SALYATOE MTJNDI.
SALVATOR MUNDI:
OR,
IS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MEN ?
BY
SAMUEL iCOX.
But we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially
of those that believe."
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON :
C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1878.
The Rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved.
TO MY BIBLE-CLASS,
WITH MY LOVE.
M894384:
When man at length his ideal height hath gained,
So that the heavenly kingdom is attained,
Will there be any room for tears and pain,
For dim grey twilights, sobbing wind, and rain,
Mist, wreaths, and flying clouds, the thunder's roar,
Or the sea breaking on a lonely shore,
With all the yearnings these things shadow forth ?
Is the pathetic minor but for earth,
And will the heavens resound with joy alone,
Though sadness often makes a deeper tone ?
Must all of life fall off that cannot show
Some fruit that did to full perfection grow ?
The tottering steps, the pause, even the fall,
Will not eternal life have room for all ;
And in the circle of Infinity
Must not all moods of life unfolded lie,
But all complete, the weak within the strong,
And the one verse become a perfect song ;
The bud, the blossom, the fruit-laden bough,
Seen by the light of the eternal now ?
May not all discords to one concord lead
Whose every missing note would leave a need
Deep, unimagined as a world untrod
An infinite harmony whose name is God ?
PREFACE.
THE main object of this book is to encourage those
who " faintly trust the larger hope " to commit them-
selves to it wholly and fearlessly, by shewing them that
they have ample warrant for it in the Scriptures of
the New Testament.
For more than twenty years I have held, and
preached, the views advocated in these Lectures ; but,
in their present form, they were delivered to my
Bible-Class only last Winter. Now my Bible-Class is
one of which any man might be proud. It consists of
more than a hundred-and-fifty members, men and
women. Three or four of them are good Biblical
scholars, versed in Greek and Hebrew ; a large pro-
portion of them, thanks to our Grammar Schools and
High Schools, have some slender acquaintance with
their Greek Testaments : and all, or nearly all, of
them are accustomed to study the sacred Scriptures
PREFACE.
with intelligence and devotion. At the close of each
Lecture I invited the frankest statement of difficulties
and objections, an invitation which provoked a very
frank and eager response. Some of the discussions
which ensued were very instructive at least to me ;
and I often learned from them " where the shoe
pinched : " while, sometimes, I not only learned what
were the real difficulties in the minds of those who
listened to me, but also how they might be met. As
far as I could I met them, both at the time and in
subsequent additions to or modifications of my manu-
script. I would fain hope, therefore, that those who
read these Lectures will find that some at least of the
difficulties which have obscured their hopes, whether
for themselves or for the world at large, have been re-
moved from their path, and that points of view have
been opened up to them which they have not hereto-
fore occupied. If that should be so, they will owe
something to my Class as well as to myself.
It would have been easy to recast these Lectures
into a more bookish form, and thus to have avoided
some of the brief recapitulations which will be found
in them ; but, in the process, they might have lost
some of their vivacity ; and it would not have been
PREFACE. ix
so clear, had these recapitulations been omitted, that
the argument is a cumulative one, and needs to be
considered as a whole, as well as in its separate parts.
Of all branches of theology Eschatology is perhaps
the least attractive to sober and thoughtful students
of the Inspired Word, especially if they have dis-
covered that the New Testament predictions of ages
and things to come can only be safely approached
through the long and winding avenue of Old Testa-
ment prophecy. But that section of it which relates
to the conditions of men after death is one which so
profoundly affects our whole conception both of the
character of God and of the salvation wrought by
Christ, that even those who most shrink from the in-
terpretation of prophecy are compelled to study it.
Indeed I cannot but think it a binding duty on all
preachers of the Word that they should not only come
to some well-considered conclusion on this point, but
that they should also publish and enforce that conclu-
sion, whatever it may be. Few of the more thoughtful
and cultivated preachers of the Gospel now hold the
dogma of everlasting torment ; in a large circle of
acquaintance I hardly know one : and yet how few
seek to replace it, in the mind of the Church, with
PREFACE.
any doctrine which they hold to be more in accordance
with " the mind of the Spirit." When they are com-
pelled to speak on this point, many are content, not
to interpret, but simply to repeat, the very words of
Scripture. But, if it be an honest, it is surely an un-
dignified and unteacherlike procedure, to use in one
sense words which their hearers take, and which they
know their hearers to take, in another and a very
different sense. Many plead that they cannot speak
out without giving a kind and degree of offence which
would close the minds and hearts of most of those who
listen to them against their influence, an influence
which on the whole tells for good, and which therefore
they are not at liberty to sacrifice. But do they not
a little forget how much, and what grave, offence they
are giving to their more intelligent and inquiring
hearers, those who really give the spiritual tone to
their Congregations, by their silence, or their equivo-
cation, on a point of such grave importance ? Truth
may be dangerous, both to him who utters it, and
even to those who listen to it. But is it our function,
as ministers of the Word, to avoid danger, or to pro-
claim the truth ? and are we so very much wiser and
better than our hearers that the truths which are
PREFACE.
good for us may be highly injurious to them ? If any
man hold, or is convinced that he holds, any truth,
in God's name let him utter his truth or conviction,
and leave the consequences with the God who gave it
him, and who is quite able both to rule and to save
the world without our help, and is not in the least
likely to be helped by any man's infidelity to his con-
victions. The Church is not dying, nor likely to die,
of too much truth ; but it is sure to languish if its
teachers, even for the most amiable reasons, suppress
the truth that is in them. And such a truth as this
a truth which makes God a just God and a Saviour
to us, and the Gospel veritable good news ; how can
any reasonable man think to serve God by hiding it !
Of those teachers and preachers who honestly retain
the dogma which attaches an endless torment to the
sins of time no man can ask more than that, while
they preach it with sincerity, they also keep their
minds open to any more light which may break out
upon them from God's holy Word ; but of those who
have seen that light and yet will not suffer it to shine
through their teaching, what can one say but that they
are less worthy of their high calling than those who
still walk in darkness 2
xii PREFACE.
I have read most of the books on the theme dis-
cussed in this Volume which have appeared during
the last half century ; and no doubt am more indebted
to some of them than I know. There are but three
to which I consciously owe much : (1) A Volume pub-
lished, I should think, nearly thirty years since, by
my friend Mr Dobney of Maidstone, the very name of
which I cannot now recall, though I read it eagerly at
the time and learned much from it : (2) " The Second
Death and the Restitution of All Things," by Andrew
Jukes, a valuable and suggestive work which swept
the last remnants of difficulty clean out of my mind :
and (3) Dr Dewes's too brief remarks on one branch of
the subject in his " Plea for a New Translation of the
Scriptures." But, on the whole, I believe I may say
quite simply and honestly that 'I have got my views
from long study of the New Testament itself, and not
from any comments on it.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. THE QUESTION RAISED, .... 1
IT. THE LIMITS WITHIN WHICH IT WILL BE ARGUED, . 19
III. DAMNATION, . . . . .36
IV. HELL, ...... 55
V. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS, . 96
VI.' THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS, . 117
VII. THE TEST AND TESTIMONY OF PRINCIPLES, . 144
VIII. THE UNIVERSALITY OF CHRIST'S REDEMPTION, . 172
IX. WHAT WE SHALL BE, . . .198
SALVATOR MTJNDL
I. THE QUESTION BAISED.
ST MATTHEW xi. 20-24.
" IF the mighty works which were done in you had
been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have re-
pented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." Then why
were those mighty works not done ? Is it not the
will of God that none should perish, but that all
should come, through repentance, unto life ? Does
not He Himself plead with men, saying, " Why will
ye die ? " And yet the Lord Jesus, who knew what
might have been as well as what had been, solemnly
declares that even the guilty inhabitants of Sodom
and of Tyre and Sidon would have been brought to
repentance and life had they witnessed the mighty
works wrought in the favoured cities of Galilee ! Why
were they not permitted to witness them, then ? Can
we blame them, will God condemn them, and condemn
them to an eternal death or an eternal misery, because
they did not see what they could not see, because they
A
SALVATOR MUNbl.
i did not repent, when the very means which would in-
fallibly have induced repentance were not vouchsafed
them ?
A momentous question this ! few questions are
more momentous. It is a question which demands an
answer, even though we cannot hope, as I suppose we
cannot, to reach a full and complete answer to it
while we are compassed about with the limitations
and infirmities of this hindering mortality. The com-
plete answer would imply a complete apprehension of
the entire scheme of Providence, a complete knowledge
not only of the whole story of time, but also of the
Divine motives and purposes of which that story is a
vast and manifold illustration. And such knowledge
is too wonderful for us, too high for us to reach, too
broad for us to grasp. But some answer we must
have, some considerations which at least lighten the
burden of this pressing and momentous problem.
First of all, then, let us attempt to lay hold on the
words which have raised this problem to trace out
the order and sequence of thought in this suggestive
but obscure saying of our Lord's.
In Verse 20 we read, " Then began he to upbraid
to reproach the cities wherein most of his mighty
works were done, because they repented not." Then !
When ? When his mind was occupied with the
thought (Verse 19) that the Divine. Wisdom would be
THE QUESTION RAISED.
justified of all her children. That Wisdom had sent
forth many of her sons to turn the men of Galilee
from their sins, heroes, statesmen, prophets, poets ;
from the old-world patriarch to the modern rabbi, a
long succession of holy men had spoken to them, all
delivering the same Divine message, but delivering it
in divers manners, Wisdom changing her modes and
tones, and becoming all things to all men, that she
might win the more. And last of all, and to crown
all, the Baptist had come, and the Messias : John,
solitary and austere, keen, incisive, stimulating as the
frost of winter ; Jesus, sociable, friendly, bountiful, as
sweet and genial as a summer's day. But whatever
the form which Wisdom assumed, whatever the tone
in which she spoke, the men of Galilee found some-
what to allege against her. In her child John she
was too austere, too exacting; he was a devil of a
man, frowning on - all the sweet and kindly uses of
life. In her child Jesus she was too sociable, too
pliable, too ready to condone and to share the indul-
gences of the worst and most despised of men. He had
a devil, too, but a gluttonous and wine-bibbing devil,
not a solitary and ascetic devil like John's.
This was the attitude which they assumed towards the
Divine Wisdom that so graciously strove and pleaded
with them, an attitude of captious and yet inveterate
hostility. And now Christ sees that men possessed by
SALVATOR MUNW.
so settled an hostility to every form of Wisdom and
Righteousness as that they translate them into their
very opposites, must be nearing the end of their course.
As they will not repent and live, let Wisdom change
her voice and note as she will, nothing remains but
that she should vindicate the children whom they have
rejected and condemned, by shewing that it was by
her inspiration that they had spoken, and that all
they had said on her behalf was true. Those who
would not repent unto life when denounced by John
and invited by Jesus, and held that they needed no
repentance, must be left to die ; their very death in
sin proving that they did need to repent before they
could live. As they had left Wisdom no other way of
justifying herself, of proving herself to be the true
wisdom, and the course she indicated the only wise
course, she must take this way of justifying both her
children and herself.
In Verses 21 and 23, three of the cities in which
Wisdom had uttered her voice, and the mighty works
of Christ had been done, are named as samples of the
other cities of Galilee Chorazin, Bethsaida, Caper-
naum. And all these are now mere names to us, and
nothing more. So utterly has the prediction of Christ
been fulfilled, at least on its lower earthlier side ; so
intolerable was the judgment which fell on these
wicked cities, and so completely were they destroyed
THE QUESTION RAISED.
by it, that it is impossible so much as to identify the
very sites on which they once stood. The rocks of Tyre
and the harbour of Sidon may still be seen ; the place
of Sodom is defined by the Sea which destroyed it, the
very name of which is, as it were, the epitaph of its
inhabitants. But a more intolerable and obliterating
judgment has fallen on the cities of Galilee. The
place that once knew them knows them no more ; no
indubitable vestige of them can be traced. We know
that they were once busy and growing towns on the
teeming north-western shore of Gennesaret ; and that
is all we can say of them. Some geographers, indeed,
have found Capernaum, i.e., the village of Nahum, in
the heap of ruins which the Arabs call Tell Hum, and
Chorazin in the modern Keraseh, and affirm that Beth-
saida stood on both sides the river at the point where
the Jordan runs into the lake. But there is no common
or general assent to any of these identifications. These
ancient cities were sentenced to destruction by the
Divine Wisdom to which they had refused to listen ;
and the sentence has been executed so rigorously, and
so long ago, that all trace of them has been lost.
And yet it was not without pain and regret, we
may be sure, that Jesus pronounced so heavy a doom
on " his own city," Capernaum, in which He had spent
many tranquil and many laborious hours ; or on the
neighbouring towns, which had yielded Him many
SALVATOR MUNtil.
disciples, and in which He had so often taught and
healed. He was a man such as we are ; and that
which was familiar was dear to Him, as it is to
us. I dare say He could have better spared many a
better city than either Capernaum or Bethsaida. And
there is some trace of this natural pity and regret
there is a sound of sighing in the very sentence He
pronounced upon them ; for the Greek word (oia/),
rendered " woe " in the exclamations, " Woe unto thee
Chorazin ! woe unto thee Bethsaida ! " is elsewhere
translated " Alas ! " and here also it is an expression of
pity ; for by these exclamations our Lord means no-
thing less, though He may mean much more, than
this : " Unhappy and unblessed are ye, Chorazin and
Bethsaida, and I am sad to tell you so ! " There is
another slight but significant indication of this mood
of ruth and pity in the verb with which the Evangelist
introduces the " woe." " Then began He to reproach
the cities," &c. ; for we only " reproach " those whom,
in some sort, we have loved and trusted, of whom we
had hoped better things.
But, though his heart hung with tender com-
passion over these doomed but familiar cities, Jesus
does not hesitate to utter their doom ; for Love can
be strong and severe even while it is sad and pitiful,
and He who loved men much loved God more. And,
indeed, it was not He who condemned these cities,
THE QUESTION RAISED.
nor God. They had condemned themselves. He
does but utter the sentence which they had virtually
passed on themselves that they were unworthy of
eternal life. Life, in its true sense, was not in any
of their thoughts. They did not aim at a life wisely
and righteously ordered, but at a busy, money-getting,
self-indulgent life a life which fits men neither for
earth nor for heaven a life, therefore, which, though
it may seem to soar into a very heaven of wealth, suc-
cess, distinction, enjoyment for a time, is inevitably
doomed, and self-doomed, to sink into a hades of ruin
and oblivion.
This was the condemnation of these cities, that
light had come to them, the very Light which is the
life of men ; and they had loved darkness better than
light, because their deeds were evil. But in the mind
of our Lord this condemnation took a special and
instructive form. If we ask Him why He sighs forth
sentence against the cities of Galilee, He replies
that He condemns them for this, that in this they
condemn themselves, that the mighty works done in
them had not brought them, to repentance. But why
should they ? What was there to induce repentance
in the miracles of Christ ? Miracles naturally beget
wonder, admiration, awe ; but what is the link of
connection between miracles and penitence ? 1
apprehend it to be this. Miracles, mighty works^
SALVATOR MUNDI.
disclose the Divine presence and activity. They shew
that God is with men. They bring home to the
thoughtful heart a sense of his abiding presence and
activity. And how shall sinful men consciously stand
in the immediate presence of God without becoming
aware of the sins by which they are degraded and
defiled ? And how should they become profoundly
sensible of sin without also becoming profoundly
sorry for it ? We cannot so much as wake up in the
night under the impression that any invisible Presence
is with us, but we tremble and are afraid, because we
feel our unfitness to enter into the world in which our
spirits lie open and naked to God and our fellows.
And if, as we went about the daily business of life,
God were suddenly to stand before us, to become
visible to us in all the sweetness and glory of his
goodness, yet not clothed in the robes of his eternal
majesty, would not our first impulse be to fling our-
selves at his feet and cry, " Unclean, unclean ! "
Would not a goodness so pure call up an intolerable
and crushing sense of our own impurity ? And if
He were to lay his hand upon us, and to lift us from
the dust of our self-abasement, and to go with us
for a little while on our way, should we not walk with
Him with a softened, penitent, and lowly heart ?
That, then, was one of the functions perhaps the
main function of the miracles wrought by Christ.
THE QUESTION RAISED.
They were capable of producing, they were designed
to produce, so vivid and intense a consciousness of the
Divine Presence as should convict men of sin and lead
them to repentance.
Just now the set of thought among students of the
Bible is to underrate the value of miracles, as in the
last century the tendency was to overrate them, or at
least to apply them to evidential purposes which they
were not intended to subserve. Then perhaps men
made too much of them ; now we make too little of
them. Science scorns miracles, though she herself
has both discovered and wrought many mighty works,
-and furnished us with many a sign and proof of the
Divine presence and activity and goodness. And, to
meet the changed attitude of the world around it,
Theology is busily engaged in reducing both the
evidential and moral force of miracles, in arguing
that the unexampled character and the pure morality
of Christ are the best proof of the miracles He claimed
to^ have wrought, rather than in arguing that his
.miracles prove Him to have been sent by God to teach
men truth and win them to repentance and righteous-
ness : while Biblical Criticism eagerly undertakes to
.shew that in the addresses and letters of the Apostles
little stress is laid on the miracles wrought by Christ,
.and great stress on the still mightier truths He
enunciated and enforced.
io SALVATOR MUN^I.
All this may be, I believe it is, in the true line
of advance; but perhaps there has been something
too much of it. And assuredly the change is not
a wholesome one when it leads us to lay so much
emphasis on the teaching of our Lord as that we come
to forget, or question, or deny the force and value of
those supernatural works which were a natural result
of the Divine energies which dwelt in Him. To pitch
the cargo overboard will, indeed, lighten any ship ^
but it may also make it ride so high as that it will
endure no after storm ; and what if, when it does-
reach the haven, we find that little or nothing of value
is left in it ? Sceptics of a certain school are forward
to compliment the morality of Christ at the expense of
his miracles ; and, perhaps, with a view to conciliate
them and to secure a hearing for Christian truth, we
are somewhat too ready to put the question of miracles-
out of our thoughts, and to insist mainly, if not solely,
on the beauty and completeness and spirituality of
his teaching and commandments. But have we duly
considered what a Christ who wrought no miracle
would be to us ? and what use those same sceptics-
would be likely to make of the admission, should any
considerable section of the Church ever admit, that the
Christian miracles were a late and incredible addition
to the New Testament records ? Would they not
pounce on the admission with eager delight, and
THE QUESTION RAISED 1 1
forthwith proceed to reduce Christ to the level of
other wise men, or men of genius, or even below the
highest level of manhood ? Might they not reason-
ably reproach us with the worship we render Him ;
or even demand how we can hope that any mere man,
however gifted, should prove to be the Saviour and
Lord of the entire race ?
And we what should we not lose ? If Christ Him-
self did not become a dubious historical figure to us, if
even his moral teaching did not become uncertain and
questionable, we must at least lose both our faith in
Him as Son of God, and our hope in Him as Son of Man.
For how should the Son of God be in the world, and never
do any such creative or restorative work as the Father is
ever doing ? And if the Son of Man had not power
over the phenomenal world, the realm and sequences
of Nature, how can we any longer hope that He will
restore to us, and to the race at large, that dominion
over all the works of God's hands which we feel to be
our birthright, and which seems to be the inevitable
pre-requisite of spiritual life in its highest and most
permanent forms ?
Let us remember, then, that Christ Himself saw a
moral and spiritual value in the mighty works He
wrought in the cities of Galilee ; that He even claimed
to be believed, if not for his own sake or for the truths
He taught, yet for his very works' sake. Let us en-
I
12 SALVATOR MUNDI.
deavour, for once, to achieve a feat very difficult to
our mental weakness, that of holding two distinct
but complementary thoughts in our minds at one and
the same time. The modern set of opinion in the
Church, the tendency to subordinate the miracles of
Christ to his teaching, is a very healthy one if we do
not so far yield to it as to doubt whether those
miracles had any moral or religious value to the men
who witnessed them, as also, in a lessened degree, for
us who do but read of them. To them the mighty
works brought that sense of the presence and activity
of God which induces, or ought to induce, repentance ;
and to us they are of value as shewing that God was
once in the world, and that He who was once visibly
in the world is always in it and always at work in
it, to heal our diseases, to minister to our needs, to
quicken us to life everlasting. They feelingly per-
suade us that Christ was in very deed the Son of the
Father ; they animate us with the hope that, through
the perfect Son of Man, we shall become lords of our-
selves and of this lower world, reigning together with
Him by whom we have been redeemed.
But behind this difficulty of the miracles, and of
the way in which we are to regard them, and the
value we are to set upon them, there rises a question
still more difficult and perplexing. The man Christ
Jesus obviously thought highly of his mighty works,
THE QUESTION RAISED. 13
and of their power to open and impress the human
heart. In his mind they were not only the great
bell of the universe ringing in the world to listen to
the sermon He had to preach, but also a part of the
sermon itself, and even a very effectual part. He
was quite sure that if they had been done in Sodom,
and Tyre, and Sidon, these great cities would have
repented and remained ; and yet Sodom was a
synonym for the most utter and bestial corruption,
while Tyre and Sidon were among the most flagrantly
sensual and vicious communities of the ancient world.
Now how those who hold that Christ possessed only
human faculties interpret this claim of his to know
what men who lived two thousand years before Him
would have done had their conditions been other than
they were ; how they explain the fact that He, the
most sane, the most modest and unassuming of men,
assumed to compare Sodom with Capernaum, Chorazin
and Bethsaida with Tyre and Sidon, and to pronounce
the wickedest races of heathen antiquity more sus-
ceptible to the influences of the unseen spiritual world
than the sons of the elect Israel, it is not for me to
say ; but to me, I confess, this seems to be a monstrous
and incredible assumption, at variance with all we
know of Him, unless He were what He claimed to be,
the Son of God.
Son of God, or Son of Man, He claims to know that
14 SALVADOR MUNbl.
the men of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon would not
have resisted the influences which failed to bring the
men of Galilee to repentance and life ; and so the
question returns upon us, and must no longer be
evaded : If these ancient sinners would have repented
unto life had the mighty works of Christ been done in
their streets, why were they not done ?
One answer to this grave question is a very obvious
one, and is obviously true so far as it goes. For it is
manifest that if God were to come and dwell with
men, He could only come once in the history of the
world. He could not be for ever coming. There
could not be an advent, an incarnation, a life illus-
trated by mighty works, in every generation, among
every race, or the operations of law would have been
superseded by a constant miracle or a miracle con-
stantly repeated. And we know so little of the course
and order of the world that we cannot venture to say
what would have been the best and most fitting time
for the manifestation of the Son of God ; we are com-
pelled to assume that He, to whom the whole course
of time is open and present, chose the fitting conjunc-
ture, that it was, as the Bible affirms, in the very
fulness of times that He sent his Son into the world.
But if the time of Capernaum, and Chorazin, and
Bethsaida was the due and fitting time for this supreme
disclosure of the Divine Love and Grace, then obviously
THE QUESTION RAISED. 15
it could not have been made two thousand years before.
It would have been inconsistent with the scheme and
purpose of God, with that economy in the use of
miracles which characterizes his government and edu-
cation of the world, that the mighty works of Jesus
should have been done in the ancient cities of the Plain
and in the ports and emporiums of the Phoenician coast.
So much we can see, so much we admit. Never-
theless it irks and saddens us to think that even for
these ancient and sinful cities God should not have
done the most and best that could be done to bring
them to repentance. It seems hard and unjust that a
man's salvation, a man's life, should hang on the age
into which he is born ; that the sinners of Sodom, for
example, should have had a worse chance than the still
greater sinners of Capernaum.
Shall we say then that, although the men of Sodom
might have been saved by a gospel they never heard,
they nevertheless had all that they needed for salva-
tion had they cared to use the means of instruction
and grace which they possessed ? I for one cannot
say that. I am not unmindful of the fact that had
they come into the world some two thousand years
later than they did, and walked the streets of Caper-
naum, and witnessed the works of Christ, they must
have accepted all the conditions of that later age,
adverse as well as propitious, and might very possibly
1 6 SALVA TOR MUNDl.
have been so moulded and so hardened by them as
that even then they would not have entered into life.
And yet who dare say of any class of men, in any
age, that nothing but their own will prevented their
salvation ? There are thousands and tens of thousands
in this Christian land to-day who have never had a
fair chance of being quickened into life. Conceived
in sin and shapen in iniquity, inheriting defects of will
and taints of blood, cradled in ignorance and vice, they
have hardly heard the name of Christ save as a word
to curse by. And there are thousands and myriads
more to whom the faith of Christ has been presented
in forms so meagre and narrow, or in forms so fictitious
and theatrical, that the only wonder is that so many
of them care to worship Him at all. And with all
these in our midst now that the Gospel has been
preached among us for a thousand years, which of us
will dare to affirm that those ancient sinners of Sodom,
born in an age so dark, reared in "fulness of bread
and abundance of idleness," enervated by a tropical
climate and by the abominations amid which they
were nurtured, had all that men needed in order that
they might know the only true God and serve Him
alone ? Assuredly Lot was no Jesus, no Jonah even,
or they might have listened to him and repented ; if
he " vexed his righteous soul from day to day " with
their unlawful deeds, he did not hesitate to risk his
THE QUESTION RAISED. 17
soul and the souls of his children by " standing in the
way of sinners " to secure a fat inheritance.
No ; to say, " Doubtless God gave these poor men
all that was necessary to life and virtue," and to make
a merit of saying it as though it were a mark of piety,
is simply to offer Him that insincere flattery, to shew
Him that respect of persons, which even Job could
see He Himself would be the first to rebuke, and
rebuke the more heavily precisely because it was shewn
to Him. 1
What shall we say then ? For myself I can only say
that I see no way out of the difficulty, no single loop-
hole of escape, so long as we assume what the Bible
does not teach, that there is no probation beyond the
grave, that no moral change is possible in that world
towards which all the children of time are travelling.
I, at least, am so sure that the Father of all men will
do the most and best whicu can be done for every
man's salvation as to entertain no doubt that long ere
this the men of Sodom and of Tyre and Sidon have
heard the words of Christ and seen his mighty works
seen and heard Him, perchance, when He stood
and shone among the spirits in the Hadean prison,
and preached the gospel to ' them that were dead, in
order that, while still judged according to men in the
flesh, they mignt live according to God in the spirit. 2
1 Job xiii. 7-11. 2 1 Peter iii. 19, 20 ; and iv. 6.
B
1 8 SALVATOR
MUND}.
And what else, or less, do our Lord's own words
imply : " It shall be more tolerable for them at the
day of judgment than for you ?" Lives there the man
with soul so dead and brain so narrow that he can
take these solemn words to mean nothing more than
that the men of Tyre and Sidon will not be condemned
to quite so hot a fire as the men of Chorazin and
Bethsaida ! Must they not mean at least that in the
future, as in the present, there will be diversities of
moral condition, and a discipline nicely adapted to
those diversities ? May they not mean that those who
have sinned against a little light will, after having
been chastened for their sins with a " few stripes,"
receive more light, and be free to walk in it if they
will ? We are often chastened in this world that we
may not be condemned with the world, often judged and
condemned and punished that we may be aroused to
repentance and saved unto life everlasting. Why,
then, should we always take the chastenings of the
world to come to mean judgments, and the judg-
ments to mean condemnations, and the condem-
nations to mean nothing short of a final and irre-
versible doom ? On the contrary, we ought rather
to hope that, while during the brief hours of time our
lives describe but "broken arcs," in eternity, and
through whatever chastening and discipline may be
requisite for us, they will reach " the perfect round."
II THE LIMITS WITHIN WHICH THE
QUESTION WILL BE ARGUED.
MIRACLES naturally strike men with astonishment ;
but what is there in them to win men to repentance ?
There is this : miracles are signs of the Divine pre-
sence and activity. They feelingly persuade men that
the God of whom they too habitually conceive as dis-
tant and quiescent is near them and with them, that
He is at work in their midst. And how shall men
become conscious of the immediate presence of God
without at the same moment becoming conscious of
the sins which have alienated them from Him ? And
how shall any man become profoundly conscious of sin
without also becoming profoundly sorry for it ?
Miracles, then, are a great means of grace ; they
tend to bring, and they are designed to bring, men to-
repentance, and through repentance to life.
Now this great means of grace was vouchsafed, our
Lord tells us, to the men of Capernaum, Bethsaida,
and Chorazin, although it failed to produce its proper
effect upon them ; and it was denied to the men of
Sodom, and Tyre and Sidon, although it would not
have failed to produce its proper effect on them.
20 SALVATOR MUN.
2*7.
Oould any words well quicken in us deeper perplexity
and distress of spirit ? They seem to charge the
Divine Providence with a double blunder. What
would have sufficed to save one set of men was with-
held from them ; it was granted to another set of men,
whom it did not suffice to save ! Why was this waste
this double waste ? Why were the works of Christ
not done in the streets of those cities which would
have repented had they witnessed them, instead of
being thrown away on men to whom, since they did
not bring them to repentance, they only brought a
severer judgment ?
The usual answer to that question is true so far as
it goes ; but does it go far enough to relieve our minds
of the perplexity and distress in which the question
inevitably involves them ? It is reasonable to believe
that, since men can only live as they come to know
God and yet cannot find Him out for themselves, He
should come and dwell with them, that He should
disclose Himself to those who were groping after
Him, if haply they might find Him. It is equally
reasonable to believe that, if He came, He would come
but once, once for all ; that He would not be for ever
breaking through that veil of natural forces and se-
quences behind which He at once hides and reveals
Himself; that He would not become incarnate in
every race and in every generation, but that once, in
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 21
the fulness of the times, He would manifest forth his
glory. But if that fit and selected time fell when
Chorazin, and Bethsaida, and Capernaum were full of
busy life, obviously there was no room for a Divine
advent in that earlier period in which Sodom, and
Tyre and Sidon were filling up the cup of their
iniquities. They could not see the mighty works of
Christ, even though they would long ago have repented
had they seen them. ,
So much we admit, or may admit ; and yet, does
the admission satisfy us ? Is it just that a man's sal-
vation should depend on the age, or on the moral
conditions of the age, into which he is born, and which
he has done nothing to determine ? If, for example,
the citizens of ancient Tyre would have been quick-
ened to eternal life by the presence and works of
Christ, are they never to see Him ? are they to be
damned for not having seen Him ? If Socrates, and
Plato, and Aristotle, if Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius,
and Epictetus, would have fallen at the feet of the Son
of Man, and joyfully have taken Him for their Master
and Friend, are they never to hear the gracious words
that proceeded out of his mouth ? Are they to be
damned for not having heard them ? And if many a
Hindoo would have been saved by that very Gospel to
which we turn so cold and indifferent an ear, will that
Gospel never be preached to them ? will they be
22 SALVATOR MUNDI.
damned for not having received it ? And if they are,
shall we say, "It is just"?
Many do say so. They argue that every race and
generation of men has light enough if only they will
walk by it, even though the great Light should not
have risen upon them. It may be doubted whether
such an argument would carry much weight even with
those who most insist on it, if they themselves had
been born in one of the dark ages or dark places of
the earth, instead of standing, as they assume, in the
full blaze of the Sun of Righteousness. For those
who are content with this argument are commonly
those who defer most to the current opinions of their
time and set ; in all probability they would have re-
mained whatever they were born Jews or Mohamme-
dans, Parsees or Buddhists, and would have been no
truer to the light that was in them than they are now.
That any man who thinks for himself, and ponders the
facts of human life in a sympathetic heart, and is cap-
able of coming to a conclusion for himself, should main-
tain that every man born into the world has an equal
or even a fair chance of getting to heaven, nay, that
he should affirm that vast myriads of men have had
any chance at all, is simply incredible. There are
multitudes here in England, among the neglected and
criminal classes, who have never had any real oppor-
tunity of knowing God or Christ, or even the blessed-
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 23
ness of a pure and honest life ; and there are multi-
tudes more' from whom the Light of Life has been
concealed by the superstition, or the bigotry, or the
immorality of the very Church itself. And who
that knows the moral and spiritual conditions of
these English multitudes will venture to affirm
that in ancient Sodom, when Abraham himself was
but stumbling through the first rudiments of religion,
men had such means of knowing and loving God
that they deserved to be damned for their neglect of
them?
The conclusion to which we are driven when we
really consider these words is, as I said in my last
Lecture, that if the men of Sodom would have repented
at the ministry of Christ, then this germ of life must,
under the rule of that kind just God who suffers no
vital germ of goodness to be destroyed, have been long
since developed ; they must long ago have seen the
works of Christ, and have been brought by them to
that life of which He Himself pronounced them cap-
able. But as this conclusion runs right in the teeth
of more than one popular dogma, we must proceed to
examine a little in detail the ground on which it
rests.
These dogmas, which happily are losing force daily,
and daily moving through a lessening circle, are,
that there is no probation beyond the grave, that
24 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
when men leave this world their fate is fixed beyond
all hope of change ; that if, when they die, they have
not repented of their sins, so far from finding any
place of repentance open to them in the life to come,
they will be condemned to an eternal torment, or, at
best, to a destructive torment which will annihilate
them. And as these dogmas claim to be formulated
interpretations of Scripture, it would be of little avail
to shew that they are contrary to reason, that they
offend against the plainest dictates of justice, that they
distort and debase the very character of God. The
appeal is to the Bible as the supreme authority as
the only clear and indubitable revelation of the will of
God ; and to the Bible we must therefore go for any
satisfactory and authoritative refutation of them. I,
for one, however, cannot take this course without
entering my protest against the assumption that
Reason and Conscience are to have no voice in the
determination of this, or of any other, theological
question. Doubtless we hear the voice of God in
Scripture, and in Scripture hear it most distinctly ;
but that voice also speaks within us, in our reason and
in our moral sense. And he who has drawn a con-
clusion from Scripture which Reason and Conscience
imperatively condemn should need no other proof
that he has misinterpreted the Word of God. Still,
as the appeal is to the Bible, we will go to the Bible,
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 25
reserving our right, however, of interpreting it by our
reason and conscience.
But here, at the very outset, the question presents
itself: To what parts of the Bible may we fairly
look for clear and authoritative teaching on the
secrets or mysteries of the life to come ? And
obviously, if we know anything of the structure,
history, and design of this great collection of Scrip-
tures, we shall not for a moment assume that every
book of the Bible speaks on all themes with equal
distinctness and authority; that, wherever we find
words that will serve our turn, we may detach them
from their context, and attribute as much weight to
them as though they fell from the lips of our Lord
and his apostles. On the contrary, in selecting those
Scriptures which will really aid us in our search, we
shall have to lay aside by far the larger part of the
Bible, not that we may induce it to speak our thought,
but simply that we may argue the question fairly.
The Old Testament, for example, except in so far as
we can find large general principles in it which bear
on our question, will be of no avail to us ; for it is as
certainly true as any such wide proposition can be,
that the psalmists and prophets of old time never got
more than momentary and partial glimpses of the life
to come. We are expressly told that Christ "brought
life and immortality to light ;" and if that be true,
26 SALVATOR MUNDL
clearly " life and immortality " were more or less
hidden in darkness before He came: and we must not
go to the darkness for light.
But if, for our present purpose, we must lay aside
the Old Testament, it is equally obvious that we must
also lay aside the last book of the New Testament,
though for a very different reason. Possibly the
Apocalypse would throw a clearer light on the
mysteries of the life to come than any other Scrip-
ture, if only we had the key to it and could read it
" with the understanding." But, confessedly, we have
not the key to it ; it is variously interpreted, inter-
preted on principles wholly incompatible with each
other, by the most learned and devout students of the
Bible, the best scholars, the soundest divines ; and till
some certain interpretation of it is reached, or at least
some interpretation of it which shall command a wide
and general assent, it would be unwise and unsafe for
us to build any conclusion on our private interpretation
of it.
These are very large deductions to be made the
whole Old Testament on the one hand, and on the
other the Book of the Revelation ; but unless we are
to "fall out by the way," to wrangle over disputed
interpretations of doubtful Scriptures, I do not see
how we can refuse to make them. If we cannot, we
have only the Gospels and the Epistles left. Our
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 27
field of research, if much more limited, is also much
more manageable. But even from this limited field
there remains one deduction to be made, or rather,
perhaps, I should say, that over the entrance to this
lessened field a certain " Beware " must be inscribed.
Many of our Lord's most familiar allusions to the
future conditions of men are couched in parables ; and
to say that the details of parables must not be insisted
on, that we must be cautious how we use them lest
we should be landed in false conclusions, is, after all,
only to repeat a maxim on which all Commentators are
-agreed, although it is also the plain dictates of common
.sense a quality for which Commentators get even
less credit than they deserve. Let us bear in mind,
then, that if the parables of Christ are to be used in
this argument, they must be used with modesty and
discretion, since parables are but pictures of truth,
comparisons of things not in the world of sense with
things which are in that world, and such comparisons
seldom run on all fours.
And be sure of this or why should you listen to
me at all ? or how could we hope to travel to any
conclusion together in peace ? that in asking you to
exclude these Scriptures from the list of authorities to
which we make our common appeal, I am not trying
covertly to bring the Bible round to my view, or
indeed to any view whatever. The Scriptures which
1
28 SALVATOR MUNDI.
we thus exclude are at least as favourable to the view
to which my study of the Word of God long since led
me, as to the more common and accepted view. If
any man thinks that the Old Testament teaches the
irrevocable condemnation of the vast majority of men
at the moment they pass out of our sight, for every
text he can adduce from it in support of that view, I
will undertake to produce another which asserts the
universality of the Divine Redemption, and implies the
salvation of all men. 1 And so with the Apocalypse,
and so with the Parables. Indeed, no one who has
not given many years to the study of the Bible can so
much as imagine how numerous and weighty are the
passages, even in these excluded portions of the Inspired
Volume, in favour of the conclusion that human life
beyond the separating line of death is as varied, as
flexible, as capable of change as it is on this side;
and how many intimations they contain of the ulti-
mate restitution of all souls. The fact is, that through-
out the Bible there are two main lines of thought on
this subject, though hitherto the Church has been too
apt to recognize only one of them. The first affirms
or implies that to sin, to be in sins, is to be damned
both in this and in all other worlds; that so long as
men are shut up in sin the wrath of God abides, and
must abide, on them, whatever the sphere in which
Some of these passages are cited in Lecture viii.
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 29
they move ; that the only way to escape damnation,
whether in this or in any other world, is to turn from
sin, to come out of it, to exchange the " death in sin "
for the "-life in righteousness:" while the other line of
thought affirms or implies that the wrath of God, the
condemnation of sin, the punishments which are the
natural and inevitable consequences of unrighteousness,
are designed to correct men, to convict them of sin, to
make them hate it and abandon it, that they may
love righteousness and pursue it.
For the present, however, I must not dwell on this
point ; we shall recur to it again further on : but take
just one illustration of it. You know what use has
been made of such parables as those of Dives and
Lazarus, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Sheep and
the Goats. You know, too, how those who lay great
stress on such details of these parables as " the great
gulf," the shut door, the left and the right hand of
the Judge as if the left hand were not the next best
place to the right hand, or a door once shut could never
again be opened, or a gulf once impassable could never
be bridged: you know, I say, how apt those who lay
stress on such points would be to suspect that the
Parables were excluded from our field of view because
they told against the conclusion to which I am trying
to lead you. But do they tell against it ? Suppose
we also cared to violate an accepted canon of criticism
;
30 SALVATOR MUND2.
by laying stress on the details of parables, what bright
and happy inferences might we not draw from such
parables as these ? " The kingdom of heaven is like
unfco leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal, till the, whole was leavened ; " or
again, " What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if
he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and
nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost
until lie find it?" Would it not be quite easy to
interpret these weighty and emphatic phrases as signi-
fying that the whole mass of mankind is to be leavened
and quickened by the truth of Christ, and that the
great Bishop of our souls will never cease from his
quest of any poor lost sinner until he find him and
restore him to the fold ? Might we not even insist on
reading that " pearl of parables," the Prodigal Son, in
a very novel and surprising light ? Might we not take
the righteous, and self-righteous, brother as a type of
those good people who, with Luther, think it " the
highest degree of faith to believe that God is merciful
who saves so few and damns so many," and imagine,
with St Thomas Aquinas, that in the world to come
their bliss " may please them the more because they
are permitted to gaze on the punishment of the
wicked " ? Might we not take the younger son as a
type of those whom they call " the lost," and the " far
country " as hell, and the return to the Father as the
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 31
recovery of the self-doomed sinner from the error of
his ways ? It is very certain that in so reading these
parables we should depart no farther from the dictates
of common sense and the canons of sound criticism
than do those who pile up so great a weight of dogma
on similar phrases and analogies in other parables.
But if in answer to the question, To what parts of
the Bible may we look for clear and authentic light on
the mysteries of the life to come ? we have determined
to confine ourselves to the plain teaching of our Lord
and his apostles, i.e., to the very cream of Scripture ;
if we have gone so far as to select our materials,
another question forthwith meets us, viz., What sort
of structure may we hope to rear with them ? May
we hope to frame a clear, full, and coherent theory of
the life that is both spiritual and eternal ? to determine
with precision what the fate, whether of the good or of
the bad, will be when they put off the tabernacle of
the flesh ?
No reflective man will for a moment suppose that,
while we are compassed about with the limits and
crippling infirmities of the flesh, we can hope to com-
prehend what the purely spiritual life will be ; or that
in this, the first stage of our being, we are able so
much as to conceive what the final stage of our course
will be like. Christ descended into Hades ; yet when
He came back to earth He disclosed none of the secrets
32 SALVATOR
of the prison-house. Paul was caught up into Para-
dise, and saw some faint shadow of its glory ; yet he
maintained to the last that it was impossible for him
to utter what he had seen and heard, albeit he was a
great master of the most subtle and flexible language
spoken among men. And a little reflection will con-
vince us that that which is eternal cannot be fairly, or,
if fairly, cannot be fully, comprehended by those whose
thoughts are governed and conditioned by the sequences
of time ; that so long as we are to be approached from
without only through avenues of sense, that which is
purely spiritual can only be set before us in pictures,
in similitudes and analogies, which, like all analogies
and comparisons, have their inevitable defects, and
conceal almost as much as they disclose, in some cases
even more. All deep knowledge presupposes not only
the proper faculties for acquiring it, but that those
faculties should have been highly trained and developed.
It is of no use to talk the higher mathematics, to pick
holes, for instance, in the differential calculus, as our
friend James Hinton was so fond of doing, to one who
has not even mastered the elements of arithmetic and
geometry.
Nay, a knowledge beyond our reach may be simply
injurious and misleading to us. We know very
well, for example, that we should only injure young
children were we to discuss with them some of
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 33
the commonest facts of our own mature life, that we
should awaken a morbid and prurient curiosity in
them, and that our words would only mislead them
because they would take other shapes and relations,
quicken other trains of association in their minds, to
those which they assume and quicken in our own. In
short, we are aware that by trying to communicate a
knowledge for which they are necessarily unprepared,
we should simply impose an intolerable and degrading
burden on them. How is it then that we do not see,
if indeed we do not, that we ourselves are too imma-
ture and untrained to grasp the mysteries of eternity,
of an absolute and unconditioned existence, or of an
existence whose conditions are utterly different from
our own ? We ought to be aware, when we reflect
upon it we are aware, that if, while we are still babes
in the spiritual life, clothed with flesh, conditioned by
time, the secrets of the unclothed, unconditioned,
spiritual world could be put into any words with
which we are familiar, they would only mislead and
oppress us. What faith can apprehend and realize,
what the intuitions of love can grasp, this indeed lies
open to us, and is helpful to us, as we see in the case
of children ; but the points with which speculation
would busy itself and a merely intellectual curiosity,
these are mercifully hidden from our eyes.
What, then, may we hope to learn from these
c
J
34 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
selected Scriptures concerning the life to come ? We
may hope, I think, to see, on the one hand, that the
Scriptures, when fairly interpreted, do not sustain that
theory of the future state which has long found general
acceptance, and which, like so much else in the Roman
Church from which we have derived it seems to
be a survival of ancient heathen beliefs shewing through
the thin Christian varnish with which Papal theo-
logians have sought to disguise it ; and, on the other
hand, we may hope to find that there are great prin-
ciples, principles that run through the Bible from end
to end, which point conclusively to a very different
theory a theory consistent at once with our highest
conceptions of the character of God and with the dic-
tates of reason and conscience. In fine, I would advise
any of you who wish to know what the Bible really
teaches of the future life, first, to study attentively all
those passages in the Gospels and Epistles which are
commonly adduced in favour of the endless punishment
of the impenitent, for you will find that they are at least
patient of another than the current interpretation ; and
then, refusing to pin your faith to any theory built on
isolated texts and passages, to inquire what large,
general, pervading truths, what spacious and controlling
principles, are woven into the very stuff and substance
of Scripture which bear on this question, and what are
the conclusions to which they point.
LIMITS OF THE ARGUMENT. 35
That surely is the reasonable method to pursue ;
and if you care to pursue it, I will try in my succeed-
ing Lectures to shew you how to use it and to what
conclusion it leads.
III. DAMNATION.
IN the two previous and preliminary Lectures we have
arrived at the following conclusions :
(1.) That we must look for what the Bible has to
teach on the life to come only to the Gospels and the
Epistles, since the Old Testament Scriptures were
written before life and immortality had been brought
to light, while the Apocalypse is written in a cipher
of which we do not possess the key.
(2.) That, even with the Gospels and Epistles in
our hands, we must not hope to frame a full, exact,
and coherent theory of that life, since it is by no
means likely that the sacred and august realities of
the spiritual and eternal world can be revealed to us
with any fulness and precision so long as we are the
children of sense and time.
(3.) But that we may hope, by a patient study of
the passages commonly adduced in favour of the endless
punishment of the impenitent, (a) to shew that they
do not sustain the interpretation put upon them ; and
(/S) to find in these Scriptures, nay, in the whole Bible,
certain large and controlling principles which point in
an entirely opposite direction.
DAMNATION. 37
So that what we have yet to do is to examine the
texts which seem to imply that, when the wicked die
out of this world, there is no longer any prospect of
their being recovered unto life, since they are instantly
damned to an interminable and unremedial torment ;
and then to look for those great ruling principles
which render any such conclusion impossible.
I need hardly say, I suppose, that of those two
branches of inquiry the second is by far the more attrac-
tive and conclusive. To build up a doctrine on isolated
texts is always hazardous and unsatisfactory. Before
we can rely on our doctrine we must assure ourselves
that it is in harmony with the ruling thoughts which
pervade the Scripture from end to end, that it accords
with the mind of the Spirit rather than with the letter
of the Word. But, on the other hand, it would be of
little use to discuss these large ruling thoughts or
principles, and to draw logical conclusions from them,
if, all the while we were thus occupied, we were fretted
and harassed by the recollection of a considerable num-
ber of passages which would perk up their heads and
open their lips to question, if not to contradict, the
conclusions to which we were travelling. We must,
therefore, clear these passages out of our way, must
determine what they really teach, if we are to frame
our conclusion with an undisturbed mind, and to rest
in it. To this task, then, a careful and honest exami-
38 SALVATOR MUNDL
nation of the Scriptures which, favour, or appear to
favour, the accepted view, let us at once address our-
selves.
Now, if we ask on what, and what kind of passages
in the Gospels and Epistles the popular view is based,
I think we shall find that they are of two classes.
(1) We have all those passages in which the words
"hell" and "damnation" occur; then (2) we have a
still larger class, in which the words " eternal " and
"everlasting" occur; and in this class, a subordinate
series in which precisely the same epithets are applied
to the reward of the good and the punishment of the
wicked, from which therefore the inference is drawn that
the one will endure as long as the other. Under these
two heads we may gather up, I think, all that is of real
value and importance in the New Testament, in so far,
at least, as it bears on the question we hav.e in hand.
To examine these passages at all carefully, or even to
examine the leading examples of each class, is a work
that will necessarily consume some time ; but I hope
three or four Lectures will suffice to take us through
them ; and then we shall be free to turn to the study
of those spacious and controlling principles by which,
after all, the question must be finally determined.
The first class of Scriptures we have to examine are
those in which the words " hell " and " damnation "
occur, for it is on these passages mainly that the popu-
DAMNATION. 39
lar misconception is based. If these two words were
expunged from the Bible, I doubt whether most of
those who read it would not feel that the whole dogma
of future and endless torment had vanished with them.
No doubt, therefore, many of you will be surprised
perhaps even astonished and indignant to hear, that
neither of these words is to be found in any part of
the New Testament, or, indeed, in any part of the whole
Bible ; nor even any word which at all answers to the
conception which they quicken in our minds. " Not
to be found in the New Testament ! " you say ; " why
I can shew you a dozen, or a score of places in which
these words are to be found." But are you quite sure
that it is the New Testament in which you find them ?
It is a version, a translation of the New Testament, of
course ; but does it necessarily follow that the transla-
tion is an accurate one ? I am sorry to say, that in
so far as it uses the words " hell" and " damnation,"
it is demonstrably an inaccurate and misleading one.
No such words are to be found in the Greek, that is,
in the real, the original Testament, nor any words
which convey, as they now do, the conception of a final
and ever-during place of torment, and of a Divine sen-
tence which adjudges men to that place of torment.
Now, as that is a very grave assertion to make, as
it must seem so strange to many of you as to be almost
incredible, I must proceed to prove and vindicate it in
40 5 'ALVA TOR MUNl)l.
some detail. And as no proof would be quite satis-
factory to you that did not explain how words have
crept into our Authorized Version which are not to be
found in the Greek Original, let me show you how our
translators came to employ the words damnation and
hell. They are not to blame, or not much to blame.
Their own minds were tinctured, imbued, with the
mediaeval theology of the Koman Church, which
Church, as you know, had greatly erred from "the
simplicity that is in Christ." And, moreover, they
were strictly charged to "retain the old ecclesiastical
words," so far as possible, and to employ them in the
sense in which they had been commonly used by the
doctors of that Church. And still further, neither of
these words had then quite stiffened and narrowed
into the sense in which it is now understood. The
word " hell " comes from an old English or Teutonic
word, hel-an, which means " to cover," and, in the an-
cient use of it, it signified any covered place. In our
early English literature it is used of any obscure dun-
geon or covered spot, even of the dark hole into which
a tailor threw his shreds and clippings ; nay, even of
the retired and bosky shade to which the lads and
lasses caught in a game called Barley-break were led
to pay the forfeit of a kiss. And, in like manner, the
verb " to damn " probably came from an old Teutonic
verb, " deman" to deem. It is at least closely re-
DAMNATION. 41
lated to the words " deem " and " doom." It meant
to deem any one guilty of any kind of offence, and to
doom him to its appropriate punishment. Thus, for
example, a man might be damned to prison, i.e.,
deemed worthy of it, and doomed to it ; or his goods
might be damnified, i.e., injured or condemned ; or a
play might be damned, i.e., hissed off the stage,
deemed too poor for farther representation, and doomed
never to appear again.
Both these words, therefore, were innocent enough in
themselves originally, and had many harmless uses.
But Theology has put meanings into them which make
them the most terrible words in our language ; and
for many years now they have been used almost
exclusively in a theological sense. When we meet the
word " hell," it conveys no innocent and cheerful sug-
gestions. In many minds it quickens only an image
of some vast and burning prison, in which lost souls
writhe and shriek for ever, tormented in a flame that
will never be quenched. To those who reject the
conception of a vast material hell, an endless physical
torture, the word suggests a place or condition in
which the souls of the wicked, kept in life for that end
by the mighty power of God, are for ever consumed by
pangs compared with which the horrors of a furnace
would be a paradise. To be damned is, at least for
us, to be adjudged to that intolerable torment, without
1
42 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
any hope of amendment or release. The meaning of
these words, therefore, has greatly and horribly changed;
and whatever excuse we may make for the use of
them by King James's translators, there is no shadow
of excuse for those who now use them to translate the
New Testament Greek.
That you may be convinced of this, let us examine
the passages in which they occur. Take the verb " to
damn" first. The word is so frequent in the mouth
of Theology that it is with some surprise we ascertain
that it only occurs twelve times in the New Testament ;
that in some of these cases it cannot possibly have the
sense we put upon it : and that in no single instance
is any equivalent word employed in the Original.
Before we turn to these passages, and in order that
you may understand them, let me give those of you
who need it a little lesson in Greek. It shall be a
very short and simple one, and any of you may master
it in a minute or two. In the Greek, one of the verbs
in the most common use is xp'miv (krineiri). Any
Lexicon will tell you that xpiveiv means " to part, to
separate, to discriminate between good and bad," in
short, " to judge." From this verb, xpfouv, two nouns
are formed, xp<ti$ (krisis), which means the act of
deciding or judging, and xp//*a (krima), which means
the sentence, or judgment, which has been reached.
From this verb, xpheiv, moreover, another verb has been
DAMNATION. 43
formed by prefixing a preposition to it, which intensifies
its meaning, viz., xara-xptvsiv (kata-krineiri), "to give
judgment against, to condemn." And from this second
verb, as from the first, two nouns are formed
(kata-krisis), the act of condemning, and
(kata-krima), "the sentence of condemnation."
All you need remember is, that in the Greek there is a
verb, xpfaiv, which, with its derivatives, means "to
judge," "the act of judging," and "the sentence of
justice ; " and another verb, xara-x/ws/v, which, with its
derivatives, means "to condemn," "the act of condemn-
ing," and " the sentence of condemnation." There are
hardly any words in the Greek language more common
than these ; and there is not, and never has been, any
dispute as to their meaning.
Now the former of these two verbs, xpivw, with its
derivatives, occurs more than a hundred and seventy
times in the Greek Testament ; more than a hundred
and fifty times it is rendered in the English Version
by our verb " to judge," so that our translators evi-
dently knew its plain meaning and use. Seven times,
very needlessly and misleadingly, it is rendered by "to
condemn;" twice by "to accuse"; and only eight
times by "to damn." That is to say, our own trans-
lators render the word in the sense of to damn, only
eight times out of nearly a hundred and eighty ! So,
again, with the other Greek verb, xara-xpfaiv, which
44 SALVATOR MUNDl]
means to condemn. With its derivatives it is used
twenty-four times in the New Testament, and only
twice do they render it by " to damn ;" in every
other instance they abide by its true meaning " to
condemn."
You see how the case stands then. These two
Greek verbs occur some two hundred times in the New
Testament, and in only ten instances is this dreadful,
this damnable, meaning foisted upon them ! Is there
anything in the intention and contexture of these ten
passages to warrant so grave a departure from the
common and admitted meanings of the words ? Look
at them for yourselves, and see.
Turn to St Mark xii. 40. Our Lord is warning
his hearers against the Scribes who " devour widows'
houses, and for a pretence make long prayers."
"These," He adds, according to our Authorized Trans-
lation at least, "shall receive greater damnation"
The Greek says simply, " These shall receive the
severer judgment." And the plain meaning of the
passage is, that the very hypocrisy under which the
Scribes thought to cloak their crimes would only bring
a heavier krima, or verdict, upon them. Both good
men and God would pass the sharper sentence on them
for the semblance of piety behind which they veiled
their impious and insatiable greed. It is a general
truth which Christ here enunciates, a truth as applic-
DAMNATION. 45
able and as pertinent to the present life as to any
other. It has no special bearing on the future life
until we import that bearing into it by substituting
the word "damnation" for the word "judgment." To
warn men in general terms that, if they add the
sin of hypocrisy to the sin of extortion, they will
inevitably expose themselves to a keener censure, is one
thing ; but surely it is another and a very different
thing to threaten them with being shut up in an
interminable hell the very moment they die !
If any think that even to restore the true word
"judgment " in this and similar passages makes very
little difference in their meaning; if they take the
"judgment" of God as equivalent to "damnation,"
that can only be because they conceive of the Divine
judgments as though they were confined to the future
life, whereas the Scriptures constantly affirm that God
judges all men, good and bad, every day and all day
long ; and because they wholly misapprehend the
character of the Divine Judge and Father. A man
who is a magistrate judges many men whom he does
not condemn, whom mere justice, to say nothing of
compassion, will not allow him to condemn ; he con-
demns even most of those whom he finds guilty to a
limited punishment which is intended for their correc-
tion : and what conception must they have formed of
the Father of an infinite justice and mercy who assume
46 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
that He will never judge men save to condemn them,
and never condemn them to any punishment short of
an illimitable and degrading agony ?
St Matthew xxiii. 33. According to our English
Version our Lord demands of the same wicked and
unhappy class of men, the Scribes, " How shall ye
escape the damnation of hell?" The full explanation
of this passage I defer till we reach that other class of
texts in which the word " hell " is employed. For the
present I ask you to mark only that in the Greek we
read simply, " How shall ye escape the judgment," not
the damnation, " of Gehenna ? "
St Mark iii. 29. Our Lord is speaking of the sin
against the Holy Ghost. He who commits that sin
"can never be forgiven," or, literally, "cannot be forgiven
in this age," and is " in danger of eternal damnation."
So, at least, the Authorized Version affirms. But even
the Greek Text from which our Version was made,
only affirms that such a sinner is in danger of " eternal
judgment;" and that Text is now admitted to be corrupt,
the true reading being, " eternal sin." What our
Lord meant by a man's coming into the grip of an
seonial or eternal sin, we may inquire hereafter ; all we
now have to do is to discharge the word "damna-
tion " from the passage ; to affirm that it should
never have been thrust into it, since the word before
our translators only meant "judgment," and that
DAMNATION. 47
that word must now be replaced by one which means
"sin."
St John v. 20. Our Lord affirms that all who are
in their graves shall one day hear his voice and come
forth, " they that have done good to the resurrection
of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection
of damnation." Here again the word is krisis, and
the phrase should read, " they that have done evil to
the resurrection of judgment"
Romans iii. 8. The Apostle Paul, speaking of men
who made it their maxim, " Let us do evil that good
may come," affirms that " their damnation is just."
The Greek word is krima, and means judgment; and
I take the holy Apostle to assert that the instinctive
verdict of the human heart against those who act on
that detestable maxim is a true, a just, verdict. There
is no reference whatever, or at least no necessary refer-
ence, either to the judgment of God or to the recom-
penses of a future state.
In Komans xiii. 2, the same Apostle is enforcing
obedience to the public authorities. He asserts that
there is no " power " which is not ordained of God ;
that to resist any such power is therefore to resist
God's ordinance : and he adds, " they that resist shall
receive to themselves damnation." Once more the
word is krima ; and the sentence means simply that
those who resist the public authorities will expose
1
48 SALVATOR MUNDL
themselves to judgment, i.e., to the censure of their
contemporaries, of the authorities, and perhaps also of
God Himself. We too much forget that we all have
and shall have, to answer at the bar of God for all we
do, for our thoughts as well as for our words, for our
motives as well as for our actions. And no doubt the
more momentous and influential our thoughts, or words,
or actions are, the more strict and searching will be
the account to which we shall be called, both in this
age and in the next, and in the next to that, and in
all the ages through which we pass. And if St Paul
intended any reference to the judgment of God here,
he intended to warn men that even those who lead a
revolt against an intolerable and degrading despotism
will have to answer for it to God ; that a special and
heavy responsibility rests on those who stir up men's
hearts to sudden mutiny, to a desperate resistance of
even the most abused public authority. That is very
wholesome doctrine, whether St Paul intended to
teach it or not. Men should weigh well what they
do when they think to follow in the steps of the great
patriots and martyrs. Rebellion, like matrimony, " is
not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unad-
visedly, lightly or wantonly, but reverently, advisedly,
soberly, and in the fear of God." But can any sane man
take the words of St Paul to mean that the patriots
who won the freedom of ancient Greece or Rome, or of
DAMNATION. 49
modern England and America, by resisting the powers
set over them, have been damned for resisting them ?
Yet that, you see, is what our Authorized Version
affirms or implies ; so that, in this case at least, mere
common sense teaches us that it must be faulty and
misleading.
There is another and a somewhat similar instance
in that very curious passage, 1 Timothy v. 1 2. It
would seem that in some of the Apostolic Churches
there arose a class of women devoted to a single life,
who gave themselves to works of hospitality and mercy.
Their names were entered on an official roll. And on
this roll Timothy was advised not to enter the names of
any young widows, nor indeed of any woman under sixty
years of age, lest the younger" women should repent of
their vows. " They will marry again," says St Paul,
" having damnation, because they have cast off their
first faith." Is it, then, so great a crime for a young
widow, even though she has vowed she would never
marry again, to contract a second marriage, that she
must needs be damned for it ? What more, or worse,
could befall her had she violated every commandment
in the Decalogue ? Is a sister of mercy, or a nun
such an one as Luther's wife, for example to be
adjudged to an everlasting torment, should she swerve
from her single estate ? Surely not ; for once more
the Greek word is krima, and means no more than
D
So SALVATOR MUN&I.
" judgment." Such a woman will not be damned for
breaking her vow ; but, if she have taken that vow
rashly and heedlessly and then should break it, she
will very certainly be judged, perhaps severely judged,
not by God alone, but also by men, and, above all, by
women. Vows are too solemn to be lightly taken or
lightly broken, whether they be vows of marriage or
vows against marriage ; and therefore Timothy is not
to let those take them who are only too likely to
break them.
The two passages we have just considered are in-
stances of the absurd, almost grotesque, way in which
this word " damnation " has been thrust into our
Version of the New Testament, without any warrant
from the Original, and in the teeth both of common
sense and common humanity. But, nevertheless, you
must remember what use has been made of this absurd
blunder by that priestly caste which has too long
dominated and degraded the Church. Planting them-
selves on this blunder, they have solemnly pronounced
all rebellion against kings and governors, even when
provoked by the most intolerable despotism, to be an
inexpiable crime, and have exulted in the certain
damnation of such noble patriots as Hampden, Crom-
well, Milton, Washington, Cavour; they have also
pronounced any and every violation even of the most
senseless vows to be a crime not to be forgiven whether
DAMNATION. 51
in this world or in the world to come : and thus, century
after century, a blunder for which a school-boy would
be whipped has been used by them to narrow the
thoughts of men, to dull their consciences, and to
inflict an agony of doubt and shame on many sensitive
hearts which we can hardly so much as conceive.
But even these are not the most cruel results of this
fatal inaccuracy. There is one passage which, as it
stands in our Authorized Version, has darkened and
pierced with pangs of deadly fear myriads of tender
consciences, very mainly because the word " damnation"
is substituted in it for the word "judgment." In
1 Corinthians xi. 29 we read, " He that eateth and
drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation
to himself, not discerning the Lord's body," although
here again the Greek word is krima, i.e., judgment.
And thus the gracious assurance that even if we come
to the table of the Lord in a spirit unworthy of that
sacred mystery, because we have not first judged our-
selves, we shall be judged, judged here and now, in
order that we may not be condemned with the world
(vers. 31 and 32), is converted into a horrible menace,
which has kept thousands from the communion of the
body and blood of Christ, that we shall be damned to
an everlasting loss and ruin !
In 2 Thessalonians ii. 12 St Paul refers to some
who would not receive the truth, and predicts that
52 SAL VA TOR MUN^L
God will suffer them to be deluded by lies, in order
that " they all might be damned who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." But here
too the verb is krinein, and all that St Paul says is
that they will be judged, without so much as hinting
what the judgment may be or when it will take place.
These are all the instances in which the verb krinein
(" to judge") is rendered in our Version by the Eng-
lish verb "to damn." But there are two passages
in which that other verb (katakrineiri) , which means
to condemn, is thus rendered. The first is St Mark
xvi. 1 6 (a verse not contained however in the most
ancient MSS.), "He that believeth not shall be damned"
where the rendering should be, " He that believeth not
shall be condemned." And the second, Romans xiv.
23, "He that doubteth is damned if he eat," where of
course we ought to read, " He that hath scruples is, if
he eat, condemned" condemned, i.e., by his own
conscience for doing what that conscience disallows.
The notion that the weak brother who thinks it wrong,
or thinks that it may be wrong, to eat of meat offered
to idols will be doomed to hell for eating them, is
utterly and grossly alien to the Apostle's mind. No
one would have been more shocked by such an extra-
vagance than he.
There are still two instances in which the word is
used in our Translation j but in these the mistake is
DAMNATION. 53
acknowledged by all students of the Bible. They both
occur in 2 Peter ii. 1-3, where the Apostle speaks of
those who bring in " damnable heresies," and says of
them " whose damnation slumbereth not." Here a
new word is used in the Greek, a word we have not
met before, and the meaning of which we need not
discuss, since it is admitted on all hands that the
Greek should be rendered " destructive heresies," here-
sies destructive to the Faith, and "whose destruction
slumbereth not." What the ApostJe means is evidently
that those who introduce destructive heresies shall
themselves be destroyed by them ; but how, and when,
and where, he deponeth not.
I have now cited every passage in which the verb
" to damn," in any form of it, is used in our Version.
And, as you see, in no single case is there, in the
Original, the slightest warrant for its use. With a
clear conscience, therefore, and a thankful heart, we
may discharge this horrible word from the pages of
the New Testament. It should never have been per-
mitted to defile them. There is no shadow of excuse
for retaining it when once we have learned that the
Greek words it is employed to render never mean more
than to judge and to condemn. We are all of us
iudged by God every day that we live, and often con-
demned. And we shall all be judged by Him when
we die, and even then some of us may be condemned.
I
54 SALVATOR MUNDL
But to what we shall be condemned none of the pas-
sages we have yet examined declare. And, therefore,
we have no right to import into them, as we do by
our present translation, the notion that we shall be
doomed to an endless torment, or even to the final and
irrevocable loss of hope.
In my next Lecture I will try to shew you that we
may send the word "hell" after the word " damnation,"
and for ever have done with them both.
IV. HELL.
IN my last Lecture I shewed you what I hope you
found to be good and conclusive reasons for expunging
the verb "to damn," with its derivatives, from our
translation of the Bible ; and I am now to shew you,
if I can, equally good and conclusive reasons for
expunging the word "hell."
This word comes, as I have said, from an old Eng-
lish or Teutonic word, hel-an, and means any covered
place. In our early literature it is used to denote,
not only any obscure place or dungeon, but also the
dark hole into which a tailor flung his waste shreds,
and even the retired spot to which, in a popular game,
a lad led a lass to exact the forfeit of a kiss. But
Theology has long since discharged all gay and inno-
cent meanings and associations from the word " hell."
It only calls up in our minds either some faint image
of a vast prison or furnace, in which the impenitent
are tormented in a flame that will never be quenched ;
or of a vast and awful realm in which their spirits are
to be searched through and through with intolerable
and never-ending pangs. In short, those who hold
the orthodox, or hyper-orthodox, dogma maintain that
at death, or at latest after the resurrection, the wicked
56 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
will be turned into a place of torment, torment phy-
sical or meta-physical, torment uncorrective and there-
fore without an end.
Now in this theological sense, the sense in which
we naturally take the word when we meet it in the
Bible, I am bold to say that the word " hell" is never
once used in the Original, though it is so frequent in
our translation of it, and that we have no longer any
sort of excuse for retaining it on the sacred page.
There is no word at all answering to it whether in the
Hebrew or in the Greek. We, however, are not con-
cerned with the whole Bible ; we have agreed to con-
fine our search for light on the future conditions of
men to the Gospels and the Epistles. In our Author-
ized Version of these Scriptures, then, the word " hell "
occurs eighteen times, and is used to render the three
Greek words, Tartarus, Hades, and Gehenna ; at each
of which we will look in turn.
1. The word Tartarus occurs but once in the whole
New Testament, or, indeed, in the whole Bible. You
will find the passage in 2 Peter ii. 4, and a very
singular passage it is. The holy Apostle is arguing
that the Lord knows how " to reserve unrighteous men,
under punishment, unto the day of judgment" He
is not speaking, therefore, of the final estate of the
unrighteous, but of the state in which they are to
await that great and terrible day. To prove his point,
HELL. 57
he refers to the punishments which turned Sodom and
Gomorrha into ashes, and swept away Noah's ungodly
generation with a flood. But the first example to which
he appeals is that of the doom which fell on the angels
who kept not their first estate. His words are : " God
spared not angels who sinned, but cast them into Tar-
tarus, delivering them over into dens of darkness, to
be held in custody unto" with a view to "judg-
ment." Now it is very curious that St Peter, a simple
and unlettered man, should have used this word " Tar-
tarus," a word never occurring elsewhere in the Bible,
not even in the writings of St Paul, the most learned
of the Apostles. One can hardly help asking, with
an accent of wonder, where he got it from, and how
he came to use it ; for it is a purely heathen word,
and embodies a purely heathen conception. As they
pryed into the future the Greeks and Romans saw
nothing clearly, although " the initiated," perhaps, had
been quickened into an intense yearning for, if not a
bright and vivid hope of a life to come. The world
beyond the gates of death was, for them, " a world of
shades." Their utmost hope even for the good was
that some thin shadow of the former man would sur-
vive, to enjoy some faint shadow of his former honours
and pursuits. The utmost they foreboded for the
wicked was that their thin, wavering, unsubstantial
ghosts would be doomed to hopeless tasks, or consumed
1
58 SALVATOR MUNDI.
by pangs such as men suffer here. Sometimes they
gave the name Tartarus to the whole of this land of
shadows ; but more commonly they divided the under-
world into two provinces the Elysian fields, in which
the spirits of their heroes and their sages, with all who
loved goodness, wandered to and fro, illumined by a
pale reflection of their former joys ; reserving the name
Tartarus for that dismal region in which the ghosts of
the wicked were tasked, and tantalized, and tormented. 1
Here, no doubt, St Peter uses it in its more limited
sense, and means to imply that the angels who sinned
were cast into that gloomier province of the under-
1 Mr Mahaffy, one of the ablest and best-read of our modern,
classical scholars, has some remarks on this point, which illustrate and
confirm both what I have here said on the pagan conception of the
Tartarean world, and what I have yet to say on the ancient concep-
tion of Hades. " We know from Homer and from Mimnermus, that
in the earliest periods, though the Greeks were unable to shake off a
belief in life after death, yet they could not conceive that state as
anything but a shadowy and wretched echo of the real life upon
earth. It was a gloomy and dark existence, burdened with the
memory of lost happiness and the longing for lost enjoyment. To
the Homeric Greeks their death was a dark unavoidable fate, with-
out hope and without reward. It is, indeed, true that we find in
Pindar thoughts and aspirations of a very different kind. We have
in the fragments of his poetry which remain to us more than one
passage asserting the reward of the just, and the splendours of a
future life far happier than that which we now enjoy. But, not-
withstanding these splendid visions, such high expectation laid no hold
upon the imagination of the Greek world. The poems of Pindar, we
are told, soon ceased to be popular, and his utterances are but a streak
of light amid general gloom. The kingdom of the dead in ^Eschylus
is evidently, as in Homer, but a weary echo of this life, where honour
can only be attained by the pious memory of attached relations ;
HELL. 59
world which was the haunt of the wicked. Probably
the Apostle did not know, nor affect to know, muck
of the angels who sinned and fell, and of what became
of them after their fall. Probably it was because their
fate was dim and shadowy to him that he employed a
word, Tartarus, which carried only a dim and shadowy
significance. But very certainly his " Tartarus " by
no means answered to our " Hell." He was speaking,
not of the final estate, whether of sinful men or of
sinful angels, but of a state in which they are held
until the day of judgment arrives. The word Tar-
tarus would call up in the minds of his readers only
where duty paid to the dead affects him in his gloomier state, and
raises him in the esteem of his less-remembered fellows. Sophocles
says nothing to clear away the night ; nay, rather his last and
maturest contemplation regards death as the worst of ills to the
happy man a sorry refuge to the miserable. Euripides longs that
there may be no future state, and Plato only secures the immortality
of the soul by severing it from the person, the man, and all his inte-
rests." (Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 69, 70.) In the same
work (pp. 153-56) he develops the hint I have given above, that
perhaps "the initiated" had been taught to " faintly trust the larger
hope." Cicero (De Legg, ii. 14, 36) has a memorable passage on
the Mysteries : " Much that is excellent and divine does Athens seem
to me to have produced and added to our life, but nothing better
than those Mysteries, by which we are formed and moulded from a
rude and savage life to humanity ; and indeed in the Mysteries we
perceive the real principles of life, and learn, not only to live happily,
but to die with a fairer hope." Commenting on this passage Mr
Mahaffy asks what it was that gave these celebrated Mysteries, the
greater Eleusinia, so transcendant a character that all the greatest
minds of Greece and Rome speak of them with enthusiasm. And
his reply is : " There is only one reasonable cause, and it is that
which all our serious authorities agree upon the doctrine taught in
60 SAL VA TOR MUNDL
the most vague and undefined conceptions of some in-
termediate state. And, therefore, we have no right to
translate it by a word which we use to denote the final
state, the last and unchangeable lot of guilty men, and
which calls up in our minds the most definite and ter-
rible conceptions. Our plain duty to the passage is to
read it in English as it reads in the original Greek,
" God spared not angels who sinned, but cast them
into Tartarus."
2. The word Hades occurs five times in the Gospels
and Epistles ; and in every instance our translators
render it by the word "hell." That the translation is
the Mysteries was a faith which revealed to them hopeful things
about the world to come, and which, not so much as a condition, but
as a consequence of this clearer light, this higher faith, made them
better citizens and better men. This faith was taught them in the
Mysteries through symbols, through prayer and fasting, through
wild rejoicings ; but, as Aristotle expressly tells us, it was reached,
not by intellectual persuasion, but by a change into a new moral
state in fact, by being spiritually revived." After adverting to the
wonderful fidelity with which this secret, known to so many, has
been kept, so that we have nothing but hints of the "scenes of dark-
ness and fear in which the hopeless state of the unbelievers was
pourtrayed, and of light and glory to which the convert attained,
when at last his eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and
evil," he sums up thus: "But all these things are fragmentary
glimpses, as are also the doctrines hinted of the unity of God, and of
atonement by sacrifice. There remains nothing clear and certain
but the unanimous verdict as to the greatness, the majesty, and the
awe of the services, and as to the great spiritual knowledge and
comfort which they conveyed. The consciousness of guilt was not,
indeed, first taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt very
keenly, by the Greek mind. These Mysteries were its Gospel of
Reconciliation with the offended gods. "
HELL. 6 1
an inaccurate one, and at times even a grotesquely
inaccurate one, it will be easy to shew.
The word Hades (6c./dt$, from a = not, and /5l/i/ = to
see) means, according to its derivation, that which is
not and cannot be seen. According to its usage, it
denotes in especial that vast subterranean kingdom,
that dim shadow- world, into which the spirits of all
men, good and bad alike, were held to pass at death.
When they die, men are no longer seen ; they pass
over into the land which, if not dark in itself, is dark
to us, hidden behind impenetrable veils of mystery.
This, at least, was a common, perhaps the most common,
conception of the future state among both the Eastern
and Western nations of antiquity, 1 most of whom
assumed the earth to be a vast plain, floating through
space as " a broad leaf floats through air," the
upper side of which, illumined by the sun, was
reserved for the living, while the spirits of the dead
were condemned to the dark under- surf ace, i.e., to what
we should call "the Antipodes." -And the Jews
shared, or adopted, this conception. They, too, thought
of the kingdom of the dead as a vast under-world, in
which the disembodied spirits of men would dwell
until the day of judgment. In this vast kingdom
there were two provinces, separated from each other
See Dr Draper's " History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe," voL i., passim.
62 SALVA TOR MUNbl.
by an impassable gulf Paradise, answering to the
Elysian fields of the heathen poets, and Gehenna,
answering to their Tartarus. In Paradise the souls of
the righteous awaited their final and complete blessed-
ness; while in Gehenna the souls of the wicked
awaited their final doom. To this entire kingdom,
including both provinces, they gave the name Hades.
For them Hades included Paradise as well as Gehenna;
and therefore it is obviously inaccurate and misleading
to render the word Hades, as our translators do, by
the word " hell." Nay, the word " hell " is in every
case a false and misleading rendering of the word
Hades; for (1), Hades is never once used to denote
the final estate of men, but only the state which pre-
cedes the day of judgment ; and (2), it is commonly
used to denote the whole of that intermediate state,
the lot of the righteous as well as that of the unright-
eous. Thus, for example, Josephus speaks of the
spirit of Samuel as being evoked from Hades to warn
King Saul of his approaching doom; and we may be
very sure that Josephus did not conceive of that great
prophet as doomed to an everlasting torment. Indeed,
all the best ancient writers, Greek and Roman, Jewish
and Christian, speak of their noblest men as dwelling
in Hades, and looking with solemn expectation and
sustaining hope for the dawn of some great day
of deliverance. And the word is used in pre-
HELL. 63
cisely the same sense both in the Gospels and in the
Epistles.
Thus, in St Matthew xi. 23, we have our Lord's
pathetic apostrophe : " And thou, Capernaum, which
art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to
Hades ! " So at least it stands in the Original, and
not, as in our Version, " to hell." And no doubt the
thought in his mind was, that all that busy multitude
of living men who then thronged the streets of
Capernaum, would, ere long, be hurried into the dark
under- world, leaving their favoured city desolate as
it is to this day.
In St Matthew xvi. 1 8, we have his gracious promise
to Simon Barjona : " Thou art Petros (a rock), and on
this petra (or rock), I will build my church ; and the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it;" that is to
say, no spiritual principalities and powers from the
unseen world, whether bringing with them airs from
Paradise or blasts from Gehenna, shall ever overthrow
the Church animated by the spirit of that loyal and
zealous Apostle. No thought of "hell," the final
prison-house, was in our Lord's mind.
I have said that we must be careful not to push the
details of any parable too far, that we must not go to
parables for clear and authoritative teaching on the
future conditions of the human race. But I gave you
that caution simply because it is dictated both by
64 SALVATOR
common sense and by sound criticism, not because the
Parables tell against my argument. They tell in
favour of it, as you may see by referring to St Luke
xvi. 23. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,
our Lord describes the after condition of him who here
was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sump-
tuously every day, thus : "And in Hades he lift up
his eyes, being in torment." Here, of course, the word
Hades stands for, or at least includes, that dark
province of the under-world in which the unrighteous
receive the due reward of their deeds ; but is it there-
fore equivalent to our word "hell?" By no means;
for " hell " is the name we give to the final estate of
the wicked ; to us it suggests, whatever it may have
suggested to an earlier generation, the thought of
never-ending punishment. But our Lord, in his
parable, is evidently speaking only of the state which
immediately follows death. Neither Lazarus nor
Nimeusis (if this were the rich man's name) has reached
his last state, his final condition, or can reach it until
after the day on which the secrets of all hearts shall
be disclosed. So that even here we must reject the
word " hell," and retain Christ's word, " hades."
Nor is our Lord's description of the moral effects
of the " torment " on the Rich Man's character
without many suggestions of hope, were this the
place to dwell on them. For obviously a process
HELL. 65
of amendment has begun to take effect on him,
and even now already has been carried to a sur-
prising length. He who had cared only for himself
now cares for his " five brethren," and cares not
that they should be clothed with purple and fine
linen, and surfeited with sumptuous fare, but that they
should be quickened and renewed in the spirit of their
minds, and saved from the torment to which he has
doomed himself. In short, vital and hopeful germs of
charity and spirituality have already been released and
developed within him ; and how can any torment,
any discipline, which produces such happy effects, be
enduring ?
Turn now to Acts ii. 27 and 31. In his great
sermon on the Day of Pentecost, St Peter is arguing
that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ whose advent
had been afore-announced by the Hebrew prophets.
He quotes certain words uttered by "the patriarch
David," which he affirms were true of Jesus, and of
Him alone " Thou wilt not leave thy Holy One in
Hades." In those words, argues the Apostle, David
" spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was
not left in Hades." Now here, surely, every man may
see for himself how inaccurate and misleading it is to
translate "Hades" by "Hell." God will not leave
his Holy One, the Christ, in hell ! Is that a promise ?
What special grace is there, or rather, is there not a
E
66 SALVATOR MU^DI.
very special and incredible indignity, in assuring the
Holy One that God will not leave Him in hell, when
we know that He will not suffer any of his holy ones
so much as to enter hell ? But though God does not
suffer any good man to enter hell, He suffers all good
men to enter Hades. He leaves them there, in the
world of disembodied spirits, until the morning of the
resurrection ; i.e., He leaves them all there but one.
The Christ could not be holden of death ; his soul was
not left in Hades, as ours are, any more than his flesh
saw corruption, as ours does. There was, therefore, a
very special grace in the promise made to Him, a grace
vouchsafed to none but Him ; and if this promise were
fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, as St Peter affirmed it
was, its fulfilment was an infallible proof that he was
in very deed the Christ of God. 1
1 There is one other passage in the Textus Receptus in which Hades
occurs ; but here (1 Cor. xv. 55) the Authorized Version renders
it by "grave." The true Text, however, reads ddvar-r} (death), not
ade (Hades).
There are also four places in the Apocalypse in which "hell" is
substituted for "Hades," in our Version. They are as follows:
Rev. i. 18, "I have the keys of Hades and of Death;" Rev. vi. 8,
' ' His name that sat on him was Death, and Hades followed with
him;" Rev. xx. 13, " Death and Hades delivered up the dead that
were in them;" and Rev. xx. 14, "Death and Hades were cast into
the lake of fire." No real student of the Bible will deny that the
word Hades should be retained in all these cases. And indeed one
is puzzled to know what those who hold the "orthodox" view can
possibly make of the last of these texts, if they retain the present
rendering of it ; for surely " the lake of fire " stands for hell ; and if
hades also be hell, it would seem that hell was, or is to be, cast into
fall, a, somewhat questionable feat.
HELL. 67
Now these are all the passages in the Gospels
and the Epistles in which the word Hades occurs ;
and I think you will admit that in no one of these
cases should it be translated by the word "hell."
For whereas our word " hell " denotes the final and
everlasting torment of the wicked, there is not a single
instance in which the word " Hades " is used in that
sense. Where it applies to the lot of the wicked at
all, it denotes simply that intermediate and prepara-
tory state of punishment, or discipline, which precedes
"the last judgment;" while at least, in some cases, the
word obviously covers Paradise as well as Gehenna, and
denotes the tranquil and happy intermediate estate of
the good, that rest-full region or condition in which the
righteous await the Resurrection, and into which Christ
Himself entered, although He was not " left " in it.
3. There is but one other word in the New Tes-
tament which is rendered by "hell," the word Gehenna.
This word occurs twelve times in the Gospels and
Epistles. And how inadequately the word " hell " trans-
lates it you will see if we consider (1) the derivation
of the word ; (2) the sense in which it was used and
understood in the time of our Lord and his Apostles ;
and (3) the meaning of the several passages in which
it is found. And as these passages are those on which
the popular dogma is very largely based, we must
examine them with some patience and care.
68 SAL VA TOR MU&DI.
(1). As to the derivation of the word there is not,
there never has been, the slightest doubt. Gehenna
is the Greek form of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, or
"Valley of Hinnom." This valley was a steep ravine im-
mediately under the South-Western wall of Jerusalem,
watered by the brook Kidron and " Siloa's sacred
stream." In the time of the Hebrew Kings it was
.laid out in " paradises," i.e., pleasure gardens, with
their groves, pools, fish-ponds. Here the wealthier
nobles and citizens of Jerusalem had their country
villas, their summer palaces. At its South-Eastern
extremity lay the paradise of King Solomon, with its
" tophet," or music grove, the grove in which the King,
with his wives and concubines, listened to his men-
singers and women-singers, and to the blended strains
of " musical instruments of divers sorts." The whole
beautiful valley, in short, was full of those delicious
retreats which are still found in the close neighbour-
hood of large and wealthy Oriental cities, and in which
the monarch and his nobles seek repose from the sultry
heat of the summer, and from the frets and toils of
public life. To gratify the " foreign women " with
whom he consorted, Solomon polluted his pleasant
gardens and groves with idolatrous shrines, in which
the cruel and licentious rites of Egypt and Phoenicia
were observed. His successors imitated, and out-ran,
his evil example. The horrid fires of Molech were
HELL. 69
kindled in the beautiful valley, and children were
burned in them " passed through the fire." Gradu-
ally " the valley of Hinnom " grew to be a type of all
that was flagrantly wicked and abominable to the
faithful souls, fallen on evil times, who still worshipped
Jehovah on the neighbouring hill of Zion. And when
Josiah came to the throne, and good men could once
more lift up their heads, the groves were burned down,
the pleasant gardens laid waste, the shrines ground to
powder, and, to render the valley for ever " unclean,"
the bones of the dead were strewn over its surface.
Thenceforth it became the common cesspool of the
city, into which offal was cast, and the carcasses of
animals, and even the bodies of great criminals who
had lived a life so vile as to be judged unworthy of
decent burial. Worms preyed on their corrupting
flesh ; and fires were kept burning lest the pestilential
infection should rise from the valley and float through
the streets of Jerusalem.
To the Hebrew prophets this foul terrible Yalley
became an apt type, or illustration, of the doom of the
unrighteous. They drew from it their images, images
of which such terrible and unwarrantable use has been
made, of the worm that never dies, and of the fire
which is not quenched. With them, to say that a
man was in danger of Gehenna was to say that his
sins had exposed him to a judgment the terrors of
r
70 SALVATOR MUNDL
which were faintly shadowed forth by the sickening
horrors of the detestable Ge-Hinnom.
(2). This is the derivation of the word. In what
sense it was used and understood in the time of Christ
and his Apostles, it is not so easy to say. To deter-
mine that point requires no little learning and research.
But we may reasonably conclude that, if we can
recover the sense in which the word was commonly
used by the Jews some nineteen centuries ago, we
may be sure that that is the sense in which Christ
used it ; for we cannot doubt that He would have
defined the word afresh, that He would openly have
put a new sense into it, unless He used it in the sense
in which his hearers already understood it. Whatever
certain modern teachers and ministers may do, we may
be quite sure that the Great Teacher did not use in
one sense words which He knew that those who
listened to Him took in another and a very different
sense.
Now, all the Jewish writings which date from three
centuries before Christ to three centuries after Christ
have been carefully ransacked, with a view to ascertain
the meaning then placed on the word Gehenna. 1 And
1 Among others, and chief among those who have ransacked the
Hebrew literature of this period, with an express view of determin-
ing the significance of Gehenna, I may mention the Rev. Alfred
Dewes, D.D., LL.D., perpetual curate of St Augustine's, Pendlebury,
Manchester, who has published the result of his researches in a
HELL. 71
the result of the search a result confirmed to me
personally by that eminent Hebrew scholar, Emmanuel
small volume, not so well known as it deserves to be, entitled "A
Plea for a New Translation of the Scriptures." To him I am in-
debted for the references which follow, and for many hints which
have helped me to make this and the next sub-division of my Lecture
more complete. In order that my readers may know more exactly
the ground covered, and the care with which it has been covered, by
this erudite and laborious scholar, I cite a few sentences from his
work. After animadverting on the " rather pitiable way " in which
one Commentator after another has denned and repeated Lightfoot's
somewhat ambiguous words, taking him to assert, or making him
assert, "that Gehenna was the abode of the damned, a place of
eternal fire, and that there are endless examples to prove it," he adds
(p. 21) : "With a view to test the truth of an assertion so continu-
ally 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, lie 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, Bux-
torf, Castell, Schindler, Glass, Bartoloccius, Ugalino, and Nork :
and the result of the whole examination is this : there are but two pas-
sages which even a superficial reader could consider to be corroborative
of the. assertion that the Jews understood Gehenna to be a place of ever-
lasting punishment" Among the works read by Dr Dewes were, of
course, the several books of the Apocrypha, the writings of Philo
and Josephus, the Targums, and, as he has said, those passages in
the Talmuds which are commonly cited in favour of the popular
dogma. And surely it is a wonderful result of his examination of
these and other works that only two sentences I only know of one
(i.e., in the Talmud) were discovered which even appeared to
favour that dogma, and that neither of these, when investigated,
could be held to lend it any support.
i
72 SALVATOR MUNDI.
Deutsch 1 is that, without a single exception, or with
only one very doubtful exception, 2 these writings lend
no countenance to, that they positively discounten-
ance, the English translation of that word. That is
to say, the uninspired Jewish writings for the six
centuries nearest to Christ know nothing, absolutely
nothing, of " hell." What, then, do we find in these
writings ? We constantly find such sentences as
1 On the only occasion on which I had the privilege and pleasure
of a long talk with .Mr Deutsch, I cited as many of the passages
adduced by Dr Dewes as I could recall, and asked him whether the
impression in his mind at all harmonized with the conclusion to
which these citations naturally led. His answer, given very empha-
tically, was that they very fairly represented the teaching of the
Jewish rabbis ; and he added, "Of this you may be quite sure, that
there is not a word in the Talmud which lends any support to that
damnable dogma of endless torment." Since then his incomparable
essay on the Talmud has been given to the world, and in that essay
this private opinion of his is publicly affirmed. So that if any one
should think that Dr Dewes might have found passages in the Tal-
mud, had he searched it for himself, which would have modified his
conclusion, Mr Deutsch comes to the rescue, and declares, with all
the authority of his unrivalled knowledge of the Talmud, that it
throws its whole weight in favour of that conclusion, and not
against it.
2 This one exception is a sentence from the Talmud (Rose, has-
ciana, ch. I.), which declares that " Christians and apostates descend
into Gehenna, and are judged in it for generations of generations."
But the passage is of late date ; it is obviously inspired by the
hatred and scorn felt by the Jewish rabbis for those Christians who
seek to "convert " Jews, and for those Jews who apostatize from the
faith of their fathers : and, after all, "generations of generations"
is not precisely equivalent to " for ever and for ever." It is a tine
sign of Mr Deutsch's fairness that even in his brief abstract of the
Talmudic teaching on this point, he includes in it the solitary passage
which seems opposed to its general spirit (see his " Remains," p. 53).
HELL. 73
these : " Gehenna is ordained of old because of sins." 1
" In Gehenna the fire is kindled every day." 2 " God
hath prepared Gehenna for the ungodly who transgress
his commandments." 3 " The ungodly will be judged
in Gehenna, to shew that there is none in whom is
the virtue of innocence against the day of judgment"*
" The ungodly shall be judged in Gehenna until the
righteous shall say of them, We have seen enough ! " 4
" The judgment of the ungodly is for twelve months" 5
" Noah, seeing the Angel of Death, hid himself in the
ark twelve months, because the judgment on sinners
la,sts for twelve months" 6 " The impious shall be
burned up by the heat of the sun." 7 " Gehenna is
nothing but a day in which the impious will be
burned." 8 " The sinners of Israel and the sinners of
the Gentiles shall descend with the body into Gehenna,
and for twelve months shall be condemned in it ; at
the end of twelve months the body shall be consumed,
and the soul burned up, and the wind shall scatter it
under the feet of the just." 9
Now, of course, these ancient Hebrew sayings carry
no authority on points of Christian doctrine. We are
not to take them as yielding any real help to our
1 Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel on Isaiah xxx. 33.
2 Ibid., on Ixv. 5. 3 Ibid., on 1 Samuel ii. 8, 9.
4 Ibid., on Isaiah Ixvi. 24. 8 Mishna, Adyoth, ch. 2, s. 9.
6 The Cabalistic Book of Zohar, col. 205.
7 Talmud, Avodah Zarah, ch. 1.
8 9 Talmud, Rose, hasciana, ch. 1.
74 SALVATOR
theory of the future life. Nay, as Bartoloccius, in his
" Bibliotheca Rabbinica," long since complained, " the
propositions which they contain are so variable and
unstable " that " no firm and unshifting dogma can
be deduced from them " as to the future punishment
of the guilty. But this much we may learn from
them, as he reluctantly confesses, that the Jewish
rabbis did not believe in " a material fire," and that
they thought such fire as they did believe in would
one day be put out. 1 And the conclusion of this
learned Talmudist is abundantly confirmed by the most
eminent and erudite Hebraist of our own day,
Emmanuel Deutsch. In his celebrated essay on the
Talmud, he writes 2 : " There is no everlasting damna-
tion according to the Talmud. There is only a tem-
porary punishment even for the worst of sinners.
'Generations upon generations' shall last the damnation
of idolaters, apostates, and traitors. But there is a
space of ' only two fingers' breadth between hell and
heaven ; ' the sinner has but to repent sincerely, and
the gates to everlasting bliss will spring open. No
human being is excluded from the world to come.
Every man, of whatever creed or nation, provided he
be of the righteous, shall be admitted into it."
And there is another point on which these sentences
1 See Dr Dewes' Plea, pp. 23, 24.
2 Literary Remains, p. 53.
HELL. 75
of the Jewish Fathers speak with high and conclusive
authority ; they shew us, they prove beyond contradic-
tion the general sense put on the word Gehenna by
the Jews of our Lord's time. Obviously they thought
of Gehenna as the state in which the wicked would be
reserved for judgment, as an intermediate, not the
final, state. On the duration of that state of punish-
ment, or discipline, they differed, as also on its ultimate
issue. Some held that the torment of Gehenna would
endure for twelve months ; some, for a single day ;
some, only until the righteous should desire it to end
and that surely would not be very long. And,
again, some held that the discipline of Gehenna 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. With these differences of
opinion we are not at present concerned. All we
have to mark is the general sense in which the word
Gehenna was then used and understood ; and I do not
see how we are to escape the conclusion that among
the Jews it was taken to denote a punishment, or
discipline, which did not extend beyond a definite, and
probably a very short, period of time. Christ was a
Jew, and spoke to- Jews ; and in what but their
Jewish sense can we fairly and reasonably interpret
his words ?
I
76 SALVATOR MUNDI.
(3). Taking the word in this Jewish sense, as we
are bound to do, let us briefly examine the Scriptures
in which it occurs. The word Gehenna is used eleven
times by our Lord, and once by his " brother " James.
No other of the Apostles, or Apostolic men, uses it even
once, mainly, no doubt, because they wrote to Gentile
churches, to whom this Jewish word, this illustration
taken from the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, would
have been strange and perplexing.
The first instance in which it is employed is St
Matthew v. 22. Christ is comparing his laws, the
laws of the kingdom of heaven, with the laws given of
old time by Moses. Moses had said, " Thou shalt not
kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the
judgment. . But," continues Christ, "/ say unto you,
Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause
shall be in danger of the judgment ; and whosoever
shall say to his brother Raca (a mere expletive of dis-
gust and contempt, like the odious expletives which
we may hear every day in our own streets) shall be in
danger of the Council : but whosoever shall say, Thou
fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." The general
sense of the passage is that, whereas Moses condemned
murder, Christ condemns the angry passions in which
murder takes its rise. Even an angry emotion was
henceforth to be regarded as incipient murder ; and if
that angry emotion found vent in angry and malicious
HELL. 77
words, words which smote and wounded a neighbour's
heart, it was to be held a still heavier crime, worthy
of a still severer punishment. This, confessedly, is the
general sense of our Lord's saying ; but he casts his
thought in a technical and figurative form which needs
a little explanation.
In every Jewish city there were courts of justice 1
which had the power of life and death ; but, though
they could condemn criminals to death by the sword,
they had no authority to inflict that death by stoning
which was the most ignominious punishment known to
the Hebrew code. Only the Sanhedrin, the supreme
council at Jerusalem, could inflict that penalty. But
the Sanhedrin, besides condemning a man to be
stoned, could also ordain that, after death, his body
should be cast into the valley of Hinnom, to become
the prey of the worm or of the fire. We hold it a
bitter disgrace to be denied Christian burial ; but for
a Jew to be denied burial in the family sepulchre, and
thus not to be " gathered to his fathers," was far more
shameful and terrible. Of these national customs and
feelings our Lord avails Himself in the passage before
us. He affirms that whoso is angry with his brother
without a cause shall be in danger of, shall put himself
in the power of, those local courts of justice which sat
in every city, wielding the power of life and death.
1 Deut. xvi. 18 ; and Josephus, Ant. iv. 8, 14 j Wars, ii. 20, 3.
78 SALVA TOR MUNbl.
He affirms that whoso vents his spleen in the expletive
" Raca " shall be in danger of the Sanhedrin, the
metropolitan court, or " council," which alone could
condemn men to be stoned. And He also affirms that
whoso vents his anger in the word " Fool " shall be
liable to be condemned after death to " the Gehenna of
fire" i.e., to the valley of Hinnom, in which the fires
were always at work on the refuse of the city. 1
This is the form in which the Lord Jesus cast that
law of his kingdom which forbids causeless anger, and
the contemptuous or malicious words in which it finds
expression. But consider, first, how the word " hell "
introduces a false tone and scale into the law of
Christ. Here are three sins and three punishments.
The three sins are anger, the anger that says Raca,
and the anger that says Fool a somewhat harsher
and more contemptuous word, at least in Hebrew ears.
And the three punishments are that of the local court,
that of the metropolitan court, and that of hell-fire !
Now between the three sins there is a gradual descent,
1 All this is as well brought out probably as it can be by a mere
translation in Mr M'Clellan's new Translation of the Gospels, which
runs thus :
21. " Ye have heard that it was said unto them of old time,
' Thou shalt do no murder :
And whosoever shall do murder shall be liable to the judges. '
22. But I say unto you, Every one that is angry with his brother
shall be liable to the judges: and whosoever shall say to his brother,
* Tush ! ' shall be liable to the High Council : and whosoever shall
say, ' Thou fool,' shall be liable for the Burning Valley of Fire."
HELL. 79
each is a little worse than the one which goes before
it. But who does not feel that in the three punish-
ments, instead of a correspondingly gradual descent,
there is, in the last interval, a sudden plunge so vast,
so profound, as to be out of all keeping. The dis-
proportion strikes one in two ways. It is incredible
that to call a man Fool should be so much worse a
crime than to call him Raca that, whereas for the one
offence men are to be brought before a court of justice,
for the other they are to be damned to an everlasting
torment. And it is equally incredible that any man
should be doomed to all the horrors of hell if, in a
moment of angry impulse, he let the word Fool, or
any other word, slip from his lips. On the other
hand, if for " hell-fire " we read " Gehenna of fire,"
and understand that, while the first punishment is that
which a local court may inflict death, and the second
that which only the metropolitan court can inflict
death by stoning, the third is to be cast out, unburied,
into the accursed valley of Hinnom, we at least restore
something like scale and proportion to the sentence,
though the punishments still look, if not far too heavy,
far too material and external for the sins.
And, indeed, if any man really studies these words,
he soon finds it quite impossible to take them in their
literal sense. In that sense they are not true. No
Jew, no Christian was ever brought before a local
8o SALVATOR MUNS>L
court of justice, and condemned to be beheaded simply
for indulging an angry thought or feeling. No Jew,
no Christian was ever called before the Sanhedrin, and
condemned to be stoned to death simply for calling his
brother Raca. No Jew, no Christian was ever first
put to a shameful death, and then denied decent
burial, simply for calling his brother Fool. And no
man who reads these words with the understanding
can for a moment suppose that Christ meant these sins
of anger to be brought before courts of justice, and to
be visited with punishments so disproportioned and
inappropriate. The most savage judge who ever dis-
graced the bench would not have doomed men to death
for an angry feeling that was never uttered in word or
action, nor to a death in the last degree shameful for
uttering an angry word. And would Christ, the Lover
and Redeemer of men ? Use your common sense.
Translate these Hebrew figures of speech into their
English equivalents, and see what you think of them
then. " Whosoever is angry with his brother without
cause shall be brought up before the Police Court; and
whosoever shall call his neighbour Coxcomb shall be
tried for his life at the Assizes : and whosoever shall
call his brother Fool shall be hung, and then denied
Christian burial !" Can you swallow that? Does that
sound like "the sweet reasonableness of Christ" to you?
If not, you may be sure that He who taught all things
HELL. 8 1
in parables is uttering a parable here. There is no
thought of hell in his mind ; there is no thought even
of literal courts of justice. He is simply teaching an
Oriental people, in the Oriental forms with which they
were familiar, that every sin, however inward, will
receive its due recompense of reward ; that the heart
is the fountain from which all sin flows ; that in God's
sight the murderous wish, scheme, bent, is murder : and
that every utterance of it, whether in word or in deed,
since it deepens and confirms it, will entail a still
severer punishment. " Be angry, and you will suffer
for it ; let your anger mount to utterance, and you
will suffer the more : every new access and expression
of evil passion will plunge you still deeper in sin and
misery." This is what Christ meant ; this is the law of
anger as interpreted by 'Him.
Twice more the word Gehenna is used by Christ in
the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew v. 29 and 30).
If our right eye or our right hand offend us, if, that is,
it become an occasion of sin, we are to cut it off or
to pluck it out ; for " it is profitable for thee that one
of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole
body should be cast into Gehenna." It is the law of
Adultery of which our Lord speaks here ; and He
treats it in precisely the same method and spirit in
which we have already heard Him treat the law of
Murder. The Jewish code only punished the outward
F
82 SALVATOR MUNbl.
overt act punished it by stoning, and in aggravated
cases by dooming the bodies of the offenders to be-
flung into the valley of Hinnom. Our Lord used this
Jewish punishment to illustrate his meaning. " To
commit adultery is/' He says, "to take the way to
Gehenna, And as I adjudge even a lustful look, or
touch, to be adultery, it were better for you to pluck
out your right eye, or to cut off your most serviceable
hand, than to commit that sin ; since, by the loss of
one member, you may save your whole body from the
fire and the worm."
Can we take these words in their literal sense ? or
are not they too a parable ? If we take the word
Gehenna literally, as meaning the valley of Hinnom ^
we must also take the right eye and the right
hand literally ; and every man who has looked and
longed and touched must cut off his hand and pluck
out his eye. Is that what Christ means ? Is his-
code written in blood ? Does He bid us atone the sin
of the soul by mutilating the body ? Impossible !
The simple truth is that no thought of a literal valley
of horrors was in his mind, and still less any thought
of an everlasting torment, to be evaded only by an
excision of the offending organs of sense. He was.
simply using these familiar terms as figures of speech
to convey the solemn warning, that it is better for us
to endure the utmost pains of self-denial and self-
HELL. 83
restraint than to yield even to the first movements of
sensual and unlawful desire.
A similar passage occurs in St Matthew xviii. 8 and
9, and is repeated, in an expanded form, in St Mark
ix. 43-48. In both we are exhorted to cut off the
hand, the foot, the eye which offends, on the ground that
it is better for us to go into life maimed and halt and
blind than to have our whole body cast into Gehenna
" into the Gehenna where their worm dieih not and
the fire is not quenched" Here, of course, the allu-
sion is not to hell, but to the valley of Hinnom outside
Jerusalem, where fires were always burning and the
worm for ever preyed on the corpses of the dead. And
here, again, there is only an allusion to that valley j
i.e., Gehenna is only a figure of speech. For if we
take any part of the passage literally, we must take it
literally throughout. If Gehenna stands for a real
valley, polluted by the prey of the worm and the fire,
then in common fairness we must admit that the foot
and the hand and the eye stand for the physical organs,
and members of the human frame, and the plucking
out and cutting off for real physical acts. But we
cannot take the whole passage in that literal way. It
is impossible that we should please God by maiming
and crippling the body which He has given us. And
how should our whole body, the bodies of English
men and women, be cast into a Palestinian valley ?
84 SALVATOR MU^DL
What our Lord is really teaching here is one of the
first and most important moral lessons we all have to
master, viz., that we must learn to go without a great
many things we should like to have ; that we must
learn to rule and deny ourselves on pain of being ruined
&nd undone. What He means is that self-control,
self-denial, is life to us ; that self-seeking, unbridled
self-indulgence, is death. If we deny ourselves our
strongest craving when to indulge it would be wrong,
if we refuse to yield to our most absorbing affection
when to gratify it we must sin against God and our
neighbour and wrong our own souls, we enter into our
true life, into the life which is eternal ; and enter into
it here and now. We may indeed enter into this life
maimed and wounded for a time ; for have we not
crucified our strongest craving, our most engrossing
affection, that we might enter it ? Nevertheless, even
on these terms, it is well to lay hold upon life, or to
seize it in a firmer grasp. But if we care mainly to
please ourselves, to gratify instead of ruling our passions
and desires ; if we will take our own way and follow
our own will at the cost of conscience and duty, we
lose our true life ; we adjudge ourselves unworthy of
it: here and now we enter into the eternal death, for
here and now we cut ourselves off from God and his
eternal life of service and self-sacrifice. This, without a
figure, is the general principle which our Lord taught
HELL. 8$
in figures intelligible and acceptable to the Jewish
mind.
As yet, then, we have not met a single passage
which so much as alludes to the future state of the
wicked. But you will find such a passage in St
Matthew x. 28, which is repeated in St Luke xii. 5.
St Matthew represents Christ as saying, "Fear not
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul ; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both
soul and body in Gehenna." St Luke reports Him
as saying, " Be not afraid of those that kill the body,
and after that have no more that they can do ; but I
will forewarn you whom ye shall fear : fear him who,
after he hath killed, hath power to cast into the Ge-
henna." Now as the disciples listened to this impres-
sive warning, in what sense would they understand it ?
what thoughts and associations would it quicken in
their minds ? They had been trained to believe that
at death the souls of the unrighteous would descend
into a frightful region in much resembling the polluted
and abhorred Valley outside the walls of Jerusalem
that they would suffer dreadful torments in it for a.
brief space of time : and that then their very souls
would be burned up and scattered, like dust by a wind,,
under the feet of the just. They would therefore
understand Christ to mean that, because men could
only kill the body, they were not so much to be feared
86 SALVATOR MUNDL
as God, who could destroy both body and soul in
Gehenna : they would understand that it was better
for them to dare the utmost wrath of man than to sin
against God. But can it be right to translate the
word " Gehenna," in which after brief torment both
soul and body might be destroyed, by our word "hell,"
when, for us at least, " hell " is the name of a place
in which both body and soul are not destroyed, but
kept alive for ever in order that they may for ever be
tormented in its flame ?
In St Matthew xxiii. 15, our Lord pronounces a woe
on the Scribes and Pharisees because they compassed
sea and land to make one proselyte, and, when they
had got him, " ye make him twofold more a son of
Gehenna than yourselves." In Verse 33 of the same
Chapter He demands of them, " How shall ye escape
'the judgment of Gehenna ? " Both these phrases are
of frequent recurrence in Jewish literature. " A son
of Gehenna" meant very much what " Son of Shaitan"
means in the East now, viz., a wicked and abandoned
man, " a child of the devil," a man born again from
below rather than from above. " The judgment of
Gehenna " was the sentence to the torment and de-
struction of Gehenna the verdict by which a man
was doomed to be stoned in the valley of Hinnom, his
body being left to the worm, the jackal, the raven, and
the flame ; or, when used in a figurative sense, the
HELL. 87
sentence to the darker region of the Hadean world.
Neither phrase has any meaning at all resembling that
of our word "hell." What our Lord intended was
that the Pharisees corrupted the proselytes they were
so zealous to make " out of bad heathen making
worse Jews," as Erasmus puts it ; corrupted them by
teaching them to veil greed, perjury, uncleanness, and
even murder itself, behind a mask of religion : and
that they themselves, therefore, deserved that very
sentence to the death and horrors of Ge-Hinnom to
which they were so ready to doom men far less guilty
than themselves.
The last passage in which the word occurs is James
iii. 6. " The tongue is a fire ; .... it defileth the
whole body, both setting on fire the whole round of
nature and being set on fire of Gehenna." And here,
obviously, the meaning is that the unruly and malicious
tongue, which kindles a fire wherever it falls, is like
those noxious and infectious flames which burned night
and day in the loathsome valley of Hinnom, or that
it is tipped with that searching and destructive flame
which, as the Jews thought, destroys both the body
and the soul of the prisoners in the unseen world.
We have now examined every passage in the New
Testament in which the word Gehenna occurs. We
have found that for the most part it is used in a purely
figurative sense ; that, so often as it is used in a
SALVATOR MUNDI.
literal sense, it denotes the punishments executed
on criminal Jews in this present world : and that, in
the one or two cases, in which it veils a reference to
the punishments of the world to come, it would be
understood by those who heard it as denoting that
brief agony which, as they thought, would precede the
entire destruction of the wicked. And, therefore, the
word "hell," in the sense in which we use it, is in
every case a monstrous mistranslation of the word
" Gehenna," and should be replaced by it. It is quite
possible that, if the word Gehenna were transferred to
our Version, many would be perplexed by it at first,
as at first many were arrested by the Greek word
" baptism." It is very probable that, for a time at
least, its exact shade of meaning would be disputed,
just as there are still those who dispute the meaning
of " baptism." But these would be slight evils as
compared with the immense evil of retaining the word
" hell," the meaning of which every reader fancies he
knows, but the meaning of which, at least in the sense
in which it is now commonty taken, is utterly alien to
the mind of our Lord and his Apostles.
Nay, as we have also seen, neither the Lord Jesus
nor his Apostles had any such word as " hell " in their
vocabulary, or any conception answering to it in their
thoughts. The only words they use are Tartarus,
which stands for the classical conception of an under-
HELL. 89
world, in which the shades of the dead enjoy some
poor shadow of their former joys or suffer some faint
shadow of their former woes ; Hades, which stands for
the Jewish conception of a similar underworld in which
the souls of the good and of the bad alike await the
trumpet of the Kesurrection ; and Gehenna, which
stands for that dark province of the underworld in
which the souls of the unrighteous are tormented for a
time, and until it shall please God to put an end to
their misery.
The word ' ' hell," therefore, has no sort of right to a
place in our Bible; and I cannot and will not doubt
that those of you who have long felt that the dogma
of an everlasting punishment inflicted for the sins of
time threw dark shadows on the very throne, nay, on
the very character, of God, will thankfully expunge it
from the Inspired Record. But do not too hastily
assume that, by getting rid of the word " hell," you
also get rid of the doctrine of retribution. To sin is
to suffer even here and now, and will be to suffer here-
after. No man can be freed from sin except by suffer-
ing, as our daily experience and observation of life
plentifully avouch. And if any man abide in sin to
the very last moment, we may well believe that he
will then enter into a suffering so intense and so pro-
tracted as that he may feel it had been better for him
had he never been born. The merciful God, simply
90 SALVATOR MUNDI.
because He is merciful, does not shrink from inflicting
any pain upon us which is necessary to our welfare,
even in this world ; and if the sufferings of this world
fail to cleanse us from evil, what possible alternative
do we leave Him but to inflict sufferings still more
penetrative and cleansing in the world to come ? No
man who at all knows the evil of his own heart, and
how hard it is to get quit of it ; no man even who has
slipped into a passing indulgence of sinful and exorbi-
tant passion, which was pleasant enough for the moment
and did not then seem so very wrong, can recall the
shame, the agony, the remorse in which even a
momentary sin has landed him, and doubt that
habitual and unrepented sins will entail a misery well-
nigh, if not altogether, intolerable. But to endure
sufferings imposed by Love for our deliverance from
evil is one thing; and to endure sufferings which do
not tend to correct and amend us, which only harden
and degrade us, and which are to know no close, is
another and a very different thing. A wise man might
well take it as the dearest proof of Divine Love that
God should expose him to the severest agonies requisite
for his own well-being, and much more for the welfare
of the world at large ; but how can any thoughtful man
reconcile the infliction of intolerable and never-ceasing
anguish either on those who sinned and knew not
what they did, or even on those who knew what they
HELL. 91
did when they sinned, with the love or with the very
justice of God ? That the wrath of God should be
revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of
men in this and all other worlds, I can well believe,
and can even see that such a wrath as that is but a
severer form of love; but that the just God dooms men
to abide in sin for ever because they have sinned for
a few hours of time, with no prospect of amendment
and no hope of relief, how am I to believe that, if at
least I am to believe in God at all, and to love Him
as the sole and ever-springing fountain of that Charity
which covers a multitude of sins ?
Still there are many who, despite this perplexity of
thought, this impossibility of reconciling the justice no
less than the love of God with the everlasting damna-
tion of the vast majority of men, fear to renounce that
horrible dogma lest, by renouncing it, they should
perilously reduce and abridge the terrors of retribution,
and thus leave men at ease in their sins. They hold,
and hold rightly, that sin ought to be, and must be,
punished : but they do not see that the punishment
which is the present, the natural, and inevitable con-
sequence of sin is the true death, the true hell; and
that to be unconscious of this punishment is itself the
worst punishment of all. They see a man who has
lived for the flesh and the things of the flesh, but who
has only indulged his passions within the limits of a
92 SALVATOR MUNDI.
certain moderation and decorum never caused any-
grave scandal nor entangled himself in the web of law,
never exposed himself to the ban of social reprobation,
and exclusion. He prospers and enjoys himself; he
is " fat and flourishing." So that he makes a fortune,
rises in the social scale, is held in fair repute and can com-
mand the luxuries and recreations to which he has accus-
tomed himself, he is quite content with himself and his
lot. He looks for nothing higher, cares for nothing
better. And as they consider him they are grieved and
perplexed ; they ask, " Where is the judgment of
God ? " Where is it ! Why, there, in the man him-
self, and in his base content with a lot so base. He
is content though he lives only to pamper his senses-
and indulge the pride of life ; content though he, an
heir of immortality, lives only for earth and time, and
though all that is noblest and best in his nature is
dwindling for lack of use ! He thinks more of his
business or profession, more even of his cricketing and
fishing and shooting, nay, more of his very dinner,
than of mental culture, or moral sweetness and purity,
or of the sacred and august realities of eternity.
Deeming himself among the manliest of men, he is of
all men the most unmanly i.e., the least like the true
Man, the perfect Man. His base content with himself
is but the numbness and torpor of a disease which
draws nigh to death. Under heaven and before men
HELL. 93
there is no creature more degraded, and fallen from
high estate, than he a capable and immortal spirit
pining toward death under the tyranny of lusts and
cravings he was born to rule. And yet, fools and
blind that we are, we ask, " Where is the judgment
of God ? why are the sinful prosperous and at ease ? "
Their very prosperity, such as it is, and their content
with it, are, as the Psalmist long since perceived, their
ruin and destruction.
Is it not punishment enough for men that they should
have so miserably fallen from their " pride of place " ?
If not, think of them when they go hence deprived
of the senses through which they have drawn in all
their delights, hurried into the world of spirits with
spirits stained, polluted, debased, unbroken to spiritual
toils, insensitive to spiritual joys, unsustained by
spiritual hopes ; think of them, I say, when they
pass into a world all strange, alien, repulsive to them :
will they not suffer then ? Can they find a home and
its sanctities in Hades ? can they find a Paradise and
its joys? Will it not be a most miserable Gehenna to
them ? Must they not then fear Him who has
destroyed their bodies, and is still able to destroy their
souls ? Ah, we need not " fret because of evil doers
and be envious against the workers of iniquity ;" we
need not fear lest that natural sense of justice which
calls for the due punishment of wickedness should be
94 SALVATOR
ungratified. If we are men and possess the capable
and forecasting spirit proper to man, can we not
penetrate these hindering veils of flesh and custom,
and see in the moral loss and spiritual degradation of
those who are without God in the world a punishment
all the more terrible because they are unconscious of
it, and make no effort to escape it ? Can we not
project ourselves so far into the future as to anticipate
the time when, flesh and heart having failed them,
they will have become only too sadly conscious of their
degradation and woe ? Can we not resolve that as for
us, God helping us, we will not sink into the present
hell of spiritual death, and lay up for ourselves a fear-
ful looking-for of judgment ?
For, consider, this intelligent contriving soul of ours r
which we acknowledge to be " the master part of us/ r
did God intend it to find its true satisfaction and
rest in pleasures which perish as we enjoy them, or in
a world for ever on the flux and that will soon pass
away ? Can we find our chief good, our true rest and
peace, save in that which is as enduring as ourselves ?
When we die all that is material and temporal in us
is resolved into the elements from which it sprang
" our bodies to earth, our blood to water, heat to fire,,
breath to air : " but mind but thought but the soul
which informed all what will become of these ?
" Where will they find their parent element, who
HELL. 95-
will call them home ? " " We shall still be in them,
and they in us ; " l but these are not material, not
sensual : they can find no home in the material uni-
verse. And if we have made them the mere captives
and hungry dependants of sense, how can they but go
out into a world all strange, and alien, and full of
torment ? Is it wise, then, to neglect this our master
part ? Is he a true man who sacrifices that which is
highest and most enduring in him to that which is
most fugitive and lowest ? Is not Tie dead even while
he lives, and damned even before he is judged ?
1 The citations are from Matthew Arnold's Empedocles on Etna,
Act ii. pp. 64, 65.
V. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE
^EONS.
WE have now examined all the passages in the Gospels
and Epistles in which the words "hell" and " damna-
tion" occur. We have found that these words are
always a false and misleading translation of the original
words of Scripture, since the two verbs rendered by
" to damn " never mean more than " to judge " and
" to condemn ; " while the three substantives rendered
by "hell" "Tartarus," "Hades," and "Gehenna"
all indicate a temporary and intermediate state, not
a final and everlasting state.
The second class of Scriptures we have to examine
is that in which the words " eternal " and " everlast-
ing " occur ; and in this class a subordinate series in
which, as these epithets are applied both to the future
felicity of the good and the future misery of the
wicked, the logical inference seems to be that the one
will last as long as the other.
Now this class of passages is so numerous, the words
"eternal," "everlasting," "for ever," and the like
recur so frequently, that it will be simply impossible
for us to examine them all. We must be content with
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. 97
some general remarks which will cover them all, and
with a detailed investigation of a few leading texts
which bear most directly on the subject we have in
hand.
And perhaps the very first point we should mark
is this : that, though the words " eternal " and " ever-
lasting " are used indiscriminately to translate one and
the same Greek word, they are by no means identical
in meaning. The word " eternal " bears two great
meanings, and is used in two very different senses.
Popularly and loosely it is used to denote that which
lasts for ever ; but as it is used by many of our most
eminent thinkers and theologians, instead of denoting
that which endures through all the successions of time,
it denotes that which is above and beyond time, that
which is independent of duration ; that which you can
no more calculate on the sequences of time than you
can weigh music by the pound or measure beauty with
a foot-rule. God, for example, and Christ, and indeed
all that pertains to the spiritual realm as faith, hope,
charity, righteousness, peace are eternal in this
higher sense. 1 They cannot be expressed in terms of
1 It must be admitted however that this higher sense has been
put into the word : it is not the original meaning of the word : ac-
cording to its derivation "eternal" means "age-long" (seepage
119). And if it could be brought back to its original meaning, if it
now suggested nothing more, it would be the very word of all words
for rendering the Greek al&vios. But that, I suppose, is wholly
impossible.
G
98 SALVATOR MUNI
duration. They cannot be brought within the mea-
sures of time. God may indeed, and- does, act within
the limits of time ; but He is not confined by them.
Faith and love may be quickened and experienced in
the hours of time ; but they are not to be measured
and limited by its sequences and changes. They are
spiritual, eternal.
Now this meaning of the word " eternal," as denot-
ing that which transcends the standards and limits of
time, that which is above and beyond, before and after
it, that which encompasses as well as penetrates and
suffuses it, is clearly the greater and the nobler of the
two ; it is even held by some modern teachers and
theologians to be the only meaning in which the word
should now be employed. So that we must not take
the words " eternal " and " everlasting " as synonyms
or equivalents. The one indicates that which con-
tinues through the whole of duration ; the other, that
which is out of duration and above it, of which the
measures and sequences of time are no necessary part.
The one expresses quantity, the other quality. " Ever-
lasting " denotes that which lasts for ever ; " eternal,"
that which is spiritual and divine. And hence to
translate one and the same Greek word by either of
these words, as if it did not matter which, is obviously
inaccurate and misleading.
With this necessary distinction well in our minds,
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^ONS. 99
we may turn to the texts in which these words occur.
There are two, and only two passages in the Gospels
and Epistles in which both one and the other word
are employed to translate a Greek word (a/3/og) which
unquestionably means " for ever ; " and though neither
of these texts refers to the future and final conditions
of men, we will just glance at them, in order that we
may put them aside with a clear conscience, as not
bearing on the question in hand. In Romans i. 20,
St Paul speaks, according to the Authorized Version,
of " the eternal power and godhead " of the Almighty ;
or, as the phrase should be rendered, of " the everlast-
ing power and godhead." Now that God's power and
deity are everlasting, that they endure for ever, that
they can know no bound, no diminution, no end, no
man who believes in God at all will be likely to deny.
The second passage is Jude 6, where Jude, speaking
of the angels who sinned and fell, says that God has
reserved them " in everlasting chains, under darkness,
unto the day of judgment." And here the word is
used in a poetic and figurative sense. " Everlasting
chains " there may be, though one hardly sees how
any " chain " should last for ever ; and the fallen
angels may be bound by them, though one hardly sees
how spirits should be held by chains : but they are
not to be bound by them for ever, only " unto the day
of judgment." All that Jude meant to imply was,
loo SALVATOR
therefore, that these fallen spirits were securely held,
held by bonds they could not hope to break, until the
day that should decide their fate. Neither of these
passages, then, although they are the only two in
which any Greek word is used that, beyond all dispute,
signifies " everlasting," at all bears on the question on
which we are trying to get a little light.
Laying them aside, then, what have we left ? We
have this singular and significant fact, that in all the
other passages in the Gospels and the Epistles in which
the words " eternal " or " everlasting " occur, they are
used to translate one Greek word a/we, and its deriva-
tive aiuvwg, 1 words which, as I believe I can shew
you, so far from denoting either that which is above
time, or that which will outlast time, are saturated
through and through with the thought and element of
time. Now I am sorry to have to trouble you with
Greek again ; but, you know, it is not my fault that
the New Testament was written in Greek : nor can
we very well get at the meaning of the Original with-
out studying the Original. At the same time let me
say for your encouragement that these two Greek words
have been transferred bodily into the English language,
1 To those who say that though alwv may or must be taken in a
temporal sense, ai'civtos may or must be taken as having a non-
temporal sense i.e., as meaning either spiritual or everlasting, it
should surely be enough to reply that the adjective (aldvios) must
derive the whole of its meaning from the substantive (ai&v) from
which it is derived.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 101
so that even those of you who know nothing of Greek
will nevertheless be able to judge what their meaning
really is. The Greek word a/uv is simply an earlier
form of our word ceon, which means, as you are aware,
an age, an epoch, a period of time which is in some
way, from some point of view, a rounded whole, com-
plete in itself. Thus we speak of the aeons, or ages,
which must have been consumed by the geological
changes of the earth, and of the still vaster aeons, or
ages, necessary for the great astronomical changes that
must have preceded the periods during which the void
earth was taking its present form. The Greek aiwiog,
again, is but an earlier form of our word ceonial, or
ceonian, which means aeon-long or age-long ; a word
not infrequent in our poetry and books of science.
When speaking of the immeasurable changes of the
natural world, some of our best writers call them
" aeonial processes " or " aeonial changes."
All you need remember is, therefore, that our word
ceon, which means an age, a period, and usually a vast
period of time, and our word ceonial, 1 which means
age-long, are not translations of the Greek words a/w>
and a/wv/os, but are the very words themselves bodily
lifted out of the one language into the other. Re-
membering this, you would at once understand what I
1 I retain this as the more familiar form of the word, though.
wonian is the more scholarly and accurate.
T
102 SALVATOR MUNDL
meant were I to substitute the Greek words for the
words of our Authorized Version in many of the most
familiar passages of Scripture. Take, for example,
this passage, 1 " Now to the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for
ever and ever ; Amen." If I retain the Greek words
of which I have spoken, you will quite understand the
passage in this version of it, though you may not like
it so well as the other ; " Now to the King of the
aeons (i.e., the King of the ages}, immortal, invisible,
the only wise God, be honour and glory through the
ceons of the ceons (i.e., through the ages of the ages),
Amen." You would understand and this is precisely
what the passage means that God is here set forth
as the King of all the ages of time, and that through
all those ages He was to receive honour and glory.
But " the King of all the ages of time " is not exactly
the same as " the everlasting King; " for the ages of
time had a beginning and are to have an end : and
still less does it convey the idea that would be con-
veyed by "eternal (or spiritual) King," or "King of
eternity " (i.e., monarch of the spiritual universe).
You see, then, that these words ceon and ceonial
denote periods, ages of time, however vast, which sooner
or later come to a close. And it is very certain that
the words were used in this sense by the speakers and
1 1 Timothy i. 17.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE JEONS. 103
writers of the New Testament. For, three centuries
"before the New Testament was first published, the Old
Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek.
This translation, the Septuagint, was in common use
among the Jews in the time of our Lord. Most of
the quotations from the Old Testament which we find
in the New were taken from it. It becomes, therefore,
an important question for us : In what sense are the
words " aeon " and " seonial " used in the Septuagint ?
Do they there, and invariably, carry either the sense
of spirituality of nature or of unending existence ?
So far from that, these words are commonly and fre-
quently applied to the land promised to the seed of
Abraham, which surely was neither an everlasting nor
an eternal inheritance ; to the Aaronic priesthood,
which was not a spiritual priesthood and has already
been abolished ; to the Temple in Jerusalem, which,
long a heap of ruins, is now profaned by " the inex-
pressible Turk ; " to the daily offerings, the " carnal
sacrifices," presented in it, which have fallen into dis-
use for eighteen centuries ; and even to the leprosy of
Gehazi, which was not a spiritual punishment, and
which surely terminated at least at his death.
These are only a few out of a multitude of instances
in which the words were applied to places, persons,
vocations, accidents which endured only for a time, some
of them only for a short time. Of course the words are
I
104 SALVATOR MUNDL .
also and commonly applied to persons and things which
are spiritual and which will endure for ever : to the
being of God, for instance, and to the reign of the
Messiah. But the question is and this is the great
question we have to determine do these words, which
we admit to be applied to that which is, as well as
to that which is not, eternal and everlasting, themselves
carry an eternal or everlasting significance ? The
answer seems plain. If these words really carried in
themselves the sense of eternity or of everlastingness,
they could not possibly have been applied to that
which was so material as the land of Canaan or the
Temple at Jerusalem, nor to that which was so
transitory as the Levitical functions and offices or as
the leprosy of a prophet. Mark this point well, for it
is an important one ; words, epithets, could not be
applied to that which is carnal or transitory, if in and
of themselves they implied in it either a spiritual
quality or the quality of endless duration. When,
therefore, these words are applied to a Being who is
both eternal and everlasting, both spiritual and ever-
existing, such as God, or to a reign, the reign of Christ,
which is also both spiritual and without end, they
cannot fairly be taken as denoting these qualities of
spirituality and endlessness in them ; but only as de-
noting the relation in which God stands to the ages of
time, or as affirming that the reign of Christ will
THE DOCTRINE OF THE JZONS. 105
extend through all such ages. The Greek language is
not so poor that it cannot convey the idea of spirituality
or of unbroken duration in terms not to be mistaken.
On the contrary it is even a more precise and flexible
language than our own, and contains many words by
which it might have conveyed these ideas in the most
definite and unquestionable way. So that when we
find the Greek New Testament constantly using the
words aeon and ceonial where we should have expected
to meet words carrying a spiritual or an everlasting
significance, we must conclude that these words were
used with intention; we must also, or at the lowest
we may reasonably, conclude that there is hidden in
them some doctrine of the ceons, or ages, which it will
repay us to investigate and discover.
Now that there is such a doctrine I have more than
once pointed out to you when neither you nor I were
thinking of the future conditions of men. 1 Instead of
speaking of time as though it were a single period or
epoch, the New Testament speaks of it as broken into
many ages, in each of which some counsel of the
Divine Will is wrought out. Instead of affirming
that time shall be no more when men pass out of this
present order and age, it speaks of " ages to come " as
well as of " ages that are past." Thus, for example,
1 The reader, if he cares to look for it, will find a brief statement
of this doctrine in The Expositor, Vol. iv., pp. 285, et seq.
1
io6 SALVATOR MUNDI.
we have, in the past, the age or dispensation prior to
the giving of the Law, or the Patriarchal age ; then
the Mosaic age or dispensation ; then the Christian
-age, or dispensation, of which the Jews spoke familiarly
both as " the age of the Messiah " and as " the age to
come :" while, in the future, we have apparently many
ages, only imperfectly known to us, under such names
as the Millennium, the Regeneration, the Restitution of
all things, and even ages beyond these which perhaps
are all unknown to us. In short, we find in the New
Testament a series of aeons which are to precede, and
in which men are to be prepared for, that final and
eternal state in which, Christ having delivered up his
Kingdom to the Father, God shall be all in all.
All these preparatory and intermediate ages, more-
over, are contained within, are comprehended by, a vast
epoch which St Paul calls " the ceon of the ceons," i.e.,
the age which includes all ages, which covers the whole
course of time ; the age also in which what he calls
God's "purpose for the ages," i.e., the redemption of
the human race, will be wrought out. And how en-
tirely this doctrine falls in with the demands and
speculations of modern science and thought you will
see at a glance. For they demand for the evolution
of, man, and of the world, and of the universe at
large, precisely those past ages and those ages to
come of which the New Testament so constantly
THE DOCTRINE OF THE jEONS. 107
speaks ; and, moreover, they, no less emphatically than
the New Testament, affirm that all these ages must be
gathered up under one, that they must all run up into
a sacred unity in which the great scheme or purpose
with which universal Nature is pregnant shall be
slowly but victoriously developed.
This, stated briefly and in general terms, is the
Christian doctrine of the aeons, or ages. But as it may
be novel, and even startling, to some of you, and as it
is the key to all those Scriptures which speak of
" ceonial salvation" and " ceonial life," or of " ceon-
ial judgment" and "ceonial punishment," let me
restate it a little more fully.
These aeons, or ages, then, as we learn from St
Paul, are epochs or periods of time in which God is
gradually working out a gracious purpose which He
purposed in Christ Jesus long ere man fell from his
first estate, long before those " age-times," as he calls
them, 1 in and through which men are being recovered
from the fall. God's wisdom, he affirms, 2 was " or-
dained before the ages to our glory;" i.e., God, in his
wisdom, had determined before time began to educe
from the very fall and sin of man a greater glory both
to Himself and to us. In his Epistle to the Ephe-
sians 3 he both expressly names God's determination to
.save men by Christ " the purpose of the ages," the end
J 2 Timothy i. 9. 2 1 Corinthians ii. 7. 3 Ephesians iii. 11.
1
io8 SALVATOR MUNDI.
that was to be wrought out through all the successions
of time ; and distinctly asserts that this redeeming
work will take " ages" for its accomplishment. In the
same Epistle 1 he speaks of the revelation and work of
Christ as " the mystery which hath been hid from the
ages, but is now made manifest ;" and of the glory
accruing from it to God " unto all generations of the
age of the ages" In proof that he anticipates periods
after and beyond the Christian era, I cite from this
same Epistle 2 the glorious ascription in which he
speaks of Christ as set "far above all principalities
and powers, and every name that is named, not only
in this age, but in that which is to come ; " and the
noble hymn, 3 we might almost call it, in which he
sings of the great love wherewith God, who is rich
in mercy, hath loved us, quickening us who were
dead in sins together with Christ, and raising us
together with Him, and establishing us in the
heavenly world with Him, "that in the ages to
come He might shew the exceeding riches of his
grace toward us through Christ Jesus." In proof
that he conceived of these aeons as periods of time
which had or would have their commencement and
their close, I refer to his description of the be-
lievers of his own day 4 as those upon whom " the ends-
1 Ephesians iii. 9 and 10 ; 21 (Comp. Colossians i. 26).
a Ibid., i. 21. 3 Ibid., ii. 4-7. 4 1 Corinthians x. 11.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 109
of the ages are met" a phrase which shews that he
conceived of the primitive Church as standing at a
point at which two great epochs, the Jewish and the
Christian, ran together, the terminal end of the one
and the initial end of the other meeting, as it were, in
the brief span of their single life. And this descrip-
tion is confirmed by a passage in the Epistle to the
Hebrews 1 in which it is recorded of Christ, "Now
once, in the end of the ages (the conclusion or the
terminal point, as some take it, the conjunction or
meeting-point, of the ages, as I take it) He hath ap-
peared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."
For brevity's sake I have as yet only appealed, save
in one instance for a confirmation, to the writings of
St Paul, although his doctrine of the aeons pervades
the whole New Testament ; but I do not doubt I have
already cited passages enough to give you an insight
into the meaning and scope of this suggestive but
neglected doctrine. I understand him to mean, I
understand the New Testament throughout to imply,
that, before time began, God foresaw the sin and
misery of mankind ; that He purposed to redeem us
from that sin and misery by the gift and sacrifice of
his Son ; that the full accomplishment of this great
redemptive work, this new creation, will occupy ages
to come, just as the creation of the physical universe
1 Hebrews ix. 26.
1 10 SAL VA TOR MUN&.
has occupied ages that are past ; that the gradual de-
velopment of this recreative and redeeming purpose
is that which binds all the ages of time together in a
sacred unity ; and that only when it is carried to its
final triumph by the entire redemption of the human
race, only when Christ has subdued all things unto
Himself, will the successions of time pass away, and
God be all in all beings and things, every shadow of
evil being swept out of the universe, that the everlast-
ing blessedness of the eternal world may be without
spot or stain.
Now if we accept this grand conception of St Paul's,
which to my own mind goes far to prove itself by its
very grandeur, we hold the key to many of the most
difficult passages of Scripture, and especially to those
which relate to the life to come. Thus, for example,
in Romans xvi. 25 and 26, God Himself is called the
ceonial God. We there read of "the mystery kept
secret from ceonial times (since the world began, says
the Authorized Version), but which is now made mani-
fest, and by the scriptures of the prophets (i.e., the
New Testament prophets, of whom St Paul himself
was one), according to the commandment of the ceonial
God (everlasting in Authorized Version), is made
known to all nations, for the obedience of faith."
Now, observe, God is here called " aeonial," and certain
times are also called " seonial." In both cases, there-
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. in
fore, we must take the epithet in the same sense.
But we cannot take the word when it is applied to
times or ages, and especially when it is applied to
ages that are past, ages in which Jesus Christ -was not
known, as meaning ceaseless, everlasting ; for these
ages have, long since, ceased : and therefore we cannot
take it in that sense, when, in the same sentence, it
is applied to God. Do we therefore deny that God
is eternal and everlasting ? By no means. But God
is the God of time, as well as the God of eternity.
And as St Paul elsewhere attaches epithets to the Divine
Name which imply the everlastingness of God, so here
he attaches to it an epithet which implies that all the
ages of time are under God's control. Was it wrong
or misleading to call God " the God of the. Jews ? "
Why, then, should it be wrong or misleading to call
Him the God of all men through all the successive
periods of the human story down to the very last?
No doubt the holy Apostle here speaks of the aeonial,
rather than of the everlasting, God, because his whole
mind was full of that great mystery of love, the pur-
pose of God to redeem the human race by Christ Jesus
his Son, a purpose which, as he believed, it would yet
take many ages to accomplish. Of all these ages, he
says, God is the God. It is He, the aeonial God, who
is working in and through them all, and working to
bring men, through righteousness, unto life eternal.
ii2 SALVA TOR
So, again, and in like manner, another great Evan-
gelist, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks
of Christ * as the author of " ceonial salvation," and 2
as " having obtained ceonial redemption " for us. Now
of course the author of this Epistle, whether Apollos or
another, does not mean to deny that the salvation of
Christ is an eternal salvation, or that his redemption
is an everlasting redemption. In language not to be
mistaken he elsewhere implies it to be both everlasting
and eternal ; but this is not the point which occupies
him here. He is not teaching that our redemption is
a spiritual as opposed to a carnal redemption, or that
it will endure for ever. He is rather teaching that it
is the redemption proper and peculiar to this Christian
age in which we live ; that it is the redemption at
which Christ laboured while He was with us in the
flesh, at which He still labours now that He has gone
up on high, and at which He will continue to labour
through all those ages to come through which man's
appointed course is to run, never lifting his hand from
it until the river of time flows into the sea of eternity
and is lost in it.
So, once more, in this same Epistle, 3 the Holy
Ghost, the Spirit of God and of Christ, is called
" the ceonial Spirit." Not that the writer would for
a moment deny this Spirit to be both eternal and
1 Hebrews v. 9. 2 Ibid., ix. 12. 3 Ibid., ix. 14.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. 113
everlasting ; but he here conceives of Him as the
great Zeit-geist, or Time-spirit, the Spirit of the
Christian age or ages : speaks of Him as animating
and informing these ages with a Divine intention and
significance, as conducting the whole discipline and
culture by which men are led on and up through the
successive periods and dispensations of time until they
are made perfect in wisdom and righteousness.
And here again we may see how the New Testament,
when it is rightly read, not only harmonizes with, but
strangely elevates, the highest conceptions of modern
thought. Like their German teachers, many of. our
more advanced English thinkers are for ever speaking
of the Zeit-geist, the Time-spirit, which broods with
quickening heat over the thoughts and aims of men,
shaping and conducting them to loftier issues than
they had set before themselves, giving to every race
or generation its distinctive character and value. To
them this Time-spirit is a mere abstraction, or it is
the final outcome, the general result, of all the best
human thinking and acting of the time ; an influence
generated by the conflicting currents of human thought
and endeavour, and, in its turn, generating new currents
by which the thoughts and aims of men are swayed.
No, says the Scripture ; this Zeit-geist, this Time-
spirit, is no thin powerless abstraction, no mere blending
and sublimation of whatever is best in an age, no
H
H4 SALVA TOR Ml^NDI.
unknown power even whose influence is felt, though
it itself remains indefinable and unseen. No; there
is a Zeit-geist ; but this Zeit-geist is a Divine Spirit,
the Spirit of God, the Father of all men ; the Spirit
revealed in Christ, the Saviour of all men. This is
the Spirit which in very deed sits brooding with
wide-extended wings over the successive ages of time ;
shaping men's thoughts and aims for them, rough-hew
them how they will ; blending and binding those ages
into a sacred unity, and conducting men through them
all toward the many mansions of that great House,
not made with hands, which is eternal, in the heavens.
Now if you have at all grasped this Christian
doctrine of the aeons, and of the purpose and work of
redemption which is being slowly wrought out in them,
you will not be surprised to hear that this same
epithet ceonial, which is applied to God, to Christ,
and to the Holy Ghost, is also applied in the New
Testament to every particular and aspect of that great
redemptive work. If you look back to the Jewish age,
you know very well that during that aeon a very
different, a far inferior, kind of religious life and
discipline was open to men as compared with the life
and discipline of the present time. If you look forward
to the millennial age, whatever your idea of the mil-
lennium may be, you expect that men will then enter
into a far higher and nobler kind of life than is open
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 115
to them now, and be trained by a still severer and
nobler discipline. And therefore you will expect to hear
that the Christian aeon has a life and a discipline
peculiar to itself. It will not perplex you to read of
an " ceonial life," 1 or of an " ceonial inheritance" 2 in
which, by making friends to ourselves of the Mammon
of unrighteousness, we may prepare for ourselves
" ceonial tents." 3 Nor, on the other hand, will it
perplex you to read of an " ceonial judgment" 4 or an
" ceonial punishment" 5 or even of an " ceonial fire" 6
You will understand that, in the one case, the life that
is spoken of as seonial is the life peculiar and proper
to these Christian ages, the life of faith in Christ; and
that the promised " inheritance " is the happy spiritual
estate or condition to which such a life naturally con-
ducts us. And, in the other case, you will readily
understand that the seonial judgment is the judgment
peculiar to this great series of ages in which God is
working out his purpose of redemption ; while the
seonial fire is a symbol of that seonial punishment
which is to be inflicted on all who adjudge themselves
unworthy of the life of Christ, the punishment peculiar
and proper to the Christian ages. And you will
remember that the element and thought of time, of
ages, is implied in all these phrases, that it cannot be
1 St John xvii. 3. 2 Hebrews ix. 15. 3 St Luke xvi. 9.
4 St Mark iii. 29. 6 St Matthew xxv. 46. 6 Jude 7.
n6 SALVATOR MUNDL .
dissociated from aught which pertains to the aeons
of time ; so that even this large and important class
of passages does not carry us beyond the bounds of
time, and reveals nothing concerning the final and
everlasting conditions of men.
All this, however, will, I trust and believe, grow
still clearer to you as we proceed, in my next Lecture,
to examine more in detail a few of the more important
passages in which these words and phrases are
employed.
VI. THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE
^EONS.
WE have now entered on an investigation of those
passages of Scripture in which the future conditions of
men are spoken of as eternal and everlasting, with a
view to ascertain whether or not they lend any support
to the popular conception of a ceaseless torment, an
ever-burning hell. To prepare you for a right appre-
hension of these passages 1 asked you, in my last Lec-
ture, to consider the way in which these words are used
in the Bible ; and the conclusions we arrived at were
such as these. The English words "eternal" and "ever-
lasting " are used to translate the Greek words aiuv and
ai&vios. Happily these Greek words have been trans-
ferred to our own language, so that we can all look at
them for ourselves, and in some measure judge what
they mean : the Greek a/uv becoming ceon in English,
and a/'wi>/o becoming ceonial. jSZon, like a/wv, means
a term, a period of time, an age, an epoch ; and
ceonial, like a/'wv/oj, means that which is of or for an
age, that which endures through or pertains unto an
epoch of time. So that if we wanted to translate the
words ceon and ceonial, which are mainly used by
n8 SALVATOR
MUNDL
poets and men of science, into more familiar English,
we might very fairly render them by the words age,
and age- or ages- long. That the words were used in
this sense by the Jews of our Lord's time, that they
do not therefore necessarily and invariably imply either
spirituality or everlastingness in the objects to which
they are applied, I shewed you by alluding to pas-
sages in the Greek Version of the Old Testament then
in use ; passages in which the inheritance of the land
of Canaan, the priesthood of the Sons of Aaron, the
temple in Jerusalem, the sacrifices offered in it, and
even the leprosy of Gehasi, are called ceonial, though
all these were but for a time and have long since come
to an end. And to these passages I might have added
as many more from the New Testament itself, where
the same Greek words are used in precisely the same
sense. For there are at least a score of texts in the
Scriptures of the New Testament in which these words
are confessedly applied to limited periods of time, or
to things and persons which were only for a time ; as,
for example, when St Paul charges them that are rich
in this aeon, or age, that they do not trust in
uncertain riches, 1 or as when he complains, "Demas
hath forsaken me, having loved this present ceon." 2
Beyond a doubt, then, the words ceon and ceonial
suggest to us an epoch of time, that which is of or for
1 1 Timothy vi. 17. 2 2 Timothy iv. 10.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE jEONS. 119
an age, or at most that which is for all time ; and
beyond a doubt also they were so used and so under-
Stood by our Lord and his Apostles. But were they
never used in any other, in any larger sense ? That
remains to be seen. For the present I simply affirm
that, unless some good and sufficient reason for it can
be assigned, it cannot be right to translate them by
such words as eternal and everlasting ; cannot be right
to take words which are saturated through and through
with the sense of time as though they denoted that
which is beyond and above all time. No doubt it was
right at one time to translate ceonial by eternal, and
would be right again could we reinstate the original
significance of the word : for, strangely enough, the
word " eternal " originally meant aBonial or age-long.
It comes to us from the Latin ceternus, the older and
longer form of which is ceviternus : and the word
cevum, which is the root of it, is simply the Latin
form of the Greek aiuv and the English ceon. But, as
we have seen, this word has now come to have two
meanings which are as nearly as possible the very
opposites of its original meaning. As we now use it,
eternal means either that which is outside of or above
time, or that which outlasts time ; that which is
spiritual or that which is everlasting. We cannot
measure and limit that which is spiritual by the
sequences of time ; we cannot say that truth is so
1
120 SALVATOR MUNDI.
many years old, or that righteousness and love are so
many years long ; and therefore we lift them clean out
of the inappropriate measures of time, and call them
eternal, that is spiritual. And, again, we are quite sure
that these august and spiritual realities will outlast all
the changes and sequences of time,;that they will endure
for ever ; and therefore we also call them eternal when
we really mean that they are everlasting. So that
the conclusion at which we arrive is that, since the
word " eternal " has so completely changed its meaning,
and its meaning is now indeed so indefinite, we must
not any longer take it as an equivalent of " seonial."
Nay, more : I think we may fairly conclude, as in the
last Lecture we did virtually conclude, that since the
words in the Original are ceon and ceonial, we should
always first take them in their first and simplest mean-
ing, as meaning age and age-long, and see whether we
cannot make sense of the passages in which they occur,
before we so much as think of looking for any other
meaning in them.
And yet, reasonable as it sounds, -that is a bold
thing to say ; for if you turn to any Greek Lexicon,
you will find that it gives as the first meaning of a/we
(aeon), an age, a period ; and almost always gives as
an illustration of what it means by an age, the lifetime
of a man, the span of human life ; but you will also
find that it gives as the second meaning eternal, ever-
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. 121
lasting, and that without assigning any reason what-
ever for this sudden and stupendous alteration in the
value of the word. Now no man likes to contradict
the Lexicons. It looks not only bold, but too bold.
And when I had done so, I was like Fear in Collin's
Ode, ready to recoil at the sound myself had made,
for I did not then know that any scholar of repute had
adventured himself in this enterprise before me.
Judge, then, how welcome a surprise it was when, a
few days after the last Lecture had been given, I
found all that I had said confirmed and sustained by
one who had every right to speak with authority on
this point. 1 In reading the Memoir of Charles
Kingsley which has just appeared, I lighted on a letter
containing these words :
" The word (a/uv, aeon) is never used in Scripture
or anywhere else in the sense of endlessness (vulgarly
1 Whatever may be said of the eagerness and impatience with
which Kingsley leaped to his conclusions, and of the tenacity with
which he held them, it must be allowed that on subjects within his
range and in which he took an interest he was a tolerably accurate
observer. He is better known and more commonly thought of as a
poet and novelist than as a scholar or divine. But he not only took
a first-class in classics at Cambridge, he continued to read the classical
authors with delight to the day of his death. The " fathers " of the
Church were familiar to him, as Hypatia will avouch. And when
his friend and "master" Maurice was compelled to withdraw from
King's College mainly for denying the endless torment dogma,
Kingsley made a special study of this question of the future condi-
tions of human life, and continued to brood over it for many years.
I take his word on such a point as this to be worth much, therefore.
122 SALVATOR MUNDL
called eternity) . It always meant, both in Scripture
and out, a period of time. Else how could it have a
plural how could you talk of the aeons, and aeons of
a?ons, as the Scripture does ? Nay, more, how talk of
ol-os 6 a/uv (this age), which the translators, with laud-
able inconsistency, have translated ' this world/ i.e.,
this present state of things, age, dispensation, or epoch.
Alums (aBonial) therefore means, and must mean,
belonging to an epoch, or the epoch ; and aluviog
xoXafffc, (aeonial punishment) is the punishment allotted
to that epoch." 1
But I need not say more on the meaning of the
words aeon and ceonial. You have now, besides your
own common sense, high authority for believing that
they do not imply endlessness whether in Scripture or
1 Since meeting these words of Kingsley's, which confirm my posi-
tion point by point, I have found that Dr Abbott, the head master
of the City of London School a scholar himself and a very efficient
cause of scholarship in others leans to, probably holds, the same
conclusion. For, in his " Cambridge Sermons " (page 25), he writes:
"And as for ourselves, though occasionally mentioning, in language
general and metaphorical, states of woman life and ceonian chastise-
ment awaiting us after death, the Holy Scriptures give no detailed
information as to either condition." No competent English writer
would have spoken of ceonian life and (Konian punishment, if he
believed the commoner phrases, such as " eternal life " and
" everlasting punishment," would have as accurately conveyed his
meaning.
Since the above Note was written Dr Abbott has put this point
beyond doubt. In his very thoughtful book, "Through Nature to
Christ," he expressly affirms his conviction that the received dogma
is untenable, and falls back both on the interpretation and the con-
clusion for which I am contending.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 123
out of it ; that they always carry in them the sugges-
tion of periods and epochs of time. Let us at once
turn, therefore, to some crucial passages in the New
Testament, examine them in the light of this hypothe-
sis, and see whether we can make good sense of them.
There is, however, a large and important class of
passages at which we must glance, those in which
ceonial life is mentioned or denned, before we pass on
to the more difficult and decisive passages which speak
of seonial judgment or seonial punishment. You will
all remember such passages as that in which the
Young Lawyer asks, " What shall I do that I may
inherit seonial life ?" or that in which our Lord bids
the Jews, " Search the Scriptures, since in them ye
think ye have seonial life, and these are they which
testify of me ;" or that in which He affirms, " Whoso-
ever believeth in the Son of Man shall not perish, but
have life seonial ;" or that in which He gives the
definition, " This is seonial life, that they might know
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent." And if we put away from ourselves for a
moment the thoughts and associations which naturally
cluster round these passages for us, and try to read
them in the sense in which the Jews who first heard
them would take them, is it difficult to understand
that they all refer, and were understood to refer, to
that life which is proper and peculiar to the Christian
124 SALVATOR MUND I.
age or dispensation ? Need we import our ideas of
" eternal " and " everlasting " into them ? Can we
import these ideas into them without so far forth de-
parting from the sense in which they were then
apprehended ? The Jews were quite familiar with
this doctrine of the ages. They knew very well that
the age of Moses was to be succeeded by the age of
the Messiah, that the Legal was to be followed by the
Christian dispensation. They spoke familiarly of the
former as " the age that now is," and of the latter as
" the coming age : " and they were quite aware that
the religious life of the coming age, the age of the
Christ, would be both higher and broader than the
life proper to the Legal age, that it would be some-
thing more and better than a life of obedience to
national laws and carnal commandments. What more
natural, then, than that when the Messiah came they
should ask Him what they must do in order to rise
into this new and higher life, what new and greater
commandments they must keep in order to lay hold
of the life proper to the age of the Messiah ? What
more natural than that He should refer them to their
own Scriptures as containing hints and predictions of
what this new life should be, and affirm that these
Scriptures bore witness to the very kind of life they
might find in Him ? What more natural than that
He should assert, " Whosoever believeth in me shall
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 125
not perish," i.e., shall not find his old religious life come
to an end, but, on the contrary, shall find it rise and
expand into the new better life proper to this new
age ? How could He more exactly define this new
life than by telling them that henceforth they must
not only believe in the only true God this belief in
one only and true God having always been the dis-
tinctive creed of the Jew and the source of his distinc-
tive spiritual life ; but must also believe in Him, the
Christ, whom at last that God had sent to save and
bless them, as He had promised to their fathers ?
How could they possibly rise into the new life, the
distinctively Christian life, except by faith in the
Christ ?
Surely, then, this much is clear, that we are not
driven to put our ideas of "eternal" and "everlasting"
into this large and important class of passages. We
can make perfectly good sense of them, and I am bold
to add a sense much more clearly historical and appro-
priate, by taking seonial life to mean the special and
distinctive life of the Christian aeons, that form of
spiritual life which came with Christ, which is to
endure through all the Christian ages, and which will
probably be succeeded by still higher and more
heavenly forms of life when the redemption of Christ
shall be fully accomplished.
But will the same interpretation hold equally good
1 26 SAL VA TOR
of the passages in which an ceonial death and punish-
ment are denounced against the wicked. Let us see.
Turn first to Jude 7. In Verse 6 there is a pas-
sage we have already considered. 1 Jude there says
that the angels who sinned and fell are reserved in
everlasting chains, i.e., are securely bound, "unto the
day of judgment," when of course they are to be
released from their chains, and judged by God per-
chance to be restored to their first estate if they have
repented while " in prison," perchance to be condemned
to " some worse thing " should they have remained
impenitent. In any case their fate is not yet fixed
forever. There is still a " judgment" before them.
In Verse 7 Jude illustrates their doom by that of the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, cities which our Lord
Himself assures us " would long ago have repented "
had they seen his works. For their sins, however,
they are " set forth as an example, suffering (not the
vengeance of eternal fire, as the Authorized Version
has it, but) the sentence of ceonial fire." Now if we
take this seonial fire to signify the punishment inflicted
on un repented sins during a certain age, or certain
ages, of time, we not only get a perfectly good sense
out of the words, a sense in harmony with the general
teaching of the New Testament, but the very sense
which this passage taken as a whole imperatively
1 See page 99.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE jEONS. 127
demands. For the doom of Sodom and Gomorrha is in-
troduced with an us (even as), and is obviously intended
as a parallel to, an illustration of, the doom which fell
on the sinful angels. Can it then be a worse, a more
enduring, doom than theirs ? What becomes of the
parallel if it is ? Yet the sinful angels are only doomed
" until the day of judgment." The sinful Cities of
the Plain, therefore, are only doomed until that day.
Before them there is still a judgment. At this judg-
ment their case will be reconsidered. A new sentence
may be pronounced on them. And if, while they were
" spirits in prison " they saw Christ and his works, as
St Peter implies that all the spirits in prison did when
Christ descended into Hades, then, according to our
Lord's words, they have " long ago repented " : and
who can doubt that their repentance will be unto life ?
There is good reason, therefore, to hope that even the
men of Sodom and Gomorrha, like the disobedient
generation of Noah, 1 have been saved, or will be saved ;
that, though doomed for an age to the seonial fire
which alone, could burn out their sins, they will no
longer be adjudged unworthy of eternal life on the
great day of account.
In 2 Thessalonians i. 9, a new phrase, a new con-
ception, meets us. St Paul affirms that those who
knew not God, though they might have known Him,
1 1 Peter iii. 20.
1 28 SALVA TOR MUI^DL
and did not obey the Gospel of Christ, although they
heard it, " shall be punished with ceonial destruction
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of
his power," on some day when Christ will come to be
glorified in his saints and to be wondered at in all
them that believe. On what day this revelation of
Christ is to take place we cannot tell and need not
speculate. The Greek formula which St Paul em-
ploys, as even the most straitly orthodox, as even the
hyper-orthodox admit, denotes " some single point of
time distinct from the actual present, but the exact
epoch of which is left uncertain." 1 But assuredly the
Apostle gives us no hint that he is thinking of the end
of time. Rather his general course of thought implies
that he is speaking of the very men who then troubled
and persecuted the Thessalonian Converts to the Chris-
tian Faith ; and threatening them that, for the age
which is to commence with their condemnation, they
shall not be permitted to behold the glory and triumph
of Christ. jEonial destruction ought to mean age-
long destruction, as we have seen : and an age-long
destruction from the presence and glory of Christ, i.e.,
the being shut out from all sight of and participation
in the triumphs of Christ during that age, appears to
be, so far as we can recover it, the very thought St
Paul had in his mind. Just as we are told that there
1 Bishop Ellicott in loco.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE JEONS. 129
are some men who will not have part in the first
resurrection, but will have part in the general resur-
rection of the dead ; so also there are some who for
their sins will be debarred from the presence and glory
of Christ for an age, the age perhaps which imme-
diately succeeds this present life, and yet abide in
his presence and share his glory in the ages beyond.
At all events such an interpretation makes perfectly
good sense of the passage ; it is the natural and com-
mon sense interpretation of the words ; it does not,
like the commonly received interpretation, shock the
reason and natural sense of justice of every unprejudiced
mind : why then should we cast about for another ?
But let us turn to more decisive passages than these.
In St Matthew xviii. 8 and 9, we have a passage on
which I had to speak 1 when dealing with the New
Testament use of the word " Hell." But as it is one
of the great proof- texts with those who uphold the
popular dogma, and as moreover the word translated
" eternal" and " everlasting" occurs in it, as well as
the word " hell," we must look at it again. Our Lord
here counsels us that if hand or foot offend us, we
should cut them off, lest (verse 8) we be " cast into
the ceonial fire" In Verse 9 He once more bids us
rule and deny our strongest cravings, lest we be cast
into " the Gehenna of fire." The two phrases, "aeonial
1 See page 83.
I
130 SALVATOR MUNDL
fire" and "the Gehenna of fire," are equivalents, you
see ; they both point to the same terrible doom. But
we have ascertained what one of them means. We
Lave seen that " the Gehenna of fire," so far from
indicating the final and endless condition of the
wicked, indicates only an intermediate and tempo-
rary condition ; their condition in that dim Hadean
world in which the wicked are afflicted, tormented,
and perchance led to repentance and life, before the
.great and terrible day of the Lord come. And as
"aeonial fire" is equivalent to, as it is only another
way of saying, " Gehenna of fire," we have in this
passage a clear proof that seonial means, not everlast-
ing, but age-long, one such clear and convincing proof
outweighing, remember, any number of dubious hints
or probable arguments. Just as in this great Chris-
tian epoch there is a life which is proper to it and
distinctive of it, so also are there a death, a fire,
a judgment, a destruction, a punishment which are
also proper to it and distinctive of it : and these,
like the " life," are called ceonial to mark the fact
that they belong to the Christian age and are peculiar
to it.
This passage of St Matthew's is reported at still
greater length by St Mark (ix. 42-50); and in this
form it is one of the most solemn and terrible utter-
ances of our Lord. The iterations and reiterations in
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 131
it are simply appalling. The seonial fire of Gehenna,
that doleful region of the nether- world, " where their
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," is
brought before us again and again. No passage is
more frequently cited by those who believe in what
Shakspeare calls " th' everlasting bonfire." And there-
fore, though I must go a little out of the way to do it,
let me say a few words on its ruling conceptions and
images. I have already explained its technical phrases.
I have shewn you that the Jewish prophets and
apostles, even our Lord Himself, took the imagery of
the passage the undying worm and the unquenchable
fire from that detestable valley of Ge-hinnom out-
side the walls of Jerusalem where the fire and the
worm were for ever at work on the refuse of the city.
I have told you in what sense the Jews of our Lord's
time understood these figures when they were used as
figures of speech ; how they believed that the incor-
rigibly wicked would be subjected to searching torments
for a brief space of time, and then either be reclaimed
by the mercy of God or destroyed by his mighty power.
And now I have only to ask you to put out of your
thoughts for a moment all the interpretations put upon
the passage by those fathers and inquisitors of the
Church who did not hesitate to consign the bodies of
men to the torments of a slow fire, and who naturally
enough created a God after their own image, a God who,
132 SALVATOR MUNDL
as we read in Boston's Fourfold State, would " hold up
the wicked in hell-fire with the one hand, and torment
them with the other." Put all these morbid horrors
clean out of your minds ; if you .will, put all true, as
well as these untrue, historical interpretations out of
your minds ; and then come to these terrible words
with the wind of healthy common sense blowing about
you, and look at them for yourselves.
Perhaps the very first thing that strikes you is, that
even the bold cruel men who adopted, and formulated,
and to whom we are mainly indebted for the current
libel on God, have played fast and loose with their own
favourite scriptures. Our Lord speaks of the worm that
dieth not, as well as of the fire that is not quenched.
But they, though they are sure the fire is a real fire, are
not so sure that the worm is a real worm. They have
not scrupled to depict the future world of the wicked
as an enormous furnace, in which the souls of men
writhe in intolerable and hopeless agonies for ever and
for ever ; but even they have not dared to paint a
world all worm, a world in which the souls of men
are exposed to the various and sickening horrors of
corruption. Why ? Simply, I believe, because they
felt that superstition itself would have recoiled before
such horrors as these, and have refused to believe that
such a world as that could possibly have been the
handiwork of God ; or because even they themselves
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 133
consciously or unconsciously revolted from a conception
so coarse and horrible. Yet our Lord speaks of the
worm just as emphatically as He speaks of the fire.
And if men cannot believe in a world all worm, why
should they believe in a world all fire ?
But consider again : when our Lord speaks of the
worm and the fire, we must take Him to mean either
the actual worm and the actual fire of the Gehenna
valley, or some spiritual analogue of these, some dis-
cipline, some torment, which effects in the spiritual
world what the real worm and the real fire do in the
natural world. Go to the natural world, then, and ask
what are the functions of the worm and the fire. The
function of worms in the natural world is to prevent,
though they seem to promote, putrefaction. They
feed on the noxious matter which would else breed
infection ; they transmute the refuse of decay into
their own living and healthy organisms. Fire, again,
consumes dead and noxious matter, leaving only the
ash, which is the best manure of a new crop, trans-
muting all else into higher and invisible forms. To
rid the earth of that which is noxious and infectious,
to transmute it into vital and wholesome forms this
is the proper function of both worm and fire in the
natural world. What then can the moral analogue of
them be but a discipline so searching, so severe, as
that it shall destroy that which is corrupt and corrupting,
134 SALVATOR
MUNDL
render innoxious that which is noxious, and evolve life
itself from the very jaws of death I 1
Does not Nature itself, then, teach us all, and more
than all, that we have learned from language and
history of the true meaning of our Lord's words ?
If even the voice of Nature does not suffice, let
Christ be his own interpreter. As this solemn passage
draws to a close, He utters words (verse 49) which
clearly indicate what He meant by threatening the
corruptions bred in us by self-indulgence with aeonial
fire : " For everyone shall be salted with fire." The
allusion is of course to the sacrifices offered in the
Jewish Temple. These were salted with salt the
salt being an emblem of the life and purification
wrought in the conscience of the offerer when they
were duly presented. In like manner, our Lord
teaches, every soul of man, who is to become an
acceptable offering unto God, will and must be salted
with fire, i.e., exposed to a still more searching, purify-
1 ' ' When Christ says, Better life with self-mortification than self-
indulgence with Gehenna, Gehenna on his tongue must needs stand
for corruption, since corruption is the antithesis of life, and the
literal Gehenna, as we have seen, was emphatically the place of cor-
ruption For what were the fires of Gehenna lighted ? To
inflict pain and anguish ? No ; but to get rid of the city's impurity.
All its various filth was there : and for what purpose ? That by the
action of fire it might be licked up and purged away. The flame of
the valley of Hinnom cannot be made to represent the awful suffering
in store for sin : it can only fitly represent the certain consumption
of sin, to be effected through the sharpness of fire." Echoes of Spoken
Words. By S. A. Tipple.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE JEONS.
ing, and quickening element than salt to a discipline*
still more severe and penetrating. As to the time
when this discipline will be granted or inflicted our
Lord is silent. But obviously He means that at some
time every man, who is to be redeemed, must pass;
through it. We may inflict it on ourselves here and
now if we will, voluntarily passing through the fire of
self-denial and self-restraint : but if we shrink from
this fire, then hereafter, when we have grown at once
more weak and more corrupt by habits of self-
indulgence and self-will, a fiercer and more penetrating
fire of remorse and shame and punishment will bo
kindled within us. But in one way or the other, in
this age or in the ages to come, our sins, the sins of
every one of us, must be burned out. Here, then, our
Lord explains his own thought to us, and shews us
that the fire of Gehenna, the aeonial fire, which He
had in view was the symbol not of a vindictive and
degrading punishment, but of a purifying and vivifying
correction. " Our God is a consuming fire ; " and a
fire that will burn on until all that is evil is burned up.
St Mark (iii. 29) reports other words spoken by
Christ which have carried fear and dismay into many
an honest and good heart, but which we are now in a
position to understand in their true sense. How
many, alas, have fancied, how many have persuaded
themselves, that they had committed the sin against
136 SALVATOR MU1JDI.
the Holy Ghost ! how many even have been driven by
the consequent fear of hell into asylums many of which
were, in past days, veritable hells ! And yet, now
that we apprehend what the words ceon and ceonial
mean, how easy it is to take all that power of inspiring
abject terror and hopeless despair out of them ! I need
do little more than read them to you in the light of
what you have already heard. " But he that shall blas-
pheme against the Holy Ghost is not to be forgiven in
this ceon, but is in danger of ceonial judgment." A
man may blaspheme the God who speaks to him from
without, in the person or by the representatives of the
Son of Man, and be forgiven even in this present age ;
but the man who blasphemes against the God within
him, the Holy Ghost the man who calls that right
which he knows and feels to be wrong, and who,
knowing the good, deliberately says to evil, " Be thou
*niy good," is not to be forgiven in this age. No,
verily : for this age has brought him all that it has to
bring, and he has rejected it : the most penetrating
and intimate ministries of Divine Grace have been
vouchsafed him, and he has resisted them : let him
feel ike judgments of this age, since he will not accept
its choicest gifts ; let him pass out of this age only to
enter into the discipline of the next : and as he suffers
these aeonial judgments, let him consider and reconsider
himself, lest he also lose the ages beyond.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. 137
There is but one other passage to which I need
refer you. It is the great passage recorded in St
Matthew xxv. 31-46. And here you must observe
that the passage is a parable ; and that the parable
is concerning nations, not individual men, as our Lord
Himself tells us at the very outset (verse 32) : " And
before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He
shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from his goats." You must also
remember, if you intend to found any conclusion on
the parable, or to infer from words spoken of nations
conclusions which touch the lot and fate of individual
men, that the Judge is here set forth in the tender
and familiar form of a Shepherd ; that to the Eastern
shepherd his goats are well-nigh, if not quite, as dear
&s his sheep : and that the left hand of a Judge or
Ruler is the next best place to his right hand. Nay,
more, you must mark and this is a point which does
not appear in our Authorized Version that our Lord
.speaks in a certain gentle and kindly, even in a pitiful
and caressing tone, of those who are ranged on the left
hand of the Judge. The words he uses for them is not
"goats." In Verse 32, he speaks of the Shepherd as
dividing his sheep, not from his goats, but from his
"kids;" and in Verse 33, He takes a still tenderer
tone, and speaks of the Shepherd-Judge as setting his
sheep on his right hand, but his "kidlings" a
138 SALVATOR MUNDL
diminutive of kids, and, like all such diminutives, an
expression of affection on his left.
These considerations, these hints of mercy and com-
passion, may well make us careful as to the conclusions
we deduce from this great passage. And even when
the veil of Parable falls aside, and we seem to get
clear and distinct statements, at least on the fate of
nations, if not on that of their individual units, we
have still to remember that the Judge is depicted as
rendering to every one the due reward of his deeds,
and of all his deeds. It is implied that if any one
has so much as given a cup of cold water to the least
of Christ's brethren, he, though himself not a broth er,
shall in no wise lose his reward.
And, finally, we have to examine the terms in which
these future rewards are expressed. To those who stand
on his left hand the Judge is represented as saying,
" Depart from me, ye cursed of my Father, into the
cvonialfire" Now I have no wish to abate the impres-
sive sadness, the awful severity, of these words. " The
wrath of the Lamb " of God must be very terrible.
And to hear Him whose gracious lips have always
hitherto said, " Come unto me," say " Depart from
me," will be an experience so sad, a surprise so terrible,
as that I can well believe every man who hears that
rebuff from his meek and gracious lips will wish that
he had never been born ; yes, and wish he had never
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 139
been born even though he understands that he is
banished from the presence of Christ only for an age,
only that the age-long fire may consume his sins and
burn out his unrighteousness. But to say that those
who have rejected Christ in this present age are to be
doomed to an everlasting banishment from his mercy is
to contradict Christ Himself, who expressly tells us 1 that
all manner of blasphemy against the Son of Man may
be forgiven both in this age o,nd in that which is to
come. And, moreover, it is to import a new meaning
into the word " seonial," which, as we have seen, means
" age-long," and to import it quite unnecessarily, since
if we take our Lord as meaning that our rejection of
Him in this age will be punished by banishment from
Him in the age to come, we find a very good and a
sufficient sense in his words ; whereas if we take Him
as meaning that to reject Him in this brief life is to
be excluded from his love for ever, we not only strike
a note utterly discordant with the tender and pitiful
tone in which He speaks throughout the Parable, but
we also introduce that vast, unreasonable, unjust dis-
proportion between our deeds here and their results
hereafter from which Reason and Conscience alike
revolt.
But what are we to say to the closing words (verse
46) of the Parable? "These shall go away into
1 St Matthew xii. 31, 32.
140 SALVATOR MUNDL .
&onial punishment, but the righteous into life ceonial"
Well, we may say this. Take the phrase " aeonial
life " to mean here, as elsewhere, life in Christ, the
spiritual life distinctive of the Christian aeons, and
" seonial punishment " to mean here, as elsewhere, the
discipline, the punishment distinctive of the Christian
aeons, the punishment which those inflict on themselves
who adjudge themselves unworthy of that life, and the
words make a very good and reasonable sense, a sense
so reasonable that we need search for no other. And
mark, in this case at least, we cannot put a darker
sense into the words of Christ except by trifling with
them, and implying that we know what He meant
better than He did Himself. For the word here
rendered "punishment" (xo'Xa<r/g) is a very peculiar
one. In its primary use, when it is applied to natural
processes, it means "pruning," i.e., pruning bushes
and trees in order that they may bring forth more
fruit. When it is used figuratively, when it is applied
to moral processes, it means corrective discipline, dis-
cipline by which character is pruned and made more
fruitful in good works. The Greek has two words
for " punishment ;" xo'Xacvs, the word used by our
Lord, and npupia, a word also used in the New Testa-
ment (Heb. x. 29): and the distinctive meanings of
these two words are defined by Aristotle himself. 1
1 Rhet. L, 10, 17.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ^EONS. 141
The one word, that used by Christ, denotes, he says,
that kind of punishment which is intended for the
improvement of the offender ; while the other denotes
that kind of punishment which is intended for the
vindication of law and justice. And even the advocates
of endless torment admit that the word selected by
Christ means, according to the Greek usage, remedial
discipline, punishment designed to reform and improve
men, to prune away their defects and sins. Arch-
bishop Trench, 1 for example, after adverting to the
well-known distinction between the two words xoXattg
and ripupfa, confesses that while the latter is used to
indicate " the vindicative character of punishment, the
former indicates punishment as it has reference to
the correction and bettering of the offender." And I
do not know where we shall find a sadder instance of
the way in which good men suffer their theories and
traditions to warp their judgment than may be found
in the fact that, after thus defining the original and
proper sense of the word used by Christ, this good and
learned man proceeds to say that it would however be
" a very serious error " to take the word in its proper
sense here. We, on the contrary, maintain that it
would be something worse than an error to take it in
any but its usual and proper sense. And, therefore,
we conclude that our Lord meant precisely what He
1 Synonyms of the New Testament, pp. 23, 24.
142
SALVATOR MUl^DL
said ; viz., that the wicked should go away from his
bar to be pruned, go away into an age-long discipline
by which they should be castigated for their sins, yea,
and saved from their sins by the corrective discipline
of his loving wrath. For that would not be a corrective
discipline which left men unimproved for ever ; that
would be a strange sort of " pruning," which was not
at least designed to produce fruit.
" 0, but," say some, who little think what they are
saying, " ike same word is here used of the life pro-
mised to the righteous which is used of the punishment
of the unrighteous ; each is called ceonial : and if the
punishment of the wicked is not to last for ever, what
guarantee have we that the felicity of the good, our
felicity, will last for ever?" To that question I reply
by another. Would you, then, have the vast majority
of men damned to an everlasting torture in order that
you may feel quite sure that your timid soul will " sit
and sing itself away in everlasting bliss ? " If your
soul is capable of no higher flight than that, is it
worth saving ? is it capable of everlasting bliss ?
Moses could wish himself blotted from the book of life,
St Paul could wish himself " anathema " from Christ,
so that Israel, their brethren according to the flesh,
might be saved. And Christ both could and did far
more than wish ; He, who knew no sin, became sin
for us, that we might be made the righteousness of
THE DOCTRINE OF THE &ONS. 143
God in Him. And He Himself has taught us that
he who would save his soul must be willing to lose
his soul. How much of his spirit can we have, then,
if, instead of wishing ourselves damned for the sake of
the world, we are willing that the world should be
damned for the sake of our timorous and foreboding
souls ?
My friends, if we love Christ, we need have no fear
for our souls. In sundry places and in terms not to
be mistaken, all who trust in Him are assured of an
eternal salvation, a life that can never die. But if we
truly love Him, we are willing even to die in order
that the world may be saved : for did not He die to
take away the sin of the world ? and must not we be
made partakers of his death, if we are to be glorified
together with Him ? Unless I can believe that God
will deign to use me for the good of others, what is
my life worth to me ? Not to be capable of living
and suffering for others, that is the true hell ; but to
be capable of, to be allowed to serve and suffer for
others, is the true heaven : for this is the very life of
God Himself, and of Christ Jesus his Son, and of the
ever-blessed ever-quickening Spirit.
VII. THE TEST AND THE TESTIMONY OF
PRINCIPLES.
IT is not reasonable to expect that, while we are in
this chrysalis and initial stage of our being, we should
be able to comprehend what the final stage of our
career will be like, if indeed there can be a final con-
dition to finite creatures who are to live, and to grow,
for ever, and who must therefore, one should think, be
ever reaching forth to that which is before and above
them. And accordingly, as we have seen, Holy
Scripture does not profess or attempt to disclose the
secrets of the remote future, but only to give us some
general indications of what our several conditions will
be in the stages and a3ons which immediately succeed
to the present life. Nay, more, however deeply we
may long for it, and however full and varied the
Scripture revelation concerning it may be, or may
seem to be, it is not possible that we, who reach even
our most immaterial conception through the gates and
avenues of sense, should be able to formulate any
complete and accurate theory of the life to come, the
life which is independent of the senses, even though
it be still within the compass of time. But we may
hope, by a careful examination of those scriptures
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 145
which are held to support the current theory of that
life to shew that, so far from supporting, they contra-
diet and disprove it ; and we may also hope to shew
that great principles, what we call " doctrines," which
are wrought into the very substance of Scripture and
pervade it from end to end, point in an entirely oppo-
site direction, and render the current theory altogether
untenable. And this is the task which we have set
ourselves to attempt. 1
Now in so far as the future condition of the wicked
is concerned, we have already discharged the more
difficult and tedious part of our task. We have
examined the scriptures on which the popular concep-
tion rests ; and we have found that they lend no
support to the notion that the wicked and impenitent,
from the very moment they pass out of this life, are
damned to hell, i.e., doomed to an endless and unre-
deeming torment. I have shewn you that the verb
" to damn " should be expunged from the New Testa-
ment, since the Greek verbs rendered by it commonly
mean only " to judge," and never mean more than
" to condemn." I have shewn you that the substan-
tive " hell " should also be expunged from the New
Testament, since it is used to translate the Greek
nouns " Tartarus," " Hades," " Gehenna," and these
words point, not to a final and endless state of torture,
1 See Lecture II., pages 31 et seq.
K
146 SALVATOR MU&DL
but to an intermediate and temporal state of discipline
which reaches at the farthest only to "the day of
judgment." And I have shewn you that the Greek
and English adjective " seonial," which is commonly
translated by "eternal" or " everlasting," means no
more than " age-long/' and points, when used of the
future, to the age or dispensation which is to succeed
the dispensation in which we now live, an age which
has a life, a reward, a bliss peculiar to itself, and also
a death, a pruning, a discipline peculiar to itself.
The way we have traversed has been long and often
tedious, for we have had to study somewhat minutely
a large number of texts ; but the conclusion we have
reached is, I trust, one in which we can rest all the
more securely because of the pains we have taken to
reach it. For, you will observe, our conclusion is but
one, though it has taken many forms, and though it
has been drawn from many passages of Holy Writ.
And our conclusion is this : In an immense variety of
ways the New Testament teaches us to believe that
men who die in their sins will be adjudged to a state
in which, for an age, or for ages if need be, they will
be exposed to a corrective discipline far more search-
ing and severe than that to which they are exposed
now, and by which we may hope they will be recovered
to righteousness and life. And if it is satisfactory, if
it strengthen our faith in our conclusion, to have been
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 147
led up to it by so many different lines of thought, by
scriptures so numerous and so various, it should still
further assure our hearts to find that the conclusion to
which we have been led by our study of Scripture is
one which our reason approves and our sense of justice.
Do what we will, we cannot make it seem fair and
reasonable that a God of perfect justice and perfect
goodness should doom men to a torture which has no
end, which will do nothing to correct or amend them ;
that He will keep them alive for ever in agonies which
will only harden and degrade them for sins committed
in these brief hours of time, on the spur of a nature
already depraved when they received it, and at the
solicitation of external influences and conditions which
they did not charge with their power to tempt and
allure to evil, . and from which they cannot possibly
discharge that power. But, on the other hand, is it
not most fair and reasonable that men who have had
no chance of life here should have one hereafter ;
that those who have thrown away their chance should
suffer for it in the age to come, and so suffer as to be
taught their folly and their sin before a final sentence,
if indeed any such sentence can be final, be pronounced
upon them ?
Now till we had examined in some detail the pas-
sages from which the popular conception is drawn, it
would have been of little use for me to speak of those
148 SAL VA TOR MUNDI.
great pervading principles, or doctrines, which are incon-
sistent with it. You would have been for ever recal-
ling this text or that which seemed to contradict the
conclusion to which you were being led. But now that
we have examined them, and have done our best to
discover what they really mean, I trust you will be
able to turn to a consideration of these principles with
an open and untroubled mind.
For myself I am glad that this necessary, yet less
welcome and less conclusive, part of our task is over,
and that we may pass on and up from these minute
critical investigations to breathe a larger air and to
move freely along a higher path. For not only does
it cramp and deaden the spirit that is in man to tarry
long in the low valley of mere criticism, where the
atmosphere is commonly charged with the elements of
polemical strife ; but it is also impossible for him,
until he climb up out of it, to gain any broad, decisive,
and inspiring view of the truth for which he contends.
For no conclusion can be safely based on the study of
scattered and isolated texts. It is the Bible, alas ! of
which it has been written,
" This is the book where each his own dogma seeks ;
And this the book where each his own dogma finds."
Even with our best care, and the sincerest endeavour
to deal honestly both with ourselves and the Bible, it
is difficult, if not impossible, to escape the bias of our
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 149
own nature and preconceptions ; it is difficult even to
avoid selecting those texts which support the view to
which we lean, and twisting in our own favour those
which tell against us. I can claim, indeed, to have
aimed at handling the Word of God sincerely through-
out this discussion ; but I do not therefore infer that
I have succeeded in escaping my own natural bent. I
frankly admit that another man as sincere as I, and
far more competent, in his search of the Scriptures
might have lit on quite another series of passages to
that which I have asked you to consider. I frankly
concede even that, had he selected the same passages,
he might have put another, and not wholly unreason-
able, interpretation upon them. All I can plead for my
selection is that I have not made it for myself ; it
has been made for me by those who hold other views
than mine, and is constantly adduced in support of
their views. All I can plead for my interpretation,
beyond honesty of intention, is, that all these passages,
thus interpreted, seem to run up easily and fairly into
one and the same conclusion, and that this conclusion
accords with the plain dictates of reason and the moral
sense. But if, now that we have put our interpreta-
tion upon them and reached our conclusion, we bring
that conclusion to the test of the great leading prin-
ciples which confessedly pervade the whole Bible, and
find that they will stand this test, then I think we
i5o SALVATOR
MUI^DL
may safely infer that our method of interpretation is a
true one, and our conclusion one on which we may
rely. It is with a great sense of relief, therefore, for I
have no fear as to the issue of the experiment, that,
leaving the discussion of isolated texts, I ask you to
turn to a consideration of large and accepted doctrines,
in order that you may put our conclusion to this
crucial and decisive test.
(] .) Take, first, the doctrine of Retribution. Through-
out the Bible we are taught that both in this world
and in that which is to come every man receives, or
will receive, according to his works or deeds, ' accord-
ing to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether
it be bad. ' ' Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap ' is the familiar illustration of this principle,
or law, both in the Old Testament and in the New.
Perhaps Jeremiah 1 gives it the noblest expression in
the words, ' I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the
reins, to give every man according to his ways, accord-
ing to the fruit of his own doings' But I need not
cite texts in proof that this Law of Retribution is a law
1 The passage will be found in Jeremiah xvii. 10. As a proof of
the constant iteration and reiteration of this principle in the Bible T
may mention that any one who will turn up the word * according ' in
a Concordance will find the following references to passages in which
it is enunciated, which of course are not a tithe of the places in which
it is really taught and illustrated : Job xxxiv. 11 ; Psalm Ixii. 12;
Prov. xxiv. 12 ; Jer. xxi. 14, and xxxii. 19 ; St Matt. xvi. 27 ; Rom.
ii. 6 ; 2 Cor. v. 10, Rev. ii. 23 ; xx. 12, 13, and xxii. 12.
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 151
both of this life and of the next ; for I am sure you
instantly recognize it as a law revealed both in the
Divine Providence which controls the lives of men and
nations, and in the Word of Inspiration.
But of this Law we are apt to frame very partial
and misleading conceptions. We are apt to assume
that Ketribution means only that the bad man will
be punished and the good man rewarded, as if all
men were either wholly good or wholly bad ! We
forget the complexities of human character, and the
consequent complexity of the recompences which await
us ; and thus we create many difficulties for ourselves
even as we study the history and fate of men in this
present world. Who has not been puzzled and per-
plexed, for example, when considering the story of
Esau and Jacob, at finding that while our sympathy
instinctively goes out toward the bold impetuous
hunter, God's sympathy and goodwill seem to go out
toward the timid and crafty shepherd ? What pro-
found and far-reaching solutions of this problem have
been propounded when, but for our partial concep-
tions of the law of Retribution, there would absolutely
be no problem to solve ! Esau was bold and im-
petuous ; he loved hunting, loved power over men,
loved immediate gratification and visible success. And
he had his reward. He enjoyed the adventurous life
of the hunter and the conqueror ; he became a " duke "
152 SALVATOR
MUNDI.
or leader of men, and was established in the fastnesses
of Edom. But, at the best, was he much more than
a type of that "healthy animalism" as we call it,
which has gone far, despite our admiration of it, to
ruin the world ? Was he nothing but bold and gene-
rous ? Was he not also careless, reckless, self-regard-
ing, worldly, unspiritual ? Would it have been just,
then, to bestow on him, not only the appropriate re-
wards of his good qualities, but also a reward which
his evil qualities and defects incapacitated him to re-
ceive ? Would it have been of any use even, would
it have been of any comfort or pleasure to him, to
bestow on him the spiritual gifts for which he had no
capacity ; to send him visions he could not see, and
voices he could not hear, and thus to call him to a
life of faith and self-sacrifice ? Such a summons
would have simply been intolerable to him, he being
what he was ; and the mere attempt, had he even
made the attempt, to grasp and respond to it would
have been as distasteful to him as ineffective. On the
other hand, Jacob was crafty and mean, and was
punished for it all his life long. Cheated and be-
trayed by Laban, by his wives, by his sons, and, worst
of all, in the person of Joseph " whom he loved more
than all his sons," he had to eat the bitter fruit of his
own doings. But was Jacob nothing but crafty and
mean ? Could he not value and prefer the future to
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 153
the present, the spiritual to the sensual ? Was not
the birthright which Esau "despised," unspeakably
precious to him ? And if it was just that he should
be chastised for his meanness and subtlety, was it not
also just that he should be rewarded for his spiri-
tuality, that he should receive the visions for which
he had an eye, the oracles for which he had an ear,
and the training by which he had the heart to profit ?
You see, the very moment we look at the whole
man, and apply the Law of Retribution through the
whole circle of his qualities, capacities, deeds, the
dealing of God with Esau and Jacob is strictly and
conspicuously just. But this same Law, as the Scrip-
tures emphatically declare, is to govern the awards of
the life to come as well as the events of the life that
now is. And if, instead of taking part of the law and
applying it to part of a man, we take the whole law
and apply it to the whole man, what room do we leave
for the everlasting damnation of the wicked, or indeed
for the immediate and perfect felicity of the just ?
For even the best of men carries out of this world
some taints of evil, and many lingering traces of im-
perfection. And even the worst of men is not wholly
bad, not so bad but that he has done some kind deeds,
or cherishes some unselfish affection. Is the good
man, then, to receive the due reward of his good
deeds, but no reward no punishment, no discipline
1
154 SALVATOR MUNDL
for his bad deeds and for the evil that still cleaves
to him and needs to be purged out of him ? And the
bad man, is he to get the due reward of his bad deeds,
but no reward for his good deeds, no training for his
good and pure affections ? Is God to deal with us in
the next world, as He dealt with Esau and Jacob in
this world, meting out to each of them the exact
reward of his deeds, both good and bad, and graciously
adding to each the very discipline he required in order
that the most and the best might be made of him ?
Or is God to deal with us there as, in their ignorance,
many have thought He ought to have dealt with Esau
and Jacob here seeing only the good that was in
Esau, and rewarding him for it with blessings he could
not appreciate ; and seeing only the evil in Jacob, not
the good which blended with it, and punishing him
not only according to his deserts, but above and be-
yond his deserts ? If in this life on the whole I have
tried to do God's will, and so pass for what is called
" a good man," though I know only too well how much
evil I have done, and how much evil still lurks in my
nature which I am wholly unable to subdue, am I to
be so rewarded for what God has made good in me as
that no chastisement will be accorded me for that
which has been evil, i.e., no discipline by which I may
be taught and enabled to subdue it ? I should be
sorry to think so : for how, except by such a discip-
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 155
line, am I ever to get quit of the evil that I hate ?
And if, on the whole, I have been a bad man ; if, de-
spite some pure affections and kindly deeds, I have
been selfish in the main, and sensual, and godless, am
I to be punished, as I deserve, for all that has been
wrong in me, and yet to receive no recompense, no
training, for that which has been good ? Again, T
should be sorry to think so : for that would neither
be just nor kind. And if God is not going to deal
both justly and kindly by me, would God I had never
been born ! But if, because I have been a bad man,
God will punish me as I know I deserve to be
punished, if He will search me through and through
with the discipline of his loving wrath till I hate all
badness, and my own worst of all ; if, because I have
done a little good and have still some capacity of
goodness in me, He will train and foster that capacity
by the very discipline which also punishes me for my
sins, that will be both just and kind of Him, and my
life is worth having after all. In that case I can say
not simply, " The Lord is righteous/' but, with the
Psalmist, 1 " Thou, O Lord, art merciful ; for Thou
render est unto every man according to his work."
And whatever men may say, that is precisely what
He will do, what He has bound Himself to do, by
that solemn Law of Retribution which He has revealed
1 Psalm Ixii. 12.
I
156 SALVATOR MUNDL
in his Word. Was not St Paul a good man ? and yet
did not even he expect to appear before the judgment-
seat of Christ, in order to receive the things done in
his body, according to that he had done, whether it
were good or bad ? 1 Are we not expressly assured 2
that " whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the
same shall he receive of the Lord ? ' And is not the
term ' any man ' wide enough to include even the
worst of men ? It is not easy to see how we could
be more emphatically taught that the bad deeds of
the good are to be weighed and condemned, and the
good deeds of the bad to be weighed, approved, re-
compensed. Be sure, then, that you will find no in-
justice in the Great Judge of men. To you He will
render according to your deeds, according to all your
deeds, good as well as bad, bad as well as good ; so
that even the worst of you will not be quite shut out
from hope, and even the best of you will receive the
discipline and training which will tend to make you
better, and still better, until you become perfect even
as He is perfect. Else what becomes of the Law of
Retribution which the Scriptures declare to rule in
the world to come even as it rules in this ? We see
how that Law works here, how variedly and subtlely,
and with what delicate complexity it adjusts itself to
the whole scale of our capacities, qualities, doings ;
1 2 Corinthians v. 8-10. 2 Ephesians vi. 8.
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 157
and we may be sure that it will adapt itself with the
same variety and subtlety to the whole of our nature
and to all our deeds and qualities hereafter. In fine,
God will prove Himself to be both " a just God, and
a Saviour.'"
Before I quit this point let me just remind you
how exactly this conception of the Law of Retribution
and its action in the world to come falls in with the
laws formulated by modern science, and applied by it
to the life and history of man ; viz., the laws of con-
tinuity and development. For as no man is wholly
good and no man wholly bad ; and as, moreover, the
man who is good on the whole is to receive according
to his bad deeds as well as his good, and the man who
is bad on the whole is to receive the due reward of his.
good deeds as well as of his bad, it follows that our
life in the next aeon, or age, will be as complex, as
varied, as chequered as the present life : it follows
that there will be no such sudden break in the con-
tinuity of our life as has often been assumed ; but
that the next stage of it will be, as Science demands
that it should be, the continuation and the development
of that through which we are passing now : it follows,
in short, that the life to come will be the present life
carried to a higher power, with a larger scope and
outlook, a nobler and severer discipline, a purer
and a more enduring joy. On this point, at least,
1
158 SALVATOR MUND1.
Science and Scripture are at one and join in a pure
concent.
There is another principle, or doctrine, which so
pervades the whole structure of the Bible as to be
even' more familiar to us than the Law of Retribution.
The Unchangeableness of God is as clearly revealed in
Holy Writ as it is ingrained into the very reason of
man. I need not quote a single text to prove it, nor
allege a single argument. We all admit, we all be-
lieve it. But, though we believe that God sits high
above all change, that He is the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever, we too often forget how this convic-
tion should enter into and modify other theological
beliefs which we hold to be equally true. If God is
unchangeable, then what we see to be true of Him at
any moment must be true of Him at every moment of
time, true of Him also both before and after all the
moments of time, always and for ever true of Him.
But which of us remembers that, and allows for it,
when he is trying to frame his doctrine of election, or
to determine the true function of the punishments
which dog the steps of sin, or to conceive the scope and
method of that Atonement which taketh away the sin
of the world ? " The gifts, and the calling (i.e., the
election) of God are without repentance" affirms St.
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 159
Paul ; l i.e., they are not to be revoked, not to be
diverted from their purpose, not to be foiled and de-
feated of their end. But do we bear this affirmation
sufficiently in mind when we are formulating our
credenda ? Let us briefly apply his conception of the
Unchangeableness of God to the three doctrines I have
just mentioned, and mark how it does or ought to
modify them.
(2). Take, first, the doctrine of Election. As you
recall what the Bible has to say on that point, you
instantly remember that it consistently and throughout
affirms that, when God calls or separates one man
unto Himself, it is for the good of other men ; that
when He selects one family, it is that, in and through
the one, all the families of the earth may be blessed :
that when He chooses one nation, it is for the welfare
of all nations, " salvation," for example, being " of
the Jews," but for the Gentiles as well as the Jews :
that when He elects and establishes a church, it is for
the spiritual benefit of the whole world. No man, no
family, no nation, no church possesses any gift, any
privilege, any superior capacity or power for its own
use and welfare alone, but for the common advan-
tage, the general good. You admit that to be the
teaching of Scripture, as well as of Reason and Ex-
perience, do you not ? But see where the admission
1 Romans xi. 29.
160 SAL VA TOR MUNDL
lands you ? The gifts and the election of the un-
changeable God are as unchangeable as Himself, affirms
St Paul ; and, whatever we may do, he does not scruple
to carry his principle to its full logical results. Thus,
in those noble Chapters in his Epistle to the Romans,
ix. to xi., he argues that, since God has called and
chosen Israel, " all Israel must be saved," although, as
he frankly admits, that stiffnecked race had long rejected
the salvation of God. And if "all Israel " is to be
saved, saved by the discipline of a coming age, since
it certainly has not been saved in this age, who then
can be lost ? for who has sinned more deeply or with
a more settled obstinacy ? With the same logical
consistency, the same impassioned earnestness, he
argues, in Chapters v. and viii. of the same great
Epistle, that as, by the unrighteousness of one, all men
were condemned, so, by the righteousness of One,
" all men " will be justified unto life ; that the salva-
tion of Christ will extend even beyond the limits of
human sin : that even the inanimate creation, made
subject to vanity and corruption by the sin of man,
shall be redeemed from that involuntary bondage into
the glorious liberty of the children of God. Clearly
St Paul had "the courage of his convictions." It was
plain to him that, sooner or later, the purposes of the
unchanging God must be achieved in all their integrity
and breadth. He was sure that Israel had been called
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 161
in order that Israel might be saved, and that it might
save the world ; he was equally sure that by and
through Christ ike world had been called, and called
in order that the whole human race might be saved :
and therefore he was also sure that, by some means,
in some of the ages, in the age to come if not in
the present age, this redeeming purpose would be
fulfilled, that both Israel and the world at large would
be lifted into life everlasting. And even if we shrink
from adopting this conclusion, if we believe that what
the Apostle says in these Chapters must be limited
by what he says elsewhere when his heart was not so
hot and so large within him, 1 we may at least adopt
his method of argument, and conclude : What we see
to be true of the unchanging God at any time must
be true of Him through all the ages of time. When-
ever, hitherto, He has elected a people for Himself, it
has been that, through them, He might save and bless
those who were less openly and avowedly favoured
than they were. And, therefore, in the ages to come,
if there be a saved and elect people, these too will be
chosen not for their own sakes alone, and saved not
1 This device of limiting Scripture by Scripture, which is a very
different thing from "comparing Scripture with Scripture," and
striking an average of their contents, is surely a very questionable one,
and can hardly be resorted to by those who hold the stricter views
of Inspiration without glaring and perilous inconsistency, though it
is they who for the most part have recourse to it, especially when
the scope of the larger and nobler Scriptures is to be curtailed.
L
1 62 SALVATOR MUN.
NDI.
simply that they may revel in their own blessedness,
but that they may carry the tidings of salvation and
the hope of blessedness to those who are still in the
grasp of their sins.
But if that be so, how can the lot of those who
even in that world are still tied and bound by the
chain of their sins be a fixed and hopeless lot ? God
will not send us on a bootless errand, an errand in
which success is impossible. If, then, this be the true
doctrine of the Election, and we be of the elect, we
may hope that in the ages to come God will make us
the ambassadors of his love, and so bless us in our
labour of love as that St Paul's largest hopes may be
fulfilled, "all Israel" and "the fulness of the
Gentiles," i.e., the whole race of man, being recovered to
righteousness and life.
(3). We may draw a similar inference from the
true function of Punishment, so soon as we see how
the punitive i.e., the natural and inevitable con-
sequences of sin illustrate an invariable law of the
kingdom and providence of the unchangeable God.
Throughout the Bible we are taught that these miser-
able yet most happy consequences are designed by
God to be corrective and even redemptive ; that their
true purpose is to castigate and chasten men, to open
their eyes to the exceeding sinfulness of sin, to teach
them to loathe and renounce it. What is the whole
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 163
Book of Job but a subtle and manifold commentary on
this thesis, that the sufferings of men are not simply
penal and retributive, but corrective and remedial 1
that, by these, God is ever seeking to withdraw man
from his evil deeds, to bring back his soul from the
pit that it may grow light in the light of life ? The
Bible is full of statements and illustrations of this law
of the Divine Kingdom from which I select but two,
one from the Old and one from the New Testament.
The prophet Habakkuk, after that terrible description
of the supreme judgment of his time with which his
prophecy opens viz., the invasion of " that fierce and
impetuous nation," the Chaldeans, who "marched
across the breadths of the earth, to seize upon dwell-
ing-places not their own," whose aspect was cruel and
fatal as the simoom and who " swept up captives like
the sand," debated within himself what could be the
meaning and purpose of this portentous "work" of
God. And the conclusion to which he came was the
simple conclusion of faith : Terrible and fatal as our
doom seems, he argues "We shall not die ;" for "for
judgment hast Thou ordained it, Lord, and Thou,
Rock, hast determined it for correction." 1 And
this conclusion is still more simply and tenderly put
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2 where we are exhorted
neither to despise the chastening of the Lord, nor to
1 Habakkuk i. 12. * Hebrews xii. 5-11.
1
1 64 SALVATOR MUNDI.
faint under it, since chastening is a mark of sonship :
" for what son is he whom his father chasteneth not ?"
and because, though " no chastening for the present
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless after-
ward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness
unto them which are exercised thereby." "Further-
more/' argues the sacred Evangelist, expressly stating
the law of all Divine chastisements, " we once had
the fathers of our flesh to correct us, and we gave
them reverence : shall we not much rather submit
ourselves to the Father of spirits, and live. For they,
verily, for a few days chastened us after their own
liking ; but He for our profit, that we might be
partakers of his holiness" Here, then, through this
avenue, we get a glimpse into God's attitude toward
the sins of men, of the purpose and function of the
punishments with which He visits those sins. They
are intended for correctio , for discipline, for our pro-
fit ; they are designed to quicken life in us, to produce
in us the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and even to
make us partakers of the Divine holiness. But will
the unchangeable God change his attitude toward sin-
ful men, when, despite his discipline, they have gone
down into the pit ? Can He ? If we have once seen
what his purpose is in chastening and punishing them
for their sins, must not that be his eternal, his
unalterable, purpose ? What right have we to assume
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 165
that pain, and wrath, and judgment will have another
function in the age to come, or in any age, than that
which we know them to have in this age ? If they
are corrective and remedial here, why should they be
penal and uncorrective hereafter, provided at least that
the same God rules both here and there and rules by
the same laws ? They will not change their function
and purpose. For has not Christ Himself taught us
that even the unrighteous, who stand on his left hand
on the very day of judgment, will go away from his
presence into " an age-long pruning " ? And what
does that mean if not that the discipline of the world
to come, like that of this world, is to be corrective and
redemptive, to yield the peaceable fruit of righteous-
ness ? You do not prune a tree to kill it ; but that
it may bring forth fruit. And what but fruit, fruit
unto holiness and life everlasting, can be the intention
of the Divine pruning in the ages to come ?
(4.) But, finally, the great doctrine, the doctrine
which we need most of all to connect in our thoughts
with the unchangeableness of God, is that of the
Atonement wrought by Christ. We never weary of
speaking of the Cross of Christ as a revelation of the
loving and saving will of God, as a proof, and the
supreme proof, of how far He will go, and how much
He will do, to redeem men from their sins. But, O,
what poor and unworthy conceptions of God do we
1
166 SALVATOR MUNDL
entertain when we conceive of the great sacrifice of
the Cross as a mere event in time, as an exception,
though a most happy exception, to the ways of God,
and not as a disclosure and an illustration of what He
is always doing for men ! We are so bound by the
measures of time within which we live, that we even
think within them, and find it well nigh impossible to
conceive of an eternal law, an eternal action, an
eternal passion. Although the Scriptures often speak
of the sacrifice of Christ as both ordained and made
from before the foundation of the world, and thus
seek to lift it clean out of the limits of time, we
commonly think of it only as a sacrifice made on a
certain sacred day in our human calendar. And yet
the Cross of Christ must speak to us of an eternal
sacrifice, it must become the symbol of a divine and
eternal passion, before we can rise to an adequate
conception of its significance. In what sense, then, is
Christ " the Lamb slain from before the foundation of
the world ? " in what sense is the Cross an exponent,
an illustration, of the eternal passion of God ?
That I may not even unconsciously invent or
modify a theory that shall sustain my argument,
permit me to answer that question in words which I
printed twelve years ago, 1 when I was thinking only
1 The passage is a condensed citation from a discourse on the Self-
Sacrifice taught by the Sacrifice of Christ, published in a small volume
called " The Secret of Life," which has long been out of print.
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 167
of the Atonement wrought by Christ, and not of the
future conditions of men. "God made men, as He
was obliged to do, if they were not to be mere
automata moved by a Divine spring, free to choose
between good and evil. And, though good be in
itself so winsome and attractive, men chose evil rather
than good. In proving and asserting the freedom of
their will, they deflected it from the will of God. It
was, and is, the Divine purpose to redeem them,
through their experience of the miseries of self-will
backed by the ministries of his grace, to a firm and
constant love of goodness, to draw back their wills into
a complete and abiding harmony with his perfect
Will. This is the one, divine, far-off event to which the
whole Creation moves, and the whole course of Pro-
vidence, and the entire series of Revelations, and all
the gifts and operations of the Spirit. To secure this
result, God permits those who have made an evil
choice to do the evil they have chosen, and to suffer
by and for it, to be corrected by it. But God is love,
and cannot see his creatures suffer without pain.
God is good, and cannot come into contact with evil,
even though it be a victorious contact, without enter-
ing into a divine agony. In all our afflictions He is
afflicted ; He suffers in all our sufferings. That is to
say, from the very beginning God has borne part, and
the greater part, in the countless and dreadful miseries
1 68 SALVATOR MUNDL
and conflicts which men have provoked by their sins,
and will continue to bear that part in them till sin
and time shall be no more.
" Now it is this perpetual conflict with the in-
numerable forms of evil, this endurance of the miseries
which his creatures endure, this sorrow as of a
gracious Father who sees his children sold into the
bitter captivity of sin and pain, and can only suffer
with them till, through suffering, they have grown
wiser and stronger, it is this which constitutes the
eternal agony and passion of God ; this is the cross
which He for ever bears, this the sacrifice which He
is always making for the sin of the world.
" But if this divine eternal Passion is to become a
redeeming energy, it must be revealed to those for
whom it is endured. Till we know that God is sorry
for us, we shall not be sorry for ourselves with that
godly sorrow which worketh life. Till we feel that
He is afflicted in all our afflictions, and will therefore
use all the resources of his power to deliver us from
the evils which afflict us, we can make no hopeful
stand against them. Hence, once in the ages, in the
person of Jesus Christ, God became man to shew his
sympathy with men, his kinship with them, his care
for them. To prove that He is verily afflicted in our
afflictions, and that He is able to redeem us out of
them all, He visibly lived our life, bare our afflictions,
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 169
carried our sorrows, confronted our temptations, and
overcame even the sharpness of death by laying down
his life for us and by taking it again. In short,
the historical Cross of Christ is simply a disclosure
within the bounds of time and space of the eternal
passion of the unchangeable God ; it is simply the
supreme manifestation of that redeeming Love which
always suffers in our sufferings, and is for ever at work
for our salvation from them."
For, as we have seen, what is in the eternal un-
changing God at any moment must always be in Him.
Christ did not create. He only unveiled and disclosed,
the self-sacrificing love of the Father. His attitude
toward man and the evil that is in man, if at any
instant we can catch a glimpse of it, must be his
constant unvarying attitude, since He is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. In Christ and his
cross we get not a glimpse only, but a full view of
his attitude toward us and toward the evil that is in
us : and that must be his constant attitude. As once,
so always, He suffers in our sufferings ; as once, so
always, He is seeking to save us from the evil which
causes them : or how can He be unchangeably the
same ? In every age, in every world, that must be
his work, his endeavour for us : for what is there in
the mere lapse of time, or change of place, to affect
Him who sits high above change and time ? If God
i?o SALVATOR MUNDL
suffers with me here, because I am his creature, his
child, must He not suffer with me hereafter, when my
sufferings may be so much more keen and deep ? If
He here seeks to redeem me, and has even endured
the bitter Cross to encourage me to believe and hope
in his redeeming love, can He, all in a moment, cease
to care for my redemption and to labour for it, and
study why and how He may degrade and torment me ?
It is incredible, impossible. Changeable and fickle
as men are, would any man that is a father do that ?
And God is unchangeable. His gifts and election are
without repentance. The mere lapse of time, the
fact that I have passed out of this age into the age to
come, cannot change Him, cannot annul his relation
to me, his sympathy with me, cannot reverse hia
whole attitude toward me.
" Love is not love that alters where it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove."
And if human love can resist the influences of time
and change, shall not the eternal love of God ?
You see, then, how many great doctrines, how
many leading and pervading principles of the Bible,
combine to assure us that we have misinterpreted
those passages which speak of the future condition of
the impenitent, if at least we have taken them to
imply that all who are not saved in this age will be
doomed, the very instant they die, to an endless and
THE TEST OF PRINCIPLES. 171
depraving torment. Such an interpretation is incon-
sistent with the law of Retribution, with the doctrine
of Election, with the revealed function of Punishment,
and even with the very love and passion of God as
disclosed in the Atonement wrought by Christ.
yilL UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION.
I MAY now assume, I think, that the main conclusions
at which we have arrived are tolerably familiar to you,
or that they may be recalled to your memories by a
mere touch.
We have seen, then, that the English verb " to
damn " is used to translate two Greek words which
never mean more than " to condemn," and commonly
mean only "to judge ;" that our English noun "hell"
is employed to render three Greek substantives
Tartarus, Hades, Gehenna, each of which, so far
from indicating an endless state of torment, indicates
only an intermediate and temporary condition of the
soul ; that the Greek and English adjective " aeonial,"
though it is commonly translated by " eternal " or
" everlasting," means only aeon- or age- long both in
the Bible and out of it ; and we have found, especially
in the writings of St Paul, a Christian doctrine of the
aeons, a doctrine which implies that as there have been
ages that are past during which men have been slowly
raised to their present condition, so also there are ages
to come in which the Divine education and develop-
ment of the race will be carried on toward its final
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 173
issue or goal. From all these lines of thought, and
from the Scriptures which illustrate them, we have
drawn the conclusion that the impenitent wicked, when
they pass out of this age, will not be adjudged to a
final and changeless doom, but will be exposed to a
still severer and more searching discipline than that of
this life, to what our Lord Himself calls an " aBonial
pruning," or a " salting with fire," the design of which
will be to free them from their thraldom to evil, and
to save them unto life everlasting. The current
theory of the future estate of the wicked is, therefore,
condemned by the very Scriptures to which it has
long made its appeal.
Nor only so. It is also at variance, not only with
the general tone and spirit of the revelation made by
Christ though that were much, but also with certain
definite principles, or doctrines, which are wrought
into the very substance of Scripture and pervade it
from end to end. It is inconsistent with the law of
Retribution, with the doctrine of Election, with the
declared function and end of Punishment, and with
the eternal love and passion of God as disclosed in the
Atonement wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ.
At this point we arrived, and paused, in our last
Lecture. And, having conducted the argument so far,
it might seem that nothing remained but to review its
whole course, and to formulate some reasonable and
r?4 SAL VA TOR MUNDL
coherent theory of the life to come. But even yet
the argument is not complete ; and the endeavour to
frame a theory must still be postponed, if indeed we
should ever brace ourselves to enter on a path of
speculation so lofty and so perilous. For the present
I must be content with carrying the argument to a
close, by adducing those Scriptures which either ex-
pressly affirm or obviously imply ike universality of the
redemption wrought by God in and through Christ
Jesus our Lord. And, unless you have made a special
study of this subject for yourselves, I cannot doubt
that you will be astonished, I trust also that your
best hopes for mankind will be invigorated and con-
firmed, by finding how numerous and emphatic these
Scriptures are, how the principle they illustrate is
interwoven with the very texture, and with the whole
texture, of Holy Writ.
From the dawn of Revelation down to its latest
recorded utterance we find the very widest scope as-
signed to the redeeming purpose and work of God our
Saviour. Even in those early days when one man,
one family, one nation were successively chosen to be
the depositories of Divine Truth ; when, therefore, if
ever we might expect to find the redemptive purpose
of God disclosed within narrow and local limitations,
when unquestionably it was in much fettered and
restrained by personal promises and by national and
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 175
temporary institutions, that Divine purpose is for ever
overleaping every limit, every transient localization
and restraint, and claiming as its proper sphere "all
the souls that are " and shall be. Thus, for example,
Abraham and his family are chosen for special teach-
ing and privilege ; but it is in order that in him and
them " all the families of the earth" without dis-
tinction of name and race, and whatever the moral
condition to which they have sunk, "maybe blessed." 1
In what sense this great promise was meant, how
wide and far-reaching its scope, we are taught by two of
the greatest Christian apostles. St Peter standing in
the temple at Jerusalem, and addressing part of that
vast multitude " out of every nation under heaven "
which had come together to keep the sacred Feasts
that immediately followed the death of Christ, many
of whom, remember, had clamoured for his death and
invoked his blood on their heads did not scruple to
say to them, 2 " Ye are the children of the covenant
which God made with our fathers, saying unto
Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of
the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having
raised up his son Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in
turning away every one of you from his iniquities."
This, then, as St ' Peter read it, was the blessing pro-
mised to Abraham and his family, the blessing of
1 Genesis xii. 3 ; and xxii. 18. Acts iii. 25, 26.
1
176 SALVATOR MUNDI.
becoming a blessing. They themselves were to be
redeemed from iniquity, to be recovered to righteous-
ness, by Him who was at once the seed of Abraham
and the Son of God ; but they were to be saved in
order that from and through them this great salvation
might extend to " every one " of the Jews and to " all
the kindreds " of the earth. This salvation had indeed
been sent to the Jews " first ; " but that very word
" first " implied that it was to be sent to the Gentiles
also.
And what St Peter both implies and asserts St
Paul emphatically confirms. Writing to the Celtic
and Asiatic tribes of Galatia, he argues l that as many
as believe in Christ become, by their very faith,
children of faithful Abraham ; and affirms : " The
Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the
heathen through faith, preached beforehand the Gospel
unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be
blessed."
Both the holy Apostles therefore saw, and teach
us to see, in the promise made to Abraham a dis-
closure of the Divine intention to redeem men, to
make them just, or righteous, by the Gospel of his
Son ; and both affirm that this intention extends to
the whole family of man, though the one applies it
mainly to the Jewish tribes and the other to the
1 Galatians iii. 8.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 177
nations of the Gentiles. St Peter, indeed, does not
shrink even from asserting that this blessing has been
" sent," has been conferred upon the most flagrant and
enormous sinners the world then held, those who,
because they loved darkness rather than light, had with
lawless hands put to death the very Life of men.
And from the time at which this great and far-
reaching promise, or gospel, was given to Abraham,
the universal scope of the Divine Redemption is in-
sisted on with growing emphasis even in those Hebrew
Scriptures which we too often assume to be animated
only by a local and national spirit. That such a spirit
is to be found in them is unquestionable ; but it is
equally unquestionable that from the very first we may
also find in them a generous and catholic spirit which
contemplates the salvation of the whole world, and
that this deeper broader spirit more and more disen-
gages itself from all that is national and local in them
as the years roll on. The Psalmists, for example, are
full of the happiest and largest forecasts. When they
speak of the coming Messiah they are at the furthest
remove from claiming the blessings of his reign ex-
clusively for themselves. On the contrary they say,
" His name shall endure for ever ; his name shall be
continued as long as the sun : and men shall be
blessed in Him; all nations shall call Him blessed." 1
1 Psalm Ixxii. 17.
M
1
1 78 SALVATOR MUNDL
They look forward to an age when " the heathen shall
fear the name of the Lord, and the kingdoms shall
serve Him." ] They constantly breathe forth the in-
vitation, " praise the Lord all ye nations ; praise
Him all ye peoples? an invitation, by the bye, which
St Paul cites when he is arguing that Jesus Christ
was sent, not only to confirm and fulfil the promises
made to the Hebrew fathers, but also " that the Gen-
tiles might glorify God for his mercy." 3 And, in fine,
the Psalter closes with the noble, far-resounding, yet
most characteristic, strain, " Let everything that hath
breath praise the Lord. " 4
Nor do the Prophets come behind the Psalmists of
Israel ; rather they excel them in the large gladness
with which they recognize the breadth and length, the
height and depth of the Divine Redemption. I need
not detain you by quoting the noble strains in which
Isaiah and the major prophets depict the golden close
of time, the age, or ages, during which a regenerated
race is to dwell on a renovated earth. They are
familiar to you ; they have entered into the heart
and reappeared in the poetry of all Christian races.
From him who, because he so clearly foresaw the day
of Christ, has been christened " the Evangelical Pro-
phet " take only this one sentence ; and take it mainly
1 Psalm cii. 15, 22. a Psalm cxvii. 1.
3 Homans xv. 11. 4 Psalm cl. 6.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 179
because St Paul echoes it back, and interprets it as he
echoes it. It is Jehovah who speaks these words by
the mouth of Isaiah : " Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all ye ends of the earth ; for I am God, and there is
none other : I have sworn by myself, the word is gone
out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return,
That unto me every knee shall bend, and every tongue
shall vow" 1 Could any words more emphatically de-
clare it to be the Divine purpose that the whole earth,
to the very ends of it, shall be saved, that every knee
shall bow in homage before God and every tongue take
the oath of fealty to Him ? Are we not expressly
told that this declaration, since it has come from the
righteous mouth of God, cannot return to Him void,
but must accomplish its object, that object being the
salvation of the human race ? St Paul echoes this
great word, and interprets it in his Epistle to the
Philippians ; 2 and though on his lips it gains definite-
ness and precision, assuredly it loses no jot nor tittle
of its breadth. He affirms that, because Christ did
not clutch at his equality with the Father, but, to ful-
fil God's ancient promise, humbled Himself to man-
hood, to servitude, to death, therefore " God hath
highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is
above every name, in order that at the Name of Jesus
every knee should bow" not only every knee of man,
1 Isaiah xlv. 22, 23. 2 Philippians ii. 6-11.
1
i8o SALVATOR MUNDL
for now the promise grows incalculably wider, but
every knee " in heaven, and in earth, and under the
earth ; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." It is
hard to understand Isaiah as proclaiming less than au
universal redemption ; but if St Paul did not mean to
proclaim a redemption as wide as the universe, what
use or force is there in words ?
I have said enough, however, to recall to your
memories the bright and vivid pictures of " the Re-
generation" which the greater prophets such as
Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel loved to paint. If you would
collect them in some private gallery of your own, you
know where to look for them. But, perhaps, some of
you may not be equally familiar with the fact that
these same pictures, drawn on a proportionally lesser
scale, are also to be found in the works of those whom
we call the Minor Prophets giving them that name
not because their strains are of an inferior quality to
those of their compeers, but because they are fewer
and shorter. Yet every one of their brief poems, or
collections of poems, has its tiny apocalypse. And
mark this point well, for it will be useful to us by and
bye while each of the Minor Prophets sees the vision
of a whole world redeemed to the love and service of
righteousness, this vision of redemption is invariably
accompanied by a vision of judgment. Thus, for in-
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 181
stance, Joel 1 foresees that all nations will be gathered
into the Valley of Doom in order that every man may
receive the due reward of his deeds; but he also
foresees that they will be judged in order that, there-
after, the Spirit of God may be poured out on " all
flesh" on young men and maidens, old men and
children, bond and free. In like manner the pencil
of Habakkuk 2 labours to depict the judgment that
will fall on the nations which " exhaust themselves for
vanity ;" but he too can look beyond the terrors of
judgment and see " ike whole earth filled with the
knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the
deep." Zephaniah, 3 again, is possessed by this deep
conviction, this healing and sustaining hope. He sees
that God will make Himself terrible over the nations
only that " all the isles of the heathen, every one from
its place, may worship Him ; " that He will purify the
earth with the fire of his judgments, in order that He
may " turn to the nations a pure lip," in order that
they may " all invoke the name of Jehovah, and serve
Him with one shoulder." And Malachi, 4 the last of
the prophets, foresees a day of the Lord, which will
burn like a furnace against all unrighteousness of men ;
but he also foresees that these flaming judgments will
kindle on men only that "from the rising of the sun
* Joel ii. 28-31 ; and iii. 12-21. * Habakkuk ii. 13, 14.
* Zephaniah ii. 11 j and iii. 8, 9, 4 Malachi i. 11 j iii. 1-3; iv. 1-.3
1 82 SALVATOR MUNDI.
to the going down thereof God's name may be great
among the nations" and that " in every place incense
may be burned to his Name and a pure sacrifice be
offered Him."
But why should I elaborate this point ? why should
I cite so many passages from the Old Testament
Scriptures, except indeed to impress upon you the
fact that even in those Scriptures which we admit to
be the narrowest in their scope this doctrine of an
universal redemption is iterated and reiterated again
and again ? We, who are appealing to the authority
of Holy Writ, need no proof of the fact, though we
may need to have the fact impressed upon us : for St
Peter, 1 when he is speaking of " the times of the resti-
tution of all things" i.e., the age in which all things
shall be restored to their primeval, or raised to their
ideal, order and beauty, distinctly asserts that God
hath spoken of this age " by the mouth of all his holy
prophets since the world began"
Here, then, we have the highest and most conclusive
authority for believing that, from the beginning, God
has cherished the purpose of an universal restoration
or redemption; that this purpose has been revealed
to and by all the inspired Hebrew prophets : and that
the revelation made to them has been endorsed and
attested by the Christian Apostles. It would almost
1 Acts iii. 21.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 183
seem unnecessary, therefore, that I should go on to
quote the illustrations of this Divine purpose which
abound in the Scriptures of the New Testament. But
the effect of a doctrine depends not only on the clear-
ness and fullness with which it is revealed, but also
on the clearness and depth of the impression it makes
on our minds. And hence I will cite, as briefly and
with as little comment as I can, some of the leading
passages of the New Testament in which this great
doctrine is taught or implied.
John the Baptist, then, saw in Jesus "the Lamb
of God which taketh away (not the sins, but) the sin
of the world ;" i.e., the whole sin of the whole world. 1
The Lord Jesus Himself assures us that "God sent
his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but
that the world through him might be saved." 2 And,
again, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given
all things into his hand," and " all that the Father
hath given me shall come to me, and him that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out ;" for I came down
from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of
Him that sent me : and this is the Father's will who
hath sent me, that of all which He hath given me I
should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at
the last day." 2 And, again, " /, if I be lifted up from
1 St John i. 29. 2 Ibid., iii. 17.
*lbid., iii. 35; and vi. 37-39.
1 84 SALVATOR MUNDL
the earth, will draw all men unto me." 1 Could
even He that formed the tongue use language more
explicit and decisive than this ? Could even the Lord
Jesus have taught us more plainly and more effec-
tively if only we bring an unbiassed mind to his
words that it is the intention and purpose of God to
take away the sin of the whole race, arid to redeem
all men unto Himself? And since the gifts and the
calling of God are without repentance, must not that
purpose be carried out, if not in this age, then in
some of the ages to come ?
But lest we should have misunderstood these great
sayings of the Great Teacher, let us mark how the
Apostles understood them, what meanings they found
in them. The great theologians of the Apostolic
Company were St Paul and St John. St John has
left us only one theological Epistle, only one public
Letter, from which we may learn how the truths
taught by Christ shaped themselves in his mind and
ministry. But even in this single and brief Letter we
find these sayings and such as these : " And we have
seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be
the Saviour of the world ;" 2 and, again, " If any man
sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the Righteous ; and He is the propitiation for our sins,
and not for ours only, but also for those of the world "^
1 St John xii. 32. a 1 John iv. 14. 3 Ibid., ii. 1, 2.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 185
St Paul, happily, has left us many Epistles ; and in
his Letters the doctrine of universal redemption is de-
veloped at length and with extraordinary breadth and
force. Writing to the Ephesians 1 on that " mystery "
of the Divine Will with which we are now concerned,
the redemption of the human race, he calls it " God's
good pleasure which He hath purposed in Christ," and
affirms this purpose to be " that in the dispensation
of the fulness of times He might gather up under one
head in Christ all things, both which are in heaven
and which are on earth, even in Him in whom also
we have obtained an inheritance." That is to say, it
is God's good purpose, in and by the Christian
economy, to gather up " the all " the whole universe
of intelligent creatures, whether in heaven or on earth
under the lordship and rule of Christ. Not only
are those who then believed and who by faith had
obtained an inheritance in Christ, included in this pur-
pose, but all spirits in heaven and on earth ; and not
these spirits alone, but also the very universe in which
they dwell : for only thus do we exhaust the meaning
of that " all " (TO, tfavra) which is to be reduced to
the love and obedience of Christ. Writing to the
Colossians, 2 he expresses the same thought in other
words ; for to them he declares it to be the pleasure
of the Father that all the fulness of the Divine Nature
1 Ephesians i. 10. a Colossians i. 20.
T
1 86 SAL VA TOR MUNDL
should dwell in Christ, in order that, "having made
peace through the blood of the Cross, He might recon-
cile all things (ra vavra) unto Himself, whether they
be things on earth or things in heaven:" the two
points on which the Apostle here lays stress being (1)
the universality of the reconciliation to be effected by
Christ, and (2) the fact that Christ is the only medium
of that reconciliation.
Writing to the Romans, 1 he presents us with another
aspect of this doctrine, and reaches the same con-
clusion by another road, the road of the Hebrew pro-
phets. He is rebuking the disciples at Rome for
judging one another for mere differences of thought
and practice. Judgment belongs to the Lord, he
argues, and to Him alone, whether in this life or in
that which is to come ; for " whether we live, we live
unto the Lord ; and whether we die, we die unto the
Lord ; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the
Lord's." And then he adds this remarkable passage :
" For to tliis end Christ both died, and rose and revived,
that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the
living. But why dost thou judge thy brother? . . .
for we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of
Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord,
every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall
confess to God." Christ is to be the Lord, then, of
1 Romans xiv. 9-11.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 187
the dead as well as of the living ; and, as "no man
can confess that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy
Ghost/' the dead who are to bow to Him and confess
Him their Lord, as well as the living, must be open
to the renewing ministry of the Divine Spirit : open to
it ! yes, and mercifully condemned and exposed to it
until " every one," even the most stubborn, be com-
pelled to yield it. Here, too, strangely enough, and
in this St Paul resembles the Hebrew prophets, 1 there
is obviously some connection in his thoughts between
the judgment to which both the living and the dead
are to be summoned, and their participation in the life
and Kingdom of Christ.
Again ; what less than a purpose of universal re-
demption can explain such passages as these : " God
was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them : " 2 " We trust
in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men,
specially of those who believe:" 3 "I exhort, therefore,
that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings
be made for all men : for this is good and accept-
able in the sight of God our Saviour, who wills that
all men should be saved, and should come to a full
recognition of the truth, since there is one Mediator be-
tween God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave
Himself a ransom for all (lies? wdtruv), -a fact to be
1 See page 180 et seq. 2 2 Corinthians v. 19. 3 1 Timothy iv. 10.
I
188 SALVATOR MUNDI.
testified in its appropriate seasons." l Now surely
these passages speak for themselves, and need no in-
terpreter, at least to those who have " the mind of
Christ," and instinctively reject whatever is contrary
to the great revelation He came to make. On any
narrower hypothesis than ours they must be pared
down, explained away, their generous force abated ;
but on the hypothesis which we have, at least provi-
sionally, formed, they are simple and clear as day and
may be taken, as surely Divine Words should be taken,
in their largest sense. On that hypothesis we read
them thus. The whole world of men is ultimately to
be redeemed to the love and service of Righteousness
by God our Saviour, and so to be really and eternally
reconciled to Him. But if He is to be ultimately the
Saviour of all men, as it is very certain that a count-
less multitude of men are not saved in this age, they
must of necessity be excluded from that presence and
glory of the Lord in the age to come which the right-
eous will enjoy, must be exposed to a far more severe
and searching discipline than any they have known
here, in order that what the discipline of this age has
failed to do may be done i.e., that they may be re-
deemed from the hand of their iniquities and led,
through righteousness, unto life eternal. God there-
fore, while the Saviour of all men, is specially the
1 1 Timothy ii. 1, 3, 6.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 189
Saviour of them that believe, since these * are saved
in the present age, will pass into the blessedness of a
perfecting discipline in the age to come, and may even
be employed on errands of mercy to the spirits who
are still in the bonds of their iniquity. Meanwhile,
the purpose of God standeth sure. It is his will, his
good pleasure, that all men should be saved by
being led, through whatever correction and training
may be necessary for that end, to a full and hearty
recognition of the truth ; which truth will be testified
to them in its appropriate seasons, and by appropriate
methods, in the ages to come, if it has not been
brought home to them here : so appropriately and so
forcibly testified that at last they will no longer be
able to withstand it, but will heartily betake them-
selves to the Father against whom they have sinned,
and submit themselves to his righteous Will through
the Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus. Thus, as I read
St Paul, God will prove Himself to be at once the
Saviour of all men, and especially the Saviour of those
who now turn to Him.
And that I am not forcing a meaning on his words
alien to his mind is proved by those other passages
from his writings which I have already quoted. It is
still more conclusively proved by the two great
passages in his Epistle to the Romans in which he
formally argues for the salvation of the whole Hebrew
I"
190 SALVATOR MUNDI.
race and for that of the world at large. We referred
to these passages only in the previous Lecture ; and
therefore I need now do no more than remind you
that, in Chapters ix. to xi. of this Epistle, the Apostle
proves, at least to his own satisfaction and comfort,
both that " all Israel will be saved," and that " the
fulness of the Gentiles" will be brought in to the
kingdom of God ; in short, that " God hath concluded
all men in unbelief," or " shut up all in sin," only
" that He may have mercy on all : " while in Chapters
v. and viii. he argues at great length that " as in Adam
all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive," 1 that as
sin has abounded, so the grace of God shall much
more abound, that the free gift of that grace shall
come on " all " men " unto justification of life ; " and
that even the inanimate creation, reduced to the
bondage of vanity and corruption through the sin of
man, shall be redeemed into the glorious liberty of the
sons of God. In his first Epistle to the Corinthians 2
he iterates and completes this argument ; not only
affirming that all shall be made alive by Christ, but
affirming also that Christ must reign until He has
brought all who have ranked themselves among his
enemies to his feet : that " the end " of the Christian
1 These words are from 1 Corinthians xv. 22, where we have both
a confirmation and a briefer statement of his argument in the
Romans.
2 1 Corinthians xv. 24-28.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 191
dispensation cannot come until all are subdued under
Him ; and that then even He Himself will become
" subject " unto the Father in the same sense surely
in which his enemies have been subjected to Him, i.e.,
voluntarily, gladly, of freewill, not of constraint in
order that God may be all, not in, some only, nor
only in many, but in all.
Now is it not well nigh impossible to gather these
passages together from the Old Testament and the
New, to listen to this " pure concent " of the Hebrew
Prophets and the Christian Apostles with the direct
words of Jehovah and of Christ, without being con-
vinced that the doctrine of an universal redemption
and restitution, however long we may have overlooked
it, is interwoven with the very texture of Holy Writ
and pervades it from end to end ? And how is the
eternal purpose of the unchangeable God to be ac-
complished if there be no possibilities of salvation be-
yond the grave, when it is only too certain that many
pass out of this life loving darkness rather than light,
many more to whom the good news of Kedemption
have never been either adequately or attractively pre-
sented', and most of all who have never so much as
heard the joyful sound ?
I am not unmindful of the fact that he who so
searches the Scriptures as to find this happy prospect
of eternal life for all men in them, will also find many
1
192 SALVATOR MUNDL
passages which denounce the wrath of God against all
unrighteousness of men, which threaten the wicked
with the terrors of judgment, with death, and with being
destroyed from the presence of the Lord and the glory
of his power. "We have examined many of these pas-
sages, and have ascertained what they mean. It is no
part of our argument that wrath and judgment and
punishment are not to be elements of the life to come.
Rather we affirm, and rejoice to affirm, that in every
age and in every world unrighteousness must be hateful
to God ; and that so long as men cleave to it, and refuse
to submit themselves to the righteousness of God, they
must be searched through and through with unspeak-
able miseries. We admit that if men pass out of this
age unrighteous and impenitent, they must be banished
from the presence and glory of God in the age to
come, must pass through the pangs of death before
they can be born again into life. But we ask why
death, judgment, punishment should change their
nature and function the very moment we pass from
this seon, or life, into the next '( They are remedial
and corrective here ; why should they be uncorrective
and merely punitive hereafter ? On the authority of
the New Testament itself we maintain that God is
the Father of the spirits of all flesh, and that He can
never chasten us save for our profit. Nay, more,
on the authority both of the Hebrew Prophets and of
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 193
the Christian Apostles we maintain that this law of
the Divine punishments holds in the world to come no
less than in the present world, since their visions of
future judgment are almost invariably followed by
visions of a redemption which is to extend to all
nations and to cover the whole earth. And this con-
clusion is sustained by our Lord Himself in those
memorable passages in which He speaks of the un-
righteous as going away from his bar into "an age-
long pruning," and affirms that "every one shall be
salted with fire," i.e., saved by it.
Still there are those who are well nigh incapable of
logic, well nigh impervious to argument, even when
the argument is based on Scripture itself, who distrust
inferences and demand instances. And these may
say : " Before we accept this doctrine of an universal
redemption to be achieved in due time, before we even
weigh your argument for it, can you point us to any
instance of the redemption of sinful men after they
had left this life, after they had been condemned to
receive the due reward of their deeds ? " And even
to that question, unreasonable though it be, I may re-
ply, " Yes, I can." In the first Epistle of St Peter
(Chapter iii. verses 18-20) we are distinctly told that,
when Jesus was put to death in the flesh, He descended
in the spirit to that dim Hadean world in which, as
the Jews held, the spirits of all men ' await the Resur-
N
i 9 4
SALVATOR MUJ^DI.
rection, and preached his Gospel "to the spirits in
prison," to those who were being held in ward until
the trumpet should sound and the dead be raised up.
Nor was it to the spirits of the righteous alone that
He preached this Gospel, but also to those who had
been " disobedient " to the word of God, to that
ungodly generation to which Noah had preached
righteousness in vain, a generation so disobedient
and ungodly that it repented God He had made them,
and compelled Him to sweep them off the face of
the earth with a flood. Do you ask, " For what pur-
pose, and to what effect, did He preach to them ? "
St Peter replies in the same Epistle (Chap. iv. ver. 6):
" For this cause was the Gospel preached also to them
that are dead, that they might be judged according to
men in the flesh, but live according to God in the
spirit." Now we know how this strange revelation
made to St Peter was interpreted by the primitive
Church and this is a point which those should mark
who object to the late and modern date of the doctrine
of Universal Redemption ; for within a hundred years
of the death of St John there appeared a work of
fiction, called the Gospel of Nicodemus, which professed
to set forth all the details of Christ's descent into
Hades. Of course this Fiction speaks to us with an
authority no greater than that of the " Pilgrim's Pro-
gress," although, when it appeared, it was very widely
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 195
received as an authoritative description of our Lord's
ministry in Hades. But just as from Bunyan's great
Allegory we might very safely infer what the Puritan
conception of the Christian life was in the seventeenth
century, so from this " Gospel of Nicodemus " we may
very safely infer what conceptions the Christians of
the second century formed of Christ's descent into
Hades. And in this Gospel it is expressly affirmed, 1
that, when He arrived, the gates of the Hadean prison
burst open before Him, and the King of Glory, taking
our forefather Adam by the hand, and turning to the
vast multitude of imprisoned spirits, said, " Come all
with me, as many as have died through the tree
which he touched; for, behold, I raise you all up
through the tree of the Cross," words which, after
all, are but a paraphrase of St Paul's great saying,
" As by one man's disobedience the many were made
sinners, so by the obedience of One shall the many be
made righteous."
This, then, was the faith of the early Church, before
it became corrupted by heathen philosophies and
heathen superstitions viz., that the good news brought
to earth by Christ was also preached by Him in Hades,
preached even in Gehenna ; that on the bridge of his
Cross even the worst of the spirits in torment were
able to pass over the " great gulf " and enter into the
1 The Gospel of Nicodemus, Part II., Chap. 8.
196 SALVATOR MUNDI.
joys of Paradise ; that even the disobedient genera-
tion of Noah, though still " dead " in the judg-
ment and censures of men, live unto God. Why
should it not be our faith too ? St Paul held it as
well as St Peter ; for in all those passages l in which
he speaks of the redemption of Christ as extending to
all who are in heaven, and on the earth, and under
the earth, by those who are " under the earth/' he
signified the inhabitants of that vast subterranean
kingdom in which, as he held, the spirits of the dead
were reserved for the day of judgment. And St John
held it as well as St Paul ; for, in his Apocalyptic vision, 2
he too beheld " every creature in heaven, and on the
earth, and under the earth," i.e., in Hades, giving
glory and power unto Him that sitteth on the throne,
and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.
And if St Peter held the faith that even the most
disobedient of the spirits in prison were quickened into
life by the preaching of Christ ; if St Paul held that
every knee in the Hadean kingdom should bow to
Christ, as well as every knee in heaven and on earth,
and every tongue confess Him Lord, which yet no man
can do but by the Holy Ghost : if St John heard
" every creature " in hades as well as in heaven and
on earth, singing the high praises of God and the
Lamb, why should not we also hold this faith ? If
1 Cf. Philippians ii. 9-11. 2 Eev. v. 13.
UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION. 197
Christ took flesh and dwelt among us that He might
become at all points like as we are and threw open
the kingdom of heaven to all believers ; if He trod,
step by step, the path we have to travel from the
cradle to the grave, must He not also, for us men
and our salvation, have passed on into that dim un-
known region on which our spirits enter when we
die ? Did He leave, did He forsake our path at the
very moment when it sinks into a darkness we cannot
penetrate, just when, to us at least, it seems to grow
most lonely, most critical, most perilous ? And if He
followed our path to the end, and passed into that
awful and mysterious world into which we also must
soon pass, could his Presence be hid ? Must not truth
and mercy, righteousness and love attend Him wherever
He goes ? Would not the eternal Gospel in his heart
find fit and effectual utterance, and the very darkness
of Hades be illuminated and dispersed as it was
traversed by the Light of Life? Surely our own
reason confirms the revelations of Scripture, and con-
strains us to believe that, in all worlds and in all ages,
as in this, Christ will prove Himself to be the great
Lord and Lover of men, and will claim all souls for
his own.
IX. WHAT WE SHALL BE.
WHEN we were commencing our study, at the very
outset of these Lectures, I forewarned you that, in all
probability, we should find in the Word of God no
clear and detailed disclosures of the final estate whether
of the good or of the bad ; and that for this reason.
Just as it is impossible to convey to a child many of
the facts, relations, and intercourses of mature human
life, i.e., of its own subsequent career, so, probably, it
is impossible that the higher facts of the life which is
purely spiritual and eternal, i.e., the ultimate facts
and conditions of our own career, should be conveyed
to us at this early and initial stage of it, and while we
are under the conditions of sense and time. If St
Paul, when he was rapt in the spirit into Paradise,
beheld scenes which he could not depict and heard
what he calls " unwordable words," words, i.e., which
could not be uttered, much more, had he been caught
up into the very heaven of heavens, would he have
found himself surrounded by sacred and august realities
which it is not possible for man to conceive, much less
describe. My warning has been abundantly verified.
Although we have now studied most of the leading
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 199
passages in the Gospels and Epistles which relate to
the future life of the human race, we have found none
as yet which carries us beyond the aeons of time.
While the New Testament has much to tell us of our
future conditions, it has nothing, or nothing definite,
to say of our final estate, but compels us, in so far as
that is concerned, to " trust in the living God who is
the Saviour of all men," and in a very special sense
the Saviour of all who believe in Him. And, indeed,
there hardly can be a final estate for finite creatures
such as we are. We must ever be reaching forth to
things before and beyond us, ever rising through grade
after grade of being and of attainment, ever approach-
ing yet never reaching that infinite perfection which
we name God.
For the present, at all events, we must be content
with the revelation which He has made of " the ages
to come," the ages which are to succeed this present
age and to precede that great " day of judgment" be-
yond which as yet we cannot, for want of clearer light,
safely project our thoughts.
Now as we try to sum up all that we have learned
of those future but intermediate ages, there rises be-
fore us the image of a vast Hadean world, with its
Paradise for the good and its Gehenna for the bad, in
which the spirits of all who have left this life are
assembled, in order that every man may receive ac-
I
200 SALVATOR MUNDI.
cording to his deeds, but receive also according to the
infinite mercy and goodness of God. And if we try to
conceive the moral and spiritual conditions of this
Hadean world, we derive no little help from the fact
that in the Scriptures of the New Testament God is
described as "the seonial God," the Holy Spirit as
" the seonial Spirit," and the redemption of Christ as
an "seonial redemption," i.e. a redemption which it
will take many aeons, or ages, to complete. For these
descriptions assure us that our God and Father will
rule over all the ages to come as well as over this
present age ; that through all these ages the Holy
Spirit, our Comforter, will still be at work in the
hearts of men, seeking to change them into the image
and likeness of God : and that the redemption of Christ
our Saviour will not have spent its force in this world,
but will continue to operate, and perchance to operate
under more favourable conditions, in the world on
which we enter when we pass through the gate and
vestibule of death. In short, the implication of these
passages is, that all the familiar but august forces
which are working together for the regeneration of the
race here will continue to work hereafter, and surely
to work with new power and happier effects in a world
so much more advanced and spiritual than this.
On the other hand, these same Scriptures speak of
an " seonial fire," an " seonial judgment," an " seonial
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 201
punishment/' an "seonial pruning;" and so convey
the impression that in the ages to come there will be
a revelation of the severity, as well as of the mercy, of
God ; a revelation of his burning wrath and indigna-
tion against all unrighteousness of men, as well as of
his love and grace toward all that is righteous in them.
But, if we would interpret these hints of terror aright,
we must remember that, even here and now, God
judgeth the righteous and God is angry with the
wicked every day, yes, and angry with the righteous
too. 1 Even here and now He is for ever judging us,
if we do not judge ourselves, ever punishing, pruning,
and chastising us for our good, and that we may bring
forth more fruit. So that we must not hastily con-
clude that, in the ages to come, judgment and chas-
tisement and punishment will change their very nature,
and work to opposite effects. Analogy would rather
suggest that then as now, there as here, God will still
judge us in order that we may learn to judge ourselves,
still chastise us for our good, still prune us that we
may bring forth more fruit ; and that the fire of his
holy wrath against evil will burn up, or burn out, only
that which has become evil in us, but liberate and
enfranchise that which is good. And this suggestion
is confirmed, as we shall see, by many direct teachings
of Holy Writ.
1 Psalm vii. 11, where "with the wicked" is, and is marked as,
an interpolation.
I
202 SALVATOR MUNDI.
What the Scriptures further teach concerning our
conditions in the ages to come may perhaps be summed
up under these three heads: (1) That as there are
degrees of bliss in Paradise, so also there are degrees
of punishment in Gehenna : (2) that as the reward of
the righteous is at once retributive and perfecting, so
the punishment of the unrighteous is at once retri-
butive and remedial : and (3) that both to the righteous
and to the unrighteous there will be vouchsafed a new
and deeper revelation of the grace of God in Christ
Jesus.
(1.) There are degrees of bliss, or reward, in
Paradise, and degrees of punishment in Gehenna.
We often speak of " fraternity and equality " as
though the one were the complement or consequence
of the other ; whereas for anything like a true frater-
nity inequality is indispensable. " All men are
brothers"? Yes; but let some be older and some
younger, some more and some less experienced, some
wiser and some less wise, some stronger and some less
strong, some more and some less good ; or what be-
comes of the variety and interest of human life ? what
becomes of its most tender and generous intercourses
and ministrations ? If every man were simply a repe-
tition of every other, how sick we should soon grow of
one another and of ourselves ! how weary of looking at
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 203
each other and seeing ourselves reflected from every face !
If there were none to whom we could look up with
reverence and admiration, and none to whom we could
reach down a kind hand of help ; if there were none
to whom we could give and none from whom we could
receive, nearly all that makes life vital to us and worth
having would be gone. Yet how often have we con-
ceived of the life to come as a dead level of guilt and
pain, on the one hand, and, on the other, of goodness
and bliss, with no inequalities in it, no variety, and, I
had almost said, no interest.
Not thus, however, is the Paradise of God depicted
in the "Word ; not thus, even the Gehenna of God.
Our Lord Himself teaches us that they who have been
faithful in a few things shall be made rulers over
many things, while those who have been faithful in
many shall receive the more. 1 And St Paul, in that
strange weird passage 2 in which he tells the Cor-
inthians how he was caught up into Paradise, affirms
that he penetrated as far as to " the third heaven."
But if there be a third heaven in Paradise, must
there not also be a second and a first ? May there
not be, as the Jews held there were, seven heavens,
each with its distinctive conditions and discipline and
blessedness? May there not even be an infinite
number of heavens, according to that promise of our
1 St Luke xix. 12-26. ! 2 Corinthians xii. 2-4.
\
204 SAL VA TOR MUNDL
Lord/ in which He assures us that He has gone
before us to prepare for each of us " his own place,"
i.e., a place specially adapted to our personal bent
and requirements ?
In like manner, and with equal plainness, we are
taught that Gehenna is as various as Paradise. Some
that have done evil are to be beaten with few stripes,
others with many stripes ; 2 and, by the by, on the
current doctrine of the future life, what is to be done
with those who are to be beaten with few stripes after
they have received them ? And, again, our Lord 3
warned those who blindly followed the blind guidance
of the Scribes that a heavy sentence would be passed
upon them ; but He threatened a still " severer
sentence/' a heavier judgment, on the Scribes them-
selves.
This variety of conditions in the future estate both
of the righteous and of the unrighteous is, indeed, the
simplest inference from that law of Retribution of
which I have so often had to speak in these Lectures,
and shall have to speak again immediately. For if
every man is to receive the due reward of his deeds,
and of all his deeds, " both good and bad," the life to
come must be at least as various, as complex, as full
of subtlely blended forces and interests as the life we
now live in the flesh.
1 St John xiv. 2. 2 St Luke xii. 47, 48. 3 St Mark xii. 40.
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 205
(2.) In the spiritual world the reward of the
righteous is at once retributive and perfecting, and
the punishment of the unrighteous at once retributive
and remedial. On the former of these two points
few words will suffice. For we all admit that the law
of the future life which is most clearly revealed in
Scripture is the law of Retribution ; we all hope that
by the discipline of that life, by its very blessedness,
we may be more and more perfectly conformed to the
image of Him that created us, until we are " satisfied
with his likeness." And we can all see, I think, that
if in that future life we should receive according to
all our deeds, the very retribution that will come on
us for our evil deeds, will be a most welcome dis-
cipline in holiness. In banishing all pain from the
heavenly world, we too much forget how wholesome
and blessed even pain may be, how it changes its very
nature according as we view it and meet it. To be
punished for a bad deed, to be compelled to reap
what he has sown and to eat the fruit of his own
doings, is terrible for a bad man, no doubt ; but is it
so terrible to a man who has repented his sin, who
knows himself to be forgiven, and who longs to be
delivered from the power of sin, to be quit of it at any
cost ? While we are on earth at all events, even
when we know that our sin is forgiven and that God
is making us pure, we. are not let off from the painful
206 SALVATOR
MUNDI.
consequences of our sins, and cannot be, since it is by
enduring those consequences that we get the very
discipline which detaches us from our sins and trains
us in righteousness. And when, strengthened by a
sense of the Divine love and forgiveness, we set our-
selves to undo what we have done amiss, to arrest the
evil forces we have set in motion, to replace them by
good influences, we suffer much and long from shame,
we are pierced with an infinite regret, as we dis-
cover how much harm we have done, and how much
of it has gone beyond our reach so that we cannot
arrest it. Even the risen Jesus bore in his side and
hands and feet the stigmata, the marks of the wounds
He had received in his conflict with sin : and, in like
manner, even when we have renounced and in some
measure subdued the lusts that war against the soul,
we still bear about these " marks of the Lord Jesus,"
these traces, which often smart and throb painfully
enough, of our former bondage to evil and of our
present conflict with it. But if we take this dis-
cipline with a patient and hopeful heart, because we
feel that God Himself is touched with a feeling of our
infirmities and sorrows, because we feel that He is
afflicted in our afflictions and is helping us to bear all
we have to bear, and to do all we have to do, and is
doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and
loving and comforting us under all our pains and
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 207
endeavours, is our pain all pain ? do we not find in
it a welcome discipline in holiness ? do we not even
enter into a blessedness compared with which mere joys
of sense are gross and poor ; do we not count this among
our most precious spiritual experiences ? And if it
should prove that our future life is at once a continua-
tion and a correction of our present life ; if in the
ages to come God should permit us to do rightly
what we have here done wrongly ; if He should
permit us to undo the harm we have done, to do good
to those to whom we had done evil, and to wipe out
the very memory of our offences by a willing and
cheerful obedience to the very laws we had broken :
will not that be a delight to us, and an unspeakable
solace, and a most exquisite blessedness ? And
suppose, also, we receive strength to be and do all
that we desired to be and do here : to say the kind
words we wished to say but could not find a tongue
to utter, to shew the tender tremulous sympathies and
affections we felt but were unable to express, to
achieve the great things for God and man which we
aspired but were unable to do, through some thwarting
of nature or circumstance, some defect of character or
will ; will there not be in this a new and still vaster
field of blessedness ?
And, again, how can we grow like God without
entering into his eternal passion ? He is afflicted in
1
208 SALVATOR MUNDL
all the afflictions of men, pained by all their sins,
grieved in all their griefs. May we not hope, then,
must we not hope, that hereafter this spirit of Divine
Charity will more fully possess us, so that we shall be
most truly afflicted by all that afflicts Him, and set
ourselves to remedy all the wrongs over which He
mourns, and to win back to righteousness those who,
by their unrighteousness, grieve Him to the very
heart ? Is not this at least a nobler yes, and even
a happier conception of the heavenly life than we
have been wont to entertain ? And may we not well
believe that, when this muddy vesture of decay is
stripped from our spirits, and we gain by that very
loss new and enlarged powers of expression and action,
we may be engaged in such blessed toils and honour-
able ministries as these ?
On the other hand, we have clear reason for believ-
ing that the punishment of the unrighteous will be at
once retributive and remedial. That they will suffer for
their sins, and continue to suffer till they shake off
their sins, follows both from the very nature of sin and
of the human spirit, and from that great law of Retri-
bution so plainly revealed both in human life and in
the Inspired Word. God is merciful ; but He never
ceases to denounce tribulation, anguish, and woe on
all that do evil. Nay, the Psalmist affirms that He
is merciful because He renders unto every man accord-
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 209
ing to his work : l though how that should be, unless
retribution is designed to restore and save men, it is
not easy to comprehend. We need not try to compre-
hend it. The Scriptures reveal in the simplest and
most generous terms the true function and design of
punishment. They say that, while the fathers of
our flesh may chastise us after their pleasure, -with-
out consideration, i.e., or without due consideration,
out of mere caprice or vindictiveness, not aiming at
our welfare or from a mistaken conception of that
wherein our welfare consists and the reasonable methods
of securing it, the Father of our Spirits chastises us
only for our profit. And what profit ? " That we
may be partakers of his holiness."
Does any man say, "But that rule only holds in
this world, not in the world to come ? " We reply
not only with an " Who art thou, O man, that thou
shouldest limit the express words of Scripture and the
boundless compassion of God ? " but also by referring
him to the very words of our Lord. He speaks even
of the unrighteous who stand on his left hand, and
whom He Himself has sentenced to " the aeonial fire
prepared for the devil and his angels," as leaving his
bar to enter into an " aeonial pruning," just as the
righteous leave it to enter into aeonial life; He de-
clares that " every one shall be salted with fire ; " and
i Psalm Ixii. 12.
O
-f-
210 SALVATOR MUNDI.
that surely can hardly mean less than that in every
case the fire of the Divine wrath is to have a pre-
servative, a sanitary and sanctifying, effect. Nay,
more, we ask such an one to go down with us into
Gehenna, and to mark the effect of its torment on one
poor soul long since adjudged to it. The rich man of
our Lord's parable Dives, as we call him, though
Tradition speaks of him as Nimeusis had thought
mainly of himself and the pampering of his senses
while he was on earth ; and nevertheless had
comfortably assumed that he was all the while a true
and faithful child of Abraham, and would lie "in
Abraham's bosom " when he had to doff his purple
and fine linen and could no longer enjoy his sumptuous
fare. But mark the change that has passed on him
ere he has been more than a little while in Hades.
No sooner does he lift up his eyes on the new scene
into which he has passed than he awakes to a sense
of his real position, and discovers that, instead of being
in Abraham's bosom, he is in torment ; that, instead
of being near and dear to Abraham and to Abraham's
God, he is far off from them, alienated from their life
through sin that is in him. He is taught to correct
the false estimate of good and evil things which he
had framed and on which he had acted, by the dis-
covery that what he had held to be " good things ''
had landed him in Gehenna, while what he had held
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 211
to be " evil things " had carried Lazarus into Abraham's
bosom. He is taught to replace superstition by
religion ; to look for spiritual instruction and impression
not to apparitions, not to the reappearance of one
risen from the dead, but to the divine law written on
the heart and interpreted by Moses and the prophets.
And the moral effect of these lessons and discoveries is
that, instead of thinking only or mainly of himself, he
begins to think of others, of his five brethren ; and
that instead of longing that they may receive what he
had been wont to think the good things of life, such as
sumptuous raiment and sumptuous fare, he craves that
they may be spared that torment of a wasted life
of which he has become conscious, and be saved unto
life eternal. Now if we are to take this parable as an
illustration of the future lot of the wicked, we see here
what the discipline of Gehenna is to be, and what its
fruits. And who that has an eye to see the lessons
which this rich man had been taught by the very
torment of Gehenna, and a heart to appreciate the
happy moral change it had wrought upon him, burn-
ing out his selfishness and world! iness, and quickening
at least the germs of charity and spirituality within
him, who can doubt that that discipline is designed
for " the correction and bettering of the offender,"
that the very torments of the wicked are designed to
redeem and restore them ?
1
212 SALVA TOR MUNDI.
And, in part at least, we can see how it should be
so, how the change from this world to the next should
involve the keenest torment to the unrighteous and
yet the most effectual discipline. Think for a moment
what the punishment, and what the revelation, of
merely having his body stripped off him must be to a
man who has walked after the flesh, and not after the
spirit. He has lived mainly to pamper the senses, or
to gratify the passions and cravings which hold by
sense, or to secure the means for gratifying them. In
his pursuit and enjoyment of the things which are
seen and temporal, he has neglected, he has become
insensible to the things which are unseen and eternal.
But when he himself becomes an unclothed spirit, he
can be unconscious of them and indifferent to them no
longer. They press in upon him from every side.
The veil of sense and sensuous pursuits has fallen
from his eyes ; he is in the real world now, not the
phenomenal, and he can no longer look out upon it
through eyes of flesh. And, moreover, he has lost all
that he most loved and with which he was most
familiar, all that he deemed to be his " good things."
He who counted for so much in this world counts for
nothing in that. All his pleasures are gone, all his
gains, all his pursuits. He is torn by appetites and
cravings which can no longer be indulged. All the
conditions of his life are strange, unwelcome, repugnant
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 213
to him ; there has been little in the past to prepare
him for them, much to unfit him for them. Can he
fail to be devoured by a sense of loss and misery, by
shame for the past, by dread of what is to come, by a
horrible sense of discord between himself and all tha
is good and fair and enduring ? Can he fail to feel
that he is far off from the God from whom he has
long alienated himself, and feel it so keenly as to make
any place a place of torment to him ? And yet who
does not see that in the very shame and misery pro-
duced by a revelation of that which is spiritual, and of
his alienation from it, and of his guilt in neglecting it,
lies his one chance of redemption ? All that was
familiar to him is seen in a new light, and a light
which compels him to reverse his former estimates of
good and evil. All that was invisible and distant here
becomes near and visible there ; and the man, since
he can no longer hide himself from spiritual realities,
but is compelled to dwell among them and to brood
over them, may find in his very punishment the means
of spiritual life. He may begin to study what is
highest in himself and best, in place of that which is
lowest and worst ; he may begin to think of others
instead of himself and to study how they may be kept
from a torment like his own. And who will venture
to say that God will destroy a spirit in whom these
germs of the Divine Life have been liberated and
developed ?
214 SALVATOR MUNDL ,
(3). In the age or ages to come there will be
accorded a new and deeper revelation of the grace of
God in Christ Jesus, a new and more penetrating
proclamation of the Gospel. In its essence, the
Gospel is a manifestation of the loving and redeeming
will of God. It culminates in the gift and sacrifice of
his Son ; for here we see most clearly how far He will
go and how much He will do to save men from their
sins. But when we considered the doctrine of Re-
demption, we agreed that even the 'sacrifice of Christ
was but a manifestation within the bounds of time and
space of the eternal passion of the Father ; that, be-
cause God is unchangeable, He must always be what
we see Him to be at any moment ; and that, therefore,
the love He manifested for sinful men in the sacrifice
of Christ must always be in his nature, and must con-
tinue to manifest itself, in appropriate forms, through
all the ages and changes of time. To doubt that, is
to doubt that God is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever. In what forms He will manifest his redeem-
ing love for men in the ages to come, we may not be
able to conceive. We could not have conceived
beforehand how He would manifest it to the ancient
world, in the age that is past, that, before Christ
came, He would have foreshadowed it by that strange
system of sacrifices by which He enabled Abraham
and the faithful of his seed to see the day and the
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 215
work of Christ afar off, We need not wonder, there-
fore, if we fail to imagine how, in what forms of light
and grace, He will reveal that redeeming Love in the
ages to be. But we must not, and cannot, doubt
that, in some form, He will reveal it. Indeed we
have in Scripture itself proofs as well as hints that He
will reveal it both to the righteous and to the un-
righteous, and even one very broad hint as to how He
will reveal it.
That a new and deeper revelation of the loving and
redeeming will of God will be vouchsafed to the
righteous, you are doubtless prepared to admit.
Nevertheless, glance at two passages 1 which, when
combined, may define and confirm your hope. In
writing to the Colossians, St Paul, speaking of the
risen and glorified Christ, affirms that " in Him all the
fulness of the Godhead has its fixed abode bodily" or,
rather, " bodily-wise ; " that is to say, the Apostle
affirms that in some mysterious way Christ has carried
our entire human nature, body as well as soul, into
the heavenly places ; that He still retains that power
of physical manifestation which He used more than
once after He had risen from the dead, and even after
He had gone up into heaven as St Stephen and St
Paul and St John all attest : in short, that He still
wears, or can still assume, the spiritual but human
1 Colossians ii. 9 ; and St John xvii, 24.
216 SALVATOR MUNDI.
body of his resurrection. And our Lord Himself,
when praying to his Father for his disciples says :
" Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given
me be with me where I am, that they may behold my
glory." Christ, then, retains the power of revealing
Himself " bodily-wise " to men, and asks that his dis-
ciples may join Him in the world to come in order
that they may " see his glory." Did you ever con-
sider what it may be to behold Christ in his glory ?
If you have, you surely were not so childish as to sup-
pose that you were to see Him standing as in the
centre of the sun, irradiated by and emitting intolerable
rays of splendour ! The glory of Christ is a spiritual
glory, the glory of a perfect wisdom and a perfect love,
wisdom and love in active exercise, revealing them-
selves with a divine energy and power. We see Him
manifesting forth his glory as we read the Gospels,
and would give much no doubt to look for a moment
on his very face, to see one of his mighty works, to
listen to one of his gracious words. But why should
we frame so poor a wish as that when, in the ages to
come, we are to see a whole new Gospel enacted
before our eyes, to see Him "bodily-wise" yet in
his glory ; not dumb and inert, but speaking words
that will quicken life and clothing Himself in the
loveliness of perfect deeds ?
This new and more glorious Incarnation, this new
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 217
and more glorious Kevelation, may be denied to the
unrighteous who are receiving the due reward of their
sinful deeds ; for of them it is written that, at least
for a time, they shall be " destroyed from the presence
of Christ and the glory of his power : " and that may
mean that the glorious revelation vouchsafed to the
redeemed will be denied to them, and denied simply
because as yet they are unable to receive it. But it
does not follow that all manifestations of the redeem-
ing mercy of God will be refused them. Christ in the
severity of his anger against sin, Christ in the tender-
ness of his grace to sinners, may be visible to those
who would only be dazzled and blinded by Christ in
the full glory of his power. And if God has once
shewn that He will make any sacrifice for the salva-
tion of the guilty, must not that be always true of
Him ? must He not continue to manifest his blended
severity and mercy in the ages to come ? Has He
not, in that long and splendid catena of passages
which I recited to you in my last Lecture, declared it
to be his intention to recover the whole human race
to righteousness and peace, to prove Himself "the
Saviour of all men ? " If He is to be the Saviour of
all men, must He not redeem even most of the men
who have passed across the face of the earth after they
have left the earth ? And have we not at least one
instance recorded in which Christ entered into the
2i 8 SALVATOR MUNDL
vast Hadean kiDgdom and preached his Gospel to
them that were lost ? Did He not, when " He
descended into Hades," preach it with such power that
even the vilest sinners of the ancient world, every
imagination of whose hearts had been only evil con-
tinually, were constrained to listen and respond, to
rise and follow Him over the " great gulf," on the
bridge of his cross, into the fair gardens and spacious
halls of Paradise ? Does not the Apostle Peter
expressly affirm, "for this cause was the gospel
preached also to them that were dead . . . that they
might live according to God in the spirit," even while
their fellows on earth still accounted them to be dead
in trespasses and sins ? And if the Gospel has been
preached in Hades once, and so preached as that the
worst of men were saved by it, why may it not be
preached there again and again, and preached with
results still larger and happier ?
When it is preached again, it may be that Christ
will not be the preacher, or not the only preacher.
For when we considered the true doctrine of Election
we concluded that as one man had always been chosen
for the good of other men, one family for the good of
all families, one nation for the good of all nations, so
also it might be nay, must be in the ages to come.
If, then, we are of those who have been chosen and
redeemed, it may be that we shall be the happy
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 219
messengers of God's love and mercy to those who are
still being purged from their sins, thus entering at
once into the eternal passion of God and into the
redeeming work of Christ ; being afflicted, like the
Father, in all the sins and afflictions of the unrighteous,
and, like Christ, descending into the very Pit if by any
means we may save some. It may be through our
ministry that the purpose of God will be accomplished,
that all Israel will be saved and the fulness of
the Gentiles brought in. God grant that it may be so !
for that surely would be an infinitely diviner service
and reward than to sit, clothed in white raiment,
striking harps of gold.
The Scriptures, then, have much to teach us of the
future, though not much of the final, estate of men.
And what they teach, in so far at least as we have
been able to gather it up, comes to this. No man is
wholly good, no man wholly bad. Still some men
may fairly be called good on the whole, although
much sin and imperfection still cleaves to them ; and
others may fairly be called bad on the whole, although
there is still much in them that is good, and still
more which is capable of becoming good. When we
die, we shall all receive the due recompense of our
deeds, of all our deeds, whether they have been good
1
220 SALVATOR MUNDL
or whether they have been bad. If, by the grace of
God, we have been good on the whole, we may hope
to rise into a large and happy spiritual kingdom in
which all that is pure and noble and kind in us will
develop into new vigour and clothe itself with new
beauty ; in which also we shall find the very discipline
we need in order that we may be wholly purged from
sin and imperfection ; in which we may undo much
that we have done wrongly, do again and with perfect
grace that which we have done imperfectly, become
what we have wished and aimed to be, achieve what
we have longed to achieve, attain the wisdom, the gifts
and powers and graces to which we have aspired : in
which, above all, we may be engaged in errands of
usefulness and compassion by which the purpose of
the Divine love and grace will be fully accomplished.
If we have been bad on the whole, we may hope
and we ought to hope for it to pass into a painful
discipline so keen and searching that we shall become
conscious of our sins and feel that we are only receiv-
ing the due reward of them ; but, since there has been
some good in us, and this good is capable of being
drawn out and disentangled from the evil which
clouded and marred it, we may also hope, by the very
discipline and torment of our spirits, to be led to re-
pentance, and, through repentance, unto life : we may
hope that the disclosures of the spiritual world will
WHAT WE SHALL BE. 221
take a spiritual effect upon us, gradually raising and
renewing us till we too are prepared to enter the
Paradise of God and behold the presence of the Lord
and the glory of his power : we may hope that our
friends who have already been redeemed will pity us
and minister to us, bringing us not simply a cup of
cold water to cool our tongue, but words of instruction
and life. And as for the great mass of our fellowmen,
we may hope and believe that those who have had no
chance of salvation here will have one there ; that
those who have had a poor chance will get a better
one : that those who have had a good chance and lost
i will get a new but a severer chance, and even as
they suffer the inevitable results of their folly and sin
will feel
the hands
That reach through darkness, moulding men.
This, on the whole, I take to be the teaching of
Scripture concerning the lot of men in the age to
come, a teaching which enables us to see " beneath
the abyss of hell a bottomless abyss of love." And if
it clash with some dogmas that we have held and
some interpretations which are familiar to us, it never-
theless accords, not with " the mind of Christ " only,
but also with the dictates of Reason and Conscience,
the voices of God within the soul. It presents no
such sudden break in our life as, in the teeth of all
1
222 SALVA TOR MUNDL
probability, we have been wont to conceive ; no heaven
for which we feel that even the best of us must be
unfit, no hell which is a monstrous offence to our sense
of justice. It promises to every man the mercy of
justice, of a due reward for all he has been and done ;
and, while it impresses on us the utter hatefulness and
misery of sin, it holds out to every one of us the
prospect of being redeemed from all sin and unclean-
ness by that just God who is also a Saviour. Nor does
it less accord with the demands of Science than with
the dictates of Reason and the Moral Sense ; for it
carries on the evolution of the human race through
all the ages to come. And, therefore, let others
think as they will, and cherish what trust they will :
" but " as for us, with the Apostle of the Gentiles, our
own Apostle, " we trust in the living God who is the
Saviour of all men."
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