The Problem of Immortality (Part 4 of 6)

CHAPTER XI .

EXAMINATION

AGAINST

PRINCIPAL

TRADITIONAL

ARGUMENTS

SUPPORT

ADDUCED

DOGMA.

Introduction-1 . That the indefeasible immortality of individual souls is taught implicitly, if not explicitly, in the Bible- II . The threatenings of Jesus- III . That the purpose of the Tree of Life was only the maintenance of physical life-IV. Certain declarations of the apostle Paul-V. That there is no relation between the notion of moral good and that of existence

-VI. The mystery - VII . Various objections—VIII. A text from the

Apocalypse-IX. Our principal opponent at last proposes an hypothesis approaching nearly to Conditionalism.

HAVING examined the arguments put forward in support of

Universalism, it is fitting that we should now do as much for the traditional dogma. We have brought this dogma to the bar of a tribunal composed of philosophy, exegesis, history, the religious consciousness, and pastoral prudence. Our plaint is before the court ; we will now hear an advocate for the defendant. Professor F. Godet having come forward, we will proceed to consider his arguments. The widely acknowledged merit of Professor Godet as a theologian will be sufficient guarantee of our desire that judgement should be pronounced upon a full understanding of the case.

Professor Godet confines himself to the essential arguments ; for which our readers will be thankful. Their attention being concentrated upon a few decisive points, will not be so liable to be distracted, and in case there should be some who do not shrink from a more extended study, we will endeavour to satisfy them . They will find in the Supplement of this work a collection, as complete as it has been possible for us to make it, of the objections that have been raised against the point of view that we are defending.1

Professor F. Godet's plea appeared in the Revue théologique of Montauban, as an article in reply to one by Pastor Charles Babut. We read this article with a mixture of regret and satisfaction : regret in seeing so distinguished a theologian combat that which we believe to be an important truth ; satisfaction in finding that the arguments employed are not of a nature to shake our conviction. There is, moreover, a satisfaction in knowing at last the judgement of the eminent professor on the subject in question. His silent opposition was much more formidable than a frank discussion .

We have not forgotten the advice that we received from M.

Godet himself thirty-seven years ago, when we had the privilege of attending his lectures. He told us that in questions of theological science the record should always be left open. It has been by following this advice that we have reached what is called Conditionalism, in which we see an element of the primitive Gospel ; but the record remains open. If, therefore, our professor of former days should be able to remove the difficulties that we are about to submit to him, it might be for us the beginning of an evolution which, perhaps, would bring us back to our starting-point, to that point of view which a special study of the subject forced us to abandon more than a quarter of a century ago. We will now present the arguments as nearly as possible in the order adopted by our venerable antagonist .

1 See the Supplement No. XVII . , Classified list and refutation of objections putforth against Conditional Immortality.

2 Number for Jan.--March, 1886 : Quelques réflexions sur l'enseignement de Saint Paul concernant la viefuture. M. Babut's article had appeared in the number for Jan.--March, 1885 : De l'enseignement de Saint Paul sur la viefuture, a report presented to the Evangelical Conference at Montpellier, 29 Oct., 1884. The author concluded thus : " We therefore hold it to be probable that the doctrine of Conditional Immortality expresses more nearly than any other St. Paul's views on the grave and painful subject under review." It will be seen that M. Godet, in his article, has considerably extended the debate.

3 At that time we stood at the point of view of eternal torments ; we even preached them conscientiously, from a sentiment of loyalty towards that which passed for true biblical teaching. Will M. Godet, in his turn, deign to place himself for a short time at the Conditionalist point of view ?

The words spirit and soul occur more than sixteen hundred times in the Scriptures, but the expressions " immortal soul " and " immortal spirit " are never found there. God only, it is said, hath immortality. M. Godet acknowledges the correctness of this statement. Many writers have thereby been led to the conclusion that the immortality of the soul, in the common and traditional sense, is not a biblical doctrine.

Men on every step in the scale of beliefs are agreed on this point.¹ M. Godet is of a different opinion ; in his view, the " natural indestructibility of the soul " is " a tacit supposition of the biblical intuition." In other terms, if the Bible never speaks of a native and inalienable immortality, it is because this doctrine is treated as self- evident .

Here our difficulties begin .

1. It seems to us that if the immortality of the soul had been self-evident it would not have been contested , whereas it has always been very much contested. The Epicureans at Athens, the Sadducees at Jerusalem, denied the immortality of the soul, and even all life after the death of the body. These two were numerous and powerful sects. Even as early as the time of Isaiah there were some whose maxim was : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. "

After death all is dead !

The immortality of the soul could not, therefore, be taken for granted .

2. M. Godet says : " The biblical sphere is limited to the moral sphere. " Be it so ; but he will surely admit that the immortality of the soul concerns morality, and even religion . Faith in a survival is indeed one of the bases of religious morality. The immortality of the soul belongs, therefore, to the " biblical sphere." It would be strange that Scripture should teach nothing on that which so distinctly comes within its sphere. As Luther said : " We are not papists, but Christians ; we know that there is nothing relating to faith and morals which is not amply and explicitly taught in the holy Scriptures." 3

The question is, therefore, why the scholastic

1 See Chap. III., sect. iv. ; Chap. IV., sect. iv. ; and Chap. X., sect. vi.

2 Isa. xxii. 13.

Works, Wittenberg, ed. 1549-1559, vol. ii., fol. 113, verso, § 2.

doctrine of the soul's immortality should be the sole exception to this general principle of evangelical Protestantism.

3. It may even be said that the Bible contains an abundance of declarations in support of doctrines which might better be taken for granted than that of the essential immortality of the soul . The existence, the spirituality, and the eternity of God, for example, are frequently and explicitly affirmed. " God is a spirit, " says Jesus ; " He that cometh to God must believe that he exists, " writes the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews . The Jewish code appoints the punishment of death for those who deny the existence, the unity, or the spirituality of God ; but that code does not contain a single clause which condemns those who deny the spirituality or the immortality of the human soul.

God is declared to be immortal, eternal, incorruptible.¹ If we are to believe in the native imperishability of man, we should like to find at least one passage in which one or other of these epithets is applied to the human soul ; but it seems that we must forego that satisfaction.

4. Is it not generally understood that we ought to avoid imputing to a man opinions which he has never expressed, and are not gratuitous suppositions at the bottom of that which may be called a biased construction of any given text ? What would be said of a judge who would send a prisoner to the scaffold simply because he had an " intuition " that the man was a murderer, and without invoking further proof or testimony ? Yet something very like this is done, unintentionally, when the opinions of certain pagan philosophers are imputed to the biblical writers. The partizans of the traditional dogma, imbued with Platonic ideas, have too often ignored that essential principle of true exegetical science : Sensum ne inferas sed efferas ; everything should be drawn from the text, and nothing brought to it.

5. In this case, however, there is more than an absence of proof : there is proof of the contrary. So far from leaving it to be supposed that the soul is absolutely imperishable, the Bible teaches categorically that it is mortal. A celebrated Hebrew scholar, to whose authority M. Godet will hardly take exception, Professor Franz Delitzsch, has acknowledged this ;

1 Heb. xi. 6 ; Rom. i. 23 ; xvi. 26 ; 1 Tim. i. 17 ; cf. Deut. xxxii. 40.

he says : " From the biblical point of view the soul can be put to death, it is mortal " (Num. xxiii . 10 ; xXXV. II ; Isa. xxvi. 19) , it may be " lodged in the dust. " 1

6. More than that : in a hundred passages the Scriptures, both the New Testament and the Old, teach that the wicked shall be totally destroyed.

The sacred writers have exhausted the resources of the languages in which they wrote in order to declare it .

In the New Testament the terms used are the very same that Plato employs to designate that annihilation or extinction of being of which he had the most definite conception.2

It is impossible to apply to the silence of the Scripture in relation to a pretended native immortality the familiar proverb :

" Silence gives consent. "

Indeed, the explanation derived from such unexpressed evidence does not fully satisfy M. Godet. After having offered it for what it is worth, he proposes a second : This phenomenal silence is preserved because in applying to the soul the epithet immortal (which is conspicuous by its absence) , Scripture " would have seemed to attribute to this element of our being an existence independent of the divine will. "-" Would have seemed to attribute " !

What ? The use of this epithet would then have been objectionable, or, to speak plainly, dangerous ; while, forsooth, in our time the danger would not exist ! The Bible feared to pander to the pride of man ; in our own epoch there is no longer reason for the same fear !

Men are become so modest that to all of them may safely be accorded the immortality which the Bible reserves for genuine believers !

One of the most majestic jewels of the diadem of Deity may be placed on the heads of all without peril ! Is it not, on the contrary, more like the truth to affirm that never did human arrogance parade itself with greater audacity, that never did man-

1 Commentary on Psalm vii. 5 [6] ; cf. Comment. on Genesis, p. 190,

3rd edition ; 1860.

2 Phædo, §§ 14, 23, 29, 36, sq., 41, 44, 50, 52, 55. Cebes is made to say :

"Almost all men imagine that the soul, when parted from the body

• is nothing, nowhere," ouden, oudamou, § 14.--" What ! a soul created with such prerogatives would no sooner have quitted the body than it would be dissipated and annihilated, as most men believe."---Diapephusētai kai apolōlen hōs phasin hoipolloi anthropoi, § 29. [The higher numbers quoted on p. 105 are those of Bekker's edition. ] worship display itself with more grotesque shamelessness ? No doubt God created man in his own image, but precisely because he bears the image he has not the reality. The sun is reflected in a pail of water, but this ray of light is not a sun ; it may easily vanish . An image is not necessarily indelible. A tarnished mirror of the Divinity, the human soul has the fragility of the glass.

Indirectly and very reasonably, M. Godet blames the Churches which have overrated man by the lavish use of the phrase " immortal soul," which for excellent reasons the Bible has always carefully avoided.

M. Godet makes yet another important concession .

He admits that " immortality belongs to God alone in a manner absolute and inalienable, " and that God has always " the right to take back to himself this gift " of immortality. But if the immortality of man is not " absolute and inalienable, "

if it depends upon the good pleasure of the Creator, it is, in fact, relative and conditional. Apparently without suspecting it, M. Godet himself is, then , a Conditionalist, with this difference, that he does not accord to the soul the liberty of suicide ; while to us it seems that a compulsory immortality would be a grave infringement of human liberty. Yet, in some of his writings M. Godet has seemed to recognize the truly destructive effects of sin. He says : " The soul of the vicious is dissolved (se dissout) by the deleterious action of his vice.¹ According to Littré, the verb se dissoudre means to be destroyed . Does M. Godet use it in any other sense ? “ Deleterious " comes through the medium of Latin from a Greek verb signifying to destroy, to kill. M. Godet elsewhere says : " The soul corrupts itself in its lusts. " 2 According to Littré again, “ to corrupt " is to break up the integer, and thence to spoil, destroy. The propriety of the images requires therefore that the corruption of the soul should issue in a similar result . If, then, we are to understand M. Godet's meaning by reference to the definition of his words in the standard dictionaries, we may claim that substantially he partakes our own mode of thinking.

1 Commentaire sur l'epître aux Romains, i. , p. 256. 2 Ibid., p. 442. 3 Cf. p. 85.

§I . MATTHEW X. 28 .

Jesus here exhorts us to " fear him who is able to destroy [French : faire périr, cause to perish] both soul and body in Gehenna . " According to M. Godet, this expression, cause to perish, " may mean something quite different from annihilate. "

What precisely in this something ? Professor Godet does not say, but it must be the perpetual infliction of punishment on individuals whose life is indefinitely prolonged in a lake of fire and brimstone . That is the doctrine of which, so far as we know, M. Godet is a representative. Yet he recoils from the explicit mention of such a prospect.

If we may be allowed to say so, it seems to us that our honoured opponent would find himself less hampered if he adhered to the historical and grammatical sense of the words, in accordance with the accepted law of Protestantism . Littré and the Academy agree in defining périr [to perish] as " to come to an end . " To cause the soul to perish " must therefore mean to put an end to the soul's existence. The historical and grammatical sense ought not to be set aside except when it involves contradiction .

When, for example, Jesus, speaking of Mary, says to John : " Behold thy mother," the words are used in a figurative sense, the natural sense would be contradictory ; but is it contradictory to suppose that the body and the soul of a created being should come to an end ? Not at all, for M. Godet himself has only just said that " God can always annihilate any being by an act of his will. " We find ourselves therefore forced to conclude that in this verse Jesus threatens the wicked with a complete abolition of existence .

If we leave the translations and go back to the verb in the original text, apolesai, the sense remains the same. Itis clearly indicated and fixed in many passages of the New Testament ; for example, in the comparison of the limb which, when amputated, perishes and putrefies , and again in the verse in the Epistle of James relating to bodily beauty, the sense of ceasing to exist is evident.¹ When therefore to the verb

1 Matt. v. 29, 30 ; James i. II . See also in the Greek Mark xiv. 4 ;

Luke xxi. 18 ; John vi. 12, 27 ; Acts xxvii. 34 ; Rev. xviii. 14, etc. Accord apollumi , to perish , in relation to the soul, is attributed the sense of being wicked and miserable, a sense which it never bore in Greek antiquity (the lexicons settle that) , an exceptional rule is created, the truth of the text is sacrificed out of deference to a philosophical hypothesis. Lexicology groans under this violence done to the sacred writers. Origen, although a thorough Platonist, remained a good Greek scholar , and he understood this passage in the sense that we maintain ; he says : " God can annihilate (exaphanisai) the body and the soul in Gehenna or in any other manner that it may please him to choose . " 1

§2. MARK IX. 48 .

There is, however, one threatening of Jesus Christ which at first sight seems to set aside the supposition of a future absolute destruction of the wicked. M. Godet says :

How is it possible to refer to such an intuition the terrible words (Mark ix. 43-48), to " be cast into the unquenchable fire where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched " ? The answer is given that the fire remains and the worm does not die, but the victim is consumed ; the punishment remains, but the prey escapes. Can it be believed that the true sense of the Lord's words is to be brought out by such expedients ? And if the expression has been exactly preserved, Jesus said their worm (autōn ho skolēx), and not merely the worm dieth not.

Expedients ! "

The word is somewhat hard, and we appeal against this judgement, the too brief preamble whereof misrepresents the argument of the Conditionalists. The fire does not remain after having burnt out, and the prey does not escape, since it is destroyed. If we wished to retort, we might well complain of the convenient process which in respect of texts takes advantage of an optical illusion many times already dissipated. Is it needful now to recall to mind the last deing to Cremer's Biblico-theological Lexicon, apollumi in Matt. x. 28 is a stronger expression than the verb to kill, which it replaces as a synonym. See also p. 27, note 2.

1 Quoted by C. F. Hudson, Christ our Life ; New York, 1863, p. 84. 2 The Struggle for Eternal Life, by E. Petavel, D.D., 1875, chap. viii.

and obj . 13 ; Revue théologique, 1876, p. 145 ; Crit. relig., 1879, p. 264 ; Chrétien evang. , 1881 , p. 561 ; Life in Christ, by Edward White, chap. xxv. ;

Notre Durée, by Charles Byse, 1885, p. 48, sq.

fenders of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, holding their position on the ground of Joshua's, at first sight decisive, declaration : " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon " ?

M. Godet takes no account of the fact that the text which he advances is a simple quotation from the prophet Isaiah.¹ He sees a special intention of Jesus in the use of the pronoun their, as though Jesus had wished to modify the meaning of the original Hebrew.

M. Geo. Godet (son of Professor F.

Godet) had previously insisted upon this point ; he says : " They forget the auton, ' their,' which Jesus adds to the word

' worm,' and which accentuates the persistence of the individuality of the sinner by attributing to him a duration equal to that of the worm that is attached to him . " 2

M. Geo. Godet here makes a slight mistake as to fact ; in truth, Jesus " adds " absolutely nothing ; on the contrary, he suppresses one of the two theirs of the prophet Isaiah : he says the fire, not their fire .

By a reference to the text of Isaiah the optical illusion is speedily dissipated. As M. Reuss says : " There is here no question of torments inflicted upon living beings, of the hell-fire and other mythological pictures of later Judaism." 3

What, then, is the meaning ?

Professor Aug. Sabatier shall tell us :

The fire that burns the carcase and the worm that gnaws it are, for the Hebrew, the symbol of total destruction. Isaiah says : " From new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have rebelled against me, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. " This is the double image taken up by Jesus (Mark ix. 48), which, far from expressing eternal torments, originally expressed nothing but the idea of a hopeless destruction.4

Let us study closely the symbolism of the worm, the fire, and the carcases.

1. The worm causes no suffering to the carcases, which are

1 Ch. lxvi. 24.

2 Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 558. Oltramare's translation, which Professor F. Godet reproduces, has “ the worm," unlike the manuscripts. 3 Les Prophètes ii., p. 326. * Mémoire sur la notion hébraique de l'esprit; Paris, 1879, p. 25.

rightly held to be types of insensibility. What, then, is the work of the worm ? It hastens the disappearance of that which has ceased to live, to a certain extent it replaces the absent grave-digger ; the cremation follows, which burns up the bones gnawed by the worm . This worm, which it is sought to immortalize, is nothing else than the larva of the meat-fly. Its name in Hebrew, according to a probable etymology, comes from a verb signifying to devour, to destroy.¹ The worm is essentially a gnawer, a carrion- eater, a destroyer. But in order to comprehend the full force of the prophet's declaration, it is necessary to recall the capital importance attached to sepulture by the Israelites. The book of Ecclesiastes goes so far as to declare that the most fortunate of men would be deserving of pity if he should have no burial ; an untimely birth would be better than he. The Talmud, speaking of an impious man who has not made amends, says :

" O most senseless of men !

Thou hast been abominable thou hast had no burial, the worm has made its bed under thee, and has devoured thee. " The extraordinary concern of which the dead body was the object among the Hebrews, and even more among the Egyptians, was caused in great measure by a more or less vague hope of resurrection. To abandon the body of a detested enemy to the worms and the birds of prey, to burn his bones and thus to take from him, as far as possible, all chance of resurrection ; this was the ideal of perfect vengeance. The worm and the perpetual fire symbolize the eternal impossibility of a resurrection to eternal life, the eternal continuance of a state of death.

Cremation was regarded by the Hebrews as an aggravation of the punishment inflicted upon a criminal, no doubt because it accentuates the

1 Tola', from tala', to gnaw. So also skolēx in the LXX. , and in Mark, from skallō, to scrape, to hollow out. Linnæus calculated that the larvæ issue of three meat-flies would devour the carcase of a horse as quickly as a lion could do it.

3 Midrash Ruth, fol. 44, 2 ; Midrash Koheleth, fol. 86, 4 ; cf. Isa. xiv. II ; Job xxiv. 20.

4 In Chap. VIII., sect. iii., p. 239, we have seen that the heathens burned the bodies of Christians with the same intention. Cf. Virgil, Æneid, x. ,

5 Lev. xx. 14 ; Josh. vii. 25.

idea of complete destruction. Such, also, is the thought of the prophet : the oppressors of Israel shall be overtaken by the fate which was held to be the ne plus ultra of calamity.¹ Following the rules which govern the use of images, the worms of which Isaiah speaks are, in the second place, symbols of ignominy, precisely because they attack only bodies deprived of burial.

The destruction of which these worms are the agents will be, moreover, as rapid as it can be made, the public health depending upon it, on account of the pestilential emanations from dead bodies, otherwise habitation in the holy city would become both disagreeable and unwholesome ; but the destruction caused by the worm and the fire remains eternal in its effects. Thus it was with the fire which devoured the palaces of Jerusalem, and which also was to be " unquenchable, " although no one has therefore concluded that the palaces burnt were to endure for ever.

Unless we admit that, at the present time, there are at Jerusalem buildings which have been burning ever since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, we are compelled to restrict the duration of the fire that " is not quenched. " Has M. Godet any other interpretation to propose ?

If not, he must allow us to transfer to the exactly analogous

1 Among the Egyptians the burning of the body to ashes was the supreme punishment ; inflicted upon parricides, it symbolized the annihilation of the criminal soul.

2 There is no worm that gnaws the bodies which are decomposing underground. See Littré, Dict. de la langue française, at the word ver. Cf. Jer. xxv. 33 : " The slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth ; they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried ; they shall be dung upon the face of the ground." The term chosen by Isaiah to designate these carcases is a depreciative word used specially of animals ; it corresponds nearly with the English word carrion. The worm being a symbol of ignominy, the worm which dieth not is the emblem of an eternal ignominy. The remembrance of the rebels will provoke repulsion, disgust, it will be abhorrent : deraón. This term reappears in Dan, xii. 2, again applied to those who are condemned. Daniel says nothing about torments. He tells of the memory buried under contempt ; the sentiment of the survivors is disgust, not pity. Nothing remains of the individual destroyed except a perpetual and repugnant recollection. Cf. Deut. xxviii. 26 ; 2 Kings ix. 37 ; Psa. lxxix. 2, 3 ; Isa. xiv. 19 ; Jer. vii. 33 ; xxii. 19 ; xxxvi. 30 ; Rev. xi. 9. A proof, moreover, that the worm does not designate remorse is found in the parallel passage of Isa. li. 8 : " The moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool," etc. Evidently these metaphors tell us of destruction only.

text of Isaiah, the explanation which offers itself so naturally, and which he accepts in the prophecy of Jeremiah.¹

2. A merely elementary philology teaches us, then, to see, in the eternal or unquenchable fire, the irresistible agent of a complete and irremediable ruin. This proverbial and hyperbolical expression is not even exclusively a Hebraism ; the French sometimes speak of an " eternal adieu " ; Ovid tells of the " eternal sore ” which consumed Telephus ; Homer had already told of the " inextinguishable fire " which might have consumed the Grecian fleet , and sixteen centuries later Eusebius uses the same terms in describing the martyrdom of two Christians condemned to be burnt. Can this imply that the Grecian fleet and the bodies of the martyrs have never ceased to exist ? As we have said, the perpetuity of the fire, as well as that of the worm, is a symbol of complete destruction, which will always remain irremediable.

3. The carcases of our text also are symbols. From the traditional point of view, the bodies of the lost will not in

1 Jer. xvii. 27, " If ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden and enter in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day, then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." Lo thikbeh, exactly the words of our text, Isa. lxvi. 24. Cf. Ezek. xxi. 2-4 ; Amos v. 5, 6 Heb . Isa. xxxiv. 1o adds to the image of fire that shall not be quenched that of the smoke that shall go up for ever, the last vestige of that which was Bozrah. Cf. Rev. xiv. 11 ; xix. 3. This applies equally to Matt. iii. 12 ; Mark ix. 43 ; Luke iii. 17 ; and to Isa. xxxiii. 14, one of the four passages of the Old Testament in which it has been thought that eternal torments were indicated.

The origin of these images is to be found in Gen. xix. 28. For the eternity, not of the act nor of the agent, but of the effects of the action, see also Mark iii. 29, an eternal sin ; 2 Thess. ii. 16, eternal comfort ; Heb. vi. 2, eternaljudgement; ix. 12, eternal redemption ; Jude 7, Sodom and Gomorrah setforth as an example, suffering the punishment ofeternalfire. We should also include in this list Matt. xxv. 46, eternal punishment (definitive destruction ), a passage with which we are often opposed, but which M. Godet has not seen fit to invoke. In biblical language eternal often corresponds with our adjectives : irrevocable, irremediable, irremissible, etc. The notion of irreparability is found again in Matt. xxv. 41 : to pur to aiōnion, eternal fire, synonymous with unquenchable fire : to pur to asbeston, the fire which does not go out until it has consumed everything (Matt. iii. 12 ; Mark ix. 43) . In thus repeating remarks already made (Chap. VII ., sect. ii.), we trust that these new developements will serve to confirm those remarks in the minds of our readers. In addition to M. Arnaud, M. Gretillat has adopted this explanation, op. cit., ib., p. 617 .

2 Hist. Eccles., lib. vi., 40, sq.; cf. Iliad, xvi. 123 ; cf. i. 599 ; xiii. 169, etc..

reality be carcases. What, then, is the symbolism ? The carcase is first and foremost an emblem of inactivity and insensibility . Although the carcase were preserved, centuries would elapse without restoring sensation ; it is and it remains a corpse. The corpse is not the man. Here, as frequently elsewhere, time does not alter the condition of things. In order to conceive of these inert bodies feeling the least pain, it would be necessary to suppose them possessed of a soul, and, what is more, an immortal soul ; in other words, it would be needful to suppose just that which is in question . An eventual resurrection would be the very antipodes of the prophet's thought, and, besides, a resuscitated corpse would be no longer a corpse, still less a corpse in process of decomposition. The possessive pronoun their, in the phrase " their worm dieth not," is said to reveal " suffering inherent in the moral state of the reprobate " ; but, once more, the carcases are not the reprobate themselves ; inconscient remainders as they are, carcases have no " moral state. " The perpetuity of the decomposing carcase would thus become the symbol of an eternal death, which for ever does away with the notion of future life .

Secondly, carcases are emblems of pollution. King Josiah, desiring to pollute the valley of Hinnom, caused to be transported thither filth and human bones.¹ From that time the valley was called Tophet, a word that probably signified spitting, that which causes loathing and abhorrence.

Josephus narrates that, under the Procurator Coponius, some Samaritans, wishing to pollute the temple, strewed bones therein. The next day the priests could not enter to officiate. The disgust inspired by a corpse reaches its height when, deprived of sepulture, it becomes the prey of worms .

Further, as being relics, the carcases remaining on the ground may symbolize the present remembrance of beings that have lived, but live no more .

It thus appears that the perpetuity of the carcase serves to symbolize the perpetuity of the remembrance left by the final destruction of God's enemies.

2 Kings xxiii. 10. 2 See Kitto and W. L. Alexander's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature at the word Tophet.

On the other hand, the hyperbolical perpetuity of the agents of destruction is a figure of the eternal impossibility of a return to life after a final death.

Will it be said that for the rebels who have been put to death there remains an existence in Sheol ?

That existence is a quantity of the smallest value in the eyes of the Israelite.

It is a latent, and, so to speak, a potential state, in which the individual no more gives any real sign of life, unless under the evocation of his manes, which is a crime, and probably also a deception.

Sheol is a frontier zone between existence and non- existence, " a land of silence, of darkness, and forgetfulness, a sojourn where there is no more thought nor activity." The faithful had a horror of Sheol, which they often likened to nothingness . On the other hand, they delighted to cherish the hope of a resurrection ; but as we have just seen, the prophet puts aside the prospect of a resurrection of the reprobate ; he says also : " They are dead, they shall not live, they are shades [ R.V. margin] , they shall not rise ; therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish but " thy dead [O Israel] shall live, my dead bodies shall arise. "1

The punishment of the condemned will be irremediable, definitive, and in that sense eternal.

On the other hand, the idea of torment without end is so foreign to the noble imagination of the prophet, that he elsewhere reduces the duration of the process to a minimum.2

The prediction of the passage under review appears to have been occasioned by Isaiah's vivid personal remembrance of the tragic fate of the army of Sennacherib . The allusion is evident in the phrase " they shall go forth and look." In the time of Hezekiah, the inhabitants of besieged Jerusalem did thus “ go forth and look " upon the 185,000 carcases of the Assyrians struck down with the pestilence . The prophet announces that the same scene will be reproduced at the end of the times on a

1 Isa. xxvi. 14, 19.

Chap. i. 31, " The strong shall be as tow, and his work as a spark." Nothing burns more quickly than tow, nor is anything more quickly extinguished than a spark. " None shall quench them," in the same verse, must therefore signify, not that the fire shall have an infinite duration, but that the destruction shall be irremediable, and that all shall be consumed.

vaster scale ; Jerusalem shall again be besieged, hence the expression " they shall go forth," which otherwise would not be accounted for.

It is the habit of the prophets to find in a past fact the type of a future event. Moreover, the mention of new moons," and the expression " all flesh," show that the reference is to a temporal chastisement.¹

The prophet Ezekiel takes up and developes this theme ; he says : " They that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth (veyatseu, the identical word used by Isaiah) , and shall make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, the hand-staves and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years . "2 Ezekiel afterwards introduces a variation of the original theme : " Seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. "

The bleeding remains of the slain of the Lord are deposited by the grave-diggers in a valley called Hamonah .

These variations in the details bring into prominence the principal idea.

Both prophets tell of an immense number of carcases which pollute the land, and of the removal of the pollution through the expenditure of much time and effort ; a terrible and magnificent image of the universal pacification and purification that are to follow the last judgement.³

The Annotated Bible of Neuchâtel has the following appropriate note :

This is a parallel passage with Isaiah lxvi. 24 ; the mysterious necropolis of Hamonah, with its enormous grave, would seem to be no other than that place of condemnation " where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," the Ge-Hinnom of the land finally sanctified.

1 Cf. xxxvii. 36 and 2 Kings xix. 35. The same depreciative word pegarim occurs in the narrative and in the prophecy. Many times Isaiah makes allusion to this event. See in Segond's volume upon Isaiah different notes on some of the following passages : x. , 16 s. , 28-34 ; xiv. 24 ; xvii. 12-19 ; xviii. 6 ; xxix. 8 ; xxx. 31-33 ; xxxi . 8 s.; xxxiii. 12, 14, 33 ; xliii. 17. The notion of the righteous surviving and contemplating with satisfaction (raah be) the carcases (not the sufferings) of the " slain of the Lord " occurs frequently in the Scriptures, and even in the New Testament--Ex. xiv. 30 ; Ps. lviii. 10 ; xlix. 14 ; Isa. xxvi. 14-19 ; Mal. iv. 1-3 ; Rev. xviii. 20, 21 . 2 xxxix. 9-20.

These same images recur in the Sibylline Oracles, iii. 633-697, and in the book of Enoch, xc. 16.

Thus may be understood this antithesis : not a single carcase forgotten (ver. 15), and not a single faithful soul left behind (ver. 28). The definitive judgement is completed : cf. Rev. xx. 11, 15. Thus the ground is at last cleared for the appearance of the perfect edifice, for the answer to the third petition of the Lord's prayer.

The Annotated Bible, prepared under M. Godet's direction , thus implicitly recognizes that the notion of interminable sufferings is absolutely foreign to all this extensive symbolism of the Hebrew prophets. A necropolis is not a place of torture.

Zechariah says : " This shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the peoples that have warred against Jerusalem : their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet and every one that is left ... shall go up from year to year [to Jerusalem] to worship the King, the Lord ofhosts . "1 The gangrene devouring the enemies of Jerusalem is another emblem of the same fundamental thought, which Ezekiel again expresses under the image of a feast on human victims to which the " wild beasts and birds of prey " are invited.2

It has not been sufficiently noticed that the marvellous deliverance accorded to Hezekiah is the greatest in the history of Israel since the Exodus from Egypt and the destruction of

Pharaoh's army.

The Psalms, as well as the Prophets, make frequent allusions to it.

M. Bruston says : " The disaster of

Sennacherib, and the consequent deliverance of Jerusalem , appear to have inspired Psalms 46 and 48, 65 to 68, 75, 76, 87 , and perhaps others . "4

1 Ch. xiv. 12-21 ; cf. xii. 9. See also Hosea ii. 20 ; Nahum i. 6, etc. 2 Ch . xxxix. 17-20 ; cf. Jer. vii. 32, 33 ; Rev. xix. 17-21 .

3 The Assyrian annals are silent as to the terrible disaster of Sennacherib's army. It is well known that it was the rule among Oriental historians to commemorate the glories of their heroes, while they seem to have ignored their defeats and reverses. The biblical narratives are the only exception to this custom. Nevertheless, recent discoveries have confirmed the historical truth of the episode with which we are now occupied. In a cuneiform inscription Sennacherib himself implicitly admits the check suffered by his army under the walls of Jerusalem. See the article by Frederick Delitzsch on Sennacherib in Herzog's Encyclopædia, 2nd edition, vol. xiii., p. 385 ; Vigouroux, La Bible et les découvertes modernes, Paris, 1881, vol. iv. ; E. Archinard, Israel et ses voisins asiatiques, 1890, etc. * Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, vol. xi. , p. 22. See in Supplement

Not one of these biblical commentaries on the passage with which we are dealing contains a syllable respecting eternal torments . The notion of suffering is, in fact, entirely absent ; it is not suffering that is contemplated ; that has gone before, and does not accompany this second phase of the chastisement.

As M. Reuss has said, the redundance dates from later

Judaism, from an epoch in which Greek influence and the infiltrations of Platonism begin to take effect. About 134 years before Jesus Christ, the apocryphal book of Judith introduces a gratuitous addition to Isaiah's picture. The author makes his heroine say :

Woe to the heathen who rise up against my people ! The almighty

Lord will punish them in the day of judgement by delivering their flesh to the fire and to the worms ; they shall suffer and lament eternally.1

Unheard- of monsters, these carcases live ; these infectious masses, these formless remains, feel their position ; these scraps of rotten flesh have consciousness of themselves ! Unhappily, this addition, in spite of its bad taste, has had great success ; it has made the rut in which traditional exegesis drags itself painfully along. M. Reuss himself sees " mythological pictures " in the text of Mark, in which the last verse of Isaiah is quoted ; yet the text and the context may be read over and over, and nothing will be found that adds the least idea of suffering to the prophet's words. Nothing is indicated but the eternal infamy attaching to the remembrance of beings which have utterly perished, and which consequently cannot possibly have any feeling.

Gehenna, which Jesus on this occasion mentions, is well known to have been a receptacle of filth near

No. XVIII . an analysis which shows that the notion of endless sufferings was completely foreign to the eschatology of the psalmists. 1 xvi. 17. A sentiment of justice towards the anonymous author has originated the supposition that he may have written kausontai instead of klausontai, the Vulgate having translated urantur in accordance with the Syriac version. A copyist, by the addition of one letter, would thus have changed cremation into lamentation. The en aisthesei, however, still remains ; but the canonical text of Isaiah does not contain anything of the sort. Itis only a redundance introduced by a Platonic writer.

2 Mark ix. 48. Let us note in passing that the triple repetition of this quotation is an error of copyists. Verses 44 and 46 ought to be omitted, as they are in the R.V. and in Oltramare's translation, while in Segond's they are placed between brackets.

to Jerusalem, where the carcases of animals and criminals were cast and burnt.¹ The name Gehenna is met with in the New Testament a dozen times without the notion of torments being ever attached to it. It is as though Jesus had said :

" You all who love life ought to fear sin, which leads to the destruction of the soul as well as the body, to the definitive and ignominious death from which there is no return. "

It is elsewhere, in other Gospels, that Jesus speaks of the " weeping and gnashing of teeth " which will precede the unconscious state of the soul and the body; and it is worth notice, too, that Jesus does not say that the " weeping and gnashing of teeth " will be without end .

The identification of the worm with remorse was an ingenious and tardy discovery of some unknown disciple of Pherecydes.2 Preachers have eagerly seized upon it ; Jesus and his disciples never dreamed of it ; it is simply a mistake.

M. Reuss, in commenting upon the last verse of Isaiah, has seen in the " worm that dieth not " the larva of the meat-fly, the worm of an insensible carcase ; how, then, can he subsequently compare this same worm to the remorse of a living, moral, and conscient being ? That is an evident inconsistency. It is true that Jesus does go beyond the horizon of Isaiah when, in other passages, he supposes a survival of the soul ; but even that provisional survival is not indestructibility, aphtharsia. Survival is no protection against the second death . There are some plants which are biennial ; in harmony with

Scripture, the human soul may be compared to them. It has a natural prospect of a life beyond the tomb, but except in

1 In this passage Jesus recommends that a hand, a foot, an eye should, in case of need, be sacrificed. This sacrifice implies the destruction, the suppression, of the member or the organ sacrificed, which perishes. Jesus likens the fate of the sinner in Gehenna to that of an arm that is cut off or an eye that is plucked out ; the fire of Gehenna, which will cause the impenitent to perish, is therefore understood to cause the destruction, the total and complete suppression, of the sinner. Cf. Matt. v. 29, and x. 28. The simile thus introduced by Jesus puts the notion of a perpetuity of suffering out of the question.

The hand, once cut off, suffers no more, but the process of decomposition begins which at last reduces it to dust.

Pherecydes Syrius primum dixit animos hominum esse sempiternos.

Cicero, Tuscul. quæst., i. 16. The identification of the worm with remorse can be traced back as far as to Origen. 3 Hist. évang. , p. 428.

See Kitto's Cyclop., s.v. worm.

communion with Jesus Christ, that life, like the life here, will necessarily be perishable .

The revolting idea of interminable sufferings never haunted the imagination of the Saviour. When, in this same chapter of

Mark, Jesus speaks of the impending fate of a great criminal, he says : " It were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. " The mention of a punishment much longer and more grievous, that of the cross, for example, might have been expected. On the other hand, the stone attached to the neck keeping the corpse at the bottom of the sea, the culprit would be thereby deprived of a proper burial, and, as we have seen, that privation was considered a supreme misfortune. It would seem therefore that Jesus looked upon the eternal infamy attaching to their memory as the chief punishment of the greatest criminals. In concluding this section we will invite the venerable Archbishop Whately to speak. He says :

The expressions of " eternal punishment," " unquenchable fire," etc., may mean merely that there is to be no deliverance-no revival, no restoration of the condemned.

" Death," simply, does not shut out the hope of being brought to life again " eternal death " does. “ Fire ” may be quenched before it has entirely consumed what it is burning; " unquenchable fire " would seem most naturally to mean that which The " fire " and the " worm " that are spoken destroys it utterly. of must be something that is to the soul what worms and fire are to a body. And as the effect of worms or fire is not to preserve the body they prey upon, but to consume, destroy, and put an end to it, it would follow, if the correspondence hold good, that the fire, figuratively so called, which is prepared for the condemned, is something that is really to destroy and put an end to them.¹

Archbishop Whately is the author of a treatise on logic which is used in the English Universities. Simple, true, perfectly straightforward, this prelate remains the very type of

1 Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State, 10th edition, Lect. VIII., pp. 189, 190. Let us also note that the phrase the worm that dieth not is admitted by our opponents to be synonymous with the worm that ceaseth not to exist, thus confirming the ontological meaning that we have assigned to the verb to die. An undying soul is admitted to be a soul that will never cease to exist. How a soul that never dies can die unceasingly is the secret of the traditionalists.

an impartial and equitable writer. Will his reasoning also be called an " expedient " ? 1

According to the book of Genesis, God drove out the man from paradise " lest he should put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." The fruit of this tree would have rendered the man immortal ; the divine mercy desired to spare the transgressor the frightful punishment of an eternal existence in sin. Thus there remains to the man only a dying life, during which he may still repent and obtain the divine forgiveness.

Professor Godet thinks that the purpose of the tree of life was simply to confer physical immortality. God wished to prevent " the infinite prolongation of earthly life," which for fallen man would have been " the direst of calamities ."

We would ask upon what grounds can such a restriction of the efficacy of the tree of life be based ?

The text does not make this distinction, which seems to be the result of a preconceived opinion ; the death relates to the whole man without any restriction or reserve.

The reappearance of the tree of life in the future paradise confirms our interpretation.

The identity of the tree is proved by the use of the definite article in the text of the Apocalypse. But there it appears that the fruit of this tree is the portion of the elect exclusively ; those only " have the

1 Professor Gretillat, another thoroughly qualified judge, has also taken the same view :

" It seems to us now to be dangerous to establish a dogma upon an image, upon a borrowed image, and, what is more, to attribute to a quotation a signification different from that of the original text. As in Isa. lxvi. 24 the prey of the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched consists of corpses by their very nature condemned to disappear, we have no right to affirm that the persons threatened by the same agents of destruction in the words of Jesus Christ are necessarily condemned to indestructibility.

" The possessive pronoun in the expression their worm, on which M. F. Godet lays stress, is also borrowed from the Hebrew text. M. Geo. Godet observes that corpses were supposed to retain their sensibility. Is it not wiser to acknowledge that in the passage of Isaiah there is no question of eternity, than to attribute to the prophet a mere popular prejudice ?"-Op. cit., vol. iv. , p. 618.

2 Rev. ii. 7 ; xxii. 2, 14, 19.

right " to it who have " washed their robes. "

The tree of life does not grow on the desolate shores of the lake of fire and brimstone. Yet, according to the orthodox system, the inhabitants of that lake will have bodies, and since the purpose of the tree of life is, as stated by M. Godet, the perpetuation of the bodily life, the question naturally arises how the bodily life of the wicked is to be maintained.

Is it to be supposed that at the last judgement God will by a stroke of omnipotence immortalize the bodies of the wicked ?

If so, how can it be explained that he does not do as much for the righteous ? And then, what would be the value of the tree of life planted in the midst of the reconquered paradise ? Has it no value ? Ought it to be said of this tree, as of the barren fig-tree in the parable, that it deserves to be cut down because it cumbers the ground ? Indeed, it would be dangerous, for it might lead astray by giving rise to the supposition that the wicked, deprived of its fruits, would not have immortal bodies, a supposition which would not be in conformity with the dogma that passes for orthodox .

It has been said : " It is not to prevent them from dying that the raised saints eat of the fruit of the tree of life, since, according to the words of Jesus, ' they cannot die any more.' '' 1 But again we have to ask what purpose, then, is served by this tree ?

The elect would not eat of its fruit for the mere pleasure of eating ; and, besides, there does not seem to be anything remarkable in either the beauty or the flavour of this fruit ; it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that specially flattered the senses . We are therefore obliged to conclude that the " sons of the resurrection " eat of the tree of life because they have need of it. Usually men eat for the sake of nourishment ; these also eat to live, the converse proposition would be insupportable. Although Jesus said that the " sons of the resurrection " will not die any more, that does not prove the uselessness of the tree of life ; it intervenes as the means which God employs to prevent the elect from dying the second death. If a father promises his son a pleasure-trip, it will not be superfluous to let him have the sum needed for its cost. The objection now under review

1 M. Geo. Godet, Chrétien évangélique, 1882, p. 505 ; Luke xx. 36.

arbitrarily suppresses from biblical symbolism the very reason of its existence. It depreciates the value of an emblem to which the author of the Apocalypse attaches great importance , since in his view to be deprived of the tree of life is the supreme malediction.¹ If the righteous die no more, it is because they have access to this tree.

There is here something more than the frivolous play of an Oriental imagination. A profound truth underlies these figures, these images correspond to realities, they enable us to understand that God does not immortalize the righteous, so to speak, once for all. The immortalization is accomplished by successive stages.

The tree of life is a figure of communion with God in Jesus Christ, who elsewhere calls himself the " bread of life . "

This communion needs to be continually renewed. Jesus Christ will always be necessary for the immortalization of the soul as well as the body of man. The apocalyptic text rests upon the necessity of a regular and constant assimilation of the divine life, adding that the tree yields its fruit every month ; " it can thus sustain the strength of the risen saints without interruption."

This fruit is the unique, perpetual, and indispensable aliment of the dwellers in paradise. The tree is planted on the borders of a river, the water of which is the only beverage that can quench the constantly recurring thirst of the elect. This river is a second symbol taken from the paradise of Genesis . In the paradise of the Apocalypse the river of life is again Jesus Christ, and this " living water," with its unceasing flow, is at

1 Rev. xxii. 19, R.V.

2 This immortalization by successive stages solves a difficulty that exists with respect to the first man. It is sometimes asked, Why did he not take of the fruit of the tree of life before his disobedience, the fruit of this tree being at his disposal as well as that of all the rest, with a single exception ? We are in a position to answer that he might have taken of the fruit of the tree of life, for it was the habitual use of the fruit which immortalized, and not an exceptional eating of it. If it be still objected that all kinds of fruit served for the sustenance of Adam's life, we reply that the special virtue of the tree of life was that it prevented both body and soul from growing old, the privilege attributed to the fabulous fountain of perpetual youth.

3 La Révélation de SaintJean, par F. de Rougemont, p. 373.

4 Gen. ii . 10.

In the Apocalypse the tree of life is placed " in the midst" of the paradise, in order to indicate its supreme importance. The " midst of a

the same time the image of a perpetual life. It is added , " He that will, let him take " of it. An optional immortality is thus distinctly formulated. A life indefinitely prolonged is a gift offered to all who desire to take possession of it. It appears in three words¹ on the last page of the Bible, as a summary of the whole Bible so far as it relates to immortality .

Both the tree and the river in paradise represent that which here below is represented by the elements of bread and wine ; the body, the blood, the life of the only Mediator between God and man.

For ever the members will depend on the Head, for ever the branches will derive their sap from the Vine, for ever the redeemed will say : " If I live, it is not I, but Christ who liveth in me."

If our brethren of the contrary opinion will allow us to say so, in heaven itself immortality will remain conditional ; this is demanded in the interest of human freedom, and it is also required by the majesty of him who alone possesses ontological independence.2

As for the wicked, the Apocalypse deprives them of the symbol of immortality because in reality they will not become immortal. Since the tree of life, according to M. Godet, symbolizes the immortalization of the bodily life, the bodies of the wicked, being deprived of this sustenance, cannot be immortalized.

Moreover, the eating of the fruit of the tree of thing serves as a symbol of that which is most essential in it, the very condition of its existence, as, for example, the heart in the human body. In the prophecy of Ezekiel the sanctuary is placed in the centre of the future Jerusalem. In the wilderness the tabernacle was in the midst of the camp.

In Genesis the tree of knowledge of good and evil is in the midst of the garden of Eden, a test being the purpose of that primitive abode. In the apocalyptic paradise this tree no longer exists, the test being over and temptation at an end.

1 Ho thelon labeto.

2 " Jesus alone has direct access to the supreme source. The life which he draws therefrom, humanly elaborated and reproduced in his person, becomes in him accessible to men.

It is thus that he becomes for all the bread of life. Only, if this is to give life, it is necessary that it should be eaten.... The true God, the living Father, gives himself to one alone, but in him to all who will partake... The life that he communicates to the believer is not, then, of an exclusively moral nature ; it is his complete life, corporeal as well as spiritual, his entire personality."-Professor F. Godet,

Commentaire sur l'Evangile deJean, 1865, ii., pp. 131, 134.

life is, as we have just seen, a symbol of the soul's communion with God; it is therefore the perpetuation of the soul's existence that is in question. Not having this sustenance, the existence of the souls of the wicked will be suppressed ; succumbing to starvation, body and soul, they will utterly die. Returning now to our starting-point, going back from the end of the Apocalypse to the beginning of Genesis, leaving the paradise regained to re- enter the paradise lost, we can better understand the teaching of the narrative of Moses : God banishes Adam from the tree of life to make him understand that sin tends to bring the whole man under the dominion of death. Such, too, we believe, is the sense which will suggest itself naturally to all unprejudiced minds .

Besides, if the soul were immortal, would it have been really merciful to put an end to the life of the body ? The soul in man is that which feels and suffers the most.

According to the traditional dogma, when once separated from the body, it continues to be tormented ; it will suffer all the more because, left alone to its sorrow and remorse, it will no longer have the diversion of the smaller consolations furnished by physical enjoyments. It would be astonishing that God, who puts an end to the sufferings of the body by causing it to die, should manifest no compassion towards the soul when separated from the body. Nor is this all, for, according to the traditional teaching, on the day of resurrection the body which has been taken from the suffering soul will be restored to it, and both together will be forthwith plunged into a perpetual bath of fire and brimstone ; and the executioner is the God who, we are told, desired to diminish the suffering of the man by a brief separation of soul and body ! He would begin by sparing his sinful creature the obligation of living for ever here below ; after which he would impose upon him the obligation of living for ever, body and soul, in hell-fire ! His ferocity would recoil for a moment, only in order to act with the greater vigour ! No ! this God is an idol of the imagination, cast in the mould of a pagan philosophy. The pretended mercy of such a God makes us think involuntarily of the refined cruelty of the beast of prey, which, after having seized its victim, lets it go for a moment only in order to seize it

again when it tries to escape, and then tear it to pieces. But then the victims of the feline races are not imperishable, and it is even said that by a kind of fascination they are brought into a state of unconscious catalepsy under the paw that pounces on and plays with them ; unhappily, however, the unconscious catalepsy forms no part of the traditional dogma .

Better the mediæval executioners !

After having for a long time tortured their victim, they had a sufficient remainder of humanity left to give him the finishing stroke.

To the partizans of the traditional dogma there still remain three resources :

Ist. They may assert that deprivation of the tree of life and physical death were for man not an alleviation of his misery, but a chastisement. Under this hypothesis what would be the purpose of the final resurrection of the bodies of the wicked ? Would it have for its object the diminution of the punishment at first aggravated ?

2nd. Or perhaps the traditionalists will give here to the word life the sense which they attribute to it in so many passages ; they will make it synonymous with holiness and consequent bliss. Then, God would have banished Adam from the tree of life lest he should become holy and eternally happy !

There is no need to refute such an absurdity.

3rd. Or, lastly, will it be said that the tree of life was a symbol of enjoyment ? We have already remarked that this tree did not exert any sensuous attraction, it had only a single property : namely, to perpetuate existence. This characteristic is brought into bold relief by the fact that the tree is described as being able eventually to immortalize even impenitent sinners.¹

Resist as we may, we are brought back to the Conditionalist interpretation. While reconciling the texts, it equally reconciles the divine goodness with human freedom. God offers his benefits, immortality included, without imposing them. The wicked, after the final judgement, will die body and soul ; such is the biblical teaching. We rejoice that it is so, because the compulsory immortalization of the wicked would be unworthy of the goodness and of the power of God.

1 Gen. iii. 22.

We now approach the subject which gave occasion for Professor Godet's article. Was the apostle Paul a Conditionalist ? Professors A. Sabatier and Ménégoz, Pastor Causse and M. Charles Babut, had answered this question in the affirmative.¹ M. Godet gives a negative reply ; he brings forward in support of his negation certain arguments which we now proceed to examine .

§I . I CORINTHIANS XV .

At the outset M. Godet contests the interpretation given by M. Babut to the apostle's declaration : " If Christ hath not been raised they which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished (apōlonto). ” 2

According to M. Babut, " there cannot be any doubt as to the meaning of this passage the apostle certainly does not mean that the dead believers suffer in hell through eternity, but that they will never live again, that they have disappeared, that they are annihilated. " The apostle's reasoning would be as follows : Man can perish, body and soul. Being a sinner,

• he is on the way towards complete destruction, he is about to return to the nothingness whence the Creator had called him ; but the divine mercy intervenes. Jesus has promised and

1 A. Sabatier, Mémoire sur la notion hébraique de l'esprit; Paris, 1879. E. Ménégoz, Le péché et la rédemption d'après St. Paul; Paris, 1882. Ad. Causse, same subject, Revue théol., 1883, p. 624. С. Е. Babut, De l'enseignement de St. Paul sur la vie future, Rev. théol., 1885, p. 419. According to M. Ménégoz : “ The whole theological system of Paul falls to pieces " if we understand death to mean " anything else than the annihilation of existence. " -Op. cit. , p. 84. Pastor Causse says : " For us, too, the complete destruction of the sinner appears to be within the logic of the Pauline system." M. Babut is of the same opinion. He says : " We consider it probable that the doctrine of Conditional Immortality expresses Paul's view better than any other.

There is here a fact which dominates the discussion, namely, that in the numerous passages in which Paul speaks of the fate of the wicked (twenty-five of these have been counted) he constantly uses terms that express the idea of destruction. Once or twice he speaks of tribulation and suffering, but he does not add that the suffering will be endless.

Assuredly the annihilation of the wicked will not be immediate nor free from pain ; they will suffer before their death and in their death ; but this is just what is understood by the partizans of Conditional Immortality."

2 1 Cor. xv. 17, 18,

reconquered for us an eternal life, and the Almighty has set his own inimitable seal to the Gospel by raising Jesus from among the dead.

This resurrection has become the pledge of our own ; but if Christ was not raised, the divine seal to the work of Jesus would be lacking, his promises would be illusory, and there would be nothing to guarantee a life beyond the grave. The faithful dead would be utterly lost. Buried in the profound lethargy of Sheol, they would never awake from that heavy sleep.

They would be for ever dead.

M. Godet, on the contrary, thinks " that it is of the moral condemnation of the unpardoned sinners that Paul means to speak when he says : apolonto, they have perished." We know that from the traditional point of view, for which M. Godet appears as the advocate , “ moral condemnation " is the same thing as " eternal torments, " so that in this passage Paul would have taught that if Christ hath not been raised, his disciples have no other prospect than eternal torments in hell, " the tortures of perdition . " 1

Here our difficulties again begin.

We submit to M. Godet :

I. A philosophical difficulty. M. Godet sees in the words they have perished " the notion of eternal torments. This notion supposes a native and inalienable immortality ; but with that hypothesis at its base the apostle's reasoning would not bear examination.

If Paul had allowed that the soul is naturally imperishable, those Corinthians who were disbelievers in the resurrection would have had a triumphant argument against him. They would have said : " If Christ hath not been raised, we know what we can fall back upon : there remains to us the immortality of the soul. Indeed, we much prefer this alternative to the promise of a body which would be a new encumbrance, a prison, and a chain. With Platonism, we can do better without a resurrection.

Christ hath not been raised, for the dead do not rise, but those who have died in moral communion with the Christ will certainly not therefore be the more miserable ; on the contrary, they will taste the ineffable joys of pure spirits, and such joys are the worthiest and the best.

With an immortal soul, the idea of again

1 F. Godet, Commentaire sur la ire Epître aux Corinthiens, in loco.

entering into the bonds of a material organization may well be despised and discarded. " ¹

If Paul had admitted the immortality of the soul, how, we ask, could he have replied to these opponents of the resurrection ? The bold confidence of his dialectics evidently proves that he ignored, and meant to ignore, the Platonic hypothesis. He treats it with supreme contempt. He leaves it to Kant to demonstrate its weakness. He will not even listen to it, as witness his categoric declaration that if Christ hath not been raised, he will himself seek no consolation in the pretended privileges of pure spirits, but will renounce his apostolic career and become a materialist, an Epicurean rather than Platonist. It is clear enough : “ If Christ hath not been a raised, those who have believed in him will never rise again , and if the dead do not rise again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. "

Yes, we shall die !

In other words, we shall no longer exist, for here it is evident that the word die must mean cease to exist, and cannot mean anything else. Well ! the apostle distinctly declares that if Christ hath not been raised, all revelation would be nothing but imposture, and that he, Paul himself, would think it wise to adopt the materialist standpoint of the Epicureans. He would no longer look for either pleasure or pain beyond the tomb, and would think only of enjoying the present. This categorical declaration implies incontestably that Paul had no belief in a separate and independent immortality of the human soul. It was therefore impossible for him to believe in eternal torments, in the supposed case that Jesus had not been raised. According to him, in that case there is no other prospect than nothingness.2

1 These opponents of the doctrine of resurrection may be considered the precursors of modern rationalists. They, indeed, wished to be Christians, but without admitting any miracle. It is by resting upon a native and absolute immortality of the human soul that the Protestant rationalists reject the miracle of bodily resurrection, both of Jesus and of his followers. A resurrection of the body seems useless to one who follows the logic of the Platonic dogma, as the most beautiful body is in that view only a brilliant prison for the soul.

2 Here, again, M. Gretillat, a colleague of M. Godet, does not fail to support our interpretation. He says : " Paul, according to the Master's own example, intentionally ignores any middle term between the certitude of

Evidently the opponents of the resurrection, against whom Paul was arguing, were Platonists. M. Godet himself recognizes the fact.¹ It therefore necessarily follows that the apostle was an anti- Platonist. It seems indeed as though it were his intention to make a clean sweep of Greco- Roman spiritualism when he adds : " If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable." Considering the context, this declaration implies that if Christ had not been raised there would be no hope of immortality ; for if there were a separate immortality for the soul, the believer might and ought to hope for a better life beyond the tomb, even though Jesus had not been raised from the dead ; and the apostle could not truly say that apart from the resurrection the Christian is " of all men most pitiable . "

At the close of this chapter, again, the apostle says : "Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord. " What is the basis of this argument ? Why will the labour not be vain ?

Because the soul is immortal ?

Not at all ; but because there is to be a resurrection, as the apostle has just demonstrated. The whole of this chapter, all Paul's epistles, all that is recorded in the book of the Acts of his teaching, in fact the whole Pauline system, is arranged and directed in the sense of Conditional Immortality.

As a good Israelite, everywhere and always, the apostle bodily resurrection at the last day and the absolute negation of all reality in the future and of all morality in the present. The philosophic and Platonic solution of an indefinite survival of the soul might appear, and in fact be, sufficient for the education of man to a rudimentary degree of religious knowledge and developement, but it did not for a single moment arrest the apostle's thought. The Pauline and biblical point of view admits only two alternatives : either the future reunion of the soul with the body or its total disappearance : ara kai koimēthentes en Christō apōlonto " ( 1 Cor. xv. 18 ; cf. 32).- Op. cit., vol. iv., p. 569.

1 Commentaire, 1 Cor. xv. 1 , 34, 44 ; Rom. viii. 24, sq. Some commentators have thought that Paul was opposing the Epicureans by reducing their materialism to an absurdity. But the apostle simply states the principles in which the Epicureans gloried as being the highest wisdom ; they would have subscribed to his statement. So far from ridiculing them, the apostle declares that he would share these principles if he had not faith in a resurrection. It seems therefore evident that his argument was not directed against the Epicureans.

tramples under foot the pretensions of those Greeks who, insolent worms of the earth, arrogate to themselves the immortality which is the prerogative of the Almighty. It has been observed that Paul had but little success in the city of

Socrates and Plato. Perhaps he would have succeeded better if he had believed in the immortality of the soul. What an admirable exordium ad homines this doctrine might have furnished for his great discourse on the Areopagus ! He might have said : " Men of Athens, you are heirs of the sages who have had the glory of proclaiming the immortality of the soul.

Their belief was far from certitude ;

Socrates sometimes doubted the value of his hope, and talked of it as a splendid peradventure. I bring to you, Athenians, the certitude which he failed to attain. I announce to you a fact fitted to confirm the faith of your ancestors." Introduced in such a fashion, the doctrine of the resurrection might have met with a better reception . Presented by itself, this doctrine only provoked mockery ; the audience dispersed, and the great apostle could not finish his discourse.

Will it be said that this was his own fault, and that he ought not to have deprived himself of a powerful means of gaining sympathy ? The same must then be said of Peter and John, who, living in the midst of Greeks and Romans, never sought any support for the Gospel in the heathen idea of immortality. But no ! if the apostles never spoke of native immortality, it was not a mistake on their part , but simply because they did not believe in it.

II . Our second difficulty is lexicological. Already, in treating of the threatenings of Jesus, we have shown that the true sense of the verb apollusthai is to come to an end. The interpretation that is offered in opposition misreads this historical and grammatical meaning, and gratuitously substitutes that of being eternally alive, guilty and miserable.

III . This raises also a grammatical difficulty. The aorist apōlonto, which seems to be quoted against us, recoils against the traditional interpretation. The Greek aorist is used to designate an action done at a precise time which can only be fixed by the context, an act accomplished once for all, " already consummated," according to the expression used by M. Godet himself.

How can he fail to see that the aorist of verse 18

CHAPTER XI.

excludes the traditional interpretation ? From the traditional point of view, perdition is not an act, but a state ; it is never consummated, the process is never ended, the torment once begun continues without intermission and without end ; the condemned remain perpetually in a state of perdition. To be correct from the dogmatic point of view, which is that of M.

Godet, instead of the aorist, the tense employed should have been the present : apolluntai, are in the way of perdition " ; or the perfect : apolōlasi, are in a state of perdition," the dead " remain lost " ; or even the future : apolountai, “ they shall perish, "¹ their sentence at the day of judgement shall be perdition, they will incur at the last the moral condemnation which is perdition ; but as Winer says : " the aorist never has the sense of future time. " By a curious coincidence, this same form apōlonto occurs twice in the same epistle, where it is used of those who " perished " by the serpents and under the strokes of the destroyer. These passages relate to facts occurring and completed at a precise time indicated, and not to a permanent state. In our text, then, it is necessary to translate as in the English revised version, “ have perished," and not are perished. "

Those who fell asleep perished, ceased to exist at the very moment when they went to sleep.

The verbs are both in the aorist .

In the face of these three difficulties M. Godet's single argument breaks down. He brings forward verse 17: " If Christ hath not been raised ye are yet in your sins, " and from this he concludes that the faithful dead also would be in their sins, and consequently eternally guilty and miserable.

But that is not so.

According to the apostle's reasoning, if

1 As, for instance, in Rom. ii. 12. For the correlation of the four tenses, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 18, 20 ; xi. 30 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13-15.

2 1 Cor. x. 9, 10. Cf. Ecclus. xliv. 9 : " There are some who perished, as though they had never existed."

3 The versions of Rilliet, of Darby, and of Stapfer deserve honourable mention in this respect, as well as the English R.V. M. Godet also translates faithfully, but a petitio principii vitiates his interpretation. He may retort that we, too, have a preconceived notion, namely, the negation of a native and inalienable immortality ; but he will not deny that in strict logic it is for him who affirms to prove his affirmation. M. Godet has not told us upon what grounds he bases his implicit affirmation of a native and indefectible immortality. Upon him, then, lies the onus probandi.

Christ hath not been raised there is neither resurrection nor immortality, the Gospel is only an immense deception, the apostles are false witnesses, the believers are dupes, their faith is a chimæra, they are yet in their sins. Consequently there is no future life, death is about to swallow them up, the death which has already stricken their brethren defunct, the death which is the wages of sin, death absolute, which is the end of life, and of all life.

Moral condemnation will neither immortalize the living nor resuscitate the dead. Far from it, this executioner whom we call death will destroy the soul as well as the body. The fate of the dead is fixed ; they, too, were yet in their sins, and therefore when they died they " perished." As we have seen, Sheol has only an infinitesimal value, which becomes practically equal to zero when all hope of resurrection has vanished .

Is not this prospect sufficiently dismal ? To imagine in addition an enforced immortality, to suppose that these poor deluded believers would have to undergo eternal suffering, is a baseless hypothesis which is as revolting as it is chimerical . But especially it is anti-exegetic, for, as we have just seen, it is at the very antipodes of the apostle's thought. Even when denouncing the greatest sinners, he goes no farther than to declare, even weeping, that " their end is destruction " (Phil. iii. 19) . The Church had not as yet formulated the doctrine of perpetual tortures, doubtless SO much more efficacious !

But to return to 1 Cor. xv. 18 , the anti- Platonist interpretation has prevailed even with some commentators who were not Conditionalists ; as, for instance, Cruden, in his Concordance,¹ Wesley, Adam Clarke, Webster and Wilkinson, Bloomfield and Bengel. Bengel says : " The dead believers would be as though they had never been ; " " Bloomfield's words are : " There is an end of them and all their hopes ; " and the learned and pious Olshausen says :

The fact should be borne in mind that the apostle does not admit the possibility of a survival of the soul apart from a bodily organism .

1 Under the word " perish " Cruden gives six meanings, the sixth of which is " to be deprived of being," 1 Cor. xv. 18 being quoted as an instance. 2 Gnomon, in loco : “ Nulli sunt ac si nunquamfuissent."

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is totally foreign to the teaching of the Bible; neither the name nor the thing can be found there. Corporal limits have been assigned to all created spirits.¹

Professor Godet's last resort is to an à priori ; he argues that, even in the supposed case that Christ had not been raised, the eventuality of an annihilation of the believers who had died in the Christian faith could not have been present to the mind of the apostle, seeing that in other passages he speaks of a judgement to come for all men. But M. Godet can hardly fail to see that in the apostle's thought this prospect of a universal judgement is always based upon the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This he expressly declares in his discourse on the Areopagus, saying that God " will judge the world in righteousness, by the man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead ."

If therefore Christ had not been raised, the assurance of a universal resurrection would be wanting, and there would be nothing to prevent the admission into Paul's mind of the idea of an annihilation even of the believers who had died in the Christian faith.

Starting from the Platonic à priori, M. Godet at last goes so far as to endow " all men," including the reprobate, with a body unassailable by death. " We are disposed to ask whether these last three words might not be reduced to one : immortal, imperishable, or indestructible, in Greek athanatos or aphthartos, and whether the apostle would not have been startled at hearing such epithets applied to the wicked. So far from obtaining incorruptibility, aphtharsia, the wicked sow to the flesh and of the flesh reap corruption," phthora .

1 Biblischer Comment., in loco.

Cf. Olshausen on Luke xvi. 24, " Die

Bibel kennt weder den Ausdruck Unsterblichkeit der Seele noch die moderne Unsterblichkeitslehre."

2 Acts xvii . 31 .

Incorruptibility, the quality of being exempt from all decay, from all chance of death (aphthartos), belongs really to God alone (Rom. i. 23 ;

1 Tim . i. 17) . None, therefore, but Christ, the image of God, could communicate such a gift to the world (2 Tim. i. 10). "- Reuss, Hist. de la théologie apostolique, vol. ii., p. 238 ; edition of 1852.

4 The word phthora implies the destruction of the individual being. It cannot here apply to the decomposition of the body, since that is the fate of

In this chapter the apostle declares that " corruption, phthora , doth not inherit incorruption, aphtharsia. " Incorruptibility, an endless life,¹ is a glorious state of existence, the exclusive privilege of God, of Christ, and of believers, the supreme object of the saints' ambition, synonymous with eternal glory. The parallelism of verses 42 and 43 assimilates the two nouns glory and incorruption. Will it be maintained that the wicked will be raised again to glory ?

If M. Godet remains faithful to his point of departure, he will find himself compelled to see in Paul a Universalist. The " all, " pantes, of verse 22, according to M. Godet, includes all men without exception ; but only a few lines lower down, in verse 28 , we find this very same word in the declaration " that

God may be all in all. " This would, then, clearly be universal salvation.

Conditionalism avoids this danger at the outset by limiting the " all " to the total number of those who will live again in Christ. This interpretation is supported by the great authority of Reuss, who says : " All those who are in Christ will have life precisely because they are in Christ, who is the From author or cause of this henceforth indestructible life.

the Gospel point of view there is no life but in God and in

Christ ; apart from that there is only death. The believers , the bodies of believers also. In the Phado, sect. 55, phthora specifies the destruction of the soul, its eventual annihilation.

1 Akatalutos, Heb. vii. 16.

2 M. Godet is opposed to Universalism. In the article with which we are now dealing he expresses himself thus : " M. Babut rejects Universalism, or the doctrine of the final salvation of all, and that for reasons which appear to us to be unanswerable."

3 Verse 22 might be paraphrased thus : Just as all men who die are branches of a tree whereof Adam is the trunk, so all men who are spiritually united to Christ are branches, which in the spring of the resurrection will receive a new life from the one sole vinestock. Adam represents all those who have inherited from him their physical life ; Jesus, on the other hand, represents all those who in him have received the divine and imperishable life. As Adam is the father of the whole human family from the terrestrial point of view, so Jesus is the father of that select portion which, being animated by a superior life, will alone in the end represent the human race. " The two pantes include only those over whom the two powers extend."- Hofmann . " It should be observed that Christ can hardly be looked upon as the firstfruits of the risen reprobate ; and verse 23 , which carries on the argument begun in verse 20, clearly deals only with believers."-F. Godet, in loco.

CHAPTER XI.

the regenerate, alone will live ; the rest pass through temporal death to death eternal there is here no question of the resurrection of the unbelievers . " 1

On this point M. Godet appeals to the Apocalypse, which, however, seems to us to support Reuss, making " the second death " complete and final destruction, the fate of the reprobate. According to M. Godet, these very reprobate would on the contrary become " unassailable by death." But is it possible to be at the same time the victim of the second death and unassailable by death ?

A day will come, according to Paul's assertion, when death shall be destroyed. The Apocalypse teaches the same thing in symbol, saying that death shall be " cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. " The meaning evidently is that thenceforth none will die ; but before that consummation there will have been some dead, who will one day be " as though they had never been ."4

We must not omit to notice the fact that in this chapter M. Godet several times translates the Greek verb katargein by overthrow (Fr. , abattre) . This is not quite correct. For overthrow the New Testament employs the verbs kataballein or kathairein . As we have had occasion to remark, death is not merely overthrown, it is abolished. This expression is applied

1 Epîtres pauliniennes, i. 260 ; Histoire de la théologie chrétienne, 1852, ii. 234, 241. We have put in italics the two words henceforth indestructible as being decisive in the sense of our argument. " It would be to pervert Paul's thought even to contradiction if we were to apply to the resurrection of the unjust that which is said in 1 Cor. xv. 42-47 of the nature of the resurrection body."--C. Babut, Rev. théol., 1885, p. 397. In verse 52 "the dead " must mean the dead believers only, since their resurrection precedes the change of the living believers, as this also precedes the universal resurrection , which M. Godet places in verse 24.

4 Obad. 16. Cf. Ezek. xlvii. 11. The traditional dogma does not suffice to explain Rev. xx. 14. " Hades" in this verse cannot mean those who are therein, since the previous verse states that " Death and Hades " have already delivered up their captives. On the other hand, universalist optimism contradicts the Scripture, which speaks of the persistently wicked as being the stillborn children of humanity. The prophecy of Ezek. xlvii. It seems to allude to the remembrance which will be left behind by these victims of sin.

How numerous are the green and worm-eaten fruits that fall to the ground before even the most abundant gathering ! 5 Comment. sur la tre ép. aux Cor. , vol. ii ., p. 35 .

6 1 Cor. xv. 26, 54 ; 2 Tim. i. 10 ; Rev. xx. 14 ; xxi. 4.

to Satan, ¹ and we have an interest in the final suppression of that terrible enemy. Cremer, whose authority in the domain of New Testament lexicology is of the highest rank, says : Katargein is a favourite term with Paul, who gives to it the emphatic meaning of to annihilate, to put an end to, to bring to nought. " And this meaning is quite evident in such a passage as Rom. vi. 6 : “ Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away ; " on which Reuss observes : “ This relates to the annihilation of the evil element in man, of sin, and of the flesh. "

Thus also in Ephes. ii. 15 we read that Christ has " abolished (katargēsas) in his flesh the enmity, the law of ordinances." 3

Our conclusion with regard to this chap. xv. of Ist Corinthians must therefore be that of M. L. Bonnet, who says :

It is perfectly clear that in the whole of this chapter St. Paul does not speak at all of the fate of unbelievers, for there is no occasion for him to do so. He is dealing only with those who " are fallen asleep in Christ " ; and by the resurrection of the Saviour he proves that they will not remain the prey of death, but will be delivered from it completely, body and soul, by the fulness of life. This enabled him to answer triumphantly the negations which he knew were current in the

Corinthian Church .

If he is here silent as to the fate of the condemned, it is because their resurrection is not a manifestation of the life of Christ in them, but a judgement. Elsewhere the apostle plainly teaches their fate.¹

1 Heb. ii . 14.

2 Reuss, Histoire de la théologie apostolique, vol. ii., p. 163 ; edition of 1852. Against this meaning of the verb katargein M. Godet quotes Luke xiii. 7, the barren fig-tree that cumbers (katargei) the ground. But, in the first place, this is an exceptional use of the verb, which everywhere else in the N.T. might be translated cause to cease or abolish, representing the Chaldee battel. Further, even here this notion is not absent, for the value of the ground is for the time being abolished by the presence of a barren tree , and, in the view of an owner impatient to obtain his revenue, to abolish the revenue of the land is much the same as to abolish the land.

In his commentary on Rom. vi. 6, M. Godet himself adopts the word destroy, and

Grimm's Clavis translates ut aboleaturcorpus; elsewhere M. Godet translates cease to be. We may also quote Rom. vii. 6 : " We have been discharged from the law," katërgēthēmen, the law is abolished so far as we are concerned . M. Stapfer translates : " The legal bond has been broken, we are dead to that law which held us captives."

3 Segond gives : " Having annihilated " (anéanti) ; M. Stapfer translates : " Annihilating (anéantissant) by his death."

* The New Testament with comments, in loco. Professor Beet, in the Expositor for Feb., 1890, says as much.

In vain does M. Godet labour to make the apostle's text accord with the ecclesiastical dogma on the point in question ; it is a hopeless task. In reading his commentary we seem to be spectators of a struggle of the intensest interest between the old Platonist dogmatics and an impartial exegesis.

The masterly talent of the interpreter does not succeed in harmonizing them ; they are irreconcilable enemies, and in the end exegesis must prevail.

§2 . EPHESIANS II . I.

We now pass with our Professor from the Corinthians to the Ephesians. Ye were “ dead through your trespasses and sins, " says the apostle to the Ephesians. M. Godet speaks of this assertion as if the Conditionalists had used it as an argument in favour of their doctrine. In fact, as a reference to the beginning of this controversy would show, they have simply maintained that this passage proves nothing against them.¹ It was invoked as a proof by the traditionalists. We think we have shown that they have no right to claim it as a proof. M. Godet does not here introduce any new element . His position is fundamentally the same as that of Professors

Oehler and Beck.

Like them, he thinks that eternal death, the second death, results from " the consummation of separation of the soul from the spirit. "

the

No doubt the con-

1 See, for example, Pauline Theology, by H. L. Hastings. This work, of which the special object is to bring together all the apostle's declarations on the subject, does not even mention Eph. ii. 1. The Conditionalists have never quoted Rom. ii. 9 in support of their opinion ; they do not therefore claim that " all the expressions which Paul uses to designate the state of condemnation resulting from sin imply the suppression of existence ;" they only maintain that the precedent suffering does not exclude the final suppression of the obstinate sinner.

2 See Chap. VII ., sect. vi., p. 206. Here, and elsewhere, our readers will no doubt excuse some repetitions. In dealing with age-lasting errors which are still supported by eminent men, it is not the first stroke that kills. It may be useful to return to the charge.

3 See p. 86, note 4, and p. 202 . 4 Commentaire sur l'Epître aux Romains, vol. i., p. 442 ; vol. ii., p. 164. M. Godet defines life, in the sense of life eternal, as " a fully satisfied existence in which all the faculties find their full scope and their true employment. " Death would then be the suppression of all scope for the faculties ; much the same thing as the suppression of the faculties themselves and the end of the individual. Is it possible to conceive of a life without faculties ?

science, or at least the moral consciousness, forms a part of the spirit as understood by M. Godet. Would it be indiscreet to inquire of our venerable antagonist what are the probable destinies of the human soul after this definitive divorce, how it could be anything else than an irresponsible machine, what would be the use of such machines in the universe, and how the indestructibility of such machines can be consistent with the conception of a God who is to be " all in all " ?

Would the survival of a soul without consciousness of itself deserve to be honoured with the name of immortality ? It seems to us that, notwithstanding such a survival of vital functions, there would no longer be a human person, and that M. Godet has implicitly conceded to us the very point of our discussion .

The passage relating to the death of the Ephesians is, as we have said, susceptible of another explanation. It may contain a prolepsis, the anticipation of the final and total death which threatens the obstinate sinner.

We have devoted several pages to the support of this interpretation. It has been maintained in principle by eminent commentators.¹

We will now simply mention a passage which seems decidedly to turn the scale in favour of that view ; it is the verse in which Paul applies to the unconverted the epithet weak" or " sickly. "

If the apostle sometimes calls the same individuals at the same moment of their existence " dead " and sometimes sickly, " it follows that the death of which he speaks is decidedly proleptic. Jesus, too, calls those " sick"

whom on other occasions he calls " dead . " 3

Let us for a moment leave the texts and go to the heart of the matter. Were the unconverted Ephesians absolutely dead in a moral and religious sense ?

No, for Paul himself declares

1 See Chap. VII. H. Cremer, also, in more than one passage combats the notion of " spiritual death." He says : " Thanatos in biblical Greek has not This the commonly admitted sense of moral and spiritual insensibility.

sense, profound as it looks, would blunt the point of the expression in question.

Nekros in Eph. ii. 1, 5 and Col. ii. 1.3 does not signify what has been called ' spiritual death.' It signifies devoted to death, condemned to death."

* Rom. v. 6 ; cf. 1 Cor. viii. II . The apostle says also that they are perishing (apollumenoi), on the way to perish, not yet altogether perished ( 1 Cor. i. 18 ; 2 Cor. ii. 15 ; iv. 3 ; 2 Thess. ii. 10).

3 Matt. viii. 23 ; ix. 12, etc.

of the heathen that " their conscience beareth witness " ; in a conscience that speaks, is there not a principle of moral life ? The unconverted Jews had " a zeal without knowledge " ; in religious zeal, though blind, is there not a symptom of religious life ? When heathens or Jews are converted, the identity of the moral personality is maintained. In a graft the sap of the wild stock does not perish ; it is modified, transformed, not replaced. If the moral personality has survived, that is a proof that it was not altogether dead .

Moreover, even if the notion of spiritual death be preferred, it proves nothing against Conditionalism, which might adopt it without inconvenience ; but the proleptic meaning is preferable, and is supported by competent authorities.¹ M. Godet's accusation of " wresting " the apostle's words in this instance seems to be out of place.

With such names as those of

Messrs. Meyer, Cremer, and Babut as a shield to break its force, his stroke will not hurt us.

Embarrassed by a preconceived idea, M. Godet has said that spiritual death is " a state of interior death ."

But tautology is not definition. On the same page that same death appears as " a spiritual impoverishment, a miserable condition. "2 This is surely an impoverishment of the notion of death ; and with this impoverished sense how are all those passages to be explained in which the apostle exhorts us to " put to death " the old man ? Is not the object in view the complete and final extirpation of sin ? Is Reuss mistaken in saying that it is " the annihilation of the evil element in man, of sin, and of the flesh " ? In the matter of good lexicology, Conditionalism must carry the palm, as being the only theory which leaves to the same word everywhere the same fundamental meaning . Once more we challenge our opponents to quote a single text in which death and die do not designate the breaking up of an organic connection, the cessation of a life or lives.

1 M. Babut also has clearly indicated the incontestable use of prolepsis in Paul's writings. Article quoted, p. 399.

2 Rev. théol., 1886, p. 8.

§3 . 2 THESSALONIANS I. 9.1

In the numerous passages in which Paul tells of the fate of the wicked (twenty-five have been counted) he constantly uses terms which suggest the idea of destruction.

Once or twice he speaks of tribulations or of suffering, but he does not add that the suffering will be endless.2

M. Godet, nevertheless, persists in considering the apostle as a believer in eternal torments ; yet he can only adduce two texts from the Pauline epistles in support of his opinion :

1 Cor. xv. 17 , which we have already studied, and the one we have now to consider, which, according to M. Reuss, is the only one that seems to support the traditional dogma.

We translate this passage thus : " They shall suffer their punishment, an eternal destruction, by means of the presence of the Lord and by his glorious power. " The reference is not to a life spent apart from the presence of the Lord, but to a life destroyed by the brightness of his coming.³

According to M. Godet :

An eternal destruction produced by the face of the Lord and by the glory of his might would more naturally designate a state of misery, resulting from the permanent removal of that face and that glory, than an instantaneous and crushing stroke caused by his look and followed by an eternal abolition of being.

The question that here arises is whether the Greek words apo prosopou are to be translated " away from the face," or " by means of the presence. " Here again the Old Testament will explain the New. The quotation of a few passages may, perhaps, suffice to warrant the rejection of the proposed interpretation : " Fire goeth before the face of the Lord, and burneth up his adversaries round about." " Thou shalt make them as a fiery furnace in the time of thy presence (lit. thy

1 See also as to this passage Supplement No. XIX.

2 C. Babut, article quoted, p. 416.—Mr. Hastings, from whom M. Babut takes this number of twenty-five passages, treats the Epistle to the Hebrews as one of the Pauline letters .

3 This is the meaning adopted in the revised Ostervald. Our interpretation is also in harmony with that of M. Renan, whose impartiality in relation to this point is beyond question. See the quotations on pages 295, 296, and

Gretillat, op. cit., vol. iv., p. 614.

face), the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath . "1 In the passage before us, Paul says of the wicked that which he says a little later of their chief, the Antichrist : " Whom the Lord

Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nought by the manifestation of his presence . ”2

The recently discovered Moabite stone also comes to the support of our exegesis. The Moabite king, Mesha, puts into the mouth of his god Kemosh words which threaten Israel with an " eternal destruction . "

It is incontestable that these words must relate to an eternity, not of the act of destruction, but of the effects of that act .

M. Godet further asks : " How can the word eternal be applied in the Scripture, which has nothing to do with ontology, to a state which would be no more felt nor perceived ? " In reply to this question, we need only quote a single text : " They have made their land an astonishment, and an eternal hissing ; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and shake his head ."4

Is not that an eternal reproach which will be at last neither felt nor perceived, the land being reduced to the condition of a desert ?

Paul slips away from traditional orthodoxy. In order to keep him in it, M. Godet finds himself obliged to appeal to the apostle's subordination to the Master. He says : " If the Lord has decided the point before us, the opinion of the disciple is no longer in question. " This mode of argument seems to us open to three objections . First, it is an intrusion of the dogmatic element in a question of exegesis. Secondly, the converse might equally well be maintained, thus : the apostle knew the Lord's thoughts ; as the apostle was a Conditionalist , therefore the Lord was too .

Lastly and especially, this

1 Ps. ix. 3 [4] ; xxi. 9 [ 10] ; xxxiv. 16 [ 17] ; xcvii. 3, 5 ; Lev. xx. 6 ; Lam. iv. 16 ; and Isa. xxx. 27, a passage which M. Renan translates thus : " Behold, Jehovah cometh from afar, his face burneth, the fire is kindled, his lips are full of wrath, his tongue is like a devouring fire, his breath as an overflowing torrent."

2 2 Thess . ii . 8 ; cf. Rev. xx. 9.

In 2 Thess. i. 9 the apostle uses the term olethros, which in Plato's Phado is employed to indicate the suppression of the existence of the soul ; olethros psuches, the destruction of the soul. § 41. 3 Verse 7 of the inscription on the stone. 4 Jer. xviii. 16 ; cf. xx. 11 ; xxiii. 40 ; xliv. 12 ; xlix. 13 ; Dan. xii. 2. See also M. Byse's note on p. 30 of Notre Durée.

suggested proof starts from a premiss which is a gratuitous supposition ; Jesus has not " decided " in favour of unconditional immortality. In complete accordance with our foregoing study, M. D. H. Meyer has shown that the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is Conditionalist.¹ The same character is even more evident in the other Gospels, particularly in that of John.2

Does there exist any necessary correlation between moral goodness and the immortality of believers, between moral evil and the final destruction of the reprobate ?

M. Godet answers this question in the negative.

He says :

" From the biblical point of view, the notion of moral goodness is absolutely distinct from and independent of the notion of existence or metaphysical being."

If that were so, there would be no reason in the nature of things why the sinner should not continue for ever to exist. This opinion seems to us contrary both to the Bible and to reason . A universal analogy teaches us that every created being is subject to certain conditions of existence ; it can only continue to exist by virtue of a double series of relations : interior relations between its several constituent elements and exterior relations with other beings ; these relations are founded on the very nature of things, and to suppress the natural and normal relations of a being would be to destroy the being itself. Now, the tendency of sin is to

1 Le Christianisme du Christ, pp. 307, sq., 486, 491, sq. In Matt. xxv. 46 Jesus speaks of an eternal punishment, while Paul in 2 Thess. i. 9 specifies the nature of that punishment by calling it an eternal or definitive destruction. 2 As to the Conditionalism of the Master as well as of the apostles, see our Chap. IV. , sects. iv. to vii. According to M. Ménégoz, the essential thesis of Conditionalism is the keystone of the arch of Paul's theological system , a system which " falls to pieces if by death anything else be understood than the destruction of existence."

In Supplement No. IX., § 1, will be found a note relating to the apostle's willingness to be " anathema " for his brethren, which cannot well be understood except from our point of view. According to the traditional doctrine,

Paul would have been willing to become one of those reprobate who fill eternity with their blasphemies ; while, according to the Conditionalist theory, the apostle, even in the very moment of perishing as anathema, might have exclaimed : " Glory to God and good will towards men !" A sublime selfdevotion thus ceases to appear revolting and even inconceivable.

suppress these normal relations and to establish others which , being against nature, become more and more difficult, and at last become impossible, the ultimate result being the cessation of every function. A railway locomotive which runs off the rails soon comes to a stand. Every disorder tends towards the destruction of the individual being. Gross passions brutalize a man and cause his death . The egoist ends by perishing in a sort of moral suffocation ; excessive pride produces insanity. Moses said : " I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. " 1 In other words, moral good perpetuates life, moral evil produces death. Nor is it of a mystic life that Moses speaks, for he also says : " This law is your life,

But if and through this thing ye shall prolong your days. thine heart turn away ye shall surely perish, ye shall not prolong your days. " In the book of Proverbs , too, it is said : " The fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the

• wicked shall be shortened . " 3

In the Hebrew language, moral evil is designated by words of which the etymology usually recalls notions of destruction or non - existence.4

The suppression of the sinner is spoken of as the supreme chastisement. The psalmist exclaims : " If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand ? "5 No one would stand, i.e. , no one would remain in existence ; the answer is understood as being self-evident. God's blessing is upon a

1 Deut. xxx. 15.

2 Deut. xxxii. 47 ; xxx. 18. See also iv. 40 ; v. 33 ; vi. 2, 24 ; cf. Ps. xxi. 4 ; xciv. 23 ; Prov. iii. 2, 16 ; ix. II .

3 Prov. x. 27, etc.

+ Ra', bad, wicked, from raa', to break noisily ; shaah, to devastate, whence shav, iniquity. Hebel, riq, 'avon, aven, tohu, vacuity, vanity, inanity, lack of reality, nothingness, are also often used as synonyms for sin (2 Kings xvii. 15 ;

Ps. xxxi. 6 ; Jer. ii. 5 ; Jonah ii. 8) ; the expression habele shav, lying vanities, refers to the idols used in the worship of false gods. Nebalah, crime, comes from nabel, to fade away, to waste ; the godless, nabal, has the brain diseased. Gesenius connects this root with nafal, to fall. The " son of Belial " is a man of nought, worthless ; later on Belial became one of the names of Satan (2 Cor. vi. 15). So also in Greek phaulos, worthless, then bad, whence the German faul, rotten. In French, too, the word mal is derived from the

Sanskrit root mar or mal, to crush, grind.

Virtue is the supreme force of man, vice designates primarily a deficiency, a lack, a feebleness bordering upon non-existence. See, too, Supplement No. V., § v., note.

Ps. cxxx. 3 ; cf. Ezra ix. 15.

thousand generations " of those who love him and keep his commandments, while he punishes " to the third and fourth generation " those who hate him.¹ If the punishments of the future life were to go on for ever, it would logically be required that God should punish here below to the thousandth generation ; but it appears from the biblical teaching that the rebel families are devoted to extinction , their chastisement ceases at the fourth generation because in the fifth the guilty family no longer exists. Idolatry and immorality bring about the ruin successively of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, yet the fall of the latter is delayed on account of a longer prevalence there of faithfulness to the divine commandments .

The immortality of the good alone is not merely a " Jehovistic " doctrine, it forms part of the Gospel. It is found in the saying of John : " He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 2 It is the idea of permanence that is here made prominent. Paul quotes the ontological promise of the fifth commandment : " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land. " Elsewhere it is said that sin leads to decomposition and corruption, and that the barren tree shall be cut down, cast into the fire and burnt.4

M. Godet supposes that this correlation between good and immortality and between moral evil and the cessation of existence is of Platonic origin. Some traces of it are indeed found in the writings of the founder of the Academy ; it is ,

1 Ex. xx. 5, 6.

2 I John ii. 17.

3.Gal. vi . 8.

4 Luke iii. 9 ; xiii. 9 ; John xv. 6. As to the fundamental meaning of life and death in the Bible, see ante, Chap. III., sect. ii.; Chap. IV., sect. iii. ;

Chap. VII . , sect. vi.

5 Republic, Bk. X. , 608 с.-" Dost thou acknowledge that there are good and evil ?

Yes .

Hast thou the same idea of them both as I have ?-What idea ? That evil is all that which destroys and corrupts, good that which preserves and improves.-Yes. Hath not every being its evil and its good ?

Ophthalmia, for example, is the evil of the eye, fever is that of the whole body, blight that of wheat, rottenness that of wood, and rust that of iron.- That is true. Doth not evil spoil the thing to which it attaches itself ? Doth it not end by dissolving and totally destroying it ? Yes."

Being misled by a preconceived opinion, Plato does not apply the same reasoning to the human soul. Because there are wicked men who prosper and display great skill to the end of their days, Plato concludes that the soul is indestructible. We believe, on the contrary, that sin interferes with the exercise of the soul's faculties, and that, in accordance with the law of retro-

however, regrettable that he was not consistent on this point ; but it is evident that Plato was not sufficiently Conditionalist , since he held that hell was eternal, and so he immortalized even great criminals. If he had identified good with being and evil with non-being, Plato would logically have concluded that the wicked will be finally destroyed. He has not done so ; and that proves that he did not entirely confound the moral with the ontological notion.

Neither do we confound these notions ; we do not identify them, as M. Godet erroneously accuses us of doing. We simply assert that sooner or later they must enter into close correlation one with the other, and that immortality is to moral virtue that which physical longevity is to healthiness of body.

The inconsistency that we have pointed out in Plato is also chargeable against some of the Church Fathers . They retained something of the biblical principle, but unhappily their Platonism made them inconsistent like Plato himself.

Augustine said : " If we only think it out, evil diminishes existence, and tends towards non-existence. " 1

In a study of facts we find further confirmation of these principles. For instance, it is evident that drunkenness and impurity debilitate and often kill their victims. It has been objected that the ambitious have achieved wonderful success . We would ask in reply whether such success is the same thing as the absolute immortality of which we are speaking . " The triumphing of the wicked is short, " as it is said in the book of Job.2 " Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit gression , this interference must end in the cessation of the soul's functions, although the shortness of man's life upon earth does not always permit us to perceive this final result. But the Bible reveals to us that which, thus enlightened, reason confirms. The analogy of the laws of nature lends its support to the same teaching. This accord constitutes a Christian positivism, which permits morality to take its stand upon what we may call concrete and objective ground.

1 De moribus Manich., Bk. II., § 2, sq.; cf. Conf., Bk. VII. , c. 12. The most catholic philosopher of our time, Auguste Nicolas, professes the same doctrine.

He says : " Evil has not a substantial existence ; it is an accident, not an essence. It is the not-good, non æquitas iniquitas. Most of the expressions used to designate evil are privatives : failure, defect, injustice, iniquity, disorder, etc."-L'Etat sans Dieu, p. 40 ; 1873.

2 Job xx. 5.

before a fall, " adds the book of Proverbs.¹ We give their full value to these texts. Recent works have proved that the unmeasured ambition of Napoleon I. led him to acts of folly. The faculties of the great captain were enfeebled as an effect of imprudences which shortened his days. King Nebuchadnezzar lapsed into insanity at the very moment when he exclaimed : " Is not this great Babylon which I have built ! " Alexander died at the age of thirty-three, a victim of the orgie in which he was celebrating his triumphs. Ambition is thus seen to be a pernicious fever, and physicians are well aware that an inordinate desire of greatness is one symptom of a mortal disease .

In practical life men of business have an instinctive sense of the intimate relationship which unites the notions of probity, stability, and prosperity. The fact that a commercial firm has had a long existence is an honour and a recommendation in their eyes.

M. Godet brings against us those recrudescences of energy which may occasionally be observed in evil-doers ; but these can be explained by the sinner's prodigal expenditure of the treasures of life with which he is entrusted.

How many madmen there are who senselessly risk their remaining all. We are told of the ever-powerful personality of Satan, but he is of all others the great prodigal. To us his resources seem inexhaustible, and his existence interminable, because we ourselves are but creatures of a day ; the prophetic eye of Jesus saw Satan " as lightning fall from heaven."

So also science predicts the end of the sun, although ten thousand years may elapse without the ignorant being able to perceive any evidence to support the assertion of the astronomers . Satan and his companions will in the end be destroyed ; the Scripture declarations are clear on that point. The Son of God became man " that he might bring to nought ... the devil, " says the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The apostle says that the devil is the serpent whom God " will crush under our feet. "

This striking metaphor puts aside the notion of an interminable life . Satan is a being already diseased. The eternal fire will

1 Prov. xvi . 18 ; cf. xi. 2 ; xviii. 12 ; xxix. 23 ; Esther vi. 6 ; Dan. iv. 30, etc. 3 Gen. iii. 15 ; Rom. xvi. 20.

2 Heb. ii. 14.

eventually dispose of this contingent and incorrigible created being.

The fallen archangel will not lift his hand to heaven and say, as says the Eternal : " I live for ever ! " There is nothing to guarantee to him an immunity which would put his existence out of all danger. The righteous and the regenerated sinners alone have the right and the prospect of becoming immortal. Perverted, degenerate, unnatural beings will not indefinitely pollute by their presence the temple of the universe. The memory of their terrible end will remain for the survivors as a wall built across the way to the abyss. In the end God will be all in all. The episode of evil in the history of the world is a dismal parenthesis, which God has permitted in order to provide scope for the exercise of liberty.¹

At the close of his article Professor Godet undertakes a defence of mystery, that last refuge for untenable dogmas.

He says : " What we have to do is to listen, to watch, and to wait. "

To listen, yes ; still, it is needful to understand that listened to.

" The refusal to interpret and to comment upon the texts is a symptom of the approaching disappearance of a doctrine that is dying. " Eschatology has its place in a system of dogmatics, in the same way as dogmatics have their place in theology. Like every science, theology no doubt has its mysteries ; but while humbly accepting the which is

1 We are glad to note that M. Gretillat, in spite of his wish to remain agnostic on this point, inclines towards the same hope : " A biblical argument against the perpetual dualism of the existence of the good and of the wicked is that which I will call the optimism of New Testament prophecy, particularly that of St. Paul ( Rom. v. 20, 21 ; 1 Cor. xv. 27 and 28)-an optimism which would apparently not be justified if God's right were to remain contested and his glory outraged by a considerable fraction of his creatures. "- Op. cit., vol. iv. , p. 619.

2 Goblet d'Alviella, Le rationalisme religieux aux Etats Unis; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 April, 1883. M. Goblet adds : " Thus it was that in the United States, at the end of last century, the ultra- Calvinists still repudiated the name of Unitarians, maintaining the necessity of allowing to remain indefinite certain points of doctrine, such as predestination, the eternity of sufferings, or the divinity of Christ. ' The biblical expressions only are suitable for the formulation of biblical mysteries ;' such was the answer invariably given to their opponents when these challenged them to define their beliefs. But that position was untenable."

Gospel facts, it endeavours to systematize them ; its aim is to solve the difficulties, to harmonize the texts, to explain the apparent contradictions, to define the indefinite. In a word, theology seeks to reduce to its smallest limits the domain of the incomprehensible.

The synthesis, a synthesis in conformity with the nature of the Christian fact which is the subject of theology, can and ought to be sought for in the Christian datum itself, among the elements of which that is composed, and which it furnishes.¹

Christian wisdom does not consist in the mechanical repetition of unintelligible phrases, which will speedily degenerate into shibboleths, mere passwords . The Bible excludes neither reason, nor experience, nor the study of nature. On the contrary, it enjoins upon us to " add to our faith knowledge. " 2 And why should M. Godet, who has sounded the depths of more than one profound mystery, that of the incarnation for instance, debar us from the less transcendent study of our own last end ? The suppression of eschatological research would mutilate theology. Besides, in the absence of a sound eschatology, every man will secretly make an unsound one for himself ; there is no one who has not in his mind some kind of eschatology. Ofall the different parts that make up dogmatics, eschatology remains the most indefinite and nebulous ; it is chaos. With regard to this it may be said, as of the epoch of the Judges, that each one does that which is right in his own

1 A. Gretillat, op. cit., vol. i., p. 190. M. Jean Monod has expressed himself to the same effect : " Faith, taking possession of the whole man, stimulates his thinking power ; he wishes to account to himself for that which he believes ; to the pistis he would add gnosis. When faith proceeding from the inner recesses of the soul expresses itself, that expression ought to be as closely as possible in conformity with its contents, ought not to neglect any element in it, but ought to give to each element its relative value. This involves considerable intellectual labour, which has been called theology , and which is continually going on within the Church : fides quærit intellectum. Should the Church fail to carry on this labour incessantly through the medium of its thinkers and theologians, it would be likely to see erroneous and superstitious traditions or vain imaginings taking the place of the realities of the faith.

The faith has no need to fear the efforts of thought ; science, which is the truth of things, can never be in real conflict with faith, which unites the soul with the God of truth."-Lichtenberger's Encycl. des sciences relig., article Foi.

2 2 Pet. i. 5.

eyes. Yet it is of great importance, for it is the crowning of the edifice of religious thought .

The proposition made by M. Godet amounts to a truce on the basis of the incomprehensible, the contradictory. We will take care not to accept it ; the more so as it would be entirely to the advantage of the traditional dogma. Beati possidentes, as Prince Bismarck said. A superstition of pagan origin has formulated a certain dogma which is affirmed in many an authoritative book, and still keeps its ground in popular teaching.¹ A conspiracy of silence would be altogether in the interest of that dogma. The proposal might be compared to that of the claimant of a contested inheritance who should say : " I take possession of the assets ; as to the liabilities, they are doubtful ; I leave them to my competitors." We are reminded of the argument of a personage in the fable :

Quia nominor leo ! In our view, this claimant is only a usurper, the traditional dogma is based upon a colossal error, and is a frightful calumny against the heavenly Father, a stronghold of

Satan, our delenda Carthago ; but let the servants of the truth, through good and evil report, continue unceasingly to blow the gospel trumpet, and the walls of this spiritual Jericho will, sooner or later, crumble to their foundations of clay.

We have completed our examination of the objections raised by M. Godet in the Revue théologique of Montauban, but as our honoured opponent has renewed his attack in an American symposium, an imperious duty obliges us to follow him across the Atlantic. We shall only be following his example in thus pursuing the contest .

In addition to the arguments already put forward, the article in the American symposium contains some fresh elements which we will now proceed to notice.

We observe that the author's conviction seems to be considerably shaken. It appears to him that the study of the biblical

1 See ante, p. 268. 2 That Unknown Country; or, What living men believe concerning punishment after death, etc. C. A. Nichols and Co., Springfield, Mass. , 1889. 51 essays, 943 pp. On this publication see p. 20.

texts leaves an impression in favour of the traditional dogma of eternal torments, but that even this conception " suggests great difficulties, both philosophical and biblical."

M. Godet begins by combating Universalism. On this point we are naturally in agreement with him ; but in this combat we cannot help noticing the superiority of Conditionalism, for after having declared that " love is doubtless found in all God's ways " (p. 400), on the very next page M. Godet says that love and justice " enter as factors either simultaneously or successively into all the dealings of God towards his creatures, " thereby giving an advantage to the Universalists . These would rightly say that the divine perfections form an indivisible whole, and that if the love of God were entirely absent from hell, God would be in a sense divided, and that M. Godet would be found in contradiction with himself, for it could no longer be said that " love is in all God's ways. " We have seen how, in the Conditionalist view, the divine goodness prevails even in eternal chastisement.¹

We gratefully acknowledge that M. Godet speaks of Conditionalism with great respect ; he " cannot but be struck by its plausible aspect, " and says that from a purely rational point of view, " without the light of Christian revelation, it would seem difficult to arrive at any other conclusion. "2 But he proceeds to ask, " What is the good of this suffering in view of which God brings back the dead to life by resurrection, if it is to end simply in nothing ? "

Conditionalists can reasonably reply that the partizans of the traditional dogma have no right to raise this objection, since a resurrection followed by judgement and eternal death is infinitely less repugnant to the Christian conscience than a resurrection immediately followed by eternal torments. But since our honoured opponent admits in principle the possibility of a further trial beyond the grave, we are in a position

1 Chap. VII . , sect. viii.

2 Op. cit., p. 405 .

3 He says (p. 408) : " Punishment, in the absolute sense of the word, will be visited upon those only who have resisted God's grace, not only in this world, but in the world to come, trampling under feet with full knowledge all the appeals of God's grace, thus committing the sin for which there remaineth no more sacrifice (Heb. x. 26) ."

to give him a more satisfactory answer. The resurrection of the wicked may be explained as a last means of grace, and final destruction may be the fate of the most hardened only. The Rev. L. C. Baker, of Philadelphia, has very fully developed this view, which seems to be worthy of the most serious attention.¹ In fact, as appears by the original text, Jesus did not say that the wicked shall be raised for " damnation " (A.V.) , but rather in view of a " judgement " ( R.V.). The phrase might even be translated " in view of a trial, " of an examination, a probation, literally a " crisis. " There is nothing to prevent the supposition that a whole life-time will be devoted to this definitive classification . If a bunch of grapes is tainted with rottenness, it is not thrown away so long as it contains some grapes in good condition. So also God does not entirely reject the man who is not yet altogether corrupt .

" That God is able to destroy the soul is certain," says M. Godet, but he argues that, being simple in its nature, the soul is not liable to dissolution.

If we were to admit this argument, there would still be the possibility for the human soul to perish by extinction. But to us it little matters to know the way in which the soul perishes. We see that the least accident may suffice to deprive a man of his self-consciousness ; but, finally deprived of self-consciousness, the man is as it were decapitated. No reawakening is to follow the second death . What is the force of an objection based on the simplicity of the soul in presence of this dismal and interminable sleep ?5

Professor Godet maintains that for the soul to perish is not for it to be destroyed, but to live in a state of moral separation from God. To perish is to live ! The paradox is violent, but it is more than a paradox : it is a contradiction. Jesus threatens the soul with an end essentially similar to that of the body. A human body that perishes is necessarily and finally

1 The Mystery of Creation and of Man, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1884 ;

The Fire of God's Anger, Philadelphia, 1887 ; Words of Reconciliation : a monthly periodical, Philadelphia.

2 John v. 29. See, too, a letter from the learned Professor Stokes ;

E. White, op. cit., preface, p. vii.

3 Isa. lxv. 8.

4 See p. 52 .

See Chap. I., sect. vii.; Chap. III ., sect. iii.; Chap. VII., sect. v., vi. ;

Supplement No. III . , § 6.

abolished ; the analogy therefore requires a final abolition of the soul that perishes ; and, since M. Godet admits that " God is able to destroy the soul," the prospect of such an abolition forces itself upon the reader of the Scripture texts that speak of the final perdition of the soul.

Imitating an ineradicable habit of our opponents, M. Godet plays upon the word annihilate ; he argues that because the body is not annihilated when it dies, the soul will not be annihilated in the second death ; but that is only an equivocation, not to say a sophism. It is true that death does not annihilate the atoms of which the body is composed, but it annihilates the combination of those atoms, a combination indispensable to the existence of the body. The analogy, therefore, requires that the final death of the soul should involve the suppression of the conditions indispensable to the existence of the soul.¹

Endowed with a sensitive conscience and a tender heart, M.

Godet is revolted by the shocking disproportion apparent in the traditional dogma : a fault committed in a moment of forgetfulness entailing torments without end.

He endeavours to explain the incredible severity of such a retribution by saying that " this punishment is inflicted on sinners not only for the sin as a past act, but for the rebellion as an actual and persistent state."

Like M. Godet, we believe that the moral character of a man has a tendency to become fixed, that the sinful soul may take a definite bias, and that the malady of sin may become incurable. We even believe in an eternal chastisement, the impenitence of the sinner leading to irremediable consequences, by involving him in complete destruction. The reasoning of our honoured opponent would be correct if it did not start by begging the question. The perpetually persistent. state of rebellion supposes an inalienable immortality of the rebel, but, as we have seen, this supposition has no solid foundation. If M. Godet will renounce this à priori he will find himself naturally led to the point of view that we are defending.

In that case he will see that this point of view offers a more reverent homage than does the traditional dogma to the wisdom

1 See p. 32.

of the Creator. Foreseeing that his creatures might abuse their liberty by persistent rebellion against him, and not being willing to expose them to the danger of eternal torments, God made them not absolutely immortal, but only capable of being immortalized.

An obstinate rebellion will lead to the final destruction of the rebels, but this punishment, the result of the sinner's own act, is exactly proportioned to the sin committed ; while it respects human freedom, it does not include anything that can revolt the religious consciousness .

Conditionalists see in the doctrine of eternal torments a shocking calumny against the heavenly Father ; they believe that by the dissipation of this calumny the progress of the Gospel in the world would be greatly facilitated. M. Godet looks upon " the antipathy of the natural man as the great

د و hindrance to the success of the Gospel, and thinks the scandal caused by the ecclesiastical dogma of eternal torments only a pretext for the rejection of the Gospel. Even if that were so, we ought in charity to take away from the sinner this pretext which blinds him to his real danger. The question, however, is not whether unbelievers will remain such when the cause of offence is removed, but whether we do well to cause the offence by maintaining a doctrine as revolting as it is erroneous. It seems to us that there is here not only offence taken, but offence given, the elimination of which, if in any way possible, is a pressing duty.

Somewhat embarrassed, and being more and more sensible of the weakness of the cause of which he has made himself the champion, M. Godet has recourse to an argument which in his previous article he had disdained to use ; he quotes this text from the Apocalypse : " The smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever. " 1

Let us examine the value of this proof invoked in extremis.

1 Rev. xiv. II. Dogmaticians generally agree in attributing only a half value to quotations from the Apocalypse. For example, Luther was of the opinion of those Church Fathers who rejected the book, and it was the only book of the Bible on which Calvin did not write a commentary. M. Godet himself abstains from claiming the aid of another text of this book which is often invoked by American orthodoxy. See Supplement No. XX .

ITY.

THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTAL

REVELATION XIV . II .

Enormous errors have been founded upon isolated verses . Those words of tender solicitude, " Compel them to come in," served as a pretext for the horrors of the Inquisition. When offering the bread to his disciples at the last supper, Jesus said :

" This is my body ;" and from these words the Roman Church has deduced the contradictory dogma of transubstantiation. Luther saw in them what he called consubstantiation, and had the dismal courage to refuse the fraternal hand of Zwingli, who could not admit his strange explanation. In our own day we have heard of a zealous though ignorant member of a Young

Men's Christian Association who compared St. Paul to Christopher Columbus because a French version of the Acts states that the apostle and his companions " discovered the island of Cyprus. " A study of the context would usually enable the reader to avoid such errors.

If Luther had but turned the page, he would have noticed that Jesus, seeing his mother and the disciple whom he loved near to her, said to Mary : " Behold thy son ; " in other words, him who will be to thee as a son. Just so does the bread in the Lord's Supper become, or rather represent, to us Jesus himself.

For the proper understanding of a book, the ideas that were prevalent at the time of its publication ought to be studied. We will proceed to do this with respect to the isolated verse which M. Godet quotes against us. The whole force of this passage as a proof depends upon an illusion. M. Godet seems not to have noticed that there is here an image borrowed from the book of Isaiah, and that Isaiah himself was inspired by the story in Genesis of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and

Gomorrah.

Of Edom he says : " The streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day, the smoke thereof shall go up for ever." 1 At the present time there is in the land of Edom neither fire nor smoke, so that everyone has to admit that the

1 Isa. xxxiv. 9, 10 ; cf. Gen. xiv. 10 ; xix. 27, 28.

prophet made use of hyperbolical expressions. So also did Jeremiah when he spoke of the fire that should devour the palaces of Jerusalem and should not be quenched. "1

Why, then, should not the author of the Apocalypse have the right to use hyperbolical expressions in his turn ? He certainly has that right, seeing that his book bears an eminently poetical character.

But it is said that in this case there cannot be hyperbole because the soul is immortal ; that, however, is the very question in dispute, such an answer begs the question, it is an attempt to keep us in a vicious circle.

Must we repeat that which we think we have already sufficiently established ? At the time when the Apocalypse was written, Jews and Christians still agreed in repudiating the pagan and insolent idea of a soul as imperishable as God himself. In his Talmudic Dictionary, Dr. Hamburger shows that the Synagogue " categorically rejects the opinion which makes immortality a consequence of the nature of the soul. " According to Dr. F. Weber, the Rabbis have generally taught the final destruction of the impenitent. According to Maimonides, whom the Jews call their second Moses, " the wicked shall be completely destroyed ; it is the death from which there is no return. " In a lesson given at the University of Geneva, the Chief Rabbi Wertheimer stated not long ago that " the principle of an immortality inherent in the soul has been, is , and always will be repudiated by the Semitic races, because for them God is all. " 2

For the endurance of endless torments there must be indestructible life ; as the wicked do not possess such a life, how can there be for them endless torments ?

Besides, it has been shown that in the Bible the adjective " eternal " and the adverbial phrases which express eternity, " for ever," " for ever and ever," etc., indicate an indeterminate duration, whereof the maximum depends upon the nature of the persons and the things. Infinite when predicated of God or of beings who live by faith in communion with him, that duration is only relative for other beings. The sufferings of rebellious creatures cannot

Jer. xvii. 27 ; cf. xlix. 18. See p. 324, note 1. 2 See Chap. III ., sect. xiii. , sq.

be prolonged farther than is compatible with their perishable nature.

The language of the Apocalypse being symbolical, it is necessary to seek the metaphorical meaning of the smoke spoken of in our text. Smoke is a formless relic of an object that has been decomposed by the action of fire. It can only be an emblem of the remembrance left by the object destroyed. A perpetual smoke would therefore symbolize the ineffaceable remembrance of an irreparable ruin. Thus it is said of the great harlot that " her smoke goeth up for ever and ever. " 1

But this same harlot has previously ceased to live, she has been " killed," her flesh has been devoured and her bones consumed .

This harlot is a city, a government opposed to God, a temporal power.

As M. L. Bonnet says : " It tells of a destruction without any hope of restoration. "2

This does not by any means exclude long-continued antecedent sufferings. Written under the strokes of the frightful persecution by Nero, the Apocalypse accentuates the sufferings reserved for persecutors. It seems to us that the Conditionalist exegesis can accept this datum without striking on the fatal rock of dualism. The text of the Apocalypse brings face to face simultaneously the two notions : torments and ultimate destruction.

Conditionalism reconciles these two notions ; this fact enables it to claim the authority of the Apocalypse as on its side, whatever may be the value assigned to that authority.

The notion of utter destruction can scarcely be contested. Several times over the Apocalypse speaks of a " second death. "

As the first death brings to an end the life and ultimately the very existence of the body, the analogy would evidently lead to the supposition that the second death will bring to an end the life, and even the existence, of the soul. Two imaginary beings, Death and Hades , are cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. To what end ? Will it be said that, by metonymy, these names are used to represent the victims of Death and the inhabitants of Hades ?

This evasion is inadmissible, seeing that, according to the immediately preceding

1 Rev. xix. 3.

2 Cf. Rev. xviii. 9, 18 ; Isa. xxxiv. 10 ; Dan. vii. 11 , sq.

verse Death and Hades have already given up all their captives.¹

It will surely be admitted that an imaginary personage and an empty receptacle cannot be tormented . The Conditionalist interpretation seems unavoidable. When the obstinate sinners shall have perished, death will be abolished. This is also, as we have seen, the teaching of St.

Paul.

We may here quote the admission of a loyal opponent previously mentioned, Archdeacon Farrar, who is an adherent of a mitigated Universalism . He says : " I do not accept the doctrine of Conditional Immortality, but its supporters at least have furnished an impregnable bulwark against the necessity for any man to believe in the hell of Tertullian, Dante, or modern revivalists .

I cannot find one single text in all Scripture which, when fairly interpreted, teaches, as a matter of faith or in any way approaching to distinctness, the common views about endless torments . " 2

It would seem that M. Godet himself would gladly be rid of the horror of the traditional dogma, for at the close of his article he proposes, by way of hypothesis, a theory which is surely somewhat heterodox, viz., that an impersonal existence of the rebellious soul might be maintained after its personality has been destroyed. M. Godet compares this soul to a glass vase fashioned by a workman, which, being accidentally injured, is put back into the furnace and is transformed into an incandescent mass which the workman can remodel so as to answer to his thought. Such would be the lot of the man who has refused to enter into the divine plan. In the furnace of suffering he would lose the sense of his identity, but from the inconscient substance God might cause to spring forth a new personality. As M. Godet puts it : " May there not be at the bottom of this ruined personality an impersonal human existence which God can take back into his hands to draw from it by a subsequent developement a personality which shall

1 Rev. xx. 13 .

2 Mercy andJudgement, pp. 423, 424, 474.

answer to his thought ? "" What does this mean, except that the first personality would be abolished ? But the suppression of the personality is precisely the supreme chastisement according to the Conditionalist view. When once the personality is destroyed, what value could there be in the remainder, if remainder there be ? Absolutely none ; at least, none for the individual who thus, along with his identity, has lost his autonomy, without which he is no longer a man, but a thing.

And what has become of the eternal torments of which we understood M. Godet to be the champion ? They have come to an end !

Well and good !

But in vain does

M. Godet introduce into his closing sentence the recommendation to his readers not to " try to anticipate the light to come " ; is not the hypothesis that he has just formulated itself an anticipation, and the half-opened door through which will speedily escape all the denizens of the orthodox hell ?

So, then, it would seem that M. Godet has been opposing the

Conditionalists on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the result of all his contention is a solution of the problem very much like their own !

The result of all these passages of arms is a practical surrender on his part ! What can be the explanation of this great and sudden concession ? We must suppose that he has at last perceived the weakness of the traditional arguments, on which he had previously set too high a value. His own researches must have more or less consciously converted him ; his opposition gives place to a note of acquiescence. We admire in him the skilful general who, after having done all that depended upon him to maintain an untenable position, at last builds a bridge over which, perhaps to-morrow, the army under his command will be able to retire in good order.

1 Rev. L. C. Baker and M. Ott have propounded hypotheses somewhat similar. See Chap. II ., sect. viii., § 12, and note on p. 363. 2 See pp. 33, 86, 202, 235, and Supplement No. III. , § 6.

CHAPTER XII .

HARMONIES AND BENEFITS OF THE TRUE

BIBLICAL , TEACHING.

I. The mystic Sphinx and the divine Edipus- II. Recapitulation of the results arrived at in the preceding chapters. The Conditionalist solution of the problem is warranted by philosophy, exegesis, and the history of dogmas- III . As an evangelical synthesis, it bears the character of a theodicy, and it replaces in their true light several doctrines generally misunderstood : § 1, The notion of God and predestination ; § 2, The notion of man ; § 3, The Christological notion ; § 4, The notion of salvation ;

§ 5, Eschatology. Conditionalism establishes the law of exact proportion in future retribution-IV. It tends to reconcile science with faith, and reason with the Gospel : § 1 , In the person of their most illustrious representatives, the schools of duty and of liberty have declared their adhesion to this conception of the Gospel ; § 2, Guided by universal analogy and by the law of continuity, Christian evolutionists have adopted the same point of view ; § 3, A glance at philosophical pessimism ; Conditionalism furnishes weapons with which to combat it-V. Conditionalism in practical theology. It stimulates missionary zeal -VI . The conditions of moral and religious revival-VII . A prophecy in course of fulfilment—VIII . Duty of propagating a salutary truth- IX. Conclusion.

THE Greek poets tell how the Sphinx, stationed upon the road near Thebes, proposed to the passers-by an enigma to be solved. Those who failed to give the right solution were devoured or cast into the sea. At last came Edipus, who expounded the riddle ; then the Sphinx, defeated, cast herself down into the waves, and Thebes, being delivered from the monster, placed her liberator upon the throne.

In this ancient myth we may see an evangelical parable. The Sphinx represents death, the scourge of God, punishing the people's sins. The passers-by are ourselves, each one of us being called upon during this earthly pilgrimage to solve the enigma of the great beyond. The sea is the dreadful gulf of nothingness which threatens the man who fails to solve the fateful problem. Jesus Christ is represented by Edipus the deliverer, revealing the secret of death, overcoming and finally suppressing that last enemy. In Thebes is seen humanity, groaning under the tyranny of death, but already hailing in Jesus Christ the conqueror of that king of terrors.¹

The longer we reflect upon it, the more are we convinced that the true solution of the problem propounded at the outset of our study is presented by the Gospel. But we mean the Gospel taken at its source in heights above the point at which the current has been empoisoned by human traditions.

In mounting to those heights we have gathered up a number of precious truths : the time has now arrived for binding the sheaf. We will use as a bond this master-thought, which arises out of our study as a whole :

MAN , WHO IS HEIR PRESUMPTIVE OF IMMORTALITY, WILL

NOT

ASCEND

THRONE

WITHOUT

FULFILLING

CON-

DITION, ENTERING INTO COMMUNION WITH JESUS CHRIST

AND WALKING IN

HIS FOOTSTEPS .

While keeping aloof from this, the only way, man is advancing by a slow and painful death-process towards the eternal night out of which he has arisen, and into which every being must sink again who does not live in the holy life of the living God. The believer alone receives, through the Holy Spirit , that vital force which conquers the second death. In support of this main thesis we have shown the following facts :

1. In this age of universal emancipation, wherever Christian thought has freed itself from the fetters of scholasticism, that which is provisionally called Conditionalism has presented itself as the true biblical teaching. Everywhere it wins the adhesion of an increasing number of generally esteemed theologians .

1 The name Edipus, meaning the man with swollen feet, leads to the thought of the stigmata of the victim on Calvary. As the mythological story goes, Edipus, when a child, had his feet pierced and nailed to a tree by a servant of his father, Laius, King of Thebes.

2. It has also won the more or less close adhesion of a choice company of metaphysicians, men such as Rothe, Weisse, Lotze, De May, Charles Lambert, Charles Renouvier, François Pillon, and Charles Secrétan, to mention only the principal names . Christian anthropologists, biologists, and physiologists are in agreement with modern metaphysics on this point.

Without being founded upon the vain reasoning of the schools, Conditionalism has the support of those moral presumptions which testify in favour of an eventual survival beyond the tomb.

3. Our thesis is in conformity with the data of the Old Testament and with the twenty centuries of teaching in the Synagogue, the principal chiefs of which have not ceased to affirm that God is the only being truly imperishable. This teaching is contradicted only by some uncanonical books and by the Kabbalah, a pantheistic doctrine of Indo-Persian origin which has no official authority in orthodox Judaism .

4. So, too, the New Testament teaches that " God only hath immortality, " and that the indefinite perpetuation of existence is the exclusive privilege of the man who doeth the will of God. Immortality, which in the New Testament is called eternal life, or by abbreviation the life, is the very subject of the preaching of Jesus and his apostles. The final suppression of the impenitent is but a corollary of this teaching.

5. Jesus reveals to us the secret of immortalization ; his supreme purpose is to restore life to the dying, and to restore the capacity of life to beings whom sin has excluded from the conditions of an eternal life.

6. This same notion has supplied us with a key to the symbolism of baptism and the Lord's supper : it explains the deep meaning of these rites, which form, as it were, the escutcheon of the Church .

7. The elimination of evil and of evil-doers by way of gradual extinction is in conformity with the historicogrammatical meaning of the Scripture, with reason, and with universal analogy. The religious consciousness cannot but subscribe to this declaration of the apostle : " The wages of sin is death . "

8. The earliest Fathers of the Church maintained the primitive teaching.

9. The doctrinal deviation of the later Fathers is easily explained by the surreptitious infiltration of the Platonic philosophy into the degenerate Churches.

It is now generally recognized that since the second century that philosophy has been an important factor in ecclesiastical theology.

10. The theory of universal salvation falls to pieces as soon as the pillar that supports it is taken away ; and that pillar is nothing else than the Platonic à priori of the emanation and eternal pre-existence of individual souls.

11. A similar petitio principii is found to be the basis of all the arguments brought forward in support of the traditional dogma and against an acquirable immortality. Biblical evangelism is summoned, under pain of forfeiture and deposition, to restore to the fundamental terms life and death their ontological value, of which they have been unjustly deprived in favour of merely accessory notions. The legitimacy of such a restitution is implied in admissions made by interpreters of various schools . We have recorded these declarations. In conformity with the Latin adage : Patere quam ipse fecisti legem, Protestant orthodoxy, which makes its appeal to the biblical text, must in the end draw the conclusion from that principle, must accept it or abdicate. The fact that our principal opponent has ended his long contest, as may be seen in the preceding chapter, by an implied adhesion to one of our fundamental theses, is, in relation to the coming evolution of orthodoxy, like that swallow which does not make, but foretells the summer .

In brief, a verdict favourable to our hypothesis is given, as with a common accord, by philosophy in the measure of its competence, by revelation as contained in both Old and New

Testaments , by the history of dogmas, and by the religious consciousness ; these confer upon it the right to a place in

Christian dogmatics .

Dogmaticians will arise who will reconstruct on this foundation the tottering edifice of traditional beliefs .

During many past years much confusion has prevailed respecting the origin and developement of this system of interpretation. Discovering that one of its results is to establish a doctrine of future retribution which is irreconcilable with belief in the eternal misery of the lost, the advocates of the latter opinion, naturally impressed with the magnitude of the cause at stake, have, not " for the space of two hours " but for a whole generation, filled the air with doubtless honest outcries against what they describe as the " miserable doctrine of annihilation," and have persistently represented that this doctrine is the beginning and the end of our endeavours. It now, however, begins to be understood, after many years of misconception, that much more is concerned than a doctrine of future punishment.¹

To see in Conditionalism nothing but a question of future punishment was to depreciate the doctrine, to look only on the reverse of the medal. Judges whose competence and impartiality are beyond dispute have called immortality " the great question. " 2

In the Christian system, as presented by

Mr. White, for example :

The idea of life occupies the central position, and is, so to speak, its generative principle. Immortality brought again within the reach of creatures who are rebellious, and so devoted to absolute death : that, in short, is the " glad tidings."

When once properly understood, this doctrine lets in a flood of light upon all the rest, which, grouping themselves around it, help in their turn to corroborate it and give it precision. Thus Christianity, which is so often mutilated by the narrow ness of its teachers, appears before us in its true logical sequence and in its grand unity.³

It will become more and more evident that far from overturning evangelical teaching, the thesis that we are defending can only rejuvenate by regenerating it.4

We have already had occasion to remark that this thesis brings a renovating element into biblical theology and exegesis , by a more rigorous application of the important hermeneutic principle of the historico-grammatical interpretation. A glance which we are about to cast at the various branches of dog-

1 E. White, op. cit., p. 346.

2 MM. Dupont-White and Ch. Renouvier, Critique religieuse, April and

July, 1878 .

3 Chas. Byse, preface to his translation of Mr. White's book, p. vii., sq. 4 See the opinion expressed by Dr. Dale in Supplement No. II.

matics may convince us that, looked at from this point of view, many a doctrine generally misunderstood presents itself in its true light. We will mention, for example :

§ 1. THE NOTION OF GOD AND PREDESTINATION .

This notion is of the highest importance, since it is in the nature of things that the believer transforms himself into the likeness of the God whom he adores .

In every religion the chief moral force is the God whom it reveals and whose sovereignty it establishes. A sleeping Boodh sends nations to sleep. An impure Vishnu depraves all India. An infinitely terrific power hardens and alienates the people. A God of more intelligible justice and mercy will more powerfully " draw all men unto him. "1

The God of evangelical orthodoxy does not always set a good example. His charity is absent from hell, where, however, more than anywhere else, it would seem to be needed.2 To doom to endless torments unhappy beings of whom it is certain that they will never obtain any advantage from their sufferings is hardly a charitable act. Their bitterest enemy could scarcely show greater hatred. Even if they are incorrigible sinners, everyone would like to know why the Almighty does not open to them the door of nonentity, out of which they never asked to be brought forth. And is that the God who commands us to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to do good to them that hate us ? A venerable Christian has acknowledged to us that he had passed half his life in questioning whether the orthodox deity were not the devil . Any way, the docility of those believers who here and there still adore this contradictory deity is marvellous. From the Conditionalist point of view, God, always charitable, manifests his compassion even in the terrible chastisement meted out to the most rebellious sinners. Bestowing life upon all as a provisional gift, he does not impose upon any one the perpetuity of that boon. Not being able to consult his creature before having called him into existence, he interrogates him when self- consciousness has been attained. He inquires whether the life received is appreciated, and whether the creature

1 E. White, op. cit., p. 493.

2 See p. 225, note.

desires the conservation of that life on conditions that he has appointed. The gift of life will not be taken back unless the creature does what he can to deprive himself of it. On his side the Creator will do his part towards leading the ungrateful recipient to repentance. Thus does Conditionalism dispel the dark cloud that dimmed the notion of God.

Even hell itself is no longer withdrawn from the omnipresence of an indivisible divinity. Like propitious stars, justice and goodness, holiness and mercy shine into the dark abode of which the disappearance is provided for by the eternal wisdom .

In connection with the notion of God let us take one of the most discredited among the Calvinistic dogmas, that of predestination to evil. At the present day who preaches it, either in Calvin's own city or in Scotland ? An enforced immortality which devoted the wicked inevitably to eternal torments, gave an odious character to the divine decree .

Put aside this element of error, and election will be nothing more than God's liberty in the initial distribution of his gifts. There is nothing more striking in nature, nothing more undeniable than this liberty, whereof no man has a right to complain, since every benefactor has the right to " do what he will with his own, " showing favour to whomsoever he may prefer. An unequal distribution is even indispensable for the variety which embellishes the universe. In order to prevent the possibility of the prerogatives conferred being taken as motives for jealousy, God would have had to limit his creation to one single individual. In his munificence he promises to enrich indefinitely all those who make a good use of the gifts confided to them . But he will banish from his universe those who, in their ingratitude , refuse to accept the position that he assigns to them, or rather he will at last abandon them to the fatal consequences of their guilty folly. The predestination of the wicked may simply consist in the determinate purpose of the Creator not to oblige those to live for ever who obstinately plunge themselves into death. The predestination of the righteous would be the determinate purpose and promise to give " eternal life to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption "; those will be the elect who will fulfil the required conditions. These purposes, at the same time unchangeable and conditional, would leave intact the liberty of man, an intelligent mite going and coming at his will within the narrow precincts of his perishable dwelling. For the repression of abuses in dealing with property some modern codes limit a father's testamentary power ; but the heavenly Father, who can never abuse his rights, has evidently reserved full power to himself.

He has created in the world hills and mountains, a Pascal, a Newton, and myriads of little or medium intellects. Let us not speak of the disinherited : there are none ; all have a share. If privileges exist, it is because without inequalities God could not have created two beings differing one from the other. Even if we imagine two exactly alike, the one who is placed on the left might find occasion for being jealous of the one on the right , or vice-versâ. Granted the existence of two beings, privilege cannot but exist also ; privilege is indeed the same thing as individuality. Let us, then, leave to God the liberty that he has assumed of entrusting to one five talents, to another two, to a third only one ; let us leave to him also the liberty of taking away from this last his single talent if it is not used to good purpose. Let the hill, instead of envying the mountain, give thanks and rejoice that it is not a mere mound, and let the mound in its turn appreciate the unmerited advantage which raises it above the grain of sand.¹ The parable of the talents, to which allusion has just been made, teaches us, too, that capital well administered may increase. Prayer and work at all times open the ever- full treasury of divine gifts and graces .

Doubtless all are not equally endowed. But, first, each one will find a measure of happiness in the exercise of the several faculties that he possesses ; secondly, each one will find an increasing measure of happiness in the truly divine prerogative which permits him to share his communicable advantages with others less privileged ; and, thirdly, each one will find such an increasing measure of happiness in the attainment of advantages not at first possessed, or in the developement of those already possessed, that in the end he will no longer desire the lot of any

1 This truth has found ingenuous expression in the liturgical prayer of the Israelites, who give thanks to God that he has not made them women. The women, for their part, give thanks to God that he has made them according to his good pleasure.

CHAPTER XII.

SECTION III.

other. Why should we speak of envy ? Such as we are, debtors to Providence, we shall all be animated with gratitude corresponding to the benefits of which not one among us is entirely deprived. Furthermore, we shall remember that every advantage creates a moral debt, and carries with it proportional obligations. The most richly endowed is, so to speak, the most deeply indebted.¹

§ 2. THE NOTION OF MAN .

To suppose with the poet that man is " A fallen deity, with memories of heaven," is to assign to him a nature consistent only with pantheism. From the biblical point of view, which we occupy, man has not fallen from heaven, having never been there. He is not a part of God, but only a perishable creature endowed with a certain aptitude for immortality . Sin, the parent of death, has diminished that aptitude, and will in the end destroy it, if not itself rooted out. The wild tree that bears only acid fruits is valuable only on condition of being grafted ; if, endowed with liberty, it refuses the graft, it is good for nothing except to be burnt. In the spring- time the ground is strewed with the vine shoots cut off by the vinedresser, but when autumn comes the vine shows no sign of having suffered by the pruning ; this vine is an emblem of the human race .

A being of an intermediate nature, as Theophilus of Antioch expresses it, risen above animality and a candidate for immortality, man has power to choose between progress and retrogression, between the nothingness that is behind him and the imperishable life that is before him. In this domain God has granted him liberty without reserve .

This notion, which opens up to us the most sublime prospects, shuts out the titanic conception of a being who, when punished by the Monarch of the universe, would avenge himself by for ever pouring forth an inexhaustible torrent of curses and blasphemies.

1 It may here be noticed what a light is thus thrown upon the social problem.

§ 3. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL NOTION .

A contributor to the Témoignage has affirmed that in Conditionalism " the divinity of Christ is superfluous. " There could not be a greater mistake. It is precisely upon the divinity of Jesus Christ that our hope of immortality depends ; from our point of view there is much greater need for his divinity than there is from the traditional standpoint. It is, indeed, possible to conceive that the devotedness of a man might suffice to deliver us from impending ills, were they even eternal, and to procure the healing of our bodies or our souls. A created being may be able more or less to give happiness, to aid in our sanctification .

But to communicate life eternal to a perishable creature is the work of the Almighty alone. If, therefore, we obtain in Jesus an eternal life, in our view he can be no other than God himself manifest in the flesh.

From the biblical standpoint there is no life apart from the Word, of which Jesus was the incarnation. This creative Word animates as well as enlightens every man that comes into the world. Unconverted sinners have no other light than the twilight afforded by Christ, the Sun of souls, not yet visible on their horizon or already set below it. For us Jesus is not merely something, he is everything.

One of the principal characteristics of the doctrine that we are defending is that it exalts the unique glory of him whom the apostle Peter calls the Author of life. Thus to enforce a doctrine and bring it into bold relief, does that look like hostility to it, does that make it seem superfluous ?

We believe, indeed, that from the standpoint of an inevitable immortality it may be easily shown that the essential divinity of Jesus Christ is by no means an indispensable dogna. It would suffice to see in Jesus a model man and the guide who brings back the erring travellers into the right way. But a doctrine that is not indispensable is in great danger of being rejected. A few biblical passages, the authority of which is contested, will not suffice to support it. In order to become

1 M. Ménégoz, in a review of our work entitled La Fin du mal, No. of

10 Aug., 1872.

2 Archēgon tēs zōēs, Acts iii. 15. Grimm, Clavis N.T. ,; Eng. R.V. margin.

unassailable, the dogma of the divinity of Jesus Christ needs, to be placed upon a Conditionalist foundation.¹

§ 4. THE NOTION OF SALVATION .

Salvation originally signified conservation. Conditionalism restores to this term its primitive meaning. In the traditional dogma the accessory notion of happiness usurps the whole position, the result being that Christianity has incurred the reproach of eudemonism. The Gospel, which is more profound and more moral, relegates to the background the selfish notion of happiness. It puts man into a condition in which he may fulfil his sublime mission. It re-establishes the failing conditions of existence, restores the primitive hierarchy of our faculties, and thereby renders us immortalizable.

The emblematic rites of the Gospel are explicable only from this point of view; they tell us of renovation and a new life ; the notion of happiness is not brought out by them .

§ 5. ESCHATOLOGY AND RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE .

The Conditionalist principle lightens up this mysterious domain by fixing what may be called a standard of measure in the matter of penalties and rewards. According to the Gospel, this standard consists in a given capacity for action or feeling, to which Jesus in the parable applied the name of talent.5

At the starting-point the portions allotted vary according to the good pleasure of the master, who at his will endows the servants to whom he confides the administration of his goods. The recompense consists in the increase or the multiplication of the powers of those who have well used their capital ; the penalty will be a diminution, or, if deserved, a suppression of such and such a faculty, or even of all the faculties. The moral and religious use of our faculties prepares for us eternal

1 On the specific divinity of Jesus Christ, see Supplement No. XXI. "

2 See p. 277.

3 A system which consists in recognizing personal well-being as the supreme motive of all actions. It is one of the names applied to the doctrine of Aristippus and of Epicurus.

4 See Chap. V.

5 Matt. xxv. 14-30 ; Luke xii. 42 ; xix. 12-27 ; cf. xvi. 1-12 .

riches, it creates within us a superior aptitude which we shall retain beyond the tomb, while all the riches of this world will vanish in smoke.

The traditional dogma has displaced the axis of the sphere of retributions, making it pass through the inferior notions of pleasure and pain. The importance of these notions is thus exaggerated. It is clear that the exercise of a faculty must be accompanied by a measure of enjoyment, and that the deprivation of that same faculty would involve a corresponding measure of suffering ; but we ought to seek the cause that is behind the consequence.

When Jesus speaks of the sufferings of the wicked in the future life, he describes them as being caused by a sight of the advantages of which they have deprived themselves by their own wilfulness.¹

Thus pain loses its odious character. It may be considered as an appeal by the divine charity, and as a means for rescuing the guilty from the essential chastisement, which is the gradual loss of faculties, and in the end the loss of all faculties. In itself a benefit, pain becomes a real misfortune only to him who refuses to profit by it.

Punishment will be strictly proportional. Guilt will be measured exactly by responsibility, and the measure of the responsibility will be found in the number and extent of the powers and privileges granted. The guilty one who has received much will suffer much, just because he will lose much.

He who has received less will sin less, because he will abuse a smaller number of gifts ; he will suffer less, because he will lose less . Everything will be taken away from the man who makes no good use of his faculties.

Such a man will cease to exist, for a man is only by that which he has.

Otherwise stated, responsibility is measured by prerogative ; guilt by the abuse of prerogative, suffering by loss, and loss by guilt. The duration and intensity of sufferings in the future life will be in direct proportion to the quota of vital forces and diverse faculties distributed at the first to each delinquent ;

1 Luke xiii. 28. On consideration it will be seen that all pain is either the consequence of actual loss or the symptom of a danger threatening that which we fear to lose. A toothache usually precedes the rottenness of a tooth. Painful blows cause bruises which themselves are threatenings of death, either local or general. See Chap. VII ., sect. iv.

and that quota being always limited, the sufferings will be so too. No one can sin or suffer beyond the strict measure of the faculties received.¹

The ruin of a millionaire will cause privations which will be to him more painful than they would be to a poor man who has never possessed riches. The greater the mass of vital forces, the longer and more poignant will be the pain that accompanies their dissolution ; the more richly a soul is endowed, the more guilty will it be if it falls from its high estate, and the more grievous will be its death in the doctrine of Conditional Immortality is ever-exact equilibrium between these three responsibilities, retributions. According to

Akibah : " All is supplied under bond.

agony. Thus , established an factors : gifts, the saying of

The market is open ; the merchant gives credit ; but a register is kept ; each debt is inscribed, and sooner or later the collectors will obtain payment in one way or another. "2

There is, then, nothing to prevent us from subscribing to the principles laid down by M. Gretillat :

Ist. Every creature being eternally called to perfect happiness in perfect holiness, at the time of retribution will have received a portion of the necessary means of grace sufficient for obtaining salvation.

2nd. The portions granted at their initial distribution to the different moral agents are unequal, and are sovereignly and unconditionally determined by the divine will.

3rd. The responsibilities incurred by the various moral agents are proportionate to the means of grace that have been granted to them.³

Our standpoint allows the determination with the greatest precision of the bases of the last judgement, and to some extent the nature of the retributions ; while the traditional dogma, for lack of a proper datum line, is unable to measure the gradation of future rewards and punishments.

In particu-

1 The opinion of the learned Rothe was nearly the same. In his view the duration of the chastisement of a soul would be in proportion to its guilt, and this guilt in proportion to the sum of the divine elements that were in it. We may add that the law of analogy leads us to suppose that in the future life it will be as on earth, where we see suffering usually shortened in direct proportion to its intensity.

2 Aboth, iii . Quoted by M. J. Cohen, Les Pharisiens, vol. ii., p. 426. 3 Op. cit. , vol. i., p. 366.

lar, the hell of popular theology is only a vast lake of fire and brimstone into which the guilty, small and great, are cast indiscriminately, and where they will live for ever in a promiscuous crowd. We, on the contrary, believe that God has established an exact and infallible correlation between sin and its punishment. The calculation will be absolutely correct ; the balance will be more delicately poised than that of any jeweller. No artifice, no acceptation of persons, will ever make it turn ; but, on the other hand, it will surely be affected by the slightest efforts and the least failures of the moral life.

The eternal law speaks to the conscience of every sinner, saying to him : " Whoever thou art, I have a right over thee, and I will judge thee at the last day. Do to-day whatever may please thee, to-morrow I will lay hold of thee. Lie, steal, kill , blaspheme , and laugh over it, I still hold a mortgage upon thy person. In the exact measure of thy delinquencies, thy capacities for action and feeling shall be diminished, and except thou repent thou shalt be miserably and definitively suppressed .

The eternal order which thou hast violated shall be restored at thy cost ; the universe, for a moment troubled by thy presence , will find thy disappearance to be an advantage. The very excess of evil shall result in the suppression of evil. "

The penal code of human justice, the dread of which holds in check so many evildoers, is but a feeble echo of this threat of the moral law.

We may be told that to a perverse will this threat will not be found an all- powerful restraint.

But where is there such a thing as an all-powerful restraint ? It does not exist. God has not willed that it should exist, because he desires the maintenance of an element of spontaneity ; none the less will the restraint that we have described replace with advantage the official dogma, which reassures the sinner by its excessive menace .

That dogma, being incredible, encourages the secret hope of a final amnesty. It is like the scarecrow which, so far from frightening the pilfering birds, at last serves them as a perch. It reminds us of the bogey stories wherewith nurses too often fill the imagination of little children. A sound system of education rejects such well-meaning falsehoods.

The defect of the traditional dogma comes out clearly in the

CHAPTER XII.

presence of the most poignant realities. Recently, at Ain Fezza, in the province of Oran, an adulterous wife was found guilty of administering poison to her husband. Condemned to twenty years of close imprisonment, she poisons herself. A pastor presides at her burial ; he consoles the mourning family by the presentation of a hope of pardon at last beyond the tomb, " the divine mercy being greater even than men's sins . " A reputedly orthodox journal reproduces this funeral oration without the expression of any reserve. Nor are we going to blame it ; but it must be admitted to be in flagrant contradiction with the doctrine that announces punishment beginning immediately after death and perpetuated without any possibility of remission. Will our brethren who call themselves orthodox never stir from the false position in which they still stand ? By what right will they condemn us when they themselves are thus more or less chargeable with heresy ?

Such is the horror arising from the prevalent creed, that it is seldom applied either to living multitudes or dead relations. A hopeful case is made out for almost everyone who dies, in direct opposition to Christ's words that " destruction " is certain for all except those who " hear his sayings and do them." The effect, moreover, of the existing opinion is to lower the standard of morality to zero, since the hell believed in is thought too dreadful for all except gigantic offenders. Thus Christ's words on " wrestling to enter into life " become practically inoperative. The masses harden themselves in wickedness, and Christians deliberately set aside their Lord's lesson on the fewness of the saved.

The effect of true doctrine will be to strengthen the moral testimony. When men believe in a terrible but credible perdition, they will allow the limitation of the offer of eternal life.2

The traditionalists are accustomed to assert that, if we assign an end to the sufferings of hell, vicious and hardened beings will plunge into evil with a renewed sense of security.

But such persons forget that these profligates have enjoyed the full restraining advantage of the threatening of everlasting woe with scarce an interruption during all their lifetime, and that even this has not deterred them from their dreadful career. They are already as wicked

1 It has just been seen that even the orthodox are now reassuring themselves as to the future end of the greatest criminals.-E. P. E. White, op. cit., p. 467, sq.

Y THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALIT .

as they can be, and cannot be made worse by the modification of a threatening which they have utterly disbelieved in and defied. It is even possible that some alteration in the way of presenting God's justice and love to them may work for the better and diminish their blasphemies.

to make

What is needed to arouse such profligates to reflection them tremble at judgement to come, and to bring them to repentance, is the proclamation of a future remediless punishment, which carries its own credentials along with it, and while shaking the souls of sinners, even the most intelligent, as at a fiery handwriting on the wall, with a deep convulsive dread, shall leave no valid ground for moral speculations on its injustice and improbability. Such is, I subinit, the doctrine of judgement as here set forth.¹

No sinner can hope to escape from this righteous condemnation to death, while everyone imagines that he will escape eternal torments, even if he believes in them for others .

The enfeebled evangelism of our day has taken pains to substitute for the traditional hell the fear of a moral separation from God.

It has always seemed to us that this motive can have very little hold upon souls. The sinner willingly accepts this prospect of an existence independent and uncontrolled ; he has little dread of a moral separation from God, for to him God is only a constraint.

The ship of Conditionalism sails at an equal distance from these two rocks : the dualist pessimism which makes evil eternal, and the perfidious optimism which asserts that all will end well for every one.

We do not replace the faith of our fathers by a relaxed doctrine. Our God, too, is a consuming fire. An earnest

Christian lady is said to have declared that she would no more seek to evangelize, but would " sit still in her drawing-room " if it should be proved that the torments of the damned are not endless. This pious person judges herself too harshly. She would quickly leave her drawing-room if in an adjoining chamber the beginning of a fire should threaten the life of an infant in the cradle ; she will find herself even more strongly urged to leave her room in order to rescue souls from'eternal death.

" Flattering, " " reassuring," death eternal !

1 E. White, op. cit., p. 491 .

Is the

bloody sword of the executioner flattering, reassuring ? the sword of celestial justice be any more so ?

Will

Paul was accused of making void the law, and he exclaims :

" Do we then make void the law ? Nay ! we establish the law " upon a more solid basis. So, too, we are accused of suppressing a salutary fear, while on the contrary we reestablish it.

For the traditionalist the sinful soul is a diamond fallen into the mud, which soils but does not destroy it ; delay is not absolutely fatal. In the view of the Conditionalist the diamond has fallen into a fire that is consuming it.

Of these two views, which is the one that supplies the most urgent motive for a prompt and energetic rescue ?

To point out the irreparable effects of sin, is that to deny its terrible reality, is that to enfeeble the notion of sin, is that to paralyze the activity of the missionary or the preacher ? What ! shall we see the physician lavish of his attention and his efforts with the sole object of prolonging his patient's life for a few years, or perhaps a few days ? shall we call heroes the men who are ready to brave flood and flame in order to rescue their fellow-creatures from a death comparatively little dreadful, and shall we remain careless and indifferent in presence of the plague that is destroying souls ? The true believer dreads for the whole race of men that danger to which they are insensible ; he knows that if he does not hasten he will have to answer for the blood of his brethren ; he knows that the ravages of evil will become irremediable, that the tide is rising, that the fire is spreading ; is not that enough to enkindle his zeal and to keep the sacred love of souls ever burning in his heart ?

In dread of the mortal peril which threatens the impenitent, we live in a state of perpetual alarm, for we are as it were upon an immense vessel on which a fire has already broken out, the fire and the water enveloping us on all sides, and the ship full of sleeping passengers. We lift up our voice and cry : " Sleepers , awake ! Hasten to put on the life-belts ! The shore is not distant, and all who will may be saved . " This ship on fire is the world ; the life-belt is faith. We do not believe that a ferocious God is going to occupy eternity in tormenting the damned in hell, but the motive of our life is the desire implanted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit himself, the ardent inextinguishable desire to honour the heavenly Father by rescuing some of our fellow-creatures from an eternal death .

Over the converted sinner Conditionalism possesses a unique power, namely, the notion of a certain irreparability of evil. The traditional dogma ignores gradation ; it attributes to faith the power of destroying, as by enchantment, all the consequences of sin. Salvation is all or nothing. Let a sinner give the rein to all his passions his whole life long, let him repent at the very last moment, his place is not only in heaven , which is true, but his place in heaven will be as good as that of the man who has not ceased to strive and to pray. Pursuing this mischievous way even to the end, the ritualist dogma has done away with all righteousness. A sacramental formula is to save from hell ; a gift or a legacy to the Church is to shorten the duration of purgatory. Constantine could imbrue his hands in the blood of his own children, the baptism which he postponed until his last hour was to take the place of repentance.

All these abuses are cut short by the biblical principle of the condition of existence. According to that principle, sin is a corrosive, a burning, of necessity implying damage, destruction partial or total, local or general. Sin involves for the sinner more or less self-diminution. The penitent sinner will be saved as through the fire. Although saved, he must pay a proportionate tribute to the inexorable law of eternal justice. Repentance, even though followed by pardon, will not cause the disappearance of all the deleterious consequences of the sin that has been committed. It is possible to circumscribe a fire, to stop it, to rebuild the edifice that has been destroyed or damaged, but it is not possible to do away with the fact of damage or loss. Great sin means great damage ; little sin, little damage; but in either case a loss that is irreparable, and therefore serious.¹

This austere truth leaves room for justice without excluding

1 See Chap. V., sect. ix. See also the sermon by Rev. E. White on The Secondary Consequences of Sin in the volume entitled The Mystery ofGrowth, etc., Dickinson, 1877, and Un redoubtable Mais in the Journal religieux of

9Aug., 1890.

grace ; it assigns salvation to every believer, and renders to each man according to his works ; it gives us consolation, but does not soothe us with dangerous illusions. It occupies in moral retribution the position claimed in politics for the representation of minorities ; to the passions of the sinner who believes himself to be converted, and in reality is only half converted, it opposes a barrier unknown to the traditional dogma.

We may add that in the eschatological domain the resurrection of the body had become a kind of needless extra, not to say a retrogression . In the traditional view, the believer's soul, leavingits prison-house of clay, is in immediate enjoyment ofcelestial happiness . Why it should return to the bondage of a body is not explained. Thus it has come to pass that many theologians relegate to the background the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which in the New Testament occupies a foremost position .

Conditionalism, not believing in a separate immortality of souls, restores to resurrection the predominant place that is assigned to it in Scripture .

We will sum up this section by noticing that :

Ist. The truth of any teaching is confirmed when it introduces into dogmatics a synthesis which facilitates the methodical arrangement and connection of all doctrines.

2nd. A doctrine is beneficent when it satisfies the mind and the heart, solves our difficulties, urges to the practice of that which is good, represses evil, edifies and sanctifies the soul.

If these are true touchstones, Conditionalism deserves to be placed in the rank of beneficent truths.

§ I. ADHESIONS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHERS .

The doctrine of which the Conditionalists are the humble upholders is no human invention. All the honour belongs to Jesus Christ ; it is a revelation, and its divine origin appears all the more clearly since it has won the adhesion of thinkers belonging to the most diverse schools. We have gathered together some of their testimonies.¹ In them may be seen pledges of a

1 See the prefatory letter by Professor Charles Secrétan and our first two chapters.

reconciliation between old rivals : on one side, human reason and science ; on the other side, faith and religion. The neocriticism, of which M. de Pressensé said : " More than ever we have need of such a philosophy, "¹ has shown itself particularly favourable to an understanding upon such a basis. One of its standard-bearers, M. F. Pillon, now director of the Année philosophique, looks to the adoption of the Conditionalist point of view as assuring the future of Protestantism, whereof he has become one of the most eminent champions . He says :

On the one hand Conditional Immortality is perfectly admissible in philosophy for anyone who places himself at the point of view of metaphysics and criticist morality. On the other hand this theory seems to me to result clearly and certainly, in theology, from an exegesis that is truly scientific and in conformity with the Protestant spirit. I believe that it is necessary to make of it one of the essential foundations of the renovated Protestant theology. It offers the advantage of purifying without suppressing the Christian idea of damnation and salvation. In the conception of damnation the substitution of annihilation for an endless hell can and ought to serve as opposing Protestantism to Catholicism, the religion of freedom to the religion of servitude. The Catholic conception of the kingdom of God resembles the despotic Asiatic empires, where the sovereign power is manifested in penal matters by horrible tortures without limit or purpose. The penalty of death is sufficient in the Protestant conception of the kingdom of

God.2

We believe that the theological importance of this thesis can hardly be exaggerated. A theology is defined and characterized especially by the solution that it gives to the eschatological question, because it is eschatology alone that can fully determine the nature of the divine government, the scope of human freedom, the consequences of sin, the position and work of the Christ, the purpose of redemption. The theology of the sixteenth-century reformers remained half Catholic. The Conditionalists have understood that, in order to amend it, the first thing to be done is to put aside the Catholic conception of damnation and salvation, not by doubt or indifference, but by precise and resolute affirmations, by a doctrine in conformity with the Protestant method ; that is to say, taken from the Scripture, and not from tradition.3

1 See p. 29.

2 Private letter to the author, 6 May, 1887 . 3 Critique philos. , 31 March, 1877 .

§ 2. ADHESIONS OF EVOLUTIONIST SCIENTISTS .

Conditionalism, being in conformity with practical reason, may serve as the crown and completion of the evolutionist system, which has been adopted by so many learned men.

That system is no longer dangerous when an element of liberty is admitted into it. Thus regarded, evolution is the method followed by the personal God, who sometimes introduces unexpected threads into the tissue of his work.

The creation of a principle of organic life, man's self- consciousness, the developement of moral liberty, the appearance of Jesus Christ, these are undeniable facts, new beginnings, which a determinist evolutionism cannot explain, and which must be taken into account.

The evolutionist who is faithful to his principle will become transformed into the image of Jesus, who himself transformed his humanity into the image of the heavenly Father. For a man to be satisfied with himself, to believe himself perfect, and not to evolve in the direction of the model man, would be a flagrant negation of the transformist principle properly understood.

Conditionalism defies materialist evolutionism to find a developement for the human race superior to that which the Gospel proposes. In this way Christian sanctification becomes a postulate of science.

Evolutionism thus amended and completed would help us the better to understand the Gospel. The struggle for life and survival of the fittest prophesies in a measure the immortalization of the elect ; the elimination of the unfit enables us to foresee the final suppression of the wicked, who withdraw themselves from the requirements of moral progress . The same laws are there, with individual liberty in addition.

The fossil remains of fifty thousand extinct species attest a certain contemplated loss in the work of creation. Such a fact

1 See pp. 30 and 48, and the volume entitled Christianity and Evolution, a symposium reprinted from the Homiletic Magazine. London : Nisbet and

Several theologians among the contributors adopted the standpoint of Christian evolutionism. Dr. MacCosh, in his book The Religious Aspect of Evolution, Professors Flint, of Edinburgh, and Pfleiderer, of

Berlin, belong to that school.

is of a nature to reconcile us with the notion, at first painful, of a corresponding loss in the operations of grace.¹

Let us distinctly keep in mind the fact that in the ecclesiastical doctrine the eternal hell is not only an immense loss, but is also an ever-festering sore. The superiority of the Conditionalist theory is, therefore, clearly perceptible.

Just as in the visible universe there is apparently an enormous and inexplicable waste of germs, seeds, and eggs of all kinds, which die simply because they are useless--analogy would lead us to conclude that something similar, and to at least as enormous an extent, happens in the Unseen with the germs of spiritual frames. The caterpillar which has not chosen a secure place of refuge in which to assume the chrysalis form does not live to become a perfect insect. The seeds that fell by the wayside, though scattered by an intelligent sower, were devoured by the birds of the air. " For many are called, but few chosen. "2

In the true Gospel teaching, the elect are neither the objects of a divine caprice, nor are they egoists ; they will form a select portion of mankind, chosen on account of spiritual qualities .

The men who are fittest for the life eternal will be found to be the most charitable, their ambition being indistinguishable from the desire to be useful and devoted in the highest degree, the greatest among them to the best of their power helping the least in their upward course.

In this conception there is no foundation for such accusations against Christian morality as the following :

This morality is arbitrary, superficial, and in fact immoral; it does not explain why it calls some actions good and others bad. It sets forth as the motive for doing right the assurance of thereby gaining a place in paradise, and as the motive for avoiding wrong the fear of burning in

1 On this subject see the remarkable considerations of the second book of Esdras viii. 41 ; ix., passim, and various passages of the Wisdom of Solomon. Therein will be found a sort of presentiment of that which is well founded in Darwin's celebrated theory of the struggle for life and survival of the fittest. The partial loss does not in any way contradict the principle of the superabundance of grace, the effects of which will last and be manifest through eternity, while evil, a merely ad interim apparition, is abolished.

See

Supplement No. IX., end of § 6 ; cf. Chap. II ., sect. iii., sect. viii. , § 2 ; p.

289; and the end of Supplement No. V.

2 The Unseen Universe, by Professors Balfour Stewart and Tait, 4th edition p. 265 art. 261.

hell. As a reason for not giving way to the temptation to deceive, by being apparently good while really wicked, it makes believe that everyone is always under invisible surveillance.

Such is religious morality ; it is based upon egoism and the fear of corporal punishments, upon the hope of the advantages of paradise and the dread of the flames of hell. This morality is good for egoists and cowards, but especially for children who may be influenced by the threat of the whip or the promise of barley-sugar. In place of this morality, which appeals to the lowest instincts of man, progress lays down a general principle : the solidarity of humanity.¹

We have shown that the " actions called good " tend to the conservation of the being, and as Professor Auguste Sabatier has very well said :

We scarcely think now that God's universal work, his definitive work, consists in the mysterious choice of a few elect for future bliss. No doubt we still believe in God's elect ; but they are elected, not for bliss, but for duty, for the salvation of their brethren. To be one of the elect is to be called, to be sent, into the Lord's vineyard. It is not a privilege of selfish enjoyment ; it is the call to a greater, harder, and more glorious task. True salvation for a soul, in fact, consists especially in its birth to the life of love, that is to say, in its vocation to self-devotion for the sake of those who are still in death and sin ; in other words, our own salvation has its aim and object in the salvation of others.

Salvation consists in the developement of the eternal life of love.3

What is there now remaining of M. Nordau's diatribes ?

§ 3. A GLANCE AT PHILOSOPHICAL PESSIMISM .

Professor Secrétan, in his prefatory letter, mentions certain thinkers " who hold themselves aloof from eschatological questions, being persuaded that it is impossible to form an idea of a future existence that will be both precise and rational, and who are also led away by the idea that we ought to will the right for the sake of the right, without regard to personal consequences." It seems to us that the ideal set forth by Professor Sabatier is exactly of a nature to satisfy such agnos-

1 Max. Nordau, Les mensonges conventionnels de notre civilisation, translated by Auguste Dietrich, p. 351.

2 See Chap. XI., sect. v., and Supplement No. V., § v. 3 Deux conceptions du ministère évangélique. Revue chrétienne, I Jan. ,

1891 , p. 11 , sq.

tics. Their admirable spirit of devotedness will find in the mission to which the elect are called a field of activity as precise as it is rational. They may even enter upon it at once, without quitting the present life .

Professor Secrétan further asks us to say a word for the benefit of persons otherwise excellent, " for whom the prospect of complete annihilation is a subject rather of hope than of fear. " Are these good folk theists or pantheists ? M. Secrétan does not say. If they belong to the latter category, we look upon them as being out of health and needing to place themselves under special treatment. If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, they will learn to distrust a tendency which, under the names of Brahminism and Buddhism, has reduced a great part of Asia to the state, little to be envied, in which we now see it. The desire to live being inherent in life, the enfeeblement of that desire is a symptom of coming death. Moreover, the virtue of these good people themselves seems to us to be in danger, for human morality has great need of a sanction which pantheism does not furnish, since it sanctions everything.

Those who are tired of life should hasten to come back to the personal and living God. While recommending to them the study of the Bible and the society of sincere Christians, we will leave to others more competent the task of indicating remedies more efficacious .

In the Gospel Jesus tells us of a king who is angry because , having prepared a grand banquet, he learns that some of those who had been invited have, on frivolous pretexts, declined the invitation. If the personal and living God assigns to us a place in a better world, shall we not offend him if we disdain his gracious offer ? Is it not insulting to the Creator for the creatures to decline the position that he calls them to fill ? Has not an element of laziness some place in the readiness to forego life thus put forward ? Would not the aspiration after absolute repose, when there is so much need for doing good, be a subtile form of egoism, and is not that abdication of all individual will the very death of liberty, which is the glorious aim of the universe ?

The Christian is not his own ; as a loving and docile son, he will heartily fulfil his Father's commands. Without allowing

himself a passionate attachment to the present life, nor even to the life to come, he will see in immortality not so much a reward as an opportunity for the accomplishment of a noble task.

For him to start towards heaven is to go forward to the performance of fresh work.

There are some who through idleness shrink from this prospect, persuading themselves that their unwillingness is the effect of a sublime disinterestedness. They will get no admiration from us ! We have a much higher regard for working Christians . Even though these should retain some degree of egoism , Jesus, their Chief, will take care to purify their notion of future bliss. Though there should be some alloy in the gold of their piety, would that be a reason for denying the natural connection between happiness and virtue ? How can we doubt that a holy joy will fill the hearts of the workers in the future life ?

A sumptuous feast is spread in the heavenly Father's house ; if the child feels no attraction towards it, that shows that he is in a state of spiritual decline. But, faithfully acted out, the Gospel will restore both the will and the power to live, even to those who have lost both .

The object of practical theology is the application of Christian teaching to the needs of the Church and of the world, and in that department also a return to the primitive Gospel will be of great advantage. The preacher is a soldier to whom Conditionalism brings new armour. There was a fault in the cuirass furnished by the traditional dogma. Since no apologetics could succeed in making the notion of a " hateful God " appear legitimate, that dogma has been used by freethinkers in order to hinder the propagation of the Gospel. To this day they include both Catholicism and Protestantism in their hostility. In their view evangelism is only a species of

Jesuitism, a lying invention, and an instrument of tyranny. Exposed to these accusations, preachers cannot repeat without reserve the proud saying of the apostle : " I am not ashamed of the Gospel. " Confined within their places of worship they remain on the defensive, and unbelief mounts guard at the door of their temples. The Christian literary man blushes for his faith in presence of his intimate literary but worldly friend, who asks him whether he sincerely believes in an eternal hell. Is the relative sterility that characterizes much evangelistic work to be greatly wondered at?1

The primitive Gospel, on the contrary, commends itself to all consciences as a manifestation of divine truth. It may restore to preachers that freedom of speech which was characteristic of the apostolic period. Being founded upon an unassailable theodicy, demonstrating the harmony of these four books of

God-the conscience, the Bible, nature, and history-it establishes the superiority of the Christian teaching over all religions and all systems of philosophy.

" The application of a truth cannot generally be made at the moment of its recognition. " Having been counteracted by the irrational hostility of the Churches, Conditionalism has hitherto been prevented from manifesting the extent of its power. It is asked whether it has founded all the works of Christian

1 See Chap. I., sect. iii. It is sad to see how, through lack of a dogmatic and philosophic synthesis, French Protestantism seems to be tramping without advancing. The Sunday at Home recently published a series of articles on religious thought in France. Towards the end the writer shows, with a certain sadness, that the Reformed Churches have lost all spirit of conquest and all hold upon the general public. Regarded by some as a detestable heresy and by others as a despicable superstition, Protestantism scarcely gains any recruits from among the cultivated classes. The home mission addresses attract a certain number belonging to the illiterate classes, but where are the earnest convictions ? As for the Salvation Army, it does not even pretend to reach the thinking people ; it brandishes in vain the blunted sword of an antiquated doctrine ; it seems like the last convulsions of a sickly kind of evangelism .

Notwithstanding his optimist temperament, M. de Pressensé, who was in the best position for knowing, was convinced of the powerlessness of the traditional Calvinism. In a letter to Father Hyacinthe Loyson, dated September, 1887, he wrote : “ I have not ceased to believe that we, the sons of the sixteenth-century Reformation, have not power sufficient to rescue our country from Romanism, and that for the accomplishment of that end it is necessary that an original reforming movement should arise within Catholicism itself." -Eglise libre, 17 July, 1891 .

2 2 Cor. iv. 2.

3 See Supplement No. XXII .

4 Octave Feuillet.

CHAPTER XII.

SECTION V.

charity ; but how could it have done so, since it has only just arisen out of its age-lasting entombment ? Nevertheless, it already includes within its ranks preachers and evangelists of the first order, men like Dr. Dale, who was appointed President of the recent International Congregational Council, Rev. Edward White, the learned Dr. Perowne, now Bishop of Worcester, Rev. W. H. M. Hay Aitkin, whose daily services at New York some years ago attracted such crowds as to interfere with the commercial activity of that great city.¹ Sir

Geo. Gabriel Stokes, Secretary and late President of the Royal

Society, has borne witness to the zeal of Conditionalist missionaries ; in a printed statement he has shown their exceptional success.2

On the other hand the Rev. T. E. Slater has indicated a crisis in the affairs of the missionary societies. He declares that in many parts of Great Britain and the United States the zeal of the subscribers has cooled, and he attributes this fact to eschatological scepticism. Like the sword of Damocles, a schism is threatening the American missions on this very subject of future retributions. The former enthusiasm is, as we believe, to be brought back only by a victory of the primitive

Gospel.

Where there is no belief in an end of evil beyond the tomb, the prospect of a suppression of misery on earth is not very likely to be admitted ; thus the traditional dogma has a tendency to paralyze the hope of social reformation. Before singing with the angelic host at Bethlehem, " Peace on earth ! " the Church must cry with a conviction at present lacking : " Glory to God in the highest ! " Such a conviction has become incompatible with a theology that makes hell eternal.

The true Gospel stimulates the zeal of both missionaries and

1 See his biography in The Christian of 10 Aug., 1888 .

2 See Supplement No. XXIII ., Conditionalism in Missionary Preaching. 3 " Strange to say, we hear in many quarters of a decline in missionary interest. There is not that enthusiasm in our Churches in respect to missions that formerly existed.

It is probably the uncertainty that has been gathering around the whole question of the future that has cooled the ardour of missionary enterprise."-The Christian World, 2 Feb., 1882. The Philosophy ofMissions, I vol., 16mo., 1882 ; see pp. 2 and 36. Chap. III. is entitled Decline of Interest in Missions. Cf. Evangelical Christendom,

Dec., 1885.

philanthropists by giving the joyful certitude of a final triumph of the good ; it leads us on towards the epoch wherein, the episode of evil being ended, there will no longer be anything to disturb the felicity of the universe. But this hope does not inspire us with the fatal sense of security produced by the belief in an inevitable salvation ; we are responsible for those who, through our negligence, will be missing from the celestial assembly.

France is now passing through a crisis of vast import.¹

Her friends tremble to see her tossed about between atheism and the Syllabus upon a sea full of rocks. May she, being spared fresh misfortunes, listen to the counsel of one of her most devoted sons, who said : " That which France needs is a religion at once simple, positive, enlightened, tolerant, and moral, a religion that would live in peace with science and would be the ally of liberty ; in fact, the religion of the Gospel. Such a religion, we are bold to say, Protestantism could and ought to give to her ; but," adds M. Recolin, " that which seems to be lacking in evangelical Protestantism is a system of dogmatics more precise, more vigorous and more profound."2 The voice of the lamented François Bonifas, speaking as it were from the tomb, makes the same avowal ; he has said :

We need clear affirmations, precise doctrines. We must resolutely follow truth the whole way, and not fear to affirm all that the Bible affirms and teaches.

Let us bow respectfully before the mysteries whereof God has reserved the secret, but not without having used our best efforts to let in upon them all the light supplied to us by revelation . Let us thus construct a complete system of dogmatics which, without neglecting the precious heritage of past ages, will be careful to go back

1 Closely connected with France, in addition to Belgium and French Switzerland, are the Latin nations, which in religious and literary matters move more or less in the orbit of France.

The same fermentation extends in some degree to the Sclavonic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon races ; in a word, to all our western civilization .

2 De l'état religieux de la France et particulièrement du protestantisme français, a report presented at the international conference of the Evangelical

Alliance at Copenhagen on the 2nd Sept., 1884. Revue chrétienne, Nov. and

Dec. , 1884.

to the biblical sources, and to give to the eternal truths of the Gospel a new form that will answer to the requirements of the present state ofthings.1

Let us once more recall a saying that formed part of the spiritual testament of Pastor Bersier : " What we especially need is a sound and strong doctrine. " 2

By another we are told :

Young men say : " There is no thought in that which is offered to us. " We need a movement of thought. Christians who are called to be missionaries in their generation ought to enter into living communion with this thought by the use of new formulas suited to the language of the age.³

In the biblical doctrine that we have been describing, we have met with these very characteristics : eternal truth, new form, scientific value, vigour, and depth. It furnishes a satisfactory solution of the eschatological difficulty, and, as M.

Pillon has said, in dogmatics eschatology is of capital importance. It has been too much neglected in the recent crusades of the home mission, which may perhaps account for a certain lack of success likely to lead to discouragement. It is desired to preach the Gospel of salvation, but it is important to know what is the great danger from which we are saved by the Gospel. If, when interrogated on this point, the evangelist hesitates or stammers, his mission will be in peril. If he either wounds the consciences or lulls them to sleep, he is not likely to have greater success.

Several solutions of the difficulty offer themselves. They correspond to different notions as to God's character, human nature, sin and salvation. They are so many theologies,

1 Revue théologique, July, 1878. These lines form part of the last article published by their author, who died the same year.

2 See p. 4.

3 Lecture by Professor Raoul Allier on the moral conditions of a religious renewal. Le Trait d'union, 15 May, 1891.

4 " He who has not a clear notion of salvation, how can he have a clear idea of the Gospel ministry, which is nothing else than a work of salvation ? Is not this the secret cause of the vagueness and uncertainty in which so many young pastors still remain as to the real nature of the task that they have to fulfil ?"-Aug. Sabatier, article quoted, Revue chrétienne, I Jan. , among which a decision becomes urgent. We have rejected, after full examination, the official dogma which offends the religious sentiment by calumniating the heavenly Father. With no less energy do we reject the enervating doctrines of

Universalism, whether absolute or conditional.

Nor will we accept that dogmatic scepticism according to which the Bible would at the same time teach contradictory doctrines, all equally good, it is said, provided that a good use be made of them. There is nothing much more dangerous than such indecision .

Man with heart unrenewed makes for himself an impenetrable retreat in a vague region of unlimited extent which is thus given over to him, and there he sleeps the sleep of eternal death. If the choice is left to him, it is needless to say that he will choose the pleasant and convenient doctrine of an inevitable salvation. And in that doctrinal indecision, which is proposed as an ideal, what becomes of the precision demanded by Messrs. Bonifas and Recolin ? No, even hell itself belongs to the domain of Christian dogmatics, which, enlightened by the torch of an impartial exegesis, will sound the depths even of the second death, will burst open those dungeons wherein the gaolers of the old theology inflicted eternal torments upon imperishable victims, and, armed with the besom of religious criticism, will clear the temple of truth of the impurities left by the harpies of the middle ages .

There remains Conditionalism .

This is a doctrine which uses neither palliation nor dissimulation ; it rests straight and square upon the Bible, bringing all the biblical declarations into harmony ; it was maintained by the earliest Fathers ; it is in conformity with universal analogy, it satisfies the instinct of self-preservation, an instinct which is also a duty ; within the sphere of liberty it is the crowning of the great scientific law of the survival of the fittest, the graft of the Gospel upon the vigorous but wild tree of evolution.

It humiliates the presumptuous child of the dust ; it glorifies Jesus Christ ; it is the basis of a new theodicy ; it keeps the golden mean between the manichæan pessimism which makes evil eternal and the optimism which sees no serious danger in evil. By removing the stumbling-block of eternal torments, it shows a God always faithful to himself, and merciful even in the terrible chastise-

ment wherewith he threatens obstinate sinners. By reestablishing the notion of irreparability, it restores to the preacher a weapon that he had lost. The fury of human passions is such that often nothing but the vision of the irremediable can arrest the sinner when exposed to temptation, but in the traditional dogma the irreparable had an odious character which paralyzed the preachers. They had overshot the mark, and so had been led to keep silence as to future punishments. Conditionalism boldly declares the irreparable consequences of sin ; the pardon that it offers is not impunity. Its mathematical morality deals out future retributions in exact proportion to the use made here below of the resources put within reach. A doctrine so clear and so just is a wellsharpened sword wherewith the defenders of the Gospel will be able to resume the attack, quitting the position of the besieged for that of conquerors .

The traditional doctrine was a fetter on the feet of the evangelist, Universalism paralyzed his arm . Conditionalism terrifies the impenitent with the dismal prospect of a long agony and a no less lamentable eternal death. Is it possible to find a restraint at the same time more powerful, more moral, and more rational ?

Conditionalism is, however, not merely a restraint, it is also a motive force. Appealing to our thirst for immortality, it presents to us Jesus Christ as the only one who can satisfy that thirst.

In other terms, it places man at the very heart of the

Gospel .

It may thus be seen that :

Our principal thesis is not at the circumference, but at the centre of Christian dogma. It is a vital germ, a principle ofregeneration for contemporary theology and preaching. In the measure in which our French Protestants assimilate this grand idea, deduce its logical consequences and thereby renew their faith, their apologetics, and their propaganda, in that measure we believe they will be seen to rise above their actual declining state and to exert their due influence in their country. They need this courageous evolution, which moreover is demanded by their own principles, they need this dogmatic reformation, which has been too long retarded by less pressing interests, if they are to win the ear of the present age.

On this ground, where they scarcely expected to meet us, the men of science will be able to follow us. Then, perhaps, we may succeed in making them understand that the Gospel has no fear of the light, that it completes instead of contradicting the revelations of nature, that in a word there is an admirable harmony between faith and reason. Thus rejuvenated and transfigured in its fundamental conception, the religion of the Christ will be able afresh to manifest its legitimacy as the best explanation of our troubled world, as the divine answer to our most agonizing questions. To many sincere and reflective minds, driven in spite of themselves by the parching wind of doubt towards atheism and despair, it will bring an untold peace and a sublime hope.¹

Forty years ago, Isaac Taylor, although not professing himself a Conditionalist, had a kind of prophetic intuition of a rejuvenation of the Church by means of a new eschatology. He wrote :

When once this weighty question of the after-life has been opened, a controversy will ensue, in the progress of which it will be discovered that with unobservant eyes we and our predecessors have been so walking up and down, and running hither and thither among dim notices and indications of the future destinies of the human family, as to have failed to gather up or to regard much that has lain upon the pages of the Bible, open and free to our use. Those who, through the course of years, have been used to read the Scriptures unshackled by systems and bound to no conventional modes of belief, must have felt an impatience in waiting, not for the arrival of a new revelation from heaven, but of an ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has so long been in our hands.

The doctrine of future punishment will take its place in the midst of an expanded prospect of the compass and intention of the

Christian system.

So it will be with the future Methodism ; and although it will rest itself upon a laboriously obtained belief concerning the " wrath to come," a belief that will heave the mind with a deep convulsive dread, yet, and notwithstanding this preliminary, the renovation which we look for will come as the splendour of day comes in the tropics ; it will be a sudden brightness that makes all things glad !2

1 Ch. Byse, in the preface to his translation of Mr. White's Life in Christ, p. xxxi., sq.

2 Wesley and Methodism, 1851, p. 289, sq. E. White, op. cit., p. 457.

This prophecy, like many others, and like immortality itself, remains conditional. History teaches us that the truth triumphs only by the disinterested efforts of those who believe that they possess it, efforts which, although disinterested, are none the less obligatory, being required by loyalty. Those of our readers who share our conviction will understand also the imperious duty of propagating it. As M. de Pressensé said :

I hold that life is too short for us to lose.time and strength in attenuating or disguising that which we believe to be true, for the purpose of making it more acceptable, and for the sake of not wounding numerous susceptibilities. We are here below in order to be ourselves, to speak the energetic language of our convictions, without looking to the right hand or to the left. It is only at the cost of this imprudence that the cause of truth is usefully served.¹

It should be well understood that in this matter we are not dealing with the theory of an individual, nor joining in a vain tournament of dialectics, but considering the gravest question in the world, the specially vital question, to be or not to be, the question of our eternal destinies, of the character of God, of the future of the Christian religion upon earth. Those whose eyes have been opened will see in that which we seek to maintain a portion of the glad tidings which has been misunderstood.

Imitating the widow in the parable, they will not fail to importune their brethren until that which we are opposing, that tyrannical dogma which to so many souls bars the way to the kingdom of God, is utterly overthrown.

If the doctrine of pain that shall never end be the offspring of the combination of a false psychology with the traditionary interpretations of a superstitious and uncritical antiquity, it is easy to see that the Deity must abhor the falsehoods taught in his name, in Europe as in Asia, and will highly commend the work of those who set themselves to overturn this stumbling-block, and to rend the dogma which at once veils from sinful men his real and awful Justice, and from his children so much of the light of his eternal Love.2

1 Quotation in the journal Signes des temps, 17 Feb., 1891.

2 E. White, op. cit., p. 64.

Our Western civilization, distracted by an intestine war, divided against itself, has now reached a point at which it cannot stay, nor can it long subsist if it fails speedily to discover and to make manifest to all a meeting-point between science and faith , between the old Gospel and modern progress.

The Conditionalists believe that they know that meeting-point.

The farther they advance, the more are they confirmed in their belief by the manner in which that belief sustains the attacks of opponents and satisfies the cravings of their own souls . But the more complete their certitude, the more would their silence become culpable. May they help to hasten the day when all the friends of truth will share in its benefits !

Every strong and sincere conviction tends to proselytism. When a man, after having long groaned under the yoke of ignorance and error, succeeds in finding a truth which satisfies all the needs ofhis reason and of his heart, which is like thefiat lux causing the radiant daylight to shine in upon the darkness and chaos wherein he was sinking ; such a man could not keep that truth to himself. He would feel his soul too narrow to contain its brightness and splendour ; it would produce in his mind so many thoughts, in his heart so many emotions, in his conscience the sense of so many obligations and duties, that in spite of his feebleness and timidity that truth would break forth in all his utterances, it would be perceptible in all his silences, in the fire of his eyes and the unusual radiance of his face. And should any authority, any despotic power succeed in shutting his mouth, that truth would become in his soul a consuming fire, an intolerable torment which would make him weary of life and cause him to long for that future existence wherein all his faculties will have full liberty of developement.¹

But yet, who will shut the mouth of the true believer ?

Who will cool down his enthusiasm ? Cold water will intensify rather than extinguish the celestial fire by which he is animated. In the midst of a conflict which is often grievous he will call to mind the saying of a Christian thinker : “ I know no greater delight than that of fighting for the triumph of a great truth that is still misunderstood. "2

As regards the result of his efforts, the believer is patient,

1 Jules Denys, Le Signal, 18 June, 1881 .

2 François Guizot, L'Illustration, 25 Oct., 1884.

because he has eternity before him. By his faith he dominates a transitory world. He pities those who do not share his treasure, but his solicitude does not interfere with his confidence in God. Although he should never see here below the success of the cause that he defends, he knows that he will one day contemplate it from a higher standpoint, and this assurance is sufficient for him.

The faithfulness of his testimony will not depend upon the sympathy that men, be they good or bad, envious or benevolent, cowardly or courageous, may deign or not deign to accord to him.

Upon the Churches this testimony lays a certain responsibility from which they can free themselves only by a serious response to the challenge. The fate of Jerusalem, the torpor of the Synagogue, reduced to the condition of a chrysalis, not to say a mummy, the ever-lamentable situation of the Jewish people, all these are facts indicating what may become of religious communities that reject or pretend not to understand the appeals of the truth. Will it be said that the truth which is occupying our attention is of secondary importance ? That would be to prejudge the question. In the first century of the Church the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Herodians doubtless agreed in assigning only a secondary importance to the problems raised by the disciples of Jesus Christ. In the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Church treated as secondary the question of justification by faith, which Luther set up as a standard, but which does not appear in the Apostles' Creed. Again, only some fifty years ago the ecclesiastical authorities of French Protestantism still spoke disdainfully of a " pretended revival," a religious movement the power of which was very soon to overcome their own.

If ever an age has claimed to be able to solve the universal problem ; if ever an age has been called upon to gather up a past fruitful of instruction in order to prepare a future loaded with benefits ; if ever an age has been great in its mission, ardent in its hopes, indomitable in its enterprises, that age is surely our own ; yet this age is agitated, breathless, weary, sick.¹ And this sick patient is distrustful of every remedy, ancient and modern ; he wants the composition and effects of the medicines to be explained to him ; he prefers death to the charlatans .

The doctors must therefore meet the demands of their patient. The modern spirit rejects odious and contradictory conceptions. The required explanations can be refused only by obstinacy or ignorance.

We have asserted that every being exists only under a definite condition ; that for every human soul this condition is personal communion with the personal and living God ; that this, too, is the condition of immortality ; that as a consequence of sin man finds himself outside of that communion ; that he is invited to return into it ; that this return is to be effected by faith in Jesus Christ, and is the healing needed by the age : are not these assertions reasonable, in conformity with universal analogy, with the laws of nature, and with the necessary conditions of life and progress ?

Neither science nor conscience can contradict these assertions .

Science says : Conform to the condition of your existence, reject every element that is contrary to your physical or moral constitution. The Gospel says : Be ye holy.

Science says : Aspire after indefinite progress. The Gospel says : Be ye perfect.

Science demands the abandonment of every prejudice ; the Gospel requires the docility of the little child .

The Gospel teaches that the Christ died for all, to the end that no man should live for himself alone .

The blood of our

Chief cries to us that we must live, and if needful die, for each other. Science responds with the cry : Solidarity, mutual trust ; all for each, each for all. The object of social economy is attained when fraternity tends freely towards equality by the multiplication of the relations of all to each.

The Gospel tells us that many are called but few chosen, and that many of those who are invited will refuse to sit down

1 Adolphe Monod, in the peroration of his sermon, Qui a soif?

at the banquet of eternal life.

Observation convinces us that in nature only a limited number of choice germs are developed and perpetuated .

So, too, the Gospel and universal analogy teach us, as by a common accord, that the gift of life is conditional, that progress is effected by a process of elimination, or to vary the expression , that it is needful to " strive to enter in by the narrow door for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby ; for narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it. "1

These parallels might be multiplied. From them it appears that the Gospel at the very outset gives to the believer the benefit of that healthful rule, whereof science is only in these

• later days formulating the definition.

Everything, said Joseph de Maistre, is announcing to us a great unity of some sort towards which we are hastening with rapid footsteps.2

In the words of a profound historian :

A fuller comprehension of the positive spirituality that underlies all forms, although not adequately expressed by any, must at last reconcile all antagonisms. We cannot give up the assurance that above these oppositions there yet rises the unity of a clear and therefore effective consciousness of God.3

In the distance, wrote M. Taine only recently, a moment is perceptible in which those two coadjutors, an enlightened faith and a respectful science, will together work at one picture, or else separately paint the same picture in two different frames.4

The time is approaching when God's eternal light, meeting at last with man's reason and experience, will chase from the face of the nations that night in which no man can work .

spent, the day is at hand."

St. Paul said : " The night is far

We ought now to understand for ourselves

1 Agonizesthe eiselthein, Luke xiii. 24 ; Matt. vii. 13. See p. 63.

2 Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, eleventh conversation. 3 Ranke, at the end of his " History of the Popes." 4 Revue des Deux Mondes, June, 1891, p. 509.

that which formerly we accepted as told to us. Humanity is reaching adult age, and the dictates of wisdom, patiently inculcated in our childhood by the heavenly Father, ought now, in the light of experience, to display before our eyes the immensity of their truth. St. Paul also said : " We are no longer under a tutor," we are ourselves becoming masters.1

These are the first dawnings of the promised day in which all from the least to the greatest shall comprehend religious truth, when " they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying : Know the Lord," for " the law of the Lord shall be written in their heart. " 2

In the crisis through which we are now passing an imperfect science is shaking the faith of many ; a riper science will change faith into sight.

And when, by the easier road of science, the hosts of mankind shall have reached the summits where light in full glory shines, they will there with surprise and joy encounter the men of faith, who, having gone forth from among them, will be found to have arrived long before, under the leadership of Jesus, and by the arduous and blood-stained paths of sacrifice.

Men of science, their minds having attained to maturity and to conformity with universal law and with God himself, will then return, but in resplendent light, to the formulas of the little, the humble, the simple, who with emotion and adoration say : My Father ! They will see that those whose hearts were right have from the beginning of the world been in possession of the substantial and whole truth, which a partial thought and an immature science were not in a condition to grasp.3

In this glorious picture there is a dark shadow. It is the void left behind them by the voluntary victims of evil. We have seen that the wish to remove this shadow would be an interference with the principle of individual freedom. But the number of the victims is not fatally fixed ; the believer can labour to reduce that number. A sublime vocation, a powerful incentive : he can strive to rescue perishing souls from the nothingness to which they are hastening.

1 A. Gratry, La Morale et la loi de l'histoire, vol. i., p. 159.

2 Jer. xxxi. 34, 33. 3 A. Gratry, La Morale et la loi de l'histoire, vol. i. , p. 46 .

This thought brings us back at last to the practical solution of the great problem .

The prospect of a more consolatory future ; a deeper love for a God better understood ; a fear, in view of sin and its inevitable consequences, that is more salutary because more rational and exempt from superstition ; and lastly, a more enlightened zeal for the present and future interests of mankind : such will be in every honest and good heart the fruits of the true biblical teaching in relation to immortality.

SUPPLEMENT .

SUPPLEMENT No. I.

THE FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

(See page 17.)

THE book of Dr. Hermann Schultz, of Göttingen, which I am about to give an account of, is entitled Presuppositions of the Christian Doctrine of Immortality ; in German : Die Voraussetzungen der Christlichen Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit.

Although this book was published as long ago as 1861, it still remains the most profound study of the subject that it deals with : viz. , the

Old Testament considered as the foundation of the Christian doctrine of immortality.

Throughout the book the author uses the word immortality in its strict sense of a life beyond the reach of death or destruction, such a life being carefully distinguished not only from a mere survival beyond bodily death, but also from a destructible life, even though that life should be eternally sustained by a power outside itself. Immortality in this strict sense is the absolute possession of God alone ; in its relative sense it can only be acquired by man through constant communion with God, and this communion must be of such a nature as will make the man a personal revelation of God as holy love.

Such is the main theme of the book, which is arranged in four chief divisions. Of these, the first treats of human nature in the light of experience ; the three others deal with human immortality in relation to creation, sin, and grace.

I. The first division has to do with human nature as it exists under our observation. The author shows that immortality cannot be a native quality in any created being. God is the possessor and only source of life; this is indicated by the names under which he is revealed in the

1 This statement, prepared by Mr. F. A. Freer with a view to the present work, was read by him before the Theological Society of the Canton de Vaud at its session on9 June, 1890. It subsequently appeared in the Revue de Théologie et de Philosophic, for July of that year.

OldTestament, as well as by the formal teaching of the New Testament. If, therefore, any being who is not God has life, and especially if that life be indestructible, that can be so only by virtue of some relation with God. All beings in the universe, visible and invisible, are in relation with God as creatures with their Creator. Man is no exception ; his life is not inherent : it is derived, and therefore may be destroyed. That which God has created cannot be a part of God, and consequently cannot have in itself the source of life. The creature must, therefore, be always dependent upon that divine source for the continuance of its life, and cannot be essentially immortal, even though its life should be prolonged to eternity by a power outside itself.

The author here makes a careful examination of the principal arguments that have been advanced by philosophers of various schools, ancient and modern, in favour of the immortality of the soul, arranging them in the order of Göschel's classification as metaphysical, ontological, and teleological, and he comes to the conclusion that they are all insufficient to prove the native and absolute immortality of the human soul.

II . The second division discusses human nature as it was before the fall.

By creation man became a living, but not an immortal, being.

The Scripture assumes that the soul does not die with the body, and, further, that man is susceptible of immortalization ; but it certainly does not teach that the human soul is indestructible. “ We have seen," says Dr. Schultz, " that God alone is the source of life, and that the fact of having been created does not suffice to assure immortality to the creature. As an effect of the divine will, man's life might certainly be maintained through eternity, but for all that he would not be, properly speaking, immortal, since his life would always come from without, and might at any time be withdrawn from him. If, therefore, man is called to become immortal without losing his identity, some special relation with God must be open to him whereby he may become partaker of the divine life, so as to feel it to be his own. This is the effect of the ethical relation."

The author refers this ethical relation with God to a second, yet simultaneous, exercise of the creative power, which has made of man a being superior to the animals, and makes it possible for him by his own choice to become a sharer in the divine life. This special creation, on which rest all our hopes of immortality, as described in the second chapter of Genesis, is referred to in the New Testament. God is the supreme personality ; man, who is a subordinate personality and an image of God, was not created holy and immortal, but he was endowed with the faculty by which he may attain to the absolute, becoming holy and immortal. He is destined for union with God, but the union can only

SUPPLEMENT No. I.

be voluntary and moral. By the first creation man is composed of body and soul, like the beasts. There is nothing in that which would make him capable of raising himself to the height ofGod. It is the second creation that gives him spirit, whereby he is brought into contact with that which is supersensual. The life of this ethical creation is communicated to the soul by the spirit, and to the body by the soul. Man was thus originally endowed with faculties which made it possible for him to attain the purpose of his creation and to acquire immortality. But it is the whole man, not any separate portion of his being, that can become immortal. If he fails to attain the assigned purpose of his being, he also fails of his immortality. The biblical story indicates this consequence when it tells that Adam was driven forth from the garden and from access to the tree of life.

" According to the New Testament," says Dr. Schultz, " the divine

λόγος is he through whom and for whom all things have been created.

We may, therefore, say that man can become immortal by his relation with the λόγος, the creative Word, who in his own person has furnished the ideal to be realized. The first Adam was created to this end, that in the Son of God he should have eternal life. By the uninterrupted developement of his natural faculties, by the free and voluntary acceptance of the circumstances in which the Creator had placed him, Adam would have united himself with the eternal Son, not indeed physically, so as to lose his own personality, but ethically, so as to acquire the kind of immortality that is accessible to created beings." The conclusion naturally follows : that the creation of man did not confer immortality upon him, but made him capable of acquiring it by continuing in filial relation with God.

III. The subject of the third division is : man and immortality as affected by sin and outside of the economy of grace. In all that has been said thus far the possibility of sin has been implied. Man can attain the purpose of his existence only by becoming voluntarily holy and immortal. It is evident that the possibility of attaining this purpose implies the possibility of failure. According to the Bible, although a possibility, sin is not a necessity of man's nature. In his original and normal condition he needed only to avoid wilful disobedience. When temptation assailed him, he had only to withstand it in order to become immortal.

" This temptation and the possibility of giving way to it," says our author, " were the conditions which would have enabled man to attain the true purpose of his existence.

Man was required to overcome the temptation to disobedience which was a consequence of his nature, both spiritual and carnal.

He had to overcome that temptation, even though aggravated by the intervention of a supernatural evil power. Thus only would he have attained immortality." Death is, therefore, the consequence of the moral failure. This selfchosen separation from God leaves him subject to the law which governs all living creatures, the law of mortality. Death is implied in sin as its necessary result, in accordance with the saying : " In the day when thou eatest thou shalt surely die. "

Dr. Schultz regards death as a process, which began at the moment of the first sin, but is not completed by the cessation of bodily life. In the hour of bodily death natural law triumphs, the life-breath, the principle of individual existence, is withdrawn from the man ; the body, being of dust, sinks to dust, as an integral part of the material universe. But the man's death is then only in its first phase. The spiritual soul is not delivered from the power of death in consequence of the loss of the body. Begun long before the body died, the work of death goes on long after that event. As life is the sphere of union with God, so death is the sphere of separation from God. The death of the body cannot be regarded as a liberation of the soul ; it is rather the abstraction of its substratum, of the organ by means of which the soul acts.

Dying of inanition is the only way in which the soul can perish ; it will therefore continue to exist so long as those sources of nourishment are available which can operate without the intervention of the body.

Dr. Schultz thinks that the soul may find these sources of vital force in its relation with spiritual powers hostile to God.

" The spiritual soul separated from the body, which was the medium connecting it with nature, separated from God, for the full comprehension of whom sin has unfitted it, is now in a state of death.¹

When once those spiritual powers hostile to God shall have been brought to nought in the fire of the divine judgement, the soul, deprived of all support, and having no more vital force, will itself become the prey of utter destruction. " This second death will be the completion of the death penalty of sin, the last stage of the long road that leads to death absolute. There could not be endless sufferings unless God, in his holy wrath and to increase the chastisement, should maintain for ever the existence of the soul with the express purpose of causing it to suffer for ever. Such a perpetuation of abortive beings is not at all likely. When God is all in all, when sin and death are no more, there will be no place for beings who are without moral relation with God ; otherwise there would be a place where God would not be. God could hardly make free beings and yeť make it impossible for them, while failing of their proper purpose, to abolish themselves.

1 Todeszustand. In this expression there is evidently a proleptic element. mors moriens as distinguished from a mors mortua.

It is a

SUPPLEMENT No. I.

IV. The fourth division of the book treats of man and immortality as affected by the forbearance of God.

When man sinned he did not entirely cease to serve as an organ for the personal revelation of God.

In strict justice God might at once have left him a prey to the second death ; but God's justice is to be also an exhibition of holy love, and so man comes under the operation of grace immediately after the fall. In all God's subsequent dealings with man punishment and grace go hand in hand, until in the end, by the redemptive work of Christ, grace makes it possible for him to attain the purpose of his existence by becoming a full personal revelation of God. Apart from that work of

Christ man remains, and must remain, in his state of death .

God's forbearance did not put an end to that state, but it postponed the operation of the second death.

The divine forbearance could not restore to the human soul the source of life, for God could not fully reveal himself to man defiled by sin and so rendered incapable of being his organ. He would deny himself if he were to dwell in a soul in which there remained the least unexpiated sin. Even if God were to allow the time of his forbearance to last for ever, the unredeemed soul would still not be immortal, not having life in itself. This supposition, however, is inadmissible, for the rebellious soul, remaining an imperfect revelation of God, would make the fulfilment of the purpose of creation impossible. The state of the disembodied soul must vary with the varying cases. The one who in this earthly life has yearned after God, and has striven to become as nearly as possible a full revelation of God, finds itself in a state wherein it may hope for more complete satisfaction. It is even possible that such a soul, separate from the body, may enjoy spiritual things none the less, or even more, than when united with the body. On the other hand, the soul that has lived only for itself or for this world must be without hope and in danger of utter destruction. This disembodied state is not a state of rewards and punishments, but only of waiting; and if forbearance were the only manifestation of the grace of God, there could be no deliverance from this state of death .

But God's grace goes farther : it strives to make of humanity a living revelation of the personal God. Still, God could not attain this end by an arbitrary act, by a simple declaration of pardon of sins. As Dr. Schultz says : " It is evident that such a notion is only possible if sin and its punishment are regarded as having only a mechanical, outward, and arbitrary connection.

So soon as it is seen that the chastisement of sin, that is, separation from God, is inseparable from the sin, that this abnormal state deprives the soul of the power to maintain a hold on life, that God, who is holy love, cannot be known by a being in whom sin abides, and that the sinful soul is incapable of communion with the divine personality, then will be perceived the inadmissibility of the notion of salvation without moral conversion. It is, moreover, condemned as antichristian by a mere cursory examination of the New Testament."

A renewal of the spirit is necessary. This renewal is made possible by the incarnation, the life and death of Jesus Christ, the sole perfect representative of God. " In a living union with this living Saviour, a union accomplished by faith, now lies for each individual the only and last possibility of incorporating in himself the life principle and so of obtaining immortality, eternal life."

Here follows a lengthened examination of Old Testament views as to the condition of souls after death. The author maintains that the hope of saints under the old covenant amounted only to a survival in Sheol .

That survival was, however, not in view of rewards or punishments, although the condition of the souls therein was held to differ according as they had been godly or ungodly. " As a hope of future good, immortality was known to the prophets ; as a positive doctrine, the books of Moses entirely ignore it. "

From this brief analysis it will be seen that the work of Dr. Schultz is not a full exposition of the Christian doctrine of immortality ; it merely prepares the way for it ; lays its foundation. In other terms, the author seems to have set forth the premisses of that which in our day is called the doctrine of Life in Christ, or Conditional Immortality.

A letter from Dr. Schultz, received by the writer since the foregoing article was prepared, states that although he would now put his arguments in a somewhat different form, and would use other modes of expression, he feels more than ever assured of the correctness of his main thesis as being the only truly Christian basis for the doctrine of immortality.