The Problem of Immortality (Part 3 of 6)

CHAPTER VIII .

I. The apostolic Fathers : Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, Clement of Rome,

Ignatius, The Pastor of Hermas, Polycarp-II . Recent discovery of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles—III . The apologist Fathers : Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus, Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius-IV. The purpose of the incarnation according to the great Athanasius, surnamed the Father of orthodoxy-V. Latest echoes of the primitive teaching : Lactantius, Nemesius, Theophylact, Sophronius,

Nicholas of Methone.

IN our introductory chapter we stated that the biblical doctrine of Conditional Immortality was that of the earliest

Fathers of the Church .

The time has now arrived for producing evidence in support of that statement.

The apostolic Fathers never speak of a native immortality ; an immortal life is in their view the exclusive privilege of the

1 At the beginning of this chapter we must express our regret that circumstances have prevented us from extending our researches, and especially from discussing the value of certain passages that seem to be contradictory. Happy the man who can put each Father into agreement with himself ! Although we have verified most of the quotations in the original texts, the value of one or other of these testimonies may be disputed ; that, however, is of little consequence, if only it be recognized that the fundamental thesis of the chapter is sufficiently established. That appears to us certain. Nevertheless, we desire to see our examination completed, the more so because the mine is rich and deserves to be more fully explored than it has been, particularly in French-speaking countries. Meanwhile, we refer our readers to the excellent work of Rev. Edward White, already more than once mentioned, in which chap. xxvi. contains, in addition to numerous extracts not here reproduced, indications of special works on this important subject. See in

Supplement No. XV. a synchronical table of the Church Fathers, and their opinions as to the future life.

redeemed.

The punishment of the rejected consists in a gradual destruction of their being, which finally becomes total.

This punishment is called eternal, as being definitive and irremediable ; we have already shown in the Scripture this use of an adjective, qualifying not the momentary action but the permanent results of the action.¹ Neither do the apostolic Fathers speak of a universal salvation ; they teach that the unquenchable fire will consume its victims ; in a word, they all with one accord appear to be Conditionalists .

Before quoting the apostolic Fathers, properly so called, we will mention the epistle ascribed to Barnabas . Although apocryphal, this writing must not be passed over in silence, for it has come down, at least in part, from the highest antiquity. The Chevalier Bunsen placed its origin in the last years of the first century ; it was read aloud in the public worship of the primitive Church, and Tischendorf found it forming part of the Sinaitic manuscript. In it we read :

The way of darkness is tortuous, it leads to death eternal with torment ; those who walk in it go towards that which destroys the soul.

He who chooses evil will be destroyed with his works the fate of the wicked will be that of the Israelites who were bitten by the serpents in the wilderness.

They will be finally destroyed in the approaching day of judgement, when the world and the evil one will be exterminated.

The work that perishes comes to an end ; to perish with his works is to exist no more.

Satan is the evil one who is to perish with the world.4 Chapter VI . contains an allegory, wherein it is said :

The child is nourished with milk and honey ; so too we, being nourished and sustained by faith in the promises and by the divine word, shall live and reign.

1 Chap. VII ., sect. ii. , p. 194.

2 Meta timōrias. An infliction of suffering precedes death or the end of being.

3 xx., sq.; cf. xii. It is in the Epistle of Barnabas that the expression eternal death is first found as a synonym of the second and definitive death .

* Sunapoleitai to Ponēro.

5 Literally, made alive, zoōpoioumenoi. As in the writings of the New Testament, the notion of the sustentation of life takes precedence of the notion of mystic enjoyment.

The first epistle of Clement of Rome is held to be authentic ;

Bunsen attributes great importance to it from the standpoint of history as well as of doctrine. It also was read publicly in the Churches.

This epistle teaches that " life in immortality is a gift " which God grants to believers only. Clement does not confound death with immorality ; death is a result of immorality.

The death of such as Cain, Pharaoh, and the bad men of the Old Testament is identified with the death reserved for all the impenitent.¹ The second epistle speaks of a struggle to obtain immortality," which implies that immortality is not inherent in our nature.2

The third to be quoted is Ignatius who died a martyr at Antioch about the year 115 of our era . He writes :

Be vigilant, as God's athlete; the reward is incorruption and life eternal³.

That for which I seek is the bread of heaven, the bread of life, the flesh of Jesus Christ, and the divine drink, love incorruptible and perpetual life.4

Elsewhere he calls the Lord's Supper " the medicine of immortality, an antidote against death, the pledge of a per- If

How could we live without Christ ? petual life.

God should reward us according to our works we should no longer exist . "6

The book of the Pastor was composed by Hermas about the year 140. Like the Epistle of Barnabas it forms part of the

Codex Sinaiticus ; Bunsen compares it to Dante's Divine

Comedy and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. According to Hermas, men are like trees in winter ; without their leaves, all trees, whether dead or alive, are very much alike, and so it is often difficult to distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous ; but, says the Pastor :

The righteous are trees which will revive in the spring-time of the life eternal. Those men, on the contrary, who are absorbed in worldly preoccupations will remain withered and dead in the age to come ; they

1 First Letter to the Corinthians, iii., ix., xxxv. ; cf. xvi., sq. , xlviii.

3 Letter to Polycarp, ii. * Letter to the Romans, vii. * Pharmacon athanasias, antidotos tou mē apothanein. Letter to the

2 Second Letter to the Corinthians, vii.

Ephes., xx.

6 Ouk eti esmen.

Letter to the Magnes., ix., sq.

will be burnt up like dry wood

• their death will be final.

Those who are dominated by evil desires will perish for ever, for lusts and kill the wicked.¹ are deadly they consume

Similar views are expressed in the epistle addressed by Polycarp to the Philippians. This Father, who had known the apostle John , died a martyr at the age of eighty-six years, soon after the middle of the second century. He ends the series of apostolic Fathers. He wrote :

If we are pleasing to God in this world we shall obtain the future world, for God will raise us up if we do his will.2

This notion of conditional resurrection brings us again to the Judeo- Christian point of view, which left in the shade the eventual and provisional resurrection of the lost.³

Here may be placed the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the text of which had for centuries been completely lost. Discovered by the learned Bryennios, Patriarch of Nicomedia, it was published in 1883. What date should be assigned to this document ? Bryennios thinks it was written about the year 150. Dr. Lightfoot, Professors Funk, Massebieau, and a certain number of German critics, attribute it to the end of the first century.

In any case it is difficult to exaggerate its importance.4

The series of precepts in the Didache begins with a comparison ot the two ways, that of life and that of death. The unity of the book is thereby distinctly indicated, since the last chapter shows us the ending of these two ways : for the wicked it will be death, that is to say, annihilation ; for the good it will be life.

There are two ways, that which leads to life, to the eternal kingdom with the Lord, and that which leads to death, to the annihilation of the thanatoi ... dapanatai deinōs. Simili-

1 Apothanountai eis telos tudes, iii., sq.; Mandates, xii., § 1, sq.

2 Letter to the Philippians, ii. ; cf. v.

3 Cf. Luke xx. 35 : " They that are accounted worthy to attain to that world and to the resurrection from the dead."

4 The quotations that follow are taken from the interesting work entitled La Didachē ; or, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. By Paul Sabatier ; Paris, Fischbacher, 1885, passim.

wicked.¹ Believers who desire to follow the first of these must practise the love of God and of the neighbour, join the Christian societies in baptism and the Lord's supper, and in prayer and meditation await the We feel ourselves in a great day when the Messiah will return. current strongly Israelite and Palestinian, without any mixture of Alexandrian or Philonian philosophy. There is here nothing which either nearly or remotely reminds us of the immortality of the soul. There are two ideas at the foundation of this eschatology, or rather one idea under two forms : the survival of a certain number of believers, and the resurrection of the rest.

The eternal life is not conceived of here any more than in the synoptic Gospels apart from the body. The author has maintained purely Jewish ideas ; he ignores or neglects those of the Greeks .

After the appearance of the great Seducer, the whole world is to pass through a trial by fire ; the wicked are annihilated, the righteous are saved. These are the endings of the two ways : some live, the others die, or rather they are annihilated. This idea comes out everywhere in the Jewish books of the first century ; it is found even in a prayer that was said by the scholar on leaving the place of study.2

Participation in the eucharistic supper confers immortality in symbol :

Thou, O Lord almighty, hast " We thank thee, O holy Father ! created all things for thine own name, thou hast given food and drink to men for their enjoyment and that they may render thanks to thee ; and to us thou hast freely given spiritual food and drink and life eternal by thy Servant."

To sum up, the eschatology of the Didachē not only belongs to a Palestinian current of thought ; but by its numerous points of resemblance with the Epistles to the Thessalonians, it seems to depend upon very ancient tradition, very nearly reproducing the ideas of Jesus on the subject.3

1 " Usually the noun life in the New Testament is taken in a too spiritual sense.

For the most part, this word designates not life in the Philonian sense, but life with the Messiah after his return. See Bruder, Concord., N.T. Graca, p. 386.'

2 " I thank thee, O Lord my God, for having associated me with those who frequent this place of study, instead of leaving me among those who haunt the shops. I rise like them, but it is for the study of the Law, not for worthless affairs ; I take pains, but I shall be rewarded for them, while those will not ; we all alike are running, but my goal is the future life, while they will only arrive at the pit of destruction." Talmud of Babylon, Berachoth, 286, Schwab's edition, p. 337. 3 Paul Sabatier, op. cit., pp. 55, 150.

A passing reference may here be made to a document which has also come down from a high antiquity, the anonymous romance of Paul and Thecla .

The author attributes to his heroine this declaration : “ The Son of God is the ground of immortal life, for to the storm-tossed he is a refuge, to the troubled repose, the shelter of them that had despaired ; and in a word, whoso believeth not on him truly shall not live, but shall die outright. "

Thecla is addressing the surrounding crowd of heathens. The heathens were absolutely ignorant of the mystic meaning that the Churches have given to the words live and die ; for them these verbs could only bear the meaning of the perpetuation or cessation of existence. This saying is, no doubt, taken from a legendary story ; but since, according to a quotation of Tertullian, the document dates from the first half of the second century, it may very well serve to fix the meaning then given to the expressions in question.

With Justin Martyr begins the series of apologist Fathers ; his death took place in the year 164.

In his dialogue with the

Jew Trypho one of the interlocutors is an aged Christian, who is understood to represent the true biblical doctrine. Having repudiated the Platonic doctrine of the eternal pre- existence of souls, the old man is made to say :

The world was created, and souls also. There was a time when they were not ; they are therefore not naturally immortal. I do not, however, say that all souls die, for that would be too much to the advantage of the wicked. I say that the souls of the righteous remain in a better place, The but the evil in a worse, awaiting the time of judgement. righteous ... shall not die any more, but the wicked shall be punished so long as it shall please God that they exist and be punished.3

Justin then asks the old man whether he thinks with Plato

1 Praxeis Paulou kai Theklēs. Edition of Professor Lipsius, 1891, § 37 . We owe this quotation to the kindness of Professor E. Combe, of the

Lausanne University. [See also Dr. Wm. Smith's Dictionary of Christian

Biography, art. Thecla. ]

2 Alla men oude apothneskein phēmipasas tas psuchas ego.

3 Kai einai, kai kolazesthai. Dial. cum Tryph., § v. Cf. Irenæus, Adv.

Hæres., lib. ii., cap. xxxiv., § 3 : " Quoadusque ea Deus et esse et perseverare voluerit."

that the world and the souls that form part of it will be made imperishable by the divine will ; the old man replies that he does not hold that view, and says :

Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake of life when God does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God's ; but as a man does not live always, and the soul is not for ever conjoined with the body, since whenever this harmony must be broken up the soul leaves the body, and the man exists no longer, even so whenever the soul must cease to exist the spirit of life is removed from it and there is no more soul.¹ ...

Although certain contradictions make Justin appear to be in conflict with himself, he introduces the same principles in his

Apologies, thus :

God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and men shall cease to exist, 2 because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.3

1 Dial. cum Tryph., § vi. Kai ouk estin hē psuckē eti. [The translation of this and the following quotations from Justin is that of T. and T. Clark's series : The Ante- Nicene Chr. Libr. , 1867.] The text adds : " It returns to its starting-point," nonentity, or the original substance. Olshausen says : " Without being nonentity, this starting-point is equivalent to non-existence." Quod idem est atque ouk einai (Opuscula, p. 180). The distinction seems very fine drawn. Ullmann says that the soul then ceases to be conscient and personal ( Studien und Kritiken, p 430, 1828). In all this, do we not see a manifest tinge of Platonism ? In Platonism, which these Fathers had sucked with their mothers' milk, nothing comes out of absolute nonentity, and, therefore, nothing can return thither. But even from that point of view, what is a soul that is deprived of spirit, without liberty, without reason, without self-consciousness, in a word, without personality ? A human soul without spirit is like a body without a head ; but universal analogy teaches us that a decapitated being cannot continue to live.

The last hesitation of Nitzsch (an inconceivable existence in nonentity), of Delitzsch, and of Olshausen himself, may they not be also the result of some vestige of dualism ? And may it not be the case with M. Geo. Godet too ? He believes that the power of the wicked will one day be " paralyzed in the outer darkness ” (Chrét. évang., 1881 , p. 60). If he grants to us a total and finalparalysis ofall the faculties of the wicked, we will willingly abandon to him all that remains, if there remains anything. It is open to him to come to an understanding with us on that basis (Cf. Crit. relig., p. 17 ; April, 1882).

If the paralysis is not absolute, there remains a hostile power, and therefore dualism. See, too, Supplement No. III ., § vi. Putting aside the circumlocutions and the reserves of the Greek Fathers, Arnobius, as we shall presently see, speaks of a soul that perishes without leaving behind it " any residuum."

2 Mēketi ōsi.

* Second Apol., vii.

Dr. Donaldson's rendering.

We have learned that those only are deified¹ who have lived near to But if the soldiers enrolled by you,

God in holiness and virtue.2 and who have taken the military oath, prefer their allegiance to their own life, it were verily ridiculous if we who earnestly long for incorruption should not endure all things in order to obtain what we desire from him who is able to grant it.³

But we, because we refuse to sacrifice to those to whom we were of old accustomed to sacrifice, undergo extreme penalties and rejoice in death, believing that God will raise us up by his Christ, and will make us incorruptible, undisturbed, and immortal.4

The Epistle to Diognetus has been attributed to Justin. In it there is mention of a punishment " which must continue until the end. "5 There is, therefore, to be an end of that punishment. It is also therein stated that " God has given his only Son, who is righteous, immortal, and of an imperishable nature for men who are unrighteous, mortal, and of a perishable nature. " ' 6

One of Justin's disciples was Tatian, the Assyrian. According to this author it is the spirit which preserves the soul.

The soul is not in itself immortal, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die .

the ignorant soul is darkness. On this account, if it continues solitary, it tends downwards towards matter, and dies with the flesh ; but if it enters into union with the divine spirit, it is no longer helpless, but ascends to the regions whither the spirit guides it ; for the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the soul is from beneath.7

1 Apathanatizesthai. According to its etymology, the primary meaning of this word is to immortalize. Its use in the sense of apotheosis shows that among the Greeks deification and immortalization were synonymous terms, immortality being the prerogative of the gods. The evident inference is that man, not being a god, without this process has not immortality.

3 First Apol., xxxix. 2 First Apol. , xxi.

4 Aphthartous kai apatheis kai athanatous. Trypho., xlvi. Cf. First

Apol. , xlii., lii.

The Apologies are addressed to the Roman emperor and senate. For these, immortality could not be anything else than the perpetuation of a glorious existence. Did not Marcus Aurelius on the approach of death exclaim ironically : " It seems to me that my immortality is already beginning."

5 Mechri telous, x.; cf. Dan. vii. 26 : The work of destruction and its final result. It is in this epistle that is found the first mention of an " immortal soul ."

6 Idem. , ix.

7 Ouk estin athanatos hē psuchē kathheautēn, thnētē de. Alla dunatai hë

Theophilus, sixth bishop of Antioch, who like Justin was a convert from paganism, addressed to one of his friends a treatise which was intended to bring him over to Christianity. He thus falls into the ranks of the apologist Fathers. He puts this question :

Was man created mortal ?

then ?

Not so.

Immortal ?

Neither so .

What

Man was made neither mortal nor immortal, for if the Creator had made him at once immortal, he would have made him a god ; if he had made him mortal, God would appear to us as the cause of his death.

Therefore neither immortal nor yet mortal did he make man ; but, as we have said above, capable of either destiny,¹ in order that he might incline to the things of immortality, and keeping God's commandments obtain immortality as his reward, and so become divine ;2 but if he should turn aside to the things of death, disobeying God, he would become the cause of his own death.

For God made man free and master of his own fate. But that which he through his negligence and disobedience did not acquire, God in his philanthropy and mercy now gives to him when men become obedient. For in the same manner as man by his disobedience brought death upon himself, so if he fulfils the will of God any man who desires it can acquire the life eternal. In fact, God has given us a law and holy precepts whereby any man who does them will be saved, and, attaining the resurrection, will inherit incorruptibility.5

The testimony of Irenæus has an exceptional value. A disciple of Polycarp, who, as we have seen, had known the apostle John, Irenæus was as it were the spiritual grandson of the beloved disciple. He was bishop at Lyons, where he died a martyr about the year 197. His teaching on the subject before us is most explicit.

He says :

God created the heavens above us, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all their grandeur ; and so it is with souls and spirits. All autē kai mē apothneskein.

Thnēskei men gar kai luetai meta tou sōmatos mē ginōskousa tën aletheian. Contra Græcos, xiii. Cf. vii., xv.

1 Dektikos amphoterōn, amphidektos, mesos. Irenæus, Arnobius, Lactantius, and Nemesius come again to this intermediate position. 2 Literally, god, genētai theos.

3 Autexousion.

4 This negative is a conjectural emendation of the text, reading ouch for oun, thus giving to a phrase that has puzzled the interpreters a clear and consistent meaning, which brings it into complete harmony with the context. 5 Ad Autolycum. Lib. ii., cap. xxvii.; cf. xxiv.

creatures have had a beginning, and their duration depends upon the divinewill.

The prophetic spirit speaks of God as the Father of all, who grants perpetuity of existence to those who are saved. For life is not from ourselves, nor from our nature, but it is bestowed according to the grace of God. He who preserves this gift of life and returns thanks to him who bestows it shall receive " length of days " for ever and ever; but he who rejects it and proves unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will not know him who bestows it, deprives himself of the gift of duration to all eternity. The Lord spoke of those who are thus unthankful when he said : " If ye have not been faithful in that which is least, who will commit much unto you ?" He thus teaches us that those who are not thankful to him for this short transitory life deserve the fate that awaits them, and will justly be deprived of perpetual life.

Souls receive their life and their perpetual duration as a gift from God, coming out of nonentity and continuing to exist because he wills that they should be and subsist. The substance of life comes from communion with God, and to be in communion with God is to know him and to enjoy his goodness. Men therefore will see God that they may live ; they will be made immortal by that vision and by that intimate relation with God.

It was for this end that the Word of God became man.

This took place that man should not suppose that to himself belongs naturally the incorruptibility which is an attribute of God alone, and that he should not boast in his vainglory as though he were in his nature like Unbelievers will not inherit incorruptibility. The to God.

• believer himself only possesses it as yet by his faith in the divine promise; it will actually begin only after the resurrection.¹

Here, as elsewhere in the writings of the earliest Fathers, incorruptibility means not a mystic purity, but the imperishability of the resuscitated body. The chastisement of the wicked will be eternal, because God's benefits are eternal.

To be deprived of the benefit of existence is a punishment ; to be for ever deprived of it is in fact to suffer an eternal punishment.2

Two passages have been urged against us in which Irenæus

1 Adv. Hares. Lib. ii., c. xxxiv. ; cf. lib. iii., cc. xviii.-xx., and lib. i. , c. vii., § 1. 2 Irenæus seems to exhaust the vocabulary at his disposal in order to deny the immortality of the unsaved. The terms that he uses have a definitely ontological meaning : athanasia, aphtharsia, diamonē, paramonē, paramenein .

speaks of immortal souls ; but these contemplate a merely relative immortality.¹

Here we may quote Saint Perpetua, whose martyrdom took place at Carthage about the year 205. When the proconsul said to her, " Perpetua, wilt thou sacrifice to the gods of the empire ? " she replied : " I am a Christian ; I am called Perpetua, and am willing to die that I may have a perpetual life. " 2 The true faith of the primitive Church was thus declared by the ingenuous lips of this virgin martyr. So, too, by a striking contrast, the enemies of the Church had a correct notion of the

Christian's hope. Lucian, the great mocker, the second century Voltaire, derided them by saying, " These wretches have got it into their heads that they will be immortal ! " And the heathens of Lyons, after having tortured the Christians, burnt them and cast their ashes into the Rhone, with the intention of preventing the martyrs' resurrection .

Clement of Alexandria died about the year 220. Having been a disciple of the celebrated Pantenus, he succeeded him as chief of the Christian school of philosophy founded at Alexandria.

He says :

Let us observe God's commandments and follow his counsels ; they are the short and direct way that leads to immortality.4

Even by the admission of our opponents the term that he uses can only designate an endless duration. Again he says :

When baptized we become enlightened ; enlightened we become sons ; as sons we become perfect and immortal.5

Here the writer establishes a very clear distinction between immortality and the virtues of which it is the crown and the reward .

Arnobius, the earlier one of that name, last of the apologist Fathers, lived at the beginning of the fourth century. His

1 " Sed incorruptibiles animæ quantum ad comparationem mortalium corporum." Lib. v. 7.

2 A similar allusion to her name occurs in her farewell to her father : " If thou put no obstacle in the way, thou shalt one day have thy daughter in perpetuity."

3 E. Doumergue, in the Christianisme au XIXme siècle, 11 April, 1884. + Aidiotēta. The Pedagogue, i. 3.

› Apathanatizometha. Ibid., § 6.

talents had made him famous.

He was well known for his prejudices against Christianity, which he relentlessly attacked.

Still, he could not contemplate without admiration the heroic courage of the martyrs.

A new Saul of Tarsus, he could not always kick against this goad, and at last became a Christian ; but, like the apostle Paul, he was distrusted by those whom he had so long opposed. In order to dissipate their doubts , he published an appeal to the heathens . It was at the time of the persecution under the emperor Diocletian ; and after this courageous act the doors of the Church were opened to him. He is the most decided of all the Fathers in his opposition to Platonism . It is surprising, indeed, that the Church should have preserved his work, which is so contrary to the opinions that subsequently prevailed. This is how he apostrophizes the disciples of Plato :

What arrogance it is on your part to claim God as your Father and to pretend that you are immortal as he is ! Inquire, search, examine what you are, what your fathers were, and how you have made your entrance into life. Will you consent to recognize that we are creatures either quite like the rest or separated from them by no great difference.

Your interests are in jeopardy, it is a question of the preservation of your souls ; and unless you apply yourselves to know the supreme God a terrible death awaits you : not, indeed, a prompt and sudden abolition, but a long and grievous death-agony. None but the Almighty can preserve souls, give them length of days, and a spirit that shall never die, for God alone is immortal. As for souls, they are of an intermediate quality, even as Christ has taught us.

They may, on the one hand, perish through not having known God, and on the other hand be delivered from death if they give heed to his threatenings and profit by his offered favours.

Let it be understood that in man's true death there is nothing left behind.¹ The death that is seen is only the separation of soul from body, not absolute destruction. But the true death is when souls that know not God shall be given over to be consumed in protracted torment.

Let us, then, avoid the vain hope of this new category of individuals who in their own insolent presumption assure us that souls are naturally immortal, of divine rank, offspring of God, inspired by him, exempt from the defilement of matter.

In fact, souls are born at the very gates of the empire of death ; but as the result of the divine

1 Hæc nihil residuumfaciens.

generosity they are allowed to prolong their existence on condition that they earnestly seek to know God. That knowledge is for them like salt, which, permeating their substance, protects them from corruption, or like the cement which serves to connect the stones of a building.

By putting off their insolence and cultivating sentiments of greater humility, your souls will prepare themselves for a new destiny. But God does not constrain anyone. The maintenance of our existence is by no means a necessity for him. He will not enrich himself by making us like gods ; he will not impoverish himself by leaving us to fall back into nothingness.¹

It is easy to understand that detrimental to the reputation of trine was taught by one so little called the Father of orthodoxy, a doctrine so definite was Arnobius, yet the same docsuspected that he has been none other than the great

Athanasius, who was the leading spirit in the Council of Nicæa.

Such at least was his view when he composed his treatise on the Incarnation of the Word of God, which may be considered the most ancient treatise of Church dogmatics.

M. Jundt, writing in the Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, calls this work a veritable philosophy of religion.

Athanasius writes :

God is good, or rather is himself the fount of goodness. made all things out of nothing through his own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. And among these, pitying the race of men above all things on earth, and seeing that from the condition of its own nature it could not continue permanently, he graced them with something yet more. He brought them into his own paradise and gave them a law, to the end that if they preserved the grace given, and remained good, they might have the life in paradise without sorrow, or pain, or anxiety, in addition to the promise of incorruption in heaven ; but that, if they transgressed and turned aside and became evil, they might know that they would undergo the corruption in death which was natural to them, and no longer live in paradise, but thenceforth dying outside it, abide in death and in corruption..

The transgression of the commandment was making them return to their natural state ; so that, having come into being out of non-

1 Treatise against the Gentiles, bk. ii., chap. xiv.

xvi., passim.

2 Its date is understood to be the year 319. Athanasius would then be in his twenty-third year.

existence, they also naturally suffer corruption back again into nonexistence in course of time. For if, having once no existence,¹ they were called into being by the presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it was a natural consequence that, when men were destitute of the knowledge of God and were turned back again to non-existence (for evil is not being, and good is being), they should, inasmuch as they were called into being from God who is, be for ever left destitute even of being2 -that is, that they should be destroyed and remain in death and corruption.3

Athanasius then proceeds to expound the purpose of the incarnation, namely : to save man from relapsing into nothingness, and to endow him with immortality in the renewed image of God . Through the effects of the transgression man is born to perish ; but by means of the incarnation he can by faith become united to the imperishable nature of the Word. The Son of God has appeared in order to communicate immortal life to men.4

This doctrine was, as it were, drowned in the rising tide ofthe

Platonic theory which was made to triumph in the Church by the false Clementines, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Jerome, and especially Augustine. Nevertheless, the primitive teaching was maintained here and there .

1 Phusin echontes to më einai. 2 Kenothēnai kai tou einai aei.

3 [The foregoing paragraphs are quoted from the translation published by the Religious Tract Society in the Christian Classics Series, pp. 52, 53, 54, 55.] 4 De incarnatione Verbi Dei, iii., iv., sq., etc. " Notwithstanding this sound basis of faith, it must not, however, be supposed that Athanasius attributed immortality to the saved alone, for, like Dr. Watts and some other modern writers, he inconsistently taught, at least in the case of rejectors of Christ, ' that God would immortalize the wicked for an " eternal death " of conscious suffering.' The seemingly self-contradictory doctrine of Athanasius is well discussed and accounted for in the work above referred to, The Holy Spirit the Author of Immortality, 1708. "-Edward White, op. cit., p. 425.

The immortalization of man by Jesus Christ remained, however, the great force in the struggle against Arianism. Athanasius argues : " If the Son of

God has had a beginning, he may also have an end ; in that case, our life depending upon his, the power by which the Saviour delivers us from eternal death would not be complete."

Lactantius, surnamed the Christian Cicero, a disciple of Arnobius, was, like his master, a partizan of Conditional

Immortality.¹

Man, says he, stands upright with eyes raised to heaven because immortality is offered to him. Yet he does not possess it otherwise than as a gift of God, for there would be no difference between the just and the unjust if every man born into the world should become immortal. Immortality is, then, the wages and reward of virtue ; it is not inherent in our nature.2

According to Nemesius, who lived in the fifth century :

Man was originally neither mortal nor immortal, but in an intermediate condition. He was either to share the fate of his body, if he gave way to bodily passions, or to become worthy of immortality by following the noblest aspirations of his nature.3

Canon Swainson, in his learned history of the Apostles' and

Nicene Creeds, shows by a curious example that the belief in

Conditional Immortality lingered in the Churches sporadically for several centuries after the time of Athanasius. At the third

Council of Constantinople, A.D. 680, under the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, at the eleventh session, a synodical letter of twenty-one pages in length from Sophronius, who had been Patriarch of Jerusalem in the early part of the century, was read, in which, after reciting his faith in the Trinity, he proceeds to speak of the Incarnation, making special mention of the errors of Nestorius and Apollinaris ; and on a later page declares the true faith to be that " men's souls have not a natural immortality, it is by the gift of God that they receive the grant of immortality and incorruptibility. "

Theophylact, Archbishop of Acris, Metropolitan of Bulgaria, who died about 1107, was one of the best masters of exegesis of the Byzantine school. He seems to have had much the same tendency as Theophilus of Antioch. He has been

1 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, § 106. 2 Inst. div., lib. vii., cap. 5 ; cf. Epitome, cap. 35. Non sequela natura sed merces premiumque virtutis. See Carl Beck., Christl. dogmengesch., p. 319.

3 De natura hominis, cap. i. 4 Page 250.

praised for penetration and correctness of expression.

He says :

The angels are not immortal by nature, but by the effect of grace. If they share in immortality it is not inherent in them.¹

There are souls that perish, wrote Nicholas of Methone.

Those souls that are reasonable, truly spiritual and divine, alone survive, attaining to perfection by the communication of God's grace and by the effort of virtue.

If any creatures are eternal, they are not so in themselves , nor by themselves, nor for themselves, but by the goodness of God, for all that has been created has had a beginning, and can only be preserved by the goodness of the Creator.2

The historian Neander called Nicholas of

Methone the greatest theologian of his time. The lines just quoted show to what an extent he could rise superior to popular opinion. It is astonishing that they could have been written in the twelfth century.

Darkness was at that time spread all over Europe , thick darkness, which was very soon to be illuminated by the sinister gleams of the torches of the Inquisition.

1 Commentary on 1 Tim. vi. 16.

2 Refut. , p. 207, sq.,; cf. p. 120. Hagenbach, op. cit., § 174.

3 The triumph of the Platonic heresy was universal. Popes and councils were eager to put their seals upon the tomb of an ancient truth. As we shall see, the Reformers did not break these age-lasting seals. A few vestiges of primitive teaching have, however, been preserved in the text of certain liturgies. For example, in the Roman Missal, the order for Christmas contains this prayer : “ Post communion. Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that as the Saviour of the world, born this day, is the author of divine generation to us, so he may also be himself the giver of immortality !" So, too, in the liturgy of the Anglican Church we find some characteristic phrases : " Perish everlastingly ;" " eternal death ;" " that in the last day ... we may rise to the life immortal." In this Church, Conditionalism has continued latent, so to speak, and by a decision that dates from the year 1864 the constituted authorities have formally declared that the doctrine of an eternal hell is not an official dogma. See the pamphlet entitled : Hear the Church of England, which is proved to have expelled from her articles the dogma of endless torments, by H. S. Warleigh, Rector of Ashchurch,

Tewkesbury ; London, Elliot Stock, 1872.

It may be added that the Roman Church admits a distinction between the punishment of privation and that of infliction (pæna damni, pæna sensûs).

The former would be eternal, consisting in the privation of the beatific vision of God ; the latter might be mitigated, or even come to an end. Is not this an indistinct echo of the biblical doctrine : suffering followed by the privation of sensation ?

The poem of the Redemption, by Charles Gounod, also contains an echo of Christ's teaching (p. 31 ) :

Il a fait de sa chair le pain de notre vie ! Par ce miracle de bonté,

Son amour a versé dans notre âme ravie Un levain d'immortalité.

Which may be rendered into English thus :

In his flesh he has made for our life the true bread.

By this wonderful bounty of God,

In our rapturous souls his love has now spread

Immortality's leaven abroad.

A hymn well known in French Protestant churches expresses the same thought :

Notre Jésus aujourd'hui nous présente Un pain céleste, une manne excellente ;

Qui le reçoit avec humilité

Peut s'assurer de l'immortalité.

Or in English :

Our Jesus offers us to-day

Celestial bread, a manna pure ; And whoso humbly takes it, may Of immortality be sure.

CHAPTER IX .

THE DEVIATION

CHURCHES , AND

THE DOCTRINE OF

I. The corruption of the traditional dogma explained by the infiltration of heathen dualism-II . The apostles had predicted corruption in the doctrine of the Churches and the intrusion of false philosophy- III . The doctrine of Athenagoras- IV. Three Africans, Tertullian, Augustine, and

Origen, secure the triumph of the Platonic doctrine-V. Feeble protests of Duns Scotus and Pomponatius --VI . Acknowledgements of the

Reformers Luther and Tyndale-VII. Serious deficiency in Protestant dogmatics-VIII . Summary of the dogma called orthodox- IX. Pernicious consequences of that dogma-X. Alleviations imagined by evangelical theologians-XI . Scepticism of believers in respect of eternal torments-XII . Unstable equilibrium of eschatological agnosticism- XIII . Shrinking from the necessity of a doctrinal reform, Evangelism is lapsing into Universalism.

How is the gold become dim ? how is the most pure gold changed ?

How is it that the firmament of evangelical doctrine has become darkened ? How is it that night has closed upon it ?

How is it that the Church as a whole could so deviate ?

All Protestants agree in admitting that during more than a thousand years the universal Church has deviated with respect to more than one important point. The fault of this deviation is attributed either entirely to the Popes or to Constantine the Great. Protestants are also very ready to imagine that the

Reformers made all needful reforms. Unhappily that is only an illusion .

The Church of the second century already cherished in its bosom the germ of many a Romish error, and Protestantism is even now half Roman Catholic. Count de Gasparin has said :

We forge Protestant Fathers .

The truth is that the Fathers are the beginning, and for that very reason the condemnation, of Roman Catholicism.

It is just because the lapse begins with the Fathers that it is necessary to go back farther than their time.¹

Professor Ernest Naville, a thinker of the highest reputation , who is well versed in the history of philosophy, has made a similar declaration, as follows :

In the formation of Church science there were introduced elements of ancient thought which were incompatible with the direct and true meaning of the Gospel. Dazzled by the genius of Plato and Aristotle, the Fathers and the schoolmen accepted from these illustrious Greeks not only the part of their works that is eternally true, but also certain principles the consequences of which contradict the teaching of the living and true God. The philosophy accepted by Christians, and illustrated in modern times by such men as Leibnitz, Fénelon, Malebranche, contains foreign currents which have come from Greece and India and tend to land the thoughts on the desolate shores of Pantheism. The idea of God, of the almighty Creator, does not even yet reign completely above the ruins of the metaphysical idols set up by the errors of the sages. A noble task has been reserved for our epoch. A great harvest of truth is demanding reapers. While gathering up with pious care all that is pure in the intellectual heritage of past centuries, we need to break away more than has yet been done from the false and unsatisfying doctrines of Greek tradition, and by a serious effort of thought to succeed in placing the intellect itself, in its own primitive nature, in presence of the Gospel. Then will it be recognized, as I am fully convinced, that the Gospel is the true principle of science, as it is the true principle of civilization, and that Christian philosophy is the meeting of reason, as God has made it, with truth, as God has given it.2

Let us examine the history of dogmas. Just as in the autopsy of a dead body the baneful traces of a poison may be followed, so we shall show in the official doctrine of the

Churches the deleterious influence of a diabolical falsehood .

This falsehood is still sounded forth from the pulpits of truth. It promises immortality to sinners, even though impenitent.

1 Le Christianisme aux trois premiers siècles, pp. 117-119.

2 Revue de théologie et de philosophie, p. 178, 1875 ; and Chrét, évang., p. 470, 1874. The italics are those of M. Astié's quotation. " The Fathers of the Church were only heathen philosophers christianized."-A. Schloesing,

Revue chrétienne, p. 269, 1882.

" Ye shall not surely die," that insolent declaration of the Old Serpent, has become the basis of ecclesiastical eschatology.

In order the better to deceive, the seducer has transformed himself into an angel of light ; he has presented himself in the brilliant costume of science. Intoxicated with a false philosophy, the Church Fathers have conferred upon a heathen a title with which none of the apostles even were ever honoured ; they have called him the divine Plato.¹

And yet the Church had been specially cautioned on this point. The apostolic Epistles contain various admonitions and predictions on the subject. Paul writes :

The mystery of lawlessness doth already work take heed lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit.

Where is the philosopher ? where is the disputer of this world ?

Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ?

Greeks seek after wisdom ; but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Greeks foolishness ; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God

The time will a wisdom not of this world.

come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside unto fables.

I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and purity that is toward

Christ.2 " The craftiness of the serpent ! " Is not the lying promise of unconditional immortality a part of his craftiness, and is it

1 The late Rev. Edwin Hatch, D.D., in his recent volume on The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, shows that in the third and fourth centuries, under the influence of Greek logic, more importance was attributed to the letter of the formulas than to the primitive doctrine, and that the old orthodoxy then became a new heresy. He further indicates the need for a return to the true Gospel of Christ. See, too, Alex. Westphal's essay entitled, Chair et esprit, wherein he traces the developement of the two notions of flesh and spirit in the Old and New Testaments. Toulouse, A. Chauvin and Son, 1885 , p. 150, sq.

22 Thess. ii. 7 ; Col. ii. 8 ; 1 Cor. i. 20, 22-24 ; ii. 632 Tim. iv. 3 ;

2 Cor. xi. 3. The apostle, who quotes three Greek poets, does not invoke the authority of a single philosopher.

not at the foundation of Plato's dualist doctrine, the danger of which we have just seen indicated by Professor Ernest Naville ?

The Church, believing herself to be wiser than her founders, placed herself blindfold under the direction of the Academic philosophers. Clement of Alexandria said, in his early time, that the apostle Paul did not include in his blame " all philosophies, but only those of the Epicureans and the Stoics. " Plato had taught the pre-existence and the imperishability of souls. His affirmation prevailed against the negation of the apostles and prophets. Christ, Paul, Peter, and John were made to appear Platonists .

The author of the false Clementines is the earliest in date of the ecclesiastical writers who deviate from the primitive faith. Yet he in some passages contradicts himself by asserting that the soul " will end by being consumed in the flames of hell ; for they cannot endure for ever who have been impious against the one God.

A supreme chastisement will put an end to their existence . " 1

Then came Athenagoras, a native of Athens and disciple of

Plato, who applied himself to the task of demonstrating the existence of a fundamental accord between the doctrine of

Jesus and that of the great Athenian philosopher.

He laid down as a principle that in creating man God's purpose was to make him live ; it is impossible that God's purpose should not be attained ; therefore man must live for ever, good or evil, happy or unhappy.

Athenagoras holds that the purpose of man's existence is that existence itself. The Gospel, on the contrary, subordinates the perpetuation of existence to holiness. According to the apostle Paul, the purpose of the creation is the manifestation and the glorification of the sons of God. But this glory is not attained apart from the exercise of freedom ; it

1 Homily iii. 6, sq., 59. ; xvi. 10 ; Antwerp edition, 1698.

2 Here again is found the Platonic principle adopted by Thomas Aquinas, and recalled if not adopted by Professor Ernest Naville (le Libre arbitre, p. 318), who, however, has just cautioned us against the errors of Greek 3 Rom. viii. 19. philosophy.

depends upon the triumph of morality. The elect lay hold on eternal life ; it is not imposed upon them. A compulsory immortality in wickedness, interminable sufferings which will never be of any advantage to the victims, these are blasphemous inventions .

We raise our feeble voice in denunciation of the truly diabolical craftiness which, by presenting to the Church the seductive fruit of heathen philosophy, with subtilty and without noise, has at last attained to this shocking triumph : to cause God to be calumniated by his own elect.

Greek philosophy at that time was making a vigorous effort to substitute its dogma of the immortality of the soul for the old Jewish ideas of resurrection and an earthly paradise. The two forms, however, were still existing together.¹

There were three natives of burning Africa, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine, who were most influential in completing the triumph of the Platonic doctrines .

Tertullian, who had an ardent spirit, and was an eloquent preacher but a most ignorant theologian, appealed to the revelations of a sister who had seen visions .

In order to explain how the flames of hell will burn the wicked without devouring them, he alludes to the philosophical notion of a special kind of fire, a secret or divine fire , which does not consume that which it burns, but while it burns it repairs. So the volcanoes continue ever burning, and a person struck by lightning is kept safe from any destroying flame. The mountains burn and last, and so will it be with the enemies of

God.2

Tertullian forgot that, according to the Scripture, God does not allow to subsist that which he consumes ; it needed a miracle to prevent the destruction of the burning bush, while it is written of the wicked that by the wrath of God they will be " burnt up like stubble."

The Bishop of Carthage lived in a time of persecution. Christians were seized and given over to wild beasts.

The law of the Gospel prohibited vengeance on the part of Christ's disciples, but it sometimes seemed to

Renan, Marc Aurèle, pp. 505 and 511 ; and L'Ecclésiaste, p. 29. 2 Apolog. xlviii., cf. Scorp. iii.

them that an eternity of sufferings in hell would not be too much punishment for those who thus tormented them in the present life.

You delight in spectacles, exclaimed Tertullian, and there is a spectacle reserved for us in the day ofjudgement. How shall I admire, how rejoice, when I behold in the depths of the abyss so many proud monarchs and magistrates who have persecuted the name of the Lord ; when I hear their cries in the midst of flames more terrible than they ever kindled to burn the Christians ! There will be seen tragedians whose sufferings will force them to utter the true accents of pain ; there will be dancers whom we shall see leaping in the midst of the flames, and fiery chariots going the round of the burning arena.¹

The spirit of vengeance impelled Tertullian to make out hell to be eternal. He goes so far as to speak of the immortality of the wicked : " An eternal life will be their portion," he says. Such expressions are, as we have seen , utterly foreign, and even contrary, to both the letter and the spirit of the Scriptures .

Tertullian's hell is a hideous field of carnage, a " perpetual slaughter ; "" mortal sufferings without the relief that is brought by death. Such a doctrine causes horror ; it is, however, logical, if the teachings of Plato are to be reconciled with those of Christ.

In that case the Bible asserts contradictions .

Ever slaughtered, the wicked are never put to death ; they perish without ever being destroyed, and death becomes one of the aspects of life !

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, upheld with all his might these strange aberrations.

For the dogma of Platonic immortality, he did that which later on was done by Calvin for the dogma of the predestination of the wicked ; he perpetuated for centuries the triumph of a monstrous error. Impelled by the logic of his system, he condemned to the eternal fire of hell every little infant dying unbaptized.4

2 Æterna occisio.

1 De spectac., xxx. 3 That the doctrine of native and inalienable immortality prevailed in the Church through the influence of Augustine after his controversy with Pelagius is expressly stated by Petavius . De théolog. dogmat., vol. iii., p. 172 ; Antwerp, 1700. + Multum autem fallit et fallitur qui eos in damnatione predicat non futuros. Opp., vii., p. 142 .

It was with Calvin, his disciple, as with Augustine ; their characters were affected by their sombre theology. Augustine devoted to eternal torments not only little infants, but also those wretched beings who in his time found reason to believe in the existence of the antipodes ! In his letter to Pope Boniface, like Jerome he sanctioned persecution against heretics.

These facts confirm what we have said in a former chapter about the always deleterious effects of sin, even when pardoned. If the son of the pious Monica had not wasted his youth in guilty pleasures, he would have had the time needed for the acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Neither did he nor his predecessor Tertullian take the trouble to learn Hebrew. He had not even a good knowledge of Greek. Not being able to study the Bible in the original texts, Augustine found himself deprived of the best antidote against a false philosophy. The Old Testament, that bulwark of monism, remained almost a closed book to him.¹ Carried away by

1 In theology monism is the doctrine which admits only one eternal principle. Dualism is, on the contrary, a " system of philosophy or religion which, going back to the origin of things, admits two contrary principles, both eternal, as, for example, good and evil, spirit and matter, the ideal and the real. This system is essentially heathen; it is found among the Persians under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and although Christianity recognizes only one God, the Creator, eternal, by whom all things subsist, a dualism has made its way more than once into the developement of

Christian dogma, not only in a coarse and material form, as with the

Gnostics and Manichæans, but in a more subtile form in the discussions between Augustine and Pelagius as to the origin of evil, in the lucubrations of the spiritualist and antinomian sects of the middle ages, and in the conception of the devil as it is admitted in the Catholic Church, and even by many Protestant theologians."-J. Aug. Bost, Dictionnaire d'histoire ecclésiastique, article Dualisme. In a private letter to the author, Pastor Mittendorff, of Geneva, writes as follows :

" You have said that the Platonic doctrine of the soul's immortality contains a basis of dualism. That is perfectly true. It is right that the upholders of the traditional dogma should be confronted with the ultimate philosophical consequences of their system. Starting from the principle of the soul's indestructibility, they admit, as a final result of the exercise of human freedom, the persistent revolt and the eternal suffering of a certain number of creatures, that is to say, the eternal duration of an evil principle, of a state of rebellion against the principle of good, against God ; that is, from the point of view of duration, the infinity of evil opposed to the infinity of good, or the introduction of dualism into the notion of the supreme Being .

every wind of doctrine, he was for seven years an adept of Manichæism , of a sect which actually rejected the Old Testament.

From that heresy Augustine retained the evil leaven of dualism . His dogmatics were completely impregnated with it . The Western Church, and more especially the Calvinists and Jansenists, have had to suffer grievously for the errors of the Bishop of Hippo : those errors still hinder the progress of the

Gospel.

The doctrine called orthodox provoked, as early as the third century, the equally excessive reaction of Origen. He, too , was a victim of the Platonic dualism . He imagined a hell that was nothing more than a purgatory ; from it men and devils come forth regenerated, and go to enjoy the felicity of the elect at the right hand of the heavenly Father. We shall devote our next chapter to the examination of this theory.

The Church maintained the endless tortures of Tertullian for heretics and those who were excommunicated ; to the general body of the faithful it gave the benefit of the prospect opened up by Origen. The idea of the indestructibility of the soul flattered human pride, and for the clergy purgatory became a source of honour and profit.

On this basis was founded the system of indulgences. The well-paid priest had the power of sending more quickly to paradise any deceased person whose salvation might be somewhat doubtful to those left behind . The proverb is well known : " The fire of purgatory boils the monk's saucepan. "

The abuse became so shocking that it provoked Luther's

Reformation .

" Now, this dualism ought to be repudiated in the name of philosophy and in the name of the Bible. There is only one Absolute, one Infinite, who is God, the principle of good, of whom the Scripture gives a sublime definition by calling him the ' I am.' This is exactly Paul's thought when he says that

' God only hath immortality,' and that a day is coming when ' God will be all in all.' That which results from this conception is the annihilation of the devil, of the principle of evil. If God is the source of life, all who separate themselves from God are condemned to death ; annihilation is the logical consequence of sin as viewed from either the metaphysical, the juridical, or the moral standpoint. He who revolts against God puts himself outside of life."

Even before the Reformation the Renaissance uttered its protest against the Platonic immortality. As early as the thirteenth century Duns Scotus, while still professing to believe in the immortality of the soul, maintained that it was a doctrine not susceptible of demonstration by the aid of natural powers, via naturali ; for him it is one of the data of Revelation, an article of faith.¹

Some of the fifteenth-century humanists went further ; they demonstrated by philosophical and scientific arguments that the soul is mortal as well as the body. They attributed their point of view to the teaching of Averroës, an Arabian philosopher and commentator of the works of Aristotle.

Peter Pomponatius, born at Mantua in 1462, became the chief of an Averroist school .

Bartholmess calls him " the most influential professor of philosophy of his time."2

Idolized by the youth of the universities, Pomponatius published in 1516 his famous book on the Immortality of the Soul, wherein he maintained a doctrine somewhat similar to that of Duns Scotus. This book was burnt at Venice by the public executioner ; but at Rome Pomponatius was warmly defended by Cardinal Bembo. Said Pomponatius : "As a Christian, I believe that which, as a philosopher or scientist, I cannot believe. " To which his adversary Boccalini replied :

" Pomponatius should be absolved as a Christian and burnt alive as a philosopher. " Pomponatius died a natural death four years later, and Cardinal Hercules de Gonzaga had a statue erected to his memory.

The doctrine maintained by this philosopher became for some years an almost official teaching throughout Italy. About the year 1500, immortality was the problem around which all philosophical questions revolved, and " throughout the sixteenth century, when a new professor of philosophy made his appearance before the students in the Italian Universities, whatever might be the subject that he proposed to treat, they were

1 F. Bonifas, Histoire des dogmes, vol. ii., p. 330. 2 Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, article Pomponace.

always ready, in order that they might at once understand his views, to cry out : ' Speak to us of the soul ! ' dell'anima."1

The opinion that the soul is mortal was so widely accepted by the learned men in Italy that the Church considered it a duty to intervene. Pope Leo X. caused this doctrine to be condemned by the fifth Lateran Council. The absolute immortality of the soul separate from the body was proclaimed by a decree of the eighth session of that Council.

Pomponatius was condemned, says Renan, but was supported in secret.

What serious effect could be expected from a Bull counter-

The signed Bembo, and commanding belief in immortality ? Lateran Council was but a feeble effort to arrest the progress of Italy in the path on which she was going, and from which she could only be withdrawn by the great reaction produced by the commotion of the

Reformation.2

It is thus seen that the triumph of the doctrine of native and inalienable immortality is of comparatively recent date. Its place in the chronological order of official dogmas is immediately before the immaculate conception of the Virgin and

Papal infallibility.

There was a moment in which Luther seemed to take the part of Pomponatius against Pope Leo X. In his Defence of all the Propositions condemned by the New Bull, Luther placed the dogma of the immortality of the soul among the " monstrous fables that form part of the Roman dunghill of decretals. " It 1 Franck, Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, article Pomponace.

2 The date of the Bull is December 19, 1513. As we have said, the book of Pomponatius on the Immortality of the Soul appeared in 1516 ; it would be interesting to know to what extent the author took account of the Pope's

Bull, one part of which was directed against his academic teaching.

3 The Latin text of Luther's thesis is as follows :

" Permitto tamen quod Papa condat articulos fidei et suis fidelibus, quales sunt panem et vinum transsubstantiari in sacramento, essentiam Dei nec generare nec generari, animam esse formam substantialem corporis humani, se esse Imperatorem mundi et Regem cæli et Deum terrenum, animam esse immortalem et omnia illa infinita portenta in romano sterquilinio Decretorum ; ut qualis est ejus fides, tale sit evangelium, tales et fideles, talis et ecclesia et habeant similem labra lactucam, et dignum patella sit operculum. " Nos vero, qui non Papani sed Christiani sumus, scimus quod nihil est fidei et bonorum morum quod non abunde in literis sacris sit expositum ut neque jus, neque locus sit alia statuendi ullis hominibus."

has been supposed that Luther's indignation was due to the fact that the Pope allowed himself " to raise to the rank of a dogma a truth which had been always an integral portion of the Christian faith. " This view might perhaps be upheld if, in his enumeration of " Roman corruptions," Luther did not associate the dogma of the soul's immortality with transubstantiation and papal idolatry. He does not mention a single biblical article of faith . Native immortality there finds itself decidedly in very bad company. We find it difficult to understand that the great reformer could have applied the name of " monstrous fable " to " a truth which had been always an integral portion of the Christian faith. " For the present we prefer to admit that he may have shared for a while the doubts that were then so generally prevalent with respect to the scholastic notion of the immortality of the soul. It has, moreover, been remarked that Luther, who taught the sleep of souls between death and resurrection, hardly ever speaks of eternal torments .

Calvin, however, thought it his duty to devote one of his earliest works to the question of the sleep of souls.

On this point he opposed the opinion maintained by the Reformer William Tyndale, the translator of the Bible into English, who died at the stake in 1536.

The true faith, says Tyndale, putteth [setteth forth] the Resurrection, which we be warned to look for every hour. The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put [set forth] that the souls did ever live. And the

Pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together, things so contrary that they cannot agree any

1 Geo. Godet, Chrét. évang., 1882, p. 562.

We may add that in the passage quoted by M. Geo. Godet the argument adduced by Luther in support of the immortality of the soul has little weight.

It amounts to this : that the human soul must be imperishable because in the

Apostles' Creed it is said, " I believe in the life everlasting ;" as if the life everlasting were not, even from the traditionalist standpoint, the exclusive privilege of believers, and that of which non-believers will be deprived ; for non-believers, therefore, there would be no immortality. The explanation given by the Reformer would then lead straight to Conditionalism. It should also be borne in mind that the explanation referred to appeared some time later than the thesis before mentioned.

3 Psychopannychia, Strasburg, 1542. The two prefaces are dated respectively from Orleans, 1534, and Basle, 1536.

more than the spirit and the flesh do in a Christian man. And because the fleshly-minded Pope consenteth unto heathen doctrine, therefore he corrupteth the Scriptures to establish it.¹

To the Swiss Reformer, Zwingli, belongs the honour of having risen superior to the ecclesiastical belief that all heathens were doomed to hell ; he taught the virtual and implied salvation of men of good and true will in all religions.2

On the whole we are bound to admit that, recoiling from the immensity of the task, the theologians of the sixteenth century did not thoroughly examine the foundations of the theory formulated by Augustine. Not one of them undertook the reform of the traditional hell.

The Reformation, being concentrated upon the points that separated it from the Catholic Church, which for the Reformers were summed up in the authority of the Scriptures and justification by faith, did not submit to a new examination those doctrines that were not included within the bounds of its dominant preoccupations, and that did not form an object of the ardent polemics of the time.³

It may, however, be told, to the honour of the sixteenth century, that in 1562 the Convocation of the Anglican Church, presided over by Archbishop Parker, had the wisdom to suppress the " articles of religion " in which the eternity of sufferings was implicitly affirmed. It is a no less remarkable fact that the doctrine in question is absent from the confession of faith of the Reformed Churches of France, called that of

La Rochelle.

The successors of the Reformers quarrelled, and then went to sleep. The religious re-awakening of our century contented itself with the acceptance of the traditional doctrine as it stood. Adopting the ready-made formulas of the Reformation, its

1 Confutation of Sir Thomas More, 1531. 2 See the dedication to Francis I. of his latest work, Christianæ Fider

Expositio, 1536.

3 Edmond de Pressensé, Essai sur le dogme de la rédemption, p. 23, Paris,

4 The Anglican " Articles of Religion " were originally forty-two ; they were reduced to thirty-nine.

leaders seem to have had no sort of suspicion that those formulas contained a bastard mixture of Gospel with heathen philosophy. By a sort of intellectual indolence, evangelism has disdained the profound study of dogma, and is now punished for it by the felt lack of power to influence the class of thinking men . French Protestantism in particular has failed to make any deep impression outside its own borders.¹ Alone, or nearly so, one of the chief apostles of the revival ,

M. Ami Bost, attained to the point of view that we are defending.

His work on the subject was the last that issued from his incisive pen. It was the worthy crowning of a career devoted without reserve or prejudice to the defence of truth.2

It is incumbent upon our generation to take up the uncompleted work of the Reformers . Happily, they have handed down to us the Bible and freedom of inquiry, the fulcrum and the lever, by means of which, with the help of God, the coming generation will raise and speedily put aside the stone that encumbers the way of truth .

This reform within the Reformation is all the more urgent because on the point in question Catholicism has an incontestable advantage over

Protestantism.

The doctrine of purgatory, although false in some respects, contains an element of truth which has been lost in the Calvinist dogma. This fact may perhaps partly explain the reason why Protestantism has made no advance in Europe since the sixteenth century, while Roman Catholicism, with the aid of persecution it is true,

1 See Chap. I., sect. iii.

2 See Chap. I., p. 24, note 3.

We ought here to mention beside Ami Bost one of his friends, the father of him who writes these lines.

Shortly before his death, which occurred in his eightieth year, and while in the full possession of all his faculties, A. F. Petavel arrived at the same conclusions.

In relation to M. Bost, we may here mention a characteristic incident. Some of the chiefs of the revival having felt the need of replacing Ostervald's . translation of the Bible by a new version (which has been called the Swiss version), there was a discussion as to the text which should serve as the basis of the work. The superstitious notion of a providential text, together with the intellectual indolence before referred to, brought about the adoption of the Elzevirs' edition, which has borne the name of received text, the predominance of which is only a usurpation. Ami Bost had the courage to protest, demanding that account should be taken of the results of criticism ; but this proposal was rejected, and its author had to retire from the committee of translation.

has reconquered various countries, as, for instance, Poland, the region of Gex, and a part of Savoy.1

The so-called orthodox doctrine appears in the standards of the Reformed Churches, and particularly in the Westminster

Confession, which still holds its authority among the Presbyterians of England, Scotland, and America. It may be summed up thus :

1. Adam was created with a soul immortal as God himself, although his body was perishable .

2. The death with which he was threatened in the event of disobedience had a threefold character : it would put an end to physical life, separate the soul from God, and subject the soul to eternal torments .

There are thus three kinds of death, two of which are rather life than death.

3. Adam's fall not only rendered our first progenitor subject to these three kinds of death, but also by the hereditary transmission of original sin has brought the same condemnation upon all his posterity.

4. Therefore, with the exception of a certain number who are the elect, every human being is even before his birth predestined to endless torments. Thus hell is to be the eternal abode of all children dying in infancy who are not the objects of a special decree.

5. Christ has borne the curse of the law ; yet in his case the eternal torments of the second death were limited, it is not said why, to the period of a few hours passed in the garden of

Gethsemane and on Calvary.

6. These expiatory sufferings of Jesus during a few hours and his death protect the believer against the two kinds of death of the soul. As for the body, the Christian dies with the prospect of a resurrection at the last day.

7. The Gospel has introduced an infinite aggravation of the sentence pronounced by the law of Moses. Therein death by stoning was the only punishment of the greatest culprits. But

1 See the article in the Figaro of 19 April, 1889, previously referred to, which exhibits that feature of Roman Catholicism which has been so skilfully turned to advantage.

the Gospel threatens the impenitent with torments which must last as long as God himself.

This aggravated doom will have a retroactive effect upon the obstinate sinners of the Old

Covenant.

8. The inhabitants of the eternal hell will be infinitely more numerous than those of the future paradise, for there is no possible salvation beyond the tomb, and all the heathen are to be there ; all men who have not had sufficient faith, or who die without having here below heard of Jesus Christ, will rise again in order to suffer endless torments .

Now, there can be no question that the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ have formed, at any rate up to the present time, only an insignificant minority of the human race.

Such is the Augustinian and Calvinist doctrine in its offensive nakedness, which the evangelical theologians of our day sometimes endeavour to hide under a Noah's mantle.¹

If it were but altogether dead we might apply to it the saying :

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but it is well known that wherever it has maintained a breath of life it persecutes those who appeal from it to the Bible and free inquiry. Abusing its acquired position, it seems to have but one aim : to blight in its germ every effort to return to the primitive Gospel. We are therefore bound to denounce it openly as a superstition as dangerous as it is tyrannical. The summary of it that we have given may suffice to show its incoherence, but it is needful also to indicate its disastrous effects.

By presenting God in a false light it has discredited the

Gospel.

A theologian of the Anglican Church has brought out very clearly the logical results of this doctrine :

No man can deny that God is able to destroy what he was able to create. No man can deny that God had a power to choose whether he would inflict death upon the sinner or an endless life of agony. Which

1 It will, of course, be understood that we do not at all underrate the genius of the great men who formulated this doctrine. On the contrary, we acknowledge and admire the logic which has courageously drawn the legitimate consequences from an erroneous principle, and the candour of a Calvin who admitted that his system was horrible : Decretum quidem horribile fateor !- Inst. , lib. iii. 23 , § 7.

would he choose, the gentler or the more fearful doom ? Will you say the latter ? Why ? There must be a reason. Is it to please himself ? He repudiates this kind of character (Ezek. xviii. 23). His mode of dealing here contradicts it : where pain is sharp it is short. Is it to please his angelic or redeemed creation ? They are too like himself to take pleasure in such a course. Did no pity visit the Creator's bosom they would look up into his face and plead for mercy. Is it to terrify from sin ? To terrify whom ? Not the lost, they are handed over for ever to blasphemy and evil. Is it, then, to terrify the unfallen, and preserve them from sin? Would it ? What is sin ? Is it not pre-eminently alienation from God? What would alienate from him so completely as the sight or the knowledge of such a hell as Tertullian taught ? Pity, horror, anguish, would invade every celestial breast. Just fancy a criminal with us. He has been a great criminal. Let him be the cruel murderer, the base destroyer of woman's innocence and honour, the fiendish trafficker in the market of lust, the cold-blooded plotter for the widow's or the orphan's inheritance. Let him be the vilest of the vile, on whose head curses loud, deep, and many have been heaped. He is taken by the hand of justice. All rejoice. He is put to death ! No ; that is thought too light a punishment by the ruler of the land. He is put into a dungeon, deprived of all but the necessaries of existence, tortured by day and by night, guarded lest his own hand should rid him of a miserable life, and all this to go on till nature thrusts within the prison bars an irresistible hand and frees the wretch from his existence. Now, what would be the effect upon the community of such a course ? The joy at the criminal's overthrow, once universal, would rapidly change into pity, into indignation, into horror, into the wild uprising of an outraged nation to rescue the miserable man from a tyrant worse than himself, and to hurl the infamous abuser of law and power from his seat. And this is but the faintest image of what a cruel theology would have us believe of our Father which is in heaven ! Nature steps in in the one case, and says there shall be an end. Omnipotence, in the other, puts forth its might to stay all such escape. For ever and for ever ! Millions of years of agony gone and yet the agony no nearer its close ! Not one, but myriads to suffer thus ! Their endless cries ! Their ceaseless groans ! Their interminable despair ! Why, heaven and earth and stars in their infinite number, all worlds which roll through the great Creator's space, would raise one universal shout of horror at such a course. Love for God would give way to hatred. Apostasy would no longer be partial, but universal. All would stand aloof in irrepressible loathing from the tyrant on the throne, for a worse thing than

Manichæism pictured would be seated there the one eternal principle would be the principle ofevil.

Can that be a true theodicy which allows the continuance in the universe of an ever-burning volcano, an ever-livid blotch, an ever-festering sore, a howling and cursing that will never cease ? Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of destructive principle that never produces destruction, and of a the destruction of a finite being that never comes to an end ? ' '2

If a tree may be judged by its fruit, is that dogma beyond the range of criticism which espoused the barbarism of the

Visigoths, and brought forth the tigers of the Inquisition ? These read the Gospel in the light of the burning piles that they kindled ; fashioning their own souls in the image of their ferocious deity, they thought that they were rendering service to heretics by tormenting them on earth to enable them to escape from unending torments .

Can that be an acceptable doctrine which obliges us to admit something like two different deities : one here below who is tender and beneficent, most frequently avenging himself for the ingratitude and wickedness of men by untold benefits ; the other beyond the tomb beholding with impassive complacency the interminable sufferings of his adversaries ? We read with horror the stories of the Inquisition or the history of the conquest of Mex co by the Spaniards, the Emperor Montezuma broiled on a gridiron over a slow fire, the description of that torture which was caused by the dropping of water perpetually night and day on the forehead of the victim until he became mad with the pain ; but what are these torments of a few hours or days in comparison with a fire, fierce or slow, material or immaterial, which after a thousand millions of years would then only just have begun its work ?

Just as Torquemada has discredited the Papacy, so the doctrine of eternal torments has dishonoured the Gospel. The

Goliath of unbelief, who to-day so arrogantly defies the forces of the living God, has not a more effective weapon in his

1 Rev. H. Constable, M.A., late Chaplain to the City of London Hospital , and Prebendary of Cork. Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, 6th edition, 1886, p. 217, sq.

2 Aug. Bouvier, Actes de la Sociétépastorale suisse, p. 83, Geneva, 1885.

SECTION IX.

CHAPTER IX.

panoply than the reproach that the Churches adore a cruel God. Even the idolaters of India and Siam repulse our missionaries in the name of divinities who, as they say, are more clement than ours. If we may believe the assertion of a man who in his lifetime was an influential London minister, " nine-tenths of the bitterness and fierceness with which

Christianity is assailed by its coarser and more malign opponents may be traced to this fatal spring. "1

We will not accept, as arbitrators in this matter, the avowed enemies of the Christian faith, nor even freethinkers like John Stuart Mill, Professor Tyndall, Theodore Parker, Colonel Ingersoll, or Madame Ackermann, although these have all expressed their reprobation of this dogma ; but we will quote writers who are favourable to the Gospel.

M. Charles

Renouvier says : " An eternal hell is one of the scandals most effective in alienating minds from the Christian conception of the world and its destinies . "

The excellent Sismondi wrote :

I left the church in haste, that I might not have to speak with anyone of the indignation that the minister had excited in me by his preaching about eternal torments.

I am determined never again to enter an

English church, that I may not be forced to listen to such blasphemies, never to contribute towards the promotion of that which the English call their reform, for by the side of it Popery is a religion of mercy and grace. I can put up with idolatry and atheism, but to attribute to the divinity an infernal malice is an outrage upon the object of my adoration which fills me with indignation.4

The traditional doctrine is largely responsible for contemporary scepticism. It has called forth the poet's cry :

1 Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, The Christian World, 16 March, 1877, p. 196. 2 Critique religieuse, April, 1880, p. 44. 3 Sismondi probably means the religious movement called the Revival.

4 Fragments de son journal et de sa correspondance, Geneva, 1857, p. 106, sq.

Among the former Earls of Shaftesbury there was one whose unbelief has remained proverbial in England. It is said that he had consulted several eminent ecclesiastics in order to ascertain whether the New Testament really teaches eternal torments. Upon their affirmative reply, he declared himself unable thenceforth to admit a religion so contrary to the idea that he ought to cherish of the Governor of the universe. But a Scottish minister, Rev J. L. Robertson, in a sermon preached at Glasgow has expressed yet stronger indignation ; he declares that " the popular notion of eternal punishment is

Rather a desert heaven than your so cruel God, Whom I could only fear and curse.1

The aim of one of Tennyson's later poems, the ode entitled Despair, is just to bring out into strong relief the deplorable results of this same belief.2

Mr. Thomas Walker, late editor of the London Gazette, has shown that it was a challenge intended by the Poet- Laureate to force the hand of the evangelical Churches with regard to a doctrine which has not yet been repudiated by any one of them.

Not long ago the president of a French tribunal wrote to us thus : " I am anxious to thank you.

You may boast of having brought me back to Christianity, from which I had been completely alienated by the frightful, atrocious, monstrous That question had been the dogma of eternal torments. torment of my life. "

It was Father Hyacinthe who said one day : " One of the starting points of contemporary unbelief is the error of the Churches in presenting to us a God who is either imbecile or

• ferocious ."4 erroneous and very hurtful in its tendencies in so far as the conception debases and distorts the character of God."-Christian World, 20 Jan., 1877, p. 71 .

1 Plutôt un ciel désert que votre Dieu cruel

Qu'il me faudrait craindre et maudire ! 2 And we broke away from the Christ, our human Brother and Friend, For he spoke, or it seemed that he spoke, of a hell without help, without end.

Ah, yet, I have had some glimmer, at times in my gloomiest woe, Of a God behind all, after all, the great God for aught I know ;

But the God of Love and of Hell together-they cannot be thought ;

If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought !

Tennyson puts this imprecation in the mouth of an unhappy disciple of Calvin. An eternal hell is likewise the pivot of one of Victor Hugo's dramas : Torquemada. The author makes an eternal hell the foundation of the theory of the Inquisition ; the stake is the supreme remedy that is to preserve the misbelievers from the unquenchable flames.

3 We must here say that the Conditionalists do not " boast " of the fulfilment of their duty, which is always imperfect.

4 Conférence of 21 May, 1886. A similar thought appears in the discourse entitled " An Apology for the Inquisition."-Ni cléricaux ni athées, p. 190.

The God of the pretended eternal torments is all one with the God of the Inquisition. The defenders of an eternal hell might to some extent apply to them-

A prebendary of St. Paul's in London has expressed in a recent volume a very similar opinion ; he considers that at the present time it is of the highest importance to make an inquiry into this point. The inquiry has been also demanded by the Rev. J. Foxley, chaplain to the University of Cambridge ; it is on the order of the day in the religious press of England .

Thus challenged and closely pressed, the traditional dogma is ashamed of itself; it hides itself, or else pleads attenuating circumstances. The position of Platonic orthodoxy becoming untenable, its defenders have imagined certain accommodations.

Thus, in spite of Augustine, of Calvin, and of the confessions of faith , the salvation of all children who die in infancy is affirmed, although it is not said to what extent they share in original sin ; what may be the consequence to them of that evil predisposition is a question that is not considered. The study of the problem being dreaded, it has been found more convenient to put it aside.

The traditional doctrine is further mitigated by the assertion that while the first death and the second are transmissible by inheritance, the third death is not.

The assertion is, however, quite gratuitous, and Calvin was more logical. In order to be orthodox, that is logically Platonist, it must be admitted that, with the exception of the small number of the elect, humanity, like a great river, is rushing on over the precipice of eternal sufferings ; humanity, that is to say men, our fellow- creatures, by hundreds and thousands of millions.

The recent census shows that British India alone contains some two hundred and eighty-five millions of inhabitants . Supposing that population arranged in ranks of thirty abreast and one yard apart, they would form a column some five thousand four hundred miles in length, a column that would extend from Delhi to Lisbon .

If we were to believe the selves the words of the ex- Carmelite monk addressed to the ultramontanes : " It is because of you that the name of God, of the personal and living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the God who hears and inspires me, because of you that the name of God is blasphemed all over the world !" --

Ni cléricaux ni athées, p. 191 .

1 Rev. C. A. Row, Future Retribution, p. 3 ; London, 1887.

traditional dogma, all these millions of a single generation of Hindoos are marching towards the lake of fire and brimstone, not there to perish, but there to live for ever in torments .

And we must not forget that the official doctrine does not admit any means of grace beyond death, nor any intermediate abode between heaven and hell .

And what a hell it is !

To describe it we will simply quote a sermon by the celebrated preacher, Spurgeon.

He says :

When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone-that will be a hell for it-but at the day of judgement thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul shall be together, each brimfull of pain, thy soul sweating in its inmost pore drops of blood, and thy body from head to foot suffused with agony ; conscience, judgement, memory, all tortured.

Thine heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire and yet unburnt, thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained yet coming out undestroyed, all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune.... Fictions, sir ! Again I say they are no fictions, but solid, stern truth. If God be true, and this Bible be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will find it one day to be so.1

That sort of thing is preached even now, here and there, but some of the more compassionate theologians protest. They say : " We reject the notion of material fire.

The sufferings of the future life will be eternal, but they will belong to the moral order. "

This is another pretended alleviation .

Can those who so use it ever have tried to realize that eternity so glibly spoken of? In vain does the imagination attempt to embrace a number so vast as that representing the distance from the earth to the sun ; but supposing as many centuries

1 New Park Street Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 105, Sermon No. 66. Mr. Spurgeon would not now use the phraseology of a discourse that dates from the early years of his career. His theology has, then, been modified in some degree, although he would perhaps not be willing to admit it. We should be glad if, some day, he would explain the causes of his doctrinal evolution ; it would be interesting to learn how he has come to think himself authorized to mitigate in any way that which he declared to be the immutable truth. In any case, his early sermons remain as authentic monuments of the old socalled orthodox preaching. [See an article entitled " The Christian Hell "

in the Nineteenth Century for November, 1891, p. 712.]

as there are units in that number, and the moral sufferings of the reprobate lasting throughout all that duration : that would be but the beginning of sorrows .

But we shall be told of the philosopher Kant, who speaks of such a conception of eternal duration as childish . We reply that our business is not with Kant, but with traditional notions which are insulting to our heavenly Father.

Enough, however, of alleviations. An important article of faith is not to be veiled ; it either is such or it is not. It must be loyally proclaimed or else denounced. If believed, it should be preached from the house-tops ; if not believed, it should be opposed to the very end. If this dogma be false, it is a calumny against God and a stumbling-block in the way of humanity. All the resources of apologetics would not suffice to counterbalance its baneful effects .

Vainly, too, has it been thought sufficient to diminish the intensity of eternal sufferings. In vain is the penalty mitigated in spite of the Scripture imagery which threatens the reprobate with the most acute pains ; the most odious characteristic of the traditional teaching, namely, the disciplinary uselessness of interminable sufferings, can never be got rid of. A learned and thoroughly evangelical man once said to us that the softest easy- chair would fill him with horror if he had the prospect of continually sitting in it for only a hundred years ; but a century in eternity is infinitely less than a drop of water in the ocean. It has been thought that dualism might be avoided by opening up the prospect of a day when the wicked “ will be reduced to a condition of impotence to do harm. " It is said that " suffering, sin, and death will for ever have disappeared. "1

Does not this involve contradiction ?

A wicked man who no longer does harm is no longer a wicked man. A poisonous tree will always bear poisonous fruit. A wicked man, if he were all alone, would do harm to himself ; if he lives in society he will do harm to his companions.

More than that : the universal law of progress requires a developement of evil in the reprobate . The cruelty of a Nero would be raised to the millionth power, without even then ceasing to become more cruel.

Is that conceivable ? But we are assured that " sin will have disappeared ";

1 F. Bonifas, Le Christianisme au XIXme siècle, 20 Sept., 1872 .

then the wicked will no longer be sinners, there will be no more eternal sufferings, nor even the possibility of alienation from

God .

Such a doctrine amounts to universal salvation ; it is no longer the traditional dogma, to which the defence was intended to apply.¹

We have now to show that if the majority of modern theologians mitigate hell, there are some even in learned Germany-who are not afraid of invoking the nightmare of unending torture. For example, it is surprising to find so enlightened a theologian as M. Paul Chapuis translating without note or reserve the following passage from a manual of Kurtz. It may be noted that this astonishing paragraph occupies a position of honour ; it is the last but one in the volume .

Eternal condemnation consists, from a negative point of view, in an eternal rejection, away from the face of God, cut off from happiness which can only be found in God ; in an abode totally deprived of all light, of all life, of all joy or enjoyment ; in a society composed of the refuse of angels and men, where there is neither love nor sympathy. On the positive side this condemnation may be described as an unlimited moral torture which nothing softens, nothing calms, nothing benumbs ; an existence in company with the rejected from among angels and men, in torments caused by their abode deprived of light and of life.2

Believers themselves have become sceptical with regard to eternal torments.

An English writer says :

The persuasion is general that things are not so bad as they are commonly represented to be ; that in some way or other, through the mercy of God, punishment will not be inflicted.3

A minister of the Church of Scotland, the late Dr. N. McLeod, chaplain to Queen Victoria, expressed himself thus :

1 See Supplement No. III., § 6, and in note I on page 235, our reply to

M. Geo. Godet, who, like M. Bonifas, supposed a final paralysis of the faculties of the wicked.

2 La Révélation salutaire de Dieu, a manual of sacred history, translated from the fourteenth German edition, Lausanne, 1887, p. 427. The sentence that we have put in italics surely deserves that distinction.

3 Henry Dunn, The Destiny of the Human Race, vol. ii., p. 586 ; London,

It does appear to me that there exists a wide-spread callousness and indifference, an ease of mind, with reference to the fate hereafter of ungodly men, which cannot be accounted for except on the supposition that all earnestfaith is lost in either the dread possibilities of future sin or of its future punishment.¹

Mr. Henry Dunn, who quotes these words, adds :

Even of professed believers the sad truth must be told, that few attempt to realize the awful condition in which mankind are supposed to be placed ; that many shrink from ever hinting danger to their nearest and dearest unconverted relatives ; and that some, it is to be feared, compromise with conscience for the absence of a life in the spirit of their creed by violent speculative denunciations on those who oppose it. The great multitude in the meantime live on and pass into eternity devoid of every sentiment of anxiety in reference to the world that is to come ; the popular theology being, we fear, but too truly expressed in an epitaph we have seen somewhere written upon the tombstone of a notoriously abandoned man who was killed by a fall while hunting :

Between the stirrup and the ground He mercy sought and mercy found.

Is there, indeed, anyone who imagines his own father or child for ever burning in unquenchable flames ?

In the pulpit the preacher is assailed by distressing doubts ; he hesitates in his speech ; his reserve, his indefinite declarations, and perhaps a factitious vehemence, betray a secret scepticism which communicates itself to his hearers, troubles the believers , and hardens the impenitent.

There is no lack of talent in modern preaching, yet it gains few converts, because it is incapable of inspiring a salutary fear. Paul made Felix tremble while speaking to him of judgement to come ; in our days the Christian orator, fettered by a dogma that cannot be avowed, can do no more than stammer out unintelligible threatenings.

Fifty years ago, John Foster, the essayist, wrote to our venerable friend, Rev. Edward White :

A number (not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of ministers within my acquaintance, several now dead, have been disbelievers of the

1 Parish Papers, chapter on Future Punishment, London, Alex. Strahan and Co., 1862, p. 144, sq.

doctrine in question; at the same time not feeling themselves imperatively called upon to make a public disavowal ; content with employing in their ministrations strong general terms in denouncing the doom of impenitent sinners.1

An organ of the Wesleyan Methodists, quoted by Mr. Henry Dunn years ago, stated as a notorious fact that many Christians whose orthodoxy on other points has never been questioned are unbelievers on this . Some evade inquiry as unprofitable. Others preach the doctrine of eternal remorse, and consider future punishment to consist not so much in any direct infliction by the hand of God, as in the natural working out of confirmed depravity. Others are known to go much farther, and hold that eternal punishment is but a diminution of eternal joy in a state of salvation . The lowest order of happiness in heaven, say they, and the lightest suffering of hell, may, for aught we know, touch each other.

For our own part, we are able to confirm the truth of these remarks . The outcome of conversation with colleagues in the ministry has often been just this : " Your view may be correct, but it is not prudent to speak of it ; do not by any means preach it ! " As though the Gospel contained inopportune truths, and as though we were not required to publish the whole plan of salvation !

Besides, considered from the point of view of the most practical pastoral prudence, will it not be found that this doctrine, which we believe to be the most true, is at the same time the most useful ? The certainty and clearness of the teaching, the confidence of the preacher, the threatened chastisement no longer revolting, but yet terrible and inevitable, at the same time biblical and rational, these character-

1 Life and Correspondence of John Foster, vol. ii., p. 415, sq. Belief in eternal torments is also shaken even in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is now a considerable time since Monseigneur Chalandon, Archbishop of Aix, in a sermon preached at Paris recommended the clergy of the capital to avoid preaching about hell, saying that " this question tends more to the alienation of men's minds from the faith than to their attraction towards it."

The preachers of our days, finding the attenuation of purgatory not sufficient, “ have to such an extent widened the conditions of salvation, that the dogma of the small number of the elect has given place to that of the small number of the reprobate."-Ch. de. Rémusat, La Vie future in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 June, 1865.

istics are likely to produce an impression a hundred times more profound than that made by an inadmissible theory which each one mitigates and manipulates in his own fashion.

It has been said that there is nothing more immoral than a law of which the application is neglected. A dogma in course of decomposition is even more deleterious ; it corrupts the atmosphere of the religious life .

Recoiling from an honest return to the primitive teaching, ever fettered by the doctrine of eternal torments, not being able to justify that doctrine but desiring to stem the tide of scepticism of which it is the overflowing fountain, contemporary evangelism sometimes seeks a refuge in eschatological agnosticism as in a citadel.

When alleviations are exhausted, and the cause becomes desperate, ignorance on this special point is set up as a principle. In Christian teaching the fate of the wicked becomes a reserved compartment, a sequestrated domain, access to which is interdicted ; and this procedure has " a show of wisdom in humility. " ¹

We have already quoted the saying of Pastor Rochat :

" When anyone believes in eternal torments he confines his statements to our Saviour's own words as to judgement to come, and he trembles ." 2 One of the latest champions of the traditional dogma has seized upon this saying and set it up as a standard ; he said, " Therein lies our whole theology on the subject in question. " 3

Shortly afterwards the Synod of a Free Church carried the same principle a step further :

The pastors of the Belgian Christian Missionary Church think it neither prudent nor useful to refer in their preaching to the doctrine of eternal torments, which they accept in the very terms of the holy

Scriptures , while refusing, with wise reserve, to examine it. never bring it prominently forward in the pulpit.4

2 See page 217 . 3 Geo. Godet, Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 564.

1 Col. ii. 23 .

4 Report of the Synod of the Belgian Christian Missionary Church. Extraordinary session of I Nov., 1882, pp. 23, 35.

In presence of a doctrine the examination of which is thus interdicted, what are to become of exegesis, dogmatics, reason, the religious consciousness, and that Christian faith which seeks to understand; fides quærens intellectum ?1

These are all immolated together upon the altar of an idol which, though clothed in ecclesiastical costume, is in fact none other than the heathen principle of a native and inalienable immortality.

Some will doubtless retort by saying that if examination is suspended it is done " out of respect for the word of Jesus Christ. "2 But there are more words than one of Jesus Christ ; there are several, which need to be brought together and logically connected in order to the due maintenance of the authority thus invoked, which we, too, invoke. Here are some of these words which are too often lost sight of :

" Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose or forfeit his own self ?

flesh .

That which is born of the flesh is

Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. "

Jesus compares the unrepentant sinner to the criminal who is put to death, to the barren fig-tree that is rooted up, to the vine branch deprived of its sap, to the tares which are burnt up. What is done with these images and declarations by the traditional dogma ? It ignores them ; and then it isolates two or three sayings apparently contradictory, and summarily opposes us with them as being irrefragable arguments.

We shall have occasion to show, in a subsequent chapter, that, far from establishing the traditional dogma, these texts confirm the natural meaning of those that we have just quoted.

The agnosticism wherein some of our opponents seek an entrenchment is a position so untenable that we find its defenders in flagrant contradiction with themselves. Here, for example, is M. Geo. Godet, who reproaches us with " wishing to dissipate the mystery " which is the last resource of the dogma that we are opposing. Before an insoluble problem he thinks we ought to imitate the prudence of Martensen, who left all in uncertainty. Whoever may be right, the believers in

1 Anselm of Canterbury.

2 Geo . Godet, Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 564. 3 See Chap. XI. , sect. ii., The Threatenings ofJesus.

attainable immortality are evidently very wrong to defend so warmly that which they believe to be the truth ! Yet M. Geo.

Godet " rejects Universalism in the name of Scripture and of conscience dangers . " ¹ and as presenting considerable practical

On the other hand he admits that there will be an evangelization of the dead, and that no one will be finally judged until he has had salvation clearly set before him."2 We agree with both these views, and we congratulate ourselves on being to that extent in accord with our opponent ; but when he thus determines two eschatological questions on which there is still much controversy, has M. Geo. Godet no fear lest he should dissipate certain mysteries ? May not the Universalists on the one hand, and the old Calvinists on the other, fairly charge him with not observing that " sacred reserve " to which he exhorts us ? Be that as it may, fortified by his example we will continue to affirm other truths equally evident to our eyes, and also to condemn " in the name of Scripture and of conscience " that theological agnosticism which, halting in the rear of Scripture, refuses to see that " the things that are revealed are for us and for our children."

We should think we were holding the truth in captivity if we were not to declare that for us the final lot of the wicked is among the truths that have been revealed.³

If we have rightly understood M. Geo. Godet, he would have us hold to the received dogma while finding a remedy for its " inconveniences " in certain modifications that he suggests .

We have seen that all such alleviations leave untouched the main " inconvenience " of an endless hell. We are further advised to " use only biblical terms " ; but how are these to be employed without attaching to them a definite meaning ? The minister of Queen Candace tried to understand the words that he read ; the apostle Paul blamed the use of unintelligible words .

The human mind has a thirst for definitions.

و و doubt, as M. Geo. Godet very well says, the " vital question is that of salvation ; but still it ought to be understood from

1 Chrétien évangélique, 1881, p. 70, sq. 2 Ibid., p. 58, sq., 70.

3 Gieseler goes so far, in his History ofDogmas, as to maintain that of all evangelical doctrines, after Christology, eschatology is the one that the apostles have developed with the greatest care.

what we are saved. Salvation and perdition are correlative terms ; but, logically, perdition takes the first place. Put that aside, and the very foundation of evangelical preaching is gone. That is the reason why, if we may believe the Journal religieux, crowds have been seen “ bursting with laughter on hearing the unexpected question : Are you saved ? To be saved, what does it mean ? "1 It is impossible to answer that question without dealing with eschatology .

The agnosticism that is recommended , being in unstable equilibrium impossible to be maintained, is at the same time very dangerous. Intended as a safeguard for the traditional doctrine, it is really more likely to favour the progress of Universalism . In our seventh chapter we have already shown that the impenitent sinner is quick to take advantage of the silence of certain preachers with regard to future punishment ; the signature in blank that is entrusted to him he fills in with optimist hopes. We believe that an almost mechanical repetition of threatenings that are not understood will lead to the same result. Agnosticism is in fact only a form of scepticism . The refusal to examine that which we are supposed to believe is caused by the weakness of belief and the fear of being convicted of error. Seeing that pulpit orators glide over the theme of eternal torments without daring to deal thoroughly with it, that they hesitate to plead that cause before the tribunal of reason and the religious consciousness, and that they base a colossal dogma upon two or three doubtful passages, as on the point of a needle, many a simple listener will come to the conclusion that in reality there are no eternal torments. The few texts that are invoked in proof will be in his eyes no more than hyperbolical formulas, from which it is understood that con .

siderable discount is to be taken off.

As, on the other hand, he is constantly told of the eternal mercy, this same simple listener will naturally be led to cherish the hope of a final and general amnesty. Supposed to possess an inalienable immortality, having eternity before him in which to become

1Journal religieux, 14 May, 1881.

reconciled to a God of love, he will not fail to put off indefinitely that disagreeable conversion, of the urgency of which he has not been made sensible. Thus it is that eschatological agnosticism blunts the salutary point of Christian preaching. Evangelism, which thinks itself immovable, is, then, dragging its anchors and drifting helplessly in the direction of Universalism . As an indication of this may be mentioned the fact that Universalists are looked upon generally with favour, while several Conditionalist pastors have been deposed.¹ The traditional dogma, like a new Proteus, becomes transformed when closely pressed ; it then becomes softened. It " is resolved to admit nothing but probabilities in these matters, and to await from the divine mercy, beyond time, unsuspected combinations such as are outside all our earthly categories. "2 Unsuspected combinations " ! There is one, however, that

1 In the pastoral conferences in Paris in 1885 it was a Universalist, Pastor Ducros, who was appointed by the party that was reputed orthodox to oppose the Conditionalism of M. Byse. This detail shows, by the way, how difficult it now is to find a theologian who will consent to defend the old ecclesiastical dogma. There is nothing to be said in its favour, yet it is thought right to put every possible obstacle in the way of those who would fain substitute a sound stone for the one that is crumbling, and so endangering the whole edifice of the faith.

Conditionalists are shut out from the Evangelical

Alliance. Contemporary evangelism may truly be said to have done its best to disparage, to discourage, to stifle in its cradle a most legitimate conviction.

Short-sighted, if sagacious, it has more than once fired upon its true friends at the cry : " Conditionalism, that is the enemy !" When will the scales fall from its eyes ? When will it be perceived that this victim of persecution is the direct heir of the Old Testament and the New ? Will it be said of it : " This is the heir ; come, let us kill him "? Will it be immolated for the sake of its rivals, the traditional dogma and Universalism, those illegitimate children of Christianity and Alexandrine philosophy ?

2 A. Gretillat, Exposé de théologie systématique, vol. iv., p. 602. “ We hope for the salvation of all."-G. Godet, Chrétien évangélique, 1871, p. 70, sq. In a recent thesis, destined to oppose our conviction, M. Joseph Bès concludes as follows : " With the Scripture and the Christians of past ages we shall continue to preach the doctrine of eternal torments, with the secret hope that this preaching itself will serve to render the threat vain ; we shall continue to announce tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, but retaining at heart an immortal hope for our fellow-travellers who have fallen by the way."-Etude critique sur une théorie contemporaine de l'immortalité conditionelle. Thesis presented to the Protestant theological Faculty of Paris, the 7th July, 1890. Thus a certain dissimulation would form part of the programme of the evangelical ministry. " We are reproached with no longer daring to speak of perdition ; this accusation is severe, but it is just."

--Ch. Porret, La notion du péché in the Chrétien évangélique, 1890, р. 507.

everyone will suspect. Since you thus set the door of eternity ajar, allowing a transcendent mercy to appear on the threshold, each one of your readers will cherish the dream of a supreme and universal absolution. The meshes of your net are wide enough to let all your fishes escape, great and small, and you may be sure that they will have sufficient intelligence to take advantage of that fact, if indeed there be any advantage therein.

One who believes himself to be orthodox is surely universalist at the bottom of his heart ; and " the heart has reasons which reason does not know. " But to pass from the traditional dogma to Universalism is to quit a crumbling fortress only to get suffocated in a bog. It is falling from Scylla into Charybdis when, in whatever way, the rebel is allowed to imagine that he will inevitably be saved. Evangelism will have to pay dearly for its compromises with Universalism, which is the negation of its principle ; for there is no ultimate danger for anyone if everyone must infallibly be saved, and if there is no danger, there is no salvation. The preaching of the Gospel of salvation becomes superfluous , since, with or without preaching, the final result will be the same, and all will end well for all. By becoming universalist , evangelism will cease to be evangelical. Deprived of the notion of a loss that is irreparable, it will perish like the bee that dies when it loses its sting.¹

Universalism is neither more tenable nor less pernicious than the official dogma ; we can hardly doubt that our readers will come to this conclusion if they will but take the pains to study in the next chapter the arguments put forward by the believers in universal salvation .

1 In England and America there are Unitarian churches which are also universalist. One of their periodicals, The American, recently confessed that these churches are incapable of taking part in the aggressive work of Home Missions. See the Eglise libre of 20 Dec., 1889.

CHAPTER

THEORY

UNIVERSAL SALVATION .

I. Starting from the same à priori as the traditional dogma, Universalism is a falling from Scylla into Charybdis-II . Origen and his successors down to our own days-III . Elements of truth in this theory ; it is right in teaching that grace has been or will be offered to all- IV. Relative novelty and esoteric character of Universalism-V. Irrational character of this point of view-VI. Its anti-biblical character-VII. False notion of the divine Fatherhood and of human Brotherhood-VIII . Fearful dangers of an excessive optimism.

As its name clearly indicates, the doctrine of universal salvation supposes that all men without exception will sooner or later attain to eternal felicity.¹ This seductive hypothesis has taken various forms and names .

It has been called at one time or another Origenism, from the name of him who first developed it into a system ; Apocatastasis, or Restitutionism, by which is meant the restitution of all things ; and, lastly,

Universalism.

There is an absolute Universalism and a Con-

1 In here giving the meaning of eternal felicity to the word salvation we are simply conforming to usage, which warrants this deviation from its primitive signification . Salus in the original language is properly conservation or preservation of existence ; root, salvus, whole, intact ; salva epistola, a letter not destroyed. (Freund and Theil's Dictionary and Doederlein's Synonymik). So, too, in Greek, sōzō, to preserve or rescuefrom destruction ; root, soos or sōs, subsisting, surviving ; in Hebrew, hoshia', which is used of altogether physical preservation, as in Ps. xxxvi. 6 [7].

In the Syriac version of the New Testament, called the Peshito, the Greek sōzō is always rendered by a verb signifying to give life ; the Saviour, sōtēr is the life-giver. (See the Dictionaries of Alexandre, of Passow, and for the New Testament those of Schleusner, Wahl, Grimm, Cremer.) The meaning of words has been forced and falsified to make them serve the needs of the traditional dogma.

ditional Universalism.¹ Absolute Universalism goes so far as to affirm that every man of every sort, even though destitute of all religion and of all morality, will at last infallibly be reclaimed to goodness, and so enjoy eternal happiness. According to the formula of one of the adepts of this system , " It is not possible for a man not to be saved. "

No human being would be able to withdraw himself or to be withdrawn from the final salvation reserved by God for him .

We shall now deal only with Universalism properly so called, which is absolute, according to the formula just quoted. We believe this doctrine to be without solid foundation in philosophy, anti-biblical, and dangerous.

Our purpose in this chapter is to set forth some of the reasons for our conviction with regard to it. We shall not do this without regret, as we think of the disagreement with a number of our colleagues which will thus be made apparent ; but do not the respect and affection in which we hold them make it our duty to lay before them the reasons which prevent us from sharing all their hopes ?

On their side, our brethren will no doubt take into account the seriousness of our intentions, and will not be offended at our frankness .

Like the traditional dogma, the doctrine in question has for its philosophical basis the Platonic theory of the inalienable immortality of every human soul, a preconceived idea which has been treated as an axiom .

The baneful influence of this opinion upon Christian dogmatics shows the danger of a metaphysical à priori and the wisdom of the apostles when they warned the first disciples against all philosophies, Plato's included.

By the side of Revelation it would seem that there is room only for a system which, like that of Kant, declares itself incompetent in the domain of metaphysics, and is based entirely upon the incontestable facts of sensible experience or of moral consciousness .

We may, however, admit that if we had to choose among the philosophers of antiquity, the founder of the Academic school would present exceptional claims. There were in this

1As to Conditional Universalism, and that which has been called

Christian Universalism, see Supplement No. XVI .

man the sublime aspirations of " a fallen deity with memories of heaven . " We have more sympathy with him than with an Epicurus who denied all survival of the soul, with an Aristotle who hardly ever alluded to the subject, or even with an Epictetus who admitted only the survival of the just. Plato taught also the survival of the wicked, either with a view to their amendment , or for the infliction of the endless suffering reserved for great criminals. By thus recognizing the recompense of evil, as well as of good, in the future life, Plato came near to the Bible teaching, but he went away from it by his dogma of unconditional immortality, a dogma foreign and even diametrically opposed to the spirit as well as to the letter, of the Scriptures. We will therefore repeat the excellent adage : Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. While admiring the philosopher, we will beware of his system, as we would avoid machinery of which the wheels would crush the incautious person who should allow even the tip of his finger to be caught in the cogs.

We have shown the lamentable results of the Platonic doctrine in the theology of Tertullian and Augustine, a theology that passes for orthodox, which turns the God of love into an executioner who would be eternally cursed by innumerable victims. Such a doctrine is felt to be a burden by its adherents themselves. Henry Rogers declared that for his part he would not be sorry to see every child die at the age of four years. Albert Barnes, the American commentator, admits that in the anguish of his soul he cannot at all understand why there are men destined to suffer for ever.

Isaac Taylor says that the Gospel fills us with a universal sympathy which makes us sometimes regret that it should be true in all its teachings. Calvin, as we have seen, could not refrain from admitting that God's decree concerning the wicked seemed to him horrible. In a word, the traditional dogma leads to pessimism, because it makes evil eternal .

What, then, has actually come to pass ? This : that, as extremes meet, the doctrine of eternal torments has come very near to that of universal salvation.

With more or less reticence many partizans of the traditional dogma, not being able any longer to maintain it, have quitted their positions and have turned towards the hope of universal salvation ; others have lost themselves in the obscurity of eschatological scepticism .

On the bastions of the orthodox citadel of the eternity of sufferings, there remain sentinels only here and there, and soon, if these do not take care, the falling of the fortress will bury them in its ruins. But are the deserters quite out of danger ?

We do not think so ; it seems to us that there is only one secure position, and that is the biblical dogma of an immortality that may be acquired. Whatever we may do, speaking logically and theologically, a forced immortality leads to impossibilities. The example of Origen suffices to show that the most earnest piety, the most extensive knowledge, and the most noble genius, are unable to found any durable edifice upon the shifting sand of human inventions.

Origen was born in the year 185, a quarter of a century later than Tertullian. Like him a child of burning Africa, like him he had an ardent soul ; like him he was a Platonist ; like him , too, he strayed into more than one singularity of doctrine. At first an even fanatical literalist, he afterwards became the great master of mystical interpretation. His intellect, vast and noble as it was, lacked equilibrium. Plato, a blind leader of the blind, had led Tertullian into a ditch.

Origen saw the fall of

Tertullian, but not perceiving the cause of that fall, he took the hand of the same guide, and in his turn fell into as deep a ditch.

The fanatical conceptions of Tertullian, who saw in every volcano a chimney of Gehenna, were to bring about Origen's equally extravagant reaction. Origen was the director of the

Christian school in Alexandria ; he desired to defend the faith against the attacks of the Voltaires and Rousseaus of that epoch, particularly against those of Celsus, who had opposed the nascent Christianity with the weapons of argument and ridicule .

The doctrine of an eternal hell offered a famous target for the shafts of this redoubtable adversary. Celsus had gone so far as to declare the God of the Christians " execrable, " asserting that his religion " fascinates the minds of the simple with chimerical terrors . " These provocations

drove Origen from one error into another of an opposite kind. To the eternal hell he with great force opposed the Scripture, declarations as to the suppression of evil and the pacification of the universe. Combining these promises of revelation with the preconceived opinion of an indefeasible immortality, Origen naturally arrived at the idea of a final conversion of even the most incorrigible sinners, and of Satan himself.

But from this point of view what was to be made of those passages which so clearly tell of the destruction of the wicked ? Here it was that Origen called in the aid of the mystical interpretation . According to him, the sinner will not be destroyed, he is indestructible ; it is only the sinner's sin that will be consumed in a baptism of fire.

Thus hell would only for a longer or shorter time retard the entrance of its inhabitants into heaven ; it would, indeed, no longer be hell, but a mere purgatory, and, as it were, the vestibule of the abode of the blessed.¹

Mystical interpretation thus made use of by Origen to serve the needs of his cause became, as is well known, the pest of exegesis, and the heroic effort of the reformers has not even yet completely delivered us from it. No doubt there are passages in Scripture, images, prophecies and parables which must be taken figuratively, but none the less does the rule remain that the metaphorical meaning is admissible only where the literal meaning would be absurd.

But in the case before us, what is there absurd in the supposition that a being that has had a beginning may come to an end ? That there is here absolutely nothing absurd is recognized in principle even by universalist philosophers and theologians .

Although Origenism never became the official doctrine, it won numerous partizans, especially in the East. Among them may be mentioned Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Neo- Cæsarea, who during eight years attended Origen's lectures ; Pierius and Theognostus, Origen's successors in the school of Alexandria ; Pamphilus of Cæsarea ; the historian Eusebius, who also leaned towards Arianism ; Gregory of Nyssa, Diodorus of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

1 De principiis, i. 6 ; Cont. Cels., vi. 26 ; Hom. in Ps. iii. 1 ; inJercm. ii. 3 ; in Ezek. i. 13 .

In the West the influence of Augustine prevailed over that of Origen, whose doctrine however, more or less modified, reappeared after the Reformation with Petersen, Bengel , Oetinger, Michael Hahn, in Germany, Newton in England ,

Lavater at Zurich, and the venerable Oberlin of Ban de la

Roche. Almost all are worthy of the highest respect. We cannot but acknowledge, with Bishop Martensen, that " the doctrine of apocatastasis is not always born of levity, but sometimes of a sentiment of humanity deeply rooted in the very essence of Christianity ; " all the more reason is there for deploring that philosophical à priori which has too often misled the best of men .

We may mention along with Lavater in Switzerland, Mademoiselle Huber of Geneva, and Pastor Ferdinand Oliver

Petitpierre of Neuchâtel.¹ To Petitpierre we owe a volume entitled The Plan of God.

It was with reference to the controversy started by him that Frederick the Great, when appealed to by the Venerable Company of Pastors, replied : " If my honest and faithful subjects in Neuchâtel insist upon being eternally damned, I will not stand in their way. " Petitpierre had to go into exile. In spite of all his zeal, his talents, and his virtues, he left but few disciples. The fault was in his system, which led to a deadlock. In our own days Neander at Berlin, Tholuck at Halle, the prelate Von Kapff at Stuttgardt, Professor Maurice and Rev. Andrew Jukes, in London, have to a greater or less extent adopted the same doctrine. In the case of Tholuck, however, a reserve must be made ; he said : " Dogmatically I feel myself drawn towards this opinion [Universalism] , but exegetically I do not know how to justify it. " Dr. Tait, late Archbishop of Canterbury, in his book The

1 Le Système des théologiens anciens et modernes sur l'état des âmes séparées des corps. London, 1729. See, too, the recent thesis of M. G. A.

Metzger : Marie Huber, sa vie, ses œuvres, sa théologie.

Geneva, 1887.

2 The biography of this good man is to be found in a very curious volume entitled Les quatre Petitpierre, by Professor Ch . Berthoud ; Neuchâtel, 1875 . Petitpierre having resigned his charge, went to London, became a member of the Consistory of the Swiss Church there, gave lessons in French, returned to Neuchâtel, and four years before his death published his book entitled Le plan de Dieu, tel qu'il l'a manifesté dans la nature et dans la grâce ; Hamburg, 1786.

3 Quoted by C. F. Hudson, Human Destiny; New York, 1862, p. 105.

Word of God and the Ground of Faith, expressed the hope that after the day of judgement the divine mercy will find in the infinity of the ages some means of reclaiming lost souls without compromising his justice. On the other hand, his colleague, Dr. Thomson, late Archbishop of York, leaned towards attainable immortality ; speaking of the wicked, he says : " Life, to them, must be the beginning of destruction, since nothing but God and that which pleases him can permanently exist . "1

A letter from Dr. Cazenove in The Guardian would make it appear that Origenism, or a doctrine very similar to it, is prevalent at the present time in the order of the Jesuits ; but it is impossible to examine a theology that shuns the daylight of publicity.

Returning then to Protestantism, we will further mention Archdeacon Farrar, one of the Court chaplains, whose volume, entitled Eternal Hope, produced considerable agitation in

England.

Dr. Farrar is author of a Life of Christ which has had the honour of passing through fifty editions. It may be imagined what an excitement was caused among religious people when they found that this eminent preacher and theologian also rejected the dogma of eternal torments. The editor of the Contemporary Review instituted a kind of jury, in which seventeen well-known theologians or philosophers were invited to state their views. Their statements appeared in three consecutive numbers of the Review .

Of one of those numbers seven editions were issued. It is thus apparent that, notwithstanding the preoccupation of the public mind in England with political affairs, this discussion assumed the proportions of a notable event ; it proves at the very least that the subject seems worthy of attention, and that anathemas on one side and supercilious disdain on the other are no longer seasonable. The cold water of dogmatic indifference will not be able to extinguish a fire so thoroughly kindled.

On some points we are in sympathy with Dr. Farrar's optimism . To begin with, we also believe, and that even more positively than he does, that there will be an end of evil. We

1 Bampton Lectures, 1853, p. 56 .

derive profound consolation from the thought of that blessed day when sin will be no more than a remembrance.

It cannot be denied that the Bible tells us of a final restitution of all things . The prophets of the Old Testament, so long ago, predicted the establishment of the kingdom of God in the whole world, and the renewal of the earth by righteousness. David declares that " all the ends of the earth shall

• turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship Let before him .

Bless the Lord, all ye his works. everything that hath breath praise the Lord "; these are the

• closing words of the book of Psalms.¹ The New Testament ratifies the Psalmist's utterances ; it reveals to us God's purpose " according to his good pleasure ... to sum up all things in Christ

• that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It was God's good pleasure that in Christ should all fulness dwell, and through him to reconcile all things unto himself.

When all things have been subjected unto the Son, then shall the Son also himself be subjected unto him that did subject all things unto him, that

God may be all in all. " 2

This category of passages, however, ought not to make us forget the still more numerous texts which tell us of the previously accomplished destruction of obstinate sinners. Exegetical truth is to be found only in the synthesis of these two equally categorical lines of teaching.

We will, then, admit in the world of spirits as well as in the visible universe, an end of evil by way of gradual elimination.

Moral evil, which we will define as a wilful return towards nonentity, would disappear, carrying with it into the abyss of nothingness its most guilty victims. The final restitution would be preceded by the voluntary death of many souls. Thus it is that in the analogy of nature a multitude of seeds

1 cl. 6 ; cf. xxii . 27 ; lxxii. 11 ; lxxxvi. 9 ; ciii. 22 ; Isa. ii. 2 ; xix. 23-25 ;

Dan. vii . 14.

2 Eph . i. 10 ; Philip. ii. 10 ; Col. i. 19, 20 ; 1 Cor. xv. 28.

For the standpoint of natural science, see De l'Elimination graduelle du mal, from the English of Herbert Spencer. Paris : Sandoz and Fischbacher

perish between the time of sowing and the time of harvest, that myriads of germs and ovules are destroyed before developement, and that thousands of species have disappeared in the many revolutions of the globe. The harvest will nevertheless be rich and joyous. God will be all, in all those who will have survived the destructive effects of sin : in all the saints, “ the escaped of Israel, those that are left in Zion, that remain in Jerusalem, that are written among the living."¹ It will be the universal salvation of the survivors .

A second element of truth in the doctrine that we are opposing is, as we believe, the hope which it affirms of a possible salvation in the life to come for a multitude of souls whom the Gospel message has not reached here below, or who have not been able to understand the meaning of the message.

The patriarchs and prophets of the old Covenant were saved under conditions of very imperfect knowledge. The apostle Peter tells us of a preaching of the Gospel even to the dead. It would seem that the universal and final judgement cannot take place until every man shall have heard the preaching of the Gospel. Beyond the tomb the Apocalypse places a tree of which " the leaves are for the healing of the nations, " these being apparently the heathens and the ignorant to whom God has not yet been revealed.

The Reformer Zwingli taught that in every age God has had his own elect, even in idolatrous countries . " In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him . "3

If anyone, apart from the knowledge of Jesus Christ, had felt the need of a Saviour, had sought for him, had, so to speak, virtually

1 Isa. iv. 2. See ch. ii ., pp. 49 and 63 . 2 1 Pet. iv. 5, 6. In an unpublished dissertation, which the author permits us to quote, Pastor Tophel thus paraphrases these two verses : "God is about to judge the living and the dead, and the proof of that is that the Gospel has been announced also to the dead. If it had not been so announced, the judgement could not yet take place, at least for them, for the position taken with regard to God's grace is the criterion of judgement. It is true that, as men and in the flesh, they have undergone the judgement of physical death , the judgement that comes upon all the posterity of Adam ; but the Gospel has been announced to them in order that, accepting it, they might live according to God, according to the will of God, so as thus to escape the second and final judgement."

3 Acts x. 35.

accepted him, he would be within the conditions of true faith, and would be the recipient of its benefits.¹

As for children dying in infancy, it is surely unmistakable that by the fact of heredity they must have brought with them in their very birth a certain inclination towards evil ; consequently it would be difficult to affirm that their salvation is assured. It would rather seem probable that in another world they will attain the developement of adults, and will then be subjected to the probation which in this life they did not undergo.

In a word , to make use of the terms of a letter addressed to us by M. F. Pillon, we believe in " a continuance of probation after this life for those who, not having killed within themselves the moral faculty, have preserved a germ of immortality. " Jesus declares that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is alone unpardonable ; it would seem, therefore, that all men who have not committed that sin may be pardoned " either in this life or in that which is to come."2 This hope will not become a pillow of security for the sinner. To one who occupies our standpoint sin appears as a fire that damages, devastates , and in the end destroys the soul ; senseless indeed would be the man who should allow his dwelling to burn under the supposition that later on he would have an opportunity of arresting the progress of the flames ! Even when followed by pardon, sin leaves ineffaceable traces. In this thought there is a sufficient restraint, although we do not say that it is allpowerful. There is no panacea ; God has not willed that any doctrine should have irresistible effects, yet if apart from Christian love there exist any effective motive, it must surely be the fear of that which is indelible in the consequences of sin.

Further, we believe that the mission of the elect will be to

1 Vinet, Revue chrétienne, 10 May, 1883. See, too, the fragment quoted in Supplement No. III . , § 5 .

2 " According to Matt. xii. 31, taken literally, the sin against the Holy Spirit being the only one that will not be pardoned, and that neither in this world nor in the other, it follows that all sinners definitively condemned will be so condemned for having committed that sin, which implies, in order that they should be able to commit it, a knowledge of the Gospel, and that by proclamation not outward, addressed to the ear, but inward, that of the Spirit, who makes himself understood in the heart. "-G. Tophel, MS. quoted.

carry on the work of universal pacification undertaken by Jesus

Christ and by his Church here below.

It seems natural to suppose that the ignorant and the sickly already referred to are the people of whom the elect are to be the kings and the priests, the physicians and the spiritual leaders. Members of Christ's body, disciples of the Saviour, firstborn of the new creation, children of the first resurrection, the elect, at the epoch of the second resurrection, will doubtless have younger brethren whose education may be entrusted to them.¹

While these elements of truth belong naturally to the view that we are defending, we may be thankful to the Universalists for having maintained them at a time when the true biblical teaching was not heard .

Having premised and conceded so much, we shall begin the refutation of Universalism by two preliminary criticisms.

In the first place we charge it with a relative novelty : it does not appear in the history of dogmas before the third century.

All the earliest Church Fathers are Conditionalist ; not one of them teaches Universalism.

In the writings of Clement of

Alexandria it is found only in germ .

Then the esoteric character of this doctrine also constitutes a presumption against it. Esoteric teaching is a secret doctrine which certain philosophers communicate only to a small number of adepts . This character is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, which is to be preached upon the housetops. The that I am pure from the apostle Paul said : " I protest blood of all men, for I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God. " But Universalism has always been more or less ashamed of itself, has had behind it an uneasy conscience. Origen admitted that " his doctrine might be dangerous for the unconverted " ; he taught that " the doctrine

I In his lectures on Redemption, Pastor Choisy speaks of a ministry of intercession which the believer may be called to carry on beyond the tomb.

In support of this idea he quotes Dr. Norman McLeod. It may also be found in the volume entitled The Destiny of the Human Race, by H. Dunn ; in The Restitution ofAll 1hings, by Rev. Andrew Jukes, and in the second part of Goethe's Faust.

Acts xx. 20, 26, 27. See Chap. VII ., p. 199, note 1.

of an eternal hell was a salutary error, eminently suited to alarm the sinner and convert him " ; he even called it " an educational artifice used by God for the training of novices. "

He said, too, that " if the people were taught that the pains of hell would have an end , a large number of men would be seen to plunge without hesitation into excesses from which fear had thus far restrained them. " This esoterism reappears in the exhortations of Bengel, who was not willing for that which he believed to be publicly preached. Dr. Thomas Burnet spoke of his doubts only in Latin and in covert expressions. Except for the Latin, it is often the same in our day.

Such conduct seems to lack sincerity, and, moreover, it is impracticable in an age of entire publicity. That which would most surely circulate among the people, and would make the deepest impression upon their minds, would be precisely that doctrinal point which it was intended to withhold from their curiosity. Secrets whispered in the ear of all the world are no longer secrets .

Universalism is timid and embarrassed because of a latent and unacknowledged sense of its own weakness.

As we said at the outset, it has no solid foundation in philosophy, it does violence to the formal declarations of Scripture, and it is fruitful of dangerous consequences . Anti-rational, anti-biblical, and dangerous, these seem to us to be the characteristics of

Universalism .

Let us study it under these three aspects .

From a philosophical point of view, Universalism is like an edifice built upon the sand, since it adopts as a premiss the dualist axiom of a native and inalienable immortality ; and, as we have seen , to treat that as an axiom is only to beg the question,¹ For a long time the audacity of this gratuitous assertion secured its acceptance, but those who have examined it closely have seen it vanish like a vision. In disappearing it takes away from Universalism its very foundation. How, then, can eternal felicity be attributed to creatures whose duration is naturally limited ? It is impossible except upon Conditionalist principles.

Universalism has grown upon the trunk of

1 See Chap. II.

Platonism ; that worm-eaten trunk now falling must carry the branch with it in its fall .

Not only is enforced immortality a gratuitous assertion, but it is in contradiction with universal analogy. All around us in the world we see the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Transformation as a condition of life, that is the great law of nature ; it is also the great law of the Gospel. Considered from this point of view, what is to become of free beings who resist the required transformation ? What must be the fate of men who, instead of progressing, recoil wilfully and obstinately towards mere animality ? Evolutionist science has shown that in nature there are retrogressions, degenerations , backward movements . For lack of culture even superior types are apt to return to the primitive type. The conscient being may revert to an inconscient condition, and, in fact, the sleep that takes possession of each one of us every day is a kind of daily menace of that inconscient state from which we have but just emerged.¹

Anti-metaphysical and anti-scientific, Universalism is also anti-psychological. It is a misunderstanding of the law which determines and fixes the character in accordance with the habits adopted.

At the same time it is a denial of human liberty, which may, indeed, become restricted in the voluntary practice of evil.

The essential tendency of evil, when left to itself, to intensify, to accumulate and perpetuate its own misery, is what makes the weak point in all schemes of Universalism or Restorationism. Like so many optimist theories, the idea that all men shall become good and be saved at last is opposed by the course of experience here. The hard facts of the present life are all against it, and how are we to judge of the future but by the present. Supposing even that new influences of good were brought to bear upon the human will, who can " estimate the hardening effect of obstinate persistence in evil, and the power of the human will to resist the law and repel the love of God ?" Out of the very excess of love there sometimes comes a greater bitterness of hatred ; out of the very light of good a deeper darkness of evil. To assert therefore, in the face of Scripture and experience, that " all men will be saved " is

1 Edgar Quinet has elaborated a discussion of this subject, to which we refer our readers.

See p. 64.

to make a very hardy assertion. About all such optimism there is a tinge of unreality. It may please the benevolent, but it can hardly satisfy the really thoughtful mind.¹

Will anyone say that God would use forcible means for constraining the most recalcitrant to return to him ? Surely not, for the supposition of such violence would be an outrage against him who created man for liberty.

Jesus looks upon sin as a malady of which he is the physician, as a progress towards perdition which he would arrest, as a decline which leads to death, and is an anticipated death, from which he would rescue the moribund.2

That is all true enough ; but we cannot help asking what the Universalists mean by this death in which, as they admit, the malady of sin must logically terminate. Let them tell us what they understand by this death. Is it absolute moral corruption ?

But if the corruption is absolute there would be an arrest of the degradation ; that backward movement would become stationary, which is a contradiction in terms. In our view the corruption ends in death, which is the cessation of life, and since it relates to individuals, the end of the individual functions. We cannot see any other issue.

Extermination may not be pleasant to speak of, but the evidence is undeniable.

It is acknowledged that sin involves " the diminution of the being, " a decline . "3 • Logic demands a prolongation of the lines. We may fairly demand the admission that this gradual diminution may go on until that which is left is mathematically equal to zero . The sinful man is thus brought to the very confines of nonentity, reduced, so "

to speak, to the condition of latent existence characteristic of the primitive ovule. But multitudes of these primitive ovules are every day lost. Will it be said that to everyone of these God necessarily owes the unfolding of the present life, and of the life eternal ?

No one will make such an assertion.

Still

1 Principal John Tulloch, D.D., The Contemporary Review, April, 1878, vol. xxxii ., p. 158.

2 L'Esprit du Christianisme, lectures by Professor A. Bouvier, Geneva, 1877, p. 132. In a subsequent discourse the author speaks of sin as a " species of death," but this " species " does not enable us to determine the genus.

3 Ibid.

less will it be demanded that God should provide the conditions of a revivification for beings who after a first developement have wilfully retrograded. May it not be said that a being who by an abuse of his liberty has returned to the inconscient state has by that voluntary retrogression contracted a constitutional vice, a sort of evil bent, which would inevitably be manifested in a new developement along with the renewal of vital functions ?

By promising to us an infallible salvation, universalist optimism audaciously flies in the face of all psychological probabilities. At the bottom it is not more moral than the theory of the opus operatum with which Roman Catholicism has been so justly reproached .

Professor Dorner, of Berlin, was one of the most highlyesteemed theologians of Germany. His sentiments with regard to Universalism were thus expressed :

Mr. White's doctrine appears greatly preferable to the universalist theory, for it more fully recognizes the rights of human liberty and of divine justice.1

A recent article in Herzog's Theological Encyclopædia comes to a like conclusion :2

No one who firmly believes in the sovereignty of moral liberty can admit the probability of universal salvation. It is much more reasonable to suppose that a complete suppression of obstinate rebels will precede the triumph of final harmony. Such has been the view of two modern dogmaticians, Rothe and Dr. H. Plitt.3

Universalists in their turn reply by questioning us. They say : " Reason teaches us that there is an all-powerful and all-

1 Letter to M. Byse.

In order to see how near Dorner's views were to those which we are defending, it would suffice to read the last pages of his Dogmatics. The great Rothe was a Conditionalist ; Ritschl tended in the same direction. Baader, Weisse, Olshausen, Twesten, Karsten, Hermann Schultz, Von Rudloff, Gess, Glaubrecht, F. Ecklin, the preacher, Otto Funcke, have adhered more or less explicitly to the same general views. Schoeberlein's death in 1881 deprived Universalism of its principal defender in the region beyond the Rhine.

2 Herzog, Real-Encyklopædiefür protest. Theol. und Kirche, 2nd edition ; article , Apokatastasis, by Professor J. Koestlin, vol. i., p. 483.

3 Dr. Plitt belonged to the community of the Moravian Brethren ; he was one of the two directors of Herzog's Encyklopædie. See his work entitled Die evangelische Glaubenslehre.

wise Creator.

If the sinners are to be at last annihilated, to what end can the divine wisdom have called them into existence ? " We answer that God has given existence, not to sinners, but to creatures capable of choosing good or evil. Supreme goodness could not but confer upon the most privileged creatures the supreme benefit of liberty ; but liberty cannot exist without the danger of a baneful choice. Should the creature choose evil, it would follow under the hypothesis of an inevitable immortality that the creature would either come to repentance, or else, becoming more and more rebellious, would make the disorder eternal. God has guarded against this latter alternative by creating man not immortal, but immortalizable.1

There are creatures who, on their own sole responsibility, break in their pride the bond of love that united them to their

Creator , creatures who prefer non-existence to dependence of any kind. An enforced immortality would restrict their liberty. It is worthy of God's character to abstain from imposing eternal life upon beings who obstinately reject the reasonable conditions of existence.2

The force of logic has led a Roman Catholic author to the same conclusions. A great Protestant thinker is equally explicit :

Professor Secrétan warns the sinner against a direction tangential in relation to being which would lead to exhaustion, extinction, annihilation. " The following passages from the same author are still more categorical :

We derive life from God.

We can, by a voluntary act, cease thus to derive it, and continue an apparent life by consuming the portion of substance that we originally received, by exhausting the quantity of force implanted in us by the creative impulse; but in the delusion and torment of this isolated existence we drain our resources, we destroy ourselves.... By the use of his liberty, man has cut off from its

1 Dektikon amphoterōn. Theophilus of Antioch , Ad. Autol., ii . 27.

See ante, p. 237.

2 More than that. The law of continuous developement from which there is no escape being admitted, the possibility of a perpetual disorder in an individual is inconceivable. A being in a state of growing internal discord cannot but lose his individuality at last, or, in other words, cease to be ; for individuality requires a certain harmony.

3 A. Gratry.

See ante, p. 205.

4 Revue chrétienne, 5 March, 1882.

source his own being which he derived from God, and he exhausts it in a slow death-process.¹

The possibility of suicide which God leaves open to every man in this world is surely an analogy which suggests that a suicide of the soul is possible, and that immortality must be conditional .

In the book of Wisdom we read that God created all things to the end that they might be ; he made man in view of immortality, but the wicked have made a compact with death ; they have called it their friend, and have united themselves so closely to it that they have been thereby consumed.3 Certainly sinners have not been created to be destroyed ; yet even their destruction, and indirectly their original creation, will serve some purpose.

The remembrance of their ultimate fate will oppose itself as an awful barrier against the abuse of liberty in the future life. The smoke of the cities of the plain, upon the black volumes of which Abraham looked from the heights of Mamre, inspired him with a salutary fear which he transmitted to his descendants. Thus Israel was, as a nation, preserved from the abominable vices of the accursed cities.

In later times the bitter remembrance of the first captivity prevented a return to idolatry.

So, too, the remembrance of the end of the wicked, that smoke of which the Apocalypse tells, will remain for ever as a testimony to the indefeasible rights of divine justice. It is written : " Their shame shall not be forgotten. " 4

Fertile in resources, Universalism borrows from the Platonic doctrine another subterfuge. That doctrine makes evil to reside not in the guilty will, but in matter, which being inert, insensible, is consequently innocent. Set free from the vile bondage of the body, the soul, as a white dove, would return to God in the abode of happiness. Death would become a magical means of salvation, and as it were a warrant of impunity. Suicide would here find excuse, if not even sanction and encouragement :

What is it then to die ?

To break the bond unjust,

The union adulterous of soul with dust.

1 Théologie et religion. Lausanne-Paris, 1883, pp. 24, 28.

2 Epaphtharsia ii . 23.

3 Etakēsan i. 14-16.

4 Jer. xxiii. 40.

That hateful union is evil ; death is sent To break the bond, both remedy and chastisement ! For at the moment when that union gives way The soul o'er viler elements resumes her sway, And straight on beams of immortality she flies To worlds of blessedness and truth beyond the skies.¹

Such is the doctrine which forms the basis of many a funeral oration. It is of a nature to dissipate all fears. The profligate who dies without having given any indication of personal faith is, according to the expression of F. W. Robertson, of Brighton, a more or less prodigal son, who has set out for the father's house. " Archdeacon Farrar quotes this formula with unqualified approbation. Does it not, however, contain a grave error ? Physical death can never be an infallible means of healing for the soul ; too often the moral element that characterizes the conduct of the repentant son in the parable is altogether lacking. To use consolation of this kind is not to lay healing balm upon the broken heart, but to make a wrong use of narcotics, forgetting that narcotics are poisons. The philosopher Kant said : " To administer opium to the conscience of a dying man is to commit a crime against him and against the survivors ! ” 2

Lamartine, La Mort de Socrate. The French words are : Qu'est-ce donc que mourir ? Briser ce nœud infâme,

Cet adultère hymen de la terre avec l'âme.

Cette horrible union, c'est le mal ; et la mort, Remède et châtiment, la brise avec effort ! Mais, à l'instant suprême où cet hymen expire, Sur les vils éléments l'âme reprend l'empire Et s'envole au rayons de l'immortalité

Au monde du bonheur et de la vérité.

Béranger, moreover, wishing to excuse the suicide of two young poets, dedicated to their memory a song containing these lines :

Et, vers le ciel, se frayant un chemin,

Ils sont partis en se donnant la main. Which may be thus rendered into English :

And making their own way towards the heavenly land, These two have started forth together, hand in hand.

2 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, p. 81, sq., note.

Native and inevitable immortality, besides begging the question and being a theory without reason in philosophy, flies in the face of the most formal declarations of the holy Scriptures . The Bible tells us in so many words, and in a hundred different ways, that life is not immanent in ourselves ;1 that our immortality is dependent upon the tree of life ; that the cherubim and the flaming sword keep the way of that tree ; that we are not, but are intended to become, “ partakers of the divine nature ; "" that God " only hath immortality ; and that obstinate rebels will be destroyed " body and soul. " The sacred writers exhaust their vocabulary in declaring the total and definitive end of existence which awaits the wicked , so that it may fairly be asked in what stronger terms that doctrine could have been expressed. We have quoted the texts, we have established the fact.

It has been recognized in principle by two men who stand at the antipodes of implicit faith and transcendent scepticism : M. Thomas Henry Martin, whose work on The Future Life received the approbation of Pius IX.; and M. Ernest Renan. We have already quoted M. Martin's words. We now give M. Renan's paraphrase of the passage in which the apostle Paul speaks of the chastisement in store for the impenitent : 6

A great wrath , that is to say a terrible catastrophe, is near at hand ; this catastrophe will come upon all those whom Jesus will not have delivered.

The unbelievers will become the prey of fire. Their punishment will be an eternal death ; driven away from the face of

Jesus, they will be engulfed in the abyss of destruction. A destroying fire, indeed, will be kindled, and will consume the world and all those who will have rejected the Gospel of Jesus.7

All this is a long way from the purifying fire, the ignis sapiens, and all the fantasies of Origen and the allegorists. The author

1 John vi. 53.

2 2 Pet. i. 4.

3 1 Tim . vi . 16.

4 See the Supplement No. VI . * See p . 90. 6 Olethron aiōnion, 2 Thess. i. 9 ; olethros, a term specially employed by

Plato to express annihilation; Phædo, 37, 41, 44, 55, etc. On this important passage see post, Chap. XI ., sect. iv., § 3, and the Supplement relating thereto.

Saint Paul, p. 248.

just quoted makes frequent reference to the fact that the first Christians were " a thousand leagues from the ideas of the immortality of the soul which have sprung from Greek philosophy. " He further shows that, according to the New Testament, " all men die once, but the wicked will die twice, for after the resurrection and the judgement they will be replunged into nothingness. " 1

M. de Boutteville has remarked that " Jesus had no idea of adapting the Platonic or Cartesian notion of the immortality of the soul to his dogma of a future life. " The learned

Olshausen and Delitzsch, Professors Nicolas, of Montauban , and H. Vuilleumier, of Lausanne, have come to a similar conclusion.

A commentator highly esteemed in the camp of evangelical orthodoxy, Pastor L. Bonnet, of Frankfort, also acknowledges that " the heathen doctrine of the abstract immortality of man is not taught in Scripture. " In the camp of moderate liberalism, M. Reuss, whose circumspection is well known, has declared that the philosophical thesis of the immateriality and indestructibility of the human soul " is absolutely foreign to biblical religion." 5 It may thus be easily understood that when Professor Aug. Sabatier combatted that same thesis before the Theological Society of Paris, not one of his colleagues attempted to defend it. It would, therefore , seem that the true biblical notion of immortality is a truth henceforth gained, or rather regained.

The Jews boasted of being children of Abraham ; the disciples of Plato, more audacious, say that they are of the same essence as God, like him not subject to any contingency,

1 L'Antéchrist, pp. 357, 364 ; Marc Aurèle, p. 505, sq. 2 La Morale de l'Eglise et la morale naturelle; Paris, 1866. 3 See Chap. III ., sect. iv. + See Chap . IV., sect. iv. , § 5 . 5 Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique, vol. ii , p. 457 ; 1852. Compare other declarations of the same author, Chap. IV. , sect. iv. , § 2.

6 La Renaissance, 9 Nov., 1883, and Journal du protestantisme français of 3 Nov. The director of the seminary of the Protestant Faculty of Paris , Professor Ménégoz, has decisively proved the Conditionalism of Paul, but he erroneously sets the teaching of Jesus Christ in opposition to that of his apostle. In our turn we will place, in opposition to M. Ménégoz, the categorical statement of M. D. H. Meyer in his book entitled Le Christianisme du Christ, p. 307, sq.

irremovable sharers in his eternity. Mere dwellers in the dust declare themselves for ever indispensable as God himself.

And how will it be if these demi-gods, intoxicated with the titanic, but logical, conceptions of the philosopher Schelling, puffed up with pride, should rise in insurrection against their Father and cast in his face the immortality with which they are endowed ? They will say : " As children come of age we claim the right of self-government, we break the yoke that weighs us down. " If God chastise them, they will curse him ; if he load them with favours, they will look upon all such benefits as nothing but the legitimate appanage of the children of the Most High. The wicked might thus mock God and defy him eternally, unless he should invent tortures of everincreasing ferocity in order to repress them. Here again the traditional dogma leads to that which is odious and contradictory.'

Man has been over-rated .

To all such inflated arrogance the Scripture opposes words like these : " Return, ye children of men ! " Return to the dust of which your bodies were formed, to the night from which the divine bounty brought you forth Absolute immortality is an attribute of which the God of the Bible has never divested himself in favour of any one of his creatures. The existence of these depends upon conditions fixed by the Creator.

Tenants at will in this universe that

God has made, we are bound, under pain of expulsion, to observe the conditions of the lease under which we are allowed to sojourn in it. Faith in Jesus Christ is the fundamental clause of this lease, and the Gospel is intended to make it known to us ; without a personal faith in Jesus Christ there is no imperishable life.

Exegesis recognizes, à priori, that essential immortality, and consequently Universalism which is dependent upon it, are doctrines opposed to the Bible. We will now examine the à posteriori evidence that is brought against us ; that is to say, the texts that are supposed to imply a final immortalization of all men .

As we have seen, there are certain passages of Scripture which seem to announce a universal salvation ; but let us not be misled : these passages relate to an epoch when, the conflict being ended, peace will be made with all the survivors. As for the victims of the second death, they, alas ! can have only the peace of the cemetery, of that refuse-heap of souls called in Scripture Gehenna. Among the texts quoted against us let us take those which seem to be most favourable to the universalist point of view :

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.

As through one trespass the judgement came unto all men to condemnation, even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.. God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.

who willeth that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. is the propitiation for our sins, and not s Christ the righteous for ours only, but also for the whole world.¹

This is the bright and joyous side of the Gospel ; it is the plan of divine mercy embracing the whole world, all sinners without distinction ; but, as M. Reuss has well said, it relates to an " offered grace, not to a necessary effect. "2 Our thankful admiration will not cause us to forget that men may still " make void the plan of God as respects themselves, " according to the expression used by Jesus Christ concerning the Pharisees and doctors of the law. Jesus said again : " How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her own brood under her wings, and ye would not " ! Jesus embraces the world in his love, and would draw all men unto himself; but how many there are who resist !

Jesus Christ draws souls, but does not force them. Human liberty has its privileges and its perils, but it is everywhere proclaimed and treated as a serious reality in the sacred Scriptures.

The doctrine of

1 John xii. 32 ; Rom. v. 18 ; xi. 32 ; 1 Tim. ii. 4 ; I John ii. 2.

Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique, edition of 1852 , vol. ii., p. 258. The expression hoi polloi, which Paul uses, Rom. v. 19, designates, as we believe, in his vocabulary humanity, in the modern collective sense. An expression so general must admit many exceptions. For example, if we say that Jenner's discovery has delivered humanity from a terrible scourge, we do not mean thereby to deny that thousands of children still die of smallpox in countries where vaccination is not practised.

3 Ethetēsan, Luke vii. 30.

4 Luke xiii. 34 ; cf. John xv. 22, 23.

universal and obligatory salvation seems to us to involve a misconception of the liberty of man. A free soul has always the right and the power to lose itself. We may wish to believe that none will ever exercise that power ; but present experience and certain biblical declarations make it difficult to entertain such a hope.¹

All may be saved in Christ, that is clearly taught by the apostle ; but are all actually saved ? Certainly not ; the gift of justification in Christ, as all Scripture testifies, is accorded to us only on certain conditions, and if the apostle Paul does not indicate those conditions in the verse under review, it is because he has done so in twenty other places in his Epistle to the Romans, particularly at the very beginning of this chapter, where he says : " Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."2

In Scripture the word all is frequently hyperbolic, as, for instance, when Paul declares that in his life-time the Gospel has been preached " in all creation under heaven. " The apostle's declaration that " the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance " must not be abused ; it signifies that God is faithful, but " if we deny him, he also will deny us. " 4 The parable of the unmerciful servant is on record to teach us that salvation is and remains conditional. The compact that unites us to God is bilateral. God draws, but he does not compel ; he will not save us in spite of ourselves. His patience no doubt is eternal ; but, contingent beings as we are, in perishing we withdraw ourselves from its operation . We are images of the divinity, but how many fugitive images are effaced !

What a contrast there is between Scripture and Universalism !

Peter speaks of the salvation of the righteous as being accomplished " with difficulty. " Paul says that we are to " work

1 P. Vallotton. La Bible, son autorité, son contenu, et sa valeur, p. 343 : Lausanne-Paris, 1883.

2 Rom. v. I. De Felice, Avertissement aux Eglises réformées de France contre l'universalisme, p. 7 ; Toulouse, 1840. 3 Col. i. 23.

2 Tim. ii. 12. Here, as almost everywhere, the New Testament has its roots in the Old. David had said to his son Solomon, " If thou seek the Lord, he will be found of thee ; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever " ( I Chron. xxviii. 9 ; cf. 2 Chron. xv. 2 ; xxiv. 20). In the same chapter in which the irrevocability of the gifts and calling of God are spoken of, the apostle threatens us with the severity that cuts offthe fruitless branches (Rom. xi . 22 ; cf. 29) .

out our salvation with fear and trembling." In the universalist system salvation is inevitable ; it cannot fail of accomplishment . That system would make it appear that the Bible was written in order to tranquillize the impenitent, and that God had given his Son to the world in order that whosoever believeth not on him should be saved !

those " whose God is the end be destroyed : come after the end ? dry his tears, for even

Paul weeps over their belly, " who, as he says, will in " whose end is perdition." What can Universalists would bid the apostle perverted disciples are not truly lost ; their destruction will be the renewal of their being.

Thus to destroy and to save become synonymous terms . The wrath of the Lamb, spoken of in the Apocalypse, will be only a supreme effusion of tenderness for the benefit of obstinate sinners. Jesus urges us to " strive to enter in at the strait gate " ; he tells us that the broad way leadeth to destruction . The Universalists, however, say : No, that way also leads to life ; longer but easier than the narrow way, it leads to the same end. Jesus threatens with a fire that can " destroy both soul and body in Gehenna " ; but all may be reassured, the threat is impossible of execution, the soul is absolutely imperishable, and " doomed to salvation. " ¹ According to universalism, the tares cast into the fire become wheat, the withered vine-branch recovers its foliage in the flames.

The sinner is not the blackened and half- consumed " brand " that is plucked " from the burning ; he is the incorruptible diamond which, having fallen into the mud, will certainly one day come forth thence with undiminished value.

It has never yet been explained how Jesus could have said of Judas that " it would have been good for that man if he had not been born. " If a blessed eternity was sure to follow his chastisement, however much that might be prolonged, it would have been an advantage for that man to have been called into existence .

It is impossible to eliminate from the Scriptures the irrevocable sentences, the irreparable ruins, a sin against the Holy Spirit, a sin that will not be forgiven, " neither in this

2 Matt. xxvi . 24. 3 Isa. v. 24 ; Mal. iv . 1 ; Matt. iii. 12 ; Luke xiii. 6-9.

1 Miss Cobbe.

world nor in that which is to come, " a sin unto death for which it would be useless to pray, a severity of God which will cause him to cut off even the branches that had been grafted into the good olive -tree . " God is not to be mocked . " The God of the Gospel is " a consuming fire " that will " devour the adversaries " ; not their sins only, but their very persons. When closely pressed, the Universalists abandon to us the letter, and invoke the spirit of the Scripture, which, they say, is against us ; and they quote, although perverting its meaning, the apostle's saying : " The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. " This saying has been treated as a rule of hermeneutics, according to which imagery and hyperboles are not to be understood in a literal sense .

That is a rule that we are willing to accept ; but, as a general principle, the meaning must be the outcome of the details of the letter, in the same way as in an account pounds are produced by the addition of shillings and pence.

Of course " the letter must not kill the spirit, but neither is it permissible for the spirit to nullify the letter. High-flying exegesis loses sight of the firm ground of the biblical text to such an extent that it ceases to be its commentary."1

In the Bible, the final death with which the obstinate sinner is threatened is death without qualification and without reserve ; it is therefore a complete and definitive death . To save is to rescue from imminent destruction .

The tree of life does not grow beside the " lake of fire and brimstone. " There is a " second death, " but nothing is said about a third life.

To imagine such a life would surely be to set up for being wiser than Scripture and, as it has been well put, more Christian than Jesus Christ himself.

The pious Tholuck, while Universalist at heart, honestly acknowledged the exegetical weakness of his position. M. Reuss declares it to be absolutely anti-biblical ; he says : " Final restitution, that is to say, the salvation of the reprobate, neither Paul nor any of the members of the primitive Church ever dreamed of. "2 Professor F. Godet on this point agrees

1 De la conciliation en théologie, by E. de Pressensé. Revue chrétienne,

October, 1883.

2 Les Epîtres pauliniennes, vol. i., p. 262. " The hope related to the masses, the regrets were concerning individuals. "-Ibid. , vol. ii., р. 10б.

with Reuss ; he writes : " Nowhere does St. Paul teach a universal salvation. There are indeed in his writings passages which seem positively to exclude it. " According to Delitzsch : " There is no doctrine that contradicts the Scripture in a more unpardonable fashion . "2 Professor Ménégoz, too, has reached the same conclusion ; he says : " Paul does not teach the final salvation of all men.

God would have mercy upon all, yet there are those who will be condemned. ''3

It will be difficult for our honoured opponents to resist the authority of this quadruple verdict .

Ill at ease on the ground of metaphysics, banished from the field of Scripture, Universalism entrenches itself in the domain of sentiment.

It invokes in its favour the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man .

It is important to notice that these two notions have sprung , not from natural theology, but from the holy Scripture. With the false gods fatherly sentiments rise but little above zero, and human brotherhood scarcely exists among peoples who have not the Bible. It is therefore the Scripture that must determine the true scope of these notions.

It must be admitted that the traditional theology had suppressed that element of tenderness and compassion in the divine character which a good father introduces even into his chastisements .

While the old systems emphasize chiefly God's authority and his royal prerogatives, we see in him essentially a father, as Jesus Christ has

1 Thus 2 Thess. i. 9 ; Philip. iii. 19.

Comment. sur l'Epître aux Rom., vol . i. , p. 491 .

2 System der bibl. Psychologie, 2nd edition, p. 470. So, too, C. H. Weisse : " Every sincere and impartial theologian who will study the biblical teaching on this point must at last admit that universal salvation is contrary to that teaching. "- Stud. und Krit. vol. ix. , p. 327.

* Le Péché et la rédemption d'après St. Paul, pp. 133, 144 ; Paris, 1882 . 4 Moloch devoured the children of his worshippers ; Jupiter was not exactly a tender father. As for human brotherhood, it does not appear very clearly in these lines from Lucretius :

For one who watches others' danger from the shore

There is a subtle charm in angry ocean's roar.

-De rerum naturâ, lib. ii. 1 , 2 .

taught us. The old orthodoxy seems to have looked upon God mainly as an almighty ruler ; we now think of his omnipotence as employed to protect, to assist, to bless.¹

For all that, the divine fatherhood is far from being a lax indulgence . The living God requires, at all costs, the progress of his creature. The Spartan mother said to her son when he started for the war : " With it, or upon it ! " bring back thy shield with victory ; or let it serve thee for a bier ! The divine law of moral progress cries to us : " Forward, or die ! " As the apostle says : " He that soweth unto his own flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the spirit, If ye live after the shall of the spirit reap eternal life. flesh , ye must die ; but if by the spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live . " There is no remaining stationary ; we must advance or recede, must be converted or be destroyed.

Such is the divine fatherhood , in nature and in grace. When it undertakes to chastise, it assumes a severe and even terrible aspect, as, for example, in certain diseases which are the direct consequences of sin.

Let us consider the picture of a good father, as we find it in the parable of the prodigal son. Although that father had his elder son at home, and was surrounded by a numerous retinue of servants, it does not appear that he sent anyone to seek for the erring son. The heavenly Father, on his part, strains mercy to its utmost limit ; he plies us with messages of reconciliation ; he goes so far as to deliver up to death his beloved Son, who devotes himself for our salvation ; he will take care that the good news of pardon shall reach the worst of sinners. But if there are some of them who " trample under foot the Son of God, profane the blood of the New Covenant, and do despite unto the Spirit of grace, " for them " there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgement, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries . "

The terrible fate of Jerusalem, the " beloved city," of which not one stone was left upon another, is an historical attesta-

1 Orthodoxy in the United States. Journal du protestantisme français,

4 Jan. , 1879.

2 Gal. vi. 8 ; Rom . viii. 13.

tion of the severer side of the divine fatherhood : " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ."

Such a prospect is logical, and the Christian conscience is constrained to ratify the sentence pronounced in the Scripture. Is it possible to imagine anything that would avail to touch a man who remains utterly unaffected by the work of Jesus Christ and the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart ?

In absolutely refusing to admit that a human soul can perish, the Universalists remind us of those Jews who did not believe that God would ever permit the destruction of their sanctuary.

The temple was indeed precious, souls are more precious , but the rights of eternal justice are most precious of all. The heavenly Father of the Gospel remains faithful to his threatenings as well as to his promises .

Universalism , however, would restrict the power of God to create responsible beings having liberty to destroy themselves . All will be saved, whatever they may do to prevent it. God owes to every man an unconditional and perpetual prolongation of existence. Universalism shows itself generous at the expense of justice and liberty. It is nearly connected with the levelling tendencies of our time, which would proscribe every superiority, even superiority of talent and of virtue. The demand is now made that good and bad workmen should be paid at the same rate. The demagogic instinct would " make believe in the equality of merits because of the similarity of pretensions .''1

The democratic idea, which would make out that all have the same rights, is thought to be incompatible with the doctrine of the final separation between the good and the wicked ; equality requires universal salvation. Is such reasoning really serious ? Does not M. Bouvier himself speak of a judgement ? What is the meaning of judgement if it does not establish differences between men ? And from the universalist point of view, what becomes of the liberty and the responsibility of individuals ? One of two things : either they have not the power to resist the predestination that would lead them to goodness ; or, having that power, if any one of them should refuse to be thus led, he will not be punished, for that would be contrary to equality. But is it not clear to you that, on the contrary, equality requires that there should be punishment ?

1 H. F. Amiel. Fragments d'unjournal intime, p. 187 ; Paris, 1883.

That which ought to be claimed, from the democratic point of view, is equality in the adaptation and the chances of salvation, the possibility of attaining it offered to all ; and that is just what the Gospel assures to them. But, the individual merits being unequal, an equality of destiny would simply perpetuate inequality and injustice. Universal salvation, set forth as a certainty and not simply as a desirable but uncertain possibility, since its realization depends upon the moral attitude of millions of individuals, Universalism set up as a system is the very negation of liberty and of justice. With all my might I reject it, in the name of these two great principles, which are the foundation of moral order.1

A great landowner finds a number of unemployed labourers and sets them to work ; he says to them : “ Here are five pounds for each of you as earnest-money, you will cultivate my vineyard ; when the vintage is over, you shall each receive a further and larger sum. "

But among these labourers there are some idle fellows, who pass their days in their own pleasures, and do not fulfil their appointed task. Will it be harshness on the part of the landowner if he refuses to these the recompense that had been promised conditionally ? Ought we not, on the contrary, to admire the liberality of the advances originally made ?

In this parable the earnest-money represents this life ; the promised recompense, life eternal ; the refusal to give it, the decline and second death of the impenitent sinner.

But Universalism does not like to hear of a difference of virtue among men. It says that we ought to learn not to believe ourselves better than others ; that men are of equal value, or very nearly so. Be it so, very nearly equal ; but two lines that are only very nearly parallel are divergent ; they will in the end be wide as the poles asunder.

Wherever there is life, that is to say, continual progress or retrogression, the important thing is the direction. There is a moral equalization against which we need to be on our guard . " Ye have wearied the Lord with your words," says the prophet, " yet ye say :

Wherein have we wearied him ? In that ye say : Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them ; or, Where is the God of judgement ? ''2

1 Geo. Godet. Actes de la Société pastorale suisse, p. 195, sq. third general assembly , at Geneva, 1885 .

2 Mal. ii. 17 .

Forty-

Universalists appeal further to the sentiment of natural affection, which, as they say, would be wounded by the theory that we are defending. M. Atger has formulated this objection in his thesis on personal survival, thus :

We are often told in the Gospels that after this life perfect happiness is reserved for souls without blemish .

I cannot reconcile this sublime promise with the doctrine of annihilation. We have sons, brothers, parents, friends who are as dear to us as ourselves, and who, so to speak, live in our souls ; how is it possible for us to be perfectly happy if we are destined to see them no more ? In the midst of the perfect felicity of the abode of the elect, the father will he tortured by the mournful thought that the son whom he has so dearly loved is for ever separated from him, and that this being, the object of so much solicitude and affection, is condemned to hopeless and absolute nonentity.¹

On this our first remark is that the same difficulty exists , at least in part, in Universalism. M. Atger admits retribution, and consequently sufferings, beyond the tomb ; these sufferings, perhaps both long continued and intense, would not fail to interfere with the happiness of relatives and friends who might see them inflicted upon those dear to them .

Further, we will ask M. Atger what it is that we love in our fellow- creatures, their good or their bad qualities. Assuredly it is their good qualities ; and so long as these have not entirely disappeared we are permitted to hope. These constitute a soil in which the seed of a new life may yet germinate and grow : " Thus saith the Lord : If there is juice left in the grape [any sound portion in the cluster] the saying is : Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it ; so will I do for my servants' sake, that I may not destroy them all. "2 Ten righteous men in Sodom would have saved the city. The same rule is doubtless applicable to individuals ; we are permitted to believe that so long as they remain corrigible God will not altogether reject them . But suppose them utterly perverted, all their natural sentiments distorted, and your compassionate affection will give

1 De la survivance personelle, par Elie Atger, bachelier ès lettres et ès sciences, thesis presented to the theological Faculty of Geneva. Nismes,

2 Isa. lxv. 8.

place to horror. Thus, too, in the analogy of nature, which we cannot too frequently invoke, the most beautiful body, the most idolized while alive, when reduced to the condition of a corpse, becomes very soon nothing better than an object of repugnance and a painful reminder to be put out of sight. Doleful remembrances there will necessarily be in heaven, the recollection of our faults to begin with ; there will be weeping there, but " God will wipe away every tear from our eyes." Jesus said : " Who is my mother, and who are my brethren ? Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother. " When we become like Jesus Christ we shall no longer love according to the flesh ; the affections of Christ will be ours.¹

Now, therefore, without further hesitation, we shall bow to the verdict of Scripture and of conscience. We shall say : Yes, the righteous and the regenerated sinner alone have the right and the capacity to become immortal. Beings that are utterly corrupt neither deserve nor desire immortality ; nor will anyone desire or demand it for them. A wise and good God will not impose it upon them. As it has been said by M. Gretillat, whose view is in harmony with Vinet's : " The cause of irrevocable condemnation being a state of actual rebellion which is absolutely conscient and voluntary, that cause cannot be suppressed at any future moment except by the suppression of the very personal identity. "2

Lastly, Universalism seems to us to have an immoral and dangerous tendency. If all men without exception are the predestined heirs of eternal life ; if final salvation, enforced, infallible, universal, has received the warrant of the divine government, that is surely all that is needed in order to lull into a sweet and perfect repose the many who desire to sleep. Why should we watch and hurry when we have eternity in which to act ? With eternity before him and the divine good-

1 This shows that Conditionalism does not lead to the same barbarous consequences as the traditional dogma, which forbids to the elect all pity for the reprobate. See Chrysostom, Hom. in 2 Ep. ad Cor. A cruel dogma has an ill effect upon even the best of men.

2 Exposé de théol. systém., vol. iv., p. 608.

See Supplement No. III . , § 6 .

ness always to be relied upon, the sinner will imagine that he can drink with impunity of the cup of forbidden pleasures. It is true that Universalists speak of a sort of purgatory ; but the sinner flatters himself that he will be able to shorten the duration of this purgatory, if it should ever come in his way, by an appeal, necessarily irresistible, to the mercy of the kind Father of whom such a reassuring portrait has been drawn for him, to that mercy which knows absolutely no bounds. He will say : Let us lead a joyous life, let us banish all anxiety ; to-morrow God, ever indulgent, will forgive us ; whatever we may do, or fail to do, an eternity of happiness awaits us.

The teachers of Universalism will no doubt respond that this sinner's reasoning is ignoble, that they appeal to more exalted sentiments. That is all very well, but where are these exalted sentiments to be found ? Among the multitudes they exist only here and there. In proof of this we will invoke the testimony, not of a theologian, but of an illustrious nineteenthcentury Voltairean, whose knowledge of men was exceptional, M. Thiers, who said : " Men are naturally cowards, liars, and sluggards. " As for those in whom these characteristics predominate, that is to say, the majority of mankind, Universalism abandons them to their increasing degradation, satisfied with predicting their final salvation ; being disarmed, it has no hold upon them. The God of the Bible, on the contrary, takes pity on these poor people ; he speaks to them, threatens them, and often alarms and saves them. Which of the two doctrines is, then, really the more tender : that which, itself lax, in its laxity leaves such people to their fate, or the biblical doctrine which seizes them with a strong hand and rescues them from their mortal carelessness ? The fact is that these two theories have at their base two different notions of sin . Universalism treats sin as a matter not very serious ; in its view, moral evil is not a tragic fact, but only a lack of taste or ignorance of the laws of æsthetics ; it is the spot of dirt on the disobedient child's dress which a little water will efface. In our view, sin is a corrosive.

Although restrained, even pardoned, it has certain absolutely irreparable effects.

When unpardoned it " eateth as doth a canker, " and totally destroys its victim.

1 The Fortnightly Review, Nov., 1877, p. 650.

There are men who would be wiser than the Bible ; they suppress the motive of fear as unsuited to the times. Many a preacher keeps silence upon the wrath to come, although its rumblings may be heard from one end to the other of the New Testament. It follows that such preaching is shorn of half its power ; for, indeed, why should the pastor, the evangelist, the Christian publicist, the missionary, multiply their painful efforts ? ¹ There is no danger in prospect ; there can be no question of the salvation of souls, as they are not liable to be lost ! The nerve of apostleship is thus half paralyzed. In fact, the conversion of heathens by universalist missionaries has hardly ever been heard of. In short, as we said when adverting to one of the perils of evangelism, universal salvation is really self-contradictory ; for, if the salvation of everyone is assured, there is no longer any danger, and, since there is no more occasion for it, salvation becomes an unmeaning word.

But if we keep silence the very stones will cry out. A writer quite unconnected with this discussion, a Darwinist, not so long ago acknowledged that fear is a great and precious motive in the case of the natural man .

A possible, probable, inevitable or imminent peril is the great motive that urges an indolent man to the exercise of all his faculties. In peace and safety our faculties are apt to slumber, while in peril they are stimulated and elevated to the highest degree ; and progress is realized when our faculties are wide awake, not when they are asleep.2

Universalism may be without any great danger for pious hearts and souls of superior order, but it will exert a baneful influence over the majority of us. If our final salvation is inevitable, if all ways lead eventually to God, we shall no longer endeavour to resist the current of our alluring passions, and we shall speedily be carried away by the impetuous torrent towards the cataracts from which there is no return .

If, as we believe, Universalism is a false system, its fearful

1 Mr. Moody, the celebrated American evangelist, recently declared that he would immediately renounce the fatigues of his life as an itinerant preacher if he could believe that in one way or another all men would inevitably be saved.

Pour et contre, by Ch. Pradez ; Paris, 1878 .

effect will be to lull to sleep souls that are threatened by a supreme danger. Have those who maintain this theory weighed the responsibility that they are assuming ? We appeal to their conscience with this question .

Imprudent man, exclaims M. de Felice, what art thou doing ? Where will be the sanction of the moral law, where the check upon vice, the terror of crime ? Seest thou not that already in our natural affections visible things outweigh so much those which are invisible, and present those things which are future, that if by thy sophisms thou destroyest even the wholesome fear of God's judgements, nothing will remain but ardent and insatiable passions, clashing furiously against each other and overturning the whole earth ? Wishing to get rid of hell in the life to come, thou wilt make for us a hell in this life ; with this immense difference, that in it the good will be oppressed by the wicked. A doctrine is to be judged by its effects, as a tree is known by its fruit :

therefore examine thy doctrine by this rule, and thou wilt not wait until to-morrow before repudiating it ! ¹

We know that there are glorious spirits who despise equally both punishments and rewards. These do good, as they say, for the love of good, disdaining other motives. Will they deign to cast a compassionate look upon the rest of mankind ?

We do not pretend to an equality with them. Jesus did not come for these righteous persons, but for us poor sinners, who find that all the goads and the restraints of the Gospel are none too many. Borne along by the torrent of passion, we seek a foothold, a helpful rope, a willow branch that can be reached by our convulsive hand. The promises and the threatenings of our Saviour are, for us, means of salvation. In pity leave them to us !

Universalism is crumbling at its foundation, for it starts by begging the question ; it fails to recognize the seriousness of human liberty ; it wrests or contradicts the Scriptures ; it enervates the soul ; in these several respects it is very weak, but we must admit that it is strong with all that force of inertia which at the bottom of our fallen nature pleads in favour of letting things alone, to be and to go as they may. Popular at little cost and wildly optimist, absolute Universalism

1 Op. cit., p. 45.

determines to see everything in a rosy light. It is breathed in the moral atmosphere of this age of laxity. A salvation assured and guaranteed, do what we will : what a fallacious ideal for the existence here below !

Struggle is imposed upon all ; humanity is marching towards immortality like Hannibal's army on the way to Italy. We encounter narrow defiles, lofty ridges, violent tempests, fatigues without number. How welcome the voice that would tell us that we might safely go to sleep on the soft carpet of snow spread out at our feet ! Sweet were the accents of the siren inviting the mariner to quit his painful handling of sails and helm in order to follow her !

From the depth of our soul and conscience we protest against this doctrine ; we are urgent in pointing out its error and its danger.

We believe that it tends to lead the Churches and society towards abysses and catastrophes, wherein, however, the moral sense would be reinvigorated through the terrible reclamations of a divine justice too long treated with disdain.

There are circumstances in which it is good for the world that God's messengers should be armed with a forehead of adamant, like Ezekiel, when the object is to warn men as with the trump of God against approaching doom ; when the sense of heaven's government has wellnigh died out under the soporifics and enchantments of so evil a time ; and when men and women will say and do the utmost wickedness in assurance of being fortified at last in death by all the rites of the Catholic Church or by all the deadlier consolations of a Protestant scepticism !¹ " Thus saith the Lord of hosts :

Hearken not unto the prophets who say still unto them that despise me : The Lord hath said ye shall have peace ; and unto everyone that walketh in the stubbornness of his own heart : No evil shall come upon you.

Behold, the tempest of the Lord, his fury has gone forth, it shall burst upon the head of the wicked.

It is a rebellious people, lying children, that will not hear the law of the Lord, which say to the seers : See not ; and to the prophets : Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us

1 Edward White, Life in Christ, 3rd edition, p. 452, sq.

They have healed the smooth things, prophesy deceits . hurt of the daughter of my people lightly, saying : Peace, peace ! when there is no peace.

Ye yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they are saying : Peace, and safety ! then sudden destruction cometh upon them and they shall in no wise escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that So, then, let us that day should overtake you as a thief. not sleep as do the rest, but let us watch and be sober. "1

1 Jer. xxiii. 16, 17, 19 ; Isa. xxx. 9, 10 ; Jer. vi. 14 ; 1 Thess. v. 2, sq.