroyed' 
 (Matt, xxvii.). The 'shedding of His blood' was the pouring 
 out of the ' life ' of the ' flesh,' which was the shrine of the God- 
 head. These views of Man's nature are adhered to with marvel- 
 lous tenacity throughout the Scripture, and they are such as to 
 commend its teaching to thoughtful biologists. 
 
 The Apostle Paul discusses the subject of the Resurrection of 
 the dead, as if the hope of humanity were bound up with that 
 supernatural consummation. The thought of the independent and 
 eternal perpetuity of the ' soul ' of unredeemed man appears never 
 to have glanced across his mind as affording any prospect of future 
 bliss or future being. He does not even allow that apart from 
 redemption effected by Christ's resurrection, there was any hope of 
 the temporary survival of souls; since the hades-state is, for 
 good and bad, one of the miraculous results of a new probation. 
 'If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your 
 sins. Then they also which have fallen asleep in Christ have 
 gone to nothing* dTrcoAorroj for thus he explains the term in the 
 following verse, ' If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we 
 are of all men most miserable.' What can be gathered from this 
 style of reasoning, except that S. Paul regarded the body of the 
 first Adam as being formally the man, that the animating principle 
 within us is not alone or formally a man, that without redemption 
 man would certainly go to nothing at death, and that if redemp- 
 tion is to be accomplished there must be a ne"w birth of spirit a 
 union of body and mind with Christ, and a resurrection from the 
 dead? 
 
DEATH IS DISSOLUTION. 97 
 
 If we have correctly interpreted the general sense of the biblical 
 doctrine on man's constitution, the true idea of death is the break- 
 ing up of the human integer. When the complex man is dissolved 
 he i$ dead, no matter what may become of the component elements 
 of his being ; just as water is put an end to, when the combining 
 oxygen and hydrogen are separated. And as water might be 
 destroyed in two ways, by simply separating its elements, leaving 
 them still to exist, or by annihilating those elements, just so man's 
 death might be brought about in two ways, by dividing the body 
 from the soul or animating spirit, leaving both of those elements 
 to exist in a different manner ; or, by putting them out of existence 
 altogether. A man may be thus said to be dead both by a 
 Pharisee and a Sadducee ; although the one would believe that the 
 animating principle had survived, and the other would believe that 
 it had perished. The former idea of death is set forth by Christ 
 in the words, ' Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
 die, it abideth single, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.' 
 In this case the death of the grain is its disintegration the break 
 ing up of the organisation, a process in which one portion survives 
 to gather around itself fresh materials in a veritable resurrection. 
 Such was His own death. The humanity was broken up, ' de- 
 stroyed/ and 'poured out its soul unto death,' but a divine 
 and spiritual energy remained, around which God built up again 
 the dissolved Humanity, and made that so restored God-man the 
 Life of the World/ 
 
 What shall become of the residuary elements of disintegrated 
 organisms clearly depends in each case upon their relation to 
 the general plan. In some instances each liberated fraction 
 immediately seeks fresh combinations. In others, the specialised 
 energy, as in the electric fishes, is transmuted into heat in the 
 ensuing decomposition. In others, one of the elements, as in 
 the flesh of beasts, becomes the aliment of living organisms. In 
 others, the disintegration leaves one of the remaining germs to 
 form, as in transformed insects, a new life, the same yet not the 
 same. In others, as in the seeds of plants, a portion of the dis- 
 solving organism remains to form the nucleus of a new plant or 
 tree, which perhaps gathers its requisite materials from the relics 
 of the former. In others, as in the case of animals, the ani- 
 mating principle either passes out of existence, or is absorbed, 
 
 7 
 
98 DISSOLUTION OF ORGANISMS. 
 
 according to Oersted, by some over-soul of Nature, or * returns 
 to God who gave it ; ' but in every case the destination of the 
 component parts, when their union is dissolved, is determined by 
 the will of God as to the future of the organism. This observa- 
 tion will be of value somewhat further on. In no case does the 
 subsequent disposition of the elements affect the reality of the 
 death of the integer. Its dissolution is its destruction. And 
 no temptation to play upon the word ' annihilation,' in its meta- 
 physical sense of abolition of substance, should turn the attention 
 away from the fact that thus all living things on earth are, one by 
 one> destroyed. 
 
99 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE DEATH THREATENED TO THE ANCES- 
 TORS OF MANKIND IN PARADISE AS THE PENALTY OF SIN. 
 
 ' "LIFE," as applied to the condition of the blest, is usually understood to 
 mean a "happy life." And that theirs will be a happy life, we are indeed 
 plainly taught ; but I do not think we are anywhere taught that the word 
 " life " does of itself necessarily imply happiness. If so, indeed, it would be a 
 mere tautology" to speak of a "happy life ; " and a contradiction to speak of a 
 "miserable life;" which we know is not the case, according to the usage of 
 any language. In all ages and countries, " life " has always been applied in 
 ordinary discourse to a wretched life no less properly than to a happy one. 
 If, therefore, we suppose the hearers of Jesus and His apostles to have under- 
 stood, as nearly as possible, the words employed in their ordinary sense, they 
 must naturally have conceived them to mean (if they were taught nothing to the 
 contrary), that the condemned were really and literally to be " destroyed" and 
 ceass to exist ; not that they were to continue for ever to exist in a state of 
 wretchedness.' ABP. WHATELY, Lectures on a Future State. 
 
 ' THE tree of knowledge of good and evil ' has exercised th e 
 curiosity of critics in every age ; but the most obvious account of 
 it appears to be, that it was a tree by touching or refraining from 
 which our first parents might demonstrate whether they would 
 or would not lead a life si faith in God. It would seem to have 
 been conveyed to them that the tasting of this tree would com- 
 municate to themselves that knowledge of good and evil which 
 now they were required to receive upon the authority of God.* 
 Simple, therefore, as the elements of the temptation were, all those 
 principles were involved which had been illustrated in the most 
 momentous trials of their descendants, the claims of Divine 
 Authority, and the rule of choice between the seductions of pride, 
 passion, or falsehood, and the all-obliging commandment of the 
 Supreme. 
 
 * Mr. Henry Rogers in the first edition of Greysoris Letters has an ingenious 
 chapter on the impossibility of testing Adam by the ' ten commandments. ' 
 
loo SWEDENBORGS DEFINITION OF THE CURSE. 
 
 The tree of life in the midst of the garden was plainly accessible 
 to Adam until the hour of his transgression ; for we read that 
 permission was granted to eat of every tree of the garden, with 
 the single exception of the tree of knowledge. The effect of the 
 tree of life seems to have been to repair the decays of nature, 
 and to prevent the approach of death ; for we read that after his 
 sin God said, ' Now, nS&^~|) lest he put forth (or as Swedenborg 
 rightly interprets, in order that he may not put forth) his hand, 
 and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ; '- 
 implying a strong negative, that having chosen the creature 
 rather than the Creator he should not possess that immortal life, 
 which, under the divine will, access to the tree of life would 
 have sealed to him in obedience. 
 
 It is unnecessary to discuss the questions, wherefore the gift of 
 abiding life was to be communicated through so extraordinary a 
 medium as a tree in a mortal world ; or whether, after a short 
 period of probation, Adam would have been made ' equal to the 
 angels,' and translated to heaven. It is of more importance to 
 learn the actual results of his probation. 
 
 We suppose, then, that from the simple account furnished in 
 Genesis, we are to understand that Adam was not created in the 
 possession of immortality either in his body or soul ; yet, also, 
 that he was not created under a definite sentence of death, as 
 was the rest of the creation around him, since the prospect of 
 ' living for ever ' by the help of the ' tree of life ' was open to 
 him upon the condition of obedience during his trial ; in other 
 words, the first man was not created immortal, but was placed 
 on probation in order to become so. Viewed as he was in him- 
 self, there was a noble creature, the offspring of God, endowed 
 with capacities for ruling over the world, and for holding com- 
 munion with Heaven ; but as to his origin, his foundation was in 
 the dust, and the image of the Creator was impressed upon a 
 nature, if a ' little lower than the angels,' still also no higher than 
 the animals as to unconditional immortality. His upright form 
 and * human face divine,' gave token of a spirit formed for in- 
 tercourse with the Eternal ; yet his feet rested on the same earth 
 which gave support to all the ' creeping things ' which it brought 
 forth, and, like the subjects of his dominion, ' his breath was ir\ 
 his nostrils.' 
 
ADAMMIDWA Y BETWEEN ANGELS AND ANIMALS. 101 
 
 Thus according to Moses, was Adam placed in Paradise ; mid- 
 way between the angels and the animals, on trial for everlasting 
 life ; midway between an existence which was as a shadow that 
 passeth away, and one, of which it should be beyond the powers 
 of any created mind to calculate or describe the duration. When 
 we attempt to conceive of the heights of blessedness which are 
 attainable in such a life, of that ' far more exceeding and eternal 
 weight of glory ' which would have been the reward of obedi- 
 ence ; and contrast with this the alternative of returning to the 
 dust to perish, what finite mind can appreciate fully the signifi- 
 cance of the trial of the first Man in the garden of Eden ? But 
 when, to such reflections upon this destiny, we add the considera- 
 tion, that in his hand were placed, perhaps, the lives of his count- 
 less descendants, language can give no utterance to the sense of 
 infinite loss involved in the conception of his failure. 
 
 These statements, however, are founded upon the assumption 
 of that which must be more particularly investigated, the literal 
 interpretation of the threatening held out to this first man on 
 his admission into Paradise : ' IN THE DAY THAT THOU EATEST 
 
 THEREOF, THOU SHALT SURELY DIE.' 
 
 A person who had not previously formed an acquaintance 
 with the commentaries of modern times would certainly be 
 astonished to learn that the threatening of death was explained 
 to signify something different from a literal loss of life, something 
 less and yet more than the utter destruction of Adam's nature 
 as a man. How would the earliest readers of Moses understand 
 it ? It can scarcely be thought very likely that the terms of 
 the menace would suggest, under all the circumstances, to an 
 ordinary reader of those Israelites for whom Moses wrote, any 
 other idea than that which we assume as the true one, that 
 the offender should endure the penalty of capital punishment, 
 and forfeit his life for his sin. 'By death,' says John Locke, 
 1 some men understand endless torments in hell fire ; but it 
 seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires 
 the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant 
 eternal life in misery. Can any one be supposed to intend, by 
 a law which says for felony thou shalt surely die not that he 
 should lose his life, but be kept alive in exquisite and per- 
 
102 ADAM'S IDEA OF DEATH. 
 
 petual torments ? And would any one think himself fairly 
 dealt with that was so used ? ' (Reasonableness of Christianity.) 
 There seems to be nothing in the language employed intended 
 to convey any other idea than that the punishment for trans- 
 gression was immediate destruction. There is no intimation of 
 a prolonged existence to be afterwards permitted, either in time 
 or eternity ; the threatening is brief, direct, decisive : 'In the 
 day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.' Since Adam 
 was not yet immortal, the signification could not be, as is some- 
 times supposed, that in the day of his sin he should ' become 
 mortal,' or capable of death (for that which is not yet immortal, 
 in the sense of incapable of death, must be in that sense mortal 
 already), and, therefore, it remains only to receive the terms in 
 their most obvious sense, ' In the day of thy transgression, thou 
 shalt be destroyed, shalt lose thy being as a Man.' 
 
 How would Adam have understood this threat for himself? 
 It will probably be admitted that the sense in which the first 
 man would have understood the threatening of death was the 
 true one; for it would be difficult to reconcile it with justice 
 or mercy in the Almighty, if He were imagined to deliver His 
 threatenings to a newly-created being, in enigmas which were 
 beyond the grasp of his faculties, and whose real meaning 
 ' surpassed in horror the apprehension of every intellect but 
 the Omniscient.' Now it would appear that unless Adam were 
 inspired with the knowledge of the comments of Augustinian 
 divines, or at least of some rhetorical and rare forms of speech 
 in the Greek poets, he could affix no other interpretation to the 
 word ' death ' than that to which he was accustomed, when he 
 employed it, in his short use of language beforehand, in relation 
 to the animal system around him. Life and death must have 
 been opposites to him, as to us ; and surely, in the awful crisis 
 of a world, when, if ever, clear terms should be used, we can 
 scarcely imagine that words would be employed in a curious 
 metaphorical sense, entirely opposed to their first signification. 
 With whatever facility, therefore, readers of modern times can 
 dismiss the original notion of death in the employment of 
 the term, and substitute that of endless misery to the exclusion 
 of the idea of destruction, we cannot impute the same extraor- 
 dinary process of thought to Adam, but must conclude that he 
 
ADAM'S IDEA OF DEATH. 103 
 
 would have understood the threatening to mean the dissolution 
 of his nature, the opposite of ' taking of the tree of life ' and 
 ' living for ever.' 
 
 And when we remember that in all probability Adam had then 
 no idea whatever of his ' soul,' as capable of a separate, existence, 
 apart from his body, but conceived of his being as one, we shall 
 find a still greater difficulty in supposing that he could have been 
 metaphysical enough to conclude that death signified death for 
 his body, and everlasting life in misery for that ' understanding 
 which was in his inward parts.' But if Adam could not ha\e 
 understood the threatening thus, without some special revelation 
 to enable him to do so, and if that revelation does not appear 
 in the record, it follows that theology has no right to make a 
 gratuitous supposition of its existence, but ought to interpret the 
 words in such a manner as to avoid a slander on the preventive 
 justice of Heaven. For if even the Chinese government considers 
 itself obliged to read to the people periodically the criminal code, 
 in order that they may know what to expect as its punishments, 
 it ill becomes us to impute to the Highest Tribunal a complete 
 concealment of the true meaning of that menace under which the 
 first man in Paradise commenced his probation. The primitive 
 sense of the threatening of death must surely go far to determine 
 its meaning afterwards. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the existence of these arguments, this 
 threatening is metaphorically understood in modern times. It 
 is alleged by innumerable divines, that whether Adam understood 
 the meaning or not, the menace of death conveyed the complex 
 notion of literal dissolution for his body, called temporal death, 
 and of everlasting existence in misery for his disembodied soul. 
 This latter portion of the curse is denominated spiritual and 
 eternal death, and is conceived to combine in itself the triple 
 notion of eternal existence, moral degradation, and consequent 
 misery in alienation from the Father of spirits. It was supposed 
 to follow from the immortality of the soul, as an appointment of 
 God. By these interpreters the expression, ' In the day thou 
 eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,' is taken to signify, not death 
 in the day of transgression, but only a liability to death of the 
 body at some future time ; so that the life of Adam being pro- 
 
104 THE DEATH THREATENED TO ADAM. 
 
 longed, and a race in his own image springing from him, that race 
 is born ' by nature children of wrath ; ' liable not only to death of 
 the body, but also to everlasting misery of the soul, or death ' in 
 all its senses.' 
 
 It will probably become evident to any one who devotes even a 
 few moments to the rationally careful study of this phrase, ' ever- 
 lasting misery,' (a phrase which may indeed convey but little to 
 a mind armed with a determination not to think of it, but which 
 confounds and almost paralyses the meditative spirit, ) that such 
 an interpretation of the term death ought not to be taken for 
 granted. The allegation of New Testament authority for it is of 
 little avail ; for those passages of the New Testament, which are 
 supposed to fix the metaphorical signification of the original curse, 
 have been themselves first interpreted by the rule of a theory 
 founded upon a perversion of these earliest statements of Scrip- 
 ture a theory based on the inadmissible assumption of the 
 immortality of the soul. And if neither reason nor Scripture 
 permit us to lay as a foundation that exalted conception of man's 
 spiritual part, the whole fabric of interpretations, reared afterwards 
 upon it, falls to the ground. 
 
 With a view to a determination of this question, let us now 
 observe, in reference to the ordinary belief, that the death 
 threatened to Adam included the curse of everlasting existence 
 in misery for his ' soul ' : 
 
 I. First, that our original authority utters not one syllable on 
 the subject. It is true that caution is needful in the use of any 
 argument drawn from the silence of an Old Testament writer, 
 especially in the earlier portions of the revelation. It may be 
 urged, that the second and third chapters of Genesis were the 
 brief statements of ' mysteries,' which succeeding revelations were 
 given to develop ; and that, therefore, the greater regard is due 
 to the larger inspired commentary of subsequent prophets, if such 
 exist. Yet, on the other hand, we cannot but observe that the 
 chief outlines of the Paradisiacal history have been generally 
 received in their plain, unvarnished sense; a valid argument in 
 favour of so understanding all its parts, and in bar of suggested 
 additions whether of poetry or prose, wherever the literal sense is 
 
THE DEATH THREATENED TO ADAM. 105 
 
 not forbidden by subsequent declarations, and does not contradict 
 the doctrine of redemption. 
 
 There is, besides, a wide difference between a veiled promise 
 and a veiled threatening. The former may be worthy of divine 
 wisdom and goodness ; the latter seems irreconcilable with divine 
 justice. The blessing of Christ in the Gospel might fitly be 
 promised under the figurative expression, that ' the seed of the 
 woman should crush the serpent's head ; ' but the curse of the 
 law, which called for the intervention of mercy, should surely 
 be expressed in all the length and breadth of its terribleness. 
 Can any ' honest and good heart ' (and let us remember that the 
 Maker of such men, according to Christ, has ' much more/ rather 
 than less, goodness Himself; Matt. vii. n) suppose, that in the 
 original threatening, a term would be employed which must 
 primarily suggest the idea of an infliction, in its literal sense 
 already sufficiently tremendous * Thou shalt die ! ' and yet, 
 that behind that screen there was concealed a deeper meaning, 
 which transcended the conception of all but the Infinite Intelli- 
 gence ? Is it credible that He who alone knew what an eternity 
 of misery involved, and who in after ages sent His prophets to 
 mourn, without any limit to their loud lamentations, over the 
 merely temporal calamities of His people, as may be seen in 
 the Hebrew books of Isaiah and Jeremiah would, in this first 
 fixing of the conditions of human probation, have failed to denote 
 as clearly the positive infliction of "suffering intended, as the priva- 
 tion which transgression required? And again, when the curse 
 had been incurred, is it to be believed, that a total silence would 
 be preserved by the Judge on that part of it, which was essentially 
 the curse, after all, and that the stress of the Divine Attention 
 would be directed to that bodily decease, as it is termed, which was, 
 when compared with the impending eternal misery of the spirit, 
 but as a grain of sand to the universe, or one point of space to 
 infinity ? 
 
 II. In addition to the foregoing consideration, the view which 
 it has been shown that Scripture takes of the nature of man is 
 opposed to this interpretation. It has been pointed out that, 
 according to the Bible, man is essentially a complex being, con- 
 sisting of body and soul, presenting his characteristic ' image ' in 
 the 'flesh.' It is this complex nature which the later dispensa- 
 
io6 THE DEATH THREATENED TO ADAM. 
 
 tions of Heaven regard, and which, therefore, we may presume, 
 the primeval dispensation regarded likewise. It follows from this, 
 that if death, threatened to the man, involved his everlasting 
 existence in misery, that menace could not have contemplated 
 the spirit alone ; for the spirit alone is not man. If the Ruler of 
 Heaven had intended an endless infliction of suffering upon the 
 Man, the curse would have demanded the associated body to share 
 in that suffering. The body would not have been permitted to 
 die. We are borne out in this statement by the fact that when 
 it is intended, in consequence of the abuse of a new probation, 
 to punish the wicked of mankind, it is declared that Divine power 
 will raise the bodies of the ' unjust ' from the grave to undergo the 
 infliction, of whatever nature that may be. But since it is rightly 
 admitted, even by the writers in question, that the original curse 
 contemplated no eternal infliction of pain upon the body of Adam, 
 but only its dissolution, we argue that it is an unwarrantable 
 imagination that the spirit alone was destined to endure an 
 eternity of suffering ; for why should the curse of the law take 
 an eternal effect of infliction upon one-half of his nature, when 
 both the promise and the curse of the gospel, or new system of 
 trial for recovery, are directed to the whole of it ? 
 
 III. Still further evidence that literal death, a loss of life for 
 the compound man, without eternal infliction upon the soul alone, 
 was the curse of the Adamic trial, occurs in the argument of the 
 fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. In that place, 
 summing up his previous reasonings on justification by Christ 
 alone, without the deeds of the law, S. Paul thus concludes, in 
 verses, 12-14: 'Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the 
 world, and DEATH by sin, even so DEATH passed upon all men, 
 for that all have sinned. (13. For before the law, sin was in the 
 world; but sin is not imputed where there is no law. 14. Never- 
 theless, DEATH reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that 
 had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who 
 is the figure of Him that is to come.)' In the verses included in 
 a parenthesis, viz., 13 and 14, it is plainly the object to show that 
 the statement in the preceding sentence, verse 1 2, was correct ; 
 to wit, that death entered into the world by the offence of one 
 man ; that by the offence of that one man, all had been con- 
 stituted sinners (as it is afterwards expressed), and rendered liable 
 
S. PAUL ON DEATH BY SIN. 107 
 
 to death. He therefore desires to prove that it was not the 
 entrance of the Sinaitic law which brought death, the penalty of 
 sin, into the world for the first time : since, says he, during 
 the period which elapsed before the giving of the law, from 
 Adam to Moses, men died : yes, and even those that had not 
 sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression ; by which it 
 is to be apprehended, notwithstanding the objections of some 
 critics, he means infants and young children for sin, he adds, is 
 not imputed where there is no law. Yet here sin was imputed, as 
 is evident from the penalty endured ; therefore there must have 
 been some law more ancient than the Mosaic reigning from Adam 
 to Moses, a law which consigned personally-sinless beings to 
 death, through reckoning to them the act of their ancestor in its 
 consequences. 
 
 Now the argument is as follows : In the fourteenth verse, when 
 S. Paul declares that death reigned from Adam to Moses, over the 
 personally innocent, it must be admitted that he intends no other 
 death than that which is so plainly described, a dissolution of the 
 humanity, without reference to a future eternal state of suffering 
 for the soul. Else, we shall find ourselves called upon to receive 
 the abominable doctrine that the souls of infants, children, idiots, 
 ' from Adam to Moses,' went to a state of everlasting suffering 
 after their natural death ; and that, as is specially pointed out, for 
 no fault of their own. But if this be an interpretation, repugnant 
 alike to the whole temper of revelation, and to the character of 
 God, it follows, by the rules of clear writing, that the term death 
 stands for the same idea in the twelfth verse, which introduces the 
 argument. It is inconceivable that the apostle has changed the 
 signification of the same word in the distance between two verses ; 
 for if that be the case here, we might on the same principle 
 conclude, that when he uses the term faith repeatedly in the 
 course of his reasonings, he as often changes the meaning of the 
 word in the same sentence, and thus introduces inextricable con- 
 fusion into his language. If the terms 'loss of health* were substi- 
 tuted for death throughout the passage, we should be surprised to 
 learn that those terms were intended to convey their plain and 
 obvious meaning in verse 14; but that in verse 12 they signified 
 a loss of reputation and property, and the transmission of blind- 
 ness to all his descendants. Yet this alteration of meaning would 
 
loS ON DEATH BY SIN. 
 
 be as nothing compared with that supposed in two reputed senses 
 of ' death : ' dissolution, and interminable suffering in hell. If 
 this observation be admitted as just and it must be a strange 
 exigency which requires the abandonment of this principle of 
 interpretation, in a passage where no variation in the sense of 
 the term is indicated by any of the usual marks of emphasis or 
 allusion or explanation then it follows, that the death which Adam 
 brought into the world, as the wages of sin, was not an immor- 
 tality in misery, after natural dissolution, but that literal dissolu- 
 tion of the compound nature of body and soul itself, a definition 
 which will embrace the cases both of Adam and of his innocent 
 infantile posterity. 
 
 From these considerations, then, we conclude that the original 
 threatening, ' In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
 die,' was intended to signify a literal, immediate, and final disso- 
 lution of the nature of Adam as a man ; his death, in the ordinary 
 sense of the word, without any reference whatever to the state, or 
 even to the survival, of the spirit beyond.* Adam was placed in 
 Paradise, a wonderful combination of earth and soul; allied to 
 the animals, but a little lower than the angels, and endowed with 
 the image of God ; on probation, to ' see what was in his heart ; ' 
 whether by obedience he would rise to the rank of immortals, and 
 4 never die;' or whether, by disobedience, he would forfeit for 
 himself, and for his posterity, the possession of that prospect of 
 eternal glory which was visible from the heights of his glorious 
 abode in the garden of Eden. This death was ' the curse of the 
 law ; ' not merely of the Mosaic law, but of that law under which 
 Adam was created at first, and of which the thunders of Sinai 
 were a second manifestation. In the language of S. Paul, ' The 
 letter killeth ' (2 Cor. iii. 6). 
 
 This seems, however, to be the fitting place to enter a caveat 
 against a misconception which experience shows to exert a mis- 
 leading influence in this discussion : we refer to the definitions of 
 Death and Life. The advocates of the theology which is called 
 in question in these pages have sometimes shown an anxiety to 
 fasten upon their opponents a definition of death which shall 
 
 * In this sense the same words are used by the Almighty in threatening 
 Abimelech (Gen. xx. 7). 
 
SIGNIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 109 
 
 restrict its meaning sharply to annihilation of substance, and con- 
 versely to restrict the definition of eternal life to the naked idea 
 of eternal conscious existence ; knowing well that under such con- 
 ditions of controversy a temporary verbal advantage is assured. 
 For nothing can be clearer than that these terms, when used respect- 
 ing the destiny of a moral being under judgment, carry with them 
 throughout the Scripture certain secondary associations of thought 
 and feeling, the exclusion of which from view will lead to grave 
 error, error just as pernicious as that which arises from an 
 exaggeration of these secondary associations into the place of the 
 primary radical signification of the terms. Life in the Scripture, 
 used in relation to the gift of eternal life, undoubtedly carries 
 with it associations of holy spiritual blessedness ; and death when 
 spoken of as the penal destiny of the wicked undoubtedly carries 
 with it in all cases associations of sin and suffering as its conse- 
 quence, suffering leading to destruction. The measure of that 
 suffering and even its nature will depend on the death which the 
 sinner dies. If it be like that of Adam under the original law, a 
 death incurred through sore temptation, the case is distinct from 
 that second death of obstinately impenitent sinners, who have in- 
 curred ' many stripes ' by rejecting the covenant of Divine mercy. 
 This observation is required at the outset of the argument, inas- 
 much as writers of ability have attempted to nullify its general 
 strength by insisting on the adoption of definitions to which it is 
 impossible to yield assent. 
 
 Not less is it necessary to guard against the recurrence of diffi- 
 culties springing from the attempt of some ingenious writers to 
 fasten on us a metaphysical definition of death as an annihilation of 
 substance. Of such annihilation in its strict sense we know nothing. 
 The death of which we speak, is both in the first and the second 
 death the destruction of the life of Humanity, by dissolution. What 
 becomes of the elements which composed the Integer depends on 
 circumstances. Where no reconstitution of the complex organism 
 is designed, we suppose the destination of the spiritual element is 
 similar to that of the animating principle in the death of animals. 
 Where such reconstitution is designed, we suppose the spirit is pre- 
 served with a view to the resurrection of the Man. Those, whose 
 philosophy requires them to maintain, contrary to their practice in 
 relation to the animals, that the veritable humanity is found in 
 
i io DR. ANGUS'S DILEMMA. 
 
 the mind alone which survives in death, seem unable even to 
 apprehend an argument in which the humanity is the living 
 organism, including body and soul. When that complex organism 
 is dissolved the Man is no more. Those who for any reason do 
 not assent to this proposition are at war not only with us, but, 
 may we not add, with true science and philosophy, the whole 
 body of Scripture, and the best Christian antiquity. 
 
 The statement that the threatening of death as a penal infliction 
 must be taken in the complex sense of suffering ending in de- 
 struction, has been opposed in the manner following. It has 
 been said : * * The destruction spoken of in the future cannot 
 mean annihilation. Most of those who hold ultimate annihila- 
 tion, hold that it is preceded by years or ages of suffering. 
 Either these ages of suffering are the destruction, or they are not. 
 If they are, then clearly destruction is consistent with continued 
 life. If they are not the destruction but only precede it then the 
 destruction is not inflicted when Christ comes, as it is said to be, 
 and the threatened destruction which is always spoken of as a 
 punishment, is a blessing, not a curse. It is either suffering or a 
 most welcome release ! From one or other of these conclusions 
 we see no escape/ 
 
 Substituting in this extract the words destruction of life for 
 annihilation, and disclaiming the belief that 'ages' of suffering 
 are to precede that destruction, it is easy to unlock this dilemma, 
 by attending to the language used in the Bible respecting the 
 Death of Christ. All that is comprehended under that designa- 
 tion, is sometimes spoken of as 'the sufferings of Christ,' 
 sometimes simply as His ' death,' or the ' laying down of His 
 life.' Suppose we apply the "above-cited principle of criticism to 
 these phrases. ' Either those dreadful sufferings precedent were 
 the death of Christ, or they were not. If they were, then the 
 death of Christ was not dissolution, but was consistent with His 
 continued life as a man, and He never died in the sense in which 
 the evangelists say that He did. If those sufferings were not the 
 death, but only preceded it, then the Saviour was not ' ' dying " 
 during the passion, but only at a single moment between the two 
 evenings at the feast of the passover ; and, moreover, the death 
 of Christ, which is always spoken of as a curse, was a blessing, 
 * See this argument in Dr. Angus On Future Punishment, p. 25. 
 
DR. ANGUS' S DILEMMA. in 
 
 Christ's death was either suffering, without dissolution, or it was a 
 most welcome release. From one or other of these conclusions, 
 we see no escape.' What would be the answer to such an argu- 
 ment? The general term death, as applied to Christ's sacrifice, 
 signified the dissolution of His life, but included also the idea of 
 those fearful mental and bodily sufferings, including the * stripes ' 
 laid on Him by Pilate, which preceded and prepared it. 
 
 Another example will further illustrate this rule. In Deut. 
 xxviii. 58, Moses thus exhorts the Israelites : ' If thou wilt not 
 observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this 
 book, then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the 
 plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, 
 and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance. Also every sickness 
 and every plague which are not written in the book of the law, 
 will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed. And it 
 shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you 
 good, and to multiply you ; so the Lord will rejoice over you, to 
 destroy you and bring you to nought' 
 
 A comment on these curses of the law, on the model furnished 
 above, would run as follows : ' Either these great plagues of long 
 continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance, were 
 the ' destruction ' and the ' bringing to nought ' here threatened, or 
 they were not. If they were, then the destruction was consistent 
 with the continued life of Israel on the land whither the Lord 
 led them to possess it ; and the threatening never contemplated 
 the literal death of the offenders, but solely the infliction in 
 Palestine of great plagues of long continuance on a population 
 which should exist in misery and in imdiminished numbers, from 
 age to age, and generation to generation. And the ' bringing them 
 to nought,' and ' leaving them few in number,' meant that they 
 were to be made exceedingly wretched in the land of their pos- 
 session. If on the other hand the ' great plagues of long con- 
 tinuance ' were not the destruction, but only preceded it, then the 
 destruction was a ' most welcome release ; ' and it was a blessing 
 that was held out to the Israelites when it was said they should 
 be ' destroyed from off the land given to their fathers.' Again, 
 we may surmise that the reader would not find difficulty in 
 allowing that a general threatening of death and destruction 
 might well be taken to include the prolonged sufferings of the 
 
ii2 GRADUAL DESTRUCTION. 
 
 disobedient people, and the awful abolition of life in which those 
 sufferings should terminate. He would certainly not argue either 
 that destruction could not signify a complex curse of plagues and 
 death, or that the plagues and sicknesses were to be everlasting. 
 He would pronounce that the threatening intended was prolonged 
 suffering ending in a death which was a ' curse,' and a loss of all 
 the blessings of continued life in the holy land and in the Divine 
 favour. It is a gradual and painful destruction. We propose to 
 apply the same rule of interpretation to the more awful threaten- 
 ing of ' many stripes,' and of * destruction of body and soul, in 
 Gehenna,' held out to those who reject the gospel. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ON THE RESULTS OF THE TRIAL OF ADAM IN PARADISE, AND 
 THE ENTRANCE OF REDEEMING MERCY. 
 
 ' And that He hath withdrawn Himself, and left this His temple desolate, 
 we have many sad and plain proofs before us. The stately ruins are visible to 
 every eye, that bear in their front yet extant this doleful inscription HERE 
 GOD ONCE DWELT. Enough appears of the admirable frame and structure of 
 the soul of man to show the divine presence did some time reside in it ; more 
 than enough of vicious deformity to proclaim He is now retired and gone. 
 The lamps are extinct, the altar overturned, the light and love are now vanished, 
 which did the one shine with so heavenly brightness, the other burn with so 
 pious fervour : the golden candlestick is displaced, and thrown away as a useless 
 thing to make room for the throne of the Prince of Darkness. The faded 
 glory, the impurity, the disorder, the decayed state in all respects of this temple, 
 too plainly show the Great Inhabitant is gone.' HOWE'S Living Temple, 
 Pt. ii., ch. iv. 
 
 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and 
 desirable to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she 
 took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband 
 with her, and he did eat' (Genesis iii.). It has been usual under 
 superficial views to make sport of this narrative, as if it represented 
 the ruin of a world as turning ' just upon the eating of an apple.' 
 Such is not the representation of the ancient Sage who has been 
 employed to preserve the traditions of the earliest world. The 
 temptation presented was, according to him, one which appealed 
 to the whole un-moral side of humanity- to the lower appetite 
 (good for food), to the sense of beauty (desirable to the eyes), and, 
 above all, to the intellect and Ego-theism'' of the probationer 
 (it was a tree to be desired to make one wise). And this wisdom is 
 declared by the ' serpent,' who allures the woman, to be such as 
 would exalt them to an equality with God in insight. ' Ye shall 
 be as God, knowing good and evil? The whole strength of the 
 
 8 
 
114 THE NATURE OF THE TRIAL 
 
 sensuous, imaginative, and ambitious portion of their nature was 
 brought out, as a test of the strength of that higher will which 
 should have preserved them, by faith, in union with their Maker. 
 ' The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life ' 
 were set over against the attraction of the Infinite Good, the 
 Infinite Beauty, and the Infinite Will. And as against these no 
 attraction in the creation, no fascination of the tempter, ought to 
 have prevailed. The determining force is represented as lying in 
 the will ; a real and mighty Cause, which could produce either 
 life or death eternal, according to its self-direction. There seems 
 to have been no exceptional hardship in the case of the first 
 human beings. The higher privileges of divine sonship with us 
 must be purchased by ' enduring temptation.' Those who 'with 
 full purpose of heart cleave to the Eternal ' remain in everlasting 
 union with Him. Those who separate from God, and insist on 
 an empirical atheism of thought and action, sink into darkness. 
 The trial of Adam, then, was a trial of faith j and in no essential 
 respect differed from our own except in this, that he commenced 
 his probation in a state of healthy moral equilibrium, which made 
 his sin the greater : and we commence ours with an inherited 
 degeneracy that entails a weakened power for resistance. 
 
 Yielding to the falsehood of the ' Serpent ' (a personage whose 
 true nature and relationships will be considered in a following 
 chapter), Adam and Eve, says the record, disobeyed their Creator, 
 and came under the sentence of Death. This serpent, who is at 
 once marked as more than a serpent (i) by his speech, (2) by 
 fixed defiance of God, and (3) by contradiction of His word, 
 ' beguiles the woman ' by an argument drawn from the name of 
 the ' tree of knowledge of good and evil.' * If it be a tree 
 whereby you may gain knowledge, then it is clear that it will not 
 cause death, since the dead cannot know. Your " eyes will be 
 opened ; " you are now led blindfold by the envious and tyrannical 
 Power which has made you ; but then you will see and know for 
 yourselves what is wise.' In such a serpent as this was surely 
 hidden some mystery of power of evil, which, if not explained at 
 once, may expect explanation in subsequent revelation. 
 
 Death by the law, however, was due to the law-breakers. 
 Revolting from the rule of the Eternal, they fall back upon 
 their own mortality, and come under that law of evanescence 
 
OF ADAM IN PARADISE. 115 
 
 which had dominated over all living creatures on earth since the 
 beginning of the kosmos.* 
 
 According to the history there was now nothing which should 
 delay the execution of the sentence. ' In the day that thoti eatest 
 thereof thou shalt surely die? It has been argued that sometimes 
 this phrase 'in the day,' is taken in Hebrew in a wider sense, so 
 as not to involve an immediate action, but the commencement of 
 a process which should subsequently end in death. No small 
 importance attaches to this seemingly minute question. For if 
 in the day was originally designed to signify instantaneous death, 
 then since Adam's life was spared for a thousand years, according 
 to Moses, the original sentence was not executed, and the subse- 
 quent propagation of the human race, their very existence, must 
 be set down as the first result of the entrance of redemption. 
 But if ' in the day ' was to be taken only in the sense that the 
 certainty of death would date from that day, but would be 
 executed only after a thousand years of life, then the life of the 
 human race was not due to redemption, but came as part of the 
 original order of nature under the law. The question is, whether 
 the human race receives its existence, since the sin of Adam, 
 under the law, or under redemption ? I venture to think that 
 there is not much room here for hesitation as to the intention of 
 Moses. The phrase ' In the day,' often occurring elsewhere, in 
 the large majority of cases signifies the occurrence of something 
 on the day referred to. The exceptions to this usage are few and 
 dubious. The reference to the phrase, attributed to the mysterious 
 ' Serpent ' of the narrative, shows the sense attached to it, both 
 by the persons concerned, and by the historian. When Eve 
 replies to the inquiry, ' Yea hath Elohim said, Ye shall not eat of 
 every tree of the garden ? ' ' Of the fruit of the tree which is in 
 the midst of the garden Elohim hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, 
 neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die,' the Serpent rejoins, ' Ye 
 shall not surely die ; for God doth know that in the day ye eat 
 thereof then your eyes shall be opened.' Now in this bold con- 
 tradiction of the express words of the Creator, the Serpent uses 
 
 * Mr. Clemance demurs to our reliance on the plain meaning of words in 
 this narrative, and to our building theology on such a foundation. If the lan- 
 guage suited popular theories better, we should hear of no objection to its 
 Authority as a basis of belief, Future Punishment, p. 33. 
 
n 6 THE FALL OF MAN. 
 
 the phrase taken from the lips of God in the day, unques- 
 tionably in the sense of something immediately to occur. ' In the 
 day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened.' We conclude, 
 therefore, that in the original menace the signification was im- 
 mediate death. 
 
 Accordingly, in ' the cool of the day,' apparently of the day 
 of their sin. the Judge descends, and summons the offending 
 pair, now burning all over with a new shame of outward naked- 
 ness corresponding with the inward consciousness of guilt ; and 
 ' they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among 
 the trees of the garden.' 
 
 The Judge descends ; but not to inflict the penalty ! 
 
 What cause has suspended the thunderbolt ? What is it that 
 arrests the course of law? The soul that sinneth it shall die* 
 What miracle of mercy unfolds itself before the astonished sinners, 
 who stand in momentary expectation of their doom the doom of 
 death eternal ! 
 
 The answer is familiar to ourselves, but will be a ceaseless 
 cause of thankfulness to redeemed sinners throughout the coming 
 eternity. It is, it can be, no other, than that from the moment of 
 the Sin, the action of Redemption began at once to unfold itself, 
 * that tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on 
 high hath visited us.' And while the sentence of death is post- 
 poned, not repealed, during that postponement springs to light 
 the ' manifold wisdom ' of a grace which has resolved on ' bring- 
 ing many sons unto glory.' 
 
 I shall now attempt, under the light cast upon this narrative by 
 subsequent revelations, to sketch the method of this redeeming 
 mercy, throwing in at this place a connected statement of the 
 hypothesis which it will be the object of subsequent chapters to 
 establish. 
 
 In this succinct view of the supposed dispensations of God we 
 shall assume, since it is not the object of this work to prove it, 
 that the Bible contains a trustworthy record of the history of 
 human redemption. 
 
 i. The general course of this argument hitherto has prepared 
 the reader to apprehend that the bestowment of Immortal Life 
 in the restored divine Image is believed by us to be the very 
 
METHOD OF REDEMPTION. 117 
 
 object of the Incarnation of Deity. The prevailing theology 
 regards man as naturally mortal in the bodily part of his constitu- 
 tion and naturally immortal in the spiritual part. In his interior 
 being he is already eternal ; his sin is the sin of a will destined 
 to endless duration. Redemption contemplates, it is thought, no 
 change in the quality of his nature or in its durability. The 
 ' resurrection of the body' in glory is a secondary and accidental 
 accompaniment of salvation. The true humanity is found in 'the 
 soul/ and that soul is already immortal. Redemption delivers it 
 from a ' wrath coming ' for ever, on a nature destined to live for 
 ever. Hence the ' greatness of the salvation.' It is a salvation 
 from eternal misery. Deliverance from so profound a ruin re- 
 quired a Divine Saviour and a Divine Atonement. Such is the 
 idea of the modern age. 
 
 These notions we hold to be anti scriptural, and part of the 
 ' mystery of iniquity.' We hold that the Scripture teaches that 
 the very object of Redemption is to change our nature, not only 
 from sin to holiness, but from mortality to immortality from a 
 constitution whose present structure is perishable in all its parts, 
 to one which is eternal, so that those who are partakers of the 
 blessing ' pass from death unto life,' from a corruptible nature 
 into one which is incorruptible in all its parts, physical and 
 spiritual. 
 
 2. We hold next, that this mighty change in human nature and 
 destiny, involved in the bestowment of everlasting life, is con- 
 veyed to mankind through the channel of the Incarnation, the 
 Incarnation of ' the Life,' of the ' Logos,' or Word of God ; who 
 being before all worlds, and creating all things as the Word of 
 the Father, 'became flesh/ took on Himself our mortal nature, 
 ' yet without sin/ and as the Christ, or Anointed One, died on 
 the cross, as a Divine Self-sacrificing Mediator between God and 
 Man, so reconciling in the Divine Mind^ the act of grace with the 
 equilibrium of government. 
 
 3. We believe, next, that God still further unites the Divine 
 Essence with man's mortal nature in the Regeneration of the 
 Individual, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, * the Lord and 
 Giver of Life/ whose gracious inhabitation applies the remedy 
 of redemption by communicating to good men of every age and 
 generation God-likeness and immortality, to the soul by spiritual 
 
1 1 8 DELA Y OF DEA TH. 
 
 regeneration, and to the body by resurrection. Redemption from 
 death to endless life in God's image thus depends on nothing less 
 than the union of humanity with Deity the nature which has 
 broken the law, with the Nature which is above the law ; and 
 carries out this purpose by a grace which forgives offences, a 
 meekness which endures the legal curse of sin, and a power 
 which snatches the victims of the Destroyer from his grasp for 
 evermore. 
 
 This general idea of the object of Redemption we gather from 
 a comprehensive view of the language which is employed through- 
 out the Scripture. It is not once, nor twice, but persistently in 
 the whole series of revelations, declared, that the Son of God 
 came into the world to give men Life Everlasting. The idea now 
 flashing upon so many minds, and ever gathering greater clearness, 
 is that this phraseology must have been designed by the Scripture- 
 writers to signify the bestowment of immortality that there has 
 been a mistake of the first magnitude in the traditional turn given 
 to the term Life, reducing its meaning to a bestowment of 
 ' spiritual life ' or moral goodness on a creature already im- 
 mortal. 
 
 The obvious argument occurs, that when we consider the 
 absence from the Bible of any distinct reference to the natural 
 immortality of the soul, and the incomparable fitness of the 
 selected language on life to denote that the gift of eternal being 
 as well as holy blessedness was the end of redemption, (supposing 
 that such was the intention,) it seems incredible that Heaven 
 should have allowed its messengers to employ terms systematically, 
 on the chief topics concerned, so liable to be perverted, supposing 
 that man is naturally immortal, and supposing that the gift of 
 immortal life signiSes only the gift of immortal perfection and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 4. It follows from this- leading principle that the execution of 
 the original curse of death denounced on the First Man did not 
 take effect on the day of his sin ; that it was in fact postponed 
 fora thousand years in his own person, and that this postponement, 
 which gave space for the propagation of a race descending from 
 him, though in the image of his own mortality, was the result of 
 the action of Redeeming Mercy. Had the sentence of law taken 
 immediate effect, in the deepest of all senses in Adam we all had 
 
NEW PRIVILEGES, NEW PENALTIES, 119 
 
 died ; the human race would never have been born. The exist- 
 ence of our race then is a boon beyond the limits of law.* We 
 are born, it is true, to a short and evil life ; exiles from Paradise, 
 we are born into a world smitten with a curse which cankers half 
 its blessings ; born in the image of a fallen progenitor, by nature 
 ' children of the indignation ; ' born under the sentence of disso- 
 lution, and in the valley of the shadow of death, where mortality 
 not penal but natural has reigned for countless ages over the 
 races that inhabit it; yet assuredly this is an existence far 
 better than none, considered even in relation to the blessings of 
 time, inasmuch as ' all that a man hath will he give for his life j ' 
 but when we consider that the gates of eternal glory open out 
 of this mortal world for repenting sinners, and that by a wise 
 numbering of our days during the period of trial we may obtain 
 immortality, this brief grant of life to the myriads of the earth's 
 population assumes the aspect of a beneficence of which the true 
 dimensions ' pass knowledge.' 
 
 5. We suppose further that the entrance of Redemption with 
 new privileges has brought in also new responsibilities upon 
 mankind, involving fresh penalties on those who have ' done 
 despite to the spirit of grace.' Hence there will be a ' resurrection 
 of the unjust,' to give ' account of the deeds done in the body ; ' 
 and in order to permit of the reconstitution of the identical 
 transgressor we hold that his spirit is preserved in its individuality 
 from dissipation in the death of the man, to be conjoined again 
 to the body at the day of judgment. This survival of the ' soul ' 
 we attribute exclusively (with Delitzsch) to the operation of 
 
 * Note to yd Edition. Adverse criticism is divided on this question in a 
 way which shows that a despotic tone in opponents is quite out of place. The 
 Chtcrch Quarterly Review treats the statement in the text as a figment for 
 which you ' look in vain ' in Scripture. The London Quarterly Review (a 
 Methodist organ) affirms it to be ' a necessary implication from the biblical 
 statement ' p. 326 ; but in this important admission, that the human race 
 'owes its existence to the Incarnation,' The London Quarterly Review not 
 only abandons the key to its whole exegetical attack on the interpretation of Life 
 and Death, but falls back upon the weak theological position, that whereas, 
 under the original condition of trial, the root of human misery would have 
 been destroyed if the sentence had been inflicted, now all the wicked will have 
 received their immortal existence in depravity and misery ultimately as the 
 result of Redemption. The old Church doctrine is best defended in its integrity. 
 It at least forms a coherent system. 
 
120 SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL 
 
 Redemption with its graces and corresponding judgments. We 
 hold, further, that the souls of the righteous have in like manner 
 been upheld in individual being (in ' S/ieol ' or ' Hades ' under 
 the old law, l with Christ* under the new ), with a view to the 
 reconstruction of humanity in the resurrection of glory. These 
 conclusions respecting the survival of the spirits of both evil and 
 good men that such survival is due not to their inherent 
 immortality, but to the entrance of the new system of probation 
 and judgment are derived inferentially from the whole course of 
 this argument. 
 
 6. We suppose that in the evolution of the wisdom of God in 
 relation to the earth, the multiplication of the surviving human 
 race was permitted under an hereditary law, similar to that 
 which operates among animals, but also involving in this case an 
 awful development of moral degeneracy in man.* Evil was 
 destined here to work out its will once for all in the history of 
 the creation. And not only human, but superhuman evil agency, 
 co-operating and conspiring, was to be permitted to concentrate 
 its hostility to God upon the earth. To the original Tempter 
 the world was ' delivered up,' so that he might become the ' God 
 of this world ' and reign over the creatures whom he had ruined, 
 as an all-devouring king, who ' had the power of death.' 
 
 A new probation was instituted for man under these fearful 
 circumstances ; and it was the design of the All Merciful to de- 
 liver the objects of His mercy from out of this seven- walled 
 Egyptian prison-house of a permitted ' kingdom of darkness.' 
 For here was to be reared, under a stress of temptation never 
 known before, a type of faithfulness to God also before unknown, 
 and every volition of right was to be exerted against the force 
 of the whole combined strength of evil; while in order to allow 
 of the fuller freedom of all wills in declaring their choice, judg- 
 ment was not to be executed speedily, but postponed till a distant 
 future. 
 
 The real existence and frightful activity of Evil Spirits in the 
 history of man we believe to be an essential element of the truth 
 respecting this world. Their action from the first days or 
 humanity until the end of the kingdom of darkness is represented 
 
 * See on this head an admirable treatise by the Rev. J. C. Whish, M.A., 
 Elementary Truths ttfon Creation. Bemrose & Co, 
 
ATTRIBUTED TO REDEMPTION. 121 
 
 as one cause of the special compassion with which God has re- 
 garded our mortal condition. * The devil was a murderer 
 (dv#/oG>7roKToVos, man-killer) from the beginning ' (John viii. 44) 
 There is a conflict between good and evil principles going 
 forward on earth, a conflict between good and evil men; but 
 there is a conflict behind that, both more ancient and more awful, 
 which alone explains the tremendous strength of evil among 
 mortals, that between the powers of heaven and a wing of the 
 angelic principalities and powers in bitter revolt against the 
 authority of God. It is on the earth that that conflict is declared 
 to be fought out and ended. The human history is treated as an 
 episode in a direr warfare which divides the universe ; but the 
 earth is the battlefield of the last encounters, and the scene of 
 the final suppression of the rebellion. 
 
 7. We believe that in the midst of this ( kingdom of darkness ' 
 God has been working from the beginning in the execution of 
 merciful designs. Where spirits of wickedness have striven most 
 earnestly to efface His image and to mingle earth and heaven in 
 confusion, there the Divine Mercy has counterworked the strategy 
 of these 'murderers,' and has unfolded successive dispensations 
 of truth and order, suited to the age of the world, and the corn- 
 prehension of mankind. In every age some sevenfold central 
 light has been kindled to lead our race into the way of peace. 
 In every age God has ' showed ' to men, sometimes more dimly 
 by an inward but unspoken guidance, sometimes by a verbal 
 revelation, the reality of judgment to come, and the hope of life 
 eternal. But the full forthshining of the light came only with the 
 Christ. He has ' revealed the Father ' ' full of grace and truth.' 
 In Old Testament times men knew that there would be a resur- 
 rection ; even the Egyptians retained so much as that of the 
 primeval faith. The Spirit witnessed in every city of future re- 
 tribution. But the grand secret of redemption was veiled. 
 When the Christ came, that mystery long hidden was revealed. 
 
 ' The Life was manifested.' And now all men are summoned to 
 embrace the amnesty. 
 
 8. This Christ, the King of Glory, taken up into heaven as a 
 pledge of the enthronisation of humanity, and as a proof of the 
 eternal union of God and Man, will shortly appear again, to over- 
 
122 THE FINAL AWARDS. 
 
 throw the adverse Power, to imprison in subterranean darkness 
 those infernal enemies, to dispossess the ' aerial ' spirits of evil, 
 and to replace those c world-rulers/ by glorified guardian saints of 
 human origin ; thus gathering out of His kingdom of the earth, 
 ' all things that oifend and do iniquity/ and establishing the reign 
 of right among the nations until the hour shall strike for ending 
 the mystery of God in the final assize. In that judgment the evil 
 spirits will be consigned to their doom in the ' everlasting fire ; ' 
 and the impenitent part of mankind, who have resisted all ap- 
 proaches of redeeming mercy, with those whose spirits, ignorant 
 of God while living, have still persisted in rejecting Him in 
 Hades, shall be cast also into hell, there to suffer ' few stripes ' or 
 ' many stripes,' ' according to their knowledge of their Lord's 
 will,' and 'according to their deeds;' but all alike at last to 
 perish everlastingly, to be ' killed with death,' to be ' blotted from 
 the book of life,' to suffer oXeOpov atoWov, ' eternal destruction,' 
 of ' body and soul in hell,' thus dying a ' second death ' as the 
 ' due reward of theh\ deeds,' because persistently choosing evil, 
 and rejecting good. ' Then shall the righteous shine forth as the 
 sun in the Kingdom of their Father,' and ' as the stars for ever 
 and ever.' 
 
 If these views of the basis of Redemption and of the Divine 
 Method be well founded, we may anticipate the confirmation 
 of them by the testimony of consecutive revelations honestly in- 
 terpreted. We may expect to find the sacramental institutions 
 of the patriarchal age, the revelations of the Old Testament 
 concerning the state of man in death, and the resurrection both 
 of just and unjust, the partial truth possessed by contending 
 factions among Jews and Gentiles, the leading doctrine of re- 
 demption from the curse by a Divine Mediator, as set forth in 
 the writings of the New Covenant, the teaching of the apostles 
 on the nature and necessity of regeneration, and on the spiritual 
 union of the twice-born with the ' Second Man the Lord from 
 heaven,' and lastly the awful declarations of the evangelists and 
 apostles upon the penal destiny of those who 'judge themselves 
 unworthy of eternal life,' consenting to form one intelligible 
 circle of coherent truth, and commending itself ' to every man's 
 conscience in the sight of God.' 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SERPENT IN GENESIS ; AN EXCURSUS ON THE SCRIPTURE 
 DOCTRINE OF AN EVIL SUPERHUMAN AGENCY CONCERNED 
 IN THE DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND. 
 
 BEFORE we advance to the examination in detail of the Scripture 
 testimony on the subjects enumerated at the close of the last 
 chapter, it is necessary to consider with some care the preliminary 
 difficulty presented by the introduction of the speaking Serpent in 
 the Mosaic narrative. 
 
 That difficulty ought not to be summarily evaded by the asser- 
 tion that the whole narrative is mythical, and therefore that the 
 introduction of one personage, less or more, need occasion no 
 disturbance to faith. It is impossible to treat the first section of 
 the book of Genesis apart from the other books of the Bible. 
 The organic unity of the Sacred Scriptures is by far their most 
 wonderful characteristic. Although produced at intervals during 
 at least 1,500 years, and varied in every degree as to style, object, 
 and occasion, there runs through this extraordinary compilation a 
 unity of thought and purpose, as apparent as that which pervades 
 the organic fabric of the earth.* There have been numerous 
 builders on this intellectual edifice, but there has manifestly been 
 One Supreme Architect. However ready, therefore, we might be 
 at first sight to dismiss the Serpent in Genesis as an old-world 
 fancy, it is impossible so to do when we find that Christ and His 
 apostles unanimously refer to this ' ancient serpent ' as being no 
 other than Satanas, the avfyxoTroK-rovos, or man-killer, in disguise 
 the man-slayer ' from the beginning.' We have already re- 
 marked that the Bible history of man, and of man's redemption, 
 is inextricably interwoven in the Scripture with another history of 
 superhuman enemies of God ; whose temporary victory and final 
 * See Garbett's Divine Plan of Revelation. 
 
124 BIBLICAL DOCTRINE ON EVIL SPIRITS. 
 
 destruction are treated as essential elements of the right theory of 
 the kosmos, of the right understanding of the death incurred by 
 sin, and of the immortality bestowed in redemption. c For this 
 purpose was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the 
 works of the Devir (i John iii. 8). 
 
 We shall, therefore, in this place, interpose a discussion on the 
 Biblical doctrine of evil spirits, and attempt to sum up the declara- 
 tions of prophets and apostles on this theme. In so doing, some 
 difficulties may be removed, and faith increased in divine revela- 
 tion as a whole. 
 
 The theology of the Bible, when taken in its integrity as a 
 living unity, commends itself to a rational belief, but single por- 
 tions taken alone, and apart from collateral truths, often and not 
 unreasonably appear incredible. Any considerable addition to, 
 or subtraction from, this unity will prove an occasion of scepticism. 
 Faith in Revelation, as has been said, is never opposed to reason, 
 but always to sight ; yet the reasonableness of Christianity can be 
 made to appear only to those who receive the revelation as a 
 whole. It holds together like a vast arch composed of many 
 stones hung in air, in which the removal of one endangers the 
 stability of all the rest. 
 
 There can be no doubt that although Moses is silent on the 
 source of the Serpent's murderous inspiration, his silence is vocal, 
 and that he designed to set his readers thinking on the subject. 
 The Serpent occupies too prominent a place in the story to allow 
 of the idea that the writer introduced it as an unimportant orna- 
 ment to the narrative. The object of this adversary is nothing 
 less than to kill humanity in its origin, to stamp out the eternal 
 life -of man. The motive also is, manifestly, a desperate hostility 
 to the Creator ; and the method is an unscrupulous use of false- 
 hood to accomplish the end designed. Can any reader of modern 
 times seriously think, with Josephus, that Moses believed this 
 serpent to be a common snake of Paradise ? His pen was per- 
 haps stayed by a superior will, as Mr. Tennyson imagines with 
 regard to an * Evangelist ; ' but there is everything in this narrative 
 to suggest, if it be but true, all that follows in succeeding revela- 
 tions as to the abnormal cause of man's mortality. 
 The speaking of the serpent is one of those difficulties which 
 
MODERN REJECTION OF THE DOCTRINE. 125 
 
 appear insuperable on a superficial view ; like the speaking of 
 Balaam's ass, and the entrance of the demons into the swine ; 
 but which vanish under a more correct appreciation of the powers 
 that underlie the phenomena, and of the moral ends subserved 
 by permitted deviations from law. In this instance comparative 
 inexperience of the capacities of animals, or it might be positive 
 experience of the speech of parrots imitating her own, may 
 account for the small recorded wonderment of Eve at the voice 
 of the serpent. At this point it suffices to affirm that there is no 
 scientific reason for declaring a priori that, in case of man's ex- 
 istence originally under the circumstances supposed, it is impossible 
 that God should permit the possession of a serpent by some 
 hostile Intelligence, or the employment of unfit organs to pro- 
 duce the effect of speech. The true question is whether the 
 narrative in Genesis is so connected with other facts in the 
 world's history, which carry with them decisive evidence of 
 Revelation, as to compel belief in the literal reality of this 
 narrative. Standing alone it would be of course incredible. 
 
 Nevertheless we speak the simple truth when we say that if a 
 man in the biological section of the British Association were to 
 declare his opinion that some of the most lamentable conditions 
 of human life were traceable to the action of evil spirits, he 
 would be regarded, by nearly the whole company of learned 
 persons assembled, as an enthusiast past redemption by argu- 
 ment. Yet strangely enough it is the very persons who hold the 
 highest opinion respecting the moral excellence of man who 
 would be foremost in the expression of displeasure at the utter- 
 ance of so fanatical a doctrine ; preferring, as Mr. Foster long 
 ago suggested, to account for the whole vast sum of wickedness 
 and misery which fills the globe, by the single action of one 
 nature which, as they allege, is marked by no radical defect, 
 rather than by the easier hypothesis of the combined action of 
 two corrupted natures working in concert. 
 
 What explanation can be given of the process by which such 
 a result has been reached? Do the chemists, geologists, astro- 
 nomers, and mathematicians, know for certain that the atmosphere 
 of the earth is untenanted by spirits ? Has the subject ever been 
 investigated by biologists ? A respectful hearing would be given 
 
126 UNREASONABLE SCEPTICISM. 
 
 to any one who had even the smallest contribution to ofter 
 respecting the formation, the habits, the aliment, of any living 
 creature, wild or tame, now inhabiting earth, or water, or air, 
 from the least to the greatest. On the evidence of a single bone, 
 or even of a mould of a single bone in clay or sand, made by 
 pressure in old times, they would believe firmly in creatures which 
 they never saw. The most minute animalcule, invisible to the 
 naked eye, would win the attention of the wisest. The fierce 
 destructive character of the beast or bird or insect would form no 
 objection to the audience. A single tooth of any * dragon of the 
 prime' would be considered to furnish a basis for solid and 
 respectable knowledge. But if one were to assert the existence 
 of aerial ' dragons ' far more terrible, and of a system of prey of 
 which mankind were morally the victims, he could not even 
 obtain a hearing for the evidence in any of the departments of 
 the Association. 
 
 Do the scientific men, then, know that there are no such beings? 
 By no means. All they know is that they have not obtained evi- 
 dence of their existence through the organs of sense, the aid of 
 chemical analysis, or optical instruments. But as in the last 
 century electricity was unseen and unknown, and the actinic ray 
 in the sunbeam unsuspected, so now there may be agencies at 
 work not the less real because unobserved, Moreover, there 
 may be methods of obtaining knowledge on such subjects quite 
 different from those with which ordinary physicists are familiar, 
 yet equally to be depended on. A large part of every scientific 
 man's knowledge rests on testimony. It is but a fraction of his 
 knowledge which he can personally verify, and there may be solid 
 knowledge which may be obtained in the first place through the 
 testimony, not of man, but of God, though capable of being veri- 
 fied by subsequent observation of physical and moral phenomena. 
 Men of physical studies are in danger of one-sidedness in their 
 training as truly as other men. Some are prone to neglect visible 
 phenomena, others are prone to neglect historical and moral evi- 
 dence. Professor Huxley has declared with true insight, that 
 ' those who adhere most closely to facts will be the masters of 
 the future ; ' but then it must be all the facts. 
 
 There is indeed nothing intrinsically absurd in the belief that 
 
OBJECTIONS AGAINST EVIL SPIRITS. 127 
 
 there are spirits in the air, and that some of them are malevolent. 
 Why should it be a clearer sign of perverted judgment to believe 
 in wild spirits than in wild beasts, if there be but sufficient 
 evidence ? What a priori argument can be set up against the 
 existence of any kind of beings, in a creation so full of unexpected 
 and unimagined forms of life and activity ? 
 
 There seems to be no fair answer possible to these questions, 
 in bar of a hasty denial of the existence of malignant spirits of a 
 rank above the human. Nevertheless the persuasion of their real 
 being is in our time dying out from the minds of the majority. 
 In educated society few can be found who believe in the Devil. 
 The Unitarians reject the belief with abhorrence, and they are 
 reckoned by some, as Socrates was reckoned by the oracle of 
 Delphi, among the wisest of men. The humbler Christadelphian 
 materialists follow in their track, and teach, from Birmingham 
 to the Irish and German Seas, that the devil is nothing but evil 
 in man, and that man is nothing but organised matter. The 
 Spiritualists declare with one voice that there is no Satanas, no 
 fallen Angel of light, no great Destroyer of Souls. The philo- 
 sophers, with Mr. Lecky, demand of us, do you not know that 
 the belief in evil spirits has been one of the commonest, one of 
 the most vulgar and malignant, types of the superstition which 
 has darkened earth and sky, and degraded human life in every 
 climate where it takes possession of the soul ? Do you not know 
 that heathenism has always dwelt largely on this gloomy dogma ; 
 that it forms half the so-called religions of India, Japan, and 
 China ; and has lain at the root of all the worst corruptions of 
 Christianity during the last eighteen centuries ? Do you not 
 know that it has been the custom of every ignorant age to attri- 
 bute to malign spiritual agency, to evil genii, half the phenomena 
 of nature, and half the events in Providence ; and that the pro- 
 gress of science has been a hard-fought battle with this old enemy 
 of knowledge and truth, which has been dislodged from its 
 position only after ages of inquiry, of observation, and careful 
 study of nature and man ? Do you not know that the unreformed 
 tendency of humanity is always to believe in evil more than in 
 good, even in a God who is no better than a devil, and to attri- 
 bute to the Supreme Eternal Power thoughts and passions which 
 are absolutely contrary to the laws of justice and truth ? 
 
128 THE BIBLICAL DEMONOlOGY. 
 
 Yes, we know these things ; and if we are, nevertheless, com- 
 pelled to believe that evil spirits exist, and exert a fearful influence 
 upon human destiny, it is against many prepossessions, and under 
 a full view of the possible perversions of the doctrine. 
 
 The question may be brought for examination within a narrow 
 compass. By no fair and straightforward method of interpretation 
 can this doctrine be extruded from the Bible. The one point to 
 determine is What measure of authority belongs to the Bible on 
 such a subject ? The reference to evil spirits, operating on man- 
 kind from the air, weirdly extends like a flaming arch across the 
 whole firmament of Scripture. The Bible asserts, and most 
 clearly in its final revelations, that the earth, as it flies along its 
 orbit, is haunted by wicked beings of mighty ambition and sleep- 
 less energy, whose aim it is, by exciting passion and misleading 
 thought, to deceive and destroy mankind. ' We wrestle not/ says 
 S. Paul, ' against blood and flesh, but against the spiritual hosts 
 of wickedness in the heavenly places ' (Eph. vi. 12). 
 
 We proceed now to point out several characteristics of the 
 teaching of the Bible on Infernal Agency, to which sufficient 
 attention has not been paid, though Jhey go far to establish its 
 truth. 
 
 i. This doctrine, plainly as it is taught in the Hebrew and 
 Greek Scriptures, is at once distinguished from the debasing 
 superstitions respecting evil spirits found in heathen systems of 
 mythology and religion, as in China, Ceylon, and India, by this 
 that it is taught along with the equally clear doctrine of the 
 counteracting agency of good spirits called the angels of God. 
 * Michael and his angels fight against the devil and his angels.' 
 If the Bible declares that we wrestle against the ' power of the 
 air,' it also declares that tHere are good spirits ' sent forth to 
 minister to the heirs of salvation.' If a black cloud. of asserted 
 diabolic agency covers the world, in the representation of the 
 Bible that black cloud is riven in many places, and through the 
 rifts we see the guardian angels extending as a galaxy of stars 
 across the midnight sky, covering the world with a benignant 
 agency sweeter than the influence of the Pleiades. This is a fact 
 most noteworthy, for it has had this effect, that in no place where 
 the Bible in its integrity has been popularly read has the doctrine 
 
METHOD OF BIBLICAL DEMONOLOGY. 129 
 
 of evil spirits usurped a disproportionate share of attention, or 
 debased the public mind through the pressure of an overwhelming 
 burden of gloom. Good and good beings, God over all, have 
 always been represented by the Bible as supreme. Evil, however 
 powerful, is but a temporary hindrance to the welfare of the uni- 
 verse. ' Satan is to be trodden under foot shortly.' Thus it has 
 happened that the Christian believer in infernal agency is easily 
 distinguishable from the devil-worshippers of Ceylon, or the 
 paper-burning devotees of China and Japan, much more from 
 the adherents of the Oriental theology, in which two equal powers 
 of good and evil struggle through eternity for supremacy. 
 
 2. It is to be observed next, that the demonology of the Bible 
 is developed in a method exactly the reverse of that which occurs 
 in every other literature, ancient or modern. Alike in the East 
 and in the West the general order of thought has been from more 
 belief to less ; from superstition and credulity to scepticism and 
 rejection of mythologic folk-lore concerning genii and demons; 
 from the old faith in devils to the more recent unbelief of * science.' 
 The further we go back in the history of nations the larger is the 
 belief in bad agencies and evil spirits, the gloomier the super- 
 stition arising from terror at their power; and the nearer we 
 approach to modern times the more has this belief yielded to the 
 influence of doubt and questioning. Thus it was in Greek history. 
 Thus it was in the case of the Romans. Thus it has been in 
 Chinese and Indian literature. And thus it has been in the 
 thought of modern Europe. In the earlier ages men readily 
 believed in ghosts and demons ; in our day a man who professes 
 such a faith has to fight a battle, and to render a severe account 
 of his intellectual state to his contemporaries. 
 
 Now observe the Bible. There we find, in a remarkable 
 manner, the reverse of the phenomenon to which attention has 
 been called. The farther back you go in Hebrew history, the 
 earlier the epochs to which the Hebrew books belong, the fainter 
 and dimmer is the character of the references to the agency of evil 
 spirits. The nearer you advance towards the maturity of Jewish 
 thought, when it was strongly influenced by Hellenic culture the 
 nearer you draw to the period of final revelation the more 
 distinct, the more emphatic, the more positive, the more detailed 
 
 9 
 
130 DOCTRINE OF GOOD ANGELS. 
 
 and absolute, the more pronounced and dreadful becomes the 
 doctrine of evil spiritual agency. In the books of Moses you 
 find it occurring only as a faint shadow on a background of 
 terrestrial legislation. In the Gospels and Epistles, in the 
 teaching of Christ and His apostles, you find it flaming out like 
 lightning on every side, whose ' flash hangs durable in heaven ; ' 
 you find a terrible clearness of outline and force of colouring 
 given to the doctrine, which astonish and overawe you. When 
 according to all other experience this doctrine of evil agency 
 ought to have begun to fade away, it comes into the front, the 
 veil seems to be removed, and we are called to battle with 
 enemies that almost visibly fill the air, and carry on a ceaseless 
 war against God and man. And if a slight exception occurs in 
 the scepticism of the Sadducees, that exception serves only to 
 prove the rule with greater emphasis, of a general fixed resolve 
 on the part of apostolic teachers to affirm the reality of the 
 powers which the Sadducees denied. Surely this looks like a 
 special overruling influence ; for it contravenes the natural method 
 of human thought. 
 
 3. There is another characteristic of the Scripture doctrine on 
 Satanic action, which distinguishes it from pagan mythologies. 
 In the heathen mythologies the so-called good spirits were scarcely 
 distinguishable morally from bad, except in this one particular, 
 that they were reputed arbitrarily to confer physical benefits upon 
 their adorers, while the evil demons are hostile and mischievous. 
 In the Bible the evil spirits are represented as evil, mainly because 
 they are morally opposed to a God who is righteous, and who can 
 be acceptably worshipped only by righteous adorers. There is 
 nothing conventional, local, or peculiar in the quality of the evil 
 ascribed in Scripture to the devil and his angels. The evil of 
 their nature consists in opposition to a God who answers to the 
 highest possible conception of Purity and Truth. The evil spirits 
 of the Bible are the enemies of man because they are the enemies 
 of 'Righteousness.' They are to be abhorred and resisted 
 because they have lost the image of God. Their ill-will is 
 boundless, but their power is limited, and strictiy subordinate 
 to the Sovereign Perfection. 
 
 Thus the belief in the evil spirits of the New Testament never 
 
CHRIST'S SANCTION TO DEMONOLOGY. 131 
 
 operates as a degrading influence on any one who also believes 
 in the revelation of the Divine glory. It operates for evil only 
 when taken out of relation with what is revealed of Divine wis- 
 dom, mercy, and truth. There have indeed been many perverted 
 Christians who have believed in the devil a great deal more than 
 in God and in Christ, but these must not be taken as examples 
 of the character which the Bible rightly used will produce in its 
 disciples. 
 
 4. The last peculiarity in the Biblical doctrine on Satanic 
 agency is, that it is an essential element in the system of Redemp- 
 tion which the Scripture professes in part to reveal. It is not an 
 accidental excrescence, but belongs to the substance of the whole 
 whether that whole be true or false. There is no special reason 
 for rejecting this portion of the system more than any other. It 
 is interwoven with every other element of Christianity. If the 
 supernatural character of the doctrine be an objection, the same 
 objection will lie against the belief in the holy angels of God, or 
 in any Divine revelation whatsoever. If the circumstance of 
 invisibility be an objection to faith, the same objection lies against 
 belief in God, in Christ, and even in the human soul. 
 
 Not only are we taught that the reduction of man to the rank 
 of creatures doomed to die was the work of such an agency, but 
 we are urgently warned that that malign agency continues to 
 dominate over mankind, to poison the world by its influence, to 
 deceive the nations, and industriously to tempt individual souls 
 to their eternal destruction. The reader of the Bible may not 
 approve of this instruction may find it opposed to his inner 
 consciousness may secretly doubt or openly deny its truth, but 
 at all events it is in the Bible, it is everywhere in the Christian 
 Revelation, most clearly of all in the teaching of the Son of God 
 Himself. It is in His discourses that we discover the fullest, 
 firmest assertion of the existence, action, and punishment of ' the 
 devil and his angels.' To say, as some do, that Christ herein 
 showed His limitation and ignorance, is not for a man to show 
 his own scientific accuracy. It is to beg the very question in 
 dispute. How do you know that there are no evil spirits ? Two 
 hundred years ago men did not know that there were such things 
 as oxygen or electricity ; both invisible, and yet both most real. 
 
I 3 2 CHRIS TS TEACHING. 
 
 How do you know that Christ was ignorant, when He asserted, in 
 God's name, that there were such beings ? 
 
 To say again, as others do, that Christ was not ignorant, but, 
 knowing well that there were no Satanic spirits, He nevertheless 
 dissembled, and accommodated Himself to superstitious usages 
 of speech, to Jewish or Grecian folk-lore, is to strike at the root 
 of His claim to be a heaven-sent messenger at all, much less the 
 Son of God. If the doctrine of evil spirits be not true, there is 
 no falsehood in religion more pernicious, more destructive in its 
 operation, or which more deserves to be assailed and exploded 
 by the prophets of God. The adversaries of the doctrine are 
 witnesses to its pernicious quality, unless divinely true. To 
 represent Christ as teaching wilfully in this matter a lie, is to take 
 away His claim to be listened to on any religious subject whatso- 
 ever. If there be no Devil and Satan, no ' murderer from the 
 beginning/ no real ' demons ' to be cast out and conquered, then 
 Jesus Christ proceeded on a false path, and has in this respect 
 done more than any other teacher to debase mankind, and, as 
 Mr. Clifford affirms, to ' destroy two civilisations.' But who can 
 seriously believe that when He was professing to ' cast out the 
 spirits by His word/ and to address as personal beings the demons 
 whom He expelled, He was all the while talking to ' Oriental 
 figures/ to * metaphors for disease and lunacy/ and that He 
 voluntarily deceived both His disciples and the multitude ? It is, 
 at all events, clear that Christ believed in the devil and his angels, 
 and believed Himself sent by God to overthrow * the kingdom 
 of darkness ; ' and this goes a great way towards establishing the 
 truth of the doctrine. 
 
 My object, however, in this chapter, in summarising the state- 
 ments of Scripture on the action of evil spirits in human affairs, 
 is not to prove the truth of those statements to general sceptics. 
 Their truth can be rendered apparent only to those who believe 
 much besides. Into a belief of their reality, no man can be 
 argued in our time by an independent process. Such a faith must 
 spring, if at all, from a general acceptance of the Christian Reve- 
 lation, and from some spiritual experience and insight. If a man 
 do not possess these qualifications, it is hopeless to offer him this 
 evidence of an evil agency operating on the earth, since to such 
 
CHANGING IDEAS ON DEMONOLOGY. 133 
 
 a mind any special argument, however serious, in support of the 
 doctrine is certain to excite ridicule rather than respect. 
 
 In this, however, as in other instances, the believers have had 
 a share in producing unbelief. Additions to the Scripture doctrine 
 have resulted in its indiscriminate rejection. The rabbinical, 
 patristic, and mediaeval writers have each in turn promoted that 
 state of thought which is now ending in a general disbelief in 
 diabolic power. The very idea of the devil has varied with the 
 spirit of the age. The Devil of the earlier centuries of Christianity 
 was a ' roaring lion/ a ' raging wild beast ; ' so he is often called 
 by the martyrologists. The Satan of the middle-ages was a 
 grotesque but mischievous imp of darkness. The Devil of 
 modern romance is the Mephistopheles of Faust and Festiis, a 
 mocking philosopher and grimly profane misanthrope. Milton's 
 genius has filled the atmosphere with a brilliant phantasmagoria of 
 contending angels, at once too human and too divine a vision 
 of chivalry which has resulted in creating either a sympathetic 
 interest, as in Robert Burns's verses, on behalf of the hero of the 
 song or an unconquerable scepticism with regard to the whole 
 subject. 
 
 Dismissing now from our thoughts, as far as possible, all ideas 
 except those which we find plainly set forth in the Biblical writings, 
 what remains ? 
 
 First of all, the Bible offers no genesis of the kingdom of dark- 
 ness, no clear account of ante-mundane angelic rebellion. It 
 takes up the history of the spiritual world at the point where it 
 touches the history of man, that is, in the middle of affairs, not 
 at the beginning. Just as it takes up the physical history of the 
 globe at the introduction of man, so it is with the spiritual history 
 of the creation. The book of Genesis for the whole system of 
 things has not been written for us. By geology we have learned 
 that there was a long preadamic history of the globe, and we 
 may infer, perhaps, that there was a preadamic spiritual history, 
 perhaps of this very earth, and a history in which the evil power 
 was concerned ; but of this we are taught nothing in the Bible. 
 The record of revelation to man commences with man's creation, 
 and as it unfolds it brings cut in vivid colours his relations with 
 some man-destroying agency above him in the air. But there is 
 
134 RETICENCE OF OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 no memoir of Satan pour scrvir. The Bible expends one chapter 
 on the final setting of the earth in order as man's abode, the last 
 of the animal ascending series, the first of the sub-angelic, and 
 two chapters on his loss of eternal life by sin ; and then adheres 
 closely to man's work and business under the sun, his history, his 
 destiny, throughout its remaining pages. 
 
 Towards the latter part of the record, in the biographies of 
 Christ, the fact of the existence of evil spirits, referred to dimly 
 by preceding prophets, comes out into prominence ; but there is 
 still no genesis, no history of celestial insurrection, no biography 
 of the Rrince of Darkness. Tempting as the subject would have 
 been to the ' will of man,' no prophet's hand was stretched forth 
 to portray on the screen of revelation the awful shadow-picture of 
 the*revolt in heaven. There are those to whom these persistent 
 silences of Scripture are as expressive of divinity, in * reason's 
 ear,' as its positive utterances. 
 
 The next noticeable characteristic of the Biblical record on 
 this matter is the reticence of the Old Testament writers in com- 
 parison with those of the New. The account of the speaking 
 serpent in Genesis is given so as to suggest to after-thought, rather 
 than to plainly unfold or enforce, the idea of a mighty spiritual 
 agency hostile to man. It was open to a materialistic reader of 
 that narrative to take the story as a mythical representation of the 
 evil which everywhere attends misapplied free agency, or, even 
 in its lowest literality, as a description of the war between man- 
 kind and the serpent races. The idea of a superhuman evil 
 spirit, however, appears more than once in the following pages 
 of the Old Testament. The Pentateuch is completely silent ; for 
 the reference to Azazel, in the Hebrew of Lev. xvi. 8, 10, 26, as 
 the supposed demon of the desert, to whom the sin-laden goat of 
 the Atonement-day is sent, is too dubious to furnish a basis for 
 criticism. But if we assume the moderate antiquity of the book 
 of Job we find a clearly-developed idea of an 'Adversary,' who 
 operates from the air, and even exerts enormous power over the 
 elements in persecuting the saint of the Lord. 
 
 Excepting the 'lying spirit' in Micaiah's vision (i Kings xvii. 
 23), there is no similar reference till thfr Captivity ; for the allusion 
 to the temptation of David by Satan in the matter of numbering 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE GOSPELS. 135 
 
 the people does not occur in the earlier book of Kings, but in the 
 compend of the Chronicles, which belongs to a much later age. 
 In this age there are several distinct references in the prophets 
 to evil spirits. In Daniel x. 13-20, we find the angel Michael 
 resisting a power whom he calls ' the Prince of the kingdom of 
 Persia ' during the twenty-one days that the answer to Daniel's 
 prayer was delayed through the absence of the hierophant ; the 
 reference being indubitably to some demonic force believed to 
 influence for evil the destinies of that court. In Zechariah iii. 
 1-3, we find Satan appearing in a vision of the Prophet as a foe 
 to the high priest Joshua, who represents the Jewish people, and 
 he is there rebuked by name as a personal being. There ends 
 the Old Testament demonology. It could not well occupy a 
 narrower space in the record of a revelation extending through 
 several millenniums. * 
 
 Very striking is the change of tone at the appearing of Jesus 
 Christ. The historians of His life are men of the Roman age, 
 that age so supremely realistic and business-like in its tastes, so 
 proud and pitiless in its scepticisms. Yet these Evangelists, after 
 detailing in the most prosaic style the birth and early history of 
 Jesus, with dates, places, and other particulars thereto pertaining, 
 bring into their narration of the commencement of Christ's ministry, 
 in the most deliberate manner, an account of His direct ' tempta- 
 tion by the Devil ' in the wilderness, a devil so real and personal 
 that he quotes Scripture deceitfully, and is corrected by Christ, 
 asserts his control over the political system of all nations on 
 earth, yet offers to abandon his sovereignty if Jesus will do him 
 homage. This account of the existence and activity of the Devil 
 is delivered by Matthew, Mark, and Luke to mankind ; and is 
 distributed in every province of the Roman Empire, as a true 
 history, in the full blaze of the Roman day, as a thing which the 
 Evangelists themselves believed, and expected other men, even 
 of the highest intelligence, to believe also. 
 
 * If it be said that Jews learned this lesson from the Persians and the 
 Chaldees, it may be replied that the Persians and the Chaldees learned it per- 
 haps from a primitive antiquity. Truth was not revealed only to the Jews. 
 And all Oriental traditions aftid doctrines are not false because they are 
 Oriental.' 
 
136 NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE. 
 
 The residue of the evangelical biographies is answerable to this 
 beginning. So far from retreating from these introductory state- 
 ments into the light of common life, Christ seems in their pages 
 to be surrounded by evil spirits. Notwithstanding the singularly 
 realistic style of these writings, their freedom from ordinary signs 
 of exaltation, their strange quietness of tone in narrating events 
 which have furnished pabulum to the arts of nearly two thousand 
 years, they adhere throughout to this representation of the life 
 and speech of Jesus. His days are spent not only in healing 
 diseases and in raising the dead, but specially in ' casting out 
 unclean spirits' (or Seu^oW). These are constantly distin- 
 guished from ' the devil ' (6 Sia/?oAos), but are represented to us 
 (whatever their origin, whether departed evil souls of men or 
 fallen angels, of which nothing is affirmed) as forming a part of 
 the Power of Darkness. More than this, the ability of casting 
 out daimonia was imparted, say they, to Christ's disciples. 
 Various are the effects attributed to the demonic action in the 
 New Testament. In the Gospels they appear as causing deaf- 
 ness, dumbness, madness, epilepsy, and exhibitions of violence 
 equal to the rending of bands of iron. In some cases they acted 
 alone, in others by ' sevens,' in others they ' swarmed,' (Luke vi. 
 1 8, ot 6x\ovfjLvoL VTTO TTvcv/x-dtTcov aKa6dpT(Dv) as in the instance of 
 the Gadarene who filled the midnight darkness with his awful 
 shrieks and wailings ; out of whom went a ' legion ' of evil spirits 
 (a legion in that day contained 6,500 men) ; beseeching Jesus 
 that they might not be sent out into the ' abyss ' (afivo-o-ov or 
 1 bottomless pit' of Rev. xx. i), the under-world of Hades. They 
 are further represented as seeking liberty to transmigrate into the 
 bodies of two thousand swine, and as accomplishing the destruc- 
 tion of the whole herd as by the passage of some malignant whirl- 
 wind ; * at another time as possessing a slave-girl at Philippi, and 
 enabling her owners to make ' much gain ' by her supernatural 
 spiritualism ; a ' divination ' so effectual that when the spirit was 
 cast out there was no legerdemain remaining, or natural clair- 
 
 * Those who believe in the reality of this occurrence will learn to look upon 
 the old-world Asiatic doctrine of metempsychosis with fresh interest. It is 
 scarcely possible to regard the action of the demons in this instance as an 
 isolated fact. If the demons of the Gospels were departed spirits of men, as 
 many suppose, the subject acquires still further interest. See Dr. J. H. 
 Newman's Historical Sketches, Hi., 208. 
 
CHRIST S TEACHING. 137 
 
 voyance, so that the ' hope of their gains war, gone ; ' loudly 
 crying up the apostleship of Paul and Silas as * the servants of 
 the Most High God,' so as to fasten the brand of their abomin- 
 able advocacy upon the ministers of the Gospel and then 
 leaving the wrathful proprietors of the dispossessed medium to 
 wreak their vengeance on the evangelists before the magistrates 
 of Philippi, who beat them cruelly with rods and cast them into 
 the prison. But all these spirits, whatever their number, force, 
 origin, or malignity, are represented as subject to the Son of God. 
 Him they 'knew' when men knew Him not. His power they 
 feared as that of their destined judge and ' destroyer.' ' He cast 
 out the spirits by His word, and suffered them not to speak,' 
 when they offered their infernal testimony to Him as the ' Holy 
 One of God.' 
 
 From such descriptions of the subordinate powers of evil the 
 Gospel writers never shrink : they insist upon this testimony to 
 the end. But their chief effort is directed to bring out their 
 Master's tremendous doctrine respecting the Devil himself. In 
 the four Gospels the personality of this mighty Destroyer is nearly 
 as pronounced as that of the Scribes and Pharisees ; Jesus Christ 
 speaks of him with an edge and a fervour, and of his doom in 
 * the everlasting fire ' with a fearful reality of tone, which leaves 
 no doubt at all as to His own belief in infernal agency. With 
 Him it is ' the Devil ' who plucks away the good seed sown in 
 man's heart ; the ' enemy who sows tares ' among the wheat to 
 ruin the crop is the Devil ; falsehood is traced by him up to no 
 abstract origin of evil, but to its fountain in the Devil ; * for he 
 is a liar and the father of it/ The Mosaic narrative of the fall 
 and death of Adam and Eve is plainly assumed by Christ to be 
 literally true, and the serpent is described as this same ' Devil ' 
 who was a ' man-killer from the beginning ' (di/flpwTro/cToVo?, John 
 viii. 44). Hear His piercing words, ' Ye are of your father the 
 devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do ! He was a murderer 
 from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is 
 no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his 
 own, for he is a liar and the father of it ! ' 
 
 Can we wonder if, after such language from the Master, who 
 said that by His death ' the Prince of this world should be cast 
 out,' and that He would thereby ' draw all men to Himself,' we 
 
138 SUMMARY OF NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 read S. John's deliberate statement that ' after the sop Satan 
 entered into' Judas (rore elcrrjXOw ets eKetvoi/ 6 Saravas, xiii. 
 27), words in which he affirms a personal possession and in- 
 carnation of the chief Evil Spirit for a season in the body of the 
 traitor, even as the Logos was incarnate in the person of Jesus 
 Himself? Can we wonder that S. John afterwards sums up the 
 end of the incarnation as being the destruction of the works of the 
 devil, by the abolition of death, and of sin its cause ? or that 
 at the close of his long apostleship S. Paul, after conversing for 
 thirty years with the sceptics of the Roman world, in the most 
 deliberate language asserts that the conflict of godliness is to be 
 carried on not simply against earthly forces, but against that 
 mighty realm of evil spirits unveiled by the Son of God ? He 
 says (Eph. vi. 12), 'For us the wrestling-match is not against 
 blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the powers, 
 against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spirits of wicked- 
 ness in the heavenlies,' or aerial regions. Such words accord well 
 with his statement to Agrippa (Acts xxvi. 18), that when he re- 
 ceived his commission from Christ, then risen into a realm where 
 no human illusions could obscure His vision, our Lord sent him 
 * to open the "blind eyes, and to turn men from the power of Satan 
 unto God.' They accord with his frequent allusions to the same 
 Satan as an active enemy of man, who was ever on the watch to 
 deceive the Churches by * transformation as an angel of light ' 
 (2 Cor. xi. 14), to * overreach' them by the temptation to exces- 
 sive severity with an offender (2 Cor. xi. n); who was capable 
 of 'hindering ' an apostolic journey (i Thess. ii. 18); of inciting 
 the younger women to turn aside after himself, to their own 
 perdition. He attributes the spiritual condition of mankind as 
 ' alienated from the life of God ' to the direct inspiration of a 
 spirit that 'energises in the children of rebellion ' (Eph. ii. 2) ; he 
 speaks of excessive anger as ' opening the door to the devil ' 
 (Eph. iv. 27), of pride in a neophyte bishop as leading him to 
 the ' doom of the devil ; ' of the necessity there is for a bishop to 
 avoid the 'trap' set for him by the devil (i Tim. iii. 7). Again 
 and again he describes this arch-enemy of God, and his sub- 
 ordinate agents, as resorting to all imaginable arts of deception 
 to effect the perversion of Christendom. He speaks of the 'wiles 
 of the devil,' as well as of the sleight and legerdemain of his 
 
DOCTRINE ON EVIL SPIRITS. 139 
 
 crafty emissaries ; of the ' all-deceivableness of unrighteousness ' 
 in the ' working of Satan ; ' of his manifold ' devices,' as well as 
 of his 'fiery darts.' He addresses Elymas the Goes, or spiritual- 
 istic sorcerer, as one of Satan's sons ' Thou child of the devil ! ' 
 He does not scruple to speak of this mighty spirit in the loftiest 
 terms when describing his influence over human affairs. He is 
 the ' Prince or ruler of this world ; ' he is even eos, ' the God of 
 this world,' the ' Governor of the demons.' Surely such language 
 in S. Paul well accords with the language of our Lord Himself, 
 recorded by the Evangelists. 
 
 But now, to digest these testimonies into definite forms, what 
 are the conclusions to which they seem to compel assent ? We 
 submit to the reader the following : 
 
 i. We learn, if the Bible is true, that the moral life of mankind 
 is closely interwoven with the life of spiritual beings inhabiting 
 the earth's atmosphere. It may be that all planetary and animal 
 life is subject to the government of higher intelligences. But the 
 case of the earth is peculiar. From whatever cause, of which the 
 history is concealed, the /cooyAOKpa-rope?, or world-rulers of this 
 globe have revolted from God, and have succeeded in propa- 
 gating their revolt to its human inhabitants, with the result of 
 bringing them decisively under the law of death which has reigned 
 during all past ages. We are taught that there is one sovereign 
 Archangel of stupendous power, capable of embracing in his 
 thoughts the government of the world, and of prosecuting through 
 all ages a fixed purpose in that government ; who, together with 
 his allies, is carrying forward on earth a war of resistance against 
 God and of extermination against man. For the conflict in its 
 essential end respects the immortality of man. Man, at first 
 hovering in his constitution between death and life eternal, was 
 brought under definitive sentence of destruction for the sin into 
 which he was tempted by these envious foes. The letter, or law, 
 ' killeth.' But redeeming mercy came to our relief in that love 
 which seeks to save our lives with a great deliverance. The 
 Incarnation of the Divine ' Life ' secures the immortality of all 
 who are united with Him by regeneration of the Holy Spirit, but 
 the finally unregenerate will perish; and thus, to achieve the 
 destruction of the greatest possible number is represented as the 
 
140 GENERAL RESULTS. 
 
 object of Satanic action from age to age. ' Your adversary, the 
 devil, goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.' 
 His passion for soul-killing is represented as extending this system 
 of prey over all the earth. He is the controller of the conduct of 
 natural men. His access to the minds of wicked men is de- 
 scribed as direct. Satan ' put it into the heart of Judas ' to betray 
 his Master. He ' filled the heart of Ananias to lie to the Holy 
 Ghost.' But his power is limited by the soul's compliance. 
 Christians can 'resist the devil, and he will flee from them.' 
 The spark is impotent where the powder is absent. The resolved 
 will leaning upon the power of God ensures absolute safety against 
 the machinations of evil. The will of man acting through the 
 medium of the power of God suffices to overcome ' all that is in 
 the world.' But the invisibility of the force to be resisted supplies 
 one main element in the trial of the human soul, and brings into 
 probation all the spiritual energies of our nature. When there is 
 no resistance to evil attempted by men, they are said to be * led 
 captive of the devil at his will ; ' the soul is then carried along 
 by the mighty stream of universal depravity, like a corpse floating 
 upon the Ganges, and is swallowed up by the destroyer. 
 
 2. A review of the above-cited passages shows it to be the 
 doctrine of Scripture that those Powers of Darkness, in the prose- 
 cution of their design, or general purpose of ' man-killing,' direct 
 their special endeavours to raising up and consolidating systems 
 of government which shall effectually promote the deception and 
 degradation of mankind. In the temptation of the Son of God, 
 Satan is represented as asserting his political dominion in plain 
 words. He showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and said, 
 ' All this power will I give thee, for to me it is delivered, and to 
 whomsoever I will I give it ' (Luke iv. 6). The same idea is 
 conveyed in S. Paul's description of the evil spirits as ' princi- 
 palities and powers ; ' and it is repeated in symbolic language in 
 the Apocalypse, where S. John, speaking of the sovereignty of 
 that ' ten-horned wild beast ' which is usually supposed to repre- 
 sent the Roman Empire, says, ' The dragon gave him his power 
 and seat and great authority.' And the present general abandon- 
 ment of the political providence to the Devil is implied in the 
 contrasted statement that hereafter 'God will take unto Himself 
 
SATAN A MAN-KILLER. 141 
 
 His great power and reign.' This fearful description of the origin 
 of most of the world's sovereignties and priesthoods (to be qualified 
 of course by much exceptional victory of good), at all events 
 agrees well with their recorded history. If evil spirits had openly 
 assumed the government of the nations, they could not have 
 surpassed the ordinary reigning houses and hierarchies of the 
 earth in the neglect of the true ends of administration, or in the 
 active promotion of every influence which can delude or deprave 
 mankind. The history of government, civil and sacred, is the 
 history of a wickedness which, if not infernal, at least strongly 
 resembles it. 
 
 Under this view the union of the civil and religious authorities 
 under one head perhaps the chief agency in the spiritual ruin 
 of the world is revealed in its true character, as the policy of 
 ' the power of the air/ No lesson of the Apocalypse flashes forth 
 more clearly than the evil origin of the craft which places the 
 woman (the Harlot-Church) on the back of the wild beast. She 
 has made the nations * drunk with the cup of her fornication,' 
 and has ' shed the blood of saints and martyrs ' till heaven itself 
 cries, ' Lord, how long ! ' The marvellous stability, through long 
 ages, of governments devoted to the maintenance of superstition, 
 receives its most intelligible explanation in this doctrine of the 
 Prophets that the Rulers of the earth are not men, but the hosts 
 of darkness, and that Kings and Priests are but their tools. 
 
 3. The next fact that comes out in the Biblical testimony is 
 that the diabolical rule over mankind is maintained less by open 
 war with the religious sentiment than by its perversion ; less by 
 inciting men to atheism and vice than by deceiving them into 
 God-dishonouring and soul-destroying superstition. S. Paul, the 
 most effective adversary with whom evil ever contended, lays the 
 utmost stress on the ' wiles,' the ' devices,' the ' stratagems ' of the 
 powers of darkness. The warfare is carried on everywhere from 
 an ambush. There is little advocacy of evil as evil ; the effort is 
 directed to presenting evil as good. There is no coming forth 
 with an open proclamation, ' We are devils, in revolt against God 
 and His Christ ; join us in the insurrection ! ' but the mischief is 
 wrought by deception and personation, and by combinations of 
 good and evil, which indicate the vast reach of the subtlety which 
 
142 DEVICES OF SATAN. 
 
 creates them. The politically useful is united with the theologi- 
 cally false. The corrupting idea is adorned with the most attrac- 
 tive beauty. Art in all its magical fascination is set to * face the 
 garment of rebellion with some fine colour.' The solemnities 
 and sublimities of devotion are associated with the foulest mis- 
 representations of the character of God, as when the New Testa- 
 ment idea of the love which ' reconciled the world unto itself ' is 
 exchanged for the detestable paganism of the Roman doctrine of 
 mediation and satisfaction. The humility and self-denial of the 
 celibate priesthood are set forth to facilitate the enslavement of 
 the world by their means. All that can attract the senses 
 incense, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, magnificent 
 ceremonial all that can enchant the imagination is lavished to 
 recommend creeds which contradict in their essential instructions 
 the revelations of God. 
 
 The same end is attained by the most diverse ' devices/ The 
 object, as we see, is reached at one time by idealism, at another 
 by materialism ; at one time by laxity and a cry of freedom, at 
 another by an extravagant and cruel orthodoxy ; at one time by 
 despotism, at another by revolution ; at one time by excessive 
 puritanic strictness, at another by all the genialities of an 
 ' enlightened self-indulgence.' The power of darkness becomes 
 at will Papist and Protestant, Christian and Heathen. Any 
 religious forms, any philosophical speculations, any policy, any 
 art, any literature, any civilisation, any barbarism, you please, 
 if Christ may be but set aside, or His truth caricatured, or 
 Apostolic Scripture kept out of view, or the Gospel discredited, 
 or its faithful teachers deprived of their moral power. Nay, in an 
 age of positive philosophy, when ' Christianity is worn out through 
 its own contentions/ you shall have a brand-new revelation of 
 * Christian spiritualism ' from heaven itself, or at least from ' the 
 air,' with ' miracles, and wonders, and signs,' and ' holy ghosts ' 
 that can solve every mystery, and demonstrate the salvation of 
 all men, against the express and ever-recurring declarations of the 
 apostles and prophets that the unrighteous shall ' perish ; ' a ' reve- 
 lation ' which shall finally put an end to that black old legend of 
 the 'devil and his angels,' by making known, through table-rapping, 
 their non-existence ! ' Evil men and yoryre?, sorcerers, wax worse 
 and worse, deceiving and being deceived.' 
 
PRETENDED REVELATIONS. 143 
 
 4. This brings us to the last characteristic of the Scripture doctrine 
 of Satanic agency. We are warned by the apostles and prophets 
 of Christ to expect a series of pretended revelations adapted to 
 successive ages, with a view of obscuring the revelation of God. 
 ' In the last days some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to 
 seducing spirits and teachings of demons speaking lies in hypocrisy 
 (8aLfAovi(Dv ev woK^t'tra i^euSoAoyan/), forbidding to marry, and 
 commanding to abstain from meats.' ' Then shall that lawless 
 one be revealed, whose coming is after the working of Satanas, 
 with all power and signs and lying wonders, and all deceivable- 
 ness of unrighteousness in them that perish. ' ' For this cause God 
 shall send them strong delusion that they. should believe the false, 
 that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had 
 pleasure in unrighteousness ; (i Tim. iv. i, 2 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8-12). 
 
 Protestants of all ages have commonly thought that these pre- 
 dictions have received at least one signal accomplishment in the 
 history of post-Nicene and mediaeval Christianity. I see no 
 reason to question the application, especially since the Apocalypse 
 assigns a local centre to the spiritual apostasy of Christendom on 
 * seven hills' (Rev. xvii.), on which stood, in S. John's time, the 
 great City which ' reigned over the kings of the earth.' But be that 
 as it may, the lesson is obvious : the Devil in Scripture is described 
 as an eminent inspirer of false revelations, which come with the 
 force of demonic delusion, of 'new truth/ and 'timely aid,' from 
 Heaven to men who have grown weary of the ' words of God.' 
 In such revelations to Christendom he will doubtless maintain his 
 character for generalship, as well as for piety. Evil is not all 
 black ; for it is one of the devices of evil to lead men to think 
 falsely that Satanas is nowhere without the odour of brimstone. 
 As a matter of fact, evil wears a coat of many colours, and dresses 
 in the philosopher's cloak, as well as in the richest ecclesiastical 
 costume. Bad tendencies are not pushed to open excess. Much 
 shining goodness is tolerated, and even encouraged, so long as it 
 is used to support what is distinctly anti-Christian. Thus we see 
 the world covered with the ruins of religions and philosophies, 
 which have each in their day been an improvement on worn-out 
 superstitions. Laoutzeism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Brahminism, 
 Mohammedanism, Romanism, political Protestantism, Positivism, 
 Germanic Idealism, Mormonism, the modern spiritualistic Sorcery, 
 
144 ' DELIVER VS FROM THE EVIL ON.' 
 
 (with its signally inconsistent denial of the Scripture doctrine on 
 infernal spirits), have not these all alike been works of art adapted 
 to 'deceive the nations 'into rejecting true Christianity? Evil 
 could not pass into currency except it were gilded. Falsehood 
 must glitter ; chastity must be sublimed into asceticism ; music 
 almost divine must enchant the ear ; 'a fair show in the flesh ' 
 must be made, even if the interior be ' dead men's bones and 
 all uncleanness.' 
 
 ' Let Christ, the King of Israel, come down from the cross, and 
 we will believe in Him ! ' That is the cry of superstition and of 
 1 free-thought,' now as of old. If you will but abandon the doctrine 
 of the Cross, ' the power of God unto salvation,' you are welcome 
 to the crucifix, and even to self-crucifixion. If you will but give up 
 praying ' in the Spirit,' you may have beads, Paternosters, and 
 Aves innumerable. If you will but set aside the truth on man's 
 justification exclusively in Christ, you are welcome to a distorted 
 doctrine of sanctification by the Sacraments. If you will but 
 nullify by criticism and free-handling the truth on Atonement, 
 you may retain all the rest of Christianity, and pass for liberal 
 Christians, without hindrance from the chief enemy of Christ. 
 And thus it has come to pass that the * veil is spread,' the dark- 
 ness thickens, and the unwary are beguiled on every side. So 
 long as God is kept out of men's hearts, they are welcome to be- 
 come civilized, devout, liberal, broad, enlightened, what you 
 please ; only let ' the Prince of this world blind the minds of them 
 that believe not,' for then, since their ' religion ' (Oprja-Kcia) must 
 needs be only a form, and not godliness (evcre/?eia), their destruction 
 is sure. 
 
 If these things be so, we can comprehend the urgency of 
 S. Paul's exhortation that, in resisting this crafty and malignant 
 Power, we should take the * panoply of God,' and specially wield 
 ' the sword of the Spirit, which is the Divine Word.' It is, as in 
 Christ's temptation, this which alone avails against all craft and 
 force, while we pray, ' Deliver us from the Evil One ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE PATRIARCHAL DOCTRINE ON A FUTURE STATE. 
 
 Section I. Animal Sacrifice 
 
 Section II. Indications of Patriarchal Faith in a Future Life by Resurrection. 
 
 THE object proposed in this and the three following chapters is 
 to trace the gradual development of the truth of redemption from 
 death up till the time of the Incarnation. 
 
 The first topic which occurs in this historical order is that of 
 Animal Sacrifice. It has been argued with probability, from the 
 divine sanction given to sacrifice in the patriarchal ages, that it 
 was originally of divine appointment, and was instituted imme- 
 diately after the expulsion from Paradise, as part of the worship 
 of the exiled sinners. The skins with which ' the Lord clothed ' 
 the fallen pair after their transgression, in merciful concealment 
 of their shame, and in symbolic representation of the righteous- 
 ness reckoned on repentance, are reasonably enough thought to 
 have belonged to animals which they were instructed to offer up 
 as emblems of the * propitiation ' to be revealed in future times. * 
 
 Whether sacrifice was of early or subsequent appointment, it 
 was certainly afterwards divinely sanctioned. The question, then, 
 arises, what were the ideas conveyed to the minds of the sacri- 
 ficers, in the rite of putting to death an animal, by the sheddirg 
 of its blood, and then of committing its body to the flames ? 
 The answer maybe given in the language of Dr. Pye Smith. He 
 says, 
 
 ' The modern Jews, though their aversion to Christianity has led them, in 
 various important points, to abandon the theology of their ancestors, have 
 recognised statements on this subject, which we may justly deem concessions 
 One of their most learned writers, Isaac Abravanel, says, "Ths blood of the 
 
 See Pye Smith and Hengstenberg, on Sacrifice, and Graves on the Pentateuui. 
 
 10 
 
I 4 6 SACRIFICE. 
 
 offerer deserved to be shed, and his body to be burned, for his sin : only the 
 mercy of the Divine Name accepted this offering from him as a substitute, and 
 propitiation, whose blood should be shed instead of his blood, and its life instead 
 of his life.* Could it have been difficult to perceive the meaning of this signi- 
 ficant action ? or was it possible for a serious and thinking mind to avoid 
 recognising and deeply feeling principles such as these ? that sin is an offence 
 against the blessed God ; that the essential righteousness of JEHOVAH renders 
 it necessary that sin should be punished ; that death, in all its tremendous 
 meaning and extent, is the proper punishment of sin ; that the sinner is 
 totally unable, by any power or resources of his own, to escape the punishment 
 due to his offences ; yet that God is full of mercy, and graciously willing to 
 pardon the guilty offender ; that the way of pardon is through the substitution 
 and sufferings of a piacular victim ; and that, on the part of the suitor for 
 pardoning mercy, there must be such a proprietorship in the victim as o create 
 a beneficiary interest ; and such a moral disposition as cordially acquiesces in 
 the punitive acts of Divine justice.' (On Sacrifice^ 
 
 From these representations it will appear that the object of 
 sacrifice was to set forth the punishment due to sin, the punish- 
 ment of death. In this statement every reader of the Scripture 
 will concur. 
 
 But then the inquiry is naturally suggested, If death, in the 
 case of Adam, signified the dissolution of his compound nature, 
 and after that, the infliction of everlasting suffering upon his soul 
 in hell (a definition which assuredly fixes our attention upon the 
 fate of the spirit ; a fate, in comparison of which the mortality 
 of the body was a circumstance unworthy of regard), how could 
 the simple death of an animal, the shedding of its blood, which 
 was the extinction of ' the life thereof/ convey to his mind the 
 idea of such a destiny ? He was not commanded to inflict on 
 the unoffending creature a series of prolonged tortures ; much 
 less was he directed to contemplate the condition of its ' spirit ' 
 when the life was gone ; but he was ordered to slay it, to kill it, 
 to destroy it, to put it to death. f How, with any semblance of 
 truth, could it have been said to him, This is death ; ' * the 
 desert of punishment ; ' if the dissolution of the living animal, the 
 taking away of its life which surely could typify nothing but a 
 
 * This great Rabbi says (Summary of the Faith, ch. 24), The wicked in 
 their lifetime are called dead, and their soul is to be destroyed with the 
 ignominy of the body, and will not have immortality.' David Kimchi taught 
 the same doctrine. See his comment on Psalm i. See also the Supplement 
 to chap. xvii.,/0j/, on the doctrines of the Talmud. 
 
 f See Petavel, Struggle for Eternal Life, pp. 68, 69. 
 
SIGNIFICATION OF SACRIFICE. 147 
 
 death which was destruction was but the faint emblem of one 
 portion of the complicated curse, and that the most insignificant 
 portion of it ? This consideration seems to support the inference 
 that the death of the lamb offered in sacrifice was a true repre- 
 sentation of death, the 'proper punishment of sin,' 'in all its 
 tremendous meaning and extent ; ' of that death which was 
 threatened to Adam in the original curse. Thus regarded, the 
 immolation of an animal, the taking away of its life, would por- 
 tray for all ages the execution of the sentence under which man- 
 kind lay death, like that of the ' beasts which perish ; ' a loss 
 of life, and of the prospect of immortality. Nothing could more 
 vividly set forth the holiness, and, at the same time, the mercy 
 of God, than the dramatic representation of such, truths as these ; 
 that man by refusing to lead a divine life in holy obedience 
 to the living God, had justly incurred the doom of the animal 
 creation ; that it was infinite goodness alone which withheld the 
 stroke from man ; that he could hope for restoration to life 
 eternal only through the sacrifice of One who, through death, 
 should abolish death, and bring immortality to light ; and that a 
 final rejection of the remedy offered left them still liable to the 
 penalty, but aggravated by the guilt of trampling under foot the 
 mercy of God displayed in the supervening redemption. 
 
 Interpreted by these ideas, the history of typical sacrifices 
 receives a forcible illustration. We learn to trace in the number- 
 less effusions of blood, practised under the two ancient dispen- 
 sations, an easily understood testimony to the desert of sin : 
 The soul that sinneth it shall die. We see a vivid image of that 
 ' curse of the law ' under which men are born, the dissolution, or 
 breaking up, of humanity. 
 
 These considerations lead us to conclude, that the preceding 
 representations concerning the result of the Fall of Man are 
 therefore correct. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 Indications of Faith in a Future Life, among the Patriarchs. 
 
 From the beginning of the world mankind has existed under 
 a dispensation of mercy, having for its object to bestow in a 
 
148 FAITH IN A FUTURE STATE 
 
 higher form the ' eternal life ' from which Adam was excluded by 
 transgression. ' At sundry times and in divers manners ' this 
 hope of recovering the lost paradise has been made known to 
 men ; and hence none can rightly understand the earlier portions 
 of the Old Testament who thinks that such a hope was hidden 
 from the patriarchs. Nevertheless the opposite opinion has 
 widely obtained, and it is still common to hear it laid down that 
 the ancient fathers either knew nothing at all of a future world, 
 or held ideas respecting it so dim and uncertain that their faith 
 resembled a flickering candle-flame rather than a steady watch-fire. 
 
 The origin of this opinion is easily perceived. It has become 
 in modern times an established canon, that whenever a nation 
 believes in a future world, they will found that belief on the im- 
 mortality of the soul, and will accordingly expect eternal blessed- 
 ness for the good and eternal suffering for the evil. So deeply 
 is this habit of thought infixed in modern readers, that when they 
 do not find both of these last-mentioned expectations clearly 
 expressed, they at once doubt the reality of the belief in either. 
 When men do not find the doctrine of eternal suffering in a 
 historical record of faith they are unable to recognise the doctrine 
 of eternal life. Thus it has fared with the Old Testament, and 
 especially with the books of Moses ; not only in our own age, 
 but in the days of the Sadducees, whose error, as will be suggested 
 hereafter, was a natural reaction from the opposite psychology of 
 the Pharisees. 
 
 One of the first phenomena which draws attention in the 
 Pentateuch is the omission, both in the historical and preceptive 
 portions of it, of any mention of the immortality of the soul. If 
 this view of man's nature be true in our time, it was true from 
 the beginning, and true in the time of Moses. And if it be as 
 important as it is supposed to be now,* it was equally important 
 then. Yet no single indication of it is discoverable in the writings 
 of Moses. The prophet who had opened his book on the Genesis 
 of the world by an explicit reference to a lost prospect of * living 
 for ever ; (' lest he take of the tree of life and eat and live for ever '), 
 showing thereby that his mind had revolved the conception of 
 
 * See, for an example of the zeal of its modern believers, Mr. Darby's 
 treatises on Immortality and Punishment, and Canon Garbett's recent, papers in 
 he Christian Observer. 
 
AMONG THE PATRIARCHS. 149 
 
 Immortality, preserves an unbroken silence in every after-page 
 on that immortality of the soul which carries with it, if true, an 
 eternity of being, independent of the 'word which endureth.' 
 There is but one tolerable explanation of this silence. Moses 
 was withheld by divine control from teaching what was not true ; 
 a doctrine which was radically opposed to the fundamental facts 
 of man's sin and mortality, on which Redemption proceeds. 
 
 If the immortality of the soul had been a truth, it was not only 
 in itself a truth of transcendent moment, but one to be pub- 
 lished and enforced, as in all ages, so especially in the earlier 
 generations of men, and under the preparatory dispensations. But of 
 an eternal soul Moses seems to know nothing, and is so persistently 
 silent on the innate and intrinsic dignity of man as a ' coeval of 
 God ' that many readers have even imagined that he lived and 
 died altogether without faith in the soul as a spirit, utterly dis- 
 believing in a life to come. This they have imagined of a man 
 who was 'learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,' with whom 
 the life to come, and the resurrection of the dead, were the grand 
 interests of the life that now is, with kings, and priests, and 
 people: as is proved by the sculptures and paintings on their 
 tombs, and by the mummies still waiting ' the awakening ' in 
 the soil of Egypt. Strange, if all that such a man, thus trained, 
 learned by close communion with the Eternal God, was to deny 
 these immortal hopes for the righteous, which burned even in 
 the ashes of the worshippers of Amon and of Phtha. Strange, if 
 Moses believed in a final extinction in death for Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, when under every Pyramid beside the Nile there lay 
 a royal slumberer, however evil, who was embalmed in sweet odours 
 with ' a hope full of immortality.' In such a case there would 
 have been a new reason for the ' great mourning of the Egyptians 
 in the floor of Atad ' when they bore to his long home in Hebron 
 the patriarch who had died, as Moses thought, without a soul, and 
 without a future ! Well may they have sympathised with Joseph 
 in the loss of a father who, in his belief, had relapsed into eternal 
 nothingness. 
 
 But such fancies receive no sanction from the Mosaic writings. 
 They teach indeed no doctrine of the immortality of the soul ; 
 but they teach the reality of a life to come in conformity with all 
 other parts of the Old Testament. 
 
1 5 o ABEL, ENOCH, ABRAHAM. 
 
 1. The fate of Abel suggests a clear inference of the reality of 
 some future reward for good men, and so may well be thought to 
 have directed the minds of the earliest men to that conclusion. 
 
 ' For consider,' says Dean Graves, ' what would have been the effect of this 
 tragic event upon every human being, if they conceived dea*h to be a final 
 annihilation. He perished in consequence of his acting in a manner conform- 
 able to the will and acceptable in the sight of God. To conceive that a just 
 and merciful God should openly approve the sacrifice of Abel, and yet punish 
 him, by permitting him, in consequence of that very action, to suffer a cruel 
 death, which put a final period to his existence, while his murderer, whom 
 tha same God openly condemned, was yet permitted to live ; all this is so 
 monstrous, so contradictory to the divine attributes, as to prove beyond the 
 possibility of doubt, that this event was allowed to take place, partly at least, 
 in order to show that death was not a. final extinction of being.' 
 
 2. The translation of Enoch, the antediluvian prophet, must 
 be regarded similarly as a designed instruction on the part of 
 Moses respecting the blessed destiny of the righteous. We read, 
 ' And Enoch walked with God, and he was not (^3^*1), for God 
 took him ; (Gen. v. 24). The alternatives in interpretation are 
 that we understand here bodily translation to heaven, or a death 
 which was followed by a rest in God for the spirit. If the former, 
 there was a public indication of future blessedness for the integral 
 humanity involving a 'resurrection' or a 'change' of the physical 
 manhood. If the latter (as some modern critics suppose, on 
 insufficient grounds), still the ' taking ' by God was evidence of 
 an eternal home with Him. But it is better to abide by the 
 comment of the author to the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 5), 
 that 'Enoch was translated that he should not see death,' a 
 comment which carries with it the authority of the apostles and 
 companions of the Son of God, to whom Elijah had ' appeared 
 in glory ' at the transfiguration (Luke ix. 30) after nearly a 
 thousand years' residence in the skies. 
 
 3. * The next circumstance I shall notice,' proceeds Graves, ' in the history 
 of the Patriarchs, is the command of God to sacrifice Isaac. As to the purport 
 and object of this command, I adopt the opinion of Warburton, who with 
 equal ingenuity and truth has proved, that when God says to Abraham, ' ' Take 
 now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest," etc. (Gen. xxii. 2), the 
 command is merely an information by action, instead of words, of the great 
 sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of mankind, given at the earnest request 
 
RESURRECTION OF ISAAC. 151 
 
 of Abraham, who longed impatiently "to see Christ's day;" and is that 
 passage of sacred history referred to by our Lord, when conversing with the 
 unbelieving Jews (John viii.). Of the principal reason of this command, the 
 words of Christ are a convincing proof. Nay, I might say that this is not the 
 only place where the true reason for it is plainly hinted at. The author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking of this very command, .says, ' By faith 
 Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac : accounting that God was able 
 to raise him up, even from the dead ; from whence also he received him in a 
 figure,' ev Trapaj3o\rj, in a parable ; a mode of information, either by words 
 or actions, which consists in putting one thing for another. Now in a writer 
 who regarded this commanded action as a representative information of the 
 redemption of mankind, nothing can be more easy than this expression. For 
 though Abraham did not indeed receive Isaac restored to [life after a real 
 dissolution, yet the son being in this action to represent Christ suffering death, 
 for the sins of the world, when the father brought him safe from Mount Moriah, 
 after three days, during which he was in a state of condemnation to death, the 
 father plainly received him under the character [of Christ's representative as 
 restored from the dead. For as his being brought to the mount, there bound, 
 and laid upon the altar, figured the death and sufferings of Christ, so his being 
 taken from thence alive, as properly signified and figured Christ's resurrection 
 from the dead. With the highest propriety, therefore, might Abraham be 
 said to receive Isaac from the dead in a parable or representation.' 
 
 If we may adopt this explanation of the history, the doctrine 
 of a resurrection to life must have been known to Abraham and 
 Isaac, as well as to their families. Doubtless, then, as now, the 
 truth was best apprehended by spiritual minds ; and may have 
 been called in question by the Sadducees of the period ; but this 
 circumstance by no means diminishes the reality of the * expecta- 
 tion ' on the part of holy men of old. 
 
 The answer of Jacob to the Egyptian monarch, in which, when 
 questioned as to his years, he denominates his life a pilgrimage, 
 indicates, as is argued in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a distant 
 aim of the weary traveller, beyond th limits of the present state. 
 ' The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an 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 forefathers in the days of their pilgrimage? * Now they 
 that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country.' 
 
 That the hopes of the patriarchs in a life to come were founded 
 upon an expectation of a resurrection, may be solidly inferred 
 from the following premisses. 
 
1 52 BELIEF OF MARTHA. 
 
 4. The belief in resurrection to eternal life was thoroughly 
 established among the spiritual part of the Jewish nation, both in 
 Palestine and throughout the world, at the time of Christ's advent. 
 We discover several traces of this in the gospel histories ; and the 
 book of the Acts of the Apostles contains no intimation that they 
 were then compelled to promulgate the doctrine for the first time 
 amongst the people of Israel. The language of Martha, in reply 
 to Christ's assurance of the resurrection of her brother, illustrates 
 this point ; I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the 
 Jast day. Now from this it may be soundly inferred that the belief 
 in the resurrection to eternal life was of primeval antiquity. It 
 is not infrequently said that this and many other less wholesome 
 beliefs came in at the time of the Captivity. Doubtless there 
 was then an importation of some philosophical notions from the 
 Oriental world. But if we are to listen to certain recent critics, 
 we might imagine that the whole of the Old Testament dispensa- 
 tion was invented at the time of the Captivity, by the aid of the 
 Chaldees and Persians. No epoch, however, can be assigned for 
 the commencement of belief in resurrection among the Hebrews 
 with any semblance of probability. In the books of the Mac- 
 cabees, and of Enoch, there are clear records of faith in a ' better 
 resurrection,' in view of which the martyrs of Antiochus Epiphanes 
 sacrificed their lives for their religion. 
 
 In the book of Daniel (xii. 2) there is an explicit declaration 
 of the ' awakening ' of the righteous from the ' sleep in the dust 
 of the earth/ and an angelic promise to Daniel that he should 
 'stand up in his lot at the end of the days.' In the book of 
 Ezekiel the restoration of Israel is described under the pictorial 
 parable of the resurrection of the dry bones, showing that both 
 the prophet and his readers were at least familiar with the con- 
 ception of such an event. 
 
 5. We thus reach the times of the prophets. But who will 
 suppose that Daniel was acquainted with a resurrection of which 
 Jeremiah was ignorant, of which Isaiah was ignorant, Isaiah who 
 sings, ' Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise'? (ch. 
 xxvi. 19). To imagine that so stupendous an expectation was 
 raised in the Hebrew mind by contact with the Babylonians or 
 Persians is entirely to misconceive the genesis of thought in 
 ancient times. Their old taskmasters the Egyptians could have 
 
FAITH OF THE PROPHETS. 153 
 
 taught them the doctrine of the resurrection, ages before the 
 Captivity, if they had required the instruction. But the sons of 
 Abraham stood in no need of pagan tutelage on the main hope 
 of righteous men. Eiisha's bones miraculously caused the resur- 
 rection of the dead man who was placed in his sepulchre ; indi- 
 cating that those bones were very full of a ' lively hope ' of rising 
 again for themselves. Elijah's translation to Heaven was a 
 presage of immortal glory for all who faithfully served the same 
 Lord. David himself spoke of his ' flesh resting in hope, because 
 God would not leave his soul in sheol, nor suffer his holy one 
 to see corruption.' We thus reach the eleventh century before 
 Christ. 
 
 At every step backwards in time we learn the primitive antiquity 
 of these ideas ; the truth of the statement of the writer of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, who at least as a learned Jewish 
 Christian (Apollos ?) was an important witness to the immemorial 
 antiquity of the natural belief, that the patriarchs ' all died in 
 faith,' ' looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder 
 and maker is God ' (Heb. xi. 10). The whole of that wonderful 
 chapter is an elaborate assertion of the ' faith ' of the earliest 
 fathers in a future eternal life for the saints, and in a resurrection 
 from the dead. In no single instance is this faith described as 
 reposing on a belief in natural immortality. It was traced to 
 the purpose of God in redemption, and not once in any Old 
 Testament writing is reasoned out on the lines of Plato's argu- 
 ment from pre-existence, or from any Pharisaic presumption of- 
 natural eternity. It is the whole man who shall live again, and 
 therefore, it is, as is reasoned by the Highest Authority, that the 
 declaration of God to Moses that he was ' the God of Abraham/ 
 four hundred years after his death, proves the resurrection, against 
 the Sadducees ; since the departed spirit was not the veritable 
 Abraham, but only one element in the constitution of him who 
 slept in Machpelah. The argument is that God would not declare 
 Himself the God of a dead man, unless he had predestined his 
 revival. Though dead, they ' all live to Him/ who are to rise to 
 the life immortal. And if Abraham's resurrection after his death 
 was so certain from the relationship of a God borne to him by 
 His Heavenly Guardian, it is unquestionable that during his 
 lifetime it must have seemed equally certain to himself; since the 
 
154 THE FAITH TRACED BACKWARDS. 
 
 Eternal Being who appeared to him by night, and said, ' 1 am thy 
 Shield, and exceeding great shall be thy reward,' would not have 
 mocked him, if an ephemeron, with the pretence of His ' friend- 
 ship,' but must have taught him to confide in His endless Love. 
 
 The expectation of the old fathers of an everlasting inheritance 
 must be distinguished from an understanding on their part of the 
 method of redemption. A ray of Divine Mercy shone upon 
 them. The detailed explication of that mercy, by the opening 
 and unfolding of the Sunbeam of truth in the spectrum of the 
 New Testament revelation, was withholden. Christ, in the pur- 
 pose of God, was the life of the world, from the day of Adam's 
 sin ; but His coming was only dimly foreseen by the saints of old 
 times, and the method of His work was wholly unknown. ' The 
 prophets inquired and searched diligently, searching what things, 
 or what manner of times, the Spirit of Christ which was in them 
 did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, 
 and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed 
 that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things 
 which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the 
 gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven ' 
 (i Peter i. 10-12). 
 
155 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ON THE DEATH-PENALTY OF THE MOSAIC LAW. 
 
 THE nature of the death-penalty of the law of Moses becomes a 
 question of vast moment under the present discussion. The law 
 of Moses was the law of God, ' which entered that the offence 
 might abound;' that sin, by the commandment, might become 
 exceeding sinful ' (Rom. v. 20 ; vii. 13). St. Paul and the other 
 apostles treat this as a root-principle of the gospel theology. The 
 Mosaic Law was not an institute of human origin, seeking only 
 temporal ends for the Jewish race. It was a Divine Economy : 
 the Ruler and Moral Governor of the Universe condescended to 
 come down and reign over Israel, and in attestation of His righ- 
 teousness He gave them a law ' holy, just, and good ' (Rom. vii. 
 12) a ' spiritual law' (Rom. vii. 14), requiring not only outward 
 obedience, but inward purity of motive, an obedience springing 
 from loyalty to God. This law was designed to exhibit the sin- 
 fulness of man, and thus to be a ' schoolmaster to bring hirn to 
 Christ.' Sin was to be shown forth in its unfilial disloyalty, in its 
 anti-social and criminal mischievousness towards other men, and 
 in its danger as bringing penalty upon the sinner. The law was 
 the Praparatio EvangeliL 
 
 It follows from this that the penalty denounced in the Mosaic 
 Law represents the punishment of sin under the moral law of 
 God. If that penalty be eternal suffering of either body or soul, 
 or both, here is the place where that penalty ought to appear 
 on every page. Sinners might then have learned from Moses of 
 the doom from which they are redeemed by Christ. 
 
 But there is not in the law of Moses a sentence, a line, a single 
 syllable, not even a letter, which by any ingenuity of perverse 
 criticism can fairly be made to convey the idea of a threatened 
 eternity of suffering. This is generally acknowledged. 
 
156 CAPITAL OFFENCES OF THE LAW. 
 
 The Jews themselves have never pretended to derive from the 
 Mosaic law a defence of the doctrine that eternal suffering is the 
 legal punishment of sin. The greatest of the modern Rabbins,- 
 Maimonides, Abravanel, Kimchi, Bechai, with one voice teach 
 that the punishment of impenitent sinners is literal and absolute 
 extermination at the last judgment, and they represent this as 
 the tradition of the Jewish Church in interpreting the law. The 
 absence of the doctrine of eternal suffering from the law is 
 decisive proof that modern men have misinterpreted the Revela- 
 tion, by foisting into it the philosophic doctrine of natural 
 immortality, thus compelling Scripture to utter a language not 
 its own. 
 
 The penalty of the Law is DEATH death inflicted in various 
 modes, sometimes with 'greater plagues, and of long continuance,' 
 preceding it, sometimes with less, but the characteristic curse of 
 the law is always capital punishment, loss of life, excision or 
 cutting off, utter destruction, perishing, being blotted out from under 
 heaven. ' He that despised Moses' law died without mercy, under 
 two or three witnesses ' (Heb. x. 28). 
 
 Eleven offences are mentioned in the law as liable to the 
 punishment of death (HJb) '> Striking a parent, Blasphemy, 
 Sabbath-breaking, Witchcraft, Adultery, Un chastity previous to 
 marriage, or in a betrothed woman, Rape, Incest, Man-stealing, 
 Idolatry, False witness.* 
 
 In other passages of the law, karat (J"YTp > ^oXo^pevw, LXX.) 
 or cutting off is allotted to thirty-six offences. An attempt has 
 been made to affix the lighter meaning of excommunication to this 
 penalty in some instances ; but it is unlikely, as Ewalda urges, 
 that a clearly annexed penalty would signify some light punish- 
 ment in one case, and capital punishment in others. In the 
 majority of the thirty-six laws the punishment is unquestionably 
 capital. Nearly all commentators, Jewish and Gentile, have 
 agreed that the death-penalty is designed by karat. It was 
 attached to uncircumcision, to fifteen cases of incest, neglect of 
 the passover, sabbath-breaking, neglect of atonement-day, work 
 done on that day, offering children to Moloch, witchcraft, anoint- 
 
 * See on this special point, and on the subject of the death-penalty, the 
 careful article on Punishments in Smith's Biblical Dictionary, by Rev. H. W. 
 Philpot, M.A. 
 
CAPITAL OFFENCES OF THE LAW. 157 
 
 ing a foreigner with holy oil, eating leavened bread during the 
 passover, eating fat of sacrifices, eating blood, eating sacrifices 
 while unclean, offering too late, making holy ointment for private 
 use, making holy perfume for private use, neglect of purification 
 in general, not bringing an offering after slaying a beast for food, 
 not slaying an animal at the door of the tabernacle, touching holy 
 things illegally. 
 
 The penalty of death for sin was thus brought home to every 
 man's door, and brought near to all the concerns of common life. 
 Any sin partaking of the nature of wilful contempt or profanity r , 
 however seemingly trivial in form, was treated as a treasonable 
 offence against the Majesty on High, 'and was punishable by 
 karat, i.e., death, by Stoning (Exod. xvii. 4), or Hanging (Numb. 
 xxv. 4), or Burning (Lev. xxi. 9), or by the Sword or Spear (Exod. 
 xix. 13), or by Strangling. 
 
 The person or thing devoted to utter destruction, 'accursed' 
 under the law, is called in the Mosaic writings D*3)l> cnerem i 
 translated by the Greek dva0e//,a, anathema. The Hebrew word 
 is derived from a verb signifying (i) primarily to shut up, or 
 devote, and (2) to exterminate or root out of life or being.* 
 
 Idolatrous nations marked out for destruction by the decree 
 of Jehovah were made Anathema. The extermination, being the 
 result of a positive command, was applied to the destruction of 
 men alone (I)eut. xx. 13), of men, women, and children (Deut. 
 ii. 34), of all living creatures (Deut. xx. 16), and to whatever 
 objects could be burned with fire (Joshua vi. 26). The word 
 used in the Greek version of the LXX. to denote 0*111, charam, 
 is eoA.o$peu'a>. The use of this term by S. Peter (Acts iii. 23), 
 'It shall come to pass that every soul which shall not hear this 
 prophet shall be destroyed from among the people' (e(foXo0pev$iJo-rcu), 
 shows that the punishment of rejecting Christ is karat or the 
 anathema, extermination, under ' sorer infliction.' 
 
 It is further to be observed that all the terms used in the law 
 of Moses in illustration of the meaning of the death-penalty, 
 which was the generic ' curse of the law,' signify the same idea ; 
 and in no case look forward to the infliction of suffering on a 
 being living for ever ; and this notwithstanding there is a wide 
 difference in the intensity and duration of the positive inflictions 
 * Gesenius and Fuerst in voc. 
 
1 58 ANA THEMAEXTERMINA TION. 
 
 of suffering, by which the ultimate destruction, or extermination, 
 was to be wrought. 
 
 The Law denounces this capital punishment- not only on 
 individual offenders, but on the mass of the Hebrew nation, in 
 case of their disobedience. In chapter xxvi. of the book of 
 Leviticus, and in chapters xxviii. and xxix. of Deuteronomy, 
 there is a perfect thunderburst of anathemas pronounced against 
 all who in future ages should disobey the divine law. An exami- 
 nation of these theatenings will bring out even more clearly into 
 view the penalty of Sin under that dispensation, which was given 
 to make known its * exceeding sinfulness,' and its ' wages.' . 
 
 In Leviticus xxvi. occur such threatenings as these : 
 
 ' If ye will not hearken unto me ... I will also do this unto you ; if ye 
 shall despise my statutes or if your soul abhor my judgments, I will even 
 appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall 
 consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart . . . and I will set my face 
 against you and ye shall be slain before your enemies. And if ye walk 
 contrary to me I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to 
 your sins ; I will also send wild beasts among you which shall rob you of 
 your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, and your 
 highways shall be desolate. And I will send the pestilence among you to 
 avenge the quarrel of my covenant, and I, even I, will chastise you seven times 
 for your sins. . And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, 
 and cast your carcases tipon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor 
 you. And ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies, and ye shall 
 fierish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. ' 
 
 In Deuteronomy xxvii., xxviii., and xxix. there is a still more 
 direful catalogue of curses denounced upon apostates and rebels. 
 The Curses were to be denounced from Mount Ebal as soon as 
 they entered Palestine, to hang like thunderclouds of death over 
 the nation in every succeeding generation. 
 
 ' But if thou wilt not hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, all these 
 curses shall come upon thee. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, 
 and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do. until thou be 
 destroyed, and until thou perish quickly (?pnttftrw spnjfro). The Lord shall 
 make the pestilence cleave to thee until he have consumed thee from off the land 
 (rrcnwn btfn ^n'w inVp TO). The Lord shall smite thee with blasting, and mildew, 
 and fever, and inflammation, and extreme burning, and they shall pursue thee 
 lint il thou perish. And the Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and 
 dust, it shall come down upon thee until thou be destroyed. The Lord will 
 make thy plagues wonderful, even great plagues and of long continuance, and 
 
TEMPORAL PUNISHMENT. 
 
 159 
 
 sore sicknesses and of long continuance. And every sickness and every plague 
 which is not written in this book of the law them will the Lord bring upon 
 thee until tJiou be destroyed. And it shall come to pass that as the Lord 
 rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice 
 over you to destroy you and to bring you to nought (opriN Tpujnb), to exterminate 
 you.' 
 
 Such are the awful variations on the original theme in the 
 revelation of judgment according to the law. The sinners were 
 to be consumed out of the earth, to be exterminated after plagues 
 of long continuance, to die, to perish utterly, to be slain, to be 
 cut off, to be destroyed, to be brought to nought. 
 
 There is not a word of the indestructible life of a sinner, or 
 of the endless suffering due for sin; it is always, and everywhere, 
 The soul that sinneth it shall die. 
 
 If it be replied, These were temporal punishments, and related 
 only to men's state in time, the answer is obvious : the Law was 
 given to manifest sin, and its danger, both for time and eternity ; 
 and the time when actions are done is of no account in relation 
 to the moral government of God. Sin was ' exceeding sinful ' 
 then as now. It was here, if anywhere, that the * wages of sin ' 
 should have been plainly declared, and they are declared in 
 language which uniformly signifies the infliction of suffering ending 
 in death. It is to us inconceivable that if God were dealing with 
 immortal beings and exhibiting to them the ' due reward of their 
 deeds,' that reward being, in part, impending everlasting misery, 
 He would have commissioned Moses His servant to speak of no 
 punishment except one, which signifies extermination of the 
 offender. It seems to be the extreme of perverseness to assert 
 either that the language of the law means in genere anything else 
 than destruction, or that, meaning this, there was yet hidden 
 behind it, in the purpose of God, an eternity of misery of which 
 not a syllable is spoken to warn men to escape it. 
 
 Besides, if.it be alleged that these threatenings relate to time 
 only, the main argument is abandoned. For the words used by 
 Moses to denote, as is conceded, ' temporal ' destruction of life, 
 are the very words used by the Apostles of Christ to denote the 
 penalties of Gehenna ; they employ the same terms death, destruc- 
 tion, perishing, utterly perishing, consumption, in their Greek 
 equivalents, which Moses employs in the Hebrew of the law; 
 
160 DEATH EXPLAINED BY KILLING. 
 
 and it is surely to make a large demand upon men to ask them to 
 believe that such terms under one dispensation signify all that can 
 be even imagined of utter and complete extermination ; and, 
 under the other, all that can be imagined of indestructible bring, 
 and endless misery. 
 
 We possess, however, a comment on the threatening of death, 
 the characteristic Curse of the Law of Moses, from the pen of the 
 greatest Apostle of the Gospel, and that comment seems to be 
 so explicit as to leave not an inch of ground on which to found 
 the prevailing interpretation. 
 
 In the Epistle to the Roman Church S. Paul has occasion to 
 speak largely of the Law and its Curse. This curse he says is 
 death : and he traces it up to the first sin of humanity in paradise. 
 By one man sin entered into the ivorld, and death by sin, and so 
 death passed upon all men, in him in whom all sinned (or, for that 
 all sinned). This death he identifies, in the subsequent verses of 
 this fifth chaper, with the curse of the law, which * entered that 
 the offence might abound ; ' but ' where sin abounded grace did 
 much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, so might 
 grace reign.' 
 
 This death he traces in its action through the following (sixth) 
 chapter, ending with the sentence, 'The wages of sin is death, 
 but the gift of God is eternal life ' (ver. 23). 
 
 Then in chapter vii. he carries on the argument on the function 
 of the Law to convince of sin, not to save, showing that it brings 
 men under condemnation to death, and cannot give life eternal. 
 But here (as has been shown in a previous page) he uses a 
 word in explication of the <&#M-dealing action of the law, which 
 fixes the signification. He says the commandment (law) ' ordained 
 to life I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by 
 the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me,' St* ai/n/s 
 d-TreKTetvev. Now this verb iroKTewcw, to kill, is used as the 
 explanation of death, an explanation inconsistent with the Augus- 
 tinian idea of death, as endless misery. To kill is to take away 
 life, and nothing else. And not here alone S. Paul employs it 
 in exposition of the death which is the curse of the law. In 
 2 Cor. iii. 6, he repeats it TO yap ypa/A/m cbroKTeWet, TO Se TTVfVfJia 
 a>o7roiel, ' The letter (or law of Moses) killeth, but the Spirit (the 
 gospel) giveth life.' As has been remarked already, if the sup- 
 
THE LETTER KILLETH. 161 
 
 posed moral and figurative sense of death be the apostolic 
 sense if men were intended to understand by Odvaros, death, 
 eternal suffering in hell, then the synonymous word aTroKTewciv, to 
 kill, ought to be capable of similar treatment ; and it ought to 
 make sense to say that a sinner is killed and slain in the eternal 
 miseries of hell. But not even Augustine, or Calvin, or Edwards 
 have ventured to apply OLTTOKTCLVW in this signification; the 
 violence of the perversion would have too plainly appeared. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the death-penalty of the Law of 
 Moses signified the destruction of life, and that this is the curse, 
 however varied in the details of infliction, from which the Divine 
 Incarnate Life descends on earth to redeem mankind. 
 
 ii 
 
162 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS IN THE 
 POETIC AND PROPHETIC BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 I. The hope of eternal life in the Old Testament. 
 
 WHEN the law promises life to perfect obedience, we have the 
 authority of Christ for believing that that life is eternal. ' What 
 good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life ? Thou knowest the 
 commandments. This do and thou shalt live? But no law 
 * could be given to man by which he should gain ' eternal life, 
 because his nature was degenerate, and the rule of justification 
 by law demands that perfect obedience which man cannot render. 
 By the law comes only the ' knowledge of sin ' and its penalty. 
 
 But from the beginning of time sinful beings have been placed 
 by divine mercy under a dispensation of reconciliation. Man, 
 legally condemned to death, is 'brought nigh.' Before the 
 world Redemption was prepared in Christ, and through Him 
 there has been a ministration of the Spirit in all ages, by which 
 sinful men, 'born again/ may be led to the hope of life eternal. 
 The ' gospel was preached to Abraham/ and to all the fathers 
 who died in faith ; not in full doctrinal form, but in power, so 
 that every one who repented and turned to God in ' every nation ' 
 was, for Christ's sake, ' accepted ' of God ; even though knowing 
 little, or perhaps nothing at all, of the Saviour. Christ Himself 
 represents nothing greater than God. If, then, men believed in 
 God, and by yielding to God's Holy Spirit turned to Him, they 
 were saved, from the beginning of the world. Thus millions 
 innumerable were ' prepared unto glory ' in the ages before the 
 advent qf Christ. The Saviour's influence was felt long before 
 His person was revealed. There was a long dawn before the 
 
ETERNAL LIFE IN OLD TESTAMENT. 163 
 
 sunrise. Accordingly we find in the Old Testament writings 
 abundant evidence of a ' hope full of immortality.' 
 
 The writings of Moses comprise two revelations different as 
 light and darkness. They comprise the elementary revelation of 
 ' grace,' and they comprise that ' law ' which entered in order to 
 enforce and condemn the sin of man. In the same manner the 
 remainder of the Old Testament scriptures of the prophets 
 comprises a history of the working of the law, in stimulating 
 and bringing to the surface the ' sinfulness of sin,' in the chronic 
 rebellion of the Hebrew nation and they also comprise mani- 
 fold indications of the working of grace in the hearts of men of 
 good will. 
 
 It is also to be considered that the entrance of Redemption, 
 with promises of pardon and eternal life, had indefinitely 
 aggravated the sin of impenitence, as against God. Of those 
 ' to whom much is given more will be justly demanded.' Hence 
 there is not only that death which is the hereditary curse on 
 the descendants of the first sinner, and the due reward of law- 
 breaking in his descendants, but also the 'judgment' demanded 
 by the rejection of mercy, on ' a hard and impenitent heart.' 
 In the Old Testament writings we discover indications both 
 of the hope of the righteous, and fear of the ungodly. These 
 we now proceed briefly to collect and interpret. 
 
 The institution of Sacrifice by divine authority carries with 
 it a promise of life to penitent men. What meaneth sacrifice, 
 if not that God, the Judge who condemns man to death for 
 sin, has found some ransom by which He can restore His 
 ' banished ones ' ? The hope of restoration to Paradise and 
 the Tree of Life dawned upon men from the hour of the exile. 
 Our first parents were ' driven out ' with a whisper of prorm'se 
 in their hearts, that ' the seed of the woman should bruise^ the 
 serpent's head.' Adam called his wife's name ./T&zrcfcz^, ' Life, 
 because she was the Mother of all living ; for l being high priest 
 that same year he prophesied,' without knowing it, that the 
 woman's Son should 'abolish death, and bring life and incor- 
 ruption to light by the gospel.' 
 
 At the gates of Eden were 'made to dwell the Cherubim, 
 and a revolving flame to keep the way of the Tree of Life/ 
 
164 THE LOST PARADISE. 
 
 words which receive some explication when we perceive in 
 these cherubs emblems of man's dominion as lord of the living 
 creation. They are found in the tabernacle, -upon the throne of 
 grace, within the veil, even in that Holy of Holies which 
 represented the lost Paradise ; where were the ' propitiatory,' 
 and 'the pot of manna' which symbolised the bread of life 
 eternal, and 'Aaron's rod' that blossomed with life out of 
 death; mysteries setting forth the work and victory of that 
 ' Man Christ Jesus ' who should sit * down on the throne of 
 God ;' because all things 'should be made subject unto Him ; ' 
 who should * give His flesh ' as the bread of God, the celestial 
 manna, 'for the life of the world;' discharging the priesthood 
 of the everlasting covenant under which man, though dead, 
 lives again, and for ever. 
 
 When, then, the servants of God ' went into His sanctuary/ 
 as Asaph confesses in Psalm Ixxiii., ' then understood they ' 
 the ' end,' or future destinies of men (achatith). They under- 
 stood the eternal life of the saints ; they meditated upon the 
 sacrifices of blood, the holy candlestick, the golden altar ot 
 acceptable prayer, the hidden oracle of the Holiest, the type 
 of the lost Paradise, into which ' once a year ' Man already 
 entered ; and they broke forth in songs of praise to the Living 
 God. 
 
 ' Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel 
 And afterwards receive me to glory. 
 Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? 
 And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. 
 
 My flesh and my heart faileth, 
 
 But God is the .strength of my 
 
 Heart, and my portion for ever ! ' 
 
 If the heart of one devout man under the old dispensation 
 can be distinctly proved to have burned with these immortal 
 hopes, we may be assured that it was the common hope of them 
 all. Such expectations cannot be the idiosyncrasies of a select 
 few among the saints. The soul's love to the Eternal carried 
 with it the prevision of Immortality : and everything around 
 assured their hearts that if God would ' dwell with men upon 
 earth,' it could not be that He might simply watch His servants 
 dying like insects, around Him from age to age. No : their. 
 
ETERNAL LIFE IN THE PSALMS. 165 
 
 faith in every generation led them to cry aloud to God, ' Thou 
 wilt make me full of joy with Thy countenance/ 
 
 Of the Psalms, which express the familiar spiritual thoughts of 
 saints and prophets during a thousand years, a large number give 
 explicit utterance either to the hope of salvation from death, or to 
 the expectation of the Coming of that Mighty King * in whom all 
 nations should be blessed, and whose glory was connected with 
 power over death.' * 
 
 But in no single instance do we discover in the book of Psalms, 
 or in the poetical books, or in the book of collected Proverbs, or 
 weighty sayings of the wise, or in the Prophets, the expression of 
 the Socratic hope of eternal life, founded on man's essential nature 
 as eternal. The hope of life is restricted to righteous men, to the 
 true servants of God. There is not one ray of hope of an eternal 
 future which shines on the head of a rebel in the Old Testament. 
 The immortality of the nephesh was a speculation unknown to the 
 
 * The following Psalms seem to be full of thoughts which would never have 
 entered into the minds of men to whom death was a sleep that ended all. 
 Psalms i., ii., iv., v., viii., xv., xvi., xviii., xxiii., xxv., xxvii., xxxii., xxxiv. , 
 xxxvii., xxxix., xli., xlix., 1., li., Ixii., lxxii.,lxxiii., Ixxxiv., xc., xci., xcii., xcv., 
 c., ex., cxvi., cxix., cxxxix., cxlv. Having quoted Mr. Spurgeon adversely in 
 a previous page, I have the greater pleasure in recommending his elaborate 
 work, The Treasury of David, as an extraordinary collection of valuable 
 comments on the book of Psalms. 
 
 The reader who will study in this order these sublime odes of many writers 
 ranging from the age of Moses (as Psalm xc.) down to the Captivity, will find 
 the conviction deepening upon him that of all groundless delusions of modern 
 times one of the most groundless is that these ' old fathers looked only for 
 temporal promises.' They looked indeed, as we also should look, first of all 
 to 'inherit the earth? they looked for the coming of God's King, and with him 
 of God's kingdom on the earth, that here ' His will might be done as in heaven ;' 
 but their hopes extended infinftely beyond. They were not so far behind the 
 materialistic Egyptians. Their ' own God ' was the Ever-living Creator, and 
 while His gracious relation to them implied the gift of immortal life, their rela- 
 tion to Him implied the faith of it. ' They looked for that city which hath 
 foundations.' Even the learned authors of The Unseen Universe have been 
 seduced by Dean Stanley into the opinion that 'although there are a few 
 scattered passages which favour immortality, yet these are so few that we can- 
 not err if we maintain that this doctrine was no u . brought to the mind of the 
 Hebrews in the same way as was the Unity o" God. Not from want of 
 religion but from excess of religion was this void le r t in the Jewish mind. The 
 future life was overlooked, overshadowed by the consciousness of the presence 
 of God Himself.' Page 9. 
 
166 ETERNAL LIFE IN THE PROPHECIES. 
 
 saints and prophets. 'All the wicked will He destroy.' 'When 
 the wicked spring as the grass, and all the workers of iniquity 
 flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever.' That with 
 them is the end of the ungodly. No man lives for ever but in 
 God. ' Evil shall slay the wicked.' 
 
 It cannot be insisted on too urgently that the hope of the Old 
 Testament saints was a hope of Resurrection. They believed 
 indeed more or less vividly in a survival of souls in Shcol or 
 Hades, as we shall attempt to show in a future chapter; but 
 that state was thought of as one of comparative torpor and in- 
 capacity. The main hope was that ' in the flesh ' they should 
 see God. We have already adverted to a part of the evidence 
 of this fact. A few points of interest now remain to be noted. 
 
 The sixteenth Psalm expresses, a thousand years before Christ, 
 this hope of God's servants. ' Thou wilt not leave my soul in 
 Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption. 
 Thou wilt show me the path of life, and make me full of joy with 
 Thy countenance.' It is true that this promise made in a climate 
 where corruption occurs before the 'fourth day' (John xi.) applies 
 primarily to the resurrection of One who must therefore rise soon 
 after death. But His resurrection carries with it the hope of all 
 God's servants. 
 
 The prophet Isaiah (we shall assume with Dr. E. Hawkins the 
 homogeneous authorship of the whole book bearing that name) 
 has two remarkable passages expressing in the most distinct 
 manner the faith of the Resurrection. 
 
 In the celebrated 53rd chapter, which describes the sufferings 
 of the 'Servant of God,' 'by whose stripes we are healed,' the 
 following words occur : 
 
 'When thou shalt make his soul (or nephesh) a sin-offering 
 (D^'tf) he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the 
 pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands/ 
 
 Here it is declared that after his life is poured out as a sin- 
 offering, he shall nevertheless ' prolong it.' This can be only by 
 a resurrection. Can it be that men who thus prophesy are 
 destitute of faith in the resurrection ? Do we not trace in these 
 words the same hope that dwelt in David when he says of the 
 same Saviour, ' My flesh shall rest in hope, because Thou wilt 
 not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy 
 
ETERNAL LIFE IN THE PROPHECIES. 167 
 
 One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of Life, and 
 make me full of joy with Thy countenance.' Either the Messiah 
 is here, or the Hebrew believer is here. In either case there is a 
 solid confidence in the resurrection of glory. 
 
 The other passage of the Prophet Isaiah is in chapter xxvi. 
 19: 
 
 * Thy dead shall live ; 
 My dead bodies shall arise : 
 Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, 
 For thy dew is as the dew of herbs.' 
 
 Here the lot of the righteous is contrasted with that of their 
 tyrants and oppressors, who are described as D^SH* Rephaim, 
 wicked ghosts : 
 
 ' They are dead men ! They shall not live ! They are Rephaim ! They 
 shall not arise ! Thou shalt visit and destroy them, and make all their memory 
 to perish.' 
 
 Here again is language which expressly indicates the awakening 
 of the just ; and in the former passage, the forgiveness and glori- 
 fication of the saints is ascribed to the Resurrection of the Servant 
 of God. Daniel but re-echoed the faith of his predecessors when 
 he said, ' At that time many of them that sleep in the dust of the 
 earth shall awake, to life everlasting' (xii. 2). 
 
 II. Old Testament doctrine on the Future Punishment of the 
 Wicked. 
 
 It has been shown at the commencement of this chapter that 
 Man, placed from the very epoch of the fall under two distinct 
 systems of moral government, the law and the gospel, is subject 
 to two distinct systems of penalty ; the one, normal, congenital, 
 and hereditary, as well as due for our own sins ; the other incurred 
 by persistent rebellion against the mercy of God. The death or 
 destruction of earthly life is the curse of the Law, the Second 
 Death in ' Gehenna' is the curse of rejected redemption. These 
 conclusions we gather in their clearest form from the Christian 
 revelation ; but the question arises whether the second order of 
 penalty in * judgment to come ' was known to the ancients, and if 
 it were, in what measure of clearness. 
 
1 68 FUTURE PUNISHMENT ISAIAH XXXIII. 
 
 Those who are of opinion that all men are immortal, reading 
 the Hebrew Scriptures with a predisposition to find the corre- 
 sponding doctrine of eternal misery in every part, have found, 
 or thought they found, this threatening in several passages of 
 the prophets. Compelled to discover it only in language which 
 requires severe pressure to make it speak the sense of a ' death 
 which never dies, such critics have fastened with warmer zeal 
 upon the few sentences which, especially in the English version, 
 seemed to be capable of the desired interpretation. Of these the 
 chief must be noticed, even although criticism has long abandoned 
 them as defences of the article of eternal suffering. Dr. Horberry, 
 one of the most strenuous and able asserters of this doctrine in 
 the last century, admits (and it is a remarkable admission on the 
 part of those who allow that men in ancient times stood in no 
 less need of solemn warnings than to-day) that ' the Old Testa- 
 ment has nothing so clear and express upon this subject as the 
 New ; ' intending doubtless nothing so clear as he thought he 
 found in the New ; but the following passage is cited in proof, 
 even by many careful writers, and is used in popular discourse to 
 this day without apparent suspicion of irrelevance. 
 
 (i) The words of the Prophet Isaiah (chap, xxxiii. 14) are 
 adduced by Dr. Jonathan Edwards in his Reply to Chauncy, 
 chap, v., as Old Testament evidence of endless misery : ' The 
 sinners in Zion are afraid ; fearfulness hath surprised the hypo- 
 crites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire ? Who 
 among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? ' 
 
 A correct translation is the first step to a true interpretation. 
 Sir Edward Strachey * gives the passage thus : ' The sinners in 
 Zion are afraid : fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who 
 among us can abide the devouring fire ? who among us can abide 
 perpetual burnings ? ' A slight attention to the context shows (as 
 may be seen in the accessible commentaries, of very different 
 pretensions, of Barnes, Delitzsch, and Gesenius) that the chapter 
 whence these words are quoted refers to the desolating invasion 
 of Palestine by the Assyrians. On this these commentators are 
 all agreed. The cited words have not the most remote reference to 
 future punishment ; but refer to present punishment on earth. 
 They represent the outcries of terrified sinners in Jerusalem, who 
 * Jewish History and Politics, p. 435. 
 
FUTURE PUNISHMENT ISAIAH LXV1. 169 
 
 rightly feared that the perpetual conflagrations of war, the de- 
 vastations of fire and sword caused by the invader, would end in 
 their destruction ; for who, said they, can dwell in these perpetual 
 burnings ? In ver. 10 the Lord thus addresses them : ' Now will 
 I arise; now will I be exalted. Ye conceive chaff and bring 
 forth stubble, and my Spirit like fire shall consume you. And the 
 people shall be burned as lime (crumble to dust), as thorns cut up 
 shall they be consumed in the fire' Then follows this text, quoted 
 with an indifference to the sense of Scripture which deserves 
 severe reprobation, since such proceedings in hermeneutics are 
 fatal to the honest study of theology . ' Who among us can abide 
 the devouring fire, who among us can abide perpetual burnings ? ' 
 It is manifest that the fires of ver. 14 are the same with those of 
 ver. 12, but they were the flames of war kindled in Palestine by 
 the Assyrians, the effect of which could be withstood by the 
 righteous, and by them alone ; for they can dwell in these per- 
 petual conflagrations. It is the wicked who cannot dwell in them. 
 
 (2) The second passage from the Old Testament cited in 
 support of the doctrine of endless suffering is in chap. Ixvi. of 
 Isaiah's prophecy, ver. 24 : 
 
 * And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men 
 who have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, 
 neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring to 
 allflesh: 
 
 It is argued that, in Mark ix. 50, our Lord Jesus Christ quotes 
 the last two clauses in proof of the eternal sufferings of the 
 wicked in hell, thus giving decisive evidence that such is the 
 signification of the words in the original text. We deny both the 
 premiss and conclusion. Christ does not cite the words in proof 
 of the 'doctrine of eternal suffering.' He utters not a syllable to 
 that effect. He warns His disciple to enter into ' life ' halt or 
 maimed, rather than, ' having two hands or feet,' to be cast into 
 the * eternal fire ; ' for He says 'it is better that one of thy members 
 should perish, rather than that thy whole body should be cast into 
 Gehenna.' But what remains true is this, that our Lord's citation 
 of' the passage from Isaiah in reference to future punishment 
 sanctions the belief that the passage, as it stands in Isaiah, bears 
 the same reference ; to judgment, in fact, inflicted on God's 
 enemies during the kingdom of Christ. The nature of the 
 
1 70 ' THEIR WORM SHALL NOT DIE: 
 
 punishment is a 'miserable destruction,' as appears from the 
 following considerations : 
 
 1. The condition of the victims of divine vengeance is ex- 
 pressed by the word carcases. 'They shall go forth and look 
 upon the (0^3$), pegarini) dead corpses (so the same word is 
 rendered in the account of the slaughter of the 175,000 Assyrians 
 2 Kings xix. 35) of the men who have transgressed against 
 me.' ' In the morning they were all dead corpses,' pegarim. The 
 persons referred to are dead. Their life is destroyed. 
 
 2. The attempted figurative sense given to the ' undying 
 worm,' as an ever-gnawing Conscience, can be imposed on the 
 clause only by taking the word die in the sense of literal death. 
 ' Their worm shall not die? signifies their worm shall not cease to 
 be. The addition of a negative does not alter the signification of 
 a verb. Thus the prevailing argument that death stands for 
 eternal suffering can be made out from this passage only by taking 
 the word die in the natural sense of ceasing to live, that is to 
 say, the sense which we suppose to be the general sense is taken 
 here for the true meaning, because when so taken, with a negative, 
 the passage can be made to speak of eternal suffering. 
 
 3. Our Saviour has fixed the signification of living %&& perishing 
 in the context of Mark ix., by drawing the contrast, ' It were good 
 that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole 
 body should be cast into Gehenna,' the effect of which is that it 
 also would 'perish.' Now the 'perishing of one member,' by 
 cutting it off, is for it to be deprived of life ; not to expose it to 
 endless misery. Therefore the perishing of the whole body 
 results in similar destruction. And therefore, also, the persons 
 whose ' worm shall not die ' are those who have been reduced to 
 pegarim, dead corpses, as we read in the prophecy whence the 
 citation is taken. 
 
 When, therefore, the fanciful post-Christian writer of the Book of 
 Judith declares that ' the vengeance of the ungodly is fire and 
 worms, and they shall feel them and weep for ever,' he goes beyond 
 the prophecy, and yields to the influence of a philosophical 
 doctrine on immortality learned from Greece and Egypt, and not. 
 found in his national scriptures. 
 
 (3) The third and last passage in the Old Testament which 
 is sometimes cited in support of the idea of eternal misery is in 
 
'EVERLASTING CONTEMPT* DANIEL XII. 171 
 
 Daniel xii. 2 : l And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth 
 shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlast- 
 ing contempt? 
 
 ' So it reads,' says the learned Mr. Maude, ' in our English 
 version ; Dr. Tregelles, however, who will not be suspected of 
 any heretical bias, with many other Hebrew scholars, translates : 
 " And many from among the sleepers of the dust shall awake ; 
 these shall be unto everlasting life; but those (the rest of the 
 sleepers, those who do not awake at this time) shall be unto 
 shame and everlasting contempt." And he adds, "The word 
 which in our Authorised Version is twice rendered 'some,' is 
 never repeated in any other passage in the Hebrew Bible, in 
 the sense of taking up distributively any general class which had 
 been previously mentioned ; this is enough, I think, to warrant 
 our applying its first occurrence here to the whole of the many 
 who awake, and the second to the mass of the sleepers, those who 
 do not awake at this time."* And the correctness of this transla- 
 tion is confirmed, not only by the fact that it is the interpretation 
 given by the most eminent Jewish commentators, t but also by the 
 internal evidence of the passage taken in its context. For the 
 "time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation," 
 spoken of in the preceding first verse of the chapter, must certainly 
 be identified with the " great tribulation " spoken of in Matt. 
 xxiv. 21-30, which will be endured during the reign and 
 blasphemy of the last Antichrist " the Man of Sin " even him 
 " whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and 
 shall destroy with the brightness of His coming" (2 Thess. ii. 8). 
 Hence the resurrection here spoken of by Daniel synchronises 
 with the period of the Second Advent, and is plainly a prophecy 
 of the First Resurrection, all the partakers in which are " blessed 
 and holy." ' 
 
 It is added, however, that even if the wicked do not then rise, 
 
 * Remarks on the Prophetic Visions of Daniel, p: 174. 
 
 f * Thus the famous Aben Ezra, in his commentary on the chapter, quotes 
 Rabbi Saadias as declaring that "those who awake shall be (appointed) to 
 everlasting life, and those who awake not shall be (doomed) to shame and 
 everlasting contempt." The words of Saadias himself are that "this is the 
 resurrection of the dead of Israel, whose lot is to eternal life, and those who 
 shall not awake are the forsakers of Jehovah," etc.' 
 
1?2 THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS MISERY 
 
 they are reserved ' for shame and everlasting contempt' and this 
 indicates their conscious existence for ever to endure the con- 
 tempt. That this is not so is proved by the Hebrew word here 
 employed. It is pXT-J demon, the very word employed in 
 Isaiah Ixvi. 24 to represent the ' abhorring of all flesh,' which is 
 the fate of the wicked men just before described as dead corpses 
 or pegarim. It follows that the everlasting contempt or abhorring 
 may fall, for anything that is taught in Daniel xii. 2, upon the 
 dead. 
 
 We do not learn that any passages excepting these three are 
 cited from the Old Testament writings in support of the modern 
 doctrines. Let us consider what is involved in this admission. 
 During certainly five, and possibly six or eight, thousand years 
 preceding the advent of Christ, there was an innumerable race 
 of sinful creatures on earth abandoned for the most part to 
 hereditary superstitions, for the most part also unable to read or 
 think clearly, and nearly at the mercy of their kings and priests. 
 Now these seemingly mortal creatures were all according to this 
 theory immortal, destined to endure as long as the Eternal God ; 
 they were all born in sin, they were all sinners, they were all liable 
 to everlasting misery in hell. And yet the only recorded refer- 
 ences made by their merciful God to this frightful doom in the 
 way of warning are discovered in three disputed texts of two 
 Jewish prophets, living in a late age in comparison with the length 
 of the world's past history ; and these three texts are declared by 
 the most competent critics to have not the least relevancy to the 
 supposed impending destiny. Is this the method of the Divine 
 government? Is there not here rather the method of theologising 
 handed down to its by men of the fourth century, who knew little 
 of Scripture, little of history, and still less of God, the Righteous 
 and the Merciful ? 
 
 What, then, we must now inquire, were the beliefs of Old 
 Testament times respecting future judgment ? Are there no 
 decisive indications that men were taught to look for future 
 retribution, and if there be any, what were the evils they 
 feared ? 
 
 The safest method of investigating the beliefs of antiquity is to 
 begin at this end of the history, and in this case to seize the clue 
 
NOT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 173 
 
 offered to us by the statements of Christ and His apostles. They 
 lived only 1,800 years ago, and were far more likely to know what 
 their predecessors believed, and what the prophets taught, than 
 modern men who look at the remote past through the medium of 
 modern theories. 
 
 Let it be observed, then, that our Lord never even makes a 
 question of it, but decisively takes it for granted that * Sodom and 
 Gomorrha,' which were destroyed once by fire for their sins, have 
 yet to undergo a second and more awful infliction in * the day of 
 judgment.' ' Tyre and Sidon ' are spoken of as reserved for a 
 similar retribution. 
 
 The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, expressing himself as 
 if giving utterance to an acknowledged belief, says, ' As it is 
 appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment' (ix. 27). 
 The apostle Jude, citing perhaps the apocryphal book of Enoch, 
 nevertheless only signifies what was the consenting voice of ages, 
 that from the earliest times God has announced by His prophets 
 retribution for the sins of time in a state still future. ' Behold the 
 Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment 
 upon air (ver. 14). 
 
 In the centuries immediately preceding the gospel this belief 
 was unhesitatingly held. In the book of Ecclesiastes a work 
 written during or after the captivity, more probably than by 
 Solomon, if we trust the latest criticism the closing verses reveal 
 the faith of the writer. ' Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
 matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the 
 whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, 
 with evety secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil/ 
 
 That such expectations of judgment should prevail among the 
 Israelites, as the punishment of rejecting God's offered mercy in 
 time, is in accordance with the almost universal instinct of both 
 ancient and modern times which leads men to ' the fear ' of, what 
 Shakespeare calls, * something after death? Whether the retribution 
 would come upon the spiritual element of the dissolved nature in 
 Sheol, or on the whole awakened man in a future judgment, might 
 be doubtful but of the fear itself there was general recognition 
 as a divinely implanted instinct. The punishment of Sodom and 
 Gomorrha was regarded not only as the due reward of their deeds, 
 but as an example to them that should after live ungodly ; which 
 
174 OLD TESTAMENT THREATENINGS 
 
 could not be unless they understood that judgment by fire from 
 heaven was prepared for sinners. ' Upon the wicked He shall rain 
 destruction, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest ; this shall 
 be the portion of their cup ' (Psalm xi.). ' His hand shall find 
 out all His enemies. He shall make them as a fiery oven in the 
 day of His wrath, and His anger shall devour them' (Psalm xxi.). 
 ' Behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and the proud 
 and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble, and the day that 
 cometh shall burn them up, that it shall leave them neither root nor 
 branch' (Malachi iv.). 
 
 Such expressions as these are frequently, but most unwar- 
 rantably, taken to refer only to temporal punishments. The plain 
 indications of faith in a survival of souls in death, many of them 
 in a state not blessed, nor leading to blessedness, adds force to 
 the impression given by the fore-cited passages announcing 
 Judgment. These we shall examine, together with the New 
 Testament doctrine of Hades, in a separate chapter (xxi.). That 
 the Jews themselves had gathered from their own Scriptures and 
 had received by tradition from their fathers the fixed anticipation 
 of a 'resurrection both of just and unjust* is certified to us by 
 S. Paul and S. Luke, who declare that they themselves ' allow this ' 
 (Acts xxvi.). The 'Second Death' of the New Testament 
 revelation is but the repetition of an old Testament doctrine. 
 The souls of the wicked remain in Sheol, the under-world, and 
 are termed D^T]> Rephaim, but they, like the souls of the righ- 
 teous, await a judgment before the Lord, who comes to 'judge the 
 world in righteousness.' Then, says the Prophet Isaiah, 'the 
 earth shall cast out the Rephaim. The earth also shall disclose her 
 blood, and shall no more cover her slain ' (Isaiah xxvi. 19).* All 
 
 * The entire chapter (Isaiah xxvi.) deserves attentive study. Sir Edward 
 Strachey's comment on the prophecy xxv.-xxvi. is highly valuable. The 
 prophet describes the final victory of God over the foes of His Church. ' He 
 shall swallow up death for ever.' The church however complains of delay, the 
 delay of resurrection and recompense. * We have as it were brought forth wind ; 
 we have not wrought any deliverance, neither hath the earth brought forth the 
 inhabitants of the -world (for judgment). Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies 
 shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust and the earth shall cast 
 forth the Rephaim ' (the wicked dead), ^sn G^En p- 
 
 And just above the prophet had said ver. 18, ' O Lord, other lords besides 
 Thee have had dominion over us. But by Thee only will we make mention of 
 
OF DESTRUCTION TO THE WICKED. 175 
 
 human life is to reappear for judgment. And whatever may be 
 the spiritual sufferings of some souls in Hades, judgment requires 
 the whole humanity to appear. The departed spirit is not the 
 Man, but only one element of his being. If the man is to be 
 judged, he must rise from the dead to appear before God. 
 
 The bodily resurrection of the wicked who had lived before the 
 advent is doubted by some writers, on the ground that it is not 
 distinctly taught in the ancient canonical books. I submit that 
 it is taught in as many places as the resurrection of the righteous 
 is there taught; neither of them are numerous, yet the whole 
 moral structure of the Old Testament dispensation implies the 
 reality of the judgment to come, as the readers of Christ's time 
 justly judged. But the main noticeable fact is that the final destiny 
 of the wicked is spoken of in the general terms of the curse of 
 the law itself. There was no prospect of eternal suffering set 
 before the sinners. Their end would be death, extermination. 
 ' When the wicked spring as the grass, and all the workers of 
 iniquity flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever' (Psalm 
 xcii. 7). Hence the faint distinction made in the perspective of 
 prophecy between the death which was the legal curse, and the 
 death eternal. The one dark cloud is seen against the back- 
 ground of a blacker darkness but the general impression left is 
 that the wicked will ultimately perish, and miserably die. 
 
 The prophets, who could speak so eloquently of the woes of 
 mortals in time, as we see by the Lamentations of Jeremiah, do 
 not vary the form of their speech when speaking of a wicked 
 man's final destiny. They only deepen their colours, and intro- 
 duce terms which declare that his ruin shall be irreparable and his 
 destruction complete and eternal. 
 
 There is much doubt as to the date of the BOOK OF JOB. 
 Recent criticism inclines to the opinion of a more recent original. 
 
 Thy name (of God). They are dead, they shall not live ; they are Rephaim 
 (wicked and lost men), they shall stand up. Thou wilt visit and destroy them, 
 and make all their memory to perish.' 'For behold' (ver. 21) 'the Lord 
 cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, 
 and the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.' Here is the 
 contrast between the righteous and the wicked. The wicked (Rephaim) shall 
 be brought forth, cast out by the earth as an abortion but they shall not stand 
 ^ip, TOJ7^a. But the righteous shall ' stand up ' and ' live. ' See Psalm i. 5, 
 with Kimchi's comment, in Perowne on the Psalms. 
 
176 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WICKED. 
 
 Of whatever epoch, this sublime poem contains numerous exam- 
 ples of the contemporary beliefs respecting judgment to come. 
 
 A steadfast silence as to the endless duration of the lives of the 
 ungodly characterises this book. It contains frequent and animated 
 references to the punishment of the wicked ; and being composed 
 in the ' lofty style of the Asiatics,' we might anticipate amplifica- 
 tion in the detail, and a copious vocabulary of curses to pervade 
 those portions which describe their doom. For it is not the 
 genius of oriental speech to compress infinite ideas into tame and 
 inadequate expressions, with Spartan sententiousness, but rather 
 to magnify them. And, surely, if such a conception as that of 
 everlasting existence in misery were intended to be conveyed in the 
 style of Eastern poetry, it would find its natural and appropriate 
 vehicle in the terrific language of the Koran, rather than in the 
 brief declarations of this composition. The following are ex- 
 amples of the threatenings held out, in the book of Job, to the 
 enemies of God : 
 
 Chap, xviii. 'The light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of 
 his fire shall not shine. His strength shall be hunger-bitten, and destruction 
 shall be ready at his side. It shall devour the strength of his skin : even the 
 first-born of death shall devour his strength. His confidence shall be rooted 
 out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors. It shall 
 dwell in his tabernacle, because it is none of his : brimstone shall be scattered 
 upon his habitation. His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his 
 branch be cut off. His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall 
 have no name in the street. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and 
 chased out of the world.' 
 
 Chap. xx. ' Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon the 
 earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite 
 but for a moment ? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his 
 head reach unto the clouds ; yet shall he perish for ever like his own dung : 
 they which have seen him shall say, Where is he ? He shall fly away as a 
 dream, and shall not be found : yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the 
 night. The eye also which saw him shall see him no more ; neither shall his 
 place any more behold him.' 
 
 Chap. xxi. 'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out? and how oft 
 cometh their destruction upon them ? His eyes shall see his destruction, and 
 he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty.' 
 
 The BOOK OF PSALMS may be supposed to represent the 
 popular belief during the best instructed ages of the Jewish com- 
 monwealth. The menaces of vengeance to the ungodly found in 
 
OP THREATENING Iti TtiE PSALMS. 177 
 
 this collection of sacred songs, in addition to those already cited, 
 are as follows : 
 
 Psalm i. 'The ungodly are not so : they are like the chaff, which the wind 
 driveth away. The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous : but the way of 
 the ungodly shall perish.'' 
 
 Psalm ii. ' Thou shall break them with a rod of iron ; thou shalt dash them 
 in pieces like a potter's vessel. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish 
 by the way.'* 
 
 Psalm ix. ' Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the 
 wicked ; thou hast put out their name for ever and ever. The wicked shall be 
 turned into Sheol (the state of death), and all the nations that forget God.' 
 
 Psalm xxxiv. ' The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off 
 the remembrance of them from the earth. Evil shall slay the wicked: and they 
 that hate the righteous shall be desolate. ' 
 
 Psalm xxxvii. 'Fret not thyself because of evil-doers, neither be thou 
 envious at the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut dawn like the 
 grass, and wither like the green herb. For evil-doers shall be cut off : but 
 those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. (See Matt. v. 5.) 
 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be : yea, thou shalt diligently 
 consider his place, and it shall not be. The wicked shall perish, and the enemies 
 of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs : they shall consume ; into smoke shall 
 they consume away. For such as be blessed of God shall inherit the earth ; but 
 they that be cursed of him shall be cut off. I have seen the wicked in great 
 power, and spreading himself like the green bay tree. Yet he passed away, 
 and, lo, he was not ; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark 
 the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace. 
 Bnt the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be 
 ctit off.' 
 
 Psalm xlix. ' Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the 
 beasts that perish? 
 
 Psalm xcii. 'O Lord, how great are thy works ! and thy thoughts are veiy 
 deep. A brutish man+ knoweth not ; neither doth a fool understand this. 
 When the wicked spring as the grass, and all the workers of iniquity do 
 flourish ; it is that they may be destroyed for ever. (Lehishshamedam, the word 
 used in Gen. xxxiv. 30; Levit. xxvi. 30; Numb, xxxiii. 52; Deut. i. 27.) 
 For, lo, thy enemies, O Lord, for, lo, thy enemies shall perish ; all the workers 
 of iniquity shall be scattered. ' 
 
 Psalm ciii. 9. ' He will not contend for ever, neither -mill he retain his 
 wrath to eternity (legnolam*),' 1 words which never could have been written by a 
 believer in the doctrine of endless torments. 
 
 Psalm civ. ' My meditation of Him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the 
 
 * From this passage Rabbi David Kimchi takes occasion to teach in his 
 Commentary the literal destruction of the wicked. 
 \ Hebrew, "Wl-urN, ish-baar, literally the man beast, or animal-man. 
 
 12 
 
1 78 THREATENING^ IN THE PROVERBS. 
 
 Lord. Let the sinners be destroyed out of the earth, and let the wicked 
 be no more.' Could the Psalmist have really found a ' sweet ' subject of medi- 
 tation in the God of Augustine and Edwards, who would never cease through- 
 out eternity to inflict suffering on the wicked ? 
 
 Psalm cxii. ' The horn of the righteous shall be exalted with honour. The 
 wicked shall see it and be grieved ; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt 
 away.' (See Matt. xiii. 50, 'There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.') 
 
 The wisdom of SOLOMON dictated to him expressions on this 
 subject in conformity with the declarations of David : 
 
 Prov. x. 24. ' The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him : but the 
 desire of the righteous shall be granted. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the 
 wicked no more: but the righteous hath an everlasting foundation. The 
 fear of the Lord prolongeth days : but the years of the wicked shall be shortened. 
 The hope of the righteous shall be gladness : but the expectation of the wicked 
 shall perish. The way of the Lord is strength to the upright : but destruction 
 shall be to the workers of iniquity. The righteous shall never be removed ; 
 but the wicked shall not inherit the earth.' 
 
 Prov. xiii. 13. ' Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed: but he that 
 feareth the commandment shall be rewarded. The law of the wise is a foun- 
 tain of life, to depart from the snares of death. ' 
 
 Prov. xiv. 12. 'There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the 
 end thereof are the ways of death.' 
 
 Prov. xv. * The way of the life is above (an upward road) to the wise to 
 depart from Sheol (the state of death) beneath.' 
 
 Prov. xxi. 16. 'The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding 
 shall remain in the congregation of the dead' {Rephaim Heb.). 
 
 After the preceding citations, it is not necessary to enlarge 
 on the general style in which the PROPHETS denounce God's 
 judgments to the ungodly. Their words are uniformly to the 
 effect, that the sinner shall be destroyed, shall be consumed, shall 
 die, perish, or be slain.* 
 
 * An objection has been raised by the Rev. C. Clemance to the quotation 1 
 of Old Testament writers ' without considering, Who said it ? and, When was 
 it said ? Chapters written in an early age for infant minds, are dealt with as 
 if they were written in precise formula.' ' We cannot consistently in the same 
 breath maintain that the Word of God, especially in its earliest stages, is written 
 in a style not scientific but popular, and then appeal to its rudimentary chapters 
 as if they were not popular but scientific ' (pp. 33, 34, Future Punishment}. 
 Mr. Clemance plainly forgets the most remarkable element of the case for con- 
 sideration, viz., that the Bible -writers of all ages use. the same terms throughout 
 to denote the final curse of God on sin ; and hence the ' popular and scientific ' 
 are not only not at variance, but coincide. 
 
' THE SPIRIT SHOULD FAIL BEFORE ME: 179 
 
 The 1 8th chapter of Ezekiel's prophecies contains a fair 
 example of the prophetical mode of address : 
 
 * Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son 
 is mine. The soul that sinneth it shall die. Have I any pleasure that the 
 wicked should die ? saith the Lord God, and not that he should return from 
 his ways and live ? ' ' For when the wicked turneth away from his wickedness 
 which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall 
 save his soul alive ; because he considereth, he shall surely live, he shall not 
 die. For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord 
 God : wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye ! ' 
 
 The following passage occurs in a critique in the British 
 Quarterly Review, February, 1 846 : * We know that the soul 
 is immortal by intuition, the savage and the sage alike ; aye, 
 the savage often more surely than the sage ; and God Himself 
 assures us in revelation, as through intuition, that the souls 
 which He has made shall never fail from before Him.' With 
 respect to the former part of the learned writer's assertion, it 
 suffices to allege that the Bechuanas and Australians, and 
 several tribes of Central Africa, have been found destitute of 
 the notion of immortality. The Scripture referred to is Isaiah 
 Ivii. 1 6 : ' For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always 
 wroth : for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls that I 
 have made' From these words it is evident, in the first place, 
 that there is no such doctrine as ' everlasting wrath ' in the Old 
 Testament : and, secondly, that the holy prophet , declares such 
 an intention on God's part as an eternal infliction would neces- 
 sarily be followed by the ' failure ' or cessation of the souls which 
 He has made. He declares that human souls are not made by 
 God strong enough to endure an endless torment. The reference 
 was, therefore, altogether misleading. 
 
i8o 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ON THE OPPOSED DOCTRINES OF THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES 
 IN RELATION TO A FUTURE LIFE j AND ON CHRIST'S REJECTION 
 OF BOTH. 
 
 WE are indebted in recent times for an excellent summary of 
 all that is known respecting these two sects of the Jews to four 
 articles by Mr. Twisleton and Dr. Ginsburg in the great Biblical 
 Dictionaries of Dr. Smith and Dr. Kitto.* They offer to the in- 
 quirer a remarkable phenomenon in the history of thought, doubly 
 remarkable as appearing at the very end of the Mosaic Dispen- 
 sation, while standing also in close contemporary relation with 
 the teaching of the ' Word made Flesh.' 
 
 The date of their origin as distinct parties is somewhat obscure, 
 but under their present names their existence is not traceable 
 beyond the second or third centuries before Christ. Their 
 opinions and general line of thought belong to an earlier epoch. 
 Modern critics are agreed that the Sadducees, properly speaking, 
 were a priestly and aristocratic party, professing to ' stand upon 
 the old ways,' to adhere closely to the Mosaic law, taken in its 
 most literal and limited sense, to reject tradition, and that 'oral 
 law ' of unwritten explications and additions, which their oppo- 
 nents the Pharisees made the rule of all their thought and action. 
 The most prominent result of this general position was that they 
 rejected altogether the doctrine of a life to come. The account 
 given of their standpoint on this question by S. Luke in his two 
 historical books tallies in every respect with what is learned of 
 them from other sources. It is a misfortune that no work written 
 by a Sadducee remains, but so far as the main dispute between 
 them and their opponents is concerned there is no reason to 
 
 * Both Mr. Twisleton and Dr. Ginsburg rightly acknowledge their great 
 obligations to Geiger, Urschrift und Uebei'setznngen der Bibel. 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE SADDUCEES. 181 
 
 imagine that less than justice has been done to them by the New 
 Testament writer. 'They deny/ says S. Luke, 'that there is 
 " any resurrection " ' (ot di/rtAeyorres dmo-rao-iv //// eu/cu XX. 27). 
 He adds (Acts xxiii. 8), ' For the Sadducees say that there is no 
 resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess 
 both.' 
 
 Josephus says, ' They take away the survival of the soul 
 (SLafjiovrjv) and the punishments and rewards of Hades ' (De 
 Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 14). Again (in Antiq. xviii. r. 4) he says, 'Their 
 doctrine is that souls perish with the bodies ; ' literally ' their 
 doctrine makes souls to vanish together with the bodies,' 
 
 The later Rabbins give the same account of the Sadducean 
 opinion ; which is indeed a logical result from their general mode 
 of regarding the Law, and a natural reaction by antipathy against 
 the indefensible tenets of the Pharisees. 
 
 The basis, then, of the doctrine of the Sadducees was the 
 silence of Moses, the complete silence, as they thought, respecting 
 a future state. The less astonishment ought to be felt at this 
 conclusion when we remember that some of the foremost Jewish 
 and Christian scholars in modern Europe are equally convinced 
 that in the Pentateuch Moses preserves an unbroken silence re- 
 specting a future life or a resurrection. The opinion of Warburton 
 in the Divine Legation is earnestly maintained by the learned 
 French Jew, Grand-Rabbi Stein, in his work on Judaism in 1859. 
 Dr. Stein says : 
 
 * What causes most surprise in perusing the Pentateuch is the silence which 
 it seems to keep respecting the most fundamental and consoling truths. The 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of retribution beyond the tomb, 
 are able powerfully to fortify man against the violence of passions, the seductive 
 attraction of vice, and to strengthen his steps in the rugged path of virtue : of 
 themselves they smooth all the difficulties which are raised, all the objections 
 which are made, against the government of a Divine Providence ; and account 
 for the good fortune of the wicked, and the bad fortune of the just. But man 
 searches in vain for these truths which he desires so ardently ; he in vain devours 
 with avidity each page of Holy Writ ; he docs not find cither them, or the simple 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, explicitly announced.'* 
 
 Dr. Stein then goes on to maintain that these truths of man's 
 natural immortality and future retribution were supplied by .the 
 * Smith's Dictionary, iii., p. 1088. 
 
1 82 RABBI STEIN ON IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Oral Law. A citation of his argument will serve as an exposition 
 of the position of the Pharisees in Palestine, for his opinion and 
 theirs, if we may rely on Josephus, are identical. The Grand 
 Rabbi of Colmar proceeds : 
 
 'Nevertheless truths so consoling and of such an elevated order cannot 
 have been passed over in silence, and certainly God has not relied on the mere 
 sagacity of the human mind in order to announce them only implicitly. He 
 has transmitted them verbally, with the means of finding them in the text. A 
 supplementary tradition was necessary, indispensable : this tradition exists. 
 Moses received the law from Sinai, transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the 
 elders, the elders transmitted it to the prophets, and the prophets to the men 
 of the great Synagogue.' (Z<? Judaisme, ou la Vcrite sur le Talmud ', p. 15.) 
 
 This was, it is supposed, the position of the Pharisees. They 
 were compelled to acknowledge, with the Sadducees, that the 
 doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and a future eternal 
 existence in penal retribution, were not to be found in the Penta- 
 teuch, nor anywhere else in the Old Testament scriptures. Look- 
 ing, like Dr. Stein, with dismay upon their Law, that spoke no 
 single word of comfort on the natural dignity of man as an 
 immortal being, they took the course which was morally inevitable, 
 and invented or borrowed the doctrine on which that law observed 
 so fatal a silence. It was among the Pharisees who represented 
 and sympathised with the body of the nation, Dr. Ginsburg tells 
 us, ' that the glorious ideas were developed about the Messiah, the 
 kingdom of heaven, the immortality of the sou/, the world to come, 
 etc. ; ' and since Scripture was silent on man's natural Immortality 
 as the basis of the expectation of a future state for righteous and 
 wicked, they set up the ' Oral Law,' or immemorial tradition, as 
 the authority which supplemented the deficiencies of the Scriptures.* 
 Our direct knowledge of the psychology of the Pharisees de- 
 pends on the testimony of Josephus alone, and his testimony is 
 generally discredited on such subjects by the most learned men 
 
 * A valuable analysis of the book of Enoch will be found in Dr. Pusey's 
 work on the Prophet Daniel, p. 391. Dr. Pusey assigns the date of the chief 
 portion to the time of the Maccabees, but maintains that it consists of con- 
 tributions from several authors. It can be quoted, therefore, on either side of 
 the present discussion, because it expresses both the belief of the Pharisees in 
 endless suffering, and also that of the elder Jewish Church, that the righteous 
 shall live for ever, and the wicked be ' annihilated everywhere.' See Arch- 
 bishop Lawrence's Translation of Book of Enoch. 
 
JOSEPHUS ON THE PHARISEES. 183 
 
 of both the Jewish and Gentile communions. Dr. Pocock's 
 sentence upon him is as follows : 
 
 ' If we have not cited Josephus it is no wonder, since in giving the views of 
 the sects he names, respecting the other world, he seems to have used words 
 better suited to the fashions and the ears of Greeks and Romans, than such as 
 a scholar of the Jewish Law would understand, or deem expressive of his 
 meaning.' Not<z misc. inportam Mosis, c. 6. 
 
 To the same effect Professor Hudson says: 'The account 
 given by Josephus of the doctrine of the Pharisees is in a nomen- 
 clature to which the Jews were strangers, which is unknown to the 
 Talmud, but with which the Greeks, Romans, and Orientals 
 were quite familiar' (Debt and Grace, p. 224). Professor Marks 
 pronounces a similar unfavourable judgment. Nevertheless, this 
 witness of Josephus, such as it is, is decisive. He says, ' The 
 doctrine of the Pharisees was, that every soul is imperishable ' 
 ( Wars, II., viii., 14). In his own speech to his soldiers he expresses 
 himself thus ( Wars, III., viii., 5) : * The bodies of all men are cor- 
 ruptible, but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the 
 divinity that inhabits our bodies? 
 
 [The fragment on Hades, formerly bound up with the works of 
 Josephus, and still cited by the Rev. Bodfield Hooper, in support 
 of similar opinions, is excluded from the best modern editions 
 of Josephus as spurious. It is rejected from the last Leipzig 
 edition of the Greek original, by Tauchnitz, as well as from all 
 the latest English and French translations.] 
 
 On the whole, though Josephus's temper and character create 
 much suspicion, there seems reason to believe that the Palestinian 
 Pharisees held the borrowed opinion of the soul's immortality, 
 founding their faith on the same arguments which satisfy their 
 successors, the modern Rabbins. In the Antiquities, his latest 
 work, Josephus re-affirms the statements in the Wars (XVIII., 
 i., 1-4) : 
 
 * They believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under 
 the earth there will be rewards and punishments according as they have lived 
 virtuously or viciously in this life, and the latter are to be detained in an 
 everlasting prison, but the former shall have power to revive and live again, on 
 account of which doctrine they are able greatly to persuade the body of the 
 people. 5 * 
 
 * See Supplement to chapter xvii., for further treatment of Jewish opinion. 
 
184 ARGUMENT OF THE SADDUCEES. 
 
 It is easy to understand that two parties, one sacerdotal, 
 aristocratic, sceptical, the other popular and devout, would react 
 upon the mass of each other's opinions, and render compromise 
 or modification impossible. The Sadducees would naturally object 
 to the Pharisaic party, ' that their notion of an oral law, accom- 
 panying and supplementing the defects of the Mosaic code, was 
 a fiction, equally worthless as history, and pernicious as religion. 
 If an oral law, containing a revelation of eternal life, was delivered 
 by Moses, it was by far the most important part of his institu- 
 tions j as much more important than the written law as eternity 
 is more important than time ; since to the oral law was due the 
 doctrine of man's immortality, not found in the Pentateuch. At 
 least, therefore, some plain intimation would have been given by 
 Moses in the written Law, that this all-important commentary 
 was ' committed to Joshua/ to be by him transmitted to posterity. 
 There is no such sentence; because the oral law is a dream, or 
 development, of the Pharisees. * It has been excogitated/ the 
 Sadducees would say, * in recent ages by successive teachers, bent 
 on moulding the Mosaic system to their own heathenish philo- 
 sophy ; and proving the thoroughly human character of its con- 
 tents by its gross irrationality, its conspicuous injustice, and its 
 frequent puerilities of interpretation. 5 
 
 The argument of the Sadducees would in fact be parallel to 
 that of the Protestant sects, against Roman Catholic tradition. 
 Christendom likewise has its ' oral law/ its unwritten tradition, on 
 which rests the fabric of modern ecclesiastical religion. But 
 Protestants reply to its lofty claims, and unhistoric assertions, by 
 simply pointing to the New Testament Scriptures. There is to 
 be found no Roman primacy of Peter, no provision for a Papal 
 Succession, no assertion of the authority of an Infallible Church 
 or Papal Oracle ; and the silence of Scripture is thought a 
 sufficient answer to the presumptuous speech of all succeeding 
 centuries. 
 
 But further, the Sadducees urged with victorious force, ' Why 
 is it, if this oral law (with its doctrine that "every soul is 
 imperishable," and destined to eternal joy or woe) has been in 
 existence since the days of Joshua, and through all the centuries 
 of Judaism till the times of Ezra and Malachi, why is it that 
 none of the prophets who have assisted in writing the canonical 
 
POSITION OF THE PHARISEES. 185 
 
 books, and who must have been acquainted with the oral law, 
 have introduced into their histories or predictions, or sacred 
 psalms, one single sentence from it, conveying the " truths " which 
 Moses omitted ? ' By what signal fatality, we add, did their inspira- 
 tion lead them to avoid every reference to doctrines, so 'consoling' 
 and so 'necessary,' that Dr. Stein declares ' they cannot have been 
 passed over in silence, although they are ' nowhere to be found in 
 Holy Writ ' ? How can it be that ' truths ' concerning which 
 David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel are wholly silent, could, 
 as Dr. Ginsburg says, be * developed among the Pharisees ' of the 
 centuries just preceding Christ's advent, if they were indeed 
 handed down from the days of Moses ? Certainly the case of 
 the Sadducees as against the oral law was formidably strong : and 
 they occupied an unassailable position in declaring that the 
 imperishableness of the soul was not to be found in the Law of 
 Moses, or the Psalms, or the Prophets. 
 
 The position of the Pharisees, however, had its elements of 
 strength, and though they could not completely answer the Sad- 
 ducees, either as to the general basis of their belief in the rule of 
 faith, or as to the particular question of a future life, they felt that 
 in some way they were right ; and that their materialistic opponents 
 were distinctly in conflict with the moral instincts of mankind, 
 and not less with many plain declarations of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures. It was this fidelity of theirs which, notwithstanding 
 their mistakes, gave them a mighty and a desirable influence upon 
 the mass of the Jewish nation. 
 
 There is something in the human soul, except when it has been 
 brutalised by savage life, or seared as with a hot iron by sensuality 
 or by perverse reasoning, which instinctively looks forward to 
 retribution. The Pharisees took their stand upon this fact, and 
 so far they were right. Men, too, who live with God here are 
 inspired with a profound moral conviction, as was Socrates, that 
 in some way, whether it can be scientifically argued out or not, 
 they shall live with God hereafter. The Old Testament Scriptures, 
 in their own method, support both of these expectations. It is 
 impossible to admit, with the Sadducees, that Moses designed no 
 lesson of hope for good men, when he began his history with an 
 account of the paradise lost, and followed that account with so 
 
1 86 TRUTH DIVIDED BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES. 
 
 many indications of the persistent grace of the reconciled God, 
 in the histories of the Patriarchs. The ascension of Enoch, the 
 promise of an everlasting inheritance, and of the eternal God 
 Himself as a ' Reward ' to Abraham, even if they stood alone, 
 sufficed to shatter the wretched system of the Sadducees, and to 
 establish the hope of Eternal Life for the just. The hypothesis 
 of an oral law would have been a pardonable invention, if no 
 more solid ground of hope had been furnished of a world to 
 come. It was impossible for spiritual and thoughtful men to 
 assent to the frightful positivist dogma which wrapped in thick 
 darkness at once the destinies of the human race and the character 
 of God. 
 
 Yet no escape from that dark conclusion was known to the 
 Pharisees of that age except by the assertion of the un-biblical 
 doctrine of the soul's Immortality. The idea of an immortality 
 which was a gift of God under redemption alone, and not a 
 natural attribute of humanity, had probably died out of the 
 general Jewish mind in the last ages, just as the same idea has 
 died out, and from the same causes, from the later popular mind 
 of Christendom. The notion of a God-given and conditional 
 immortality, of which the righteous alone shall partake, had 
 ceased to exist in the mind of most of the readers of the Old 
 Testament Scriptures, as it has now ceased to suggest itself to 
 most of the readers of the New. We shall show further on that 
 this was the faith of the primitive Christian Church, but was 
 gradually lost sight of, through the growing influence of Oriental, 
 Greek, and Roman modes of thought in the following centuries. 
 In the same manner, we doubt not, it had gradually been lost in 
 the growing humanisation of Judaism after the days of the Great 
 Synagogue. The modern Rabbins are quite right in speaking of 
 the doctrine of natural immortality as an ' oral ' tradition. It is 
 the voice of man supplementing the revelations of a God whom 
 he has ceased to understand. 
 
 There are, however, dynamics of opinion. The absence of a 
 single idea from a system of thought sometimes leads to and com- 
 pels ages of controversy. The existence of two such parties as 
 the Sadducees and Pharisees was a necessity of the times, under 
 existing one-sided conditions of belief. The Sadducees occupied 
 
CHRIST'S REJECTION OF BOTH DOCTRINES. 187 
 
 an unassailable post when they declared that Moses and the 
 Prophets knew nothing of the Immortality of the Soul as a basis 
 of hope in futurity. The Pharisees were equally in strength when 
 they declared that the Scripture proclaimed the promise of eternal 
 life. But both alike erred, from failing to grasp the truth which 
 would have reconciled them that man has lost the hope of life 
 eternal under the law, and regains it by the grace of God in 
 redemption. 
 
 The conduct of the Incarnate Life towards each of these parties 
 throws a flood of light upon the cause of their honest differences, 
 and the true mode of reconciliation. The existence of the two 
 sects seems to have been permitted by Divine Providence as the 
 most effectual method of leading men to the Christ who alone can 
 open the gates of Life Eternal to the dead. 
 
 Towards the Sadducees our Lord, as was inevitable, presented 
 a front of stern rebuke. Their professed zeal for the letter of the 
 law of Moses won them no favour with 'the Prince of Life.' 
 They prided themselves on a theology built exclusively on reve- 
 lation. Yet they 'erred, not knowing the Scriptures.' 'That 
 the dead are raised, said he, ' even Moses showed at the bush, 
 when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham. For he is not 
 a God of the dead (veKpwi/), but of the living, for all live unto 
 him' (Luke xx. 37-8). It must be noted that this argument was 
 used to prove the resurrection, not primarily the survival of the 
 soul. That it is S. Luke's design to represent our Lord as 
 proving the resurrection, and not simply survival, is certain from 
 his use of the verb eyeipw both in his gospel and in the Acts 
 of the Apostles, which is strictly confined to denote resurrection. 
 But how does the word of God to Moses prove the resurrection 
 of Abraham ? It is not that the phrase, ' I am the . God of 
 Abraham,' proves that his spirit exists somewhere, although that 
 also was true. It is that the spirit alone of Abraham was not 
 Abraham ; and that if God was still the * God of Abraham,' it 
 was because Abraham, sleeping in Machpelah, was to rise from 
 the dead to enjoy God for ever. The relationship of a ' God ' 
 looked forward as well as backward and He who IS ' calls those 
 things which are not as though they were.' In this sense, then, 
 all 'live unto Him.' Those who are to rise from the dead and 
 to live for ever, are, in the view of God, alive now ; and therefore 
 
1 88 CHRIST AND THE PHARISEES. 
 
 He calls Himself their God, ' because He has prepared for them 
 a city' (Heb. xi.). 
 
 Certain of the Scribes, of the Pharisaic party, exclaimed, 
 ' Master, Thou hast well spoken.' And the Sadducees were 
 effectually * put to silence ' (e^t/x-wcre, Matt. xxii. 34). The 
 priestly party of materialists were summarily put to flight by 
 Him who came to speak ' the words of life eternal.' 
 
 Did, then, Christ turn a more sympathetic aspect towards 
 their opponents the Pharisees ? Every reader of the New 
 Testament knows that His earthly ministry was spent almost 
 in one continuous battle with the supporters of the Oral Law. 
 Christ was short and sharp with the Sadducees ; but in dealing 
 with the Pharisees his speech became as terrible as a thunder- 
 storm. ' He denounced them/ says Mr. Twisleton, ' in the 
 bitterest language, and in the sweeping charges of hypocrisy 
 which He made against them, He might even, at first sight, 
 seem to have departed from that spirit of meekness and gentle- 
 ness in judgment which is one of His own most characteristic 
 precepts.' Christ must have satisfied the Sadducees themselves 
 in the thoroughness with which He exposed and denounced the 
 Pharisaic fiction of the ' oral law ' as a rule of faith and practice. 
 * Full well,' cried He, ' ye reject the commandment of God, that 
 ye may keep your own tradition? l Woe unto you, scribes and 
 Pharisees, hypocrites ! Ye have taken away the key of know- 
 ledge : ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering 
 in ye hindered.' Neither did Christ enter into any distinction 
 between the part of the Pharisaic system which was better and 
 that which was worse. He linked them in His fearful anathemas 
 along with the Sadducees, and denounced in one breath the 
 ' doctrine ' of both. Then they understood that He bade them 
 beware of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees' (Matt, 
 xvi. 12, StSaxfc). 
 
 Our Lord on no occasion took part with the Pharisees on their 
 own ground, as against the Sadducees. If the Pharisaic doctrine 
 of the oral law (the doctrine also of modern Rabbinical Judaism) 
 were the truth that the ' soul of man is imperishable,' and that 
 the expectation of a future eternal state is built upon man's im- 
 mortal nature, there was not only no reason why the Incarnate 
 Wisdom of God should not confirm the doctrine of the tradi- 
 
CHRIST AND THE SADDUCEES, 189 
 
 tionalists, but there was every reason why He should do so, and 
 in the clearest language. But from this Christ steadfastly abstained. 
 He was not of the sect of the Pharisees, any more than of the 
 Sadducees. 
 
 What, then, was the position practically taken up by the Lord 
 of Glory between the two contending factions ? 
 
 (i) To us it appears that He did contradict in His own way the 
 errors of both parties, and asserted the truths which they main- 
 tained. The Sadducees were in the right in affirming that Moses 
 wrote nothing respecting an eternal state depending on man's 
 nature, or the natural immortality of his soul. (2) The Pharisees 
 were right in affirming that the writings of Moses contained clear 
 indications of eternal life for ' the sons of God/ a hope confirmed 
 by all subsequent revelation. (3) But this life is not of man, nor 
 in man's nature. It is the gift of God in Redemption, His un- 
 speakable gift in His Son. The words of Christ cover precisely 
 this ground. ' Ye search the Scriptures,' said Christ to the 
 Pharisees, ' for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
 are they which testify of Me. But ye will not come to ME, that 
 ye may have life.' % 
 
 1 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and died ; this 
 is the bread that came down from heaven, that a man may eat 
 thereof and not die' (John vi. 49, 50). 
 
 ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh and 
 drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in yourselves ' 
 (o/ eavrois ver. 53). 
 
 This teaching caused a combination of both Sadducees and 
 Pharisees against Him. They, who could agree in nothing else, 
 agreed to ' kill the Prince of Life,' and were instant with loud 
 voices for His death. The Sadducees were ' grieved ' that the 
 apostles should ' preach, through Jesus, the resurrection of the 
 dead.' And the party of oral tradition, Jewish and Gentile, the 
 party which holds the doctrine of natural immortality in man, will 
 combine in every age, even with materialists and infidels, in ex- 
 communicating those who teach that Life Eternal is God's gift 
 to men, through the blood-shedding of the ' Lamb.' For those 
 who think that salvation is man's work towards God, or that 
 Immortality is man's native attribute, never come to terms with 
 
igo CHRISTS DOCTRINE ON ETERNAL LIFE. 
 
 those who maintain that salvation is God's work towards man, in 
 all the stages of its development, and that it is Christ the Lord 
 who is the Life of the World. Those also who have learned 
 these truths can never enter into a compromise with the ' sect 
 of the Pharisees' however splendid their virtues because the 
 assertion of man's natural immortality is the direct cause of the 
 creation of a God-dishonouring theology, carrying with it generally 
 the dogma o misery that shall never end, which has done more 
 than any other notion to hinder men from coming to the Living 
 God for life immortal.* 
 
 * See further on Pharisaic opinion, and its right to determine the sense ot 
 New Testament language, in the Supplement to chapter xvii. ad fat. In the 
 same .Supplement will be found a sketch of modern Rabbinical doctrine on 
 eschatology (3rd Edition). 
 
BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE ON THE OBJECT 
 OF THE DIVINE INCARNA TION, AND THE METHOD 
 OF REDEMPTION. 
 
193 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE INCARNATION OF THE LIFE; OR THE LOGOS MADE FLESH 
 THAT MAN MAY LIVE ETERNALLY. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 THE doctrine of a distinction, of Persons in the Godhead, and of 
 the union of the Personal Word of God with the human nature of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, is, and always has been, the great stumbling- 
 block in the way of the reception of Christianity by the nations 
 of the world. 
 
 The Jews as a nation have, from the beginning of the gospel 
 through all following centuries until now, maintained a stout op- 
 position to a doctrine which they believe to be as profane as 
 baseless.* The Mohammedans have learned from the Koran to 
 regard as an assault upon the majesty of the One Lord of Heaven 
 and Earth the notion that He has a Son or an Equal. And 
 Unitarians, to be numbered within and without the churches by 
 myriads in Christendom, whether bearing a distinctive name or 
 not, have in every generation held fast to the belief that original 
 Christianity was marred by no such blot on its brilliant disc as the 
 exultation of Jesus into the place and name of Deity. 
 
 It is easy to suggest by anticipation arguments on every side 
 against the dogma of the incarnation of the Logos. The whole 
 world of human probabilities is opposed to it. That the Godhead 
 should be itself distinguished into Persons, such as may be denoted 
 by the relationships of Fatherhood and Sonship, or by such 
 images as that of Mind and Speech, or Thought and Word, is 
 
 * The Logos of Philo was impersonal, and he would have shrunk with horror 
 at the idea of its personal incarnation. Even Dr. Davidson admits, 'an irr- 
 portant link is wanting between Philonism and the theory of the fourth 
 gospel.' 
 
 13 
 
194 CHRIST'S DEITY THE CRUX OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 itself a notion altogether foreign to the circle of ideas respecting 
 Deity gathered by the study of matter and mind. But that there 
 should be three distinct Persons in the Godhead ; that One of 
 these should lay aside the * form of God ' and descend to be born 
 of a Virgin, so as to become part of the integral personality of 
 the Christ; and that this occurred 1877 years ago in Palestine, in 
 the Son of Mary, is a proposition of prima facie incredibility 
 so confounding to sense and reason that the tendency of the 
 thinking public, learned and unlearned, has ever been largely in 
 the direction of scepticism or resolute denial. And when to this 
 has been erroneously added, that the object of the Incarnation 
 was to constitute a spotless personality, which Eternal Venge- 
 ance might strike for the salvation of sinners, a personality of worth 
 so transcendent that His sufferings might outweigh the deserts 
 of men in everlasting misery, the reason assigned has rendered 
 the ' fact ' a thousand times more incredible than it was before. 
 
 Nevertheless the documents of apostolic Christianity, if dealt 
 with by the same rules which govern the interpretation of other 
 books, afford no fair escape from the conclusion that the body of 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the shrine and temple of Deity, in such a 
 sense as has never been true of any other man, however God- 
 inspired. After every deduction from the doctrine on the side of 
 its Athanasian form ; after stripping the statement of the article 
 of every special ecclesiastical peculiarity, even those of the second 
 and third centuries, when, as Dr. Liddon acknowledges, ' the 
 language of the ante-Nicene Fathers was such as to allow of, 
 rather than invite, an orthodox interpretation,' there still remains 
 so complex a mass of evidence that all the apostles and evan- 
 gelists desired to represent their Master as the Son of God, 
 in no simply moral or human sense, but in the sense of a living 
 incarnation of One Person of a tripersonal Godhead, that it is 
 vain to struggle against the argument. Is it not better to reject 
 Christianity altogether than to receive it in the gross, and then 
 explain it away in detail, on the theory of a simply human per- 
 sonality in the Saviour ? 
 
 The three synoptic gospels varied editions, under the different 
 circumstances of the three great churches of Palestine, Italy, and 
 Greece of the one primitive history of Jesus, though having 
 
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 195 
 
 for their object the presentation of the wonderful Humanity, 
 present that never-fading portrait to the world crowned with a 
 divine aureola, which leaves no reasonable doubt that they re- 
 garded this Person, with more or less distinctness of thought, 
 as a Present God. Two of them commence their history by 
 an assertion of His miraculous conception ; certainly the most 
 effectual hindrance to European faith in their narrative, supposing 
 their desire was to be believed ; and one which has no meaning 
 apart from an implied Divine Incarnation. They represent their 
 Master as assuming a tone of personal authority unknown to all 
 previous legislators and prophets, an authority extending even to 
 the raging elements and unclean spirits. They represent His 
 very piety and virtue in a style which, however consistent with the 
 filial subjection of the Son to the Eternal Father, is wholly un- 
 suitable to a mortal, and which compels the reader to choose 
 between the alternatives of true Deity in the Saviour, or a blas- 
 phemous impiety in His pretensions as a man.* If Jesus were 
 not more than man, then He was certainly much less than a good 
 man of the ordinary description. The rational alternatives to-day, 
 as of old, are those of ' stoning ' Him or * worshipping ' Him. 
 To maintain that He was a holy person, as a man, is consistent 
 only in those who maintain that He was infinitely more than man. 
 For if merely human, His l piety ' was of a type to encourage by 
 example the most profane assumptions on the part of every one 
 who professes to be a teacher of righteousness. 
 
 Besides this, the synoptic gospels contain pretensions which 
 are intelligible only on the theory that their writers believed the 
 subject of their memoirs was the incarnate Son of God. They 
 show Him to us as receiving a ' worship ' (Matt. xiv. 33) which 
 angels themselves are said to have refused when offered by these 
 same apostles (Rev. xxii. 8). They show Him to us as pronounc- 
 ing absolution from sins without reference to the delegation of 
 His authority as a minister of heaven, assuming in fact the attri- 
 bute and the tone of Deity; as was objected by learned Jews who 
 heard Him often commit the supposed offence. They depict 
 Him as claiming the possession of a nature which none but the 
 Father knows ' or fathoms ; and as declaring absolutely that 
 
 * See this argument drawn out with wonderful power and beauty in ch. x. 
 of Bushnell on Nature and the Super natiiral. 
 
196 AUTHORSHIP OF FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 
 1 no being knows the Infinite Nature except Himself, and those to 
 whom He is pleased to reveal it' (Matt. xi. 27). In teaching us 
 the final destiny of men and angels, He speaks of Himself as the 
 arbiter of doom (Matt. xxv.). The sublime scenes of His Bap- 
 tism, and of His Transfiguration by night on the southern summits 
 of the Hermon, when the synoptics tell us that God spoke of 
 Him as His ' Beloved Son,' are difficult to reconcile with any 
 conception ot Jesus simply as a good man, or as perhaps the 
 first and best teacher of virtue among millions of others; but 
 entirely agree with the idea of a Sonship which is Divine.* 
 S. Matthew ends his gospel by openly associating the Son with 
 the Father and the Holy Spirit, in the form of baptism. 
 
 If we pass on to the Fourth Gospel, it is necessary to assign a 
 reason for setting aside recent doubts as to its authorship by the 
 Apostle John. Suspicion has been thrown on its apostolic author- 
 ship of late years, (i) in consequence of the noticeable superiority 
 of its Greek to that of the Apocalypse, which was undoubtedly 
 John's, and belongs to an earlier date ; (2) in consequence of the 
 apparent lateness of its general acceptance and quotation, no 
 decisive examples of citation occurring before the first third of 
 he second century ; (3) in consequence of its internal character.f 
 
 (i) The primary argument for the Johannine authorship is what 
 may be fairly called the unbroken external tradition of the earliest 
 ages, the like authority on which we depend for our knowledge of 
 the authorship of the other anonymous books of Scripture, or of 
 the Odes of Horace, or of the ^Eneid of Virgil. (2) Secondly, 
 there is the internal evidence of John's striking individuality as 
 depicted in the three synoptic gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, 
 and his undoubted Epistles and Apocalypse ; and which appears 
 in every line of this gospel also, at least to those who possess the 
 critical dramatic faculty that qualifies them to form a judgment. 
 (3) There is the exceeding holiness of the book, which it is not 
 
 * This argument (on the synoptics) is drawn out exhaustively in Dr. Dorner's 
 first volume on the Person of Christ. 
 
 t The history of the attack on the Fourth Gospel will be found in Kaur, 
 Strauss, Keim, Davidson, and Taylor ; that of the defence, in Bleek, Dorner, 
 Ebrarcl, Mayer, Schneider, Godet, Liddon, Farrar, and Beyschlag. Dr. Matt. 
 Arnold (Contemp. J?ev., May, 1875) ma y be fairly reckoned on the same side,, 
 though his suggestions are not original. 
 
AUTHORSHIP OF FOURTH GOSPEL. 197 
 
 conceivable could proceed from a writer consciously forging the 
 narrative, under the pseudonym of the holy apostle an argument 
 which will produce the deepest impression on those who are 
 ' spiritual' (i Cor. ii. 14). 
 
 How, then, are we to account for the late diffusion of this 
 gospel, and its remarkably late quotation by writers of the east 
 and west ; and how shall we account for the improvement in the 
 Greek as compared with the Apocalypse ? 
 
 The following replies seem to offer a strong appearance of 
 truth. 
 
 (1) When John was imprisoned in Patmos, almost in solitude, 
 he carried with him the provincial Greek of his early Palestinian 
 days. In that Greek he wrote the Apocalypse.* When later in 
 life, long after the destruction of Jerusalem, he lived at Ephesus, 
 and wrote his gospel, he had the advantage of daily association 
 with men who spoke accurately grammatical Greek, from whom 
 S. John would gradually gather a similar accuracy, or even receive 
 editorial assistance. This would account for the improvement of 
 the style of the gospel upon the Apocalypse. 
 
 (2) As to the latter diffusion of the gospel, it deserves to be 
 remembered that the fifty years following on the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, from A.D. 70 to A.D. 120, were fifty of the most terrible 
 years the world had ever seen. They were years of war, confusion, 
 turbulence, and fearful massacre of both Jews and Gentiles. In 
 such an epoch a new book would perhaps spread itself less rapidly 
 than in more peaceful and orderly times. 
 
 (3) There was, however, a further and far deeper reason for 
 
 * For an accessible account of these defects in the Greek of the Apocalypse 
 see Alford's Prolegomena. The author of Supernatural Religion (ii. 406) thus 
 describes the two works : ' The language in which the Apocalypse is written 
 is the most Hellenistic Greek of the N. T. ' ' The barbarous Greek and abrupt, 
 inelegant diction, are natural to the unlettered fisherman.' Of the Gospel he 
 says, ' Instead of the Hellenistic Greek, abrupt and barbarous, we find the 
 purest and least Hebraistic Greek of any of the gospels, and a refinement and 
 beauty of composition whose charm has captivated the world. ' On the ground 
 of this difference the author rejects the fourth gospel. Dr. Luthardt agrees 
 with this criticism, but rejects the conclusion. ' As regards grammar the 
 Gospel is written in correct, the Apocalypse in incorrect Greek ;' but Dr. L. 
 strangely accounts for this difference by referring to the sovereignty of the 
 Spirit, who chose to deliver the prophecy in inferior and the gospel in superior 
 language. 
 
198 LATE RECEPTION OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the later reception of S. John's Gospel; and this is found in 
 its contents. The fact of its later diffusion, now brought 
 forward as an argument against its apostolic authorship, was 
 rather in part the result of its late composition, and the effect 
 of the peculiar character of its two main lessons. These two 
 prominent doctrines, of the Personal Deity of the Christ, and 
 of man's Immortality depending on Him alone, were as much 
 opposed to all ancient thought as they are to modern 
 philosophy and modern theology. They could be effectually 
 taught in the first age of the Church only when the ground 
 had been somewhat prepared by the circulation of the gospels 
 of the Divine Humanity. The lesson of the Human Divinity 
 was for the later rather than for the earlier intelligence of 
 the first century. Thus the writings of John, both from their 
 date and their subject, necessarily had a somewhat later circu- 
 lation than the synoptic gospels, or even than those epistles in 
 which Paul and Peter, building on the same bases, set forth 
 rather the effects of Redemption on man's relations to his Judge 
 and Master. { I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
 bear them now,' are words which were true of the Church of the 
 first century even after the coming of the Comforter. There 
 are some things which cannot be explained thoroughly until the 
 complex whole is explained together. The divine incarnation, 
 the sacrificial death of Christ, His ascension, the free pardon of 
 sinners, the world-wide aspect of redemption, the final issue in an 
 endless life, all these are parts of a system, incredible in fragments; 
 and you must expound the whole at once to render any single 
 portion thoroughly intelligible. But however desirable, it was 
 very difficult to teach these mysteries all at once and fully, to the 
 first generation of men who had seen the Lord. The humanity 
 of Christ both revealed and obscured His Deity ; and until His 
 Personal Deity was thoroughly understood, His life-giving power 
 could not be fully believed in. Thus these two correlated 
 doctrines, of the Deity of Christ, and of our Immortal Life in 
 Him, were so closely connected that they could not be completely 
 divulged except in combined radiance, as complementary colours 
 of one heavenly sunbeam of truth and godliness ; and this process 
 belonged to the later stages of the Church's earlier life. So 
 much I venture to propose hypothetically in explanation of the 
 
OBJECT OF JOHN TO DEIFY JESUS. 199 
 
 later reception and citation of the fourth gospel, and in vindication 
 of its Johannine origin. The value of these observations will, 
 I think, appear more clearly when the present argument is 
 completed. 
 
 What is it, then, that we discover in this gospel ? It does 
 indeed appear to be an intolerable abuse of criticism to pretend 
 that Christendom has been mistaken in the east and in the west, 
 in the north and in the south, in the general drift of this book 
 and to deny that the manifest intention of the writer was first of 
 all to Deify Jesus. Dr. Vance Smith almost allows that this was 
 his aim. The phenomenon indeed is singular and unexampled 
 in history. There has been many an illustrious teacher in every 
 land ; but the last thought which has occurred to his immediate 
 friends and followers, immediately after death, has been to give 
 out that he was the Infinite God incarnate. This can scarcely 
 be maintained respecting the Buddhist sages who have since 
 been regarded as avatars of Divinity. Plato and Xenophon 
 would never have ventured on declaring that Socrates was the 
 Infinite Mind made flesh. No modern biographer would have 
 found it possible to assert the Divinity of any artist, theologian, 
 or man of science ; nor would the imagination have ever entered 
 a healthy brain. In Roman times, after their deaths, the 
 emperors were regarded as in a low sense Divine (Divus Julius, 
 Divus Augustus, Divus Titus\ but no friend or flatterer thought 
 that by ascribing to them that title they asserted that in Augustus, 
 or Tiberius, or Titus the Supreme God dwelt as a part of their 
 personality; or dreamed of teaching, in a historical book, that 
 during their lives they spoke and acted as if they pretended to be 
 Jupiter in disguise. 
 
 But John goes much farther than this. He, a Jew, a member 
 of a nation where the first principle of thought was monotheism ; 
 where the gulf between the finite and the Infinite, the creature 
 and Creator, was held to be impassable and unfathomable ; where 
 for a man to claim divine honours was held to be the consummation 
 of wickedness ; where men would die rather than allow the statue 
 of Caligula in the temple ; where no such phantasy had ever 
 crossed the mind of any Hebrew since the formation of the 
 Commonwealth, John distinctly asserts of this peasant- carpenter 
 
200 JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 
 
 of Nazareth, his Master and Friend, that He was the 'Word made 
 Flesh,' that Word by whom ' everything was made that was made.' 
 The history of the miraculous conception, with which Matthew 
 begins his gospel, was a trifle in comparison with this portentous 
 declaration with which John commences his. Let us note the 
 precision of his language. He says, 
 
 ' In the beginning was the Logos ; and the Logos was with the 
 (great) Theos ' (this is the force of Trpos TOV edV) ; and the 
 Logos was Theos ' (without the definite article : He was A Divine 
 Person, not the great original Theos,* or Deity). 
 
 The evangelist then further elaborates his idea that the LOGOS 
 was a Divine Person, the Agent of the Father in creation, and 
 existing before all worlds. In verse 14 he distinctly asserts 
 the Incarnation of the personal Logos, who was Theos ; and the 
 whole gospel is one prolonged commentary on this claim which 
 he makes for Jesus, to be the Divine Creator of the Universe 
 (verse 3), the Representative Deity, in human form. Again and 
 again he carefully details discussions between ' the Jews ' and 
 Jesus Christ, in which he affirms that, 
 
 1. He came down from Heaven, yet was in Heaven, iii. 13, 31 ; 
 
 2. That He was God's ' only-begotten ' Son, whom God gave to the world 
 for its salvation, iii. 16 ; 
 
 3. That what things soever the Father doeth, these doeth the Son likewise, 
 v. 17, 19 ('making Himself equal with God') ; 
 
 4. That as the Father raises up the dead, so could He, v. 21 ; 
 
 5. That God had committed the judgment of the whole world to Him, v. 22 ; 
 
 6. That at His voice all the dead should rise, v. 29 ; 
 
 7. That the Father Himself attested these claims, v. 36 ; 
 
 8. That lie was the Bread which came down from Heaven to give life unto 
 the world, vi. passim ; 
 
 9. That before Abraham was He was, viii. 38 ; 
 
 * Origen (in Johan. 46) points out the force of the definite article in the 
 second clause, and of its omission in the third clause of this verse. Af/crlov Us 
 avToiQ K. T. X. 'This scruple of many pious persons may be thus solved. We 
 must tell them that He who is of Himself God, is o 9fo, but that whatever is 
 God, besides that underived One (avroBtoQ), being so by communication of His 
 Divinity, cannot so properly be styled 6 9t> the great God, but fooc, a divine 
 person (ov% 6 06of dXXa Oibc; Kvpuurfpov Xlyoiro). 
 
 See also Dr. J. H. Newman's Tract on the Principatus of the Father in 
 which he, though with great caution, uses language similar in effect. 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 201 
 
 10. That He came forth from God, and went to God, xiii. 1-3 ; 
 
 11. That He should send the Holy Spirit of God, as the Comforter, xvi. 7 ; 
 
 12. That He had a glory with the Father before the world was, xvii. 5 ; 
 
 13. That He and the Father were ev, one, x. 30. 
 
 And these statements, powerful when taken in isolated citation, 
 are far stronger when looked at in their connection, so that those 
 who can eliminate from this gospel the doctrine of the personal 
 Deity of Christ, as the Son of God, can perform any feat of trans- 
 formation on the words of the New Testament, or of any other 
 writing. 
 
 The English Prayer Book was ' proved ' by Tract No. 90, 
 under the auspices of the Oxford conspirators, to permit prac- 
 tically of a Roman interpretation ; and the gospel of John, under 
 similar treatment, may be regarded as the work of an apostle who 
 was a Unitarian. 
 
 For ourselves while rendering just homage to the many noble 
 qualities of our Unitarian brethren, and lamenting, in the interests 
 of truth, the excesses of the falsely so-called Athanasian orthodoxy, 
 which have occasioned and perhaps excused in part the reaction 
 towards a purely humanitarian view of Christ's person, we must 
 nevertheless abjure as scarcely deserving refutation these efforts 
 of critical artifice. To us Christ is the Lord, the all-creating 
 ' Word made flesh,' God over all, blessed for ever.' ' Being in 
 the form of (Beov) a Divine Person, He thought it not a thing to 
 be snatched at to be equal to a Theos, but emptied Himself, and 
 took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness 
 of men ; wherefore God (6 cos), the supreme Theos, hath highly 
 exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, 
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 heaven, and things in earth, and of the under-world, and that 
 every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the 
 glory of God the Father' (Phil. ii. 6-n). He is 'the First 
 and the Last the Beginning and the Ending, which is, and 
 which was, and which is to come, the Ruler of the Universe ' 
 (Apoc. i. 8; 6 
 
 We cannot then separate from Apostolic Christianity the 
 transcendent mystery of the incarnation of the Logos. It is 
 the foundation of the whole system. If the New Testament 
 
202 INFINITE GREATNESS OF CHRIST. 
 
 was written to teach modern Unitarianism, there is no series of 
 books on earth more elaborately contrived to fail of their pur- 
 pose. There is none which so much requires an apparatus of 
 special criticism to bring out that sense ; for they leave on the 
 minds of all who will permit them to make their natural impres- 
 sion an ever-deepening conviction that the doctrine of Christ's 
 Deity is the Shekinah of the temple, and the secret of man's 
 Redemption. The writers leave also the impression that this 
 doctrine was as great a natural improbability to themselves as it 
 is to us ; that it was gradually forced on them by the over- 
 powering evidence of the facts, by a divine inspiration, and 
 by the words of Jesus Himself, supported, and proved to be true, 
 by a blaze of miracles which rendered unbelief impossible. 
 
 Eighteen hundred years of further meditation on this sublime 
 mystery have not, however, lessened the wonderfulness of the 
 message, that the everlasting Nature has joined itself once and 
 for ever to humanity in the Christ. On the contrary the thought 
 of it, as the vastness of the universe is further disclosed, weighs 
 more and more heavily upon the labouring mind; yet, while 
 there open through this gateway infinite prospects of glory, 
 one beyond the other crowding on the vision of the enraptured 
 spirits who contemplate them in earth and heaven, the evidence 
 brightens as the future unfolds ; and though the fact of the In- 
 carnation ' passeth knowledge/ the soul is compelled to recognise 
 in the loftiest conceptions of man's destiny through redemption 
 the nearest approaches to the truth of God. The Eternal Love 
 which created us has given Itself, its All, its ' heights and depths 
 and lengths and breadths' (TO. Trdvra Rom. viii. 32) in His 
 Only Begotten Son ! 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 We have now to direct the current of our special argument 
 into this broad and mighty stream of truth on the Deity of Christ 
 which makes glad the city of God, a tributary to its fulness, as 
 we believe, having its origin also in the heights of divine revela- 
 tion. In executing this purpose, it will be necessary to direct 
 continued attention to that gospel of John which is the object of 
 
TRIPLE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 203 
 
 so natural a hostility to those who misconceive the scope and 
 method of man's redemption by the Incarnation. 
 
 It will be observed by careful readers of this gospel that there 
 run throughout its course two parallel lines of thought and speech. 
 The first has been already noted the assertion, chiefly in Christ's 
 varied and solemnly reported words, of the Incarnation of the 
 Divine Nature in His person : and an incarnation or ' becoming 
 flesh' (i. 14) so real and so vital that the Logos became as truly 
 a part of the complex personality of the Christ, as is the thinking 
 power a part of man's integral being. This union of the Divine 
 and Human natures is represented as so close as to constitute the 
 Logos a Man, and the Manhood Divine : so close, that when 
 Jesus speaks of ' I,' it may be either, or equally, the body, the 
 mind, or the Eternal Spirit, which speaks: (i) 'I thirst;' (3) 'I 
 will, be thou clean ; ' (3) ' I will raise it up at the last day.' He 
 was, as the Creed declares, ' Perfect God and Perfect Man, of 
 a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting \ who although He 
 be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ ; One not 
 by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the 
 Manhood into God One altogether not by confusion of sub- 
 stance, but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and 
 flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ.' 
 
 The second line of doctrine which runs throughout the gospel 
 of John from the first paragraph to the last, is that this Incarnation 
 of the Divine Logos of God has for its object TO GIVE LIFE 
 ETERNAL TO MANKIND. This is repeated more than thirty times 
 in the most emphatic manner. And if the epistles of John are 
 added to the account, it will be found that nearly fifty times does 
 this apostle declare the gift of LIFE, or LIFE EVERLASTING, to be 
 the end of the Incarnation. A few striking examples of the 
 phraseology may be selected. 
 
 (1) In the proem of the gospel the Divine Logos is described 
 thus : * In Him was Life, and the Life was the light of men.' 
 
 (2) In conversing with Nicodemus, Jesus declared that ' God 
 so loved the world as to give His Only Begotten Son, that who- 
 soever believeth in Him should not perish, but should have 
 everlasting life ' (ya\ COT-OA^TOU, dAA' e^ tpty auovioi/j John iii. 16). 
 
 (3) He assured the Samaritan woman that the water which He 
 
204 LIFE ETERNAL BY THE INCARNATION. 
 
 would give would be within a fountain of water springing up to 
 everlasting life (iv. 14). 
 
 (4) In the fifth chapter Christ declares again and again that 
 with Him rests the power of raising the dead, and giving them 
 life (wo7roi). 'He that heareth my word and believeth hath 
 everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is 
 passed from death unto life.' 
 
 (5) In the sixth chapter there is a prolonged argument with the 
 Jews to prove that He was the Bread of Life ; that the fathers 
 ate manna in the desert and died, but this was the bread that 
 came down from heaven that a man should eat thereof and not 
 die, Kat /xr/ aTroflavT/, verse 50. The statement is reiterated in 
 every possible form that His work on earth is to give life, ever- 
 lasting life, to prevent men from dying, from perishing. He 
 declares that whoso eateth His flesh and drinketh His blood, 
 hath eternal life, and He will raise Him up at the last day, ver. 54. 
 * As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so 
 he that eateth me, even he shall live by me' ' He that eateth of 
 this bread shall live for ever,' vers. 57, 58. * Except ye eat the 
 flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in 
 yourselves,' tv eavrots, ver. 53. This discourse, delivered in the 
 synagogue of Capernaum, deserves careful and consecutive study, 
 for it may be taken as the fairest battle-ground of this whole con- 
 troversy. What is said elsewhere is but a repetition of what is 
 here declared with a persistence and fulness which are fitted to 
 arouse earnest inquiry as to the design of our Saviour's words. 
 
 (6) S. Paul and S. Peter have many expressions of the same 
 character affirming that we owe our ' everlasting life ' to that 
 Christ, that He is our 'Life' our 'hope of life,' and apart 
 from Him we shall ' die,' 'perish,' and be ' destroyed; ' but although 
 at least fifty times such expressions occur, no practical purpose 
 would be answered by multiplying here parallel quotations from 
 their writings. 
 
 What, then, if we may follow the natural and proper sense of 
 these declarations of Christ, is the result to which they lead us ? 
 
 Is it not THAT THE VERY OBJECT OF THE INCARNATION IS TO 
 
 IMMORTALISE MANKIND that man can live for ever only by 
 spiritual union with the Incarnate Deity ; that apart from such 
 union man will 'die, perish, and be destroyed' 
 
NATURAL SENSE OF CHRIST'S WORDS. 205 
 
 When we wish to express the idea of perpetual existence, or 
 the loss of being, there is no language in which we can so naturally 
 and properly convey our meaning as in these words of Christ. 
 Some will live for ever, others will perish. Were it not for certain 
 extrinsic considerations, derived from foreign fields of thought, 
 no one would ever have imagined a different sense. Unless a 
 reader had been warned beforehand that every man's soul, being 
 destined by its nature to last for ever, and not to die (being 
 im-mortal) he must therefore not put upon the terms of Christ's 
 discourses any meaning which will contradict that doctrine of 
 natural immortality, he would not have dreamed of imposing 
 a figurative sense upon them, or of making life eternal stand for 
 happiness, vc perishing stand for endless misery. It is altogether 
 due to foreign and unusual considerations, if readers have learned 
 to take such words in an unnatural sense. For to live for ever 
 signifies to live for ever, and to perish signifies not to live for ever 
 but to lose organised and conscious being. That is the first and 
 the natural meaning of the words. 
 
 Moreover, it is the very meaning of them taken in constructing 
 the favourite phrase, an Immortal Soul. An \m-mortal soul is a 
 soul that will not die ; and to die there is taken for ceasing to exist 
 (not for being miserable] ; so that every one who uses the phrase 
 ' an immortal soul,' and maintains that man possesses one, shows 
 us what is the natural and proper sense of dying, by saying in Latin 
 that the soul will not die. It is obvious, then, that, unless there 
 be some reason of overpowering strength, this is the sense in 
 which the words must be taken in the gospel. This is not to 
 deny that in God's distribution of life and death to moral beings 
 there will be, and must be, glorious or dreadful secondary associa- 
 tions of thought connected with these words in the one case of 
 holiness and happiness, in the other of sin and misery ; but it is 
 to deny that in consequence of those secondary associations the 
 terms lose their primary, radical, and proper signification, or 
 become mere tropes and figures of speech for a life which is not 
 literally life at all, or for a death Avhich is not the breaking up 
 of humanity. 
 
 That the persistent resolution, through many ages, to strip 
 these converse terms Life and Death, in their application to 
 Christ's work and Man's destiny, of their proper signification, has 
 
206 ECLIPSE OF FAITH BY MYSTICISM. 
 
 resulted in eclipsing fully one-half of the light of the Sun of 
 Righteousness, of the glory of Christ, of the truth of Christianity, 
 is a conviction deeply fixed in the mind of the present writer ; 
 and that this fatal result has followed from the stealthy advance 
 in the early church of error on the soul's natural immortality has 
 already been partly shown in previous pages. A false psychology 
 throws a mist over the whole firmament of truth ; but it is surely 
 very difficult, after the writing of the last twenty years, to main- 
 tain that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul has any 
 unquestionable foundation in biology, in metaphysics, or in Scrip- 
 ture.* Is not its chief source the self-estimate of men destitute 
 of the knowledge of God, and grasping at a shadow when the 
 substance has escaped them ? 
 
 In order to determine this question, whether we owe the pros- 
 pect of immortality to the natural constitution of our spiritual 
 being, or, to the grace of God in Redemption, to the Incarna- 
 tion of the Life of God in the Christ, to a divine regenerative 
 process restricted to the sons of God, which contemplates the 
 whole humanity, body as well as soul, in its transforming and 
 immortalising action, we fall back on the generally accepted 
 principle of biblical interpretation. If the writings of the apos- 
 tles and evangelists are insufficient to decide this controversy, 
 when handled * not deceitfully,' but according to the canon which 
 governs the honest interpretation of all public documents, there is 
 assuredly no reason for expecting satisfaction elsewhere. The 
 ' oral law ' of Christendom is as delusive a guide as that of ancient 
 Judaism. 
 
 What, then, is the canon above all others obligatory in inter- 
 preting Scripture ? It is delivered to us in the words of Hooker : 
 ' I hold it for a most infallible rule in expositions of Sacred 
 Scripture that when a literal construction will stand, the farthest 
 from the letter is commonly the worst. There is nothing more 
 dangerous than this licentious and deluding art, which changeth 
 the meaning of words as alchemy doth, or would do, the substance 
 of metals, making of anything what it listeth, and bringing in the 
 end all truth to nothing.' 
 
 * See especially the remarkable series of papers in the 'Nineteenth Century,' 
 1877, on the Future Life, called 'The Symposium.' 
 
CANON OF THE LITERAL SENSE. 207 
 
 The literal sense of words is prima facie their true sense. The 
 literal sense is presumptively true, or has the first claim to be 
 received. The literal sense is the common, fundamental, ordinary, 
 usual sense in all languages, Hebrew and Greek included, and 
 that which first strikes the mind of a hearer. Life, death, living 
 for ever, perishing, the ideas conveyed by these and similar words 
 are likely to be their true sense, unless overruled by the connec- 
 tion, or by the general tenor of the book in which they appear. 
 * They ' (the heavens) ' shall perish, but Thou remainest* (Psalm 
 cii.). ' Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the'meat 
 which endtireth to everlasting life ' (John vi.). * The outward man 
 perisheth, but the inward man is renewed fay by day' (2 Cor. iv.). 
 Who could fail to see that in such passages perishing is the 
 opposite of remaining and enduring? Why is the word to be 
 taken differently when the object to perish is a sinner? or the 
 object to perish is not a man who has eaten of bread * that 
 endureth to everlasting life ' ? 
 
 The adage that the literal sense of words is presumptively the 
 true one has been held by all interpreters. Thus Luther says : 
 ' That which I have so often insisted on elsewhere I here once 
 more repeat, that the Christian should direct his first efforts 
 towards understanding the literal sense (as it is called) of Scrip- 
 ture, which alone is the substance of faith and of theology.' 
 And Dean Alford says : ' A canon of interpretation which should 
 be constantly borne in mind is that a figurative sense of words is 
 never admissible except when required by the context' (Comm. on 
 Acts x. 42.) 
 
 No rule besides this is permitted by a sound interpretation in de- 
 ducing the doctrine of the New Testament on other topics of the Chris- 
 tian revelation. The doctrines of the Trinity of the Godhead, of 
 the Deity of Christ, of the Person and work of the Holy Ghost, 
 of justification by grace, of the resurrection of the dead, of the 
 kingdom of Christ, are learned among Protestants by a persistent 
 application of this canon, against whatever mass of evil example 
 and precedent to the contrary. For in fact the measure of light 
 and darkness in the Church in every century has been determined 
 by the degree in which its interpreters have stood fast on this 
 common-sense rule of interpretation, or have given way to tradi- 
 tional perversion, or to the fantastic notion of inner senses and 
 
2o8 CLAIMS OF THE LITERAL SENSE. 
 
 universal mystery. There have been no deadlier enemies to 
 Christianity than its mystical interpreters. 
 
 The application of this great rule to the words of the Incar- 
 nate Word describing the nature of His own work of Redemption 
 seems especially imperative. Can we seriously suppose that 
 when Christ pours forth that soul-moving current of expression in 
 which He solemnly and so often declares on all various occasions, 
 and in all-varying companies, during His ministry, that He came 
 to earth to 'give Life,' * everlasting Life to men,' to 'raise them 
 up ; to everlasting Life, to prevent them from 'dying,' can we 
 suppose, after deliberation, that this emphatic language was no- 
 thing more than a mighty volume of figurative speech, rolling 
 before us, and tantalising our understandings ; when it was of the 
 last importance for us to know clearly what the doom was of 
 which we were in danger, and what the blessing is which He came 
 to confer? 
 
 If the main current of the Redeemer's language on the very 
 object of His mission is to be taken as a stream of metaphors, 
 how can we know what the realities are of which these figures are 
 the emblems ? If none of the language of the Bible is plain and 
 easy to be understood, how can we hope ever to understand the 
 metaphors ? But, indeed, this has been the delusion alike of Jew 
 and Gentile, that the Bible scarcely ever means what it says. 
 Men do ' not like ' some for one so-called reason, some for 
 another to admit that their natures are as perishable as those of 
 the races around them, they do ' not like ' to retain in their 
 knowledge a Saviour who is the ' life of the world,' they do ' not 
 like ' to admit the awful idea of a judicial extinction of life in 
 hell, for defying the Almighty, and therefore they leave no 
 verbal artifice unemployed in perverting the plain meaning of the 
 terms which clearly announce that doom to the condemned, and 
 point to the Christ as the sole hope of humanity. Just so those 
 who go to the Bible resolved not to allow of the ideas of the In- 
 carnation and of the Atonement find critical means to persuade 
 themselves that those doctrines are not really in the Scripture. 
 
 Nothing is more wonderful in the history of thought than the 
 degree to which men have persuaded themselves that the Spirit of 
 Revelation in dealing with mankind has systematically avoided 
 that ' great plainness of speech ' which is the natural outcome of 
 
CHRISrS PARABOLIC STYLE. 209 
 
 a direct and simple purpose when the object is to be understood. 
 The notion is deeply rooted that when God speaks, as in the 
 person of Christ, the Incarnate WORD, scarcely any of His words 
 are to be taken in their obvious sense. Surely the rule of 
 thought ought to be the opposite, and we ought to think that He 
 who was the Truth as well as the Life employed human speech in 
 its most direct signification. 
 
 It is said, however, in reply to this assertion of the first claim 
 of the literal and obvious sense of words in the interpretation of 
 Scripture doctrine, that we are overlooking the undeniable pre- 
 valence of metaphor in the Biblical writings, and especially in 
 the teaching of Jesus Himself. ' Without a parable spake He not 
 unto them.' ' He multiplied parables? after the fashion of the 
 ancient prophets. There is not a doctrine of the gospel which 
 He did not involve in an envelope of metaphorical speech, partly 
 as a punitive measure towards dishonest souls, partly as an exer- 
 cise of the pious ingenuity of His disciples. May not, then, the 
 whole sense of Christ's language respecting Life and Death, as 
 the destinies of men, be a portion of the metaphorical vocabulary 
 in which He presented the truth ? The writings of the Apostles 
 of Christ contain several indications of the strong secondary 
 associations which belong to these terms, as when S. Paul speaks 
 of his own happiness, in the words, * Now we live if ye stand fast 
 in the Lord ' (i Thess. iii. 8) : as much as to say, ' Your depar- 
 ture from the truth would be my death.' 
 
 We acknowledge that the associations of holy blessedness and 
 sinful misery occasionally, as in the cited passage, come forward 
 into vivid prominence in the use of the terms life and death; 
 and not only that, but also that other secondary associations of 
 these terms and their correlatives, such as the ideas of force and 
 liveliness, of weakness and torpor, of a spiritual and of a carnal 
 condition, occasionally are made prominent in the use of the 
 words, as perhaps in such passages as these : * Quicken thou me 
 in thy way ' Psalm cxix. (give me force and vigour in thy ser- 
 vice) and, * Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead,' 
 * Be zealous and strengthen the things that remain, that are ready 
 to die ' (Rev. iii.). But it would be a perversion of all the rules 
 of speech, and the experience of literature, to allow that because 
 
 14 
 
2io GENIUS OF ORIENTAL SPEECH. 
 
 terms are sometimes employed in a sense in which their secondary 
 associations are prominent, therefore we are to interpret them 
 everywhere so as to exclude their primary and proper signification. 
 In passing expressions of emotional thought, the secondary asso- 
 ciation may thus sometimes get even the upper hand; but in 
 solemn and deliberate teaching the main terms are certain to be 
 used in their strict signification. When and where on earth is 
 there better reason to look for the use of words in their proper 
 sense than when the Saviour of the world is teaching men what 
 their danger is, and in what Salvation consists ? If it be urged 
 again that Christ hid much of His truth in a glory-mist of meta- 
 phors, the answer is, that ' privately He explained all things to 
 His disciples ; ' yet in private as in public He adhered to His 
 theme, that men were in danger of death, and destruction, and 
 that He came to give them everlasting life. 
 
 The impression prevails among many readers of the Bible that 
 inasmuch as it is an Oriental Book, and the genius of Oriental 
 Speech is metaphorical and symbolical, it is a dangerous fallacy 
 to handle its language according to the cold canons of European 
 language. We must expect a metaphor everywhere, until it is 
 proved that the Asiatic prophet or apostle has spoken in simple 
 terms ! 
 
 Except in some conspicuous examples of imaginative poetry, 
 Indian and Persian, there is reason to deny with emphasis this 
 popular notion of Asiatic discourse. The realities of life impose 
 more sobriety upon Orientals than the Westerns usually allow, 
 and this sobriety percolates through their common literature. 
 With respect to the Bible, to impute a highflown metaphorical 
 style to its writers as their ordinary habit is manifestly a delusion. 
 The most decisive evidence of this is, that the Bible will bear 
 translating, nearly word for word, into the tongues of Northern 
 Europe ; and has been listened to in public reading with the 
 utmost edification for many generations. This would have been 
 impossible in the colder atmosphere of the North, unless, in the 
 main, the Bible were a sober book ; sober in its history, in its 
 teaching, even in its poetry ; using language that can be ' under- 
 standed of the people ' in all climates of the world. The idea, 
 then, that Asiatics never speak except in metaphors, and that the 
 
DEFINITENESS OF GREEK LANGUAGE. 211 
 
 Biblical writers are but examples of the Asiatic genius, is to mis- 
 conceive the facts of life and of history. 
 
 There is, however, a further argument, which alone might 
 suffice to correct the imagination that the Bible has taught the 
 mysteries of Redemption in a cloud of metaphors. I refer to 
 the providential selection of the Greek language to be the instru- 
 ment for the revelation of the gospel ; the language of mankind 
 which beyond all others assists and encourages the expression of 
 thought in exact terms. Admitting, with strong reservation and 
 protest against the exaggerated notion of Asiatic tendency to 
 metaphor, that the Hebrew of the Old Testament partakes in 
 some degree of the poetic indefiniteness of a primitive tongue, it 
 cannot be pretended that this is a weakness of the Greek speech. 
 There at least we have definition, edge, precision, itself an effect 
 of clear thought, and an incentive to it. Now the * oriental ' 
 Jews had been for three centuries placed under the yoke of 
 Greek- speaking rulers when Christ appeared. Their Scriptures 
 were read in Greek throughout the world. There is reason to 
 think, with Dr. Roberts, that Greek was widely spoken in Pales- 
 tine by the hearers of our Lord ; and it is this perfect language, 
 in which reason rules over fancy with undisputed sway, that 
 was chosen to be the organ by which Christianity and Christ's 
 discourses should be divulged to the civilised world. 
 
 To assert, therefore, that in the Greek gospel of John, written 
 in the clear sunshine of Ionian Greece itself, the language is 
 probably metaphorical at every turn, that we shall most likely 
 err in taking far] to mean fife, and Qdvaros to mean death, and 
 shall more likely reach the truth by supposing that d^o^o-Kc/ 
 signifies to be banished from God, or to live for ever in misery , 
 is to offer a violent contradiction to one of the most obvious 
 facts in philology, namely, that the use of Greek in the New 
 Testament is in itself a presumption that its ordinary terms are 
 taken in their natural signification. 
 
 But this being so, we may learn with certainty, if any doubt 
 exists, through the Greek of the New Testament, the meaning of 
 the corresponding Hebrew words in the Old; and no extreme 
 theories as to the range of the Hellenistic dialect must blind us 
 
212 BOOK OF GENESIS THE KEY TO SCRIPTURE. 
 
 to the truth that the Greek of the apostles was a tongue which 
 the Grecians understood. 
 
 These considerations necessitate what may be termed the 
 literal, or, still better, the natural and obvious interpretation of 
 S. John's gospel in its discourses on the life eternal. But some 
 special and detailed arguments may be added which confirm the 
 presumption raised on grounds such as we have discussed. 
 
 (i) The work of the Son of God in redemption is in Scripture 
 interwoven with the history of the sin of Man in paradise. The 
 doctrine of the First and of the Second Adam constitutes the 
 4 mystery of the gospel ' (i Cor. xv.). In the teaching of our 
 Lord Himself there are clear references to the history of the fall 
 of Man as the basis of God's dealings with the human race. He 
 speaks of Satan as a ' Murderer (di/0powroKTwos) from the be- 
 ginning ; ' and of Himself as sent to destroy the works of the 
 Devil. Now, a murderer is a destroyer of life. The meaning of 
 Death, and of the gift of Eternal Life, in the discourses of Christ, 
 is thus fixed by the history of the First Adam in Genesis. Christ 
 appeared to ' abolish death (2 Tim. i.), and the death which He 
 abolished was the death that ' came into the world ' by the 
 original Sin, and through the temptation of the original 
 Murderer. 
 
 What was that death ? We have already seen that it is to offer 
 violence to known fact, as well as every probability, to suppose 
 that the death incurred by Adam's sin was, as Athanasius declares 
 in a passage (cited hereafter in chapter xxvi.), aught else than 
 Extinction (<0opa), a death like that which animals have died 
 on this globe since the beginning. No word is said either before 
 the fall, or on the approach of the Judge, or afterwards, of Adam's 
 possession of a deathless soul, when his mortal integer was broken 
 up ; not a word is uttered in the divine comment on that curse, 
 of an eternity of misery to be endured by the soul after the disso- 
 lution of the Man. Indeed that notion seems to deserve little 
 else than the scorn which Locke bestows upon it. It is the 
 gratuitous invention of theologians who have forfeited the claim 
 to be listened to in that matter by their perverse departure from 
 the record. 
 
ARGUMENT OF FOURTH GOSPEL. 213 
 
 The signification, then, of the Life which Christ bestows is deter- 
 mined by the history of the Bible. It is the spiritual renewal 
 of God's holy image, and with it the concurrent bestowment of 
 that literal eternal life in body and soul which was annexed to 
 the right to the Tree of Life in Paradise, and which was forfeited 
 by sin. ' Now, lest he put forth his hand, and take of the Tree 
 of Life, and eat, and live for ever, so he drove out the man.' 
 Christ is the Door into the eternal life. Through Him sinful, 
 mortal humanity enters in again, and He gives us * to eat of the 
 Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.' 
 After His ascension to heaven Christ solemnly appropriated 
 these words to Himself (Rev. ii. 7). 
 
 The result of being driven out from the Tree of Life to Adam 
 was not merely unhappiness or misery ', but death, returning to dust ; 
 hence it is necessary to understand the work of Christ to be to 
 confer Immortality. 
 
 If mankind already possessed, through the Divine constitution, 
 the attribute of everlasting life in the most essential part of their 
 nature, an ever-during soul, it cannot be admitted that in the 
 proper sense of the terms Christ ' gives eternal life ' to the saved. 
 His title as the Life of Men must be understood as applicable to 
 Him only in a vague metaphorical sense, as the giver of grace 
 and happiness. But this would not correspond to the breadth 
 and depth of Scripture language respecting redemption. He 
 Himself is our Life. And the body no less than the soul is said 
 to be saved by Him, ' Waiting for the sonship, to wit, the 
 redemption of the body ' (Rom. viii.). 
 
 2. Every chapter in the gospel of John gives force to the 
 preceding argument. In the opening verses, he says of the 
 Logos, 'In Him was Life,' and adds, * All things were made by 
 Him, and without Him was not one thing made that was made ; ' 
 designing clearly to indicate that the Logos was not merely the 
 fountain of happiness only, or of holiness, or of what is termed, 
 in unscriptural language, ' spiritual life,' but of all existence, 
 material and immaterial, organic and inorganic, a statement 
 which fittingly introduces that Saviour from death, who says of 
 Himself, ' The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and 
 to destroy (6vcrrj K<U a.7ro\<ry). I am come that they might 
 
214 CHRIST'S LANGUAGE INTELLIGIBLE. 
 
 have life, and that they might have it more abundantly ' (John 
 x. 10).* 
 
 Now when it is considered that Christ's words were for the 
 most part uttered in the hearing of the two hostile sects of 
 Pharisees and Sadducees, whose controversy on immortality gave 
 a special interest and a peculiar edge to every term employed to 
 denote a future state, the conclusion appears inevitable, that 
 Christ could have intended by His language only the sense here 
 imputed to it. Never once was He prevailed on to set forth 
 the Pharisaic psychological doctrine of the 'oral law,' that * every 
 soul has an immortal vigour in it/ and will live for ever ; for then 
 He would have had the democratic Pharisees always on His side, 
 as proving by miracles the truth of their doctrine against the 
 materialistic Sadducees. On the contrary, the hatred of the 
 Pharisees towards Christ corresponded to His ceaseless denuncia- 
 tion of them, and of their ' oral law.' The Sadducees, again, 
 when they heard Him speak of ' eternal life,' and of eternal life 
 by ' resurrection,' and of that resurrection to life eternal as the 
 gift of God through the Speaker, at least would not lose His 
 meaning, by imposing on the word life a figurative sense of 
 bliss, to be bestowed on a soul already immortal. They would 
 necessarily understand Him to teach that man had no principle 
 of immortality in himself, but that God would give immortality, 
 in body and soul, to those who believed in Him. They would at 
 once understand His meaning, and scorn His supposed wicked- 
 ness and folly. The Pharisees would think that He was right in 
 teaching a future eternal life for the righteous, but that He cut 
 the ground of such a hope from beneath His own feet by refrain- 
 ing from teaching, as they did, the inherent immortality of man. 
 Thus neither party ' received His words ; ' but between the two 
 they assisted all future ages to comprehend His intention, which 
 was to teach a doctrine that humbles man in the dust of death, 
 and restricts the everlasting life to twice-born and believing souls, 
 a doctrine which represents the first Adam as xofros, a ' man 
 of earth,' and the Second Man alone as a ' life-giving spirit ' 
 (i Cor. xv.). 
 
 * See further on this subject the section of chap, xxiv., headed 'Moral 
 Ideas associated with the terms Life and Death? 
 
THE INCARNATION, AND ETERNAL LIFE. 215 
 
 It remains now to offer a reflection on the relation between 
 the two great mysteries of the Fourth Gospel ; and this must be 
 done with a befitting sense of the awe under which it becomes 
 sinful men to adventure into that Holiest Place, which has been 
 ' opened ' to us by the Eternal Love. 
 
 The one line of thought, transcending all natural ideas of man, 
 which pervades John's Gospel, is THE INCARNATION OF THE 
 DEITY, of the LOGOS-THEOS, in the person of Jesus our Lord. 
 The other line of thought is the parallel affirmation from the lips 
 of this Incarnate Deity, that MAN OWES THE PROSPECT OF EVER- 
 LASTING LIFE, not to his own nature, but to redemptive UNION 
 WITH HIM, THE LIFE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 It is hard to say which of these lines of thought awakens more 
 of the natural incredulity and hostility of mankind that Jesus 
 was an Incarnation of the Godhead, or that Immortal Life for 
 man is to be found alone in spiritual union with Him. 
 
 Yet these truths support each other like the two sides of an 
 arch of triumph, ' that gate of the Lord into which the righteous 
 shall enter.' 
 
 Is not this the truth that man, who by the laws of the universe 
 is * dead in sins,' under sentence of extermination (rH^) by ^ e 
 law, can be saved from the death incurred, can be reached in his 
 misery, by no force or power of the created universe ? If he is 
 to be saved from the action of the laws of the universe, moral 
 and physical, it must be, not through the remedial operation of 
 some external force, but through the intimate union of his nature 
 with a Power which is above the universe and its laws, through 
 the union of the nature of man with the Nature of God? Is it 
 not that the salvation of a sinner from destruction is an im- 
 possibility, except through the ' taking of the manhood unto 
 God ' ? Is it not that salvation in all its parts must be the 
 direct act of God operating, not through natural laws, but in a 
 sphere above them, Himself suffering, Himself taking our 
 nature, Himself raising the destroyed Temple of His Body, 
 Himself pouring forth the tide of His own Eternal Life, a life 
 divine and immortal, into the victims of the destroyer ? 
 
 If this be so, we derive a new and irresistible argument for 
 faith in the Divinity of Christ from the related doctrine of His 
 life.-giving energy ; and from the doctrine of Life in Christ alone 
 
216 CHRIST S DISCOURSE ON LIFE 
 
 we derive fresh evidence of His personal Deity. That doctrine, 
 which beyond all others moves the unbelief and scorn of Asia 
 and of Europe, the Incarnation of the Word, is seen to be at 
 once the essential condition of man's immortality, and its only 
 solid foundation. ' Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a 
 Rock, a solid Rock ; and he that believeth shall not be confounded.' 
 This Rock is the Incarnation of the Life-giving Word. 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Note on the Sixth Chapter of S. John's Gospel : Christ's Discourse on 
 Life in the Synagogue of Capernaum. 
 
 It will be convenient to bring together in one view the indications 
 afforded by this chapter of what we term the literal sense of Life and 
 Death in our Lord's discourses, in opposition to the prevailing notion 
 that life stands only for everlasting happiness, and death for endless 
 misery. In examining the sixth chapter of S. John closely the reader 
 is requested to bear in mind what the prevailing theory is namely, 
 that man's soul is immortal by nature, so that all that comes to it 
 from the hand of God, by the additions of judgment or mercy, is the 
 misery or the happiness of a nature that is already eternal. The 
 words of Christ on the donation of life, or the infliction of death, on 
 this theory must therefore strictly signify the gift of spiritual character 
 and blessedness or the infliction of misery, and nothing beyond. 
 
 We propose to show that our Lord's statements indicate that He 
 meant much more than this ; He intended by life and death also, and 
 primarily, immortality and destruction. 
 
 The discussion recorded took place in the great synagogue of Caper- 
 naum, of which some interesting ruins yet remain at Tel Hum; for 
 even the ruins are interesting of an edifice which was the scene of this 
 notable revelation of Divine truth and grace.* The discourse was 
 occasioned by the exclamation of Jesus, on seeing the people crowding 
 around Him at Capernaum, after the miracle of Bethesda (ver. 26) : 
 ' Ye seek Me not because ye saw signs,' (tokens and intimations of a 
 
 * Canon Tristram mentions that on one of its remaining blocks of masonry, 
 forming the keystone of the entrance arch inside, and therefore visible to the 
 congregation, is sculptured the pot of Manna, the symbol of the God-given 
 immortality. 
 
IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF CAPERNAUM. 217 
 
 higher presence, \vhich led you to conceive great thoughts of Me), ' but 
 because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. Work not for the 
 food which perisheth (rr^v a7ro\Av/itw7i>), but for that food which endureth 
 (jjievova-av) unto Everlasting Life, which the Son of man shall give 
 unto you. 1 The people, supposing that He offered to supply food 
 which would confer perpetual life, ask, * What shall we do that we 
 may work at the works of God ? ' Jesus answered, ' This is the work 
 which God requires, that you should believe on Him whom He hath 
 sent ' a work of the mind which would set all outward works right. 
 ' They said therefore, What sign showest Thou that we may see and 
 believe Thee ? What dost Thou work ? Our fathers ate manna in 
 the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' 
 (Your gift of bread has been on the level of the earth, and only for a 
 single meal; can you not do something more like the miracle of 
 Moses, who gave the whole nation food from heaven daily for forty 
 years? Unless you at least equal Moses, we cannot forsake him to 
 believe in you.) 'Then Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say to 
 you, It was not Moses who gave to you even that bread from heaven 
 (it was God), but my Father now giveth you the true bread from 
 heaven. For the bread of God is He which cometh down from 
 heaven and giveth life to the world. Then said they, Lord, always 
 give to us this bread. And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He 
 that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me 
 shall never thirst.' 
 
 Now in this succession of sentences our Lord places together the 
 idea of bread, as the support of life, and of Himself as the giver of 
 eternal life. Bread is the aliment of life in the literal sense of the 
 term. Bread is not the symbol of happiness, but of preservation of life, 
 aliment for continued being. 
 
 This idea of bread as the support of life He then pursues to the end 
 of the chapter ; and just as people who have no food must die, so He 
 teaches that preservation from death, and enjoyment of endless life, 
 depend on receiving this heaven-sent aliment of being. 
 
 Ver. 41. ' This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which 
 seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have endless life . ' and in 
 order to show that this life is not simply the happiness of a soiil 
 already immortal, but the literal complex life of a being who consists 
 of body and soul, He adds * And / will raise him up at the last day.' 
 The Jews then murmured at His saying that He came down from 
 heaven. He replied that their murmurings were vain, since none 
 could come to Him unless attracted by the Father and He then 
 repeats it, ' / will raise him up at the last day ' (ver. 44). 
 
 At verse 47 He returns to His first statement, and emphasises it 
 again and again. * Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believeth in 
 
2i8 CHRIST'S DISCOURSE ON LIFE 
 
 Me hath endless life. I am the bread of life.' But now, in order to 
 make still more clear His meaning as to the sense of life, He brings 
 into view the converse, death : 'Your fathers did eat manna in the 
 desert and died; this is the bread that descended from heaven that 
 any one might eat of it, and not die' Here, then, Christ sets aside, 
 once for all, the sense of a ' merely moral ' or ' spiritual ' life and death, 
 and shows by the contrast of the physical death, died by the manna- 
 eating fathers, what was the radical signification of the life which 
 comes with the bread of heaven. It consists io. ' not dying.' There 
 is no nearer approach to a formal definition of terms in our Saviour's 
 teaching. It is inconceivable that such language as this would be 
 used to denote the idea of a life which was only bliss or spiritual 
 character given to a nature already immortal. 
 
 In verse 51 our Lord solemnly reiterates His doctrine. * I am the 
 living bread (6 apros 6 vv) which came down from heaven. If any 
 man eat of my bread he shall live for ever, and my flesh is the bread 
 which I will give for the life of the world ' (wrep Trjs rov Kocrp.ov o>j)r) . 
 [So Tischendorf, Lachmann, and Tregelles.] Here is a steadfast 
 adhesion to the idea of supporting the world's life by food which is 
 heaven-descended. 
 
 Verse 52. A natural exclamation follows : ' How can this man give 
 us His flesh to eat ? Then Jesus said, Except ye eat the flesh of the 
 Son of man and drink His blood ye have no life (not eV vfuv, but eV 
 eaurois) in yourselves. 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 truly food, and my blood is truly drink. He that eateth 
 my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him.' The 
 demonstration of our Lord's meaning still unfolds. Bread was the 
 symbol of life ; but how much more was blood. ' The blood is the 
 life thereof,' not simply the happiness of a living being, but its life ; 
 and here Christ declares that life eternal depends on drinking His 
 bloody which was His life. Under this metaphor the main idea is 
 clearly seen, and the metaphor is brought in to enforce that idea. 
 Man's literal life in eternity depends on receiving Christ, and being 
 united to Him. Apart from such union he will 'die.' 
 
 At verse 57 a still loftier illustration is given of the intention of the 
 discourse. Our Lord defines the life spoken of by reference to the 
 life of God. ' As the Living Father hath sent me ' (not surely the 
 blessed Father or the holy Father, but the ever-living, self-existing, 
 eternal Father), 'and I live by the Father'' (I derive my life my eter- 
 nal being, in the way of dependence on the Original Majesty), ' so he 
 that eateth me, he also shall live by me : ' shall derive not merely 
 happiness, but being from me, as I derive mine, as the only-begotten 
 Son of God, by generation from the Supreme God. 
 
IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF CAPERNAUM. 219 
 
 Our Lord then enforces His idea of life by recurring, after this lofty 
 reference, to His former statement : ' This is the bread that descended 
 from heaven ; not as your fathers ate manna and died : he that eateth 
 of this bread shall live to eternity' 1 (els TOV alwva) . 
 
 The reader will judge, after thus examining this wonderful chapter, 
 whether it was possible for words to convey more distinctly to the 
 mind the statements, 
 
 1. That man has no principle of eternally enduring life in himself ; 
 
 2. That God has given us eternal life in His Son ; 
 
 3. That man's actual enjoyment of eternal life depends on the closest 
 union with the Incarnate Life of God in Christ ; 
 
 4. That the eternal life bestowed on us includes and requires the 
 immortality of the whole humanity, and therefore carries with it the 
 resurrection of the dead. 
 
 The result of this discourse upon our Lord's hearers was to bring to 
 a crisis the inward revolt of many. ' From that time many of His 
 disciples went away backward, and walked no more with Him? The 
 doctrine of immortality through the Incarnation, and of death eternal 
 coming upon all men out of Christ, is the chief stumbling-block of the 
 gospel. It was the last truth for the Church to learn, and the first for 
 her to lose as it will be the last that she will consent to receive again 
 by unlearning the notion which represents man's immortality as inde- 
 pendent of redemption. 
 
 The metaphorical part of this discourse, specially the difficulty 
 occasioned by His assertions of a descent from heaven, of the necessity 
 of eating His flesh in order to eternal life, Christ at the close, accord- 
 ing to custom, explained to His faithful disciples. ' Are you scandal- 
 ised/ said He, ' at my saying I came down from heaven ? What, then, 
 if ye should see the Son of man ascending where He was before ? ' 
 a spectacle granted to them at Bethany. And as to l eating His flesh,' 
 that, He added, was a metaphor for receiving the doctrine founded on 
 the sacrifice of His flesh for the world's life. < The flesh itself profiteth 
 nothing ; ' I do not intend the literal eating of my body. It is the truth 
 respecting me which will give you life. ' The words that I speak to 
 you, they are Spirit, and they are Life.' Whence we learn that by 
 life our Lord intends precisely what He says, ' For it is the Spirit that 
 giveth life' (2 Cor. iii.). 
 
220 NOTE ON RABBINICAL DOCTRINE 
 
 NOTE on the quest ion t Whether the words of Christ on future life are 
 to be interpreted according to the sense of the Pharisees : with a 
 view of subsequent Rabbinical opinion. (3rd edition.) 
 
 It is asserted with the utmost confidence in several popular criti- 
 cisms on the former editions of this work, that since the learned 
 Jews of Christ's time, as well as the common people, held the doctrine 
 of the soul's immortality, and of the eternal suffering of the wicked ; 
 and since Christ did not correct these convictions ; it necessarily 
 follows that He designed his words to be taken in their sense, and that 
 He gives by His silence a divine sanction to the doctrine by us 
 impugned. On these assertions I beg to offer the following remarks. 
 
 i. Although it is probable that the sect of the Pharisees held a 
 philosophical belief in the immortality of souls, it is almost equally 
 probable that this belief was deeply infected with Persian dualism, and 
 was accompanied by a concurrent belief in \htpre-cxistence of souls. 
 ( Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind ? ' 
 (John ix. 2). De Wette distinctly attributes this opinion to them, and 
 traces it back to an Oriental origin. Did Christ sanction this belief 
 also ? In a letter with which Professor Marks has favoured me, he 
 says, 'If all the Pharisees of the age of Jesus had believed in the 
 eternity of misery, it would be little to the purpose as far as showing 
 such opinion to have been entertained by the early Hebrews ; since 
 these opinions would have been influenced by the doctrine brought 
 back to Palestine by the Babylonian captives.' 
 
 The direct evidence for the doctrine of an eternal hell and of the 
 soul's immortality among the Pharisees, depends on the single witness 
 of Josephus. It is to take dangerous ground to rest a non-natural 
 interpretation of the whole teaching of Jesus Christ respecting human 
 destiny, on the infallible correctness of the testimony of Josephus to 
 the philosophy of the Pharisees in all its particulars. 
 
 2. Still more dangerous is it to assume as an absolute rule to govern 
 interpretation, that whatever psychological opinion Christ did not 
 explicitly condemn He sanctioned by His silence. As Professor Hud- 
 son soundly observes, ( It was not Christ's general custom to oppose 
 particular errors by explicit mention and condemnation. He taught 
 by affirmation rather than denial ' (p. 2-24). As well might Christ be 
 supposed to sanction Josephus's account of the Resurrection as a 
 
ON JUDGMENT TO COME. 221 
 
 'passage of righteous souls into other bodies/ by a sort of trans- 
 migration (a notion which he imputes to the Pharisees). The Gospel 
 of John shows that it was the inmost secret of Christ, that He was 
 the Life of the world ; and this could not easily be taught to the 
 Pharisees. 
 
 3. The points in which alone the doctrine of the Pharisees was 
 defended both by Christ and Paul against the Sadducees, were those 
 of the existence of spirits, and the ' resurrection of the just and unjust.' 
 The psychological basis of the Pharisees on the immortality of the soul 
 received no sanction from Christ in the great argument against the 
 Sadducees (Luke xx.), when, if ever, it ought to have appeared if 
 assented to by our Lord. 
 
 4. Christ did, however, in sufficiently plain language, in the synagogue 
 of Capernaum, in the passage above reviewed, overthrow this psycho- 
 logical basis of Pharisaic anthropology, by declaring that men had 
 ' no life (ev tavTols) in themselves] but could attain the privilege of ' living 
 for ever' that is, of ( not dying ' only by spiritual union with Him- 
 self. But neither that, nor any other truth which Christ taught, was 
 received by men who were ' blind guides of the blind/ 
 
 5. It is easy to depreciate too much the weight and influence of 
 Sadducean opinion in fixing the meaning of words in popular use. 
 It must not be forgotten that the Sadducees also had their learned 
 men, who delivered a steady testimony against the Pharisaic psycho- 
 logy and eschatology as a foreign importation, and an anti-scriptural 
 error ; and although they went doubtless much too far in their antagon- 
 ism, their vehement opposition must have greatly weakened the hold of 
 the Pharisaic doctrine on those people who thought at all on futurity. 
 
 The fact of Sadducean opposition also entirely overthrows the 
 position that Christ's words must be taken only in the sense of the 
 more numerous sect. Of the two possible hypotheses, there is far 
 more reason for affirming that He used the terms ' life ' and * death ' in 
 the sense in which they were understood by the Sadducees. It is the 
 vainest of imaginations that His hearers had heard only of one defini- 
 tion of these terms, namely that of 'heavenly bliss* and ' endless 
 misery' They daily heard from the party of the Sadducees that there 
 was no foundation whatever for such a metaphorical treatment of the 
 promises and the threatenings of the Old Testament Scriptures. This 
 antagonism left it open for our Lord's words to produce their natural 
 effect upon many of his hearers. 
 
 6. The doctrine of the Rabbins during the Christian era shows 
 
222 RABBINICAL DOCTRINE 
 
 that there is no dominant Jewish tradition from the early Christian 
 ages in support of the Pharisaic opinion on endless misery. The 
 popular belief of modern Jews is generally favourable to the eternal 
 survival of all souls and the eternal blessedness of those souls. But 
 this doctrine has not been held in the most absolute sense by the 
 greatest ancient lights and ornaments of the rabbinical succession. ' In 
 the Mishna,' says Professor Hudson, who has made Jewish opinion a 
 special study, ' we find no mention whatever of the immortality of the 
 soul (he means of all souls}, or of eternal pain, though exclusion from 
 eternal life is often mentioned/ In the Gemara, which represents 
 very ancient Jewish thoughts, the destiny of the wicked is described 
 most fully. 'Those who sin and rebel greatly in Israel, as well as 
 Gentile sinners, shall descend into Gehenna, and there be judged, 
 during twelve months ; at the end of which the body is consumed, the 
 soul is burned up, and the spirit is scattered beneath the feet of the 
 just, as it is said in Mai. iv. 3. But heretics, informers, and infidels, 
 who deny the law of God, and the resurrection of the dead, and those 
 who cause others to sin, as Jeroboam the son of Nebat, shall descend 
 into Gehenna and there be judged ages of ages? The eternity of hell 
 is expressly denied as follows : ' Rabbi Simon ben Lakish has said, 
 There will be in the future no Gehenna for the wicked shall be as 
 stubble, and the coming day shall burn them up, leaving them neither 
 root nor branch.' Professor Hudson adds, 'There are in the Talmud 
 traces of Restorationism chiefly in behalf of Israelites. But we find no 
 indication that the eternity of hell torments was ever an accepted Jewish 
 doctrine, though by individual Rabbins asserted with infinite puerili- 
 ties.' The greatest of all the Rabbins, Maimonides, born A.D. 1131, 
 at Cordova, distinctly teaches the immortality of the righteous alone, 
 and the absolute extermination of the wicked. His words are : ' The 
 punishment which awaits the wicked man is that he will have no part 
 in eternal life, but will die, and be utterly destroyed. He will not live 
 for ever, but for his sins will be cut off, and perish like a brute. It 
 is a death from which there is no return.' 'The reward of the righteous 
 will consist in this, that they will be at bliss and exist in everlasting 
 beatitude ; while the retribution of the wicked will be to be deprived 
 of that future life and to be cut off* (Hilchot Teshuba, or De Pani- 
 tentid,'\\\. 12 ; viii. 2). I have verified these citations from the greatest 
 of the modern Jewish writers. Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel says that 
 Maimonides, learned in all the lore of antiquity, undoubtedly ' under- 
 stood the cutting off si the soul mentioned in Scripture to be no other 
 than its annihilation ' (Allen's Modern Judaism, ch. ix.). The words 
 of Maimonides are these I quote the Latin version of Dr. Clavering, 
 (Oxford Edition of De Panitentid, 1705): 'Hoc autem supplicium 
 impios manet, quod ista vita non potientur, sed morientur, et penitus 
 
ON IMMORTALITY. 223 
 
 destruentur (IH^I lIVl^ fcwN^ Q u * istzl vita est indignus mortuus 
 est (HDH fcOn> an illustration of the true meaning of vfKpos, a dead 
 man, when applied to an ungodly person in the New Testament), 
 quoniam non in eternum vivet, sed iniquitatum gratia exscindetur, et 
 
 tanquam bestia peribit (pl&riM "DKI WfiTQ fTO} *&$>: Et 
 hasc est excisio de qua in lege scribitur, Exscindendo exscindetur 
 anima ilia ' (ch. viii.). 
 
 Nachmanides, the friend of Maimonides, speaks in the same way of 
 the future punishment of the worst sinners as the ' third excision, 
 still more severe, by which the body is cut off in this life, and the soul 
 in the life to come.' With him agree R. Bechai, and David Kimchi, 
 who, in his Comment on the Psalms, explicitly teaches (as Canon 
 Perowne shows in his Commentary) the complete extermination of the 
 wicked. See Hudson's Debt and Grace, pp. 340-1 ; Pocock's Porta 
 Mosis, c. 6 ; Allen's Modern Judaism, ch. ix. Mr. Deutsch (p. 53) sums 
 up the result of his Talmudical studies in these words, ' There is no 
 everlasting damnation according to the Talmud. There is only a 
 limited punishment, even for the worst sinners. Generation upon 
 generation shall last the damnation of idolaters, apostates, and traitors.' 
 This fixes the limited sense in which aiwj/e? ran/ aitoi/tov is used in the 
 Apocalypse, when speaking of the torment of the Devil and the 
 Beast. For, as Lightfoot says, 'The New Testament was written 
 by Jews, among Jews, for Jews ' (a Judasis, atque inter Judaeos, et ad 
 Judseos) ; and if it is evident that the phrases ages of ages, or genera- 
 tions to generations, were used by them in a strictly limited sense in 
 relation to the subject of future punishment, it will be needless to 
 pervert the plain meaning of the ordinary Greek words, used in the 
 New Testament to denote the destruction of the wicked, or words 
 used to denote limited duration, from deference to supposed Jewish 
 idioms requiring them to be taken in the sense of endless misery ; 
 specially when it is proved that no such idiom exists in the Talmud 
 (which enshrines the traditions of the nation from a period far more 
 ancient than the age of the Pharisees), where we find the very phrases 
 even of the Apocalypse used to describe a punishment explicitly 
 declared to be terminable. 
 
 Since writing the preceding paragraphs, I have read the Rev. 
 Samuel Cox's Salvator Mundi, to which I am indebted for the 
 following extract from Dr. Alfred Dewes' Plea for a New Trans- 
 lation of the Scriptures. 
 
 'After animadverting on the "rather pitiable way" in which one 
 commentator after another has defined and repeated Lightfoot's some- 
 what ambiguous words, taking him to assert, or making him assert, 
 " that Gehenna was the abode of the damned, a place of eternal fire, 
 
224 RABBINICAL 
 
 and that there are endless examples to prove it," Dr. Dewes adds 
 (p. 21) : "With a view to test the truth of an assertion so continually 
 made, the present writer has searched all the Jewish writings that can 
 with any probability be assigned to any date within three centuries 
 from our Saviour's birth. And whenever he asserts that an idea is not 
 to be found in any work, he wishes it to be understood that the whole 
 work has been read through, not that its index only has been searched. 
 It did not seem worth while to read any of the later Jewish works ; it 
 was quite out of the question to think of wading through the Talmuds ; 
 but the earlier of them is assigned to the middle of the fourth century 
 and the later to the end of the fifth. Every passage, however, has 
 been carefully examined even from them, which is quoted in the works 
 of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, Castell, Schindler, Glass, Barto- 
 loccius, Ugalino, and Nork : and the result of the whole examination 
 is this : there are but two passages which even a superficial reader 
 could consider to be corroborative of the assertion that the Jews under- 
 stood Gehenna to be a place of 'everlasting -punishment"* 
 
 Mr. Cox, himself no mean Rabbinical scholar, adds : ' The Jewish 
 Fathers of our Lord's time, differed on the ultimate issue of the 
 state of punishment in Gehenna. Some held that it would issue in 
 the ultimate salvation of all who were exposed to it ; while others held 
 that it would issue in their destruction, the very souls of sinners being 
 burned up and scattered by the wind' (p. 75). 
 
 The Rev. Bodfield Hooper, in any future edition of his book on 
 Endless Sufferings the Doctrine of Scripture, will, therefore, do well to 
 consider whether his own view of Christ's use of the biblical language 
 on destruction is not rendered more than doubtful by the sense in which 
 that language is taken by the illustrious Maimonides and his pre- 
 decessors. Rabbi Marks says : ' The upshot is that the Jewish doc- 
 tors laboured rather to adorn the future of the good than to blacken 
 the destiny of the wicked. Stronger than their fear of justice is their 
 belief in the Divine Mercy. " He will not contend for ever, neither 
 will he retain his anger to eternity 1 '' (Psalm ciii. 9), which is a 
 powerful argument against the modern Christian dogma of everlasting 
 
225 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 What is Justification ? 
 
 THEOLOGY, as every other science, has its technical terms. 
 Justification is one of these. It will be the aim of this chapter 
 to fix its meaning, and to attempt to explain its relation to the 
 Atonement of Christ. 
 
 Under the general doctrine of this work Salvation signifies 
 being literally saved alive, saved from destruction of body and 
 soul in hell, saved from being ' burned up like chaff in unquench- 
 able fire.' And this infinite boon comes only on those who are 
 forgiven, saved from their sins, and created afresh in the divine 
 image. 'Being justified by Christ's blood, we shall be saved 
 from wrath through Him ' (Rom. v. 9). This expression 
 * justified in His blood,' carries us down into the depths of 
 Christianity. The truth which S. Paul teaches us in these words 
 he represents as the foundation of our hope of eternal life. 
 There is, then, nothing in the world which it is more important 
 to understand. 
 
 In order to comprehend it, however, we must devote closer 
 attention than is common to the apostolic writings, for the air 
 is full of battle-cries having for their object to cast reproach on 
 the true Pauline doctrine as our mistake, whereby ' the unlearned 
 and unstable ' are encouraged in their rejection of that * way of 
 salvation ' which he taught. Among these the most common is 
 the outcry against what are termed ' forensic notions ' on Justi- 
 fication. Multitudes to-day imagine they have made an end of 
 controversy when they have exclaimed against ' forensic ' justi- 
 fication. As one of the most eloquent leaders in this warfare 
 
226 FORENSIC JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 shapes it : * In the name of all that is vital and holy, let us get rid 
 of the notion that Justification, be it what it may, is a kind of 
 legal fatten, an arrangement of God with Himself to regard and 
 treat a human being as something other than what he is really 
 and substantially in His sight.' Does this mean, Beware of the 
 old Reformation doctrine of forensic justification ? What, then, 
 is intended by this disliked adjective ? That which pertains to 
 the forum. The forum was the seat of the Roman law-courts. 
 Acquittal before a court of Law was justification, being pro- 
 nounced innocent, being reckoned righteous, by the judge. This, 
 then, is forensic justification in religion, when it is held that 
 a sinful man through the grace of God shall be * regarded and 
 treated ' as something other than what he really is in His sight. 
 In this the notion of which we are to * get rid ; ' that God ' justi- 
 fieth the ungodly,' that righteousness is reckoned to an ungodly 
 man, in a legal sense, on his believing in Christ ? And why ? 
 Is it because justification is not the reckoning a man righteous 
 by grace, but making him into a really good man 9 This is also 
 exactly the doctrine of Rome. The Council of Trent says 
 (Canon xi.) : ' If any one shall say that men are justified 
 either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or by 
 the sole remission of sins, that grace and charity being excluded 
 (exclusa gratia et charitate) which are shed abroad in their hearts 
 by the Holy Spirit, and which adhere in them (qucz in cordibtis 
 eorum diffundatur atque illis inhczreat), let him be anathema' 
 
 Now we maintain, on the contrary, that i forensic justification,' 
 the acquittal of a sinner before the judgment-seat of God by 
 reckoning to him righteousness, is the chief doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity as taught by the Apostles, and notably by S. Paul. It is 
 the backbone of the Christian Revelation. 
 
 Let us reproduce the often-cited examples of the verb to 
 justify as it is used in the Bible, when not employed to denote 
 the justification of a sinner in redemption. What does it signify 
 in such cases? Does it mean to make a man good, or, to 
 declare him innocent, reckon him righteous, impute righteousness 
 to him, treat him as righteous ? 
 
 There is no room whatever for doubt as to the answer to this 
 question, whether it be asked of the verb to justify in Hebrew, 
 Greek, or English. 
 
DEFINITION OF JUSTIFICATION. 227 
 
 (1) Prov. xvii. 15. 'He that justifieth the wicked, and he 
 that condemneth the just, they both are an abomination to the 
 Lord.' To infuse righteousness into an ungodly man cannot be 
 an abomination to the Lord. The abomination is for a judge to 
 declare innocent a wicked man persisting in his crimes. 
 
 (2) Luke x. 29. Of the lawyer who wished to work for 
 salvation it is said, ' He, willing to justify himself.' Did he 
 wish to infuse righteousness into himself? He thought himself 
 righteous already. He desired to have himself accounted as 
 righteous, reputed innocent. 
 
 (3) In Genesis xliv. 16, Judah exclaims on behalf of his 
 brethren, 'How shall we clear ourselves?' (Heb., justify our- 
 selves). Not, how shall we make ourselves into good men ? but, 
 how shall we obtain acquittal from guilt, and be regarded as 
 righteous ? 
 
 (4) In Luke vii. 35, it is said, ' Wisdom is justified of her 
 children.' Is righteousness infused into Wisdom ? Is wisdom 
 made righteous by her children ? No. But wicked men bring 
 charges against wisdom. Of these charges her children acquit 
 her. They ail declare wisdom to be righteous. 
 
 (5) In i Tim. iii. 16, Christ is said to have been 'justified 
 by the Spirit.' Was Christ made into a good man by the 
 Spirit ? No. But He was crucified as a wicked impostor, false 
 prophet, and sinner; and by His Resurrection He was declared 
 righteous. 
 
 (6) In Luke vii. 29, the Saviour speaking of God says, 'All 
 the people and the publicans justified God.' Surely publicans 
 and harlots did not infuse righteousness into Him. By receiving 
 John, they declared themselves to be sinners, and God to be 
 righteous. 
 
 In these passages all the undisputed ones in which the 
 verb to justify is mentioned, we see clearly that to justify 
 does not mean to infuse righteousness, or in any way to make 
 just, but that it means to pronounce innocent, to declare 
 righteous, to account or reckon righteous, to treat as righteous. 
 In short, that, in the Bible, the forensic sense is the true sense* 
 
 When S. Paul speaks of sinners being justified by grace by 
 
 * See an excellent piece on Justification by Rev. W. Elliott, of Epsom, to 
 which I owe several expressions on p. 227, (Nisbet, 1861.) 
 
228 FOURFOLD JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 the blood of Christ, and by faith, he clearly means, then, that 
 they are thereby accounted or reckoned righteous not made into 
 good men for that is quite another idea, and is expressed by a 
 different selection of phrases such as regeneration and sancti- 
 fication. But justification means being reckoned innocent, and 
 declared righteous, treated as righteous, irrespective of deserts, 
 for God 'justifieth the ungodly.' 'While we were yet sinners 
 Christ died for us. Much more, then being justified by His 
 blood we shall be saved from wrath through Him.' 
 
 We are said to be (i) 'justified \>y grace* that is the source, 
 the pardoning mercy of God. (2) We are ' justified by the 
 blood of Christ,' that is the revealed method of our being 
 reckoned righteous, through the expiatory sacrifice of Christ. 
 (3) We are 'justified by faith] that is the personal application 
 of redemption, the condition of individual salvation. And we 
 are (4) 'justified by works] that is the external evidence of 
 personal redemption. 
 
 The reader is now requested to consider again the second of 
 these expressions, 'justified in His blood' (Rom. v. 9). What 
 does it signify? Looking below, we find the explanation, 
 ' reconciled to God by the death of His Son/ There is, then, the 
 closest connection between the justification of a sinner, his being 
 pardoned, declared innocent, treated as just, and the death of 
 Christ. It is not that he is rendered a good man by the example 
 of Christ in dying, but reckoned righteous or innocent through 
 the sacrifice of Christ's blood. Why His blood? Because in 
 that lay His life. ' For the life, or soul, of the flesh is in the blood, 
 and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for 
 your lives i or souls ' (Lev. xvii. n) ; His 'soul ' was in it : ' He 
 poured out His soul unto death.' That was the price or ransom 
 demanded by God's righteousness of Himself, that sinners might 
 live. And Divine Mercy provided a ransom. 
 
 There are some who think that God as a Father is equally 
 tender to all His creatures. He can pardon, and will pardon, 
 without satisfaction to the law, or to the Divine Nature, or to 
 the moral government. This supposed substitution of Christ for 
 sinners is not necessary. Without any intervention of an atoning 
 Mediator He will find a way by which to fold again every erring 
 
CHRIST'S RIGHTEOUSNESS RECKONED. 229 
 
 creature in the universe, even Satan himself, beneath His paternal 
 wing. 
 
 If this be so, what means that thrice-repeated prayer, presented 
 by Christ in His agony not upon His knees, but lying flat upon 
 His face, on that last fearful night, when He was delivered into 
 the hands of men ? Surely the Father never loved His Son more 
 than He did then, and surely the Father heard and answered that 
 prayer 'for Him the Father heareth always.' What, then, was 
 the answer to that prayer, * My Father, if it be possible let this cup 
 pass from me ' ? 
 
 The answer was this : Escape for men from death is impossible 
 except Thou drink it.' God cannot be ' just, and the justifier of 
 the ungodly,' if Thou drink it not. So He drank the cup which 
 His Father gave Him. 
 
 Therefore we drink the cup in the Holy Communion which 
 represents the blood of Christ to show that we are saved from 
 death by the shedding of His blood, the pouring out of His life ; 
 that we are justified thereby acquitted, pardoned, reckoned 
 innocent, declared righteous, treated as righteous, being in our- 
 selves sinners deserving death. ' There is now no condemnation 
 to them which are in Christ Jesus ' (Rom. viii. i). 
 
 But this is not the sum of the teaching of Christ's Apostles. 
 They declare not only that it is through the death of Christ that 
 we are * saved from wrath/ but, further, that we are reckoned 
 righteous on believing, because Christ's righteousness is reckoned, or 
 imputed to us. That is, we are regarded by God as being ' one ' 
 with His Son in righteousness, and therefore as standing before 
 Him clad in the dazzling garments of the First-born. ' This is a 
 great mystery' and an idea exceedingly revolting to modern 
 philosophy 'falsely so called.' But it pervades the whole of the 
 New Testament. And it is a necessary conclusion from the 
 doctrine of the two Adams which we find in the epistles to the 
 Romans and Corinthians. Paul distinctly teaches that we were 
 ' constituted sinners ' by the sinful act, the disobedience of Adam 
 * the man of dust.' Here is the first imputation, that of Adam's 
 sin to the whole race who sinned in him and died in him. And 
 then follows the parallel in Christ. The sin of the world was 
 reckoned to Him ; ' He bore our sins, in His own body, to the 
 
230 PAULINE IMPUTATION. 
 
 tree ; ' 'He hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.' 
 That is the second act of imputation. Then comes the third impu- 
 tation, that of Christ's merits or righteousness to us that ' we 
 might be made the righteousness of God IN HIM ' (i Peter ii. 
 24; 2 Cor. v. 21). 
 
 This idea of the reckoning of Christ's righteousness, as the 
 ground of our justification, before God, is repulsive to many on 
 this ground. They say, ' How can He, who sees all things as 
 they are, pretend to see the righteousness of His spotless Son in 
 sinners? There can be no fictions in the infinite Mind no 
 forensic unrealities : God may pardon a sinner, but to see the 
 righteousness of Christ in a sinner is absolutely impossible.' The 
 answer to this difficulty is derived from our general argument. 
 
 1. The expressions in Scripture are distinct and emphatic. 
 ' That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him' 
 1 Found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of 
 the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith.' ' They 
 made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb ' (Rev. vii. 14). 
 ' Christ, who of God is made unto us righteousness' (i Cor. i. 30). 
 
 2. The reckoning of Christ's righteousness to sinful men is no 
 more a fictitious act than reckoning their sins to Him. Both 
 must stand and fall together. The Unitarians who deny that 
 Christ ' suffered for our sins,' or that they were imputed to Him, 
 so that He was treated as if He had been a sinner are consistent. 
 Those who believe that Christ 'bore our sins' may also con- 
 sistently believe that we shall bear His righteousness. 
 
 3. The difficulty arises from the loss of the truth respecting the 
 death which we inherit from the first Adam, and the justification 
 of life we obtain from the second. The Church never loses one 
 truth alone. The mischief ever extends. The introduction of 
 the anti- Christian figment of man's Immortality has given a 
 wrench to the whole of Christianity, and rendered it difficult 
 for logical minds to hold some of the plainest gospel doctrines. 
 The recovery of the truth respecting Christ, as the only source of 
 immortal life to mankind, will bring out into fresh beauty the 
 whole faade of the Evangelical theology. 
 
 For this truth places in a new light all that the New Testament 
 teaches on the Church's Union with Christ. As descendants of 
 Adam, we possess no inherent principle of eternal life. We must 
 
ERRORS ON JUSTIFICATION. 231 
 
 be ' born again,' i.e., united by regeneration to Christ, the Incar- 
 nate life of God, the second head of the human race. And this 
 union by the Holy Spirit personally dwelling in us is no legal 
 fiction, no dream, or mere imagination, or figure of speech. It 
 is the deepest reality in human existence. We are * one Spirit 
 with the Lord ' ' members of His body ; ' branches of the Vine ' 
 ' the Bride of the Lamb 'the ' Wife ' who is ' one flesh ' with 
 the Immortal King. ' I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
 be perfect in one.' 
 
 What follows ? Surely that this union with Christ is so real, so 
 vital, that no earthly union is half so operative. Christ takes His 
 ' bride,' with her dowry of sin and death, and bears it. She takes 
 His place, as ' one body and spirit ' with Him. Hence we are 
 one with Him before God in righteousness. This is a mystery 
 not written in nature, or in science, or in the literature of the 
 world, ' which knows not God ; ' but it is written in the Word 
 which ' endureth for ever.' 
 
 SECTION II. 
 The three chief errors on J- 'testification. 
 
 We shall now signalise the three principal errors on Justification 
 noted in the New Testament, and afterwards show how the restor- 
 ation of the truth on the source of Immortality is fitted to explode 
 them, while offering some security against their recurrence. 
 
 The Christian religion is founded on facts ; it approaches us in 
 the form of a history. It does not consist of a series of abstract 
 ideas or propositions which came to the earth from the Eternal 
 Mind ; but it has been embodied in a course of providential 
 actions, extending onward from the beginning of the world to the 
 fulness of times. The facts of this history are set forth as the 
 foundation of the doctrines; and we may estimate their com- 
 parative importance by the magnitude and prominence of the 
 facts on which they depend. Viewed in this light, there can be 
 no hesitation in fixing upon the death of the Son of God as the 
 most prominent event in the divine order, and therefore upon the 
 doctrine of justification, which is founded upon it, as the corner- 
 stone of the Christian system.* 
 
 * See Erskine's Internal Evidence of Christianity. 
 
232 THE PHARISAIC ERROR. 
 
 Justification in Christ is not only the most important doctrine 
 of Christianity ; it is Christianity, properly so called. For it is 
 the distinction between this and all other religions, that while 
 these represent salvation as man's work towards God, that repre- 
 sents it as God's work towards man. The ignorant habitually 
 consider religion solely under the character of a law of morality 
 with rewards and punishments thus rendering the Cross a mere 
 nullity. But the rules of morality do not form the chief part of 
 Christianity ; for since these depend upon the right knowledge 
 of our relation to God, the Scripture lays that foundation in the 
 doctrine of ' grace ; ' and this doctrine of grace forms the rules 
 of morality for Christian life, and therefore is superior to them. 
 Hence we infer the necessity for a true understanding of that 
 central fact of revelation, the death of Christ, and of the doctrine 
 which shines as a glory around it, justification through the 
 reckoning of righteousness to sinners. 
 
 In the apostolic age three principal forms of error on this 
 subject infected the Church: the New Testament contains an 
 epistle directed against each of them. We may in few words 
 discriminate these errors. 
 
 i. The Pharisaic error; in refutation of which chiefly the 
 Epistle to the Romans was written by the Apostle Paul. This 
 error consisted in the notion that the law was given as the means 
 of salvation; because a man may deserve and win everlasting 
 happiness as the wages of merit.* Its language was, ' God, I 
 thank Thee that I am not as other men are.' // went about to 
 establish its own righteousness ; and, in its grosser forms, admitted 
 the extravagant absurdity of works of supererogation ; so that in 
 rabbinical phraseology a man might be better than ' righteous ; ' he 
 might be 'good', ' a distinction several times referred to in the 
 New Testament, and sternly denounced by the Saviour when 
 addressed by the latter appellation. It was a mode of thinking 
 flattering to the vanity of human nature ; but it directly tended 
 to produce alienation from God, through the ever lowering 
 standard of righteousness which it tolerated, and through the 
 
 * See Dr. Wotton, Tracts on the Mishna ; and John Smith's noble Select 
 Discourses on the Jewish Notion of a Legal Righteousness: Cambridge, 1640. 
 
THE GALATIAN AND ANTING MI AN ERRORS. 233 
 
 stimulus which the terror and desperation of dreaded punishment 
 occasioned in the ' revival of sin.' 
 
 ii. TJie Galatian error ; which consisted in laying the founda- 
 tion of a religious life in trust in the merits of Christ for justifica- 
 tion, and in a subsequent attempt to complete the superstructure 
 through a ceremonial, sacramental, and moral obedience of their 
 own. It was a mingling of the law and the gospel ; which, like 
 all unnatural unions, produced a monstrous birth. They sought 
 to begin in the spirit, and to be made perfect in the flesh ; to 
 confide in Christ up to the time of repentance, and afterwards 
 ' to trust in themselves.' It was the character of the Pharisee 
 grafted upon that of the publican, saying first, God be merciful to 
 me a sinner, and then, Stand by, I am holier than thou. S. Paul 
 regards this departure from the faith as a departure from Chris- 
 tianity, and hurls upon the heads of its teachers the greater 
 Anathema : If any man preach any other gospel than that which I 
 have preached unto you, let him be anathema (Gal. i. 8, 9). 
 
 iii. The Antinomian error ; against which James directed his 
 epistle. This error was seemingly based upon a recognition of 
 the mercy of God as the ground of salvation ; but made the fatal 
 mistake of imagining that that mercy was available for other than 
 regenerate men. It held the truth on the gratuitous reckoning 
 of righteousness ; but supposed that an intellectual belief in this 
 truth had a saving efficacy. The Apostle refuted this error by 
 the admonition, the devils also believe, and tremble ; reminding its 
 victims that the true faith was an active principle which works 
 by love. S. James does not represent sanctification as the ground 
 of justification, but as its necessary concomitant. 
 
 In opposition to these three errors, the Apostles taught, first, 
 the true notion of justification by the law. They set forth the 
 law as the image of the all-perfect and unchangeable Nature, 
 as eternal in its duration, inflexible in its demands, universal in 
 its reign. They showed that its primary concern is with the 
 secret motives of action; that it embraces the history of every 
 human being in one summary judgment ; that since it, therefore, 
 pronounces against the slightest infraction, as infringing the 
 claims of Divine authority, it thunders forth final condemnation 
 against every man in whom the love of God, the root of obedience, 
 
234 UNION WITH CHRIST IN RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 is absent or unknown. The law requires a spotless righteousness; 
 and in the absence of that righteousness the curse of death 
 descends. 
 
 Thus had mankind become ' dead' in the sight of God. But 
 the Most High had brought salvation. He could now be l just, 
 and thejustifier of him that believeth in Jesus? Christ, as the 
 second representative of Mankind, was * made under the law ; ' 
 was tempted in the wilderness as Adam in Paradise ; fulfilled all 
 righteousness, as Adam did not ; and delivered up Himself with- 
 out sin, as the Lamb of God without blemish and without spot. He 
 was confessed even by demons to be the Holy One; by His 
 followers, to be harmless and undefiled; by His judge, to have no 
 fault in Him ; by Judas, to be innocent blood ; by His fellow- 
 sufferer, the thief, to have done nothing amiss. He was a living 
 impersonation of the law. His life magnified it, and made it 
 honourable. His perfection was such that He might justly have 
 been transfigured upon the cross, and shone forth in the excellent 
 glory when darkness veiled the sky. 
 
 It is this righteousness of Christ, in which, through the new 
 law of union by the Spirit of life, redeemed man partakes. We 
 are not placed by His death in a position to deserve salvation 
 by our own works, nor is our faith legally justifying ; but there 
 is a reckoning of Christ's righteousness to every one, the meanest 
 of the members of His body. And this gift of righteousness is the 
 first, the middle, and the last cause of our justification and 
 salvation. This is the wedding garment, which the best man 
 needs equally with the worst, without which the best will be con- 
 demned, but which the worst may obtain, and wear through 
 eternity. It is the reckoning of this righteousness (in analogy 
 with the imputation af Adam's guilt) which removes the con- 
 demnation under which we lay for the sin of our first parents, and 
 for our own, the curse of death. ' Christ is of God made 
 unto us righteousness ' (i Cor. i.). Therefore does this trans- 
 cendent blessing receive the name of JUSTIFICATION OF LIFE 
 (Rom. v. 1 8). 
 
 The 'blood* of Jesus was His 'life;' and that life He poured 
 out for the world ; so that being * justified 'by His blood J we become 
 ' heirs according to the hope of that eternal life ' in which as 
 Divine Mediator He arose. Through faith in His name we 
 
JUSTIFICATION AND IMMORTAL LIFE. 235 
 
 become ' members of His body ; ' we are baptised into His 
 death. We are identified with Him by the personal indwelling 
 of His Spirit. In Him the old man endures the curse of the law : 
 he dies. Therefore the life which we now possess is ' not our 
 own,' but is a divine donation. Christ rises as the Life-giver : 
 and hence the Apostle declares, / ' through the law (through its 
 curse taking effect on my representative, the Saviour), am dead to 
 the law, that I might live imto God. I am crucified with Christ, 
 nevertheless I live; yet not 1, 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 ' (Gal. ii. 19, 20). 
 ' There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in 
 Christ Jesus : for the taw of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 
 made me free from the law of sin and death? * Therefore, as by 
 the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemna- 
 tion ; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came iipon all 
 men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience 
 many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one shall 
 many be constituted righteous. Moreover, the law entered, that 
 the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did 
 much more abound : that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so 
 might grace reign through righteousness imto eternal life by Jesus 
 Christ our Lord' (Rom. v. 18). Thus our life-union with the Son 
 of God explains and enforces the mysterious but hated doctrine 
 of the reckoning of His righteousness for justification. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 On the harmony existing between the Apostolic doctrine on Justifica- 
 tion and the doctrine of Immortality here maintained to be true. 
 
 The Lutheran Reformation, which restored the apostolic doc- 
 trine on justification by grace, through faith, in the blood of 
 Christ, found its chief difficulty in the vast antiquity and catho- 
 licity of the authorised dogma which it opposed. On rare 
 occasions the apostolic truth lifted its head above the tide of 
 general error during fifteen centuries; but the Ante-Nicene 
 Fathers here, as on many other leading topics of Revelation, 
 'allowed rather than invited' a very orthodox interpretation. 
 
236 INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Their main theme was certainly not the main theme of the 
 Apostles, the gratuitous justification of sinners through the 
 1 offering up of Christ once for all. They write nobly on the 
 evidence of the Gospel, on the folly of heathenism, on the per- 
 verseness of the Jews, on the splendour of a holy life, on the 
 certainty of the resurrection, on the authority of Scripture ; but 
 the churches which they represented had nearly forgotten the 
 one striking speciality of the teaching of the Incarnate Word, on 
 the source and condition of immortal life for man ; and the 
 eclipse of that light darkened half the theological firmament. 
 
 The Jewish and the Heathen influences to which the primitive 
 churches were exposed agreed in one thing only a common 
 detestation, both on philosophic and religious grounds, of Christ's 
 Revelation that man can possess eternal life solely in Him. 
 Every disciple of the Pharisees who became a convert to Chris- 
 tianity brought with him into the Church the Pharisaic doctrine 
 of the immortality of the soul. Every Greek or Roman disciple 
 of the better schools of Athenian thought brought with him the 
 Oriental or Platonic doctrine of man's natural pre- existence and 
 eternity. It was not long, therefore, before the naturalistic basis 
 of hope supplanted the properly Christian. We find clear traces 
 of the truth in the epistles of Ignatius, in the Trypho of Justin 
 Martyr, in the books of Irenseus concerning Heresies, in the 
 treatise of Arnobius against Heathenism, as will be seen in a later 
 page ; but the set of the current of thought all over Christendom 
 was very early towards the psychology which in after-times became 
 universal. 
 
 The admission of this erroneous psychology ensured the 
 corruption of the doctrine of justification. He who believed 
 in the immortality of the soul believed in its legal exposure 
 to everlasting misery; and the action of overwhelming terror 
 is steadily in the direction of self-righteousness and superstition. 
 The moral value of human action was infinitely exaggerated 
 through the influence of the prevailing opinion respecting the 
 human agent. So great a Being as an Immortal can surely 
 do something to avert the dread sentence of endless torment, 
 and something to deserve an everlasting crown. The mere 
 fact of being born between such tremendous alternatives as a 
 necessary immortality of torment or of joy stimulated the de- 
 
ON DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. 23? 
 
 fensive sentiments which blew up the bubble of a legal righteous- 
 ness. Thus every influence was in readiness to accomplish the 
 corruption of the gospel in its doctrine on justification. 
 
 But had the fundamental truth been sedulously guarded by the 
 teachers of the earliest centuries, had they ' taught the things of 
 the Holy Spirit ' in the ' words of the Spirit,' had they preserved 
 silence when the Apostles preserved silence, and, while refraining 
 from uttering a word as to the immortality of the soul, had insisted 
 on Christ's own teaching, that to give eternal life is the very 
 object of Redemption, a corruption of the article on justification 
 would have been almost impossible. For under this view of man's 
 condition, justification, or pardon and acceptance with God, is what 
 takes place before the bar of God when a sinner ' passes from 
 death unto life,' and that change is exclusively the gracious act 
 of God, not the work of mortal man. 
 
 Since the gift of righteousness is equivalent to the gift of life 
 eternal, and that gift, both in its moral causes and personal appli- 
 cation, is an act of supernatural grace, there is no room left for 
 the notion that a man can in any way 'justify himself.' A man 
 can work himself up into an immortal condition of ' equality with 
 the angels,' or make himself a ' partaker of the Divine nature,' no 
 more than an ox or an ass can work himself up into humanity. 
 Salvation, in the sense of being ' saved alive ' from death eternal, 
 must be purely ' the gift of God.' Man can have no share in the 
 moral or physical causes which procure it ; not in the inception, 
 not in the completion. To live for ever is a free gift bestowed 
 freely on the vilest ; needed equally as a free gift by the worthiest 
 of men. This is Justification of life. And if the main doctrine 
 had been preserved, it would have upheld, like the central column 
 of a temple, the entire fabric of evangelical theology. Every 
 other gospel doctrine is derived from it, or rests upon it, or is 
 connected with it in indissoluble unity. If the Reformation had 
 reformed the psychology as well as the theology of Christendom, it 
 would have gone much deeper into the seat of the Church's disorder, 
 and applied a far more powerful remedy. For when men see that 
 Christ is our Life, and that our eternal life is a transfusion of His 
 life into our veins, they can more readily understand that He, and 
 He alone, is of God * made unto us Righteousness, and Sanctifica- 
 tion, and Redemption' (i Cor. i. 30). 
 
2 3 8 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE NEW COVENANT OF LIFE IN THE BLOOD OF CHRIST, OR THE 
 NATURE OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST, AND ITS PLACE IN THE 
 DIVINE GOVERNMENT AS AN ATONEMENT FOR SIN. 
 
 * Behold, then, the wonderful conjunction of both natures in the one Im- 
 manuel, who was by His very constitution an actual Temple, " God with us," 
 the habitation of the Deity returned and resettling itself with men ; and fitted 
 to be what it must also be, a most acceptable sacrifice. For here was met to- 
 gether man that could die, and God that could overcome death ; sufficient to 
 atone the offended Majesty, and procure that life might be diffused and spread 
 itself to all that should unite with Him, whereby they might become "living 
 stones," a spiritual temple, again capable of that Divine Presence which they had 
 forfeited, and whereof they were forsaken.' HOWE'S Living Temple, Part II. 
 
 IN the last chapter but one we have considered the doctrine of 
 the Incarnation of the Logos-Theos, the divine life-giving Word. 
 We now are brought face to face with the characteristic doctrine 
 of the Bible, that this divine Life-giver God and Man in one 
 Person died and by dying abolished death ; His death being 
 a ' sin-offering ' . through which the Heavenly Father ' reconciled 
 the world unto Himself.' 
 
 This will lead us to consider, 
 
 1. The nature of the death that Christ died. 
 
 2. The apostolic statements respecting the efficacy of Christ's 
 death as an atonement for sin. 
 
 3. The reason of this efficacy, so far as it has been revealed. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 The Nature of the Death of Christ, 
 
 It has seldom been questioned in modern times that Christ 
 died upon the cross. Some Gnostic sects of the first century, 
 
NATURE OF CHRIST S DEATH. 239 
 
 believing in the deity more than in the humanity of Christ, sup- 
 posed that it was a phantasm only which appeared to suffer. There 
 is nothing in modern thought precisely answering to this particular 
 phase of unbelief. The idea of the Incarnation of Deity leaves 
 the popular faith untouched as to the humanity and death of Jesus. 
 There is indeed no event which stands out in history with so 
 much of reality as the soul-moving death of our Blessed Saviour. 
 Its immediate causes are presented to us with ever-touching 
 tenderness and truth in the gospels. He died not of bodily pain 
 only, nor only loss of blood, but also of spiritual sorrow of a 
 ' broken heart. ' He was ' in an agony ' in Gethsemane. His 
 ' soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,' before He 
 suffered on the cross. There was ' an hour and power of dark- 
 ness ' during which the Father's face was hidden from Him. He 
 also suffered the dreadful torment of crucifixion ; and then, when 
 the woe was at its utmost, He cried with an exceeding bitter cry 
 and 'yielded up His spirit.' * 
 
 There is no indication of doubt in our age as to the reality 
 of the crucifixion of Christ, or as to the physical similarity of 
 His death to that which * it is appointed unto men once to die. ' 
 Many questions, however, of equal moment have been discussed 
 in relation to our Lord's death by divines of later ages. Did 
 Christ die only in the sense in which other men die ? Was His 
 death the curse of the Law ? Or was it some modification of 
 that curse ? Did Christ suffer a pain and miser}' of the same sort 
 and of equal weight, with that threatened to Adam in the day 
 of his creation, or did He bear some commuted penalty, which, 
 in consideration of His Divine Nature, was accounted a sufficient 
 expiation ? 
 
 S. Paul says, ' Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, 
 being made a curse for us ; as it is written, Cursed is every one 
 that hangeth on a t tree ' (vn-ep fjfjLuv Karapa, Gal. Hi. 13). The 
 construction of this sentence, and the quotation of one of the 
 curses of that law (the law of Moses, viewed as a repetition of 
 
 * A valuable chapter on the death of Christ will be found in Mr. Denniston's 
 book on The Sacrifice for Sin (Longmans, 1872), pp. 195-211. And the reader 
 may consult with advantage, Dr. Petavel, Struggle for Eternal Life, p. 119, on 
 the question, Did Christ endure the Second Death ? 
 
240 NATURE OF CHRIST S DEATH. 
 
 God's eternal law), render it indubitable, that Christ bore the 
 curse of the law in the sense of dissolution. For if the curse of 
 the law in virtue of which we are, by nature, * children of wrath,' 
 were everlasting misery, there would be an incongruity between 
 the two parts of the Apostle's statement. ' Christ hath redeemed 
 us from the curse of the law (everlasting misery), being made a 
 curse for us ; ' not, however, that distinctive curse of the law, but 
 a very different one, that of death by ' hanging on a tree.' Thus 
 it would seem, that here there are two distinct curses of the law, 
 everlasting suffering due to the immortal soul, and death by 
 hanging on a tree, or otherwise ; and that, although the curse 
 under which we lay was, according to this theory, the former, the 
 curse which Christ bore, was the latter, which, notwithstanding, 
 availed to deliver us from the former. 
 
 But this is a case in which facts decide the doctrine. Christ 
 died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. He laid down His 
 life (i/^xV) f r His sheep (John x. 15). He did not endure 
 everlasting misery either of body or soul ; but He was, as a man, 
 destroyed: 'The rulers sought to destroy Jesus' (Matt, xxvii. 20). 
 'They &'/// the Prince of life' (Acts iii. 15). He suffered a 
 dissolution of His compound nature. He defines His own death 
 by comparing it to the death of a grain of wheat (John xii. 24), 
 conveying the idea of the disintegration of the parts of His nature. 
 'He poured out His soul, or life, unto death.' 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose, with the elder divines, that the 
 Saviour endured an amount of suffering equal to that collectively 
 deserved by the elect, or by the whole race of mankind ; for He 
 was a propitiation for that race, regarded as one individual the 
 first Adam, whose sin comprised the germ of all subsequent 
 transgressions ; yet, inasmuch as the blood of Jesus Christ is 
 effectual to the pardon of ' all sin,' it must be understood that all 
 sin was reckoned as being contained in that one offence which 
 brought death upon Adam, and which was the occasion of the 
 necessity for God's sacrifice. 
 
 1 The free gift,' says S. Paul, ' is of many offences unto justifi- 
 cation.' Hence it is that Jesus is said to have ' delivered us from 
 the wrath to come;' inasmuch as the sins of the descendants of 
 Adam, spared for a second probation, have incurred for them a 
 second and more terrible punishment at the resurrection of judg- 
 
THE CURSE BORNE BY CHRIST. 241 
 
 ment ; and Christ delivers us both from the death which the sin 
 of Adam brought in, and from that future wrath which we have 
 ourselves deserved. HE could not, as the sinless representative 
 of the race, undergo any other than the original sentence. 
 
 The curse of the law which Christ bore, then, was, as to its 
 essence, and apart from the accidents of suffering which led to it, 
 literal death ; a dissolution of His being as a man, a curse which 
 took no account of the subsequent destiny of the component 
 elements of His nature. It was the shedding of His blood which 
 the law required, since * without shedding of blood there is no 
 remission.' But the blood of the sacrifice, according to the 
 Mosaic law, was the * Life thereof,' and it was His 'blood' which 
 Jesus 'gave for the life of the world.' 
 
 That it was the union of an Eternal Spirit ' with the humanity 
 which imparted its sacrificial efficacy to the ' blood of the Lamb, 
 the New Testament plainly declares : ' For if the blood of bulls 
 and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, 
 sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the 
 blood of Christ, who through the (an) Eternal Spirit offered 
 Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead 
 works to serve the living God? ' (Heb. ix. 13). The Divine Word 
 stood forth upon the earth as High Priest of the creation, pre 
 senting ' His flesh ' as a sin-offering. 
 
 It does not, however, appear to be anywhere stated that the 
 indwelling of the Divinity changed the character of the curse of 
 the law, in the case of our Lord, from everlasting misery, into 
 literal death. It will, therefore, be sufficient to receive the 
 simpler representation, that the ' Man Christ Jesus ' endured that 
 curse. For aught that the Scripture reveals, Jesus, as a man, 
 might as justly have been required to endure everlasting suffering 
 
 supposing this to have been the legal curse as that shameful 
 
 painful death which He actually underwent. If it be asserted 
 that it was the presence of the Godhead within which dispensed 
 with the infliction of endless pains, through the substitution of an 
 Infinite Majesty for the infinitely extended misery of a finite being, 
 we reply, that this is an afterthought of theology ' which finds no 
 place in the authoritative record. 
 
 We thus derive support for our former argument that the death 
 
 16 
 
242 MEANING OF SALVATION BY BLOOD. 
 
 threatened to Adam was literal dissolution, without reference to a 
 state of eternal misery for the soul. The fact that Christ bore 
 this death, laid down His life as a man, shed His blood for our 
 redemption without suffering in hell beyond, is proof that death in 
 the Bible signifies the dissolution of humanity, and that life 
 signifies literal life ; since it was not merely His ' happiness/ 
 much less His ' holiness,' which the Saviour 'laid down for His 
 sheep/ but His life as a man. There is no evidence whatever 
 that He endured a commutation of the penalty denounced ; there 
 is no evidence for aught else than that His Deity gave a ' purging 
 efficacy to the endurance of ' the curse of the law ; ' and therefore 
 we are compelled to conclude that the death which Jesus under- 
 went when He * frustrated him that had the power of death, and 
 gave to them who all their lifetime were in bondage through fear of 
 death ' the hope of a resurrection, was death in the general sense 
 of dissolution. 
 
 This view of the death of our Lord throws a clearer light on the 
 doctrine of salvation by His blood. The ' sprinkling of His blood' 
 is the pardon of sin ; the bestowment of freedom from * condem- 
 nation ' by that law whose sentence is death. ' The blood is the 
 life thereof ; ' therefore the ' drinking of His blood ' is drinking in 
 the element of eternal life. We are by nature under sentence of 
 destruction ; but in Him, through the ' blood of the cross,' we 
 have reconciliation and resurrection. Since * sin and death ' are 
 inseparably united, forgiveness is as inseparably united with im- 
 mortality. The death of the Lord Jesus being placed in opposition 
 to the impending death of man, it cannot be supposed that the 
 same term has diverse significations in the two cases : and since 
 the loss of ' a right to the tree of life ' in Adam was followed by 
 ' a return to the dust whence he was taken,' it seems inevitable to 
 conclude that He at whose death the veil of the Holiest (the type 
 of Paradise) was rent asunder, has procured for us a literal, and 
 not a metaphorical, participation of immortality. Thus (if the 
 parallel be not too fanciful), as the first Adam by a tree brought 
 death into the world and loss of Eden, so did the Divine 
 Redeemer by * bearing our sins in His own body to the tree ' 
 obtain the right to promise dying men, ' This day shalt thou be 
 with me in Paradise* And as the sin of the first man brought 
 
CHRIST'S DEITY AND RESURRECTION. 243 
 
 forth the thorns of the curse, so did the Lord from Heaven die 
 crowned with those thorns, and the curse removed.* 
 
 A difficulty, however, here suggests itself, in bar of the con- 
 clusion that Jesus Christ bore the curse of the law. It is 
 objected that the curse denounced to our first parents was, 
 according to us, death for ever dissolution without hope of a 
 resurrection ; and that, therefore, the threatening did not take 
 eifect upon the Redeemer. The answer to this objection will 
 serve at once to establish the preceding representations on a 
 firmer basis, and to confirm the article of our Saviour's Godhead. 
 
 It is therefore admitted, that the objection would be valid if 
 the Saviour had been simply human. If Jesus had been the Son 
 of David only, He could not legally have risen from the dead. 
 Death must have had dominion over Him for ever. He must 
 have suffered everlasting destruction. His human spirit must 
 have passed away for ever. The humanity which had been 'made 
 under the law ' must abide under that law j the representative of 
 a guilty race could have trodden the path of life no more. 
 
 But the Saviour was Divine. As man, identified with human 
 nature, He died, and His death became a sin-offering ; as God 
 He could not die. As man He was ' made under the law ; ' as 
 God He was above the law laid on creatures. And therefore, 
 when the curse had taken effect upon the manhood, it was still 
 open to the Divine Inhabitant, absorbing the Spirit into His own 
 essence, to restore the ' destroyed Temple ' from its ruins ; and, 
 taking possession of it, in virtue of His Divinity (not, legally, as 
 a man), ' to raise it up on the third day/ He arose, therefore, as 
 the Divine Conqueror of death, ' God over all, blessed for ever- 
 more,' and was thus * declared to be the Son of God with power, 
 according to the Spirit of holiness, by His resurrection from the 
 dead ' (Rom. i. 4). He rose, not ' in the likeness of sinful flesh;' 
 not ' under the law,' but in the character of the 'Lord from 
 
 * The application of these statements to the interpretation of the Holy 
 Communion will be obvious to the reader. The view here maintained will lead 
 us to regard the cup in that Holy Sacrament as a standing testimony against 
 the doctrine of natural immortality, and in support of the doctrine which attri- 
 butes the eternal life of the saved to the 'blood' of the Lamb that was slain. 
 And when we take bread as Christ's Body, we receive His pledge of our ever- 
 lasting existence in glory. ' The bread which* I will give is my flesh, which I 
 will give for the life of the world.' 
 
244 MR. CHASE ON CHRIST'S- RESURRECTION. 
 
 Heaven,' ' our Lord and our God : ' not in the image of the 
 1 son of Adam,' but as the ' Son of the Highest ; ' having delivered 
 us from wrath by the death of His humanity, to endow us with 
 immortality through the life of His divinity. He was no longer 
 1 the man of sorrows,' but The First and The Last, and the Living 
 One ; no longer crowned with thorns, and clothed in a peasant's 
 robe, but wearing the diadem of the Lord of the Universe, and 
 shining with the supereminent splendours of the Godhead. 
 
 The following quotation from an estimable writer, who asserts 
 the same truth on a different occasion, will make this somewhat 
 clearer : 
 
 * The Son of God,' says Mr. Chase,* 'has, as we have seen, yielded up the 
 ghost. He is cut 0^out of the land of the living. His soul is made an offer- 
 ing for sin ! But He has risen again. Has the Divine Justice then relented ? 
 Having received the price of pardon, has it so quickly returned it back to the 
 great Ransomer ? No ; the mighty Redeemer rises not again to the possession 
 of the same life He gave a ransom for many. The life He yielded up on the 
 cross was frail, feeble, and mortal. The life to which He was quickened by 
 His own almighty energy, is spiritual and divine. It was the life of man, a 
 life common to Him with those He died to redeem, that expired on the tree : 
 but the life He mow enjoys is the life of God. Of justice He takes back no 
 part of the penalty He had paid. It is to the power of His eternal Godhead 
 alone that He owes His resurrection from the dead. For He is " the Prince of 
 Life." "In Him is the fountain of life." By dying, the Godhead, ineffably 
 united to the manhood, did not expire. And it was by the energy of that 
 Godhead that He arose, and that He now lives. Nor is it possible to imagine 
 a greater contrast than that which the humanity of Christ presents, when com- 
 paring its former state of humiliation with its present state of exaltation and 
 glory. The body of Jesus, once wearied with toil, oppressed with hunger and. 
 thirst, subject to every sinless infirmity common to our frail nature, requiring 
 sustenance, and shelter, and repose, and, above all, liable to the stroke of 
 death, now hungers no more, neither thirsts any more ; and, being transformed 
 and glorified, is removed beyond the reach of evil, or of death. " He was 
 crucified through weakness: He liveth by the pmver of God. " He can there- 
 fore die no more. " Death hath no more dominion over Him ; for in that He 
 died, He died unto sin once ; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. 
 Instead of perishing for ever, as any created being must have done, had He 
 paid with his own life the penalty of disobedience, the great Redeemer is 
 Himself " the first fruits from the dead." For when He paid the life of man 
 as the penalty demanded by inexorable justice He ceased not to retain, as the 
 essential word of God, the fountain of life in Himself. To lose this was no 
 
 * Antinomianism Unmasked, ch. v., a work prefaced by a warm commenda. 
 tion from the pen of the Rev. Robert Hall, 
 
THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST. 245 
 
 part of the penalty incurred. Having therefore laid down His life, He had 
 performed the full satisfaction which the law required, and had a right to exert 
 His divine energy in quickening to life His lifeless humanity, and making it 
 the visible abode of His invisible Godhead.' 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The Apostolic statements respecting the efficacy of Christ 's death as 
 an Atonement for sin. 
 
 ' In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His 
 only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 
 
 ' Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son 
 to be the propitiation for otir sins.' 1 I JOHN iv. 9, 10. 
 
 Such are the statements of S. John on the Atonement of 
 Christ, with which agree S. Peter and S. Paul in all their epistles. 
 
 Nearly every reader understands that this English word, Atone- 
 ment, signifies at-one-ment, or reconciliation ; and is used to denote 
 the reconciliation of the world to Himself by God, through the 
 death of His Son. 
 
 As commonly employed it signifies reconciliation effected by 
 the sacrifice of Christ, whose death is regarded not so much as 
 an ordinary martyrdom brought about by human wickedness, but 
 as an act of God determined beforehand, who through wicked 
 hands * gave his Son ' to die, to save us from death eternal. 
 
 To expiate signifies to make satisfaction or reparation for guilt 
 by some suffering or loss. In this case it means to put away sin 
 and its punishment, by the piety or self-sacrifice of Christ. The 
 idea is, that under the government of God it was impossible to 
 forgive men by an arbitrary act of remission founded simply on 
 their repentance, or on God's compassion. It was necessary that 
 some demonstration, or ' declaration ' (e^Sa^is) should be made 
 (Romans iii. 26) of a nature to uphold the government of God 
 in pardoning sin, while at the same time maintaining the gracious 
 character of that pardon ; and that necessity, we are taught, led 
 the Eternal God to deliver up His Son to die, ' the just for the. 
 unjust' (i Peter iii. 18). His death is therefore termed a 'pro- 
 pitiation,' a ' sin-offering/ a ' sacrifice/ through which God can be 
 * just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus/ This is the 
 
246 CHRIST'S DEATH AN EXPIATION. 
 
 ancient and the prevailing notion of the Atonement.* Is this 
 revealed as a fact in the Scriptures ? 
 
 Many a reader will reply, Undoubtedly it is ! There is 
 nothing plainer in all written language than that the Apostles 
 teach that the death of Christ was an expiatory sacrifice, was 
 not simply the representation to God of an obedient human life, 
 nor had to do only with making men holy in the future, but 
 had relation to the ' forgiveness of sins which are past. 1 Many 
 would say, We can never hope to understand the meaning of 
 any writing if we err in thinking that the Bible and the whole 
 Bible some part by type and symbol, some part by prophecy, 
 some part by explicit doctrinal statement, teaches that there is 
 the closest connection of means and end between our Saviour's 
 death and the forgiveness of sins. This teaching lies upon the 
 surface, and penetrates the depths of Scripture. It is indeed the 
 leading doctrine of revelation that Christ hath ' washed us from 
 our sins hi His own blood, and made us kings and priests unto 
 God.' If we are mistaken in this reading of the Bible, many 
 would say, we cannot hope to understand rightly any part of 
 divine revelation. 
 
 We agree with those who would from 'popular instinct thus 
 determine ; and fully believe that those who speak othenvise are 
 not dealing with Scripture language by the same rule which they 
 would apply to any other book. Yet it is known to all that it is 
 earnestly denied by not a few able writers that such things are 
 taught in the Bible. There are influential schools of thought, 
 professedly Christian, and even Protestant, which zealously 
 denounce the notion of an expiation of past sin by Christ's 
 sacrifice ; affirming that there is no direct connection between 
 His death and the forgiveness of sinners. They teach that 
 Christ's death was simply a measure in God's providence em- 
 ployed to bring out the sinfulness of man ; and so, by affording 
 
 * An attempt has been made to prove that this view of the Atonement is 
 modem ; but in ecclesiastical literature it is as old as the epistle to Diognetus, 
 to say nothing of its obvious presence in the apostolic epistles. Why should 
 it be so easy to understand what the Fathers teach, and so difficult to under- 
 stand the Evangelists and Apostles ? Generally the ' difficulty ' in the latter 
 case is subjective in the reader. Mr. Dale has given in his Congl. Lectures on 
 the Atonement a careful account of the history of the doctrine. (Ilodder and 
 Stoughton.) 
 
CHRIST'S DEATH AN EXPIATION. 247 
 
 the noblest example of divine self-sacrifice, to influence men by 
 example to abandon an. evil life. As for pardon, God being a 
 Father, it is said, forgives sin freely, and without further con- 
 sideration, as soon as the sinner, who is His son, repents. He 
 requires no price, ransom, or satisfaction, whereby impunity may 
 be purchased. Christ is our Saviour in this sense alone, that He 
 leads us to repentance and a new life, and therefore delivers us 
 by such change of character from the punishment due for past 
 offences. The blood-sacrifice of Christ was His life-sacrifice ; and 
 He gave Himself for our sins both by life and death, in this 
 sense, that He might 'deliver us from this present evil world,' by 
 teaching us to do the will of God our Father. The man who 
 repents becomes thereby righteous, and God gives him eternal 
 life accordingly ; reckoning righteousness to the man who becomes 
 righteous in the root-principle of his being. 
 
 With this one-sided teaching accommodation is, I believe, 
 
 impossible, so long as the apostolic writings are held as authority. 
 
 The answer to be given to these statements rests altogether 
 
 on interpretation. There is for us no hope of comprehending 
 
 Christ's religion except as explained by the New Testament 
 
 writers. If Christ and His apostles did not understand, or could 
 
 not clearly express, the divine message, no one else can hope to 
 
 understand it. We hold, then, that such an idea of atonement as 
 
 has been just described, not only fails to fill up the meaning of 
 
 the apostles' language, but offers to it the utmost violence. The 
 
 apostles teach, as plainly as words can teach anything, that the 
 
 death of Christ was an Atonement by expiation, or sin-offering, 
 
 for 'SINS THAT ARE PAST' (TrpoyeyovoTooi/, Romans iii. 25), not 
 
 simply a provision for preventing future transgression. They 
 
 teach that God's ' Fatherhood ' was not of the nature of the 
 
 demoralised fatherhood of the modern world ; where the leading 
 
 notion, on the part of bad children, seems to be that it is the 
 
 part of a good parent to bear patiently any excess of rebellion or 
 
 extravagance, to forgive it universally, and even to find means for 
 
 these excesses, such a line of action being considered specially 
 
 * paternal.' But the Scriptures teach that the Fatherhood of God 
 
 rather resembles the primitive idea of fatherhood set forth in the 
 
 law of Moses, and throughout antiquity, which included the 
 
 judicial character ; so that the father of a family, however loving 
 
248 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 to good children, was empowered and expected to act as a 
 magistrate; and even to bring forth a 'rebellious son' to the 
 gates of the city, and there, if he were ' a glutton and a drunkard ; 
 (Deut. xxi. 1 8), deliver him up to the executioner of vengeance 
 or even to decree the death by fire of a daughter-in-law who had 
 committed fornication, as occurred in the history of Judah the 
 son of Israel (Gen. xxxviii. 24). 
 
 The Scriptures, in accord with Nature and Providence, alike 
 teach in every page the eternal authority of righteousness, of 
 righteous ' severity ' as well as righteous 'goodness ' (Romans ix.). 
 Revelation knows nothing of a God forgiving sin without sacrifice 
 or suffering, nothing of arbitrary pardon, or of the abrogation of 
 law, because the execution of penalty will be painful to the 
 offender, or to the governor. In the physical world we see on all 
 sides inexorable execution of law without regard to the feelings 
 of the violator. In Revelation we find, notwithstanding the 
 presence of mercy for all who comply with certain conditions, 
 the same steadfast assertion of universal order and Divine 
 Righteousness. 'Thine eye shall not spare,' is the key-note of 
 the law. 
 
 It is necessary, therefore, to explode resolutely the sentimental 
 and wholly romantic notion of the Divine Character, derived 
 from bad human models, on which those proceed who now offer 
 violence to the scripture teaching on the Atonement of Christ. 
 Nature knows nothing of a God who makes little of broken law, 
 directly the breaker of it discovers that he is in trouble, or even 
 professes to be sorry for his offence. It is, as all may see, an 
 awful thing to oppose the physical forces of nature; yet the 
 results of transgression abide, and often operate for generations. 
 Similarly the scripture knows nothing of this false God of modern 
 times all-benignant, all-forgiving who takes no account of past 
 sin, immediately that the transgressor desires to escape the penalty. 
 ' Our God is a consuming fire.' The most prominent lesson both 
 in Nature and in Scripture is the immense difficulty of doing away 
 with the consequences of law-breaking ; for even when sin is for- 
 given, and does not end in death, its secondary consequences 
 remain.* 
 
 * I beg to refer to my Sermon on the ' Secondary and Permanent Conse- 
 quences of Sin ' as affecting the future destiny of the Saved, which, I will 
 
CHRIST'S WORDS ON HIS OWN DEATH. 249 
 
 Thus it is that the law of Moses, the praparatio evangelii, 
 teaches that pardon can be obtained only through sacrifice, and 
 this not eucharistic, but expiatory. The High Priest, in the 
 complex sacrifice of the Atonement day, ' lays his hand ' upon 
 one of the victims, ' confesses over him all the iniquities of Israel,' 
 ' putting them upon the head ' of the scape-goat, and then the 
 blood of the other victim is carried into the holy of holies to 
 be sprinkled before the Divine Judge, ' to make an atonement 
 thereby.' This idea is impressed on the Israelites by every 
 complication of the ritual, the ' exceeding sinfulness of sin, 
 and pardon through a sin-offering. This, however, it is said, is 
 but symbol. Yes, but a divinely appointed symbol points to a 
 reality, and its signification is made certain by the words of our 
 Lord Himself when about to die. 
 
 What explanation does the Son of God give to His disciples 
 of the object of His own death ? It must be admitted that no 
 words of His ought to receive more reverent attention than those 
 spoken when He was about to ' offer up Himself/ If His death 
 were nought else than a representative burnt-offering of obedience 
 to God on man's behalf, an example of self-sacrifice, for the pur- 
 pose of stimulating us to live and die self-sacrificingly, He will 
 surely tell us now. If His death were a sin-offering, an expiation 
 of ' sins that are past,' He will surely tell us that also. Hear, 
 then, His dying words. He * took the cup, and gave thanks, and 
 gave it to them, saying, ' Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood 
 of the New Covenant, which is shed on behalf of many, for the re- 
 mission of sins' (Matt. xxvi. 28). 
 
 We will not multiply comments over this utterance of the Son 
 of God ; much less offer perverse criticism with a view of explain- 
 ing away its force. The ' remission ' (a<eo-is) of sins, is the 
 word used, in its verbal form, by the same Divine Speaker in the 
 prayer which He taught His disciples. 'Forgive us our trespasses, 
 as \veforgive those who trespass against us ; ' and there as here, it 
 manifestly signifies not reformation of character, but the blotting 
 out or remission or forgiveness of offences that are past. Here, 
 
 venture to add, received the approbation of the late Mr. Binney, as a much 
 needed statement of complementary truth among Protestants. See Mystery of 
 Growth; Dickenson, 1877. 
 
250 THE PROPITIATORY SACRIFICE. 
 
 then, at the Last Supper, our Lord declares that He died in order 
 that sin might be forgiven unto men. His death was an atonement, 
 an expiation, a propitiation, a sin-offering. ' When he shall make 
 his life (or soul) an offering for sin (asham], he shall see his seed, 
 he shall prolong his days ' (Isaiah liii. 10). 
 
 Thus also taught the apostles after Christ's resurrection. S. Paul, 
 in offering an exposition of salvation to the church of Rome the 
 church of the chief city on earth, after describing the guilt 
 of both Jews and Gentiles, and setting forth the impossibility 
 of obtaining justification by law, declares that righteousness is 
 the free gift of God to sinners through Christ, whom God hath 
 set forth, tXacmjptov, a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith in His 
 blood. The sense of this word may be learned in the Greek 
 version of Numbers v. 8 : ' Let the trespass be recompensed (an 
 indemnity be paid) to the Lord, even to the priest, beside the 
 ram of the atonement or propitiation, whereby an atonement or 
 expiation shall be made for him ' (1X0,07x00, IXao-Kerat). 
 
 S. Paul further declares that this ' propitiation,' or sacrificial 
 expiation, so set forth, is for the purpose of * manifesting His 
 righteousness on account of the remission of sins that are past, 
 through the forbearance of God : to declare, I say, at this time 
 His righteousness (/.*., His righteousness in remitting past sins), 
 that He might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in 
 Jesus. ; 
 
 We need not add to these two declarations one of the Lord 
 Himself, the other of His chief apostle writing his chief expla- 
 natory sentence^ in his chief epistle, addressed to the chief church of 
 Christendom. Neither of these statements admits of being justly 
 set aside on critical grounds. And they are supported by the 
 whole body of apostolic teaching; as in the statements of the 
 epistle to the Hebrews, that ' He hath put away sin by the sacri- 
 fice of Himself ; ' that ' by His own blood He hath obtained 
 eternal redemption for us ; ' that ' the blood of Christ, who 
 through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, 
 shall purge our conscience from dead works to serve the Living 
 God ; ' that ' Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ; ' 
 that 'this man has offered one sacrifice for sins for ever,' 
 having ' by one offering perfected for ever them that are sancti- 
 fied,' having (Col. ii. 14) 'by Himself purged our sins,' 
 
THE REASON OF THE FACT. 251 
 
 ' blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us,' 
 and now * living to make intercession for us.' 
 
 The fact of atonement for sins made by the death of the Son 
 of God is then plainly and repeatedly asserted in the New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 We now approach the third part of this inquiry, into the 
 revealed Reason of the Fact. What do these Scriptures teach 
 respecting the cause of the death of Christ? Why was such 
 an atonement necessary in pardoning sin? And how does it 
 operate in reconciling sinners to God ? 
 
 Here let us say at the outset, that as we could not know the 
 fact that Christ's death was an expiatory sacrifice except by reve- 
 lation of God, so neither can we know anything respecting its 
 reasons or mode of operation except by a similar revelation. And 
 when men have departed from the Scripture teaching on this 
 subject, and framed theories of the Atonement on extra-scriptural 
 grounds, they have usually succeeded only in leading multitudes 
 to doubt the fact of an atonement altogether. 
 
 (i) For example, it has been often said, as by Dr. Watts, 
 that Christ died to appease the wrath of God, and by Bp. Heber, 
 1 to meet His Fathers anger;" 1 that the Second Person of the 
 Godhead intervened, in compassion for sinners, to prevent the 
 First Person, our Father, from executing His vengeance upon 
 them. As Cowper expressed it, in a passage quoted by M. 
 Sainte-Beuve, ' God is always formidable to me, except when I 
 see Him disarmed of His sting, by having sheathed it in the body 
 of Jesus Christ.* Now this representation of mediation is not 
 only directly contrary to Scripture but is essentially heathenish, 
 and destructive of confiding love to God. For this was precisely 
 the idea of the sacrifices to the gods of heathenism, they were 
 offered to propitiate or render placable wrathful divinities. But 
 
 * Even Canon Mozley, in his weighty volume of University Sermons, per- 
 mits himself to employ on one occasion language of the same type. ' The 
 effect of Christ's love for mankind, and suffering on their behalf, is described 
 in Scripture as being the reconciliation of the Father to man, and the adoption 
 of new regards to him.' .' The act of a suffering Mediator reconciles God to 
 the guilty.' Atonement, p. 173. 
 
252 GOD THE REDEEMER. 
 
 whatever the reason of the death of Christ may have been, 
 assuredly it was not an act of the Son of God separate from an 
 act of the Father: nor was it designed to produce states of feeling 
 in God not existent before. It was GOD who l so loved the world 
 as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believed in 
 Him should not perish.' It was God who 'reconciled the world 
 to Himself, or atoned it by Jesus Christ, not imputing our tres- 
 passes unto us.' It is to offer violence of the most unwarrantable 
 description to the character of the God of Love, to represent Him 
 as excited with wrath against sinners, while the Son of God was 
 lenient and merciful, or to represent God as seeking to strike 
 some one on earth, and striking an innocent person rather than 
 strike none at all. 
 
 All such statements, however commonly made aforetime, or 
 unfairly imputed in our time by Unitarian writers, are perversions 
 of Scripture, and have led to much reactionary feeling against 
 any doctrine of Christ's atonement for the sins of the world. It 
 has been thought justly that such views represent the Eternal Being 
 as naturally adverse to His creatures, or as an Omnipotent Foe 
 bought over to forbearance by the price of innocent blood. 
 Words strong enough to express the loathing with which such 
 teaching ought to be regarded are difficult to find. It is our God 
 who has given Christ. It is God, whom we have offended, who 
 has nevertheless 'provided the Lamb for the burnt-offering.' 
 Whatever there is of mercy to sinners in Christ springs from the 
 overflowing love of God. ' We love Him because He first loved us? 
 
 (2) Again, there are those who, casting about for some explana- 
 tion of the Atonement, have looked upon Christ in His sufferings 
 chiefly in His character as a Man, a sinless representative man, 
 but as a person outside the Godhead ; and then His death has 
 been made to appear as the execution of the judgment due to 
 sinners, by substitution of an innocent sufferer, a man who had 
 ' done nothing amiss.' Under this view at once arises the ques- 
 tion, ' How can God's Righteousness in pardoning sin be aided 
 or set forth by doing what seems the most unrighteous thing that 
 can be done in the universe, punishing a guiltless person for the 
 transgressions of sinners ? ' * Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right? That the righteous should be as the wicked, that 
 
CAUSES OF UNITARIAN DOCTRINE. 253 
 
 be far from thee ! ' If there is one moral principle which is plain 
 and authoritative beyond all others, it surely is that the innocent 
 ought not to suffer instead of the guilty. How, then, it is asked, 
 can the death of Christ, thus conceived of chiefly as a Man, 
 illustrate the righteousness of God, or establish His moral govern- 
 ment, while He pardons sinners ? 
 
 The more closely we think of this question, the greater the 
 difficulty will appear. The willingness of the victim to endure 
 suffering by no means removes this difficulty. If it be wished to 
 confirm the reign of righteous law in the world at the same time 
 that you pardon sinners and remit the penalties due to their sins, 
 the very last thing to do, assuredly, is to break through all con- 
 ceivable rules of right, by inflicting suffering on an innocent 
 creature. Such a procedure as this will shake anything that 
 deserves the name of moral government to its foundations. 
 
 Accordingly, you find that wherever such views of Christ's 
 person have prevailed, where He has been conceived of either 
 as simply human, or where His superiority of nature has been 
 regarded as less than Divine, or has been permitted to pass out 
 of view through a one-sided dwelling on His humanity, or through 
 a Sabellian denial of the real distinction in the persons of the 
 Godhead, no faith in His death as an atonement for sin has 
 long survived. The Scriptures which speak of it have been 
 explained away. It has been felt to be almost a moral duty to 
 explain them away, and not to permit the people to hear of a 
 propitiatory sacrifice which consisted in the suffering and death of 
 a man, a creature who was perfectly holy. It has been felt that 
 such a doctrine must end in breaking down the very idea of a 
 just God, and present His mercy to sinners in the guise of a com- 
 passion purchased by the undeserved agonies of an immaculate 
 victim. 
 
 (3) The Scripture doctrine on the reason of the Atonement is 
 far removed from either of these representations. 
 
 So long as Christ Himself is thought of only as a creature, 
 however dignified, no explanation of the Atonement can be 
 given, as an expiation, which does not shock the moral sense, 
 and necessitate sooner or later the abandonment of the expiatory 
 idea. So long as any explanation of the atonement is sought for 
 
254 ATTEMPTED STATEMENT OF THE TRUTH. 
 
 outside the Godhead, it will be sought in vain. So long as it is 
 sought for under the hypothesis of Christ's simple humanity, it 
 must elude discovery, or compel disbelief. We trace the presence 
 of such disbelief on all sides around us. The Unitarians, who 
 reject Christ's personal Deity, reject as a matter of course the 
 atonement in the sense of expiation. They are entirely right in 
 refusing to entertain the conception of a propitiation for sin 
 founded on the infliction of suffering on an innocent creature. 
 
 Apostolic Christianity is credible only when it is taken in its 
 integrity, and taken alone. And the doctrine of the Apostles is, 
 that the Divine Nature is revealed as bi-polar, or of double 
 aspect. They teach that there is in that Eternal Nature a love 
 of righteousness, and righteous law, necessary and ever-during; 
 leading to an eternal resolve to uphold with the Infinite Might the 
 authority of Right as right, and of God as God, both in His own 
 mind and in His outward government. They teach that there is 
 also in God, through the riches of a gracious Nature, an over- 
 flowing love and compassion, not for all sinners of all worlds, 
 and of all ranks, but for creatures whose sinfulness is the result 
 of an original malign interference ; which has prompted the desire 
 to ' save ' man although a law-breaker. Hence a moral schism in 
 the Divine Nature. The Rock of Ages was rent asunder to its 
 depths. However startling the statement, the finite will, erring 
 and rebelling, is represented as setting in eternal opposition to 
 each other the attributes of God the righteousness which prompts 
 to swift judgment as an eternal necessity of the Divine Nature, 
 and the grace which remembers mercy and pities the victims of 
 Satanic envy. 
 
 Can God 'forgive sin* without some outward demonstration, 
 of a nature to show that forgiveness of law-breaking is not a 
 1 law ' of the Divine government, or an ordinary act of the Divine 
 government, that the law is and will be, that remediless suffer- 
 ing shall follow sin ? Can God extend His mercy without any 
 manifestation of His righteousness? Can the Divine Wisdom 
 devise any compensation which Divine Righteousness may sanc- 
 tion under a moral government, so as to reconcile the sinful world 
 to God, and make salvation possible? There is but one way 
 open, say these God-taught men, that sinners, death-doomed, 
 may obtain life eternal, No innocent creature must suffer, how- 
 
EXCURSUS ON SENSIBILITY OF GOD. 255 
 
 ever willing. God Himself must suffer, in one exceptional sacri- 
 fice, if sinners are to be saved, and the stability of the Divine 
 government within itself, and over other minds, is to be preserved. 
 
 Here alone, we find the revealed reason of the Atonement by 
 the death of Christ, considered as an expiation, or ground for 
 pardoning sinners. // is not a blow falling on an innocent creature, 
 outside the Godhead. It is a blow falling from the sinful creature 
 on the Godhead itself, on that sensitive Divine Nature, which is 
 extended through infinity, and is the source of all feeling, physical 
 and moral, in all worlds. Man's greatest crime, a direct assault 
 upon the Godhead, becomes the ground on which God can remit 
 all other sins. It is a sacrifice made by the Holy and Merciful 
 One, in order 'that He might show forth all long-suffering,' by 
 identifying Himself with us. 
 
 All the language of Scripture respecting this Sacrifice is based 
 upon this idea, of God's sacrificing and suffering for us as Man. 
 ' He that spared not His own Son ; ' ' God so loved the world as 
 to give His only begotten Son/ Every word here speaks of 
 severest suffering and sacrifice of a self-exacting righteous benevo- 
 lence, which will indulge its grace only at a mighty cost to Itself, 
 of all that is most dear. 
 
 Excursus on the Sensibility of God. 
 
 But here it is necessary to turn aside for a moment to question 
 and protest against that system of metaphysics which in its re- 
 actionary zeal against extreme anthropomorphism teaches modern 
 men to think of God as a Being impassive and insensible to real 
 delight or pain the Buddhism of the West. 
 
 For is not the prevailing opinion among all ranks of the people, 
 especially when they desire to appear signally enlightened, that 
 the scriptural language respecting God as a Living Person near at 
 hand, full of thoughtful interest regarding ourselves, is but an 
 accommodation to the weakness of the lower order of minds ; so 
 that when prophets and apostles speak of Deity as resenting 
 ingratitude or insult ; as indignant at atrocious wrong ; as loving, 
 grieving, sympathising, seeking to associate with us in close com- 
 munion ; as delighting in good, provoked with bad men ; these 
 are only so many fictions, ' anthropomorphic parables,' the abso- 
 
256 THE SENSIBILITY OF GOD. 
 
 lute truth being that the Divine Nature is infinitely removed above 
 all possibility of concrete thought or moral emotion, of pleasure 
 or pain that in fact the Godhead dwells in an unbroken calm of 
 perfect rest; so that there is no objective reality in expressions 
 which practically describe Him with a moral nature analogous to 
 the human. * 
 
 If this be true, it is obvious to remark a child might make 
 the observation how uninteresting a process the worship of such 
 a God must be ; of One to whom you bring thought, anxiety, 
 emotion, passion, praise, affection, gratitude, prayer, heart-sacrifice, 
 and Who in return looks upon you in the eternal gaze of 
 impassive omniscience, with not even the faintest approach to 
 responsive fatherly love. 
 
 And is not this persuasion the reason why so few of mankind 
 inwardly worship the God in whom they profess to believe, with 
 half the enthusiasm which the adorers of the Blessed Mary devote 
 to her service ? Their inmost beliefs respecting their Maker are 
 such as to quench soul communion at its source. They conceive 
 of the all-pervading Presence as if there were no real sympathetic 
 feeling in it not more than there is in the force of attraction, or 
 in the diffused electricity of the globe. No human heart can 
 sincerely yearn after such a God as this. There are multitudes 
 who repeat the customary phrases respecting the Lord of Heaven, 
 that He is righteous, good, merciful; that He 'loves' them, 
 1 pities ' them, ' delights in His people ; ' but they have no belief 
 whatever in a God who compasseth their path and their lying down 
 with a Life more vital than that of all other spirits combined into 
 one. 
 
 Unhappily, too, there is nothing in which men change so little, 
 and improve so slowly, as in their original false notions of God 
 and His ways ; for indeed the popular ideas on this subject have 
 a moral source, in a disposition which leads men to expel the 
 Deity from the realms of thought. Men's philosophies grow up 
 from their spiritual states. The popular metaphysics both of Asia 
 and Europe spring from the depths of a moral nature which does 
 ' not like to retain God in its knowledge/ and which therefore 
 
 * For the chief assistance to recent Buddhism in England the world has 
 perhaps to thank the late Dean Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought. 
 
SENSIBILITY Of COD. 257 
 
 readily shrouds itself in a philosophy of agnosticism, Or banishes 
 Him to the skies, or out of the universe. 
 
 Now that Divine Revelation which reaches its fullest bright- 
 ness in Christ is directed to the establishment of a better know- 
 ledge of the Heavenly Father, who is not far from any one of 
 us,' and who is ' acquainted with all our ways,' of Him whose 
 Spirit can be 'grieved,' and ' vexed ' with our sinful behaviour, 
 but who also deeply is ' delighted ' with noble character. 
 
 Consider how strange it would be if God were not such a Being 
 as this ; if the Creator of all sensitive souls were the one Spirit 
 devoid of sense and feeling ! We are surrounded by a vast world 
 of living things, there are nearly a million species of them on 
 earth, under each species a multitude that no man can number, 
 each of these individual organisms possessing a sentient life, 
 even the lowest some darkling sensation of pleasure or pain, the 
 higher ranks so exquisitely organised for enjoyment and suffering 
 that no words can sufficiently express the reality. What a world 
 of quivering flesh, of nerves thickly interwoven and sensible to 
 light, to sound, to heat and cold, to tastes and smells, to blows 
 and gashes, to stripes, disease, and pain ! Then you ascend to 
 Man, who is all life from head to foot, body and mind all 
 exquisite sense, the surface one delicate network of nerves, the 
 depths full of all possibilities of fearful agony or healthy delight. 
 
 The spirits of men, again, are keenly sensible in every fibre. 
 You cannot speak or act without ' hurting ' some one, unless you 
 consider them. What wounds of vanity, what torments of injured 
 self-love, what aches and woes of agonised affection, what inward 
 sorrows of conscience ! In the sense of praise or blame, how 
 deep a well-spring of intensest joy or grief, and a well that never 
 dries up ! 
 
 Now is this world, so full of vital sensibility, the work of a 
 Being who possesses none of an all-pervading impassive Intelli- 
 gence, insensate, incapable of moral anger, sympathy, or love ; in 
 whom there is no possibility of feeling a wrong done either to 
 Himself or others ; who is incapable of righteous indignation, of 
 tenderness, self-sacrifice, companionship, or gladness? Is this 
 world, so full of passion, the work of a Power who is a kind of 
 Infinite Snow-King, having no real delight in His children, in 
 
258 SENSIBILITY OF GOD 
 
 their work, in their play, in their troubles , in their agonies, or 
 in their joys ? Is God's goodness only a word for theologians to 
 set forth in articles of faith, in mockery of a quality which is real 
 in man ? Surely this great world of sense and feeling was born 
 out of a Nature all sentient and vital, and rose like some Form 
 of beauty from a wondrous Ocean of Deity, full of the life whence 
 she sprang. 
 
 Consider, too, what an effort seems to be made in the physical 
 world to convey to our minds on all sides the impression that 
 there is real feeling in the Most High. Nature's teaching does 
 not end with science. It is full of ' tender strokes of Art/ Does 
 not every lovely form in plant or flower breathe forth to us the 
 feeling of some Unseen Artist ? Does not each living type give 
 the impression of being a beautiful work of art, with its own 
 distinct design, colour, and atmosphere ? It is as if the Eternal 
 Motherly Tenderness were for ever coming forth from within the 
 veil of the spiritual world, and, revealing itself in a golden radi- 
 ance to the eye that beholds it, saying to us in ' still small voice ' 
 as it draws near in the night of time, It is I, My Children, be 
 not afraid ! 
 
 But the senses afford no sufficing revelation to the soul. She 
 cries out still for the Living God. We require a richer and fuller 
 communion ; and we find it in the historic revelation. In Jesus 
 Christ the Infinite not only is revealed as a Person, but as One 
 1 full of compassion.' And there has been a connected series of 
 events, from the beginning, in which God has similarly made 
 Himself known, ' as He does not unto the world.' Susceptible 
 souls have been admitted within the veil of material nature, and 
 have ascended as Moses on Horeb to see the Love which is In- 
 visible. How precious the records of this progressive revelation ! 
 See how God once made Himself known to Abraham. How 
 friendly, how conversible a Being was there ! How unlike the 
 Brahminical Deity who hides himself beyond the stars, caring 
 nought for poor mortals. This ' household God ' visits Abraham 
 at every stage of his history. He imparts the first impulse of 
 emigration from Chaldea, as He starts the swallows on their 
 tourney to the southern skies. He welcomes him into Palestine 
 with new and grander visions between the hills of Shechem. He 
 communes with him by night on the uplands of Hebron, and 
 
' MAN HATH SINNED, GOD HATH SUFFERED.' 259 
 
 expounds to him the prophetic meaning of the spangled firma- 
 ment, 'So shall thy seed be.' He even comes to him in the 
 guise of a Traveller under the terebinth of Mamre, and reveals to 
 him His secrets as to a 'friend,' before He hurls the flaming bolt on 
 Sodom and Gomorrha. And He, this Heavenly Friend, never 
 leaves him, in all his journeyings, till he lies down in Machpelah, 
 where he is buried in peace, embalmed in the sweet spices of 
 a promised resurrection. How different a God is this from the 
 Hindoo Brahma, from the Siamese Gaudama, from the English 
 One Incomprehensible, in whom, if men believe not, they must 
 ' perish everlastingly ' ! 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The bearing of such views as these on the Sacrifice of the God- 
 Man is obvious and important. No statement of the case, except 
 that of Hooker, approaches the truth ; that ' Man hath sinned, 
 and God hath suffered' The Eternal Word is represented to us 
 as taking flesh into vital union, that the Godhead might present 
 a vulnerable side to the powers of evil, for suffering in life, and 
 'for the suffering of death.' Here we truly begin to apprehend 
 the 'reason of the atonement,' which escaped us so long as we 
 conceived of Christ as a suffering creature, and excluded the 
 Divine Nature from all share in the sacrifice. The Christ, who 
 is God and Man, dies, suffers for sin, and from sin. But how ? 
 By undergoing the curse of the law. No injustice is now done 
 to an innocent creature y for it is the Creator, the Law-giver, who 
 suffers; and by suffering shows that He who 'delighteth in 
 mercy ' yet so much also delighteth in righteous law, that He will 
 compel the Divine Nature Itself, made Man, as substitute to 
 pay a ' price ' for our ransom from death, while He thus opens a 
 channel to the tide of His Fatherly compassion. 
 
 Under this view of the atonement every common objection is 
 quelled. No innocent creature is punished instead of the guilty. 
 No 'Second Person of the Godhead' interposes to arrest the 
 anger of the ' First.' But the whole Godhead, which is Right- 
 eousness and Love, sacrifices Itself in the agonies of a human death, 
 that man, though a sinner, may live for ever. Well is it said, ' I, 
 if I be lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men unto me.' 
 
2<5o 1 MAN HATH SINNED, GOD HATH SUFFERED. 
 
 The death of Christ, thus regarded, is the visible reconciliation 
 of the sinful world to God, because it is the visible reconciliation 
 of the interior Divine Attributes in the abnormal act of saving 
 sinners. The reason for it is found not in nature, nor in law, nor 
 in aught on the level of humanity, or of the creation. The per- 
 sonal Deity of the Christ, in the Incarnation of the Word which is 
 One with the Father, is the solution of the mystery, and its essen- 
 tial condition. The reason is not found in a calculation of conse- 
 quences in the external world, nor in any supposed counterweight 
 of pain or terror in a finite being, that must be placed vicariously 
 in the lightened scale of forgiveness ; but in the heights and 
 depths of the Godhead alone ; in the holiness which abhors 
 evil ; in the rectitude which intensely loves the law ; in the wisdom 
 which must demonstrate that the Salvation of Sinners is no easy 
 process ; and in the boundless grace which resolves to endure all 
 that sin and sinners can inflict, as a demonstration of the impos- 
 sibility there is, even for Omnipotence, to save by an arbitrary 
 act, without a ' ransom ' and a sacrifice. 
 
 This God of mercy fixes in His wisdom the * price ' that shall 
 be paid. He chooses to suffer in the person of His Son by the 
 'wicked hands' of the men who 'crucified their King.' And 
 thus too all the secondary ends of punishment are answered, 
 to show forth the effects of wrong-doing by suffering, to prevent 
 further transgression, and to reform the offender. For by this 
 mystery of love and sorrow God draws us irresistibly to Himself ; 
 ' we look on Him whom we have pierced ; ' and the greatest of 
 all miracles is wrought, that dying sinners are at once * purged 
 from the conscience of sins,' and gather ' boldness to enter ' as 
 immortals into the Holiest of All. 
 
26l 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ON REGENERATION UNTO LIFE, THROUGH UNION WITH THE IN- 
 CARNATE WORD, BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LORD AND GIVER 
 OF LIFE. 
 
 IN that ' fourth Gospel,' in which, as in an ark of the Covenant, 
 are enshrined 'behind the veil' so many of the mysteries of 
 redemption, the doctrine of a Second Birth, as necessary to 
 salvation in the kingdom of heaven, holds a foremost place. 
 The discourse of our Lord with Nicodemus must be regarded as 
 the formal declaration of this law, from the lips of Him ' who has 
 the keys of hell and of death. 
 
 ' Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born again* he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God? In reply to the Rabbi's objection 
 on the impossibility of a second physical birth, Jesus repeats His 
 statement. ' Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born 
 of (or begotten from) Water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of God. That which is born (or begotten) of the flesh is 
 flesh ; and that which is born (or begotten) of the Spirit is spirit. 
 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The 
 wind bloweth whither it willeth, and its sound thou hearest, but 
 thou knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth away ! so 
 (ovrws, thus mysterious) is every one (the nature of every one) 
 who is born (or begotten) of the Spirit' (John iii. 3-8). 
 
 The same doctrine is taught by S. John in the phrases of the 
 proem, chap. i. 12, 13. 'But as many as received Him to them 
 gave He power to become the sons of God ; who were begotten 
 (ZyevvriOrjvav) not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
 will of a man, but of God? 
 
 * "AvuQtv may be taken, as Nicodemus takes it (ver. 4), for Stvrepov, but 
 the etymology is nearer to its full sense, of ovpavoOtv, from God, which 
 involves the d 
 
262 APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE ON NEW BIRTH. 
 
 The same language and ideas occur in S. John's Epistles. 
 
 * Ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born (or be- 
 gotten) of Him ' (i John ii. 29). * Beloved, now are we the sons 
 of God' (i John iii. 2). * Whosoever is begotten of God doth not 
 work sin, for His seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin, 
 because he is begotten of God* (i John iii. 9). Every one that 
 loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God' (ch. iv. 7). * Who- 
 soever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God, and 
 every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is 
 begotten of Him ' (ch. v. i). * Whatsoever is begotten of God con- 
 quers the world. Who is he that conquereth the world but he 
 that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God' (verse 5). 'We 
 know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not ; ' but he that 
 is begotten of God guardeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth 
 him not ' (ver. 18). 
 
 S. Paul teaches the same truth in varying expressions. The 
 idea of a new birth from out of water, in baptism, we find in 
 Rom. vi. 4. ' Know ye not that so many as were baptised unto 
 Jesus Christ were baptised unto His death ? Therefore we are 
 buried with Him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was 
 raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should 
 walk in newness of life ' (ev Kaii/orr? (017?). The remainder of 
 this chapter is a description of the character of the twice-born 
 Christian. 
 
 In Rom. viii. 1-14, S. Paul describes the position and qualities 
 of the regenerate man, whom he designates as one who is not in 
 the flesh, but in the spirit. ' If any man have not the Spirit of 
 Christ, he is none of His. If Christ be in you the body is dead 
 because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness? 
 
 The same S. Paul twice declares that the Christian is a new 
 creature* (or creation), KCIIVT) fcrcVis (2 Cor. v. 17; Gal. vi. 15). 
 And in i Cor. ii. he speaks of the true Christian as a * spiritual 
 man,' in contrast with the 'natural' (or soulicat] man (TJTCV- 
 /ACITIKOS, J/TU^IKOS). And throughout his epistles he builds every- 
 where on the foundation-thought that a Christian is a man who 
 has undergone some supernatural change which enables him to 
 
 * walk in the spirit? ' Not by works of righteousness which we 
 have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the laver 
 Xovrpov (see Eph. v. 26, ' having purified it by the washing Xovrpw 
 
APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE ON NEW BIRTH. 263 
 
 of water by the word ') of regeneration, and of the renewal of the 
 Holy Spirit ' (Titus iii. 5). 
 
 Lastly, S. Peter, in full accord with the other apostles, sets 
 forth the divine origin of the new nature of a Christian. ' Blessed 
 be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according 
 to His abundant pity hath begotten us again to a living hope 
 through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an 
 inheritance incorruptible and undented.' This change is evi- 
 denced in the life. ' As obedient sons, not fashioning yourselves 
 according to your former sinful passions in your ignorance.' * See 
 that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, being begotten 
 again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, by the word of God, 
 which liveth andabideth (for everis omitted in all the oldest MSS.). 
 For that all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is as the 
 flower of grass. The grass withered, and the flower thereof fell 
 away. But the word of the Lord abideth for ever. And this is 
 the word (prjpa) which by the gospel is preached unto you. 
 Wherefore as newborn babes (apnyiw^a) desire the guileless 
 milk of the word that ye may grow thereby' (i Peter i. 3, 14, 23 ; 
 ii. i, 2). 
 
 These are the leading passages in the apostolic scriptures de- 
 scribing that supernatural action of the Spirit of God by which men 
 become ' new creatures,' in order that they may * see the kingdom 
 of God.' Apart from such a change, Christ Himself again and 
 again declares that no man can see it (ou Swarai, John iii. 3). 
 
 * Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' A life 
 which, notwithstanding the possession of a spiritual faculty, 
 persists in being animal, or psychical only, is by divine decree 
 transitory and perishable. True spiritual life alone is eternal 
 life. 
 
 . * He that soweth to his flesh ' (leads an animal godless life), 
 
 * shall of the flesh reap 7 <j>0opdv, death, extinction; (see the sense 
 of this word in 2 Peter ii. 1 2, ' Brute beasts born for capture and 
 extinction,' <j>6opdv), ' byj: he that soweth to the Spirit ' (lives for 
 the spiritual and eternal world), ' shall of the Spirit reap life ever- 
 lasting' (Gal. vi. 8). 
 
 It is necassary, therefore, to consider more attentively (i) the 
 Immediate Author of this new nature ; (2) the method and instru- 
 
264 WORK OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. 
 
 ments of His action (3) the inward and outward change in man 
 which results from it. 
 
 SECTION I, 
 
 The Immediate Author of the new nature in Regeneration is 
 said to be the Holy Spirit, * the Lord and Giver of Life,' 'who 
 with the "Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified ' 
 as in the Nicene Creed is declared. 
 
 The distinction of Persons in the Godhead, like the distinction 
 of energies in the Sunbeam which is its purest symbol, was a dis- 
 covery reserved for the later ages of the world. Under the 
 ancient economies The Supreme God, in His character of Father 
 and Governor, was offered in the Unity of His glory as the object 
 of faith to the Church's infancy. As the centuries rolled on, 
 obscure intimations were given to the prophets, in language more 
 comprehensible to us than to themselves, of the existence of a 
 ' Lord,' distinct from the Father, who nevertheless * sits at His 
 Right Hand ' on the Throne of the Universe (the Aden of Psalm 
 ex. T ; Isaiah vi. i ; Malachi iii. i). But not until the Word was 
 made flesh, was the eternal glory of 'the only-begotten Son' 
 clearly revealed. In the same manner the ' Spirit of Jehovah/ 
 ' His Holy Spirit/ was spoken of by the prophets : but the 
 personality of the Holy Spirit was not projected separately and 
 distinctly before the general blaze of Deity. 
 
 When Christ appeared, the Incarnation of the Logos required 
 the more distinct revelation of the Three Persons of the Godhead, 
 and it is from the lips of the ' Logos made flesh ' that we learn 
 the personality and subordination of the Holy Ghost. Our Lord 
 is represented by S. John as applying the masculine personal 
 pronoun e/ccu/o? to the Holy Spirit (although the word Spirit, 
 7rvcv/xa, is neuter) in a manner which can be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained only in the sense of the Catholic Church of all ages, that 
 a Personal distinction is designed (see also Acts x. 20 ; eyw). 
 
 To this Holy Spirit is attributed the direct Divine agency in 
 the worlds of both matter and mind throughout the universe.* 
 
 * In Ezekiel's vision (chs. i.-x.) the vast sea-green Wheels of the Chariot 
 of Jehovah, representing the forces of inorganic nature, and the fiery Cherubim, 
 representing the organic and intelligent creatiop, are alike Described as fuH of 
 
WORK OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. 265 
 
 And to Him in the sphere of spiritual action is attributed the 
 work of begetting the new ' divine nature' (i Peter i.) in 
 redeemed men even as when it was said to Mary by the Angel 
 Gabriel (Luke i. 35), of the conception of Christ, 'The Holy 
 Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall 
 overshadow thee : therefore also that holy thing which shall be 
 born of thee shall be called the Son of God.' 'So is he that is 
 born of the Spirit.' 
 
 The sum of the New Testament doctrine is that forth from God 
 have come to the earth Two Almighty Powers, for the salvation 
 of sinful mortals : the Divine Word or Logos, who took flesh of 
 the Virgin Mary ; and the Holy Spirit the Comforter, the Lord 
 and Giver of Life, 'proceeding from the Father and the Son,' who 
 in viewless action, like the wind, descends wheresoever He wills, 
 to dwell in and renew the nature of man, making the Church ' the 
 temple of God ; ' ' one Spirit with ' the Lord of Glory (i Cor. vi. 
 17) ;' members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones ; ' 
 the redeemed humanity being thenceforth as true an Incarnation 
 of this Holy Spirit as the Saviour is a true Incarnation of the 
 Logos, and creating, through the double bond, an eternal union 
 of Man with the Nature which is Divine and Eternal. 
 
 In the execution of His purpose of saving us it has seemed 
 good to the Almighty Lord to adhere to the original lines of the 
 life-system which He designs to immortalise in His own image. 
 Christ has been constituted a second Head of humanity ; and Re- 
 generation unto Life unites us to Him by vital ties of Justification, 
 Sanctification, and Redemption of body and soul to eternal life, as 
 close as those which connected us with the first Adam, from whom 
 we derived Condemnation, Degeneracy, and Death. This is the 
 ' great mystery of godliness,' and when this chief truth of living 
 union to the Redeemer by the indwelling Spirit is obscured, the 
 New Testament revelation is shorn of its beams, and casts over 
 the creation but the baleful twilight of a solar eclipse. 
 
 eyes,' i.e., pervaded by the Divine Spirit. Nature is not blindly feeling her 
 way into fortunate selections, but her course through the ages is governed by 
 a Mind that sees the end from the beginning ; represented by that fiery Form 
 Who sat enthroned on the sapphire floor of the Cherubic Car at whose voice 
 of command each wheel moves in its predestined pathway, towards the four 
 quarters of the horizon, according to the all-wise Will 
 
266 UNITY OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 The unity existing between Christ and His Church, (i) is 
 sometimes compared to the union between the Father and the 
 Son : ' That they may be one as We are one : ' ' that they all may be 
 one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may 
 be one in Us' ' That they may be one even as We are one: I in 
 them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one * (John 
 xvii. 11-23). ( 2 ) ft i s sometimes compared to the union of a 
 Vine and its Branches. Thus : * 2 am the VINE, ye are the 
 BRANCHES. He that abidelh in me, and I in him, the same bringeth 
 forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing* (John xv. 4). 
 (3) It is compared to the union of our meat and drink with our 
 bodies. Thus : ' He that edt'eth me, even he shall live by me. He 
 that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in 
 him ' (John iv. 56). (4) It is compared to the union of the body 
 with the head. Thus : ' But speaking the truth in love, grow up 
 in all things unto Him who is the Head, even Christ 1 (Eph. iv. 15). 
 (5) It is compared to the union of Husband and Wife. Thus : 
 1 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head 
 of the Church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and 
 of His bones ' (Eph. v. 23). (6) It is likewise compared to the 
 union of a building, whereof Christ is considered as the foundation 
 or chief corner-stone. Thus : * To whom coming as unto a living 
 stone, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house ' (i Peter 
 ii. 4-6). (7) It is sometimes described in Scripture as an 
 identity of spirit. Thus: 'He that is joined to the Lord is one 
 spirit 1 (i Cor. vi. 17). (8) It is sometimes represented as an 
 identity of body. Thus : ' For as the body is one, and hath many 
 members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one 
 body ; so also is Christ. Now ye are the body of Christ, and 
 members in particular' (i Cor. xii. 27). Such is the apostolic 
 language upon the close unity of CHRIST and His members. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 On the method and instruments of the Holy Spirit's action in 
 Regeneration. 
 
 The words of Christ to Nicodemus are strong enough to support 
 the idea of an immediate action of the Spirit of God on the souls 
 of men in imparting to them the new life. But the analogy of all 
 
SPIRITUAL REGENERATION IN BAPTISM. 267 
 
 other divine working known to us favours the concept of the 
 action of Deity in combination with mediate influences. Two 
 opinions have long prevailed in the Church as to the instrumen- 
 tality by which divine grace reaches the soul. One is that the 
 Holy Spirit connects the exercise of His regenerating power with 
 the sacrament of Baptism; the other that He connects it with 
 the Truth respecting the Saviour of the world. 
 
 The former doctrine is expressed with the utmost clearness and 
 confidence in the baptismal formulary of the Church of Rome, 
 and with scarcely less strength in the liturgies and catechisms 
 of the Anglican, Lutheran, Helvetian, and Scottish Churches. 
 It is founded upon the close association, in our Lord's words, 
 between Water and the Spirit, held to signify that when and 
 wherever baptism is rightly administered, there the Holy Spirit 
 accompanies the rite, confers the grace of ' spiritual life,' and 
 washes away the guilt of original sin. The guilt, according to 
 the Roman theology, carrying with it the penalty of eternal 
 misery for the immortal soul, is in baptism cleansed away, and a 
 new creature implanted j so that infants thus baptised are * un- 
 doubtedly saved,' while a cloud hangs over the eternal prospects 
 of the unbaptised. Under this view baptism is not regarded 
 simply as a dramatic expression of man's faith or of God's mercy, 
 but as the veritable channel in which runs the stream of eternal 
 life. A similar tendency to materialistic and magical views has 
 been' manifested in the doctrine of Christendom on the Lord's 
 Supper. The language used by Christ respecting ' His body ' 
 allows of the Roman tenet, if men are so perverse as to adopt it. 
 
 The doctrine of spiritual regeneration in baptism not merely 
 of an outward ceremonial cleansing, but of a real inner salvation 
 therein bestowed may be traced back to the third century of 
 Christianity, perhaps to the second. It has been adopted as the 
 popular faith of Christendom ; and the application of the grace 
 has been extended to baptised infants, for whose 'spiritual 
 regeneration ' the English prayer-book requires the minister to 
 'give thanks.' The English Nonconformists, who use infant 
 baptism, not as a seal of the ' remission of sins ' (Acts ii. 38), 
 not even as a sign of introduction into the Church, not as a 
 means of grace to the child baptised, but simply as a didactic 
 symbol of the grace of God, which has 'come unto all men,' that 
 
2 68 NONCONFORMIST IDEAS ON BAPTISM. 
 
 is, simply as the mark of the catechumen, can find little justifi- 
 cation of their opinion in its practical results ; for in no part of 
 Christendom are ' baptised ' children such ecclesiastical outcasts 
 as theirs, being generally regarded as unfit for church fellowship 
 till ' decided ' or ' converted ' afterwards. Nor can they find any 
 justification for it in antiquity a fact on which the great church- 
 men of England, from Dr. Waterland to Bishop Bethel, have 
 securely depended in assailing their Nonconformist opponents.* 
 
 All known infant baptism in the Ante-Nicene age was given 
 for the purpose of spiritually regenerating the subjects. Cyprian 
 urges baptism as soon after birth as possible, on the ground that 
 spiritual circumcision should not be delayed, but that every 
 human being should be admitted as speedily as possible to the 
 grace of Christ, the remission of original sin, and the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost (Epist. 58). In the same age heretical baptism 
 was accounted a nullity in a Council at Carthage, ' because it 
 could not be accompanied by the heavenly gift.' Heretics there- 
 fore were to be rebaptised.f 
 
 The other opinion connects the regenerating action of the 
 
 * We must not here be supposed to yield unqualified assent to the doctrine 
 of the ' Baptists' on this subject. The Baptists have built up a sect, with a 
 special name, on the basis of a sacrament ; which is, I humbly think (notwith- 
 standing their signal merits) an uncatholic procedure ; and as indefensible as 
 would be the institution of a second Sect, based on a reform of the Mass, to 
 be called the Lord's Supperist Denomination, with missions, newspapers, 
 unions, and relief-funds, all for Lord 's Supperists. They are, however, we 
 conceive, with Dr. A. Neander, right in discouraging infant baptism, as not 
 apostolic ; and in maintaining the highly significant rite, Jewish, Christian, and 
 Catholic, of immersion, representing the death and burial 'of the old man,' 
 and also resurrection to life eternal. But would it not be better to dwell more 
 than they do on baptism as the sign of the 'remission of sins' (Acts ii. 38), 
 to allow, in many cases, of baptism by plenteous affusion, like the ' shed 
 forth' baptism of the Holy Spirit, and also of the baptism of young children 
 who are old enough to understand discipleship to Christ ? Infants are already 
 in the good hands of God, and will neither gain by the ' baptism of repentance.' 
 nor lose by its absence. Their alleged ' spiritual regeneration ' therein seems 
 to be the quintessence of a system of theological error, upheld through the 
 combined superstition of priests, women, and families. 
 
 f Improving on this idea, Henry Dodwell, who believed that the Immortality 
 of the Soul was a grace conferred in baptism, held that ' none have the power 
 qf bestowing the immortalising spirit except the bishops.' 
 
PATRISTIC IDEAS ON BAPTISM. 269 
 
 Holy Spirit, not with the Sacrament of Baptism, but with the 
 Truth, offered and believed. The sacramental theoiy of regenera- 
 tion, although pleading strong patristic authority, and subsequent 
 general acceptance both in the east and in the west, is weak in 
 even the appearance of apostolic support, and is opposed to the 
 letter and spirit of scriptural Christianity. In judging of Ante- 
 Nicene doctrines it is necessary to remember the warning of all 
 the apostles that even in their own life-time the 'mystery of 
 iniquity ' already wrought ; that the age was signally ignorant of 
 the sacred writings, and rife with the spirit of priestcraft, magic, 
 and apostasy. Men are deceived by the glory of the martyrs as 
 to the character of the second century in its theological aspect ; 
 and never will apostolic Scripture regain its due supremacy until 
 we have learned that Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Clement, Athena- 
 goras, Tertullian, and Minutius Felix were unworthy successors of 
 John, Paul, Peter, Luke, and Matthew. 
 
 For, in the first place, although it is said, that ' Except a man 
 be born of Water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of God/ it is not said that he who is baptised is at 
 the same time born of the Spirit. Simon Magus was ' baptised ' 
 (Act viii. 13), but immediately afterwards S. Peter said to him, ' I 
 perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness.' Thou hast 
 neither part nor lot in this matter.' ' Thy money perish with 
 thee.' No stronger language could be used to denote that not 
 even the germ of grace had been communicated by baptism. 
 He had not been regenerated or renewed by the Holy Ghost. 
 That which our Lord affirms is that baptism by water is necessary 
 and that baptism by the Spirit is necessary; but He does not 
 connect the two together, so as to imply that regeneration by 
 the Spirit takes place at or in the baptism by water. On the con- 
 trary, the New Testament represents spiritual baptism, or regene- 
 ration, as preceding the water baptism. It was after Cornelius 
 and his company * believed,' and even after they had received the 
 wonder-working Spirit, that Peter said, ' Can any man forbid 
 water, that these should not be baptised, which have received the 
 Holy Ghost as well as we ? ' On Roman or Anglican principles 
 the reply would have been obvious and pertinent. Let all men 
 forbid it ! for why should they be made a second time ' regene- 
 rate in baptism ' who have already received regenerating grace, 
 
270 APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE ON BAPTISM. 
 
 as is evident by their faith and piety, and by the testimony borne 
 of God by the gifts of the Holy Ghost. S. Paul distinctly 
 repudiates the idea of sacramental efficacy in baptism, when he 
 says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chap, i., ' I thank God 
 I baptised none of you, save Crispus and Gaius, lest any should 
 say that I baptised in my own name.' For Christ sent me not to 
 baptise but to preach the gospel.' Can one even imagine a 
 modern clergyman who believed that in Baptism the gift of 
 Spiritual Regeneration was bestowed, 'thanking God/ for any 
 reason, that he had not bestowed it. Such language as this, 
 ' Christ sent me not to baptise but to preach the gospel? would be at 
 once condemned as ' evangelical and puritan/ If the grace of 
 the regenerating spirit were to be conveyed in ^baptism, surely 
 S. Paul should rather have lamented that he had conferred the 
 heavenly gift upon so few of the Corinthians. Little right had 
 he to say, ' I have begotten you through the gospel/ His 
 language here is incompatible with the idea of saving grace con- 
 ferred in the sacrament. Neither is there any ground for the 
 statement that our Lord in His conversation with Nicodemus 
 (John iii.) intimated the necessity of baptism for infant salvation, 
 when He says, ' Except a man be bora of water and the Spirit 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God ; ' for it might as reasonably 
 be argued, that because elsewhere repentance and baptism are 
 conjoined as essential to salvation, S. Peter intimates thereby that 
 infants cannot be saved unless they repent ; which is impossible. 
 There is as much mention of, or reference to, infants in the one 
 case as in the other ; that is, there is no mention or reference at all. 
 
 If, however, we are to believe that the Spirit of God effects 
 spiritual regeneration in infant-baptism, it seems to be reasonable 
 to ask, Are there any clear signs that so blessed a change has 
 been wrought upon the natures of the baptised ? If the fruit of 
 the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, purity, assuredly the 
 bulk of the populations asserted to have been regenerated in in- 
 fancy give no evidence in their conduct of having been the sub- 
 jects of the transforming agency. Is this change transient in its 
 results, so that the grace of the Spirit evaporates in early childhood, 
 like the baptismal water from the forehead of the babe ? Or, if 
 it be a permanent change of nature abiding through following. 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE PATRISTIC DOCTRINE. 271 
 
 years, how is it that there are not uniformly some external signs 
 in the character of that new birth and new creation? Infant 
 baptism is not followed by the evidences of divine grace ; and 
 few Christians, blessed in after years with a spirit of piety, think 
 of attributing its possession to regenerating mercy received at the 
 font. Unbaptised children are every whit as near to God as the 
 baptised. 
 
 The practical tendency nevertheless of the Roman and Anglican 
 doctrine is to accustom all the baptised to consider themselves 
 ' Christians,' requiring, indeed, additions of grace, yet not re- 
 quiring that ' new creation ' which is described in Scripture as 
 the ' second birth.' If, then, spiritual regeneration was not 
 effected when supposed, the influence of the doctrine must needs 
 be disastrous. It closes' the ears of its votaries to all those 
 warnings which represent a ' new creation ' as indispensable to 
 salvation ; it fosters in impure men the error that they are, in 
 some effectual sense, ' the children of God and inheritors of the 
 kingdom of heaven ; ' and encourages the opinion that there may 
 be some other valid foundation for hope than manifest faith and 
 love. It confounds together all the inhabitants of a parish, good 
 and bad, as equally regenerate persons, leading to a general 
 acknowledgment of worldly virtues as Christian graces, and 
 lowering the supernatural system of spiritual religion to a level 
 which suits the average ungodliness. 
 
 Dismissing, then, the church-doctrine of spiritual regeneration 
 in baptism, founded on the inveterate leaning of mankind towards 
 magical and material views of the action of grace, and on mis- 
 conception of the fact that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost 
 were in the apostolic age often conferred immediately after bap- 
 tism, we return to the apostolic teaching that the Holy Spirit 
 employs the truth as the ordinary instrument of regeneration. 
 ' Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, 
 by the word of God living and abiding ' (i Peter i. 19). 'Christ 
 loved the church and gave Himself for it,' that 'He might 
 sanctify and cleanse it by the laver of the water in the word' 
 (Eph. v. 26). The grace of ' sonship ' is attributed to the 
 ' reception ' of Christ (John i. 12); this is an act of the mind 
 receiving truth. He that ' believeth on the Son hath eternal life ' 
 (John iii. 36). Baptism is placed after repentance and faith by 
 
273 DEGENERATION fHROtJGH THE 
 
 S. Peter, in preaching the gospel : c Repent, and be baptised every 
 one of you ' (Acts ii. 38). S. Luke says that Christ's last words 
 were, ' that repentance and remission of sins should be preached 
 among all nations ' (Luke xxiv. 47). The remission of sins 
 (sealed in baptism) follows on repentance and faith (Acts iii. 
 19). 'Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
 may be blotted out' ' Arise, and wash away thy sins, calling on 
 the name of the Lord,' were the words of Ananias to S. Paul 
 after he believed. 
 
 No such notion as the communication of regenerating grace 
 (apart from which, already received, man cannot repent and 
 believe, since ' he that believeth is born of God,' i John ii.) 
 by the act of baptism, is found in the New Testament. The 
 regenerating grace comes first, then faith, then the outward seal. 
 The regenerating gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism is a concep- 
 tion as foreign to the Scripture as was that of the gift of the Holy 
 Spirit in Circumcision, or in the Passover. It is, we hold, an 
 invention of the apostatising church, founded partly on sensuous 
 and magical ideas, and partly on mistaking the baptismal miracu- 
 lous ' gifts ' of the Holy Spirit for His renewing action, and for 
 His 'fruits.' 
 
 These statements, however, do not exhaust the New Testament 
 doctrine on the methods of the Holy Spirit's saving operation. 
 The question at once arises, Is the production of this new nature 
 in men, under the action of the Holy Spirit, absolutely dependent 
 upon the intermediate operation of truth upon the mind and 
 heart, or may we believe that the action of the Regenerating 
 Spirit is sometimes independent of the action of the vov?, or 
 mind ; taking effect directly on the Trveu/xa, or spirit, and renew- 
 ing it to life-eternal ? Is not the true answer as follows ? 
 
 (1) That where truth is revealed, and fully known, the Holy 
 Spirit employs that truth in the awakening of new life in the souls 
 of men. 'This (regenerating word) is the word which by the 
 gospel is preached to you' (i Peter i. 24). But 
 
 (2) Where that truth is unrevealed, or from various causes 
 unknown, lesser measures of truth may prove effectual to re- 
 generation. Such was the condition of those devout souls who 
 lived before the Advent of Christ. Assuredly they were ' born 
 of God,' both those of Hebrew and of Gentile blood ; yet the 
 
REGENERATION BY FRAGMENTARY TRUTH. 273 
 
 truth by which they were renewed was of a fragmentary character, 
 and did not include the knowledge of a suffering Messiah. 
 
 Under this view of men's condition, it is reasonable to enter- 
 tain hopeful views of the final salvation of millions whom we 
 denominate ' heathens,' but whom God loves, and has visited in 
 His grace in every land. It has been the custom to suppose that 
 all lands marked black as pagan in ' missionary maps ' have been 
 inhabited by men utterly deprived of saving grace. Amidst much 
 error, we doubt not that in every land and age God has ' reserved 
 to Himself a people who have 'feared Him,' and 'wrought 
 righteousness ' under a secret divine inspiration ; but it requires 
 a better acquaintance with so-called ' heathen ' men and women, 
 and a somewhat broader standard of judgment, to recognise such 
 souls under non-Christian forms of thought and speech. ' I per- 
 ceive' said S. Peter, ' that in every nation he thatfeareth God, and 
 worketh righteousness, is accepted of Him' 
 
 Always through the mediation of the unknown Saviour, always 
 through the regenerating action of the unknown Spirit, have such 
 results occurred; but to deny their existence would require us 
 equally to deny the reality of pre- Messianic grace among the 
 Jews. If they were saved under imperfect conditions of know- 
 ledge, there is hope for others though under still less favourable 
 conditions ? 
 
 If it be alleged that such hopeful views would discourage 
 missions, it may be confidently replied that the missions which 
 such thoughts will discourage can be but of little value abroad. 
 If it be essential to the propagation of the gospel for men to 
 believe that all who have not known ' the whole truth ' or who 
 have not called the Infinite Creator by the right Names, have 
 been doomed to damnation, it would be better to discontinue 
 endeavours founded on so foul a perversion of the Bible. But 
 surely if Christianity was worth promulgating, even although pious 
 Israelites could be saved before the Advent, much more must it 
 be * worth while ' to promulgate Christianity among those whose 
 knowledge of God has been restricted to the broken lights of a 
 world darkened by the philosophy and priestcraft of Eastern 
 paganism, or by African barbarism." 
 
 * * We do not deny the possibility of the salvation of the heathen, or of 
 some of them, by the mercies of God and under the teaching of His good 
 
 18 
 
274 SALVATION OF HEATHEN POSSIBLE. 
 
 (3) There is still one more step to be taken in the same direc- 
 tion ; and this is to affirm, on the authority of the same Scrip- 
 tures, and, may we not add, of experience, that sometimes the 
 action of the Holy Spirit in His regenerating grace descends 
 upon infants even from their ' mother's womb.' Thus was John 
 the Baptist < filled with the Holy Ghost from his birth ' (Luke i. 
 15). In such cases the spiritual action must at first be directly 
 on the Trvevpa, and not at all on the vovs, in the way of under- 
 standing truth ; and if this be true in even one instance, why not 
 more frequently ? We conclude, then, that although the normal 
 action of Divine grace be now through the ' truth of the Gospel,' 
 that action is not restricted to any special measure of truth, and 
 can take effect, if God so will, even in the total absence of truth 
 apprehended by the intellect. We are far from doubting the 
 frequent action of grace upon infants ; what is denied is that that 
 grace depends upon baptism. 
 
 Brief Excursus on the question of the creation, or renewal^ of the 
 7n/ev/xa (spirit) in regeneration. 
 
 Before we advance to the last section of the present chapter 
 it is necessary to consider in this place the psychological difficulty 
 
 Spirit. We are quite sure indeed of this, that whatever salvation there is any- 
 where in human hearts, or working in human lives, is to be traced up to the 
 same fountain-head of Divine love, and comes to them or to us, known or 
 unknown to them or to us, along the same channel of mediation and grace ; 
 and we are* very sure that any of the heathen who are saved will be as ready 
 as the rest to cast their crowns at the Saviour's feet, ascribing salvation to Him 
 that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb. But how much knowledge, in 
 its intellectual forms, may be necessary there or here for salvation, it is quite 
 beyond our power, and it is no part of our duty, to say. It would seem that 
 there is no invariable standard either there or here. Moral disposition is always 
 more than intellectual culture. The moral bent of a human life is that which, 
 far more than the intellectual knowledge that may be held in it, will settle its 
 character ; and if it can be shown from the lives of the heathen, and from the 
 actions they perform, and the spirit they manifest, and the aims they have in 
 view, that there is justifiably any hopefulness about them, why we are the most 
 hopeful of all people in the world, and we are ready, therefore, to hope. Ay, if 
 there is any probability that Job, and Elihu, and the Syro-Phcenician woman, 
 and the Roman centurion, and the Ethiopian eunuch, have successors in heathen 
 lands, we of all people, whose very object is to promote human salvation, will 
 and ought to rejoice.' Speech by Dr. Raleigh for London Missions, Exeter 
 Hall, 1874. 
 
BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT. 275 
 
 presented by the Pauline doctrine of the tripartite nature, ( The 
 very God of peace sanctify you (oAoreAeis) wholly ; and may your 
 whole constitution (oAo/cAr/pov vpJuxv\ the spirit (TO TTVCV^O), the soul 
 (77 $v\rj), and the body (TO O-W/AO,), be preserved blameless in the com- 
 ing of our Lord Jesus Christ, i Thess. v. 23), taken in connec- 
 tion with our Lord's declaration to Nicodemus, ' That which is 
 begotten of the flesh is flesh; and that which is begotten of the Spirit 
 is spirit ' (John iii. 3). 
 
 Is the Pneuma, or spirit, here spoken of as begotten or born 
 of the Holy Spirit, a new substantive addition in regeneration 
 to the nature of the man born of the flesh ? or is it the renewal 
 in power of an element belonging to man as born into the world ? 
 Has every man Trvev/xa as well as i/or^r/, spirit as well as soul ? or 
 is spirit the production of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, and 
 therefore peculiar to the saved ? This question is one of exceed- 
 ing difficulty, partly in consequence of the varying terminology 
 adopted by so large a number of Scripture writers, which renders 
 it perhaps impossible to extract from them a homogeneous 
 psychology.* 
 
 If it be contended, as by Dr. Delitzsch, that the Bible uniformly 
 ascribes ^SJ, nephesh, soul, to the animals, but never, PlJp^J, 
 neshamah, a reference to Genesis vii. 21, 22 (Heb.) will dispel 
 the illusion. If it be said that H^l, ruach, belongs to man, not 
 to the animals, in Scripture usage, a reference to Ecclesiastes iii. 
 21, will show that the Hebrews spoke of the ' spirit of a beast.' 
 If it be said that H^, ruach, is peculiar to good men, we learn 
 from Job xxxii. 8 that the ancients thought there is a ruach in 
 $U{$, mortal man, and that the ' inspiration of the Almighty 
 give th him understanding.' 
 
 The passages of Scripture in which a technical or special mean- 
 ing seems to be designed by the distinction between soul and 
 spirit are few j yet it is on this very narrow basis that any psycho- 
 
 * The chief writers on the side of man's natural possession of the 
 are Dr. Delitzsch, in his System of Biblical Psychology, and Mr. Heard in his 
 Tripartite Nature of Man. The doctrine of the addition of the Pnenma in 
 Regeneration is ably maintained by Dr. Morris in What is Man ? (Stock), 
 Mr. Constable in his papers in the Rainbrnv (Elliot Stock), General Goodwyn 
 in his Holokleria (Kellaway), and Dr. Thorn of Liverpool in Soul and Spirit 
 (Lewis), to which last I especially refer the reader. 
 
276 ON THE CREATION OF THE < PNEUMA? 
 
 logical system must be content to stand. There is one feature of 
 the Biblical phraseology in which our version fails us. In the 
 Hebrew, nephesh stands for life, and soul, and also for the dead 
 body. The animals, moreover, are always spoken of as having 
 nephesh, or soul. This is concealed in the English translation 
 under the term * creature,' or ''living creature' King James's 
 translators had a psychology of their own, which they have some- 
 what favoured in their version. 
 
 The main strength of the argument for the creation of the 
 Trvev/Ao, in regeneration lies in the important statements of Christ 
 to Nicodemus. When our Lord says, * That which is born, or 
 begotten, of the flesh is flesh/ it is held to indicate that what is 
 born of sinful man is of an animal nature (o-w/xa and ^vy?}), body 
 and soul ; but not 7rvcv//,a, or spirit. Christ speaks of the spirit 
 as begotten by the Holy Spirit. ' That which is begotten of the 
 Spirit is spirit.' It is added that S. Paul speaks of Adam as 
 created only a living soul ; of Christ as the Life-giving Spirit \ 
 and of the unregenerate man as i/o^i/cds the * soulical ' man, or 
 man of mere \\ruyT) : while He designates the regenerate man as 
 7rvev/x,aTiKos, or spiritual. S. Jude also has this strong expression 
 to denote the condition of ungodly men, i/or^i/col, Tn/eC/xa p/ genres, 
 animal men, not having Trvev/xa, or 'spirit' (verse 19). 
 
 It must be admitted that this language is of very formidable 
 strength ; and that it finds an almost continuous echo in the 
 remains of the Ante-Nicene age.* The doctrine of the non- 
 possession of the TTvev/xa also accords well with the general idea of 
 the natural mortality of man. But it is attended with great diffi- 
 culties, if by the 7rvev/xa is intended anything more than the 
 spiritual character produced by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. 
 That in Christ's discourse the TrveS/za, or spirit, which is begotten, 
 must be distinct from the Power which produces it, is evident. 
 We cannot therefore say, with Mr. Constable, that the spirit, 
 which is part of a Christian man's oAofcA^pia, or constitution, is 
 the Holy Spirit, since Christ describes the spirit as the product of 
 the new birth. But that spirit may be the eternal life which the 
 
 * The proof of this statement may be seen in the carefully drawn catena of 
 Mr. Dodwell's anonymous defender, A Presbyter of the Church of England^ 
 1 728. The Ante-Nicene Fathers almost without exception held that the irvt vfia 
 *as an addition bestowed by the Holy Spirit, on which eternal life depends. 
 
1 NOT HAVING SPIRIT: . 277 
 
 Holy Spirit confers along with the germ of the Divine Image ; 
 and under this definition there would be less difficulty in holding 
 that the regenerate man alone possesses Tn/ev/xa, or spirit, in the 
 technical sense of the term. 
 
 There are many, however, who think that the true solution of the 
 difficulty is to be found in insisting on the tropical character of the 
 language which our Lord employed on the occasion of His discourse 
 with Nicodemus. In popular language in every country the slight 
 possession of any power or faculty is described as non-possession. 
 Thus we say of a very unfeeling man that he is 'heart-/m,' or that he 
 has ' no soul,' of a fool that he has ' no understanding,' of a violent 
 man that he is a * brute,' of one who has weak life that he is ' as good 
 as dead,' not intending to deny that such persons possess the 
 natural endowments of life, reason, and affection, but only to assert 
 the very low degree of their development, just as Abraham said 
 that he was ' but dust and ashes.' May we not trace, it is said, 
 the operation of the same law of speech in the language of Christ 
 and His apostles ? Our Lord says, ' That which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh' He certainly did not intend to deny that men 
 have ' souls ' as well as bodies, yet on the surface He might be 
 held to declare that there was no i/ojx 1 / or soul in an unregenerate 
 man. Is it, then, necessary to hold that He teaches that man by 
 nature has also no Trvev/xa or spirit ? May it not be that the whole 
 nature, bXoKXrjpia, of every man includes body, soul, and spirit, the 
 spirit standing for all that part of man's nature which is superior 
 to the animals his moral and religious being, as made in ' the 
 image of God ' ? 
 
 Regarding the expressions of Christ from this point of view, 
 His statement, that * that which is born of the flesh is flesh,' may 
 be taken for a declaration that the orcO/Aa (pneuma) in unregenerate 
 men is so undeveloped, that the man may be called flesh. A 
 new spiritual life must be produced in him in order to life eternal ; 
 and this he terms pneuma> begotten by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In the same manner we may, on this method, deal with the 
 words of S. Jude, that ungodly men are i/o^oi, Tn/ev/m /u; 
 CXOVTCS, * soulical, not having spirit' Ths small development 
 is described by total destitution. The proninently active part 
 gives designation to the man. He in whom the animal soul or 
 Psuche is supreme \spsuchicoS) or animal; he in whom the Pneitma 
 
278 THE CARNAL MIND. 
 
 reigns is pneumaticos, or spiritual. The work of the Holy Spirit 
 is to arouse and develop the spirit, or moral Godward part of 
 man's nature. 
 
 An example of this mode of speech is found even in S. Paul's 
 writings. The Corinthians he regarded as ' sanctified in Christ 
 Jesus' (i Cor. i. i), and as destined to be * confirmed unto the 
 end ' (i. 8). Yet these very persons he speaks of thus in chap, 
 ii. 1-3 : 'I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, 
 but as unto carnal ' (o-apKi/cois) ; which he explains thus, ' even 
 as unto babes in Christ.' Men who are characteristically of low 
 development take their names from the lower faculty, not from 
 the higher. 
 
 If these criticisms are defensible, we escape the difficulties 
 involved in the doctrine that unregenerated men possess no 
 pneuma, or spiritual faculty. For the spirit of God strives with 
 them. They 'resist the Holy Ghost.' The conscience can hardly 
 be regarded as an endowment of the animal i/or^, or soul. In 
 every man there is a witness for a ' law ' against which he offends 
 by sin. If Adam was originally endowed with a spirit as well as 
 a soul, we do not understand how by transgression he succeeded 
 in excising one part of his nature. If, on the other hand, neither 
 Adam nor his descendants possess \\\z pneuma, as Dr. Thorn main- 
 tains, they are not accountable for conduct which is not spiritual. 
 Since men cannot receive the gospel until they become { spiritual,' 
 how can they be accountable for its non-reception if destitute of 
 the spiritual faculty? Is it not easier to understand that the 
 enervated ' spirit ' is supernaturally energised by the Holy Spirit 
 so that a spiritual life is produced, which is called Tn/ev/Aa 
 than it is to conceive of the fall as involving the loss of one part 
 of man's nature, or of redemption as bestowing a wholly new 
 element of being ? 
 
 Without dogmatising on a subject, which certainly has two 
 sides, perhaps the most considerable alleviation of the difficulty 
 will be found in the suggestion above made, that by spirit, as pro- 
 duced in the twice-born man by the Spirit of God, our Lord 
 intended the spiritual and eternal life secured by the indwelling 
 of the Holy Spirit, not the addition of a wholly new faculty to 
 the humanity. What is agreed on both sides is that the personal 
 indwelling of the Holy Spirit changes the old nature by imparting 
 
COMPLEX ORIGIN OF LIVES. 279 
 
 a new germ of grace, and thereby creates a ' new man,' new in 
 the springs of thought and purpose, new in heavenly relationship, 
 and new in the prospect of life everlasting. The measure of 
 development may vary exceedingly, but on this new evolution 
 depends the life immortal. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 On the Change effected by Regeneration. 
 
 This leads us naturally to the last question under this topic, 
 What is the spiritual change effected in this life by Regeneration f 
 Relying on the teaching of the Apostles, we answer, (i) trans- 
 formation into the moral likeness of Christ, (2) passing from 
 death into life, entering into that life of Christ, the second Man, 
 which is eternal obtaining ' a hope full of Immortality,' through 
 union with the Eternal Spirit. 
 
 I. The doctrine of the Bible accords with observation, that 
 the moral degeneracy in mankind is the cause of our mortality. 
 There is some poison in the blood, running through all genera- 
 tions, and ' alienating man from the life of God.' Depravity is 
 manifested in different degrees, according to training, and accord- 
 ing to personal wickedness but degeneracy is common to all.* 
 
 * The fact that every human being is born of two parents accounts for many 
 of the opposite manifestations in character which are usually set down to 
 blameworthy inconsistency. The common remarks on the degrees of likeness 
 to father and mother respectively embody a philosophy which requires to be 
 carried still further. Persons who are descended from parents whose tempers 
 and personalities widely differ, will usually display the one or the other on 
 finding themselves in circumstances fitted to bring out either speciality. Sub- 
 jection to the influence of but one of the two parents during early life, under 
 circumstances favourable to the development of that type, will perhaps seem 
 almost to extinguish the influence of the other hidden nature ; yet it mingles 
 with the inmost life of the body and soul, and might be easily educated under 
 a favourable regimen. In addition to the influence of parents, it must be 
 remembered that they themselves embodied the result of many marriages and 
 successions. Hence each man is a complex being whose analysis is possible 
 only to the Omniscient. God alone knows the secret forces of life, and He 
 alone can judge the respective measures of hereditary tendency and personal 
 desert. Into this complex life we must desire, above all other influences, that 
 there should be introduced that redeeming element of God's Spirit which is 
 destined at last to vanquish all others by stamping upon us the image of the 
 Eternal. 
 
2 8o SJGNS OF REGENERATE LIFE. 
 
 This moral ruin consists in the paralysis of the Trvcv/xa, or spiritual 
 faculty, which no longer either sees or wills as is necessary for a 
 life in union with God. This is the cause of the sinful life, and 
 1 the wages of sin is death.' 
 
 The act of the Holy Spirit therefore reaches to the centre of 
 our being, and awakens the 'spirit' to a new energy. Forming 
 a union with the spirit of man, He dwells in the body as in a 
 ' temple/ and recreates the character in the image of the God of 
 Love. ' He that loveth is born of God.' ' Love is the fulfilling 
 of the spiritual law. He who is purified by faith, becomes a 
 partaker of a divine nature ' (2 Peter i. 4). True godliness, 
 practical reformation in body and soul, is the condition of Immor- 
 tality. ' Many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ ; whose 
 God is their body, who mind earthly things ; whose end is 
 destruction' (Phil. iii. 19). 'See then that ye love one another 
 with pure heart affectionately, being born again' (i Peter i. 19). 
 Where there is no love, there is no eternal life. Hatred is the 
 germ of murder; and 'no murderer hath eternal life abiding in 
 him.' Not less does true intelligence depend upon love, for there 
 may be religion (fy^cr/ceia) without godliness (eiW/2eia). The 
 soul is then inspired by hatred and terror, and throws forth an 
 Image of itself for its Deity. ' Thou thoughtest I was altogether 
 such an one as thyself.' The soul must be ' rooted and grounded 
 in love,' in order that it may ' be able to comprehend the love ' 
 of God in Christ (Eph. iii. 20). Love is the eye upon the summit 
 of the soul, that sees God. Apart from such renewal in the 
 Divine likeness, life, however intelligent, is perishable, for the 
 sous has no union with Eternal Love. It is, then, a moral change 
 in the character of the soul and the discipline of the body, and not 
 an ontological or physical change in substance, which is the con- 
 dition of salvation, and the present result of the indwelling of 
 the Divine Spirit. ' The spirit is life because of righteousness ' 
 (Rom. viii. 10). 
 
 II. It seems to be taught with equal clearness in the Scripture, 
 though less remarked in modern times, that the result of true 
 regeneration is to bestow the gift of everlasting life on the whole 
 nature. The final cause of regeneration is to vanquish the 
 mortality produced by sin. This is a complex process, in- 
 cluding both soul and body of the integral manhood. The 
 
MEANING OF <>AD BY SINS? 281 
 
 spirit enters into Christ's ' eternal life ' now ; the body at th e 
 resurrection. 
 
 The mortal condition of the unregenerate, or ' soulical ' man, 
 under the sentence of death for sin, leads to the descriptive name 
 assigned to wicked men both by Christ and the apostles the 
 dead. ( Let the dead bury their dead ' (vcKpovs, ve/cpov's ; Matt, 
 viii. 22). 'To you hath He given life (e^woTroiVre), who were 
 dead in (by) trespasses and sins ' (ve/<pou? -TrapaTTToS/xao-t ; Eph. 
 ii. i, 5). 'But God, who is rich in mercy even when we were 
 dead by sins, hath given us life together with Christ, and hath 
 raised its up together' (Eph. ii. 5). 'She that liveth in pleasure 
 is dead though alive' (oxra rtOvrjKe ; i Tim. v. 6). 'Thou 
 hast a name that thou art alive, but art dead' (ve/cpos et; Rev- 
 iii. i). ' He that loveth not his brother abideth in death' (i John 
 iii. 14). 
 
 An almost universal custom has affixed to these expressions 
 what is termed a spiritual sense ; namely, that of alienation from 
 God, who is the highest ' life ' of the soul, ' the strength of our 
 life, and our portion for ever.' Hence have arisen the phrases, 
 'spiritual death,' and the* spiritually dead,' both of them without 
 example in apostolic usage. 
 
 For there seems little doubt that the mode in which the 
 Scripture terms here referred to are handled in the 'apostolic 
 fathers,' more fully represents their real meaning than the modern 
 application. That there is a figure in the Scripture use of the 
 term the dead, cannot be disputed. But the question is, Are we 
 to trace the figure in the tense, or in the radical signification of the 
 terms? We submit that the figure is in the tense. The unre- 
 generate men are described as the dead, and dead in sins, because 
 they are certain to die, because they are under sentence of de- 
 struction, as men of mere soul (i/o^oi). Thus the figure of 
 prolepsis is employed in Gen. xx. 3 : 'God said to Abimelech, 
 Thou art a dead man, for Sarah Abraham's wife.' 'The Egyp- 
 tians said, We be all dead men ' (Exod. xii. 33). ' All my father's 
 house were dead men before the king 1 (2 Sam. xix. 28). The 
 figure in each of these instances is that of using the present in- 
 stead of the future tense. The unregenerate are ' as good as 
 dead.' In the language of Ignatius (Trallians, ch. x.), * they 
 themselves only seeming to be ' (cTvai). From the first Adam they 
 
282 APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE ON RENEWAL. 
 
 have received by traduction of being a nature which is animal 
 and perishable. From Christ alone comes the spirit-life which is 
 eternal (i Cor. xv.). 
 
 The converse figure is used when a name is given from regard 
 to a past condition ; as when it is said, ' I saw the dead, small 
 and great, stand before God,' Here the dead are persons who 
 were dead, but have been raised for judgment.* 
 
 That in the phrases in question there is a strong moral associa- 
 tion of ideas, suggesting a sinful condition, is not only acknow- 
 ledged but strongly affirmed ; but as little can it be doubted that 
 the ultimate reference is to that death by sin which extinguishes 
 the hope of immortality ; a reference which enables us more fully 
 to understand the bearing of the language of S. Paul, S. Peter, 
 and S. John. 
 
 S. PAUL, in the eighth chapter (ver. 1-14) of the Epistle to 
 the Romans, sets forth the condition and prospects of the twice- 
 born man, in language which requires little more than exact 
 translation and paraphrase to show its conformity with the doc- 
 trine that eternal life is the gift of God in Christ. 
 
 1. * There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus 
 (united to Him as the second Man). 
 
 2. For the law (dispensation) of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus hath set 
 me free from the law of sin and death. 
 
 3. For that which was not in the power of the law (to regenerate in God's 
 likeness and immortalise) in that it was weak through the flesh (unsaying 
 through man's corruption), God sending His own Son in the likeness of flesh of 
 sin, and on account of sin, condemned sin in the flesh (broke its practical power), 
 in order that the requirement of the law (practical righteousness) might be ful- 
 filled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 
 
 5. For those who are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh (lead an animal 
 and godless life), but those who are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 
 
 6. For the mind of the flesh is (ends in) death, but the mind of the Spirit is 
 (ends in) life and peace (unites to God now and for ever). 
 
 7. Because the mind 'of the flesh is hostility to God ; for to the law of God it is 
 not subjected, neither indeed can be. 
 
 8. So then they that are in the flesh (in their unregenerate state), cannot please 
 God. 
 
 * A careful discussion of the correct translation and true meaning of the 
 phrase of S. Paul, 'dead by sin' (Eph. ii. i); will be found in the important 
 Appendix to the Rev. T. Davis's work on Endless Sufferings. Longmans, 
 1866. See also note on p. 223, for the Rabbinical usage. 
 
APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE ON RENEWAL. 283 
 
 9. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwell in 
 you. Now if any man possess not the Spirit of Christ, this man is not His, 
 
 (There is no salvation apart from the personal and real inhabitation of the 
 Holy Spirit.) 
 
 10. And if Christ be in you (by His Spirit) the body is dead (vfjcpov) because 
 of sin the body remains mortal, and as good^as dead, because of the evil law in 
 its members), but the spirit (the human spirit) is life (w)) (is sealed to eternal 
 life), because of righteousness (because of the new principle of holiness which it 
 has received. See verse 4). 
 
 11. But if 'the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead (SK vtKcxZv) 
 dwell in you, He that raised up the Christ from the dead, shall also give life to 
 (ojo*-ot7}o-t) your mortal bodies on account of His Spirit dwelling in you. (He 
 who already dwells in your souls, as the principle of Christ-like eternal life, 
 will complete the process by immortalising your mortal bodies also at the 
 resurrection, on the pattern of Christ's body, because they have been His 
 dwelling-place on earth.) 
 
 12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. 
 
 13. For if ye live after the flesh (if ye lead an animal and godless life contrary 
 to the Spirit of God), ye are on the point of death (ye shall soon and certainly 
 die fjikXXfTe d-n-oBvTjffKftv ; see John iv. 47 %if\\ diroOvriffKeiv, he was at the 
 point of death), but if ye through the Spirit put to death (put an end to) the deeds 
 of the body, ye shall live (shall possess eternal life). See Gal. vi. 8. * He that 
 soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap 00opav, extinction' (2 Peter ii. 12). 
 
 14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God 
 (destined immortals, and ' children of the resurrection '). ' Neither can they 
 die any more ' (Luke xx. 36). 
 
 The teaching of S. PETER corresponds with that of S. Paul. 
 He regards Regeneration as a process not only sanctifying, but 
 immortalising (i Peter i. 22-25). 
 
 22. Having purified your souls in the obedience of the truth by means of the 
 Spirit unto unfeigned brotherly love, out of a pure heart love one another affec~ 
 tionately. 
 
 23. Being begotten again (dvaytytvvqfievdi) not of perishable seed, but of 
 imperishable (OVK kit (TTropac 00aprjfe aXXa d<j>9apTov), by the Word of God, 
 living (life-giving, see John vi. 51) and remaining. 
 
 24. For that (diort, the reason of the need of imperishable seed) all flesh is 
 as grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass 
 withered, and the flower fell away (the reason of the necessity of regeneration is 
 not only the sinfulness but the perishable nature of man). 
 
 25. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which 
 by the gospel is preached unto you. (The seed of God is the life-giving word. 
 John vi., ' The words which I speak unto you, they are (irvtvua) spirit and 
 life.') 
 
 2 Peter i. 3, 4. Seeing that His divine power hath given unto us all things 
 
284 PX&S&NT CHARACTER, AND 
 
 that pertain unto life and godliness (jrpoQ w}v icai ivaifltiav) through the know- 
 ledge of Him that hath called us by His own glory and goodness ; whereby He hath 
 given unto us the exceeding great and precious promises, that through these ye 
 
 might become PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE (Ofiac; KOlVUVoi 0W(rWf), 
 
 having escaped the DEATH, which is in the world through lust (ciiro-pvyov-tc rij 
 tv T<p KufffUf) iv i-jnOv/jiig. 
 
 S. JOHN sets his seal upon the same doctrine, in the whole of 
 the language of his gospel, in which he represents union with 
 Christ as essential to save men from 'dying' (John vi.). 
 
 And finally in his first epistle, where among his last words to 
 the world, he says (chap, ii.) : 
 
 1 6. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and 
 the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 
 
 17. And the world (o jeoo-juof, the sinful world of mankind) passeth away 
 (irapaytTai) and its passion; but He that doeth the will of God rcmaineth 
 eternally (utvti tic; TOV a/wi/ct) ; where the definition of terms by contrast is 
 distinct and decisive. In this remarkable verse perpetuity of being is in the 
 foreground. The sinful world departs and vanishes, but he that doeth the will 
 of God, abideth for ever. The Eternal Will dwells in him, energising in his 
 life, the moral likeness of Deity is stamped upon him, and he shares in the 
 ETERNITY OF GOD. 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAP. xx. (3rd edition); ON THE DENIAL OF 
 
 SPIRITUAL DIFFERENCES IN MEN SUFFICIENT TO JUSTIFY 
 ETERNAL DIFFERENCES IN DESTINY. 
 
 It is said, that in affirming this doctrine of Regeneration unto 
 Life we are asserting nothing less than an infinite and generic 
 distinction between two classes of mankind, the mortal and the 
 immortal, for which no sufficient justification is discoverable in 
 their nature or spiritual character while on earth. 
 
 It may be asked of us, Do you indeed believe that regenerate 
 man passes into endless being ; or that true faith carries with it a 
 destiny so different from that of common men, as you would assign 
 to it ? For who that reflects on the community of the human 
 race in all its conditions of temporal existence, on its common 
 origin, on its physical, intellectual, and moral unity, on the 
 historical, ancestral, and social causes which determine so much 
 that we call character, on the many excellences of the bad, and 
 on the manifold imperfections of the good can fail to stumble 
 
ETERNAL DIFFERENCES IN DESTINY. 285 
 
 at a doctrine which places the seal of indestructibility on the 
 foreheads of some, and relegates the unsaved remnant of man- 
 kind, with all their virtues, struggles, and woes, to the realms of 
 the perishable, and the doom of irremediable destruction ? 
 
 I know of no authority but One sufficiently commanding to 
 compel me to this conclusion, and even that one leaves me still 
 staggering under the weight which it lays upon me ; leaves me 
 still applying myself to maintain its revelations against contradic- 
 tion with a mind 'astonied/ like Daniel's, when he looked upon 
 the glories and terrors of the realms beyond. Who, indeed, is 
 sufficient for these things ? ' For we are unto God a sweet savour 
 of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish ; to the 
 one we are the savour of death unto death ; and to the other the 
 savour of life unto life.' These, however, I say to myself, were 
 the words of one who * wept ' and ' trembled ' as he taught, and 
 staggered sometimes as we do ; yet believed in the teaching of 
 the Spirit, and persisted in his faith that nothing less than death 
 and life everlasting depended on the issues of man's probation 
 here. But they were also the words of one who had not thrown 
 off the burden of faith by a desperate rush into theories, which, 
 if they help a man to imagine himself * sufficient ' to grapple 
 with the facts of life and of destiny, relieve only for a moment, 
 by an artificial light not kindled at ' the fountain itself of heavenly 
 radiance,' and that soon dies out, leaving the darkness deeper 
 than before. 
 
 (i) After a renewed and patient study of this objection proposed 
 in all its strength by Mr. Baldwin Brown, I am compelled to con- 
 clude that the authoritative record does distinctly affirm, in every 
 form, the infinitely differing characters and destinies of good and 
 evil men, and that the lecturer is shrinking from a burden of 
 thought which is laid upon him by Almighty God Himself. For, 
 in the first place, the spiritual classification of mankind found 
 in the Bible, without one exception, is simply and invariably 
 dualistic. The prophets and apostles speak of the RIGHTEOUS 
 and the WICKED, as of creatures differing in the root-principle of 
 their being. We find not even a trace of the modern mode of 
 regarding humanity, in which men discern only moral shades, 
 and deny the existence of distinct colours in character. This 
 
 I ! W i \ 
 
286 DUALISTIC CLASSIFICATION 
 
 lenient estimate of the evil, and lowering estimate of the good, 
 which makes them all of one blood, united by a moral consan- 
 guinity, and in itself so demoralising, is resolutely rejected in the 
 teaching of Christ, appointed to 'judge the world in righteous- 
 ness/ In the Old Testament we find everywhere the ' righteous 
 and the wicked ' only, as a classification exhausting the population 
 of the world. In the New Testament this distinction is re-affirmed 
 and accounted for. Christ Himself asserts a supernatural cause 
 for the distinction, which He treats as generic, and as unaffected 
 by the better qualities of sinners ' or the worse qualities of the 
 good. He declares to Nicodemus that some are ' begotten of 
 the flesh ' only, others are * begotten of the Spirit.' He declares 
 that the latter alone are the ' sons of God,' and the sole inheritors 
 of the heavenly kingdom. ' Except a man be born again he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God.' * That which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh/ ' Verily I say unto you, ye must be born again ' 
 (John iii.). His apostles persist in this classification. With 
 S. Peter, some 'are born again,' others not some are 'the people 
 of God,' others not ; some are the ' righteous,' others the 'ungodly 
 and sinners ' (i Peter i. 23 ; ii. 10 ; iv. 18). With S. John there 
 is the man who is ' born of God/ and the man who is not ; the 
 man who ' abides in death,' and the man who has ' passed from 
 death unto life ' ; the man who ' walks in the light,' and the man 
 who 'walks in darkness ' ; the man in whom ' eternal life abides/ 
 and the man in whom it does not. There is the l world that 
 knows not God,' and there are the ' sons of God who know Him ' 
 (i John ii. 5). With S. Paul there is the ' soulical,' or animal 
 man (psuchicos) and the 'spiritual man' (i Cor. ii.) ; the 'old' 
 man and the ' new ' j the old creature and the 'new ' ; the 'earthy 
 man 'and the 'heavenly' (i Cor. xv.) ; the man who 'sows to 
 the flesh,' and the man who ' sows to the Spirit ' (Gal. vi.) ; the 
 man who ' has the spirit of Christ,' and the man who ' has not/ 
 and therefore is 'none of His' (Rom. viii.). The favourite 
 Pharisaic threefold partition of mankind into the good, the 
 moderately righteous, and sinners is unsanctioned by the apostles 
 of Christ, much more the quite modern classification, which 
 regards humanity as a unit, with principles of good and evil acting 
 in every man. The Bible maintains throughout the ancient and 
 awful generic distinction between the good and the evil ; and the 
 
OF MANKIND IN SCRIPTURE. 287 
 
 Old Testament ends by declaring that whatever difficulty there 
 may be at present in distinguishing the two, in the end the 
 essential difference will appear. l Then shall ye come back, and 
 discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who 
 serves the Eternal, and him who serves Him not. And the 
 wicked shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that 
 I do this, saith the Lord ; (Mai. iii. 18 ; iv. 3). 
 
 The objection thus set forth with so much confidence against 
 the idea of an eternal distinction in destiny, depending on present 
 differences in temper and character, is, as has now been shown in 
 detail, really an objection against the plainest declarations of re- 
 velation. The believers in eternal life in Christ are under no 
 special obligation to meet this objection. It may be made equally 
 against the catholic theology of Europe. The objection depends on 
 denying the immutable distinctions of good and evil, in the con- 
 crete form of character, and savours not a little of the demoralised 
 morale of the atheistic thinking of our time. Righteousness and 
 wickedness are distinctions of infinite import in the choice of 
 wills. He who unites himself to God belongs to a wholly different 
 genus of beings from him who refuses God. He becomes 'a 
 partaker of the Divine nature/ and will ' escape the mortality 
 which is in the world through lust ' (2 Peter i. 4). 
 
 There is, further, a noteworthy peculiarity in the doctrine of 
 Christ and His apostles respecting the ' sonship ' of ungodly men. 
 An argument insisted on by Universalists is, that the fatherhood 
 of God renders it positively incredible that He will either destroy 
 or eternally banish any of the human race who are His sons. 
 An earthly father, it is said, who is wise and good, cannot even 
 be imagined as putting to death one of his own children. Much 
 more, therefore, ought such an act to be disbelieved in relation 
 to the 'Father of Spirits.' I desire to point it out as an appalling 
 peculiarity of Christ's teaching, that He represents, in the strongest 
 manner, the refusal of God to acknowledge the ' sonship ' of 
 ' sinners,' or to allow of the claim that He is their * Father ' until 
 they repent. The relation of Father, in the bare sense of Creator, 
 cannot, as a matter of fact, be abolished ' we are all His off- 
 spring ' but in every other and higher sense, involving moral 
 relationship and eternal love, it is declared to be non-existent in 
 
288 DENIAL OF SONSHIP TO THE WICKED. 
 
 reference to impenitent men. 'If God were your Father, ye 
 would love Me. Ye are of your father, the devil,' said Christ to the 
 Pharisees. Through sin men have been disinherited; they are 
 ' slaves' of sin and death, not ' sons of God/ The 'adoption of 
 sons ' comes only with the ' new birth ' unto righteousness. God 
 does not acknowledge spiritual fatherhood to those who work 
 evil. ' He that made them will have no mercy on them.' ' They 
 shall have judgment without mercy.' We are ' no more worthy 
 to be called His sons.' The Divine Word denominates us * sons 
 of God ' only when we have ' passed from death unto life.' The 
 popular argument, therefore, against the destruction of unregene- 
 rate men, derived from the fatherhood of God, is drawn from a 
 relationship which, in the case of the rebellious, Christ distinctly 
 disowns. 'The chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire,' 
 Surely there is no ' hardness ' in bringing these alarming truths 
 to public remembrance. The real hardness and cruelty lie with 
 those who ' strengthen the hands of evil doers ' to their own ruin, 
 by promising them 'life and peace,' and that in the awful name 
 of a Being who has ' sworn ' that if they do not repent ' TO-DAY ' 
 they shall ' not enter into His rest.' ' Except ye repent, ye shall 
 all likewise perish.' ' Now is the day of salvation/ 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF GERMS. 
 
 2. It remains to discuss the second part of this objection, and 
 to ask whether our incapacity to distinguish or ' discern ' in all 
 cases ' between the righteous and the wicked ' is valid reason for 
 denying the sufficiency of the distinction as a basis for eternal 
 differences in destiny. Here we are thrown back upon some 
 considerations on the phenomena of germ-life in general, whence 
 it will appear that the admitted impossibility of pronouncing upon 
 the generic distinctions in spiritual states, in many of their earlier 
 forms, forms no argument against the reality of such distinctions 
 or their infinite consequences. Mr. Baldwin Brown has himself 
 supplied the warning against precipitate judgment on germs, 
 which is applicable in the case before us. When arguing against 
 a supposed error of ours, in which by mistake he attributed to us 
 the belief that mankind is not simply allied on one side to the 
 animal races, but is distinguishable from them only by shades of 
 
PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL GERM-LIFE. 289 
 
 development, he very justly points out that this undistinguishable- 
 ness of the germs cannot be pleaded in support of the identi- 
 fication of the two, since the obscure germ soon demonstrates its 
 hidden forces, and asserts in humanity its generic superiority to 
 that of the brute. ' The germs, we are assured, of Newton and 
 of his dog Diamond, are, in their incipient stages, absolutely 
 identical. Yes, to Science. But there is something there which 
 it needs a yet diviner art, in which the philosopher is the priest, 
 to discern, which makes the one germ inevitably into Newton and 
 the other into a dog.' 
 
 It needs only to transfer this admirably-stated principle to the 
 realms of spiritual life to meet the objection on which Mr. Brown 
 relies in combating the idea of spiritual distinctions wide enough 
 to warrant eternal differences in their doom. The beginnings of 
 all life are mysterious and invisible ; the earlier stages of the 
 development are imperfect and obscure. This is true of the 
 body. It is equally true of the * new creature in Christ.' There 
 is nothing which can be said against the undistinguishableness of 
 generic difference in character which might not be said in relation 
 to the early stages of physical development. The Newton and 
 the Diamond are soon revealed ; but it might puzzle any power 
 less than Omniscience to discriminate the two until development 
 has occurred. The great lesson of biology is the enlargement of 
 our faith as to the hidden life of elementary organisms. Hear 
 how Dr. Maudsley speaks in his latest work on the l Physiology 
 of Mind.' ' Those who may be disposed to think it impossible 
 that such important constitutional differences should exist in so 
 small a compass might reflect with advantage on the various 
 undetectable conditions which may confessedly exist in the 
 minutest organic matter as, for example, in the delicate micro- 
 scopic spermatozoon, or in the intangible virus of a fever. And 
 yet it is from the conjunction of one minute spermatozoon with 
 another that are produced the muscles, vessels, nerves, and brain 
 of a Socrates or a Caesar. . . . The single cell united with the 
 single germ, each integrating the qualities of ancestors, gives birth 
 to a new organic product, which, minute as it is, contains in latent 
 forms all the potentialities, and displays actually in evolution 
 many of the qualities of generations of ancestors, male and 
 female, and furthermore evinces new qualities as a result of the 
 
 19 
 
290 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL GERM-LIFE. 
 
 organic combination. There is nothing extravagant in the sup- 
 position that a single nerve cell has many potentialities. The 
 exquisite minuteness and consummate delicacy of the operations 
 going on around us in the most intimate recesses of nature are 
 even more striking and wonderful than the vastness and grandeur 
 with which the astronomer is concerned' (p. 120). 
 
 When, therefore, it is alleged that differences in spiritual cha- 
 racter sufficient to account for opposite everlasting destinies are 
 not discernible, we submit, first, that sometimes such failure to 
 discern the radical difference in character between good and evil 
 men arises not from the obscurity of the phenomena, but from 
 the wide extent of a superficial and deceptive profession of 
 religion, or from the spiritual blindness of the observer ; and, 
 secondly, that the physical analogy of germs supports the declara- 
 tion that in two chai Deters, seemingly alike, there may, neverthe- 
 less, be such an essential difference that, as in the cases of Christ's 
 two associates, Judas Iscariot and Peter, both much alike to a 
 careless eye, ' one of them is a devil, 7 for whom it would be 
 * better if he had never been born ' ; one of them is a ' natural 
 man,' an 'earthy man,' ' abiding in death,' who has developed 
 only evil qualities, or qualities good simply on the human level ; 
 while the other, though as yet much undeveloped, contains a 
 germ of Divine Life, which before long will develop into a form 
 of character 'equal to the angels,' and 'worthy of an endless 
 life.' ' We know not what we shall be, but we know that when 
 He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
 He is. 1 
 
291 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 HADES, OR THE STATE OF MAN BETWEEN DEATH AND THE 
 RESURRECTION, UNDER THE ECONOMY OF REDEMPTION. 
 
 THOSE theologians who are agreed in the main on the line of 
 argument pursued hitherto, are divided in opinion on the ques- 
 tion of the survival and condition of souls in an intermediate 
 state preceding the resurrection ; in this respect not differing from 
 such as maintain the traditional belief on the future state. They, 
 too, who believe in the resurrection of all mankind to everlasting 
 joy or pain, are divided in opinion on the condition of the spirit 
 after death. Many, who hold the prevailing doctrine on judgment 
 to come, believe, with Mr. Robert Hall at one portion of his life, 
 that thought is a secretion of the brain, and perishes utterly until 
 'the resurrection. Others believe in the survival, and blessedness 
 or misery of the soul. Others believe in its survival and sleep. 
 The diversity of belief, therefore, on this subject, among the 
 adherents of the doctrine here denned, is not peculiar to them, 
 and is occasioned by apparent decrepancies of statement in the 
 Biblical writings, especially in the English version, which perplex 
 the students of both systems. 
 
 It must nevertheless be admitted, that the controversy on 
 survival in death of a portion of the dissolved nature of Man has 
 a peculiar interest for us who attribute eternal life to redemption 
 alone. If it can be established as a fact in nature, and as a clear 
 instruction of the Divine Revelation, that when man dies, not 
 only is the complex humanity destroyed (as when water is 
 destroyed on the separation of its component elements), but also 
 that the soul breaks up, and the thinking willing power is entirely 
 dissipated, then it is thought that the most solid basis is laid for 
 the doctrine that man's hope of a future life is in resurrection alone, 
 
292 ADVANTAGES OF MR. CONSTABLES POSITION. 
 
 or the reconstitution of the dissolved humanity. Men would be 
 1 shut up into the faith ' of eternal life in Christ only. The argu- 
 ment for Immortality in Christ is thought to be greatly * simplified,' 
 and thus to be commended to simple minds. The threatening of 
 Death also under this view receives a clear and easy definition. 
 Death in all cases is then death, total and thorough extinction of 
 life, not only of the compound man, but of all parts of his being, 
 so that not a spark of life is left in the ashes. 
 
 Nor is this the only advantage of such a position. If you 
 maintain the total dissipation of the * soul ' as well as the body, 
 you escape the * absurdity of supposing that death has converted 
 one person into two, so that whereas in life there was one David, 
 in death there are two Davids ' (Constable's Hades, p. 7). More- 
 over, if you prove that, in the death which men die here, the 
 whole man is abolished, so that no soul or spirit survives, you 
 strike the foundation from underneath the whole fabric of false 
 doctrine in the popular European theology. You not only dispel 
 illusion as to the source of immortality, but as to (i) the 'glory' 
 to which souls are supposed by Protestants to go on departure 
 (so dispensing with, or undervaluing, the hope of resurrection at 
 Christ's return from heaven) ; and (2) as to the condition of souls 
 in Purgatory, where Romanists believe them to be chastised for 
 the venial sins of a lifetime. He who proves the first death to be 
 a ' sleep,' in which not even a dreamer remains, disproves Purga- 
 tory, and thereby strikes a fatal blow at the superstition on which 
 rests the power of the Greek and Roman priesthoods. This, it 
 is justly thought, would be in some respects a considerable gain ; 
 and writers who, like Mr. Constable of Cork, have lived long in 
 a Roman Catholic country, are certain to be deeply impressed by 
 such a theoretical advantage. 
 
 Lastly, it is held that a clear demonstration of the non-existence 
 of any part of conscious humanity after death would abolish that 
 * spiritualism,' or desire for necromantic intrusion into the unseen 
 world, which has of late spread like a pernicious fever over 
 Europe and America. If it can be shown that there are no 
 souls with which to communicate, it is manifest that no one, 
 who is convinced of that position, will desire to communicate with 
 
O.V THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ARGUMENT. 293 
 
 them. Or, if perforce persuaded of the reality of spiritual com- 
 munications, they will be compelled to conclude that these are 
 the work of ' Satanic demons personating the dead.' * 
 
 I am not insensible to the force of these considerations, and they 
 have been pressed upon the public with equal ingenuity and per- 
 severance by Mr. Constable, one of the very best writers on the 
 general question of Immortality. But in the study of truth it will 
 be conceded that there is no danger more imminent than that 
 which comes with temptation to advantage in controversy. Men 
 are easily disposed to listen to arguments which seem likely to 
 gain popular support for their opinions, and easily disposed to 
 withstand or neglect evidence which might tell against doctrines 
 to which they are" honestly attached. Mr. Froude observes that 
 even in relation to historical facts the attraction of theological 
 opinion is such as to hinder men of the utmost capacity from 
 seeing or admitting what is obvious to all less partial examiners. t 
 Perhaps we never ought to be more suspicious of our argu- 
 ments than when they are derived from the presumed advantages 
 of the projected conclusion. There can be no doubt that the 
 desire for a neat and simple argument in support of a truth may 
 dispose even able men to offer some little violence to evidence 
 which points in the direction of complexity. What we consider 
 neatness and simplicity is not always a characteristic of Divine 
 working, or Divine teaching. A passion for simplicity of state- 
 ment has often blinded men to facts which indicated more com- 
 plexity than might at first have been supposed. The study of 
 physiology, for example, offers continual warnings against the 
 assumption of short simple formulas. Organisms in nature are 
 often more complex than is agreeable to the lovers of neat and 
 effective popular demonstrations. Assuredly the last object 
 which seems to have been designed in the Bible was to assist 
 controversialists to ' simple ' modes of stifling opposition. These 
 ancient records offer as complex a subject of study as the 
 geology of the globe, and only the most patient submissive study 
 
 * Such is the doctrine of Mr. Miles Grant. Spiritualism Unveiled. Kellaway, 
 London. 
 
 f He makes this fruitful remark in commenting on the denial by Irish 
 Romanists of the undoubted facts of the Irish Massacre of 1641. 
 
294 INFLUENCE OF WISHES ON CRITICISM. 
 
 of the facts is likely to be rewarded by discovery of the true 
 principles of either. 
 
 The prospective advantages of any opinion, moreover, must be 
 postponed to the general interests of truth. Doubtless a widely 
 spread conviction of the total abolition of man's nature in the 
 first death would destroy the Protestant faith in ' glory ' as follow- 
 ing decease ; it would destroy the Romish faith in purgatory ; and 
 it would destroy spiritualism so far as it is based on necromancy. 
 And in the same manner a general disbelief in Christianity would 
 abolish all the dreadful evils which attend its corruptions. A dis- 
 belief in all future punishment would abolish the doctrine of eternal 
 torment. A disbelief in anything divine would put an end to all 
 superstition around the world. And even a disbelief in the 
 doctrine of justification by faith would effectually put a stop to 
 Protestant Antinomianism. But all careful thinkers will allow 
 that such aims in thought are unscientific. Our business is 
 exclusively with the evidence; and theory, whether in nature, 
 or in theology, must adapt itself to the facts, whether they admit 
 of a simple definition or explanation, or require one of greater 
 complexity. 
 
 It may be that the process of human Redemption, and the 
 institution of a new probation and judgment springing out of 
 it, has introduced more intricacy into God's dealings, and there- 
 fore into the history and teaching of Scripture as to the death of 
 mankind, than might have been looked for under a legal adminis- 
 tration. We have thought it right to draw attention to these 
 considerations in order to insist upon a fairer examination of the 
 Scripture evidence on the subject of this chapter than is possible 
 under the prepossessions which have been now referred to. 
 
 It cannot be maintained that the .importance of this sub-con- 
 troversy, however interesting, is equal to that on the general 
 question of man's immortality in Christ. Those who hold the 
 intermediate unconsciousness of the soul, even those who hold 
 the dissipation of the soul in the first death, maintain truth 
 which more than compensates for all their (possible) errors on 
 this subject. They maintain the fundamental doctrine of Scrip- 
 ture that Man is an Integer, having his ' form ' in the fabric 
 of ' dust/ and that God deals both in judgment and mercy with 
 
MR. CONSTABLE ON HADES. 295 
 
 this visible humanity. They rightly reject the idea that the 
 supposed ' spirit ' is formally the man. They insist on the in- 
 dwelling of Christ's Spirit as the sole hope of human immortality. 
 They are also in accord with the Bible in refusing to regard the 
 condition of the soul in a separate state as 'the hope of the 
 Church ; ' rightly declaring that that hope is in Resurrection at 
 the second coming of the Christ. They maintain also with 
 reasonable zeal that if man is wholly destroyed in the first death, 
 there can be no painful sense of delay between death and the 
 advent of Christ, since those who have fallen asleep may be 
 expected to awake in the coming glory without any sense of inter- 
 vening time. 
 
 Believing, nevertheless, that a certain degree of importance 
 attaches to this subject, I shall now describe the arguments of the 
 various existing schools of opinion on Hades, and venture with 
 due deference to declare my own judgment on the difference. 
 
 I. 
 
 The first school is led by Mr. Constable. In his work on 
 Hades he maintains the position that the tripartite nature of 
 man has been misunderstood by Dr. Delitzsch and Mr. Heard. 
 According to him the ' body ' stands for the material fabric ; the 
 ' sour (or nephesh H~eb.) for that life in all his faculties and 
 members, which man possesses in common with, or in addition 
 to, that of the lower animals ; and the 'spirit ' (ruach or neschamaJi) 
 for that portion of the Divine Spirit within him which is the cause 
 of the life of that nephesh, or soul, animating the body. In death 
 God withdraws His Spirit, aad the man, with his body and soul, 
 or nephesh, then altogether breaks up and dissolves away. The 
 Man is non-existent. The essential substance of the body re- 
 mains, scattered into atoms. The life, or soul, which was in the 
 blood, was a production of the Spirit of God, and ceases to be 
 when that Spirit withdraws. Thus man in death wholly dies. 
 He has no soul, in the popular sense of the word, no spiritual 
 individuality, or ' inner man,' which can survive. He wholly 
 'dies and returns to his dust,' as do the animals." Thought 
 
 * I do not think it fair to press undesigned consequences on Mr. Constable ; 
 nevertheless is it not true that materialism finds its logical result in atheism ? 
 
296 UNCRITICAL QUOTATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 was a product of the Divine Power acting through the brain. 
 When the Spirit of God withdraws, the life ceases, and thought 
 with it. All these are restored in the resurrection; and in a 
 better form. To live for ever as a man is the privilege of the 
 regenerate. All others will die a second time in the pains of the 
 second death. 
 
 It is obvious that the phraseology of Scripture, that vast and 
 various quarry, supplies much material, if not regarded with too 
 critical an eye, which can readily be built up into this hypothesis. 
 And the advocates of the theory quote from the books of the Old 
 Testament many passages, which, if they are to be taken for 
 divine revelations on psychology, undoubtedly serve the theory 
 well, as popular defences. Thus Mr. Constable, on other occa- 
 sions a careful critic, frequently cites the noted words of the book 
 Ecclesiastes on the nature and destiny of man and of animals, and 
 on the absence of all thought in Sheol or Hades (' The dead know 
 not anything'}. Some of his coadjutors even cite the speeches of 
 the excellent but mistaken persons introduced in the drama of 
 Job's sufferings, as if they were authoritative declarations on the 
 dissipation of the soul, requiring our assent ; whereas it must first 
 be proved, against Hengstenberg and Ewald, that these books are 
 something beyond the devout speculations of poets and philoso- 
 phers perhaps of the time of the Captivity, incorporated with the 
 sacred writings as valuable records of tentative holy thought in 
 the ages of preparation for the gospel ; and next, that in these 
 passages the writers are speaking in a more than popular tone. 
 In the same manner the words of the late Psalm cxlvi. 5 are often 
 cited : ' In that very day his thoughts perish} as proving that the 
 mind of man goes to nothing at death. It is difficult to reason on 
 Scripture doctrine with those who maintain so rigid an opinion 
 on the universal force of inspiration in the books of the Old 
 
 If man has no reason to believe that he possesses a ' spirit ' in himself, he has 
 no reason for concluding that the mind revealed in Nature inheres in an 
 Eternal ' Spirit.' We know God's attributes only through our own constitu- 
 tion ; and if thought with us is a function of matter, it is right to conclude 
 either, pantheistically, that there is some governing thought which is a function 
 of the matter of the universe, or, atheistical ly, that there is no mind in nature, 
 notwithstanding appearances. Mr. Constab'e will resist the conclusion. But 
 Professor Clifford, a more consistent niateriaMst, stoutly affirms it (Fortnightly 
 Review, No. 139, 1875). 
 
6: PAUL ON i COR. XV. 1 8. 297 
 
 Testament, as to think that a strong assertion, occurring any- 
 where, of the sudden end in death of all man's active purposes 
 and judgments in life,* is to be taken for a divine psychological 
 deliverance on the abolition of the thinking spirit in death. t 
 Such modes of quoting the poetic and philosophic books of the 
 Old Testament are nearly on a par with those by which it 
 is unaccountably sought by some to withstand the Newtonian 
 astronomy, and to establish the notion that God has revealed to 
 men in the Old Testament the truth of the Ptolemaic system. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest popular support of this doctrine is derived 
 from i Cor. xv. 18: < If Christ le not raised, ye are yet in your sins. 
 Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ, a.\ovro, are gone 
 to nothing ; ' in which it is said to be asserted by S. Paul, that all 
 future life depends on resurrection, there being no soul to sur- 
 vive in death. But S. Paul makes no such statement. He 
 teaches what would have happened if Christ had not been raised ; 
 if there had been no redemption, and no justification by His 
 death. In that case doubtless death would be the end of man, 
 since the ' soul ' of any being, made as Adam was, a ' living 
 animal/ does not naturally survive in death. But S. Paul does 
 not teach this of the destiny of human souls in death, now that 
 redemption has occurred, and Christ has risen : especially not of 
 the dead in Christ. He states elsewhere that the believer's soul 
 absent from the body is present with the Lord. 
 
 It follows as a natural corollary from their general idea that 
 this school of. psychologers insists on attaching to the Hebrew 
 word Sheol (SlNS?) and to the Greek word Hades (AiS-^s) in- 
 variably the meaning of the Grave, a tolerably stout assertion 
 standing here in the place of evidence. 
 
 iT? purposes, opinions, counsels. Gesenitts. 
 t In common conversation, or in writing, either by heathen or Christians, 
 we say, ' So-and-so did such and such things while he lived, but now he is 
 dead ; ' without giving any opinion against the survival of the soul. Then 
 why should the Bible, which is written in man's language, be so interpreted in 
 some of its plain statements as to be made to contradict itself in various other 
 portions, often quoted ? When it was intended that we shall understand by 
 death the extinction of the soul also, this is expressed in words, when Christ 
 held out the threat of ' the destruction of body and soul in Gehenna. ' Matt. 
 x. 28. 
 
298 MR. MAUDE ON SHEOL. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is not a subject of wonder that a second school of criticism, 
 in which no one has written more ably than Mr. Maude, is based 
 upon rejection of much argument that passes current with the 
 former.* Mr. Constable's proposal to abolish the soul of man 
 as a separable entity is resisted (i) on the ground of almost 
 universal instinctive expectation of survival ; (2) on the testimony 
 of those Old Testament Scriptures which he regards as a psycho- 
 logical authority entirely devoted to his own side of the argument ; 
 and (3) still more .reliance is placed on the more luminous teach- 
 ing of the apostles of Christianity. 
 
 It is held that, whether rightly or wrongly, the Scriptures speak 
 of a soul or spirit which, although not forming the whole of the 
 Man, is a part of his being, and is capable, under God's will, of 
 surviving in death. Conceding that such a survival is contrary 
 to the analogy of death in all other animated beings around us ; 
 that it is contrary to the original intention of God in the curse 
 of death threatened at first to Adam in paradise ; nay, even 
 maintaining with Delitzsch that the survival of the soul or spirit 
 in death is of the nature of a miraculous or abnormal provision, 
 arising out of the economy of redemption, with a view to. future 
 resurrection ; they nevertheless hold that it is impossible by fair 
 means to eliminate the idea of a surviving soul from the Bible. 
 Such a notion was believed in, both in antiquity and in more 
 recent times. The question of the measure of truth in such a 
 
 * I have not thought it necessary to describe the intermediate eclectic opinion 
 of Mr. Warleigh, Rector of Ashchurch, an able and resolute thinker, as the 
 mark of a distinct * school,' because it seems to be almost restricted to himself. 
 He agrees with Mr. Constable that man has body, soul, and spirit, the soul 
 being the life, and the Spirit the cause of that life, the Spirit of God. He 
 believes that when wicked men die, God withdraws His Spirit, and the man 
 wholly perishes till the resurrection. But Mr. Warleigh differs from Mr. 
 Constable in this that in the case of Christian believers, the Spirit which he 
 describes as the Spirit of God, becomes, according to him, a distinct individual 
 Spirit of the man, separable from the soul ; and he thinks that this ' Spirit,' 
 with all the attributes of an individual Mind, survives in Paradise till the 
 resurrection, when it rejoins soul and body at the Lord's coming. 
 
SHEOL AND HADES. 299 
 
 belief may be postponed. The present object is to show the 
 evidence relied on to prove its reality and antiquity. 
 
 (i) Although in twenty-eight places in the Old Testament 
 King James's version translates Sheol by the grave, no point in 
 criticism admits of fuller proof than that Sheol was the name given 
 to the under-world of souls departed. Sheol fills a much larger 
 space in the Hebrew Bible that it does in the English. It can 
 properly be rendered the ' grave ' only where that word is taken, 
 as in Gray's Elegy, to include the state of departed souls. Its 
 true signification is rightly and uniformly represented in the Greek 
 version of the Septuagint by Hades, a word which in Greek 
 literature of all ages stood for the world of the departed. Sheol 
 was not the sepulchre, but a place conceived of as being as far 
 below the earth's surface as the visible Heaven was high above 
 it (Deut. xxxii. 22 ; Psalm cxxxix. 8; Job ix. 8 ; Amos ix. 2, 3) : 
 * It is high as heaven : what canst thou do ? deeper than Sheol : 
 what canst thou know? ' It was a place of darkness and silence 
 in ' the lower parts of the earth/ This, as is known, is exactly 
 what was signified by the Greek Hades, as in Homer's eleventh 
 Book of the Odyssey, where Ulysses descends to ' Hades ' to con- 
 sult the souls of the dead. The Septuagint translators, therefore, 
 who well knew the native meaning of both words, have, by sub- 
 stituting uniformly the one for the other, shown beyond question 
 what the word Sheol meant in the opinion of the Hebrews. 
 Their judgment sets aside that of Mr. Constable. Sheol was the 
 subterranean abode of departed spirits, not the sepulchre.* 
 
 When, then, the saints of the Old Testament speak of ' descend- 
 ing to Sheol] they, it is said, intended to express their faith in 
 a soul surviving in a silent abode below.the earth's surface. ' I 
 shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning' (Gen. xxxvii. 35). 
 In Jacob's idea Joseph had no grave. The belief in the abode 
 involved the belief in its inhabitants. 
 
 (2) The law of Moses against ' necromancy,' or the attempt 
 to hold illicit communion with the dead, proves unquestionably 
 the popular belief that the souls of the dead survived. The law 
 
 * For the complete discussion of the signification of Hades see Dr. George 
 Campbell's Dissertations perfixed tojiis Translation of the Gospels ; Greswell's 
 Notes on the Parables, vol. i. ; Lange on the Revelation, Excursus on Hades, 
 Delitzsch, Psychology, bk. vi. ; S. Cox, Salvator Mundi. 
 
3oo SEEKING TO THE DEAD DEUT. XVIII. 
 
 is distinct (Deut. xviii. n). ' There shall not be found among 
 you (D'W?/K trn) a seeker to the dead: This is probable 
 evidence that Moses allowed such consultation to be possible ; 
 but it is certain evidence that the people for whom he legislated 
 believed that the souls of the dead had a separate existence, and 
 that some of them further believed they might be brought up from 
 Sheol for purposes of divination. This offence constituted a 
 prominent part of the sin of ' witchcraft,' or ' dealing with familiar 
 spirits ; ' punishable with death. There cannot be a more decisive 
 proof that the Hebrew people did not think that in death the 
 whole man was utterly annihilated. They thought that a part 
 survived in Sheol* 
 
 (3) In the times of the Judges the same belief prevailed. 
 King Saul thought that by consulting the witch of Endor it was 
 possible to enter into consultation with the spirit of Samuel now 
 departed ; and, if we may trust the history, he succeeded perhaps 
 beyond his expectations. If, on the other hand, the witch was 
 an impostor, and only feigned that she beheld an apparition, still 
 she practised on the popular belief. The Hebrews of that day 
 must have believed in souls surviving, or so many witches would 
 not have pretended to raise them. 
 
 (4) In the days of David and Solomon we find that good men 
 spoke of their nephesh or soul as being in the hand or power of 
 Sheol; Samuel speaks of his spirit as * disquieted when brought 
 
 * The sense of this whole passage in Deut. xviii. is obscured in our Bibles by 
 the insertion of the paragraph mark at verse 15. There is a close connection 
 between that verse and those which precede. Divination and necromancy are 
 forbidden as * abominations,' but they are also prohibited as unnecessary 
 intrusions into the spiritual realms, since God promises to raise up prophets 
 'from the midst of them, of their brethren? men in the flesh, so that there is no 
 need for attempting to gain information from the world of spirits by unlawful 
 methods. If this was true under the Mosaic Law, how much more emphati- 
 cally must spiritualistic ' seeking to the dead ' be an abomination now that the 
 greatest of all the Prophets, like unto Moses, has arisen. To ' seek to familiar 
 spirits, or to wizards that peep and that mutter ' now, is the consummation of 
 wickedness. But it is quite in character for those who cast the words of our 
 Redeemer on all other subjects behind their backs. All such 'sorcerers' 
 (yorjrf c), we are told, ' shall have their part in the lake of fire that burneth 
 with brimstone ' (Rev. xxii. 15). On the character of the Goes, or ' sorcerer ' of 
 the New Testament, see Smith's Bibl. Diet, on Divination, and John Sheppard 
 on the Divine Origin of Christianity. 
 
THE REPHAIM. 301 
 
 up' (i Sara, xxviii. 15). In the Proverbs, Solomon speaks of 
 certain Rephaim D^KS""] as being * in the depths, or valleys, of 
 Sheol j but who are lost to view in the English Bible, under the 
 name of the 'dead.' Thus in ii. 18 we learn that there is a 
 'descent' from the harlot's house down to 'Death,' where are 
 * the Rephaim: ' He knoweth not that the Rephaim are there, 
 and her guests in the abysses of Sheol' (ix. 18). ' The man who 
 wandereth out of the way of understanding, shall abide in the 
 congregation of the Rephaim: We meet with these Rephaim 
 elsewhere. In Isaiah xxvi. 14, the prophet, speaking of pagan 
 tyrants, who had oppressed the nation, says, 'They are dead men, 
 they shall not live, they are Rephaim, they shall not stand up ; ' 
 and in verse 19, after describing the happy resurrection of the 
 righteous, he adds, 'the earth shall cast out (like an abortion) the 
 Rephaim: Again in chapter xiv. he describes Sheol, the King 
 of the world of Shades, as ' stirring up the Rephaim ' to meet the 
 King of Babylon on the day when he goes down into the abyss. 
 And once more, in Job xxvi. 5, we read another indication ot 
 popular opinion, when he says, speaking of God's all-piercing 
 sight," ' The Rephaim are pierced through beneath the waters, and 
 their habitations. Sheol is naked before Him, and Abaddon hath 
 no covering.' 
 
 Who are the Rephaim ? Gesenius says that the word stands 
 for the departed souls of the dead in Sheol, and the reference is 
 more commonly to the wicked dead (see Prov. ii. 18; ix. 18; 
 xxi. 1 6 ffeb.} 
 
 (5) In the days of Isaiah the prophet the practice of ' seeking 
 to the dead,' forbidden by the Mosaic law, was rife in the 
 degraded state of the nation (Isaiah viii. 19). The practice at 
 least bespeaks the perpetuation of ancient belief in the survival 
 of the souls of the dead. It proves, if nothing else, yet that 
 Mr. Constable's opinion that man has no surviving spirit was not 
 embraced by Israel. 
 
 Such, then, is the evidence of this faith presented in the Old 
 Testament. No one can pretend that the Sheol of the Hebrews 
 offers to us, an attractive shadow-picture. Jacob thinks of 
 descending to it ' mourning.' David has no cheerful thoughts of 
 its darkness or silence. Hezekiah 'turns his face to the wall' 
 
302 < NOT ABLE TO KILL THE SOUL: 
 
 and prays to be delivered from ' going down to the bor, or abyss.' 
 Even Samuel says only that he has been * disturbed ' by being 
 ' brought up.' 
 
 Perhaps the chief value of these dismal Old Testament repre- 
 sentations is as preparing us for the testimonies of the New. 
 The advocates of the school now under description affirm that 
 by fair criticism it is not possible to evade the evidence of the 
 New Testament in favour of the survival of souls. 
 
 1. It is said that the common use of the term Hades in the 
 Greek Testament to describe the state following death is decisive 
 as to the belief of its writers." To no Greek readers would the 
 word signify aught else than a place where departed spirits 
 reside. 
 
 2. Our Lord's words, if correctly rendered in the Greek version, 
 if a version, of Matthew's Gospel, compel the admission that 
 Christ regarded man as consisting ' of body and soul, of which 
 unity one portion survived in the first death (Matt. x. 28). ' Fear 
 not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ; 
 but fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in 
 Gehenna.' Here, it is argued, Christ asserts the survival of the 
 \j/vx>j in death ; and His words afford no congruous sense, if the 
 if/vyr} be not here a separable soul. For if the soul (or nephesh 
 of Mr. Constable) perishes at death, then he who ' kills the body ' 
 does * kill the soul/ as Calvin long since pointed out, and there 
 is no distinction between the two cases supposed. No even 
 colourable escape from this criticism seems possible except by 
 refinements unintelligible to the common people. 
 
 3. The description which Christ gave to the Pharisees of the 
 respective fates of the souls of the Rich Man and Lazarus in 
 Hades (Luke xvi.), is an apparent indication of the conscious 
 repose at least of some departed souls, and the sufferings at least 
 of certain others. The only mode of resisting this argument 
 that of Mr. Constable, who supposes that Christ here holds out 
 a description of future torment in Gehenna, under the image of 
 separate souls suffering in Hades, as the Pharisees erroneously 
 conceived it is not one which can. be tolerated until his general 
 
 
 
 * See a scholarlike letter to this effect by Dr, Weymouth, Head Master ot 
 Mill Hill School, in Rainbow of Nov. 1871. 
 
CHRIST 'S WORDS TO THE DYING ROBBER. 303 
 
 argument has been made good on other grounds. It is an inge- 
 nious but gratuitous invention in criticism. 
 
 4. The words of Christ to the crucified robber at the hour of 
 His death are naturally adduced as strong evidence of the un- 
 soundness of Mr. Constable's theory. He himself, with charac- 
 teristic candour, confesses that they long caused delay in his 
 acceptance of his later views. The robber, looking upon the 
 Saviour, gasped out the prayer, ' Lord, remember me when Thou 
 comest into Thy kingdom ! ' He had probably learned enough 
 of the history of Jesus and of the evidence of His Messiahship 
 to embrace the faith of His resurrection at some future time. 
 Christ's answer was, ' Verily, I say unto thee, This day shalt thou 
 be with me in the Paradise ' (^fMepov per e//,ov on; TW TrapaSeio-w). 
 ' The Paradise ' was the poetic name given by the Jews of that 
 day, says Professor Plumptre (rightly citing in proof Josephus, 
 Wetstein, Grotius, and Schoettgen*), to the upper region of 
 Hades, in which holy souls were believed to rest. Christ's words, 
 it is affirmed, were understood by the robber in the sense which 
 they popularly bore at that epoch. There is no doubt that he 
 would receive the promise in the sense of going to ' Abraham's 
 Bosom ' in Sheol. One argument for the survival of souls, there- 
 fore, is derived from the historical signification of Paradise. 
 
 Another is drawn from the use and place of 3?j//,epov (semeron\ 
 To-day, in the same sentence. It has been attempted to join 
 this word to the previous clause, ' Verily I say unto thee to-day, 
 thou shalt be with me in Paradise,' i.e., after the resurrection. 
 But, (i) the word a-^cpov is here obviously emphatic, and Greek 
 usage fixes the place of the emphatic semeron at or near the 
 beginning of the clause to which it belongs. Hence we learn 
 that it belongs to the second clause : * To-day shalt thou be with 
 me in Paradise.' Thus we find it in Matt. xxi. 28 (Gr.), 'Son, 
 go to-day work.' Mark xiv. 30, 'Verily I say unto thee, To-day, 
 in this very night, thou shalt deny me thrice.' Luke iv. 21, ' To- 
 day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.' Luke xix. 5, ' To-day 
 I must abide at thine house.' Acts xiii. 38, ' To-day have I 
 begotten thee.' These three examples are from the pen of the 
 same S. Luke. Heb. iv. 7, ' To-day if ye will hear His voice, 
 harden not your hearts.' 
 
 * Article on Paradise,\in. Smith's Biblical Dictionary. 
 
304 CHRIST'S WORDS TO THE DYING ROBBER. 
 
 That to-day is here emphatic is proved from two considerations 
 (i) The robber had prayed to Jesus to remember him when 
 He came into His kingdom. The answer is a gracious surprise, 
 indicated by the ' Verity ! ' that he should ' be with Him to-day 
 in Paradise.' Being emphatic, therefore, the to-day belongs to 
 the beginning of the latter clause. (2) The word, which yields 
 so pregnant a sense when taken emphatically, uses congruity 
 when taken without emphasis as the ending of the first clause, 
 * Verily I say unto thee to-day ! ' If all that Christ intended 
 were that He was speaking 'to-day/ that was already clear 
 without observation, and there was no more reason for inserting 
 the word to-day than when speaking on any other occasion."' 
 
 There is, however, another attempt to reconcile this expression 
 of our Lord with the idea of the dissipation of the soul. It is 
 said, If the soul totally vanish between death and the resurrec- 
 tion, there will be no sense of the lapse of time, and the awaken- 
 ing of the dead robber would be in the future Paradise, at a* 
 moment which would seem to be the evening of the very day on 
 which he died. The answer to this criticism is briefly as follows : 
 
 (1) It supposes, but does not prove, the dissipation of the soul. 
 
 (2) It would not be true, whatever might seem to be the case, 
 that that day the thief would be in Paradise. He would have 
 to wait till Christ's return from heaven. (3) It is inconceivable 
 that Christ would, under such solemn circumstances, have used 
 words of comfort to the dying sinner, which can be prevented 
 from conveying the idea of immediate entrance into some blessed 
 state only by an argument on the dissipation of the soul, which 
 was quite beyond the capacity of the thief, or of any except 
 cultivated men an argument partaking more of the nature of 
 an intellectual riddle than of the serious significance fitted for 
 the lips of a dying Saviour, whose own Spirit was certainly not 
 about to sink into nothingness. On the contrary, we are taught 
 by S. Peter that ' being put to death in the flesh He was made 
 alive in spirit, and went and preached to the spirits in prison, 
 who once were disobedient in the days of Noah' (i Peter iii. 18). 
 
 5. Christ's own commendatory prayer in the act of dying is 
 
 * The Improved Version of the Unitarians characteristically marks the pas- 
 sage as doubtful. But it is in the text of the Sinaitic, Vatican, and Alexandrian, 
 MSS. 
 
QUA LORD'S WORDS IN DYING. 303 
 
 thought to be fatal to the theory of soul-dissipation. Mr. Con - 
 stable is oppressed by the notion, that if anything survives in 
 death the man is not dead, and hence, that the foundation of 
 truth which he values will be removed. There is, however, one 
 great example to the contrary which, although only an argument 
 adhominem, obviates his objection. The Lord Christ undoubtedly 
 died. Now His nature consisted, according to Mr. Constable, of 
 a union between humanity and Deity. The Godhead of the 
 Word was as truly a part of the nature of THE CHRIST as His 
 humanity. In the passion Christ died. To Mr. Constable we 
 can say nothing of the survival of His soul, for he thinks that He 
 had none, in the popular sense of the term. His soul was His 
 life in the blood. But he admits that a Divine Spirit formed an 
 integral part of His nature, and that that Divine Logos survived 
 the death of the Christ. Did that survival invalidate Christ's 
 death ? Yes or No ? If it did, then, according to Mr. Con- 
 stable, Christ did not die ; but this Mr. Constable would doubt- 
 less deny, affirming that Christ died. Yet, if the survival of a 
 Divine Spirit did not invalidate the death of Christ, then neither 
 does the survival of a human spirit invalidate the death of a man 
 in that incomplete death which prevails under the economy of 
 redemption until the second death takes place. 
 
 6. The language of the New Testament writers, while 
 freely speaking of death as a sleep, indicates that the sleeper 
 was not wholly abolished. Stephen 'fell asleep,' but he first 
 commended his spirit (' my spirit ') into the hands of Jesus in 
 heaven as if the spirit in him were really a part of his own being, 
 and not more a * loan ' than his body. 
 
 There is also a remarkable difference between the expressions 
 of dying saints before and after the ascension of Christ to heaven, 
 which was early noticed in the primitive Church.* In old times 
 the saints ever spoke of descending into Sheol. Now they ' com- 
 mit their spirits to the hands of Jesus.' S. Paul again declares 
 that he was ' caught up into Paradise ' (2 Cor. xii.), whereas the 
 Paradise of departed souls was shortly before thought of as in 
 Hades, in the ' lower parts of the earth.' 
 
 * See Pearson on the Creed, in Article 'He descended into Hell' Dr. Winter 
 Hamilton assents to this doctrine. Congregational Lecture on Rewards and 
 Punishments \ 
 
 20 
 
306 ' TO DIE IS GAIN.' 
 
 7. S. Paul in often-cited passages employs terms unintelligible 
 unless he believed in the survival of his spirit in death, and its 
 residence in some restful abode with Christ, not in the sub- 
 terranean Hades, until the resurrection. 'Therefore we are 
 always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the 
 body we are absent from the Lord ; we are confident, I say, and 
 willing, rather to be absent from the body and to be present 
 with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 6-8). 
 
 In the other noted text (Phil. i. 20-22) he puts his meaning 
 beyond doubt. * Christ shall be magnified in His body, whether 
 by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 
 But if to live in the flesh, this is to me reward of labour, so that 
 what I shall choose I know not. For I am in a strait between 
 two, having a desire for departing, and being with Christ ; for it is 
 very far better: yet to abide in my flesh is more needful for your 
 sake.' It is thought to offer violence to these two passages to 
 take them in any other sense than this : that Paul expected 
 notwithstanding his language elsewhere respecting death as a 
 ' sleep ' (i Thess. iv. 13), and the day of resurrection as the day 
 of adoption, and public manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 
 viii.) that his spirit would ascend when he ' fell asleep,' to rest 
 in the keeping of Jesus Christ till the second advent. He says 
 not indeed one word of active service in the upper sanctuary; not 
 a word indicating that the soul, so resting in that Paradise (to 
 which whether in the body, or out of the body, he was once 'caught 
 up,' 2 Cor. xii.), would be qualified for either work or converse 
 with others ; on the contrary, he speaks of the disembodied 
 condition as not in itself desirable, * not that we would be un- 
 clothed ; ' he looked forward to the resurrection as the time of 
 coronation and public acknowledgment; but he does seem to 
 speak quite distinctly of survival, and of ascension into the 
 presence and society of Christ. 
 
 Now what are the two things between which Paul was held in 
 a strait, not knowing which to choose ? Surely they were life and 
 death; 'abiding in the flesh,' and the 'departing ' (of the soul) 
 to be * with Christ ; ' ' continuing ' with the Church on earth, 
 and being * absent from the body,' to be * present with the Lord.' 
 This makes excellent sense. But try Mr. Constable's theory in a 
 paraphrase, and what sense appears ? ' Christ shall be magnified 
 
1 ABSENT FROM THE BODY: 307 
 
 in my body, whether by means of life, or by means of going to 
 nothing. For to me to live is Christ, and to go to nothing is 
 gain. For if I live in the flesh this is the fruit of my labour ; yet 
 what I shall choose I know not ; for I am in a strait betwixt the 
 two, having a desire for the returning at some future time, after 
 a period of nothingness, and so being with Christ, which is far 
 better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for 
 you ; and having this confidence I know that I shall abide and 
 continue with you all.' 
 
 According to this scheme of interpretation, what are the two 
 things between which Paul was in a strait? Will it be said, 
 living here and living again at Christ's second advent? But 
 what was there in those two things to put him * in a strait ' 
 which he ' should choose ' ? He could not by any * choice ' of 
 his hasten the resurrection by a single moment, and his dying, 
 or going to nothing, is clearly by this hypothesis not one of the 
 alternatives. These are ' abiding in the flesh,' and enjoying 
 Christ's presence at the resurrection. Now since Paul could 
 not expect to enjoy that sooner than the Philippians, what 
 * strait ' could there be rendering it difficult to choose ; especially 
 as he says expressly there would be * fruit of his labour ' so long 
 as he lived ? Besides, if the reference were to the resurrection, 
 the Philippians would be with him there, and both parties would 
 be ' in the body,' so that there would be no contrast remaining 
 between a state in which he ' in the flesh ' should be with them, 
 and one in which he would not. 
 
 With this unmeaning tangle compare the sense which comes 
 out when we remember that the leading idea of the passage is, 
 that death is gain. Why is it gain to die ? Because to ' depart,' 
 or no longer to be ' in the flesh,' or continue on earth, is to be 
 'with Christ.' And this agrees with the difficulty of choosing 
 between the two attractions, to labour to serve Christ on earth 
 and to enjoy His immediate presence in heaven. It agrees also 
 with the words of the apostles in 2 Cor. v., that while we are ' at 
 home in the body, we are absent from the Lord ; ' while to be 
 absent from the body, eK^/^crai e* TOV o-w/xaros, is to be * at 
 home with the Lord' 
 
 8. Lastly, the same idea comes out, it is thought, in Hebrews 
 xi. 40, taken in comparison with xii, 23. The sacred writer says 
 
308 ' SPIRITS OF JUST MEN PERFECTED.' 
 
 the fathers all died in faith, not having received the promise ; 
 God having provided some better thing (KP^LTTOV , compare 
 Phil. i. 23) for us, that they without us should not be made per- 
 fect.' Then in the following chapter, describing the privileges of 
 Christians under this dispensation, he says, 'But ye are come 
 unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the 
 heavenly -Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 
 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are 
 written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits 
 of just men made perfect, Trvcv/xaort Si/auW TcreA-etw/xei/cov/ Does 
 it not appear that in these verses the difference is described 
 between the condition of just men in death before the coming of 
 Christ, and their condition after it ? Before that event they were 
 not * perfected,' a word taken from the mysteries, and signifying 
 ' admitted to the inner sanctuary ; ' the ' way into the holies not 
 having been made manifest ; ' but now ' the spirits of just men ' 
 are ' perfected ; ' that is, they are ascended to the ' heavenly 
 Jerusalem,' and to ' Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant ; ' 
 whither, in consequence, the departing souls of Christians ascend 
 when they die. And does not this accord with Christ's own 
 prayer, when shortly about to take his seat as Governor of the 
 universe in heaven ? ' Father, I will that they whom thou hast 
 given me be Ivith me where I am, that they may behold (a/a 
 tfewpuxn) my glory, which thou hast given me ' (John xvii.). He 
 needed not to pray that they might be with Him after their 
 resurrection, for that was a matter of course ; but He prays that 
 their spirits may escape the old law of consignment to Hades, 
 and may be * with Him to contemplate the glory ' of His Media- 
 torial Omnipotence. 
 
 III. 
 
 In summing up the result of this inquiry, it must be allowed, 
 first of all, that nearly every presumptive physical argument is on 
 the side of those who think that death ends consciousness, and 
 terminates the spiritual individuality ; and that the survival of the 
 thinking power in the dissolution of the humanity is contrary 
 to the analogy of the living creation to which man belongs. 
 Death, too, as the original penalty of sin, was doubtless death 
 
SURVIVAL DUE TO REDEMPTION. 309 
 
 in the most absolute sense of the term. If, then, any element sur- 
 vive in the first death, it must be attributed to the supernatural 
 action of redemption alone, which operates to the abnormal 
 preservation of the spiritual essence in the dissolution of the 
 man, both for judgment and reward. So much even Delitzsch 
 concedes. 
 
 But, secondly, I venture to think that the large preponderance 
 of argument is on the side of those who do not rely on this pre- 
 sumptive analogy against survival, but rather on the New Testa- 
 ment Revelation ; which compels us to believe that in the death 
 which men now die, the curse is executed in such a manner 
 (in the survival of the soul) as to allow of its reversal by the 
 resurrection of the same man to life, or of its second infliction, 
 under the irremediable condition of extinction of ' both soul and 
 body in hell ' (Matt. x. 28). That such a survival of the spiritual 
 element is possible is suggested even to reason by the fact that 
 there is something within us which preserves its identity, its unity 
 of consciousness and memory, through all the bodily atomic 
 changes of eighty years. The authors of the Unseen Universe 
 have supported this opinion with all the authority of physical 
 science i-tself. (Fourth edition, p. 200.) 
 
 The general doctrine of the Bible that a spirit survives in man's 
 death seems to outlast all the attacks of its opponents. The 
 question remains whether the New Testament is mistaken. If 
 our Lord and Saviour had not given so distinct a sanction to the 
 belief by His own words on the Cross, and afterwards allowed 
 His Apostle to use language confirmatory of the belief, we might 
 perhaps have doubted the sufficient authority of Old Testament 
 writers on such a question. But the evidence is not fragmentary. 
 It is systematic, and extends through both Testaments. Without 
 dogmatising on the measure or kind of consciousness in souls 
 departed, whether of the righteous, or the wicked, I am compelled 
 by the Scriptures to retain the persuasion of the survival of 'souls' 
 in death. The phenomena of apparitions, and of spiritualism, 
 may be regarded as inferior and secondary evidence indicating 
 some activity in the souls of the ' dead ; ' though the mixture of 
 credulity and deception in much of the supposed ' necromancy ' 
 is such as to render a cautious judgment unwilling to rest a 
 primary argument upon such disputable testimony, notwith- 
 
3 io SPIRITUALISTIC SORCERY.. 
 
 standing a personal conviction of the occasional reality of the 
 phenomena.* 
 
 Perhaps the discrepancy in men's judgments on this question 
 has arisen from the supposition that it behoves us to make out a 
 uniform scheme as to the disposal of souls since the beginning of 
 the world ; as if the condition of souls departed at any one time 
 or place must be taken as a rule for understanding all that is said 
 of souls at other times and in other places. It is possible (the 
 truth to be ascertained only by induction of evidence) that God, 
 who deals so variously with mankind on this side the veil, as to the 
 degrees of their consciousness, knowledge, and enjoyment, may deal 
 with them in the intermediate state, if, as we believe, there is such 
 a state, on a principle of similar diversity. Some may sleep, some 
 may be wholly unconscious, some may be thinking, learning, im- 
 proving ; some may be in sorrow, some may be even in torment 
 (Luke xvi.), some may be wandering on earth as daimonia y some 
 may be shut up in the abyss, some may have been confined in 
 Hades until the first Advent, some may have been evangelised in 
 Hades by the Spirit of Christ, and some may have been translated 
 to heaven since Christ ascended there. We need not imagine 
 
 * What adds to the difficulty of adducing the facts of spiritualism as evidence 
 of survival is the suspicion that loftier demonic agency may have some part in 
 ancient and modern necromancy. Tertullian has a curious passage on similar 
 * manifestations ' in his own time. ; This imposture of the evil spirit, lying con- 
 cealed in the persons of the dead, we are able to prove by actual facts when, 
 in cases of exorcism, the evil spirit affirms himself to be one of the relatives of 
 the person possessed, sometimes a gladiator, and sometimes even a god.' De 
 Anima, 57. See also Mr. Crooke's papers in the Quarterly Journal of Science, 
 1874; Mr. Howitt's History of the Supernatural (2 vols., Longman, 1863); 
 and Miss Hardinge's Record of American Spiritualism. The conduct of many 
 scientific men in refusing even personal acquaintance with phenomena travestied 
 by the jugglers of the Egyptian Hall, but attested by such capable and cour- 
 ageous observers as Dr. de Morgan, Dr. Huggins, F.R.S., Lord Lindsay, 
 Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., Professor W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.E., and Mr. Wallace, 
 F.R.S., deserves some reprobation. The generally trivial quality of the com- 
 munications thus reported forms one portion of the case for judgment, in the 
 decision of which society rightly looks to its foremost philosophers for guidance. 
 But the truth is that the theory of some of these on the unseen universe would not 
 allow of any tolerable solution of the remarkable phenomenon of folly, deception, 
 and wickedness, thinly disguised by a varnish of religious language, and 
 operating from 'the air.' The apostolic demonology alone explains that 
 paradox. 
 
SURVIVAL OF SOULS IN CHRIST. 311 
 
 ourselves under an obligation to force plain testimonies of Scrip- 
 ture out of their meaning, under the idea that it can teach only 
 one and the same thing with respect to men of all ages, of all 
 characters, of all conditions as to light and darkness. It is 
 possible that truth may require us to believe in a various economy. 
 And no man is justified in rejecting the belief in an intermediate 
 state, because he is unable to reduce the whole doctrine to a neat 
 and handy theory for use in controversy with opponents of the 
 truth on immortality, some of whom are more apt at a speculative 
 logomachy than at a broad and careful interpretation of Scripture. 
 
 Finally, there seems to be a special reason for holding fast to 
 the survival and consciousness of souls in Christ, derived from the 
 consideration of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers, of 
 which S. Paul speaks in his eighth chapter to the Romans. It 
 the indwelling of the Spirit will operate as S. Paul affirms, as a 
 reason for the resurrection of the body, surely the same indwelling, 
 operates to the blessedness of the surviving spirit. The vital 
 principle conjoined for ever to the Divine Nature cannot pass 
 away, but awaits in closest neighbourhood to Christ the hour of 
 resurrection. The eternal life begun knows no break. There is 
 no black line in that spectrum. The light is continuous, and the 
 spiritual inhabitant of the ' tabernacle ' (2 Peter i.), though he 
 may ' put it off/ can never die. 
 
 The survival of the spirits of sinful men in death seems also to 
 hold an important place in the Scripture system ; (i) In order 
 that a continuity may be established between the personality of 
 the man who sinned in time and that of the man who is to be 
 raised for judgment at the last day. If no spirit survived, it 
 might be truly said that a wholly new being was then created to 
 suffer for the offences of another long passed away. Indeed ten 
 new men might just as reasonably be created out of the old 
 materials. 
 
 (2) In order that in some cases the spirit may suffer in Hades 
 for the sins of a lifetime. 
 
 (3) That in other cases the ignorant rejection of God in life. 
 may be remedied by the evangelisation of ' spirits in prison.' 
 
 (4) That a special terror and awfulness may be assigned to the 
 second death, in distinction from the first, in this, that under 
 
3 i2 ENDS CONTEMPLATED IN SURVIVAL. 
 
 the first death there was no ' killing of the soul,' that tremendous 
 and final stroke being reserved as the last penalty of transgression 
 under the gospel, in the ' damnation of Gehenna.' 
 
 It is deserving of consideration whether the almost universal 
 instinctive expectation of survival among wicked men ought not 
 to be taken as something much more than the effect of traditional 
 teaching, and as a divine witness to the fact that the ' Lord 
 knoweth how' to reserve the unjust to the day of judgment, 
 under punishment, /coAao/x,eVovs (2 Peter ii.). See Luke xvi. 24, 
 eV ySao-aVois, spoken of a spirit in Hades,) 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 ON THE QUESTION, WHETHER THE HOLY SCRIPTURES TEACH 
 THAT ANY SINFUL PERSONS, DYING IN IGNORANCE OF CHRIST, 
 ARE EVANGELISED IN HADES. 
 
 Sleep'st Thou indeed ? or is Thy spirit fled, 
 At large among the dead ? 
 Whether in Eden's bowers Thy welcome voice 
 Wake Abraham to rejoice, 
 Or in some drearier scene Thine eye controls 
 The thronging band of souls ; 
 That, as Thy blood won earth, Thine agony 
 Might set the shadowy realm from sin and sorrow free ? 
 
 Christi-.in Year Easter Eve. 
 
 THE grave question in the title of this chapter is often discussed 
 as if it were identical with that of the final salvation of all men ; 
 but the two lines of inquiry altogether differ, and nothing but 
 confusion of thought can ensue from complicating them in one 
 examination.* It may be that the apostolic doctrine is clearly 
 pronounced, as we believe it is, against the salvation of all man- 
 kind ; yet may afford more or less distinct information as to God's 
 merciful dealings with some departed souls in the intermediate 
 state. It may be that the Scripture closes the door of hope 
 irrevocably, as we are assured that it does, against those who 
 have distinctly heard, and deliberately refused or neglected, the 
 gospel message during their lifetime, and who die in such 
 hardened impenitence. And yet it may be true that the divine 
 truth and grace are offered in Hades to millions of souls departed, 
 who died in a state of involuntary ignorance, through the delusions 
 of education, or in a state of sin consequent on imperfect know- 
 
 * The question of Univcrsaljsm will be discussed in Chapter xxvii. 
 
3 i4 ARE ALL THE HEATHEN LOST? 
 
 ledge j so that if they turn hereafter to the light of God, they 
 may participate in everlasting life, through the Incarnation. 
 
 I venture to add a few pages on this subject in a spirit of 
 reverent inquiry, rather than of dogmatic assertion ; premising 
 that with us this is not a question of speculation, but simply of 
 interpretation, and that it is not desired to vindicate for such 
 interpretations a larger space in thought than the subject to be 
 examined occupies in the sacred writings ; much less to en- 
 courage delusive hopes of purgatorial salvation in those who 
 neglect the gospel if offered on earth, whose 'damnation slumbereth 
 not.' 
 
 The reader of the fifth chapter of this volume, ' On the numbers 
 of mankind,' will naturally ask, Do you, then, set forth, as the 
 doctrine of Revelation, that the whole stupendous mass of human 
 beings, in that chapter dimly imagined rather than described, 
 with the fragmentary exception of the small minority of persons 
 affording manifest evidence of regenerate life, under the three 
 successive dispensations, patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian, 
 have all departed to await in Hades the doom of the second 
 death; so that perhaps ninety-nine hundredths of the human 
 race are irrevocably doomed to extinction ? To which we make 
 answer in an emphatic negative, for the reasons following : 
 
 (i) There is ground for disputing, at the outset of this argu- 
 ment, the truth of the popular signification attached to the 
 phrase ' manifest evidence of regenerate life.' Such has been the 
 depraving effect of many forms of Protestant opinion, that there 
 are not a few who hold it as one of the plainest truths, that salva- 
 tion has been attached by God in all ages to the intellectual 
 knowledge of Christ. Understanding that under the present 
 dispensation, salvation is made to depend upon a reception of 
 Christ, when clearly offered to men, there are many who have 
 inferred from this premiss that a similar condition of salvation 
 has prevailed under all previous dispensations of God. It has 
 been attempted to make .out that the pious persons, who died 
 before Christ's advent, understood and believed in the coming 
 sacrifice of Christ, and were saved by their faith in it. Such an 
 opinion is supposed to carry with it the conclusion that those 
 who have not known of Christ in some degree, must needs perish 
 
ANCIENTS SAVED BY FAITH. 
 
 315 
 
 everlastingly. Perhaps there is no religious opinion, once widely 
 received, which better deserves to be regarded as a bubble, 
 sustained and floating only by its inherent emptiness, than this ; 
 as there is certainly none which may be more easily exploded. 
 
 S. Peter himself furnishes us, as has already been shown, both 
 in his history and in his written doctrine, with an effectual antidote 
 to this delusion. He was himself unquestionably a forgiven man 
 when Christ pronounced him ' blessed ' as the confessor of his 
 Messiahship, and declared that the light which led him to that 
 discovery was light from heaven. Yet this saved and forgiven 
 man, when, in the next moment, he heard from Christ of His ap- 
 proaching death, * took Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, 
 That be far from thee, Lord.' Now such a reply was impossible 
 according to the opinion thus held of Jewish faith in the coming 
 Saviour. If it had been the habit of Jewish believers to look for 
 a suffering Messiah, Peter, of all men, immediately he had 
 acknowledged the Christ, would have acknowledged also with 
 sorrow the necessity of His sacrifice. Instead of this, he rejected 
 with abhorrence the idea of Christ's death ; and was reduced to 
 submission only by being ordered to the rear, with the appellation 
 of Satanas. Neither Peter nor any other Jew of his time had 
 understood the mode of man's salvation. 
 
 In his Epistle S. Peter informs us explicitly that a similar 
 ignorance characterised the holy prophets themselves, who 
 1 testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that 
 should follow.' He assures us that they ' inquired and searched 
 diligently ' into the meaning of their own oracles ; * unto whom 
 it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did 
 minister the things which are now reported unto you by them 
 that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent 
 from heaven.' Here, then, is an explicit apostolic assertion that 
 even the prophets themselves were not saved through understand- 
 ing the mysteries of redemption by Christ ; whence it follows 
 that before the first advent no inferior believers were saved by 
 such understanding. 
 
 By what, then, were pre-messianic believers of Israel saved ? 
 We reply with confidence, by trust in the mercy of God, the 
 ultimate object of faith which lies behind the Cross of Christ 
 itself. They were saved by repentance and faith repentance 
 
316 GOSPEL NOT KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS. 
 
 according to the then known standard of right, faith in the divine 
 mercy according to the measure of its revelation. They were 
 ' born of the Spirit/ and the Holy Spirit can regenerate the souls 
 of men by fragments of truth, and perhaps even by a direct action 
 on the ' spirit,' or TireO/xa, while the intellect is still under the 
 domination of many erroneous ideas. Salvation signifies salvation 
 from sin and death, which depends on the indwelling of God in 
 the soul, whether as well known or ill known by the intellect 
 (i/ovs) ; or as known in different degrees. All who are saved 
 will be saved by divine grace revealed at last to the world in the 
 Son of God, and by the direct renewing action of the Spirit of 
 Christ; but this salvation, and this action, are not dependent on 
 systematic knowledge of theological truth. They may take effect, 
 as in the Christian economy, through the renewing action of a 
 fully revealed gospel ; or before it came through the dim com- 
 munications of an elder and imperfect one. ' To them was a 
 gospel preached, even as to us,' but it was not the gospel in the 
 form of the gospel of John or the epistle to the Romans. 
 
 But the establishment of this principle in relation to Israel will 
 carry us a great deal further. What was true of Israel and of the 
 Patriarchs, before the advent, was true, and is true, of men of all 
 ages and of all nations. Wherever there have been men whose 
 souls moved towards the all pervading Light of God, ' feeling 
 after and finding Him,' under whatever shades of heathenish 
 darkness, there, we must believe, has been the action of the re- 
 generating Spirit, and there has been salvation. Men may have 
 described the Great Reality in erroneous phrases, and may have 
 called themselves by erroneous names ; but wherever the prin- 
 ciple of true goodness has existed, it is because ' God has been 
 in them of a truth ' and good men are wonderfully alike under 
 all dispensations. 
 
 Results in character do not depend always on the measure of 
 knowledge. There is no fixed proportion in quantity between 
 the chemical elements required for nutrition, and those which are 
 found in the complex food allotted to vegetables and animals. 
 Sometimes the largest part of their structure is built up out of 
 that of which there is the least proportionate supply. Thus as 
 all vegetation depends on the one-hundredth portion of carbon 
 which the atmosphere contains, so the enormous bony fabric of 
 
OF tGNOkANT MEN. 317 
 
 the elephant is reared from the infinitesimal supply of phosphates 
 in the stacks of foliage which he consumes. A similar law 
 obtains in the spiritual realms. Souls endowed with a certain 
 power can extract their aliment under most unfavourable condi- 
 tions ; and those who are bent on wisdom and goodness can find 
 the new elements of their being amidst very unpromising materials. 
 It is thus that so many reach God from amidst the unfruitful 
 wastes of heathenism, of Mohammedanism, and of European 
 superstition. The one element of truth which was essential to 
 their development has been present in small quantities even 
 amidst the profusion of indigestible diet that accompanied it. 
 
 This view of God's dealings with men is indeed contrary to the 
 professed principles on which some of the missionary enterprises 
 have been conducted in modern times. The supporters of 
 missions have too often held it for fundamental doctrine, that 
 the salvation of a man called a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, a Jew, 
 a Brahminist, or a Fire- worshipper, is simply impossible. The 
 cry has been, * The heathen are perishing ; shall we let them 
 perish ? ' a cry formed on a general, but not a universal truth. 
 Among perhaps nearly all so-called *' heathen ' nations, there are 
 souls which give evidence of elementary goodness and ' repent- 
 ance for sin,' and * feeling after God,' and indeed of ' finding 
 Him,' though not finding His true ' Name/ And when the less 
 instructed supporters of missions become better acquainted with 
 the interior life of mankind, they will learn to acknowledge the 
 reality of such goodness, and its divine original. The denial of 
 such spiritual life by the propagators of modern Christianity is 
 perhaps one cause of its world-wide dogmatic rejection. ' After- 
 wards He appeared unto them in another form ; ' and it may be 
 expected that Christ will by degrees make Himself known to us 
 even in these imperfect types, if we will submit to study facts of 
 character as well as modern theories of evangelisation. 
 
 The benefits of the system of nature can be enjoyed in great 
 measure apart from a right understanding of the theory of nature. 
 The sun has shone upon the earth and ripened the crops of 
 former generations, even while men thought, with Ptolemy, that 
 the earth was the centre and the sun a satellite. In the same 
 manner the benefits of Redemption may be enjoyed apart from 
 a right understanding of the relation of the facts on which it is 
 
318 THE DIVINE IMAGE IN GOOD MEN. 
 
 founded. An erroneous theology maybe as the Ptolemaic system 
 in comparison with the Copernican. But the Spiritual Sun does 
 not altogether restrict His shining to the men who hold a correct 
 theory concerning Him. This, however, is not to deny that, as 
 the practical improvements of modern life depend on a scientific 
 knowledge of nature, so a far higher spiritual life is built upon the 
 foundation of a true theology ; and no zeal can be excessive 
 which is devoted to its ascertainment, defence, and diffusion, 
 provided it be that zeal which is love in action, and which guards 
 itself from the exaggeration of restricting all the Divine favour to 
 its adherents. God is the .God of innocently blind men, and 
 their compassionate Judge, as well as the God of those who ' look 
 up and see all things clearly.' 
 
 When direct sunbeams penetrate through interstices in the 
 shady covert of trees and hedgerows, they carry to the ground a 
 representation, not of the figures of the minute spaces between 
 the leaves through which they streamed, but circular luminous 
 images of the sun himself; so that the ground appears to be 
 dappled with bright circles lying on a field of shadow. When the 
 plane on which they fall is not at right-angles to the ray, the circle 
 is projected slightly into an ellipse ; but if received on an arti- 
 ficial screen placed exactly, the perfect circle is at once formed. 
 In an eclipse these images follow the figure of the uncovered 
 portion of the sun. The reason of the phenomenon is, that each 
 point in the sun's disc sends forth a pencil of rays, which depicts 
 on the ground a tiny image of the aperture, and an infinity of 
 these little polygons makes up a little round, or image of the whole 
 surface of the sun. . Thus, too, the Divine Image is formed on 
 the hearts of men of many persuasions, and of various beliefs, 
 notwithstanding the figure of their receptive faculty; the Holy 
 Beams, when they come direct to the soul, having a power of 
 depicting the likeness of God, even when they enter through the 
 smallest aperture of intelligence, or through the most jagged 
 peculiarities of opinion. There is nothing which will more sur- 
 prise good men, separated on earth by sect or tradition, when 
 they reach the realms of heaven, than to contemplate in each 
 other's countenances the identity of the image of the Most 
 High. ' His name shall be in their foreheads, and there shall be 
 no night there.' 
 
s. PETERS 'i PERCEIVE: 319 
 
 On these grounds we believe, with Zwingli, in the salvation, 
 even on earth, while in the body, of a ' multitude which no man 
 can number, of every nation and kindred and people and tongue ;"* 
 even of those who were not so happy as to have heard, while 
 they lived, of Protestant Christianity or of any Christianity ; so 
 that we are not reduced to the necessity of declaring an unbiblical 
 doctrine on the impossibility of the salvation of any man except 
 through a knowledge of that Christianity. All that we are now 
 learning of the inner and spiritual life of millions of men beyond 
 the pale of the visible Church in ancient and modern Asia, 
 assures us of the reality of the divine operation contended for, in 
 numbers who on earth have never known the revealed Word of 
 God and His Messiah. ' I perceive that in every nation he that 
 feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him ' (Acts 
 x. 35). And this we hold to be entirely consistent with the 
 Article that ' They are to be held accursed that presume to say, 
 that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he pro- 
 fesseth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that 
 aw, and the light of Nature ; ' the saving influence in regene- 
 rate souls being connected with the modicum of truth which 
 they retain, and not with the rubbish of error which accom- 
 panies it. 
 
 (2) But this persuasion, though illuminating many points in 
 God's providence over mankind, does not remove all the diffi- 
 culty caused by the general darkness that has ' covered the earth,' 
 that gross darkness which has overshadowed the people. The 
 action of infernal spirits has established all- various foul delusions 
 over the largest portions of the earth, and during the longest 
 spaces of history ; so that the question recurs, notwithstanding 
 consolatory reflections of the order above set forth, What will be 
 the doom of those countless millions who have lived under the 
 shades of depraving heathenism, lived in]the sin which was the 
 essential element of such heathenism, popular and philosophical, 
 and apparently died in the evil condition which it entails j those 
 countless millions, of whom not the broadest charity can affect to 
 suppose that they were generally aught else than workers of un- 
 righteousness ? Are we compelled to believe, by the New Testa- 
 ment revelation, that all of these, without any further opportunity 
 
320 PREACHING TO SPIRITS HV PRISON. 
 
 of knowledge or repentance, will be consigned to irrevocable de- 
 struction, and ' perish without law '? 
 
 Here we enter upon an inquiry in which it is vain to expect an 
 answer of real value except as it may be supplied by apostolic 
 men, speaking to us under the authority of inspiration. We 
 thank God that there is some solid evidence of a nature to assist 
 our judgment. 
 
 The two leading apostles of the gospel, S. Peter and S. Paul, 
 appear to have given clear, if brief, intimations of a light of divine 
 mercy ' shining in the prison-house ' of souls, for certain classes 
 of spirits departed a light for those who have ' sat in darkness 
 and death shade ' while living on the earth. In commenting on 
 these declarations, I desire to avoid larger inferences than are 
 warranted by the definite statements, and to build up a hope 
 based only on the truth. 
 
 The leading authority is the first general Epistle of that great 
 Apostle to whom ' the keys of the kingdom of heaven ' were 
 delivered, by ' Him that hath the keys of Hades and of Death ; ' 
 * who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man 
 openeth.' 
 
 S. PETER in this epistle (iii. 18-22; iv. 1-6), in a passage 
 singularly free from doubt caused by various readings, and in 
 language obviously designed to teach with authority a doctrine 
 good for the whole Church to learn a doctrine which there is 
 as much reason to receive with faith as any statement similarly 
 delivered by S. Paul or S. John thus describes the mission of 
 Christ's Spirit at His death : 
 
 ' For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just on behalf of the 
 unjust, that He might bring us to God : 
 
 1 Being put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive in the 
 spirit (<amroirjOcls Se Tn/ev/xart), in which also He went and 
 preached to the spirits in prison, though they once had been dis- 
 obedient, when the longsuffering of God was waiting in the days of 
 Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which few, that is eight 
 souls, were saved by water. 
 
 iv. (i) ' Christ then having suffered in the flesh, do you also arm 
 yourselves with the same purpose ; because he who has suffered in the 
 flesh has ceased from sin, (2) so as no longer to the lusts of the flesh, 
 but to the will of God, the remaining time in the flesh to live: (3) 
 
THE SPIRITS IN PRISON. 321 
 
 for the past is sufficient to have wrought the will of the nations, 
 etc. : (4) wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them 
 to the same excess of riot, blaspheming ; (5) who shall give account 
 to Him that is ready to judge (/cptvai) living AND DEAD ' (ve/cpoi;?), 
 (those whom He finds alive at His coming, and all the departed.) 
 
 This word, venous, according to the character of S. Peter's 
 mind, brings him back to the thought, with which he had ended 
 the third chapter, of Christ's Spirit preaching to the spirits in 
 prison and now he adds, ver. 6, ' For, for this purpose even to 
 dead men has the gospel been proclaimed (et? rovro yhp KOL veKpois 
 evrjyyeXto-Or)), in order that they might be judged (Iva KpiOaxnv) after 
 the manner of men in the flesh (Kara avOpuirovs crap*!), but may be 
 living (oknv) according to God in the spirit ' (Kara Oeov Trvcv/xart). 
 
 Now in these words S. Peter seems explicitly to declare, that 
 when Christ died in the flesh, He was still ' alive in the spirit, 
 and went and preached good news to spirits of men in the <f>v\a.Kr] 
 (or prison of the 'abyss,' see Rev. xx. 7; Luke viii. 31), who 
 had once been disobedient in the days of Noah.' And in the 
 sixth verse of the fourth chapter he assigns the reaso.n why the 
 spirits of the dead were thus evangelised, even of those who at the 
 flood died in disobedience and moreover in disobedience to a 
 law made known to them by the spirit of inspiration in Noah's 
 preaching < in order that they might be judged after the manner 
 of men in the flesh, but meanwhile may be living oxn (the present 
 subjunctive) according to God in the spirit ; indicating a process 
 going on now. 
 
 Here, then, is an inspired statement at least to those who be- 
 lieve in S. Peter's authority in this epistle, that some of the spirits 
 of the dead, who had died in disobedience, were evangelised, had 
 the gospel preached to them by the Spirit of the Saviour in the 
 prison of Hades. And mor,e than that, the reason given for this 
 is one which carries us farther. They had the gospel preached to 
 them in Hades, in order that they might be judged by Jesus Christ, 
 and judged like men in the flesh, by the same rule as others who 
 have had the gospel on earth, that is, by the gospel message itself ; 
 so that they should not necessarily perish under the law, but ' may 
 live^ ' (enter into life) ' according to God in the spirit.' But this 
 seems to involve, for the same reason, the presentation of the 
 gospel to the spirits of other dead men who are to be judged by 
 
 21 
 
32 CHRIST PREACHING TO SPIRITS. 
 
 Jesus Christ at the last day ; and especially of those who had not 
 enjoyed even such advantages as those antediluvians who had 
 heard the law-preaching of Enoch and of Noah. 
 
 By S. Peter's declaration, then, a flood of light is thrown upon 
 the divine dealings with the heathen millions. Every human 
 soul survives. Perhaps to every human soul which has not heard 
 it on earth, the 'gospel' will be offered in Hades. They may 
 not accept it there ; but then they will be ' without excuse,' and 
 will be condemned to death eternal as if they were ' men in the 
 flesh ' who rejected the reconciliation.* 
 
 It may be asked, Why this special reference by S. Peter to 
 those who died in disobedience at the deluge? A conjectural 
 solution only can be offered. It may be that, as S. Peter inti- 
 mates, their case was a hard one. Only ' eight,' a * few,' out of a 
 world perhaps of millions, were saved in the ark. The Antedi- 
 luvians, too, had been longest in the <vA.o,K^, or prison-house, 
 of all those armies of souls departed, whom Ezekiel grandly de- 
 scribes as having descended into Sheol (ch. xxxiii.). To them 
 Christ Himself preached the gospel, that being perhaps the suffi- 
 cient work for the brief period intervening between His death 
 and resurrection ; the further work of evangelising all the rest of 
 the dead, who had died without the gospel, being possibly com- 
 mitted to Christ after His resurrection and before His ascension, 
 or to the Holy Spirit, the ' Comforter,' afterwards. There we 
 touch pure conjecture again, and therefore shall not pursue the 
 theme, with Clement and other ante-Nicene writers, who never- 
 theless positively declare the apostolic tradition to be as we have 
 hinted. Solid ground, however, is reached in the general prin- 
 ciple. [,S. Peter unequivocally implies that since Christ is the Judge 
 of all men 'the living and the dead' all souls will hear of Him 
 
 * Under the category of ' ignorant ' persons perhaps the Divine Goodness 
 will reckon not only the untaught victims of European priestcraft, but the 
 numerous persons who in all ages, since Christianity was radically corrupted 
 Ly its professional teachers, have been driven into scepticism by the darker 
 perversions of its doctrine and morality. Where, on the other hand, scepti- 
 cism springs from enmity to God, and is a ' work of the flesh,' it is one of the 
 most malignant forms of impiety. And many such examples may be found in 
 the fearful pages of our modern literature. Those who have had 'pleasure in 
 unrighteousness ' both under supei'stition and scepticism, belong to a different 
 o:der from those who have been unwillingly ignorant. 
 
TIMES OF IGNORANCE WINKED AT. 3-23 
 
 before the judgment, if they have not heard efficiently while living 
 in the flesh. The argument is that the dead the majority of 
 mankind could not be justly judged by Him, if they had not 
 heard of Him. They will therefore hear of Him in Hades. 
 'No thoughtful Christian,' says Canon Spence, 'can resist the 
 persuasion that the blessed preaching was not limited to those 
 who perished in the deluge, but that those unhappy ones were 
 selected merely as a sample of the like gracious work in others. 
 This extended view of our Lord's preaching is no mere outcoming 
 of modern thought, but was held in the early Church, with differ- 
 ent modifications, by writers like Hermas, Clement of Alexandria, 
 Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr' (Bible Educator, i., 118). See also, 
 in support of this doctrine, that no human spirit reaches the 
 crucial point of its probation till it has come into contact with 
 the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ for acceptance or rejection, 
 Professor Godet, of Neufchatel, on Luke xvi. 25. 
 
 We are now in a better position for understanding S. Paul's 
 weighty but neglected statement, before the Areopagus at Athens 
 when, standing in the very capital of paganism, the centre of 
 the traditions of the heathen world, he surveys the past, and con- 
 trasts it with the present. 'In times past, God' '(as he had de- 
 clared to the Lycaonians, xiv. 16) ' suffered all nations to walk in 
 their own ways ; ' and not only that, but He withheld direct 
 revelation from the majority, abandoning them to 'feel after 
 Him ' in the thick darkness, ' if so be they might find Him,' a 
 result not attained by the generality. Then he adds the remark- 
 able words ' But the times of this ignorance God WINKED AT ' 
 vrre/DiSon/ 6 0eos overlooked clearly in the sense of not bringing 
 the ancient world into final judgment solely on the basis of their igno- 
 rant paganism. Thus is this word used in the Septuagint transla- 
 tion of Lev. xx. 4 : ' If the people of the land hide their eyes from 
 the man (wepi'Soxm/) when he giveth his seed to Molech and kill 
 him not; ' i.e., overlook his offence, and fail to punish him. If 
 the countless millions who had died in heathenism were all to be 
 condemned to the death eternal, it could not be said that God 
 had (/ overlooked ' or passed by their ignorance. This word 
 therefore carries us to the belief of some operation of divine 
 mercy on behalf of the departed nations, which S. Paul had no 
 
324 S. PAUL ON TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 
 
 commission then to announce, or at least which S. Luke has not 
 thought fit to report. But this missing explanation is given at 
 least in principles by S. Peter, to whose charge was con- 
 signed the first opening with the ' key of knowledge ' of all the 
 greater mysteries of redemption. And S. Peter teaches us in 
 simple words that this method of the divine mercy consists in 
 evangelising the spirits in the prison, or, as he describes them, the 
 dead. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that when S. Paul wrote later to the 
 Romans that those who have sinned without law shall also perish 
 without law (ii. 12), he did not design to contradict his own 
 recent words, spoken on Mars Hill, but only to declare, without 
 reference to redemptive processes in Hades, that at the last day, 
 Christ's judgment on each lost man's sinful life on earth would be 
 according to his knowledge here, a principle which will remain 
 true, notwithstanding the possible further opportunities of repent- 
 ance and faith granted to certain spirits beyond. 
 
 But S. Paul's words to the Athenians make it clear that there 
 is no such merciful future opportunity of repentance and faith 
 granted to those who now hear God's word on earth, and de- 
 liberately reject it. ' But now commandeth all men everywhere 
 to repent.' And in all his epistles he declares that present im- 
 penitence and unbelief shall be followed by ' everlasting destruc- 
 tion.' Such, in Christ's awful and emphatic words, ' shall die in 
 their sins/ ' If one went imto them from the dead they would ' 
 not repent, ' if they hear not Moses and the prophets ' now ; and 
 afterwards, in the world of spirits, if one from the earth went to 
 them to preach repentance there, neither would they be persuaded 
 by him. ' O that thou hadst heard, even thou at least in this thy 
 day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they are 
 hidden from thine eyes ! ' 
 
 In this chapter I have restricted myself to the consideration of 
 the two leading passages of the New Testament bearing on the 
 question of a future probation for some souls. Much more to the 
 same effect will be found in the works of Mr. Henry Dunn, but I 
 do not feel sufficient confidence in the critical basis on which this 
 suggestive author builds his hope of the ' Destiny of the Race * 
 
DIVINE KNOWLEDGE OF CONDITIONAL RESULTS. 325 
 
 to justify me in following his wider speculations. His writings, 
 however, are always edifying and awakening. 
 
 Our Lord's double statement should not be forgotten. * If I 
 had not come and spoken to them they had not had sin] and 
 ' If the mighty works which have been done in thee had been 
 done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in 
 sackcloth and ashes' God not only does not judge ignorance as 
 if it were knowledge; but He also knows the positive circum- 
 stances of each man's earthly probation, and its issue, and what 
 would have been the happier result of probation under more 
 favourable conditions. The germs of faith and penitence, which 
 Christ affirms would have flourished under a more luminous dis- 
 pensation on earth, may in many cases receive such illumination 
 in a state beyond. But * Capernaum/ ' Chorazin,' and c Bethsaida,' 
 which rejected the Light of the World, when shining full upon 
 them, would reject it also in every world ; for such there remaineth 
 only ' fiery indignation to devour the adversary.'* The citation 
 of these words of our Lord, therefore, by the author of Salvator 
 Mundi, in order to support the speculation of the salvation of all 
 men, even the most obstinate, seems to the last degree perverse. 
 Those who ' would not be persuaded if one rose from the dead,' 
 are men who ' would not be persuaded ' even if evangelized in 
 Hades themselves. 
 
 NOTE ON THE SALVATION OF INFANTS. 
 
 The question of the condition and prospects of infants receives 
 some light from the preceding considerations. 
 
 The elder theology regards them as born under the hereditary 
 curse of death, which since they possess immortal souls, must 
 signify, it said, endless separation from God in hell for those 
 souls so departing in infancy ; unless that doom be prevented 
 
 * I think it right to acknowledge that while I am supported in these views 
 by some of the foremost advocates of the general doctrine of this book, there 
 are others of equal ability who do not agree with the preceding argument for 
 a preaching of Christ to some persons in Hades. All who, with Mr. Constable, 
 deny the survival, or assert the sleep of the soul, in Hades, of course deny this 
 second visitation. I suggest therefore to the general reader that the leading 
 argument be not prejudiced by this chapter, if he disagree with it. 
 
326 ON THE SALVATION OF INFANTS, 
 
 (i) by an eternal election of grace ; or (2) by a speedy administra- 
 tion of the regenerating Spirit in baptism ; or (3) by a universal 
 degree of redemption in favour of all infants dying before years 
 of responsibility. The Augustinian theology, as we have seen, 
 steadfastly maintained the selection of some infants for salvation, 
 leaving the remainder to suffer in hell for ever. It is only during 
 the last forty years, as we learn from Mr. Logan's Words of 
 Comfort for Bereaved Parents, that the Scottish churches have 
 ventured to repudiate the old blasphemy against God's justice 
 and goodness, involved in the doctrine of the everlasting woe of 
 non- elect infants. Formerly Scottish parents seem to have be- 
 lieved that their dead babes had probably fallen into the burning 
 hands of some Invisible Moloch. The English Prayer Book also 
 contains this equivocal consolation in the baptismal rubric, that 
 'baptised infants are undoubtedly saved.' This was not strong 
 consolation for the bereaved parents of the non-baptised when 
 the only known alternative was endless misery for the infant souls 
 departed. A more fiendish dogma than this is inconceivable, 
 the consummation of .theological hardness of heart, and a fitting 
 revenge on the people of Europe for ever permitting the sin of 
 enforced clerical celibacy. 
 
 Of late years it has been customary among Protestants to 
 maintain with some confidence a hopeful doctrine respecting the 
 millions who died in early childhood. Either they are thought 
 to be regenerate in baptism, or to be regenerated by the Spirit in 
 the article of death ; so that scarcely any reformed church upholds 
 the ancient horror of a limbus infantium. 
 
 The modifications of opinion on the condition and prospects 
 of infants, which may be held under the general views of this 
 work, are of several varieties. 
 
 (1) Those who believe that the sons of Adam are born with a 
 nature not necessarily immortal, and under the curse of death, 
 may hold with Dr. Watts, that in death either some, or all, of 
 their number perish utterly, and are extinguished when they die 
 in this world. 
 
 (2) Or any of the above-mentioned opinions may be held 
 according to the convictions of the thinker. Those who believe 
 in baptismal regeneration can hold that the baptised are immor- 
 talised, while the remainder pass away and perish. Or it may be 
 
ON THE SALVATION OF INFANTS. 327 
 
 believed by Calvinists that some are elected to eternal life, others 
 not ; the issue being immortality or death according to God's 
 good pleasure. 
 
 (3) Or lastly, it may be held that children are born under the 
 legal curse of total mortality as sons of Adam ; but, as the objects 
 of the redeeming mercy which contemplates the whole race of 
 mankind (as is asserted in numerous passages of apostolic teach- 
 ing), their spirits pass if they die before reaching years of serious 
 responsibility, of which God alone is the Judge into a state, 
 ' with the Lord,' where they partake of the grace vouchsafed to 
 the dead who have not known Christ ; and that they are there 
 tenderly developed and educated under the care of * their angels ' 
 into the knowledge and service of Christ, receiving the gift of 
 the Regenerating Spirit, and awaiting the resurrection of glory. 
 Whether the result of such education in the unseen world will be 
 universally efficacious, so as to render it certainly a good thing to 
 die in infancy, may be either affirmed or questioned. 
 
 I do not think myself obliged to discuss these alternatives here, 
 but simply to show how the general argument of this work will 
 affect the question respecting children. And it is clear that the 
 determination of each reader will chiefly depend on his modes of 
 thought on other doctrines of revelation. It is sufficient for the 
 writer to say that his own views confidently tend to the most 
 hopeful solution of this mystery. To him Christ's Infancy carries 
 with it the brightest hopes for the whole world of the young. 
 
 Two supplementary observations only are here required. 
 
 (1) Infants who do not die, but live on earth in Christian lands, 
 are under the same gracious influences which would await them 
 in death beyond. If they live to reject on earth in maturity their 
 God and Saviour, they incur the death eternal. 
 
 (2) Under the old theologies, to beget a child was to bring into 
 being a possible, and even probable, fiend, destined to endless 
 torment. No such frightful idea needs haunt the minds of 
 parents. Every child is a candidate for immortal life, since for 
 it Christ has died. Even under the darkest of the theological 
 views possible under these general conclusions, every evil nature 
 will have an end. This truth does not indeed render it a less 
 solemn thing to bring children into the world ; but it represents 
 the birth of children as opening an infinite possibility of life and 
 
328 THE SALVATION OF INFANTS. 
 
 salvation ; it dispels the black cloud which overshadows marriage 
 as if it were the means of peopling an eternal hell, and shows how 
 Christ's loving word thus turns the bitter water of despairing 
 thought, at every wedding festival, into the wine of hope and 
 gladness. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION TO LIFE ETERNAL AT THE COMING AND 
 KINGDOM OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 The Christian doctrine of a Future Life regards the whole of man's com- 
 pound nature. It does not honour one part of our being to the neglect or 
 degradation of the other. The life of which it speaks is a life of the body as 
 well as of the spirit, a life the form and pledge of which are given in the 
 Resurrection of Christ, a life which is actually communicated to us by a true 
 and vital union with Him. ' Because I live ye shall live also.' Dr. J. J. S. 
 PEROWNE on Immortality, p. no. 
 
 ACCORDING to the argument of the preceding chapters, both 
 the Law and the Gospel deal with man as an Integer, consisting 
 of body and soul. The death incurred by sin was the destruc- 
 tion of this complex humanity. Redemption in like manner 
 contemplates the whole nature, and carries with it, not only the 
 immortality of the soul, by the indwelling of the Spirit, but the 
 reconstitution of the body, in the resurrection of the dead, when 
 ' this corruptible shall put on incormption.' 
 
 In the history of doctrines several variations have occurred on 
 the question of the Resurrection. There were Sadducees at 
 Corinth who denied the future life altogether, and with it the 
 resurrection of the dead. There were others who ' said that the 
 resurrection had passed already ; ' apparently denying the re- 
 constitution of the body, and applying the language of Christ 
 respecting resurrection to spiritual renovation alone. 
 
 There is a third class of opponents of the doctrine of a physical 
 resurrection, who maintain that the term dvao-racris is improperly 
 translated resurrection, and should be rendered survival; holding 
 that the reference is only to the survival of the spirit in a vehicle, 
 the result of Redemption, and the boon bestowed by God 
 through the mediation of Christ. Of this opinion the leading 
 
330 CHRIST'S ANASTASIS THE PATTERN. 
 
 supporters in the present generation have been Dr. Bush and 
 the Rev. A. Jukes, following the Swedenborgians. 
 
 The chief difficulty attending the belief in the reconstitution of 
 the body is occasioned by supposing that the New Testament 
 requires us to think that it will be composed of the same atoms 
 in number and weight which have entered into its structure during 
 the present life. S. Paul, however, in i Cor. xv. distinctly de- 
 clares that we l sow not that body that shall be? but 'God giveth 
 it a body as it hath pleased Him.' He asserts only as close a 
 relation between the substance of the present and the future body 
 as there is between the seed you sow and the body that shall be. 
 This is not very much in point of atomic identity. 
 
 The attempt of Dr. Bush to set aside a bodily resurrection 
 breaks down, I think, at the first step. The definition of the 
 resurrection of Christians is fixed by the definition of Christ's 
 resurrection. The word cannot signify one thing in our Lord's 
 history, something quite different in the case of His followers. 
 The manner in which both Christ and His Apostles closely bind 
 together the fact of His Resurrection, and the hope of their own, 
 seems to render it an act of violence to attempt to dislocate the two. 
 
 Now, if the words Anastasis and Egersis stand only for the sur- 
 vival of the spirit, Christ's Anastasis occurred on the day that He 
 died ; when He went * and preached to the spirits in prison.' 
 
 But Christ's Anastasis occurred on the third day. And hence 
 we conclude that the so-called resurrection of Christians is not 
 the survival of their souls, but their rising up to life, in bodies 
 which shall be ( given ' them. S. Paul bases his hope of the 
 anastasis of Christians wholly on the anastasis of Christ ' on the 
 third day ' (i Cor. xv.), and hence we may be as certain as we 
 can be of anything that depends on criticism, that Professor 
 Bush, and his associates, are on this question engaged in a con- 
 flict with the apostles.* 
 
 * In the Rainbow for 1877 will be found a most able series of papers on 
 the four, theories of the Resurrection by Mr. Maude. Mr. Maude is of 
 opinion that the Spirit of God forms around the Christian soul during life a 
 ' spiritual body, ' which becomes the vehicle of that soul in the intermediate state. 
 He further thinks that this spiritual body will possess the power of clothing 
 itself at the coming of Christ with material elements^ through which it will be 
 again placed en rapport with the Kosmos. 
 
REALITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 331 
 
 ' The hope of a physical resurrection of Christians to incorrup- 
 tible life does not rest on the single testimony of the fifteenth 
 chapter in the Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 S. Paul affirms in the Epistle to the Church of Rome also 
 (ch. viii. n), that ' If He that raised up Christ from the dead 
 dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also 
 give life to your mortal bodies, on account of His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you.' 
 
 In the Epistle to the Ephesians (i. 18-20), he prays that the 
 Church may ' know what is the hope of His calling, and what 
 the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints ; and 
 what the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, 
 according to (after the pattern of) the working of the mighty power, 
 which He wrought in the Christ, when He raised Him from the 
 dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places/ 
 Here he declares that the same omnipotence which raised up the 
 dead Christ to life immortal will raise up also 'His body the Church.' 
 
 Another argument is derived from the metamorphosis, or 
 change, that is to take place in the bodies of the latest genera- 
 tion of Christians. When Christ appears the living saints will 
 be ' changed' (dAAay^o-o/x-e^a, i Cor. xv. 51). Their bodies will 
 be inwardly and outwardly altered, putting on incorruption. 
 They will not drop off, and leave the soul naked and unclothed. 
 Now if the last generation of Christians are to enter into the 
 kingdom of God with spiritual bodies, ' changed ' from their 
 former bodies, not ' flesh and blood,' but incorruptible and 
 immortal/ is it not reasonably evident that the same prospect 
 awaits all the dead in Christ ? 
 
 Enough of these ' oppositions of science,' not always genuine. 
 Christ's resurrection is both the pledge and pattern of our own. 
 * He shall change the form (/xerao-^/xaTto-et) of this body of our 
 humiliation, that IT (OUTO) may become like to the body of His 
 glory, according to the energy whereby He is able to subdue to Him 
 even all things' (Phil. iii. 21). The risen body of Christ is a 
 miracle of splendour. Its eternal form ' was presented to view 
 at night in the Transfiguration, the miniature semblance of the 
 heavenly kingdom (2 Peter i. 12-17). l His face was like the sun 
 shining in its strength, His raiment was white as the light, His 
 feet like fine brass burning in a furnace? 
 
332 RESURRECTION A T CHRIST'S ADVENT. 
 
 Sueh an eternal * house from heaven ' awaits every Christian. 
 ' Then shall the children of God shine forth as the Sun, in their 
 Heavenly Father's realm.' ' They shall be equal to the Angels? 
 * They shall die no more. ' Their ' mortality shall be swallowed up 
 of life' In this final glorification will be revealed the physical 
 effect of redemption. Christ the Second Man bestows far more 
 than was lost by the First. He imparts life eternal to the whole 
 humanity, but it is divine life in ' glory, honour, and incorrup- 
 tion.' Well may S. Paul exclaim ' Who is sufficient for these 
 things ? To some we are the savour of life unto life ! ' It is 
 Christ's own life that becomes ours ; the life of the ' Lord of all ' 
 and the ' King of eternity.' 
 
 But when shall these things be ? The answer of the New 
 Testament is, I venture, with many contemporaries, to think, 
 different from that which is commonly assigned in the modern 
 church. * In our age the popular belief leads men to declare 
 with confidence that the resurrection of glory will take place at 
 the second coming of Christ from heaven, at His return to judge 
 the world; but also to declare with equal certainty that that 
 epoch will not be reached for at least one thousand years , and per- 
 haps for three thousand six hundred centuries^ if that prophetic 
 millenary stands, by a figure of days, for years. 
 
 The belief is that the New Testament teaches us to look for 
 Christ's return from heaven only after a ' millennium ' of righ- 
 teousness on earth, during which the whole earth will be out- 
 wardly subject to Christ ; and since that time has manifestly not yet 
 even commenced, the persuasion is that the Parousia, or Coming 
 of Christ at the end of it, to raise the dead, is still far away in a 
 remote future. 
 
 If this indeed be so, the conditions of Christian life are 
 changed since the apostolic age, when men were bidden to 
 'watch because they knew not what hour their Lord would 
 
 * Theological ideas seem to have local and defined habitats, like the floras 
 and faunas of the different climates of the globe. They have also their times 
 and seasons. Hence presumably, the careful study of the question of Christ's 
 return from Heaven, the key to the whole future of the Earth and Man, is 
 almost systematically excluded from English schools of Biblical science. 
 
TIME OF CHRIST 'S SECOND ADVENT. 333 
 
 come.' It appears that we now know for certain that it will 
 not be at least for a thousand years. 
 
 Such an opinion there is much reason to regard as a serious 
 misconception. For there is a broad and deep stream of evi- 
 dence to prove that the apostles unanimously taught that after 
 their departure there would be an 'apostasy' (2 Thess. ii.) from 
 the faith, springing from a ' mystery,' or secret doctrine of 
 iniquity already working, and ending in the reign of the ' lawless 
 one ' (cu/o/xos) in the church of God, who should undertake to 
 
 * change times (divine constitutions) and laws ' (Dan. vii. 25) ; 
 who should ' exalt himself above all that is called God, or that 
 is worshipped, so that he should sit in the temple of God, show- 
 ing himself that he is God ' perhaps himself the * Anti-Christ ' 
 ' whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth, and 
 destroy by the appearing of His bodily presence* (2 Thess. ii. 8, 
 TV) 7ri<avia 7-^9 Trapowias). 
 
 In the second chapter of Daniel, the * stone which is cut out 
 without hands ' (representing Christ, Matt. xxi. 44) falls from 
 heaven upon the feet of the great image of worldly power (those 
 feet supposed by the majority of Protestant writers to symbolise 
 modern Roman Europe), and breaks it in pieces j the Stone 
 
 * becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth.' In the 
 same manner Daniel (ch. vii.) sees in a vision * one like the 
 Son of Man come in the clouds of heaven ' at the time of the 
 destruction of the fourth world-wide empire ; the ' seven-headed, 
 ten-horned beast/ who, says S. John, has his * throne ' on the 
 Seven Hills (Rev. xvii.). 
 
 Christ describes the state of the earth at His second Advent, 
 not'as if it should be the end of an age of righteousness, but at the 
 end of an age of apostasy, like ' the days of Noah,' when but few 
 expected Him ; thus indicating a general prevalence of erroneous 
 prophetic opinion in the church, and a corresponding departure 
 from God. 
 
 In the passage referred to, in S. Paul's Second Epistle to the 
 Thessalonians, this argument admits of no easy disproof. The 
 Thessalonians, who had been excited by the apostle's first letter, 
 in which he five times refers to Christ's glorious Advent, were in 
 a state of commotion from expectation of its immediate occur- 
 rence. The Second Epistle was written to correct this mistake. 
 
334 TIME OF CHRISTS SECOND ADVENT, 
 
 S. Paul commences the second chapter with a statement of his 
 theme ' Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 , and our gathering together to Him (KO! ^/xu>i/ eTrto-wa- 
 a term which fixes the reference to the personal return 
 of Christ from heaven, when Christians are to be ever 'with 
 Him '), I beseech you that ye be not soon troubled, neither by a 
 spirit, nor by word, nor by a letter as from us, as that this DAY 
 OF CHRIST is imminent.' 
 
 He then assures them that that ' day will not come except there 
 come the Apostasy first (17 dTrooraom), and the Man of Sin be 
 revealed.' He proceeds to describe the marks of that Apostasy 
 and power of darkness, showing that it is a religious power, else 
 it could not 'deceive' (ver. 10) Christians into serving it 'as God' 
 in the temple ; ' just as he adds, in i Tim. iv. i, that the ' Spirit 
 announces ' an ascetic apostasy, ' forbidding to marry,' and ' com- 
 pelling to fast,' under the ' inspiration of daemons ' (8cu/x,oFtW). 
 Then finally he declares that this Reigning Imposition is to be 
 put an end to by the returning Christ, concerning the time of 
 whose coming he now writes to instruct them. Thus Christ 
 Himself is the destroyer of Antichrist. The ' Sanctuary ' will 
 then be 'cleansed' (Dan. xii.). And at that time occurs 'the 
 first resurrection,' the 'resurrection of the just' (i Cor. xv.). If 
 these things be so, the ' resurrection ' may be nearer than the 
 majority of our contemporaries imagine, who are saying, ' Where 
 is the promise of His coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all 
 things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation.' 
 
 Here, then, to make an end of this division of our labour to 
 recapitulate the sum of the things which have been spoken and 
 to add credibility to some rejected ideas, let us recall the general 
 coup d'ceil which the Scripture affords on the method of the 
 Divine government of the earth ; since here, as everywhere, faith, 
 so difficult under disconnected views, becomes our strength when 
 Christianity is embraced as a supernatural whole. 
 
 Let the starting-point be found in the words of Christ in His 
 own prayer : ' THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, 
 AS IT is IN HEAVEN.' By one space-penetrating glance He saw 
 how God's will is done in all other places of His dominion, as 
 
THE DIVINE METHOD. 335 
 
 also how it is defied or left undone over all the earth : and, under 
 the effect of that double vision, of transcendent glory and world- 
 wide misery and death, He breathes into our hearts the invocation 
 * Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' What was its 
 true significance ? 
 
 There is no need to travel out of the record for an answer to 
 this question. The first verses in the Sacred Scripture set our 
 thoughts on the right track : ' In the beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and 
 void ; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And God said, 
 Let there be Light.' 
 
 Here, in fewest words, fitting the mystery, is (i) the Chaos, or 
 the earth in its earliest stage of inorganic disorder. Then follows 
 (2) the Kosmos, or the earth of organic life, ascending till it 
 reaches man, the image and the glory of God, formed originally 
 for an eternal life, conditional on obedience. Then follows, (3) 
 The Kingdom of Darkness, the black shadow of death by sin 
 covering the earth from Adam's fall, till now ; and, (4) Tfie King- 
 dom of God, secretly counter -working sin and death through 
 redeeming grace, manifesting itself in the King of this kingdom, 
 who is ' God manifest in the flesh.' These four stages seem to 
 constitute together the history of the Divine Method for the 
 earth, ending in the survival in immortal life of those who have 
 been * afore prepared unto glory.' This is the grand evolution : 
 God as Creator first of all, next God in the development, incar- 
 nate in Christ, and lastly, God in the issue, receiving the Church 
 into His glory for evermore. 
 
 i. First, there was the Chaos, or the earth of inorganic nature. 
 The divine record reveals nothing of the mysterious past. 
 Science, the revelation of nature to mature humanity, partially 
 lifts the veil, yet leaves us still gazing into twilight and darkness. 
 Whether the earth was at first produced in its present planetary 
 position, along with the solar system in a state of equilibrium, 
 as a solid globe of molten atoms fire-pervaded all in fierce 
 struggle ; or in gaseous condition was flung off from the central 
 sun, rushing as a flaming mist around that centre, we do not 
 absolutely know. But what we do know is that, amidst the seem- 
 ing chaos, the Spirit of Order ruled ; and, through incalculable ages, 
 
336 CHAOS KOSMOS. 
 
 that Spirit moved upon the surface and through the mass, con- 
 densing, combining, solidifying, separating land and water and 
 air ; till at length the natural forces, acting out the volitions of 
 orderly Eternal Thought, created an earth on which organic life 
 was possible ; and the long battle of fire and water, the strife and 
 attraction of contending elements, ended in a habitable world. 
 Then dawned the Kosmos, 
 
 2. Now Vegetation brightened the desert globe of land and 
 water, and the living creature came forth, bred of earth and 
 moisture, as, says our primitive cosmogony, 'Let the waters 
 bring forth ! ' ' Let the earth bring forth ! ' in this, according 
 with the latest thought of those who see in what we term 
 matter the possibility of life ; but not according with that latest 
 thought, if it be meant to exclude the all-pervading action of the 
 Eternal Cause, which lives and operates through all causes that 
 are visible, and communicates some of His own mysterious energy 
 even to the Atom which has sprung from the depths of His Being. 
 
 And so this diviner order of the Kosmos reigned through untold 
 ages, while the earth swarmed with the mortal lives that sprang 
 into being in successive bursts of the all-creating Energy, which 
 never, by existing law, excluded itself from operating by intro- 
 duction of fresh elements, but vindicated, even in a world of 
 perishable plants and animals, both its love of continuity, and its 
 absolute sovereignty and freedom, at once in Creation and 
 Destruction : it may be bringing, as men say, life out of life, 
 varying its forms under the pressure of external conditions, and 
 achieving its present results by a gradual transformation of pre- 
 existing types though of this the fossil record contains no 
 evidence, or, it may be, in the popular sense, creating, time after 
 time, new tenants of the void, and causing the fruitful Earth 
 to bear in succession the original distinct kinds of living things, 
 out of which all subvarieties have sprung. These are questions 
 which we leave to the science of the future. To us the point of 
 interest is, that this Kosmos of organic life ended in MAN, of 
 whom we are compelled to believe that, with face uplifted to the 
 skies, he is a special work of the Heavenly Power, and, though 
 belonging to the system where death was the ancient and universal 
 law of animal life, that he wa$ not originally made to die. 
 
KOSMOS. 337 
 
 Here, then, comes in the mysterious narrative with which the 
 sacred history opens, of a primeval paradise and introductory 
 trial of a man for continuance in life under condition of obedience, 
 a narrative more rational, and harmonising better with all the 
 facts of human life and thought, and with our inward yearning 
 for immortality, notwithstanding our evanescence, than any hypo- 
 thesis of animal descent, or, rather, ascent, from ascidians and the 
 fur-clad grinning monsters of the woods. 
 
 And so we will accept this narrative even although it leads us 
 into realms of thought where science founded on eyesight fails us, 
 and a science based on insight begins. The Scripture, recording 
 the revelations of God, assures us that man's history as a moral 
 being cannot be understood apart from its relations, because 
 it is interwoven with that of higher orders ; just as the history of 
 inferior species on the globe is entangled with a system of prey 
 prevailing over all the Kosmos. 
 
 This we shall now take as sufficiently proved by the emphatic 
 declaration of Christ, and of His Apostles that the case of 
 humanity in sin and death is involved in the malign action of a 
 Sat anas, an ' ancient serpent,' a mighty ' destroyer,' more fell than 
 any fiery dragon of preceding ages ; and that the result has been 
 to poison humanity with the virus of his own rebellion against the 
 Infinite ; the dread issue being sentence of return for man to the 
 outer world and lower plane of animals, in penal conformity to 
 the law of extinction for all earth-born lives incognisant of God ; 
 the finite eventually falling out of being by necessity when not in 
 union with the Eternal. ' In the day of thy eating thou shalt 
 surely die.' ' Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.' A 
 short animal life may remain to man, as to his mortal congeners, 
 but it is limited by the horizon of time. ' Man that is in honour 
 and understandeth not, is like the beasts which perish ' (Psalm 
 xlix. 20). 
 
 3. Next, therefore, follows on the Chaos and the Kosmos, the 
 Kingdom of Darkness, extending over all man's world and sphere 
 of action. There is an evil spirit that 'energises in the children 
 of rebellion.' There is, through apostasy which has become con- 
 genital a world- wide relapse of humanity into animal and demonic 
 Jife ; a complex result, evolving a new type of sin most hateful 
 
 l 22 
 
338 THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS. 
 
 combining the perversion of the animal life with the perversion of 
 the higher than animal intelligence, and becoming more detestable 
 in proportion as the demonic intelligence by culture exceeds in force 
 the animal development Hence man's ever-increasing energy, 
 but without God. Thought is poisoned at its spiritual fountains, 
 till at length a profound philosophic atheism measures at once the 
 daring of humanity and the depth of its degradation. 
 
 The Kingdom of Darkness is man's arena of action separated 
 from his God ; and it is the shadow of death unto death eternal. 
 Here is the true and real misery of mankind. These nations are 
 hastening forward to the second death the vast tide of human 
 will, passion, and intelligence is pouring itself in ceaseless flow, 
 unless arrested, into the depths of destruction. ' If ye live after 
 the flesh, ye shall die ; ' 'The world passeth away, and the lust 
 thereof; ' 'The letter killeth ; ' ' Except ye repent, ye shall all like- 
 wise perish ; ' ' He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap 
 (j>6opav, corruption, destruction' The result of the fall was here- 
 ditary death. Each man's sin has earned a more fearful repetition 
 of the penalty in the bitter pains of death eternal. Unless born 
 twice, men must die twice the first and second death. 
 
 Awful, indeed, is this view of man's condition ! The millions 
 destitute of God are sporting on the brink of doom. Imagining 
 themselves possessed of indestructible being, they are but phan- 
 toms dancing on the edge of that precipice beneath which is the 
 gulf of oblivion, the everlasting death in hell. 
 
 4. But now dawns upon this darkness the light of the Kingdom 
 of God, the light of Life. For He whose existence is everlasting 
 and His glory infinite, and who alone knows all that is lost when 
 His creatures lose life eternal yearning over the children whom 
 once that high destiny awaited, and commiserating us as the 
 victims of malignant spirits who have spread the monarchy of 
 death over all the earth has from the beginning operated among 
 men in His grace in a kindness which has defeated the Man- 
 killer ' in a goodness which is beyond and above the goodness 
 of beneficent law. This salvation, originating in the depths of the 
 Divine Love, is destined to end in restoration of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven upon the earth, the fourth and final stage of the develop- 
 ment of the 'purpose of the ages ' (irp60c<riv TOH> cuoW, Eph. iii. 1 1). 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 339 
 
 The characteristic of this Kingdom is that in its inception and 
 method it is supernatural and miraculous a system superinduced 
 by Divine Love on the laws of heaven and earth. 
 
 Every step of the procedure is by necessity supernatural. The 
 central conception transcends all thought that has been trained 
 simply under the course of natural law, ' Eye hath not seen the 
 things prepared by God for them that love Him.' It is nothing 
 less than the identification of the Divine Nature with the Human 
 of the Necessary Being with the vanishing phantasmal shadow ; 
 of the eternal Life with the child of death in the person of the 
 Christ ; who thus becomes the Life-giver to the dying race, the 
 King of the kingdom of Heaven and Earth, the Author of Im- 
 mortality to them that were perishing. This is the sum and sub- 
 stance of the Gospel. 
 
 The Divine Life takes possession of a human form, attracts and 
 unites to itself, by a new inspiration of grace, all willing souls, and 
 after stamping on them anew the Divine Image, breathe* into 
 them the spirit of Immortality. 
 
 We may now the better apprehend the meaning of our prayer, 
 ' Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth? The subject 
 of the New Testament is this Kingdom of Heaven. No less 
 than forty-four times does S. Matthew represent Christ as speak- 
 ing of this earthly reign of God. Humanity asks, with fervent 
 longing, to-day, Where is it ? What is it ? What is our relation 
 to it ? Is this Kingdom present, is it future ? Is it on earth, or 
 in the skies ? 
 
 Men's ideas in Christendom on this subject widely differ. Not 
 a few, perhaps the majority, think of the Kingdom of Heaven as 
 being in Heaven itself, beyond the stars, in a state of which good 
 men will one day for ever inhabit. Others, in millions, think that 
 it exists on the earth already, in a visible form, and that it consists 
 in the subjection of the nations to the Vicar of Christ at Rome. 
 Others, as the late Mr. Maurice, regard the papal sovereignty as 
 a diabolic caricature of this divine monarchy, but think that the 
 Kingdom of God is truly found wherever, as in England, the 
 State acknowledges the Christ, and consecrates the Civil Power 
 by the establishment of Christianity. 
 
 Each of these hypotheses falls far below the ideal of Sacred 
 
340 STAGES OF THE DIVINE VICTORY. 
 
 Scripture. The Kingdom of God is on Earth, in the last days, 
 but it is nothing less than a restoration of the supernatural 
 government of God as in the old times, a visible assertion of 
 Heaven's Sovereignty over all the world. 'Thy will be done on 
 earth as it is done in heaven.' 
 
 But the question returns How can it be reconciled with sober 
 judgment to believe in a final manifestation of such a sovereignty 
 of God in this insignificant and sinful world? We will not 
 answer that the world where Christ died is worthy of Christ's open 
 triumph. Let us rather reply that it seems easier to believe in a 
 final triumph of right upon earth than to believe in an indefinite 
 perpetuation of the reign of evil, or of the chaos which is termed 
 modern Christendom. For the Scriptures distinctly teach that 
 the Kingdom of God upon earth passes through three stages : 
 (i) The stage of spiritual preparation, lasting from the day of 
 Christ's humiliation until His second coming. (2) The stage of 
 judgment on the forces of evil, Satanic and human; when evil 
 spirits, evil sovereignties, deceitful priesthoods, and all things 
 which do iniquity, shall be ' gathered out ' of Christ's kingdom of 
 the earth, and the area be left clear for nations, rulers, and teachers 
 who do His will. (3) The stage of open victory and resurrection, 
 when Christ, and His servants ' raised in glory,' will reign over 
 the world, as the first scene of that eternal royalty which awaits 
 them beyond, of which transcendent issue the Transfiguration was 
 the prelusory representation. (See 2 Peter i. 16.) 
 
 We are not required to believe that this heavenly reign of 
 Christ must be always visible to the nations of the earth ; much 
 less that the risen saints will be mingled with the terrestrial popu- 
 lations. May it not rather be that Christ, and His Church in 
 angelic natures (urayye/Xoi, Luke xx. 36), will take the aerial places 
 (cVovpavta, Eph. vi. 12) of the dispossessed spirits of darkness, 
 and rule as guardians over the earth (over ' five ' or ' ten cities,' 
 according to desert), enjoying its beauty and glory as a whole, 
 and ' inheriting ' it, in a sense the most complete and satisfying 
 until its end in the final conflagration ? Caught up to meet their 
 Saviour 'in the air' (apTrayrja-o^Oa ets depa, i Thess. iv. 17), His 
 servants will be ' ever with Him,' as when the attendant angels 
 hovered unseen around the cloud of Glory on Sinai, or 'the 
 multitude of the heavenly host ' filled the empyrean at the Saviour's? 
 
HYPOTHESIS ON THE MILLENNIUM. 341 
 
 Incarnation. On this hypothesis we may conceive that the 
 ' flaming fire' which is reserved for some selected victims of divine 
 wrath at the Advent of Christ, who like Korah ' shall go down 
 alive into hell,' and shall be ' gathered out of the kingdom, as those 
 that cause stumbling,' is some locally kindled ' sea of fire/ 
 perhaps below the surface and not that general ' melting of 
 the elements,' which shall occur when, more than a thousand 
 years later, the burning earth will become the scene and the 
 instrument of the general destruction of ungodly men of all past 
 generations, the residuum of evil after the failure of all saving 
 processes. 
 
 On this theory of a limited and selective judgment on the 
 wicked rulers and teachers found alive at Christ's Advent, we 
 might also understand the language of prophecy when it tells of 
 good agencies operating still among the sifted nations in Christ's 
 Kingdom : so that everything that is more valuable now in the 
 work of righteous statesmen, legislators, scholars, missionaries, 
 civilisers, will be, according to the law of continuity, carried 
 forward into the final blessed state of the renovated world, when 
 human life will answer to the Divine Idea, and God shall have 
 * destroyed them that destroy the earth.' (See Isaiah Ixv., Ixvi.) 
 
 We know but too well how large a demand is made by such a 
 hypothesis on the patience of those to whom it is novel, and who 
 can rest only in the thought of a heaven so transcendental, so 
 distant in time, or so far away in space, as to exert no direct 
 influence on the smooth waters of modern life. But the difficulty 
 may be overcome. Christians are men who ' wait for God's Son 
 from Heaven ; ' who ' love His appearing ; ' who expect Resur- 
 rection and Immortality in soul and body, at His return ; who 
 look to * inherit the Earth ; ' and who know in themselves, * as 
 to the times and seasons,' that sudden destruction is corning 
 upon modern society and the wickedness of Christendom, while 
 all creation waits with outstretched neck for the ' manifestation of 
 the sons of God.' 
 
 For then, as the Kosmos once of old succeeded the Chaos, so 
 shall the Kingdom of God succeed the present Kingdom of 
 Darkness : and the men who during the ages of trial have been 
 found faithful, shall SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN IN THEIR 
 HEAVENLY FATHER'S REALM.' 
 
BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF FUTURE 
 PUNISHMENT. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ON THE FUTURE PUNISHMENT OF THE SECOND DEATH. 
 
 * Future retribution has become a kind of figment. Hell is in the world of 
 shadows. The tone in which educated men speak of it still, is often only that 
 good-humoured condescension which makes allowances for childish super- 
 stition.' F. \V. ROBERTSON, Sermons, i., 132. 
 
 WE have now reached the point at which we are compelled to 
 approach the awful theme of future punishment, and to test our 
 general doctrine by putting to proof its agreement with the 
 language of Scripture on the doom of men who 'judge themselves 
 unworthy of everlasting life.' If the previous sections of the 
 argument, on the state cf mortality into which sin has brought 
 mankind, on the object of the incarnation and the law of its 
 beneficial application, be soundly laid in Scripture evidence, it 
 follows that the New Testament will be found to teach that the 
 finally impenitent portion of the human race will not live for 
 ever. 
 
 The doctrine of the Second Death, which declares that unless 
 men are born twice they will die twice, is represented in the 
 Divine Revelation amidst ' blackness, and darkness, and tempest,' 
 like that which covered Mount Sinai at the giving of the Law ; 
 and, therefore, none can break through to gaze into the abyss 
 whence bursts the fire that ' burns into the midst of heaven.' To 
 venture into those scenes with a design of exploring the shadows, 
 on which even the flashes of Divine vengeance throw no light but 
 rather render darkness visible, be far from us. A certain part of 
 the moral effect of the prospect of judgment to come depends on 
 its mystery. This only we know that God, by all the voices of 
 His prophets, has declared that amidst that darkness the wicked, 
 under ' few ' or many ' stripes, shall ' utterly perish,' and that 
 
346 FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 the ungodly world shall ' pass away,' 'O KOO-/XOS irapayeToi, while 
 'he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever' (i John ii. 17). 
 
 During many past years much confusion has prevailed respect- 
 ing the origin and development of this system of interpretation. 
 Discovering that one of its results is to establish a doctrine of 
 future retribution which is irreconcilable with the belief in the 
 eternal misery of the lost, the advocates of the latter opinion, 
 naturally impressed with the magnitude of the cause at stake, 
 have, not ' for the space of two hours,' but for a whole generation, 
 filled the air with doubtless honest outcries against what they 
 describe as the ' miserable doctrine of Annihilation ; ' and have 
 persistently represented that this doctrine is the beginning and 
 the end of our endeavours. It now, however, begins to be 
 understood, after many years of misconception, that much more 
 is concerned than a doctrine of future punishment. 
 
 And this is indeed worthy of consideration by those who ima- 
 gine that our starting-point has been a determination to establish 
 a doctrine of limited retribution, founded on a sentimental 
 objection to the orthodox creed ; whence we have proceeded to 
 invent a corresponding dogma on the nature and the fall of man. 
 The opposite statement would be nearer the truth, that the 
 doctrine of the destruction of the wicked is a necessary inference 
 from the positions already supposed to be established by inde- 
 pendent evidence, on the constitution of Man, and the object of 
 the Incarnation. A more exact representation is that, starting as 
 we believe without pre-occupation, we have found the application 
 of the right principle of interpretation to operate throughout the 
 records of Divine Revelation, in the development of a theodicy 
 which hangs together as an organic unity, and proves its truth by 
 its internal coherence. It is the object of the present chapter to 
 show that not only does the application of the true canon of 
 interpretation to both Testaments bring out the uniform doctrine 
 that life eternal is in Christ alone, and belongs exclusively to 
 righteous men ; but also the fearful converse, that all finally 
 impenitent sinners, persistently choosing evil, shall be ' miserably 
 destroyed.' 
 
 The question to be now examined is one to be decided by 
 interpretation. The theological and spiritual principles which are 
 
FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 347 
 
 connected with that question will be considered hereafter. The 
 issue in this place must be restricted to the inquiry, what is 
 taught by the apostles of Christ as the original Christian doctrine 
 of future punishment ? The vastness of the subject, the intense 
 emotion excited in honest minds, as one interpretation or another 
 is favoured or threatened, must alike be excluded from view, 
 during the critical process of ascertaining what the New Testa- 
 ment writers meant by their words on the punishment of 
 Destruction. 
 
 There is no inquiry of more overpowering interest than this ; 
 for it bears both upon, men's prospects, if evil, and upon the 
 moral character of that Omnipotent Being ' with whom we have 
 to do.' Nothing less indeed is involved than a reconstruction, 
 by an inductive process, of the moral idea of Deity. The influ- 
 ence of either conclusion on the whole system of human thought 
 and conduct must needs be enormous ; and only a crass repre- 
 hensible thoughtlessness can pretend to make light either of the 
 mischief wrought by erroneous opinion on the duration of future 
 retribution, or of the beneficial effect Godward of a belief based 
 on a revelation of immortal life rightly understood. 
 
 What is needed here beyond all else is a doctrine which rests 
 on well-established principles of interpretation ; one which meets 
 the eye in every page of the Sacred Writings read in their simplest 
 and most direct signification; and which will appeal to men's 
 consciences, and fears of offended Justice without the intervention 
 of a difficult critical argument to support it. 
 
 Any supposed dogma of the Christian revelation that depends 
 for its evidence on three or four dubious scattered phrases in the 
 synoptic gospels, and which is not even pretended to be proved 
 by a single plain statement in the expository writings of the three 
 great apostles, S. Paul, S. John, and S. Peter, carries on its own 
 face decisive reasons for its rejection.* Doubtless, each book of 
 the New Testament, taken apart from the rest, suffices, if it be in 
 any sense a divine book, to set before the reader the grand issues 
 of human life, in words which naturally and forcibly express those 
 
 * That the doctrinal writings of these three chief teachers of the gospel are 
 wholly destitute of any assertion of the endless misery of sinners in the literal 
 sense of the word, can be verified by every reader. 
 
348 TRUTH LEARNED FROM THE WHOLE BIBLE. 
 
 issues. It is inconceivable that any doctrine of fundamental im- 
 portance can have been confided to the care of one or two of the 
 sacred writers, to express it only once or twice in 1600 years in 
 its fitting terms ; while they themselves have everywhere else set 
 it forth in delusive language, and all the rest of their fellow- 
 evangelists and apostles have employed words in relation to the 
 subject which by no ordinary rule of interpretation can be made 
 to agree with these supposed exceptional expressions. 
 
 Thus much we are compelled to say at the opening of this 
 discussion, since the Bible has fallen much into the hands of 
 those who imagine that a few favourite ' texts ' will suffice to 
 prove that Omniscience is on the side of even the most ex- 
 travagant theologies. The world has already suffered too much 
 from systems founded on a handful of wrested quotations, even 
 of the English translation, of Scripture, to allow of much reticence 
 in repudiating these hermeneutical methods, whether of heated 
 enthusiasts or ascetic priesthoods. Too much stress cannot be 
 laid on the rule that since the Sacred Writings were for the most 
 part the work of men who were commissioned by God in different 
 ways to address the understanding of human beings, fhe law 
 shall be observed, in interpreting them, of adhering to the natural 
 and proper meaning of the words which they visually employ. If we 
 once abandon ourselves to the fancies of dreamers who see every- 
 thing through an intellectual prism, for whom no word retains its 
 natural signification, but every vocable is surrounded with an 
 aureola or many-tinted halo of mysteries and 'inner senses,' we 
 might as well abandon at the same time the hope of compre- 
 hending Christianity. 
 
 Under an ever-deepening impression of the responsibility 
 attaching to the conduct of this inquiry, I ask, then, What is 
 the ordinary language of Christ, as recorded by the evangelists ; 
 and what is the ordinary language of His apostles on the future 
 punishment of the wicked? There is no need to support this 
 argument by presenting numerical tabular statements of their 
 various expressions, as some recent writers have done. It is 
 sufficient to reply generally that the following phenomena stand 
 forth in prominence throughout the New Testament. 
 
AWFUL THREATENINGS OF CHRIST. 349 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 I. There runs throughout every gospel, and every epistle of 
 Christ's messengers, a distinct and thrilling denunciation of judg- 
 ment to conic on all who, having heard the summons to repentance, 
 and the word of Divinz Mercy, have persisted in impenitence or 
 opposition to God. 
 
 The language of both Christ and His apostles is very guarded 
 respecting the persons who lived during ages of ignorance ; in 
 accordance with S. Paul's declaration on Mars' Hill, that 'the 
 times of this ignorance God winked at' But their words are 
 distinct, uniform, and most appalling, in affirming a 'wrath to 
 come ' on all knowing offenders. There are few subjects on 
 which the Son of God speaks more decisively than on the reality 
 and the awfulness of Hell or Gehenna. The ' GOD ' made known 
 by Christ, though most benign, is not a Power to be ' mocked,' 
 affronted, or defied. He is a Consuming Fire. 
 
 (1) First of all it must be asked, For whom are these judgments 
 reserved ? Who are the wicked ? They are of several ranks. 
 The foremost in Christ's enumeration of the victims of ' hell-fire ' 
 are dishonest and time-serving religious teachers to whom He 
 chiefly traces the ruin of mankind. In all written literature there 
 is certainly nothing so terrible as our Lord's persistent threaten- 
 ings of ' damnation 7 to the Pharisees and Sadducees. It is as if 
 He had opened the abyss, and compelled these hollow pretenders 
 to look down into the flaming depths into which they should be 
 cast at the judgment. The twenty-third chapter of S. Matthew's 
 gospel is the tremendous death-warrant of all self-seeking religious 
 impostors to the end of time. 
 
 (2) Next to these appear, in Christ's teaching, their voluntary 
 disciples, the ' hypocrites ' of every age, in whom spiritual arro- 
 gance takes the place of godliness ; whose religion is a doctrine 
 without morality or love, while their thinking is a tissue of per- 
 versions woven by party-spirit or self-interest, and often supported 
 by cruel persecutions. 
 
 (3) After these, but at a wide interval, follow the sensual 
 multitudes who boldly and shamelessly reject the divine message 
 altogether, that they may follow their own sinful pleasures. 
 
350 CERTAINTY OF JUDGMENT TO COME. 
 
 To these three classes of wicked men it will be found that 
 Christ and His servants steadfastly announce a future punishment 
 from which there is no redemption ; and which is described as so 
 dreadful in its ' many stripes,' in its * weeping and wailing and 
 gnashing of teeth,' in its 'indignation and wrath, tribulation and 
 anguish ' (Rom. ii. 9), that for nearly twenty centuries the readers 
 of these warnings have gathered from them an expectation of woe 
 fitted to appal the stoutest heart that hears them even amidst the 
 frivolity of the present age. 
 
 It must be added that, although, in one solitary description of 
 the * torment ' in Hades of the spirit of the selfish sensualist, 
 Christ seems, according to S. Luke, to indicate suffering as 
 awaiting the separate souls of wicked men who have ' had Moses 
 and the prophets,' He and His apostles uniformly point to a 
 * day of judgment ' in the future as the ' appointed ' time of final 
 execution of these awful threatenings. ' It shall be more tolerable 
 for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that 
 city.' And by Christ Himself it seems to be distinctly said that 
 men who are thus judged will corporeally appear before God to 
 undergo the infliction. ' All that are in the tombs shall hear His 
 voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the 
 resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrec- 
 tion of damnation ' (John v. 28, 29). 
 
 S. Paul speaks of himself as ' having hope towards God that 
 there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of 
 the unjust' (Acts xxiv. 15). 
 
 S. John also, in the vision of the Apocalypse, appears to con- 
 firm this tremendous expectation when he says, ' I saw the dead ' 
 (the dead who 'lived again' at the end of the millennium), 'small 
 and great' (high and low), 'stand before God; and the dead were 
 judged out of those things which were written in the books, 
 according to their works ; and whosoever was not found written 
 in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire ' (Rev. xx.). 
 
 These citations, and many similar expressions in the New 
 Testament, suggested in the earliest Christian centuries, the awful 
 idea of a bodily resurrection of the wicked, for the endurance of 
 physical suffering by fire. It is obvious that Fire, of some kind, 
 is threatened by all the messengers of God ; notably by Christ, 
 who is 'appointed to be the judge of the quick and dead.' 
 
CHRIST S THREATENING OF l HELL-FIRES 351 
 
 Nevertheless it has become almost an established doctrine of 
 this age, at least in Protestant countries, that the ' biblical threat- 
 enings of material fire in hell,' as they are termed, are all to be 
 understood of mental anguish only, inflicted by the fire of ' men's 
 own passions,' or of ' God's wrath.' This reaction has been 
 caused doubtless by the recoil of thoughtful minds from the un- 
 utterably horrible prospect of endless torment by fire, presented by 
 such teaching as was exemplified in our sixth chapter. An argu- 
 ment, too, of very considerable weight for regarding the threaten- 
 ings of * fire ' as figures of speech for spiritual suffering, has been 
 drawn from the tropical character of other representations of the 
 future awards. It has been said, why should the ' fire of hell ' be 
 more material than the ' water' of life ' ? Why should the ' furnace ' 
 and ' lake ' of Gehenna possess more of physical reality than the 
 * sea of glass ' or the * pearly gates ' of heaven ? 
 
 There would be decisive force in these considerations standing 
 alone : nevertheless, at the risk of much contradiction, I must, in 
 the fear of God, as well as in faithfulness to my convictions, 
 acknowledge that I see no sufficient evidence positively to con- 
 tradict the belief of the primitive church, that the New Testament 
 writers, and our Lord Himself, may have intended, by their 
 menace of judgment, what their awful words appear to portend. 
 It would be extreme folly to allow the rhetorical extravagances of 
 some teachers of endless torment to blind us to the fact, if the 
 New Testament does really teach it as a fact, that God's judg- 
 ment will be executed by an infliction of fearful severity if of 
 limited duration. The effect of the tenet of endless suffering 
 has naturally been to induce its advocates to soften as much as 
 possible the threatenings of direct infliction, until at last, in this 
 age, the very defence of the doctrine of endless misery has come 
 to rest on a ' figurative ' interpretation of the hell threatened in 
 the Bible. 
 
 On a subject so overpowering I desire to speak with profound 
 caution and reserve ; but I acknowledge that the positiveness 
 with which both good and bad men at the present time decide 
 against any retributive infliction, seems to me at variance both 
 with Scripture and the analogies of the world that now is.* By 
 
 * The over-idealistic tendency which operated so powerfully of old to lead 
 some to deny the physical reality of the Incarnation and of the sufferings of 
 
352 THE FIRE OF GEHENNA. 
 
 a divine law physical miseries of the direst description here follow 
 hard upon law-breaking. Why should it not be so beyond ? 
 Here men and women in great numbers have endured affliction 
 for truth and righteousness, under God's permission. In past ages 
 God's awful judgments have been executed by ' fire and brim- 
 stone ' on Sodom and Gomorrha, and even on Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum ; and the former, we are told, were ' set forth as an 
 example (8e?y/xa) to them that shall hereafter live ungodly.' In 
 what does the ' example ' consist, if the ungodly of the future 
 suffer no infliction ? Why the bodily resurrection of the wicked 
 at all if there be no future judgment on the body? Why should 
 such physical retribution from the hand of God hereafter be 
 regarded as more incredible than the manifold inflictions of 
 CD i temporary providence? If it has not been contrary to fact 
 that God should judge wicked men by the body here, why 
 hereafter ? 
 
 Is there not some special and terrible intention in our Lord's 
 so frequent references to the ' fire of Gehenna,' which ought to 
 render men at least cautious in expounding them. If the second 
 epistle of Peter (far more probably by his hand than by any other) 
 speaks Christ's doctrine, it is apparently taught that the fire which 
 is to melt the elements is the same which will accomplish the de- 
 struction of ungodly men ; ' the same earth is reserved unto 
 fire, against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men? 
 (2 Peter iii.). The ' tares ' are to be ' burned ' on the field where 
 they grew. S. Paul speaks of men * receiving the things by the 
 body according to what they have done, good or bad ' (TO, Sia TOV 
 
 o-(o//,a.TOS, 2 Cor. V.). 
 
 And those who will reflect on the mysterious energy of Heat, 
 one of the forms of the universal ether, on its relations with 
 life and soul, as the source of our chief pleasures and pains, 
 on its all-pervading power as one of the principal effluences of 
 the Eternal Spirit, will perhaps somewhat modify their confident 
 assertions of the ' grossness and coarseness ' of the views of those 
 who fear that these threatenings may be intended to be taken 
 more ' literally.' Fire is but one of the manifestations of Energy 
 
 Christ seems to survive still in the opinion of many learned men as to the 
 immateriality of future awards. 
 
QUESTION OF PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT, 353 
 
 into which the elements are dissolving under the analysis of the 
 electrician and the chemist. The realities of nature are uncloth- 
 ing themselves. Both at the beginning and the end science 
 stretches now beyond the phenomenal sphere into the psychical 
 and spiritual. The fire threatened may not be the less spiritual 
 because ' material ; ' for material is not far from spiritual any- 
 where, ft is ultimately God who is the * Consuming Fire,' and 
 nothing is gained by dismissing the idea of an external agent of 
 destruction, if there still remains to be confronted Him who is 
 said to ' burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.' 
 
 If it be said that such suffering is morally * impossible under 
 God's government/ it is obvious that it has already occurred in 
 myriads of instances, in the martyrdoms of the saints. It is 
 therefore not so clear that it is morally impossible in the punish- 
 ment of the wicked. Is there not reason to fear that men have 
 reached in our time utterly perverted notions of the Great Power 
 which is behind Nature ? The Infinite Spirit works by His in- 
 scrutable will in material forces and forms. Material representa- 
 tion seems to be the last end of God in His Self-Manifestation. 
 If the ' Word was made flesh ' in order to redeem men, and 
 suffered physical agony, is it wholly incredible that a daringly 
 wicked man shall be ' made flesh ' again, to receive the ' due 
 reward of his deeds ' ? 
 
 The duration of such sufferings must be spoken of with awe, 
 and only in the language of Christ and His apostles. Nothing is 
 affirmed by them of ' untold ages/ Inconceivably fearful words 
 are used respecting the doom of the leaders of the world's" in- 
 surrection against God and His King ; but both as to these, and 
 as to men generally, the sayings of Christ must govern us. The 
 rapid destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha is set forth as an 
 example ' of the general judgment. There will be * few stripes,' 
 and ' many stripes,' 'perishing without law,' and ' judgment under 
 the law,' ' swift destruction/ and a ' greater damnation.' It is 
 the act of God, and in all its details will be righteous, yet a 
 doom over which all Heaven will 'rejoice ' (Rev. xix. 3). 
 
 If it be still rejoined that this is too fearful and overpowering 
 a statement to be believed ; it must be answered, that no doctrine 
 of future punishment can possibly be true which does not bring 
 1 great fear upon every soul.' It was thus that S. Paul ' reasoned ' 
 
 2 3 
 
354 REASONABLENESS OF JUDGMENT TO COME. 
 
 before Felix of 'judgment to come' until 'Felix trembled' 
 (e/>i<o/?os yevo/xevos, Acts xxiv.). No doctrine of future punish- 
 ment, I repeat, can possibly be true at which such men as the 
 Roman governor do not ' tremble.' To refine away the threaten- 
 ings, until both gross and refined sinners find hell not so for- 
 midable, is surely no true kindness to those whom Heaven desires 
 to convert and save. 
 
 Why should it be thought a thing incredible that the Creator 
 of the world will mark with visible and intense abhorrence those 
 actions which we ourselves are so made as to look upon with 
 indignation ? 
 
 When we behold a man, created in God's image, degrading 
 himself by drunkenness many degrees below brute beasts ; or 
 when we see man or woman desecrating the sacred affection of 
 love, till it become by misuse a vile and cancerous passion eating 
 out the forces of life, why should it be thought incredible that 
 Almighty God, outraged at the ruin of His own Image, should 
 punish such offenders by a ' miserable destruction ' ? 
 
 When we see a daring sinner living by falsehood in his trade 
 or profession, or committing perjury in a la'wcou^t, by impudently 
 calling on the God of Truth to witness a deliberate lie, why 
 should it be thought incredible hat such liars shall, in S. John's 
 awful words, ' have their part in the lake of fire,' since no 
 wickedness has more of will in it than wilful falsehood ? 
 
 When we see priesthoods making gain, or seeking for power, 
 by t deceiving the ignorant peasantry with pretended miracles, 
 when we see kings and statesmen entering upon unjust wars, and 
 sacrificing thousands of lives to haughty temper, guilty ambition, 
 or lust of power, when we see professors of false religion and 
 unprincipled rulers conspiring together to torture to death the 
 martyrs of truth, as we read in the pages of history, till heaven 
 itself calls for retribution, does not conscience judge that if God 
 shall ' take vengeance ' on such men hereafter, He will, as Judge 
 of all the earth, do right ? 
 
 But if God will do rightly in judging the great criminals of 
 history, He will also surely do rightly in judging all men according 
 to their works. He will do rightly in punishing with 'many 
 stripes ' those who knew their Lord's will and did it not ; and 
 with ' few stripes ' lesser offenders. 
 
THE 'SORER JUDGMENT } SPIRITUAL. 355 
 
 And is not this precisely what the Lord Jesus Christ declares ? 
 There is] severity with God, as well as goodness, in His dealings 
 with men under the reign of physical law. The same rule holds 
 in moral law. If I oppose the will of God, I shall reap the con- 
 sequences in the deserved penalty of sin. There is no un- 
 righteousness in such recompense. Judgment comeS because 
 Heaven acts in morals as uniformly, and as severely, as it acts 
 with the breakers of natural law. The difference is tKat moral 
 law-breakers will be chiefly dealt with hereafter, when 'sin is 
 finished/ and the account is closed. 
 
 And yet it may well be that, even if there be no bodily inflic- 
 tion, a greater and more frightful penalty in the spiritual results 
 of a sinful life, shall precede and accompany the destruction of 
 great offenders. Christ's words in the monitory parable of the 
 Rich Man and Lazarus Son, Remember! point apparently to a 
 previous endurance, at least in some instances, of the unspeakable 
 misery which an awakening conscience brings. And it is not 
 necessary to imagine anything beyond this stroke of a scorpion- 
 conscience a steadfast compulsory review of an evil life, as even 
 Swedenborg teaches to perceive in many cases the most tre- 
 mendous consequence of it. What must it be, for example, for 
 an indevout scientific man to pass into a condition where atheism 
 is no more possible; because the Divine Wisdom, no longer 
 beheld at a distance in the order of revolving planets, in the laws 
 of sidereal motion, in the arrangements of far-off universes, in 
 that remoter magnificence which shrouded it from view while he 
 inhabited the body, has now come near as the Ruling Authority, 
 and closely encompasses the soul, and pierces its secret darkness 
 through, in one calm, intolerable blaze of the Excellent Glory? 
 What must it be to perceive, with a clearness which profane 
 defiance and dishonest speculation can overshadow no longer, 
 that Almighty God is holy, and that Omnipotence is everywhere, 
 or to review in thought those inner and outer evidences of a 
 Divine Revelation of truth, which, made light of on earth, will 
 seem so appallingly real in their power of condemnation now that 
 they are remembered in perdition ? Those must be very ignorant 
 of much that is passing in this world, in the solitudes of enforced 
 thought, in prisons and on beds of sickness, who peremptorily 
 
35 6 'SON, REMEMBER: 
 
 decide that such experiences are improbable beyond. If Christ 
 be from God, such experiences await every rebellious spirit here- 
 after, in ' the wrath of the Lord God Almighty and the wrath of 
 the Lamb.' 
 
 Every man's responsibility will then be found to extend over a 
 wider area than he imagined. And those whose sins are not 
 forgiven on repentance will justly be held accountable for the 
 whole stfm of their evil influence in the creation. It may form 
 the spiritual punishment of many to trace out the whole history 
 and effect of their misdeeds in subsequent generations. ' It is 
 appointed unto men once to die, but after this, judgment.' This 
 subject is to the last degree painful and terrible, but how vain to 
 deny that it occupies a prominent place in the New Testament 
 Revelation. 
 
 This is what first strikes every reader of the New Testament 
 writings, a distinct threatening of judgment to come on every 
 soul of man that doeth evil r , a threatening brought home to the 
 conscience by all the lines of evidence which prove the truth of 
 Christianity; for those warnings of 'righteous judgment ' are proved 
 to be from God by precisely the same arguments which attest the 
 divine promises. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The second noticeable fact in respect to the language of the 
 New Testament, not less than the Old, is that, in ninety-nine 
 instances out of every hundred in which the issue of God's judg- 
 ment is referred to, its effect is declared to be to bring the 
 subjects of it to an end which is described as death, destruction, 
 perishing, utterly perishing, corruption ; and, negatively, as ex- 
 elusion from life, or life eternal. Such phrases as endless woe, 
 endless misery, are unknown to the Bible. The ordinary language 
 of the pulpit on this subject is systematically unscriptural. 
 
 Now the words which occur constantly in the prophetic and 
 apostolic writings in reference to judgment to come, are, as is 
 known, taken by nearly all Christendom, and have been taken for 
 many centuries', to stand for the idea of misery only ; a misery 
 believed from the supposed nature of the sufferers, as beings im- 
 mortal, and, from other declarations of inspired writers, to be ah- 
 
HYPOTHETICAL OPERATION ON THE WORD ( LIFE: 357 
 
 solutely endless. It is denied with the utmost force of conviction, 
 by multitudes of Christians, learned and simple, that these words 
 signify what they seem to signify the utter destruction or ex- 
 tinction of the life of the condemned. It is held that their real 
 and proper sense, because their historical sense in Christendom, 
 is that the existence of wicked men will be carried on through the 
 boundless eternity, as long as the Necessary Being endures, in a 
 state of conscious suffering ; greater or less in degree, but illimit- 
 able in duration.* 
 
 There must exist some argument of almost overpowering 
 influence which has thus determined the interpretation of masses 
 of language to a sense exactly contrary to its natural meaning. 
 For the process by which such terms as death, perishing, destruc- 
 tion are made to stand for the idea of endless misery, is one so 
 remarkable as to arrest attention and demand instant inquiry. 
 A corresponding action on the word Life, so often used in the 
 Bible to denote the eternal reward of the saints, would result in 
 making it stand for the strange idea of a happy extinction, or a 
 blessed abolition of existence an euthanasia. The radical idea 
 of destruction, that is, extinction of being, is first taken out 
 of the term Death ; then the word is made to stand for its 
 opposite, eternal being ; and then the associated idea of misery 
 is grafted upon the stock of the converted primary; the result 
 being, that destruction stands for endless misery. An exactly 
 parallel treatment of the promise of Life, therefore, will result, 
 first, in taking out of it its radical idea of conscious existence 
 next, in making it stand for its opposite, extinction and, lastly, 
 in joining the idea of happiness with the converted primary, 
 so that you obtain the complex result of a happy extinction. It 
 
 * No one has exhibited this conviction with greater force than Mr. Darby in 
 his various tractates on this awful subject. His expression of displeasure at 
 the spiritual character, and of scorn for the scholarship, of all who hold a 
 different belief than his own, we must not turn aside to characterise further 
 than to entreat his reconsideration of much unfitting language. One observes, 
 however, that zealous Calvinists are often indifferent to the moral credibility of 
 their doctrines, because it is thought that predestination will secure the ' faith ' 
 of the elect, and the honest moral difficulties of the non-elect are of no con- 
 sequence to any one. If they do not see the justice of their own helpless 
 condemnation to endless torment, their opinion is of no account to writers of 
 this school. 
 
358 DEATH, DESTRUCTION, PERISHING. 
 
 would require some argument of overmastering force to per- 
 suade nine-tenths of the scholars of Christendom to perform this 
 operation upon the promise of life to the righteous ; and no such 
 argument has ever appeared or operated. 
 
 To what, then, is to be attributed the almost unanimous de- 
 cision of Europe and America, that the terms in which punish- 
 ment is threatened to wicked men in the Scripture are rightly to 
 be treated in the fashion described ? 
 
 The answer is obvious. The popular belief of Christendom 
 has now for many ages been fixed in the Natural Immortality of 
 the Soul, as a dictate of reason, and first principle of religious 
 truth ; a principle thought to rest on similarly decisive evidence 
 with the existence and moral government of God. And since 
 the soul is Immortal, or deathless, it can never die or perish in 
 the proper and natural sense of those words, but only in some 
 figurative or tropical sense, such as this of endless misery. Thus 
 psychology gives the law to interpretation. 
 
 Add to this that there are three passages of the New Testa- 
 ment, perhaps four, which have been regarded as categorical 
 assertions of the doctrine of endless misery, and we arrive at the 
 explanation of 'a handling of words, at first sight so artificial and 
 indefensible. The argument for the figurative interpretation of 
 Death, Destruction, and Perishing, derived from these supposed 
 decisive expressions in the New Testament, will be examined 
 afterwards. At present we are concerned to consider the language 
 by means of which Christianity published to the world its doctrine 
 of future retribution. 
 
 The original words (verbs and nouns) generally employed by 
 New Testament writers to warn wicked men of their future doom, 
 are the following : 
 
 1. The verb to die. ' If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die 1 
 (/ze'AAcTc airoOvyo-KCLv, ye shall soon and certainly die ; Rom. 
 viii. 13). * That a man may eat thereof, and not die ' (John vi. 50). 
 
 2. The noun death (Odvaros). 'The wages of sin is death* 
 (Rom. vi. 23). 
 
 3. The verb to destroy. God is able to 'destroy body and 
 soul in Gehenna ' (i/^x^ KCU. <ru>/xa aTroAeom cv ycfwy, Matt. x. 
 28). In this sense also a man is said to ' destroy his own life.' 
 
SYLLABUS OF NEW TESTAMENT EXPRESSIONS. 359 
 
 ' He that loveth his life shall lose (destroy) it ' (John xii. 25). 
 a7roXm avrrjv fyvx*l v m opposition to woyoviy(m avrrfv. 
 
 4. The noun destruction. * Broad is the road that leadeth to 
 destruction' (ets rrjv aTrwXciav, Matt, vii. 13). * Vessels of wrath 
 fitted for destruction ' (owrdiXeiav, Rom. ix. 22). 
 
 5. The verb to perish. 'God so loved the world, as to give 
 His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should 
 T&\. perish* (/AT) coi-oXr/rca, John iii. 15). 
 
 * The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness ' 
 (rot? aTToXXv/Aei/ot?, i Cor. i. 1 8). * Shall the weak brother perish 
 by thy knowledge ?' (aTroXXvrat, i Cor. viii. n). 'They shall 
 perish without law' (di/opos KOL diroXowrcu, Rom. ii. 12). 
 
 6. Destruction (oXeflpos). 'Who shall pay the penalty, eter- 
 nal destruction from the presence of the Lord ' (oXeflpov atwnov, 
 2 Thess. i. 9). 
 
 ' Foojish and hurtful lusts drown men in destruction and perdi- 
 tion ' (eis oXeOpov KCU ctTrwXeiav, I Tim. VI. 9). 
 
 'Then sudden destruction cometh upon them' (rare ai<i/i'8ios 
 avrots c^to-Tarat oXe#pos, i Thess. v. 3). 
 
 7. Corruption or death (<f>0opa). ' He that soweth to the flesh, 
 shall of the flesh reap corruption (<f>0opw), but he that soweth to 
 the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting ' (Gal. vi. 8). 
 
 ' That by these ye might become partakers of a divine nature, 
 having escaped the corruption or mortality which is in the world 
 through lust ' (<0ops, 2 Peter i. 4). ' These, as irrational brute 
 beasts made for capture and destruction (<f>9opav), shall utterly 
 perish in their own corruption, or mortality ' (ev rrj <f>0opa avrwr 
 KOLTatfrOaprja-ovraL, 2 Peter ii. 12). 
 
 In the same sense 8ta<0eipa>, Rev. xi. 18 'to destroy them that 
 destroy the earth.' Sept., Judges vi. 4. The trans, pass. (Sta- 
 <0etpo//,ai) to decay wholly, to perish (2 Cor. iv. 16, 'The outward 
 man perisheth, the inward man is renewed '). 
 
 8. Extermination. ' He shall be destroyed from among the 
 people ' (cgoXoOpevOrja-trai CK TOV Xaov, Acts iii. 23), the Septua- 
 gint translation of Plffl?! it shall be exterminated, in Exod. 
 xii. 15. See also Exod. xxii. 20, Zech. xiii. 8; Sept. 
 
 9. Being killed. 'I will kill her children with death' (dwro- 
 ev 0avaTO), Rev. ii. 23). ' The detter (or law) killeth (o.7ro- 
 
 , 2 Cor. iii. 6). See also Romans vii. 1 1. 
 
360 USAGE OF THESE WORDS IN PH&DON. 
 
 i o. Vanishing. l Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and vanish ' 
 (afJHiviorOrjTc, Acts xiii. 41). The word used by Josephus to 
 describe the opinion of the Sadducees. ' Their doctrine makes 
 souls to vanish along with the bodies ' (o-vra<an' ra? i/a^as TO?S 
 ). Antiq. xviii. ch. i. 4. 
 
 Let us now consider the history of these words, used (as is 
 affirmed) in the New Testament, to signify the endless misery of 
 souls and bodies, immortal or immortalised. 
 
 No fact in literature is capable of clearer demonstration than 
 that the majority of these nouns and verbs, denoting destruction 
 of some sort, are used by Plato again and again in the Phcedon, 
 a dialogue on Immortality, expressly for the purpose of convey- 
 ing the idea of the literal destruction or extinction of the soul. In 
 proof of this, it will not suffice to refer in a foot-note to the 
 passages in the *Ph<zdon where these words occur. They must 
 be presented to the reader in distinct citation. And in order 
 to dispel the suspicion even of involuntary tampering with 
 the translation under the influence of theory, we will also for 
 the benefit of English readers set forth the passages of Plato in 
 the version of Dr. Jowett, whose impartial accuracy none will 
 question. 
 
 The importance of these citations in this discussion arises 
 from the fact that the Phczdon was during the four hundred years 
 before Christ's ministry the great classic treatise on Immortality, 
 known and acknowledged as such throughout the Greek-speaking 
 world. Based upon the ever-moving story of the martyrdom of 
 Socrates, and professing to detail the arguments for the immor- 
 tality of the soul, on which he rested his hope of a life to come, 
 on the day of his judicial death by poison, the Phczdon was as 
 well known among the reading population of the Macedonian and 
 Roman empires as any tragedy of Shakespeare is known among 
 English readers. The words, therefore, in which Plato expressed 
 the leading ideas of this dialogue formed a fixed element of 
 thought and speech over the wide area where his works were 
 studied in the numerous academies and schools around the 
 Mediterranean shores. 
 
 The main object of the dialogue is obvious to every reader. It 
 is to adduce arguments of various kinds in support of the belief 
 
USAGE OF THESE WORDS IN PHALDON, 361 
 
 that in death the soul will not become extinct, will not die, perish, 
 or be destroyed. The reader's attention, therefore, is now invited 
 to the terms in which that idea is set forth throughout the 
 Phcedon. They are precisely the terms generally chosen in the 
 New Testament to denote the punishment of the wicked ; with 
 this difference, that Plato says the soul will not suffer 
 aTTwAaa, oAeflpos, <j>0opd; that it is not destined to 
 Ka.Ta<t>OeipcrOai, 8ia<0etp<r0ai, a.Tro6vr)<TKtw ', while the New Testa- 
 ment writers declare that wicked men shall suffer what is de- 
 noted by these terms. In Plato's dialogue these words stand 
 for extinction of life, for that idea only, and in the strongest 
 possible contrast to the idea of perpetuation of being. Our argu- 
 ment is that in the New Testament they signify precisely the 
 same doom, the final and absolute extinction of life in the case 
 of the wicked.* 
 
 There is, I submit, no possibility of escape from the force of 
 this argument except by a statement which is fatal to the New 
 Testament writings as a revelation. It is said that these words 
 in the New Testament are not used in the sense in which Plato 
 and all his readers for four hundred years, not less than all good 
 writers in Greek following the times of Christ, used them ; but 
 in a new and special sense, which was created for them by inspira- 
 tion of God ; so that inspiration must be regarded as having for 
 its object to give, not only a new, but a self-contradictory sense 
 to some of the most familiar words in the Greek language. But 
 if this were the effect of inspiration, inspiration would be fatal to 
 revelation; since revelation consists in making truth known to 
 the nations through language, and inspiration of the quality sup- 
 posed deprives words of their proper meaning and affixes one 
 diametrically opposite. 
 
 The passages in the Phtzdon in which the words occur, which 
 are also used in the New Testament to denote future punish- 
 ment, are as follows. The Greek words spaced out are the same 
 with those used in the New Testament to denote future punish- 
 
 * Professor Cremer, in his Lexicon of the New Testament, while asserting 
 that in Scripture these terms stand for the eternal misery of mankind, frankly 
 allows that ' such a signification is peculiar to the New Testament, and without 
 analogy in classical Greek.' In voc. 
 
362 CITATIONS FROM PH&DON OF PLATO, 
 
 ment. Their English correlatives are given in italics in Mr. 
 Jowett's version. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. EITTOVTO? Sr; TOV ^WKpdYovs ravra, v7roXa/3wi/ 6 
 Ke/fys <f>y *O ^wKpaTes, TO. /xev dXXa e/xotye SOKCI KaXuis Xeyco-flat, 
 Ta 8e 3rept T^S iftvxfjs TroXX^v aTrtcTTtav Trape^a rots di/flpawrois, /XT), 
 7Tioai/ aTraXXay^ TOV o~w/xaTO9, ovSa/xov crt 17, dXX' eKeiVy 
 S t a < $ c t prjT at TC Kat diroXXvT/Tai, 17 av avOpimros 
 
 ' Socrates having said these things, Cebes answered : I agree, Socrates, in 
 the greater part of what you say. But in what relates to the soul men are apt 
 to be incredulous ; they fear that when she leaves the body her place may be 
 nowhere, and that on the very day of death she may be destroyed and perish. ' 
 Jowett, p. 414. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. Et /X/TOI KCU, cTreiSoV d7ro0ava>/Aev, en rrcu, 
 cvS* avro) JJLOL SoKet, !<?7, w ^wKpares, aTroScSct^^at, dXX' ert 
 Kfv o vw S^ Ke)8r/s eXcyc, TO Ttiai/ TroXXwv, OTTW? /A^ a/xa a,7ro0v 
 TOV avOpwTTOv 8tao-Kc8ajaa^-at 17 '/^^ ^at avr^ TOV eTvai TOVTO T*eXos ^. 
 Tt' yap KooXvei yiyvco-^at /xcv avr^i/ /cat wrracr0ai aXXo^ei/ TTO^CV Kat 
 cu/at Trpti/, Kat et? dv^ptoTrctov o-w/xa d<iKeo-$at, eTretSav Se d^)tK^Tai Kat 
 TOVTOV, TOTC Kat avT^v TeXevrav Kat $La<f)6ipc<rOaL', 
 
 * But that after death (says Simmias) the soul will continue to exist is not 
 proven even to my own satisfaction. I cannot get rid of the feeling of the 
 many to which Cebes was referring the feeling that when the man dies the 
 soul may be scattered, and that this may be the end of her. For admitting 
 that she may be generated and created in some other place, and may have 
 existed before entering the human body, why after having entered in and gone 
 out again may she not herself be destroyed a nd come to an end f Jowett, p. 424. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 'H & i/o^ apa, TO detSes, TO ets Totovroj/ 
 TOTTOV erepov otxo/xcvov, ycwatov Kat Ka.0a.pov Kat detS^, ets "AtSov a>s 
 dXryflws, irapa TOV aya#ov Kat <poVi/xoi> Oeov, ov av Ocos fOcXy, avriKa 
 Kai T^ e/x^ faxO ^ T ^ OJ/ avr>; Se &r) fjfuv f) roiavrrj Kat OVTCO Trc^vKvta 
 aTraXXaTTO/xer*/ TOV o-w/xaTO? cv^vs 8iair<f>vcrr)Tcu Kat aTroXoXcv, ai? 
 <^>acriv ot TroXXot dv^pawrot \ TroXXov yc Set, 5 ^>tXe Kc^iys T Kat 
 St/x/xta. 
 
 ' And are we to suppose that the soul, which is invisible, in passing to the 
 true Hades, which, like her, is invisible, and pure, and noble, and on her way 
 to the good and wise God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go, 
 that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature and origin, is blown away and 
 perishes immediately on quitting the body, as the many say? That can never 
 be, my dear Simmias and Cebes.' Jowett, p. 428. 
 
WITH TRANSLATIONS BY JOWETT. 363 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. Ei ow Tvyxam ^ fax*} ^" a <W lol/t ' a Tls 
 
 oYt, oral/ x<*Xao-07} TO aw/xa ^/xtov a/xerptos, T-^V /xev \j/v\Y)V avdyKY) 
 fv@v<s vTrdpx^ aTroXooXevai, KatTrep ovo-ai/ ^etorar^v, axnrep Kat at 
 aXXat ap/Aovi'ai air' ev rots <0oyyots' apa ow Trpos TOVTOI/ TOI/ Xoyov Tt 
 <?70-o/Ai', eav Tts dtot Kpacrtv ovVav T>)I/ fax*} v v *" T( ? "^ a ' TL * v 
 TuJ KaXov/xei/a) $avaVa) Trpornyv aTroXXvo'^at J 
 
 ' And, if this be true, the inference clearly is that when the strings of the 
 body are unduly loosened, then the soul, though most divine, like other 
 harmonies, of course perishes at once. Now, if any one maintained that the 
 soul, being the harmony of the elements of the body, first perishes in that 
 which is called death, how shall we answer him ? ' J(nvett, p. 434. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. TOVTOV Se TOV Odvarov KCU ravrrjv TVJV Sta- 
 Xvarw TOU <ra)//,aT09, ^ rfj ^v\V <l>*P fi oXeflpov, /x^SeW ^aoy ctSei/ai. 
 
 The whole passage is as follows (the extract is in italics) : * For suppose that 
 we grant even more than you affirm as within the range of possibility, and, 
 besides acknowledging that the soul existed before birth, admit also that after 
 death the souls of some are existing still, and will exist, and will be born and 
 die again and again, and that there is a natural strength in the soul which will 
 hold out and be born many times ; for all this we may be still inclined to 
 think that she will succumb in one of her deaths and utterly perish (navTairaotv 
 a.7r6\Xvff9at) ; and this death and dissolution of the body which brings destruction 
 (oXtQpov) to the soul may be unknown to any of MS, for no one of us can have 
 had any experience of it. And if this be true, then I say that he who is con- 
 fident in death has but a foolish confidence, unless he is able to prove that the 
 soul is altogether immortal and imperishable (iravrairafftv dOavarov re Kai 
 avwXeOpov). But if he is not able to prove this, he who is about to die will 
 always have reason to fear that when the body is disunited, the soul may utterly 
 perish ' [ dt /i), dvdyKtjv elvat ai TOV peXXovra diroQaviioQcu Stdikvai virtp 
 ri]Q avTov tyvxrjc, [trj iv Ty vvv TOV (rw/iaroc Sia&vZti TravTonraaiv diroXij- 
 rai]. Jowett, p. 436. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. Kat TTO.W Se'o/xai TraXii/, aXXov TIVOS Xoyov, 
 os fj. TTCicrfL ws TOV aiToOavovTos ov <rvva7ro0i>?7crKi fj 
 
 * And now I must begin again, and find another argument which will assure 
 me that when the man is dead the soul dies not with him.' Jowett, p. 437. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. Kc/fys 8e /MOI eSo^c TOVTO /nev c/xot 
 TroXuxpoi/uorepoV yc etrai ifsvx*l v "<*V/,aTos, aXXa ToSc aSr/Xov Travrt, fj.rj 
 TroXXa 8^ orco/xaTa Kat TroXXa/as KaTaTpt^ao~a vj i/a;^ TO TeXeuTatW 
 croi/xa KaTaXi7roOo-a vvv avrv] aTroXXv^Tai, Kat rf avTO TOVTO 6dva- 
 T05, 
 
364 CITATIONS FROM PHsEDON. 
 
 ' On the other hand, Cebes appears to grant that the soul was more lasting 
 than the body, but he said that no one could know whether the soul (after 
 having worn out many bodies) might not perish herself and leave her last body 
 behind her ; and that thing is death, which is the destruction of the soul.' 
 p. 440. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 ' You say, Cebes, that the demonstration of the strength and divinity of the 
 soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men, does not necessarily 
 imply her immortality. Granting that the soul is long-lived, and has known 
 and done much in a former state, still she is not on that account immortal ; 
 and her entrance into the human form may be a sort of disease which is the 
 beginning of dissolution (dpx) r/i> avry 6 \ k 9 p o v), and may at last, after 
 the toils of life are over, end in that which is called death (KOI rfXfyrw.ra yf iv 
 a v a Tip air o\\v o IT o).' JcrMetl, p. 446. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. OVKOVV /cat u>Se, e<r?, dvdyKY] Trept TOV aOavdrov 
 tiirtiv ei fJLfv TO aOavarov /cat dvuXfOpov COTU>, dovvaTov ^X?? 
 OTOLV OdvaTOs err avrrjv ly, diroXXvo'daL' 6a.va.Tov u\v yap or] ov Several 
 ovS' ecrrat TfOvrjKvla, u>o~7rep TO. -rrpta OVK co-rat aprtov. 
 
 ' And the same may be said of the immortal : for if the immortal be also 
 imperishable, the soul when attacked by death cannot perish ; for the preceding 
 argument shows that the soul will not admit of death, or ever be dead, any more 
 than three or the odd number will admit of the even.' Joivett, p. 457. 
 
 And again : OVKOVV KO! vvv rrcpl TOV dQavaTov, el fj.ev rjfuv 6/xoA.o- 
 yctrcu Kat dvwXeOpov eu>ai, if/vyr) av fir] Trpos T<3 dOdvaros eTvat KCU 
 aVtoXe^pos' et Se /AT), aAAov av Scot \6yov. 'AAA' ovSev Set, t<J>Y), TOVTOV 
 yc ei/eKa' o-^oXrj yap av TL a\\o <j> 6 o p a v /XT) Se^otro, et TO ye dBdva- 
 TOV Kat afStov (f> o p d v SeeTai. 
 
 * And the same may be said of the immortal : if the immortal is also im- 
 perishable, then the soul will be imperishable as well as immortal. But if not, 
 some other proof must be given of her imperishableness. . No other proof is 
 needed, he said for if the immortal, being eternal, is liable to perish, then 
 nothing is imperishable.' Jowett, p. 457. 
 
 There can be no hesitation in affirming that any ordinary reader 
 of Greek coming to the New Testament for the first time in the 
 age of the apostles, would, as Archbishop Whately supposes, have 
 taken the words now in question, singly, and still more in their 
 
ORDINARY MEANING OF TERMS. 365 
 
 striking combination, in the sense in which they are used in the 
 preceding extracts from the Phcedon. If it can be shown, as per- 
 haps it can, that some of these words had been occasionally used, 
 in highly emotional passages of the poets, in a strained and 
 tropical sense, in which the idea of misery and pain leading to 
 death is the prominent thought, such a reader would at once 
 decide that in a grave philosophical or religious treatise these 
 words must be taken in their proper and obvious meaning; 
 especially in sacred writings partaking of the quality of public 
 legislative documents, in which important words are to be always 
 taken in their strictest and most direct definition. 
 
 Unquestionably such a Greek would reply to any one who 
 proposed to put the * figurative ' sense of endless misery upon 
 them, somewhat as the head master of an English public school 
 replied to a recent proposal of the same sort : ' My mind fails to 
 conceive a grosser misinterpretation of language than when the 
 five or six strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, 
 signifying " destroy," or "destruction," are explained to mean 
 maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence. To translate 
 black as white is nothing to this.'* 
 
 Nothing less than an argument of overwhelming cogency ought 
 to prevail to deflect and reverse the ordinary signification of 
 Greek words in interpreting the New Testament. No scholar 
 can doubt that the Greek language received in the hands of the 
 Jews a certain Hebraic education, so to speak, during the three 
 hundred years before Christ, which fitted it more completely for 
 its highest use as the instrument for propagating Christianity; 
 
 * Dr. Weymouth, of Mill Hill, commenting on and agreeing with a similar 
 statement by the late Dr. Mortimer of the City School. How differently minds 
 are constituted may be seen in Professor Moses Stuart's observation on the text, 
 that ' the wages of sin is death.' He asks, ' Is it in the power of language to 
 convey a stronger impression of the retribution (of eternal misery) that will be 
 made in the invisible world than such an expression conveys ? ' Essays, p. 104. 
 But this, even on the part of so excellent a scholar as Dr. Stuart, seems to be 
 trifling with that common sense which God in His great mercy has given to the 
 unlearned, to preserve them from the infatuations occasionally incident to their 
 superiors in learning. In reply to Mr. J. N. Darby's assertion that the word 
 ' destroy ' is never used for causing the final cessation of existence (p. 144), it is 
 sufficient to say that it is seldom used to signify anything else than the putting 
 an end to the organic form, or substance, of existing things. 
 
366 A NEW GREEK LANGUAGE NOT 
 
 but it may be safely maintained that no part of that education of 
 the language was directed to the overthrow and reversal of the 
 signification of its most familiar words ; or to the establishment 
 of rare, idiomatic, and secondary senses, as the primary, leading, 
 and established senses of the chief terms to be employed in 
 offering the revelation of the gospel to mankind, and in making 
 known the penalty for rejecting it. Surely the Greek world had 
 not to learn a new Greek language before it could understand the 
 apostles, for if so the 'gift of tongues' was an equivocal blessing. 
 
 Highly exaggerated notions are entertained by some writers 
 respecting the peculiarity of the Greek Testament idiom. No 
 sooner is it demonstrated that the identical terms which are 
 employed in the New Testament books signify in the pages of 
 Plato, in a discussion on immortality, and in all other known 
 classical writers, literal destruction or abolition of life, than you 
 are met with the statement that New Testament Greek has its 
 own * spiritual and secondary meanings,' and cannot be rightly 
 understood if we take its words in ' classical ' senses. The argu- 
 ment is not indeed always used with consistency, for sometimes 
 we are urged to attach * figurative ' senses to these very terms in 
 the New Testament on the strength of quotations supposed to 
 contain similar figures, taken from the Greek poets / The argu- 
 ment on the carnality of classical Greek is taken up or laid aside 
 apparently according to the exigency of the criticism. 
 
 But indeed the doctrine is exceedingly pernicious, and destruc- 
 tive of Christianity, that the evangelists and apostles wrote in 
 language which was in the main unintelligible to their Greek 
 converts. When Luke wrote a gospel for the churches planted 
 by Paul in Achaia, or Macedonia, or Asia Minor, or when S. Paul 
 wrote two letters to the Corinthians, recently converted from 
 heathenism, who can imagine, except one who has a theory to 
 obey, that these compositions were set forth in words which were 
 employed in senses previously unknown to the readers at Corinth, 
 Philippi, Athens, or Thessalonica ? Granting that there would 
 be some tincture of foreign idioms in the combination of their 
 phrases, and admitting that there would be some new Hebraic 
 phrases introduced from the usage of Greek -speaking Jews of 
 Palestine or Alexandria, still it is evident that their ordinary 
 expressions were, from the very fact that they were used by the. 
 
REQUIRED FOR REVELATION. 367 
 
 apostles, judged by them to be intelligible Greek, so that none of 
 the idioms were beyond the comprehension of an honest, religious, 
 Greek-speaking man. And equally evident is it that old words 
 would not be used in new and strange senses, such as making 
 death (Odvaros, or <0opa) stand for endless misery, without full 
 warning from such conscientious correspondents.* 
 
 Take for example the common verb aTroAAv/xt, to destroy. No 
 scholar is ignorant that the first, proper, and prevailing sense of 
 this verb is thoroughly to break up the existence of anything, as an 
 organic unity; in the case of living things, to destroy their life. 
 No one will deny also that it bears the secondary, idiomatic sense 
 of to lose, especially in the first aorist active. There are also 
 examples in the tragedians, in the 'hyperbole of passion and 
 poetry,' in which the idea of misery an.&pain might seem to be 
 more prominent than the destruction they were bringing on, but 
 
 * Since this was written we have the added authority of Mr. Baldwin Brown 
 for believing that the threatening of destruction in the Bible always stands for 
 the idea of 'annihilation,' only he affirms that it is the sinner's sin which is 
 to be destroyed in hell, not himself. ' There is a divine and blessed way of 
 destroying sinners by destroying sin.' There is no need for encumbering our 
 pages with an argument in reply to this notion borrowed from Origen and the 
 Universalists. Mr. Constable has sufficiently exposed it. He says, *S. Paul 
 describes the Gospel thus : " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all ac- 
 ceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (i Tim. i. 
 15). Mr. Brown would have us think that the very same blessed truth would 
 have been conveyed if it had been said that " Christ Jesus came into the world 
 to destroy sinners," for saving a sinner and destroying a sinner mean the same 
 thing with him. Or, let us read our Lord's awful warning to His generation 
 as interpreted by Mr. Brown : " Except ye repent, your sins shall all likewise 
 perish " (Luke xiii. 3). Why, instead of deterring from sin, a premium would 
 here seem to be set upon impenitence ! What does Mr. Brown make Paul tell 
 us is the due reward of transgression? " The wages of sin," read after his 
 interpretation "/> the death of sin" (Rom. vi. 23). What warning does he 
 make Peter hold out to the false teachers who should privily bring in damnable 
 heresis, even denying the Lord that bought them? He would nrnke him say 
 that they would " bring upon their sins swift destruction " (2 Peter ii. i). Such 
 is the confusion and utter violence to the language and sense of the New Testa- 
 ment which the adoption of Mr. Brown's theory of interpretation would bring 
 upon it.' Rainbow, 1876. The same reply is applicable to the argument of 
 the Rev. Samuel Cox in Salvator Mundi. The whole array of words threaten- 
 ing destruction to the wicked he regards as in effect so many fatherly promises 
 of chastisement, restitution, and eternal life to lost sinners ; but he avoids 
 the consideration of the above arguments against such violent perversion. 
 
3 68 DR. MORTIMER ON 'APOLLUMi: 
 
 these are exceedingly rare, and in no cases occur, so far as I can 
 ascertain, except when the misery is likely to end in destruction. 
 
 If now I open the tenth chapter of S. Matthew's gospel, I find 
 no single word used in the whole chapter in any other sense than 
 that in which an ordinary Greek would have understood it. Why 
 should I be asked to believe that in verse 28 the word aTroAeW, 
 to destroy ', is used in a sacred ' or ' poetic ; sense wholly unknown 
 to ordinary Greek readers to make miserable, without literally 
 putting to death ? If I find in the second epistle to the Thessa- 
 lonians no word used in any other sense than that in which all 
 the Greeks in Macedonia would have understood it, why am I 
 to think that in i. 8, the word oXcOpos is used out of its proper 
 meaning of destruction of life (the sense in which Plato uses it in 
 the Phaeton), and that it is here to be taken in the sense of misery 
 which will be endless, to suit the theory of a soul that is neces- 
 sarily immortal ? Language cannot thus be created anew at the 
 word of command, any more than a man can immortalise the 
 human race by an assertion of their immortality. One might just 
 as reasonably attempt to set up an argument to show that in 
 Matt. x. 28, o-w/xa does not mean the body, or \f/vxrj the soul, 
 on the ground that divine revelation is something much higher 
 than the common Greek-speaking populations were able to con- 
 ceive of. Such criticism prepares the way for all the ' inner and 
 deeper senses ' of Swedenborgianism and Universalism.* 
 
 * A curious example of the hold which ' figurative ' senses have on even the 
 ablest men appeared a few years ago in a public discussion on this subject. 
 Dr. Mortimer, late head master of the City School, had laid it down a little 
 too broadly that ' diroXXv^it, whenever and wherever it occurs in a Greek 
 author, has but one meaning the destruction of the object to which it is the 
 active verb. ' Profiting by this too sweeping statement, which omits to account 
 for the occasional secondary sense of losing, Dr. Lindsay Alexander (clarum et 
 venerabile nomen) took advantage of the existence of the secondary sense of 
 losing to throw a doubt upon the proper and primary meaning of the word as 
 applicable to future punishment. The following reply was given by the writer 
 to Dr. Alexander and his associates in this criticism, and I hope will explain 
 the value of that objection : ' If a man were engaged in teaching English to 
 a foreigner, and were to inform him that " whenever and wherever the word 
 strike occurs in an English author it has but one meaning to give a blow to 
 the object to which it is the active verb" what would be thought if Dr. 
 Alexander were to step in with an indignant protest against the delusion 
 practised on the foreigner, declaring that it is notorious that to strike often 
 
MORAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH LIFE, ETC. 369 
 
 If the reader will take the trouble to run his eye through any 
 lexicon of the New Testament, even of that class which might be 
 described as dogmatic commentaries in disguise, he can judge 
 for himself whether the spiritual discipline of Greek, to which 
 I have referred, had the effect of altering the proper signification 
 of any large family of words to suit the new religious purpose.* 
 
 The meaning of many terms was heightened and deepened; 
 but, as Professor Cremer allows in his lexicon, words which re- 
 late to the future state form the only class which, it is pretended, 
 were twisted out of their proper meaning, in the New Testament 
 dialect; and this notwithstanding the fact that Greek already 
 abounded in words for expressing with fullest accuracy the ideas 
 which it is sought to enforce under the perverted terminology. 
 
 MORAL IDEAS ASSOCIATED WITH THE TERMS 
 LIFE AND DEATH. 
 
 It is now necessary to consider an argument which exerts more 
 influence than perhaps any other in supporting what are called 
 the secondary senses of death and destruction, and with them the 
 doctrine of eternal misery ; I mean that which is derived from 
 certain supposed exclusively moral senses of these terms in the 
 New Testament. 
 
 signifies to cease from work, and also to pull down a flag in battle ? Assuredly 
 every one would think that Dr. Alexander was somewhat needlessly interfex-- 
 ing with the lesson, since the object of the strong general statement made to 
 the learner was sufficiently obvious to impress upon him the proper, ordinary 
 signification of the verb to strike, and the radical idea to which all the secondary 
 and idiomatic meanings are clearly traceable. What would any bystander 
 think if Dr. Alexander commenced a series of quotations from English poets 
 and journalists to show that to take the verb in the sense of giving a blcnv 
 would make nonsense in places were naval actions and trades unions are 
 spoken of ? I feel certain that the bystanders would consider that the foreigner 
 was being unfairly treated, and that the teacher ought to be supported in his 
 general doctrine ; since it is of the last importance that foreign people should 
 learn the proper meanings of our common words, and not be seduced into 
 mistaking special and idiomatic use%for normal significations.' 
 
 * See for example the meritorious Handbook to the Grammar of the New 
 Testament, recently published by Dr. Samuel Green, late of Rawdon College. 
 
 24 
 
370 MORAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH 
 
 An impression widely prevails that the life spoken of by the 
 Apostle John, oj, does not include the idea of existence, which 
 is always presupposed, but signifies only a moral condition of 
 holy union with God, carrying with it the result of heavenly joy, 
 in ' life eternal. ' Those who do not possess this life are called 
 the dead, vcicpoi, as in Matt. viii. 22 ; Eph. ii. i, 5 ; Col. ii. 13 ; 
 Apoc. iii. i.* The words of S. Paul respecting the wanton 
 widow are also cited : ' She that liveth in pleasure (wo-a 
 Te'0i/?7Ke) living is dead' Hence, it is argued, the proposal to 
 take the words life and death, as including the ideas of existence 
 and non-existence, is contrary to the usage of the Scripture, and 
 leads to a whole world of wrong conclusions. The * dead,' so 
 called, are persons actually alive ; and this proves that those who 
 hereafter are to be ' hurt of the second death ' may be persons 
 who are still alive and conscious of their sufferings, and are by 
 no means destroyed, in the literal sense of that word. 
 
 i . In clearing up this question, so important in its bearings on 
 the main controversy, let it be understood that we offer no denial 
 of the self-evident fact that the term life, as used in Scripture to 
 describe the present and future states of regenerate men, does 
 include the associated ideas of holiness and blessedness, arising 
 from a new relation to God, a spiritual resurrection resulting from 
 redemption (Rom. vi. 4). No one ought to affirm that the bare 
 idea of animate existence is all that the term includes. No one 
 of any account does affirm it. Our position is that the idea of 
 existence is included in the meaning, is fundamental to it, the 
 moral ideas associated with it having this conception of eternal 
 
 * The expressions which run through the fifth and sixth chapters of S. John's 
 gospel are usually assumed to be wholly of a figurative character. The ' dead ' 
 hearing the voice of the Son of God, and living, are said to be morally dead, 
 and their resurrection to be only spiritual. But this rendering overlooks 
 the references to physical resurrection contained in the words, ' All that are 
 in the graves (tombs, monuments) shall hear His v\>ice and shall come forth.' 
 Our Lord's intention clearly was to vindicate His claim to be the Life-giver, 
 by declaring that He would speedily give token of His power by raising many 
 from the sepulchre. This was fulfilled during His ministry; and at the 
 moment of His death, when 'many bodies of the sleeping saints arose,' an 
 earnest of His ability to raise all mankind, either to the resurrection of ' life ' 
 or of 'judgment.' But the whole chapter Aust be read with new eyes to learn 
 the force of these references to His Life-giving power. 
 
THE TERMS LIFE AND DEATH. 371 
 
 sentient being in the complex humanity (m opposition to death 
 or destruction) as their basis.* 
 
 It follows from this statement that it is no sufficient answer to 
 our argument to go about to prove that life carries with it an 
 association of moral ideas ; for this fact we, too, urgently affirm. 
 What must be established to overthrow our argument is the diffi- 
 cult position that the terms, life and living for ever, exclude the 
 idea which they most naturally denote. What we maintain is, 
 that just as the apostolic phraseology concerning a spiritual resur- 
 rection-life, as descriptive of the regenerate man's estate (Rom. 
 vi. 1-16), does not exclude, but rather involves and enforces that 
 physical resurrection, that re-construction of the dissolved humanity 
 in corporal immortality, which is the destined portion of every 
 
 * A very able writer in the Wesley an Methodist Magazine, for 1877, speaks 
 of the definition of life thus : ' No exact and exhaustive definition of *' life " has 
 yet been framed. Perhaps there is no word in our language, not even its 
 correlative "death," with so many and so delicate shades of significance. A 
 common, though vague, idea runs through all its meanings, but the sense in 
 each case depends upon the subject of which "life " is predicated. There is a 
 plainly perceptible difference between the " life " of an ox and the " life " of the 
 grass on which it feeds ; and between the " life " of the ox and the "life " of the 
 man who owns it. It would be ridiculous to confine the term to its lowest 
 signification ; the inapplicability of a formula so constructed wc-rdd be seen at 
 a glance. The Conditionalists commit a very similar absurdity, when they 
 press in their favour what they are pleased to call the " literal sense " of the 
 word in question, by which they mean the lowest sense. But the ' ' literal 
 sense " is not necessarily the lowest sense.' On this I observe that there is 
 one thing common to all the subjects of which life is predicated, that their 
 death consists in the total destruction of the organism the cessation of the life 
 of the integer. In order to understand the radical meanings of life and death 
 they must be considered together. The attempt to set up a sense of death, 
 which excludes the idea of destruction, is a departure from the analogy supplied 
 throughout nature, and requires for its establishment somethin much more 
 forcible than the uninspired assertion of our opponents, that life in relation to 
 man's religious state and prospects, signifies only union with God and that his 
 death eternal signifies only endless misery. I cannot too strongly recommend 
 the appendix to Rev. Thomas Davis's work on Endless Suffering, where the 
 reader will find critically discussed the phrases in the Pauline Epistles on 
 which the Augustinian theory of ' death ' is founded (Longmans). Christ 
 bestows on His servants life in all its * shades of significance ' including the 
 lowest as well as the highest. ' He will raise them up at the last day.' And 
 He bestows such complex life on these alone. It is life in His own Image, as 
 God and Man in one Person for ever. (3rd Edition). 
 
372 FIGURATIVE SENSES OF DEATH. 
 
 Christian so the moral idea of eternal life in Christ does not 
 exclude, but imply, the under-lying fact of an eternal existence, 
 depending on union with Him as the * life-giving Spirit' And 
 just as we reprobate the criticism of those who argue, that because 
 the apostles describe a moral resurrection of believers, therefore 
 they do not teach a physical resurrection, (the error of Hymenaeus 
 and Philetus, who said ' that the resurrection is past already '), so 
 we maintain that the doctrine of those persons is to be condemned 
 who hold that, because there is a spiritual sense included in the 
 ' life ' possessed by believers, therefore we are to exclude from the 
 term the fundamental idea of a literal immortality in body and 
 spirit. The new life, being divine in its quality, is eternal. 
 
 2. Next it is necessary, in order to obviate similar misconcep- 
 tions, to add tkat we do not question the figurative uses of death 
 in the New Testament. In every language these uses are common. 
 Thus, in English, we say to be ' dead to any thing or person ' 
 in the obvious sense of ceasing to be in living relations with him or 
 it. So a man is said to be * dead to the law/ * dead to the world,' 
 1 dead to sin,' the meaning being that he ceases to live or exist in 
 certain relations with them. But in these cases the figure is formed 
 on the proper meaning of the term. 
 
 Again, we often speak of one as a 'dead' man, who is in 
 imminent danger of death; as when you hold a pistol to a burglar, 
 and say, * You are a dead man, if you move a step further ; ' or, 
 as when the apostles cried out in the storm, ' Lord, save us, we 
 perish] dTroXAv'/xefla not intending to indicate that they were in 
 a state of perpetual suffering, but in danger of literal death. Thus, 
 also, S. Paul says of himself' In deaths oft ; ' ' We that live are 
 always delivered unto death ; ' ' Thanks be to God, who hath 
 delivered us from so great a death' Also, he speaks of ' deliver- 
 ing such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh ' 
 (oXeOpov). In this passage, the term destruction is used to denote 
 the effect of the mortal disease with which the incestuous man was 
 smitten for his sin ; the final result of which was certain, unless 
 he repented. The fact that he did repent and live (2 Cor.) no 
 more proves that the oAeflpos was mere suffering, without danger 
 of death, than the use of the phrase ' we perish ' by the drowning 
 apostles proves that they were in affliction which threatened no 
 fatal result. Yet it is on such trifling perversions as these that 
 
PROLEPTIC USES OF THE TERMS. 373 
 
 some authors rest a mighty theory of interminable suffering for 
 sinners of every description. In none of these cases would any 
 one contend that the words death, perishing, or destruction stand 
 for a state of sin or misery, but the condition of a man who is on 
 the brink of death, or in danger of physical destruction. That is 
 to say, death is used proleptically, in anticipation of a future re- 
 sult : in a manner the reverse of that which is found in the phrase 
 ' I saw the dead stand before God,' where the persons then 
 raised up are spoken of as dead, not because they had been 
 wicked, but dead in the past. 
 
 3. Neither, in the next place, is it denied that when sinful and 
 unregenerate men are called ' the dead,' or ' dead by sin,' or are 
 said to ' abide in death,' or to be in ' death,' there is a strong 
 associated reference to the spiritual condition of sin and misery 
 which brings or keeps them under this category. So that it is 
 not sufficient to adduce evidence to prove that there is a reference 
 to a moral condition, for we maintain this as firmly as the advo- 
 cates of natural Immortality. 
 
 But the true question is, whether, underneath all such moral 
 references in the terms, there is not a deeper reference to the 
 historical meaning of death as illustrated in that narrative of the 
 Fall of Man on which redemption is founded ; that meaning 
 which is explained in the sentence passed upon Adam, ' To dust 
 thou shalt return,' and which finds its full explication in the 
 correlative terms used throughout the Bible to reveal it; as in 
 our Lord's words in Matt. x. 28, 'Fear Him who is able to 
 destroy both body and soul in hell.' This is the essential question. 
 The evidence in support of the affirmative answer is as follows : 
 The synonymous terms employed in the New Testament, in 
 explanation of the death in which sinners lie by sin, compel the 
 assertion that the conceptions of existence and non-existence are 
 at the basis of the terms Life and Death. Take, for example, 
 the verb aV0KTVco, to kill, or rather kill outright. This word has 
 dropped out of use in modern theology, because it fails to express 
 the complicaticn of ideas which in later ages have grown up 
 around the two words death and destruction, and which have 
 stifled their proper signification. But in the New Testament 
 the verb to be killed is used interchangeably with the verbs to 
 die and to be destroyed; is used, in fact, to explain what it is to 
 
374 THE LETTER KILLETH. 
 
 die or be destroyed. Thus, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 S. Paul, after previous references (chapter v.) to the death which 
 descended upon the race from Adam (including, as he specially 
 observes, that innocent part of mankind who had 'not sinned 
 after the manner of Adam '), goes on in the seventh chapter to 
 treat of the effect of the law upon those who attempt to serve 
 God while under its ban. He says (vii. n), * For I was alive 
 without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin 
 revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained 
 to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the 
 commandment, deceived me, and by it killed or slew me outright,' 
 aTrc'/cTeivev. This is in accordance with his statement in 2 Cor. 
 iii. 6, where he contrasts the different effects of the law, or 
 ministry of condemnation, and the gospel, or ministry of right- 
 eousness. 'The letter killeth, aTroKren/ei, but the spirit giveth life.' 
 Now, in each of these cases, S. Paul uses the verb to kill as ex- 
 planatory of the death which comes by sin under the law, and this 
 being so, it ought to be capable of being used interchangeably with 
 death, and its derivatives, as employed to describe the state and 
 prospects of sinners. Let us, then, assume the senses attributed 
 to death and the dead by. established usage. ' Sinners are morally 
 dead, and the word signifies nothing else than a state of sin and 
 misery ; there is no reference to existence or non-existence.' If 
 so, then it ought to make sense to say that a wicked man is 
 'killed in sins' (Eph. ii. i) ; or that he is spiritually killed by 
 transgression, and will be slain and killed to all eternity in the 
 miseries of hell. But ordinary preachers would not now think of 
 telling a wicked man tl^at the law or curse of God would kill him. 
 That word would not express their idea of ' death.' They would 
 be afraid lest the sinful man should take it in the sense of literally 
 losing his life in hell. S. Paul, however, used the word con- 
 stantly and fearlessly as synonymous with death a decisive proof 
 that the radical meaning of death, the loss of literal life or exist- 
 ence, lies at the basis of it wherever it is held forth as the doom 
 of the wicked. We conclude then that when the unregenerate 
 are called 'the dead,' the usage \s> proleptic or anticipatory, one of 
 the commonest figures in all languages ; * founded upon the 
 
 * It is thus that Maimonides, 'the eagle of the Rabbins,' the greatest and 
 most learned of the Jewish commentators on the Hebrew Bible, explains the 
 
THE LETTER KILLETH. 375 
 
 doctrine which underlies the gospel, that men have lost life 
 eternal by the fall, and have aggravated their doom by their 
 own sins, so that all who are unsaved are but awaiting that 
 sentence of the ' second death' which will consign them to 
 'destruction of body and soul in Gehenna,' an 'everlasting 
 destruction from the presence of the Lord/ 'If ye live after 
 the flesh, ye shall soon and certainly die (/te'AAere aTroOvrjo-KtLv) \ 
 but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, 
 YE SHALL LIVE' (Rom. viii. 13), where the word is used in its 
 most emphatic sense, as where the eternally existing God is called, 
 the Living God. 
 
 The general philological argument to which attention has been 
 now drawn, I believe, compels the conclusion that the New 
 Testament doctrine on the future punishment of obstinately 
 impenitent men is that they shall be 'blotted out' and finally 
 perish under inflictions corresponding with their sins. A doom 
 more credible, indeed, than that of endless existence in misery, 
 but in another aspect not less awful, for what can be imagined 
 more tremendous, as the issue of an evil life, than to have incurred 
 a death which shuts the sinner out of the universe for ever, by 
 driving him into the abyss of destruction ? The horror of capital 
 punishment on earth is the best representation of such a doom, 
 though offering indeed but a feeble image of the catastrophe 
 when a soul shall ' die in its sins ' by undergoing the final stroke 
 of extermination as an enemy of God. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 I shall now add some criticisms on the New Testament lan- 
 guage on future punishment, which taken collectively confirm the 
 general argument just exhibited. 
 
 If the preceding considerations are based on truth, we ought 
 
 term. In his book on Repentance, ch. viii., he says, ' But this is the penalty 
 which awaits the unjust that they shall not attain that life, but shall be 
 utterly destroyed. He who is unworthy of eternal life is called the Dead, 
 nnn wn, because he shall not live for ever, but on account of his iniquities 
 shall be cut off in his wickedness, and like a beast shall perish.' norraD "OKI 
 rroa ; Edition by Clavering, Oxford, 1705. 
 
376 IMAGES TO DENOTE DESTRUCTION. 
 
 to discover in the apostolic writings forms of expression either 
 openly, or by implication, or by undesigned coincidence, bearing 
 testimony to the correctness of these interpretations. A wise 
 inquirer will weigh the conjoint as well as the individual value of 
 those to be now adduced. 
 
 These coincident forms of expression may be divided into 
 two classes : firstly, the images employed to denote future 
 punishment; secondly, certain unrhetorical explicit statements 
 of doctrine. 
 
 i. The images used to denote the future punishment of sinners 
 agree entirely with the doctrine of their ultimate destruction, and 
 are to the last degree unsuited to denote the idea of their ever- 
 lasting existence in misery. 
 
 The name of the wicked shall be ' blotted from the book of 
 life.' The wicked man shall be 'cut down* like a dead tree. 
 He will be ' cut asunder ' amid his ' weeping and wailing and 
 gnashing of teeth.' He will be cast into the fire to be 'burned ' 
 like a fruitless branch. He will be ' burned up ' like ' chaff, 
 or ' stubble,' so that the fire shall leave him ' neither root nor 
 branch ' (Malachi iv.). He will be ' broken to shivers * like a 
 potters vessel, ' dashed to pieces,' ' ground to powder.' He 
 shall be thrown down into destruction like a ' house without 
 a foundation ; ' be ' cast away ' to putrefy like bad fish. If 
 the destruction so constantly threatened to sinners in the Old 
 Testament be regarded as a figure of the future punishment in 
 another state, the image at least is a strong support of the 
 belief that karat or extermination is the impending penalty. 
 If the Old Testament threaten ings under the Law are to be 
 taken as distinct predictions of future punishment, then they 
 agree in their literal sense with the New Testament, which also 
 denounces the same ' destruction.' 
 
 But there is not one image in either the Old or New Testa- 
 ment, descriptive of retribution, which encourages the expecta- 
 tion of a bad man's everlasting life. ' When the wicked spring 
 as the grass, and all the workers of iniquity flourish, it is that 
 they shall be destroyed for ever* (Psalm xcii. 7). 'All flesh is 
 as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass; 
 the grass withereth, the flower fadeth but the word of the 
 
THE HELL OF MOHAMMED. 377 
 
 Lord endureth for ever ' (Isaiah xl. 7). ' The enemies of the 
 Lord shall be as the fat of rams ; into smoke shall they consume 
 away ' (Psalm xxxvii. 20). This is language which it is difficult 
 to believe proceeded from inspired men who thought that the 
 wicked were immortal, and would endure for ever to be the 
 plagues of the universe, or a torment of soul to the saved, who 
 should behold their endless woes. 
 
 It has been often said that the proposal to denominate a 
 limited amount of suffering, terminated by destruction, Death, 
 is unreasonable. Such a term must signify either misery or 
 extinction, but not both. To this we reply, that the contrary 
 is nearer the truth : and that the real objection lies against the 
 popular interpretation. For it appears to be as irrational to 
 declare that those persons shall perish and be destroyed, who are 
 in fact to be kept alive evermore in suffering, as it would be to 
 say of a man labouring under a distemper, which was certain 
 not to be fatal and mortal, that he was dying or perishing in it. 
 We should never be induced to employ these phrases in any case 
 in which it was not evident or probable that the disease would end 
 in dissolution ; and it remains to be seen by what process of 
 thought in the apostles of old it originally was, that they came 
 as is supposed to affix these expressions to the cases of those 
 whose torments should be ' without measure or end/ 
 
 A striking confirmation of this argument arises from con- 
 sideration of the language employed by Mohammed in the 
 Koran like the Bible, an Oriental book when denouncing 
 future punishment to unbelievers. That marvellous farrago of sense 
 and nonsense is destitute of the threatening of death, slaughter, 
 and destruction to the wicked in hell. Mohammed intended to 
 teach the everlasting misery of ' infidels,' and he has given ex- 
 pression to his ideas in words well fitted to denote them. See 
 Koran, chaps, iv., vii., xx., xxix. 
 
 Indeed, so far is the proposed signification of these words, 
 'death,' 'perishing,' 'destruction,' from being alien to their 
 proper application, that it is one of the most ordinary usages 
 of speech to convey the compound ideas of suffering and final 
 cessation of life by each one of the very terms under exami- 
 nation. 
 
 So far is it from being the fact that Death must signify either 
 
378 PASSAGES OF NEW TESTAMENT EXPLAINED 
 
 misery or non-existence, but not the composite conception of 
 misery and loss of life, than no phrases are more usual than 
 these: 'an easy death,' 'a lingering death/ 'a painful death,' 
 'a violent death,' a 'horrible death,' 'a miserable destruction ; ' 
 in each one of which the notion of a final cessation of life is 
 associated with the conception of varying degrees of suffering. 
 Thus, also, in Scripture (as has been shown in the former part 
 of this chapter), we find the idea of a ' mighty destruction ' and 
 of a 'great death' (2 Cor. i. 10), presented in reference to 
 temporal dissolution, in such a manner as to indicate that it is 
 entirely in accordance with the thoughts of the Bible writers to 
 denominate the future punishment of the wicked, consisting in 
 suffering and destruction, by the general name of Death ; leaving 
 it to other occasions to add the qualifying representations con- 
 cerning the extent of that suffering, from the 'few stripes ' of the 
 comparatively ignorant up to the ' greater damnation ' of the well- 
 instructed transgressor. 
 
 (2) We shall now proceed to point out some such portions of 
 Scripture as appear to fulfil the conditions just stated and 
 required, commencing with the gospel of Matthew. 
 
 Matt. iii. 12. ' He will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into 
 the garner ; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire* It is diffi- 
 cult to believe that if John the Baptist had before his imagination the thought 
 of the indestructibleness of the wicked in the fires of hell, he would have 
 likened them to chaff, which is proverbially the thing in creation least fitted to 
 withstand the action of the flames. This is an image which no orthodox 
 preacher in modern times can be induced to employ. The meaning of the 
 irvp avfieffTov of the New Testament writers is here revealed. It is a fire 
 which thoroughly accomplishes its object and burns up the chaff. 
 
 Matt. v. 30. ' Cut it off, and cast it from thee ; it is profitable for thee 
 that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy -whole body should be 
 cast into hell.' Here there is manifestly a comparison drawn between the 
 evils of the literal perishing of one member and of the whole body. The 
 effect of cutting oft" the hand is literal perishing (aTroX^rat). This fixes the 
 signification of d7ro>\a in relation to the whole body. 
 
 Matt. vi. 25. 'Take no thought for your life, tyvxn, what ye shall eat, or 
 what ye shall drink : nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the 
 soul, tyvxri, more than meat, and the body than raiment? ' Our Lord by this 
 last question intimates that if His hearers neglected the kingdom of God on 
 account of meat and drink, they would lose their lives, body and soul, in the 
 
ON HYPOTHESIS OF LIFE IN CHRIST ONLY. 379 
 
 world to come, and therefore He warns them that it is of far more importance 
 to preserve the soul or life to eternity than to be anxious about it on earth ; to 
 preserve the body for ever than to clothe it curiously now. 
 
 Matt. x. 28. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
 soul (aTTOKTiivai) ; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy (a7ro\rai) 
 both soul and body in Gehenna.' ' To kill the soul ' unquestionably signifies 
 to destroy its life, in the same literal sense as that in which men were able * to 
 kill the body. ' It is the threat of God's accomplishing what man was unable 
 to effect, which the Saviour holds out to the timorous ; He ' is able to destroy 
 both soul and body in Gehenna ; ' and the ability to destroy the soul, to kill 
 it outright, will be exerted by that God who is a 'consuming Fire,' and 
 whose threats are not vain. Christ here taught the doctrine which is found 
 substantially in the Talmud. 'The body shall be consumed, and the soul 
 burned up, and the wind shall scatter it under the feet of the just ' (Rosc- 
 hasciana, ch. i. quoted, by S. Cox in Salvator Mundi, pp. 71-3, which see for 
 further evidence of Jewish belief). 
 
 Matt. xvi. 25. 'Whosoever shall wish to save his life, TY\V 
 ffuaat, shall lose it, diroXkati avTrjv.' ' For what is a man profited if he 
 shall gain the whole world and lose his own life, ^vx^v, or what shall a man 
 give in exchange for his life, ^vx^v ? ' 
 
 The same aphorism occurs in S. Luke, chap. ix. 25, with this variation : 
 ' For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world and lose himself, or 
 be cast away' (be lost) ; savrbv Sk dTroXtaag % ^^naBtiQ. And again, in chap. 
 xvii. 33 : * Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever 
 shall lose his life shall preserve it,' KCU bg t&v d-rroXkay avrriv, Zatoyovrjau 
 avTrjv. 
 
 In the Gospel of S. John also it occurs thus, chap. xii. 25 : ' He that loveth 
 his life, i//i>x)j', shall lose it, diroXtatt avrijv ; and he that hateth his life, ^vyriv 
 in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal,' tg Zwrjv ai&viov <f>v\dti avrrjv. 
 
 Here, to love or save the life, ^iv^v, m the first clause in each passage, is 
 determined by the connexion not to signify being concerned for a man's salva- 
 tion, but the desire of saving his life. If, then, by ' losing it ' our Lord intends 
 eternal suffering in hell, the tyvxri which shall so suffer must be taken in quite 
 a different sense from the fox*} of the first clause, which will be a great con- 
 fusion of terms. The avr^v, ' itj referred to is surely the ^vx^v taken in the 
 sense of the first clause of the sentence life; which, says our Lord, a wicked 
 man shall lose. Otherwise the whole will stand thus : ' He that loveth his 
 ^VXTQV in the sense of life, shall lose it in the sense of soul.' But then the verb 
 lose must also undergo a conversion of meaning in the two clauses of the sen- 
 tence, as it is given by Luke, chap. ix. 24. There our Lord says, * Whosoever 
 will lose his life, shall save it.' Here lose must signify literally lose. Else our 
 Lord will be represented as saying, ' Whosoever shall consign his soul to eternal 
 misery for my sake, the same shall save it ; ' which is absurd. But if a literal 
 loss of life is the meaning of the phrase in one clause, it surely stands for the 
 same idea in the next j unless we are prepared to read the whole passage thus : 
 
380 PASS A GES OF NEW TESTAMENT EXPLAINED 
 
 'Whosoever will save his tyvxr)v, in the sense of life, shall lose his ^v\ffv, in the 
 sense of his soul going to eternal misery : but whosoever shall lose his life in 
 its literal sense for my sake, shall save or keep it in the sense of soul, and pre- 
 serve it (woyov?7(re, Luke xvii. 33,) in the sense of making it happy.' 
 
 The ' losing, of Matthew and Luke, is the not ' keeping' of John ; and not 
 keeping is the explanation of losing. And certainly not * keeping ' a man's 
 life or soul, or self, is the last form of expression fitted to denote that soul's 
 everlasting existence in torment. 
 
 Luke ix. 56. ' The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, 
 dv9p(t)7Tb)v aTToXevai (some MSS. diroicrtivai,) but to save them.' This 
 verse is omitted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, and is absent from 
 all the more authoritative manuscripts. But, as Alford bravely says, ' This 
 whole passage has been tampered with, as supposed to involve indirect censure 
 of Elias, and to stand in the way of church-censure.' And we cannot consent 
 to expunge, where authorities are so much divided, words whose insertion could 
 hardly have occurred. Their design is obvious. The meaning of Christ's 
 'saving men's lives' is denned by the converse of killing or destroying them; and 
 it is just possible that another reason for the early omission of the words was 
 the perception that they were clean contrary to the ever-advancing doctrine of 
 man's natural possession of an ' indestructible ' 
 
 Luke xiii. 1-5. ' There were present at that season some that told Him of 
 the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus 
 answering said unto them, Suppose ye that those Galileans were sinners above 
 all the Galileans because they suffered such things ? I tell you, Nay : but 
 except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom 
 the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above 
 men that dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you, Nay : but except ye repent ye shall 
 all likewise perish.' w<rai>rwg, 6/zoiwc, atroXiioQt. This cannot signify that 
 they should perish in the same manner, through the cruelty of Pilate, or 
 through the fall of towers : therefore it remains only to apply the adverbs of 
 likeness to the doom itself literal loss of life, perishing. If the reference were 
 to this world, the threat was not fulfilled. 
 
 Luke xx. 1 8. * On whomsoever that stone shall fall, it shall grind him to 
 powder.' Was this figure likely to have occurred to any mind in which the 
 dissolution of human nature was not regarded as the punishment of the 
 wicked ? 
 
 Luke xx. 35. ' They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world 
 and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 
 Neither can they die any more.' In this passage the resurrection from the dead 
 is spoken of as the peculiar privilege of the righteous ; notwithstanding the 
 declarations elsewhere given of the resurrection of the unjust. The same 
 apparent restriction of the resurrection occurs in John vi. 54, Phil. iii. 1 1, 
 I Cor. xv. 42 ; in which last passage, as Locke forcibly proves, the wicked are 
 
ON HYPOTHESIS OF LIFE IN CtfRlST ONLY. 381 
 
 passed by, and the righteous alone are spoken of as rising to incorruption and 
 immortality.* How shall we reconcile these seemingly conflicting testimonies? 
 Are we to suppose that our Lord and His apostles intended by their expressions 
 that, compared with the eternal happiness of the saved, the eternal misery of 
 the wicked might be termed no resurrection at all ? Rather, do we not detect 
 in their words the doctrine that the resurrection of the wicked will take place 
 only in order that they may undergo the due reward of their deeds in the 
 second death by ' fire ' ? In this case, no doubt, they may truly be said not to 
 have 'attained to the resurrection from the dead ' (iZavdaraffiv, Phil. iii. ii). 
 
 John viii. 34-36. 'Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin. And the slave abideth not in 
 the house for ever : but the son abideth ever. If therefore the Son shall make 
 you free, ye shall be free indeed.' The intimation that the slave of sin ' does not 
 abide in the house for ever,' taken in connection with the passage next to be 
 noticed, seems to point to the interpretation proposed. ' The world passeth 
 away and its passion, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever ' 
 (i John ii. 17). 
 
 John viii. 51. ' If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death ' (pit ju) 
 0wpr;cry Oivarov tig rbv aiwvd). To which assertion the Pharisees objected, 
 that their pious father Abraham was dead, dirt9avt, and the prophets, con- 
 sequently that His words proved Him 'to have a demon.' They therefore 
 understood His words, literally, to teach that faith in Him would prevent that 
 cessation of life which disbelief would infallibly procure. Neither did He object 
 to their interpretation, but confirmed it, by predicating of Himself an existence 
 denoted by a form of speech suitable only to a pre-existent divine nature : 
 ' Before Abraham was I am ; ' an existence therefore on which, in fact, the life 
 of mankind might depend. 
 
 John x. 10, 27. ' The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to 
 destroy : I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more 
 abundantly.' The opposition in which killing and destruction are here placed 
 to that life which Jesus came to confer, appears to afford ground for the con- 
 clusion that since that life was the benefit to be obtained through His media- 
 tion, deprivation of life was the doom of those persons who were not saved 
 by His death. The possession of eternal life depends on obedience and faith. 
 ' My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me : and I give 
 unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, av /*} aTrdXwvrai tif rbv 
 , neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.' 
 
 John xi. 49, 50. ' And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest 
 
 * Mr. Baldwin Brown, in his sermons on Annihilation, takes the words 
 ' Neither can they die any more ' as descriptive of all mankind. But this is 
 manifestly to force the Scripture. The case put by the Sadducees was the con- 
 duct of a righteous man. Our Lord's reply corresponded with the question 
 proposed : ' They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world.' 
 
382 PASS A GES OF NE W TESTAMENT EXPLAINED 
 
 that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is 
 expedient for us that one man should die, airoOavy (ch. xviii. 14, tva avOpwirov 
 diroXtoBai, that one man should perish}, for the people, and that the whole 
 nation perish not, diroXriTai. In this unconscious prophecy of Caiaphas the literal 
 death or perishing of one person is placed in opposition to the impending death 
 or perishing of the whole nation : in accordance with Christ's own statement, 
 Luke ix. 56, that * the Son of man came not to destroy meris lives, i^vxC aTroXe- 
 <rat, but to save them! 
 
 Acts iii. 22, 23. ' For Moses truly said unto your fathers, A prophet shall 
 the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me. . . . 
 And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet, 
 shall be destroyed from among the people,' QokoBpivQijatTai, the same term 
 employed in the Septuagint translation for the menace of extermination or cut- 
 ting off. 
 
 Acts viii. 2O. * Then Peter said unto Simon, Thy money perish with thee ; 
 literally, thy money be with thee to destruction, TO dpyvpiov oov avv aoi ilrj 
 t'iQ dir&Xtiav. If the term rendered perish signifies eternal existence in misery, 
 it is not easy to perceive the force of this curse on the money ; but if we under- 
 stand it in the literal sense, then Simon might perish like his money, and his 
 money like himself. That the word ajrwXaa, usually translated perishing and 
 perdition, does really signify the literal death of the wicked, will appear to the 
 reader who remarks how currently it and its derivatives are employed in the 
 New Testament, in cases where modern theologians would hesitate to employ 
 its modern representative. Thus, Matt, xxvii. 20, the chief priests sought to 
 destroy Jesus, 'iva TOV 'irjffovv aVo\<rw<m>. And Festus applies the same term 
 to the loss of life, Acts xxv. 16 : 'It is not the custom of Romans to deliver 
 any to die, etc., ec aVolXetaa/.' If that same word stood for endless misery, its 
 use in such cases would have been almost impossible by the apostles in that 
 age. 
 
 Acts xx. 26. * Wherefore I (Paul) take you to record this day that I am 
 pure from the blood of all men ;' i.e., no one of you will be able to blame me 
 for unfaithfulness if finally lost. But by blood a Jew would intend not happi- 
 ness, but life ; whence we infer that their blood, i.e., their loss of life, in 
 eternity, was to be upon their own heads. 
 
 Rom. i. 32. ' Who (the Gentiles) knowing the judgment of God, that they 
 which do such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have 
 pleasure in them that do them.' If by death eternal misery were intended, 
 this statement would be historically false ; for the heathen at large have never 
 known that to be the just judgment of God, dtKa'tufta. But if we interpret the 
 passage so as to understand the term death literally, the language of the apostle 
 becomes at once, satisfactory. For the heathen knew this. They were * with- 
 out hope/ being ' without God in the world. ' 
 
 Rom. ii. 6, 7. ' God will render to every man according to his deeds : to 
 them who, by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory, honour, and 
 incorruption of nature, eternal life. ' Ch. vi. 23 : ' For the wages of sin is 
 
ON HYPOTHESIS OF LIFE IN CHRIST ONLY. 383 
 
 death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' In 
 these passages, Incorruption and Death are declared to be the respective de- 
 stinies of the righteous and the wicked : and it is conveyed in the strongest 
 manner, that ' incorruption ' is the * gift of God ' to the godly alone. 
 
 Rom. viii. 13. 'If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die (/tsXXere a.TroQvi]<rKiiv, 
 translated, John iv. 47, on the point of death) ; but if ye, through the Spirit, do 
 mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.' The insertion of a phrase ex- 
 pressly adapted to indicate a speedy dissolution, * ye are about to die,' suggests 
 a literal sense for the words that follow, ' ye shall live.' 
 
 I Cor. iii. 14. ' If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he 
 shall receive a reward : if any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer 
 loss. ' This warning, directed against the admission of unholy persons into 
 Christian communion, seems to represent such unsuitable characters as mere 
 4 wood, hay, stubble,' which would not be able to endure or abide the trial by 
 fire at the last great day : therefore it follows, ' If any man defile the temple 
 of God, him shall God destroy.' 
 
 Gal. vi. 8. ' He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption,' 
 tyQopdv.* The term corruption, in Greek and in English, has two significa- 
 tions, moral depravity, and literal destruction of life. In the present 
 instance, the first of these meanings cannot be intended by the apostle, for it 
 will offer no congruous sense to say, He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the 
 flesh reap depravity. The term, therefore, in this place, signifies literal death. 
 Thus the same word is used, Rom. viii. 21 ; I Cor. xv. 42-50 ; Col. ii. 22. 
 See note on 2 Peter ii. 12, p. 384. The whole verse will then present an 
 intelligible statement. ' He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap 
 utter death ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life 
 everlasting.' 
 
 \ Tim. vi. 9. ' But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, 
 and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and 
 perdition ; ' etj oXtOpov /cat ctTrwXetaj/. As the Greek language does not afford 
 two stronger expressions than these for denoting the idea of literal death and 
 extinction of being, it requires a large amount of evidence to prove that they 
 were intended by S. Paul to convey the idea of indestructible existence in 
 torment. 
 
 Hebrews x. 26-31. 'If we sin wilfully after that we have received the 
 knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain 
 fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour 
 
 * A stronger form of the same word is employed to denote the chemical 
 breaking up of the frame, ia<f>Qopa (Acts xiii. 34). That <j)9opd was one of the 
 most usual words to denote corruptibility, or evanescence may be seen in 
 Irenseus ; who, in disputing against the Gnostics, constantly uses this word to 
 denote the literal perishing of souls. In this sense also it is used by Plato, 40x5 
 A.c.,and by Athanasius, A.D. 350, covering a space of 750 years. Seethe 
 titation from Athanasius, in ch. xxvi. 
 
384 PASSAGES OF NEW TESTAMENT EXPLAINED 
 
 (I<r0ieii/, eat up) the adversary. He that despised Moses' law dud without mercy 
 under two or three witnesses : of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall 
 he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath 
 counted the blood of the covenant wherewith He was sanctified an unholy 
 thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace ? For we know Him 
 that hath said, Vengeance is mine, I will recompense, saith the Lord. ... It 
 is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.' 
 
 It is evident that this passage is intended to strike an awful alarm into the 
 hearts of those who are disobedient to the call of Christ ; and the language is 
 well fitted to excite the utmost apprehensions in the hearts of those who are 
 ' doing despite to the Spirit of grace.' The principle which is established by 
 these verses is, that the severity of the punishment which is to follow the rejec- 
 tion of the gospel economy is to be estimated by a consideration of the greater 
 guilt of despising a gospel of mercy, proclaimed by a Divine Mediator, in 
 comparison with the heinousness of despising a divine law, proclaimed by a 
 mortal. Now the usual reply to the inquiry, ' Of how much sorer punishment 
 suppose ye,' etc.? is, an infinite, an eternal infliction of suffering. Without 
 diminishing the real terror of the question, it must be suggested that this reply 
 proceeds upon a contemplation solely of the dignities of the persons of Moses 
 and Christ, in which, certainly, there is a boundless difference. But there is 
 one other consideration to be attended to, which will prove the invalidity of 
 the common conclusion. The law of Moses was the law of God : and therefore 
 the real comparison to be made is between the guilt of despising the Divine 
 Law and the Divine Gospel : and while, on the one hand, it is evident that 
 the punishment for rejecting the gospel of the Son of God will be much more 
 severe than that for despising His law ; yet, since, on the other hand, the 
 penalty of God's law was a literal, though terrible death, it seems to confound 
 all moral sense of proportion to pronounce that the penalty for rejecting the 
 offer of mercy should be infinitely more tremendous than that, being, in fact, 
 to suffer through endless duration the torment of ' fire.' What is this but to 
 assert that the sanctions of the Divine Justice are infinitely less terrible than 
 the sanctions of the Divine Mercy ; or rather that it is an infinitely less terrible 
 thing to affront the majesty of God's righteousness than it is to reject the offers 
 of His love ? 
 
 2 Peter ii. 12. ' These, as (wg) natural brute beasts, made for capture and 
 extinction, yeytvvrjukva tie liXwatv ccu $0opav, speak evil of the things which 
 they understand not, and shall utterly perish in their extinction, kv ry 00opp 
 avruv Ka.Ta<})Qapri<TovTai.' Evil men did not resemble beasts in evil speaking, 
 but they resemble them in irrationality, and will be like them in their destiny. 
 The beasts are made or born for 00opdt>, extinction, and wicked men will suffer 
 $9opav also (Gal. vi) ; but if this word signified endless misery, it could not be 
 said that the 'natural irrational brutes' were ' made ' for that. This is decisive 
 proof that <p9opa stands for extinction in the apostolic writings, as it does in 
 the writings of Plato, and in those of Irenaeus and Athanasius in the Christian 
 literature. 
 
 I John ii. 17. * The world pas seth away, irapaytrai, and the lust thereof; 
 but he that doeth the will of God abidethfor ever' The ' passing away ' of the 
 
ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF LIFE IN CHRIST. 385 
 
 world, and the 'abiding for ever ' of the servants of God, are contrasts which 
 establish the literal interpretation of the subsequent words, ' He that hath not 
 the Son of God hath not the life.' 
 
 Jude 5, 7. 'I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew 
 this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, 
 afterwards destroyed them that believed not ..... Even as Sodom and 
 Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner giving themselves over to 
 fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering 
 the vengeance of eternal fire' (TrpoKtivrai fitly pa Trupot; aiwviov SiKrjv vTrt^ovrrat.) 
 1 That this is not spoken ' (says Whitby) ' of the cities themselves, but of the in- 
 habitants which dwelt in them, is evident ; but yet I conceive they are said to 
 suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, not because their souls are at present 
 suffering punishment in hell fire, but because they and their cities perished by 
 that fire from heaven which brought a perpetual, irreparable destruction on 
 them and their cities.' 'To fitly pa, an example, is to be taken from some- 
 thing visible to, or knowable by, all who were to be terrified by it, especially 
 when it is an example set forth or manifested. Now, such was not the punish- 
 ment of the souls in hell ; but nothing was more celebrated among ancient 
 authors than the history of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.' ' The 
 reduction of those cities with their inhabitants to ashes, is mentioned as the 
 thing which placed them as an example of God's vengeance on the ungodly to 
 all future ages ; nor could anything be a more fit example of it ; for since 
 Peter hath informed us that the heavens and earth which now are, are reserved 
 unto fire against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men, when 
 the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up, what could be a 
 more exact emblem of that day when the elements shall melt into a lake of 
 fire, and the ungodly shall be cast into it ? Nor is there anything more common 
 and familiar in Scripture than to represent a thorough and irreparable vastation, 
 ivhose effects and signs should be still remaining, by the word aiwvioQ, which lue 
 have rendered eternal. "I will make thee a perpetual desolation" (aiwviov 
 , Ezek. xxvi. 21), and often elsewhere.' 
 
 Rev. ii. 7. 'To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, 
 which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. ' What was to be the conse- 
 quence of this to Adam ? ' Living for ever ' (Gen. iii. 22). What was on the 
 contrary, the opposite consequence of being deprived of the right to the tree of 
 life ? Eternal misery ? No : ' returning unto the ground whence he was 
 taken ; ' 'for dust thou art,' said the Almighty, not an ' Eternal Being,' ' and 
 unto dust shall thou return. So He drove out the man. ' Therefore, we argue, 
 all who are not admitted to the tree of life, by the second Adam, the Life- 
 giving Spirit, abide in death, the doom of the first, and 'have no life in them.' 
 ' Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts which perish ' 
 (Psalm xlix.). ' When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers 
 of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever* (Psalm xcii.). 
 
 Rev. iii. 5. 'He that overcometh, the sacne shall be clothed in white 
 
 25 
 
3 86 DR. PETAVELS TABLE OF VERBS 
 
 raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life. ' This implies 
 that it is there at present ; but it refers to one which, by possibility, might not 
 be there some day : consequently to a bad man, not one whose 'name was 
 written before the foundation of the world,' in the book of life of the ' Lamb 
 which was slain,' which contains the names of the finally saved (Rev. xiii. 8). 
 But the book of life, in which all other names could be, can be no other than 
 the book of the living, or those who exist ; not the book of those who are 
 ' spiritual ' or ' happy,' but of those who are alive. Hence, to be ' blotted 
 from the book of life ' is loss of existence ; as also to be written in the book 
 of life of the Lamb, is to ' live for ever.' 
 
 Rev. xxi. 8. ' All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with 
 fire and brimstone ; which is the second death.' It cannot be said to be a 
 second death, unless it be a doom bearing some likeness to z. first death. There 
 is no generic likeness whatever between corporeal dissolution, the breaking up 
 of human nature, and the everlasting suffering of a living body and soul : but 
 there is a strong likeness between the mortality of man upon earth, and his 
 second death at the judgment, when ' both body and soul will be destroyed in 
 Gehenna.' The latter may reasonably bear the fearful title of the Second 
 Death ; whereas if neither body nor soul is ever to die again, death was the 
 last word that was fitted to express that idea. Our Lord is represented by S. 
 Luke (xvii. 29) as pointing out the result of punishment by 'fire and brimstone,' 
 viz., that the sulphureous rain ' destroyed them all !' ' Even thus,' He adds, 
 ' shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.' 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I subjoin the following synoptical table of Hebrew verbs used in the 
 Old Testament signifying to destroy r , with their equivalents in the LXX. and 
 N. T., which will form a valuable addition to the extracts from the Phadon 
 given in a former page of this chapter. I am indebted for this to Dr. Em- 
 manuel Petavel, whose book, The Struggle for Eternal Life, is a condensed 
 summary of critical and theological evidence on the general subject : Kellaway, 
 1875. This accomplished scholar has also, in the French version of his work, 
 effectually opened the controversy among the churches of continental Europe. 
 La Fin du Mai : Sandoz et Fischbacher, Paris, 1872. 
 
 IN the Hebrew tongue there are no less than fifty roots, meaning, habitually 
 or occasionally, to destroy ; most of which are used in the Old Testament to 
 specify the ultimate doom of the wicked. Many of them denote absolute 
 suppression or abolition ; some are strictly images, but all point in the same 
 direction. (See Gesenius, Fuerst, etc., and the " English and Hebrew Lexi- 
 con " of Selig Newman, on the word to annihilate.} In fact, it is certain that 
 the Hebrew language has no stronger terms to express a ceasing to be what we 
 call annihilation than those used respecting the fate of the wicked. The 
 plain teaching of the Old Testament on this subject is endorsed by Jesus 
 and His apostles ; its truth is therefore, as it were, riveted. The corresponding 
 
IN PIE BREW SIGNIFYING TO DESTROY: 387 
 
 . terms of the New Testament are ordinarily borrowed from the Greek Septua- 
 gint translation of the Old Testament, and likewise distinctly foretell the 
 extinction of all evil and evil doers. " The majority of these nouns and verbs 
 are used by Plato again and again in the Phaeton, a dialogue on Immortality , 
 expressly for the purpose of conveying the idea of the literal destruction or 
 extinction of the soul. They are precisely the terms generally chosen in the 
 New Testament to denote the punishment of the wicked, with this difference : 
 that Plato says the soul will not suffer 9a.va.TOQ, dTrwXfia, oXt^poc, $$0joa, that it 
 is not destined to cnroXtaQai, Kara^QtipiaQai, a7ro9vr]ffKtiv ; while the New 
 Testament writers declare that wicked men shall suffer what is denoted by 
 these terms." We are therefore able to state, concerning the Greek, what we 
 have said concerning the Hebrew, that the authors of the Greek New Tes- 
 tament have used the strongest terms at their command, to assert a total 
 extinction of both evil and evil doers. The verbs IZovdevow and tZovBevtw, 
 which seem more literally to answer to our word " annihilate," are all but 
 exclusively used with the tropical meaning of "to treat with utmost contempt." 
 In the Septuagint, however, they are found with the meaning of "bringing 
 to nought," for instance, in Psalm cviii. 14 (numbered cvii. 13 in the Greek); 
 in the Vulgate : "Ad nihilum deducet," " He will reduce to nothingness." 
 
 In the following quotations, some Greek words refer exclusively to the 
 Septuagint. With reference to Hebrew verbs, it will be found sufficient for 
 practical purposes to mention the stem word or chief ground form. On 
 account of the many inaccuracies of the usual version, the reader will find it 
 desirable, if possible, to refer to the original texts, in which case the figures 
 within brackets will facilitate his research. The quotations within parentheses, 
 though not referring to conscious beings, are intended to point out the proper 
 'meaning of certain words. 
 
 This table, long as it is, might be greatly enlarged. Many illustrations, 
 symbolical expressions, and suggestive phrases might also be cited. We trust, 
 however, that, after having gone carefully through the present table, the 
 honest inquirer will find it sufficient proof in support of our statements. It 
 seems to us as if the sacred writers had exhausted their vocabulary in order to 
 convey what is contended for. 
 
 To ANATHEMATISE, to devote, to doom to destruction. See To CUT OFF. 
 
 To ANNIHILATE, to bring to nought. See also To DESTROY, To LOSE, 
 
 To PERISH, etc. 1?3> fjio HDD , rqti nnst, aQaviZw* kXeiTrw, Gen. xviii. 23; 
 
 Deut. xxxii. 26 ; (Est. ix. 28) ; Job xxii. 20 ; Psa. Ixxiii. 19 ; xciv. 23 ; ci. 8 ; 
 
 cxix. 119; Is. Ixvi. 17 ; Zeph. i. 2 ; cr TUN ware pr) virapxiiv a#rovc, Psa. 
 
 civ. 35 ; DD:n p4p, we OVK ovrtg Kal OVK taovrat, Isa. xxix. 20; xli. n, 12 ; 
 
 comp. Rev. xviii. 21 ; (Matt. vi. 20 ; Heb. viii. 13); Acts xiii. 41 ; vrr te vm, 
 
 Ka9oj oi>x vTraoxovTtQ, Obad. 16 ; b JH T Isa. xl. (17) 23 ; ty nnuj, the pit of 
 
 nought, Isa. xxxviii. 17. 
 
 To BLOT OUT OF EXISTENCE. nrra, l^aXa'^w, Gen. vi. 7; vii. 4, 23 
 
 tie raff ^v^aQ o \6yog avvaQaviZti ro7 erw^ao't. Joseph. 
 Antiq. xviii. I, 4. 
 
388 TABLE OF HEBREW VERBS 
 
 Dent. xxix. 20; Psa. ix. 5 [6] ; (li. 9 [n]) ; Ixix. 28 [29] ; cix. 13, 14 ; (Col. 
 
 11. 14) ; Rev. iii. 5 ; (comp. Luke x. 2O ; Phil. iv. 3). 'A0m;af, the efface- 
 ment or suppression of sin, Heb. ix. 26. 
 
 To BREAK IN PIECES, TO SHIVERS. yp: , yna , ysn , *m . iiti, ?r\ nra 
 cvvOXdw, avvTpifiwj avyicXdu), Job xxiv. 20 ; xxxiv. 24 ; Psa. ii. 9 ; Ixxii. 4 ; 
 Ixxxix. 23 [24] ; Isa. viii. 15 ; Matt. xxi. 44 ; Luke xx. 1 8 ; Rev. ii. 27= 
 
 To BURN UP. See To CONSUME and To DEVOUR. 
 
 To BRUISE. See To GRIND TO POWDER. 
 
 To CAST AWAY, OFF. m\> f3d\\<t) ?w, t/c/3aX\w, I Chron. xxviii. 9 ; fli; rfjv 
 Kapivov TOO 7rvpo t into the furnace of fire, Matt. xiii. 42, 48, 50 ; John xii. 31. 
 
 To CONSUME, to devour entirely. con , nte , cr . "Cfa . b\a , dvaXlvKia, 
 KaravaXiaKM, Karajcaiw, <rwvrX?w, TTU/OOW, Job xxiv. 19 ; Psa. xxxvii. 2O ; lix. 
 13 [14] ; Ixxiii. 19; xcvii. 3 ; civ. 35 ; Isa. i. 28, 31 ; Jer. xxx. 1 1 ; Mai. iv. 
 I [iii. 19]; Matt. iii. 12; xiii. 30, 40; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ; Heb. xii. 29 ; Rev. 
 xviii. 18, 7ryp<o<nc, burning, 9, 18. 
 
 To CORRUPT. See To PERISH. 
 
 To CRUCIFY, to kill or to annihilate. Dravpow, avaravpod) (Rom. vi. 6 ; 
 Gal. ii. 20 ; v. 24 ; vi. 14). 
 
 To CRUSH. See also To GRIND TO POWDER. wa t%ovcev6u t vvvrpipw, 
 Psa. Ix. 12 [14]; cviii. 13 [14], ad nihilum dedncet, Vulgate -Isa. xiv. 25; 
 Matt. xxi. 44; Luke xx. 18 ; Rom. xvi. 20. 
 
 To CUT IN SUNDER. See To BREAK IN PIECES. 
 
 To CUT OFF, DOWN, to suppress. nns ana VID rrfl . "iro , cnn , m , alplw, 
 foXo0pvw, 6KKo7rrw, aipu>, t/cjrXaw, dva0f/*ari'a>, Gen. ix. II; Ex. xii. 15, 19; 
 Lev. xxvii. 29 ; cf. Deut. vii. 25, 26 ; xiii. 15 ; xx. 17 ; Jos. x. 39 ; Judg. xxi. 6; 
 i Sam. xv. 8, 18 ; (2 Chron. xx. 23); Job xiv. 2 (7) ; Ps. xxxvii. 9, 38 ; liv. 5 
 [7]; Ixxiii. 27; Ixxv. 10 [ii]; Isa. xxix. 20; xxxiv. 2; xlviii. 19; Nah. 
 i. 12, 15 ; Matt. iii. 10 ; vii. 19 ; Luke xiii. 7, 9 ; John xv. 2; Acts iii. 23 ; xxiii. 
 
 12, 21 ; Rom. xi. 20, 22, 24; Dnn, dvdQipa, devoted, doomed to utter de- 
 struction, Lev. xxvii. 28 ; Josh. vi. 17 ; Rom. ix. 3. 
 
 To DASH IN PIECES. See To BREAK. 
 
 To DESTROY. See also To LOSE. note , con , yn: . nps , bnn "n 
 emphatically used by Plato in order to specify annihilation, civaX/crKw, 
 /carapyw, t4oXo0pyw, Xvw, a TroXXv/ji, (Deut. vii. 24) ; Psa. liv. 5 [7] ; Ixxiii. 
 27 ; xcii. 7 [8] ; civ. 35 ; cxlv. 20 ; Prov. xiii. 13 ; (Isa. xlviii. 19) ; Lam. iii. 
 22 ; Zeph. i. 2 ; Matt. (v. 29, 30) ; x. 28 ; xxvii. 20 ; Rom. vi. 6 ; vii. 6 ; 
 I Cor. (i. 19, 28; vi. 13 ; xiii. 8, 10); ii. 6 ; v. 5 ; xv. 24, 26 ; (2 Cor. iii. 7, 14) ; 
 Gal. v. (ii) 15 ; i Thess. v. 3 ; 2 Thess. i. 9 ; ii. 8 ; i Tim. vi. 9 ; 2 Tim. i. 
 10 (comp. Rev. xxi. 4, "no more death"); Heb. ii. 14; (James i. ii) ; i 
 John iii. 8. Abaddon, Apollyon, the Destroyer, Rev. ix. ri (cf. John viii. 44). 
 
 To DEVOUR, to eat up. See also To SWALLOW UP. b? Ifffl/w, KanoOiwi 
 /corr0aya>, avvTtXib), Deut. vii. 16; Isa. i. 20; Hos. xiii. 8 ; Heb. x. 27; 
 Rev. xi. 5 : xx. 9. 
 
 To DIE, to come to nothing, to cease to be (with regard either to the bodily 
 life alone or to certain activities of the soul, or both to the body and to the 
 soul). mo, 3n|f dTroBvrjffKdJ, dTTO-ylvofiai. "I must find another argument 
 \vhich will assure me that, when the man dies, the soul dies not with him " 
 
SIGNIFYING 'TO DESTROYS 389 
 
 (ovvcnroQvi)<?Kti}. Phado, xxxviii. Isa. xxii. 13 ; Zech. xiii. 8 ; John v. 24 ; 
 vi. 50; viii. 24 : Rom. vii. 6, 10 ; viii. 13 ; I Cor. xv. 22, 32 ; (Gal. ii. 19) ; 
 Eph. ii. I, 5 ; Phil. ii. 27 ; I Peter ii. 24 ; rno, Qavaroq, death : gradual or com- 
 plete, apparent or real, proleptic or effective loss of life ; absolutely, the ex- 
 tinction either of the bodily life or of the whole human being. Deut. xxx. 15; 
 Rom. vi. 16, 21, 23 ; vii. 5 ; James i. 15 ; y. 20 ; I John iii. 14 ; Rev. xxi. 8 ; 
 aTtuAcuh violent death, Acts xxv. 16 ; vtKpos, dead, out of existence (James ii. 
 
 17, 20, 26). 
 
 To DISSOLVE. See To LOSE, To PERTSH. 
 
 To DROWN. rip, 2p\, fivOtfa, vavaytw, Psa. ix. 15 [16] ; Ixxv. 3 ; Jer. Ii. 
 64 ; I Tim. i. 19 ; vi. 9 ; 2 Peter iii. II, 12. 
 
 To EAT UP. See To DEVOUR. 
 
 To EXTERMINATE. See To CUT OFF. 
 
 To EXTINGUISH. -qyi, nja, or/Sli/i/upi, Job xviii. 5 ; xxi. 17 Psalm cxviii. 
 12 ; Prov. xx. 20 ; xxiv. 20 ; Isa. xliii. 17. 
 
 To FALL. See also RUIN. bC2, TTITTTW, Psa. xxxvi. 12 [13] ; Matt. vii. 27 ; 
 Luke vi. 49. 
 
 To GRIND TO POWDER. See also To BREAK, To CRUSH. -we . ppi, pnir 
 Xt/c/Ltftw, XtirTvvu), (2 Kings xxiii. 6) ; Job xxvii. 21; Psa. xviii. 42 [43] ; Dan. 
 
 11. 44 ; Matt. xxi. 44 ; Luke xx. 18. 
 
 To KILL OUTRIGHT, to put to death, to put an end to. The middle voice 
 is used interchangeably with To DIE and its derivatives (to put an end to, with 
 reference either to the body or to certain activities of the soul, or both to the 
 body and to the soul). See also To CRUCIFY. :nn, VtDp, CLTTOKTI ivw, dnoXXvfii, 
 GavaTou, ve*cpow, Kara<r0arrw, dvaiptw, Gvti), Ps. Ixxviii. 31 ; cxxxix. 19 ; Dan. 
 vii. ii ; Matt. x. 28 ; xxi. 41 ; xxii. 7 ; Mark xii. 9 ; Luke xix. 27 (comp. xx. 
 36 ;) John x. 10 ; Rom. vii. ii ; viii. 13 ; (Heb. x. 9); 2 Cor. iii. 6 ; Col. iii. 5 ; 
 Rev. ii. 23 ; dvOpuTTOKTovog, homicide, John viii. 44. 
 
 LIFE, LIFE EVERLASTING, u>>j, wr} aluviog ; the impenitent sinner shall 
 NOT see it, have it : John iii. 36 ; v. 40 ; Acts' xiii. 46 ; i John iii. 15 ; v. 12. 
 
 To LOSE LIFE, to be lost, to cease to exist, to come to an end. ins, diroX- 
 Xu/u, Abaddon, Apollyon (the destroyer) ; dir&Xeia (destruction), Ezra vii. 26; 
 Esther viii. 6 ; Job xx. 7 ; Psa. ix. 5 : xcii. 9 [10] ; (cii. 26 [27]) ; cxlvi. 4 ; 
 Prov. xxvii. 20; Tsa. xxvi. 14; xxix. 14; Jer. xlvi. 28; Ezek. xxii. 27; 
 Dan. vii. n, 26 ; Matt. (v. 29, 30) ; vii. 13 ; Mark iv. 38 ; (xiv. 4 ; John vi. 
 
 12, 27); xi. 42; xvii. 12; Acts viii. 20 ; (xxv. 16) ; Rom. ix. 22, "vessels 
 fitted (or vases ready) for destruction" ; (i Cor. xv. 18) ; Phil. iii. 19 ; 2 Thess. 
 ii. 3 ; i Tim. vi. 9 ; (Heb. i. n) ; 2 Peter ii. i, 3 ; iii. 7, 16 ; Rev. xvii. 8, n. 
 
 To MELT AWAY, Dpn f rqico/mi, ia\vo/iai, kZovStvovpai, Psa. Iviii. 7 [8] ; 
 cxii. 10. 
 
 To OVERTHROW, to overturn. yn3 , 7]prr i Din KaBaipku, <rvj/rapa(r<ra, <j>9e i'pw, 
 Psa. xxviii. 5; Iii. 5 [7] ; cxliv. 6 ; Prov. xii. 7 ; Jer. i. 10; Luke i. 52. 
 
 PERDITION. See To PERISH and To LOSE. 
 
 To PERISH, to corrupt, to perish utterly, to putrefy, nnitf' pp^ 00a'/ow, 
 diatyOiipw, ia(t>9opa, *ara00t'pw, arroXXvp, Lev. xxvi. 39; Psa. Iv. 23 [24]; 
 (Matt. v. 30) ; Acts xiii. 34; Gal. vi. 8 ; i Cor. iii. 17 ; (xv. 18 : 2 Cor. iv. 
 1 6) ; 2 Peter i. 4 ; ii. 12 ; Rev. xi. 18. 
 
390 VERBS SIGNIFYING 'TO DESTROY: 
 
 To QUENCH. Sec To EXTINGUISH. 
 
 To ROOT OUT. tJ-TSJ, HD2, erriXXw, Kpiou>, Psa. Hi. 5 [7] ; Prov. ii. 22 ; 
 Jude 12. 
 
 RUIN. Ti nic> /cara.-rpo^ry, Trrwtrtf, pjjypa^job xxi. 17; xxxi. 3; Isa. 
 x. 3 ; Matt. vii. 27 ; Luke vi. 49 ; 2 Cor. x. 8 ; xiii. 10. 
 
 To SHATTER. See To BREAK IN PIECES. 
 
 To SLAY. See To KILL OUTRIGHT. 
 
 To SWALLOW UP. rV|' ftW* Karcnrivw, Job ii. 3 (Psa. cvii. 27); Isa. xxv. 8; 
 xlii. 14 ; I Cor. xv. 54 ; i Peter v. 8. 
 
 To UNDO. See To LOSE LIFE, To DESTROY. 
 
391 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPAL SCRIPTURE TEXTS SUPPOSED 
 TO TEACH THE EVERLASTING DURATION OF SIN AND MISERY. 
 
 ' The evidence accompanying the popular interpretation (of the doctrine of 
 eternal suffering) is by no means to be compared to that which establishes our 
 common Christianity : and therefore the fate of the Christian religion is not to 
 be considered as implicated in the belief or disbelief of the popular doctrine.' 
 ROBERT HALL, Works, v. 529. 
 
 IT is well known, notwithstanding the preceding arguments, that 
 there are three or four passages in the reports of Christ's dis- 
 courses, and two in the Apocalypse, which are considered by 
 many pious and able men to contain statements so precise, dis- 
 tinct, and decisive, in affirmation of the awful doctrine of the 
 eternal suffering of the wicked, as to compel us to affix a corre- 
 sponding meaning to the whole mass of prophetic and apostolic 
 language, which, it is generally admitted, must otherwise bear the 
 sense which we have imputed to it. 
 
 The question is whether these few passages, taken in the 
 popular sense, are to give the law to the interpretation of the 
 general current of Scripture language on future punishment ; or 
 whether the plain and natural sense of this general language is to 
 determine the force of the few disputed quotations. 
 
 Before proceeding to examine these well-known ' texts,' it is 
 proper to take note of a habit of the mind which is as likely to 
 affect those who are conscientiously opposed to us as ourselves. 
 The eye looks, but it is the mind that sees ; and when the mind 
 contemplates phenomena under a preoccupation of thought, it 
 interprets them in the light of its own idea : so that unless that 
 general idea be a right one its view of every phenomenon is in 
 some measure perverted. This is not less true of the study 
 
392 INFLUENCE OF PRECONCEPTION. 
 
 of Nature than of Scripture. So long as men were convinced 
 that every word of the Bible was a distinct revelation from 
 God, that there was no element of human limitation in its 
 pages, and therefore that its statements on the visible universe 
 were of as much authority as its declarations respecting re- 
 demption, they looked upon the heavens not only with the out- 
 ward eye of sense, but with the inner eye of faith in the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy, which makes the earth a plane, and the centre around 
 which revolve sun, moon, and stars, a view of matters confirmed 
 to the observer both by his senses and by the ' authority of Holy 
 Writ.' 
 
 So long as men thus looked on the earth and heavens, every 
 phenomenon was interpreted in the light of the general theory. 
 And we are now aware how wrongly men saw what they so beheld 
 in the creation. The same thing happened with respect to the 
 strata of the crust of the earth. So long as men observed with 
 eyes which were forbidden to see anything in the world beyond 
 the six days' work of Genesis, and a recent creation of all things, 
 they surveyed the mighty congeries of rocks and fossils with an 
 eye as good as blind. 
 
 The same law of vision applies to the study of the Bible itself. 
 So long as men read it with minds that recognise in every writer 
 a mechanical instrument through which ' the Holy Spirit ' has 
 written a certain number of equally infallible 'texts,' it is im- 
 possible they can allow themselves even to see the discrepancies 
 and omissions of a minor sort, which have crept into the writings 
 of some of the holy and honest men who have ' taken in hand ' 
 to write for us the history of Redemption and of the Redeemer. 
 It becomes a part of piety not to study phenomena so unedifying, 
 and so fatal to the preconceived theory of what an infallible Bible 
 ought to be. 
 
 And so long as men look on the Bible a priori, as a series of 
 writings given to a world of ' immortal creatures ' to teach them 
 how to escape from eternal misery, and to gain everlasting glory, 
 half its contents will receive a tinge, or an interpretation, corre- 
 sponding with that theory of Divine Government ; which is found 
 not to belong to them, when once the experiment is tried of 
 reading the Bible through on another theory. The effect then 
 produced resembles the sudden flooding with sunshine of a thick 
 
MODES OF CITING SCRIPTURE. 393 
 
 forest formerly suffused with the darkest shades. And many a 
 passage once quoted with sincere reverence as evidence of the 
 eternal duration of sin and misery is seen not only to be capable 
 of, but to demand, a more luminous and hopeful interpretation. 
 
 The indefensible method, moreover, of citing the books of the 
 Bible as if some one had beheld an angel inditing them in suc- 
 cession, without consideration of their individual history, of the 
 degree of confidence due to the fulness of each writer's informa- 
 tion, of the positive marks of defective knowledge, or misconcep- 
 tion in some, will serve the cause of truth no longer. We may 
 read, for example, with general confidence the gospel of Matthew, 
 whether a Greek original, as Dr. Roberts maintains, or a trans- 
 lation from the Hebrew, as Dr. Tregelles, after the fathers, affirms, 
 notwithstanding the omission of one sentence in the middle of 
 Christ's last discourse on Olivet (the same discussion in which 
 later occurs the KoAao-ii/ atoWov of xxv. 46) an omission supplied 
 by S. Luke (xxi. 24), ' And Jerusalem shall be trodden down by 
 the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled' And in 
 consequence of that fault of S. Matthew, or his Greek translator, 
 we shall not unduly question the accuracy of the other reports of 
 Christ's teaching in this Gospel. Nevertheless it is certain that 
 that omission, leaving the discourse to end with the unqualified 
 words, ' Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass till 
 all these things be fulfilled] xxiv. 34, has thereby created one of 
 the chief stumbling-blocks to faith in the New Testament, it 
 being clear that Christ's second advent did not occur in ' that 
 generation,' but will take place at the end of those ' times of the 
 Gentiles,' our Lord's reference to which S. Matthew unwittingly 
 omitted, and S. Luke has happily supplied. 
 
 I cannot conceal my conviction that the path of duty and of 
 wisdom in dealing with such documents as the gospels demands 
 this practical conclusion : If they offer to us any statements of 
 Christ's doctrine, by excess or defect conspicuously disagreeing 
 with the facts, or with the plain sense of His teaching as recorded 
 by the same or other historians, resolutely to refuse to allow such 
 exceptional misreports or omissions to interfere with the truth 
 which has been learned by a wider survey of the evidence. 
 
 In a large collection of books, the works of authors living in 
 different ages, through fifteen centuries, at different distances from 
 
394 GENERAL IDEA OF INSPIRATION. 
 
 God, enjoying different measures of that afflatus which sometimes 
 lifted up a prophet to the third heaven, and sometimes only to 
 the first, and sometimes left him. to obtain, like S. Luke, a 'perfect 
 understanding ' by personal inquiry, it is vain to anticipate a 
 uniform terminology in doctrine, or an equal comprehension of 
 the truths of redemption. The expectation of reasonable readers 
 must be restricted to ascertaining the general sense of the books of 
 Scripture, taken as a whole, and that general sense lies doubtless 
 on the surface, in words taken in their obvious signification by 
 honest readers. 
 
 It forms no part of the present writer's belief that each contri- 
 bution to the collection which we combine in one volume and 
 call ' the Bible ' has been preserved from every tinge of educa- 
 tional thought, from every defect in statement, from every reflec- 
 tion of surrounding opinion or faith. The receiving mind 
 somewhat colours perhaps every communication. There is a 
 certain allowance to be made for every religious as well as 
 astronomical observer's eye. S. Matthew did not altogether see 
 the same Christ with S. John ; S. John saw a far diviner Christ 
 than he. Our single hope of true knowledge is by comparison 
 and careful criticism of the whole record. 
 
 It is matter of notoriety, moreover, that almost every fact in 
 Christ's life is received by us under a slight fractional difficulty in 
 the evidence arising from the differing statements and silences of 
 the evangelical reporters. The greatest fact of all, the Resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, we believe, not because there exists any single 
 perfectly coherent digest of testimonies concerning it in the New 
 Testament ; but because the general result of all the testimonies 
 converges to that centre, and removes the partial difficulty which 
 each narrative taken alone might suggest to the mind. 
 
 The same rule applies to doctrine. There is no general dogma of 
 faith deducible from the Bible, which it is not necessary to believe 
 under fractional difficulties of interpretation. If we hold to the Tri- 
 unity in the Godhead, it is not because that truth is taught at all in 
 the Old Testament, or very systematically even in the New. If we 
 maintain the personal Deity of Christ, it is not because it is easy to 
 understand S. Mark's most exceptional report (xiii. 32) that * The 
 Son of Man knew not the hour of His coming.' If we hold to 
 the Pauline statement on Justification, it is not because S. James 
 
THE RULE OF INTERPRETATION. 395 
 
 has very carefully conformed his elementary terminology to that of 
 his brother apostles, or because S. James has spoken even once 
 of the Atonement. If we hold to the doctrine of individual 
 election to salvation, it is not because there is not a whole array 
 of ' texts ' which seem strongly to favour the advocates of general 
 redemption ; or if we hold to this, it is not because the Calvinists 
 can discover nothing in support of the five points of their theology 
 in the body of the Scripture. 
 
 Thus is it also in relation to the subjects which have occupied 
 the present volume. There are a few scattered passages which, 
 taken alone, and much more taken together, may well seem to 
 countenance the established theology. When such expressions, 
 in the favourite style of religious controversialists, are extracted, 
 tabulated, and presented in one view, without respect to masses 
 of different phraseology, they offer the appearance of a battery 
 ready to shatter to atoms the argument developed in these pages. 
 We are not careful to answer such assailants. Each of these 
 ' texts ' requires to be examined in its own terms, in its own con- 
 nection, and in its own place as an extract from a book with a 
 special history. And all such 'texts 'have then to be further tried 
 in the light of the general doctrine of the book in which they 
 occur, and of the whole Bible. And for our own part, we are 
 well resolved that no isolated ' text ' of any synoptic gospel shall 
 overthrow our faith in the lessons learned from the massive records 
 of a Revelation extending from one end of man's history to the 
 other, and specially from the writings of those great apostles of 
 Christianity, S. Peter and S. Paul in their letters, and S. John in 
 his gospel and epistles. In those great authentic records of ' the 
 whole truth ' promised by the Holy Spirit, there is, at all events, 
 not a trace of any other doctrine except that of Eternal Life in 
 Christ only, and the final destruction of the unsaved/ 1 ' or of any 
 expression which can with any semblance of reason be perverted 
 into teaching the opposite. 
 
 MATTHEW xxv. 46. 
 In proceeding to examine the principal passages in the New 
 
 * See this, as respects S. Paul, popularly demonstrated in Pauline Theology ', 
 a small work by Mr. Hastings of Boston, U. S. E. Stock, London. 
 
396 NOTE ON THE READING IN ' VETUS 1TALAS 
 
 Testament considered to teach unequivocally the doctrine of 
 endless" misery, and therefore to overthrow the fabric of the pre- 
 ceding argument, the first in order is the great text of Matt. xxv. 
 41, 46 : * Then shall He say unto them on the left hand, Depart 
 from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and 
 his angels . . . And these shall go away into everlasting punish- 
 ment (et<j KoXacnv utojviov), but the rigJiteous unto life eternal? 
 
 The first question to be regarded is the Greek text, the second 
 the English version, and the third the signification of the words. 
 
 (i.) In respect to the Greek text, there is absolutely no various 
 reading of any account in the most ancient manuscripts ; but it 
 must always be remembered that the nearly uniform testimony of 
 antiquity is that the original of Matthew's gospel was in Hebrew, 
 and that it is uncertain how much of authority attaches to any 
 particular expression in the Greek translation. It is this which 
 renders it specially hazardous to build any system of theology on 
 a single phrase in the Greek of this gospel. We shall, however, 
 treat this passage on the supposition that the Greek was the 
 original, and that Matthew wrote what we find in these expres- 
 sions." 
 
 * At the same time the fact deserves to be mentioned not as a basis of argu- 
 ment but as a matter of interest, and those who know the weight assigned by 
 Von Tischendorf to similar examples will be ready to allow it a certain degree 
 of importance, that the two most ancient, and several more modern, manuscripts 
 of the Italic Version, or ancient Latin translation of the New Testament, in 
 popular use in Italy, in Spain, and in Africa from the middle of the second 
 century, before Jerome's Vulgate appeared at the end of the fourth, here have 
 distinctly, in verse 46, ' These shall go away adignetn aternum, into the eternal 
 fire,' not ad suppllcium tzternum, into eternal punishment. These MS S. are 
 the codices of Verona and Vercelli, of the old or ' unrevised ' text of the fourth 
 century, and were transcribed and edited by Bianchini, librarian of Verona, in 
 1740. The first sumptuous uncial codex (in the Cathedral library of Verona), 
 in which I have verified this reading by personal examination, belongs to the 
 end of the fourth century ; the second, transcribed by the hand of Eusebius, 
 the bishop of Vercelti, also belongs to the fourth century. See Dr. Westcott's 
 exhaustive article on the Latin versions, Smith's Dictionary, vol. iii. p. 1692. 
 The recurrence of the same remarkable reading in two MSS., by different 
 hands, shows that it cannot be attributed to a slip by a single copyist, but was 
 the received reading among the Latin populations. 
 
 The Latin populations of Italy, Africa, and Spain, so far as evidence re- 
 mains to us, from the second century onwards, until the days of Jerome, did 
 not read, ' these shall go away into everlasting punishment J but into eternal 
 
MEANING OF l AIONIOS: 397 
 
 (ii.) The English version of the phrase in question requires 
 to be amended in order to bring it into exact correspondence 
 with the original. There is no reason why the alwiov should 
 not be translated by the same word in both members of the 
 clause, and in the same order. The clause will then in every 
 respect answer to the Greek. ' These shall go away to punish- 
 ment eternal, and the righteous to life eternal? The English 
 adjective everlasting is a good deal stronger in many cases 
 than the word eternal. That which is eternal is not always 
 an everlasting process. Eternal judgment is not everlasting 
 judging, but the eternal effect of a judgment. Eternal re- 
 demption is not everlasting redeeming, but an eternal effect of 
 an act of redemption. So an eternal punishment may be not 
 everlasting punishing, but the eternal effect of an act of punish- 
 ment, and we have no right to prejudge this question by an 
 over- forcible rendering of the adjective. 
 
 It is easy to distinguish this observation from a criticism 
 designed to make out different senses as to duration in the use 
 of aiconos in the two clauses. Of the ninety widely different 
 subjects to which the Scripture writers apply terms which occa- 
 sionally take the sense of endlessness, in seventy instances they 
 are confessedly of a limited and temporary nature. This 
 suffices to prove (i) that the radical meaning of these words is 
 not endlessness, but a hidden duration, and (2) that the question 
 whether they are to be taken in a limited or unlimited sense 
 depends on the nature of the subject to which they are applied, 
 Unless, therefore, the absolute eternity of misery can be esta- 
 blished from extrinsic reasons, such as the immortality of the 
 sinner, or from the nature of the doom threatened involving 
 consciousness, the adjective of duration connected with the 
 sinner's punishment would not alone suffice to prove his endless 
 misery. In fact it is so used only two or three times in the New 
 Testament. There are cases where, as in Rom. xvi. 25, 26, the 
 word is taken in the two different senses, one limited, one infinite, 
 within the same sentence, ' The mystery kept secret in " ancient 
 times " (xpoVois cuwwois), but now made manifest, according 
 
 fire. The difference is, that the one word expresses only the perpetuity of the 
 instrument of destruction, the other denotes a final effect of some sort on 
 the subjects of the infliction, without fixing the nature of the effect. 
 
398 KEY TO MATT. XXV. 46. 
 
 to the commandment of the eternal God ' (aiwn'ou). But I 
 am not disposed to found an argument on such a basis in the 
 passage before us. The ' punishment,' of whatever nature, is 
 described in the same terms, as the ' life ; ' and the object of the 
 passage certainly seems to be to convey the idea that the righteous 
 and the wicked here spoken of alike will reach a result which is a 
 final settlement of their destiny. 
 
 (iii.) Lastly, the question comes, What did the writer intend by 
 the words ' punishment eternal ' ? Did he unequivocally intend 
 everlasting suffering, or did he intend an awful punishment, posi- 
 tive and privative, extending in its results to eternity, a miserable 
 death, the opposite of the life of the righteous ? 
 
 No one with the fear of God before his eyes can doubt that 
 the main design of Christ in these closing words of His dis- 
 course on the Mount of Olives, as throughout all His teaching, 
 was to raise in the minds of His servants and ministers a 
 soul-terrifying conception as to the future punishment of the 
 persons chiefly aimed at in this final prophecy the wicked 
 world-rulers and church-governors who should be found in 
 their evil activity when He the Lord should return from 
 heaven to take possession of His kingdom. This discourse 
 (xxiv.-xxv.) does not deal with the judgment of the dead (cf. 
 Rev. xx. 5, 12), but with the judgment of the 'nations' found 
 alive at Christ's coming, at the beginning of the Kingdom of God. 
 It represents Christ's dealings with Antichrist and his satel- 
 lites, and the rebellious nations, at his Second Advent to 
 establish God's kingdom on the earth. The parallel prophecy 
 will be found in Ezekiel's much-neglected description of Je- 
 hovah's dealings with the ' sheep 'and the goats,' chap, xxxiv., 
 when He comes to set up His King, and His kingdom, at the 
 end of the Kingdom of Darkness. The fate of men living at 
 the advent will be determined by their treatment of the ' Israel 
 of God ; ' without ' dying the common death of men ' many of 
 that generation will go at once into life eternal, or into the 
 'Gehenna of fire.' The angels shall 'gather out of Christ's 
 kingdom all things that do iniquity,' and shall ' cast them 
 into a furnace of fire,' when the Devil and his angels will be 
 ' cast out,' and ' shut up in the abyss ' during the thousand years 
 w - Christ's reign on earth. 
 
MR. DARBY ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 399 
 
 If, then, we can ascertain the doom of those who are cast 
 into the lake of fire at that time, we may learn the nature of 
 the ' punishment eternal ' here. 
 
 The key to the true interpretation, therefore, is, I believe, 
 with Mr. J. N. Darby, to be found in the collective statements 
 of Scripture respecting that awful ' fire the ceonial or eternal ' 
 'prepared for the Devil and his angels,' reserved also as the 
 special instrument of the judgment for those who have been 
 his agents in church and state, in persecuting God's people and 
 deceiving the nations. Mr. J. N. Darby, in his early days, 
 rightly said : 
 
 ' It is commonly supposed that the judgment which is spoken of in this 
 chapter is the last judgment, the general judgment : this is a mistake. It is 
 the judgment of the nations living upon this earth, and not of the dead. There 
 is no question of the resurrection, but only of the judgment of the Gentiles. 
 What will happen to the Jews is mentioned in chapter xxiv., then what will 
 happen to believers, and then the fate of the Gentiles ; it is the judgment of 
 the living, and not of the dead. We say it is the judgment of the living, 
 because we read, "Before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall 
 separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
 goats." That which has given rise to the supposition that it is the judgment 
 of the dead are these words : " These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
 ment, but the righteous into life eternal : " but this only means that the judg- 
 ment of the living will \>zfinal, like that of the dead. When God judges, 
 whether the dead or the living, His judgment sends the good into life eternal, 
 and the wicked into everlasting punishment. The judgment of the living is as 
 sure as that of the dead.' Hopes of the Church, p. 66, first edition. 
 
 The leading thought clearly is that there is an unquenchable 
 fire of whatever nature, prepared as the instrument of judg- 
 ment for the Devil and his angels who are to be ' tormented 
 therein,' says S. John, ' for ages of ages ' (ets TOVS atwvas rw 
 aluvw Rev. xx.) along with 'the beast and the false prophet.' 
 The perpetuity of the fire signifies at least a duration equal to 
 any demand that may be made upon its punitive energies. 
 The fire will not burn itself out, for it represents outwardly the 
 ever burning and consuming fire of God's Holiness. 
 
 But the perpetuity of the fire, on which Christ dwells with 
 terrible emphasis, while holding out the most awful prospect of 
 irremediable doom to the chief offenders in the universe, does 
 not necessarily imply the eternal duration of an object thrown 
 
400 THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS. 
 
 into it. Sodom and Gomorrah utterly consumed are, neverthe- 
 less, ' suffering the vengeance of eternal fire ' (Jude 7). We are told 
 by S. John that he beheld in vision ' Death and Hades cast into 
 the lake of fire ' (Rev. xx. 14). These were figurative personages, 
 who represented the Powers presiding over the Body and the 
 Soul under the reign of death. And when the saints are glorified 
 there will be ' no more death.' Death will be ' abolished? Their 
 being ' cast into the lake of fire,' therefore, indicates not their 
 everlasting survival in it, but their absolute destruction. Here, 
 then, we have the answer to the question, What is the meaning of 
 the ' lake of fire ' ? It is the instrument of destruction, but of 
 1 destruction ' under different degrees and durations of ' torment.' 
 The ' beast and the false prophet ' are ' cast alive into the lake of 
 fire,' at the beginning of the millennium. This is perhaps (if, as 
 is utterly improbable see Daniel vii. u, 26 individual persons 
 are symbolised)* the ' greater damnation ' of which Christ speaks, 
 as following upon the inexpiable crime of teaching lies and of 
 governing for devilish ends. But these, too, after their * many 
 stripes,' after their long agony in ' remembrance ' of their sins, are 
 to burn out of being, under the ' consuming fire ' of God's wrath. 
 ' Who shall pay the penalty, eternal destruction from the presence 
 of the Lord, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints,' 
 aiurt'tov oKSpov (2 Thess. i. 8), oA.e#pos being with <f>0opa, 0avaro9, 
 and ctTrwXeta, the very words chosen by Plato, as well as by the 
 Christian Fathers, to denote the abolition of being when they 
 desired to express that idea. The fire of judgment is always a 
 ' consuming fire.' When a fire burns and its fuel is 'not con- 
 sumed,' as in the Bush of Horeb (Exod. iii. 3), that effect is men- 
 tioned. But 'the chaff' will be 'burned up' with unquenchable 
 fire. ' All the wicked will He destroy.' ' Our God is a consuming 
 fire.' 
 
 That the ' punishment eternal ' is for a man to have his part in 
 ' the lake of fire which is the second death,' and to reach final 
 extinction of life through penal infliction bodily and spiritual, 
 suited to each man's demerits, we see no reason to question. 
 The 'tares will be bound 'in different 'bundles to be burned.' 
 Some will be burnt with a less, and some with a far ' greater 
 
 * See Petavel's Struggle for Eternal Life, pp, 73-75, 
 
GENERAL DOCTRINE OF MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 401 
 
 damnation,' 1 " corresponding to the atrocious crimes of the mur- 
 derers of a world of souls. This is written on the face of the 
 record of Christ's teaching, and is fitted to ' bring a great fear 
 upon every soul.' For the ' vengeance ' will be righteous, and the 
 'indignation ' such as all righteous spirits will approve of ; ' I heard 
 a great voice of much people in heaven, saying Alleluia ! ' (Rev. 
 xix. i.) 
 
 Such, then, is the interpretation we offer of Matt. xxv. 46, a 
 text, as it stands in our English Bibles, as well fitted to uphold 
 the traditional belief as Matt. x. 28 is fitted to overthrow it. It 
 proceeds on the recognised principle that each book in the Bible 
 should in the first instance be employed in self-explanation, under 
 its real character as a separate publication. 
 
 What then is the general teaching of S. Matthew's gospel on 
 future punishment? It is (ch. iii. 10-12) that 'the chaff shall 
 be burned up with unquenchable fire ; ' that the fruitless tree shall 
 be ' eut down and cast into the fire ; ' that the wicked man shall 
 be ' cast into hell-fire,' into a ' prison,' from which he shall ' not 
 come out till he has paid the uttermost farthing' (v. 26); that 
 his ' whole body shall be cast into hell, or Gehenna,' a doom 
 from which he is exhorted to escape by rather allowing ' one of 
 his members to perish] by being 'cut off'(v. 29 the same word 
 
 * I have not thought it necessary to reproduce the plentiful evidence of the 
 limited senses of ai'wv and en'wvioc, on which I build no leading argument. The 
 reader will, however, remember that the very belief of the Jewish nation in 
 Christ depends on their learning to understand the temporary character of those 
 institutions of Moses which were to be 'for ever ; ' that the hills which ' stand 
 fast for ever and ever 1 are one day to melt away ; and that God's grace is said 
 to be given to the Church ' before eternal ages ' (Trpo xpovuv aidiviwv}. The 
 whole of the New Testament, therefore, is a prolonged comment on the limited 
 senses of a/wj/iof. Nevertheless it is certainly also used in the sense of time 
 ' hidden, ' or indefinitely long, as perhaps in this threatening of torment to the 
 Devil, Rev. xx. ; and also in the sense of absolute infinity, as in relation to 
 God, to everlasting redemption, and to the life eternal. In which sense it is 
 taken in any passage must be learned by other methods than etymology. Even 
 a little common sense has its uses in interpreting Scripture. Mr. Clemance, in 
 his book on Future Punishment, has a useful table of the uses of aiW, and its 
 adjectives ; Mr. Cox, in his Salvator Mundi, a still abler discussion on the same 
 subject ; although I cannot think that Christ ever held out to the destined 
 victims of the unquenchable fire what Mr. Cox translates as an ' ceonial 
 pruning,' (KoKaaiv di&viov). 
 
 26 
 
402 GENERAL DOCTRINE OF S. MATTHEW. 
 
 being there used which is elsewhere employed to denote the fate 
 of the ' whole body ' in Gehenna). 
 
 The traveller in the ' broad road ' is threatened with ' destruc- 
 tion' (aTraiAetav, a common word for death, see Acts xxv. 16), 
 and loss of 'life' (vii. 13). His doom is likened to the ' great 
 fall of a house built on sand.' The wicked are said to be ' cast 
 out into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of 
 teeth' (viii. 12). The demons expected to be ' tormented ' at a 
 fixed epoch (viii. 29), (also, we read in Mark, to be ' destroyed '). 
 In x. 15 those who reject the Gospel are threatened with a doom 
 less 'tolerable in the day of judgment than that of Sodom ; ' and 
 at the twenty-eighth verse the disciples themselves are warned to 
 ' fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, 
 but rather to fear Him that is able to destroy both body and soul 
 in Gehenna.' (A passage in which it is little better than an 
 evasion to say that Christ represents only God's ability to do this, 
 not His intention. In respect to the meaning of aTroAe'o-ai, to 
 destroy life, in this gospel, we may refer to ii. 13, xxi. 40, 41, xxii. 
 7, xxvi. 52. The word, indeed, signifies this alone when human 
 life is the object. It never signifies in Greek to torment only.) 
 In x. 39, 40, our Lord says that he who ' findeth his life,' by 
 avoiding martyrdom, ' shall destroy it ; ' that is, he shall lose Jiere- 
 after the life he saved here. In xii. 32 the sin of attributing Christ's 
 miracles to magic is declared unpardonable ' either in this world 
 or in the world to come.' In xiii. 50 the wicked are said to be 
 ' cast into a furnace, where shall be weeping and wailing,' etc. In 
 xvi. 25 the threat of x. 39 is repeated, that ' whosoever shall wish 
 to save his life shall lose or destroy IT.' In xviii. 8 the man who 
 sins is said not to ' enter into life,' but to be ' cast into the eternal 
 fire/ * into the Gehenna of fire.' In verse 14 the ruin of souls is 
 called ' perishing.' In verse 34 the unforgiving servant is delivered 
 to the ' tormentors.' In verse 44 the stone which falls from heaven 
 'grinds to powder' its object. In xxii. 13 the man without the 
 wedding garment is ' cast into outer darkness, where is weeping 
 and gnashing of teeth.' In xxiv. 5 1 the evil servant is ' cut asunder, 
 and has his portion with the hypocrites, where shall be wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth.' In xxv. 30 the unprofitable servant is 
 ' cast into the outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth.' 
 
GENERAL DOCTRINE OF S. MATTHEW. 403 
 
 These are all the places in which this gospel speaks of future 
 punishment up to this point. Then comes the description of 
 judgment at the advent of Christ, when those who had maltreated 
 Christ's poor are represented as the * goats ' on the left hand, and 
 receive their sentence, ' Depart, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, 
 prepared for the devil and his angels.' ' And these shall go away 
 to punishment eternal, but the righteous to life eternal.' Applying 
 the orthodox canon of interpretation to these words, we say that 
 the ' punishment eternal] if S. Matthew is to be his own commen- 
 tator, is to be ' cast into the eternal fire' (whether that fire be an 
 objective reality, or only a name for God's justice), fitted therefore 
 to be the instrument of torment, so long as God wills, for all who 
 are cast into it. ' There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth ; ' 
 the suffering will be, ' intolerable ; ' the prison one from which 
 there is no escape, the penalty being capital punishment death, 
 perishing, destruction of soul and body in Gehenna, loss of life ; 
 words which bear, in Greek prose, only one signification that 
 which is self-evident. 
 
 If asked, Would such eternal destruction be 'punishment 
 eternal ' ? we reply, It must be such, if S. Matthew may interpret 
 his own words. S. Paul decides the question affirmatively (2 Thess. 
 i. 9) ' Who shall suffer punishment ' (pay the penalty), ' eternal 
 destruction from the presence of the Lord] 6\0pov auoi/iov. 
 
 The punishment of death for sin has a double reference to a 
 life eternal lost by transgression, under the law, and under the 
 gospel. The cutting off of a sinner from the opening prospect of 
 an endless life may truly be called a punishment eternal for its 
 effects in privation run along the infinite duration of an eternity 
 which, but for rebellion and unbelief, would have been the scene of an 
 endless glory. When, therefore, objectors ask Would a man who 
 has suffered temporal death have suffered ' punishment eternal ' ? 
 we reply Certainly not ; for it was only a short life which was 
 forfeited here. But as to the world to come, the loss is infinite 
 and eternal, God ' not willing that any should perish,' but opening 
 the gate of immortality to all. 
 
 MARK iii. 29, 
 
 There are two passages in this gospel which are much relied 
 on in proof of the doctrine of the immortality of the lost, The 
 
404 ' GUILTY OF AN ETERNAL SIN: 
 
 first is on the unpardonable sin, Mark iii. 29. The English version 
 is, ' He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never 
 forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.' The Greek 
 Text of Tischendorf is as follows : OVK e^et a<eer/ cts TOV aiuwa, 
 aXXa tvoxos eVrtv aliovtov a/xaprTj/AaTo? * hath not forgiveness for 
 ever ; but is guilty of (chargeable with) an eternal sin' 
 
 It is remarkable that in nearly every passage on which it is 
 attempted to found the argument for the eternal misery of the 
 lost, there is a less or greater difficulty in settling the text, or in 
 reaching the conviction that we read as the author wrote. Here 
 some manuscripts read /cpcVew?, and some later ones have in- 
 serted KoAacrews, but the Vatican and the Sinaitic read as above, 
 tt/x.a/)T*7/zaro?, which is adopted by the latest editors. The evi- 
 dence, so far as existing manuscripts can guide us, is indeed 
 decisive. The meaning, whether the exact words were spoken by 
 our. Lord, or are given in substance by S. Mark after S. Peter, is 
 clear. All other sins can be forgiven and blotted out. This one 
 sin of imputing Christ's miracles to devilish magic is unpardonable, 
 here or hereafter. It is, therefore, an eternal sin to be punished 
 with its fitting doom in the everlasting fire with ' many stripes,' 
 and finally with that awful destruction from which there can be 
 no revival. This sin incurs an irreversible sentence. Thus we 
 read in the book of Enoch (Laurence's translation), ' They shall 
 be cast into a judgment of fire ; they shall perish in wrath, and 
 by a judgment overpowering them for ever.' 'An everlasting 
 judgment shall be executed, and blasphemers shall be annihilated 
 everywhere' (chs. xc. 13, xcii. 16). The same form of speech is 
 met with in the Talmud and the Rabbins. Prof. Hudson (Debt 
 and Grace} quotes the following from Lightfoot (Centuria Chorog. 
 c. 15) * If the King of kings shall be angry with me His wrath 
 is eternal ; if He should slay me His slaying is eternal.' ' The 
 wicked shall descend into Gehenna and shall then be judged for 
 ever.' On which Abrabanel remarks, ' Now the greatest retribu- 
 tion in the world to come, and the heaviest punishment, is exter- 
 mination' (De Capitc Fidei, c. 24). Maimonides says, ' Heretics 
 have no share in the world to come, but they are cut off, destroyed, 
 and condemned for ever and ever.' [And what Maimonides 
 intended by these words may be seen in the note affixed to the 
 supplement of chapter xvii., in a previous page.] 
 
'THE WORM THAT DIETH NOT: 405 
 
 The wicked man who is raised for eternal judgment is under 
 the wrath of God. He is represented as crushed for ever beneath 
 the weight of the authority which he has defied, and his ' eternal 
 sin ' holds him fast in the bands of death. There is no forgive- 
 ness for him either under the law or under the Messiah's kingdom, 
 either in this world or in futurity. The ' wrath of God abideth 
 on him,' and its sentence will be executed to '* the uttermost farth- 
 ing.' He will suffer 'everlasting destruction.' 
 
 MARK ix. 44-50. 
 
 The passage in Mark ix. 44-50 offers another example of an 
 unfortunate corruption of the text in some passages brought for- 
 ward in support of the eternal duration of evil. That the suspicion 
 of an early ' pious ' improvement of the original in the interest of 
 a more terrific theology is not wholly out of the reckoning appears 
 from the exhibition of a similar honest zeal even in our own 
 translation, which reads thus : 
 
 43. If thine hand offend thee cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life 
 maimed than, having two hands, to go into hell, into th> fire that never shall be 
 quencfud (e a; TOV ysevvav, tig TO irvp TO dafBtffTov}. 
 
 44. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 
 
 45. And if thy foot offend thee cut it off; it is better for thee to enter halt 
 into life than, having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall 
 be quenched. 
 
 46. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 
 
 47. And if thine eye offend thee pluck it out ; it is better for thee to enter 
 into the Kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into 
 hell-fire. 
 
 48. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 
 
 49. For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted 
 with salt. 
 
 The original state of the text here seems hopelessly doubtful. 
 Tischendorf omits the repetition of the words in verses 44, 46. 
 Alford thought them emphatic and characteristic, and retained 
 them in his Greek Testament ; while marking them as doubtful 
 in his later English version. The 49th verse rests, under any form, 
 only on a mass of contradictory evidence on its two clauses. But 
 it matters not, for no valid argument for immortality in sin and 
 suffering can be drawn hence under any reading. There is 
 
4 o6 'THE WORM THAT DIETH NOT: 
 
 absolutely no excuse for rendering TO -n-vp TO ao-/?eorov by any 
 stronger words than 'the unquenchable fire,' the phrase being 
 often used to signify only destructive fire. 
 
 Such as it is, however, the argument of our opponents is as 
 follows : The wicked are here said to be cast into the unquench- 
 able fire, called elsewhere the ' everlasting fire,' and that alone 
 shows that they are destined to eternal pain ; a conclusion fixed 
 by the sequence, thrice repeated to bring out the terror of the 
 prospect, ' where their worm (their conscience) shall not die, or 
 cease to be, and the fire is not quenched.' They are therefore 
 pierced eternally by the tooth of conscience, and tormented for 
 ever by the perpetual fire of God's vengeance. ' For every one 
 shall be salted for the fire,' every victim of divine vengeance shall 
 be miraculously preserved to endure the torments of this avenging 
 flame. 
 
 For at least fifteen centuries these words have been employed 
 in sermons and devout writings in the sense now described ; and 
 it is not an easy process by which they, or any familiar but mis- 
 quoted expressions, can be restored to their true interpretation. 
 Nevertheless I submit to the reader the following observations. 
 
 (i) The argument for endless sin and sorrow hence derived is 
 based upon that very understanding of the verb to die, against 
 which the argument itself is directed. The eternal suffering is 
 supposed to be proved by the words 'their worm dieth not. 1 
 But dieth is here taken in the sense of ceaseth to be, not in the 
 sense of being miserable or being unholy. ' Their worm ceaseth 
 not to be,' to live, to exist (T\CVTO.), which is also one of Plato's 
 words for existence coming to an end. Be it observed, then, that 
 when it serves the purpose of the doctrine of eternal misery to 
 prove that the 'worm of conscience will never cease to gnaw,' 
 then the verb to die must be taken in its natural and obvious sense 
 of cease to be. It is so taken, indeed, as a matter of course, with- 
 out a word of exhortation to enforce the figurative meaning of 
 being 'miserable.' Thus the defenders of the traditional doctrine 
 adopt or reject this signification at pleasure, but forbid its adoption 
 in any other instance except this, where, with a negative, it 
 furnishes a good argument against the same meaning everywhere 
 else in relation to the death of the sinner. We are at liberty to 
 accept as scriptural a 'worm ' which shall not ' die,' or cease to be, 
 
'THE WORM THAT DIETH NOT: 407 
 
 provided we understand the worm to be conscience, but not to 
 believe that a sinner shall ' die,' in any other sense than that he 
 shall live in eternal misery. The sense of the verb to die here, 
 however, which is admitted by all, shows what its proper meaning 
 is in relation to other inhabitants of Gehenna ; for if a worm's 
 death in Gehenna would be its ceasing to exist, the same must be 
 true of the sinner's ; unless it can be shown that in relation to hell 
 itself the word death has two opposite meanings. 
 
 If it be said that in the Greek version here the worm's death is 
 represented by reXevra and not by aTroOvrjo-Ka, it is sufficient to 
 point out that in the Hebrew of Isaiah Ixvi. 24, whence the citation 
 comes, the worm's death is represented by JT)Jbn> the same verb 
 which describes the death of the sinner elsewhere. 
 
 (2) The -venerable gloss that the ' worm ' here is a symbol of 
 the sinner's conscience, like other ancient imaginations of similar 
 value, must give way to opposing evidence. It is indeed a difficult 
 lesson for a Roman Catholic to learn, that those words of Christ 
 to Peter, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my 
 Church ' inscribed in vast letters around the dome of the great 
 papal Cathedral, and used in controversy for thirteen hundred 
 years, have no real reference to S. Peters supposed successors 
 in the see of Rome ; yet that and other hard lessons must be 
 learned by students of Scripture. Here the Saviour's words are 
 plainly a citation from the last verse in the prophecies of Isaiah 
 where the context proves that the ' worm ' stands naturally for 
 putrefaction, the concomitant of death, and in this case the death of 
 those ' slain by Jehovah.' 
 
 The effect of being eaten by worms, in contrast with the eternal 
 life of the saved, as it appeared to Isaiah, may be seen in ch. li. 6-8.* 
 
 The sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah describes the awful scenes of 
 Christ's advent, of which the New Testament version is in Matthew 
 xxiv., xxv. ' For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with 
 
 * 'Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath ; 
 for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like 
 a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die like an insect ; but my salvation 
 shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Fear ye not 
 the reproach of men, and be not afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall 
 eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool ; but my 
 righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.' 
 (From the popular translations of Dr. Boothroyd and Dr. Barne?.) 
 
4 o8 'THE WORM THAT DIETH NOT: 
 
 his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and 
 his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by sword will the 
 Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many ' 
 (verses 15, 16). The following verses describe the establishment 
 of Christ's kingdom on earth, the restoration and conversion of 
 Israel, and the ' restitution of all things ' in the setting up of 
 * New Heavens and New Earth.' The closing words describe the 
 holy central worship set up at Jerusalem ; and the going forth of 
 the worshippers to the scene of that ' supper of the fowls ' (Rev. 
 xix. 17-21), to wit, the masses of the dead who have been slain, 
 like the Assyrian army of Sennacherib, by the hand of God. 
 The reference to that Assyrian slaughter is still more evident 
 in the Hebrew. ' They shall go forth and look upon the D^"1.JSD 
 pegarim carcases (the same word translated in the. history of 
 the Assyrians in i Kings xix. 20 ' they were all dead corpses'} of 
 the men that have transgressed against me for their worm shall 
 not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be 
 J1KT} demon an abhorring to all flesh' the word translated 
 contempt in Dan. xii. 2 ('to shame and everlasting contempt '), 
 describing the horror excited by the spectacle of the bodies of 
 those who die under the stroke of God. The use of the term 
 pegarim, therefore, to describe the condition of these victims of 
 the worm and the fire decides that the worm does not symbolise 
 conscience, but absolute death. There will appear on the earth, 
 at the beginning, and at the end, of the kingdom of Christ, two 
 fearful scenes of execution of God's enemies, who will be slain 
 by Jehovah ; the first scene being the destruction of His assembled 
 foes, of the armies of the kings of the earth, around Jerusalem ; 
 the second scene, still more awful, being the more gradual de- 
 struction of all the wicked dead, raised for judgment, at the end 
 of Christ's reign on earth : when a fearful monument of the effect 
 of sin will be established on this globe (perhaps in that same 
 region), in that ' perpetual fire ' into which all shall be cast, ' whose 
 names are not written in the book of life.' 
 
 But in either case the effect will be death ; the wicked will 
 become dead corpses, than which there is no stronger word to 
 denote the ' destruction of the soul or life in Gehenna.' 
 
 If, then, there be any safety in commenting on verse 49 which 
 follows, ' For every one shall be salted with fire,' where the Greek 
 
THE APOCALYPSE. 409 
 
 text is hopelessly uncertain, the meaning may be, that every such 
 sacrifice to the avenging Justice will be, like ' Lot's wife] ' salted 
 with fire,' preserved as a monument in death of the tremendous 
 results of rebellion against the Omnipotent. ' Remember Lot's 
 wife] is one of Christ's momentous warnings to His disciples, 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 Rev. xiv. 10. 'If any man worship the beast and his image, 
 the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is 
 poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation, and 
 he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the 
 holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of 
 their torment ascendeth up to ages of ages, and they have no rest day 
 nor night who worship the beast and his image? Rev. xix. 20. 
 ' These both ' (the beast and the false prophet) ' were cast alive 
 into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.' 1 Rev. xx. 10. 'And 
 the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and 
 brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they 
 shall be tormented day and night to the ages of ages? 
 
 The terms of duration here used are those which beyond doubt 
 often signify endless duration. It is also certain that they and 
 their Hebrew parallels are often used to signify long but limited 
 duration, as when the Mosaic institutions are said to be 'for ever' 
 (Deut. xxix. 29) a word which must be here understood in the 
 limited sense before the Jewish people can be expected to believe 
 in Christianity, which has abolished the law. Dr. Adler recently 
 assailed the gospel on this ground that the Jewish law was in this 
 
 text said to be p Tl^ 7, for ever.* 
 
 * In his recent brochure on Future Punishment the Rev. Clement Clemance, 
 after presenting a carefully drawn table of the limited and unlimited senses of 
 oi<jjv and aiaiviog, and maintaining that it would be unsafe to affirm positively 
 that these words are used in their infinite sense in relation to retribution, 
 since it is the fact that there is no statement which we can discover, either in 
 the Old or New Testament, which refers to evil, that is so strongly worded in 
 its expression of duration as is the phrase in Psalm cxlv. 13 (LXX. ), which 
 refers to the kingdom of God, goes on later to say, ' If we tell the unbeliever 
 thnt he must accept the doctrine of the absolute unendingness of punishment, 
 we may cause a fatal revolt against Christianity ; which fatal revolt will be, I 
 make bold to say, less his fault than ours ; or, if we make any such demand 
 
410 ORDINARY LANGUAGE OF APOCALYPSE. 
 
 On this series of passages I offer the following observations : 
 The Apocalypse, like other books, is best interpreted, first by 
 the rule of its less obscure portions, and next, by careful com- 
 parison of the more ancient prophecies on whose pattern it is 
 framed. From other portions of it, and those the least loaded 
 with prophetic symbol, we learn directly, or indirectly, that the 
 doom of wicked men is to be excluded ' from the tree of life ' 
 (ii. 7) ; to lose the ' crown of life' (verse 10) ; to be * hurt of the 
 second death' (verse n); to 'be killed with death'* (verse 23, 
 the strongest expression to denote absolute extinction) ; to be 
 ' broken to shivers as a potter's vessel ' (verse 27) ; to have their 
 ' names blotted from the Book of Life ' (iii. 5). Again, at the 
 close of the book, we are told that ' whosoever was not found 
 written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire ' (xx. 15). 
 This ' lake of fire ' is in the preceding verse called ' the second 
 death.' Into this lake are cast Death and Hades, assuredly not 
 to give the idea that they were to exist there for ever, but that they 
 were put an end to, so that henceforth there was to be ' no more 
 death.' The 'last enemy is destroyed ' or '' done away.' 
 
 The description of future punishment as ' the second death ' 
 determines the question as to the general nature of the penalty. 
 As already remarked, there cannot be a ' second ' of anything 
 unless it be at least of the same genus as the first. If we say a 
 second house, there must have been a first house, and not a first 
 tree. If there be a first and second death, there must be a generic 
 likeness between them. There would be no likeness whatever 
 
 upon him, we impose on him a weight which no human intellect can bear ' (p. 76). 
 Mr. Clemance therefore will admit that until the publication of his work, in 
 which was made known the unfixed meaning of Scripture language on the 
 duration of evil, there was good excuse for those who deviated from the strict 
 doctrine of endless misery, in which they had been brought up ; since such 
 deviation was an effort to save at once their senses and their faith, and to 
 escape from ' a weight which no human intellect can bear.' And Mr. Clemance 
 on reflection will allow that such an admission is inconsistent with the very 
 severe blame which he lays on us for 'distorting' Scripture, by taking its ordinary 
 language in its obvious sense. Considering the temptation to save our ' intellect,' 
 and considering the words to be interpreted, it appears to us that Mr. Clemance's 
 condemnation is misplaced. 
 
 * This is one of the many phrases used in Scripture to denote Future 
 Punishment, which modern preachers never dream of employing in ' warning 
 ;he wicked man.' Why ? 
 
, 
 
 . 
 
 'THE SMOKE ASCENDING FOR EVER: 411 
 
 between death as threatened to Adam, or death as men suffer it 
 here, and the everlasting torment of a living body and soul united 
 in immortality. Such a doom would not, we may venture to 
 affirm, have been called, by any writer, a second death. But 
 there is a strong likeness between the first dissolution of humanity 
 and the second ' destruction of body and soul ' in Gehenna here- 
 after. Such a doom in the lake of fire might well be termed the 
 second death. That which ' the lake of fire,' the instrument of 
 Divine vengeance, effects for ' Death and Hades,' namely, to put 
 an end to them, it will effect on wicked men it will ' utterly 
 destroy ' them, 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the passages in question in Rev. 
 xiv., xix., and xx., delivered in the symbolic language of prophecy, 
 must be interpreted so as to accord with these facts. It is re- 
 markable that the strongholds of the two different theologies 
 treated of in this volume are found in the two works of the 
 Apostle John the Gospel and the Apocalypse. The question 
 really is, therefore, Shall the Gospel be interpreted by the key of 
 the mystical Apocalypse, or shall the sense of the Apocalypse be 
 fixed by the Gospel ? We cannot hesitate long over such alter- 
 natives. In the Gospel we have the recorded words of the Lord 
 Jesus, delivered in the calm language of His daily life, and also 
 the latest work of S. John. In the Apocalypse we have in every 
 line the exalted style of parable and allegory, suitable to a 
 mysterious prophecy of things only half revealed. In the Old 
 Testament similar language carries unquestionably the meaning of 
 a temporal destruction, in Isaiah xxxiv. The terrible words cited 
 from Rev. xiv. are allowed by nearly all commentators to predict 
 earthly and terminable judgments on the supporters of the Apostasy. 
 Chapters xv. and xvi. announce the execution of these plagues. 
 Chapter xvii. contains the song of triumph over Babylon as 
 actually undergoing destruction, through the burning of her flesh 
 by the ' horns ' ' and the beast.' Chapter xviii. continues the 
 strain of triumph, and here we find word for word the fulfilment in 
 this world of the threatenings before us. ' How much she hath 
 lived deliciously so much torment and sorrow give her. Therefore 
 shall her plagues' come in one day, death, mourning, and famine, 
 and she shall be utterly burned with fire. And the kings of the 
 earth shall lament for her when they see the smoke of her burning 
 
412 THE DEVIL IS TO BE TORMENTED 
 
 standing afar off for fear of her torment, saying, "Alas," etc. ' And 
 the sailors cried when they saw the smoke of her burning] etc. 
 ' And a mighty angel took up a stone and cast it into the sea ' (to 
 give an image of something utterly lost out of knowledge), saying, 
 ( Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, 
 and shall be found no more at all.' See the precisely similar lan- 
 guage respecting Idumea in Isaiah xxxiv. 8-14, a passage which 
 the reader is invited to consider in detail.* Thus it is that S. John 
 adds of this ' spiritual Sodom/ xix. i (as Isaiah of Edom), 'And 
 her smoke went up for ever and ever? The whole of the imagery 
 describes destructive punishment on earth at Christ's advent. 
 
 REV. xx. io. 
 
 There remains only to be considered the passage respecting the 
 doom of the ' Devil,' with that of the ' beast and the false prophet.' 
 ' And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and 
 brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they shall 
 be tormented day and night to the ages of ages' (/cat /?ao-ai/io-$r/o-ovTa(, 
 rjjj.cpas KCU. VVKTOS ets rovs cuah/as TGJV atwj'tm/ Rev. XX. io). 
 
 It is not certain whether * the beast and the false prophet ' are 
 abstract symbols of the ' Fourth Kingdom upon earth/ in its 
 double form of Church and State ; or symbols denoting particular 
 classes of persons, whether satanic spirits who inspired that fourth 
 system of government, or human kings and priests who received 
 and acted on such inspiration. It is possible, but not probable, 
 that they represent individual wicked rulers and teachers who 
 will receive a ' greater damnation ' (/xeioi/ /cpt/xa, James iii. i ; 
 TTtpioro-oTepov Kpijjia, Matt, xxiii. 14). But this is less important 
 to decide than the meaning of the threatening ; * they shall be 
 tormented day and night to the ages of ages.' There can be no 
 doubt that the terms of duration here employed are sometimes 
 used to denote an absolute eternity, as in relation to the nature of 
 Deity. There is as little doubt that they are as frequently used 
 
 * ' My sword shall be bathed in heaven, behold it shall come down upon 
 Idmnca, and upon the people of my curse to judgment.' ' And the streams 
 thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the 
 land shall become burning pitch. // shall not be quenched day nor night ; the 
 smoke thereof shall go tip for ever, from generation to generation it shall be 
 waste : none shall pass through it for ever and ever ' (Isa. xxxiv. 5, 9, io). 
 
DAY AND NIGHT FOR AGES OF AGES. 413 
 
 to denote a very limited duration. The alternative meaning must 
 be decided by the nature of the subject, or by other declarations. 
 
 Thus the things which were ' revealed to Israel were for them 
 for ever to do all the words of that law' (Deut. xxix. 29). In this 
 case forever must be taken in a limited sense (contrary to the 
 teaching of the Rabbins on the eternity of the law), if Israel is 
 ever to submit to Christ. Again God gave the land of Israel to 
 His people 'for ever and ever' (Jer. vii. 7), e atcoj/os KCU e'ws 
 ataivos : yet the ' earth and all the works therein are to be burned 
 up.' He set the earth so that 'it should not be removed for 
 ever :' yet it is to 'pass away' (Rev. xxi. i). The 'everlasting 
 heavens ' are to ' perish,' while God ' remaineth ' (Psalm cii. 26). 
 
 The language here used, then, respecting the doom of the 
 ' Devil, the beast, and the false prophet ' in the ' everlasting fire ' 
 is consistent, according to the Scripture usage of aum/ either with 
 endless torment or a long but limited infliction, of which the date 
 of termination is not revealed. In this sense, as may be seen in 
 the supplement to chapter xvii., a similar phrase is used by the 
 Rabbins of the Gemara (who did not certainly believe in endless 
 suffering), in speaking of future punishment. 
 
 In this case, although the terms are clearly designed to denote 
 a most awful infliction of judgment on the chief malefactors in 
 the universe, surely the terms of duration are not designed to 
 reverse the sense of others which declare that, like Death and 
 Hades, who are cast into the same ' lake of fire,' their ' end is to 
 be burned up ' and abolished. The imagery is taken from the 
 vision of Daniel (vii. 10), in which he sees a 'fiery stream issue 
 from the throne ' of God : this very same ' beast,' or fourth empire, 
 is then ' slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning 
 flame,' words whose literal sense is fixed by the contrast of the 
 fate of other ' beasts ' whose * lives were prolonged for a season and 
 a time.' And it is expressly said Dan. vii. 26 that the action of 
 the flame is ' to consume and to destroy, fc^iD 1JJ to extermina- 
 tion,' in our version, ' unto the end.' 
 
 If, then, the result to the ' beast ' of being cast into the lake of 
 fire and brimstone to be ' tormented for ages of ages ' is neverthe- 
 less that he is 'destroyed,' 'consumed,' ' slain ' (Rev. xvii. S-n) 
 ' He shall ascend out of the abyss, and go into destruction 
 ; if the result to Death -and Hades of being cast into 
 
4i4 DOOM OF THE EVIL SPIRITS. 
 
 the same lake is to abolish them, so that there shall be ' no more 
 death,' so it may be with respect to the other victims of the 
 'everlasting fire.' For as in the case of 'Babylon' in Rev. xiv., 
 xv., xix., the 'smoke of her torment ' ' ascended up for ages and 
 ages,' yet she was ' destroyed,' and * found no more at all,' so it 
 may be with other beings who are nevertheless said to go away to 
 ' punishment eternal ' in the ' everlasting fire.'* 
 
 It is from other scriptures that we infer that thus it will be with 
 the Great Enemy of God and man. The ' unclean spirits ' expect 
 from Christ 'torment 'and 'destruction' (Matt. viii. 29, Mark i. 
 24 /2a<ravi'crai, aTroXecrat) ; and there seems no reason to think 
 that their doom is generically different from that of their leader 
 and lord. His conscious punishment will certainly be vastly 
 greater than theirs, but it can scarcely differ by a whole eternity 
 in duration. ' Torment ' and ' destruction ' will therefore be his 
 doom. The same conclusion seems derivable from the words of 
 God spoken to our first parents. The seed of the woman is to 
 ' crush ' the ' head ' of the serpent an image vividly denoting the 
 destruction of his life. ' No murderer hath eternal life abiding in 
 him,' and ' the Murderer from the beginning ' shall die the mur- 
 derer's death. ' God shall be all things in all,' an expression 
 seemingly inconsistent with the eternal survival of any enemy, or 
 any evil. But through what inconceivable agonies of mind and 
 ' spiritual body ' that Infernal Origin of all Evil shall reach his 
 final doom no tongue can tell. His judgment will correspond 
 with his crimes ; and ' many stripes ' and ' great plagues and of 
 long continuance ' will doubtless avenge the murder of a world of 
 souls. 
 
 I have now considered in detail the principal passages in the 
 New Testament brought forward in support of the opinion of the 
 endless future of evil. The suggestions respecting them must be 
 weighed along with the whole argument of this book. If they 
 are regarded as sufficient, it will be needless to examine minutely 
 more vague examples of flying or traditional criticism. If they 
 are not sufficient, such examination would be useless. It is 
 morally inconceivable, if it had been the intention of Heaven to 
 
 * In Rev. ix. 18, 'fire and brimstone' are said to 'kill the third part of 
 men.' 
 
' HE THAT IS FILTHY, LET HIM BE FILTHY: 415 
 
 convey to mankind, speaking so great a variety of languages, into 
 which the Bible must be translated, the threatening of torment 
 which should be absolutely endless, that such a threatening would 
 be, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, expressed in terms 
 which literally signify something in all languages wholly incon- 
 sistent with such a destiny : and that the announcement of the 
 real danger awaiting the world should be dubiously ascertainable 
 only from one passage in a gospel (Matthew), which is probably 
 itself a translation ; from another (in a second gospel Mark), 
 which has reached posterity in a very corrupted form ; and lastly 
 from two verses in the latest of the prophecies, where it is difficult 
 to distinguish metaphors from simple terms, and where the terms 
 employed are themselves undoubtedly employed by the Jewish 
 Rabbins, as well as in the Bible, to denote a limited period of dura- 
 tion in punishment. A question so vast as the eternal destiny of 
 the human race cannot be determined on the evidence of a few 
 poetic or prophetic phrases. If the plain sense of the main current 
 of language is not to be taken as decisive in such a case j we 
 despair of learning Divine Truth on any subject from a verbal 
 revelation." 
 
 * I will give two examples of the class of criticisms to which I refer. A 
 learned writer sets forth as the very first ' text ' by which he supports the doc- 
 trine of eternal suffering the words in S. Jude's epistle, verse 13, ' the blackness 
 of darkness is reserved for them for ever' These words, as so quoted, suggest 
 the idea of a dark prison in which condemned souls shall wear out eternity. 
 But if we consult the connection, and cite the whole clause, we find it to be, 
 ' These are wandering- stars, to whom the mist of darkness for ever is re- 
 served.' This citation, taken by S. Jude from the Book of Enoch, is part of 
 an image of future doom drawn, not from prisoners in a dungeon, but from 
 meteors swiftly extinguished in eternal darkness, an image, therefore, giving 
 support to the doctrine of extinction, not of endless woe ; a doctrine supported 
 by the natural sense of every other expression in the epistle of Jude. 
 
 A second writer quotes Rev. xxii. II. ' He that is imjiist, let him be unjust 
 still ; he -which is filthy, let him be filthy still,' as implying an eternal course of 
 injustice and impurity. But the parallel passages are in Ezek. iii. 27 ; xx. 39. 
 ' Go and serve ye every man his idols,' etc. It is an awful challenge to every man 
 to choose and pei'severe in whatever course he thinks best, here and now, and to 
 take the consequences. In the prophecy of Ezekiel the consequence of such 
 persistent sin is death. 
 
416 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ON THE SUPPORT GIVEN BY SOME FATHERS OF THE PRIMITIVE 
 CHURCH TO THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE IN CHRIST; AND ON THE 
 PROCESS BY WHICH THE PREVAILING OPINION OF MAN'S IM- 
 MORTALITY BECAME THE CREED OF CATHOLIC CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 On the Support given by some Fathers of the Primitive Church to 
 the Doctrine of Life in Christ. 
 
 Two stringent demands may justly be enforced on those who 
 advocate the general system of doctrine which has now been sub- 
 mitted to the reader. First, it may fairly be required that we 
 should bring forward some extra-scriptural evidence of the recog- 
 nition of the doctrine of life in Christ only in the ante-Nicene 
 ages of the Church ; and, secondly, it may be asked that we 
 should offer some rational and historical account of the sources of 
 the now established belief in the absolute immortality of all men, 
 and the eternity of evil. 
 
 This subject has been discussed with so much accuracy and 
 fulness by previous writers, that there is the less need for a large 
 exhibition of the evidence in these pages. 
 
 In the early years of the eighteenth century the learned non- 
 juror Henry Dodwell set forth a treatise in which he proved * from 
 the Scripture and the first fathers that the soul is a principle 
 naturally mortal,' but he unhappily burdened the doctrine of a God- 
 given immortality with the high-church conceit that ' the soul is 
 actually immortalised by the pleasure of God to punishment or to 
 reward, through union with the divine baptismal spirit ' and that 
 led him to the strictly logical result that * the bishops alone, since 
 the apostles, had this immortalising power ' ! This strange con- 
 
TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS. 417 
 
 junction of ideas fixed the destiny of his book to oblivion ; but 
 its patristic evidence on the fundamental idea of man's natural 
 mortality was clearly and forcibly set forward. Dodwell was 
 answered with the utmost virulence by Dr. Samuel Clarke, who 
 attempted to show that his extracts were garbled and his argument 
 unsound. This brought out a third writer, who describes himself 
 simply as a * Presbyter of the Church of England? and who was a 
 much more accurate patristic scholar than Clarke ; and he, with 
 overwhelming force of citation, vindicated Dodwell's statements 
 on the main question, and proved beyond reasonable denial that 
 the earlier ante-Nicene Fathers knew nothing of the natural 
 immortality of the soul as an apostolic doctrine, showing that ' Mr. 
 Clarke hath not one sentence of the Fathers or one text of Scrip- 
 ture on his side.'' This rare work is called The Holy Spirit the 
 Author of Immortality, and is a well-stored magazine of evidence 
 on this side of the subject, so far as the historical argument is 
 concerned. The author well affirms, 
 
 ' Nothing hath contributed more to the growth of Atheism, Scepticism, 
 Libertinism, Popery, and Sectarianism than our modern method of recommend- 
 ing our most holy religion upon the precarious topics of natural light, and 
 natural religion, which set all mankind upon an equal level with those who 
 urge only arguments from human corrupt nature, which the oracles of God 
 frequently represent under the notion of blindness and darkness and philosophy, 
 which is no better than vain deceit (Col. ii. 8) ; science falsely so called (i Tim. 
 vi. 20). And nothing hath given a greater shock to many men of searching 
 and acute parts, and more than ordinary capacities, than the insisting upon and 
 pressing the vulgar topics of the natural immortality, immateriality, and spirit- 
 uality of the soul, of all which it's so difficult to form any idea, and thus we 
 find too often that by the unsatisfactory management of them they only minister 
 matter of burlesque, buffoonery, scorn, and contempt, for the asserting of 
 which we find our philosophical theologues run down and silenced most shame- 
 fully, by even illiterates, and women, very frequently, in conversation.' 
 
 In our own age the early opinions have been handled in a care- 
 ful manner by Prebendary Constable ; * and by the Rev. J. M. 
 Denniston in his work on The Perishing Soul\ (pp. 283-350). 
 Mr. Denniston has treated with honest impartiality the variable 
 doctrine of the first two centuries, specially of Justin Martyr and 
 
 * Kellaway, Warwick Lane. Chs. xv., xvi., xvii., of his striking work on 
 Future Punishment, 
 f Longmans, 1874. 
 
 27 
 
4 i 8 IGNATIUS JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 Irenoeus, and shown that although they have sometimes spoken the 
 philosophic or popular language, their deliberate and final teach- 
 ing is strongly in support of the unpopular, but apostolic doctrine, 
 of immortality in Christ only.* 
 
 The Essay on the Duration of Evil, published anonymously in 
 1855, and on good grounds attributed to one of the most accom- 
 plished nonconformist writers of the present age, contains also a 
 short but vigorous review of the ante-Nicene modes of expression 
 on immortality, deciding that their language is incompatible with 
 the modern faith. 
 
 But the most complete view of this subject has been given by 
 the late distinguished Professor Hudson, of Cambridge in America, 
 in his great work entitled Debt and Grace as related to the Doctrine 
 of a Future Life, In his eighth chapter he has presented a full 
 history of both Jewish and Christian opinion on the present con- 
 troversy and few will, after careful study of his pages, persevere 
 in regarding the modern doctrine of the Church as a representa- 
 tion of its faith in those earlier times. 
 
 Referring for fuller information to these writers, I shall now 
 present the principal examples of a scriptural mode of expression 
 on the subject of Immortality in Christ, which I have found in 
 the Fathers. 
 
 Ignatius, martyred probably A.D. 115. 
 
 In the Epistle to Polycarp he says : ' Watch, be vigilant as 
 God's athlete. The reward is incorruption, and life eternal.' 
 ' The bread of God is the body of Christ, and His blood is love 
 incorruptible and perpetual life ' (Ephesians, c. 7). He speaks of 
 Christ as ' our inseparable life ' (Eph. c. 3), who ' breathes the 
 breath of immortality into his church' (c. 17). 'The bread 
 which is the medicine of immortality, an antidote that we should 
 not die, but live for ever, is Jesus Christ ' (c. 20). ' But if as 
 some (the Docetae), who are atheists, that is to say unbelievers, 
 pretend, He only seemed to suffer, they themselves only seeming to 
 exist (eu/ai), why then do I?' etc. (Trail. 10). 
 
 Justin Martyr, A.D. 135, bred as a philosopher, several times 
 
 * Mr. Bodfield Hooper's misrepresentation of the doctrine of Irenreus de- 
 serves a harsher name than I shall give to it. 
 
JUSTIN MARTYR ON IMMORTALITY. 419 
 
 speaks the language of the schools on the eternity of evil and 
 misery, in his Apologies to the Emperors, except in one passage 
 (No. II. c. 7), where he says, ' God delays the breaking up and 
 dissolution of the world so that evil angels and demons and men 
 may cease to be (/^/cert w to-), for the sake of Christians who 
 are in His mind the final cause of nature.' But in the Dialogue 
 with Trypho, the Pharisaic Jew, he brings in an aged Christian, 
 who is represented as having taught him the truth respecting the 
 middle quality of souls. After a discussion on the soul's pre- 
 existence and eternity, he represents this aged Christian as 
 saying, 
 
 ' But if the world was created, it must follow that souls were created also, 
 and that there was a time when they were not. 
 
 ' Justin. This has the appearance of truth. 
 
 * C. Therefore they are not immortal. 
 
 ' J. No, they are not, seeing it is evident the world was created. 
 
 ' C. However, I do not say that all souls will die, for that indeed will be 
 good news for the wicked. 
 
 ' What then ? Why, that the souls of the righteous remain in some better 
 place, but the evil in a worse, waiting till the time of Judgment. And so the 
 former, being worthy to appear before God, shall not die any more, and the 
 latter shall be punished so long as it shall please God that they exist and be 
 punished. ' On this Justin remarks, ' God alone is uncreated and incorruptible ; 
 but all things beside Him are created and perishable. For this reason souls 
 both die and arc punished.' ' For it cannot live of itself, as God does. But as 
 the personal man does not always exist, and body and soul are not ever con- 
 joined, but whenever this harmony may be dissolved the soul leaves the body 
 and the man is no more ; so likewise whenever it is necessary that the soul 
 should no longer be (tTvat), the vital spirit leaves it, and the soul is no more, 
 but itself returns whence it was taken ' (cc. 4-6). 
 
 Iren&tis, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 202. His view of the nature 
 and destiny of the soul is most deliberately expressed in the 
 following passage of his Second Book against Heresies (c. 34). 
 Irenaeus was the disciple of Polycarp the martyr, who in turn was 
 the scholar of the apostle John. His testimony, therefore, almost 
 touches the fountain of truth, and is of transcendent importance. 
 
 Not only does Irenseus briefly affirm in the remaining Greek 
 fragment of the fifth book (c. a) that it is ' from God's Majesty, 
 not from our own nature, that we receive the gift of enduring for 
 ever,' TT/V cis ael 7rapa[jiovr)v ; but in the place above referred to he 
 speaks at large thus ; 
 
4 20 IREXsEUS ON LIFE IN CHRIST ONLY. 
 
 1 If any should assert that those souls which a little while since be^an to 
 exist cannot hold out for many ages, but must be supposed unborn that they 
 may be immortal, or that if they had a beginning by generation they must die 
 with the body, let them understand that it is only God the Lord of all things 
 who, without beginning or ending, is truly and always the same, without any 
 shadow of change. But all things that are from Him, whatever things are 
 made, have their beginning by generation, and in this respect are inferior to 
 Him who made them, because they are not unbegotten ; but they continue their 
 existence and are extended to the length of ages according to the will and 
 pleasure of God the Creator, just as it was by His gift that they had their 
 being at first, and by His gift likewise that they now exist. For as the heavens 
 above us, the firmament, the sun, the moon, and stars, and all their ornaments, 
 were created, whereas before they were not, and continue for many ages accord- 
 ing to His will ; so if any one thinks the same with respect to souls and spirits, 
 or all things created, he will not be mistaken, since all things that were made 
 had a beginning of their making, but continue their existence so long as it 
 is the will of God they should be and continue. The prophetic Spirit bears 
 witness to all this, saying, " He commanded, and they were created ; He hath 
 also established them for ever and ever" (Psalm cxlviii. 5). And as to the 
 salvation of man he saith, " He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him length 
 of days for ever and ever " (Psalm xxi. 4). The prophetic Spirit speaks of Him 
 as the Father of all, granting perseverance of being to all eternity unto those 
 who are saved. For life is not from us ourselves, or from our nature, but it is 
 given or bestoT.vcd according to the grace of God ; and therefore he who preserves 
 this gift of life and returns thanks to Him who bestows it, he shall receive 
 " length of days " for ever and ever. But he who rejects it, and proves unthank- 
 ful to his Maker for creating him, and will not know Him who bestows it, he 
 deprives himself of the gift of duration to all eternity. And therefore the Lord 
 speaks thus of such unthankful persons : If you have not been " faithful in that 
 which is least, who will commit much to you?" intimating thereby unto us, 
 that they who are unthankful to Him with respect to this short transitory life, 
 which is His gift the effect of His bounty shall be most justly deprived of 
 length of days for ever and ever* For as the animal body is not life itself, but 
 
 * ' Testatur pro suis sententiis etiam propheticus spiritus, dicens " quoniam ipse 
 dixit et facta stint" (Psalm cxlviii. 6), etiterum de salvando hominesicait, " vitatn 
 petiit a te, ettribuistiei longitudinem dierum in saculum saculi" (Psalm xxi.), tan- 
 quam Patre omnium donante, et in sseculum srcculi, perseverantiam in his qui 
 salvi fiunt. Non enim ex nobis, neque EX NOSTRA NATURA VITA EST ; SED 
 SECUNDUM GRATIAM DEI DATUR. Et ideo qui servaverit datum vitoc, et. 
 gratias egerit ei qui praestitit, accipiet et in saeculmn sceculi longitudinem 
 dierum. Qui autem abjecerit earn et ingratus extiterit Factori, ob hoc quod 
 factus est, et non cognoverit Eum qui praestat, ipse se privat in saeculum sreculi 
 perseverantia. Et ideo Dominus dicebat ingratis existentibus in eum, "Si in 
 inodico fideles nonfuistis, quod magnum est quis dabit eum / " Significans nobis, 
 quoniam qui in modica temporal! vita ingrati extiterunt Ei, qui earn procstitit, 
 juste non percipient ab eo in sseculum s?eculi longitudinem dierum.' 
 
IRE A^ US ON LIFE IN CHRIST ONLY. 421 
 
 partakes of life, so likewise the soul itself is not life, but receives the life be- 
 stowed upon it by God; whence is said, "The first man became a living soul," 
 teaching us to distinguish between the soul and the life of the soul. Souls 
 therefore receive their life and their perpetual duration as a donation from God 
 continuing in being from non-existence because God wills them to exist and to 
 subsist.' ' For the substance of life conies by partaking of God, and to partake 
 of God is to know God and enjoy His goodness. Men, therefore, will see God 
 that they may live, being made immortal by the vision, and attaining unto 
 God.' 
 
 Again, in lib. iii. 18, 19, Irenaeus writes: 
 
 ' Therefore, as I have already said, He caused man (human nature) to cleave 
 to and to become one with God. For unless man had overcome the enemy of 
 man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again, 
 unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have 
 possessed it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could 
 never have become a partaker of incorruptibility, for it was incumbent upon 
 the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both 
 to friendship and concord, and to present man to God, while He revealed God 
 to man. 
 
 ' For in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons, unless we 
 had received from Him through the Son that fellowship which refers to Him- 
 self, unless His Word, having been made flesh, had entered into communion with 
 us ? Wherefore also He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all 
 communion with God. 
 
 ' For as by the disobedience of the one man, who was originally moulded 
 from virgin soil, the many were made sinners, and forfeited life ; so was it 
 necessary that, by the obedience of one man, who was originally born from 
 a virgin, many should be justified and receive salvation. Thus, then, was the 
 word of God made man, as also Moses says : " God, true are His works." But 
 if, not having been made flesh, He did appear as if flesh, His work was not a true 
 one. But what He did appear, that He also was : God recapitulated in Him- 
 self in the ancient formation of man, that he might kill sin, deprive death of 
 its power, and vivify man : and therefore His works are true. 
 
 ' But again, those who assert that he was simply a mere man, begotten by 
 Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of 
 death ; having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor 
 receiving liberty through the Son, as He does Himself declare. " If the Son 
 shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." But being ignorant of Him who 
 from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift which is eternal 
 life ; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, 
 and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life. To whom the 
 Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace, " I said ye are all the sons of the 
 Highest, and gods ; but ye shall die like men." Ho speaks undoubtedly these 
 words to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but who despise the 
 incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of G:>1, defraud human nature 
 
422 1RENAZUS ON IMMORTALITY. 
 
 of promotion into God, and prove themselves ungrateful to the Word of God, 
 who became flesh for them. For it was for this end that the Word of God 
 was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, 
 that man having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might 
 become the Son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to 
 incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility 
 and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immor- 
 tality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we 
 also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by the incorruptibility, 
 and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons ? ' 
 
 And again, ch. iii. 2&t * This was done that, man should not suppose that 
 the incorruptibility which belongs to" God is his own naturally, and also by 
 not holding the truth, should boast with empty pride as if he were naturally 
 like to God. For Satan thus rendered man more ungrateful to his Creator, 
 obscured the love "which God had towards men, and blinded his mind not to perceive 
 what is worthy of God, and comparing himself and judging himself equal with God. 
 This, therefore, was the object of God's longsuffering, that man passing through 
 all things, and acquiring the knowledge of discipline, then attaining the resur- 
 rection from the dead, and learning from experience wharf: is the source of his 
 salvation, may always live in a state of gratitude to the Lord, having obtained 
 from Him the gift of incorruptibility that He might love Him the more, and 
 that he may know himself how frail and mortal he is ; while he also under- 
 stands God, that He is Immortal and Powerful to such a degree as to confer 
 Immortality upon what is mortal, and eternity upon what is temporary* 
 [Clark's Library of Ante-Nicene * Fathers.' Dr. Roberts' version.] 
 
 Theophilus of Antioch states the doctrine thus : ' Some will ask, 
 was Adam by nature mortal ? By no means. Immortal ? Not 
 thus, either. What then nothing at all? I answer neither 
 mortal, nor immortal ; for if the Creator had made him from the 
 first immortal, He would have made him a god. If mortal, then 
 God would appear as the author of death. He made him, then, 
 capable of becoming either ; so that by keeping the commands 
 of God he might attain immortality as his reward, and become 
 divine. But if he should turn to mortal things and disobey God, 
 he would be himself the author of his own death. For God 
 made man free and with power of self-control.' (Ad Autoly- 
 chum, ii. c. 37.) 
 
 And again at the close of the third century, in the second book 
 of a treatise devoted to the demonstration of the truth of Chris- 
 tianity against the errors of the Gentiles, a work of the nature 
 
ARNOBIUS ON IMMORTALITY. 423 
 
 of Paley's ' Evidences ' for the African churches, (so vigorously 
 written as to have survived, even in orthodox hands, until our 
 own time, contrary to the rule that the Church has generally 
 preserved the record only of triumphant opinions), ArnoMus 
 thus delivers the Christian doctrine. After enlarging at great 
 length in this book on the ' error,' as he terms it, ' of the doctrine 
 of the soul's natural immortality,' he breaks out into the following 
 apostrophe to the heathen philosophers : 
 
 ' Will you lay aside your habitual arrogance, O Men, who claim God as your 
 Father, and maintain that you are immortal, just as lie is? Will you inquire, 
 examine, search, what you are yourselves, whose you are, of what parentage 
 you are supposed to be, what you do in the world, in what way you are born, 
 how you leap into life ? Will you, laying aside all partiality, consider, in the 
 silence of your thoughts, that we are creatures either quite like the rest, or 
 separated by no great difference ? ' a fact which Arnobius then proceeds to 
 illustrate with great vivacity (ii. 16). ' Your interests are in jeopardy, the 
 salvation, I mean, of your souls ; and unless you give yourselves to know the 
 Supreme God, a miserable death awaits you, not bringing sudden abolition, 
 but destroying by the bitterness of its grievous and protracted punishment. 
 None but Almighty God can preserve souls, nor is there any one besides who 
 can give them length of days, and grant to them a spirit which shall never die, 
 except He who alone is immortal and everlasting, and restricted by no limit 
 of time ' (ch. 62). ' For souls are of a middle or intermediate quality, as has 
 been learned from Christ's teaching, and they are such that they may on the 
 one hand perish, if they have not known God, and on the other hand be 
 delivered from death, if they have given heed to His threatenings and proffered 
 favours. And to make manifest what is unknown, this is man's real death 
 this which leaves nothing behind [hrec nihil residuum faciens]. For that which 
 is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body, not the last end of 
 abolition : this, I say, is man's real death, when souls which know not God 
 shall be consumed in pi'otracted torment with raging fire into which certain 
 fiercely cruel beings shall cast them, who were unknown to the world [of 
 heathens] before Christ, and brought to light only by His wisdom ' (ch. 14).* 
 
 Lastly, Athanasius (who died in 373) speaks thus of the result 
 of the Fall of Man, in his treatise on the Incarnation of the Word.\ 
 After asserting that God created the substance as well as the form 
 of the world by His living Word, he continues : 
 
 * This accords with a striking passage in the Ebionite Clementine Homilies^ 
 iii. cap. 6. ' But as I said, at an appointed time, a fifth part being punished 
 with eternal fire shall be consumed. For they cannot endure for ever who 
 have been impious against the one God. 1 
 
 f Cologne edition, 1686, vol. i., p. 56. 
 
424 ATHAXASWS OX THE OBJECT OF 
 
 ' For God is good, the fountain of goodness ; and a good Being is envious 
 of nothing. Whence, envying existence to none, from non-existence He pro- 
 duced all things by His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amongst which 
 things before all others on earth He visited with mercy the race of man. And 
 seeing that they, according to the condition of their own nature, were not 
 sufficient to endure for ever (diap,evttv dti), bestowing His grace upon them 
 in addition, He did not simply create the human race, as He did all the 
 irrational animals upon earth, but He formed them according to His own 
 Image, bestowing on them also the endowment of His own Reason ; so that, 
 as it were, possessing certain shadows of the Logos and becoming rational, 
 they might be able to continue (diapivftv) in blessedness, living the true life of 
 saints in Paradise. But seeing again the free-will of mankind, able to go in 
 two opposite directions, He made more secure to them the grace bestowed, 
 both by His precepts and by their position in Eden. He introduced them, 
 therefore, into His own Paradise, and prescribed them a law so that if they 
 should preserve His favour and continue in piety they might possess this life 
 in Paradise, without sorrow or pain or care, in addition to the promise of 
 immortality in the heavens ; but if they disobeyed or became rebellious, that 
 they might know that they would undergo the destruction in death which was 
 according to their nature (iavrovQ TIJV iv Oavdr^ Kara tyvaiv tyOopav vrrofjifvfiv), 
 and no longer live in the Paradise, but outside Paradise afterwards dying, remain 
 in death and in destruction (<f>9opa). For this the Scripture signifies from the 
 mouth of God. " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." For 
 what else can this signify than this, that not only they should die, but in the 
 destruction of death remain (d\\d i iv ry row Qavarov (t>&onq, diaptvuv)? 
 
 ' But perhaps thou wilt wonder when my subject is the Incarnation of the 
 Word that we are now speaking of the beginning of mankind ; but this is not 
 foreign to the object of the discourse. For it is necessary that, speaking of 
 he manifestation of the Saviour, we should also speak concerning the beginning 
 of mankind ; in order that you may know that our sin became the occasion of 
 His descent, and that our transgression called out the philanthropy of the 
 Logos, that He should come down and appear as the Lord among men. For 
 we have become the cause of the Incarnation ; and it was for our salvation 
 that He showed His love to man by assuming a human body and appearing in 
 the flesh. 
 
 ' Thus, therefore, God made man, and desired him to continue in incorrup- 
 tion (lv djQapalq, pevtiv). But men, making light of and rebelling against the 
 knowledge of God, thinking out and inventing evil for themselves, came under 
 the before-threatened condemnation of death, and afterwards continued no 
 longer as they were created, but according to their reasonings were destroyed 
 (ciKjtUtioovTo). Thus Death reigning held them fast. For the transgression of 
 the command brought them back to their natural condition. So that even as 
 when not existing they had been created (OVK o>rtc ytyovaaiv] so also they 
 should undergo destruction of bt'ing in t)ie course of time (ovrtttg Be n}v et TO 
 tlvai ^Oopav vTrofJiiivuMri ry xpoi/qj). And justly. For if possessing the nature 
 of not being once (fyvatv t\ovrtQ TO /*) tlvai) by the presence and philanthropy of 
 the Logos they were called into existence, it was right that men, being emptied 
 
THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD. 425 
 
 of the knowledge of God, and turning to the things that are not (for evil things 
 are things that are not, but good things really are, since they proceed from the 
 really existing God), should be emptied also of eternal existence (Ktv^Oijvai k rou 
 tlvai dtt), and this is for them, being dissolved, to remain in death and 
 destruction (00op). For man is according to nature mortal, as a being who 
 has been made out of things that are not. But on account of his likeness to 
 God he could by piety ward off his natural mortality and remain indestructible 
 if he retained the knowledge of God, or lose his incorruptibility if he lost his 
 life in God.' 
 
 Athanasius then proceeds to describe the object of the Incarna- 
 tion of the Logos, which was, he says, to save man from relapsing 
 into nothingness, and to endow him with immortality in the 
 renewed Image of God, ' so that as by transgression they had 
 been born for mortality (<f>0opdv), by repentance they might again 
 come to incorruption. For this cause .that incorporeal and in- 
 corruptible Word of God came down to our abode, and took our 
 nature upon Him, in order that by death He might abolish death, 
 and give to man the hope of life eternal.' 
 
 Notwithstanding this sound basis of faith, it must not, however, 
 be supposed that Athanasius attributed immortality to the saved 
 alone, for, like Dr. Watts and some other modern writers, he 
 inconsistently taught, at least in the case of rejectors of Christ, 
 * that God would immortalise the wicked for an " eternal death " 
 of conscious suffering.' * 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 On the process by which the prevailing opinion on Man's Immortality 
 became the Creed of Catholic Christendom. 
 
 The question now to be considered is of momentous interest 
 in relation to this discussion. ' If the doctrine of man's immor- 
 tality, now, and for more than fourteen hundred years past, the 
 
 * The seemingly self-contradictory doctrine of Athanasius is well discussed 
 and accounted for in the work above referred to, The Holy Spirit the Author 
 of Immortality, 1708. A curious illustration of the fact that the belief in 
 Conditional Immortality lingered in the churches sporadically for several 
 centuries after the time of Athanasius, is given by Canon Swainson in his 
 learned history of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, p. 250. At the third 
 council of Constantinople, A.D. 680, under the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, 
 at the eleventh session, a sy nodical letter of twenty-one pages in length from 
 
426 DISCUSSION OF THE SOURCES 
 
 established faith of Christendom, be, as you think, a direful 
 delusion, and in its consequences a curse to the Church and 
 the world, when did this false belief, sanctioned by so many 
 myriads of the wisest men, originate, and by what steps did it 
 take possession of the mind of Christianised mankind ? ' 
 
 The answer to this inquiry demands several preliminary obser- 
 vations. 
 
 (i) It is necessary to admit, in all its force, the antecedent 
 improbability, according to the natural course of thought, of the 
 speedy and general obscuration of the great light of truth kindled 
 by God for the salvation of the world. The mind, left to its own 
 auguries of the probable future of early Christianity, would un- 
 questionably have foretold the universal diffusion and solid 
 establishment of apostolic doctrine. If heresies and errors 
 arose, they would doubtless be swept away before the triumph 
 of truth. An infallible and triumphant Popedom, or an in- 
 fallible and triumphant Church, are the expressions of all that 
 seems at first view probable in the history of a Divine Reve- 
 lation. 
 
 But the true philosophy in religion, as in other sciences, is 
 founded on induction of facts. It consisted with the Divine 
 wisdom to permit first of all of the corruption of patriarchal 
 theology into pantheism and world-wide idolatry. The worship 
 of false gods, and the adoration of images, representing grotesque 
 phantasies of the imagination, has been the religion of Asia, of 
 Europe, and Africa, almost since the beginning of their settle- 
 ment. When Moses had been commissioned to found a new 
 theocratic institution, apostasy commenced very soon after his 
 death. The history of Israel is the history of a series of reforms 
 following on a series of apostasies to idolatry, ending with a final 
 subsidence of nearly all the ablest minds into Pharisaic superstition, 
 or the materialism of the Sadducees. 
 
 Sophronius, who had been patriarch of Jerusalem in the beginning of the 
 century, was read, in which, after reciting his faith in the Trinity, he proceeds 
 to speak of the Incarnation ; next of the errors of Nestorius and Apollinaris ; 
 and ends by declaring the true faith to be that ' men's souls have not a natural 
 immortality ; it is the gift of God that they receive the grant of immortality 
 and incorruptibility.' 
 
OF THE POPULAR BELIEF. 427 
 
 The preceding history of the world, therefore, did not throw 
 so encouraging a light a priori on the future of Christianity as 
 might be at first supposed. On the contrary, to any one who 
 sincerely believed in the combined action of a corrupt humanity, 
 and of a host of infernal spirits still battling against God, the 
 probability of an uncorrupted Christianity was reduced to a 
 shadowy expectation. The experience of past ages would render 
 it the most wonderful of all miracles, if Christianity escaped the 
 universal tendency to perversion. 
 
 But we are not left to hesitate between such conflicting proba- 
 bilities. The ancient prophets foretold a general apostasy from 
 the faith of Christ (Dan.* vii., xi.). Christ and His apostles 
 stedfastly enforced on their disciples the same lamentable pre- 
 diction. Every one of the apostles left the world warning the 
 churches of some Power of Darkness which was soon to arise, 
 and to found its throne in Christendom on the basis of a widely 
 corrupted doctrine. The elements of disorder were, they affirmed, 
 in action already. ' The mystery, or secret doctrine, of lawlessness 
 doth already work* (2 Thess. ii.). ' There shall be false prophets, 
 and many shall follow their pernicious ways '(2 Peter ii.). * The 
 time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after 
 their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching 
 ears, and shall ttirn away their ears from the truth, and will turn 
 
 * I venture to quote this book as Daniel's, because the modern objections 
 have been effectively answered by Dr. Pusey in his learned work on this 
 prophet, and by Mr. Birks in his best work, The Elements of Prophecy. In 
 the same manner we adhere in the following pages to the ancient interpretation 
 of these and other predictions respecting the rise and domination of an evil 
 spiritual and temporal power at Rome, lamenting only that the theologians of 
 the Anglican branch, assisted by some extreme and less learned sects of 
 ' Plymouth Brethren,' have laboured so hard of late years to shake the faith 
 of Protestants in that well-established application of the prophecies. Modern 
 Rome is grateful to the English and the Germans who have striven to prove 
 that she is not the Babylon of the Apocalypse. But the Italian people seem 
 to be unaffected by these arguments. As soon as they become Reformed, they 
 apply with immense vigour this weapon with which the Scripture supplies 
 them, rivalling the German and old English Reformers themselves in the zeal 
 with which they hold up the mirror of the Book of Revelation before the 
 bedizened face of the ' Mother of Harlots,' and Mistress of all Churches. The 
 writings of Bishop Wordsworth are also to be commended as efficient replies 
 to the modern Anglican doctrine on the Apocalypse. 
 
428 THE APOSTASY PREDICTED. 
 
 aside unto fables' (2 Tim. iv. 3). ' Of your own selves sJiall men 
 arise, speaking eorrupt things ' (Acts xx. 30). 
 
 The errors of this apostasy had their origin, not in the Eternal 
 City, but in the human heart. The evil principles which were to 
 lay the foundation for the throne of the great Antichrist were all 
 at work in the first stage of Christianity. Human nature was 
 commencing then the process of degradation, through which the 
 spiritual would become materialised, and the divine be transmuted 
 into the diabolical. The spirit of self-glorification and formality, 
 the spirit of a false mystical philosophy, the ambitious and greedy 
 sacerdotal spirit, had already revealed themselves in the churches 
 and these, coalescing with the remainders of paganism, esta- 
 blished the reign of the powers of darkness. Christianity descended 
 from the spiritual region into the region of material forms. In- 
 stead of churches of living stones, there were ' churches ' of dead 
 stones, and of marble. Instead of regeneration by the truth and 
 the Spirit, men were offered baptismal regeneration. For eating 
 and drinking by faith the body and blood of Christ, there was 
 substituted the gross dogma of transubstantiation. Instead of 
 faith, there was the endless repetition of an incredible ' creed/ 
 in a foreign tongue ; instead of spiritual discipline, oppressive 
 ecclesiastical courts ; instead of a royal priesthood of God's elect, 
 a hierarchy, whose alleged succession from the apostles consisted 
 in an unbroken series of laying on of hands. In place of the 
 beautiful garments of Christian piety, this priesthood was arrayed 
 in purple and gold ; and ' fine linen ' literally became the ' right- 
 eousness of saints.' Instead of Christ's Gospel, there was eccle- 
 siastical law; money effected the work of grace, and church 
 decoration shone in the room of holiness. Music filled the place 
 of moral harmony, and compensated for the absence of ' melody 
 in the heart unto the Lord.' Finally, a visible Antichrist and his 
 satellites usurped the honours due to the ' High Priest of our 
 Profession,' and pretended to regulate the destinies of souls 
 departed in that region whose keys are possessed by the Invisible 
 Potentate alone. 
 
 Dr. J. H. Newman excellently described it a very few years 
 before he seceded, in these words : 
 
 * The spirit of old Rome has risen in its former place, and has evidenced its 
 identity by its works. It has possessed the Church there planted, as an Evil 
 
THE APOSTASY OF CHRISTENDOM. 429 
 
 Spirit might seize the demoniacs of primitive times, and makes her speak words 
 which are not her own. In the corrupt papal system we have the very cruelty, 
 the craft, and the ambition of the Republic ; its cruelty in its unsparing sacri- 
 fice of the happiness and virtue of individuals to a phantom of public expedi- 
 ency, in its forced celibacy within, and its persecutions without ; its craft in its 
 falsehoods, its deceitful deeds, and lying words ; and its grasping ambition in 
 the very structure of its policy, in its assumption of universal dominion ; old 
 Rome is still alive ; nowhere have its eagles lighted, but it still claims the 
 sovereignty under another pretence.' Archbishop Whately's Cautions for the 
 Times, p. 240. 
 
 Thus was ' that Wicked One revealed, the Son of Perdition,' 
 who is characterised, in the prophecies, by his intelligence, auda- 
 city, and political power in connection with the Roman Empire ; 
 by his blasphemies against Supreme Goodness, Holiness, and 
 Authority; by his long persecutions against 'the saints of the 
 Most High ; ' by his bold alteration of Divine Institutions ; by 
 his assumption of the right to legislate in opposition to the dis- 
 tinct decrees of the Deity ; by his profane reception of honours 
 due to Heaven alone, as he ' sitteth in the temple of God ; ' by 
 his disregard of the gods of his Pagan forefathers, and of the con- 
 jugal instincts of humanity ; by his boundless self-exaltation, yet 
 ' voluntary humility in the worshipping of angels,' and ' honouring 
 of a foreign deity,' with the magnificence of a ' gay religion full of 
 pomp and gold.' 
 
 More than twelve hundred years have now passed since the 
 days of Boniface, and ' the horns,' or civil Powers, have at length 
 begun, according to the prediction, to ' hate the Whore ' ; but those 
 baleful eyes of the Man of Sin still fascinate the nations with their 
 soul-consuming beams. That forehead, beaten by the storms of 
 centuries, and scarred with the lightnings that have impatiently 
 hovered over it for ages, still lifts its presumptuous front aloft 
 above the world's mightiest thrones. That voice of the pontifical 
 Magician, as of subterranean thunder, still overawes adoring 
 millions, still sends up to heaven its ' blasphemies against the God 
 of gods ' : and the tyrant will ' prosper until the indignation ' 
 against Israel be accomplished (Dan. xi. 36). 
 
 But ' the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces ; 
 out of heaven shall He thunder upon them.' Of this Man of 
 Sin,' ' the son of perdition,' the perpetual holder of the title 
 
430 VALUE OF ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 and apostolate of Judas, who ' betrayed the Son of Man with a 
 kiss, it is foretold, that the Lord shall ' consume him with the 
 spirit of His mouth, and destroy him by the brightness of His 
 coming.' ' And if any man shall worship the Beast or his Image, 
 or receive his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he shall be 
 tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy 
 angels and in the presence of the Lamb.' 
 
 The history of the ante-Nicene ages, notwithstanding their 
 heroic character, offers a convincing comment on the truth of the 
 apostolic predictions. We may not consult as a final authority 
 the post-apostolic Church on the interpretation of the holy writ- 
 ings. Holding these writings in our own hands, we can under- 
 stand for ourselves, at least as well as they, what Christ and the 
 apostles taught. And they taught something exceedingly different 
 from the larger part of ante-Nicene Christianity. We harbour no 
 irreverent design of questioning the illustrious virtue of that age of 
 martyrdom ; but it is patent to students of Scripture that the men 
 of those centuries were better trained athletes in fasting, and in 
 dying for Christ, than they were in maintaining while alive the 
 evangelic doctrine against corruption. Let any one peruse S. 
 Paul's Epistle to the Romans or the circular epistle inscribed to 
 the ' Ephesians,' or the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
 then, if competently informed in the Christian literature of the 
 three centuries following, tell us how often we shall find a page of 
 similar doctrine on the Atonement, or on Justification in Christ, 
 or on the way of a sinful man's ' access with boldness unto the 
 holiest by the blood of Jesus ; ' or a page of similarly devout and 
 loving meditation on the characteristics of family piety ? In 
 reading the ante-Nicene Fathers you feel as if you were breath- 
 ing an atmosphere very different from that of the New Testament. 
 Compare again S. John's Gospel, or Epistles, or S. Paul's Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, with the fierce ascetic diatribes of Tertullian, 
 the incredible futility of much that remains even of Justin, the 
 lame interpretations of Origen and Clement* 
 
 * ' Origen neglects and despises for the most part the outward letter ; and in 
 this devious path displays the most ingenious strokes of fancy, though always 
 at the expense of truth, whose Divine simplicity is scarcely discernible through 
 the cobweb veil of allegory.' MOSHEIM, Eccl. Hist. cent. iii. ch. 3. 
 
ON THE SPEED OF CORRUPTION. 431 
 
 The truth unhappily is, that these saintly men had either for- 
 gotten, or never learned, some of the principal peculiarities of 
 Christ's religion, and were driving hard along the road of a. falsely 
 philosophic and thence ascetic superstition. If, then, the earliest 
 ages, in their best remains, offer so meagre a representation of the 
 apostolic gospel in its faith, joy, and love, why shall we doubt the 
 possibility of a rapid oblivion of other closely connected ' pecu- 
 liarities ' of the faith of Jesus Christ, specially those which were 
 the most characteristic of it ? 
 
 (2) The opinion widely prevails that any considerable alteration 
 of belief in the ante-Nicene churches was not possible within the 
 time specified in this hypothesis. The idea is that each church 
 founded by the apostles was a fortress of the truth, fixed on an 
 independent basis ; so that corruption in one particular article of 
 faith or practice would be resisted by the general conformity to 
 apostolic rule, and thus that a vast number of separate associations 
 would be engaged in handing down the apostolic deposit. 
 
 This opinion, so natural in its auguries, proceeds on inattention 
 to the facts of religious history. Even in the lifetime of the 
 apostles, each church was prevented from lapsing into apostasy 
 only by the watchful care of the founders. All the churches of 
 Galatia had apparently abandoned true Christianity within a short 
 space from their foundation; they had received 'another gospel.' 
 The Corinthians had allowed the entrance even of Sadducean dis- 
 believers in a future state and a resurrection of the dead (i Cor. 
 xv. 12). Nearly all the apostolic epistles are warnings against pre- 
 vailing errors. 
 
 The apocalyptic addresses of Christ to the ' Seven Churches of 
 Asia' indicate, in the majority, exposure to influences which were 
 well-nigh fatal to their faith. 
 
 Every century of Christian history teaches the lesson that not 
 only are separate communities subject to rapid changes of belief 
 and feeling, through the influence of leading minds; but that 
 currents of thought sweep, like pestilential gales, over wide areas 
 of Christendom, poisoning the ideas of men in millions, in a com- 
 paratively small number of years. Let any one review the history 
 of English religious thought during the present century, or even 
 during the last twenty-five years, Who that lived in 1850 could 
 
432 EXAMPLES OF SPEEDY APOSTASY. 
 
 have believed that English opinion would have developed so 
 rapidly in the opposite directions of superstition and scepticism, 
 under the disastrous influence of a few distinguished writers? 
 The past ages are full of similar examples. Within forty years the 
 Nonconformist martyr-churches of the Restoration were sunk 
 into the apathy and scepticism of the reign of Queen Anne. 
 Within a generation from Luther's age the Protestant churches of 
 central Europe had relapsed into Socinianism, when the fervour 
 of the Reformation died away. Why, then, doubt that, if any 
 strong and steady influence was at work to corrupt apostolic 
 Christianity in the department of belief relating to immortality, 
 nothing short of a miracle could hinder the victory of such an 
 assailing force ? Not only was a general corruption of doctrine 
 possible: it was certain, except under one condition that the 
 reverent study of the New Testament Scriptures should become 
 the absorbing interest of the best intellect of every sacred society 
 in Christendom, and that the churches should burn with a flaming 
 zeal of adhesion to apostolic teaching and example, which would 
 effectually dispel the danger from corrupted Judaism, from Greek 
 and Oriental philosophy, and from popular paganism. It is 
 notorious that this condition did not exist. 
 
 The teachers of the first century complied imperfectly with 
 S. Paul's command to ' commit the things which he had taught 
 to faithful men who should be able to teach others also.' The 
 bishops of the churches of the second century sprang mostly 
 from the schools of Rabbinical Judaism, and from the schools of 
 heathen 'science falsely so called,' or from no schools at all. 
 Their training in the science of exposition had been neglected 
 in youth, and had not been attended to in riper age. Books 
 were rare and expensive, colleges were few and heathenish in 
 taste, and the feeling soon extended itself everywhere that 
 apostolic Christianity was a religion so much opposed to all 
 men's natural ideas that it was hopeless to convince the philo- 
 sophers of Greece and Rome, or the educated men who governed 
 the empire, unless at least some compromise were allowed with 
 notions more attractive and popular. The church was in no 
 humour to ' become afool^ in order to be wise.'' To the Jews, in 
 no good sense, the Christian teachers became Jews, to the Greeks 
 they became Greeks, to gain them both. 
 
WEAK SIDE OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 433 
 
 We discern the influence of similar motives at work around us 
 in the present age. The last lesson that Christians learn is the 
 strength of ' the weakness of God ' the saving power of that 
 doctrine which men count ' foolishness ' the irresistible moral 
 force that dwells in unadulterated Christianity. All this will I 
 give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me, has been the 
 tempter's seductive proposal in every age. The Church of the 
 second century accepted the offer which her Lord had declined. 
 She ' showed her treasures to the ambassadors from Babylon,' 
 and learned their speech ; she ' went down to Egypt for help,' 
 and ' leaned not on the Lord of Hosts ; ' she ' trafficked with 
 Javan,' and ' committed fornication with Tyre and Sidon ; ' she 
 received her doctrine from the ascetic heathenism of the 
 Athenian and Alexandrian philosophies, rather than from the 
 ' unlearned ' but inspired apostles of the Incarnate Word. 
 
 And thus it came to pass that every convert from Judaism 
 brought with him into the Church some remnant of the 'oral 
 law ; ' the Pharisee-Rabbins of that day, on embracing Chris- 
 tianity, too often 'betrayed the Son of man with a kiss.' They 
 came not to learn of the Word of Life, but to teach Christianity 
 to sanction a qualified Judaism. The Greek and Asiatic philo- 
 sophers naturally imitated so respectable an example. They 
 certainly believed in Christ, but many of the ablest of them 
 believed, as Simon Magus did, with a view to power and profit ; 
 and the last thing they would submit to do was to adopt the 
 'degrading' dogma of man's dependence for immortal life on 
 * Jesus of Nazareth.' 
 
 Accordingly every year of growing apostasy witnessed the 
 decline of the primitive peculiarity which attributed our life 
 eternal to the Incarnation. The religion of Redemption, in the 
 person of Christ and His apostles, had descended into a world 
 where some doctrine of man's natural immortality, and generally 
 of his pre-existence, was the established opinion of nearly all 
 who had any belief on the subject of a future state.* Christ 
 
 * It may be objected that such a preoccupation of the mind of man must be 
 regarded as a divinely-inspired preparation for the gospel. In some sense 
 doubtless every natural tendency of man's thoughts in religion, whether good 
 or bad, is such a preparation, and, as has been pointed out in chapter viii., 
 there are certain elements in the popular belief in immortality which practically 
 
 28 
 
434 GENESIS OF THE PREVAILING DOCTRINE. 
 
 Himself had shed around, in the darkness which that ' article 
 of natural religion' inevitably causes on the side of penalty, a 
 great light for a little time, by proposing Himself to the Pales- 
 tinian Rabbins as the true fountain of Eternal Life for man. 
 His faithful apostle John had continued that testimony, (along 
 with Paul, 'the chosen vessel,') for the space of seventy years 
 after the ascension. But no sooner were these bright ' lamps ' 
 extinguished than the all-surrounding influence of ' natural ' 
 psychology closed in upon the Church, and effectually shrouded 
 the main truth of Christianity from its disciples. Here and 
 there some earnest teacher, faithful to the Scripture, faithful 
 to tradition, faithful to a sounder philosophy, resisted the grow- 
 ing opinion, and boldly testified, as we have seen, against the 
 error which is the germ of nearly all heresies; here and there 
 a puzzled bishop or apologist, though holding ' philosophic ' 
 language at one time, on other occasions taught the special doc- 
 trine of Christianity ; but the resistance soon began to die away ; 
 and by the time that Jerome and Augustine arose, those intolerant 
 doctors of the demonolatrous ' apostasy,' as Mr. Isaac Taylor has 
 truly described them, several generations of Christians had lived 
 beneath the terrific superstitions that overshadow mankind under 
 the assertion of native immortality, and the denial of God's grace 
 in the gift of life eternal. 
 
 Beliefs in which illimitable terror predominates have the 
 advantage of confirming their own sway when once established, 
 by the doom which they hold out even of hostile thought. Un- 
 godly men, and many not ungodly, sincerely think anything 
 infinitely horrible is so much more probable than the opposite, 
 that the path of terror in religion is easy. After the publication 
 of Augustine's predestinarian theology, Christendom sank para- 
 served the ends of religion. But in no sense can it be admitted that Chris- 
 tianity has been anticipated by natural theology, or can be limited by its 
 supposed conclusions. Its central doctrine of salvation by the Incarnation and 
 Sacrifice of the Son of God is wholly foreign to the ' wisdom of this world ' ; 
 and its contradiction of the popular faith in man's native immortality, while 
 attributing man's immortal life to Christ, is only another example of the 
 general rule that its revelations transcend every anticipation of nature. ' Eye 
 hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
 things which God hath prepared for them that love Him,' a passage which 
 S. Paul specially applies to the revelation of the gospel theology. 
 
JEWISH AND HEATHEN INFLUENCES., 435 
 
 lysed on the fiery shores of his eternal hell ; the gloomy priest- 
 hood ruled the new Gothic world, and the doctrines of Purgatory 
 and Mariolatry were invented as necessary reliefs for souls 
 maddened with fear of eternal torments. There were always 
 ' Scripture texts ' enough at hand, duly wrested, to support this 
 or any other delusion, and they were diligently used during the 
 following centuries of Christianity, and quoted as defiantly of the 
 main drift of the Bible as they are to-day. 
 
 Such we believe to be the history of 'doctrine in relation to 
 Immortality. Natural immortality is the first article of ' natural 
 religion ' to religious men who have not learned of Christ ; as the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy founded on sense-perceptions precedes the 
 Newtonian. In every age since the first, Christ witnesses as the 
 ' Life of the world ' against this pretension to native perpetuity 
 of being, and for the most part witnesses in vain. The multitudes 
 of learned men who have in every country taught the man-deify- 
 ing dogma of natural immortality exercise a far greater authority 
 than He. Athens still rules more powerfully over men's minds 
 than Nazareth. Christ is the ' Rejected of men,' especially of 
 philosophers ; but nevertheless He is the Life of the world, and 
 if men live without Him, He declares that they will die eternally. 
 
 In accounting, therefore, for the rise and establishment of the 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul in Christendom, with its 
 logical consequence of the doctrine of endless misery, we have 
 not far to seek for sufficient causes. It was not Platonism alone 
 that operated in this direction. All the special influences of 
 Eastern and Western thought were vigorously at work from the 
 very beginning of the gospel to contravene the chief peculiarity 
 of the Christian Revelation, its declaration that immortality is 
 the gift of God, through the Incarnation, to regenerate men alone. 
 Against this humbling ' form of doctrine ' all the authority of the 
 loftiest speculation of both Europe and -Asia was arrayed with 
 overshadowing influence. Never had such a notion been heard 
 of, from the Pillars of Hercules to the farthest East, as the de- 
 pendence of mankind for eternal life on a Jewish artisan who 
 claimed to be ' God manifest in the flesh ' ! All the old religions 
 of the world were against it all the old philosophies. It was 
 the last lesson which even the faithful disciples of Christ would 
 
436 IMPERIAL CHRISTIANITY A CORRUPTION. 
 
 consent to learn. From the time when He proclaimed it in the 
 synagogue of Capernaum (John vi.) 'many of His disciples went 
 back and walked no more with Him, saying, Who can hear it ? ' 
 The mass of Jewish and Grecian converts, in proportion to their 
 ' culture,' insisted on retaining their old ideas when they entered 
 the Church,* and it required nothing less than a thorough 
 acquaintance with the course of written revelation to enable a 
 teacher to stand up in any locality against the popular opinion. 
 The doctrine of immortality in Christ was doubtless as unaccept- 
 able to the majority of Christian scholars and thinkers then as it 
 is now ; hence the true cause for wonder is, not that, long before 
 the end of the second century, Tertullian could teach the doctrine 
 of endless misery in the language of a fiend, f but that so late as 
 the third and fourth centuries we should find numerous indica- 
 tions of the partial survival of the apostolic and unpopular con- 
 tradiction of it. 
 
 For then as now the leaders of thought were possessed with 
 the opinion that the common people must be partially deceived 
 in order to be restrained. If modern Europe, both scientific 
 and theological, is honeycombed with secret beliefs, so also was 
 ancient Christendom. The most alarming theology was naturally 
 esteemed the safest for the multitude. 
 
 Original Christianity, a revelation of truth and grace, was 
 designed for sincere Christians only. A little later a Christianity 
 was required for influencing the miscellaneous multitudes of the 
 Empire. For them, since they were inaccessible to rational and 
 spiritual motives, magical sacraments, church ceremonial, and 
 terrific dogma, formed the three necessary elements of ' religion.' 
 The strongest of such elements, that of terror, was at hand in the 
 popular notion of the soul's immortality and its consequences. 
 Not many would look very closely into the Christian standards, 
 and thus a ' pious fraud ' would, in the judgment of the few who 
 examined the question at- all, seem to be justified by the necessity 
 of the times. This would be but to pursue the path of * prudence ' 
 
 * See Stanley's Essays on the Apostolical Age. 
 
 t ' How shall I admire, how rejoice, when I behold so many proud monarchs 
 liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled for the Christians, so many 
 tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings,' etc. De 
 Spectaculis t c. 30. 
 
ACTION OF EVIL SPIRITS. 437 
 
 trodden by them in other departments, and by so many thousands 
 of silent divines in later generations. For one teacher of Chris- 
 tianity who will independently examine his doctrines singly and col- 
 lectively by the standard of the apostolic writings, there are at least 
 hundreds who will humbly subscribe in early life an unquestioning 
 assent to whatever is proposed to them as the condition of the 
 priesthood or ministry, when sanctioned by the Church, and scores 
 in our own time who will deny the authority of the apostles altogether. 
 
 There is no reason to think that the governing influences of 
 life were more favourable to independent study and courageous 
 avowal in the third century than in the nineteenth. Any myste- 
 rious or terrific dogma once asserted by half a dozen eminent 
 preachers, scholars, and martyrs, was certain of a long career 
 of dominion over the masses of mankind, for there is no influence 
 to which men yield so easily as to unreasoning fear. In this 
 case, not half a dozen, but the whole body of Jewish converts from 
 Pharisaic teaching, the Oriental luminaries, and the entire army of 
 Greek converts from the Alexandrian and Athenian philosophies, 
 supported on all sides the hell-passion of such a man as Tertullian 
 whose devoutly ferocious disposition offered a fitting engine for the 
 fresh propagation of the dogma in the Latin-speaking world. 
 
 And this takes no account of that which ought not to be for- 
 gotten in describing the genesis of the opinion the action of 
 ' seducing spirits and the teaching of demons speaking lies in 
 hypocrisy,' which may nevertheless be believed to have been con- 
 cerned in re-establishing that primeval philosophy whispered in 
 the ear of Eve, ' Ye shall not surely die / ' If a few energetic 
 preachers, in .our own generation, reckless in uncritical assertion, 
 ruthless in their treatment of opponents, and moderately well 
 convinced of the truth of the tremendous doctrine they have 
 espoused, are able to persuade so many modern multitudes of its 
 truth, with the printed Bible under their eyes, it is easy to under- 
 stand that the few scattered protests of the Ante-Nicene ages were 
 feebly matched against the influnce of numberless Christian teachers, 
 maddened by the cruelty of the Roman Emperors, and thirsting for 
 some vengeful threatening of hell-torment which might perchance 
 scare the heathen into silence or submission. But the Roman 
 cruelty we believe was stimulated by the ' Christian ' threatenings, 
 and both parties alike were ignorant of the truth of God. 
 
438 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE ULTIMATE SALVATION OF ALL MEN, 
 COMMONLY CALLED UNIVERSALISM. 
 
 ' And by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which they 
 could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest that 
 come upon you which is spoken of in the prophets : Behold, ye despisers, and 
 wonder, and perish' (d^aviaOrjn.) Acts xiii. 39-41. 
 
 THE modifications of opinion on the subject of future retribution, 
 both in the earlier and later ages of Christianity, have been 
 determined in quality by their point of departure. Psychology 
 has deeply influenced the history of interpretation, more deeply 
 than is often allowed. The schools which have held as the result 
 of inquiry, or accepted with unquestioning faith, the everlasting 
 duration of the soul, have been compelled to deal with the lan- 
 guage of the Bible on future punishment under the difficult 
 conditions imposed by that unbiblical preconception. And it is 
 hard to say to which of the two parties who are agreed on their 
 psychology, but differ in their theological views, we owe the more 
 signal illustration of the fact that no words can bind a man who 
 approaches Revelation with the main articles of his creed already 
 settled on a philosophical basis. Even divine words are but air 
 against the Sit pro ratione voluntas. 
 
 The array of believers in the immortality of the soul is divided 
 into two wings; the first comprising those who maintain the 
 eternity of sin and misery, as the necessary result of the eternity 
 of the sinner ; the second those who maintain that the Divine 
 Goodness will eventually recover all immortal beings from sin 
 and its direful consequences in hell* 
 
 * The Rev. J. Baldwin Brov/n's theory of future punishment is based upon 
 he assumption qf natural immortality, and combines the faults of both Ortho. 
 
MR. BALD WIN BRO WN, LORD L YTTELTON, MR. COX. 439 
 
 Each of these theological parties has operated upon the 
 biblical language in a manner which seems to enforce the rule 
 of interpretation advocated by us. To each party the primary 
 truth that which must on no account be sacrificed, and which 
 must give the law to the meaning of all judicial words used by 
 prophets and apostles is the absolute eternity of the soul of 
 Man. No interpretation which contradicts that first truth must 
 be admitted. Not the plainest and most obvious sense of words 
 must be permitted to stand before this supreme necessity of 
 vindicating the divine dignity of man in one portion of his nature 
 as an indestructible being. If the Bible seem to assert a psy- 
 chology of its own, if it seem to present a whole forest of argu- 
 ments opposing the idea of the actual eternity of all men, then 
 this ' postulate of all religion ' must pass like a fiery flame and 
 burn for itself a way through all that forest of opposing language. 
 
 But there are two directions in which this flame may travel ; so 
 that there are two roads between which the philosophic traveller 
 may choose. The large majority of divines, holding to man's 
 immortality, have felt themselves compelled to assert, since the 
 days of the Pharisees'and early Greek Christianity, that the threat- 
 enings of death and destruction, of perishing and extermination 
 (karat], stand for the endless misery of souls that cannot die ; 
 and with respect to the declarations of Scripture that Christ came 
 to give eternal life, that these stand for the idea, that He came 
 to give ' spiritual life ' holiness and divine happiness to souls 
 already immortal. 
 
 This conclusion, however, has not satisfied the Universalists 
 from the days of Origen down to the present time. Endowed 
 
 doxy and Universalism. He seems to admit of the eternal suffering of a sinner, 
 if his ' free-will ' hold out against God for ever. In that case his destruction 
 will signify his endless misery. But Mr. Brown is hopeful of the conversion of 
 all sinful beings in hell, and then their destruction will signify the ' destruction 
 of their sins.' The outlines of this theory were also contained in a paper by 
 Lord Lyttelton in the Contemporary Review, in 1871. Lord Lyttelton and Mr. 
 Brown seem to attribute to free-will and the ' fire of hell ' the regenerating 
 power which the New Testament always ascribes to divine grace and the truth 
 of the gospel. Mr. Cox*s Salvator Mundi follows on the same track. But his 
 work is distinguished by a remarkably light estimate of the ' exceeding sin- 
 fulness of sin.' One might really suppose, in reading it, that the Bible was 
 chiefly written to give obstinate sinners a cheerful view of their future state. 
 
440 O RIG EX ON THE DEATH OF THE SIXNER. 
 
 perhaps with a livelier imagination than their opponents, they 
 have better apprehended the meaning of everlasting suffering ; 
 and, like the majority of men who allow themselves earnestly 
 to meditate upon that appalling prospect as applied to actually 
 existing human beings, and their own relations, they have found 
 the inevitable results to be approaching madness, or total 
 unbelief, or some modification of the orthodox faith. Under 
 the condition of maintaining the psychological doctrine of man's 
 immortality, and much more when to that was added the doctrine 
 of moral necessity, but one modification was possible that of 
 asserting the final salvation of all mankind. 
 
 But this involved the difficult task of dealing with the language 
 of Scripture. How shall this be reconciled with the speculation 
 of universal restitution? The answer was not long delayed in 
 the fertile mind of Origen. The orthodox party had set a bold 
 example of manipulating the words of the New Testament. If 
 one party thinks itself entitled to explain death by misery, and 
 destruction by an immortality of sin, in order to maintain the 
 soul's immortality, surely the other may claim equal right to 
 operate for theological reasons upon the same terms ; and declare 
 that the death of the sinner signifies only the death of his sin, the de- 
 struction of the wicked, the destruction only of their wickedness ; thus 
 opening the door to faith in an all-reconciling mercy, supposed to 
 be explicitly announced in certain passages of the sacred volume. 
 Such has been the basis of Universalist interpretation for sixteen 
 centuries, and as long as it endures such must be the method to 
 which it resorts in vindication of its leading principles. 
 
 It is probable that neither Origen nor his followers would 
 have imagined so considerable a violence to the language of 
 the Scripture threatening, unless they had been possessed with 
 an antecedent faith in the incorruptibility of the soul. If a 
 reader has once accepted the coherent biblical theory elicited 
 by allowing the death threatened to Adam to stand for impend- 
 ing extinction, and the life which is conferred in Christ to stand 
 for restored immortality, restricted to men who choose God for 
 their portion, the temptation to deal violently with the mass of 
 biblical language is at once removed. But so* long as men think 
 all souls immortal, and are oppressed with the horror of the 
 dogma of endless misery thence arising, the temptation to wrest 
 
SOURCES OF UNIVERSALISM. 441 
 
 the terms of Scripture into the sense of universal salvation is 
 almost irresistible. 
 
 In briefly reviewing the arguments by which Universalism 
 is supported, we shall pass by those which may be classified as 
 moral, and confine attention to critical considerations. The 
 moral argument for Universal Salvation is, as we have seen, 
 founded on the assumption of man's natural immortality. It is 
 taken as proved that men must live for ever, and then it is argued 
 with different degrees of confidence to be contradictory to what 
 is known of Divine Justice and Mercy that they should suffer 
 for ever : whence it follows, more or less certainly, that Divine 
 Wisdom will restore them to blessedness again. It is evident that 
 this argument proceeds on a psychological assumption of man's 
 eternal duration of being. That stiff-necked assumption we can 
 neither allow nor argue upon. Its removal from the field of 
 view leaves no moral difficulty to be solved by the violent hypo- 
 thesis of universalism. Universalism has no locus statidi in dog- 
 matics until it has established its psychological postulate : and 
 this is precisely the work which its psychologers steadfastly 
 decline to undertake. The natural eternity of all souls is more 
 conveniently asserted and assumed than demonstrated, and hence 
 the pernicious custom of taking for granted a principle which 
 underlies the entire fabric of interpretation. Those who admit 
 that that ground has been undermined by the preceding argument 
 will concede that the Universalists may justly be required to 
 provide some new point of departure. It cannot be permitted to 
 confound survival of the soul with its eternity. 
 
 The critical or biblical arguments for the salvation of all men 
 are found in three series of scriptural expressions, (i) those 
 which declare the character of God. (2) those which assert the 
 merciful provision of God for the salvation of the whole race 
 of mankind, (3) those which are used directly in announcing the 
 penalty of sin. 
 
 (i) The final salvation of all men is deduced from the revealed 
 character of God, as the Father of all mankind. The ' fatherhood 
 of God ' is defined to be a principle in the Divine Mind which 
 will compel the Divine Will to reach and to rescue every one 
 of His sons. Without relying on single phrases to prove their 
 
442 HUMANITY, NATURE, REVELATION. 
 
 case, the moderate Universalists would affirm that the general 
 tone of Revelation supports the belief that God's ' tender mercies 
 are over all His works,' and that ' His mercy endureth for ever,' 
 reaches, therefore, into the eternity down which the sinful soul is 
 rushing. No created being can cut himself off from relationship 
 to the Eternal Love, and that Love will not disown the relation 
 of sonship which has once existed. It is, therefore, held to be 
 infinitely incredible that God will inflict eternal misery upon any 
 creature, and equally incredible that the Father of all will, with 
 His own hand, slay any of His sons, or extinguish their existence. 
 The Divine Nature is declared to be the grand argument for the 
 final restitution of all lapsed creatures. 
 
 A thoughtful observer of the world will, perhaps, admit that 
 more certainty is attainable respecting some things which Divine 
 Goodness will not do, than as to what it will do in the way of 
 positive benefaction. We may securely decide, for example, that 
 if there be a God of justice in any sense in which we can under- 
 stand that term, He will not allow those who have died in child- 
 hood to suffer in hell for ever ; but it is not so easy to deduce 
 from the divine goodness that it will immortalise every sinful man 
 to eternal joy. 
 
 The sources of our knowledge respecting God are our own 
 nature, the world around us, and the Mosaic and Christian re- 
 velations. Now in each of these departments of study there are, 
 it must be admitted, indications of character in the Creator which 
 reveal something very different from mere indiscriminate kindness. 
 Goodness, real but limited, is indeed manifested on all sides, but 
 equally certain it is that beneath nature and providence there is 
 also a severity which clearly contemplates other ends besides the 
 enjoyment of creatures, a fixed will to uphold law at all risks, 
 and to carry out plans at great cost of suffering and life to sentient 
 beings. 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill was so much impressed with the severe 
 and awful element in Nature that he doubted whether the Cause 
 of the Universe was as ' good ' as is commonly represented. The 
 forces of the Kosmos, as he has shown in a memorable passage in 
 his essay on Nature (p. 28), operate inexorably; and if free agents 
 become entangled, through their own lack of care or knowledge, 
 in that terrible machinery, no cries of drowning, or agonising, or 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE ON DIVINE CHARACTER. 443 
 
 lacerated, or dying persons avail to deliver them from destruction. 
 Much, too, of the mental and bodily misery inflicted on men in 
 the course of Providence bears the aspect of being, not discipli- 
 nary, but terribly punitive, and that in a measure which holds 
 out little hope of different treatment beyond. On the ground of 
 nature, apart from revelation, it is exceedingly difficult, as Socrates 
 found it, to make out any evidence of a better state for the gene- 
 rality of souls departed, in case of survival. Nor is this to be 
 wondered at, when it is remembered that outward nature reveals 
 God acting by law alone, of which, we are now divinely taught, 
 that the law, ' working wrath,' cannot save. However great the 
 Divine Goodness, it has at least been limited in this world suffi- 
 ciently to allow the major part of mankind to reap the conse- 
 quences of perverse free-will under terrible issues of life and 
 death. 
 
 If we turn to the Scriptures, assuredly the modem confident 
 affirmations of the infinite tenderness of God towards all creatures, 
 good and bad, seem to obtain slight confirmation from either 
 history or doctrine. The Bible resembles a vast ocean of truth, 
 and, like the ocean, it offers at one time a boundless expanse of 
 calm and sunshine ; depths of redeeming mercy overarched by 
 azure heights of love at another time it is covered with black- 
 ness and darkness, the heavens above are red with the fiery 
 storms of Divine indignation, when God ' thundereth marvel- 
 lously with His voice,' denouncing judgment upon the rebellious. 
 Every reader can verify for himself this twofold impression made 
 by the records of revelation. If words possess a fixed meaning, 
 and have been employed in their ordinary sense by the succession 
 of prophets and apostles, and by the Son of God Himself, I think 
 we do not gather that the object was to make us believe that 
 God's nature is such as to compel Him to save all alike at last. 
 The bright current of the divine promises to penitent men is not 
 more visible to the eye, than the fiery stream of curses which 
 rolls its awful tide into the abyss of perdition, carrying upon its 
 waves all obstinately rebellious beings whether diabolical or 
 human. Mankind can scarcely have been mistaken at least in 
 gathering both from Nature and from Revelation the convic- 
 tion that there is some attribute of God far different from mere 
 
444 SCRIPTURE STATEMENTS ON GOD'S LOVE 
 
 Fatherly Compassion and Goodness, concerned in dealing with 
 obstinate offenders. ' Our God is a consuming fire ' can scarcely 
 signify that the Divine Love is determined on saving desperate 
 malefactors. 
 
 The revealed character of God, then, to whatever side we look, 
 does not seem to be more favourable to the expectation of Uni- 
 versal Salvation than the Divine Character as shadowed forth by 
 nature. The biblical doctrine concerning Divine Benignity seems 
 to be that there is no limit to God's mercy towards the obedient ; 
 that He will be compassionate towards young children and igno- 
 rant offenders ; but that there is ' merciless judgment ' for fallen 
 angels, and for men who ' set themselves ' against Omnipotence. 
 
 (2) Let us now turn to the general declarations of Divine Com- 
 passion towards men, on which some rely to prove that eventually 
 all will arrive in heaven. The following are the chief : 
 
 John iii. 17. ' God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, 
 but that the world through Him might be saved.' 
 
 John i. 29. Christ was ' the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the 
 world." 1 (See also John iv. 42, I John iv. 14, ' Saviour of the world,' 6 <rojr/p 
 
 John xii. 32. 'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
 unto myself.' 
 
 Rom. v. 15, 18. ' If through the offence of one the many be dead (ol TroAXoi), 
 much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace hath abounded unto 
 the many (TOVQ TroXXovg). Therefore as by the offence of one judgment 
 came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the 
 free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.' 
 
 I Cor. 15, 28. ' When all things are subjected to Him (to Christ), then 
 also shall the Son be subjected unto Him that put all things under Him, that 
 God may be all in all.' The subjection of Christ to God is filial, therefore it 
 is argued the subjection of all things to Christ at last will be filial. 
 
 Ephesians i. 10. 'That in the dispensation of the fulness of time He might 
 gather together in one all things in the Christ, both which are in the heavens 
 and which are on earth, even in Him.' 
 
 Phil. ii. 9, 10. ' God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name 
 which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
 of the heavenly, and the earthly, and the subterranean (cai KaTaxOoviaiv), and 
 every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.' 
 
 Col. i. 19. ' Having made peace through the blood of Christ by Him to 
 reconcile all this unto Himself, whether they be things in earth or things in 
 heaven.' 
 
 I Tim. ii. 4. ' This is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who 
 
THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE. 44$ 
 
 willeth (0g\a) all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth ;' 
 again, verse 6, ' Christ gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in the 
 destined times.' 
 
 I Tim. iv. 10. ' We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men 
 (ffwn/p iravTuv dvBpwirwv), specially of the believing.' 
 
 Titus ii. II. ' For the grace of God salutary or saving to all men (?) <7wr/j- 
 peoc Traffic) hath appeared.' 
 
 I John ii. 2. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours 
 only, but also for the sins of the whole world (Trepi o\ov TOV jco<r/ioiA' 
 
 1 Cor. xv. 22. 'As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.' 
 
 2 Cor. v. 19. ' God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.' 
 Rev. iv. 13. * Every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and 
 
 under the earth (uTrotcarw rr\q, yijej, and such as are in the sea, heard I saying, 
 Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Htm that sitteth on the 
 throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.' 
 
 Such are the general declarations of divine love and com- 
 passion towards all mankind, and of the final victory of Divine 
 Sovereignty over all opposition, on which Origen and his fellow- 
 believers in every generation have depended for convincing 
 themselves that hell itself is a school of discipline for salvation, 
 and that the destruction of the wicked signifies ultimately the 
 destruction of their sin. 
 
 We humbly and thankfully accept, in the full breadth of their 
 meaning, all these declarations of the apostles of Christ, and of 
 Christ Himself, to the effect that God has so loved the world as 
 to give His only-begotten Son, that ' whosoever believeth in Him 
 should not perish, but should have everlasting life.' The foundation 
 of the gospel is laid in a divine benignity towards mankind, which 
 embraces in its purpose the whole human race. ' God willeth not 
 that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance? 
 
 In the same spirit we accept with confidence the declarations 
 of apostolic men that the issue of all the divine dealings in mercy 
 and judgment will be to ' reconcile all things to God in earth and 
 in heaven,' by converting all salvable beings to obedience, and by 
 reducing to destruction, and ' dashing to pieces ' every adversary 
 who refuses to 'bend the knee,' so that God ' shall be all in all.' 
 And we perceive in these testimonies of the sacred Word, on the 
 one hand, the most certain evidence that evil cannot be eternal, 
 and, on the other, that the notion of a limited intention in the 
 
446 SUCH STATEMENTS NOT AFFIRMATIONS 
 
 application of the gospel, is of all figments in theology the most 
 baseless and dishonouring to God. 
 
 But to cite these Scriptures in evidence of the final salvation of 
 all men is (according to our understanding) to violate the laws of 
 criticism on which we depend for all our knowledge of the ' mind 
 of Christ.' For the limitation of those declarations to the idea of 
 God's merciful intention towards all, and to the final victory of 
 divine power and wisdom in the salvation of some and the de- 
 struction of some, seems to be required by the whole body of 
 apostolic and prophetic testimony. 
 
 The reasons of this persuasion are threefold, derived (i) from 
 the quality of the terms generally employed to denote future 
 punishment ; (2) from the adjectives of duration several times 
 affixed to these terms ; (3) from the very nature and conditions 
 of redemptive action and of probation as unfolded in the 
 Scripture. 
 
 (i) The general terms employed to denote future punishment 
 compel the interpretation of the above-cited passages in the sense 
 by us maintained. The plain meaning of the terms carries with 
 it such an extermination of the wicked as leaves no room for a 
 restitution. They are to die, to perish, to pass away, to vanish, 
 to be destroyed for ever, utterly to perish, to be consumed, to be 
 burnt up like chaff, to be blotted from the book of life, not to see 
 life, to be destroyed body and soul in Gehenna, to die the second 
 death, to be ' ground to powder,' ' broken to shivers,' ' dashed in 
 pieces,' such expressions in Greek being exactly represented by 
 the force of these English words corresponding to them. Surely 
 these are not the words which would naturally occur to a writer 
 desiring to convey the idea of universal salvation. They seem 
 expressly chosen to shut the door against hope. They convey the 
 idea, not of the destruction of sin, but of the sinner ; not of the 
 purging away of wickedness, but of the utter death of the wicked 
 man. The violence of the proposed interpretation is as con- 
 spicuous as that which finds in death the threatening of a mise- 
 rable eternity. It is indeed the one violence which has led to and 
 supported the other. 
 
 On the other hand, if it had been the intention of the prophets 
 and apostles to teach what has been taught in these pages, that 
 
OF THE ULTIMATE SALVATION OF ALL. 447 
 
 man apart from God perishes for ever, it could have been taught 
 in no other words than those which have actually been chosen. 
 
 (2) Relying upon the general system of doctrine which compels 
 this conclusion, we are led to rely also upon the soundness of the 
 ancient argument against Origen's opinion ; that the adjectives of 
 duration affixed in several parts of Scripture to the threatenings 
 of destruction exclude the hope of any reversal of the doom by 
 restoration to heaven. Admitting all that can fairly and reason- 
 ably be advanced respecting the limited senses of auovios ever- 
 lasting, in certain connections, it must be maintained that its 
 connection with the threat of o\fOpo<s, or extermination, by S. Paul 
 (2 Thess. i. 9), is designed to exclude the last ray of hope from 
 the view of men in regarding the doom of the sinners there 
 referred to. The ' punishment ' of whatever nature is ' eternal J 
 the destruction is l everlasting] the perishing is 'for ever,' the 
 'judgment' is 'eternal,' the blackness of darkness is for eternity 
 (et? TOV aiStva). ' They shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 5 * 
 
 (3) But more than all we are settled in this persuasion by 
 the nature of the Redemption which the Bible makes known. 
 So long as mankind is contemplated in the character of immor- 
 tals, Universalist doctrine marches forward with flying banners 
 and hopeful prognostics. But the Scripture, whether taken as a 
 scientific statement, or as a popular revelation, places man before 
 God in judgment on a different ground. 
 
 Man, according to the Bible, is not unconditionally immortal 
 by nature and destiny. He was created from the dust of the 
 earth, and called Earth-born, or Man of dust, on the day of his 
 making. The thinking power may, if God will, survive, in a 
 maimed, imperfect state, but it alone is not the Man. Man at 
 his creation was of earth (^oiicds), and perishable. God placed 
 him in paradise on trial for eternal life. In that trial he failed, 
 and by sin brought upon himself the sentence of extermination. 
 Under this sentence, as has been shown, lies the race of mankind 
 while under the law. ' THE LETTER KILLETH.' We owe to the 
 Incarnation our hope of immortality, and the application of that 
 grace is by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in regenera- 
 
 * Matt. xxv. 46; 2 Thess. i. 9 ; Heb. vi. 2 ; Jude 13. 
 
448 THE AWARD FINAL. 
 
 tion and resurrection. There is no other power which can effect the 
 needed change. There is no known tendency in sin, or in suffer- 
 ing, whether on earth or in hell, to regenerate, or glorify, or immor- 
 talize a dying sinner ; while there is a known tendency in both to 
 break up the very being of the offender. We are distinctly taught 
 that those who are not born again ' cannot inherit incorruption.' 
 Those who are not born twice will die twice. We must be ' born 
 again,' or die the ' second death.' This ' second death ' is never 
 set forth as a sacrament of immortality. The tree of life does 
 not grow beside 'the lake of fire.' It grows beside the river of 
 life in paradise alone, and the gate of paradise is ' kept ' by Om- 
 nipotence against the entrance of the condemned. ' Then shall 
 the King say unto those on his left hand, I know you not whence 
 ye are. Depart, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire, prepared for 
 the devil and his angels.' ' There remaineth no more sacrifice 
 for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery 
 indignation, which shall devour (eat up) the adversary ' (lo-BUi, 
 Heb. x. 27). 
 
 It is, indeed, a heart-rending conclusion to arrive at, but we see 
 no possibility of 'breaking the Scripture.' As a theory to be esta- 
 blished by criticism, Universalism is based on special pleading ; 
 while as a delusive prospect to be set before mankind it is likely, 
 as recent American experience has shown, to ruin innumerable 
 souls, who will neglect the ' day ' of salvation, for the ' fool's to- 
 morrow,' which never arrives. Again the writer keenly feels the 
 pain occasioned by uttering so earnest a protest against the doc- 
 trine of many able and otherwise admirable writers : but conscience 
 is forbidden to use smoother language when convinced that a 
 divine truth is at stake of limitless importance. The doctrine of 
 the salvation of all extends on every side. It is gradually eating 
 out the ' fear of God ' in the heart of the modern Church. Mul- 
 titudes of the ministers of the gospel cherish it in secret, with 
 more or less of assent, whose ministry suffers in fervency accord- 
 ingly, the sense of an infinite danger being lost. Yet they are 
 for some reason afraid to proclaim it. Why afraid ? Is it not 
 that they suspect that the common sense of serious Christians 
 will explode their opinion as contrary to Scripture ? The minds 
 of such good men, honestly unable to sustain the burden of the 
 
CONCEALMENT OF UNIVERSALIST BELIEF. 449 
 
 dogma of endless torments, and knowing no other refuge, have 
 fled to the doctrine of the salvation of all men, quoting the Poet 
 Laureate's agreeable reveries when Holy Scripture fails them. 
 
 Such secret Universalism correctly judges that the common 
 people will not receive the doctrine as Scriptural, for it can be 
 extracted from the Bible only by a system of interpretation which 
 would be rejected in any court of law. It is as if there were an 
 Act of Parliament partitioning certain lands between a thousand 
 of the people ; commencing with a general statement of goodwill 
 towards the whole company so designated for endowment, and 
 with an expression of the desire and intention of the Queen and 
 Parliament for an equal division between all the thousand ; but 
 distinctly providing, in words repeated again and again, that if 
 any of the beneficiaries should commit robbery or murder, or 
 disobey the Commissioners appointed to divide the land, they 
 should on conviction be put to death, and so be shut out and cut 
 off for ever from their portion of the grant. What should we 
 think of an advocate employed by such criminals if he rested his 
 plea, in an action against the Commissioners, upon the clearly 
 comprehensive language of the general terms of the Act, which 
 expressed the intention of an equal distribution, and professed an 
 equal benevolence in Parliament towards every member of the 
 thousand? If he were to found an argument on the fact that 
 the Queen loves all her subjects equally, and therefore doubtless 
 intended good and bad alike to share in the distribution, judges 
 and juries would make short work with such a plea. They would 
 point to the oft-recurring qualifying proviso, and to the evidence 
 of the criminality of the offenders and they would dismiss the 
 plaintiffs to a criminal court with a deserved rebuke for their 
 presumption. 
 
 The plaintiffs advocate here represents the Universalist theory. 
 It takes the expressions of God's love to mankind, of His gracious 
 intentions towards all men in Christ, and boldly brings these 
 declarations to neutralise the proviso, repeated hundreds of times 
 in the Deed of Redemption, that all rebellious persons shall die, 
 perish, and be destroyed for ever. 
 
 There is not, I think, a more pernicious example of violence 
 offered to sacred language in the history of the world. If the 
 threatenings of death, destruction of body and soul in hell, 
 
 29 
 
450 
 
 THE TWO OATHS OF GOD. 
 
 really signify only ' the destruction of sin,' or a suffering from 
 which sinners will all escape into heaven at last, it seems useless 
 to concern ourselves longer with sacred books which do not mean 
 what they say. But let those who revere the Scripture record, 
 consider the two oaths of God in respect of Palestine. He 
 1 sware by Himself ' to give that land to Abraham and to his seed 
 for ever. He also ' sware by Himself,' four hundred years after- 
 wards (Numb, xiv.), that none of the generation wJw had seen His 
 work in Egypt should enter the land. The one oath qualified and 
 explained the other. There was nothing in the shape of mercy 
 concealed behind that second oath of exclusion. ' Their carcases 
 fell in the wilderness.' 'As I live' was no brutum fulincn. 
 Similarly there is a distinct threatening of ' death,' of ' destruc- 
 tion for ever,' to all who, hearing the gospel, neglect or reject it. 
 Surely any tampering with this threat must be injurious to the 
 influence of religion among men. It not only encourages vain 
 hope in careless souls, and leads them to waste the present hour, 
 but it strikes at the root of faith in the veracity of the Almighty. 
 ' I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest ' 
 (Psalm xcv. 1 1 ). 
 
 If it be said that this objection is founded on the diminution 
 in the minds of wicked men of the fear of a suffering which is 
 sooner or later to come to an end, and therefore tells with equal 
 force against the doctrine maintained in these pages, we reply 
 that there is a boundless difference between the moral effect of a 
 threatening of penal suffering A terminating in glory everlasting, and 
 that of a threatening of capital punishment, especially when it 
 is made certain that the latter will be speedily executed in the 
 'miserable destruction' of 'both the body and soul in hell.' In 
 the one case men are tempted to look beyond the suffering to the 
 release, and the subsequent endless glory. In the other they 
 ' shudder ' at the prospect of a doom alleviated by no hope of 
 redemption, and overwhelming the soul by the fear of absolute 
 extermination under the blows of an Almighty hand. The 
 Universalist is always tempted, even when thinking of judgment 
 to come, to dwell upon the final deliverance j while the teacher 
 of the remediless award is armed with a ' weapon mighty through 
 God ' to make even a Felix 'tremble.' 
 
 May we not rightly cite in this connection the awe-striking 
 
LOOSE TEMPER OF THIS TIME. 451 
 
 warning of the prophet, ' Hearken not unto the words of the pro- 
 phets that prophesy unto you; who make you vain ; they speak a 
 vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. 
 They say still unto them that despise me, The Lord hath said, Ye 
 shall have peace, and they say unto every one that walketh in the 
 imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you ' (Jer. 
 xxiii. 17). 'With lies ye have strengthened the hands of the 
 wicked, that he should not return from his wickedness, by promising 
 him life ' (Ezek. xiii. 22). 
 
 At great cost of feeling I must, in view of these fallacious con- 
 solations offered to impenitence, profess the persuasion that much 
 of the religious teaching of the last few years has proceeded from 
 a gradually-declining sense of sin in its evil, and in its deserts ; 
 as that again has proceeded from a declining sense of the justice 
 of God. This is but to repeat the lesson of history, that ages of 
 brilliant external civilisation, and of physical luxury and comfort, 
 have ever been ages of epicurean theologising. Amidst plenty of 
 corn and wine, amidst the illusions of art and beauty, men lose 
 the sense of ' the sinfulness of sin,' of the righteousness and 
 severity of God, and of the terribleness of the world of doom 
 beyond. So is it to-day. ' Men heap to themselves teachers, 
 having itching ears.' They will ' not endure sound doctrine.' 
 Hell itself must become a school of glory ; heaven the final 
 refuge of a world of unfortunates, who really had almost every 
 excuse for their villainies and crimes. Between the fall of Adam 
 and the force of circumstances and the cheapness of vicious 
 indulgences, and the bias of heredity and the difficulty of 
 knowing whom to believe Jesus or Mohammed, Paul or Rousseau, 
 John or Voltaire a hopeful case must be made out for every 
 man; and if GOD Himself should ' judge the world in righteous- 
 ness/ He must unsay all the ancient threats of exclusion from 
 future blessedness ; and, after some fatherly chastisement of ' dogs, 
 and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, 
 and lovers and makers of lies,' must receive them with open arms 
 to paradise. This is certainly the tone of much of the most 
 fashionable preaching of our time, both in and out of the National 
 Church. Never has this tone taken possession of the Church, 
 but some epoch of judgment has vindicated the reality of the 
 
452 SODOM AND GOMORRAH ' SET FORTH' 
 
 government of Him ' whose eet are like fine brass burning in a 
 furnace.' Oh for the awful voice of some Savonarola to thunder 
 to-day over the heads of the ungodly millions of Europe, and 
 awaken them to the realities of judgment to come ; to turn their 
 attention away from the ' prophets who prophesy smooth things ' 
 to the true sayings of God. ' The judge standeth before the door,' 
 and here are the very signs of His approach men saying, Peace 
 and safety ! all right, and all for the best, in both worlds when 
 ' sudden destruction is coming, and there shall be no remedy? 
 
 I wonder what the recent preachers of this ' gospel of love ' 
 would have said if they had stood on high with Abraham, and 
 seen through the gloom the rain of burning sulphur descending 
 01 Sodom and Gomorrah, inflicting remediless destruction on 
 those unclean sinners against their own souls ? Would they have 
 ventured on these bold philippics against the Power that herein 
 'confessed the failure of His earthly providence,' so that He 
 ' could do nothing else than kill off' all that lived in the cities of 
 the plain ? Yet Christ declares that even these Sodomites are to 
 suffer again in the resurrection of judgment, though not so griev- 
 ously as the men at Capernaum and Chorazin, who beheld and 
 rejected the Light of the World. I wonder what they would have 
 said of the uniformly fatherly and purgatorial action of Divine 
 judgment, if they had been present in Pharaoh's Court, when, in 
 the name of the Almighty Lord of Nature, insulted and denied 
 by ages of Egyptian idolatry and philosophy falsely so called, 
 Moses, with uplifted rod, stood forth and said, from the mouth of 
 God : ' Now will I stretch out My hand that I may smite thee, 
 and thy people, with pestilence, and thou shalt be cut off from the 
 earth. And in very deed for this cause have I made thee stand, 
 for to show in thee My power, and that My name may be declared 
 throughout all the earth' (Exod. ix. 16). If Jannes or Jambres 
 had essayed similar comments, they would soon have shrunk from 
 the conflict, and their ' folly would have been made manifest to 
 all men.' There are circumstances in which it is good for the 
 world that God's messengers should be armed with a forehead of 
 adamant, like Jeremiah, when the object is to warn men as with 
 the trump of God against approaching doom ; when the sense of 
 Heaven's government has well-nigh died out under the soporifics 
 and enchantments of so evil a tjme ; and when men and women 
 
XOT AS AN 'EXAMPLE* OF SALVATION. 453 
 
 will say and do the utmost wickedness, in assurance of being 
 fortified at last in death by all the rites of the Catholic Church 
 or by all the deadlier consolations of a Protestant scepticism. 
 ' Awake to righteousness and sin not, for some have not the 
 knowledge of God ! ' 
 
 We read in the Gospels of some unblessed spirits the demons 
 who spake through the possessed who anticipate, at a ' time ' 
 yet future, ' torment,' and ' destruction,' and who prayed Christ 
 not to send them down * to the abyss.' Let any one reflect on 
 that indication of the unseen world *of judgment, and surely they 
 will think twice before they encourage men to regard the invisible 
 realms as a region into which fools may safely rush in hope of 
 salvation. The very grace of the Gospel presupposes a ' wrath to 
 come,' and that indignation is spoken of also for those who reject 
 the Gospel, as 'the wrath of the Lamb.' 
 
 It is the burden of the Lord, and we feel our own unfitness to 
 use the language of exhortation to our readers ; but .if of late it 
 was a good work to delve for seven days through the darkness 
 and to cleave the rocks, to save those imprisoned Welsh miners 
 from death in time, it seems to us as if it were for infinitely a 
 nobler end to struggle through the long years of this fearful con 
 tention with Universalism, in the endeavour to reach mankind sitting 
 in death-shade, with the true doctrine of Life Eternal ; for 'he 
 that hath the Son hath the life, and he that hath not the Son hath 
 not the life,' but shall ' utterly perish.' 
 
BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 THE BEARINGS OF THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE IN 
 CHRIST ON THE FAITH AND PRACTICE OF 
 MANKIND. 
 
457 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ON THE INFLUENCE OF THIS THEODICY ON THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 MR. ISAAC TAYLOR, in one of his latest works, Wesley and 
 Methodism, has the following somewhat enigmatic and prophetic 
 passage, in which he foretells a re-examination of the doctrine of 
 human destiny, which will bring new power to the Church of the 
 future. 
 
 ' When once this weighty question of the after-life has been opened, a con- 
 troversy will ensue, in the progress of which it will be discovered that with 
 unobservant eyes, we and our predecessors have been so walking up and down 
 and running hither and thither, among dim notices and indications of the 
 future destinies of the human family, as to have failed to gather up or to regard 
 much that has lain upon the pages of the Bible, open and free to our use. 
 Those who, through the course of years, have been used to read the Scriptures 
 unshackled by systems, and bound to no conventional modes of belief must 
 have felt an impatience in waiting not for the arrival of a new revelation from 
 heaven, but of an ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has so 
 long been in our hands. 
 
 ' Thus the future Methodism, as we assume, will feel the need of and will ac- 
 quire for itself, under pressure of the most urgent motives, an incontrovertible 
 exposition of the Scripture doctrine of the future administration of justice ; 
 but then it will not make this acquisition as if it could be held as an insulated 
 dogma ; for whatever is further ascertained on this ground will come to stand 
 in its true relationship to much beside, which, in the course of the same argu- 
 ment, will have started to view, as the genuine sense of the inspired books. 
 The doctrine of future punishment, as a belief drawn from Scripture, and so 
 drawn as to dissipate prevalent illusions, and to spread on all sides a salutary 
 and effective alarm such a belief will take its place in the midst of an expanded 
 prospect of the compass and intention of the Christian system. 
 
 ' So it will be with the future Methodism ; and although it will rest itself 
 upon a laboriously obtained belief concerning the " wrath to come" a belief 
 that will heave the human mind with a deep, convulsive dread, yet, and not- 
 withstanding this preliminary, the renovation which we look for will come in 
 
458 MR. ISAAC TAYLOR'S PREDICTION. 
 
 as the splendour of day comes in the tropics it will be a sudden brightness that 
 makes all things glad !' (pp. 289, 290.) * 
 
 In the foregoing pages we have presumed, in accordance with 
 this prediction, to discuss, as others have done, the doctrine of 
 human immortality as taught in the Jewish and Christian Scrip- 
 tures, having first ascertained that on the basis of science the 
 question of future life admits of no hopeful solution. Physical 
 nature points us to the earth for our original, and to the grave 
 for our possible, nay, our probable, end. But the Immortality 
 revealed by the gospel is its most signal peculiarity. It is set 
 forth as derived, not from Adam, but from Christ, not from earth, 
 but from heaven. It includes body and soul, it is conditional 
 upon union with God in regeneration, it is denied to the per- 
 sistently wicked. The wicked will perish, they will not live for 
 ever, they will be destroyed body and soul in hell. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 In this section I purpose to consider the influence of these 
 ideas, regarded as a coherent manifestation of the Divine 
 Character and Government, upon the Christian life ; specially 
 in respect to the maintenance of that sense of the reality of revela- 
 tion, and of faith in it, out of which a holy life must spring. A 
 belief which is a ' make-believe ' can affect life only superficially. 
 The conviction which is to govern conduct in a world of strong 
 temptation must be thorough and profound. 
 
 The custom which too often prevails both among Christians 
 
 ft 
 
 * In a letter which I received in 1871 from the late Rev. Isaac Jennings, of 
 Oakham, a learned contributor to Kitto's Biblical Encyclopedia, he says that 
 he was well acquainted with Mr. Isaac Taylor, and can testify positively that 
 he ' differed most decidedly from the popular opinion, and did not believe in 
 the immortality of the soul. I remember once putting the question to him in 
 the company of Professor Fraser, "Do you not think that the doctrine of the 
 natural immortality of the soul is a delusion ? " He replied most distinctly, " I 
 do ; " Professor Fraser expressing also his assent. I know from intimations he 
 gave in various conversations that he did not believe in eternal torment ; and I 
 think that as far back as the time when he wrote Saturday Evening he was of 
 the same mind on the subject. I know also that Mr. Taylor held that in the 
 invisible world a remedial process will go on, or goes on now, in the case of all 
 those who have lived and died without hearing the Gospel.' 
 
INFLUENCE OF TERROR ON SUPERSTITION. 459 
 
 and sceptics, of representing Faith and Reason as opposites, 
 is unbiblical and pernicious. In the Scriptures, Faith is never 
 opposed to reason, but always to sight. If faith is contrary to 
 reason, faith is irrational. But right faith is the exercise of puri- 
 fied reason, using that word to denote both the intellectual and 
 moral faculties of man. It was to this Conscience or moral 
 faculty that the apostles appealed in commending original Chris- 
 tianity to the world ; ' commending ourselves to every man's con- 
 science ((rwL8rja-Lv) in the sight of God' (2 Cor. iv. 2). The 
 proper basis of faith is in the intellectual and moral convictions 
 of mankind; but in proportion as Christianity is corrupted it 
 retreats from that basis to build a credulous assent on antiquated 
 custom, or on the authority of the uninstructed multitude. It 
 may be added that in proportion as faith blindly seeks to build on 
 these foundations it loses its control over the understanding and 
 the will, and practical morality is distorted or forgotten, until at 
 length Loyola's doctrine of the soul's subjection to the will of the 
 priest, like a dead body (perinde ac cadaver), is reckoned the height 
 of virtue. 
 
 We find no indication in the apostolic writings that Christianity 
 at its promulgation caused a shock to the general conscience of 
 mankind. It opposed the world's foolish and degenerate cults, it 
 denounced vile social customs, it made all things new ; but we 
 find no record in the Apologies that it was rejected because it 
 was morally incredible, because the God whom it revealed was a 
 Being in character unintelligible, or detestable to the moral faculty. 
 This cause for rejecting Christianity is peculiar to the later ages 
 of the gospel. There is no trace, in the hostile manifestations 
 with which the gospel was encountered at first, of that profound 
 moral loathing which has been felt for it by many able modern 
 infidels, who nevertheless admire what is good, just, generous, and 
 compassionate in their fellow-creatures who are Christians. 
 
 Nor is it sceptics alone who have found themselves unable to 
 appreciate or admire the moral element in modern Christianity, 
 considered as a supposed revelation of the Divine Character. 
 Popular Christianity can scarcely be said, even by its professional 
 advocates, to take a very firm hold on the moral sentiments of its 
 adherents, to commend itself in its highest doctrines to the hearty 
 assent of conscience, or to awaken the free, graceful, and loyal 
 
460 FAITH UPHELD BY THOUGHTLESSNESS. 
 
 emotions of the soul. The general truth of the gospel is received, 
 and the faith of it operates (through the secret and merciful aid 
 of heaven) in an admirable degree to the production of holy lives ; 
 but what is called the ' scheme of salvation ' as a whole, is seen 
 by the common mind covered with a kind of indistinct haze or 
 glare, which takes it out of the range of topics adapted for the 
 ordinary exercise of thought and reflection. A not uncommon 
 feeling is that the less attention it receives, the better for a man's 
 belief in it ; since * the faith ' is of such a quality that reasoning 
 upon it, that is, using the moral faculty, is likely to lead to 
 unsettlement. Thinking on the ' articles of religion ' comes to 
 be regarded as a dangerous employment, and inquiring into them 
 is confounded with scepticism. Thus the pride of Ignorance 
 reproves what is termed the pride of reason, and a spurious 
 humility keeps watch over the spiritual slumber of the popular 
 understanding. 
 
 Nor is this indisposition to think upon many of the articles of 
 modern faith wholly inexcusable. A vigorous application of the 
 moral sense to some well-established dogmas usually ends in 
 unbelief, unless the inquirer is happy enough to find a spiritual 
 clue to guide him out of the labyrinth of his difficulties. 
 
 That every unregenerate being, who, having been born in sin, 
 has died in sin, is destined to an endless existence in some degree 
 of misery of body or mind, or both an existence, the duration of 
 which would be only commencing when it had lasted through a 
 number of millenniums denoted by lines of figures as numerous 
 as the vibrating beams of light which extend from all the suns 
 and stars of the firmament into the infinite darkness even if 
 these innumerable lines of figures should be multiplied into each 
 other, this is a proposition which requires for its support some- 
 thing more solid than two or three disputed texts out of the English 
 version of Matthew's and Mark's gospels, and which nothing short 
 of absolute demonstration ought to persuade any man to embrace 
 as from God. The more one knows of revelation as a whole, 
 the actual history of the human race, and of the character of God, 
 as made known in the world that now is, and in the Bible, the 
 greater is the difficulty in believing in this Augustinian doctrine 
 of hell as Scriptural, and the deeper conviction that the Deus of 
 
SECRET SCEPTICISM. 461 
 
 Augustine was, after all, only a fusion of the two eternal powers 
 of good and evil of his earlier Manichean heresy. 
 
 Under the strictly orthodox representation of the action of 
 Deity in redemption, we can scarcely wonder at the vacant stare 
 of village labourers, or Sunday-school catechumens, or skilled 
 artificers, or even at the honest confession of the author of The 
 Limits of Religious Thought, who maintains that the moral 
 character of Deity in Christianity is practically unintelligible by 
 the human conscience. We can hardly wonder at the indignant 
 repulse given by the astonished Indian idolater, when we inform 
 him in one breath of the reputed constitution of law which the 
 Gospel came into the world to replace, and of that constitution of 
 grace which it came to establish instead. Nor is it enough to 
 declare that a lack of assent to the theory promulgated is due to 
 the absence of illuminating grace, since it is not the office of the 
 Holy Spirit to quench the moral understanding of man ; and large 
 numbers of persons who afford decisive evidence of enjoying the 
 teaching of that Holy Spirit experience as much difficulty in the 
 reception of that theory as the artisan, the philosopher, or the 
 subtle Hindoo. Indeed the Christians of modern times do not 
 believe even Protestant Christianity in their inmost souls nearly 
 so deeply as is supposed. They are afflicted at times with more 
 serious doubts and difficulties than they care or dare to express ; 
 and so far from possessing intelligible conceptions of the moral 
 character of God, which lead to hearty rejoicing, victorious faith, 
 or triumphant song, the result produced is generally little more 
 than passive submission to church authority, or the verbal ascrip- 
 tion of praises to Heaven, as possessing attributes of ' goodness ' 
 and 'justice,' which are nevertheless felt to be enveloped in 
 impenetrable mystery. Modern church psalmody, however beau- 
 tiful to the ear in its instrumental element, expresses with the voice 
 little of that genuine melody of the heart which comes with 
 intense conviction and joy. 
 
 Is not the theology in which Christendom has been fixed for ages 
 answerable for the loose hold of the moral faculty on Revelation ? 
 Consider what that theology lays down as its 'scheme of salvation.' 
 
 It commences with the statement that Adam was created 
 immortal, as God Himself with respect to his soul, but as to his 
 
462 VIEW OF THE < SCHEME OF REDEMPTION* 
 
 body, susceptible of death ; (2) that he was placed in Paradise, 
 on trial for everlasting life, under the menace of death; while 
 notwithstanding, irrespectively of the tree of Life, the chief part 
 of his nature was already incapable of extinction ; that the 
 privilege held out to him really was, therefore, to escape death of 
 the body alone in the literal sense of the threatening, and death 
 of the soul only in a metaphorical signification of the term ; (3) 
 that, failing in his probation, he brought upon himself death of 
 the body, and eternal misery of the soul ; and upon his posterity, 
 according to one account, simply temporal death (which system 
 of interpretation does not render any very lucid explanation of the 
 natural state and legal prospects of the souls of the posterity) ; 
 according to another account, more ancient and orthodox, and 
 held by all the great historical churches, both temporal death and 
 eternal misery of the soul ; (4) that, therefore, all mankind are 
 born, before they have sinned after the similitude of Adam's trans- 
 gression, justly liable to everlasting misery, whether through imputa- 
 tion, or through the possession of a nature necessarily corrupt in all 
 its developments ; (5) that Christ came into the world to bear the 
 curse of the law, which was death-^-z. curse which signified eternal 
 misery in the instance of mankind, but was taken to mean ' death 
 of the cross ' only, in the person of the Saviour ; (6) that in con- 
 sequence of this literal death of Christ, death in all the figurative 
 senses has been removed from the believer, and his physical death 
 shall be abolished by resurrection; (7) that although the Mosaic 
 law ' entered that the offence might abound,' it made no mention 
 of eternal misery, while nevertheless Christ's death delivers us 
 from that legal curse of which no mention is made ; (8) that while 
 the penalty for despising the law of Moses was literal ' death under 
 two or three witnesses,' the penalty of despising a system of 
 mercy shall be infinitely more tremendous than that, being to 
 suffer misery throughout endless duration; the punishment for 
 rejecting the divine mercy being, therefore, infinitely more terrible 
 than that for rejecting the divine justice; and, lastly, (9) that 
 although the greater part of mankind have been altogther deprived, 
 under divine providence, of the means of grace, they have been 
 placed on the same awful probation, unknown to themselves, for 
 an eternal existence in happiness or in misery ; the redemption by 
 Christ having added this incalculable burden to the original curse 
 
ACCORDING TO ROME AND GENEVA. 463 
 
 on Adam, that their bodies shall be raised from the dead to die a 
 second death, which signifies living for ever in torment. 
 
 There are some robust theological minds for whom a horror of 
 great darkness and difficulty, such as is shed around by this system 
 of thought and speech, offers a strong tragic attraction ; but to 
 ordinary people this ' system ' is full of incoherency, and reaches 
 the conscience as little as the reason. So far as it wins compul- 
 sory assent, through the pressure of the external evidence of 
 Christianity, supposed to support it, or in consequence of that 
 internal evidence, of which no perversion can wholly deprive the 
 gospel of Christ, it causes in young and meditative spirits an 
 internal agony of doubt and despair such as is seldom forgotten, 
 even after years of mature insensibility and decorous conformity. 
 
 Full many an elder Christian of our times, if he were to recount 
 his youthful experiences of faith, might set them forth in some 
 such terms as these : ' Yes, I remember well and bitterly my own 
 early days, when, first starting into life, I earnestly desired to 
 search after my Maker, and to love Him with all my heart and all 
 my understanding. But the more I tried to approach Him, the 
 more He escaped me. His was a " justice " which I could not 
 appreciate. It was a " love " which was altogether different from 
 my own an incomprehensible mystery. We are all immortals, I 
 was told, all fallen in Adam, all doomed for sin to everlasting 
 woe , and some have been chosen to be saved from this horror, 
 and some not ; and the rest are to " conflict and wrestle for ever 
 with the flames of this eternal fire."* It was a long-continued 
 moral agony. The only repose I had in my religion depended 
 on quenching thought. If I thought, I must doubt; I might 
 even become wholly infidel. And so I held on to Christ, as it 
 were, with a finger or two ; but my soul for years was filled with 
 anguish and difficulty, deepening as I passed along, from which I 
 was often sorely tempted to find relief in a total relapse into 
 scepticism. In the fierce conflict with passion to which I was 
 exposed, I needed a religion which I could believe with heart and 
 mind ; but I found mine to fail me intellectually when I required 
 it most; for it confounded all at once reason, conscience, and 
 affection, and half paralysed my soul under its burden of infinite 
 * Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the hand of an angry God. 
 
464 INFLUENCE OF SUCH FAITH ON SOULS. 
 
 terror. I could not comfort myself, if others could, by the 
 thought that I was one of the elect, dwelling in light, while that 
 great darkness was spread around me. That would have been to 
 content myself with living on the Fortunate Isles, while surrounded 
 behind and before by nations tossing on the surges of a boundless 
 fiery ocean. I found little in the higher doctrines of my faith to 
 exalt my apprehensions of divine goodness and righteousness, or 
 adapted to encourage a cheerful confidence in that Power on 
 which rest the foundations of the universe. For if there are some 
 masterful spirits who can stand upon the edge of the precipice, 
 observing without any recoil the millions falling in one broad 
 unbroken stream into the fiery surges below, there, 
 
 4 ' Thick as leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa," 
 
 to remain in torment for ever I was one of those, the majority 
 of Christian spectators who find repose for their minds alone in 
 the feminine sleights of forgetting or overlaying the daily remem- 
 brance of the terrible fact, that they live in a world, the certain 
 destiny of whose dense unevangelised population after every 
 deduction for lunatics, idiots, and children dying in infancy is 
 of a character to fill the creation with everlasting dismay, and to 
 draw from all ranks of being a shout of congratulation for those 
 on whom the blessing of insanity or the hand of the infanticide 
 fell. But oh, what a remedy was not thinking, for such a calamity, 
 when every weekly advance of the globe along the track of its 
 marvellous orbit witnessed, as I thought, the departure perhaps of 
 a hundred thousand fresh victims of Satan to the dolours of that 
 endless infernal career ! ' 
 
 The enfeebled state of mind produced by such impressions in 
 youth or age is that which prepares a deep foundation for sacer- 
 dotal superstition, the curse of Christendom. It is vain to deny 
 that the honest belief of misery to last through eternity upon all 
 the unsaved as long as the Necessary Being shall endure also 
 endangers the faith of every thoughtful Christian who accepts it. 
 So long as mein do not think of it, it is comparatively harmless. 
 As spoken of in a vague, indefinite way by preachers, who do not 
 labour to bring out the idea of ETERNITY, it even serves (as a true 
 
EFFECTS OF DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS MISERY. 464 
 
 doctrine of terror would serve) to arouse the careless to repent- 
 ance. And in this way it has actually been used for many ages 
 as the engine of alarm in the conversion of most of those who 
 have turned to a life of religion just as the partial truth in 
 Roman errors for ages served to save truth-seeking souls. The 
 mischief commences only when men, as in our day, trained by 
 science to larger conceptions, think earnestly of it. The begin- 
 ning of reflection upon the doctrine of literally ever lasting suffer- 
 ing is the beginning of agonising scepticism ; and serious doubt 
 of any fundamental doctrine loosens our hold on all the rest. 
 Accordingly beneath the faith of most thoughtful Christians lies a 
 hidden substratum of involuntary unbelief, which breaks out now 
 and then in a kind of volcanic eruption and earthquake. Hence 
 good men become fearful of inquiry. They inwardly dread losing 
 hold on Christianity altogether if they begin to meddle with these 
 'mysteries.' Their remedy for scepticism is, not to think, or to 
 surrender themselves, bound hand and foot, to a priesthood. 
 
 But the remedy is worse than the disease. There is no true 
 doctrine which will not bear thinking of. Every truth is revealed 
 for the purpose of being thought upon, and commends itself to 
 good men the more they think of it and compare it with Scripture 
 and experience. Every divine revelation encourages thought by 
 unveiling the character of God Most High. But this doctrine 
 hardens the heart, paralyses the reason, and delivers up especially 
 the female mind to the direction of clerical corporations, who 
 impose their authority on terror-stricken souls. What else is this 
 Vaticanism, which sits like a nightmare on the breast of slumber- 
 ing Christendom, but the perfection of unreason and spiritual 
 selfishness, the result of an overpowering fear of an eternal hell ? 
 Well sing the angels in the Apocalypse at the downfall of 
 ' Babylon,' if by Babylon be symbolised that religion which is the 
 work of theologians to whom 'the heart of a Husband and a 
 Father is,' in the language of Sir James Stephen, ' an inscrutable 
 mystery;' and who, by an enforced celibacy, have cut off the 
 teachers of the people, as well as the masters of the confessional, 
 from personal experience in those two chief revelations of God's 
 loving Nature to mankind. 
 
 Now we venture to propose it as a positive gain to practical 
 
 30 
 
466 DOCTRINAL TEACHING NECESSARY. 
 
 trust in God, to discover in the Scripture a doctrine on Immor- 
 tality which occasions far fewer moral difficulties, and appeals to 
 none but noble motives. It is simply an immeasurable gain to 
 the practical influence of faith over our lives to possess a doctrine 
 which is not incredible by the moral faculty. Irreligion and the 
 attractions of sinful pleasure take hold of the minds of men by 
 the handles of so many passions and faculties, by the enchant- 
 ments of art and fancy, by the customs of society, by the ties and 
 the sympathies of nature, that it is impossible for Christianity to 
 fix too firm a grasp on the convictions of the intellect and con- 
 science, and on the' affections of the heart. No intensity of faith 
 is excessive. Yet few things are more wonderful than the slight 
 degree to which modern character is usually influenced by the 
 ' indwelling of God's Spirit.' Seldom does a person of unsteady 
 will become in religion a man of fixed resolution, or a man of 
 stern temper one of tenderness and grace. The action of religion 
 is limited by the faith of the Church, and when the special truths 
 of the gospel do not take a firm hold upon men's convictions, the 
 effects proper to those truths are not produced on character. For 
 the Spirit acts by the truth and grace of the gospel, and great 
 transformations are wrought only in an age of profound conviction. 
 When strong faith vanishes, distinctness of type in moral develop- 
 ment vanishes with it. 
 
 For whenever religious preaching becomes chiefly hortatory or 
 sentimental, the people are easily carried away by new forms of 
 influence, which leave but faint relics of true Christian character 
 behind. Doctrinal preaching of the right sort is essential to 
 stability. But this needs not be dry. If we have no pictures we 
 may at least attain interesting ideas, the intellect and imagination 
 supplementing the lack of ceremonial. Popular Protestantism 
 seems to be strikingly deficient in both logical instruction and a 
 warm poetic environment. Both the intellect and the imagination 
 are torpid, and require the awakening of a new inspiration in 
 faith. They require a morally credible Christianity, which may 
 enable men to ' love God with all their understanding,' as well as 
 ' with all their heart.' 
 
 One effect of such a revolution would be to reform and sanctify 
 the gladness of Christians. Under the appalling shadow of the 
 Augustinian Deity, the spirit of innocent gaiety has been greatly 
 
INFLUENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE ON LIFE. 467 
 
 paralysed. Under the Old Testament the music and dancing 
 were all done in Jehovah's presence, as beneath spring sunbeams. 
 So it will be again, when men have learned to take their pleasures 
 lawfully in God, and to believe that He is really so loving as to 
 delight in their gladness. At present these pleasures are too 
 frequently stolen, the idea of Augustine's Manichaean God being 
 inconsistent, when His character is realized, with vivid delight 
 under His eye. A true theology will teach men to include the 
 whole of life in their religion, as a spectre-ridden asceticism never 
 can. 
 
 The view of the Divine Government presented by the doctrine 
 of Life in Christ alone, carries with it this advantage, that the 
 more you dwell upon it, the more it appears to be the truth, and 
 the more clear becomes the vision of Eternal Righteousness and 
 Love. Conscience assures us that God its Maker must be 
 righteous ; and Nature teaches that to break His laws will bring 
 destruction to the offender. The doctrine that the very object of 
 the Incarnation is to immortalise mankind, furnishes the vertebral 
 column, so to speak, on which the fabric of a coherent theology 
 can be built. There is no truth with which this does not seem to 
 agree. There is no aspect of revelation which does not both give 
 and receive fresh strength in this relationship. If another figure 
 is allowable, it is the golden key which enters without violence 
 into all the wards of that great lock which God has fastened upon 
 the ' everlasting doors,' and admits us to adore the harmonious 
 mysteries. 
 
 The doctrine that our eternal life is in the Christ will, as the 
 experience of many now attests, corroborate that faith which 
 * conquers the world ' a faith which, rooted in stable conviction, 
 will not forsake men in difficulties, will seem not less true when 
 beset with temptation than when the heart is ' lifted up in the 
 ways of the Lord \ ' not less true when we look upon the thought- 
 less crowds of great cities, or the brazen face of apostate Christen- 
 dom, than when we muse in secret, or gaze on the sweet 
 countenance of Nature. 
 
 It is a faith as strong for work as for consolation, and which 
 will not break down in the crisis of its application. Such is the 
 horror arising from the prevalent creed, that it is seldom applied 
 
468 ON LOVING GOD WITH THE MIND. 
 
 either to living multitudes, or dead relations. A hopeful case is 
 made out for almost every one who dies, in direct opposition to 
 Christ's words that ' destruction ' is certain for all except those 
 who ' hear His sayings and do them.' The effect moreover of the 
 existing opinion is to lower the standard of morality to zero ; since 
 the hell believed in is thought too dreadful for all except gigantic 
 offenders. Thus Christ's words on ' wrestling to enter into life ' 
 become practically inoperative. The masses harden themselves 
 in wickedness, and Christians deliberately set aside their Lord's 
 lesson on the ' fewness ' of the saved. The effect of true doctrine 
 will be to strengthen the moral testimony. When men believe in 
 a terrible but credible perdition they will allow the limitation of 
 the offer of eternal life. They will admit of their plain sense 
 being attached to Christ's awful threatenings to all, whether clergy 
 or laity, who ' make a lie,' or ' resist the truth,' or ' corrupt the 
 word of God,' or ' hold a form of godliness, while denying the 
 power thereof.' 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 We have spoken hitherto of the effect of this dogmatic refor- 
 mation on the personal faith of Christians, as opposed to secret 
 scepticism which shakes their purposes and embitters their 
 existence. We have now to consider its bearings on the coher- 
 ency of theology, considered as a truth to be ' loved with all the 
 understanding.' 
 
 Christianity being like nature, a system or part of a system, 
 proceeded from the all-perfect Intelligence, and is addressed as 
 the wisdom of God to the understanding of the ' perfect ' (rcXetot, 
 established believers). The Church is expected to study and 
 receive 'the whole truth' (John xvi. 13). But we are witnessing 
 the breaking up, through the action of external and internal forces, 
 of the mediaeval and patristic theologies. Multitudes also are 
 abandoning, at the same time, under the Broad Church guidance, 
 their faith in Christ as the Incarnate Word, in Christ as God's 
 Sacrifice for sinners, in Christ as the Righteousness of the unjust, 
 in Christ as the Sender of the Holy Spirit, in Christ as the 
 Resurrection of the dead, in a word Evangelical Christianity is 
 being abandoned in detail j and, as a consequence, the apostolic 
 
RESTORATION OF EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY. 469 
 
 writings, which teach it, are being abandoned as an authority in 
 doctrine. We think we have herein set forth the immediate cause 
 of this catastrophe, and the divine remedy. If men can be per- 
 suaded to cast aside the unscientific contention for natural im- 
 mortality, with its inference of everlasting misery as ' the curse of 
 the law,' and to adopt the simplest sense of Scripture language 
 on life and death, -the coherent evangelical system, as taught by 
 the apostles and prophets, becomes again defensible, victorious, 
 intelligible, and self-consistent. The doctrine of Immortality 
 through the Incarnation will prove itself a veritable ' flaming 
 sword,' not to shut but to keep open ' the way of the Tree of 
 Life,' and an effectual weapon against those modern delusions 
 which would close it ; whose pretended ' breadth ' consists sub- 
 stantially in narrowing the revealed thoughts of the Infinite Being 
 down to the dimensions of naturalistic fancy. 
 
 The hypothesis of man's native immortality is indeed the ful- 
 crum on which Unitarianism and Universalism place their lever 
 for the overthrow of biblical Christianity. Restore the primitive 
 truth on the nature of man, the original sin, the mediation of 
 Christ, and the consequences of unbelief to the wicked and the 
 evangelical theology will certainly vanquish its opponents, both as 
 an argument to be sustained, and as a system to govern the con- 
 victions of men. For in fact the main position here defended, if 
 successfully established, is nothing less than a physical and meta- 
 physical demonstration of the truth of evangelical Christianity. 
 At one and the same time it turns the position of the adversary, 
 and shivers his only effectual weapon of attack.* 
 
 Unhappily, however, up to the present time, the chief hindrance 
 to the propagation of these ideas in England has proceeded from 
 the less instructed representatives of that evangelical theology. 
 The modern advocacy of the doctrine of immortality in Christ 
 has been assailed by them with persistent rebuke during the space 
 of a whole generation (specially by the laymen of the party), as 
 teaching a doctrine that ' lowers men's views of the Atonement of 
 Christ, and of the Evil of Sin, which required that atonement for 
 its expiation.' This objection demands careful study. 
 
 It is held that so stupendous a measure as the Incarnation of 
 
 * By the evangelical theology here is of course intended that glorious truth 
 of Christ which is common to all the best schools both of Europe and America. 
 
470 DANGER OF ADDING TO GOD'S WORD. 
 
 Deity implies a danger to man of corresponding magnitude ; in 
 other words, that God would not have found it worth while to 
 give His Son to die for man unless the end had been to redeem 
 him from eternal misery. 
 
 In reply we submit (i) that the only source of our knowledge 
 on this subject is the apostolic revelation, and there we are dis- 
 tinctly taught, not that Christ saves us by His Atonement from 
 eternal misery, but from death ; and (2) that this view of the 
 work of our Saviour is fitted to. draw forth the utmost gratitude 
 and affection to Him for ever, and more fitted to do so than the 
 opposite representation. 
 
 i. The only source of our knowledge of the effect of the Incar- 
 nation is in those Scriptures which teach us \hzfact of the Incar- 
 nation. Unless the apostles declare that the death of Christ 
 saves us from eternal misery, no man ' glorifies God ' by asserting 
 that it does so. Now the Bible in no place declares this from 
 Genesis to the Apocalypse. S. Peter bids us ' speak as the oracles 
 of God.' Solomon says, 'Add thou not unto His word, lest thou 
 be found a liar.' Additions to Scripture have wrought even more 
 evil than subtractions. What the Scripture affirms is, that Christ 
 came to redeem us ' from the curse of the law,' which was death. 
 * The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' The Second Man came to 
 undo the work of the first Adam. 
 
 Adam brought death into the world by sin, and the curse of 
 death descended on his posterity. It is said that curse signified 
 three things dissolution of the body, alienation of the soul from 
 God (spiritual death), and eternal misery. We reply, This is your 
 gloss, not Scripture. But observe, we pray you, how you deal 
 with this curse of death. In respect to Adam you say death 
 signifies dissolution of the body. For the finally lost you say it 
 means ever-during torment of a living body. 
 
 Again, the elder Protestants, following the mediaeval theology, 
 taught that the triple death, which descended on Adam for his 
 sin, descended upon all his posterity, even on infants. So taught 
 Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Cranmer, Hooper, Jewel. It was the 
 foundation of orthodox theology. But this represented infants as 
 liable to eternal misery through Adam's sin before they had sinned 
 themselves a truly horrible conclusion. Hence the invention of 
 
FROM WHAT DOES CHRIST SAVE INFANTS? 471 
 
 their baptismal regeneration, which saves them from original sin, 
 and its curse of eternal misery. But our modern divines have 
 determined that this triple death did not descend to the posterity, 
 and it is now held that infants are not born in a state of damna- 
 tion, but of salvation. Now, it is easy to see that this laxity in 
 the treatment of the word death proves that there is no real 
 authority for the doctrine that death signifies eternal misery. If 
 it is maintained that death, as it descended upon infants born of 
 Adam, does not signify eternal misery, we maintain, as the result 
 of this admission, either that it did not signify eternal misery in 
 the case of Adam himself, or, if it did, that it signifies the same 
 thing in the case of his infant posterity, which you deny and 
 thus the opponent's mouth is shut with a stopper of his own 
 invention, unless it is decided that assertion shall stand in the 
 place of argument, when of course the discussion is ended. 
 
 Now what do the apostles teach ? Christ died to redeem us 
 from death. You affirm that infants are born now not liable to 
 eternal misery. From what, then, does Christ redeem them ? 
 Apparently it is admitted that He does not redeem them from 
 eternal misery. If they die in infancy they are redeemed by 
 grace, but from what? only from spiritual death a spiritual 
 death not deserving eternal misery? Therefore in heaven, ac- 
 cording to you, say we, there will be two classes of sinners some 
 saved by Christ's Incarnation from spiritual death only; some 
 saved from eternal misery incurred by their own actual sins. To 
 save infants, then, the Incarnation was not necessary; for you 
 hold that God would not have given His Son to die for mankind 
 unless it were to save them from eternal woe. It was a measure 
 ' too great for the occasion,' and only demanded for the salvation 
 of accountable sinners from endless misery. We see to what 
 contradiction men are led by abandoning the rule that death for 
 man means loss of life in every case the destruction of the 
 compound nature consisting of body and soul a definition which 
 will cover under every variety in the mode or speed of infliction, 
 every case in which death has occurred, or will occur..* 
 
 * The over-zealous interpretation of the Scripture-doctrine on the hereditary 
 curse has in our day operated to procure its total rejection. Nevertheless the 
 Scripture accords with Nature most completely in its assertion of the law of 
 
472 INFLUENCE OF THIS THEODICY 
 
 But to encounter the objection directly is it so mean an object 
 for the Son of God to propose to Himself to save men from 
 death, so as to ' give unto His sheep Eternal Life ' ? Consider 
 the elements of the case. There is, first, deliverance from the 
 greater part of the penalty incurred namely the second death. 
 The death men die here is for Adam's sin ; the second death is 
 for their own. There is a ' wrath to come,' from which Jesus 
 ' delivers ' men who have sinned. Consider, then, what is the 
 meaning of ' many stripes ' of the ' due reward of our deeds ' 
 of the ' great plagues and of long continuance,' incurred under 
 the law by the sins of men. Is it nothing to owe to Christ the 
 remission of all that dreadful debt of woe ? 
 
 Again, there is 'death,' the wages, 'the end of these things.' 
 Take it to signify destruction of life a final cessation of conscious 
 existence. Then consider that Christ, by His incarnation and 
 atonement, ' makes an end of sin,' ' abolishes death,' ' gives eternal 
 life.' Can I say this gift is small and mean? ' How much less 
 than to be Divine is it to be Immortal ! ' exclaims Mr. Isaac 
 Taylor. Is it no great thing to escape from being blotted out of 
 the universe, to owe to my Saviour my very being, my very 
 existence, to owe it to Him that I shall live for ever not in the 
 old animal life, but in His Divine and Spiritual life through 
 eternity ? Who will tell us that this leads to lower views of the 
 Atonement? Rather, it ennobles and glorifies our thoughts of 
 the Reconciliation on every side. 
 
 Next, these truths afford us at least a glimpse of the reason of 
 
 Heredity. M. Ribot, in his learned and useful work on this subject, cites a 
 passage even from Plutarch, which might check the boldness of some of the 
 modern antagonists of the truth. In his essay on the Delays of the Divine 
 Justice, after an argument showing that the Family and the State form a true 
 organism, Plutarch declares that ' the fact that divine vengeance falls on a state 
 or a city long after the death of the guilty, has nothing in it contrary to reason. 
 Beings produced by generation are not like products of art. What is generated 
 comes from the very substance of the progenitors. The children of vicious 
 men and women are derived from the very essence of their parents. That 
 which was dominant in the parents, which lived and was nurtured, which 
 thought and spake, is precisely what they have given to their sons. It must 
 not seem strange therefore that there exists a sort of occult identity capable of 
 justly subjecting the second to the consequences attending the actions of the 
 first.' Ribot on Heredity (King and Co.), p. 376. 
 
ON THE VIEW OF CHRIST S SALVATION. 473 
 
 the Incarnation. It was the incarnation of the LIFE. Christ is 
 the Life of God incarnate in humanity. Wherefore this marvel- 
 lous procedure ? Was it not that man, condemned by the law, 
 must die beyond redemption under the law; that Creation 
 contains no force, no power, which, even under the law of 
 continuity in endless development, can save him? None but 
 the Power which is above nature can deliver him, and even that 
 Power only by a direct assumption of the human nature into 
 union with the Uncreated Life so as to make of God and Man 
 one Christ in one Person for ever. Hence the union of the 
 Logos and Life with man in Jesus Christ who becomes a foun- 
 tain of Immortality to believers, who will ' reign in life ' super- 
 naturally by Jesus Christ, throughout eternity, in the glory of the 
 Father. These are not lower views of the Atonement, but such as 
 open vistas of glory on every side. 
 
 Again, do we not gain also under these views, I will not say a 
 full understanding, but a glimpse of the reason, not only of the in- 
 carnation, but of the death of Christ, and of the cause of His 
 resurrection ? If the curse of the law were eternal misery, and 
 Christ as our representative bore the curse of the law, why did He 
 not suffer eternal misery ? The answer has usually been that the 
 suffering of death was rendered sufficient and compensatory by 
 the indwelling of the Godhead. That is not said by the apostles. 
 What is said by them is that by sin came death, that Christ died for 
 our sins, and has thereby abolished death and brought in life eternal. 
 
 But it will be said, According to you, the curse of the law was 
 death without hope of revival death for ever. The Christ, how- 
 ever, rose again. He did not, therefore, undergo the curse of the 
 law. Is not the true answer here, as has been already argued, 
 that if Christ had been only a man (supposing on that condition 
 He could have been a propitiation of our sins by His death), He 
 could not have risen from the dead? It is not in right of His 
 destroyed humanity, ' the temple,' that He was raised again, but 
 through His Deity. He was 'proved to be the Son of God by 
 His resurrection from the dead.' Here again there comes into 
 view the Deity of Christ as the essential condition of His redemp- 
 tive work. The Atonement was the act and suffering of God. It 
 was Christ's Deity which imparted its value to the sac rifice of His 
 
474 INFLUENCE OF THIS THEODICY 
 
 life-blood. It was His Deity to which we owe His resurrection 
 and our own. So much do the Unitarians misunderstand Chris- 
 tianity. This is not to encourage lower views of the Incarnation, 
 to represent it as the essential condition of man's salvation.* 
 
 Secondly, and this time not to defend but to assail, If, as was 
 taught aforetime, the curse which had descended upon us from 
 Adam was eternal misery, the atonement of Christ was not so much 
 an act of grace as of equity. If, on the other hand, the curse was 
 .death, the redemption is, as the New Testament asserts, an act of 
 Divine beneficence. By how much grace is more glorious than 
 equity, by so much more does that view of Christ's work ' glorify ' 
 Him which represents it as the restoration, by free gift, of im- 
 mortal life to the world, which has lost it in Adam, than that 
 which declares that He came to deliver men from the penalty of 
 an eternal misery, incurred through no fault of their own brought 
 upon them by the combined action of an Ancestor whom they did 
 not commission to act for them, and an evil Spirit who warred 
 against them in prospect before they had any being. 
 
 Let any one consider the proposition that the fall of Adam 
 brought upon himself, for ' one offence,' an eternity of sufferings 
 and brought this same penalty upon us, his posterity whether by 
 
 * The doctrine that the essence of the Atonement lies in its being a voluntary 
 suffering of God from the sin of the creature, and not the suffering of an inno- 
 cent creature from the righteous God, has been argued in the nineteenth 
 chapter. An objection often made to this representation requires notice in 
 this place. It is said, If Christ's suffering were the suffering of God, how 
 could He have given utterance to the cry, * My God, my God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken me ?' ' How could God forsake Himself? ' I believe that the true 
 answer to this question is found in accepting as apostolic the ante-Nicene doc- 
 trine of the real distinction between the Persons of the Godhead, which the ex- 
 ceeding zeal of the post-Nicene ages for a metaphysical idea of Divine Unity in 
 Substance has led men to under-estimate. The Divine Word was sufficiently 
 distinct from the Father to 'empty Himself/ and to lay aside the 'form of God' 
 (Phil. ii. 9), and therefore was sufficiently distinct to become the subject of 
 suffering by the hiding of the Father's face in the Agony of the Passion. But 
 we ought not to think that the Father of Heaven Himself suffered less in thus 
 being ' pleased to bruise ' the Holy One for our redemption. The apostolic 
 writings seem to lay far greater stress on the real distinction in the Persons of 
 the Godhead than on any idea of consubstantial Unity ; though this also is 
 tenable under ante-Nicene modes of stating this transcendent mystery. 
 
ON THE VIEW OF CHRIST S SALVATION. 475 
 
 gratuitous imputation of guilt in which we had no share, or by 
 the inevitable consequence and operation of a corrupt nature trans- 
 mitted to us, or by the unasked possession of immortality either 
 in the half or the whole of our nature, and then say whether the 
 provision of some such method as the gospel does not appear to 
 be demanded by rigid justice. Had it pleased the Almighty 
 Power to bring such a race into existence under the circumstances 
 supposed, the heirs of damnation to an eternal misery which they 
 had themselves done nothing to deserve the bestowment of re- 
 demption, and of the opportunity of salvation from the direful 
 doom, would assume an aspect of simple righteousness ; and the 
 withholding of such salvation would have been to lay open the 
 Divine Government to the darkest imputations of wrong and 
 cruelty from all minds constituted like our own. And that is 
 what every unsophisticated person thinks of the ' scheme of re- 
 demption ' according to the old Calvinistic representation, as soon 
 as they hear of it. 
 
 If any one of us had the power of forming a race of immortal 
 creatures, whom we should deliberately bring into being under a 
 law of damnation to eternal misery, without redemption, we should 
 know what to think, and to say, of such an omnipotent fiend in 
 human form. If He, who kindles the 'furnace' of hell-fire in 
 defence of that law which is fulfilled in love, should have thus 
 deliberately brought an entire race into an immortal existence in 
 which there was no escape from eternal woe either through free-will 
 or redemption, unquestionably those voices must have been struck 
 dumb which proclaim that the ' whole earth is full of His glory.' 
 Whatever might have been the expense at which deliverance must 
 be effected, so far as we are capable of applying the moral judg- 
 ment which is oftentimes appealed to by Christ as a correct rule of 
 decision, because of divine implantation, the deliverance of them 
 was demanded by that common justice, the absence of which is 
 the definition of a tyranny as distinct from a legal government. 
 Grace could have had no share whatever in the work of salvation. 
 It was only an equitable procedure. 
 
 Yet it is a fact that the apostles represent the gospel as display- 
 ing the 'riches of God's forbearance,' the 'glory of His grace.' 
 Whence we conclude that the sin of Adam could not have pro- 
 cured for his posterity the consequences usually alleged. 
 
476 EFFECTS OF THIS DOCTRINE 
 
 But those views of the ruin and redemption of man, for which 
 we have contended, and which rest on the simpler rendering of 
 the gospel, answer to the height and depth and length of the 
 apostolic declarations. If man was not created absolutely im- 
 mortal if Adam by his sin lost the prospect of immortality and 
 glory both for himself and his descendants if the redemption 
 which is in Christ Jesus be regarded as the free gift of righteous- 
 ness and of life eternal to all repenting sinners in a world which 
 has forfeited its life for ever then, indeed, the gospel shines forth 
 in an effulgence of grace fitted to inspire wonder, adoration, and 
 endless thanksgiving, at once in the race whom He saves from 
 dying, and who had no claim to be made immortal, and in all 
 other intelligent beings. 
 
 Under this view the Person of the Saviour becomes radiant with 
 a light ' above the brightness of the sun ' as the Author and Giver 
 of Immortality, and attracts towards Himself the tide of human 
 affection through time and eternity. Under this view it is the 
 glory of God which ' appears in the face of Jesus Christ ; ' and we 
 are not summoned to render homage to the Son for rescuing us 
 from an original constitution of things which invests the character 
 of the Father with the blackest mystery and gloom. Under this 
 view a Christian finds himself to be related to his Redeemer by 
 even closer than moral ties. He is Christ's, not merely by salva- 
 tion from the penal consequences of his own immortality, but by 
 re-creation. He is indebted to Him not merely for pardon, but 
 for eternal existence itself; not merely for peace, and joy, and 
 glory, but for the possibility of being at all. Under this view the 
 Church is indeed the Bride of the Lamb, the offspring of His own 
 vitality, the Eve of the second Adam; a member of His body, 
 of His flesh, and of His bones ; one Spirit with the Life-giver, 
 living by His very life-blood : and there appears a fresh reason for 
 yielding ourselves unto Him as ' alive from the dead, and our 
 members as instruments of righteousness to God.' 'We thus 
 judge that if one died for all, then all died ; and that He died for 
 all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto them- 
 selves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again.' Our 
 language will be that of S. Paul ' 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 
 
ON MEATS LOVE TO CHRIST. 4;; 
 
 Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me' (Gal. 
 iii. 20). 
 
 I do not ' frustrate the grace of God,' on the one hand, by an 
 exaggerated representation of the original Curse which converts 
 that grace into a mere act of justice ; nor, on the other, by claim- 
 ing as a natural possession the immortality which is a free gift 
 of spontaneous mercy through that Divine Redeemer THE 
 RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE to 'the son of man, who is a 
 worm.' 
 
 ' Human nature lives in the person of Christ in heaven ; the 
 Divine Nature lives in Christians on earth. He has thus taken 
 possession of both heaven and earth already, although the time 
 has not yet come for all nations to know that He has been chosen 
 of the Father to universal sovereignty. He is on the right hand 
 of God, the Head and Representative of His people ; they, on 
 the earth, are the representatives of His life before the world. 
 Virtually, they are in heaven where He is, for God sees them in 
 Him ; virtually, He is on the earth where His people are, for men 
 see Him in them.'* 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 We have now lastly to consider with attention an objection 
 insisted on by certain able opponents of the hypothesis of ' condi- 
 tional immortality.' It is said that the habit of thought, which 
 this will engender in the mind-s of Christians, who believe them- 
 selves to have become immortal beings in a world of dying 
 creatures, will be in antagonism with the catholic spirit of Christ 
 Himself, who embraced the whole of humanity in His heart, and 
 taught us to 'honour all men.' We are charged with introducing 
 a doctrine of caste into religious life, which ought to be rejected 
 with abhorrence. Mr. Baldwin Brown says, 
 
 ' In place of a great human family of sorrow, struggle, and aspiration, amidst 
 which, as the brother of the poorest and the saddest, the Saviour moved, they 
 give us a few godlike, lofty forms, or say that they give us, men complain 
 that they cannot see them, endowed with a nature that cannot perish, and 
 like unto the angels, moving about as the Brahmins of creation, amidst in- 
 numerable creatures who look like them, speak like them, love like them, but 
 
 Dr. Leask on Christ Ih'ingin His people. 'The Rainbow,' 1875. 
 
478 INFLUENCE OF THIS FAITH ON CHARACTER. 
 
 are perishing pariahs born from the dust. To me this is simply a horrible 
 picture of the great world of men.' 
 
 In commenting upon this allegation, it must be admitted that 
 the ' form of doctrine ' here maintained can claim no exception to 
 the general rule, that truth held by evil or even by weak men will 
 turn to evil and vanity. Christians who are disposed to dwell in 
 a pretentious spirit upon their ' privileges ' are very likely to look 
 complacently upon their own immortality, in contrast with the 
 perishable nature of their unsaved neighbours. But this sin is not 
 justly chargeable upon the doctrine. There are few things of 
 which professed followers of Christ do not by turns become vain. 
 Some glory in their supposed election to salvation some in their 
 church orthodoxy or high respectability of ritual some even in 
 their broad philosophical views so much more spiritual than 
 those of the weaker brethren who are in bondage to New Testa- 
 ment literalism some even in their simple style of writing, as 
 contrasted with the magniloquence of inferior authors. 
 
 If there are any, then, who have thus spoken or written in a 
 lofty strain in past time of the high place and destiny of regenerate 
 men, ' despising others,' on them be the blame, not on the truth 
 of God. Truth should neither be abandoned nor misrepresented, 
 in consequence of its perversions, or because of the sins and im- 
 perfections of its advocates. In the writings of the apostles we 
 find the clearest assertion not only of Christ's ' brotherhood with 
 the poorest and the saddest,' but also of the infinite difference be- 
 tween the natures and destinies of once-born and twice-born men. 
 Christ Himself is foremost in teaching the necessity of spiritual 
 regeneration in order to salvation (John Hi.). And the general 
 drift of apostolic doctrine goes to show that this regeneration unto 
 life may be known now, by the signs of faith, hope, and love. 
 Surely no valid objection can be raised against such teaching, on 
 the ground that it ' gives us a few godlike lofty forms ' of Brah_ 
 mins, amidst ' innumerable creatures who look like them, speak 
 like them, but are perishing pariahs.' The answer would be ready 
 that the ascension of the soul into spiritual union with God does 
 produce a deep change of nature in each genuinely Christian 
 character. And if some weaker or self-deceived Christians, in- 
 stead of bearing their honours meekly, flaunted their dignity as 
 
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 479 
 
 ' the sons of God ' in the face of the world, looking down upon 
 'the publicans afar off,' no serious thinker would dream of 
 abandoning the doctrine of regeneration, because of the sins of its 
 advocates. 
 
 We ask for equal justice to be rendered to humble and holy 
 maintainers of the present doctrine, supposed to be also apostolic, 
 that spiritual regeneration carries with it the hope of immortality, 
 through the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit. After many years' 
 observation of its effects on character I feel bound to represent 
 that such transcendent hopes do not naturally lead to the tempers 
 which are described in the passage above cited. On the contrary 
 he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself ; the only certain 
 sign of possessing life eternal is love a love which ' vaunteth not 
 itself, doth not behave itself unseemly.' 
 
 As to the absolute ' fewness ' of the supposed possessors of 
 immortality, this is an invention of the contrary part. It is firmly 
 believed by us that the ' little flock,' which includes all who have 
 ' some good thing in their hearts towards the Lord of hosts,' will 
 nevertheless prove to be a ' multitude that no man can number,' 
 and that the finally lost will consist, not of the ' poor and sad, who 
 gathered rffund Christ as their brother,' but of the haughty and 
 deliberate assertors of their own ' free-will ' against the authority 
 of Heaven. The final awards of life or destruction will turn upon 
 that deepest of all differences the difference between righteousness 
 and wickedness, a difference established and brought out by God's 
 dealings with each human soul, either here or hereafter. Then 
 shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked. 
 If it be maintained that Christians ought still to wish for fellow- 
 ship, and express sympathy, with the obstinately rebellious, we 
 have no common basis of further argument. Such pernicious 
 sentimentalism was unknown to Christ and the apostles. 
 
 The New Testament does not teach the survival of the 
 strongest, but the survival of the fittest ; and these are they who, 
 * labouring and heavy laden,' embracing righteousness, and trust- 
 ing in and taking hold of the Redeeming Love, ' look for the 
 mercy of God to eternal life.' 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL INFLUENCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF LIFE AND DEATH 
 ETERNAL ON THE HOPES AND FEARS OF UNGODLY MEN. 
 
 OVK d^iovg icpivtre tavrovQ r/fe aiwviov w//f. ' Ye judge yourselves un- 
 worthy of the eternal life.' ACTS xiii. 46. 
 
 THE weightiest objection to the acceptance of the doctrine that 
 Immortality is the privilege of those alone who choose the right 
 for ever, is its supposed pernicious influence upon the masses of 
 mankind. It is said, by many of its opponents, that the doc- 
 trine of the 'annihilation of the wicked,' as they persistently 
 describe it, is of boundlessly mischievous character ; -lowering by 
 infinity the general estimate of the evil of sin, and of its conse- 
 quences ; removing therefore the chief restraint that rests upon 
 the wills of presumptuous sinners, by assuring them of the ' trifling 
 results ' in punishment which will follow even upon the most 
 stupendous transgressions. It is alleged that, however harmless 
 may be its influence on those who are already Christian believers, 
 its effect on the world at large will be immensely disastrous. 
 It will degrade the whole conception of human life, by reducing 
 human nature to the level of the animal races as to mortality, and 
 will sweep away the two chief articles of natural religion, the 
 stepping-stones of thought for faith in Revelation, namely, man's 
 belief in his own spiritual being and relationship with a spiritual 
 and eternal world, and therefore his belief in a spiritual and eternal 
 God. It will aid all the existing materialism which speculates at 
 present on the dependence of mind on brain, and thence will 
 lead logically to a denial of the being of mind where brain does 
 not exist ; even in Deity. In the thick darkness of the Atheism 
 which this doctrine will shed over the earth, all murderous and 
 
REDISTRIBUTION OF MOTIVES. 481 
 
 suicidal passions will hold sway, and the glory of man will be lost 
 in a hell-smoke of infidelity. 
 
 It must, at the commencement of this chapter, be admitted 
 that the present argument, if sustained, will result in nothing less 
 than a redistribution of the pressure of the motives of hope and 
 fear in the sphere of religion ; and therefore will operate a 
 revolution of the most momentous character, defensible only on 
 the ground of Divine Authority clearly demonstrated, and solidly 
 established. Next it must be admitted, with deep concern, that 
 even under the wisest and most God-fearing management of this 
 reformation in public thought on the sanctions and results of 
 divine government among men, much more under the unwise 
 management of it, there is reason to fear that some danger may 
 occur at first in any community where these ideas are suddenly 
 published.* The revulsion against the almost maddening strain 
 of the old theology is often so violent that some untrained minds 
 are likely to be led to views of sin and its punishment at least as 
 dangerous as those against which this movement is a reaction. 
 
 And I would earnestly conjure all into whose hands these 
 pages may fall, and who may be convinced by these arguments, 
 to guard their minds against this danger of reaction which 
 always attends the first stage of theological change ; and not 
 less to guard all whom they influence against the delusive notion 
 that the removal of the prospect of endless misery renders the 
 eternal judgment of ' a sinner ' one to be contemplated otherwise 
 than with overwhelming horror. Under no truly divine method 
 of explaining Christianity can it be made to appear other than 
 transcendent wickedness wilfully to break the laws of Almighty 
 
 * This danger is greatly augmented by the conduct of the advocates of the 
 prevailing doctrine when they represent to the public that our object is to 
 prove that there is ' no hell ' for the wicked. The former editor of the Morn- 
 ing Advertiser has distinguished himself during the last few years by the zealous 
 adoption of these tactics. The evil wrought on the minds of sinful men by 
 such representations is unquestionably great, but we justly disclaim the re- 
 sponsibility for it. If any vicious and sinful men have come to think that there 
 is ' no hell,' this issue has been reached chiefly through the teaching of those 
 who first proclaimed to them an incredible and unbiblical threatening, and then, 
 when rebuked, turned round and dishonestly described us as teaching tha 
 there is no punishment whatsoever. 
 
 31 
 
482 CHRISTADELPHIANISM REJECTED. 
 
 God. It is not indeed a sound argument to assert that sin is 
 an infinite evil, because committed against an Infinite Power and 
 Holiness; for the finite nature of the sinner determines the 
 quality of the action rather than the infinite quality of the Being 
 offended against ; but under the category of finite sins there 
 may be, and there are, offences and courses of offence of a dye 
 so deep that no infliction less than eternal destruction can form 
 a fitting expression of their criminality. And as soon as the 
 public mind has rallied from the early shock of these ideas on 
 the God-given immortality, the first vision which will be seen 
 in the future will be that of a Hell so real, so near, and so tre- 
 mendous, than men will feel as if they had never believed in or 
 dreaded future punishment before. 
 
 If there are those also who, while professing to be fellow- 
 labourers in this enterprise, yet allow the public to think that 
 they have discovered the nullity of our Saviour's awful warnings 
 of woe in the ' furnace of fire ' or who destroy their effect by 
 making them the subject of controversy in a spirit of vain 
 jangling, they must bear the burden of their own immense re- 
 sponsibility. For ourselves, we abjure companionship in such 
 advocacy, and with all our strength warn the offenders of their 
 own danger, as perhaps among the foremost objects of the ' wrath 
 of God.' If any of our contemporaries seek to defend themselves 
 in making light of the threats of positive infliction hereafter, be- 
 hind the lying refuge of biblical ' texts ' and ' passages,' we declare 
 for ourselves that we have found in the New Testament no single 
 page which leads us to think otherwise of ' judgment to come, 7 
 ' the resurrection of damnation,' than as a prospect before which 
 all rejecters of Christ may well 'tremble.' ' The demons also 
 believe, and shudder' (</)iVcrouo-i) (James ii. 19).* 
 
 No doctrine alone, and as an abstraction, will produce saving 
 effects on mankind. A good effect depends on the mode and 
 spirit of its presentation. If the doctrine of eternal life through 
 Christ, and of the miserable destruction of the wicked in hell, be 
 
 * It is needless to disclaim kindred with American ' Christadelphianism, ' 
 which has perverted some of the truths here defended by conjoining them with 
 a materialistic type of Unitarianism. There never yet was any truth set forth 
 which did not suffer from some of its professed friends more than from all its 
 enemies. 
 
CORRUPTION OF EXEGESIS BY PREJUDICE. 483 
 
 proclaimed in a simply dogmatic temper or disputatious tone, it 
 is as little likely to move or appal a sinful person as any other 
 dogma similarly set forth. Truths are often lost to the world 
 through lack of the fitting heralds to publish them. Men who 
 do not fear God, or who do not believe in the righteousness of 
 future vengeance, cannot fittingly speak in Heaven's name to 
 the nations. For if anything moral be true in Divine Revelation, 
 it must be that wilful liars, murderers, drunkards, fornicators, 
 thieves, men-stealers, literary corrupters of Christian truth, dis- 
 honest tradesmen, hypocritical priesthoods, instigators of war, 
 and cruel oppressors, shall suffer in hell the * due reward of their 
 deeds,' ' shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire 
 and brimstone ' (Rev. xxi. 8). 
 
 But now, in the fear of that Tribunal to which we all are 
 hastening, I submit the following considerations in reply to the 
 objections proposed. 
 
 I observe, at the outset, that it is an exceedingly mischievous and 
 delusive method of procedure, in determining the meaning of the 
 records of Revelation a method condemned by all past experi- 
 ence to permit of speculation on the supposed influence of facts 
 and doctrines, before deciding on their existence in the Bible. 
 To permit such a method is fatal to faith in Revelation altogether. 
 Nearly all the prepossessions of mankind derived from uninspired 
 philosophy are hostile to the actual declarations of Christianity. 
 ' Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,' says S. Paul, ' the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath 
 revealed them to us by His Spirit' ' The world by wisdom 
 knew ' neither God nor human nature. Our first business, then, 
 is interpretation and induction, not prophecy. The foremost 
 question is, Are the prophets and apostles of Christ clear and 
 unanimous on these topics ? We judge that they are ; but we 
 think that we can show that none of the anticipated evil conse- 
 quences of teaching this truth will occur. 
 
 For first of all, the doctrine of immortality by reconstruction 
 and resurrection meets, on its own ground, all the many-sided 
 materialism existing in the world, and enables it to believe in 
 God and a gospel of Salvation. The ordinary preacher of to-day 
 
484 ADVANTAGES OF THIS DOCTRINE 
 
 feels that, with his gospel, he can do nothing for materialists. 
 He must have a metaphysical battle with them first, and compel 
 them to change their ideas on human nature, before he can per- 
 suade them to believe in Christ. Now that was not Apostolic 
 Christianity; nor is it ours. The apostles evidently went forth 
 with a Message which could save without delay Epicurean Mate- 
 rialists and Sadducees, without insisting first on a psychological 
 conversion to faith in man's natural immortality and possession of 
 a ' never-dying soul.' 
 
 This is precisely our position. Those who hold this doctrine 
 are not necessarily materialists. I myself am strenuously opposed 
 to that form of opinion. But the ' Gospel which we preach ' is 
 adapted to meet, on their own grounds materialists of every 
 type, with a moral certainty of a glorious result as to multitudes 
 of them. Materialism is a creed which comprises many different 
 ranks of capacity and respectability. There are the bad kinds 
 of materialists, who have resolved that they are only a superior 
 sort of organized animal matter, in order to give an air of 
 philosophy to their much worse that brutal excesses. But there 
 are also many far better types of materialism. You have the 
 scientific materialists who are not atheists ; such as some of our 
 noblest men of research and discovery ; and these maintain a 
 conception of Matter as the effect of Energy so exalted as to 
 include within its possible combinations any degree of created 
 intelligence, without resorting to the hypothesis of a second sub- 
 stance such as Mind or Soul. With these thinkers Matter seems 
 only another name for something like Spirit, so pure and so trans- 
 cendent are their conceptions of its nature. Some of the most 
 distinguished philosophers of past and present ages have adhered 
 to this line of thought, without surrendering their faith in God as 
 the Supreme and Everlasting Energy and Life of this universe. 
 Of this opinion was Milton himself, as is proved both by the 
 explicit argument of his book on the ' Christian Doctrine,' and by 
 the following lines from the fifth book of the ' Paradise Lost ' : 
 
 ' To whom the winged hierarch replied : 
 Oh, Adam, one Almighty is, from whom 
 All things proceed, and up to Him return, 
 If not depraved from good, created all 
 Such to perfection ; one first matter all 
 
IN DEALING WITH MATERIALISTS. 485 
 
 Endued with various forms, various degrees 
 Of substance, and in things that live, of life. 
 But more refined, more spirituous and pure, 
 As nearer to Him placed, or nearer tending, 
 Each in their several active spheres assigned, 
 Till body up to spirit work, in bounds 
 Proportioned to each kind.' BK. v. 
 
 Of the same opinion still are not a few of the ablest thinkers 
 in all parts of the world to-day, theists they are, notwithstand- 
 ing. Then next, there are the materialistic scientific and literary 
 men, who are really Atheists also, but rather preferring to be 
 called Agnostics than Atheists ; and some of them of a character 
 so noble, so pure, so lovely, so sorrowfully sinking into the last 
 and deepest abysses of doubt, that Religious Faith, instead of 
 anathematising, must stretch forth a most loving hand to help 
 their sinking souls before they die. 
 
 Now the doctrine of life in Christ is a form of Christianity 
 which is specially adapted to take hold of men who are thus con- 
 vinced of the materiality of mind. It would be a poor thing if the 
 Gospel had no word for those who were Sadducees, as well as for 
 the Pharisees, if it could do naught to save men who are philo- 
 sophical materialists ; especially when we consider how tough and 
 difficult an argument is required even from such men as Doctors 
 Balfour Stewart, Tait, and Martineau, to beat out of their delusions 
 a Mill, a Spencer, and a Tyndal. But we find it to be a matter 
 of simple experience, that men of all intellectual grades, who, for 
 one reason or another, have become theoretical materialists, and 
 who, if abandoned to the influence of that philosophy alone, 
 would be compelled to surrender all expectation of a future state 
 for man, are drawn to faith in a future state, and faith in God as 
 the Saviour in Christ, and faith in immortality by Resurrection ; 
 so that numbers of these are being trained for the kingdom of 
 heaven in a life truly spiritual. Christ, who is the Word made 
 flesh, exerts a power which lifts them up to God, with a hope full 
 of immortality. 
 
 Among these certainly must be reckoned the multitudes of 
 Christian believers who have received the Gospel of Christ on out 
 theological representation of it, but on a philosophical basis of 
 
486 SALVATION OF SADDUCEES 
 
 materialism. Apart from Christianity, they would be materialists 
 without a future. But see the effect of the teaching of Life by 
 Christ and by Resurrection. These men, in masses, have become 
 Christians. These Christian brethren have no faith in man's 
 possession of a ' soul ' or ' spirit,' in the popular sense of the 
 words. But they love life in its highest form, in God's likeness, 
 and long for life eternal, and they have believed in Christ to 
 salvation. Him they regard as the resurrection, and embrace 
 Him with all their hearts. There are not a few prominent 
 examples of such believers, led by the Spirit of God to Christ as 
 the Life-Giver. 
 
 It has simply saved these men, as it is saving similar mate- 
 rialistic thinkers every day, who find this form of Christianity 
 precisely adapted to meet their needs. And when I consider the 
 difficulty and the complexity of the psychological argument for a 
 survival of the spirit, I am the less desirous of resting all the hopes 
 of the world on such an obscure foundation; and tenaciously 
 hold with Mr. Constable that the main object of faith is Resur- 
 rection by the power of Christ, reconstruction of the whole 
 humanity by the Omnipotence of God. This is a basis of hope 
 common to men of all opinions as to the nature of the thinking 
 substance, and which invites alike the trust of spiritualists and 
 materialists. Neither does it require much experience to show 
 that not a few of these 'materialistic' believers in Christ are 
 among the most ' spiritual ' persons living on the earth men of 
 the purest lives, of the firmest faith in things unseen and eternal, 
 of dauntless purpose, of heroic self-sacrifice, of devoted love to 
 their Saviour, and of the tenderest sympathy to mankind. They 
 live with Christ now, they think that in death their whole being 
 will dissolve, but that Christ, whose members they are, is coming 
 quickly ' to create them anew, to immortalise and glorify them,' 
 and that they will have no sense of the interval between death 
 and resurrection. I ask if this can be called a brutalising result 
 of the Doctrine of Conditional Immortality. The wide diffusion in 
 this day of scientific and semi-scientific materialism cannot be pre- 
 vented ; there are millions who, led on by Spencer and Maudsley, 
 will not listen to the old doctrine of the Immortality of the 
 Soul, and the more you preach it to them the more fiercely they 
 revolt, and point to the phenomena of cerebral formation and 
 
AS IMPORTANT AS THAT OF PHARISEES. 487 
 
 cerebral decay ; but to us the extension of these ideas, however 
 lamentable, is not so fatal a hindrance as it is to the advocates of 
 natural immortality. We can preach a credible Christianity, and 
 a present salvation to all materialists, high and low, by preaching 
 to them Jesus and the Resurrection. To this they will listen. 
 Their faith becomes an antidote to their philosophy, and they will, 
 perhaps, some day learn to think differently on the one question 
 which .still divides us. 
 
 2. But we have a second answer to the charge of materialistic 
 tendencies, which goes deeper into the real causes of materialism. 
 A perfectly logical materialism which, denying a spiritual basis of 
 mind in man, denies it also in the universe, and enforces the 
 result in a speculative positivism and atheism, may under certain 
 circumstances become a real danger to society. It may cornet 
 the tone of popular feeling as to the moral dignity of man, and @f 
 popular faith as to his relations with an Unseen Deity. It is not 
 we who have produced it. 
 
 But how may it best be encountered and overcome? My 
 answer is, not by any simply metaphysical or philosophical 
 process, not by a psychology which may be riddled by the 
 objections of Mr. Herbert Spencer, or made to look doubtful 
 even by Mr. Holyoake. It cannot be checked by discourses 
 on the immortality of the soul, nor even by the additional bribe 
 to faith of a promise of universal discipline and salvation. No ; 
 the true remedy for a debasing materialism (for I will not admit 
 that Milton's materialism was debasing) is to be found in the 
 moral rather than in the intellectual realms of thought. It will 
 be found, not in a contrary theory as to the substratum of mind, 
 or as to the eternity of the thinking power, but in the preaching 
 of a credible judgment to come, and of the grace of God in the 
 salvation purchased by Christ. 
 
 If you wish to overcome the evil types of atheistic materialism, 
 you must awaken conscience, rather than entangle the intellect in 
 doubtful disputations. 
 
 Men's philosophies spring from a great depth within them, from 
 their spiritual states. Bid them, then, listen to the awful voice 
 within, the utterance of a Will above the will, which persists in 
 
488 METHOD OF REACHING MATERIALISTS. 
 
 denouncing wrong and sin, and inspires an expectation of judg- 
 ment. The liar, the thief, the fornicator, the adulterer, the 
 murderer, knows in himself, when once awakened to solemn 
 thought, that it is not incredible that there are consequences 
 beyond and consequences of the most tremendous character. 
 These may be by survival or by the resurrection of damnation. 
 Whatever makes these consequences appear credible, near, and 
 certain, tends to awaken such reflections. Whatever removes the 
 fear which an evil conscience inspires, whether it be an infinity of 
 threatening, which generates unbelief, or the bold assurance of a 
 general delivery from perdition at last, is so much gain for mate- 
 rialism. Whatever confirms the voice of the inward witness, and 
 points to the ' great white throne ' of judgment, as the needle to 
 the pole-star, is so much gain for a spiritual view of life and its 
 belongings. 
 
 But this is not the complete answer. Christ is in every sense 
 the Light of the world. His special message is n jt that of Terror, 
 but of Mercy. Proclaim that mercy. Preach the Gospel to every 
 creature. Bring near, with a heart that feels it, the love of God 
 to sinners. Set before them Christ ' openly crucified for them,' 
 ' bearing their offences, carrying their sorrows ; ' declare to the 
 penitent the remission of their sins and you will wield against 
 the bad sorts of materialism the most powerful weapon in the 
 world. 
 
 The true antidote to materialism is not found in a bold ignor- 
 ing of facts as to the generation of human nature, or as to its 
 structure and functions ; much less in setting up a metaphysic 
 which confounds survival with eternal duration, and even main- 
 tains survival of the soul by arguments which revolt the judg- 
 ment of many of the foremost philosophers of the age. The true 
 remedy is to overthrow materialism by ' saving ' materialists, and 
 this is precisely what the doctrine of Redemption to Immortality 
 by Resurrection especially enables us to do. It presents Chris- 
 tianity to man's conscience, judgment, and affection, disentangled 
 from theories which dissipate its force by awakening scepticism 
 rather than faith injthe hearers. 
 
DECAY OF PUBLIC FAITH IN HELL, 489 
 
 I. 
 
 But now to sum up on the positive side : So far is it from 
 being true that, in relinquishing the ancient tenets of immortality 
 and eternal suffering, we endanger the hold of religion on the 
 fears of uagodly men, and banish a wholesome dread of God's 
 judgments from His own servants that on the contrary it will 
 be found, under every spiritual and pathetic presentation of the 
 doctrine of life only in Christ, there is a large gain on the side even 
 of a useful fear. The eternal hells of all religions are dreadful 
 to hear of at first ; but there is this hindrance to their operation 
 on the mind as a converting motive that they are not believed 
 in by men whom you most desire to alarm. The ordinary Hindoo 
 or Mohammedan believes as little in his eternal hell as the 
 English quick-witted artisan or man of science. There is this 
 circumstance attending the preaching of such a prospect that 
 the more earnestly it is studied the less it is believed in whether 
 by clown or philosopher, wise or unwise. The general alienation 
 from Christianity, of the scientific, literary, and labouring classes 
 of Europe, so far as it is speculative, is the final result of a 
 scepticism which began with a denial of the endless torment of 
 the lost. There can be no surer indication of the deep popular 
 disbelief than this that the habitual language of profane cursing 
 and swearing, which nominally is derived from the orthodox doc- 
 trine of damnation, runs from the lips of the utterers without the 
 faintest sign of faith in the reality of what they imprecate on each 
 other's heads.* Much, indeed, that they hear from the most 
 modern enlightenment concerning the everlasting destiny of 
 wicked men, is well fitted to ' alleviate ' the terror. ' In bodily, 
 awful, intolerable torture,' says Mr. F. W. Robertson {Sermons, i. 
 133), ' we believe no longer. At the idea of a bodily hell we 
 have learned to smile.' In order to maintain the eternity of hell, 
 hell has been robbed of its real and appreciable terrors. But it 
 is only thus that the eternity of it can be maintained in the pre- 
 sent day. Meantime the Christ of the Bible unveils a future, 
 with a ' furnace of fire,' at which no man should ' smile.' 
 
 * I recently heard a London carman in a raging passion consigning to 
 ' damnation ' his stubborn team of horses. 
 
490 PLACE OF TERROR IN EVANGELIZATION. 
 
 The author of the Victory of Divine Goodness teaches in effect 
 that hell is eternal, but the mistake has been in supposing it to be 
 a ' place of torment.' According to him, it seems to be rather an 
 inferior Paradise in Gehenna for the solace of the damned. 
 
 It is not an awful severity in the judgment denounced which 
 occasions unbelief, for both nature and Scripture show that God 
 is as really a Destroying Power as He is Light and Love ; but it 
 is the infinity of the threatening which has rendered it powerless 
 to produce fear. The intellect and the moral judgment are set 
 against the menace which ought to carry both in one combined 
 force to operate on the will.* There are many who have been 
 accustomed to wield the common dogma as an instrument of 
 immense power over the imaginations of debased sinners, and 
 who are capable of no other spiritual action, who will at once 
 declare 'that Satan rejoices over the proposed change in the 
 
 * At present the common doctrine seems to the coarser working people, 
 when they think at all, too horrible to be true ; just as a wicked navigator 
 recently said to a city missionary, who was urging him to repent, as he sat in 
 the mud over his midday dinner * But do you really think, master, that God 
 Almighty will put me in fire for ever and ever, after putting me in this here 
 muck all my lifetime ? ' And not thinking this to be true, they lose the 
 restraining influence of all the threatenings in the Bible, and drink, and drink 
 to perdition. M. Karr rightly says, ' Exaggerations of doctrine are like 
 those barriers that are too lofty for horses to leap, and which they quietly pass 
 under.' As for the large majority of irreligious educated men throughout 
 Europe, and the multitude of well- instructed artisans, they have thrown off 
 religious faith altogether, and specially faith in hell, alleging the incredibility 
 of this very dogma. Whatever you exaggerate you weaken. 
 
 The progress of drunkenness in England requires for its repression not merely 
 the advocacy of total abstinence, but Christ's distinct threatening of the 'furnace 
 of fire ' to all those who defy God by practising, or abetting with their capital, 
 habits of intoxication. If all the preachers of God's Word believed in that 
 ' Gehenna ' of which Christ speaks, and would firmly present the credible but 
 overwhelming prospect of the spiritual and physical Hell of Revelation before 
 the people, it is probable that multitudes would dash from their lips the cup 
 which to many is nothing less than the 'cup of derils,' and perhaps frighten 
 out of their gainful occupations some of those ' religious ' distillers and brewers 
 who are among the chief causes of national ruin, and at the same time the chief 
 lay supporters of so many perversions of Christian doctrine. But alas ! not 
 one preacher in a hundred speaks of this ' Gehenna of Fire ' as if he believed 
 in it. Yet Christ, who did preach it, was to the full as compassionate as the 
 enlightened scholars who teach the common people that ' torment ' is ' largely 
 figurative. ' 
 
JUDGMENT ON MEN OF EDUCATION. 491 
 
 Church's faith.' The idea is that headstrong sinners, both men 
 and women, deeply committed to a life of vice and crime, will be 
 sure to say, ' Oh, there is to be an end to hell-torments, is there ? 
 Very well, we are glad to hear it ; and we will, therefore, persist 
 in our enjoyments, and risk the consequences.' But the persons 
 who put this speech into the mouths of reprobates forget that 
 those profligates have enjoyed the full restraining advantage of 
 the threatening of everlasting woe, with scarce an interruption 
 during all their lifetime, and that even this has not deterred them 
 from their dreadful career. They are already as wicked as they 
 can be, and cannot be made worse by the modification of a 
 threatening which they have utterly disbelieved in and defied. 
 It is even possible that some alteration in the way of presenting 
 God's justice and love to them may work for the better, and 
 diminish their blasphemies. 
 
 What is needed to arouse such profligates to reflection, and 
 still more to alarm those numerous Men of Education whom the 
 divine revelation distinctly threatens with the greater 'judgment,' 
 but who never associate the idea of perdition with their own 
 destiny, I refer to the teaching and ruling class, the unfaithful 
 Ministers of Religion, the Traffickers in souls and many corrupt 
 Men of Literature and Art, who pervert to meanest or vilest uses 
 heaven's divinest gifts the Statesmen, who defy in legislation and 
 government the plainest laws of morals, all at present encased like 
 leviathan in impenetrable armour, to make them 'tremble' at 
 'judgment to come,' and to bring them to repentance, is the 
 proclamation of a future remediless punishment, which carries its 
 own credentials along with it ; and while shaking the souls of 
 sinners, even the most intelligent, as at a fiery ' handwriting on 
 the wall,' with a deep, convulsive dread, shall leave no valid ground 
 for moral speculations on its injustice and improbability. 
 
 Such is, I submit, the doctrine of Judgment as here set forth. 
 It will not, indeed, form a Dantesque subject for hard and unreal 
 pulpit rhetoric ; but it fulfils those conditions of credibility, crush- 
 ing terribleness, nearness, and finality, which are necessary to 
 move the souls which can be moved by terror at all. The history 
 of modern reforms in the criminal law demonstrates how much 
 greater a deterring power is possessed by certainty and nearness 
 than by disproportionate and indefinite or dubious terribleness, in 
 
492 THE CREDIBILITY OF THREATENINGS. 
 
 a threat. And men who can be morally * moved with fear ' will 
 more certainly be reached by the warning of an irremediable 
 wrath to come, which is nothing less than the consuming fire 
 of Deity, visiting with destruction its implacable adversaries, and 
 ' so repaying the sinner to his face,' than by any unauthorised 
 representations. 
 
 I venture, then, to set it down as a much-needed gain on the 
 side even of terror, that, under this view of God's dealings with 
 wicked men, retribution may be heartily believed in, in its grada- 
 tions and equitable proportions ; and none will see better reason 
 to fear it than those hardened men and women of fashion and 
 ability who now confidently fling every threatening of hell behind 
 their backs. For there is no conception of a future state more 
 awful and more probable as a retribution to powerful minds who 
 have spent their lifetime in exerting ruinous influence upon their 
 fellow-men, than that they should be compelled to ' remember ' 
 the whole sum of evil which they have wrought in the universe, 
 where no ' drop of water will be given to cool the tongue ' which 
 once poured forth, perhaps, its eloquent blasphemies, or philosophy 
 falsely so called, or polluting verses, against the sovereignty of 
 God, and then suffer ' everlasting destruction from the presence 
 of the Lord and the glory of His power. '* 
 
 II. 
 
 But another advantage of an alteration in the methods of 
 approaching sinful men, to persuade them to repentance, will be 
 found in this ; that the doctrine of the gift of life enables us to 
 bring to bear on their understanding, conscience, and affections, a 
 view of the character of their Maker and God incomparably more 
 efficacious in winning them to a new life than all the threatenings of 
 endless suffering which can be set before their minds. 
 
 I am far from recommending this system of belief as a universal 
 
 * This is the answer to such positions as that of the Rev. A. Thompson, 
 Chairman of the Congregational Union for 1875, that ' it is not by any fancied 
 irradiation of the dark problems of Retribution that we shall commend God's 
 character to the confidence of men.' This is just what the high Calvinists say 
 of their creed, yet high Calvinism is distinctly guilty of producing infidelity, 
 throughout Scotland, and elsewhere. 
 
VIEW Of THE EVIL OF SIN. 493 
 
 remedy for that deep-rooted enmity to a Sovereign God which 
 dwells in many souls, and which not even the most perfect ex- 
 hibition of truth can overcome, as we see in the failure of Christ's 
 ministry among the Jewish nation, and in ten thousand other 
 examples. Such men will be humbled only by ' the fierceness 
 of the wrath of the Lord God Almighty.' But in every religion 
 the chief moral force is the GOD whom it reveals, and whose 
 sovereignty it establishes. A sleeping Boodh sends nations to 
 sleep. An impure Vishnu depraves all India. An infinitely 
 terrific Power hardens and alienates the people. A God of more 
 intelligible justice and mercy will more powerfully ' draw all men 
 unto Him.' 
 
 Theologians have sometimes given the impression that the chief 
 attribute of God is His incomprehensibility. But this notion has 
 more of a ' show of humility ' than of real submission. God has 
 'revealed Himself.' He is no longer incomprehensible. If In-* 
 finite Wisdom were asked, as has been well said, what is the sum 
 of twice six, the answer would not be an unknown quantity or an 
 endless line of figures, but the limited number twelve. In the 
 same way God will commend Himself to created judgments in 
 His moral dealings, and will punish and reward according to the 
 knowledge and ability of His creatures with an appreciable equity. 
 Theology, since the days of the apostles, has done at least as 
 much to conceal as to open Divine Revelation. The rules of 
 thought, the laws of interpretation, the measures of deference to 
 authority, accounted specially learned and orthodox seem to 
 have been devised in good part almost as if on purpose to build 
 up apostasy in the Church, and atheism in the world. 
 
 Here, then, it behoves us to consider the allegation so confi- 
 dently pressed forward, that the doctrine now defended lowers 
 men's views of the Evil of Sin, considered as a transgression of 
 the law of God. 
 
 The views taken by men of the evil of sin may respect either 
 its consequences to themselves, or its intrinsic unrighteousness ; 
 and these are widely different. There are many who never think 
 of the evil of sin, except as regards the harm and mischief it will 
 bring to themselves, and that is indeed one mode of estimating 
 evil ; for sin is full of danger to the offender. But they never 
 
494 INFLUENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE 
 
 consider its intrinsic hatefulness, or its unfilial character as com- 
 mitted against their Father and God. Their sole idea of the evil 
 of sin is gathered from the danger to which it exposes them. 
 
 The single religious influence which reaches them therefore is 
 fear, and it is thought the greater the terribleness the more the 
 restraint, and the more probable the repentance. It is held that 
 the moment the idea is suggested to men, that the consequences 
 of their lives will not be ' so bad as they thought before,' they will 
 take a full swing, and run all risks, if they may but enjoy their 
 sinful pleasures for a season. The one thing which can exercise 
 any restraint upon them is thought to be the fear of endless misery 
 in hell.* But this view is founded on a gross delusion. Men, in 
 general, are neither restrained from sin nor drawn to God, by 
 representations concerning the eternity of hell. It requires faith 
 to lead them to fear judgment, and this requires the awakening of 
 conscience by a filial repentance. But the world is without faith. 
 It was Noah who was ' moved with fear,' not the ' world of the 
 ungodly.' They were filled with violence, notwithstanding the 
 preaching of the prophets. Souls are not now moved or drawn 
 to God even by the threat of endless torment. The world has 
 enjoyed the advantage of this threatening for ages, and resisted 
 it. With one consent men think it incredible, disproportionate, 
 unreal ; the more you educate them the more they think so ; and 
 the present result is a more thorough freedom from anxiety about 
 judgment to come, and sense of the 'evil of sin,' than has perhaps 
 ever been seen before. Men either believe that their sins are not 
 bad enough to deserve that doom, or that there must be some 
 road out of such an infinite horror for them, in an unrevealed 
 scheme of universal salvation ; or they give up thinking about 
 religion altogether because they cannot understand the character 
 of God. Our country is half filled with young people whose faith 
 is thus shaken to the foundation. 
 
 Never did mankind in general dread less the evil of sin, in the 
 
 * This seems to be the ruling thought of some at least of our opponents. The 
 Rev. Bodfield Hooper clearly believes that if he could make the hair of his 
 parishioners stand on end; with fright all the year round,* he would greatly 
 aid their salvation. See Endless Sufferings the Doctrine of Scripture, 1877, 
 a book in which there is not one word of tenderness from the beginning to 
 the end. 
 
ON UNGODLY MEN. 495 
 
 sense even of its danger, than to-day, and that notwithstanding 
 the spirit of profane and lustful excess which fills the world ; and 
 I attribute this chiefly to the effect of the doctrine of endless 
 misery. We therefore rebut the accusation with all our strength. 
 Nothing is more needed than a reform in that part of theology 
 which treats of penalties. Just as penalties which were too severe 
 to be believed in by criminals in former times were inoperative 
 they were too terrific to frighten men so it is in religion. Hang- 
 ing for sheep-stealing was thought to be too terrible a punishment 
 to be executed, and sheep continued to be stolen until the penalty 
 was made one which could be believed in. So it will be in re- 
 ligion. The day which sees a revival in Europe of the vigorous 
 teaching of some formidable doctrine on future punishment, 
 credible by the general intelligence of humanity, some doctrine 
 which men cannot put aside, saying, 'It is too horrible to be 
 true ; ' which will come home to their consciences as just, to 
 their fears as most awful, and which will shut out all hope of 
 redemption from it, when once the indignation begins, that day 
 will see, among the impressible part of mankind, a wholly new 
 public opinion prevailing on the evil of sin, taking this phrase 
 now to signify only its dangerousness to the wicked. That day will 
 see the majority still, I fear, unmoved, impenitent, ' past feeling/ 
 as in the days of Noah ; but it will see those souls which can be 
 reached at all impressed with a sense of the reality both of God's 
 judgment and mercy as never before. 
 
 Hitherto we have considered the question only of the Evil of 
 Sin in its dangerousness to men, and the comparative influence 
 of the two doctrines of punishment upon mankind in the way of 
 alarming them by the prospect of judgment. 
 
 But there is another view of the subject. The apostles were 
 not in the habit of pressing by threats of endless torment a rejected 
 gospel for years on the same people. ' Seeing ye put it from you, 
 and judge yourselves unworthy of endless life, lo, we turn to the 
 nations, and they will hear it ' (Acts xiii. 46). Suppose, then, we 
 think less of the hardened part of mankind, for whom corrupters 
 of religion have been inventing terrific, or decorative, types of 
 
496 LACK OF LOYALTY TO GOD. 
 
 ' national Christianity ' for nearly two thousand years. Suppose 
 we think a little more of those who can be reached by spiritual 
 influences, of those young souls who are seeking after God in 
 solitary places, of those perplexed but amenable spirits whom 
 sorrow and fear and merciful invitations are drawing back to their 
 Father : is there nothing to be said here of the possibly beneficial 
 effect of some improvement in the representation of truth? 
 Would not their sense of the evil of sin be deepened if they were 
 permitted to feel that the system of God's government is morally 
 intelligible if they could be assisted to see all things in the light 
 of an intelligible justice and love, not in the red glare of that lake 
 into which they have been taught to think so large a portion of 
 the creation around them is going to burn for ever ? Sin will 
 never seem so evil as when we can, with heart and soul and 
 strength, like David, ' sing aloud ' with joy to God our 
 Redeemer. 
 
 What is lacking in the spiritual life of most men is a feeling of 
 intelligent loyalty to God a love of His righteous will, because 
 it is His will. And the reason men do not feel this is, I think, 
 because they cannot. They are too full of doubt, distrust, and 
 secret controversy with His supposed government, to be able to 
 feel it. The root of this evil is in the doctrine of endless misery, 
 springing out of the doctrine of man's natural immortality. Men 
 thence hold views of the Divine Administration which confound 
 the conscience, and freeze up spiritual loyalty at its fountain. 
 
 If Christians are to be converted thoroughly, to contend stren- 
 uously, pray earnestly, they must maintain doctrine in which they 
 heartily believe. If you would have them hate evil, you must 
 make known to them a God whose very name acts as a watchword 
 that sets their souls on fire. It is not an enthusiasm for humanity 
 which Christ sought to inspire so much as this rare enthusiasm 
 for Divinity ; and that cannot exist where scepticism is eating like 
 rottenness through the bones. There is no occasion to dread the 
 lack of wholesome fear. Terror sufficient for all practical ends of 
 suasion will remain in the awful prospect of the real Gehenna ; 
 but we shall have, as now a long experience proves in many 
 lands, an added strength of rational conviction, of satisfied justice, 
 of joy, of love, in which will be found far more than a compensa- 
 tion for the lost doctrine of a misery that shall never end. 
 
TERROR AN ANIMAL NOT MORAL EMOTION. 497 
 
 But beyond all this it should be observed that, when we analyse 
 the nature of Terror the feeling which it is the end at least of 
 the announcement of God's external judgments to awaken we 
 find that it is not a moral emotion at all, but only an animal 
 passion. You can frighten a horse or a dog, and you can also 
 frighten a man, with a prospect of present or future infliction. 
 But what you cannot do is to perpetuate the alarm ; for all animal 
 passions, terror among them, are of transitory operation. Each 
 fit passes away, and each fresh excitement is weaker than the last. 
 So it is seen in wicked men. The moral alarm which springs 
 from more spiritual views of God's holiness is less often awakened. 
 Physical terror predominates in ordinary minds, and you see the 
 result of it in those older ' revivals,' where the chief influence was 
 terrific. You cannot reach any in these days, except the most 
 ignorant and thoughtless, with the threat of endless physical 
 misery ; and if you could, the impression would be but transitory. 
 Multitudes hear these menaces without a pang, and ' take sittings ' 
 to listen to them, if eloquently set forth by a tragical preacher. 
 
 The true use of terror is to awaken by a sudden blast of the 
 trump of God. If it fail in that, it is powerless for good after- 
 wards. The threatening of a judgment on the soul and body, a 
 judgment to be inflicted on the earth, at the end of all things, and 
 proved by all the evidence of Christianity, will awaken those who 
 are susceptible of the saving influences of the Gospel. These are, 
 truth addressing the understanding, grace appealing to the affec- 
 tions, holiness appealing to the repenting will. These, and these 
 alone, are the permanent springs of spiritual life, while terror of 
 itself can neither convert nor sanctify. 
 
 It is holy love which wins the heart, spiritualises the conscience, 
 and transforms the character ; and the doctrine here defended un- 
 veils that LOVE OF GOD which is, the transforming Power, like 
 the bright shining of the morning Sun. It is sin which fills men with 
 undefined alarms, and leads them to think they do God's service 
 by depicting Him as pagans conceive of their terrific divinities. 
 There cannot, indeed, be genuine love to God which has not 
 been preceded by some deep sense of danger and of guilt j but 
 it is through loving delight, not by overwhelming fear, that the 
 power of sin is to be extinguished in the soul. In a word, that is 
 the safest religion, not which attempts to maintain incessant dread 
 
 32 
 
498 INCREASE IN STRENGTH OF NOBLER MOTIVES. 
 
 of eternal suffering, but that which most steadily upholds within 
 man's heart the influence of law, love, reason, truth, joy, divine 
 authority, delicacy of moral sentiment, and filial awe. 
 
 The evil of sin does not consist chiefly, as many coarser 
 preachers to the populace suppose, in its being an offence against 
 a Power which is able and willing to inflict unending torment 
 upon evil doers, but in its being a wilful opposition to the Eternal 
 Light of love and of righteousness. He has not the deepest 
 sense of sin who most dreads the avenging rod, but he who most 
 keenly feels the hatefulness of insurrection against the Father of 
 Spirits and the All-satisfying Good. Terror of an infinite infliction 
 generates selfish views of sin, and selfish views of the evil of sin 
 are in common minds a hindrance to ingenuous repentance. 
 Fear may arouse, but it is confidence (Trapprja-ia) which wins 
 men into union with God. From the throne of God there issue 
 ' lightnings and mighty thunderings,' but God is Love ; and the 
 consuming fire of judgment is kindled in defence of that law of 
 love which proceeds from the Nature of the Everlasting. 
 
 The threatening of eternal misery also loses its hold upon the 
 mind exactly in proportion to the development of those faculties 
 which take cognisance of the character of God as displayed in all 
 His other operations : and this hinders it from acting with the 
 steady force of an appreciable motive. For even if it be true that 
 occasionally the mists of time disperse and permit a momentary 
 glance over the fiery eternity, the very circumstance of the end' 
 lessness of the vision has a tendency to draw the attention away 
 from that near and immediate prospect of judgment, which follows 
 on death, to the inconceivably remote futurity, whose distance, 
 through the dimness of the perspective, invests it with a haze of 
 unreality, and prevents it from exercising a definite influence on 
 the conduct of life. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is matter of fact that a considerable 
 number of persons, including some of the highest power, who 
 have seen cause to adopt the foregoing interpretations of Scripture, 
 have declared that, in consequence of the modification of their 
 ideas, Redemption, as a display of the Holy Love and Justice of 
 God, has become a subject of constant and delightful thought, 
 so that Christianity in general has assumed an air of stronger 
 reality ; that since, in the language of Baxter, faith has become, 
 
FAITH, CONSCIENCE, AND REASON. 499 
 
 in all its exercises, an act of the conscience and reason, God has 
 drawn nearer to them ; they have perceived fresh force in the 
 command to love the Lord their God with all their understand- 
 ings as well as with all their hearts ; and finally, that, instead of 
 the lustre of the gospel truths which they believed before being 
 diminished, those truths have come forth into high relief, marked 
 with a grander and more vivid outline, and surrounded by a 
 brighter radiance, as if a faded fresco-painting had been trans- 
 formed into statuary, and illuminated by the beams of the sun. 
 
 III. 
 
 But we must now encounter a final objection urged on all sides 
 with wonderful confidence that it is wholly irreconcilable with 
 any rational view of the Divine Attributes of Wisdom, Justice, or 
 Goodness, thus to represent the Almighty as ' raising wicked me* 
 from a state of death only to inflict on them a second and more 
 thorough annihilation? Or, as it is sometimes stated, ' it is wholly 
 unreasonable to think that, whereas under the original law of 
 creation men would simply have died in Adam for Adam's sin, 
 through Christ they have incurred the risk and the condemnation 
 of punishment in hell for untold ages.' The indictment varies. 
 When it is the object to represent this doctrine as teaching a pur- 
 poseless resurrection of the wicked, then they are said to rise 
 again 'only to suffer annihilation.' When it is the object to show 
 that men incur a heavier curse through redemption than through 
 the original covenant of works, then wicked men are said to be 
 raised to ' suffer for untold ages.' 
 
 Before offering a reply it is necessary to reject both of thete 
 misleading modes of stating the doctrine in question. It forms 
 no part of the doctrine, as maintained by us, that any wicked men 
 will be raised from the dead ' simply to be put to death a second 
 time.' After God has gathered out of the world's population by 
 methods of grace on earth, or in Hades, all salvable persons, 
 there will remain for the 'judgment of the last day ' and the 
 ' resurrection of damnation ' those alone who will deserve seme 
 terrible positive infliction as the antecedent to extinction, part of 
 the sentence of a ' miserable destruction ; ' an infliction which will 
 explode the delusion that they are raised again ' only just for the 
 
Soo ARE WICKED MEN RAISED FROM DEATH, 
 
 purpose of being annihilated.' This infliction will be lighter or 
 heavier according to men's knowledge, and according to the 
 malignky of their crimes ; but while some will endure few stripes, 
 others are said to be beaten with many stripes, to endure ' tribula- 
 tion and anguish] words which raise an awful conception of 
 impending woe. 
 
 But, it is said, this will be suffering with a view to destruction / 
 and this is inconsistent with any intelligible view of divine justice, 
 or goodness. 
 
 It may be answered at once that at least it is more consistent 
 with intelligible ideas of divine justice and goodness than the 
 orthodox doctrine, that they are to be raised to suffer without 
 amendment, and without mitigation, through eternity. Indeed, 
 the advocates of the doctrine of everlasting suffering have no 
 locus standt, as opponents of this view of the Scripture doctrine, 
 on the ground of its inconsistency with the divine attributes. 
 They, at all events, must be silent ; for the human mind can form 
 no conception of either goodness or justice in the infliction of a 
 misery out of all proportion to the finite quality of the sinner, 
 and which has no end. 
 
 The true supporters of the present objection are the advocates 
 of a positive doctrine on the salvation of all men. And to this 
 objection as proceeding from them we have to offer a respectful 
 answer. Their theodicy is based on the belief that out of all evil 
 God will bring eternal good, even to the offending individuals in 
 the kingdom of darkness. Ours is based on the conviction, not 
 ' philosophical ' in its origin, but simply derived inductively from 
 the instincts of our moral being, and by fair interpretation of the 
 apostolic writings that the final universal ' reconciliation of all 
 things ' will be reached through the salvation of some and the. 
 destruction of some, when ' God shall be all in all.' 
 
 The Universalists hold that under a paternal government, 
 punishment must needs possess the quality of chastisement, and 
 issue in the final purification of the condemned. It is held to be 
 a contradiction to all enlightened views of the divine wisdom and 
 love to suppose that God can intend to inflict a punishment 
 which is capital and remediless, or that the Heavenly Father can 
 lift His almighty hand to 'slay His sons.' 
 
 Such a theology, we submit, not only offers violence to the 
 
6 ONLY JUST TO BE ANNIHILATED'? 501 
 
 record in which is contained the Revelation of the Holy Spirit 
 of Christ, but is opposed to every defensible idea of the divine 
 character and government. It is an introduction, into the sphere 
 of divine rule, of notions which, although popular enough in 
 modern legislation, are misleading when applied to the interpreta- 
 tion of God's dealings with His rebellious creatures. 
 
 The mistake has arisen from confounding God's action towards 
 us in grace (and the new corresponding rule of conduct, which 
 forbids vindictive or compensatory behaviour to those who offend 
 us) with God's action in law, and His dealings in judgment with 
 those who, having refused His mercy, must feel the weight of His 
 justice. This distinction is pointed out by S. Paul in these 
 words : ' Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give 
 place unto wrath, for it is written, "To me belongs vengeance, / 
 will repay," saith the Lord' (Rom. xii. 19). So far as the rule of 
 State government in criminal law proceeds on the refusal to con- 
 template ' righteous vengeance' (for blind vindictiveness none 
 would advocate), this has been caused in part perhaps by the 
 conjunction of the Church with the State, through which evan- 
 gelical rules of conduct have been erroneously assumed as proper 
 maxims of government by law. 
 
 Of the three objects which may be contemplated in the inflic- 
 tion of penal suffering (i) vengeance, (2) prevention, or (3) the 
 reformation of the offender, the first, vengeance, or the retri- 
 butive infliction of pain or death for wrong committed, ' the due 
 reward ' of evil deeds, suffering inflicted because it is deserved, 
 has latterly, through the influence of a few, chiefly sceptical, 
 philosophers, been excluded from the objects aimed at in modern 
 criminal legislation. It is held to be unworthy of a beneficent 
 sovereignty to 'return evil for evil,' or to exact pain or death 
 simply for the satisfaction of vengeance. The intellectual process 
 by which Bentham and his followers have succeeded in establish- 
 ing this view of the nature of punishment is one of the most 
 curious phenomena in the history of statesmanship. This trium- 
 phant school will permit only of two ends in criminal legislation 
 prevention of similar offences, by affixing pain or loss to the 
 offence ; and personal reformation of the offender, to be carefully 
 considered in every stage of the chastisement. 
 
502 ON THE VENGEANCE OF GOD. 
 
 This philosophy of punishment has at length asserted its 
 authority in theology, and we are now taught, almost as a first 
 principle in divinity, that under the government of God there can 
 be but two ends in punishment Prevention and Reformation. 
 Vengeance, Retribution, Remediless Punishment, is not to be 
 considered as possible for an instant under the government of 
 Eternal Love. The ' Fatherhood of God ' is security that every 
 sinner, if punished for a time, shall be. punished no longer than 
 the interests of himself and the universe require, and shall, having 
 received correction in the visitation, 'come forth as gold.' This 
 philosophy necessarily issues in Universalism.* 
 
 We dispute its first axioms. Against the notion that it is 
 inconceivable that God should punish for any other than benevo- 
 lent and reformatory ends, it must be maintained that the radical 
 idea of punishment for sin committed is in the Divine Govern- 
 ment, as in all unperverted human governments, a retribution for 
 the wrong done. This is the most ancient idea of penalty, but 
 none the less just and true for its antiquity. It is the idea which 
 springs first from the depths of man's moral nature, before it has 
 been perverted by atheism. Wrong-doing deserves punishment or 
 pain ; this is one of the deepest laws of our moral nature, which 
 originated in the depths of the Divine Nature. The sinner 
 deserves to suffer, in vindication of the law, irrespective of benefit 
 to the creation, or amendment to himself. Other motives may 
 operate, but the original idea of penalty seems to be vengeance, 
 or vindication from the Eternal Nature. And vengeance in God 
 is neither a wrong nor a weakness. It is retributive righteousness. 
 It is not a mark of barbarous thought, but the first function of 
 Divine Government in the administration of law. There is not 
 probably a more pernicious misconception in morals than that 
 vengeance is an old-world passion of barbarians. It is the action 
 ef a Personal Deity infusing His own Personality and Will into 
 the steadfast action of government in resistance to moral evil. 
 
 * Mr. Baldwin Brown in his Lectures on Annihilation bases his scheme 
 of doctrine for the most part on the same philosophical foundation with the 
 Universalists. The differentia of his system are found in the sphere which he 
 allots to the sinner's free agency, and in the refusal to affirm a decree of uni- 
 versal salvation. So far as he agrees with Universalism we assign to him our 
 replies to that death-dealing delusion, one of the most mischievous, perhaps, of 
 all perversions of Divine Revelation. 
 
ON RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 503 
 
 Law is an abstraction, and Nature a fiction, but GOD lives through 
 all forces physical and moral, and when men say that law brings 
 retribution, the true and at the same time biblical philosophy 
 teaches that it is God who ' revenges disobedience ' with a just 
 re-ward. The idea of a sinful man's guilt is, not that the guilty 
 has earned some personal chastisement, for his own good, or as a 
 warning to others, but that he has earned the proper sequence of 
 sin in suffering, the ' due reward of his deeds,' and in many cases 
 that due is death. This every conscience testifies, when a man 
 ' comes to himself.' The Scripture asserts only that which Nature 
 on all sides shows to be a real part of the plan of creation the 
 penal action of a destructive force, as all-pervading as the creative. 
 
 Retributive Justice, the disposition to repay the sinner, must 
 be an eternal attribute of the Everlasting King. ' Vengeance is 
 mine; I will recompense, saith the Lord.' If this were not so, 
 the moral government of God would have no existence except 
 over large numbers. But if God had created one single being, 
 surely that being would be bound to obey Him, by working 
 righteousness for ever. Should he rebel, and become fixed in 
 hatred of goodness according to the new philosophy of criminal 
 law God, as a righteous ruler, would have no rights, and could 
 not punish him ; for there would be, ex hypothesi, no creation to 
 be benefited by the example, and he himself was irreformable. 
 God could not punish him, could not afflict him, forsooth, except 
 for his own advantage. Common sense and conscience revolt at 
 this extravagant conclusion. The revenging Deity might justly 
 inflict the ' due reward of his deeds ' by destroying the solitary 
 spirit who troubled His holy rest and refused to repent. 
 
 This idea of retribution, as the fundamental characteristic of 
 punishment, burns like the everlasting fire throughout the record 
 of Divine Revelation. The law of Moses inflicts punishment 
 according to the lex talionis ' Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. 
 And the death-penalty is ordained for a score of offences in 
 dreadful forms. RIGHTEOUS VENGEANCE is the key-note of the 
 Old Testament. There is no attempt to soften this down to the 
 conception of public or personal benefit. It is ever the ' repay- 
 ment ' of God's adversaries, the awful debt ' due ' to thoroughly 
 bad men from Eternal Justice. God is the all-pervading Spirit of 
 Retribution, both in the realms of physical and moral law. 
 
504 THE SATISFACTION OF DIVINE JUSTICE 
 
 The entrance of Redemption in Christ effects no alteration in 
 the revealed basis of Divine criminal administration. Punishment 
 is still primarily retribution. ' What a man soweth that shall he 
 also reap.' Paul speaks of it as the righteous judgment of God to 
 inflict death on sinners : he declares to the Thessalonians that it 
 is 'a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them 
 that trouble you,' and that ' Christ shall be revealed in flaming 
 fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God ' (2 Thess. i. 6, 8). 
 
 The deep-seated sense of the existence of such a retributive 
 system in the creation often breaks like volcanic fire through the 
 superimposed strata of modern artificial philosophy and legis- 
 lation. Now and then whole nations cry aloud for vengeance on 
 flagrant offenders, as if conscious that the new legislative idea of 
 universal beneficence did not correspond with the realities of the 
 moral world. 'Vengeance suffereth not to live' the guilty 
 murderer. 
 
 When, then, the advocates of Universalism object that it is 
 inconceivable that God should raise wicked men from the dead 
 ' only just ' to punish them by the infliction of the second death, 
 the reply is that it is inconceivable on the principles of the new 
 philosophy and of modern legislation ; but not on the principles 
 of Nature, and of Divine Revelation. 
 
 The satisfaction and manifestation of the Divine Attributes 
 because they are righteous, is the first and last end in creation, 
 and providence. 'For Thy pleasure they exist, and were created? 
 The effect on creatures comes only second in the account. If, 
 then, the Divine Legislator, the Divine Spectator of wrong, the 
 Divine Ruler and Lord, has an account with rebellious free agents, 
 and burns in the awful depths of Deity with a resolution to take 
 vengeance on such offenders as have trampled on His law, and on 
 His Son, and who have done despite to His Holy Spirit, we may 
 rest certain that that satisfaction of the Divine Nature is a suffi- 
 cient end in so calling wicked men to account ; even if the result 
 of that terrible punishment be their destruction. The original 
 motive, the regulative method, of the infliction, alike proceed 
 from the Divine Mind ; from the necessary attributes of God ; 
 and are not determined merely by benevolent considerations 
 towards the individual or by the opinion of the universe on its 
 utility. The personal relation of each free agent to God is his 
 
A SUFFICIENT END IN GOVERNMENT. 50$ 
 
 chief relation, and carries with it, when he is sinful, all the fearful 
 consequences of perdition. It is God Himself, not merely the 
 law of nature, that is described as the ' Consuming Fire.' 
 
 Now this sounder philosophy of punishment, while cutting up 
 by the roots the hope of universal salvation, establishes the 
 tremendous doctrine of retribution here maintained. Every finally 
 impenitent offender has an account to render to his Maker, in 
 soul and body ; and that controversy will be decided by a sentence 
 on both, which we are taught is capital and eternal. The benefit 
 of the creation also is consulted in the example so given, ' that 
 others also may fear ; ' but since the fountain of retribution is the 
 righteous vengeance of God, the persistent rebel can build no hope 
 on any reformatory process, for God will destroy him, 'both 
 body and soul in hell.' Even if men ever so boldly declare that 
 God ' can never slay His sons,' the Divinity Himself proclaims by 
 His prophets that He will renounce the sonship of a sinner rather 
 than abandon His own Sovereignty as the Eternal Righteousness ; 
 and that though judgment on a rebel is ' His strange work,' He 
 will ' utterly destroy him.' ' The great day of His wrath will 
 come ' ' the wrath of the Lord God Almighty and the wrath of 
 the Lamb.' ' It is a fearful thing (</>o/?epov) to fall into the hands of 
 the living God.' ' I WILL KILL HER CHILDREN WITH DEATH : AND 
 
 ALL THE CHURCHES SHALL KNOW THAT I AM HE THAT SEARCHETH 
 
 THE REINS AND THE HEARTS.' 'The Lord thy God is a CON- 
 SUMING FIRE, even a jealous God. I call heaven and earth to 
 witness against you this day that ye shall soon utterly perish from 
 off the earth, ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall be 
 utterly destroyed* (Deut. iv. 24, 26). ' The wrath of God abideth 
 on ' the rebellious (John iii. 36, ^cVet). ' The Lord will not 
 spare him, but the anger of the Lord shall smoke against that 
 man, and every curse that is written in this book shall lie upon 
 him (IS ny J^O, s ^ a ^ sett ^ e down on him, like a beast of prey on 
 its victim), and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven ' 
 (Deut. xxix. 20 [19, Heb.]). 
 
5 o6 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 MISSIONARY THEOLOGY : AN INQUIRY INTO THE INFLUENCE OF 
 THIS THEODICY ON THE METHOD AND SPIRIT OF MISSIONS TO 
 THE HEATHEN. 
 
 IN a recent work by one of the most able managers of modern 
 missionary societies," the author, desiring to stimulate the zeal of 
 their supporters, asserts the present apathy of the religious world 
 in England in relation to them, in comparison with the zeal of an 
 earlier day. The author traces this comparative apathy in part 
 to a disproportionate devotion to the prosecution of the Home 
 Missions of Christianity, an exclusiveness which robs foreign 
 missions of their fitting share of attention and support. The 
 larger part of the work is expended in setting forth the general 
 social effects of Christianity in the East, and in presenting a 
 vigorous picture of the results to be expected in the future from 
 the gradual undermining of heathenism. 
 
 It is not necessary to question the position that the Churches 
 of Europe devote the largest measure of attention to European 
 objects. Men are naturally interested in the visible more than in 
 the invisible in England, which is seen, more than in India, 
 which is unseen. The spiritual force which is required to sustain 
 a deep and settled interest in the missions of the gospel is indeed 
 far greater than is usually supposed. They make a larger demand 
 upon the spiritual nature of man than any other form of human 
 endeavour. To feel compassion for the souls of nations whom 
 we have never beheld, from whom we are divided by the diameter 
 of the globe, who are physically and morally our antipodes, and 
 therefore with whose natural character we have the faintest sym- 
 
 * London and Calcutta. By Dr. Mullens. 
 
DECLINE IN MISSIONARY ZEAL. 507 
 
 pathy, to expend thought, effort, and considerable property in 
 furthering the interest of those unknown nations in a world which 
 is still more completely invisible and unknown, requires a depth 
 of conviction, a strength of principle, an elevation of spirit, 
 wholly foreign to human nature, and neither to be produced nor 
 sustained except by the direct action of the Spirit of God. 
 
 The Power which alone can ' thrust forth ' a true labourer into 
 the harvest, alone can also create or uphold a corresponding spirit 
 of faith and self-sacrifice in the people who send him forth. The 
 missionary agency is the hand at the end of a long arm, extended 
 by the Church at home. If that arm is paralysed at the shoulder, 
 whence will come the force by which blows shall be struck at the 
 ends of the earth ? A decline of the spiritual life, therefore, in 
 England, a decay of faith in things unseen, a loss of spiritual 
 power through the advance of luxurious habits, would necessarily 
 take the form first of a loss of interest in the unseen field of 
 foreign missions soon to be followed by a similar decay of 
 interest in the evangelical work at home. 
 
 It is not the present intention, however, to prosecute this line 
 of enquiry. We shall proceed on the contrary hypothesis, that 
 the concern for the salvation of the heathen nations is as earnest 
 and real as it ever was : and suggest a few considerations tending 
 to explain the nature of those influences which have, notwith- 
 standing, repressed of late years the exhibition of that enthusiasm 
 for missionary societies in Christian communities. 
 
 In the first place, I venture to assign as one of these influences, 
 a growing scepticism as to the theory on which existing missions were 
 established. 
 
 In the apostolic age the doctrinal spirit and the missionary 
 spirit were evolved by the Spirit of God in the Church with equal 
 power, and they never ought to be separated. Each requires 
 combination with the other. It has unhappily occurred several 
 times since that each has been developed almost alone. In some 
 ages a zeal for missions has been awakened apart from the spirit 
 of doctrinal study, as in the second and third, the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries. In other cases, the doctrinal spirit has been 
 evolved without a corresponding activity leading to the diffusion 
 of the gospel. At the close of the last century, when the Pro- 
 
5o8 THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT, AND THE STUDY OF 
 
 testant Missionary Societies arose amidst the hurricanes of the 
 French Revolution, the spirit of theological study, of careful, 
 honest, devout criticism, on which the faith ought to be founded, 
 was as nearly as possible extinct in England. Perhaps it may be 
 said that just at the very time when it became of more importance 
 than ever that the church should take care what was to be taught 
 as Christianity among all the nations of the world, the work of 
 evangelising was commenced, as it had been in several similar pre- 
 ceding ages of activity in Christendom, in a spirit of unquestion- 
 ing submission to the forms of thought stereotyped by previous 
 generations. Never was any great enterprise begun with more 
 simplicity of purpose, heroic faith, and devoted piety than the 
 enterprise of the founders of the Protestant Missions at the close 
 of the last century \ and also, it must be added, never was any 
 great enterprise begun with more implicit adhesion to the tradi- 
 tions of the fathers. There was scarcely one among the whole 
 venerable company of persons engaged in that glorious undertaking 
 who dreamed of doubting any of the doctrines stamped with the 
 imprimatur of the Reformation. The powers of action awoke, 
 as often before, in comparative isolation, but the zeal of truth- 
 seeking still for the most part slumbered. 
 
 What has been the result of this phenomenon ? Is it not this, 
 that inasmuch as the theological spirit has since recovered its 
 energy, and attention has been devoted once more to biblical 
 criticism and doctrine, there is now a certain separation between 
 the missions of Protestantism and some of the deeper convictions 
 of religious Englishmen ? The formal creed of the Missionary 
 Societies represents the thinking of eighty years ago, when the 
 Church accepted without question the traditions of Protestant 
 theology handed down by the reformers of the different sects. 
 But those societies are now surrounded by a generation which 
 has lifted the anchors of its theology, and has drifted or sailed 
 into other waters. 
 
 In some of the most important particulars of Christian faith, 
 indeed, there is happily little change. The faith in a Divine 
 Christ, in His Atonement for sin, in the Person and work of the 
 Holy Spirit, in a gratuitous Justification, is at least professed now 
 nearly as it was of old. But these doctrines were considered by 
 the founders of missions as but a superstructure on a deeper 
 
DOCTRINE, NOT ALWAYS CONTEMPORANEOUS. 509 
 
 foundation. That foundation was an antecedent belief in the 
 natural immortality of mankind, and their consequent destiny either 
 to endless misery or endless joy. In the opinion of Dr. Carey, and 
 those who first went with him to India, and of Xavier before 
 them, every human being was an immortal, possessed of a soul as 
 eternal in the future as the Nature of God. Every inhabitant of 
 India was thus regarded as an indestructible life. Every unre- 
 generate soul, descended from Adam, was born under the curse 
 of endless woe through original sin, and was, by its own trans- 
 gressions, sunk deeper in that direful destiny. Salvation could be 
 effected only by the grace of God in regeneration. All the un- 
 regenerate of all ages were unsaved, and the unsaved of India, 
 as of all lands, were destined to be delivered over, as Dr. Carey 
 says in one of his letters, to ' endless misery.' To endless misery 
 had departed all the unregenerate inhabitants of Asia during the 
 ages of darkness preceding the advent of Dr. Carey to India. 
 To endless misery were going all the millions who rejected his 
 message, or refused to abandon their ancestral creeds. This is 
 still the foundation of our Missionary Theology. This is still 
 what may be called the state creed of the missionary societies, 
 Roman and Protestant. No one is considered at liberty to deny 
 it in a missionary speech or sermon. It is the basis of the 
 Propaganda. It is the platform creed of Exeter Hall. The 
 students at the Missionary Colleges are supposed to believe it. 
 The missionaries abroad are supposed to believe it. No one who 
 openly assailed it would be permitted to plead the cause of 
 missions before the British or American people. 
 
 And yet it is disbelieved in the English churches throughout 
 the length and breadth of the country. It is doubted and denied 
 with varying degrees of confidence even by many missionaries ; 
 but most of all by persons of accurate knowledge and spiritual 
 intelligence. The denial is not confined to mockers or adver- 
 saries ; but it is professed with more or less of openness by men 
 whose knowledge gives the utmost weight to their judgment, and 
 whose hard-working Christianity challenges comparison with that 
 of any of the advocates of the older faith. One meets with a 
 few earnest, and able, and unquestionably sincere controversial 
 supporters of that elder belief. But no one who knows English 
 religious society will deny that there has been a considerable 
 
510 PRESENT DOUBTS ON HEATHEN DAMNATION. 
 
 revolution in opinion as to the probable destiny of the ignorant 
 idolatrous nations of the earth, and that it is the rarest event to 
 find even an official of a Missionary Society, or the Tutor of a 
 Missionary College, who will, when firmly pressed, declare his 
 unfeigned assent and consent to the opinions, on this question, of 
 his founders. 
 
 Men, now-a-days, have their doubts, their special theories of 
 relief, their vague hopes, or their positive doctrines. Either they 
 hold that Scripture gives room for several opposite theories ; or 
 they lean to Universalism, and secretly teach men to trust in 
 future purgatories ; or they wholly repudiate and openly denounce 
 and assail the old missionary doctrine, and believe that they who 
 have ' sinned without law,' and led impenitent lives under heathen 
 darkness, shall enjoy evangelisation in Hades ; or, if they reject 
 that, shall ' perish without law,' and die under the double curse of 
 God ; but it is simply a fact that opinion is changing here, and 
 that the churches at home, acted upon by the revived spirit of doc- 
 trinal study, are silent where our fathers would have spoken, or 
 doubt where they would have unhesitatingly followed the docrine 
 of former ages, or boldly deny where they would have anathe- 
 matised opposition. No one seems moved by the argument that 
 such good men as their fathers were must have been right in all 
 their doctrines. We know, for certain, that they were mistaken 
 in many things which they firmly believed. The fact is that 
 Nature, and Scripture, and human Life are better understood 
 than they were eighty years ago, and the conviction is now widely 
 spread that the notion of the unconditional consignment to ever- 
 lasting woe of the countless multitudes of the heathen who have 
 been born in error, bred in superstition, and abandoned to die 
 either in total ignorance of the true gospel, or in rejection of a 
 gospel message, but partly revealed to them, cannot possibly be 
 true under the government of Perfect Justice, Boundless Wisdom, 
 and Eternal Love. 
 
 The decline of interest in missionary societies is, therefore, 
 partly to be attributed to an unconfessed modification of the 
 faith on which they were founded. Men feel more coldly towards 
 a system which sends out agents, whose training consists some- 
 what in persuading them not to think on the question of human 
 destiny ; and which discourages the expression of belief, whether 
 
THE FEWNESS OF CONVERSIONS. 511 
 
 at home or abroad, in a sense more accordant with the thought 
 of our generation. The persuasion is general that the missions 
 of the gospel ought to represent the results of religious England's 
 present convictions. It is felt that they do not thoroughly repre- 
 sent them, that there ought to be more space allowed both at 
 college and in the mission field, certainly for doubt, for undecided 
 opinion, and even for open variation from the ancient creed, 
 that there ought to be liberty for Missionaries to express abroad, 
 especially in their dealings with the educated men of India and 
 China, ideas which are gaining ascendency over so many able 
 minds at home. It is felt that the governing power of missions 
 ought not to be exclusively in the hands of men who think on all 
 subjects as their fathers did or, worse still, in the hands of men 
 who only pretend to think as they did. It is felt that Jesuitism 
 among Protestants is just as demoralising as among Romanists ; 
 that what is needed in missionary work above all things, is, not 
 concealment of opinion, not weak compliance with articles insisted 
 on by the multitude, but earnest enlightened faith ; a faith which 
 believes, and therefore speaks ; a faith which can blow beneath 
 the walls of Jericho a ' dolorous and jarring blast,' before which 
 the defences of heathenism might crumble to the ground. And 
 until the realities of the future world occupy a far larger space in 
 the thoughts of missionary societies, the feeling of English 
 churches towards them is not likely to improve. But Heaven and 
 Hell must be made to seem more real, and more near, before 
 either the English senders of the gospel will entirely believe in 
 them, or the heathen recipients repent at the message. 
 
 Another reason for the partial decline of interest in missionary 
 societies will be found in the discouraging fewness of conversions 
 among Mohammedans, Brahminists, and Buddhists, who compose 
 the population of Asia. No considerable Protestant congregation 
 of converted Moslems is known to exist anywhere on earth. The 
 death-penalty for apostasy protects Islam from Christian conver- 
 sion from pole to pole. In India and its adjuncts there are 
 270,000,000 of people, in China 400,000,000 more. All the 
 confessed nominal adherents to Christianity in India, after eighty 
 years of labour, by thirty-one missionary societies, enjoying of 
 late years strong Government support to their cause, are at this 
 
512 MERITS OF THE MISSIONARY BODY. 
 
 moment not much over 300,000 ; the far larger proportion of 
 these being persons of the lowest castes. 
 
 It is certain that the English public greatly errs if it attributes 
 the fewness of avowed conversions to the lack of ability, zeal, or 
 holy character in the general body of modern missionaries. The 
 history of missions is the brightest, grandest page in the history 
 of the modern world. There are no men or women living who 
 better deserve the reverence of their contemporaries than the heralds 
 of Christianity who have laboured in the present century. The 
 faults which characterise them are generally our own the faults 
 of the churches who have sent them abroad as their representa- 
 tives. Their quiet heroism, their learning, their devotion, their 
 persistence under terrible discouragement, have been such as to 
 deserve the lasting veneration of mankind. The qualifications 
 which have received the testimony of Lord Lawrence and Sir 
 Bartle Frere, in respect of the Indian detachment, dispense with 
 further reply to the calumnies of sceptical criticism. 
 
 Failure is not the word which properly describes the result of 
 their marvellous labours. It has not been failure in respect to 
 the display of soldierly courage in every country under heaven. 
 It has not been failure but signal success in respect to the 
 apparatus for operating on mind, in the form of established 
 stations, translated Bibles, and organised instruction, which has 
 resulted from their efforts. It has not been failure perhaps in 
 comparison with the spiritual results of evangelical missions at 
 home. And it may be added that it has not been failure in 
 respect of the lovely and noble types of character which have 
 grown up under their fostering care. 
 
 Much less has there been failure, but victory, if we may take 
 into account the indirect civilising influences which have accom- 
 panied the gospel ; the gradual but almost universal extension 
 of the dry-rot of disbelief in their own systems among the heathen, 
 which must be set down in part to the disintegrating action of 
 Christian ideas in Asiatic society. If Asia has not received the 
 gospel during the last eighty years, it has, with the exception of 
 the Wahabite revival among the Moslems, lost much of its faith 
 in its own superstitions. Dr. Max Miiller declares, perhaps with 
 too much strength, that Hindooism is practically dead. 
 
 But to disbelieve in Buddhism, in Laoutzeism, in the Brah- 
 
MISSIONARY CONFESSIONS. 513 
 
 minist religion, as the result of wide education, is very far 
 from the same thing with believing in Christ to salvation. 
 And the general alienation of mind from Christian ideas, as re- 
 presented to us in the strikingly faithful reports of the devoted 
 missionaries, suggests reflections on the possibility that there 
 may be ' some awful mistake somewhere,' as Mrs. Stowe expresses 
 it,* in the quality of the message which we have commissioned 
 them to deliver.f I do not for a moment believe that the mis- 
 sionaries are competent judges of their own success. We may 
 reasonably hope that there are now tens of thousands of secret 
 disciples in both India and China, and hundreds of thousands 
 more of men and women saved by God's Spirit in their own twi- 
 light. Love often evangelises the heart when the doctrine fails 
 to reach the enfeebled understanding. Christ our Lord alone 
 possesses the true and full ' report ' of the effect of modern 
 evangelisation. ' We know but in part,' and probably the least 
 part, of the operation of the Divine Word among men.J 
 
 And yet, after every consolatory reflection, there remains 
 the fact that apparently more than seven hundred millions 
 
 * See Mrs. Stowe's tale, Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
 
 f Take as an example a recent Report (1869) of the Baptist Mission. We 
 may well trust men who do not scruple to record the saddest truths. The 
 directors, speaking of the known results of gospel itinerancy in India, write 
 as follows : 
 
 ' With regard to the immediate effect of these labours, it may be stated in 
 
 the words of the missionaries themselves. Mr. R writes : "Of the 
 
 visible result of these itinerancies there is little to be said. In some places the 
 message of the gospel has been gladly received ; in some few instances we 
 have hoped to see permanent results, but have generally been disappointed." 
 
 Mr. E , of Jessore, sums up the results of the daily visits of himself and 
 
 preachers to the bazaars thus : " Whilst we lament the absence of manifested 
 conversions to Christ, we cannot doubt the leaven is at work ; and our hope is 
 that, by patient labour and prayerful waiting, the result will, perhaps ere 
 long, be developed in a rapid increase of the Church in this district." Yet 
 it is seventy years since the gospel was first introduced in Jessore by the Seram- 
 pore brethren, and that with many encouraging tokens of success. " When 
 
 you ask me," says Mr. E , of Benares, "What is the result of all this 
 
 preaching ?/ should have to reply, apparently nothing! No one, so far as 
 I am able to judge, has been impressed with the truth so as to justify m: in 
 regarding him as a sincere believer in Christ" ' 
 
 \ There has been a recent conversion of scores of thousands of the ' Babs ' 
 of Persia, quite unknown to the generality of English Christians. 
 
 33 
 
5H LACK OF POWER IN MODERN CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of human beings in Eastern Asia are personally unaffected by 
 Christianity ; they put it from them as an incredible or an 
 impracticable superstition of the West, and but for the mighty 
 force of the Western States they would soon, unless Providence 
 intervened, try to sweep it from their shores. 
 
 It is with moderate expectations that experience admonishes 
 us to contemplate the beneficial results of theological reform, 
 until the great practical hindrance of a corrupt European example 
 is immensely diminished. 
 
 It is also with profound deference and self-distrust that any 
 criticism should be ventured upon the gospel which the self- 
 denying and learned missionary body is proclaiming to the pagan 
 majority of mankind, with a courage and endurance which puts 
 us all to shame ; but the knowledge which I possess of the in- 
 most sympathy of some of the ablest of themselves emboldens 
 me to express an expectation that the alteration of some of the 
 modes of stating Christianity abroad, which a similar change at 
 home may naturally lead to, will be attended with happy results. 
 Without undervaluing the successes of our contemporaries, it is 
 impossible not to feel that there is some apparent deficiency in 
 the power of modern Christianity. There is a want of definite 
 force on the side of judgment ; a judgment which shall be at 
 once so credible, yet so overpowering, as to compel the attention 
 of worldly Europeans and languid Asiatics. There is also a lack 
 of vital joyfulness in the modern gospel itself, which renders it 
 weaker than it should be before the fatalism, the pantheism, and 
 the cruel idolatries of the East. Once the gospel had miraculous 
 aids. Afterwards, Roman Christianity brought limitless and 
 remorseless terror to support it. In our time the faith is honey- 
 combed by a profound scepticism, and its terror is reduced to 
 the dubious form of a hell ' without fire,' or an endless torment 
 of which it is thought wiser by many to keep silence altogether 
 before the heathen. 
 
 It is not unlikely that some missionary readers will reply to 
 the preceding argument, that it is unwise to press on the atten- 
 tion of the heathen the doctrine of punishment, as a prominent 
 feature of Christianity, and that the main purpose and aim of 
 missions is to unfold the tidings of redeeming mercy. But still 
 
'WHERE IS THE ARM THAT SMOTE RAHAB ?' 515 
 
 the question will recur, Redemption from what? If the New 
 Testament is to be the model of preaching abroad as well as at 
 home, the glad tidings were preceded by a ' ministry of condem- 
 nation ; ' and were accompanied by threatenings of ' hell-fire ' 
 from the lips of both Christ and the Apostles, for all who rejected 
 the message ; no difference being made in this respect between 
 Jew or Gentile, Greek or Barbarian. The question is, What is 
 the Hell of which the New Testament speaks with such alarming 
 persistency? Certainly, whatever it is, it is not one which the 
 missionaries have received any commission not to ' dwell upon.' 
 It is no answer to this to say that ' the Judge of all the earth 
 will do right' We acknowledge that to the full. But some 
 doctrine of terror is part of Christianity, and that which we are 
 asking is has the Judge of all the earth revealed to mankind 
 what the founders of missions thought that He had, respect- 
 ing the prospect of ' endless misery ' ? When that question has 
 been discussed without result, or decided out of the Scripture, 
 it will be time to cite Abraham's expression of affiance as an end 
 of controversy and not before. 
 
 Under present conditions the natural force of the gospel is 
 abated. It does not take hold of the moral understanding of 
 Asia. Some converts undoubtedly are persuaded, but the masses 
 are neither convinced, nor alarmed, nor won by a ' love that 
 passeth knowledge.' ' Where is the Arm that smote RahabV 
 Where is the force of truth and grace that smote the philosophies 
 and idolatries of the Mediterranean in the apostolic age, and 
 shook like an earthquake the whole of Roman Europe and Asia 
 in a single generation ? Let it not be said it was the stress of 
 miracles that then availed. Miracles exerted an inconsiderable 
 influence, in comparison with a truth which inspired an over- 
 powering energy of faith, a grace that commended itself to all 
 affections, and an announcement of approaching doom which 
 struck like a blazing thunderbolt from the uplifted hand of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Is it not that we are propagating both abroad and at home a 
 Christianity which is half paralysed in its two chief forces of 
 hope and fear through the perrersions of an unbiblical theology ? 
 We fail in thoroughly presenting God's love to the nations, 
 a love strong enough to melt even Chinese arrogance, and to 
 
516 THE MODERN GOSPEL NOT CREDIBLE 
 
 develop the belief of a real and personal God among Chinese 
 Buddhists, because we have encumbered Christianity with a 
 doctrine of hell, so unjust, so indiscriminate, so hardening in 
 its frightful propositions, that men's consciences refuse to receive 
 it. Our missionary theology cannot ' commend itself to every 
 man's conscience,' because every man's conscience, whether in 
 Europe or Asia, in proportion as it is enlightened, rejects it with 
 horror. 
 
 This is, I venture to think, one reason for the general rejec- 
 tion of the gospel by the Brahminists, Buddhists, and Con- 
 fucianists of the East. God's* love is hidden from them, and 
 they ' turn away sorrowful ' from so direful a Christianity. Now, 
 whatever the better sort of thinking - men of any nation gene- 
 rally reject will not be long or widely received by the unedu- 
 cated. The stout English artisans disbelieve it already, because 
 men of education are rejecting it first. No evangelical ' revival,' 
 conducted on the present theological basis, will effectually reach 
 either the artisans or the more cultivated classes. 
 
 Public opinion, then, on the reasons of the wide rejection of 
 Christianity in Asia has begun to form itself under certain in- 
 fluences in addition to those of our valuable missionary reports 
 and speeches. These naturally supply us with but a portion 
 of the truth. We are beginning to learn, not only what the 
 missionaries think of the learned and able men of India and 
 China, but what the learned men of India and China think of 
 some things taught by the missionaries. We are learning to 
 exercise imagination upon the evangelical enterprise, and to 
 understand better in what light it presents itself to the ' natives ' 
 whose religion it assails.* 
 
 For example, it is now comprehended that the presence of 
 our European apostles in the ports of China, bringing with them 
 the ' good news ' of Xavier and Dr. Carey, that the former in- 
 habitants of that populous country who have been atheists or 
 idolaters (that is, a very large proportion of the population of the 
 globe during many ages), and who have died in an unregenerate 
 condition, have gone, notwithstanding their ignorance, to endless 
 
 * Se n The Modern Buddhist, or the views of a Siamese Minister of State 
 (KJalahom) on his own and other religions of the East, including Christianity. 
 Trubner, 1870. 
 
BY THE HINDOOS AND CHINESE. 517 
 
 misery, in some of its many degrees, it is now comprehended 
 that such a ' gospel ' strikes the educated men in China precisely 
 as a similar message would strike the learned men of our 
 Universities, if brought to England after ages of heathenism by 
 a handful of Chinese missionaries, landing in the ports of London 
 and Liverpool. We now understand that, if it would be highly 
 improbable that our educated classes would listen to so horrible 
 a proclamation, or recognise in it the voice of a Just and Bene- 
 ficent Deity, so it is equally improbable that it will appear divine 
 when taught by our emissaries at Pekin or Ningpo.* And thus 
 we come to comprehend some of the reasons why, after eighty 
 years of missionary labour among them, the learned and un- 
 learned men alike of India and China are as far as ever from 
 embracing Christianity. Chinese clergymen with a similar 
 doctrine at London or Liverpool could scarcely hope for greater 
 success among ourselves by eighty years of persevering preaching 
 and tract distribution. Men do not ' change .their gods ' except 
 for better ones.f 
 
 * We are informed in the Church Missionary Intelligencer for May, 1875, 
 p. 136, that a common effect of education on the minds of the young men of 
 .India, trained in Government colleges, is to make them 'deists and infidels,' 
 in relation to Christianity. Such men now swarm through Hindostan. This 
 -is not wonderful, considering what the theology is which in India represents 
 ' Christianity.' We should mostly become ' deists and infidels ' if the Hindoos 
 were" to land -in England with a similar message. 
 
 t I cannot but think that the mode of presenting UChristianity which we 
 advocate as. apostolic and Divine as a message conferring eternal life as a 
 donation upon dying men, is not only fitted to assist the faith of European 
 minds deprived of their old hopes and fears by recent scientific conclusions, but 
 also probably of the countless millions of Buddhists 'throughout India, Siam, 
 Japan, and China. In those lands the loss of individual being, nirvana^ has, 
 under the inspiration of demons, become the final expectation of the human 
 .race. Will it not give to the joyful voice of Christianity a new energy, when it 
 has learned to proclaim through Christ -the promise of individual life in con- 
 scious union with Deity, as the^eternal blessedness of the righteous ? You will 
 never succeed in persuading the 480,000,000 Buddhists that man already possesses 
 by nature an indissoluble soul ; for it is the first principle of the Buddhist that 
 the soul can be dissolved ; and his second that separate existence is so mise- 
 rable, that the highest object of hope is to lose individual being, and to be 
 absorbed in .the all. But a better result will probably follow if you teach him 
 that the Eternal Essence has spoken to mankind, and has declared, in a loving 
 message to all men, that it is sin which renders separate existence a curse ; that 
 
5i8 POWER OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 But the predominant system of teaching in heathendom fails also, 
 I venture to think, in another department through withholding 
 the influence of a truth favourable to the production alike of hope 
 and of fear. Not only does the Retribution preached at home 
 and abroad fail, by its unscriptural representations, to awaken 
 terror in the educated classes, since whatever you exaggerate you 
 weaken ; but it is nearly everywhere the custom with missionary 
 societies to send out teachers opposed to the belief of Christ's 
 Advent to judge the nations, as the next great event in the history of 
 world. 
 
 The plain doctrine of S. Paul, in the second letter to the 
 Thessalonians, that the personal advent of Christ will occur for 
 the purpose of destroying ' the Man of Sin '/ the doctrine of the 
 prophet Daniel, that the ' Son of Man will come in the clouds ot 
 heaven ' for the destruction of the ' fourth kingdom,' and of that 
 ' horn that has eyes, and a mouth speaking marvellous things ; ' 
 the doctrine that Christ Himself will come to punish ' with 
 flaming fire ' an antichristian clergy that has perverted Revelation 
 until men can no longer believe in it, and to judge nations that 
 persist in Idolatry after due summons to repentance; this 
 doctrine of Christ's ever-impending Advent, under the influence 
 of which the gospel was spread in the first century, is denied by 
 the missionary societies and the generality of their agents. Here 
 is a present loss, and possible recovery of power, which may be 
 readily appreciated. In this department of exegesis, as in so 
 many others, God is supposed to be glorified by resolving all His 
 promises into metaphorical unrealities. 
 
 Let the Gospel be preached in India and China as the message 
 of Life to the dead, as the gift of Immortality in body and soul, 
 to a race sitting in the death-shade of atheism ; let it be preached 
 as the message of a God who is intelligibly beneficent, but intel- 
 ligibly and justly ' terrible * to wicked men ; let it be proclaimed 
 that the times of pagan ignorance this righteous Judge * over- 
 looked,' but now, on peril of the ' greater condemnation,' commands 
 
 that curse is removed by the Incarnate Son of God ; that everlasting life is 
 given to us in Christ ; and that, therefore, nirvana needs no longer be sought 
 as a boon. Life in God's image is endless life and endless joy ; and conscious- 
 ness needs no longer sigh for annihilation of being. 
 
CHRISrs ADVENT TO BE PREACHED. 519 
 
 all men everywhere to repent; let the words of the apocalyptic 
 angel become the topic of the missionary, Fear GOD, and give 
 glory to Him ! for the hour of His judgment is come ! ' and one 
 cannot but believe that a new power might attend in the East, as 
 in the West, the diffusion of Christianity. 
 
 There is something so heart-striking, so fitted to compel atten- 
 tion, in the apostolic warning of Christ's imminent return to 
 destroy obstinate and obscene worshippers of idols, to avenge 
 the perversion of the truth in Christendom, to raise in glory the 
 sleeping saints, and to establish Heaven's kingdom on earth, 
 that even languid India must lift her head to listen, and haughty 
 philosophic China hearken awe-struck to the trumpet-blast. Chris- 
 tianity is a power which is designed to act on men from before as 
 well as from behind, through the expectation of coming events, 
 as well as through the study of facts accomplished. It is a pro- 
 phecy and a mighty world-embracing drama, as well as a history. 
 But under the prevailing system of teaching it is a gospel without 
 the vivid hope of that Advent of Christ to crown His followers, 
 the prospect of which, at the beginning, filled and reddened like a 
 dawn of glory all the eastern sky. The whole body of prophecy 
 is now supposed to prove only when interpreted with due caution, 
 that * the Lord delayeth His coming,' that wisdom consists in 
 proclaiming the doctrine of the ' evil servant,' and in relegating 
 the expectation of the Lord's return to a generation that shall live 
 at the end of the Millennium ! 
 
 Vain, then, at present are all such warnings as ' Behold He 
 cometh in clouds, and every eye shall see Him;'' for it is well 
 understood that such an expectation of the Lord is peculiar to 
 ' weaker brethren,' or to ' servile literalists,' or to spirits in which 
 fancy takes the place of faith. Thus it has come to pass that 
 Christ's advent is banished from the thoughts of nearly the whole 
 body of the ministers of Christ around the globe. To them ' far 
 off His coming shines ' as a dim nebula in the firmament of the 
 future. Who, then, can wonder that a Christianity so diminished 
 in its forces both to win and to appal, so pale and so colourless, 
 naturally maintains a doubtful fight with the stiff-necked pagans 
 of Asia ? Is there not required a doctrine that commends itself 
 more cogently to the reason and to the conscience ot men, of 
 the teachers as well as the taught, to their imagination not less 
 
520 SOLEMN APPEAL TO MISSIONARIES 
 
 than to their affections, a love so real, so tender and intelligible 
 a terror so soul-subduing, so near at hand, and so appreciably 
 just, as to shake if it cannot vanquish the stoutest resistance of 
 the heathen ; a hope of speedy victory to the Church, sufficient 
 to restore the death-daring energies of the first century, and a 
 courage founded on overpowering conviction which would engage 
 in closer conflict with Eastern Buddhism, and the stolid posi- 
 tivism of Confucius ? That ' throneless king,' as the Chinese 
 call him, would soon, I trust in God, lose much of his opposing 
 power, before a Saviour preached as if He were the very JESUS 
 of the gospels, ' coming again quickly ' to be the Lord of the 
 world. 
 
 I know these are unwelcome, and must seem to some presump- 
 tuous words ; but, with an earnestness which neutralises the 
 remembrance of personal insignificance, I implore my fellow- 
 Christians at home to reconsider in the light of Sacred Scripture 
 the theological basis of the missionary enterprise. I adjure, 
 before Christ our Lord, the directors of the missionary societies 
 not to multiply the number of those who carry out to the heathen 
 a doctrine which they do not, and dare not, proclaim to the 
 cultured people either of Hindostan or of England. 
 
 And finally, if by -Divine Providence one voice could reach so 
 far, I would most reverently call upon eveiy honoured missionary 
 of the gospel around the globe to bend his mind, if he have failed 
 so to do hitherto, to the consideration of that doctrine of Eternal 
 Life in Jesus Christ which now seems to so many students to be 
 the designed sense of S. John's gospel, and S. Paul's epistles ; 
 and next, to the prophetic promise of Christ's Advent, to judge 
 the nations, which may be held without the weak additions of 
 millenarian fancy, which has won the conviction in modern times 
 of a Mede, a Bengel, a Stier, a Lange, an Olshausen, an Auberlen, 
 an Alford, and a thousand others, and was unquestionably the 
 belief of the apostles' followers in the first ages of the Christian 
 Revelation.* 
 
 The following passage is from a letter by Mr. Hobbs, an able 
 and respected missionary of Sewry in India in the present year : 
 
 * See this strongly asserted and proved by Professor Lightfoot on 
 natural Religion. Contemporary Review. August, 1875. 
 
TO CONSIDER THIS DOCTRINE. 521 
 
 ' I have not been forgetful of my standing obligation to diffuse as widely as 
 'possible a knowledge of the special truth so tersely expressed by Paul " The 
 wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." 
 
 * I regard this doctrine as being the backbone of Christianity that which 
 gives to God's unparalleled expression of love to fallen men both its symmetry 
 and its intelligibility. 
 
 ' From Sept. I5th to March 3 1st, not less than ten thousand persons have heard 
 from my lips, and from the lips of the native brethren associated with me, 
 what we believe to be the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 
 ' And here I desire to note a fact which I think worth recording. Years 
 ago, and before God had brought me to receive Scripture teaching as I now 
 receive it, I was often sorely pressed in argument by these men of brains 
 around me (especially those known as Brahmists) in relation to the Christian 
 doctrine of unending suffering ; in vindication of which dogma I was necessi- 
 tated to resort to a species of argument which I felt to be as sophistical to my 
 own mind as it was evidently unsatisfactory to my questioners. I have now, 
 however, to bear testimony to quite a new and different kind of experience. 
 Cavilling Hindoos still, ask me the same sort of questions concerning the nature 
 and extent of God's vengeance ; the triumph- twinkle in fheir eyes indicating 
 that they have anticipated my answer, and are only politely waiting to hear 
 my words confirm their anticipation before launching out into a strain of cut- 
 ting satire, or assumed virtuous indignation at Christians attributing such a 
 character to God. Their pent-up eloquence, however, rarely finds "its desired 
 vent. .A minute or two spent in repudiating the doctrine as it is usually pre- 
 sented, and five minutes more in laying bare to view the essence of Christianity 
 as set forth by the Lord Jesus Himself (see John iii. 16, 36), gives to the 
 whole matter such a reasonable and unobjectionable aspect, that in the vast 
 majority, of cases it leaves, neither room nor .desire for protracted dissussion.' 
 
522 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE PROBABLE INFLUENCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIANITY, 
 AS HERE PRESENTED, ON PREVAILING ATHEISTIC AND DEISTIC 
 SCEPTICISMS. 
 
 ' The gospel saves by the revelation which it makes of the heart and mind 
 of God. by teaching us to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He 
 has sent. Now, many preachers of the Gospel declare that God will keep 
 multitudes of His own creatures alives to all eternity for the sole purpose of 
 torturing them, knowing perfectly well all the time that it can never do them 
 one particle of good. Is the representation which this gives of the character 
 of God to be accepted without discussion ? Is it more " injurious " for men to 
 try and force themselves to love such a God if they can, and, if they cannot, to 
 be driven into infidelity, or for them to inquire whether there may not be some 
 mistake in the common interpretation of the four or five passages that are 
 thought to attribute such an intention to the Creator? ' REV. S. MINTON, M.A. 
 
 THOSE whose professions enable them to acquire ample informa- 
 tion on the state of opinion in Europe are unanimous in affirming 
 the existence of a wide-spread unsettlement of the very founda- 
 tions of religious belief. Canon Liddon says, ' Never since the 
 first ages of the gospel was fundamental Christian truth denied 
 and denounced so largely, and with such passionate animosity, as 
 is the case at this moment in each of the most civilised nations.' 
 
 It is declared by those who best know Northern Germany that 
 the middle and a large portion of the lower classes are estranged 
 from the religion of their ancestors. Public qginion denies 
 miracles and the interference of Heaven with the course of events, 
 encouraged by the attitude of many of the leaders of study. Men 
 who have had a university education scarcely dare go to church 
 in some towns, lest they be taken for hypocrites or sentimental 
 enthusiasts. In France the state of opinion among the male 
 portion of the population is sufficiently notorious. The nation as 
 
THE ATHEISM OF EUROPE. 523 
 
 a whole, just in proportion to the education of its provinces, has 
 ceased to believe in Christianity. The Bon Dieu, always a shadow 
 in Roman Catholic countries, has quite vanished out of their 
 daily thoughts, and is regarded only as a mythological character 
 by the typical Frenchman of to-day. 
 
 Even in our religious England popular opinion, in its slow 
 and heavy way, is moving partly in the same direction. The 
 scientific and literary classes are to a great extent alienated 
 from the theological life of the people. Every increase of ac- 
 quaintance with interior opinion reveals the growing influence 
 of the agnostic leaders of the time. The unbelief of large 
 numbers is scarcely veiled by the thin disguise of courteous 
 silence, or seeming complicity with a revived medievalism. 
 The ' praying sister ' is, in accordance with the Laureate's 
 advice, permitted to enjoy ' her early heaven, her happy views,' 
 but the younger men of the clubs, and much more the men of 
 culture and science, in growing numbers, reject the gospel as an 
 oppressive delusion. 
 
 The scepticism of the time is indeed held in check by the 
 solid faith of the major part of the middle and humbler classes, 
 and is fairly tolerant towards believers ; but it is deep-seated, 
 resolved, and thorough-going, and not seldom secretly bitter 
 and contemptuous. Several of the prominent English periodi- 
 cals, as, for example, the Westminster and Fortnightly Reviews, 
 now openly allow fiercely atheistic articles to appear in their 
 pages. The science of Christian Apologetics meanwhile pre- 
 serves a prudent, or a necessary, silence on the objections which 
 chiefly occasion the prevailing doubt. The reputed character of 
 God the real stumbling-block of modern scepticism is seldom 
 approached. Hence apologetic literature is more successful in 
 exposing the weakness of its adversaries than in persuading 
 them to 'repent and believe the gospel.' It avails nothing to 
 stay the popular relapse into pantheism ; for this is the chief 
 characteristic of the momentous revolution, that the current of 
 thought rushes logically over that Niagara. The opinion of 
 Mr. J. Stuart Mill (as delivered in his Essay on Nature) is 
 spreading rapidly, that on one side it is difficult to establish 
 the proof of any morally intelligible God from physical nature 
 alone ; and, on the other, that so monstrous a Being as the 
 
524 ROME. 
 
 God of the old European theology is a chimera of disordered 
 imaginations. On the continent Atheism, stark and sturdy, 
 has of late made astonishing advances among men of scientific 
 culture : an atheism based first of all on a revolt against the 
 infinitely unjust and cruel Deity of old Christendom ; and 
 secondly, on an honest inability to discern any tolerable or 
 attractive Divinity in the sphere of the world's government 
 under natural law. 
 
 When such is the style of thought 'among men of education ; 
 when numbers are protected against similar views only by their 
 incapacity to understand the atheism of their betters ; it is 
 scarcely to 'be wondered at that many of the working classes, 
 always more resolute in opinion than the money-making bour- 
 geoisie, should imitate the atheology of the scientific luminaries 
 whom thej admire without entirely comprehending. Europe 
 is on the high road at length to an uncompromising popular 
 Sadduceeism, against which the Christian churches as organisa- 
 tions will be almost powerless, and under whose reign not only 
 religion will suffer, but the higher morality which derives its 
 practical sanctions from heaven. The Protestant churches 
 have lost much of their ancient interest in theology ; they are 
 honeycombed with doubt, yet are contented, under the guidance 
 of clerical leaders not too spiritual, to continue the old profes- 
 sions, to repeat the old watchwords, so as to provoke observers 
 outside to question whether they believe anything in the same 
 sense as the ancients did. 
 
 It happens that I write these closing pages in that Great 
 City which, since it ceased to trample down the earth by force, 
 has governed it chiefly by genius, by fraud, and by beauty ; 
 and still stands as the ancient centre of the religious life of 
 Christendom. Around on every side are typical forms of the 
 influences which are working desolation in Europe. Aloft 
 towers the great historical Church still overpowering the 
 imagination of mankind by its marvels of architecture and of 
 art ; revolting their reason and conscience by its representations 
 of the Omnipotent Enemy, whom it dares to denominate GOD ; 
 while it exposes Him to ridicule as pacified by the interventions 
 of S. Peter and of the Madonna, and pleased with the pueri- 
 
ROME. 525 
 
 lities of the catholic ceremonial. There are four hundred 
 churches in Rome and its environs ; but of what religion are 
 the twenty-seven millions of Italians? With the fewest excep- 
 tions the educated and richer classes are fast relapsing into the 
 fashionable indifference. The population has forsaken the 
 churches, for their thoughts are there no longer. They stand 
 around Garibaldi, the impassioned patriotic pantheist,* and see 
 with delight the Italian Government confiscating the rich heri- 
 tage of the Church, while devoting its plundered wealth to the 
 armaments of war, and to secular education. Perhaps there is 
 not a more thoroughly secularised population in Europe than 
 the inhabitants of this ' holy city,' the Mecca of the West. 
 
 There are happily many promising movements in Italy itself; 
 but what are the measures of the Reformed Churches in the 
 capital for reviving the. decayed faith of this nation, driven at 
 length into scepticism by its ancient superstitions? To repro- 
 duce, in the front of the Vatican, the absurd divisions of England, 
 Germany, and America ! Here, where, if anywhere, it was 
 essential that the majesty of original Christianity should be set 
 forth, like a new sunrise, to dispel the darkness of eternal death, 
 are the old sects, come together to repeat the ancient mistakes, 
 and to persevere in the general fixed agreement not to allow a 
 word to be spoken which might tend to shake the theological 
 interests which they represent. 
 
 And Rome well represents Europe. The religious public 
 persuades itself that faith is extending on all sides. This may 
 be true of a few favoured spots ; but at least there is a world 
 around the churches of Europe of which ordinary Christians 
 know little, and that world is divided from theirs by an im- 
 passable chasm of secularist thought and passion. An odious 
 superstition based on authority a contemptuous unbelief and a 
 half-reformed protestantism, these are the three elements which 
 divide and govern, for the most part, European society ; and 
 between them the world as a whole is losing its faith in God 
 and in a life to come. 
 
 It may indeed be but a fresh example of the hopefulness of 
 speculation to suggest the expectation of advantage from the 
 * See his letter to the devout theist Mazzini on his death-bed. 
 
526 THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THOUGHT. 
 
 modification of theological belief. Experience certainly does 
 not sanction any sanguine anticipations. The human nature 
 which has once corrupted pure Christianity is equal to a sus- 
 tained resistance to pure Christianity if it could be presented 
 again. Neither does a change in theory carry with it any 
 other than an indirect influence upon thought and life. Very 
 numerous are the limitations under which benefits can be looked 
 for from revolutions in theology ; and carefully weighed should 
 be the words in which we venture to indulge the hope that the 
 cause of Christianity as a whole will gain by the adoption of 
 new or newly-revived ideas. 
 
 Nevertheless there is a time for all things : there is a Pro- 
 vidence over the world of thought ; and after much battling 
 between extreme views the world makes decisive progress in 
 the knowledge both of nature and of God. The writer must 
 incur the risks of criticism in humbly stating his belief that 
 the leading ideas maintained in this volume for the fiftieth 
 time in European history have a special value in the present 
 condition of European opinion. A judgment on the effect of 
 the proposed modification of belief, formed after many years' 
 experience of its influence in individual cases both on the side 
 of superstition and scepticism, encourages the expectation that 
 similarly beneficial results might after a time be anticipated 
 on a larger scale, if the work of representing these ideas should 
 fall into abler hands, and be commended to general notice by 
 spiritual men. It is conceived that the views of the Christian 
 Revelation reproduced from antiquity in these pages might 
 at least in many cases be well fitted (i) to offer an effective 
 resistance to the Atheistic tendencies of this age, and (2) to 
 reclaim to evangelical faith numbers who have been shocked 
 and provoked into various forms of Deism by the monstrous ex- 
 aggerations of mediaeval theology, and the conventional life of 
 the modern churches. The candid reader will not quarrel with 
 a hope so diffidently entertained and so cautiously expressed. 
 
 I. 
 
 Those who have followed even slightly the biological studies 
 of recent years can scarcely failed to have observe the animated 
 
ANTIPATHY TO A PERSONAL GOD. 527 
 
 hostility exhibited in the leading scientific works of the period 
 to the idea of a God who is a Living Personality. There is no 
 theory of generation so far-fetched as not to obtain a respectful 
 preference in the minds of many of the foremost naturalists of 
 Germany, France, and England, before the idea of a Creating 
 and Governing Father of all.* Even such conspicuously able 
 men as Professors Helmholtz, Haeckel, and Huxley men of 
 lofty genius, and far from a disposition towards moral atheism 
 prefer to account, with Diderot, for the structure of the eye- 
 system in living creatures by referring solely to a nisus in 
 nature, rather than by open reference to One Eternal Power 
 who 'formed' it, who could 'see,' before all worlds, and be- 
 yond them. Notwithstanding the converging evidence of the 
 Metaphysical, the Teleological, the Esthetic, the Moral, the 
 Historical, and the Supernatural arguments for the existence ot 
 God, we are taught on every side that apparent design is the 
 subjective illusion of the thinker, not the testimony of nature 
 to her Maker. We are forbidden to trace in adaptation, pro- 
 portion, or number, or in provision against future need, the 
 marks of Intelligence, on pain of severe reprehension from these 
 formidable adversaries of final causes. For it is held, against 
 a world of physical and spiritual evidences forcing the con- 
 viction of a Personal God upon ordinary minds, that nature is 
 self-developing, that the heavens do not ' declare the glory ' of 
 any Power beyond their own, and that it is the wise man, not 
 the fool, who now asserts our necessary ignorance of an Eternal 
 Cause, t 
 
 Is it not strange that the very philosophers who so clearly dis- 
 cern the marks of design marks of intelligence working towards 
 an end, in the chipped flint arrowheads and hammers from the 
 drift, and who pronounce so decisively on the defective sense 
 of those who fail, after five seconds of inspection, to perceive 
 that all such chippings were the work of purpose and skill, can 
 
 * The Westminster Review, for July 1875, has an article on Evidences oj 
 Design, curiously illustrative of the antipathy of second-rate physiologists to 
 unseen Intelligence. 
 
 f One of the most interesting brochures lately published bearing on this sub- 
 ject is by the Rev. Charles Girdlestone, M.A. : Number, a link between Divine 
 Intelligence and Human. Longmans, 1875. 
 
528 ATHEISTIC EVOLUTION THEORIES. 
 
 look upon this great universe of earth and heaven, and declare 
 that the ten thousand facets of this mighty crystal are probably the 
 work of unintelligent forces ? 
 
 Let us suppose that in our time the Matterhorn, or lovely 
 Jungfrau, had been found on all its flanks to be covered with 
 a city of cottages and houses, suited to the succession of 
 climates occurring, from the icy summits down: to the temperate 
 region of the rhododendrons ; and that these structures all bore 
 traces of one internal useful plan, varied according to the heights 
 of the mountain, or the special conformation of the rocks at 
 each point of the ascent. Who would dream of accounting for 
 their existence, their general plan, or their special adaptation to 
 climate, position, slope, steepness, or prospect, by the theory 
 that the first cottages at the top were created by stones shot 
 down from the decaying rocks at the pinnacle ; and that all the 
 myriads of houses below grew out of the earliest chalets ; and 
 that from infinite numbers of stone-avalanches, supplying mate- 
 rial, the fittest forms of habitation survived, and adapted them- 
 selves to the nooks, or crevices, or platforms, or slopes, of the 
 ice or granite inclinations? Yet this would be a probable 
 result from such a cause, in comparison with the development 
 and growth of the vast system of life, including the flora and 
 fauna of all levels, out of the dead elements of atheistic physi- 
 ology. And the attempt to escape from the evidence of Intelli- 
 gence, exhibited in the similar but varied internal construction 
 of such a mountain-side of houses, by the supposition that 
 avalanches were sufficient architectural causes, would be reason- 
 able in comparison with the idea that ' this universal frame of 
 Nature is without a Mind.' 
 
 To what origin, then, must we attribute the prevailing fanatical 
 opposition to the common arguments for the existence of the 
 Living God, and these painful endeavours to displace the doctrine 
 of final causes, in favour of theories of evolution, which it is hoped 
 may blot out of the world the very idea of a Creator ? Is this 
 direful conflict even with the idea of a Heavenly Father to be 
 attributed to the gratuitous wickedness of the scientific men of 
 this generation, who, ' professing themselves to be wise, have be- 
 come fools ' ? I think not wholly. Rather the modern war of 
 ' culture ' against a personal Deity, and the persistent attempt to 
 
FEAR OF THE ROMAN DEMON. 529 
 
 evade any recognition of Mind above force and form, is to be 
 attributed in part to a sound moral reaction against the perverse 
 theisms of past ages. Manifestly it is the mistaken apprehension 
 that any Intelligent and Governing God, who might be dis- 
 covered to exist, must be admitted to be the God whom anti- 
 Christian and Mohammedan theology has described under so 
 fearful an aspect which tempts many noble minds forward into 
 atheistic speculation, as the only secure refuge against the sacer- 
 dotal ideas which threaten them. 
 
 If the Intelligence which Nature dimly reveals were conceived 
 of as the Deity whom our hearts exultingly acknowledge when we 
 embrace a more literal interpretation of the Christian record, 
 assuredly the strength of the atheistic prejudice would be sensibly 
 abated. Men fear that if but a single window be opened into a 
 world of mind, in at that aperture will glare the frightful blaze of 
 the Divinity of Rome and Geneva, under whose terrors so many 
 generations of our ancestors have groaned and died. And there- 
 fore they resolve a priori to shut out if possible the very concep- 
 tion of a Universal Mind. 
 
 The intellect is much influenced in its apprehension of evi- 
 dence by its anticipation of the conclusion to be reached by the 
 argument. If God be thought of as an unintelligible Power 
 of darkness, who is capable of tormenting * non-elect ' creatures 
 throughout eternity, who can wonder if thinking men endeavour 
 to nullify the evidence of His Being and agency? But let it 
 be seen beforehand that the God in whom Christians believe, 
 while acting in the moral sphere with that severe eternal love 
 of law which nature itself reveals, is yet appreciably good and dis- 
 criminating even in His righteous judgments, and men will more 
 willingly Jrace His presence and handiwork in the physical universe. 
 The God who both hides and reveals Himself in nature will be 
 sought for with more trustful footsteps when the search is no 
 longer harassed by the dread of finding a Being who paralyses 
 by His infinite terrors all the loftier aspirations of the soul. It 
 is not punishment of the most destructive nature which causes 
 unbelief but the idea of an infinite and endless infliction. 
 
 The conceptions of God long prevailing in Christendom have 
 been such as to render atheism in its various forms a tempting 
 refuge from the haunting spectres of superstition. The minds of 
 
 34 
 
530 TEMPORARY UTILITY OF ATHEISM. 
 
 men have been overshadowed by ideas of Deity which revolt the 
 soul precisely in proportion to its general intelligence and morality. 
 The atheism of Europe has become almost a necessary solvent to 
 eat out the mythology with which men's minds have been filled for 
 centuries (' They shall turn aside unto [ivOovs, fabtes,' 2 Tim. iv. 
 4), and so to make room for a true conception of the God of 
 Nature and Revelation, at once the terrible Destroyer of sinful 
 beings, and the glorious Life-giver. But the God of orthodox 
 Romanism is a being surpassingly evil. Occupied from eternal 
 ages in revolving the plan of the creation, He has at last brought 
 mankind into existence under the inherited curse of original sin, 
 native immortality, and endless suffering, as the consequence of 
 Adam's transgression ; and, though interposing to save some from 
 the everlasting flames, has abandoned the vast majority to a pagan 
 ignorance which ensures (as S. Francis Xavier assured his cate- . 
 chumens) the doom of 'endless misery.' This Being is repre- 
 sented as pacified towards His elect by the sacrifice of His 
 innocent Son ; while nevertheless His favour is to be still sought 
 chiefly through the intercessions of Mary and other earth-born 
 mediators in a worship which is fatal in most cases to the 
 spiritual aspirations of the soul. 
 
 Was there ever a combination of ideas more immoral, more 
 fitted to provoke men to atheistic reaction ? Such has been its 
 effect everywhere in Europe. Except the Roman clergy (whose 
 early emasculation, and training in the sacrifice of personal con- 
 viction, gradually qualify them for every enormity of opinion) and 
 their feminine entourage, it could scarcely be anticipated that 
 persons of average sense or sensibility would long endure the 
 burden. The progress of knowledge has, with rare exceptions, 
 been co-extensive with scepticism in Catholic countries, and the 
 issue has usually been, as in Rome itself, in pantheistic or 
 atheistic conclusions. But, indeed, a Spinoza, a Hume, and a 
 Spencer, are everywhere the inevitable counterparts of a Bellar- 
 mine, a Baronius, and a Bilio. 
 
 Surely it is something more than a hopeful speculation that 
 when a brighter representation of the living God of Christianity 
 dawns, like a gladdening sunrise, on the scientific world ; when it 
 is understood that Redemption, which so many centuries have 
 celebrated, has in truth been nothing less than a movement of 
 
ATHEISM A PASSING CLOUD. 531 
 
 the Being who is Eternal to bless with Immortality in His own 
 image the ephemeron ' who is of a few days and full of trouble ; ' 
 a new spirit may enter into many of the minds which devote 
 themselves to the investigation of nature. The chief intellectual 
 temptation to atheism will have been taken away. The Eternal 
 Severity and Righteousness, limited in all its actions by consider- 
 ation for the frailty of the creature, and the Eternal Love 
 bringing ultimate good out of earlier forms of evil and imperfec- 
 tion, and commending itself as a reality to every man's conscience, 
 may win God-ward many of the explorers of the material world ; 
 as when that self-sustaining Flame, the symbol of the Self-existent 
 Being, allured in a voice of soft thunder the shepherd of Midian, 
 who found in the investigation of a natural phenomenon the 
 revelation of an Essence Divine. It is a consciousness of divine 
 Love breathing around, a sense, amidst all mysteries, of intelli- 
 gible justice and goodness, which alone can awaken the belief of 
 a Divine Personality in atheistic souls ; and this is precisely the 
 effect of Christ's ministry among men, when He makes Himself 
 known as THE LIFE OF THE WORLD, and the final Arbiter of its 
 destinies. 
 
 II. 
 
 The effect of the preceding argument on Deistical objections to the 
 Miraculous History of Scripture. 
 
 It is not only in the redemption of some minds from atheism 
 that favourable results may be augured from preceding repre- 
 sentations. The doctrine of Immortality conferred through the 
 Incarnation seems likely to operate also a change of opinion 
 in many thoughtful souls who at present are simply Theists, 
 and base their opposition to Christianity on its miraculous 
 character. 
 
 It is held by large numbers to form an insuperable objection 
 to the Scriptural doctrine, that it comes professing to be a super- 
 natural and thaumaturgic revelation. It is said that if the com- 
 munication had been really divine it would have approached 
 mankind on the level of known law, and as a part of the esta- 
 blished order of nature. Men would easily believe a religion 
 which was natural, but not one which is self-condemned, by claim- 
 
532 ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES, AND 
 
 ing to operate in the sphere, and to support itself by the evidence, 
 of marvels and improbabilities. If Christianity were true, why 
 could it not dawn on the world, like sunlight, in the course of 
 nature ? Why must men's minds be tormented by a challenge 
 to believe in infractions of the laws of the universe, which offer 
 violence to every dictate of experience and reason ? 
 
 It is added, that a miraculous revelation carries with it the 
 certainty of its own rejection by all who only hear of its preten- 
 sions. Miracles which men see might, indeed, convey over- 
 powering conviction to the spectators. But miracles which are 
 simply heard of are provocatives to incredulity. Miracles to those 
 who behold them may be decisive evidence of a revelation. But 
 to those who are only hearers of a report concerning them they 
 are necessarily the chief hindrances to faith. A claim to mira- 
 culous character is the passport to oblivion for any religion just in 
 proportion as men are acquainted with the steadfast order of 
 nature. Reported miracles cannot stand for evidence. They 
 require evidence for themselves. It is thus that some even of the 
 foremost physical philosophers of our time arraign and condemn 
 Christianity. 
 
 An effective and conciliatory reply is given to such objectors 
 by this theodicy. 
 
 Christianity comes into the world, and urges its claims upon 
 mankind, not as a theory, or a philosophy, but as a practical 
 remedy for the two great evils which degrade and oppress us. 
 These are Sin and Death. Christ appears as the Son of God, 
 commissioned by the Father of Heaven, to ' make an end of sins,' 
 and to ' abolish death ' by inspiring us with the spirit of immor- 
 tality in soul and body. 
 
 Neither of these works could from their nature possibly be 
 works of law. They must be operations of God above law, and 
 beyond nature. Sin is law-breaking, and the remedy for law- 
 breaking, if it be by forgiveness, must be found in prerogative, 
 and not in a legal process. Pardon and renewal of the Divine 
 likeness, if bestowed, must be supra-legal and supernatural. In 
 the same way, to abolish death and to confer immortality on a 
 dying offender, is a work of God essentially above nature and the 
 regular order of the world. 
 
A CONCILIATORY REPLY. 533 
 
 Accordingly everything in Christianity bears the stamp of 
 the miraculous ; because its aims are supernatural. It is an 
 exercise of prerogative and redeeming grace. Salvation, there- 
 fore, is accomplished by a Power above nature, a Personal Saviour 
 who is Divine. Everything pertaining to His Personality as the 
 Life-giver is supernatural. His coming was heralded by a series 
 of preternatural dispensations, in the patriarchal and Jewish 
 economies. His birth of a Virgin was a miracle. His works of 
 mercy were beyond the powers of nature. His resurrection was 
 a miracle. His ascension to heaven was an act above the laws of 
 heaven and earth, as shall be His second coming in the glory of 
 the Father. He was ' God manifest in the flesh.' 
 
 Every procedure in the application of redemption is super- 
 natural or miraculous also. Christians are ' begotten again ' in 
 the image of God's holiness and immortality by a special action of 
 1 the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.' They are afterwards 'kept by 
 the power of God through faith unto salvation.' Their spirits in 
 death are ' caught up into Paradise ' by a miraculous act of God, 
 to be 'present with the Lord' until the second advent. Their 
 bodies shall be ' raised from the dead ' in eternal glory, by an act 
 of supernatural power. The whole eternal life to follow will be 
 a result not of primeval law but of supervenient grace not of 
 natural development or of the original law of continuity, but of 
 special mercy and abnormal compassion. 
 
 Can it, then, be thought incredible, since the very essence of 
 Christianity is thus in its spiritual quality and physical aims a 
 work not of law but of pardon, from its beginning to its end a 
 miracle of new creation, if the evidence of its truth be mira- 
 culous also ? What we term the miracles of the Scripture history 
 are but the bright cloud overshadowing that Saviour who is Him- 
 self ' the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God,' and whose 
 work transcends all that Nature can know. ' Eye hath not seen 
 nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love Him' 
 
 Thus the doctrine of the Bible and its recorded miracles seem 
 to constitute a living and coherent unity. All is in keeping. The 
 doctrine illuminates the miracles. The miracles only express 
 and commend the essential doctrine. It is God acting, no longer 
 according to the course of law, which for man would have issued 
 
5 34 CHRIST AND SCIENCE. 
 
 in absolute death, but remedially above law, in a ' grace ' which 
 literally saves us from death. Christ gives eyes to the blind, 
 hearing to the deaf, health to the diseased, speech to the dumb, 
 and life to the dead. He breaks the prison of the tomb. But 
 all these works of power represent the greater marvels through 
 which He works from age to age to heal the diseases of the soul 
 as He will finally raise in immortal glory those who believe in 
 Him. 
 
 Against a representation of Christ's mission so fruitful as this, 
 so conformable to the facts of man's condition, an ingenuous 
 scepticism will have little to allege. The incredibility of such a 
 revelation from God to man will be measured by men's ideas of 
 the Infinite Compassion. If the Eternal Cause is good as well 
 as powerful, it is not improbable that He may have vouchsafed a 
 message of pardon and eternal life to man, the 'paragon of nature.' 
 But according to the measure of that probability miracles are 
 probable, in the great supernatural work of counteracting sin and 
 death.* 
 
 * If it be objected here that we represent the security of our eternal life as 
 guaranteed by a Book, to be ascertained only by criticism of that Book, and as 
 reaching no further than such dubious criticism can carry us, so that if the 
 Bible were lost our hope of Immortality would be lost with it, it may be 
 replied that as a matter of fact the Bible has not been lost ; and that the record 
 among men of the Incarnation of God in Christ does not depend only upon the 
 New Testament writings, but also upon that confirmatory tradition of Chris- 
 tendom, of which the Bible history is but a transcript. Our faith in the His- 
 torical Revelation rests upon the * twelve foundations ' of the manifold 
 evidences that God has spoken to the world by His Son. And those who, 
 like Miss Power Cobbe, find in the mind itself provisions for a belief in the 
 life to come, are the last persons who ought in consistency to object to the 
 confirmation of that belief by corresponding provisions in external history, it 
 external history be a series of events over which the Deity has exercised any 
 control. This subject of the comparative value and utility of Revelations of 
 God made through the reason and through a written record, is treated with 
 consummate ability by Bishop Conybeare in his Defence of Revelation, 1732, 
 pp. 229-335, a work published four years before Butler's Analogy, and the 
 reprinting of which would supply an effectual answer to much of the ' magnifi- 
 cent contempt ' for the Bible which characterises the naturalistic writing of the 
 present day. Bishop Conybeare lies side by side with Bishop Butler in Bristol 
 Cathedral, and their works are more nearly of equal value than is understood 
 by some of our contemporaries. If the force of Butler's argument has been in 
 some respects exaggerated, the worth of Conybeare's has most certainly been 
 under-estimated. 
 
UNIFORMITY AND EVOLUTION. 535 
 
 In face of such anticipations and recognitions of the moral 
 nature of God loving and compassionating His creature, the argu- 
 ment against miraculous intervention founded on the order of 
 nature loses its force. It is seen that as in man the physical and 
 moral elements are conjoined, but so that the moral volition 
 determines more than any other cause the course of physical 
 phenomena, so it must be in relation to the universe and its 
 Cause. If there be a God who is a Person, a moral nature must 
 be of His Essence, and moral volition must determine the action 
 of His physical providence. In the proportion in which it is pro- 
 bable that God will act mercifully towards such a creature as man, 
 everything is also probable which is necessary for his redemption 
 from sin and death. But this involves the super-induction upon 
 the course or nature of a procedure which is exceptional and 
 supernatural. 
 
 After all that has been taught of late years respecting develop- 
 ment, one might apprehend that philosophers would observe 
 caution in extreme statements on the ' uniform ' action of natural 
 forces. We are invited to believe that without any special divine 
 interference whatsoever, but simply through an innate tendency 
 in the world to develop itself, the globe has passed from a gaseous 
 into a fiery and fluid condition, and has then finally become solid 
 in its outermost crust. Here are three actions, to begin with, 
 which are not uniform but progressive. Next we are informed 
 that the interior volcanic force, acting under impulses of which 
 no one has undertaken to assign the law, has from time to time 
 raised and then depressed many times in succession the solid 
 surface of the globe in all its portions, thus turning sea into dry 
 land, and dry land into sea, changing arctic climates into tropical, 
 and tropical into arctic, as has happened in England more than 
 once. And this again bears the aspect of intelligent progress 
 rather than of blind uniformity of action. 
 
 Next we are invited to believe that when the earth was suffi- 
 ciently cooled and solidified, the forces of nature specially light, 
 heat, electricity, or the force which is convertible into all of them 
 acting upon certain materials having a tendency to receive a 
 change, made them alive so that the protoplasm became a cell, 
 and the cell grew into a moving substance, that received increase, 
 
536 THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 and forthwith began to propagate its likeness ; that these earliest 
 growths passed from plants into plant-animals ; that the animals 
 began to feel and to act, and finally to see, to hear, to think, and 
 to advance into higher forms; until at last was produced the 
 complex animal creation which we behold around us, out of which 
 finally sprang Mankind, and free-thought in Europe. 
 
 We will not here dispute any one of these statements. But 
 surely those who propose them, and who deduce them from 
 analytical chemistry, physiology, and the testimony of the rocks 
 will not again affirm the undeviating uniformity of the action of 
 nature, or allege it as a reason why we must believe that ' all 
 things have continued as they were from the beginning of the 
 creation/ If there has been development of one kind, there may 
 have been development of another, in the Divine Cause as well 
 as in Nature. There may have been developed that special form 
 of Humanity which we denominate The Christ, or God manifest 
 in the Flesh ; and this may be at least as provable by spiritual 
 evidence and by sufficient testimony, as the gradual conversion of 
 protoplasm into a camelopard, or of a simian into a man. 
 
 Such a transcendent Divine Evolution has, we believe, ap- 
 peared on earth in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ ; the 
 object of whose holy Incarnation, or close union between the 
 Infinite and Blessed Nature and the sinful, dying creature, was to 
 pour the fulness of God's eternal life into the dead. It is a Reve- 
 lation of supernatural truth which meets man exactly at the point 
 where Natural Law leaves him on the edge of the black abyss 
 of nothingness. It is a Revelation of Divine Compassion which 
 meets us precisely at the point where science abandons us, con- 
 fronting the eternal darkness. 
 
 ' It moved upon this earth a Shape of brightness, 
 A Power that from its objects scarcely drew 
 One impulse of its being ; in its lightness 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew 
 That wanders through the waste air's pathless blue 
 To nourish some far desert r it did seem 
 Beside me, gathering beauty as it grew, 
 As the bright shade of some immortal dream 
 Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream. 
 
ATHEISM AND THE INCARNATION. 537 
 
 Faith in God in the modern world depends on believing in 
 Christ. ' He that hath the Son hath the Life : he that hath not 
 the Son hath not the Life.' In ancient times, narrow local con- 
 ceptions of Deity rendered it comparatively easy for the pious 
 warriors of Palestine to * trust in the Lord.' They were troubled 
 with few doubts because they had but little knowledge. But now 
 the veil has been lifted up. Man knows the whole world, and his 
 views are extended into the infinity around him. The idea of 
 God has been growing from age to age, until now it is so great 
 that man's heart is losing its hold on the Divine personality and 
 providence. The uniformity of the laws of force has weakened 
 the belief in a Living God working in the creation, and the dis- 
 order of events in the moral system has completed the scepticism 
 which physical science had begun. Between the order of nature, 
 and the disorder of the human world, men are bewildered, and 
 find God to be a shadow that escapes them in the all-surrounding 
 darkness. It is for these last days that Heaven has reserved the 
 Incarnation of the Word. In Jesus Christ we ' see the Father ' 
 once more. We regain our hold on that Power which wields 
 the energies of creation, and 'manages our mean affairs.' Full 
 of grace and truth, He reveals God as a Person, as a present 
 Providence, as a redeeming Mercy, as the Most Righteous Judge 
 Eternal; and we return to sit at His feet, after all our hard lessons 
 in science and history, crying out as we look up into His God-lit 
 countenance, ' LORD, TO WHOM SHALL WE GO ? THOU HAST THE 
 WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE.' 
 
 The conditions of that glorious destiny we have striven, accord- 
 ing to our ability, to set forth in the foregoing pages. But the 
 subject is worthy of the future labours of many a more powerful 
 pen ; and, when carefully studied, will be found to stand in direct 
 correlation with the entire circle of physical, intellectual, and 
 moral science of our time. 
 
 For THE WHOLE TRUTH (S. John's ircurav Tr/v dA>j0iav) in- 
 cluding under that name both these natural and moral knowledges 
 and the revelations of the Gospel may be compared to a magni- 
 ficent Organ, placed on high in the fabric of the Catholic Church 
 

 
 538 THE EVERLASTING SONG. 
 
 of God. An inferior agency may be employed to cleanse away 
 the dust and defilement which have accumulated among some of 
 its ten thousand pipes and internal adaptations, during ages when 
 its voice was silent, or rendered harsh and dissonant through the 
 derangement of its powers. But it is only some heaven-taught 
 performer, commanding the range of all its resources, and versed 
 in the management of celestial themes, who can fill the trembling 
 Edifice with its mightiest strains, and by them adequately prove, 
 that the sweetness which charms us in those milder harmonies 
 that kindle the transports of immortal joy, rolls downward, without 
 a single discord, through the vast compass of descending notes, 
 into the solemn diapason of its thunders, conformably to that 
 ETERNAL UNIVERSAL LOVE, whose glory, together with the songs 
 of men and angels, it celebrates and proclaims. 
 
 Meantime, if it be denied to all except a few most favoured 
 mortals, at rare intervals, thus worthily to touch the keys of this 
 divine and glorious Instrument, let us at least be thankful that 
 Europe has for centuries been permitted to hear the heart- stirring 
 music of its central and principal tones the testimony of Jesus 
 Christ, and the promise of everlasting salvation. A happier gene- 
 ration shall listen to the perfected chorus in the coming kingdom 
 of our Saviour. ' And every creature which is in heaven, and on 
 the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all 
 that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, 
 and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the 
 Lamb for ever and ever / ' 
 
The following Works may be consulted upon the several subjects 
 treated in this volume : 
 
 REVELATIONS OF A FUTURE STATE. Archbishop Whately. (Longmans.) 
 ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY (The Epilogue). Sir James Stephen. 
 
 (Longmans.) 
 
 LIFE OR DEATH. E. F. Litton, M.A., Barrister-at-Law. (Longmans.) 
 POPULAR IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY. Rev. W. Kerr. M. A., Incumbent of 
 
 Tipton, Staffordshire. (Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.) 
 ENDLESS SUFFERINGS NOT THE DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE. Rev. T. Davis, 
 
 M.A., Vicar of Roundhay, Yorkshire. (Longmans.) 
 
 THE DURATION AND NATURE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. Rev. H. Con- 
 stable, M. A., Prebendary of Cork. (Kellaway. ) 
 THE TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. Rev. J. B. Heard, M. A., 3rd Edition. 
 
 (Clark, Edinburgh.) 
 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND ETERNAL DEATH. Rev. J. W. Barlow, M.A., 
 
 Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Dublin. (Longmans.) 
 THE DESTINY OF THE HUMAN RACE. Henry Dunn. (Simpkin & Co.) 
 THE DURATION OF EVIL. (Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.) 
 THE QUESTION OF AGES. W. Morris, M.D., Philadelphia. 
 DEBT AND GRACE. Professor Hudson, of Cambridge, U.S.A. (Kellaway, 
 
 London. ) 
 THE RAINBOW ; with which is incorporated OUR HOPE, a Monthly Periodical 
 
 devoted to Eschatology, edited by Dr. Leask and Mr. W. Maude. (Elliot 
 
 Stock.) 
 
 PAULINE THEOLOGY. By H. L. Hastings. (Elliot Stock.) 
 GOD MISUNDERSTOOD. By D. Wardlaw Scott. (Kellaway.) 
 THE WAY EVERLASTING. By S. Minton. (Elliot Stock.) 
 HUMAN DESTINY ; a Critique on Universalism. CHRIST OUR LIFE. Both 
 
 by Professor Hudson, U.S. A. (167, Hanover Street, Boston, and Kella- 
 way, London.) 
 
 EXTINCTION. By Rev. W. S. Warleigh. (Kellaway.) 
 THE PERISHING SOUL. By the Rev. J. Denniston, M.A. (Longmans.) 
 THE HARMONY OF SCRIPTURE ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT ; or the truths 
 
 contained in the views of Origen and Augustine reconciled by the 
 
 Earlier Doctrine of Conditional Immortality. By S. Minton, M.A. 
 
 (Elliot Stock.) 
 THE ENTIRE EVIDENCE OF EVANGELISTS AND APOSTLES ON FUTURE 
 
 PUNISHMENT ; with Notes on the Teaching of Dr. Angus and others. 
 
 By Rev. W. Griffith, of Eastbourne. (Elliot Stock.) 
 THE GLORY OF CHRIST IN THE RECONCILIATION OF ALL THINGS. By 
 
 Samuel Minton, M.A. (Longmans.) 
 Du SORT DES MECHANTS DANS L'AUTRE VIE. Par M. Bost, pere. Paris, 
 
 Grassart, 1861.) 
 LA FIN DU MAL. Par Dr. Petavel. (Paris, Sandoz. 33, Rue du Seine.) 
 
 DIE VORAUSSETZUNGEN DER CHRISTLICHE LEHRE VON DER UNSTERBLICH- 
 
 KBIT. Von Dr. Hermann Schultz. (Gottingen, 1861.) 
 DOGMATIK. Von Dr. R. Rothe. Heidelburg, 1870.) 
 THEOLOGISCHE ETHIK. Von Dr. Rothe. (1867.) 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 153 
 
 IOI 
 102 
 
 333 
 
 Abraham's faith in future life 
 Adam midway between animals 
 and angels ... 
 ,, his idea of death 
 Advent of Christ, second - 
 ,, neglected by 
 
 modern missions - - $18 
 Africa, ancient inhabitants of > 46 
 Alexander, Dr. L., on destruc- 
 tion 368 
 
 Alford on literal sense - - 207 
 America, ancient inhabitants of 47 
 Anathema, meaning of - -157 
 Ancient inhabitants of Europe 
 
 and Asia ... - 44 
 Animals, difference between man 
 
 and - - - - 15 
 mind of - - 1-204 
 ,, process by which their 
 
 death occurs - - 23 
 ,, no sign of survival in 
 
 death - - 24 
 
 ,, system of prey among 25 
 Angus, Dr. , his dilemma on death 1 10 
 'Annihilation,' outcries against 
 
 'doctrine of - - 345 
 
 Antichrist 428 
 
 Apocalypse, inferior Greek of - 197 
 ,, future punishment 
 
 in 409 
 
 Apostasy predicted ... 427 
 Arguments from natural light for 
 
 extinction and immortality - 1-9 
 Arnobius, doctrine of - - 423 
 Article Ninth, on Original Sin - 51 
 Assembly of Divines, confession 
 
 of 51-2 
 
 Athanasius, doctrine of - 424-5 
 Atheism, modern - - - 527 
 Atonement, theory of the - - 25 1 
 Augustine on infant damnation - 54 
 Baptism according to different 
 
 schools .... 267 
 
 Page 
 Baptism, an error to make a sect 
 
 on 268 
 
 Baptismal Regeneration - - 270 
 Beast and False Prophet, doom 
 
 of - 409 
 
 Bees, their mental faculties - 18 
 Birth, the new - 272 
 
 Blood of Christ, drinking the - 243 
 Blood, salvation by, its meaning 242 
 Body, the, essential to humanity 96 
 ,, of the Resurrection - - 330 
 Book, Miss Cobbe on salvation 
 
 by a 534 
 
 Bread of Life, Christ the - -217 
 Brown, Baldwin, Rev. , considera- 
 tion of his statements - 226, 285 
 
 Capernaum, Discourse in syna- 
 gogue of - - - - 217 
 Caste in religious life, Mr. 
 
 Brown on - - - - 477 
 
 Chaos and Kosmos - - - 336 
 
 Christ's death an atonement 245-51 
 
 ,, reason of - - 252 
 
 Christ's Deity the Crux of the 
 
 Gospel - - - - 194 
 testimony of 
 
 synoptics to - - - 195 
 ,, ,, testimony of 
 
 Fourth Gospel to - 197 
 connection of, 
 
 with the doctrine of 
 eternal life - - - 204 
 Christ's position between the 
 
 Pharisees and Sadducees 187-9 
 Christianity and conscience - 459 
 ,, ante-Nicene - - 430 
 Clemance, Rev. C. - - - 409 
 Conditional results, God knows 325 
 Constable's, Mr. , views on Hades 295 
 Contempt Everlasting - - 171 
 Cox's Safaator Mundi - - 223 
 Curse, Christ's death the legal - 241 
 
INDEX. 
 
 54i 
 
 Page 
 
 Daimonia of the Gospels -136 
 Danger of error not on one side 
 
 only 64 
 
 Darby on Matt. xxv. 46 - - 399 
 Darkness, kingdom of - - 337 
 Day, in the, meaning of - - 115 
 Dead by sins, meaning of the 
 
 phrase - - - 223-281 
 Death, fossil evidence of - - 25 
 ,, theological definitions of 50 
 Roman Catholic doctrine 
 
 on - - - - 52 
 ,, modern merciful defini- 
 tions of - - -54 
 ,, disposal of elements in - 97 
 ,, the, threatened to Adam 104 
 S. Paul on - 106 
 
 ,, not annihilation of sub- 
 stance - - - 109 
 ,, true idea of - - - 108 
 ,, of animals in sacrifice - 146 
 ,, penalty of Mosaic Law - 155 
 ,, defined by Christ - - 210 
 is gain - - - - 306 
 ,, tropical senses of - - 372 
 , , synonyms of ; in New Tes- 
 tament - - - 374 
 Deification of Jesus, contrary to 
 
 Jewish tendency - - 199 
 
 Demonology of New Testament 128 
 
 ,, essential to Chris- 
 
 tianity - - - - 131 
 Destruction not threatened in 
 
 Koran .... 377 
 
 ,, Petavel's syllabus of 
 words signifying - - 387 
 
 Devil, doom of the - - -412 
 Doctrines, duty of realizing - 56 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, on Hell - 58 
 
 Error, examples of wide-spread 68 
 ,, rapid progress of - 
 
 Everlasting and eternal, differ- 
 ence between - - - 397 
 
 Evolution, argument for man's 
 
 mortality from - - - 6-8 
 
 Evolution, the geological record 
 
 against - - - - 28 
 
 Faith, conscience, and reason - 499 
 
 Fatherhood, God's doctrine of - 248 
 Fathers, ante-Nicene, doctrine 
 
 of - - - - - 416 
 Figurative interpretation, eclipse 
 
 of faith through - - - 206 
 
 Fire, judgment by - - - 35 1 
 
 Page 
 
 Fire, a revelation of energy - 352 
 Forensic justification - - 226 
 
 Foster, John, Letter on Eternity 61 
 Furniss, on the sight of Hell - 60 
 Future Life, hope of, in patri- 
 archs - -.. 148-154 
 Future punishment, the persons 
 
 destined to - 349 
 ,, ,, not incredible 354 
 
 ,, terms used to 
 
 denote - 358 
 ,, images to de- 
 
 note - - 376 
 , ,, evil effects of 
 
 popular doctrine on - - 563 
 
 Generation of animals - - 6 
 Genesis, Christianity based on - 88-9 
 Genesis. Book of, key to the 
 
 Bible - - . 86-212 
 Genesis of the prevailing opinion 434 
 God, sensibility of - - 255 
 
 ,, suffered in the atonement - 259 
 ,, vengeance of - - - 
 Gospel, Fourth, reason of late 
 
 acceptance - 198 
 ,, object of, to deify 
 
 Jesus - - 199 
 
 ,, argument of - 215 
 
 Greek speech, literality of - 21 1-366 
 
 Hades, or state of departed souls 298 
 
 , , sufferings of some souls in 3 1 2 
 
 Heard on unity of man's nature - 94 
 Heathen saved in imperfect 
 
 knowledge- - - - 314 
 Hell rendered more real by this 
 
 doctrine - 489 
 
 History of faith in resurrection - 152 
 
 Immortality of soul unknown to 
 
 Moses and the prophets - 78 
 imputation - ... 229 
 Incarnation, eternal life through 204 
 Infants, salvation of - - 3 2 5*47i 
 Infant damnation, Augustine on 54 
 Infidelity caused by doctrine of 
 
 endless misery - - -65 
 Infidelity often involuntary - 66 
 Instinct and reason - - - 19 
 Inspiration, limits of- - - 391 
 Interim beliefs - - - - So 
 Interpretation, general rules 
 
 of - 348 
 
 Irenaeus doctrine on life - - 419 
 Isaac, sacrifice of - - - 151 
 
42 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Isaiah, supposed threats of end- 
 less woe in - - - . - 168 
 Isolated truths often incredible - 127 
 Israel not saved by Christian 
 
 truth 316 
 
 Job, future punishment in book of 1 76 
 Judgment to come, an awful 
 
 reality - - - - 347 
 
 Justify, the verb to, its uses - 227 
 
 Justification, forensic - - 226 
 
 ,, various modes of - 228 
 
 errors on - - - 231 
 
 ,, connection between 
 
 and Immortality 234-37 
 Justin Martyr - - - - 418 
 
 Killed, being, a definition of death 160 
 
 Kingdom of God on earth - - 339 
 
 suggestions on nature 
 
 of 34i 
 
 Koran, death not threatened in- 377 
 Kosmos ending in man - -337 
 
 Law, violation of, results of - 354 
 Life, modes of treatment of the 
 
 word- - - - 357-371 
 
 Literal sense, claims of the - 207 
 
 Locke on the curse of death - 101 
 
 Logos, incarnation of the - - 193 
 
 ,, Athanasius on 424 
 
 Maimonides, doctrine of - - 222 
 
 Man a part of nature 8 
 
 date of his origin unknown 30 
 
 made in image of God - 93 
 Mosaic account of creation 
 
 of 88 
 
 palaeolithic, no history of - 38 
 signs of direct creation of - 33 
 Man's superiority to animals - 35 
 Matthew's Gospel, general doc- 
 trine of 401 
 Matterhorn - - - - 528 
 Maude on the Resurrection - 330 
 Mercy Divine, Faith's ultimate 
 
 object - - - - 315 
 Mill, J. Stuart, on the soul - 76 
 Missions, in what sense success- 
 ful - - - - 512 
 ,, as a form of spiritual 
 
 life - - - - 506 
 ,, incredulity as to the 
 
 basis of - - - 507 
 
 Moral ideas of life and death - 369 
 
 Moses, resurrection known to - 153 
 
 Page 
 Moses, book of, designed for the 
 
 world's childhood - 86 
 ,, Adam of, a probable 
 
 being .... 87 
 
 ,, his death penalties - - 155 
 Motives increase in strength of 
 
 nobler - - - - 497 
 
 Necromancy forbidden, Deut. 
 
 xviii. 300 
 
 New Testament, passages in, 
 
 most easily explained by this 
 
 theory - - - - 378 
 Numbers of men in India and 
 
 China - - - - 41 
 
 Oaths of God, two - - - 450 
 Old Testament doctrine on future 
 
 punishment - - 167-78 
 
 Oriental speech, genius of- - 210 
 
 Parables, Christ's teaching in - 211 
 Paul's, S., expectation of survival 316 
 Pentateuch not scientific - - 85-6 
 Perowne on immortality - - 77 
 Petavel's syllabus of terms signi- 
 fying destruction - - 387 
 Phsedon of Plato - - 361-365 
 Pharisees, history of their 
 
 opinions - - - 182-220 
 
 Plato, meaning of terms in - 365 
 
 Pneuma, original or newly-born 274 
 
 Prophets, eternal life in - - 166 
 
 ,, supposed threats of 
 
 endless woe in - - - 168 
 
 Propitiation, S. Paul on - - 250 
 Proverbs, future judgment in 
 
 book of - - - - 178 
 
 Psalms, eternal life in - - 165 
 
 ,, future punishment in - 177 
 Psychology gives the law to 
 
 interpretation - - - 441 
 Punishment, eternal, of S. Mat- 
 thew - - - - - 395 
 
 Rabbins, doctrine of the - - 222 
 
 Regeneration or New Birth - 261 
 
 ,, by fragmentary 
 
 truth - - 272 
 
 in infancy - - 274 
 Religions, perversions of by 
 
 Satanic agency - - - 141 
 
 Rephaim, or wicked ghosts - 301 
 Resurrection, S. Paul's argument 
 
 on - - 96 
 
INDEX. 
 
 543 
 
 ing 
 S. Paul on 
 
 Page 
 
 Resurrection, History of faith in 152 
 ,, Christ's, through 
 
 His Deity - - 244 
 ,, on the pattern of 
 
 Christ's - - 330 
 ,, of wicked - - 353 
 
 Revelation most credible in its 
 
 integrity - - - -124 
 Rewards and punishments of 
 
 Old Testament - - 145-178 
 Rome, its religious state - - 524 
 Romans, epistle to the, doctrine 
 
 of 106 
 
 Sacrifice 145 
 
 Sadducees, history of 181, 220-1 
 
 Salvation a work of grace, not 
 
 of equity .... 473 
 Satan's place in Christ's teach- 
 
 - 135 
 . 138 
 
 political influence of - 140 
 ,, transformed as angel of 
 
 light - - - - 142 
 Satan's war against human life - 139 
 Scheme of salvation, the ortho- 
 dox 462 
 
 Scientific knowledge, limits of - 126 
 Science, Christ and - - - 527 
 Sensibility of God - - - 255 
 Serpent, the, in Genesis - - 123 
 Severity of God in destruction -452 
 Sheep and goats, parable of 399 
 Sheol of the Old Testament - 298 
 Silence of Scripture on immortal 
 
 soul 78 
 
 Sin, evil of, how to be measured 493 
 Smith, Pye, on Sacrifice - - 145 
 Soul, arguments for immortality 
 
 of - - . - - -72-8 
 ,, silence of Scripture on im- 
 mortality of - - - 78 
 ,, and Spirit, distinction be- 
 tween .... 275 
 ,, man became a living. Gen. 
 
 ii. 7- 90 
 
 ,, survival of, in Hades due to 
 
 entrance of redemption 120-309 
 Souls, separate destiny of, not 
 
 uniform .... 310 
 Species in our time have real 
 
 existence - - - - 29 
 
 Spirits in prison - - - 320 
 
 ,, evil, idea of, not absurd- 125 
 
 Page 
 Spirits, evil, doctrine of, in Scrip- 
 
 ture ..... 123-150 
 Spiritualism, its source - -142 
 ,, argument for sur- 
 
 vival from - - 310 
 ,, forbidden by Moses, 
 
 Deut. xviii. - 300 
 
 Spurgeon on hell-torments - 59 
 Summary of doctrine on re- 
 
 demption - - - 116-122 
 Sun's image depicted by sun- 
 
 beams .... 218 
 Supernatural character of re- 
 
 demption - . . -531 
 Swedenborg's definition of the 
 
 Taylor, Mr. Isaac, on future 
 
 punishment - - - 457 
 Theism, contemporary antipathy 
 
 to ..... 527 
 Theos, two uses of 200 
 
 Thief on the Cross, Christ's 
 
 words to - - - 304 
 
 Time, obscurity of geological - 29 
 Traditions, recent date of human 36 
 Tree of knowledge - - - 100 
 
 Uniformity and evolution - - 532 
 Union with Christ in eternal 
 
 life ..... 215 
 Unity of human nature - - 96 
 Universalism, its modes of inter- 
 
 pretation - - 440 
 ,, Scriptures on which 
 
 it relies - - ^\ 
 
 Vegetable souls not immortal - 24 
 Vengeance of God, the - - 502 
 
 Warleigh's, Mr. , opinion on Hades 298 
 Wicked men not raised just to be 
 
 annihilated ... 500 
 
 Whately on life and death - - 99 
 Winking, God, at times of igno- 
 
 rance - - - - 323 
 
 Wishes, influence of, on criticism 294 
 Worm that dieth not, Mark ix. 
 
 44 .... 169-405 
 
 Xavier on fate of Japanese - 53 
 Youth, Spiritual Experiences of- 563 
 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF GROWTH, 
 
 AND OTHER DISCOURSES. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8v0, cloth $s. 
 
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